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| Mile High Snow Bunny |
Wednesday, February 23, 2011
Is there anybody out there?
Mornin' everyone! I'm getting hungry for some feedback and would love to hear and respond to your comments. It seems its the thing to do in the blogosphere. Please let me know your thoughts on my postings or anything you feel like talking about. I'd really love to hear them! As a thank you, here is picture of my girl.
Tuesday, February 22, 2011
Confession #9: Weinheimer
Arden flipped on her whining switch and I think I'm about to blow my fuse.
I have never been a particularly patient person. It's not a prerequisite for living in NYC. In fact, it's frowned upon. When I first moved here from Oberlin, OH I got a job at the Barnes & Noble at Lincoln Center. I'll never forget how my supervisor at the Info Desk told me to "stop wasting time with all the hello how are you stuff". You may have heard about us New Yorkers and it's all completely true. We want it fast. We don't wanna wait. We definitely don't wanna hear how you, your kids or your mom are doing if for some reason we are waiting.
The patience involved in caring for your own child is a bit different. She's my gorgeous, funny, sweet baby girl who is making me totally lose my mind! She's pushing and pushing and pushing me! I'm pretty sure my parents are smiling in that payback-is-a-little-bit-sweet kinda way.
I don't know what happened. It seems like we got back from Denver and the child went bazonkers. "Mama Mama Mama Mama Mama Mama, no, no, no, no, no, wa wa, wa wa, wa wa, wa wa et al.”
Here is a sample "conversation" from this morning:
Arden: (with tone becoming increasingly frenzied with each repetition) "peach, peach, peach, peach, peach..."
Momma: (One eye open, half dressed and have to pee because it's 6:01am and we literally just got out of bed, tone calm and singsongy) "Arden, I hear you. I'll get you peach in one minute. Mommy has to pee."
Arden: (no tone only whining) "Ahahahahnpeachypeachyahahaahahmommamommahahahaha!)
Momma: (praying to God almighty please give me the strength to make it through the next 14 hours of this!) -- I try to ignore the whining.
Arden: (It's on. Now she's trying to climb onto my lap while I'm peeing, knocks the toilet paper out of my hand and is still whining) "Up, up, up, up..."
Time: still 6:01am
I feel like I enlisted. She barks orders at me and its comply or suffer the consequences. The child knows how to say please. She knows I want her to say it. She knows I wait for her or make her say it each time she demands something. But regardless of the seemingly thousands of times we have gone through this, she does not say please on her own without prompting. I believe Bill Cosby refers to this as brain damage.
So, basically, I'm in trouble.
I love this brain damaged child and I do not want to scream at her. This none-too-patient NYC Momma is relying heavily on the serenity prayer, our dog Penny and songs from the Little Mermaid.
I was commiserating with a dear friend of mine (mother to 4 boys) about my situation. She said that the whining tends to stop some time around age 4. "God grant me the serenity..."
I have never been a particularly patient person. It's not a prerequisite for living in NYC. In fact, it's frowned upon. When I first moved here from Oberlin, OH I got a job at the Barnes & Noble at Lincoln Center. I'll never forget how my supervisor at the Info Desk told me to "stop wasting time with all the hello how are you stuff". You may have heard about us New Yorkers and it's all completely true. We want it fast. We don't wanna wait. We definitely don't wanna hear how you, your kids or your mom are doing if for some reason we are waiting.
The patience involved in caring for your own child is a bit different. She's my gorgeous, funny, sweet baby girl who is making me totally lose my mind! She's pushing and pushing and pushing me! I'm pretty sure my parents are smiling in that payback-is-a-little-bit-sweet kinda way.
I don't know what happened. It seems like we got back from Denver and the child went bazonkers. "Mama Mama Mama Mama Mama Mama, no, no, no, no, no, wa wa, wa wa, wa wa, wa wa et al.”
Arden: (with tone becoming increasingly frenzied with each repetition) "peach, peach, peach, peach, peach..."
Momma: (One eye open, half dressed and have to pee because it's 6:01am and we literally just got out of bed, tone calm and singsongy) "Arden, I hear you. I'll get you peach in one minute. Mommy has to pee."
Arden: (no tone only whining) "Ahahahahnpeachypeachyahahaahahmommamommahahahaha!)
Momma: (praying to God almighty please give me the strength to make it through the next 14 hours of this!) -- I try to ignore the whining.
Arden: (It's on. Now she's trying to climb onto my lap while I'm peeing, knocks the toilet paper out of my hand and is still whining) "Up, up, up, up..."
Time: still 6:01am
I feel like I enlisted. She barks orders at me and its comply or suffer the consequences. The child knows how to say please. She knows I want her to say it. She knows I wait for her or make her say it each time she demands something. But regardless of the seemingly thousands of times we have gone through this, she does not say please on her own without prompting. I believe Bill Cosby refers to this as brain damage.
So, basically, I'm in trouble.
I love this brain damaged child and I do not want to scream at her. This none-too-patient NYC Momma is relying heavily on the serenity prayer, our dog Penny and songs from the Little Mermaid.
I was commiserating with a dear friend of mine (mother to 4 boys) about my situation. She said that the whining tends to stop some time around age 4. "God grant me the serenity..."
Friday, February 18, 2011
Confession #8 - Disclaimer: Don't read this on your lunch break
I wasn't sure how long I'd last without writing about puke or poop. I guess now we know. Everybody knows you deal with a ton of both when you have a baby. I didn't know that it gets progressively worse as the baby grows older.
Breastfed babies are like a dream. It barely smells coming from either end. Except for the frequency and our use of "save-the-planet" diapers, it wouldn't have been much trouble. Armed with a bunch of cloth diapers to use as burp cloths we were rarely ever covered in regurgitated milk. Now, it's a completely different story that's basically all my fault.
Our darling girl has been very sick the past 6 weeks. And despite our best efforts we've been sick as well. It's been one virus after another. Thank you Sunday school nursery. I've been saying that we might as well be licking subway poles for how sick we've been. Yea. That sounds fun.
The only thing worse than a sick baby is a sick husband and the only thing worse than a sick husband is having to take care of them both while you yourself are also, sick. For three weeks we had what Im dubbing the plague of 2011. Fever, achy with a horrible cough so bad Kyle literally could not sleep. He had to get on a medicine that told his brain not to cough. Good times.
The baby rounded out that virus with a secondary ear infection. Then, she caught a stomach virus. I discovered this at 12am one morning when she woke up and vomited all over her crib. My comforting instincts go into overdrive when my daughter is puking. I just want to make her feel better. So when she is voming and calling my name and trying to hug on to me, I let her. If this strikes you as extremely stupid, it is. Arden continued to puke all night long so many times that I lost track and we were both out of clothing the next morning. She kept asking for water and then puking it up. You'd think I'd only fall for that once and I did until I thought "maybe she's done" and it happened again.
She went a whole day without vomiting and then we had our first projectile. Frankly, it was pretty awesome. It came totally out of the blue while she was in her highchair in the kitchen. I was on the phone with Kyle and was like, "projectile, gotta go". The clean-up job didn't appear to be too bad until I noticed the dog had been hit. 2 baths and a shave down later the poor girl still smelled like puke.
I thought that I had outsmarted the virus by not eating. It had been 48 hours without my vomiting so even though I wasn't hungry, I had a small bowl of popcorn that Kyle made. Who out there can smell fresh popcorn and not eat some? I wish I hadn't. Out of no where, an unholy feeling came over me when I was up with the baby in the middle of the night. I've never felt anything like it. I ran into the bedroom and said "take the baby!" and thankfully Kyle woke up and was coherent. Popcorn. What was I thinking?
The next episode was also completely my fault. We brush my darling daughter's teeth and have been doing so for some time. We've done it all. Sing about it, laugh, make it a game, use Brushy-Teethy Guy the hand puppet, ultimatums, you name it we might have tried it. Sometimes she won't go for any of it and we have to force her. This is one of the things I didn't realize I signed up for when we got pregnant. Arden hates being forced to do anything. We use an electric toothbrush so it is literally once over all surface area and she's done. She usually recovers quickly from this enforcement but the night before our trip to Denver, we were not so lucky. She got herself so upset that, you guessed it, it triggered her gag reflex and everything from her apparently 10 course dinner came up. I will be holding her over the toilet from here on out.
Breastfed babies are like a dream. It barely smells coming from either end. Except for the frequency and our use of "save-the-planet" diapers, it wouldn't have been much trouble. Armed with a bunch of cloth diapers to use as burp cloths we were rarely ever covered in regurgitated milk. Now, it's a completely different story that's basically all my fault.
Our darling girl has been very sick the past 6 weeks. And despite our best efforts we've been sick as well. It's been one virus after another. Thank you Sunday school nursery. I've been saying that we might as well be licking subway poles for how sick we've been. Yea. That sounds fun.
The only thing worse than a sick baby is a sick husband and the only thing worse than a sick husband is having to take care of them both while you yourself are also, sick. For three weeks we had what Im dubbing the plague of 2011. Fever, achy with a horrible cough so bad Kyle literally could not sleep. He had to get on a medicine that told his brain not to cough. Good times.
The baby rounded out that virus with a secondary ear infection. Then, she caught a stomach virus. I discovered this at 12am one morning when she woke up and vomited all over her crib. My comforting instincts go into overdrive when my daughter is puking. I just want to make her feel better. So when she is voming and calling my name and trying to hug on to me, I let her. If this strikes you as extremely stupid, it is. Arden continued to puke all night long so many times that I lost track and we were both out of clothing the next morning. She kept asking for water and then puking it up. You'd think I'd only fall for that once and I did until I thought "maybe she's done" and it happened again.
She went a whole day without vomiting and then we had our first projectile. Frankly, it was pretty awesome. It came totally out of the blue while she was in her highchair in the kitchen. I was on the phone with Kyle and was like, "projectile, gotta go". The clean-up job didn't appear to be too bad until I noticed the dog had been hit. 2 baths and a shave down later the poor girl still smelled like puke.
I thought that I had outsmarted the virus by not eating. It had been 48 hours without my vomiting so even though I wasn't hungry, I had a small bowl of popcorn that Kyle made. Who out there can smell fresh popcorn and not eat some? I wish I hadn't. Out of no where, an unholy feeling came over me when I was up with the baby in the middle of the night. I've never felt anything like it. I ran into the bedroom and said "take the baby!" and thankfully Kyle woke up and was coherent. Popcorn. What was I thinking?
The next episode was also completely my fault. We brush my darling daughter's teeth and have been doing so for some time. We've done it all. Sing about it, laugh, make it a game, use Brushy-Teethy Guy the hand puppet, ultimatums, you name it we might have tried it. Sometimes she won't go for any of it and we have to force her. This is one of the things I didn't realize I signed up for when we got pregnant. Arden hates being forced to do anything. We use an electric toothbrush so it is literally once over all surface area and she's done. She usually recovers quickly from this enforcement but the night before our trip to Denver, we were not so lucky. She got herself so upset that, you guessed it, it triggered her gag reflex and everything from her apparently 10 course dinner came up. I will be holding her over the toilet from here on out.
Friday, February 4, 2011
Confession #7: 10:23pm 1/29/11
My husband has a pretty brutal schedule these days which affords us about 30 minutes each evening that we can spend together without the baby. Some of you might say that just the perfect amount of time and sometimes it is, but mostly it seems a precious few minutes of a life we once knew. We were together for many years before having a baby which is fairly normal for “young professionals” these days. I look back on all the time we were able to spend together hanging out, dancing, playing cards, doing whatever with a sense of unbelieving nostalgia. Did those times really exist? Most days we are usually so exhausted that it takes all of our energy during those 30 minutes not to fight let alone to get up and dance.
I remember how dramatically having an infant changed my relationship with my husband. No matter how many people tell you that everything changes when you have a baby, there is no real way to know until it actually happens to you. I believe that’s called learning the hard way and that’s the only way I know how to do things.
Something happens to you when you give birth. You bring a new life into the world but also become a cold-blooded killer. At least I know I did. Some might call it a mother's instinct to protect her offspring. I only know that at that moment I gained the ability to kill.
Whether it's hormonal, instinct or something else entirely, having a baby completely changes how you relate to the world. The baby comes first, all else is second. Showering, eating, sleeping, husbands, other people's lives... it all comes after the safety, security and comfort of that little being.
This overnight physiological change is extremely traumatic to a marriage. I think especially for the husband. All of the sudden it's like they don't exist other than to hand you things and get yelled at for not doing something right. Thankfully infancy is a non-permanent condition. Each month as the infant grows older, it seems the demand on the parents lessens a bit from the intensity of those first few months. Even still, once a woman becomes a mother there is no going back to being a trophy wife. There simply isn't time.
Last Saturday evening, Kyle and I had a brief reprieve from the demands of life. We were not completely exhausted, likely due to our ridiculous caffeine intake, so we spent the evening having dinner and watching Dream Girls on TV. When we climbed into bed that night we held hands instead of just getting comfortable as quickly as possible so as not to wake the baby. Kyle caressed, tickled, and squeezed my hand in a conversation saying so much without saying anything at all. In that moment my heart filled to overflowing with joy. I buzzed from head to toe and my heart felt 30 times larger. We were still "we". Us. Husband and wife. Lovers. Not only Momma and Dadda although we are still them as well. I looked at the clock to see what time it was that I'd been given this moment so that I could try to remember it for the rest of my life. Just like Blaise Pascal who my pastor often quotes, it was a moment I longed to inscribe on my heart.
Whether it's hormonal, instinct or something else entirely, having a baby completely changes how you relate to the world. The baby comes first, all else is second. Showering, eating, sleeping, husbands, other people's lives... it all comes after the safety, security and comfort of that little being.
This overnight physiological change is extremely traumatic to a marriage. I think especially for the husband. All of the sudden it's like they don't exist other than to hand you things and get yelled at for not doing something right. Thankfully infancy is a non-permanent condition. Each month as the infant grows older, it seems the demand on the parents lessens a bit from the intensity of those first few months. Even still, once a woman becomes a mother there is no going back to being a trophy wife. There simply isn't time.
Last Saturday evening, Kyle and I had a brief reprieve from the demands of life. We were not completely exhausted, likely due to our ridiculous caffeine intake, so we spent the evening having dinner and watching Dream Girls on TV. When we climbed into bed that night we held hands instead of just getting comfortable as quickly as possible so as not to wake the baby. Kyle caressed, tickled, and squeezed my hand in a conversation saying so much without saying anything at all. In that moment my heart filled to overflowing with joy. I buzzed from head to toe and my heart felt 30 times larger. We were still "we". Us. Husband and wife. Lovers. Not only Momma and Dadda although we are still them as well. I looked at the clock to see what time it was that I'd been given this moment so that I could try to remember it for the rest of my life. Just like Blaise Pascal who my pastor often quotes, it was a moment I longed to inscribe on my heart.
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