I know that for a lot of you this is going to be a weird, extremely anal-retentive post. But that's ok. I have a problem with losing things. My problem isn't that I lose things often, my problem is that when I do lose something it bothers me endlessly. Seriously, endlessly. Three years later I'll still be checking under cushions just in case I didn't see the item the first 781 times I checked. My latest crusade, if you will, is missing toys. Bear has a few toys that I try very hard to keep track of each and every piece. In particular, some puzzles, and blocks that fit into shapes cut into a box. They're the kinds of toys that, if the pieces aren't looked after, will disappear forever and the toy will have to be thrown out. So I try very hard to track down every piece at the end of the day when I clean up. I did an excellent job for a long time, then we moved and I got out of the habit. I've recently gotten back into the routine and somewhere along the way during our move one of the blocks went missing. This bugs me daily and it's made worse by the fact that I have no idea where it might be. Actually, considering the fact it was strewn among three different toy boxes that it's missing only one piece out of twelve isn't bad, but nevertheless it drives me crazy. I keep thinking that as soon as I complete the other three organization projects I have left, it's bound to turn up. Today though, I was given a new frustration. ANOTHER piece went missing. Since I knew this one had been around within the last two days I checked all of the usual places that might be: toy boxes, under the couch, under the dress, under the crib, all to no avail. I can't find that damn thing. So now TWO pieces are missing and it's like this little irritant I can't get rid of. Obviously I know that there are things that are much more important in the world and much bigger issues.
Please tell me that someone, anyone, has this same affliction. You don't have to be a mom. Just please assure me that I'm not the only compulsive person out there.
Monday, November 29, 2010
Saturday, November 20, 2010
Don't say that.
I have a friend from high school that has a little girl just a few months older than Bear. Not long ago he posted that his little girl figured out how to take off her diaper. I thought, "Oh man. That sucks! But luckily that will never happen to me!" Why did I figure it would never happen to me? Who knows. Overconfidence, most likely.
Today I put Bear down for a nap. He was quiet for about twenty minutes and then started making noise. He wasn't upset or distressed so I decided to let him hang out in the hope he'd go back to sleep. After about ten minutes he was still making noise so I went in to get him. Now if you know me AT ALL you should have the punchline all figured out. There was Bear in his crib, his diaper on the floor, poo all over his hands and on the carpet and happy as a little, poopy clam. As it turns out, Bear figured out how to take off his diaper! Oh rejoice! Actually, I was mostly happy that for the first time in several days waking up didn't involve a temper tantrum. In a situation like this I believe you have only one choice: you better laugh, and you better mean it. Bear got a bath and a new outfit and I got a story for my blog so all the better.
The moral of the story: your kid will learn to take off his or her diaper. Oh, and never say your kid won't do something but they probably will.
Today I put Bear down for a nap. He was quiet for about twenty minutes and then started making noise. He wasn't upset or distressed so I decided to let him hang out in the hope he'd go back to sleep. After about ten minutes he was still making noise so I went in to get him. Now if you know me AT ALL you should have the punchline all figured out. There was Bear in his crib, his diaper on the floor, poo all over his hands and on the carpet and happy as a little, poopy clam. As it turns out, Bear figured out how to take off his diaper! Oh rejoice! Actually, I was mostly happy that for the first time in several days waking up didn't involve a temper tantrum. In a situation like this I believe you have only one choice: you better laugh, and you better mean it. Bear got a bath and a new outfit and I got a story for my blog so all the better.
The moral of the story: your kid will learn to take off his or her diaper. Oh, and never say your kid won't do something but they probably will.
Friday, November 19, 2010
Shh.
I'm going to tell you something that no mother in her right mind should ever say to anyone, let alone the World Wide Web. I have a lot of fear telling you all this. I worry about what the fallout will be.
*Deep breath*
OK. Here it goes. At 18-month-old Bear will finally go to sleep without a bottle and without crying. He sleeps through the night most night, until 7:00AM. He doesn't need a bottle, he stays in his crib instead of coming in with me and he seems no worse for the wear. It's amazing and wonderful and I fear I've now ruined it. I fear that since I've blogged about it, beginning tonight he will once again wake up two or three times a night demanding a bottle, throw a tantrum when I lay him down and wake up for the day before 6:00AM.
Sleep.
Is there anything else that a new (or newish) mother thinks about more? Fantasizes about more? Wishes for more? One of the things new mothers don't hear enough is that, no matter what, you will constantly feel like you aren't doing a good job, at least in some area. For me that area was sleeping. I have friends with babies that slept through the night with no problem at four months and hearing those stories inevitably threw me into a tailspin. Why wasn't Bear sleeping through the night? Why did he cry so much when I laid him down? What was I doing wrong? I consider myself a follower of the attachment parenting philosophy but I couldn't get past the idea that I was somehow failing because he wasn't sleeping. Attachment parenting looks at night waking as normal but I couldn't stop beating myself up over it. My anguish was amplified by my lack of sleep.
After almost a year and half though, it seems a corner has been turned. I don't know exactly what happened but I suspect a change in routine for the better has played a large part. When I still worked it was difficult to stay on a consistent bedtime routine. There was simply too much to do and not enough hours in the day. I think my being gone was very disruptive for Bear too. When I got home Kent was almost literally walking out the door. The atmosphere was very chaotic and, I think, upsetting for a little baby who didn't understand why one of his parents was almost always gone. For parents that don't have another choice but to both work, or parents that are single, they have my admiration. Doing this with a spouse who earns a good living so I can stay home makes our lives immeasurably easier and I am so grateful.
I'm hoping the good sleep continues so that for the next five months of my pregnancy I can get some decent rest. Modify that to read: as good a night's sleep as a pregnant woman can get. I can still sleep on my stomach (my preferred sleep position), but at 19 weeks those days are numbered in a serious way. If I make it to 22 weeks I'll be very surprised. Then there's the issue of waking to, um, go...you know and the restless legs. I swear that happened because I spent years making fun of restless legs as a made up disease. Whoops! Make sure your words are sweet because you might have to eat them, as the saying goes.
If any other moms out there are reading this in a sleep-deprived haze I want to promise you that things should get better. Your baby will sleep through the night eventually. Even though I said that we follow an attachment-parenting philosophy we found that sleep improved when we began to do some of the practices outlined in Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child. The hardest thing, undoubtedly, was getting Bear to stay in his crib. Even though I love him in bed next to me he (and I) sleep better when he's not there. It's bittersweet. I miss him during the night but I know that it's not healthy for him to wake up numerous times of me and it doesn't do me any favors as a mom either.
So here I am, at 10:00PM getting ready for sleep after laying down my sweet baby at 7:30. Maybe it's no coincidence that I was able to think about blogging again when sleep returned to our lives. If that's the case you can look for another long-hiatus beginning in mid-April (although I sincerely hope not). *g*
*Deep breath*
OK. Here it goes. At 18-month-old Bear will finally go to sleep without a bottle and without crying. He sleeps through the night most night, until 7:00AM. He doesn't need a bottle, he stays in his crib instead of coming in with me and he seems no worse for the wear. It's amazing and wonderful and I fear I've now ruined it. I fear that since I've blogged about it, beginning tonight he will once again wake up two or three times a night demanding a bottle, throw a tantrum when I lay him down and wake up for the day before 6:00AM.
Sleep.
Is there anything else that a new (or newish) mother thinks about more? Fantasizes about more? Wishes for more? One of the things new mothers don't hear enough is that, no matter what, you will constantly feel like you aren't doing a good job, at least in some area. For me that area was sleeping. I have friends with babies that slept through the night with no problem at four months and hearing those stories inevitably threw me into a tailspin. Why wasn't Bear sleeping through the night? Why did he cry so much when I laid him down? What was I doing wrong? I consider myself a follower of the attachment parenting philosophy but I couldn't get past the idea that I was somehow failing because he wasn't sleeping. Attachment parenting looks at night waking as normal but I couldn't stop beating myself up over it. My anguish was amplified by my lack of sleep.
After almost a year and half though, it seems a corner has been turned. I don't know exactly what happened but I suspect a change in routine for the better has played a large part. When I still worked it was difficult to stay on a consistent bedtime routine. There was simply too much to do and not enough hours in the day. I think my being gone was very disruptive for Bear too. When I got home Kent was almost literally walking out the door. The atmosphere was very chaotic and, I think, upsetting for a little baby who didn't understand why one of his parents was almost always gone. For parents that don't have another choice but to both work, or parents that are single, they have my admiration. Doing this with a spouse who earns a good living so I can stay home makes our lives immeasurably easier and I am so grateful.
I'm hoping the good sleep continues so that for the next five months of my pregnancy I can get some decent rest. Modify that to read: as good a night's sleep as a pregnant woman can get. I can still sleep on my stomach (my preferred sleep position), but at 19 weeks those days are numbered in a serious way. If I make it to 22 weeks I'll be very surprised. Then there's the issue of waking to, um, go...you know and the restless legs. I swear that happened because I spent years making fun of restless legs as a made up disease. Whoops! Make sure your words are sweet because you might have to eat them, as the saying goes.
If any other moms out there are reading this in a sleep-deprived haze I want to promise you that things should get better. Your baby will sleep through the night eventually. Even though I said that we follow an attachment-parenting philosophy we found that sleep improved when we began to do some of the practices outlined in Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child. The hardest thing, undoubtedly, was getting Bear to stay in his crib. Even though I love him in bed next to me he (and I) sleep better when he's not there. It's bittersweet. I miss him during the night but I know that it's not healthy for him to wake up numerous times of me and it doesn't do me any favors as a mom either.
So here I am, at 10:00PM getting ready for sleep after laying down my sweet baby at 7:30. Maybe it's no coincidence that I was able to think about blogging again when sleep returned to our lives. If that's the case you can look for another long-hiatus beginning in mid-April (although I sincerely hope not). *g*
Thursday, November 18, 2010
How do I...?
I don't know how to do anything. OK, that's far from true. But the things I don't know how to do have been a surprise. When my mom grew up my grandma stayed home, had four kids spanning almost ten years, made (really made, not from-boxes made) at least three meals a day AND hand washed all the dishes, kept a meticulous house and was involved in several volunteer activities. Plus, she sewed clothes for Barbies, baby dolls, kids and possibly my grandpa. She gardened, helped care for her ill mother-in-law and smoked cigarettes while maintaining a nice complexion. In a word, she was a Ginger Rogers to my Fred Astaire, vacuuming backwards in high heels. She was a consummate domestic diva without the benefits of modern convenience that I enjoy (shout out to my dishwasher!). Apparently the only thing she wasn't very good at was cooking eggs; in light of all the other things she did I think that can be overlooked.
Like most women of her generation my grandmother was trained, most likely from birth, that she would stay home and take care of her kids, husband and house. Unusually for a women in the 1940s she finished college. Up until she got married she taught home economics. In order to finish her program she had to invent several recipes. INVENT. Recipes. FOR BAKING. It took me over a year to figure out that my Toll House cookies were getting flat because I needed to add a quarter cup of flour.
I was not raised from an early age to think that I would stay home and take care of a family. I believed that I would go to college (which I did), get a degree in four years or less (BA in Psychology in three and a half years...let's not debate the usefulness of this particular program), maybe go onto Master's work and then get a job and be very successful. Nowhere in there did I learn any skill that might be useful in a domestic sense. We did have a department in my high school that was essentially a home economics department. I think it was Family Studies or something like that. I just checked my high school's website and it doesn't look like that department even exists anymore. Anyway, I digress. What I'm about to say might sound disrespectful and I do NOT mean it as such AT ALL. But, the kids that took classes in that department were, to be tactful, not kids that seemed to be college bound. Students like me were not really encouraged to take those types of classes. Family Studies students might have learned how to cook or make a budget but what I mainly remember is they had to carry around these stupid babies that were supposed to show them how time consuming it is to be a parent. Only you couldn't actually cause harm to these things and you got to give them back after three days. So, maybe not the most realistic exercise. (As an aside, my summers spent babysitting were more effective birth control than anything I could have possibly learned in three days spent with a baby doll.)
The upshot to all this is that I've had to figure out on my own how to cook, run a straight hem, take care of a toddler, keep a clean house, organize a budget, plan meals, and keep laundry from raging out of control in the span of about three weeks. However I can tell you a lot about bipolar disorder, autistic spectrum disorders and schizophrenia. So that's useful.
I thought all this would be relatively simple but it hasn't been. I'm lucky to have rudimentary organizational skills and I've found that things keeping things clean and tidy are much easier when I put them on a four week schedule and post that on my fridge. It's much easier when I think about weekly meals and plan them before I go to the store. And everything is better if I have a sense of humor. This is me as I figure out how to be successful in this new role. I have every confidence I can do as well as my grandma, except that under no circumstances will I give up my dishwasher.
Like most women of her generation my grandmother was trained, most likely from birth, that she would stay home and take care of her kids, husband and house. Unusually for a women in the 1940s she finished college. Up until she got married she taught home economics. In order to finish her program she had to invent several recipes. INVENT. Recipes. FOR BAKING. It took me over a year to figure out that my Toll House cookies were getting flat because I needed to add a quarter cup of flour.
I was not raised from an early age to think that I would stay home and take care of a family. I believed that I would go to college (which I did), get a degree in four years or less (BA in Psychology in three and a half years...let's not debate the usefulness of this particular program), maybe go onto Master's work and then get a job and be very successful. Nowhere in there did I learn any skill that might be useful in a domestic sense. We did have a department in my high school that was essentially a home economics department. I think it was Family Studies or something like that. I just checked my high school's website and it doesn't look like that department even exists anymore. Anyway, I digress. What I'm about to say might sound disrespectful and I do NOT mean it as such AT ALL. But, the kids that took classes in that department were, to be tactful, not kids that seemed to be college bound. Students like me were not really encouraged to take those types of classes. Family Studies students might have learned how to cook or make a budget but what I mainly remember is they had to carry around these stupid babies that were supposed to show them how time consuming it is to be a parent. Only you couldn't actually cause harm to these things and you got to give them back after three days. So, maybe not the most realistic exercise. (As an aside, my summers spent babysitting were more effective birth control than anything I could have possibly learned in three days spent with a baby doll.)
The upshot to all this is that I've had to figure out on my own how to cook, run a straight hem, take care of a toddler, keep a clean house, organize a budget, plan meals, and keep laundry from raging out of control in the span of about three weeks. However I can tell you a lot about bipolar disorder, autistic spectrum disorders and schizophrenia. So that's useful.
I thought all this would be relatively simple but it hasn't been. I'm lucky to have rudimentary organizational skills and I've found that things keeping things clean and tidy are much easier when I put them on a four week schedule and post that on my fridge. It's much easier when I think about weekly meals and plan them before I go to the store. And everything is better if I have a sense of humor. This is me as I figure out how to be successful in this new role. I have every confidence I can do as well as my grandma, except that under no circumstances will I give up my dishwasher.
Wednesday, November 17, 2010
What's that smell?
The other day Bear woke up at 7:00 as usual. Without my begging or asking or anything, Kent woke up so I could sleep in. I was feeling very lucky. Within five minutes though, he was back in the bedroom.
"Um, babe? I kind of need you to get up."
Those are never words that excite a sleeping, pregnant woman.
"Bear threw up and I kind of need two hands to take care of all this."
These are words that excite a sleeping, pregnant woman even less.
Why did he throw up? Who knows. He didn't seem too bothered by it. We stripped his crib and his jammies and threw him in the bath (we didn't literally throw him, in case any agents for Child Protective Services are reading).
Why am I sharing a barf story with you? Because I can't think of a good reason not to.
"Um, babe? I kind of need you to get up."
Those are never words that excite a sleeping, pregnant woman.
"Bear threw up and I kind of need two hands to take care of all this."
These are words that excite a sleeping, pregnant woman even less.
Why did he throw up? Who knows. He didn't seem too bothered by it. We stripped his crib and his jammies and threw him in the bath (we didn't literally throw him, in case any agents for Child Protective Services are reading).
Why am I sharing a barf story with you? Because I can't think of a good reason not to.
Friday, November 12, 2010
Snippets
I'm still having a hard time thinking about how to properly compose thoughts that are more than 160 words and grammatically correct. I guess that what I've learned from the evening news and Facebook is how to think in soundbites instead of real thoughts. Continue to bear with me as I relearn this skill.
There is so much that I have on my mind; funny anecdotes, things I've learned; things I need help with and techniques that have helped me as I transition to a stay-at-home-mom. For some reason though I'm having a hard time organizing my thoughts. I think (as I mentioned above) it stems from Facebook. When all else fails I hope the lesson you learn is: you can always blame Facebook.
It's been an interesting change to go from balancing a part-time job to being home full-time. Even though my days are long and busy they are also much, much less stressful. Almost everyday I make all three meals, mostly from scratch; clean whatever is on the schedule for the day; and play with or otherwise attend to Bear's needs. I have very little time to relax. Kent works hard so that I can stay home and in return I think it's my job to make his life at home as easy as possible. In my opinion, if someone is working almost 50 hours a week they shouldn't have to come home and unload the dishwasher. Before I quit work we split household tasks pretty evenly, even though Kent was at the job for more hours, in case you're curious.
I know that this post still isn't nearly as funny as my older posts and doesn't flow as well. I hope you will all continue to bear with me as I get back into the swing of writing. xx
There is so much that I have on my mind; funny anecdotes, things I've learned; things I need help with and techniques that have helped me as I transition to a stay-at-home-mom. For some reason though I'm having a hard time organizing my thoughts. I think (as I mentioned above) it stems from Facebook. When all else fails I hope the lesson you learn is: you can always blame Facebook.
It's been an interesting change to go from balancing a part-time job to being home full-time. Even though my days are long and busy they are also much, much less stressful. Almost everyday I make all three meals, mostly from scratch; clean whatever is on the schedule for the day; and play with or otherwise attend to Bear's needs. I have very little time to relax. Kent works hard so that I can stay home and in return I think it's my job to make his life at home as easy as possible. In my opinion, if someone is working almost 50 hours a week they shouldn't have to come home and unload the dishwasher. Before I quit work we split household tasks pretty evenly, even though Kent was at the job for more hours, in case you're curious.
I know that this post still isn't nearly as funny as my older posts and doesn't flow as well. I hope you will all continue to bear with me as I get back into the swing of writing. xx
Thursday, November 11, 2010
A fresh start
I'm not sure where to begin, since it's been such a long time since I last posted and there have been many changes in my life. First of all, we are no longer a family of three but a family of almost-four. We're expecting another baby in April. Last time I wrote I was a new mom that was pausing before returning to work. I quit the job I was at when I had Bear, stayed home for almost a year and then got back in the game. The game didn't last long. I worked for six months as a Child Treatment Counselor at a residential facility before the stress of being away from home, the job itself, and my pregnancy made me seriously rethink what I was doing. As a family we decided it would be best for me to stay home indefinitely. Now I'm trying to figure out how to efficiently and effectively run a household. Needless to say it's been a learning curve, and my experiences will make up a large part of my blog. For some of you these will be topics that aren't interested so it's OK if you don't want to read. Unless you're family. Then you better be checking in everyday.
Also, I know this post doesn't read as smoothly as some of my earlier posts from two years ago. You'll have to bear with me as I get my writing ability back. I'm very out of practice. Doing nothing but writing status updates on Facebook will have that effect.
Also, I know this post doesn't read as smoothly as some of my earlier posts from two years ago. You'll have to bear with me as I get my writing ability back. I'm very out of practice. Doing nothing but writing status updates on Facebook will have that effect.
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