Everything is Just a Little Bit Soggy

slimy baby has a new, third tooth! and with it, a snotty nose.

and he has this new, fun habit of grabbing both sides of your face by your hair/ears and coming at you full speed with the objective of putting as much of your head in his mouth as he can fit. he moves at terrific speeds. you never see him coming! and then he sort of open-mouth gnaws/snots on you all over and makes sure to paint it on both your cheeks, forehead, neck.

by the time you realized what happened, you're wringing out your eyebrows and you look like a 'slimer' victim and you're in a state of shock and are probably holding yourself and rocking under a desk somewhere. but every time you close your eyes, you see that sloppy jack o' lantern barreling toward you...

it's adorable.

Henry, Your Mommy's Here!

when i pick him up from daycare and have to be let in through the security door by one of his keepers, they call ahead of me into the room, "henry, your mommy's here!!"

it makes my heart slosh around in my chest and pump all warm and oozy. i am somebody's 'mommy.' and not just anybody's, but this amazing little person's.

it's the most incredible thing i've ever experienced.

and i do ok, being away from him all day at work...but come 2 o'clock or so, i start to get a little shaky and start jonesin' for those cheeks. my thoughts turn from blood pressures and suture choices to "babybabybabymonkeybabyhenrybabybaby."

and after i pick him up and gather all his goodies and get his report from the day and all that, i take him out to the car and steal a few minutes of snuggling and making sure he hasn't grown too much while i was gone, before i strap him into the chair of pain. i love those minutes. as an added bonus, when he's been at daycare, he smells like apple juice and graham crackers, which is delicious.

so as much as life has changed entirely, i couldn't be more joyful and full of love. i am so thankful to be henry's mommy.



this pic is several months old, but i just found it and think it's bad ass.

Sleep, Perchance to Dream, Perchance to Fall Asleep Standing Up

so, i've discussed this with several of my friends who also have infant humans and they all agree, managing one is like doing a science experiment.

most days, i feel like i have more questions than answers and we're just sort of throwing stuff out there to see what will stick. when to feed, what to feed, how to encourage sleep, what absolutely NOT to do to encourage sleep, how much time they spend playing on their own versus interacting with you, etc, etc. books help some, but they all offer sure thing(!) different advice.

every day is an exercise in figuring him out. and once we get one system down, he's sure to change it up. it's an experiment. and i honestly don't know if the mouse in the maze will find the cheese faster if i encourage him with techno music or polka, but i really want to find out.

in this case, of course, the mouse is henry and the cheese is SLEEPING THROUGH THE NIGHT and the music variation is all my attempts at getting him to do that. and the maze is my bonkers mind the day after i haven't slept all night. :)

and i realized this week that i think we changed too many variables at once, so we did not have a very well constructed experiment. he pretty much simultaneously started eating solids, came off his zantac, went from 7 to 6 feedings in a day and got some teeth.

everything i read tells me that he should be able to go from bedtime (8pm-ish) to morning (5am-ish) without eating. also, that unless he's completely buttsploded, he should be able to make it through the night with a wet diaper and it shouldn't make him nuts enough to wake up.

but try telling him that. last week he was up constantly (10:30, 11, 11:30, 12:00, 2:00, 4:00). even when we folded and brought him in bed with us, he was thrashing around and troubled. i folded again (like origami) and nursed him on and off through the night. so, basically, neither of us slept. and i realized the day after that rough night, while i was bathing in a cup of coffee, that he hadn't really slept more than 2 hrs straight in at least a month.

no wonder my thoughts are so cloudy and i feel so dumb! it's not a brain-eating parasite introduced by my neti pot and tap water after all! it's just plain old lack of sleep.

so this week, i thought, what used to work? what worked when he was tiny? not caring that he should be past a certain stage (come on! mama's gotta sleep!), what tricks have we been successful with in the past?

so i started dream feeding him again. i put him to bed around 8pm and then before i go to bed, around 10:30 i change him (into a disposable- he seems to do better w/ those than the cloth over night) and feed him in his sleep. i put him back down and go to bed. and he has made it until 3 or 4 every night this week! if he does wake up before then, it just takes a few minutes of rocking to get him back down in his crib.

so now he's only in our bed after 3 or 4am when i feed him and so robb and i are getting a big chunk of uninterrupted sleep for the first time in ages. and, henry doesn't seem to believe this, but babies also need sleep. their brains require it for development.

so, i'm not walking into traffic in a stupor and henry's brain is getting bigger before our very eyes! it's been a good week.

so, the mouse found the cheese....for now.



henry is now scooting! backward. only backward. he ends up wedged in a corner spinning his wheels, but it's progress anyway!

Denial is a River in Egypt as Deep as I Am Fat

so i got some unpleasant numbers today.

i finally asked the nurse at my ob/gyn's office about my weight gain over my pregnant and post-pregnant time. i had not known an actual amount gained when pregnant as i never remembered what my starting weight was.

now i know.

and, balls.

where i started was not as high as i thought it was. not nearly. at all. or even close.

all this time i was remembering myself as pretty big to start with (what with the previous pregnancies and hormone supplements, etc) and thinking i was back close to my starting weight.

but, alas. i am 17 lbs over what i weighed in october of 2010 when i was 6 weeks pregnant with monkey butt.

and during my pregnancy i gained a total of.....62 lbs.

what the WHAT?

dern.

i have a longer way to get back to 'normal' than i thought. this will hopefully prove to be a motivation. conveniently, we just started a weight loss contest (for $$ and bragging rights) at work. between realizing i've been delusional all this time and having the incentive of a competition, i think i'll really get in gear.

as soon as i finish this ice cream sandwich.

Seven Months and SASSified!

Can You Really Have it All? (I Want to Be a MWAHST!)

in the television commercials, the mom with all her shit together (MWAHST) effortlessly wrangles all her kids, has a beautiful meal prepared for the family, has a spotlessly clean house in which she's always entertaining guests, and, they may not show this, but at least in my head, she also has a rewarding career from which she just arrived home in her well-kept trendy car. also, her skin is polished, her hairy is shiny and well-coiffed, she is perfectly fit and she's probably wearing some dirty-in-a-good-way undies under her suit to give her husband a thrill. she also plays tennis and cello and reads great literature and takes cooking classes. she has girls nights out once a month where she and her beautiful friends sit around at a hip restaurant and sip white wine and talk about what they recently heard on NPR.

last night, when was at rehearsal for a short play i'm acting in, i realized that at that moment, i kind of did feel like i have it all. i might actually be a MWAHST!

i mean, mind you, there are some differences between my reality and that of the MWAHST from the commercials.

1. my car looks like Jewel and her mom are still living in it.
2. tonight, when i was making homemade noodle soup, i hollered through the cloud of flour hovering in the air at my 7 month old in his bouncy seat something about how he needed to stop whining and sack up.
3. my house is in a constant state of chaos and clutter. when i know we're having visitors, i stuff everything on my bed and throw my duvet over top. otherwise, bed stays un-made. and surprise visitors who just pop by, i make them visit on the porch. or we just turn all the lights off and stay away from the windows and pretend we're not home.
4. there are days at a time when i don't brush my hair. but the hair on my legs is luxuriously long.
5. i haven't worked out in months but recently found a new cookie i love. so that's good.
6. in addition to the hairy legs, if robb's looking for romance, he might find dirty underwear, but it won't be in a good way. (hey-oh!). and i have a whole drawer for my sweatpants.
7. my hobbies include wandering the aisles at walgreens just to get a few quiet minutes away, working overtime at my job, and occasionally doing some theater.
8. when my friends and i get together we usually drink way too much tequila and talk about the chelsea handler book we just read and how mariah carey DEFINITELY had a tummy tuck cuz ain't NO way bitch lost THAT much weight and her belly looks THAT good after having twins at 40! come on! puh-lease!

:)

but, seriously. i feel like it's all working. at least for now. and i'm so excited...somehow i still find time to still do the things that i love, like being on stage. and i have a pretty cool career as a surgical physician assistant. i have an awesome kid and am married to a fella i adore. and so far we don't totally suck at being parents (stay tuned).

huzzah.

Sock Monkey Socks Monkeying Around with a Henry Monkey. It Blows the Mind.

Silly Human Tricks/Mouth Tomfoolery/Starting to Scoot