Unwellness

a freakout haiku

Gift Show tomorrow
Wes can not bend over still
We are oh so screwed

weekend in Snotville, population: us (with brief stroller interlude)

Beck got worse on Saturday morning, more wheezy and coughing and more green stuff in and around the nose. Another day in bed. Day 4 for me, in case you missed that. Day 1 for Wes. He was supposed to go to swordfighting class but didn't feel so great himself. And by the end of the day he had pulled a muscle.

So there we were. Fibromyalgic me, Wes with a pulled back muscle, the snotty baby and the Face.book-wielding laptop. At some points, we played that scrab.ble game with one of us in the bed on the laptop and the other on the other side of the wall at the desktop. Ridiculous.

Honestly, I would have been really happy about a day in bed if we didn't need to be doing SEVEN MILLION other things. The NY Gift.Show is this coming weekend and we haven't even completed inventory for it. This requires going down to the basement and hefting boxes and counting stuff and then going to the storage place and hefting more stuff and counting and bringing it home. And neither of us is in particularly heft-worthy shape. Not. Fricking. Good.

When we were in the Bklyn De.sign Show, we worked our butts off beforehand and had game plans and knew what we were doing. We have barely discussed this show, which is MUCH bigger profile and the only remaining chance for LexieLew to continue. I am so stressed that I am dreaming my airport dreams - the ones where we can't find the gate and we lose luggage as we search and we are late late late.

On Sunday, my moms' group was having a party with spouses invited and I was excited to introduce Wes to my new friends. Except, of course, that we couldn't all go because we couldn't take the snotty baby to go play with all the other babies. So I went. In the end, 5 other moms got stomach flu (5!) and couldn't come. I went alone, bringing gingerbread muffins that I was extremely excited about. I made a pan of gingerbread last week and ate it ridiculously quickly. I thought mini muffins would be the perfect form for Party Gingerbread. They looked and smelled fine. But they tasted... odd. Dense. It wasn't until hours after I got home, tasting them over and over again to try and figure it out, that I realized that I had forgotten the baking soda.

And Wes' back was worse. So STILL no inventory done.

 

Having spent 5 days in bed, I decided we needed an outing today so we went to fricking Stap.les to try to find some stuff for the Gift.Show. They didn't have what I wanted, and I couldn't park on my block for another hour thanks to street cleaning, so we went to the mall thing to go to the other office supply place. But I had left the house intending only to go to Sta.ples briefly and I therefore only had the Starck carrier (goes over one arm but looks stylish while killing you softly).

I called Wes and told him to go online immediately and buy our lightweight stroller. If I'd had it in the car, the day would have been much nicer.

ADVICE FOR OTHER STYLE-MONGERS EXPECTING A TOT:
Our stroller is awesome.

It drives like a dream (moms in my group who tested it called it the Ferrari of strollers compared to theirs) and is nice-looking and functional and extremely cozy (once we got into the big boy seat). He loves being in it and falls asleep every time. Perfect. BUT I would not pick it if I had it to do again. We wanted a stroller that took a bassinet, a car seat and a regular toddler seat. We didn't need the bassinet. He HATED the bassinet. He hated the car seat, too, of course, but not the way he HATED the bassinet. We used it TWICE. Now the cat sleeps in it. I would have purchased the stroller we are now going to get as our lightweight, travel stroller. It can take a car seat and that would have been fine for the infant days. And it weighs 12 pounds, which is half what ours weighs. And it folds down to nothing.

BUT when we were picking strollers, the car seat that goes with the lightweight wasn't approved for the US yet. So I couldn't have it. And I thought I wanted a bassinet. I thought it would be so cute to have a little swaddly baby in there. I thought he would sleep in it all the time. HA.

When I say all this to Wes, he shakes his head. "I would have overruled you," he says.

"No, you wouldn't have. I was pregnant and angry. I would have won."

"No. You would never have won. Two words. Or is three? Anyway.... Toddler. FunSeat."

He is right. I never would have won the fight. The Toddler FunSeat wins. It goes on our stroller once Beck is big enough. It has a little fake steering wheel and the most gigantic basket ever. It really is so adorable that Wes once had all the sales guys at Buy.Buy.Baby gathered around the Internet oohing and aaahing at it with him.

Also, I would have bought this highchair.

Anyway. What was I saying?

As we got into the car (over the tethers, under the tethers... we MUST do something about those mothereffing tethers - thanks for the advice), I discovered that my tire was flattening. I considered stopping at my mechanic on the way home but the thought of leaving the car and subwaying home with the damn Starck carrier was tear-inducing. I called Wes and he agreed to take it in the next morning. But as I drove bumpily along,
I worried that if the tire was flatter in the morning, Wes would be unable to take it, since his back is out and he can't be putting on a spare. And do we even have a spare back there? And we need the car for the show this week so what if they need to keep it?

And so... I pulled around to the cheap tire guys on 4th Avenue, fully expecting to be gauged and messed with as a woman alone with a baby and a flat tire. They pulled it off, tested it, found a leak around the rim ("Did you hit a pothole?" they asked. When did I NOT hit a pothole? Sheesh. It's Brooklyn.), and fixed it. It may or may not last but I think it will get us through the week. And it cost... TEN DOLLARS.

As we made it the last few blocks home, I sang a new song to Beck as he cried and wailed and snotted all over himself, "Your mommy got the car fixed for TEN DOLLARS. Your mommy is so awesome and brilliant and brave. Your mommy got the car fixed for TEN DOLLARS.... " etc.

And now we are home, returned to bed and snot.

Notes from the Bed: Day 3

The child is really only marginally sick. A few times a day, he wheezes and it's hard to tell if it's coming from his nose or his chest. And then green things start poking out of his nose and we have an epic wrestling battle to get them out or squirt saline up there or both. But he is generally cheerful, if a little more sleepy and cuddly than usual and strangely content to play with the same 4 toys all day in the bed next to me as I Internet and neglect him (the best thing we ever did - sending my father to hunt all over Manhattan for a wireless card for our old Mac laptop AND having Wes' tech guys install said card - I am finally MOBILE, baby!). I kid. I sing ceaselessly as I type in order to entertain him. I am now capable of singing WHILE typing even the most pithy of commentary. I am singing now. Also, I can sing and watch TV at the same time. Granted, my lyrics generally devolve into something along the lines of, "Whyyyyy issss Oooooooprah so annnooooooooyyyyyying" but it's singing nonetheless. Am I creating a monster with all this singing? Will he be the kind of adult and kid who can only function in a noise-filled space? Am I that kind of person? I always did write BRILLIANT treatises on my misery while in extremely loud bars. That was probably also related to the Guiness. And the Jameson's. Right. What was I saying?

In other news, I have discovered Face.book and am grossly addicted. I even like the annoying Status Update thing where I say what I am doing RIGHT NOW so there can never be a MOMENT of my life that is not fully documented online. I may even join mothereffing Twit.ter, I enjoy it so much. I may even put a Mothereffing Twit.ter WIDGET on this here blog so you can ALL see what I am doing ALL DAY, moment by moment! How fricking fun is that!? Grossly fun, I tell you.

(edited to delete)

Did anyone else hear that classic Christian quote on Proj.ect Run.way? "I am dying of barfness." Ah. Beck woke and had to be carried into our room just in time for the runway show that night. This is the kind of child we are raising. Again.

Photo to perhaps be added when I get to the desktop someday.

Beck's First Meme

We were tagged by Jo at The Family O.

The Rules
1. Link to the person that tagged you
2. Post the rules on your blog
3. Share 6 non-important things/quirks about your kid
4. Tag at least three people at the end of your post and link to their blogs
5. Let each person know they've been tagged by leaving a comment on their blog
6. Let the fun begin!

1. Beck has ticklish armpits.

2. He has been sitting in his highchair for about a month now. He enjoys it much more than the smooshy car seat, which is the other possible kitchen 'parking place.'.

3. Beck loves to drink water. LOVES it. From whatever cup we are drinking from.

4. He also loves to be in water. He loves bathtime, especially when I fill the big tub and he gets to 'swim'  with me. Swim lessons asap, I tell you.

5. Beck has suddenly learned peekaboo, moving the covers over his face and then popping out appropriately. Perhaps a tutorial from Avery, when we visited recently, helped.

6. Beck wants desperately to crawl. I predict we are mere weeks away, as he is assuming the position and rocking. The belly is only about half-lifted, however....

First bath

Recent bath

Bonus fact: Watching the animals is excellent entertainment

We tag: Avery and Maddie at Arcane Matters, J and M at Meanmama, Lulu at Raising Bebe Lulu, Ender at Istanbul's Stranger, A and R at Light and the Red Balloon (if that blog is still around, ahem - didn't want to exclude you), K at Margaretjames (likewise) and Sophie at Spectacularly Normal.

album covers

Beck is asleep on my lap sitting up and snoring. Which leaves time to do memes.

This album one is super fun.

1.  Click on this link.  The title of the page is the name of your band.

2. Click on this link.  The last four words of the final quotation on the page are the title of your album.

3. Click on this link.  The third picture is your album cover.

4. Take the pic, add your band name and album title and tada! (this final step requires photo shop or other image editing software)

I liked it so much I did it numerous times (plus I had a sleeping baby on me and couldn't move). If you get the same quote I got, click the "new random quotations" button on the bottom of the page.

photo by BrittneyBush

photo by Xapa

photo by volpe1981

snotville

I always thought it would be so fun to have a kid and visit all my friends with kids. What I didn't realize was that the winter would be one long cesspool of germiness and we would be housebound, bedbound, for weeks and never get to visit anyone at all.

Beck has his second (third?) cold/flu thing. Wah.

Breastfed babies don't get sick, MY ASS.

Unanswered Questions

- So what the eff is with the tethers on the big boy car seat, hunh? In our car, they have to go back behind the seat and this means that there are these straps prohibiting us from putting him directly in - he has to go over or under to get in. It is ANNOYING and difficult. Any advice?

Not our car or car seat, but this is what it is like. Yes, the Roundabout is ALLOWED to tether in rear facing, and I have read that it improves safety. But SHEESH. Can we maybe just not?
(Estelle, are you still out there?)

- I decided I should drink Mothers Milk tea to try to boost my supply enough to pump more often. But it turns out I HATE Mothers Milk tea. I despise anise and licorice and all things fennel-y. Is there a brand of tea that doesn't include those but would still help supply? I know, it's unlikely. Really, I don't need the tea. At all. I just need to have the discipline to pump every day. Sigh.

- Please share all your stories, theories and strategies for feeding solid food. What did you feed first? What systems do you have for making your own? Did anyone else read that crazy Ya.ron lady's book and think she was a batshit crazy loon? It is like a train wreck, that book. Anyway, I am obsessed. I can't wait to see what faces he makes when he tastes things for the first time!

- We had a big weekend with Melissa visiting and throwing Asia's shower. 3 hostesses, each with a child under 2. It was frankly amazing.
Beck communed with the twins (or is he just going for the boobs?).

Also Beck and K (age 1) got time together. They enjoyed manhandling each other. And earned nicknames of Distracto (mine who won't nurse when friends are near) and Destructo (hers who clears a table like that).

Honestly, all our babies are darling and sweet but we look forward to when they are bigger and can go in the other room and play together on their own and we can return to boozing and using the eff word freely.

(Well, yeah, ok. I still use the eff word more than freely. Perhaps even more often than before. Wes and I both breathe it each time he wakes up when we are trying to go to bed. But the friend with the nearly 2 year old... not so much. So we try to be respectful of that. We are big on teaching the kid when words are appropriate rather than trying to change our own behavior artificially. Worked fine with GMB.)

wherein i go against everything i believe and tell you that our roles ARE different and staying home sucks

Today turned out to be a hardcore bad bad day. My plans for the all important Getting Out of the House changed and were cancelled and I never made it out. Beck was a disaster all day. Mostly this was due to teething, I think, but staying home all day is never good either. He hurt and would not be happy no matter what. No, I take that back. He would have been happy if I had held him and continuously (and I do mean without cease) lifted him into the air over and over again. Bouncing is his life. Why didn't I put him in the jumper? For one, I only remembered we had it this evening after hours of pain and whining and full out crying, after he was asleep in my arms in our bed - the brain mush, remember? Also, it is challenging to get him out by oneself. But I would have tried. If I had remembered. Instead, I bounced him a few times here and there and winced as it hurt my fibro arms like mad. Motherfricking fibro.

Anyway, it was crap. A crap, cry-ish day. I cried, he cried. Separately. When I was full out crying, I looked over at his shocked face and worried that he might be about to cry, too. Oh, he cares about me, I thought. He loves me and is worried about me, I thought. And then... he laughed. A full on belly laugh at the site of my tear-streaked face. Nice, kid.

And then Wes came home, finally. And while he fed the dogs downstairs, the baby woke up next to me in the bed and cried - full on cried - and only a dark room and staring out the window would make things marginally right. Until...
DADDY walked in. And saved him from mean, cry-ish Mommy. And as I type this, after a shower that was nowhere near as restorative as I needed it to be, I can hear them downstairs. Wes is chopping rhubarb for his strawberry rhubarb compote. Beck is GLEEFUL in his bouncer. Sly and the Family Stone is playing loud and Wes is singing the doo doo bass line. It is a motherfricking PARTY down there. A gorgeous, domestic happy-fest. Totally apart from me.

I hate being boring and mean.

Me, in a stronger moment

Do you know what song is playing right now? Play That Funky Music White Boy. Oh, indeed.

equal parents in an unequal world

I just had a nice comment on my fatherhood post from divc, directed here by Chicory. And it reminded me that I wanted to continue talking about my fatherhood post and to clarify some stuff.

First, importantly, I hope it did not seem like I was asking lesbians to take on the term father or dad. I certainly do understand how and why mother is a desired and important term, and that doing the work to 'complicate' that term by embracing it as a nonbiomom (is it more fun if we make it one word?) is huge and necessary and really just intuitive. I get that, and I didn't mean to imply otherwise.

My first few paragraphs were a response to tone, more than anything else. I don't think every nonbiomom should be called dad but I also think they shouldn't say 'dad' in a way that implies something less than or different or wrong. I want it to be clear to our children, who learn so, so much by tone, that dad is an equal, cool role. I know this is a strange and often difficult request of families who have two moms. It is a challenge to present your own family as lovely and perfect as is and yet still present fathers as integral parts of other families. But it is important. Many of us have boys who will be dads. Many of us have girls who will be parenting partners with a dad. We have to be so, so careful not to raise yet another generation of children who see 'dad' as a secondary, unnecessary role.

And that was interesting, too. I knew that our parents' generation was chock full of crappy, old dad stereotypes and poor role models. I didn't know just how many there were in OUR generation, too. So that was eye-opening. I am coming from a different background. Yes, my relationship with my father is as complicated and strange as many of yours' but when I was little, both my parents worked outside the home. After the divorce and before it, Mom had a job just like Dad. She returned to her job when I was 2 weeks old, I think. When pressed, I have a hard time thinking of ways in which my mom and dad were different other than personality and parenting style. But they were both primary parents to me (as were my babysitter and my stepmother). They all did some of the grunt work.

Staying home has complicated all of this for me so, so much. I NEVER saw myself as a stay-at-home. Yes, I do enjoy being at home (ie, not going to a job) because I am a homebody and I am enjoying the ability to stay in my slippers all day. I am SO happy I don't have to pump and that I can have the time to do things for Beck's first year that I might otherwise feel too overwhelmed to approach (such as my current obsession with what we will feed him next month - yes, I would still be able to obsess if I was at my job, but I might also find myself so tired and overwhelmed that I would crack open the jar first instead of pondering grinding up brown rice in my spare time) (and yes, I KNOW there are those of you out there who work full time and still manage to cook all your own organic baby food AND sew all your baby's diapers and wipes and burp cloths AND clothing AND teach them to write concertos in your spare time - FINE - YOU WIN).

But I miss work. And I hate not bringing in any money. I hate that our ultimate favorite plan, a 6 month sabbatical for Wes to stay home, was not possible. I hate that the cost of 6 months off for him and 9 months off for me is the same. I hate that he makes more money than I do, that somehow we managed to find ourselves in that model even though he works in a female-dominated workplace and once was one.

Right now, it feels very much like we are doing as expected. I am the woman and I am staying home, caring for our son a larger percentage of the time. It is often difficult for me to keep my brain from falling into the societal 'dumb dad' thing. It is hard to let go of the only work I am doing and have his ways of doing things be fine with me. I hate that my head goes there even though my own dad was an excellent one in my childhood.

So I am coming from such a defensive and strange place. I bristle at any implication that dads aren't as good as moms because I do not WANT to be seen as the only one who can do things, even by my own brain. I am fighting that every day. The one who stays home simply cannot be seen as the only expert when there are two parents. We must all resist that even if it is still true in so many homes and families. We must present the world to our children as we want them to build it, not just as its flawed, messed-up past self.

I asked questions about biology that still need answering - do birth and breastfeeding make things inherently different for a biomom, whoever her partner and if so how and for how long? But there are other questions here that are also huge. We seem to have gotten to the bottom of some of the fear and perception of difference - those who work outside the home often fear being lumped in with 'clueless dads.' How do we change that? How do we prevent that stereotype from ever existing in our children's heads?

The biology question does, on the surface, exclude adoptive parents from the discussion (except maybe in cases where they breastfeed)  but the new question does not. And all of these questions, on the surface, exclude single parents, because all the roles fall to them (unless there is help, maybe - my mom was single for most of my childhood but I had a babysitter/nanny, so there was still the inside/outside thing in my parenting examples and it was still mixed up and rich). But when you really think about it, all of these questions include everyone who wants to be a parent because we are talking about the ways in which we present the world to our children. Because our children will, for the most part, be parents someday, too. And we want nice, kind, equality-minded grandchildren, right?

Pictures - Beck asleep with Dad at one month, Beck asleep with Dad at five months

fun with photomerge

Chair Photos - Five Months

Hammertime