And All Through the Night… January 27, 2007

Far away, in a distant sleepy suburb in the Midwest, a miracle occurred… 

A tiny child, no heavier than a holiday ham, went to sleep one snowy eve around 9:00 p.m. and slept… 

And slept… 

And slept until dawn was on the horizon. 

Yes, indeed. It seems that something clicked and the Bee now goes right to sleep without so much as a peep around 9:00 every night, almost on the button. In fact, if she doesn’t get to sleep right around that time she gets rather fussy until we feed her and lay her down. Once she’s had all she can stomach, I gently lay her down, rub her tummy, pop in her binky—and it’s goodnight time for all.  

Needless to say we are delighted although somewhat shocked. I feel like it’s too easy—that there is a hidden catch somewhere. Like we won the lottery but know taxes are going to eat up most of the money. I keep waiting for something to not be right with this, but it’s really working out… She wakes up happy, bright-eyed, and ready to play and interact (and of course pee and eat). In response to her good mood upon waking, the past three mornings I’ve instituted a new a.m. tradition called “The Mama and Bee Morning Show” which entails me propping her up in the crack of the couch or chair, putting her elbows on two small pillows, and performing for her. I dance, jump around, wave my arms up and down, and laugh a lot and this really seems to get her going. Now that she’s got the hang of the “smiling on purpose” trick she’ll do it in response to me making an ass out of my pre-caffinated self and will even make little quick-exhale laughing sounds. Oh my god I love this girl. She is so fun.

This is how I sit her up. Doesn’t she look intent? Not even three months old, this baby…

 

 

So yeah, life is good. Ry and I are sleeping—and not even in shifts like we used to have to do. She’s playful during the day and far more interactive too. I think I like this a lot better than that first month of super-helplessness. She was so tiny and vulnerable. It scared the shit out of me. I was afraid to do anything, even let her cry. Things have certainly changed and we are thankful. Now she’s feelin’ fine…Peace Out Baby Bee….

Someone Should Have Told Me…. January 17, 2007

That yes, it really does make a difference how you hold the camera…. otherwise, this happens….

Ah well, it’s still pretty cute nonetheless….

We keep having to dress her up in all the cool Springtime outfits now since at this rate she’ll outgrow them all before the tulips come up.

A Typical Night… January 15, 2007

Click on the photos to make them larger and enjoy the illustrated story of a typical night with the Bee…

 12:00 Midnight- After numerous unsuccessful attempts at laying her down in her crib, mama finally gives up, throws on the baby sling, and totes the wide-awake Bee around, circumnavigating the entirety of the upstairs floor repeatedly as The Bee looks perfectly content but hardly sleepy.

 12:15 a.m. - Success! The Bee begins to lose control–she can no longer keep her eyes open; they’re getting heavier by the moment and just in time! Mama’s back is about to break in half… Things are looking good and Ry says, “look at that, she’ll sleep through the night tonight…”

12:18 a.m. – It looks like Ry’s right. She’s fast asleep; aside from opening her eyes open just the slightest bit to make sure she’s still the center of the action there’s no rousting her now…. we think….

…At this point, we quietly lay her down in her crib and tiptoe away, ever so softly….

And then…

1:00 a.m. – 3:00 a.m.- A picture is worth a thousand words. You go, daddy…. When all else fails, crack open a cold one, strap on the baby-backpack, and wait for the sun to come up.

I think we all managed to fall asleep at 6:00 a.m.

Bee Feats January 11, 2007

So, to begin with, a little Col-ICK update: Last night was actually tolerable. The Bee certainly wasn’t in the best of spirits and although she cried us a river, there wasn’t as much “umph” behind her sporadic but long-lasting fits of aimless baby-rage. This has me thinking that the colic might work itself on out just as swiftly as it moved on in. God, let’s hope…Another few nights of the full-force-super-high-octane colic shit and Ry and I will be certifiable.   

So, when she’s not screaming at the top of her lungs (or sleeping) The Bee does some pretty amazing stuff (aside from astounding us with her unbelievably and almost unnaturally stinky farts). One of her favorite new tricks is to make a tight fist and suddenly, almost like she didn’t quite plan it, pop her entire hand in her mouth. When she does it, she usually looks surprised, then delighted, and then kind of confused—all in a matter of seconds. At first, this was a charming addition to her steadily-growing repertoire of baby feats, but after watching her do this time and time again today, I started to worry that it might not be as cute and innocuous and I first imagined. Since she doesn’t have super hand-eye coordination yet, as excited as she is to get that fist in there, she often misses her mark and jabs herself in the eye or sideswipes her mouth, pulling her lip way up to her nose, or accidentally jams a wayward pinky up her nose. Worse yet, there have been a few times that, once her whole hand is inside her mouth, she seems to forget what movements are required for the hand to exit safely. When this happens, she registers this momentary wide-eyed moment of sheer terror and helplessness followed by a long wail. As a result of this new game she’s got little red marks above her lip, on her cheek, and somehow, up near her hairline. I guess it must not hurt too much though since she keeps doing it. Either that or she just totally forgets that she’s not always successful. She reminds me of our cat. Doing something painful, (like, I don’t know, say, jumping face-first into the door’s glass) smarting for a while, and then doing it all over again. Not quite Baby Genius stuff yet, but hey, little steps…  

So, in other Bee-related news, I’ve noticed that in profile, her head looks not unlike that of Captain Jean-Luc Picard, Commander of the Starship Enterprise

       

You see the resemblance, no? 

Live long and prosper baby girl.

…………..

Col-ICK! January 11, 2007

It’s been one hell of a long three or four days here, to say the least. Just when we’d finished bragging to everyone we knew about what a perfect little angel The Bee is things suddenly changed. We went from dealing with constant smiles and playful little cooing sounds to complete mayhem almost overnight. The cause? Colic. Or, as I like to say, “Col-ICK!” To illustrate the situation I have provided a visual aide…. 

The Bee Four Days Ago

 

The Bee at 4:00 this morning

 

So, it appears that the two most pain-in-the-ass common conditions known to mankind (the winter cold and colic) have zero options in the way of cures. Much like having a cold, it is just something that you have to ride out until it’s over; like a bad storm. I can’t help but find myself utterly frustrated that the extent of modern medical science/advice is that we simply must “just wait it out and keep her as quiet as possible” …   Yeah. Thanks. Really. I’ll try that. More on this matter when I’ve had an hour or two of sleep…..

Just a Quickie…. January 11, 2007

Just a quick post to share a short video of The Bee on her 2-month birthday. It almost looks like she’s trying to talk back…

Back in the Day…. January 10, 2007

Ah yes… now the whole pregnancy thing comes flooding back… I remember making this video one afternoon when I was supposed to be working but couldn’t think about anything but my ever-growing belly and the realization that someday I would be a parent.  Interestingly, this video thing discusses my thoughts on having a baby the “normal” way. I must say, it never once crossed my mind that I would have to a C-section. Funny seeing this now and realizing how things would go down…. Anyway, thought this was worth posting. Just for old time’s sake.

* Update as of 1/10/07 – Still no mom jeans here. Yet.

There is no Mary Poppins… January 10, 2007

The hunt for a nanny has begun and, I’m sad to say folks, Day One was not without its disappointments and/or complete shocks. As of now, three potential candidates have been shot down, each for particular reasons. In fact, I haven’t even interviewed any of them in person yet, I’ve only managed to have phone or online contact with them. The results are below and believe me, after the first one it just goes downhill from there. I mean like really downhill….  

• Candidate #1- My very first choice. A student at Ohio State specializing in Early Childhood Education (bonus points there) and with Infant CPR training (double-super bonus) as well experience working at a Catholic Youth Camp for something like 5 summers in a row. Religious (I’m not, but that’s always a good thing in a nanny) kid-loving, has her shit together….I love this girl. The problem? She has no availability. None. At least not during the day from 9-6 like I need someone. Dammit. So after a brief but polite conversation with her, I moved on, crushed for sure, but resolved to find someone like her.

• Candidate #2-  Looked great on paper… two years of nanny experience with young children…. Wonderful, right? Wasn’t thrilled that in her response she skipped an introduction altogether, opting instead to discuss her rates immediately. I was open though, after all, I figured that since she had experience as a nanny it would be only fair that she lay out her fiscal expectations. The thing is, when I pressed her for more info about the family she worked for before, she remembered something… See, what she forgot to tell me (until we had a phone conversation) was that those young children she was a “nanny” for were her own. In other words (as I asked her, slightly incredulous) she has never worked for a family, but has been a “nanny” to her own children… Yeah, Go flippin’ figure. Instead of asking her if she knew that on earth a nanny was, I simply wished her a good day, but before I could hang up she said, “if it makes any difference, I can bring my two children to your home. It would be great for your young one!” … You’ve got to be kidding me, I thought. The reason I need a nanny is so I can get some work done and seeing as how I work out of a home office, the last thing I need is 3 screaming kids instead of one. (Not that the Bee is a screamer necessarily, but you get the point…) So yeah, that one is certainly out. I think in future ads I’ll have to post a disclaimer with the formal OED definition of nanny. Lord.

• Candidate #3 – This one just takes the cake…. Law student, 5 years of babysitting and nanny experience, already gave me a resume and list of references (instead of just giving me a casual response to my ad) trained in infant CPR, oldest of 4 children… you name it, this girl had it. Before I decided to give her a call, I thought I’d type her email into the “search by email” function on MySpace, and guess what I found?… Her pictures looked like they had all been taken at bars. One of them had her with most of her chest bared, two fingers in a “V” alongside her mouth with her tongue out. Another featured her touching tongues with a fellow female reveler. A few of her other pics featured her in almost no clothes looking oh-so-slutty for the camera. In her “about me” section she talked about being a “wannabe stripper” and we won’t even discuss her blog…

Needless to say, the hunt continues. I just checked MySpace on a whim but you’d better believe that every nanny gets a thorough checkout that way, indeed. I guess candidate #3 just figured no one but her friends would ever see that…  I guess in this world today it’s damned easy to find out what someone is really like before you hire them.

Pullin’ My Weight…. January 6, 2007

To be honest, when I was pregnant (and god, doesn’t that seem like it was eons ago already!) gaining weight was actually kind of fun. I mean, I didn’t go crazy with it or anything, but I certainly packed on a few pounds. Okay, so by a few, I mean like 55. And yeah, so okay, I guess I did go kind of crazy with it. The thing was, this was around the time that every celebrity and their sister had been knocked up and voila, six weeks later they were back into a size 0. Amazing! Could it really be that easy? Were pregnancy pounds somehow different than your average run-of-the-mill pounds?  

Now I’ve never been one to follow the lives of celebrities really, but my ears always perked up when I would hear about how so-and-so gained 60 pounds and it melted away shortly after birth and so, being the idiot (or uninformed optimist) that I am sometimes, I figured this would be possible for me too. I told myself that as soon as I’d recovered, I would just start walking everyday and eventually build a running schedule. Bam! Simple as that! It seemed like, at the moment I was devouring that second Pat’s cream-filled donut, that even without a personal trainer, I could be back in a bikini within a couple of months. After all, I kept telling myself, pregnancy weight comes off easier than real weight, right? 

WRONG! 

Okay, so I was optimistic for the first two weeks after having The Bee because I started losing weight like crazy. Within three weeks almost 20 pounds was gone, as if by magic and quite predictably, I was ecstatic. What I didn’t realize was that this wasn’t pregnancy weight necessarily, but water weight. There’s a huge difference between the two and needless to say, I started to get a little frustrated after losing pounds with no effort for a few weeks only to have the scale stop dead in the high 150s. It really hasn’t budged throughout this month either and believe me, I’ve been trying. Every night I step out for a very brisk hour-long walk and during the day I make sure to only consume around 1000 calories. I couldn’t do this while I was nursing (which if I could have kept doing it for longer that would have been another excellent and easy way to keep the pounds off). At this rate, it looks like I might expect to lose around 1-2 pounds per week and my fanciful dream of wearing my old clothes is just going to have to be deferred for another several months.  Stupid celebrities….

Okay, better yet, stupid me for holding them up as examples of a normal post-pregnancy experience.

Well anyway, I will keep pluggin’ and stick to my speed-walking. To make things easier I spoiled myself and bought an iPod shuffle to inspire me to walk. It has kept me on track, I must say. Instead of listening to music (which being a cheapskate I don’t want to pay for seeing as how I already forked over $80 for something that’s the size of a Triscut) I can download all kinds of podcasts for free. This American Life and all my other NPR shows are all available and thankfully, most of them are about exactly an hour long so I can both time my walk and forget that I’m walking. I heart NPR.   

Besides, listening to something with all of my attention helps me block out the fact that other walkers in our oh-so-hoity-toity neighborhood give me the eye…. You see, they all have actual outfits specifically for walking fast and me, well, let’s just say that between my giant old hat, frumpy but warm attire, and pants that were designed to suit the fashion needs of late-term pregnancy I look kind of like this:  

While they look something like this:

Then again, who cares? Like I’d ever wear velour anyway. Since when did it become acceptable for women to judge one another on the clothes they wear to work out in when it’s like 35 degrees and 10:30 p.m.? 

Okay, so I’m just looking for reasons to bitch about working out and am skirting the most obvious one… I want my pounds to melt away as if by celebrity-magic dammit! More on the weight loss efforts later.

Sleep is Overrated… January 4, 2007

Who says you need beauty rest?

Ah…. What better time to begin a new blog than at around 5:00 a.m. on a Saturday morning? I should state here that I am not up right now by choice but rather, am still awake after hanging out with The Bee (who is a full two months old as of yesterday) for a solid hour. I can’t help but look forward to the days when she’s old enough to just come right out and tell us what she wants. Instead, Ry and I are reduced to playing the guessing game and staying on binky patrol (which is a jolly little diversion The Bee’s come up with that involves her spitting out her binky and giving us 30 seconds to pop it back in before she starts wailing in a shrill but rather unconvincing way). Lately, at night when she is wide awake, she doesn’t want to eat, she doesn’t want to sleep, she doesn’t seem in the mood for playing… I am at a total loss. What actually worked in getting her to sleep tonight was easy—easier than I imagined or else I would have tried this a long time ago…. I simply folded her fingers between mine and we had a staring match. Since it is supposed to be serious sleepy-time I didn’t want to get her riled with smiles or laughter, there’s plenty of that to go around during the day. Instead, I just gazed at her intently and very gravely for a period of about five full minutes and her little eyes (with those amazing lashes—courtesy of Ry’s gene pool) started to flutter and then get that glossy sealed-over look of deep sleep. Afraid to move, I stayed glued to my spot next to her for another full five minutes before gracefully lifting myself off the bed. I even managed to step on the super-creaky spot on our wood floors and she didn’t budge.So what does that mean for me? I could have just gone back to sleep but for some reason, I can’t seem to bring myself to feel as tired as I know I must be. Neither of us have been regular or sufficient sleep yet as much as I know I need it, there’s something about the quietness of the house right now, broken only by her sleep sounds down the hall, that makes me feel at peace. I know that if I was a good little worker I would go ahead and get working while I have some quiet time but it seems like doing so would be blasphemy somehow. It is these little moments like now; when the house is quiet and the people I love are asleep, that I have time to think about how happy I am. It’s been a hard two months with a lot of adjusting to do but we have managed just fine. We’ve been taking each day as it has come and have tried to be patient with one another and I guess, since neither of us have ever done this baby thing before, it’s all we can do.–> 

 

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