girlfiend

We visited my mom at the shore for the first time this summer and things didn’t go too badly. Things actually went quite well- no fights, no failing to choke back my rage, no insanity. The Fiendling didn’t want to go to sleep so bedtime was a battle both nights we were there, but the baby is easy going and my mom didn’t make me crazy so everything worked out. I even fit into last summer’s bathing suit with only a small amount of muffin toppage. If this keeps up we may actually be able to enjoy the shore this summer.

Don’t worry though. I haven’t lost my mind entirely. I know that any more than two consecutive nights is asking for trouble. My mother is still crazy and I still cringe at most of what she says. Sadly I missed hearing this gem first hand. My mom told Boyfiend some story about her friend’s cooking. Her friend G, who I’ve known since I was born, loves to entertain but isn’t much of a cook. There’s always something strange about her recipes and things always taste better when others are helping out in the kitchen. My mom described eating some meatballs at G’s house to Boyfiend and said that they were really cocked up.

As he recounted this to me I needed some clarification. What exactly was the context of the phrase “cocked up?” Does cocked up mean that the meatballs were good or bad? What was cocked up about them? The answer is that the meatballs had cheese in the middle and that cocked up means that they were good. Boyfiend thoroughly grossed me out by explaining that perhaps the cheese oozed out of the middle, hence the word “cocked.” We giggled about it for a while. A long while.

A little later Boyfiend went into the kitchen and I asked him to get me some ice cream. With berries. And pretzels. I wasn’t sure if he heard the additional request so I followed him in. He turned around holding a large bowl of ice cream with strawberries, raspberries and pretzels and said, “Here, I really cocked it up for you. I cocked it up good.”

For the first time since the day I went into labor I stepped on a scale at my in-law’s house yesterday. Here are the stats.

Weight gained during pregnancy: 38 lbs
Weight lost since: 28 lbs
Pounds to go to pre-pregnancy weight: 10
Pounds to go to pre-pre-pregnancy weight: 18
Pounds to go to weight I’d be happy to settle for: 15

Not bad. Considering that I had 25 lbs to lose for months and months after the Fiendling was born and I actually wore a pair of pre-pregnancy size 2 pants with a waistband yesterday, I’m in pretty good shape. Now I just have to get back to the gym.

My baby is one month old. It’s kind of tough to do a monthly update for a month because at one month not much happens. Babies are still so fetal, and my little one-month-old is no exception. But he’s getting so, so big. He’s grown out of some of his diapers already and moved to a more generous snap setting on the diapers that were so huge just a few weeks before. His face is losing that newborn puffiness and starting to look more like the baby he’s going to become. His hair, while still dark, has lightened considerably from black to brown. His eyes are still a dark navy blue, a blue that makes me wonder what color his eyes will become.

He still spends the majority of the day sleeping, but when he’s awake he spends his time looking around with those dark blue eyes. He’s mostly calm and content and very rarely cries for reasons I can’t figure out immediately. He’s a good sleeper and naps on his own for hours at a time in his crib, the pack n play in my bedroom, or on a mat on the floor. At night he wakes to eat twice between 11 and 6 but generally goes back to sleep immediately after nursing for a few minutes. Last night he pleased me by sleeping for a good six-hour stretch. I am grateful.

He nurses quickly and efficiently and doesn’t spend a lot of time just hanging out on the breast, which I really appreciate. The quick and efficient nursing makes him pretty gassy which leads to spectacular spit ups once or twice a day. It’s astounding how much liquid can spew from a newborn’s mouth without them really noticing or caring. The pooping seems to have slowed down, and while there’s still plenty of poop (one of the downsides of parenting) I no longer have to change three diapers in a 30-minute period because of it.

The poor little guy hasn’t had the best health so far. He’s already had a staph infection, a nasty yeast rash (which the other pediatrician in the office told me was not yeast when I brought him in the first time. Two days later she wrote me the prescription for the yeast cream and it promptly went away), and now he’s got a cough. The same cough his brother and I both have. It’s awful to hear his little body coughing, especially since I know how much it hurts. But it hasn’t seemed to affect his mood and it hasn’t affected his sleep.

He’s really pretty strong. He surprised everyone by lifting his head and looking around immediately after his birth and he’s continued to show off his impressive head control since. When he’s on his belly he pushes up on his arms and looks around. He’s also got strong legs. Sometimes when he sleeps he’ll push himself several inches forward. One day he turned a full 90 degrees. I’ve also seen him turn from his back to his side. He’s so advanced. (doesn’t every parent say that about their kid?)

My little baby is growing up. It’s amazing how easily and how immediately we loved him. I’ll miss the newborn stage when it’s over. I love how soft and cuddly he is and how perfectly he fits under my chin. But I can’t wait to see what he’ll be like as he grows.

So far 27 months is miserable. The Fiendling, totally shell shocked from the birth of his little brother, is not himself. Four weeks into big brotherhood and he’s still sad, angry and regressing. Right now I’m stuck in the house with him because after trying to kick his baby brother off of the couch and hitting me when he was in time out I told him we wouldn’t be going to story hour if he hit me again. Of course when he got up from time out and gave me a hug and a kiss he promptly hit me in the back twice as I walked back into the other room. So no story hour.

He might be getting a little better. He’s not hitting, biting or kicking quite as often as he was a few weeks ago, and he’s cuddly with me again, but it’s been a shitty couple of weeks. It doesn’t help that he got some sort of virus that led to a fever, snotty nose, and terrible cough. It also doesn’t help that we’re in the middle of a god-awful heat wave and it’s been in the high 90s with a heat index in the 100s. His third floor bedroom is ridiculously hot and the sound of him coughing over the monitor was keeping me awake so he’s been sleeping in our room. He didn’t accept the mattress on the floor. He preferred to sleep in the pack n play, or the green crib as he calls it, since the baby gets to sleep in the blue crib in our room. I fear we won’t be able to move him out after the illness and heat subside, but at least he’s been sleeping through the night.

He no longer plays nicely with any of his friends, yanking toys from them and shouting, “It’s mine!!” at the top of his lungs. He screams open-mouthed, arms extended as soon as another kid touches anything, whether he wants it or not. It’s embarrassing to have play dates where he argues and fights and whines and cries the whole time but it’s worse when we’re stuck in the house.

Now when he’s tired or sad he’s taken to saying, “Mommy, Daddy, Fiendling,” clearly mourning the loss of our three person family. It breaks my heart to hear it.

Good news? Ummm. Well, I guess he’s getting better at speaking. He speaks in complete sentences a good portion of the time and is using pronouns (usually incorrectly) instead of his name. He plays very nicely by himself and can occupy himself with his toys and trains for long periods of time. He’s interested in longer books these days and has discovered The Cat in the Hat. It’s nice to no longer have to read Thomas stories every night. He’s still sweet and cuddly with me when the baby’s not around and I’ve been spending as much one-on-one time with him as I can. Now instead of taking the Fiendling out when he gets home, Boyfiend takes the baby so the Fiendling and I can spend some special mommy-Fiendling time together.

Sometimes he’s sweet to his baby brother, kissing him and telling him, “It’s okay,” when he cries.

It blows that I just can’t think of anymore nice things to say right now. I love him so much, but things have just been so hard. I dread hearing his screams of “It’s mine,” and I dread being alone with him and the baby. I hate letting the baby cry to get to the Fiendling first and putting the baby down in a room out of sight and out of reach to keep him safe. I feel like I just can’t baby this baby the way I babied the Fiendling and I know he’ll never get the full benefit of cuddling all day long. The poor kid gets yanked and pulled almost every time he’s on my lap when the Fiendling’s in the same room.

Fiendling, I am so sorry you feel so awful. I am so sorry that you’re angry and sad. I am doing everything I can to let you know that you’re loved and wanted and every bit as important to us as you were four weeks ago. I just hope that this stage ends, because I don’t know if I can handle this forever.

After the Fiendling was born I could not lose the weight. I was puffy and bloated forever and despite my careful attention to diet and exercise I couldn’t fit into my pre-pregnancy pants for 9 months. Three weeks after the birth of number 2 I’m small again. I’m not pre-pregnancy size and I don’t plan on trying on my jeans for a few more months, but I’m not puffy or bloated. I’m surprised when I look in the mirror by how much I look like myself. I don’t know what happened and I’m not complaining. This is a gift.

I have mastitis. On the holiday weekend. I caught it early and it’s not as bad as it could be but it still sucks that I feel tired and run down and sore. I was hoping for a margarita and all I got was a breast infection. Awesome.

The Fiendling (who has recently added grinding and clicking his teeth to his list of ways to show mom he’s unhappy about his baby brother) is also sick. He has a runny nose, a slight cough and had an unfortunate diaper incident that led to an immediate bath and load of laundry. This morning, after waking up once in the middle of the night, he woke up just before five and couldn’t go back to sleep despite my best efforts. I hope he’s feeling better tomorrow. Though I appreciate how cuddly he is when he’s sick (and his brother isn’t around), I don’t appreciate the excess bodily fluids and the night waking.

Tomorrow is my neighborhood’s sad little Memorial Day parade then we’re going to a barbecue at my in-laws’ house. Hopefully we’ll find time to put the flowers and herbs we bought on Mother’s Day in pots. My garden has been seriously neglected.

I am tired and the baby who is peacefully sleeping beside me smells like spit up and cord stump and desperately needs a bath. I don’t want to wake him, but it’s inevitable.

Caring for a newborn is easy compared to caring for a toddler. The baby is a dream, still all sleepy and hungry, and the Fiendling has been a complete fucking nightmare when it’s just the three of us or four of us, hitting, biting and generally being a shit. Is it wrong to refer to your two-year-old as a shit?

It breaks my heart to see him like that, so unlike himself. He’s usually so sweet and lovable that it kills me to see him so upset. He’s been getting plenty of attention and just about all of our visitors have been thoughtful enough to bring him a big brother gift. I’ve been carefully timing feedings so I can put him to bed and get up with him in the mornings. He’s been getting one on one time with me and with boyfiend and`aside from the obvious addition of a crying, pooping baby in the house his general routine hasn’t changed dramatically.

I know that this kind of adjustment is common and I know the behavior won’t last forever, but god does it suck.

Still nameless (and nicknameless for the purposes of this site) my second baby boy was born last night, a full week ahead of his due date, at 10.30 pm after a long day of labor and 5 minutes of pushing. He is perfect. At birth he was 7 lbs 9 oz, and measured 20 inches long. He has dark eyes and a head of thick black hair. He looks nothing like his big brother but he’s every bit as handsome.

Now I’m going to eat lunch and take a nap while I still can.

I can’t quite manage to get to water aerobics on time. It’s a 7 pm class which usually means I’m making and eating dinner beforehand and then I get stuck in weird neighborhood traffic on the mile and half drive to the Y. I’m never very late. Usually just a few minutes, but I’m late enough that when I open the door to the pool from the locker room everyone turns, looks at me waddling in, and laughs. Last night the laughter was uproarious. I must look pretty damn funny in a bathing suit. Ha ha ha. Go ahead. Mock the pregnant woman.

The house is pretty well organized. I’ve been doing my best to keep things picked up and in their proper places so it won’t be too much of a mess when I actually go into labor. Things have been dusted in the past week and I’ve been vacuuming fairly regularly. The kitchen is cleaned daily so that’s not an issue and I’ve been on top of the laundry. The bathroom, while certainly not as clean as I’d like, is clean enough to not be too much of an embarrassment. My bedroom is a wreck, but I blame that on Boyfiend since all of his clean, folded laundry is sitting on top of an old trunk we moved out of the storage room upstairs. If he’d put his shit away (just a subtle hint) it wouldn’t look quite so bad in there.

I really need a cleaning service. It would really improve the quality of my life. Instead of hiring a service I ordered another dyson.

I’ve been cooking like crazy so I won’t have to worry about eating well later.  I’ve made a bunch of dinners and some one-handed breakfasts. In the freezer I have:

• 1 9”x 13” pan of eggplant parmesan
• 3/4 of a large baked ziti in three portions
• 2 8-cup containers vegetable soup
• 1 3-quart and 1 4-cup container of beef stew
• 1 9″x13″ pan of rotini with goat cheese, spinach and red pepper sauce divided into individual servings
• 6 bean and sausage enchiladas (1 dinner and leftovers if Boyfiend doesn’t gorge himself)
• 1 tray (3 meals) chicken enchiladas
• 2 8-cup containers of chicken soup
• half a batch of chocolate chip cookie dough
• 6 cranberry muffins
• 6 strawberry mango muffins
• 18 blueberry pancakes

I’ve also got a bunch of chocolate ricotta muffins I baked tonight that still need to be wrapped and frozen. Tomorrow or Friday I’ll probably end up baking a few loaves of zucchini bread with the last of my freezer stash from last year’s CSA.

The next meat delivery from the farm is scheduled for my due date and I ordered plenty of beef so Boyfiend could cook dinner (burgers and steaks, of course) with confidence. Shortly after my due date is the start of my CSA for the summer,  so I won’t have to worry too much about grocery shopping for a while.

Now I just want this baby out.