cranky pixels

Despite the fact that Happy Fun Baby threw an inexplicable hissy fit last night and screamed non-stop from 7pm until around 9 (I was beginning to freak out a bit myself but he calmed down just as quickly as he’d melted down), we made it through the night without incident. The kid is a bit bedraggled today, but very cute.

Not So called yesterday around 6pm to let us know he’d gotten in okay, but aside from that we haven’t heard from him. I wouldn’t think twice about that except, man, if I were away from the kid for a protracted period of time? I’d be a mess. Not So and I have always reacted differently to absences, so I guess it’s not that weird that he isn’t all OCD like me. When I went to WebVisions for the day, I had to physically restrain myself from calling every hour to check up on the kid. (Which worked, apparently, because I didn’t call once. Which…maybe is bad in the other direction?)

We’re doing great over here, actually. The weather’s beautiful, I’m weirdly caught up with business stuff, and the kid is cheerful and cooperative. Time for a field trip!

Right now Not So is somewhere in the sky* between Portland and San Jose, eating peanuts and reading a book. There is no one kicking him or demanding to run up and down the aisles, and he got to carry all his baggage on the plane with him instead of having to check all the myriad accessories that must accompany a trip with a toddler. That, my friends, is the way to travel.

While he’s gone, it’s just me and the munchkin. Four days of solo parenting. Woo hoo! I am looking forward to it, let me tell you. Except if I told you that, it would be a lie. Really the only perk that I can see is that I only have to share the bed with one person for the next few days, so maybe – just maybe – I will actually get to roll over during the night. (I’m not counting on it, though. Happy Fun Baby is a bed hog.)

Before Not So left this morning we took the kid to his 18 month Well Baby appointment. The involved getting up at 7:30 (not popular with the baby) and hopping on the Max out to Kaiser. Oh, wait – did I say hopping on the Max? I meant waiting for 45 minutes at the station a mile from the clinic and cursing TriMet for being utterly and completely useless. Apparently, a signal wasn’t working. Could they have told us this when we got on the train, instead of unceremoniously announcing that they were going out of service and dumping us at the Rose Quarter? Did they actually believe that there was a train “right behind us,” or was this a bald-faced lie? Because 45 minutes for a train that is supposed to come every 15 really doesn’t count as “right behind us.” Also: screw you, TriMet.

So we were late to the appointment. Very, very late. Happily the doctor had time to see us anyway, and he assuaged most (but not all) of my concerns about Happy Fun Baby’s development. He said he wasn’t worried about the fact that the kid isn’t talking all that much, and that if he keeps growing at this rate he’s going to be very tall indeed, and that we should feed him whatever he’s willing to eat (within reason, of course) and not try and force the issue with foods he’s not into at any given time. I love our pediatrician. Pretty much the only thing he said that wasn’t all “Go, Ellison!” was when we asked him about the headache-looking thing Ellison’s been doing:

Us: He’ll squeeze his eyes shut and press his hands to his head like it hurts or something.

Ped: Headaches are pretty uncommon in babies. It’s hard to diagnose unless he’s got a secondary symptom, like copious vomiting or sudden loss of muscle control, like leaning to one side or losing use of one leg.

Us: And that would indicate…?

Ped: You know, nothing good. A brain tumor or something like that. He seems fine, though. I wouldn’t worry.

Thanks, Ped. I am totally not going to spend the next four days obsessively Googling “toddler brain tumor symptoms” and anxiously monitoring my child’s every movement. Good day to you too.

*I mean that in the literal sense, not in the metaphorical “Daddy’s looking down at you from the sky” sense.

Man, I’m in a bad mood today. You know those days where everything seems to be arranged in a perfect tableaux of pissing you off? I couldn’t even find the floss. Clearly all my teeth are going to fall out now, which would be the perfect end to a perfect morning, and also prove that I have deeply prophetic dreams, especially if they crumble while still in my mouth. Dude, you’ve all had that dream, right? It’s such a bastard. I always forget what it means, too, aside from you are a crazy person who needs to floss.

Anyway, enough of all that. I will tell you about other things. The kid, for example! The kid is enormous now, all long legs and big grins and the very beginnings of actual speech, much of which involves either “Go!” or “More!” He’s ridiculously musical, which is baffling, given that Not So and I are…not. I wouldn’t use the words “tone deaf” to describe us, but you could, and we probably wouldn’t correct you. Not So does play a mean harmonica, though, so perhaps that gene just got passed on with interest. Plus, you know, my dead brother was all sorts of musically inclined, so you never know. The kid, though, he thinks everything is an instrument. He drums on boxes, strums his wooden sword like a guitar, and blows on puzzle pieces like they’re horns. You have not lived until you’ve seen him bouncing in front of the TV, watching Dan Zanes and strumming along on his sword.

The weather report said it was going to rain today, but it looks pretty shiny outside to me. We’re at the office, trying to get some work done before heading back to the house and trying to get more work done, plus laundry. The good news is we finally (finally!) have internet at the house, so working from home is decidedly more productive. The Covad people came out and hooked us up on Monday, and I celebrated by staying up until 3am working on all the projects I’ve had on the back burner for the past month. Because (and I know you will be shocked by this) it is not entirely productive to go to the office, frantically download everything that I might need for a project, transfer it to the ipod, bring it home, get it all uploaded to the home computer and then try to blindly make changes without being able to check to see if they’re working. And then bring them back to the office the next day to start the process again. I did that for a month. A month! And the fact that I managed to get anything done at all is testament to my extreme refusal to let something like lack of web access get in the way of web design.

But now I can work from home again, joy of joys and all that. I have to admit that part of me is a little disappointed that I no longer have an excuse to sit and read a book in the evenings anymore (because I couldn’t work anyway, not if I had something that required being online). We watched the last episode of Alias last night (only a year late! Go us! But it was full of stupid so I’m not really sad I didn’t see it when it aired) and I spent the entire time glancing at the computer, making a mental tally of all the things I needed to do as soon as the show ended. Hooray, OCD! How I’ve missed you!

You’re probably thinking Gee, it sounds like you need a day off, to which I respond Have you been talking to Not So? Because it isn’t nice to conspire behind people’s backs, you know! Also: that rhymed. I am so funny! And I do not need a day off. I have too much to do! Once I have done it all, then we can talk about a day off every once in a while. Assuming, of course, that I am still capable of speech by then and am not communicating by a series of expressive blinks.

Kidding! I’m kidding. Besides, I’m too tired to blink.

A couple of people asked how I was managing to convince Happy Fun Baby that his favorite pastime (nursing) was no more. I’d like to offer some sage advice on how to wean. I’d like to, but I really don’t have any, so in lieu of advice I will just tell you what I did:

Stopped nursing. (Dude, I know.)

This is how it worked:

Saturday morning (when we decided to run with the whole weaning thing) I hadn’t nursed the kid yet, so we just kept not doing that all day. He’s typically pretty take-it-or-leave-it about the daytime nursing, so we kept him well supplied with snacks and drinks and he didn’t really seem to notice. Not So took bedtime that night, and the kid put up his usual pre-sleep fight but didn’t really seem to notice that he hadn’t been nursed.

Until 3am. At 3am, he woke up wanting to breastfeed. Mama did not accommodate. He woke up more, pulling at my top and weeping. We offered water, milk, rocking, singing. The weeping escalated to screams. Scream, scream. After 45 minutes (!!) Not So put the kid in the Ergo and took him for a walk around the neighborhood. Apparently he calmed down pretty fast once they got outside. When they came back to bed, Ellison grabbed on to my neck like a drowning person and fell asleep like that, clinging.

The next day there was a fair amount of “Nuh? Nuh?” and me saying “No, we don’t nurse anymore,” which prompted brief teary episodes but nothing like the screaming of the night before. That night he woke up at 3:30, screamed for 15 minutes, and then fell back asleep clinging to my neck…right after Not So finished getting dressed to take him outside again. Poor Not So!

But the next night the kid slept through, and last night he only woke up briefly and fussed before going back down.

He’s still obviously quite interested in nursing, but he seems to accept that we’re not doing it anymore. He’s eating a lot more solid food. He’s also a bit clingy, needing more hugs and snuggles than usual…which is nice, actually, because I feel a bit bereft as well. It’s not that I miss nursing (I so, so do not) but it’s really hard to hear my baby cry and know that I could make it better and I’m just not.

So, yeah. That’s my big reveal. If I were to proffer advice, it would be to start the process on a weekend so at least you can nap during the next day, since there’s going to be no chance of sleep the first night. Of course, if you are clever and have already night-weaned, you’re one step ahead of me.

(By the way, I’m still in a fabulous mood. Am I the only person in the world whose weaning hormones actually make her feel better?)

technorati tags:weaning, breastfeeding, nursing

Friday night I completely lost my shit, which is impressive considering that an argument might be made for my never having had my shit together to begin with. I’m not a particularly upstanding girl, but you know it’s bad when I’m making detailed plans for who’s going to watch the baby while I check myself into the mental ward.

Not So rallied spectacularly, and I’m happy to say that I feel much, much better today. Good, even! Want to know my secret? Wait for it…we’re weaning.

Yes. I know. My inner Attachment Parent cringes at the thought of abrupt cessation of breastfeeding. What happened to my warm, cosy daydreams of child-lead weaning? Where is my slow, gentle weaning process? WHY THE HELL DO MY BOOBS HURT SO BADLY? (I can answer that last one: I’ve never had supply problems, and apparently the kid was consuming a lot of milk. Milk which now has nowhere to go and is making me look like a poor-man’s porn star. Not cool, mammaries, not cool at all.)

The kid’s almost 18 months old, so I’m basically telling my guilt over sudden weaning to sod off. He doesn’t need to nurse. He likes to nurse, but he doesn’t need to nurse. Yesterday when I gave him his breakfast, Happy Fun Baby chowed right down on his croissant in a way I’m not used to seeing, and it took me a minute to realize – he was hungry. Which, isn’t that a good reason to consume food? And also illustrated the fact that he’d really been getting a lot of his nutrition from nursing, still. In a way, I think it’s good that he’s now eating because he’s hungry and not just for kicks. Maybe we can consume a little more than the occasional spoonful of peanut butter and our body weight in french fries, huh, kid?

My outlook has improved noticeably since we stopped breastfeeding, which is weird. I keep waiting for the hormone cocktail to kick in and render me useless (well, more useless) but so far I feel…great. Really great. Here’s hoping that it stays that way.

technorati tags:nursing, weaning, breastfeeding

I thought that life without an in-home washer and dryer would be the pits, and I was wrong, mostly. The building we live in has about 20 units, and there is a laundry room on the 4th floor with two washers and two dryers. I’m home on weekdays, and when I go up to do the laundry the room is almost always empty. It’s sort of a pain to have to schlepp up two flights of stairs after a half hour to transfer it to the dryer (and again in an hour to retrieve) but the two machines do save a bit of time in the long run. I miss our lovely front-loader, but this isn’t so bad, really.

We’re slowly settling in to the new place. Every box we unpack makes the muscles in my neck unclench just a bit. We still don’t have internet at home, so my stints at the office have begun to feel increasingly frenetic. I have so much I need to get done, but Happy Fun Baby only tolerates the office for so long. Not So insists that he can be reasonably productive at the office with the baby, but when he took the kid on Monday so that I could have some desperately needed non-baby time, only an hour and a half passed before he called me saying the baby was bored and did I mind coming back soon? No hurry, of course, it’s just that he couldn’t get much work done with Happy Fun Baby all crankified and craving distraction. Which – yes. I SO GET THAT. (Note: Monday = holiday, yet where were we? Working! Don’t you wish you could start your own business too?)

Living downtown, though? Freaking awesome.

Wednesday I took the kid and headed out to Jamison Park so we could splash around in the fountain. Portland’s having a heat wave, so the fountain was absolutely swarming with people. Ellison took off running the minute we got there, splashing delightedly while I let the water run over my feet and tried to keep an eye on him. Afterward we headed home, where I managed to get a spoonful of peanut butter and half a glass of milk into his tummy before he crashed out on the couch for a nap.

This is the kind of life I want, I think. Just with a little more connectivity.

technorati tags:portland, jamison park, fountain, downtown, urban, summer

I started this post with the words “I’m a good mom” and then spent the next ten minutes qualifying that. I’m a good mom, except for the letting the kid stay up too late. And I let him eat french fries and now they’re all he’ll eat. My child is entirely composed of potato and oil. And I can’t be bothered to craft his meals out of organic, unprocessed foodstuffs, obviously. He has consumed both “meat product” and “cheese product,” as well as the unspeakable contents of the humble McDonald’s Happy Meal (mostly the french fries, but still). I completely failed at sleep training; he still wakes up five or six times every night, demanding to be nursed. And have I mentioned that I’m still nursing? Don’t know whether to file that under “good mom” or “bad mom” but I do know that I do not dig nursing, no I do not. I don’t mind it, but I’m not all bliss and bonding. It’s a chore, and I wish that when he reached for me it was because he wanted a snuggle, not because he’s hungry. And I shout. I do. I’m a shouting mom. I swear, and I make inappropriate comments which are sure to bite me in the ass once he starts talking, and he’s not talking yet, and clearly this is because I am failing to adequately stimulate and nurture him. I spend way too much time working and not nearly enough time hanging out on the floor with my kid or taking him for walks or reading to him. We do not do enriching things like Music Together or story time at the library or baby yoga. I am a terrible mother.

Do we all do this? Is our sense of self so skewed by our (real or perceived) ideal of the “perfect mother” that our imperfections are all we see? I didn’t do this in my professional life (although, truth be told, I do now – I’m constantly worrying that I’m not working hard enough/networking enough/knowledgable enough to impress my clients, even though I’m putting in something like 16 hours of work every day including weekends – since it’s interspersed with childcare and housework I feel like it’s clearly not enough, because at any given moment I’m not devoting my full attention to work, but that’s a whole different rant). I’m insanely proud of my kid, but I feel like all his positive traits are a result of his innate self-being, while the negative ones are so obviously mirror images of my negative traits that it’s kind of spooky. He’s impatient, and he shouts, and if something isn’t going his way it is THE END OF THE WORLD OMG. Which, if you’ve ever met me? Is pretty much my modus operandi.

How do you decide what makes a good mother? Is it a matter of fitting into a certain mold? Because I don’t fit. I’m not crunchy, but I wear my kid pretty often and I do own a pair of Danskos. I’m not a hipster parent, but I do dress my kid in all black whenever I can, and he never, ever wears things involving teddy bears and/or sports motifs. We listen to Dan Zanes, but we also rock out to the Fratellis and Christina Aguilera. I’m not completely AP but I’m not not AP. We all sleep in the same bed, but he’s a bed hog. Also, he kicks.

But, you know, if the measure of a good mother is how happy her kid is? I totally win the Mama of the Year award. He wakes up every morning and literally tackles us with his affection. He spends at least ten minutes hugging us and snuggling before he’ll even consider getting out of bed. He smiles more than any kid I know. He wanders around singing all the time, runs over for hugs, runs off by himself. He’s fearless and strong and self-assured. He’s curious about everything, and strongly believes that if he can figure out a way to get at something, he must be allowed to have it. He wants to do everything himself, but he also wants to be snuggled and held. When he falls down, he gets right back up. He’s very serious about dancing. He loves the hell out of us.

I’m a good mom because I love my kid. I’m a good mom because my kid loves me. Everything else is just window dressing.

technorati tags:mothers day, motherhood, good mom, bad mom