So Long And Thanks For All The Fish...

This is what I hear sleep telling me as I get closer to my due date. It has been nearly a year since my last post, so let me catch you up:

After a successful year of keeping my firstborn alive, Dan and I decided to give having number two a shot. Our first attempt didn't succeed - much like what happened with Xander - two pregnancies = 1 baby. Which, let's face it, royally sucked giant clown butt. However, having made it through one miscarriage and having quite an awesome little guy, paved the way for us dealing with the next time going quite similarly.

I am now roughly 6 weeks away from D-day and have realized that I have NOTHING DONE. Nothing is set up, all of Galaxy Guy's (what we are currently calling our in utero baby - oh, right, I forgot to tell you - it's a boy!!!) clothes aren't washed, organized or put out. I am, however, starting to prepare for our home-birth. Yes, we are doing one of those. And no, I am so not the kind of person who usually does this sort of thing. You know, cares deeply about all living creatures (ok, maybe a little), likes the company of others (actually, I guess it's not SO bad), marches to the beat of my own drum (it's more like a ukelele). Ok, shut up, maybe I am that kind of person. But I'm pumped full of crazy baby hormones, so it wouldn't be smart to call me on it.

Where was I... Oh yes, forgetfulness! There's a lot of that. It usually takes me an hour of nearly starving to death before I remember why I keep heading toward the kitchen.

As for work? Yeah, I still do that, but it's mostly from home. It's just too damned hot to go outside at any time other than early morning. But as of next week when we open our Amherst store in it's new location I am really dialing back what I do for the Mercantile. She can live without me for a few months.

Xander? Yeah, I still like him and stuff. You know, when you give birth to someone, you kinda want to keep tabs on them (thank you Daria). Xander is full of life and mission goo. He has certainly developed the ability to bi-locate and can speak better English than me. This is, sadly, not an exaggeration. I do ok typing - you know, because of the magic of editing - but speaking now just ends up a soggy word salad that only my darling husband can understand, bless him.

Yep, that's it for now. Who knows when I might do something crazy, like post again. Dunno.

Perfection

I am the perfect wife and mother

I clean my house every day. (By pushing all the crap from the center of each room to the edges.)

I get quality time with myself every day. (My morning poop is sacred.)

I  kiss my husband and tell him I love him every single night. (So what if he's asleep sometimes when I remember to do it?)

I talk to all of my family regularly. (Conversations in my head totally count.)

I make sure my husband gets quality time to himself every day. (His morning poop is sacred, too!)

I pack my son a kick ass lunch every school day. (I take pre-packaged food and put it in it's own cute little container.)

My yard is beautiful anytime someone comes by to visit. (We tend to only invite people if we remembered to do yard-work that week, so you know, 3 times a year.)

My cats coats have never looked better! (Xan's nanny brushes them because she loves cats and doesn't have one.)

As you can see, I have everything completely under control. (I honestly have never been happier to be me.)

The Awful Truth

The Awful Truth

Everyone, it's time for me to come clean. I can't keep it up anymore, the screen of falsehoods has fallen on me and I can't get up. I realized yesterday at baby group that in interesting phenomenon occurs every time I get around women I don't know very well - I lie my pants off about how much TV my baby watches. As a matter of fact, I'm pretty sure I dumb down how much he watches to every parent I know. I'm not sure why I do it, it isn't really anyone else's business what I let my baby do, but when the topic comes up, I always say what I'd rather he do than what I actually let him do.

I don't lie about anything else. I told almost everyone I knew  when he ate a string when I wasn't looking. And 2 seconds after he may or may not have chewed a piece of my phone off I told at least 3 people. I think it's because I knew that those things could happen even if you are as vigilant as humanly possible, but I think I thought I would be able to play with him all the time without needing a break.

 Yeah, that's so not possible and I think I need to give myself a break about the whole thing. Do I think letting television raise my kid is ok? No, it's totally not a babysitter or a way to keep the kid out of my hair. But I had forgotten one crucial thing when I made my 'TV is the devil' rule. And that's that I am a geek. It's in my genetics (probably from my dad's love of Star Trek) I love watching stories about crazy, fantastic people doing impossible and hilarious things. I want to be able to share those things with my kids (when they become old enough to not be traumatized, that is). So I am starting small, first it's My Little Ponies, Sesame Street and Family Matters Then it's freaking Star Trek TOS baby! Oh yeah, and I'm totally taking him to the Trek convention in Vegas this year and dressing him up as a Klingon or maybe a Vulcan. It's happening.

So that's the long and the short of it. I'm embracing my geekhood and I'm not going to apologize or lie about how much tv I let him watch. (He's totally not watching anything right now... Yes he is. No he isn't... Ok maybe he's watching the Smurfs, (He's totally watching Predator) actually he's taking a nap right now. Probably.:wink:)

I Poked The Pope

Not really, but I couldn't think of a title for this upcoming post due to sleepiness. Which is what this post is about, actually. Xan has discovered a new trick, he only sleeps on me, which is really sweet. He makes all of these really cute cooing noises, grabs my shirt and snuggles in as hard as he can.The rough part of it is that I can't sleep if anyone is touching me. It's the reason we have a king sized bed. Maybe the next week or so will break this habit, otherwise my life is going to swiftly turn into that episode of TNG where everyone on the Enterprise lost the ability to access REM sleep. We are thinking that maybe bedtime is a bit too early and that's why The Fuzzling is so restless at night. Tonight we will be bumping bedtime back to 8 or 9 and adding a twin bed to our king mattress to see if that helps at all. Fingers crossed because I have no Beverly Crusher to swoop in at the last minute to fix this for me before we all plunge headlong into a collapsing star. It could happen.

A Poop Story

Warning: Expectant mothers and manly-types should probably skip reading this particular gem.

Today was a day like any other- tripped over a cat, fed a baby, got peed on, tripped over another cat, managed to miss the second cat only to step on a third. You know, normal stuff. Anyways, I was getting Xan and myself ready to go to the store when I saw my lovely son go cherry-faced with exertion and then let out a really cute giggle. Yeah, he pooped. So I took him to the changing table, glad that he did it before I got him in the car, and proceeded to experience what I am now calling the poopocalypse. 

 Now, I've changed nasty diapers before of all colors and consistencies, but nothing had prepared me for this one. It was every single color of the poop rainbow and had blown out of the top, bottom, back and front of every part of the diaper. When I pulled his clothes off of him chucks started flying in all directions and he got his little hands around one particular bit and had it headed for his mouth at lightning speed. I managed to wrangle it away at the last second and clean him off only to drop a big piece of poo on my shoe that my cat started to go after. After getting it away from the cat, I look up and Xan smacks me in the face with a poop covered hand then twines his poo-laden fingers into my hair (you're gonna want to remember this part for later). After cleaning up all of the chucks and splatters I get him cleaned up and re-diapered and go to the laundry room to wash out his clothes. Not realizing how bad the massive expulsion of effluvium from my son's backside really was, I open up his ravaged onesie only to have a racket-ball sized chunk of poo fall out and, yes you guessed it, land right on the cat. Gracefully and with saint-like abilities, I clean up the entire aftermath (including scouring every inch of myself) and go to the store as planned. The whole time there, I smell a certain stinkiness, but think it must be in my imagination due to the thorough cleaning I did earlier. Chalking it up to being shell-shocked, or poop-shocked as the case may be.  Finish up my shopping and go home, only to discover that I went around for 30 minutes in public with a dollop of baby crap right on the very top of my head. 

My son is a magician. A poop magician.

The Sleep Thing

The Sleep Thing

When Xan was about 5 weeks old Dan and I were positive that we had made a horrible mistake. We were both only averaging about 4 hours of sleep a day - naps included. We didn't know how this was happening since Xan slept all the time. The problem was that he was waking up every hour, so it was impossible to sleep more than 15 minutes at a time. Add in the fact that we ran around like chickens with our heads cut off every time Xander so much as squeaked and really, we were just screwed. Then we saw the video Happiest Baby On The Block. It was a life changer. The very night that we watched it and started using the techniques Dr. Karp demonstrated, Xan slept for 4 hours straight. Then a few days later it was 5, then 6 and so on. By 2 months he was sleeping between 8 to 10 hours at a time, what wonderful times those were... If we could group marry that guy, we totally would. I just wish we had seen it before he came.

Anyway, around 5 months that all changed, he started waking up earlier and earlier and we went back to feeding him every 2 hours or so at night. Fortunately we had the night feedings down cold by that point so we were able to sleep better - or so one might think. During all of the clamor of having a new baby I had completely forgotten about the crazy insomnia I usually suffer from. 

Once awakened, I find it very hard to go back to sleep. So now, I really only sleep during the first half of the night when he sleeps for about 4 hours, then I just kinda lay there and stare at the ceiling and practice being as present as possible, you know, until I can't take it anymore. Then I leap up and storm downstairs and snuggle the snot out of the first kitty I find. The cats love this new arrangement. Me, not so much.

This isn't how it always is, every week or so I get a few blessed hours with my secret boyfriend Morpheus. Dan is really a champ too, if I get less than 4 or 5 hours he tries to let me sleep in in the morning if at all possible. What a guy. So the sleep thing is something we haven't conquered yet, but it does seem like we are winning more skirmishes than we were before. We are at the point where at all times there is at least one parent that isn't dangerously sleep deprived. Though its still tough enough that I've started extolling the virtues of being an only child to the Xan man. We'll see...

Baby vs Kitty

I've found that if I take several days to write one if these instead of trying to do it all at once, I post more often. It does seem to mean a lot of my post will come out in list form for some reason.

Reasons I wanted a baby instead of another kitty:

They don't claw you when you try to snuggle them. (We still laugh about that one from time to time, you know, in between doctoring each others baby inflicted gashes.)

They eventually learn how to talk to you. (So far Shadow is still more verbally communicative than Xan, but people claim that this will change. We'll see.)

They can go fetch me a sandwich. (Complete hogwash, I've had this baby for months and I sit here totally sandwichless.)

They look like you. (I know some people who look like their cats, but not near as awesomely as Xan looks like me - or his dad.)

Way more socially acceptable to take them out in public with you. (People always stop me on the street and say "Wow that's a cute baby!" Rather than shy away whilst muttering about how the crazy cat lady must need more cat food and litter.)

A new friend! (Totally nailed that one, Xan is a great friend - silly, interesting, great listener. Couldn't ask for a better friend.)