Monthly Archives: January 2013

Leaving the Baby Bug Really Sucks.

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So, Husband is on Day 2 of that day shift week I was telling you about, and my Dad is staying with the Baby Bug.  It’s not going very well.

Buggy NE-VER cries.  Like ever.  When I get home from work yesterday, she is sitting on the couch wailing and my Dad is next to her watching Moonshiners.  Not comforting her; nothing.  Basically ignoring her while she screams.  I wish I had a picture of the look of relief on her face when she sees me.

Dad shows up today at 8am, and the Bug takes one look at him and decides this day is a bust.  Automatic tears.  She is clinging to me for dear life and literally gasping for breath when I put her down on the ground so I can brush my teeth.  Love my Dad, but he is about as nurturing as a prison guard.  His first order of business is turning on the TV.  Yes!  Doomsday Preppers.  I suggest turning on Bubble Guppies for Bugs so she will be entertained and possibly fall asleep for a nap.  Not to mention distracted, so I can leave for work, which I’m already 20 minutes late for.  My Dad declares that she’s spoiled.  I don’t know many 11-month-olds, but I don’t imagine many of them enjoy Doomsday Preppers marathons.  I guess that makes them spoiled?

My heart is breaking as I leave my poor little Buggy miserable on the couch with her Grandpa, whose efforts at reassuring me that she’d be fine are, “Welp.  She can’t cry forever.”  Awesome.

This week can’t end quickly enough.

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I think my Dad just start a blog.

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60ish.com.

He loves the internet, but won’t pay for it.  Hence, he doesn’t own a computer, because what’s the point if you can’t go online.  So EVERY. SINGLE. TIME. he comes over, he gives Dogger a Milkbone and then asks where the laptop is.  So that he can go online and browse pictures of his motorcycle club events.  And find Yahoo groups for Vietnam Veterans.  And look up the Kelly Blue Book value of his truck.  Again.

He comes over this past weekend and wants to sit online for an hour.  So, I grab the laptop and log in for him.  He asks how to open the internet.  I tell him to click on the round, blue Safari icon on the bottom of the screen and he says, “No, I don’t want to go on Safari.  I want to go on the internet.  There should be an “E” with a circle around it.  That’s what you have to click on.”

And that’s all I have to say about that.

How You Know You Married Someone Awesome.

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I really need to think of an alias for my husband for blogging purposes – I hate “Hubs” and “Hubby” because they remind me of L. Ron Hubbard, and Scientology creeps me out. Anyway, he is in law enforcement and his work schedule is inhumane. He works a lot of overnights and here and there, they’ll throw in a random day shift, so he is constantly functioning on zero sleep. When he gets home in the morning, I leave for work and he is on his own with the Baby Bug until I get home at about 5:30. I honestly don’t know how he does it. I mean, he obviously has his moments, but all things considered, he is a rock star.

Today, his boss offers him a training opportunity that could lead to a really good promotion, but it involves working days rather than the insane overnight crap. Which you would think would be amazeballs, but it’s actually pretty stressful for us. I work full-time during the day, none of our parents are retired yet, we don’t have a trusted babysitter, and daycare scares us. Because the training opp is only for a week or two and I know he really wants to do it, I tell him to take it and that we’ll figure it out.

After a stressful day of scrambling for sitters, it’s basically figured out. But here’s why I know I married someone awesome. He is sad and already misses Bugs and he hasn’t even started this thing yet. And it’s only for a week or two. He says he doesn’t want her to think he doesn’t want to be with her during the day since they’ve hung out all day every weekday since she was 3 months old. I don’t know. I probably sound lame and I realize there are tons of dads who love their baby daughters. But something about the way he is with her. He loves her so much. And it makes me feel so lucky.

 

Knocked Up, the Sequel?

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We definitely want a sibling for the Baby Bug. I’m an only child and I know how bad it sucks, and I don’t want that for her. Husband is in total agreement, and we kind of want to do it sooner rather than later since I’m not getting any younger and I really don’t want to be fat and pregnant and tired and old. So while we haven’t been trying exactly, we haven’t been preventing either.

I take a pregnancy test on a whim Friday night and it’s one of those digital ones. Rite Aid brand.  It says PREGNANT.  And I die.

I mean, we want another baby for sure. But do waves of joy wash over me? Maybe waves of panic.

Visions of months upon months of sleepless nights.  Entertaining an almost two year old while nursing a newborn.  Gaining forty pounds again.  Pumping.

I takethe evidence downstairs to show my husband.  His reaction is exactly mine, but unlike me, he doesn’t internalize it. I’m thinking, this next 8-9 months should be a pleasure.  He grumbles about not being able to fit two carseats in his car.

I don’t quite trust the test that it really could have been accurate, so I take the other test in the box. PREGNANT. Again. OMG. I open the Pinterest app on my iPhone and start pinning nursery ideas.

The tests are Rite Aid brand.  I mean, they are probably wrong, right?  So Saturday, I return to Rite Aid, but leave instead with ClearBlue Easy tests. Digital ones again.  Double the price of the Rite Aid ones, so doubly accurate, I would think.  I pee on both of those and get…. NOT PREGNANT.  I can’t really deal with these tests at this point and tell my husband I need to go to the doctor Monday and find out what the hell is going on.

Two PREGNANTs and two NOT PREGNANTs.  I’m googling “how common are false positives” and “generic vs. name brand pregnancy tests” and of course finding nothing conclusive. Because I can’t wait until Monday, I go to Rite Aid once a third time to try a First Response non-digital, one-line or two-lines test.  I literally am out at the store the second I wake up and don’t even pee first, so that I have the most potent, non-diluted pee possible for the stick. Run home, take it, and one line.  Not pregnant.

So, I go to bed tonight probably not pregnant but not quite sure. After getting the one-line this morning, Husband and I chat it up over Cheerios and OJ. He shares that while he of course wants another baby, he is enjoying the Buggy Baby so much that he doesn’t want us to have to divide our love and attention just yet. I mean, if I really am pregs, I think my due date would be sometime around September.  Maybe October.  Bug Bugs would be a year and 8 months-ish.  Still so little.  And if we have Buggy 2.0, he/she would need pretty much all my attention for a few months and poor little Baby Bugs would be watching a lot of Bubble Guppies.

Tomorrow I’ll go to the doctor and see wtf.  And if I’m not pregnant, I’m writing to Rite Aid and telling them to step up their pregnancy test game.  And if I am pregnant: Pinterest.  And mentally preparing for another year of not sleeping.

Sappy parenting post.

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When I first had Baby Buggy, I was determined to nurse for six months. “Breast is best,” yada yada yada. I also knew it would help me drop the freaking FORTY pounds I gained and it’s free. Formula is not cheap. And it’s kind of gross. Anyway, I figured if and when we hit the six month mark, I would reassess.

She’s now almost eleven months and still nursing twice a day. While I am ready for her to move on so that 1: I can have my boobs back (I’ve been praying diligently that they return to their former perky state), 2: my fertility will return and we can try for Baby Buggy 2.0, and 3: I don’t end up becoming one of these, it makes me a little sad that it’s going to come to an end soon. Nursing has been an incredible experience for me and it totally created this indescribable bond between me and the Bug.

Tonight, we did our usual night routine. She had salmon and squash mac & cheese for dinner, followed by playtime, bath time, PJ’s, and about 839 bedtime stories. After that, she always nurses to sleep before I put her in her crib, at which point I can savor an hour of bad television and Ben & Jerry’s. Tonight she literally nursed for about 15 seconds before rejecting me in favor of sucking her thumb. Surprisingly, it made me a little emotional. I mean, I only wanted to make it to six months.

I know we still have a little while to go before she is completely over the boob, but I really want her to be weaned by the time she turns one at the end of next month. Which means our nursing sessions are numbered. I sound like a weenie, but I’m just realizing how fast they really do grow.  The helpless baby/fat and tired/sleep-deprived phase is just a season, and a short one at that. We’ve been so focused on celebrating all of her “firsts” – smiling, crawling, standing, babbling – that we didn’t really consider how bittersweet the “lasts” would be.

In other related news, the fact that she only nursed for 15 seconds instead of her usual 20 minutes means I’m engorged and leaking.  I won’t cry the last time that happens.

So, I meant to start this blog a few years ago…

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But better late than never, no?

You may remember me from an abandoned blog from my former life. Lots has changed since the wedding. Which was fab, by the way. Bacon-wrapped scallops.

For starters, I’m a mom now. And no, I’m not collecting diaper money this time around. (Amazon Subscribe & Save has the cheapest Pampers around). Instead, this blog will chronicle my life as I grapple with puzzling concepts like carseat installation, anti-wrinkle treatments, and life in the suburbs.

Since a juggling a husband, ten-month-old baby girl, 11-year-old German Shepherd, full-time job, and Keeping Up With The Kardashians re-runs leaves me little free time, I’ll squeeze updates in after 10pm or during work when my boss is out of the office.

Looking forward to sharing my misadventures. Here we go again.

xo