Wednesday, December 30, 2009

Out with the old.....

I haven't written in a long time..I know. I'm working and then there's the baby, and I think I have no time now, school starts in a week! Bad news, I'm taking 14 units - good news I FINALLY graduate in May!! I will always regret never finishing what I started 20 years ago and having to do it now, although I do think I have learned more on this go around. So...this is a long one, pace yourselves.
This baby I adore, I come running home as quick as I can each day. I am always amazed by some of the parents I see who drop their children off (parents dressed in pajams) as soon as we open each day and pick them up (dressed in gym clothes) with 5 minutes until closing each day. I understand the children who have to stay all day because their parents are working and I also understand the parent who leaves thier child for a long day on occasion, but the ones who do it everyday I just don't understnad, perhaps this view will change as my child gets older (lord know's many of my other views did a quick change when I became a parent), but I know I can't do that to my child. I know he's waiting for me, and I'm waiting for him. I savor every moment he's awake, which is ALOT of moments in 24 hours, I'm sure soon I will be ready for some moments when he sleeps more - but I haven't hit that wall YET.
I'm amazed each day at how I love him more and am beginning to understand the parents who bargain and request that their children do somthing (or stop doing something)over and over without ever following through (hopefully this will not be my case when he's a toddler) but I find myself doing that at bedtime. I would really like him to actually sleep in his crib, but he prefers his little rocking bed, or me. I do not particularly like being his sleeping choice because I'm scared I will fall asleep too hard and suffocate him , or I will do again what happened when he was a month old and I hadn't slept for days; I will drop him. I guess I now have to explain - when he was about a month old the sleeping (the lack of) was seriously out of control and I was exhausted but was so worried about him not breathing that I would hold him while he slept in my arms. One night I finally did fall asleep and when I did my arms relaxed and he fell, only about a 18 inches, but he still fell and I felt horrible for days!
Anyway, I would like him to sleep in his crib - so I can sleep in the bed with my husband once again and not in the Lazy Boy where I have been for the last year. But......he falls asleep in my arms and the second I put him in his bed his eyes pop open and he's awake. I walk away quickly and he usually doesn't protest. I leave him there (tonight was 40 minutes!) I go back in and he's still wide awake (not complaining) and I find myself taking him out of the bed and rewarding him with hugs and kisses. I know that I am doing this - I see myself rewarding the behavior I don't want. Yet, I continue to do it. It's like eating - you know something is bad for your body but you keep eating it. I know I should leave him in the crib - but he smiles at me and I yank him out and cuddle him and repeat the process 6 more times until I just give in out of exhaustion and let him sleep on me. He's winning - and I seem to be OK with it right now - please remind me of these words when you see me heading towards being the over indulgent parent three years from now.
I pray that in 2010 I can follow through with the limits I set (and not say "No, I told you no" "If you don't stop....." ) like I hear parents say all day long - but never see them follow through with one of their threats and their children are horrible because they know Mom and Dad are never going to do anything about it. Or....Mom and Dad finally bust and then the punishment is much too extreme. See? I can Super Nanny everyone else except myself. UGH
I'm also stressed out, I really really want to get us to a place where we have no debt - but that dream is so far from reality that even thinking about it drives me to eat. I believe all the Christmas candy is finally out of the house - I have eaten my way through it in a Christmas induced, sleep deprived fog. I realized yesterday morning, mid bite, that I was having chocolate for Breakfast. Seriously, not good. I would like to lose weight this year (I would actually like to lose weight ANY year), but I just can't continue to make the same resolution each year and not get anywhere with it so this year I'm just going to say that I would like to make healthier choices and hopefully that will allow me to not throw away the whole day because I had one bite of something I shouldn't have.
I also need to get moving - the two PE classes that are required of me in order to graduate in May should force me to do that. I hate PE - I was THRILLED when we moved to Oklahoma and PE was not a required course but Music was! If you've never been a fat girl (or boy for that matter) in a PE class, you have no idea the humiliation and shame involved. I was overjoyed to move somewhere where I could excel in the extra-curricular activity and not be embarrassed about myself.
Can you tell I'm feeling a little blue? I'm in that self-deprecating mood where I feel fat and ugly (even though my fantastic husband {main reason I married him right here} says I'm not), where nothing fits me right yet my solution is to sit and be depressed instead of get moving (sigh). I'm also disappointed that the whole breastfeeding thing never has worked out like I want it to. I pump ALL day it seems and can give Erik about 1/2 of what he needs and we supplement the rest with breast milk. I've tried fenugreek herb to help and it did for a while. I've found something new called "Mothers Special Blend" - It came in the mail today and is a combination of Fenugreek, Goats Rue (what is rue? Mike swears it's goat crap and that's the nice way to say it), thistle and fennel. It comes in pill and liquid. I bought the liquid because it was cheaper but it tastes HORRIBLE and burns like hell going down and I have to take it 4 times a day. I hate licorice with a passion, I won't get near anything that remotely tastes like licorice, which means I stay away from things that have fennel for that reason. This stuff is full of it , and if I didn't love this child as much as I do and want to make more milk from him there is no way I would drink this stuff. It's like liquid licorice and I seriously have to do the little kid gagging down the peas dance just to get it down. It BETTER help.
Mike's job is not the most stable right now and we are seriously JUST making it so I'm freaking out about that - yet trying to be supportive at the same time. He has an interview tomorrow for something better and hopefully all will go well. Momma's got to pay for that van, there is no way in hell I'm giving it back - I LOVE it.
Putting on the Becky happy face to pull everyone else out of their funks has left me feeling in a funk myself. Sometimes I just don't want to be the happy one who fixes everything and always finds a solution - sometimes I just want to fall apart and have someone put me back together (in a skinnier version please).
But........soon it will be a new clean slate and while 2009 was a blessed year for us (our darling boy Erik) I am hoping that 2010 is even better.
Tomorrow I will take down the Christmas tree (what will Erik look at now) and put away another year. I wish a wonderful New Year on all of you in our lives and peace to everyone! Here's a little video of our year in pictures.
Love to you all.
Becky, Mike and Erik
See you in 2010!

Saturday, December 12, 2009

Lick it good!!

There's a song that kids sing at daycare.."I want to Move it move it" that's all they know and that's all they sing over and over and over. I'm sure it's from some Disney movie I haven't seen. But when I saw Erik do this, that song, with these words was running around my head. "I want to lick it, lick it, I want to lick it, lick it.
Here he is - trying to lick his toy- but I have him strapped in...and he can't.


Thursday, December 10, 2009

Dear Santa

My cousin Sara has a great blog too - www.sara-sundries.blogspot.com - check it out if you get a minute, she has links to some really cool other stuff and if you want to see the adorable things she crochets take a peek.
Anyway she did this on her blog and I loved it so much I'm stealing it for here and would love to see your "lists" as well.

Christmas List
1. Wrapping paper or gift bags? I think wrapped presents look much prettier and wrapping paper is much cheaper - but if I have gift bags they are the first thing I grab for convenience sake.
2. Real tree or artificial? Fake - purchased used from a friend of a friend and I LOVE that I don't have needles everywhere, my cats don't have the urge to pee on it and mark it, I don't have to water it. I can make it as big or as small as I need to and I paid $50 bucks for it ONCE....not every year, and I don't have to lay it out in the street when Christmas is over hoping the trash man will pick it up.
3. When do you put up the tree? The day after Thanksgiving, this year I did it a week before because that's when I had the time.
4. When do you take the tree down? I start New Year's day and gradually take things down and put them away over the next two weeks.
5. Do you like eggnog? Yep - the cold non-alcoholic kind, but man the calories!
6. Favorite gift received as a child? Donny and Marie Barbie dolls (I STILL have a crush on Donny Osmond), they had holes in the palms of the hands in a weirdly religious Jesus sort of way that were for their microphones to stick in, but I clearly remember asking my mother if they were friends of Jesus because they had hand holes like him.
7. Hardest person to buy for? My In-Laws
8. Easiest person to buy for? The Baby - he really just loves anything that makes noise or lights up.
9. Do you have a nativity scene? Actually I love Nativity scenes and started collecting them when Mike and I got married, I like the really unusual ones, I have one that is just a penguin family, but the most interesting is the Native American one complete with Tee Pee. I think I have about 14 now.
10. Mail or email Christmas cards? BOTH!!
11. Worst Christmas gift you ever received? Ponds Cold Cream from a student, at least I wasn't the teacher who got lingerie!
12. Favorite Christmas Movie? It's a tie between Elf and The Christmas Story.."you'll shoot your eye out!"
13. When do you start shopping for Christmas? Whenever I have money - I JUST went back to work so I'll be xmas shopping on the 24th I'm sure.
14. Have you ever recycled a Christmas present? Absolutely.
15. Favorite thing to eat at Christmas? A desert my mother makes called "4 Hour Delight"
16. Lights on the tree? Yes, blue LED, white twinkling LED and snowflake shaped white LED
17. Favorite Christmas song? I love them all.....today my favorite is Joy to the World because my niece (3) called and sang it to me on the phone and then informed me that it was my Christmas present....SO cute!
18. Travel at Christmas or stay home? We used to travel but I told Mike if we ever had kids that on Christmas day we would stay home and people can come to us. I hated packing up as a kid and going from house to house when all I wanted to do was play with my new stuff!! I won't do that to my child.
19. Can you name all of Santa's reindeer? Oh yes, how could I not I'm a preschool teacher!
20. Angel on the tree top or a star? A star, one that light's up completely - it's gorgeous!
21. Open the presents Christmas Eve or morning? Christmas morning.
22. Most annoying thing about this time of the year? That my husband who works retail has to work SO much, and I miss him.
23. Favorite ornament? All of them, Mike and I started buying ornaments as souvenirs from anywhere we go when we first got married and now we have so many that it's fun to remember where we got them - our latest - a porcelain, hand painted ornament from our trip to Lake Tahoe. We need a Baby's first Christmas ornament!
24. Do you make Christmas cookies? Yes!
25. What do you want for Christmas this year? A bag of hundred dollar bills would be great, anything in that little blue box, Kristin Chenoweth's Christmas CD, Tickets to In The Heights which is coming to SF this year and a mani/pedi!

Wednesday, December 9, 2009

Feeding Time!

We have moved to solid foods!! He likes them very much. See for yourself here. The Doctor told us because he was a big boy it was up to us when to start him. He had to meet some prerequisites developmentally but he had met them all with A's in each one so we got the green light. He was about to eat anything that got near him, toys, his hands, my hands, and giving me that look like "you had better give me a taste of whatever you're eating!"

He loves his new highchair that Nana bought him and when he sees me get it he gets all squeely (I'm sure that's not a real word) and excited because he knows food is coming! Here's a picture of him being very happy in it.


It's so fun to see him experience these new things, and I have a freezer full of food for him to try that I started making a few weeks ago. The doctor said we could introduce a new food every five days and gave us a list of about 8 that we could work from.


We took him to the Swedish festival in San Francisco last weekend and man, those are definitely Mike's people. Every where I turned I was looking into Mike's face, so many people that were the mirror images of his mother and Aunt.

We saw a performance of a Ukaline -a combination Violin and Ukelele- (this is what is looks like and here is what is sounds like) quartet by men dressed up in Swedish outfits. It was interesting ... for about 3 minutes, and then it reminded me of nap time music. We found lovely gifts for Mike's mom and at one point a woman I was buying something from was trying to tell another customer the name of the animal that the skin on the shoes was made from but she didn't know the animal's name in English so she looked at me and asked me to translate it. I laughed, I may have the Swedish blond part down - but she obviously didn't see the rest of me, I'm not a thin, long legged Swedish beauty - now I think I would blend right in at the Irish festival (look for me near the potatoes and cheese), Swedish.....never! We did buy Erik a cute little shirt with a Swedish heart shaped flag on the front that says "Swedeheart". It was a fun day.


I'm hoping this week he will begin to sleep through the night, we've had a few sporadic nights but getting up at 2:00 and going back to bed at 3:00 and then getting up again at 5:00 to go to work is no fun, but it's all worth it from one of those toothless grins!




Monday, December 7, 2009

4 Months Old!

It's hard to believe this child is 4 months old, the time is WHIZZING by and I want to hold up a big red light so it can just STOP and I can keep him little forever. But, I also can't wait until he can talk - I want to hear that little voice, and to know what crazy things he is thinking (like the boy who told me last week that preschool was for learning how to "keep our hands off our willies") and watch him grow and explore and see the world through his eyes.


He had his 4 month check up today (I made Mike hold him for the shots - not as bad as the first ones), the Dr. actually said he was one of the most beautiful babies he'd seen and we should consider getting him into baby modeling. Then he proceeded to tell us that it takes so much time to make your baby a model that the parents need to quit their jobs in order to take the baby on jobs. That won't be happening here - we'll just keep our beautiful boy to ourselves and fill all our friends e-mails with a thousand annoying pictures that we just must share.


Speaking of....here's Erik and his first time on Santa's lap!


Erik now weighs an even 19 pounds and is 26 inches long. He was in the 90th percentile in everything! He wants to eat EVERYTHING, his hands, blankets, toys, grown up fingers whatever he can get his hands on...the cats better watch out. We are going to move to rice cereal in the mornings. I'll make sure to video that!!

Tuesday, December 1, 2009

Adjustments

They are being made all over this household! By a husband who now has to get up at dark o'clock each morning to help his wife so she can get to work by 7, even though he may not have to work until noon, and he doesn't even complain.
A Nana who is now on baby duty each day with a baby who is not so thrilled at the Mommy working idea.
And me, who while I LOVE working, I never understood how hard it was to leave a child. I think for so many years I've been on the "teacher" side of that situation, peeling crying children from Mom's legs and wondering why parents keep coming back over and over for more kisses - causing the child to say good-bye too many times. I swore I'd never do that. It's so understandable now. It's funny how all the things I've sworn I wouldn't do as a parent are slowly coming true.

Although some of my mother's views are changing as well. We got into it last week about when to start solids as she was giving me the "my babies started solids at 6 weeks.....blah blah" I tried to let her know that things change from generations to generation and in the last 30 years things have changed. She didn't quite get it until I mentioned that it used to be OK to smoke and drink when you were pregnant, and they used to tell you NOT to breastfeed. After that argument she shut up, until she started in a few days ago on something she used to say about my sister when she was watching her little girl and I can remember talking to her on the phone and her complaining that "all your sister does when she comes in is hold that baby." I admit that I too would agree that it was OK for her to let the baby be. I wasn't a working parent then. All I want to do when I come home each night is sit and hold this baby for hours. I could care less if dinner gets made, if the house is clean, I just want to hold him. He fills a void in me that I never even knew needed filling, but it did and now I'm never letting it empty again.
Mom started in on me with that same argument yesterday and I finally thought of a way to explain it that she would understand, when she said "I never held my babies all evening, I got dinner on the table and the house picked up". When I reminded her that she never had to walk away and go to work while someone else watched her babies, that she was able to see them grow and develop and smile at them all day long -- she understood. She never worked until we were all in school and if she did before, it was only a night shift here and there or a weekend when Dad was home to watch - but she didn't get up and leave us everyday when we were infants, that's hard as hell to do each day - but it has to be done.
Erik is struggling to figure out the days when Mom is home and the days when Nana watches him. He won't sleep for Nana, a couple 20 minute naps during the day but he saves it until I get home and then collapses into my arms when I walk in the door and sleeps for hours. Today Mom was frustrated, he was frustrated and needed to sleep so I told her to find something of mine and give him, she gave him my nightgown. She said he hugged it, took a big smell of it and drifted off to sleep for almost 2 hours, when I came home from work he was still asleep hanging on to it. Here's what he looked like.

We had a great Thanksgiving (all those day's off in a row!) which gave me time for some filming! Here's Erik yelling at his toys.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XI9xUe75ecE