The prize at the bottom of the cereal box

Parenting is hard. But it's worth it. That's a mantra I keep on having to tell myself.

Over the last week, AJ's sleep has regressed again.  Which REALLY sucked since I had a huge presentation at work this week to prepare for and three 7 AM shifts to contend with.  Since around Monday, he's been waking up every 1-2 hours again. Let me remind you that previously, he's been sleeping 6-7 hour intervals at a time. SOUND asleep. Yeah, I know I'm fortunate to know what sleeping 6-7 hour intervals feel like, as a parent of a 5 month old, but honestly, it's all about what you're used to, and yes I really am that tired.

!@#$%^&*.

We've been through enough sleep regression episodes though in this house to know what to expect.  They tend to be short-lived.  They will pass. They suck now.  They suck BALLS now. But they will pass.  And almost every time they happen, something is waiting for us in store.  Like a prize at the bottom of a cereal box.

Observe.
5 week regression = learned to smile
8 week regression = learned to hold his neck up by himself
16 week regression = laughing, grabbing, poking/pointing
22 week regression = "dadadada"

Yup, last night, at dinner, he looked up and said "dadadada."

Me (to M): did you hear that?  He's trying to say "dada!"

M: that can be many things, probably not trying to say "dada"

AJ: "babababa"

Me: see!  He's trying to tell you something (baba = dad in Chinese)

M: *proceeds to hug his son*

Yeah yeah, I know, it's not his real first words, but that's not the point.  AJ's never used consonants in his speech before, and now he can!  He's halfway there to saying daddy!  Makes the last few days less gloomy now, in hindsight.

Come out already, teeth!

Ughhh.

Little fat boy has been teething for what seems like months now.  At first, it was just a lot of drooling, and then it turned into a bit of gnawing, and then there was some lip chewing, and now, the moodiness.

The little AJ I've come to known over the last five months is one who is generous with smiles, patient with people, and confident about who he is.  Over the past week, he's morphed into an angry, irritable, inpatient, needy child. Occasionally, we still see glimpses of the smiling, bright personality.  But much of this has been overshadowed by the discomfort of his two bottom almost-teeth.

Oh, and did I mention?  He's sleeping less and less now. UGHHHHH.

We're finding ways to help alleviate things.  I don't want to consider medicating him unless he breaks out in fever or start to show signs of a lot of discomfort.

So far, here's what we've tried:
-Sophie the Giraffe
-Wet wash cloths, frozen
-Razzberry teether (just bought today, actually)
-My fingers
-Teething/nursing necklaces
-Any type of distraction (music, taking him outside, carrying in a carrier, etc)

I just gotta remember, this too shall pass!!!!

Solids.

First bite of solids.  Pureed yams blended with breast milk.

Reaction:  "meh.  whatever. I NEED THAT SPOON THOUGH!"

AJ is 5 months!

Dear AJ,

You're FIVE months now.  Where the heck did the time go?  I'm seeing more and more of your personality shine through, and I'm loving it all.

Your favorite food: milk of course!  Eating like a champ still. You're about to get something special though.  You've been reaching for everything I eat, so I know you're interested.  Yam is in your near future.

Your favorite toy: SO MANY!  But your real favorite, I think, is your piano.  You have expensive taste, my boy.

Your body:  You're definitely a big guy, but proportional.  At 28+ inches and 20+ lbs, you're at about 50 percentile for height-weight comparison, though clearly above the 100 percentile for heigh and weight individually for boys your age.

Your routine:  You wake up at 7-8 every morning, still take about 4 naps a day, and eat every 3 hours.  You've been sleeping through the night (mostly) since you were about 3 months old.

You smile like you mean it. And it's not hard to make you smile...sort of.  I seem to be the only one who can make you smile and laugh on command...but that means I'm never in any pictures where you're smiling...and that makes me sad.  

You love playing with your hands, and your fingers!  You discovered your feet recently.  Oh my, the make good toys, don't they?  You can point at things with your index finger.  But you'd much rather use it to scroll on a tablet using said finger.  

You HATE tummy time.  Unless you get tricked into it.  Then you can go 20 minutes at a time.  But you're still having trouble rolling over.  Oh well, more tummy time for you,

You watched your first beavers game on TV the other day.  It was a victorious day!

I still nap with you and you seem to let me.  Fridays and Mondays with you feel like a dream now.  We spend our days lazily napping, and playing, and singing, and walking, and cuddling. You're the first thing I see when I come home from work, and even though you're often angrily crying for something, I can't help but hold and hug you tight, every time like it might be my last time. 

I can't believe you've grown so much little boy!  

Love,

Mom.

New Pump Ordered!

As many of you may know, I'm currently using a 12 year old hand-me-down Medela pump.

Recently I started noticing that I wasn't able to express as much milk as I used to.  What the heck right?  Well, there's the distinct possibility that I'm making less milk now.  But even then, the pump would sometimes remove just a couple of ounces and leave my boobs feeling full. This is after minutes and minutes on my end of squishing the sisters (milking really, ha!) to get the good stuff out....to no result.

I borrowed a co-worker's pump in style (11+ years newer than mine!) and. WOW. Just wow.  I had no idea what I was missing.  There's an automatic two-phase expression that make the letdown process much easier (e.g. no manual manipulation) and the pressure is much light (yet more efficient) so it doesn't hurt when I pump!   Yeah even on the lowest setting on mine, it always hurt :(

Needless to say, after the 10 ounces of milky goodness that was removed, I caved and decided to buy the new pump.  It's a pretty good deal for a pump so I'm not that sad about ditching the old one. My insurance won't cover it, but that's a story I don't want to get in to.


More to come.

And oh, I realize we're past AJ's 5 month birthday.  Just to lazy to type it all out (little boy is on hour 3 of his nap, due to wake up any time now). More to come later.

Treasure every moment.

My life was put into perspective today with some very sad news. A co-worker of mine recently found out that his wife had cancer.  We learned of this news about two months ago.  We heard she'd been starting chemo.  We all signed up to bring dinners to them nightly.  Then, this Tuesday, we'd heard that it was time to stop bringing dinners, she'd been put on hospice with a prognosis of maybe several weeks of life left.  Then, this morning, I found out that she passed away.

I really didn't know how to process this heartbreaking information.  It was so sudden.  She was so young.  We just found out.  And then I thought of her girls.  She has two young girls.  Kids who probably aren't old enough to understand death.  Perhaps they're wondering where their mommy went.  They'll grow up robbed of truly knowing their mother.

I lost it then.  Right around lunchtime, at work.  Started bawling like a baby.  When I got home today, I skipped the dishes and all the other non-meaningful house duties and went straight to hug my big fat baby like I've never hugged him before.

A sleep-deprived mommy friend of mine recently contemplated out loud to me, "how is it possible to savor ALL the little moments...when life is this hard?  I didn't know the answer then. I do today.

Rest in peace, my friend. My son and I thank you, for reminding us about this precious treasure we call life.

30 minutes of my time

Today did not get better.  Not. one. bit.

It started out rocky anyway.  AJ woke up an hour earlier than I expected.  I'm not going to say why I think he woke up early.  Because that lays blame on someone and I don't think that's productive.  

At any rate, in my experience, when he wakes up early, he starts out the day wrong.  When he starts out the day wrong, it's very hard to set him right.  Which leaves very little room for variation...or for other things to go wrong. 

I come home from work craving his smile.  You could say I live for this little boy's smile. Usually his smile is what gets me motivated enough to put aside how physically, mentally, emotionally tired I am from a full day of work.  It's usually enough to motivate me to wash dishes, cook dinner, do laundry, clean up, you know.  The stuff that moms do.  But today, he doesn't smile at me.  He's just...angry.

And then there's the dog.  She's already rang the damn bell 3 times to go outside even before I had the chance to take my shoes off.  Today is the second day in a row that I do not love my dog.  

Somehow between 6 AM this morning when I got up and now, sad thoughts have crept back into my head again.  About how I don't want to love the dog anymore.  About how tired I am.  About how much I miss my old life.  About how much I hate not having control of things.  About how little emotional reserve I have left to deal with...anything because that last bit of it was left mourning over the fact that the damn dog chewed up my favorite necklace.

So I had to say something to my husband.

"I can't do this anymore.  I don't love the person I've become."

It's not something I was proud to say...but I've come to hate myself more and more over the last week.  I resent the fact that I think these things in my head now. I hate myself for hating the dog. I hate myself for being CAPABLE of hating the dog, who I used to treat as my firstborn.  I wonder with a lot of fear whether or not I am capable of thinking the same thoughts about AJ if we were to have a second baby.  I think maybe we shouldn't have a second child.  Ugggghhhh.

My husband offers maybe he should take the baby for 30 minutes a day and I can just go upstairs and do....whatever.  I sort of like the idea.  We're trying it out right now. 

 I've just spent 20 minutes of it typing this post.  

Sometimes, parenting feels like falling into an abyss.

Sigh.

I was told a while back that if you have two kids, the older one often regresses developmentally for a little bit after the new baby arrives.  They do things like un-learning potty training, throwing extra temper tantrums, causing ruckus to get a share of the attention.  

Never in a million years did I think I'd have to go through this now, as a first time mom.

I forgot I have a dog.

And that's probably the problem.  I forgot that I have a dog.  No, not literally.  She's become...more of my roommate over the past 4 months. We live independent lives, but I'm still very much involved when it comes to meal planning and cleaning up after her.  But the time spent cuddling, playing fetch, sleeping in on Saturdays...those have gone by the wayside.  Or at least, they've been delegated to my husband.  

It's not that I don't love her anymore (I think).  It's that...I'm so overwhelmed and tired with things right now that I don't really have the emotional capacity to make it better.  I know it sounds horrible, but it sort of...is what it is.  

Over the past several weeks, Zoe has been peeing everywhere in the house.  Which is extremely rare for her.  She gets upset at everything we do (I break out a nail clipper to trim baby's nail and she runs upstairs.  I blow raspberries on baby's belly and she runs upstairs.  It's like she's traumatized by us).  Today was the most upsetting.  She's only ever chewed through 4 items of mine in her lifetime (and we routinely leave MANY toys, gadgets, snacks, shoes left all over the house all day).  2 pairs of apple headsets. 1 macbook charger. And now, my brand new nursing necklace.

Ah, my poor necklace.  I bought this necklace last week from my friend's new online boutique.  I love this freakin necklace to death.  Why?  Because I'm too fat to fit into decent clothes rendering clothes shopping pointless save for functionality.  Because my hair is falling out like a friggin 60 year old balding man.  Because I don't the time, energy, or desire to do anything fun right now. Because there are nights when I look into the mirror after the shower and start to wonder if my husband still loves a woman whose identity falls solely into 3 categories now - mother, wife, pharmacist.  Because I'm not sure that I would.

I digress. Back to the necklace. It's perfect.  It's smells great.  It's my favorite color pattern (at the moment).  It looks great.  It's functional.  Baby loves it.  It matches my clothes.  When I wear it, I don't feel like the icky woman I just described.  I feel like me.  The girl who used to care. The girl who did things out of love, not out of necessity.  The girl who had a personality.

And now, the damn dog chewed through the necklace.

I know it's not a big deal, I know.  My mother in law graciously helped me fix it.  It's got an ugly knot in it now.  A scar that reminds me of my ugly thoughts today.  

I don't hate my dog, I really don't.  I know I'll look at this post in a matter of months, maybe even days, and regret all the bad things I've said tonight.  

But right now, right this minute, laying here on the carpet, baby sound asleep on the couch next to me, I feel.....sad....about me. 

AJ's toy recommendations: 4 months

Up until 3 months or so, I can't really say AJ's been super interested in toys.

But now, he can spend his whole waking moments playing with toys!

Here's what gets played with.

The rules:

-anything that makes noise

-anything that he can put in his mouth (which is anything)

-anything that's colorful

1.  Story books that make crinkly noises

This has been one of his favorites since the start.  There's something about the crinkly noises that really gets babies going.

2. Exersaucer/jumperoo

At four months, this little monkey LOVES to stand.  He is always beside himself when we put him in his exersaucer.  I'd feel pretty good about independently playing too!

3. Hexi-rattle

This is a wood rattle that's cleverly designed so baby can hold it, suck on it, rattle it, and stare at it (bright colors!).  It sees a lot of AJ's mouth, I must say. Watch out though, he's used it as a projectile before too. 

4. Rattle blanket

He just like blankets in general - for touching, cuddling, teething, etc.  Sometimes, I catch him snuggling this little monkey when he's asleep in his car seat. 

5. Sophie

Oh my gosh. I have SO many photos of AJ eating his Sophie the Giraffe. It's great for teething.  And making out.  See video. 

6. Our piano

About 1 month ago, AJ learned that his hands can hit things to make NOISE.  Enter the piano. His very big boy toy.

Tampered

We introduced the cheapo Gerber nipples to AJ a few days ago, and by golly, the boy loves them. He finishes his 4 ounce bottle in like 5 minutes without complaints.  I mean, he really sucks them dry.

So last night, on a grocery trip to Freddies, I decided to invest in a few more of those bad boys.  They're a 1.49 each which includes a 8 ounce plastic BPA free bottle, a bottle collar, and a silicone nipple.  Not the cheapest they get, but saves me an extra trip to Target.  Plus, come on. 1.50 for a bottle is pretty damn good.  So we bought 2 more.

I went home and separated one of the bottles from the packaging (which is essentially a cardboard ring, no where NEAR tamper-proof).  I noted a wet spot in the bottle itself.  SUSPICIOUS. Then I separated the nipple from the collar and a bit of a cloudy white liquid fell out from the pieces onto the counter.  VERY SUSPICIOUS.  I picked up the silicone nipple and sniffed it.  CONFIRMED.

This bottle's been used.  And not washed, might I add.  And returned. And sold to me.


Beyond unacceptable. Just gross.

My big girl pants

Let me spoil this one for you.  It's a downer.

It's been 13 months since I've bought real pants.  I tried on and bought my first pair of jeans the other day.  They were pretty nice jeans (honestly, nicer than any pair of pants I've ever purchased in my life, which probably should tell you something).  The girl at Nordy's was super helpful, she brought in all sorts of jeans in different cuts, shapes, and colors.  I pulled on the first pair and liked it enough. I forbade myself from comparing these jeans, size-wise, to my pre-preggo jeans. I distract myself....by staring at my belly instead. The stretch marks that used to be an angry red are now a dull tan.  They're striated all across my belly, like the marks of a mother tiger.  I run my fingers across the tops of the individual striations.  They feel like trenches to me. The dark line that divides my belly is still there, though the tenant has long vacated.  My eyes meet my belly button.  Interesting. It's an innie again now.  Too bad it doesn't look like an innie.  It looks like the belly button of someone who went on a fad diet after years of being 35 pounds overweight.  The girl knocks on my door to see how I'm doing.  She can't know what I've been thinking. Or maybe she does too, and is just too kind to say anything.  She asks what I think.  I think the jeans are fairly comfy, slightly long, and too expensive but I want to buy them just to say I'm a mom who's wearing premium jeans.  So I lie to her and tell them that they're perfect.

I walk out of the store with a brand new pair of premium jeans wondering if this is what middle aged men feel like when they buy them red convertibles.

I know I know.  It's only been 4 months.  I know I know, I should make time to work out.  I know I know, this is what all moms go through.  I know I know, the important thing is that I have a happy healthy baby, everything is secondary.

I'm not looking for reassurance or hugs or whatever here. Definitely not saying I'm regretting any of this. I chose to have my child, and I chose these bodily consequences.

Just wanted to take a moment to grieve over the damage, that's all.  I think I deserve that.

OK, I'm done now.  Time to go do the dishes.

25 Cent Nipples

I spent A LOT of time before having AJ mulling over what bottles we should be getting for him. After months of painstakingly detailed research over pro's and con's of the products out there, we bought two sets of bottles - the Como Tomo and the Tommy Tippee, both brands are highly rated for being "biologically" shaped, and therefore the easiest type of bottle for babies to take.

While that may certainly sound good, there were several key considerations that pre-baby Tina forgot to think about.  Or rather, perhaps pre-baby Tina didn't KNOW to think about.

1) cost.  

No, really I did think of it.  What I DIDN'T think about was the things you'd have to buy to maintain bottle feeding, once you've established.  Most people know about buying the basic set of bottles and what not, but did you know that nipples come in different sizes?  Call me stupid, but I didn't.  

2) convenience

Yeah you're gonna have to clean them.  And it's not like adult dishes, where you can just pile 'em up high and use paper plates for a while if you're too lazy to do the dishes.  Nope, you gotta wash them.  So any extra parts that comes with your feeding paraphernalia will of course add to the pile of stuff you have to wash at the end of the day. Plus, if you're an idiot like me and pump into one bottle but feed out of a different kind, that's 2x as many bottles and parts to wash.  BLEH.

3) storage space

Let's not pretend like this stuff makes our countertops more attractive.  Baby bottle stuff is an eyesore to look at.  I have an entire cabinet dedicated to feeding supplies.  That is almost to embarrassing for me to admit.

OK, what's this really about?

So since the day AJ's been using bottles, I've had a HUGE pile of dishes to wash every night.  I pump and store my milk in the fridge in Medela bottles.  I know there are Medela nipples and collars you can buy and screw right onto those bottles for feeding, but pre-baby Tina was too stubborn to be convinced that her baby should use anything that got a 3-star rating on Amazon.  Don't tell me you haven't heard the whole crap about how baby's success in feeding highly depends on how "biological" the bottles are? With that in mind, I was equipped to do whatever it takes to make sure that my baby gets the best.  

So 8 weeks after AJ started using bottles, I'm exhausted from washing those damn bottles. OK, more like I feel like my time is better spent doing something that's NOT washing bottles. Plus, I'm pretty sure that the caregiving grandparents are sick of transferring milk to different bottles (MIL spilled 4 ounces of milk during this process a few weeks ago).  Today, I found a sample "standard" nipple and collar in the closet, washed it, and threw it onto the bottle today.  We gave it to AJ and....dear....Lord.... HE LOVED IT.  A LOT MORE THAN THOSE DAMN FAT BOOB SHAPED NIPPLE/BOTTLES!!! Gulped his 4.25 ounces down in a matter of 5 or so minutes.  He sounded exactly like what he sounds like when he eats off the boob.   WHAT. THE. HECK.

That's it. We're headed over to the store to buy some 25 cent Gerber nipples.  AJ, you've been cut off of your fancy bottles.