Unsurprisingly, the longer I am solo parenting, the harder it gets. Actually that’s not true. Some things are actually easier when I’m the only one around. Sleeptime, for example. When the kid’s tired, I put him down. If I’m tired too, we both go to sleep, in a bed that suddenly feels spacious and accommodating. I don’t need to worry about whether the lights are off or the door is locked. I don’t need to feel bad that I’m not dividing my attention. I can just…sleep.

Other things aren’t so smooth. Happy Fun Baby threw not one, not two but three marathon tantrums in the last three days, which isn’t that unusual since he’s 18 months old. What is unusual is that afterward there was no one to watch him while I took a desperately needed mental health break. Even things like taking out the garbage became a big deal: the garbage cans have temporarily been relocated to the first floor while the elevator is being upgraded, so taking out the garbage means going down two flights of stairs. Sounds simple, right? Except how do you wrangle garbage bags and a toddler? In the Ergo, that’s how, but you’d be surprised how long it took me to figure that out.

Yesterday was…challenging. We went to Saturday Market (yes, I know it was Sunday) and the kid insisted on walking so I didn’t bring the Ergo. People! Learn from my mistakes! When your child is younger than, say, twelve, you must provide an alternate method of transport! Anyway I foolishly went out with a walking kid, and it was actually fine for the first bit. We wandered, we chatted with our friend Chyna, we had some lunch at Mother’s, and then we went home. This is where the problem started. Mother’s is just far enough from the MAX that I stupidly thought “We can just walk from here.” Stupid decision #2: “Oh yeah, we need diapers! I’ll just pop into Rite Aid on the way home.” And guess who started refusing to walk after three of the nine blocks? Guess who needed to be carried? Guess who would not stand still in the drugstore even though mama had her hands full? Guess who screamed when we handed the diapers to the cashier? Those were the longest nine blocks of my life, and several times I was very tempted to just sit on the curb and set up camp. The homeless people like us, for the most part, and the kid is very friendly.

I was lucky in that I was able to take a mini break from work the past two days, and the new school session only starts today so I didn’t have homework, either. Yes: my vacation is a weekend of solo parenting during which I only had the kid and the housework! You totally wish you had my life.

Not So gets back today, and it’s a good thing. My poor beleagured brain is so distracted with kid stuff that when Chyna said “You look cute today!” I didn’t even consider that she might not be talking to the baby. It was only when she followed up with “Do I recognize that skirt?” that I realized she was talking about me.

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.

Frog’s legs are, actually, very good. They do taste quite a bit like chicken, which is reassuring when confronted with a food that used to be covered in a slick reptile skin. I was afraid that they would come like that, covered in frog skin, and I was certain I would not be able to consume anything covered in frog skin. They were deep-fried, though, battered, and only resembled the extended, leaping legs of a frog in shape.

My week was a lot like that: unexpected goodness in unexpected places. I was surprised on Thursday by an e-mail from the Portland Picks folks, saying they love my Cranky Pals and are featuring them in (last) Friday’s newsletter. Squee! The Crankies, they are all about the love. (I accidentally typed “lobe” there, the Crankies, all about the lobe, and then spent a period of time contemplating what sort of lobe the Crankies might be all about and where in the brain it was located. Although perhaps the ear. It is hard to say.)

The kid = still weaned, which is good since my supply is finally (finally!) dwindling. Apparently I am a milking machine. Several third-world countries could be sustained on my milk supply. Unsurprisingly, now that the milk is finally going the way of the dodo, I find myself suddenly deflated. This means none of my bras are even remotely functional. You’d think I’d just start wearing one of my less immense bras, considering that I had a stash of them from my less endowed days. You’d think that, but that would presuppose that I knew where any of them were, and could locate them as needed. I suspect that they are in a box somewhere, like pretty much everything else we own. Being prepared is not one of my strong suits.

Not nursing is pretty great, though. I heartily recommend it.

technorati tags:cranky pals, portland picks, frog legs, milking machine, weaning

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