For Posterity

Routines are boring, but they work. Oh, welcome aboard, Captain Obvious. I'm a pretty laid back, go-with-the flow person, and I had always assumed I'd incorporate that part of me into my parenting style. Turns out I'm successful with this some of the time. But I realized pretty early on in the months since my boy's been around that I never feel more on top of things, more in control, than when we're able to stick to a routine. Especially since I've gone back to work. Having a plan is actually calming. For example today, HR woke up for the day at nearly seven a.m. (after only one nighttime feeding - thanks for doing your part, buddy!), and that got us off to a great start. I had time to get in two feedings, get myself ready for work, eat breakfast, help Mike get himself ready for the day and get some good play time in. Nobody was too tired (I'm talking parent-tired, not before-kids tired) nobody was late to anything, we're all happy. So today's on the right track. So far. I just know that if I tried to free-form it, I would feel way too scattered, and be on edge by the time I got to work and the whole day would knit itself into an itchy sweater of anxiety. No good. Sticking to the routine as much as possible: very good. It's true what they say, children crave consistency, but so do parents. The challenge is to make sure we keep a little flexibility, because it's the baby's job to throw a curve just when we think we've got it figured out. So far when we have deviated--and we deviate a lot, frankly--we've been fortunate enough to have decent results. HR is a pretty chill baby, he's slept away from home with very few glitches. He is not enamored of riding in the car unless we can get him to sleep first, but that's getting better as he learns how to entertain himself. Overall I guess we can chalk any success up to equal parts effort and luck. The real thing we're all bad at is naps. He doesn't like to be put down for them, and we don't push him too hard. I know that has to change for all of our own good, especially because that late afternoon nap is key to him not being overtired by bedtime. But it'll come in time, and if it doesn't I guess we'll all survive.

Does anyone watch Huge on the ABC Family channel? I love that show. The writing is just so good for the most part, the characters rich and beautifully imagined, and though I don't love the whole cast (Nikki Blonsky rubs me the wrong way) I think that many of them are amazing, especially the young man who plays Alistair. I don't know if it's just great acting or if it's his real personality that shines through, but something about him is so sweet and magical. His character also keeps me mindful:- I vow that if HR wants a princess unicorn doll for his birthday instead of a catcher's mitt that's what he'll get. 

Bee-Oh-Tee-Dubs

I regularly read a shit-ton of blogs. I guess I'm a bit of a voyeur, people's real lives and the ways they choose to present them, the aspects they show, they are endlessly fascinating to me. So I've decided to start featuring one of my favorites every week. Since you are what you love (and not what loves you back, etc.), I think it gives a peek into the (occasionally questionable and/or bananas) facets of my own personality.

The first one I'm going to feature is my current favorite: Carrots 'n Cake.  I can't remember how I stumbled upon this one, probably linked from someone else I like or maybe recommended by Google. However we came to be united, I'm hooked on this one for numerous reasons. The first is that it's a food blog, and I'm a sucker for a good food blog. The second is that, though it's a health-conscious food blog, the author is not afraid to have a drink or five from time to time. She comes from a health-first standpoint, but what I get from her more than anything is a sense of balance. She works out a lot, but she also indulges a lot. Tina always seems like she's having a blast without sacrificing or obsessing - I think she's a terrific model for living well. I'm currently jealous of her recent nine hours of sleep and foodie-job-related traveling and the marathon she's going to run in Hawaii (well the Hawaii part anyway), but living vicariously through her is almost good enough. Oh, and she's local-ish so I love to see the places she goes in and around Boston.

So there you have it, Joyberry Pie's first Blog of the Week. I highly recommend CnC, but be forewarned that she updates a LOT. I suppose I should be less of a lurking lurker and take the time to leave her a comment someday. Anyway.

Did y'all have a good weekend? I really, really did. The boy is growing so quickly before my eyes, every day brings something new and astounding. Latest feats: belly laughs, and getting really psyched about the baby gym. It's only a matter of time before he figures out that he can make the froggy play music just by pulling his leg, then all hell will really break loose.

Benefits

I'm working from home today, which means I have to be a bit more efficient (i.e. spend less time on the internet) in order to get things done. The extraordinary upside of this, of course, being that I get to take frequent play breaks. Today I dangled a toy over the boy and he grabbed it and shoved it into his mouth. It's not as simple as that at this point really, there's a lot of hesitancy and false starts and misses, but what a privilege to witness this milestone, to see before my eyes the way his little mind works and puts things together. I owe a lot to my job, and I'll write more about that when I get the time. Right now I have to go nurse and maybe when I'm off the clock we'll venture out for a walk on this gorgeous day. Happy Friday the 13th!

Snippets

- First off, thanks for the votes of confidence re: yesterday's entry. We feel pretty good about the way we're raising the boy so far, but it's lovely to have a cheering section.

- As for barf-o-rama '10, HR's pediatrician thinks he just had one of those 24-hour bugs. From whence he picked it up I have no idea, but since Tuesday night there's been no more vomit, and he's eaten and slept wonderfully. How lucky we are to have such a healthy guy, I can never take that for granted. And it's reassuring to have a doctor telling you you're doing fine.

-In my before-life, I exercised a lot. I was a runner and a yoga junkie. One of the proudest moments of my life was when I stuck the crow pose for the first time. Since I got pregnant, I sort of stopped. I kicked running to the curb because I had run a 5K the weekend before my miscarriage, and though I rationally know that it had nothing to do with why that pregnancy didn't work out, every time I tried to run I felt this bad juju so I decided the stress wasn't worth it and I switched to walking. I really miss a good run, and I intend to get back into it. The question now is how and when - looks like M and I will need to take turns instead of running together, probably in the early mornings or evenings when HR is on a longer-between-feedings schedule. As for yoga, I kept that up until the week before he was born, but I switched to gentle prenatal yoga. I'm ready to go back for the pain. I loved being pushed to my limit on the yoga mat, it helped me feel alive and, strangely, balanced. I know that yoga can be a lifestyle, and I can build my own practice at home, but there's nothing to me like a really good communal practice. Coming away from a challenging class always made me feel like a superhero, the benefit for me was definitely physical, but it undoubtedly affected me mentally. I can fit in some DVDs now here and there, but it's not the same. I hope I can get back into class at least once a week. It's not even about losing weight or looking a certain way at this point--yeah, I'd love to be as fit as I was but I'm doing my best to be patient with my body and know that it's not really mine while I'm providing someone's nutrition--I just miss the feeling. Again, all in time.

-What TV commercial do you hate the most? Since I got DVR (clearly mankind's greatest invention) I manage to not catch that many, but I keep seeing that ad for the ladies' razor with the built-in trimmer and it makes me insane. Have you seen this? Women walking around, doing their thing, and as they pass a shrub or whatever it morphs into a triangle or rectangle or--what is that, an oval? (Who has a oval-shaped bush I ask you?)--that we're supposed to infer is the shape of that particular woman's pubic hair. It's one of the stupidest things I've ever seen period, just a ridiculous commercial, not even getting into the way that women are once again reduced to their body parts. Women and advertising is a big thing with me in general and I won't get into it right now. Just saying that that commercial is almost enough to put me off shaving altogether.

- Tonight my husband (let's call him Mike, since it's his name) doesn't have to work and we're going out on a date. Mike's brother, wife and two kids live in the burbs about 20 miles away which is great since we see them a lot. It's so good to have family nearby. Way back at the beginning of the summer my sister-in-law asked when we might like her to babysit, and we made date for tonight, as she and her husband could easily come into the city while their kids were at sleepaway camp. I'm really looking forward to going out to dinner just the two of us - I have not been to a restaurant when I haven't nursed at the table in a long time. Hopefully the little boo will be an angel for his aunt and uncle. At least I'll be leaving plenty of milk for him because everything I pump today won't be needed tomorrow since it's my work-from-home day. Speaking of: gotta go get on the milking machine. Oh friends, there was a time when referring to my breasts so much might have been provocative.

Tradeoffs

Ah, boy. Yesterday's entry was supposed to reflect my gratitude rather than imply hubris, but I got repaid for the celebratory tone nonetheless in the form of lots of baby barf. When I got home from work HR got busy throwing up--about seven times within two hours--emptying his wee belly and transforming from my action baby into a pathetic little snuggler. We still don't know what the cause was, but he didn't have a fever, his wet diapers indicate he didn't dehydrate, and as of this morning he was back to nursing (and keeping it down) like a champ. My husband's taking him to the doctor for a follow-up just to be safe, but I have a feeling this can be chalked up to one of those mysterious things babies do to keep your life from getting too comfortable. The long sleep the night before was probably an indicator of the impending illness, but it was also a good thing to have under our belts because we got the opposite sort of sleep last night. It was like the old days, the two of us taking turns holding him while he snoozed because we're neurotic noobs and we didn't dare put him in his crib on his back for fear of some sort of Bon Scott action. Reading this ought to keep some people on birth control for a good long time, eh? This is my life now. It's totally worth it.

I'm trying very, very hard not to be a guilt-ridden worrywart as I sit in my office and the husband deals with the baby all day today, but I was on baby watch last night so it all works out in the end. That's how we do it - I've got the job with the office hours and benefits, he fills in the cracks with nights and weekends and work-from-home gigs so that one of us can be home with the baby. So far, so good. Nothing against daycare at all, we are just selfishly obsessed with our little dude and decided that if we could at all work out a way to have one of us home with him most of the time, it was worth a shot. Of the two of us, he's the more domestic and I just like my job better than he liked his so he's primary caregiver four days a week. He's playtime Dada, I'm the bedtime lady. We don't see each other a whole lot with this schedule, but you know, right now it's more important to us that HR gets someone to be indulgent to his every whim. And who is going to call one of us to report on an especially impressive fart or make videos of him bouncing around to "All the Single Ladies" with a pair of shorts on his head for Mama to watch when she gets home from work if we send him to someone else? We'll find a way to get him socialized - we're not trying to make an isolated little freak boy out of him. We're just older parents who have the luxury of this arrangement and are on the fence about whether we'll ever have another baby experience so we're jumping into this one with everything. People may have opinions about whether this is bad for him, but I'm not hearing them.

Nine. And. A. Half.

HUGE NEWS: HR slept through the night last night, clocking an unprecedented 9 1/2 hours, not even waking to nurse. I have no idea what prompted it, and I have no realistic expectation that it will happen again anytime soon, but glory glory that was the longest chunk of sleep I've gotten since I was probably 7 months pregnant. And of course I was like, what's wrong with him? Isn't that the first thing you think when things go suspiciously well? He's just fine though, growing up-- probably coming off a growth spurt, actually, as he's 15 weeks today and couldn't seem to get enough chowing down at the boob ranch over the weekend. Oh yeah, and because I was so, er, full by the time he woke up this morning, he had his first "reversal of fortune" due to the unfamiliar abundance of milk. Barf fountain aside, I got a little taste of how other women must feel, women whose babies sleep and who produce milk like goddamn milk-producing-prodigies and it tasted ambrosia-like. So there we have it - a milestone. I expect setbacks, but I'm enjoying it for what it is. Eventually I guess I'll have to sleep train him instead of nursing and rocking him to sleep, but first things first. I'm not into messing with success right now. He sleeps, we sleep, life is good.

About vacation: this is the same summer vacation we take every year, that I've taken every year of my life and my father before me (his mother, at 88, still goes, though she's rented a cabin for the past couple decades instead of tenting). We go to the same campground and go to the beach every day and play games and have campfires and eat lobsters and slap mosquitoes and don't shower much and catch up with the far-flung family and this is our idea of fun. It's amazingly fun, and luckily my husband has come to agree. I remember last year very well, it was probably our best time ever. I was still getting over the miscarriage I'd had a few months earlier (though it turned out that I had my LMP while at the campground and ended up getting pregnant immediately after we returned home), and being in that place with those people was really key to my healing. Suspecting that it would be my last child-free vacation, I really whooped it up the two weeks, eating and drinking and tanning and staying up late and reading book after book. Did I mention drinking? This year was ever so different, but wonderful in its own way. We went to the beach, but I had to stay out of the sun with the baby. I had an occasional cocktail, but I didn't get tipsy on 4 o'clock gin and tonics (that is the best summer drink period). I sat around the campfire, but I had one ear to the camper where the baby was sleeping at all times. But every single member of my father's side of the family got to meet and hold our little one. And we took a couple of days in the middle to go visit my mother and maternal grandmother (my parents have been married for 36 years strong, but, as I tell people, she divorced camping 20 years ago). Unlike other years we took one week instead of two, and I didn't go into psycho packing mode for the trip - I was pretty laissez faire about the whole enterprise but it worked out fine. Next year I'm pretty sure I'll resume my ultra-organized ways and the vacation will be even better, since HR will be old enough to run around and enjoy the beach and the woods. But this year, for all its weird and chaotic vibe, was pretty rad and I'm so glad we got to go. And now I've got to go.

In the Thick of It

WHOO! I am slammed today. I haven't had a workday like this in ages... since I haven't had a real workday in ages. But still. It feels good to be using my brain.

Of course I'm a bit sad about the end of my vacation. It was outstanding, all told. My little one was amazing - sleeping like a champ and really loving the outdoors. We all did better than I had ever dared to hope. It was great to see family and relax, and now I'm ready to settle into my real life: a 40 hour workweek, 32 hours of it spent away from home. Plus the return to good eating and getting exercise in there somewhere. Oh, and writing. And keeping up my share of the housework. And sleeping (HR's new personal best: 7 1/2 hours. He did it once, he can do it again, right?). Bring it on, I say.

More on how it all works, and more on the vacation itself coming up but for now it's back to the never-dwindling pile of tasks. As things that need my attention go, it's definitely not as fun or cute as this one:

But we make do.