AND Here We Go Again With the Crazies

My kid is sick. SHIT. 

Okay, okay, we are actually SO VERY lucky that Josephine is healthy in general these days. In fact, I seriously cannot remember the last time she was sick. I can't even remember the last time she had a runny nose. I couldn't even find her saline nose spray right away because it had been so long since we'd used it.

I thought a new outfit might help with the sickies:

Eh. Still not feeling so great, mom. But she looks SO CUTE, even with the snotty nose.

But then Yo Gabba Gabba! came on. This led to dancing around the house:

And showing off her belly button (she's pretty big on showing kids her belly button these days):

Of course, that tired her out and she spent the next half hour with her head on my lap, but if she can muster the energy for some dancy-dance, I think we'll make it.

And, this cold (virus?) is a little easier than the last because she can blow her nose. Of course, it would be nice if she ONLY did it when I was holding a tissue up to her nose and not just at any given moment. :)

Unfortunately, every little cold also takes me back to the time when Josephine was sick and no one knew why. Yes, we obviously have it MUCH better than many people; it "only" took two months to discover the problem, and then we were able to fix it. And although those two months were excruciating and heart-breaking, they really were only two months. She got better, and now she is healthy and happy. 

I know there are millions of kids who are not so lucky, and I would never put our issues on par with theirs, but there are also millions of kids who don't have to go through two months of agony because her doctors couldn't discover a simple problem, and I have such tremendous guilt over all of it. Why didn't I take her to different doctors? Why didn't I discover the problem myself? Why did I let her go through all of that and let her get the point that she had to be hospitalized and ... oh my god, the hospital. I try really hard not to remember the details of the visit. Tubes, an IV that took an hour of poking to start, starving her for 24 hours to "restart" her stomach lining ...

Again, I know many children go through much worse, but considering how simple the solution was to our problem, I should have been able to discover it much sooner and save her from all those terrors. 

Many people have given me excellent advice on what I need to do to forgive myself and move on from all of that, but I really feel like it was my fault that the first few months of her life were filled with pain. That's something I don't see myself getting over anytime soon, and any little sniffle takes me right back there. 

Aside from all of that damage, I'm sure I'm not alone in this, but every little sickness sends me to that place -- that place where I realize there are oh-so-many things I cannot control and there are so so many things that are going to hurt my little girl, and there is nothing I can do about many (most) of those things.

For (a very weird) example, Jeremy and I are REALLY over renting, and we have been looking at houses and looking at neighborhoods and researching schools and all of that jazz. It is S-L-O-W, to say the least. Yesterday, while driving home from doing errands, Josephine and I drove past one of the houses we looked at recently, and since it is in one of the neighborhoods we don't know much about yet, I couldn't help but play one of the (many, ridiculous, constant) possible future scenarios in my head: We live in that house, and Josephine is in school, and tells a classmate where she lives, and that brat says something about her living on the wrong side of town.

Tangent: In school we once had to do this whole big project about our hometown and get in groups and make up songs and blah blah blah, and one group got up and sang their song, and one of the lines was "Although everything north of the tracks goes downhill." Guess who lived north of the train tracks? Yeah. Me. And seriously, this town was like10 blocks by 4 blocks, and only two of the blocks were north of the tracks, and there was actually NO "bad" part of town. To be fair, there was some less-than-lovely homes North of the track and WEST of main street, but EAST of main street (MY neighborhood) was LOVELY, and even the not-so-lovely homes were PRETTY nice. Instead of being like, "Whatever, they're fools," I was SO EMBARRASSED. I was crushed beyond belief, and was CERTAIN that all four of those people were staring right at me when they sang the song, and were talking about me when they wrote it. 

It was a stupid thing to get upset about, but that didn't stop me from feeling upset. And I imagined some brat kid saying something like to Josephine, and my stomach started churning.

If I stopped and thought about it, I could think of plenty of appropriate responses to the situation, but my first instinct was cuddle Josephine until she falls into a blissful slumber and then hunt down that child and punch him in the face. INappropriate. But this is how my mind works. And I'm sure I'm not alone in that either. I have a feeling there are plenty of other moms who are normally non-violent and logical who also imagine punching kids. PLEASE tell me there are other people who feel like this.

AND ... this all came from Josephine being a little sick. I weep for my future if this is how crazy I have become since becoming a mother.

If you have any sort of compassion, I would adore a comment telling me you can commiserate. :)

Is it vain to think your child is the cutest thing ever in the whole wide world? Oh well.

I got a phone call at 9 this morning that Josephine's 9-month pictures were ready for pick-up EARLY, and I knew this was going to be a great day!

Having these pictures in my possession, along with a trip to Target (*swoon*), finding a sunscreen that doesn't kill my baby (thanks for all the tips, peeps!), and meeting Jeremy downtown for $1 Jimmy John's subs for lunch TOTALLY make up for the fact that my child has only had ONE HALF-HOUR NAP so far today.  She's lucky she's so g-d cute. 

Big Day in Baby Land

Sunday was a big day for baby Josie.


She moved on from the rice cereal that she was so OVER it made her make this face:

Yes!  VEGETABLES!!  Processing ...

First bite! 

Verdict?

Delicious!  So much excitement!  So many exclamation marks! 


Then she got a present from Granny and Gramps for St. Patrick's Day, and apparently got a little confused.

Wait.  I'm IRISH?  Huh.  Who Knew?

Then we capped off the night with books.  Of course.

What a big day for such a little lady.

And Now, "REALLY??!?!!?" With Your Disgruntled Host, Veronica

I know, twice in one day, right?  Well, the tone of this post is slightly different.  I could not keep my disgruntledness (it's a word, even if my spellcheck says it's not) to myself.  


#1:  Jeremy was sick all last week.  Really sick.  NOW, I am sick.  REALLY sick.  I have not been this sick in two years, at least.  Here's the kicker.  Jeremy just turned to me a few minutes ago and said, "Ummm, my throat is starting to hurt again."  Really??  REALLY?!?!!?!?!?!  As soon as the little Bean starts coughing, I am calling for reinforcements.  Oh wait, my mom said she is "booked" all next week.  Sigh.


#2:  I'm sitting here, watching all the school closings for tomorrow, which of course, would screw my classes up schedule-wise, but I am SICK people, so a snow day would be awesome-balls.  So far, EVERY SINGLE school and day care in the county I teach is closed, except (yep, you guessed it) MY COLLEGE.  Really??  REALLY?!?!!?!?!?!


#3:  After having Jeremy off and helping me out today (the naps were MUCH appreciated, loving husband), I went upstairs and opened the diaper drawer, and there are only TWO diapers left!  Really??  REALLY?!?!!?!?!?!  Don't get me wrong, I LOVE, like L-O-V-E, using cloth diapers, but when I get lazy and wait until they are all dirty ... man oh man ... it is a nail-biter.  I have to run them through on cold, then on hot, and then they take a while to dry because I have to dry them on low heat, THEN I have to re-assemble them all.  Sigh.  Looks like I will be up for a few more hours.  (BUT, we got all of our cloth diapers as gifts, meaning we have not bought a SINGLE DIAPER since our babe entered the world.  Holy savings, Batman!)


Okay, I should probably think of a good "Really?"  Like, a "Really? :)"  Here's one:

It should be here in eight days.  Cha-ching!  Jeremy said I should photoshop dollar signs over his eyes in that picture!


And, of course, as I was typing this, I looked over and saw this:

This is MINE?  Really? 

And, she REALLY is.

Man, that was quite a twist at the end there, eh?

How Can She Look So Much Like A Toddler When She Can't Even Toddle Yet?

This kid is getting super-old and super-cute and acting more like a kid than a baby every day.


I mean, look at this little monkey:

posing 

 jumping!

hamming it up for the camera

showing off her Kung Fu moves

She is also REALLY into her books now.  Before, we were reading to her because we were supposed to, and she was kind of meh about it, but now, she is INTO reading.  She is either concentrating super hard on the pages or smiling and laughing while she looks at the pictures.

Reading Love You Through and Through in her special Valentine's Day outfit from Granny

It's amazing to see all of the things she "gets" now.  Excellent example:  The other day I plopped her in her crib so I could have five minutes to do my hair, and from the bathroom I heard a BASH BASH BASH coming from her room.  I crept in and found her lifting up her "soothing music player" and bashing it against the bars of her crib:

And when I leaned over her and ahemed, she flipped over and immediately gave me this innocent look:

As my sister put it, we're in big trouble.

She also knows that when she makes certain faces, I laugh, so she makes those faces and gets excited when I laugh, then makes the face again!  

I know, it seems so simple, but she is purposefully doing something to make me laugh.  I love it!

And, I swear, she knows how to do "cute" poses now.  

She used to only put her fingers in her mouth when she wanted to chew them, but now she will put one to her mouth and hold it there without chewing it ... she is totally pulling off the "aren't I darling?" look, isn't she?

Who am I kidding?  She pulls off EVERY look.  I love my little almost-toddler.

I Have a Six-Month-Old. How Did That Happen?

My beautiful girl is six months old today. There is no way I will actually be able to encapsulate in words how wonderful-amazing-fantastic this kid is, but here's my best attempt:


My baby girl almost always has a smile on her face. After those first two months when she was almost always crying, almost always in pain, and I was in agony right along with her because I could do nothing to fix it, it was hard to imagine we'd ever see her smile. Now it amazes me every day how much she SMILES! And when I hold her, her body is calm and her eyes are happy, and she smiles up at me with those eyes that crinkle just like her dad's. Oh, I wish there were a way to capture that feeling and pull it out whenever I needed it.  


Back in the sick days, just about the only thing that could make her feel better was to be held. All the time. Including when she slept at night. And it exhausted me, but how long is she going to be little like that and WANT me and NEED me? Not very long, I told myself. She still likes to be held, and her favorite sleeping position is still on my chest, but she now sleeps on horizontal planes that are not me. However, sometimes I keep her there even though I know she could be put down, especially on the nights I work. Sometimes I hold her while she sleeps and then all of a sudden I look at the clock and it is the middle of the night and I should be sleeping so I can take care of her in the morning, but I just DON'T CARE because holding that little sleeping bundle is so wonderful.


And her laugh. Her laugh! She laughs and squeals and giggles, and even has a belly laugh! She has all different laughs for all different occasions, and the other day she even laughed so hard she snorted! She loves to sit on either my lap or her dad's lap and just stare at the other person, laughing and smiling, and then look at the person holding her, laughing and smiling, back and forth, back and forth. She could do it for hours.


She just loves being around us, and while she can be put down now (Did you read that??  My child who had the NEVERPUTMEDOWN disease is now happy to roll around on the floor or sit in a bouncer. It's true!) she often will bellow if I leave the room, and all I have to do is pop my head around the corner and look at her, and she rewards me with her huge smile, as if to say, "Thanks! I just needed you to look at me!"


Now that she enjoys places other than my arms, she is loving this whole new world of "things." She LOVES her crinkle book; and her elephant teether with the peanuts in the belly; and GiGi the giraffe, the first toy she ever picked out herself. She loves being laid on a blanket so she can roll and roll and roll. She loves looking at herself in the mirror; it makes her laugh like crazy. She loves her bouncy activity center; she jumps and screams and laughs until she chokes while she stares at the frog and laughs at the flowers. She has learned that many of her toys have buttons, and when you push them, MUSIC HAPPENS, and SHE MADE IT HAPPEN! She loves all music, and if she finds the right tune, she will dance with speed the Lord of the Dance would envy. Watching her marvel at all these new experiences is amazing. Just watching her look at her hand with wonder makes me feel like the world makes sense.


She loves her dad. Oh, she loves that guy so much. They have fun rituals, like the one where he leans over and she grabs two huge fistfuls of his hair and YANKS and doesn't let go and laughs and laughs and laughs at how funny she is. Or the one where he flies her around like a plane while I cook, and she laughs as they zoom past, over and over. She already looks at him like he is the only guy in the planet, and I love how we both feel that way about him.


She has discovered the joys of being upside down. This kid would be upside down for hours if I didn't stop her. She loves laying on her back across my legs with her head hanging down and her eyes fixed on something across the room. If I try to sit her back up, she will sometimes fight so hard I think I will never get her to sit upright again and I will have to walk around with a baby in the shape of a "C" whose nose I am perpetually looking down.


She adores her cat and her dog. When she sees their faces, she laughs so hard she squeals. Cleo is still her nanny, and she will stay with her no matter what we are doing in another room. If I am shaking a bag of treats in one room and the baby is sleeping in the other, Cleo stays with the baby. MoJo recently started coming and sitting on my lap when Josephine cries, and then he slowly rubs up against her and starts purring. Josephine will immediately laugh and pet him, forgetting her tears, and MoJo will just sit and let her hit him in the face (she needs some work on refining "face pets").


We are seeing the beginnings of a little dramababy. She will FLAIL her head back and give a fake sob and throw her hand over her face, but if you react the way she wants you to, she is smiling a millisecond later. Seriously, is it possible for a kid this young to have a fake cry? She definitely has one. We are already seeing those moments where I just imagine she is saying, "But I just have all of these FEELINGS! It's all just so overwhelming!" I know it will not be funny later in life, but it sure is adorable and funny right now.


She is growing too fast. Some of the 9-month clothes we got out a few weeks ago are already too small, and she fits into most 12-month clothes. She sat unassisted for FIFTEEN SECONDS on Monday! She is all about her sippy cup; she doesn't get much water out yet, but she loves trying. She seems moments away from running. She is just so strong and sturdy and ready to go go go.


She is the best thing that has ever happened to me. I can't believe it has already been a half a year. I know it's so cliche to say, but it feels like yesterday that we brought her home, put her car seat in the middle of the living room floor, and looked at each other as if to say, "What now?" If the first half year of her life went by this quickly ... I can only imagine how quickly the rest of her childhood will slip by. I waited so long for her, and now I have to pinch myself every day to see if it is real. But she's real. She's here. And I love her more than I ever could have imagined.


I love you baby girl.

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Growth Spurt

Okay, here's the deal:  My baby is GROWING.  Yeah, I know, they are totally supposed to do that, but not like this. NOT LIKE THIS!!!!  She is growing much too quickly.


Here is the evidence:

"Oh, hi.  Don't mind me, I'll just be sitting here wearing my SIX MONTH clothes on my FOUR-MONTH birthday.  No biggie."

Yeah, I unwrapped one of her Christmas presents to have a cute outfit that was big enough for her to wear.  No worries, I'll re-wrap it and take pictures of her opening it.  What?  She's a BABY.  She'll never know the difference.

Anyway, I blame the growing on her father, who doesn't understand just how terrible it is that she is growing up too quickly.  Look at him, feeding her SOLIDS and convincing her they are good for her. 

Look at that "yum" face she is making.  She has clearly been brainwashed.


More evidence:  ALL of these clothes fit THREE DAYS AGO.  

You should have seen me in there, sorting clothes and crying.  Josephine just laid in the floor and looked up at me, laughing every now and again. Then she rolled over, for good measure, to remind me how she's not a BABY anymore, but a GIRL.


Don't worry, I paid her back by trying on a few of her three-month outfits that I wasn't ready to part with.

"Give it up, Mom."

I tried really hard to make them fit.  Confession:  I also took her out in public like this.  Then I came home, cried, and put the onesie in the bin of "too-small baby clothes" that is now overflowing.


My final piece of evidence:  Comparison photos.  Yeah, I went there.

Now, you tell me that she's not growing too quickly.  Try it.  Doesn't she look like a freakin' three-year-old compared to the first picture?  The pediatrician claims she is in the 75th percentile for height and weight, but I have a sneaking suspicion she is lying to me to keep the rage at bay.  Just a hunch.

I tried talking to my sensitive husband about my feelings regarding the loss of my newborn baby. Here's how it went (hint: not well).

Veronica:  JEREMY!  Just LOOK at her!!  She is huge!  Why is she growing?  Why?  WHY?

Jeremy:  You can't halt progress, Veronica.

Veronica: *death glare*

Jeremy: *runs from room*

On a final (unrelated) note, let me leave you with ... BABY MOHAWK!

I love my giant grown-up baby.

The Most Interesting Facts You Will Read Today

Now that I've drawn you in with that tantalizing title, I suppose it's only fair to tell you the truth: I am just going to tell you what's going on in my not-so-fascinating and baby-centered life. But guess what? That is all you're getting, so you will read it, and you will LIKE it.


Fact #1: I know you are DYING for an update on my boobs, so I don't want to drag it out and make you wait any longer. Let me tell you how I honestly feel about breastfeeding. From the bottom of my heart? It is the hardest, most infuriating thing I have ever been through in my entire life. Remember how I figured out it was my breasts being "overly enthusiastic" about making milk that was destroying my daughter's innards?  


Well, ever since then I have been trying to force my boobs to make the correct amount of milk. For the first three days of following La Leche League's directions for slowing down my milk, NOTHING was changing. There was still too much milk, a lot of screaming and crying, and LOTS of crummy tummy. Then, all of a sudden, I went from one feeding with way too much milk to the next feeding with NO MILK, like, AT ALL. There was a lot more screaming and crying than usual (from both parties involved). So I tried to make a bottle, but I had no idea if I should give her the milk I had pumped and stored, because that was probably all foremilk too, right?  I tried to give her formula, but for some reason, every single one of our awesome "breast-like" bottles flipped out and the milk was POURING out of of the nipples like we were shoving a garden hose in her mouth, so she was choking and gagging and screaming and clawing at my face, and I was sobbing and shouting "WHAT DO WE DO???!?!?!?!" at Jeremy.


Needless to say, I then had to try to convince my breasts to make MORE milk. And ever since then, it has been a precarious balance trying to keep my supply at *just* the right amount. I mean, do normal people have to deal with this? Every single day I have too much or too little milk at one feeding and then have to scramble to fix it. All this is really draining me, and I feel like such a complete FAILURE. I feel like the one thing my body is supposed to be able to do to provide for my daughter is malfunctioning, and all the bonding and happiness I am supposed to be enjoying with my baby has been stolen from me. Everyone told me to stick it out for the first three weeks and then it will get better and easier. Well, it has been nine weeks, and I am still struggling in a bad way. Every single day I just want to give up, and then I feel like a horrible mother. GUH!! Boobs, why you gotta play me like this??


Fact #2: Last night when I was driving home from teaching my night class, I was feeling like a really bad mom. I felt like I hadn't done my best in mothering Josephine that day, specifically because when I was brushing her hair after her bath, she cried and made the saddest face I have ever seen, like she was just giving up because she was so destroyed by what I was doing to her. And I FINISHED BRUSHING HER HAIR, even though she was making a sad face. Plus, I was trying to enter my students' grades online and was holding her (Yeah, this is how I work now. You would think I could just ... oh, I don't know, PUT HER DOWN. But you'd be wrong. Oh, you'd be SO wrong):

... and she started fussing a little. Instead of stopping what I was doing and soothing her, I just bounced her in my arm a little so I could spend 30 seconds to finish what I was doing first. And as I was driving home at 10 PM, all I could imagine was her sad little face, and my boobs were leaking like MAD because I don't have an office anymore so I don't have a place to pump for the six hours I am gone on Tuesday nights, and the more I cried and imagined her face, the more I leaked, and the more I leaked, the more I cried. Then ... flashing lights. Yup, I was speeding, and the cop was not swayed by my sobbing about how I needed to get home to my baby. So I got a speeding ticket that essentially STOLE MONEY from my daughter because I have to pay the county money that I could be spending on her. It was kind of a bad night.

Fact #3: Okay, this is turning out to be the world's saddest post, so here is an ADORABLE fact: Josephine is going to be a MONKEY for Halloween. A MONKEY! Can you believe it? Can you think of anything cuter than my baby girl is this costume my mom just ordered for her?

I cannot.


Fact #4: My daughter would probably get a lot more restful and sustained sleep if I could just STOP KISSING HER. I mean, she's just snuggled up to me, looking all cute and sweet, and I just have to lean over and kiss her. How can I not? And 90% of the time, that wakes her up, and she looks up at me with her sleepy little eyes as if to say, "Seriously, mom? Can you let me sleep for more than five minutes without waking me up with a stinkin' kiss?" Oh my gosh, I just kissed her little forehead like five times while I typed this paragraph. 


So, what have we learned here? I am going kind of crazy, but my daughter is AMAZING and BEAUTIFUL. 

"Yeah.  I'm number one!"