The Mommy Thing
I read about the competitiveness and “mommy wars” before I had Eliana, but I always assumed it was exaggerated and I would never be one of those mothers. Alas, it is real and I am not immune. I was worse in the beginning without ever intending to be. I admit, I used to brag A LOT about Eliana and the things she could do. She was hitting milestones so early and what mother wouldn’t be thrilled about that and want to shout it from the rooftops? Or tell random strangers at the grocery store? Yeah, I suck.
The problem doesn’t really start with the bragging, or being proud of your kid. The problem really starts when the other parent hears “My kid can do this and since your can’t he/she must be behind.” Of course that’s not what’s said, but it gets turned around and heard that way. It’s almost impossible not to compare babies, especially when they’re close in age. I think every baby has their thing. Something they can do well and seem to pick up easily.
Eliana tends to be advanced physically. She rolled early, crawled early-ish, stood early. That’s her thing. These milestones tend to be viewed as a big deal in the parenting world (along with walking, I suppose). She’s not by any means better or smarter than any other babies (except in my eyes, of course). The milestones she hits “early” aren’t any more or less important than any other milestone. It’s just her thing.
Her thing is NOT food. It is a struggle every single day getting this child to eat. Bottles don’t seem to be a problem these days, but solids suck. I have to fight and bribe and plead and beg her to take even a few bites. Oh, sure, sometimes I’ll get lucky and she’ll eat a whole stage 2 container of something (sweet potatoes), but that is rare. Now that we’re up to 3 meals a day, I feel like all I do is stress about it. I try not to, I really do. But when you hear “my baby ate this and this and this today”, it’s hard not to compare. And this is by no means a jab at the person with the awesome eater, it’s just my PERSONAL issue with my own kid. I hear what isn’t really said.
Which is what other mothers heard when I would brag about Eliana’s things. That door swings both ways. Sucks when it hits you on the ass though.
So the eating is no fun. She’s good about trying new things, but then she loses interest. She used to like green beans. Now, notsomuch. Same with sweet peas. And half the other foods she’s tried. I keep offering them to her and she might eat a few bites, but GAH! Do you know how frustrating it is to hold a spoon in front of someone’s mouth that they WILL NOT OPEN? And you can’t even get mad about it because she’s a baby. She just knows she doesn’t want it.
I’ve been creative about ways to pry her mouth open. Like handing her a toy and when she opens her mouth to chew on it, sneak in the spoon. The first time I did that she looked at me like “touché”. But she’s smart and only fell for it twice. I’m quickly running out of ideas. I give her lots of different things to eat with different textures. I feed her, I let her feed herself. She’ll eat banana baby food and banana pieces out of the mesh feeder, but not broken into pieces on her tray. Sometimes she’ll take a piece off my finger and ONCE she put a piece in her own mouth. But it’s so hit-or-miss and she’s not at all consistent. Damn babies with their own minds and ideas.
And now you know what we’re dealing with. Your kid doesn’t crawl, mine doesn’t eat. It’s the same thing.
**You know who you are: I’m not talking about you in particular. I just used our conversations as examples. You know what I mean. Love love!
An off day
For the most part, I know what to expect out of my day. I’ve never been a fan of schedules and I had every intention of avoiding them when we had Eliana. I wanted her to be flexible. I figured since we’re a military family and we move ever 10 minutes, she’s going to have to learn to deal with the unexpected. She had other plans and put ME on a schedule. And I was ok with that too. I’m all about going with the flow.
Lately our day is really predictable and now that she’s older and mobile and, you know, crazy all the time, it’s nice knowing what to expect and when to expect it. Especially nap time.
Usually she wakes up at 7. Then I know breakfast is at 8, followed by sippy cup and diaper change and nap time at 8:30. Then the next nap is and hour and a half after she wakes up. She can’t stay awake for too long, so she takes a ton of naps. Except in the evenings. Then she can stay awake forever.
On days that she wakes up later, I have no idea what I’m doing. Today she woke up at 9. And I know that sounds wonderful. Sleeping in till 9! Cue the angels and harps! And it’s great. But I am so completely thrown off.
I feed her breakfast at 10, but then what about lunch? Nap at 10:30 and that’s fine, but do I give her a bottle since she hadn’t eaten since 6:45? But it’s right after breakfast so she’s not hungry. And she usually doesn’t get a bottle before 1st nap. But then she’ll be hungry when she wakes up and I usually feed her before her nap, not after. So then she won’t be hungry before her next nap. I’m so confused. And she usually goes down so easily, but on an off day, she doesn’t. It almost makes a couple extra hours of sleep so not worth it.
I think if I could only get back into not caring about the schedule, I could deal with it. She seems to have trained me well. Fortunately (unfortunately?), off days are rare and for the most part, she still wakes up at 7am.
I forgot to title this
Eliana got her 6th tooth on Saturday (2/23/08). That one surprised me. I wasn’t expecting it and it may have been there longer than I know. It’s pretty far out to be completely new, but I’m counting them as I notice. She’s lopsided right now. She’s got the normal 2 top 2 bottom middles ones and now she’s got the top and bottom on her left. Not sure where the right teeth are.
I noticed tonight that she’s doing this weird grinding thing. I was feeding her and in between bites, I could hear her scraping her teeth together. I don’t know if this is normal or if it’s going to cause problems in the long run. I’m sure I’ll consult Dr. Google tonight and see what he says.
Everyone is shocked that she has so many teeth, myself included. I keep expecting a good long break between teeth, but I’m not getting it. At this rate she’ll have all her teeth by her first birthday. Then what will she do? Learn to knit maybe? Otherwise she’ll be bored.
Oddly enough, despite her mouthful, she’s a crappy eater. She’s still timid about puffs. I keep trying, but she’s not into it. I keep hearing about all these babies eating big people food with nothing but gums, but my kid with a mouth full of teeth can’t even manage a little bit. I don’t think I’m ever going to understand this baby development thing.
Motivation
I have been so lazy lately and my house is suffering. I’m sure part of it is my inability to turn off the damn computer, but mostly it’s because I was born this way. Ask my mother. I have always been lazy. I go through spurts of motivation followed by long stretches of lazy. It’s not so bad though. I do manage to keep up with the main mess even on my lazy days.
This weekend I was half and half. Saturday I didn’t do anything. Ok, that’s not accurate. I didn’t do most of the things I had planned on doing. But today I did everything I planned on doing plus the crap I didn’t get done yesterday. Ok, Tony helped.
Our garage looks amazing. I wish I had thought to take before and after pictures because the difference is huge. Before, I couldn’t get out of the car and into the house without navigating a maze of crap and bumping my elbow and stubbing my toe. And Tony couldn’t get out of the car without hearing me bitch about all the crap. I bring fun for the whole family. But now it is clean and cleared out and makes me want to twirl around in it. Except it smells like cat pee. Must find out where that’s coming from.
We’re not done. We still have bins and boxes to go through and find homes for, but that’s a “little at a time” project. I figure if we can knock out one box or bin a night, we’ll be done in a couple of weeks. It’s so freeing to get rid of crap. I can’t wait until we go through everything and get rid of a ton of stuff.
Eliana was awesome while we did our cleaning/organizing. I put her in the PNP outside and she played happily for a long time. She loved being outside and didn’t stop smiling. I didn’t let her stay in the sun for long since I don’t want her to get burned. She was content staying in the garage where she could see the outside, but be out of the sun. She watched Tony do stuff for a while until she got hungry. Then it was bottle time and nap time while we finished up. It worked out perfectly.
Zzzzzzzzzzz
I’m lucky. I have the luxury of napping anytime Eliana does (and she takes 3 naps a day)(not that I take 3 naps a day or even 1 nap most days. Just a nap once in a while. Just making that clear). But I swear I am more tired when I wake up than I was when I went to bed. I went to bed at a decent time last night (11:30 as opposed to 1:30) and woke up at 7 (with a brief wake up at 6 going”Why is she making noise? Is she awake? Nope, still sleeping.”) And yet I still wanted to sleep. Decided that instead of cleaning and organizing during her first nap, we’d take a nap ourselves. An hour and a half later we wake up, still tired.
What is that all about? One of these days I will go to sleep at night and wake up whenever my body says it’s ready. I used to be able to do that all the time. I think I might miss it a little. And I’m one of the lucky ones with a sleeping baby. Can’t even imagine the sucktitude of the non sleeping baby. But really what the hell is going on? Is it just a lazy sleepy day? Am I suffering from some sort of vitamin deficiency? I am just so tired.
Toxic people
I once had this annoying neighbor. Everyone has had one at some time and this was mine. I was walking back to my apartment after checking the mail and she was getting out of her car. She was older than me, but not ancient by any means. She was struggling with bags and her cat. I asked if she needed any help and carried her bags upstairs for her. I hadn’t really met anyone in my apartment complex, so I thought it was great to meet a neighbor. I guess I’d envisioned having coffee with her and chit chatting every now and then.
We started talking about her cat. She mentioned she (the cat…we’ll call her Fluffy since I can’t remember the real name) was having some health problems and had to be given IV fluids every day. I offered to help her and she took me up on it. I would go over every day and help hold the cat so she could do the fluids. And it worked for a while.
But I started noticing that she ALWAYS complained about people. She was one of those suspicious types that always thought the worst of everyone. Her old neighbor tried to poison her cats, but the police didn’t believe her. The ladies at the office were out to get her. One potential customer was an idiot just because she chose not to use her service. She even went so far as to write and rude letter cussing at the customer and telling her how “stupid” she was.
So, basically crazy.
I started not wanting to even go over there because it was always something. It was never an in and out thing anymore. She always wanted to talk and complain and I was tired of it. We started out doing it in the late afternoon/early evening. But she started calling later and later asking me to come over. I was a night person and she knew this, so I guess she didn’t feel bad about it. I was so happy to go on vacation because I had a legitimate excuse to not see her.
Tony was deployed while all this was going on. Fortunately they hit a lot of ports, so I got to talk to him more than usual. I made it clear to her that he was my priority and if he called, her cat took a backseat. It had a been a while since I’d heard from him and he finally called late one night. They had just got into port somewhere (I don’t rememebr where though) and he had a good long time to talk to me. While I was on the phone with him, she beeped in wanting me to come over and help with the cat. Keep in mind it was past 11pm at this point. I told her I was on the other line with Tony and that I wouldn’t be able to help her. She kept arguing with me about it saying he could just call me back (not always possible). I told her that she knew he was my priority and I couldn’t help her. I finally got off the phone and finished talking to Tony.
The next day she told me she couldn’t understand why I couldn’t just get off the phone for 10 minutes to help her. It was then that I told her she’d have to find someone else as it was obvious she didn’t respect me or the fact that I told her my husband comes first. I don’t even know why she would think her cat would take priority.
After I made the break I was so relieved! It made me want to do a dance all around my apartment. (I may or may not have done said dance.) (And by “may” I mean I totally did.) I don’t know why it took me so long to end that relationship. It was obvious much sooner that she wasn’t a good person and her outlook on people and life itself was just toxic. I’m all about complaining about stuff when it’s warranted. But everyday is a little too much.
There’s really no point to this story. For whatever reason I started thinking about her the other day and felt like a blog. So there you go.
The end.
7 months (and 1 day shut up)
So 7 months. Last month’s update was huge. 6 months seems like such a big deal. It’s half a year. But 7 months doesn’t feel quite as important. I almost want to say “She’s bigger. The end.” Not that there hasn’t been stuff. There’s been some stuff. Like. You know. Stuff.
This month has been about making some changes and teaching better habits. Eliana started napping full time in her crib. It’s fabulous. Really, it’s great. But I miss my snuggly naps. She flat out refuses to nap with me anymore. And last night was the first night she slept in her crib. She went down and 8:30 ish and woke up at 7am (her usual time). She didn’t wake at all in between. Which is better than she’s been in our room lately. She fell asleep immediately in her crib tonight. I guess she was ready after all. I, however, sleep like crap right now. I think it might take me a little longer to get over it. I miss her. Thank God for my video monitor.
She got a few new teeth. 3 to be exact. In about a week. She already had 2, so I don’t think they were as exciting. Baby’s get teeth. I hear she’ll get a lot more. They definitely affected her sleep a lot more than the first 2 though. But once they popped through, it was all better. I hope the rest go as well. But they won’t.
She’s eating better and we started her on lunch. So now she’s getting 3 solid meals a day. She still doesn’t scarf down the food like some babies, but it’s progress. Feeding her the bottles is going better as long as you don’t try to hold her and/or speak to her. She’s picky like that. All in all, improvement.
Eliana had her first trip to the zoo and the aquarium. She digs the fish. I love watching her see new things. She already inspects things and if it’s new, she’s even more inspecty. It’s pretty cute. And she gets so excited about stuff. That’s a pretty new reaction outside the home. She has so much personality lately.
She way more verbal than she was a month ago. Her babbling is forceful. She demands you listen when she’s talking thank you very much. She’s even started doing it in public which is completely unheard of. She’s usually very shy and quiet around strangers. Not anymore. And I kinda love it. Talk to me again once she learns to repeat everything we say.
We are entering mobility. She started rocking back and forth when I would put her on her hands and knees. Then she’d put herself in the position. Now she crawls. Seriously. 7 months to the day she crawled. Not far. And she still prefers her other methods of moving. Like scooting and rolling and inching along. But we can add crawl to her list of crap that makes my kid brilliant. Woot.
And also, she got bigger.
6 months
7 months
The end.
Yay! More vomit stories!
Tony and I got engaged in November of 2001. It might have been October. I’m a crappy, non-remembering girl. At the time we were living in Oregon. We told my family and there were mixed reactions. My dad was all excited and my mom was..less. I was kinda surprised since I expected it to be the other way around. No biggie. We decided to drive down to California to see his family for Thanksgiving and we would break share the news with them then. I had only met them once since they lived 10 hours away. I wasn’t really nervous though since I’d talked to his mom on the phone a lot.
We told them after Thanksgiving dinner and I honestly don’t remember how they reacted. I think they said they knew. I’m not sure how since I didn’t have my ring yet (it was being sized and I had the setting lowered), but whatever. Happy happy times. The next morning we went out to breakfast. Evidently the food was undercooked because I got a wicked bad case of food poisoning. I spent the entire day throwing up. It sucked. The fact that we were all out shopping the whole time did not make it better. Naturally his family then assumed I was pregnant and that’s why we were getting married. I guess that’s how they do things in the family (I’m not being mean, Tony told me that’s how it goes in his family). It took a few days, but I think we eventually convinced them that I wasn’t pregnant. It might have been when there was no baby 9 months later.
Side note: Can I just say it bugged the CRAP outta me that everyone asked if I was pregnant when we told them we were getting married. Why would you ask that? Isn’t it possible for 2 people to want to get married because they’re in love and want to share their lives together? Why does someone have to be knocked up? Yeah, ok, we had only been dating for 3 months before we got engaged, but look at us now. Showed you, didn’t we? Suckahs. </endrant>
By the time we had to make the trip back, I was feeling much better. We decided to take the coast highway since we weren’t in a super hurry and it sounded fun. It’s really curvy and narrow in some places. Think the car commercials where they’re on the curvy road with a cliff on one side with the ocean at the bottom and a huge wall on the other side. We stopped at some Chinese place for lunch. I guess they didn’t cook the food right either because Tony got food poisoning. Only his was 10 times worse than mine. He couldn’t drive, so I had to. I should point out that I don’t drive. As in I HATE it. I’m a big chicken and I’m scared of other cars. People seriously hate me. I should also point out that it was dark and pouring down rain and we were in a mustang with not great tires. I don’t think I went faster than 30mph. Once we hit the first decent stopping place I got out and smoked half a pack of cigarettes. I was that stressed. Add in the fact that I had to stop every 10 minutes so Tony could open his door and throw up. Not a fun trip.
The next day Tony still couldn’t keep even water down, so we took him to Urgent Care where they gave him some IV fluids. He had a really bad fever. I told the nurse he was burning up and she asked what his temp was. I said I didn’t know, but I know he had a fever. She actually rolled her eyes at me. Like I didn’t know. Bitch. When she took his temp she jumped into gear. Told her it was high. I called in sick to work (not really…I told them he was sick and I had to take care of him) and spent the day giving him watered down gatorade and medicine. Poor Tony.
You’re loving where my blog is going, aren’t you? With the vomit stories? Don’t worry, I don’t think I have any more.
A progress report
Attempting to be committed to a New Year’s Resolution sucks. It’s almost like work. This year is all about progress and I think we’re making a lot some a tiny bit sometimes. The de-cluttering process is wearing on me. It’s so much worse than I thought and the going is oh so slow. Not to mention the baby crap EVERYWHERE omg I want to move. I didn’t realize how chock full my garage was and how much crap we have accumulated. We generally go through most of our junk stuff every 6 months or so. But I feel like we must have skipped a few, I don’t know, YEARS. It’s just everywhere. And the actual process, AGH! We have to bring in a box, go through the box, get rid of everything we’re getting rid of, repack the left-overs in a plastic bin and find a place inside to store it until we’ve gone through the rest of the garage. Don’t get me wrong, progress is being made. It’s just. Slow.
I’m not doing so hot on the buying organic. Mostly I just forget or don’t go out of my way to look for it. It doesn’t help that we don’t have a Whole Foods here and the only organic-ish store looks yucky. I can get some stuff other places, I just..suck. I’m gonna have to work a bit harder at this one. I have been eating a little healthier. I think. I already don’t drink soda and I stopped buying ice cream and cookies and candy. I think that’s progress. I still eat boxed, processed crap, but…you know…baby steps.
We don’t buy individual bottles of water anymore. We’ve been really great about filling the 5 gallon jugs we have. Go us. I also bought some reusable shopping bags and just yesterday remembered to cut the plastic tie things off so they can be usable. Woot! Granted I bought them a month ago. But whatever. Progress! I’ll be using them the next time I go grocery shopping. We started recycling. I was a little disappointed after the first day when I noticed they didn’t take my wine bottle. What? It’s glass. I don’t need your judgment recycle-taking man! But everything else gets taken.
The potty mouth is so hit or miss. It really depends on how cranky I am at that one moment. Tony’s always on me about it. I’m working on it. Dammit.
So far it’s coming pretty naturally. I just hope it stays this easy and maybe I get better about some stuff. I feel like this may be the first year I actually follow through.
