One Perfect Mess

Archive for March, 2009

I immediately hated being pregnant. I felt awful, and the anxiety kept me up most nights. I had horrible panic attacks that something was going to happen to the baby or to me. It was a long 40 weeks. I hired a doula to help with my anxiety during labor. That turned out to be a total bust as she hounded me the whole pregnancy with fear tactics about how my posture was going to cause a csection. The day I went into labor I patiently timed contractions all day long. They didn’t hurt, and so I was pretty sure this wasn’t going to be “it”. Everyone talks about how first time moms usually go to L&D at least once when they really aren’t in labor so I figured if I went it would be nothing. I called the doula that evening and told her my stats. She flatly informed me I wasn’t in labor. I couldn’t sleep so Andrew and I stayed up and watched Christmas Vacation and a special on Hugh Hefner. I still couldn’t sleep so I called the midwife on duty and she said to come on in, might as well get it checked out. Determined to not be embarrassed any more than necessary I refused to let Andrew use the labor and delivery valet. We parked in the deck and walked across the street. I didn’t bring anything in with me because I knew I’d feel really stupid hauling stuff in only to be sent home. When the midwife checked me I was already about 4 1/2 cm. They told me I’d be having a baby soon and I think I was still in denial. We kept putting off calling the depressing doula until early that morning. When we did call her we weren’t able to reach her and we were relieved. We hung out, I took hot showers and walked around. At one point I felt such intense pressure I thought for sure it was time to have the baby. They told me I wasn’t quite there yet. Finally they said I was ready and the Weebles was born within 20 minutes or so. It was much, much easier than I’d expected. I left the hospital early, after only about 24 hours. We struggled like hell with breastfeeding for the first several weeks. I ended up pumping and feeding her with a bottle the first month or two. She lost weight and took forever to gain it back. We were worried. The first few days I was totally possessive of her. I’d get this feeling like I wanted to snatch her away from visitors and protect her from everything. Hormones are f’d up things.

I have always wanted to be a mom. The tiny clothes, the big hugs, the enormous responsibility of shepherding a new little life, knowing someone else that was part of me… plus just the sheer domesticity of it. I eat that kind of thing up. I could not wait to start a family. Then, I met Andrew. When we started dating he was still in undergrad and had plans to go to law school. Sadly, this meant waiting (and waiting… and WAITING…) to start our little family until he was out of school and working. Being just a tad on the impatient side, ahem, I had been doing my studying to give us the best opportunity possible for getting pregnant right away. I did the whole charting thing for months in advance so I’d know exactly what patterns to expect. The insurance from his job didn’t kick in for three months and we feared pregnancy would be a pre-existing condition so we waited until October and it was go time. When I didn’t get a positive test that first month I was really disappointed. I knew it could take several months but I really hoping that we would be able to surprise our families with the news at Christmas. The weekend after Thanksgiving I saw the very faintest possible second line. It didn’t even have any color… it was just sort of a colorless indention. I must’ve taken 30 tests that weekend. Finally I went and got of the expensive fancy tests that just says PREGNANT or NOT PREGNANT on it. I dutifully put it away to wait to take it first thing in the morning as the instructions say but ended up not being able to wait past 3 am… I woke Andrew up, still in shock. He mumbled something about “awesome” then started to doze back off. I laid awake the rest of the night thinking “what the f#(* did we just do?, are we even qualified for this?”

Too. Much. Internet. I read an article last night (not online, thankyouverymuch) about moms that spend too much time online. It is easy to do. Between keeping up with friends, researching milestones/symptoms, looking for new activities to do with the kids, and most importantly.. shopping online I can easily spend up to 8 hours a day piddling around on the internet. Generally I am nursing the Peanut, or the kids are napping or I’m just doing a quick email check in the middle of playtime but still it is time I am taking away from spending with my kids. It is easy to feel isolated when you are home with two small children all day every day. I spend 10 hours a day by myself for the most part and the internet is a vital part of how I stay connected to the outside world. So while I don’t think it is possible for me to give it up entirely I am going to try for the next week to be more mindful of the time I spend aimlessly reading through the latest on my baby chat rooms or looking for yet another Carter’s sleeper. My mom blogs? Yeah.. not giving those up.

Have you ever had a really productive day only to follow it up with a day where you hardly managed to get out of bed? Yeah, I’m having one of those follow up days. I don’t know why I can’t seem to get into the swing of things today. The Weebles struggled with her nap and never fell asleep so that’s always good for throwing the entire day off. I tried cranking the radio and dancing around with the kids but that didn’t even cheer us up. Bleh. I had some fairly big goals for today WiiFit, Shred, and get the kitchen and porch organized. Not to mention, I don’t know.. maybe play with my kids a little. Some days it seems like I spend so much time having to deal with meltdowns and interruptions that we don’t actually get to have any fun. We went through a phase one time where I literally spent the entire day for several days in a row trying to get The Weebles to sleep. That was back when she was still on two naps a day. That caused us to switch to one nap to ensure she would actually go down without a fuss and to lessen the amount of time spent putting her to bed. It seemed to work until now. Let’s hope she isn’t going to be one of those kids that gives up their naps entirely by the time they are two. I need a nap…

I have taken the first day of spring as a challenge to get this house organized. Well… that and we have some major room shuffling to do since our son still doesn’t have a bedroom ahem… I had counted on The Peanut loving to cosleep as much as his big sister and he doesn’t really seem to care one way or the other about it so far. I figure he’ll be moving to a room of his own much sooner than she did. So we started this weekend by breaking down and recycling approximately 400 cardboard boxes that housed the ridiculous amount of online shopping I have done in the last month or two. We also took pretty much everything out of two of our attics and have sorted through most of it creating a huge donate pile as well as quite a bit of things to throw out. It’s amazing how unimportant some things seem once you have kids. High school mementos? Eh really am I ever going to miss looking back at these notes I passed in Algebra? Nah. Tons of clothes, books, and household items are going out the door and I am already feeling saner. Today I’ve ripped apart the laundry room and gotten it in order. To show for all our hard work we have one totally organized attic, two pretty much empty attics and a house that looks like a tornado hit it. I’m hoping that it’s really not that bad and that if I can just finish up a couple of things that items will start to fall into place… that is how it works right? The inlaws are coming this weekend… what was I thinking starting such a big project? Eeek. I guess I can always just cram everything back in the attic…

The Weebles has been on a sleep strike and pairing that with her new-found flair for the dramatic does make for some interesting tantrums. It’s hard to get stressed over a tantrum when the cause is so mundane. For example, she is currently obsessed with ChapStick. I can’t blame her, I am too. The problem is that she eats it and that’s just not going to work for me. Not only is it gross and not good for her (ugh petroleum based products, but I put too many expensive organic equivalents through the wash to justify the expense) but I am addicted to them and between her and the darn cats I’m already down to only one or two that I can find. If I do not let her have my ChapStick she will wail as though it is the end of the world. She will throw herself on the floor and scream. Being the good mom, I usually laugh. Really, what do you do? It’s actually pretty funny. But I know it’s important to try to help her identify and work through all these feelings she just isn’t capable of handling yet. She isn’t trying to be a brat to get her way, she honestly just doesn’t know how to handle such awesome disappointment. So I try to keep a straight face and explain why she can’t have it then divert, divert, divert. This scene is repeated at least once an hour throughout the day over my water glass, pens, her blankie, a rock, being allowed into the refrigerator, or being shut anywhere for any length of time away from me. Oh! And being put in the high chair. Holy Hand Grenades she HATES being put in that high chair. I’ve resorted to letting her “picnic” for meals during the day. Let’s just say I had to vacuum cereal out of the sheets this morning. I think I’m going to start a list of things I never thought I’d do…

The Weebles has been talking for awhile now but her vocabulary (that we understood anyway) was limited to perhaps 20 words or so even though she understands virtually everything we say. Whether or not she listens when we say it all depends. However, just in the last week or two she has really started repeating and adding words to her vocabulary. Some favorites of mine are “otay” (okay) and “bus” and also “cheese” whenever she sees a camera. She also has started saying juice, dolly, yehyeh (for Lily) and brudder for The Peanut. When she first started to talk I was very impatient for her to say “mommy” thinking that would be my favorite thing to hear. She certainly says it plenty these days, never once at a time either. It’s usually “mommy, mommy, mommy, mommy… ut oh mommy” and I do love hearing her say it. But what surprised me was how much more I love hearing her say her own name. It is really adorable. You can point to her in a picture and she will get excited and say JEWIE! It’s so cute that I’ve caught myself calling her Jewie. Just for the sake of record keeping some other often used words are: bubble, oopth (oops), widgee (Widget), paci, banyee (blankie), daddy (of course), Papa, CiCi, nana (banana), cup, wow wow, no no no, up up!, bear, mee mees (nummies), baw (ball), baby, mo mo (more, with sign), shoes, night night, and GO GO GO. I never tire of hearing her sweet little voice and knowing what she is thinking about. Unfortunately now I’m really going to have to try to stop swearing.

One of the things I am proudest of is that I chose the world’s best dad for my kids. Really, without a doubt, there is no better father than Andrew. Weebles and Peanut are so lucky to have him. He never loses his patience. Seriously, never. Those that know me know all too well that patience is not one of my strong suits. I have been known on many occasions to throw bigger tantrums than my toddler and my intolerance for delayed gratification is probably worse than hers too. Andrew will always be there willing to play, ready to make up a new verse to a song or new rules to a game. He is the master when it comes to distractionary measures which any parent can tell you is invaluable, at least when they are still small. He’s fair, honest to a fault and will always put their best interests first. He’s pushed the Weebles in the stroller hundreds of miles to help her fall asleep, even in the rain on occasion. He’s read thousands of stories and taken hundreds of bubble baths. He’s built forts, played in the ocean when it was probably too cold to do so, slept in a chair so he could hold the Peanut when he didn’t want to be put down and pretty much kept his mouth shut as I have spent thousands of dollars on toys, books and clothes for them. And perhaps more impressive than anything else, he’s kept their mom from teetering over the fine line into craziness. So for all that I am very grateful. Don’t worry though honey, I’ll still keep bringing up how you fell asleep while I was in labor.

I’m not going to lie, we live in an all out cattery. We have four feline residents currently that let us live here with them, doling out the kibble and cleaning up their messes. I used to really love my cats and I suppose on the off second when the kids are busy or sleeping (he, yeeeah) or occasionally even when the s^&% is hitting the fan and I stop and see a bundle of fur all curled up peaceful I still remember that they are certainly a special part of our lives. The Weebles loves her cats. LOVES THEM. Probably more so than they would like. Especially now that she can actually catch up to them when they play chase and is also learning that she can pick them up (sort of) and move them around to her liking. Maggie and Cat were two of her first words after uh oh, not a coincidence since uh oh is frequently said regarding Maggie and his (yes his) activities. As any cat owner will tell you, well except for maybe the ones that are totally nuts, cats make life… interesting. Nothing is ever where you left it, you will find pee in the strangest places (stove? shoes? on the mail? I swear our cats peed once on a print out we had on how to stop your cats from peeing outside the litter box. I couldn’t have made that one up if I tried.) and guaranteed at the moment you need them to be quiet, for example when you are trying to coordinate TWO small children’s naps who are fighting them, they will decide it is a perfect time to meow loudly and walk all over the bed. I always knew I’d love my kids more than my pets, I just couldn’t actually imagine it. However, once they arrived the contrast was shocking. It takes those quiet moments to remember how much they do mean to me. As our children grow up I hope they will inherit our love of animals. I always thought that people that didn’t have pets must have such normal boring lives. Now I feel that way about people that don’t have children. What on earth do they do with all that time? What did I do with all that time?