New Year's Resolutions!

1. Get pregnant again, but not until after August.
2. Lose some of this baby weight, hopefully before August.
3. Get Tommy into his own bedroom.
4. Decorate said bedroom in one cohesive theme.
5. Paint the basement with drylock and turn the new half into a playroom.
6. Get Ryan to turn in her homework on time every day, without yelling.

more to come......

Christmas recap

Hmmm, how was my Christmas? Well, Tommy and Ryan got spoiled, as was to be expected. Gluttonous American commercialism at it's best. On Christmas morning Tommy got an exersaucer from Santa, which he LOVES, and sticking out of his stocking (on top of tons of other stuff) was his now-favorite: a Wubbzy! His first ever TV show (aside from football which is really more of a bonding with Dad thing than entertainment) and Santa got him a Wubbzy to hug and talk to and chew on. Ryan got the Sims for the laptop she uses along with just about every expansion pack they make, and her stocking held tons of candy and other little treats. This was her year of the goth so she got plenty of stuff with skulls and lots of black clothes. Tommy got lots of toys and clothes and didn't really know what to make of any of it. Tom got a new coat and some really warm gloves and a bluetooth and I got the book I'd been wanting and some kitchen toys, and a robotic vacuum that cleans by itself. I named it Rosie, because it's red and because of the cleaning robot on the Jetsons. On Christmas morning, after the presents, I made latkes in honor of the holidays and then we got ready to go up to the in-laws', which was pleasantly uneventful. And then today, Tommy and I woke up with colds. So, lots of fluids for me and lots of breast feeding for him so he'll get my antibodies.

I love Christmas. But next year, not so many gifts for the kids. Tom and I need to quit shopping without each other. We each end up doing all the shopping, which results in twice as many gifts. We need to communicate better, I think.

Well, I hope everyone had as good a holiday as I did, and Happy New Year to all.

Merry Christmas!

Aging gracefully?

I have a dilemma. For years I've dyed my hair. I'd gone exclusively red until Tom mentioned that his first wife had been a redhead, and a drug-addles bitch, so I started bouncing around between shades of red and blond. Then I got pregnant and decided not to dye my hair due to health concerns and was shocked by how much gray came in. A couple months ago I decided to try brunette for a change and now it's faded to match the non-gray portion of my natural color. It's past time to touch up my roots, and I have the dye in the bathroom waiting, but I'm hesitant. I'm considering just going natural.

I 've been teased about my gray roots before and am not looking forward to it again, but I don't have anything agianst gray hair. Tom is gray and it's sexy as hell. And if I were to go completely uniformly gray I wouldn't blink twice about it. But part of me suspects that this may be the wrong time to go gray. I'm still carrying about 20 pounds more than I can stand, 30 more than I want, and I'm afraid that gray roots will be the final straw in "letting myself go". I want to age naturally and gracefully. I'm just afraid that my natural aging process may be less than graceful.

So, what do you think? Should I go natural or pour on the color?

And what would you like for Christmas little girl, a mass spectrometer? Part II

Why the Hell didn't I find this before I'd finished my Christmas shopping?!

I have the best baby in the world

Tonight, for like the fifth night in a row, I put Tommy to bed without incident. It was around 9:00, he'd just finished eating and was now rubbing his eyes and fussing, so I changed his diaper, kissed him goodnight, and then laid him down in the pack n play. While I was still arranging the blanket over him he started chewing on his thumb and rolled over onto his side. I turned off the light and never heard a peep out of him after that. Ryan never did that. Then again, I went to bed at 8:00 with Ryan because she broke into spontaneous hour-long screaming fits in the middle of the night. But I have to say, even knowing that I don't know much about other babies out there, I have the best baby in the world.

Score One For The Hunted

I love stories like this. Hunting has never made any sense to me, and no one's really been able to explain it to me either. People say that we need to hunt to prevent overpopulation, yada yada yada. It's true, but it's not why hunters hunt. They don't do it out of some altruistic concern for crops or vehicles or anything like that. It's not the dirty job for the Department of Conservation rookies, to go out and kill hundreds of deer. and you hear a lot of hunters say they eat what they kill, as though somehow that makes it less violent. And food isn't why they hunt. Theses people could feed their families with meat from the grocery store for less money than they spend on hunting. The license, the orange and camo clothes, the non-scented soaps and shampoos and detergents, the spray bottles of dear urine, the weaponry itself, it costs more than pork chops from Safeway.

No, hunters hunt for fun. It's some sort of bloodlust thing that I can't fathom, wanting to kill something just for the thrill of killing it. I'll kill bugs, and mice, but not for pleasure. I'll kill them because they revolt me and I feel, however irrationally, that they somehow present a threat. I can't let spiders live in my house because they might crawl on my face while I sleep or bite my children, and the same goes for mice who might also eat my food and poop in my silverware drawer. Very few hunters, I believe, fear that a deer is going to poop in their silverware drawer.

It's probably best that I don't understand the thrill-killer mentality, that in fact I believe it to be horrifying and worthy of psychological treatment. If I thought that watching something twitch and writhe in pain was fun, if I thought that cutting into still-warm flesh and gutting it would bring me joy, I'd probably be a serial killer. No, I need, absolutely need, to believe that my meat originates in the grocery aisle, that before the burger was on my plate it came from a styrofoam tray and nowhere else. I can't eat anything that was hunted, only what was purchased. No deer jerky or venison steak, no rabbit meat. Tom eats it, and Ryan has at times. I don't begrudge anyone else their "game", but I can't eat it. And I get a thrill whenever I read or hear of a hunter being attacked by his prey. As long as they're going to continue to call hunting a sport, the other team should occasionally score a point too.

Similac . . . From Hell!

They've found melamine in baby formula. Here, not in China this time. Yes it's trace amounts, but who knows how ingesting trace amounts of an industrial cleaner for a year will affect a child down the line? Just another reason to breast feed.

I know not everyone can breast feed. Some women have to work in service or retail jobs where pumping isn't a viable option. Some women are post-mastectomy breast cancer survivors. Some women are, knowingly or unknowingly, given medications that compromise or decrease their milk supplies. But then there are the women who just don't feel like it, and those are the ones who tend to piss me off.

Yeah, I know. Mothers have the right to parent however they see fit, and even more they have the right to use their breasts however they see fit. But for now let's assume I have the right to get pissed whenever I see fit. Okay?

Women who look down at their infant babies and say to themselves, "It's only second best for my baby," bother me with their sheer incomprehensibleness. But even worse, infinitely worse, are the ones who make us pay for it. The ones who go to WIC or who use food stamps to buy the formula. It's like (exactly like) if I went to your employer and said, "I have a baby and I want to buy that baby bottled water, and I want you to take money from your employees' paychecks in order for me to do it. Now, I have superior water at home in my tap. It is nutritionally superior to the water I want to buy. It has over 100 nutritional compounds not included in the water I want your workers to pay for. But I don't feel like using it, so hand over the money."

Yes, yes, people have choice and they can feed their kids whatever they damn well feel like. But I can hold it against them if they let their kids eat chocolate all day long, and in the same vein I can pass judgement on those who electively formula feed.

And what would you like for Christmas little girl, a mass spectrometer?

When I was a kid, my mom would ask me to start my Christmas Wish List sometime around the first of November, and I would hand her a list 3 feet long in about a week, and continue adding to it right up until Christmas Eve. As I got older, my list went from Barbies and teddy bears to cassettes and clothes, but I always had my list, and plenty of catalog pages with the corners turned down too.

I asked my ten year old what she wanted for Christmas and this is what she said, "I don't know. Science stuff." She can't, or won't, elaborate, and the only addition she's made to the list of one is "Habbo cards". Spending real money on toy money, it seems dumb to me. SO what do I get her? She's not the average ten year old. She'd hate me if I gave her anything Hannah Montana, and she's never even seen a high school musical before. So . . . what? I can't give her a box full of gift cards, and I can't afford to get her the kind of science stuff she wants (think the Mythbusters store room plus a full forensics lab), and she's already told me in no uncertain terms how much she detests girly things like jewelry and make-up.

Ugh, Christmas was so much easier before she outgrew Barbies and teddy bears.

Yes, he did!

We won! Okay, not me per se. But Obama won. Tommy will grow up having absolutely no memory of a time when people wondered if this country could vote in a black president. Tom was about his age when Martin Luther King was killed for daring to dream that this could happen, and now Obama's been elected. Cool.

Probably I've lost it.

Tommy's only 3 months old, and he's getting bigger and cuter and smarter every day. But I'm starting to get that feeling whenever I see a pregnant woman, or a cute maternity top, or watch A Baby Story on TLC. I want another one.

Yes, I'm enjoying Tommy. And yes, I realize that 2 babies will be a huge undertaking. And yes, I know that I will have a lot fewer memories of Tommy's childhood than of Ryan's, in part due to lack of sleep and also due to jumbling his childhood up with the next baby's. But I still amd starting to look forward to my next baby.

Is this natural, do you think? Or have I just completely lost it now?

Merlot and Email, part 2

Hah! And now blogger is in an Asian language too. Will it never stop?

I'm a fat person. I never wanted to be a fat person, and last summer I was dieting to avoid it. But then came pregnancy, and now I'm nursing, and soon the holidays anyway, and I won't be able to diet again until next summer which is actually when we're going to try to get pregnant agin. If he can stand to touch me, that is, considering that I'm a fat person.

My ex was an asshole. A drunk and a world class asshole. But his ex was bigger. Incredibly hot, don't get me wrong, but bigger nonetheless. I wish Tom's ex was bigger, any ex. But no, he's a superficial old goat who values a low body fat percentage and so I feel bad about being a fat person. If I were still with the asshole, I wouldn't worry about turning him off. Mostly because it would be a good thing, but also because size never mattered to him. It matters to Tom, I think.

I don't want to be a fat person, although the laws of karma say I should be. I was always the skinny girl, my whole life. I hated wearing a bathing suit because I looked too bony. No matter what I ate, I stayed skinny. Hate me? Yeah, so did everybody else. But now, every potato chip, every Little Debbie Swiss Roll, goes straight to my burgeoning fat layer. And here I sit, eating said potato chips and Swiss Rolls because really, in a land of giant thighs and horrifically jiggly midsections, what's another thousand or so calories?
I'm a fat person who's given up for the time being. What's more pathetic than that?

My family

I have it all now.

Elmer Fudd, and babies!

I'm having a problem with my google toolbar. Every time I do a search from it, google comes up in random new languages. And since I can't read Arabic or whatever Asian or African dialect I might get, I have to randomly change the language until I get something Latin-based so maybe I can find the word "English" in the list. Last time I had to go to Elmer Fudd (an actual language choice). Then I had to click "Engwish" and "Save Pwefwences". This is a ridiculous glitch!

I met my nephew! My brother's girlfriend was in town and she brought the baby over. Adorable, as I of course knew already. But the surprising thing is that Tommy outweighs him by at least a pound. Tommy weighed 6-11 at birth, Collin weighed 8-14. Sure Tommy's 3 weeks older, but the day Collin was born he weighed more than Tommy did. Apparently, I make fattening milk. I hope so. And I hope that I lose every one of the calories Tommy gets, because it's the only weight-loss plan I'm using.

Someone please tell me how to fix the google toolbar thing. It's weally fwustwating!

The best baby sitter ever

She actually asks to change wet diapers and burp him. And he behaves better for her than for me.

Don't blog drunk!

Tommy took a bottle! Today was my hometown's annual marathon (complete with mini-races for the kids) and Paint The Town, where they block off Main Street and fill it with 3X3 squares you can paint for $10 a piece. Ryan is in fifth grade this year which means she got to choose between a half mile run or a full mile, and she chose the full mile. And she came in dead last. Like WAAAYYY last. She crossed the finish line after the people who tell you what number you are in the race left. So after the race she came home with Tom, Tommy, and I and about ten minutes later a friend of hers who had seen her finish came to the door. Ryan won the first place medal for fifth grade girls. It turns out that no other girl in her grade had had the nerve to run a full mile. So she finished last, but first, and who knows how she would have done if she had been competing against kids her own age. After that, she decided to paint her medal in her square, so now on Main Street (in front of Happy Joe's Pizza) is a 3X3 rendition of a solid brass first place medal. I will upload a photo soon.

So she and I were wandering the street, looking at the paintings, when Tom got tired and took Tommy home. He called a while later when Tommy was hungry, but we had milk in the freezer so I told him to feed him. And he took the bottle!

So tonight, I am drinking! I am on my second (and last) beer, and I have already emailed buzzed which is a no-no. And now I am blogging buzzed too, so apparently I will never learn.

I HATE BLOGGER!

Why is every word that blogger doesn't recognize in bright red bold print?! And how do I fix it?! Blogger pisses me off so bad sometimes. And all my contractions are underlined in red now, to alert me to their inherent evil, I suppose.

Wastes of money

Okay so I posted my favorite can't-live-withouts, so here's my list of things you don't need to waste your money on.

1. diaper bag. Not because they're not incredibly useful, but because the hospital gave me one for free, from Similac. I don't use formula, but it's a nice bag. And, it came with a cooler for breast milk and 3 freezer storage bottles.
2. Lansinoh cream. Ugh, where do I start? It's a goopy mess, and it doesn't work, or at least it didn't do anything for me.
3. burp cloths. I don't see the point in spending good money on something cute to be puked on. To wipe up spit-up I use wash cloths, and to put over my shoulder I use flannel receiving blankets because I've been given at least a dozen of them as gifts. And they're multitaskers; I've never swaddled a baby with a designer burp cloth.
4. jogging stroller. I wanted one, oh how I wanted one. They're sleek, they're triangular, they have wheels big enough to not get stuck in the train tracks that bisect this little town. But they cost almost $200, and unless you pay even more for a deluxe model the front wheel won't turn so you can only go straight, and an infant can't ride in one until he's old enough to sit up and hold his head straight on his own.
5. baby mittens. Just use a pair of baby socks, or buy shirts with long sleeves that have fold-over pockets on the end.
6. gym play mats. The whole point of the play mat is to give back-sleeping babies tummy time. So why put a big Saint Louis arch of toys over them? It seems like an over-designed rip-off. Buy one of the tummy-oriented ones instead and stick hanging toys on the car-seat handle instead.
   
7. baby food. Yep, that's right. I see baby food as a waste of money. Well, except for the meat, because there's just no way to turn meat into a smooth paste yourself, or at least I've never found it. I buy canned vegetables and fruit, rinse it, and pop it into the food processor. Fifty cents for a can of sweet potatoes that makes 2 jars of baby food, or a dollar fifty a jar for prepared stuff? That said, I always have a couple jars of the store-bought stuff on hand because it doesn't have to be refrigerated and so it goes well in the diaper bag.

Again, I will add to this as it occurs to me. Or, more likely, I'll forget and this post will never be touched again.

Reccomendations

The last time I had a baby was a decade ago, so there are tons of products out now that weren't out then. These are some of my favorite things, some old but mostly new discoveries.

1. Kiddopotamus SwaddleMe blankets.
2. playpen/bassinet/changing table combo. Last time I had the plain old square playpen and I love the new combo thing, especially since we don't have room for a crib yet.
3. Travel systems with car seat bases. Ten years ago I had a car seat with no handle, and a completely separate stroller. And I had to tighten the seat belt every time I drove anywhere because it had to go over/through the car seat. These things are so easy and so great.
4. Diapers by the case. I love buying diapers by the case because it's cheaper and I don't find myself running out every couple days.
5. Diaper Genie II. Last time there was only the diaper genie, which took very expensive bags and had an easily worn-out twisting mechanism to give you mile-long sausage ropes of diapers. This new version, however, is much easier and simpler and keeps the stink well-contained. I mean, it sits literally 2 feet from the head of my bed and I smell nothing.
6. Sleeping gowns. They were around before and I loved them then too. SO much easier to change a diaper without waking the baby too much without threading the legs through some sort of pants.
7. Simethicone colic drops. I use generic but these things are great! The baby hurts from a bubble, you give the baby drops, the baby burps and sleeps. Voila!
8. Gerber Breast Therapy balm. WAY better than Lansinoh. Hard to find in stores but well worth the gas to get to one or the shipping. Buy it before you give birth.
   

It's late so that's all for now, but I'm sure I'll add more later.

Quick updates

Tommy's doing great. He has my cleft chin but other than that I can't tell whose features, what with smooshed baby nose and nursing blisters on his lips. I hope his eyes go hazel like his dad's. He had colic for a few days but I ditched dairy and it seems to have cleared up in the last couple of days. No more cappuccinos or ice cream for me but my waist didn't need them anyway.

Tom's sister and brother in law came into town for labor day weekend. She's a photographer and she took some pics of us. I haven't seen them yet but I hope they're good.

My brother's baby was born last week. I haven't heard much from them but I did see some pictures and he's a cutie, but what baby isn't. He was big so my sympathies go to his mother. Vacuum extraction, ouch.

I let Tom win the circumcision fight and then the idiot geriatric OB nurse over-simplified the after-care instructions and the skin got stuck back over and now the pediatrician had to pry it loose. I am SO anti-circumcision now it's not even funny. Not only did we hack a perfectly good piece of baby off, but we screwed it up and now it may need to be done again. What's worse than being circumcised without giving your consent? Being circumcised TWICE without your consent! Poor baby.

Here's a treat for ICC. I hope to see her soon.