Here this is for you but can I have it back now please?

Leah appears to have moved on from needing to HAVE ALL THE TOYS.  She is learning to share.

Sort of.

It started with her blue elephant, which is this super-duper-funtime-learning thing with textures and teethers and crinkly-paper ears and the whole bit.  She loves this elephant.  Recently, we were playing on the floor with the elephant, and she purposefully picked him up and extended him in my direction.

I was mildly shocked.  "Sharing" is a fairly simple word, but the concept of "I have this thing that I really like but I'm giving it to you right now" is sort of complex.  In my completely amateur psychological evaluation, it seemed to me that in order to "share" her elephant, she had to acknowledge that she, the elephant and I were all separate beings (stuffed or otherwise.)

(Stay tuned for the part where I am proven wrong.  Wrong wrong wrong.  But for now, back to the part where I was all Proud!Shocked!Parent.)

"For Mama?" I asked.

"Ababa BABABA!" she insisted.

I'm no fool.  I took the elephant.  "Thank you," I said.  "Thank you for sharing your toys with Mama."

And she immediately burst into tears and started flailing her hands about in what was clearly an attempt to regain possession of her beloved toy at all costs.

A few days later, she was enjoying a frozen teether.  After said teether was sufficiently covered in her spit and slobber, she held it out to me.

I was understandably much less excited to "share" this particular item, but she was rather insistent.

"Amamamamama!" she said, which I assume is baby-speak for, "Goddammit, I'm offering you my toy, this is my most favorite toy and I will be insulted until the end of time if you do not show some interest in it."

This time, she chewed on one end and I chewed on the other, and this by her was an acceptable method of "sharing."

I know what you're thinking.  You're thinking, "Ohmygod, that's totally gross.  Ew ew ew ew."  And all of you who are thinking that are totally right.  It's gross.  And, for that matter, it was a frozen teether, so it was very, very cold.  But I'm pretty sure that in the Parenting Bible, it says something like, "If your infant voluntarily shares her toys with you, you say 'thank you' and do not ever, under any circumstances, ever ever turn her down."

(And again, stay tuned.  It totally gets worse.)

By the end of this week, we had this "sharing" thing down cold.  She would play with a toy (wherein "play" equals "cover in baby spit") and then offer it to me with her Hopeful Face on.  I would dutifully open my mouth and say, "Om nom nom!" and chew on the toy for a bit, until she decided the toy was, in fact, hers and she wanted it back.  On several occasions, she would chew on one end of the toy and I would chew on the other end, and we looked like two puppies fighting over a toy.  Sort of.  I guess.

Then something happened.  On Friday, Leah thew up at daycare.  They called me mid-day at work to inform me that my daughter had upchucked in her crib and I needed to come pick her up and take her home.  So I did.  She vomited one more time at home, about two hours after we'd arrived, and then slowly began to perk back up.  By 6 p.m., she was on the floor, orange frozen teether in her mouth, as though she had not just six hours prior been emptying her stomach contents into her daycare crib and forcing them to bring out the hazmat mop.

Then she offered the teether to me.

I looked at the toy.  I frowned.  "No thank you, Leah," I said.

I went back to my Angry Birds.  She went back to her teether.  A few minutes later, she tried again, this time with a sweet, "Gah?" and her head tilted Just So in a way that would make a photographer swoon.

"No thank you," I tried again.  "That's your toy.  Mommy has her own toy."

At this, she became quite upset and began to pitch a fit in that whiny way that only a sick child can manage.

Fine.  It had been a long day and she hadn't puked in four hours.  I got down on the floor and chewed on the teether to her satisfaction.

Two things about this:
1) In case you're wondering, Leah is on the mend and I've not yet gotten ill.  And
2) I believe we've reached a boundary.  Fine, I shared her slobber-covered toy when she was pukey.  But this morning, Leah insisted that I chew on my own hair.  I am all in favor of her learning how to share, but there is something to be said for the idea that you can't share something that doesn't belong to you in the first place.

From Leah, with love.

I have a subscription to "Parenting" magazine.  This is partially because I felt it would be helpful but mostly because I was asked if I wanted to subscribe and get a free issue and I couldn't say no, and then I forgot to cancel it before I had to start paying for it.

But I digress.

I have a subscription to "Parenting" magazine.  I sometimes read it and sometimes forget that I have it, depending on the day.  It happened that I actually had time to read the November issue on the day it arrived (otherwise known as the day I sorted through the mail pile and realized it had been delivered at some time within the past week or so.)  I do enjoy it, do find the articles to be (usually) helpful and (sometimes) interesting, and I especially like that most of the articles are very short.  Clearly this was written for parents who don't have time to sit and read a magazine for an hour.  Well done, "Parenting."

There was an article in the November issue written by a dad about middle-of-the-night wake-ups.  "This will be interesting," I thought.  "I will read this, and I will learn something."  Because I do, at least once a night, have a visit with my daughter who has woken from her slumber and is demanding food or attention or a warm body to snuggle with.

The article, titled "Our Finest Hour" (Page 58 of the November 2012 issue, for those of you who want to follow along in your books at home), proposes that a baby crying at night is "like an opera - it starts out quiet, and then crescendos into a dramatic aria."  And this particular father gave it some thought and decided that when he only woke when the child reached the aria, he was missing the best part.  And so he started getting up early, before the child's predictable cry, in order to hear the start of the opera.

This melted my heart.  I'm reasonably certain I "awwww"'d out loud.

The guy gets up on purpose at 4:15 every goddamn morning to hear is kid wake up, and then he feeds his son, and then, he says, "We just hang."

I would not be outdone by some hipster dad.  I COULD HANG, TOO, DAMMIT.  So Leah and I had a middle-of-the-night "hang" session one night because she woke up, had her midnight snack, and decided she was not, in fact, interested in going back to sleep at all, thank you, and further, she had some things she wanted to talk about.  I thought, "I'll try that 'hang' thing.  It'll be fun."

Yeah, no.  I mean, it was, for about 20 minutes.  But our "hang" session was three hours long.  It included two diaper changes and two failed attempts on my part to put an end to the party before she finally consented.  The next day, I required three cups of coffee (in comparison to my usual 1) just to get through my work day.

"4:30 a.m. is a gift," this article concludes.

I'd like a refund, por favor.

All your toys are belong to me!

Earlier this week, I happened to arrive  at daycare to pick Leah up at the same time as "Keaton's" mom.  Keaton is a couple of months younger than Leah, and I picked up from an overheard conversation that he is not a first child.  I therefore observed Keaton's interaction with his mother as one might observe mice in a lab: In a controlled environment, I was hoping to learn something that might be useful in my interactions with my own child.

Lo and behold, after Keaton was all suited up in his jacket and secured in his carrier, Keaton's mom presented him with two toys.  "Which one?" she asked him, and Keaton smiled and, after a moment, chose the toy in the right hand.  "Yeah, I thought so," said Keaton's mom, and she smiled at me, and I smiled back, and off they went.

Well, I can do that, I thought.  I can present two options.  My kid can make a choice.  Surely this is not that difficult.

So today, as I was making blueberry puree and was home alone and thus needed my child to be occupied, I presented Leah with two toys, one in each hand, just as I'd seen Keaton's mom do.  "Which one?" I asked her, and she assumed the same happy expression I'd seen on Keaton's face when faced with this question.  I dared to hope as she got a knowing glint in her eye...

...And reached out with both hands, one for each toy.

So there you have it.  My daughter believes she can have everything she wants.

After giving it some thought, I've decided she's smarter than Keaton after all.

It's fine. We'll just never clean again.

Leah has been enjoying a period of perfect bliss.  Once she got over her initial belief that the outside world sucked donkey balls and she hated everyone and everything that was not a warm, fuzzy swaddle and a mommy snuggle and DEAR GOD, MOMMY, do not let anyone else hold me or I'll scream my head off, she has been a reasonably happy baby.  She no longer fears strangers (or grandparents), rides in the stroller are full of win, and it's totally fun to go out to Target and sit up in the cart and smile and babble and giggle to herself.  Oh, and bottles?  We're so over throwing tantrums about those.  Now she prefers to watch all bottle preparation so that the instant it's ready, she may snatch it from your hand and shove it into her mouth.  Everything is new and interesting and worthy of being gummed (if possible) or at least oggled with a wide-eyed stare that can only be seen on the face of someone who has never seen This Thing before.  

That period, unfortunately, is over.

The world is still pretty awesome and worthy of being explored with the same wide-eyed stare, but we now have "fears" and "dislikes."  Green vegetables are a definite "dislike."  I've attempted to explain to her that if all she eats is carrots, squash and sweet potatoes, she's going to start turning colors and smelling funny, but so far this logic eludes her.  (Or maybe she really wants to be orange.  I don't know.)

As for fears?  One day, I was home alone with Leah.  She was in her Jumperoo, happy as a clam, and so I thought to myself, "I know.  I'll vacuum."

The scream of terror she emitted when I turned on the appliance was as though I had opened the gates of hell and let the soul-eating devil monsters out to get my child.  

So (because I'm not a complete bitch), I turned it off and scooped her up, and she proceeded to whimper like a puppy left out all night in the rain, and stare over my shoulder at the Vacu-Terror.  Even though it was off.  And unplugged.

Five minutes later, I took this photo.  Guess what she's still staring at?  Yeah.

Other attempts to vacuum have been met with similar results.  If I try to do it when she's napping on a Saturday afternoon, she wakes up and alerts me to the arrival of the zombie apocalypse.  Put her in the bathroom with the fan running, I thought, and that will mask the noise.  But no.  The monsters are still coming and she is still scared and no stupid fan is going to fool her.

She also seems to have a distinct fear of long-sleeve shirts.  I believe it's because she thinks her tiny little fingers are going to get lost inside the sleeves and, Dear God, what will she do without those?

For the sake and sanity of everyone in this house, I sincerely hope she moves on from all of this, and the sooner the better.

 

You haz betrayed my tiny trust.

We've started giving Leah vegetables.

No... no, that's not right.

We've started pushing spoonfuls of rainbow puree into her mouth.

It's quickly become clear to me why so many children hate vegetables: It's because as children, their parents, in one form or another, at some point before the poor little memory began, spent an insurmountable amount of time and energy forcing unspiced vegetable goo down their throats.  Preference?  Pfffft.  Babies don't have preferences!  Give them ALL the vegetables!  Give them pureed carrots, pees, squash, sweet potatoes, hell, give them spinach!  Give them beets!  Introduce your baby to flavor!

Except the fatal flaw in this logic is that some vegetables, with no butter or salt or pepper or spice or anything added to them, do in fact still taste like the dirt they were grown in.

In an effort to earn back some of the Hippie Karma we lost when we decided to use disposable diapers and formula, Dan and I are making our own baby food.  (Also, it's about a gazllion times cheaper to steam and puree a bunch of Farmer's Market carrots than it is to buy the jars in the store.)  This is mostly a good idea, except that I'm now sitting on a bunch of pea puree that I can't justify giving to my child because she cries every time I attempt to feed her the accursed bright green goop.

But wasting is no good, and I'm certainly not going to eat it, so this week I decided to get creative.  On Wednesday evening, I prepared oatmeal (adored by child) and carrots (tolerated by child) and a a couple tablespoons of the detested green peas.  I fed her two spoonfuls of oatmeal, for which she opened up her mouth like a hungry baby bird.

Then I blitzed her trusting face with a spoonful of mixed carrots and peas.

Results were mixed.  On the one hand, she ate all of the oatmeal and about 3/4 of the pea-carrot mixture.  On the other hand, by the time we were finished, the look on her face clearly implied that I had just declared a dinnertime war that may continue for years to come.

I've given her a break and introduced sweet potatoes, which may outrank the oatmeal as Most Favorite Food Ever.  Squash is next on the list, but it occurs to me that maybe we ought to introduce a different color before she starts turning orange.


 

Well, that should make for an interesting poop.

I understand that people don't want to hear about my baby's poops, and so I make a conscious effort not to post about them.  And you should therefore know that this post is not actually, in fact, about Leah's poop.  It's about the thing she ate that ultimately came out in her poop without having been the least bit digested.

Ladies and gentlemen of the Bad Parenting jury... my daughter ate a Band-Aid.

This is actually the end of the story, and nothing even remotely interesting happened after it, except that the next morning she did, in fact, poop out one tiny little bandage that had previously been at the tip of her left pointer finger.

Although I promised not to tell other people how to parent their kids, I can and will tell you that should your child ever consume a Band-Aid (or, in our case, Target store brand "flexible bandage"), it will likely not bother the child in the slightest and will go through the system unobtrusively in about 12 hours.

How I know this for a fact: Witness one lively, smiling, completely unharmed Leah Danielle Bush, who not only survived eating the bandage but also the wound that warranted its placement in the first place.

Leah's "first boo-boo" will go down in her personal history (read: "baby book") not as a self-inflicted wound, but rather as an accidental nip of her fingertip by her well-intentioned daddy as he tried to clip her fingernails.

(Aside: Up to this point, I had been biting them off, which sounds disgusting but is apparently a completely socially acceptable way of taking care of an infant's fingernails.  It's one of a bazillion things that people don't give a lot of thought to until parenthood is staring them dead in the face and some consideration has to be given to the fact that you will be completely responsible for tending to the activities of daily living of a very small and helpless being for the foreseeable future.  Tiny fingernails are scary.  Much scarier, in retrospect, than dirty diapers - because caring for them carries the potential for actual bodily harm.)

It bled a bit, and as we as first-time parents have no concept of how much blood an infant can lose before it becomes an Emergency, when it bled through several pieces of gauze and a first Band-Aid, we loaded her into the car and drove her to Urgent Care.

It should be noted that:

a) Leah giggled the whole way and
b) Her finger had stopped bleeding by the time we were in front of a medical professional.

Nonetheless, the doctor put a Band-Aid on the "wound" (though I suspect it was more to make Leah's parents feel better than to appease the actual patient) and told us to watch for infection.  But likely she would be fine.

Which she was, except that the trip to the clinic meant she had missed dinner, and so she was hungry and, at some point in the hour following our clinic visit, she sucked that little bandage right off her finger like it was a sugar-coated gumdrop, and down the gullet it went.

Truth be told, my first thought was that we should load her back in the car and take her back to Urgent Care, but no.  No no no.  I made myself give her a bottle and put her to bed, consumed foreign object and all - not because I wasn't actually worried.  I must've done a Breath Check every hour that night.

It was because, God help us, we are not going to become Those Parents.  I appreciate that Dean East Urgent Care indulged us once in six months; I was not going to press our luck by adding a second visit within  six hours.  Not for this.  Maybe for a fall down the stairs, but hopefully we won't ever have to put that to the test.

 

I did not actually fall off the face of the Earth.

Dear Jeff Vogel,

As much as I enjoy your wonderful book, I have spent the better part of the last two months questioning exactly how you managed to write it.  And I came to the conclusion that either a) you had a very understanding wife who said, "Oh, yes, by all means, spend two hours every night behind the locked door of your office and pay no attention to your screaming child; I'll take care of her," or 2) You gave Cordelia a very effective sedative every night.  If a) then your wife should get the credit for writing Poo Bomb, and if 2) can I please have some?

(There is an option D, which is that you are simply quicker, better and wittier than I am, but I would rather not acknowledge that as a possibility.)

-

As most of you have no doubt noticed, this blog went to shit at the end of May, when I returned to work.  In stark contrast with all reasonable sensibility, one does not, in fact, get more hours in the day when one procreates.  There are still only 24 or them, which must now be spread even thinner than they already were.  This either means less time for sleeping, less time for the child, or less time for enjoyable freetime writering-things.  As I quite enjoy sleeping, and as I sort of feel that letting Leah cry while I lock myself in a closet with my laptop for an hour would be bad form, my freetime has suffered considerably.

Fortunately, now five months old, Leah has what can probably be called a semi-regular, mostly consistent bedtime routine that has her asleep by 8:00 each night, which means I may have earned some of that freetime back, if I'm not too ungodly exhausted to do anything but go to sleep myself.

Rather than backtrack, I'm simply going to pick up the ball from this point, because it's likely that trying to rehash everything that's happened since May would be a complete shitshow.

Instead, you should all know this: I have the best baby ever.

There.  I said it.  I have a GOOD BABY, and I would really like to tattoo it on my forehead or get a T-shirt for every day of the week proclaiming just how incredibly awesome my child is*.

When I returned to work, Leah started day care.  When Leah started day care, she became a social butterfly.  She has no fewer than three little boyfriends, all of whom are adorable and - as I've told her many times - all of whom have cooties.  She has found her voice and progressed to uncontrollable inflection, and if you want an opinion on just about anything, she will give it to you (and then grunt at you when you say things like, "Oh really?" or, "Is that so?")

I can only conclude that my returning to work brought her out of her shell as she was exposed to the idea that she is not, in fact, the only baby in the universe, and there might just be someone out there who understands the language she speaks.

She is well-behaved in public unless she's hungry or needs to have her diaper changed, which I can totally understand, because I'm an absolute bitch if I haven't eaten and, hey.  Who among us doesn't like to have a nice clean behind?  The bottom line is, with a few noted exceptions, we don't have to fear taking her out in public or leaving her home with a baby-sitter.

Stay tuned for the latter six months of her first year, when I promise to try to update at least monthly.

"Try."  Nice word, isn't it?








*This opinion is one part Proud Mama Syndrome and two parts I've Been Told I'm a Lucky Bitch By The Whole World.

Pull my finger?

Leah appears to have discovered that she can control her hands.  I am very much in favor of this, as it seems to me that to get anywhere in life, this is something she needs to know.

(I know, I know - I've seen the people who put paintbrushes in their mouths and make masterpieces, too.  But if genetics has anything to say about it, Leah will be terrible at art.)

My daughter and I have different strategies in mind for honing and perfecting this new skill.  She wants to spend a lot of time very slowly putting her hand in her mouth, then taking it out, and repeating this action until she stops hitting herself in the face.  She seems determined to get the entire fist in her mouth, and while she's been encouraged on numerous occasions to aim for just the thumb, it seems she's determined to prove she can pull this trick off.  Someday, maybe she'll enter a beauty contest a la "Little Miss Sunshine."  Or maybe she'll just be fun at parties.

I have tried for days to make that not sound dirty.  Sorry, folks.  It is what it is.

I, meanwhile, have invented a game I call "Fishing for Leah," whereby I dangle a chain of brightly colored oval links above her until she grabs for it.

Remember when she was boring?  Those days are over.  Now she's just unaware enough to unwittingly be my dancing monkey.

Sweet.

Children's Clothing: Magical Happy Funtime World

One day this week, I was dressing Leah (for the second time that day, after she did an impressive job of spitting up all over herself) and talking to her, as I often do, about the world around her.  We talk about lots of things when she's getting dressed, because I'm not very fast at it, and because she thoroughly enjoys not wearing pants.  On this day, as on most days, we went through a ritual: I said, "What do you want to wear today, Leah?"  And she flung her little arms about, and I reached into her drawer and pulled out a brown onesie and proceeded, as I always do, to explain it to her.  "How about this one?  It's brown.  Can you say 'brown'?  And look, it has some animals on it.  It has a giraffe, and a rhinosorus, and an elephant, and a crocodile.  And it says right here 'best friends.'  And that's--"

And I stopped talking, because it hit me right then that my daughter's clothing was complete bullshit.

I think I was OK until I got to the crocodile.  Someday, we'll take Leah to the zoo, and she'll say, "Mommy, why is the alligator all by himself and not with the giraffe?  I thought they were friends."  And I will have to say, "No, Honey, I'm sorry.  In real life the crocodile and his very sharp teeth would tear the giraffe to shreds if he could."  Not to mention all the complexities of different habitats, which I really hope some biology teacher explains someday, because although I can play Zoo Tycoon like a boss, I fully admit to the occasional purchase of a penguin or peacock just so I can put it in with the lions and see what happens.

I've since taken a survey of my daughter's clothing, and I noticed that most of it has this same "happy world where everyone and everything loves each other" motif.  The animals all smile and have big, innocent eyes and look absolutely adorable and not vicious at all.  And I get that we want our children to feel safe, and to protect them from the knowledge that there are bad things in the world, and to teach them to love all animals and whatever.  That's all well and good.  But she doesn't care what's on her shirt.  When we say that the giraffe and the elephant and the rhino and the crocodile are best friends, who is that message for?  I could put her in blue plaid with orange polka dots and she wouldn't know the difference.  All her current wardrobe is teaching her is that she can feel free to go climbing over the bars of the gorilla habitat at the zoo and it will hug her and cuddle her and smile at her for all of time and they will be the most happiest of best friends forever.

I'm pretty sure the most honest piece of clothing she owns is a onesie that says, "I love my mommy, even though she's a bitch."

Shooting baby up with viruses (or, Where I judge the Hippies)

Leah is now two months old.  Developmentally, she has progressed to holding conversations with the patterns on my animal-print body pillow.  Adorable as fuck, but I continue to have concern for the child's ability to engage in conversation with animated objects.

Reaching the two-month mark also means that the children of all Normal Parents get their first shots.

(I try really hard not to judge other parents, but I put on my Judging You hat when parents choose not to vaccinate their babies.  Jenny McCarthy is not a doctor.  Her kid is autistic and she couldn't deal, so she had to blame someone.  She's an airhead, and if you make medical decisions based on her ideas, you're an airhead, too.)

But I digress.

Leah went in for her first shots.  I'll be honest, I don't remember what most of them are.  I trust the Medical Professionals that they are the right ones and are important and if I have a question and need to call the nifty Nurse On Call, she will know what I mean when I say, "She got her two-month shots."  Because she's a nurse. And not Jenny McCarthy.  I only remember that TdaP (DTaP?  Pad-Thai?) is one of them, and specifically that the "P" stands for "pertussis", otherwise known as Whopping Cough, which is at the top of my Important Shit list on account of said disease is on the rise in our very county because..why?

...


Oh.  That's right.  Those pro-communicable disease people.

  And as Leah may very well interact with some of these children at daycare, I wanted to make damn sure she got her first step toward being inocculated against their parents' stupidity.

But I digress again.

Here is a brief summary of how the visit went:
- Nurse asked me a bunch of questions.  I mentioned that she (Leah, not the nurse) spits up a lot.
- Leah demonstrated this by spitting up on the exam table.
- Then she cried.
- Nurse left.  Leah calmed down after being picked up and allowed to stare at the wall over my shoulder.
- Doctor came in.  Poked at the baby.  Pronounced her to be very strong, pretty tall and sorta skinny.  All in all, "average."
- Nurse returned bearing Tray of Evil Things.
- Nurse gave a vaccine in drink form.  Leah had a new Favorite Thing Ever for five seconds.
- Nurse instructed me to hold baby's hands so she could jab baby in thighs with sharp things.
- Baby turned beet red and screamed as though the world was coming to an end.
- I laughed.

Yes, I laughed.  And then I bundled up my baby to take her home, and she realized she was in her Safe Place as soon as the 5-point harness was secured, and she stopped crying.  It was very much like taking my cats to the vet, except that Leah didn't pee in the corner or try to knock the treats container on the floor.

My only regret in laughing at her (and spending the next five minutes telling her that her life is really not that terrible and she should calm the fuck down) is that I think she got wise to the fact that I was making fun of her.  She spent the rest of the night being an absolute fusspot.  So I did what any good mother would do.

I left her alone with her father for an hour while I went shopping.

Paranoia, paranoia, everybody's coming to get me...

My father suddenly visits a lot.

When he cannot visit, he calls.

On Monday, I had to call him and tell him that, due to the very busy week ahead, I didn't have time to just sit and chat this week, but he was welcome to come over and help me with household chores or yard work or baby-tending.

He did not come over this week.

Once we got that all settled, the conversation steered to a number of other things.  First he asked about the baby's well-being, and I said what I always say when people ask how the baby is doing.  I said, "She's fine.  This week she _____________ (learned to reach for things)."  And he said, "Oh, that's great, and by the way, did you ever consider the fact that if you leave Leah's bedroom door open at night and someone is walking by outside, they might see there is a baby inside?"

This completely broke my brain.

I took a few moments to blink and say nothing and try to reboot my mental faculties.  Then I decided that he couldn't possibly be implying what it sounded like he was implying and I must have misunderstood.  So, like an idiot, I opened my word-hole and said, "What?"

"You know.  Someone might break in and take her."

(I will choose to ignore the part of me that wants to write about how this is a completely inappropriate thing to say to a new mother, or any mother, ever, on the face of the Earth for all of time, and how I stayed up half the night worrying about it.) 

I calmly told my father that we always close both of Leah's bedroom doors at night, and that even if we didn't, the only way anyone would be able to possibly see into her bedroom would be if they were already in our breezeway.  So if someone was going to steal Leah away out of her bedroom, they would need to already know that we have an infant, and that she sleeps in that particular bedroom.  Otherwise, we'd be looking for a baby-snatcher who goes around, creepily looking into everyone's open windows and doors, looking for a baby to steal.

And then I hung up the phone and had a freakout.  And I continued to quietly freak out about it for the rest of the week.  Logic has no place in the mind of a new mom, no matter how casual and laid-back said mother is.  

But I don't blame my father for his lapse in judgment.  I blame the media, which jumps on the stories of missing white children like a pack of rabid dogs and makes TV movies about this shit for Lifetime.

The majority of Bad People do not stranger-kidnap infants.  You know why?  Because taking care of one is really hard.  Also, they cry a lot.  Also, they require a multitude of care-taking supplies that cost a lot of money that would severely cut into any ransom.  And this is encompassing all infants - nevermind Miss Leah's very special lungs and the fact that she is, hands down, the loudest and least patient baby I have ever met.  If anyone did steal her, she would make sure they immediately regretted their decision and they would probably put her back and go in search of a baby more conducive to their scheme.

But as I said, that's not going to happen.  It's not going to happen because when newborns disappear in real life, eventually the (inevitably very public) case almost always leads to a member of the family, an estranged parent, or a family friend.  So let's just make a deal: If you are reading this blog, you agree not to steal my baby, and I will agree not to murder you in the face.

Also, as a general PSA, please do not go around suggesting to parents that someone may steal their child out of their bedroom at night.  It's really not helpful at all.

Now that we're all square on the baby-snatching front, maybe I can get some sleep.

Someday, we will have a lot of parent/teacher conferences.

Since Leah's arrival, my husband and I have been trying to tone down our use of profanity.

Well.  Sort of trying.

Kind of.

It's not going well.

So one day, as I was crossing the living room floor and managed to trip over something (possibly my own feet, I don't know), I said, "Shit."  And then I immediately turned to Leah and advised, "That is a word you shouldn't say."

Later that same day, for reasons I don't recall, I said, "Fuck."  And then I turned to the baby again and said, "That is another word you shouldn't say."

And then I realized that if we cannot control our language around the baby, she at least ought to be advised of the words she shouldn't say.  Otherwise, how would she ever know which parts of our conversations are just for grown-ups?  She might be sitting in a third-grade social studies class, learning about government, and the teacher would say, "Our country has two major political parties, Democrats and Republicans," and Leah would gasp and scold her teacher for using the word "Republican."

(This, in case you were curious, is the same way I intend to approach the subject of sex with her someday: She is going to have it, and I would rather have her get the correct information from her father and myself than to trust the public education system to do it properly.  I am still horrified that in middle school, my sex ed class began with the teacher writing the word "ABSTINENCE" on the blackboard in 72-point font and underlining it with red colored chalk.  No, Leah is going to learn about sex properly, and not from some boy in the back of the bus with a magazine.)

But we have many-several years before she starts putting her Ken doll on top of the Barbie doll and furtively looking around to make sure no one's watching.

For now, swearing is the priority, and so when she was awake and alert, I put Leah in my lap and said, "Now listen.  There are some words that Mommy and Daddy say that you should not say ever.  Or... well, can you at least wait until you're 12?"  And then I proceeded to list them for her:

Shit
Fuck
Crap
Bitch, and while we're at it, comma-son of a
Asshole
Asswipe
Douchenozzle
Turd Gobbler

Then I realized she was looking up at me with the most adorable shit-eating grin you ever did see, and I said, "We are so screwed."

And then I said, "Don't say 'screw'."

But, no, seriously.  I should probably just stop talking in front of the baby for, like, forever.

Mama's Girl

Leah is starting to develop preferences for things.  At the top of this list is a strong preference for BEING HELD BY MOMMY.  I am OK with this just as much as I am not OK with it.

Her desire to be near me is an excellent confidence builder.  That she wants to tell me gurgle-stories while she sits in my lap, or that she looks at me as though I created the universe itself, is a whole new kind of awesome.  However, there are other people in this world who want to hold her: Grandparents.  Great-grandparents.  My co-workers.  Aunts and uncles.  Mommy and Daddy's friends.  Unassuming strangers.  And all of these people stand about a 90 percent chance of being screamed at because, apparently, my daughter is not the kind of baby who wants to be passed around so she can show off how adorable and well-behaved she is.  If you have managed to hold Leah for more than five minutes in the last two weeks and have her not start possessed-dolphin screeching at you, congratulations.  Your name is on a very elite list.  You must have magical powers or something.  Not even her grandfather could manage this feat.

Fortunately, she will also sometimes stand to be entertained by non-Humanoid neglect-o-matics.  The swing.  The bouncy chair.  This glow-worm seahorse toy that I stand about a 1 in 4 chance of not remembering how to turn on.  She likes musical things over other toys.  If the TV is on, she prefers sports or game shows to anything with an actual plot (to be fair, this is likely inherited behavior.  For generations, my family has turned these things on so that if we zonk out in the middle, we can wake up and still know what happened just by looking at the score.)  She likes to stare out the window, though what exactly she's looking at, I can't say.  She also spends a fair amount of time staring at the upper corner of our china cabinet.

She will engage inanimate objects in conversation from time to time, which is equal parts amusing and disturbing.  Not every 8-week-old will spend 20 minutes talking to a stuffed leaf.  Some grown-ups could, but because I do not want to pay a fortune in psychiatric bills, I'm hoping she eventually starts to engage things that have, you know, eyes.

Other things Leah likes:
Being naked
Being placed in her car seat and bashed against Mommy's leg (Mommy has bruises and truly wishes this wasn't a thing)

I have begun to suspect that we are raising a very strange child.

Lucky for her, she fits right in at home.

Gimme Gimme Gimme

This has been a productive week for Leah.

To start with, she discovered that she can grasp rhings.  You'll notice I said "grasp" and not "grab".  She cannot reach out and possess things (even if they are attached to her body.)  She can, however, express a strong desire to have something as her very own forever if it is placed in her hand or mouth.  If she really wants it, getting it back becomes not unlike trying to take a tennis ball from a very rambunctious puppy.  She also cannot reason that some things are not an extension of herself.  Therefore if she has something in her hand, she can fling it about until her motor skills give out and she opens her palm and drops it.  Then she cries.  Or if she has something in her mouth that is attached to other things (like, say, my nipple, which is attached to my body) and she wants to turn her head and the thing will not go and also, Mommy gets mad and takes the thing away, she also cries.  So there's some work to be done on that front yet, clearly.

Lucky for us, she has also started to make sounds that are not crying.  This is a refreshing change of pace as it is now possible to (sort of) tell when she is enjoying something.  Furthermore, she has made herself a source of entertainment in that she will sometimes pipe up in conversation with a little squeal or grunt at extremely convenient times, so that it almost sounds like she's voicing an opinion.  Sometimes, when she is in an extremely good mood, this means we can have a conversation:

Me: Hi Leah!  How are you today?  Are you a happy girl today?  Are you Mommy's happy girl today?
Leah: Aaaaahphhht!
Me: How do you feel about a new shirt?
Leah: Guh.
Me: Oh, my goodness.  Look at that dirty diaper.  That is such a big poopy for such a little girl.  Yes it is.  Yes it is.
Leah: ...*blank stare*

Of course, most of the time I just get the *blank stare* part of that, but I like to think that maybe, just maybe, that stare is not as blank as it looks.  That maybe her little brain is cyphering on what I have just said.

Also, she smiles now!  There really isn't any rhyme or reason to those smiles, though.  Like the happy-grunty-not crying sounds, they are just there.  Sometimes they are timed very conveniently so as to make Mommy or Daddy (or Grandma, who I think delights in the whole "smile" thing even more than we do) think we've done something to make her happy.

Then five seconds later she fixates her eyes on the china hutch for no reason, or fills her diaper, or starts to cry.  After some observation, I've decided that her smiles are not at all an indication of emotion.  They are an indication that she is about to change something about what she's doing, and I may or may not enjoy it.  Each Leah Smile is like reaching into the Mystery Bag of Life.

And then there's the biggie.  A couple of days ago, I was on the floor with Leah, doing the all-important "tummy time."  Tummy time is one of those obligatory parent-things that we have to do even if the baby screams her little head off, because otherwise she will never develop stomach muscles and will be a helpless, back-laying nobody for the rest of her life.  If you want to get anywhere in life, you need abs as a child.  And so we do tummy time, which amounts to me putting her face-down on a blanket and letting her push and squirm and move around until she gets totally frustrated, at which point I will pick her up and assure her that the world did not disappear into red-and-white checker design.  But I digress.  We were doing the tummy time thing, and she got her little arms under her squirmy body, hoisted herself half an inch off the ground in a pseudo push-up position and then, right before my eyes, pushed herself over onto her side and then onto her back.

It was the most amazing thing I have seen in a very long time.

It also made me realize that, whether we are ready for it or not, Leah is now slightly mobile.  Very soon, she will be able to roll the other way, too, and then she will be even more mobile.  And then she will learn to crawl, and we are completely fucked and should probably re-take that Infant CPR class, because she is most definitely going to eventually put something in her mouth that she finds on the floor, because it's not like we're the best housekeepers in the world.

But I think we're safe for a little longer, as right now she is very much like a turtle.  (I can no longer justifiably call her a potato.  Potatoes, awesome as they are, are not capable of self-propulsion.  If you want them to roll, they must be pushed.)  Turtles, however, occasionally flip themselves over onto their backs for no discernible reason and get stuck there and can only flail their little legs in the air until someone comes along to help.  That's exactly what Leah looks like right now.

Baby-Soft Skin and Other Mythological Things

First, a housekeeping issue.  Some of you may notice that I deleted the post on my feelings about breastfeeding.  There are two reasons for this:

1) After I got done being on my soapbox and was somewhat less hormonal emotional, I realized that post was entirely not in line with my intended purpose for this blog in that it had everything to do with me being opinionated and very little to do with Leah, and

2) The comments on that post were a wankfest that resulted in the dissolution of a relationship that meant a lot to me.  While valid points were made on both sides that directly related to the post, a lot of personal comments were also made, and I did not feel those belonged in a public forum.

Now.  Moving on.

Over the last week or so, Leah has developed what I refer to as "an unfortunate skin condition."  First her cheeks were extra rosy and a little dry, and we grouped it in with the rest of her skin, which was also going through a molting of sorts which All The Books assured us was completely normal in the first weeks of life.  We put lotion on her and called it good.  Then her scalp started to look funny and there were little red dots on her face, and people started to ask questions - "Are you sure it's nothing to be concerned about?"  (Note: If you want to shake a new parent's confidence, there is no better way to do that than to ask if we're sure our child is normal.)  We decided, based on a quick consultation with Dr. Google, that Leah was suffering from cradle cap and baby acne.  Though unfortunate, both Dr. Google and her actual doctor assured us that both conditions a) were common and b) would go away on their own, though there were home remedies we could certainly try.  We set about applying baby oil to her scalp and washing her face more regularly.

Then one day, very early in the morning after I'd been up most of the night, I looked at my little girl and realized that the yellow scaliness from her scalp had migrated south and now covered the entirety of her face, her neck, her chest and her upper back.

I completely lost my shit.

I scheduled a same-day appointment with the pediatrician, where the very nice doctor did a very good job of not patronizing me as she told me to CTFD.  This, too, was relatively common, was not harmful to her and would go away on its own if left untreated.  However, since it was clearly bothering me (and who wouldn't be bothered by their newborn child suddenly developing the skin of a reptile?), there was a cream that we could put on her face to speed up the healing process, make her skin less irritated and, in general, bring our perfect baby back to us sooner.

I have no delusions that Leah will grow up to be a model.  She is doomed by heredity to suffer through years of acne that will inevitably leave her with scarred skin for all of her life.  I just figured I had a good 12 years of confidence-building before that happened.

After five days of treatment, I'm pleased to report that Leah's "normal" baby skin is returning, though she does smell vaguely like cheese and the condition tends to leave yellow stains on her clothes as though she's the world's youngest smoker.  I didn't take pictures, but I did find this blog entry by someone else that made me feel a million times better and more normal about everything that we've been seeing.  As the saying goes, "misery loves company."

Here is where my baby girl starts to distinguish herself from a potato.  I would not freak the hell out if one day I got out my potato and noticed it had yellow shit growing all over it.  I would just toss the potato and get a new one.

Babies are sort of not like that.  The law tends to frown on people who cannot make this differentiation.

I Am, Except When I'm Not

All The Books will tell you that a 1-month-old Human child has no concept of object permanence.  The thing about looking at that from an adult's point of view is that I have no concept of what it's like to have no concept of object permanence.  My grown-up mind is blown by this concept that I sometimes don't exist.

(This is about to get pretty existential and deep.  You might want to get some nachos or something.)

Last Wednesday, Dan and I left Leah with a baby-sitter so that we could go to an Infant CPR class.  We were gone for a couple of hours, and when we returned, that baby looked at me as though she was laying eyes on the Great Maker herownself.  This did wonderful things for my Momfidence, first of all, because I figured if she despised me, I would have gotten a look that said, "What are you doing back?" instead of, "OMFG MOMMY-THING EXISTS AGAIN!!!1!!"

I took her in my arms and smooched her little face and when I pulled back and did that thing that parents do - "Hi Leah!  Hi!  Hi!"* - she was just staring at me with huge blue eyes, and  it succeeded in melting me into a Mommy-goo pile that got gooier at the center for every second she did not look away.

Clearly I had just performed the most awesome magic trick her little mind had ever seen: I ceased to exist, only to reappear again at a later time, continuing on with life as though nothing had changed.  But is my two-hour David Copperfield impression enough time for her to forget that I am a thing?

And then I wondered, is the disappearance of some things more concerning to her mind than the disappearance of other things, or do we all rank pretty much the same on the "out of sight, out of mind" scale?  If her Super-Favorite Frog Toy was lost (or stashed under the couch by the cat) and found again several hours later, would she reconnect with it on the same level as she does with Dan or I when we "disappear"?  What is her little mind's capacity to remember things that she has less contact with?

I will have to do some experiments.

The other cool thing that happened this week is that she has learned to track objects with her eyes when they move.  Granted, this seems to be limited to brightly colored objects that make rattle sounds and are placed directly in her line of sight no more than a foot from her face and only move left to right, but I hold out hope that she will someday track my movements, too, so that she'll follow me into... say, the kitchen.  And fetch me a beer.

Someday, baby bird.  Someday.



*It doesn't matter how extensive my vocabulary used to be.  I find that even on days where I am being a Good Mom and Promoting Language Development by narrating my day to my daughter, I actually use very few big words.  This is part of why I crave contact with grown-ups.

Baby Hiccups: God-Given Respite

In one of the bazillion parenting books* I read while I was pregnant, there was a section on baby hiccups.  The author made sure to be very reassuring about the fact that hiccups don't bother your baby one bit and are generally more disconcerting to parents than they are to the child.  I expected to fit into this "concerned parent" category, because when I was pregnant, fetal hiccups bugged the crap out of me.

However, now that the baby is actually here, I find that I love Hiccup Time.  We have Hiccup Time two or three times a day, and I delight in its arrival and promptly put the baby down in her swing or her crib and go do other things. I usually have about 20 minutes, because Leah is less than a month old and therefore has no concept of hiccup remedies, and encouraging an infant to hold his or her breath is generally frowned upon anyway.  Twenty minutes is enough time for me to do a couple of household tasks - dishes, start or fold a load of laundry, clean the cat box (it's amazing how I am much more willing to clean my house now that I spend so much time in it.)

You can chastise me all you want, but the reality is, I very quickly discovered that during Hiccup Time, the baby ABSOLUTELY CANNOT CRY.  I've seen her try.  Her little face screws up to protest being put down or tickled or changed and then along comes a spasm of her tiny little diaphragm, and out comes the hiccup and the screwball face just disappears.  Upon further observation, I noticed that she is surprised by the arrival of each little hiccup as though she didn't expect it, whether it's the first or the fifth or the fiftieth.  This makes me even more confident in my actions.  I now believe that not only do the hiccups keep her from crying, they're also a source of entertainment that she unwittingly provides for herself.  I'm sure her little mind is being constantly stimulated during Hiccup Time: "Woah, what was that?!"... "Whoah, what was that?!"... "Woah, what was that?!"

The look she gets with each little hiccup is a tiny glimmer of hope that she is slowly becoming smarter than the potato.  However, I will not be entirely convinced she is going to thrive in this world until she proves herself to be smarter than the cat.  Stay tuned.





*Four, one of which I did not finish because it was a week-by-week and Leah was born eight days early and one of which I am still working on.  Deep dark secret #15: I am actually a very slow reader.  Oh, and there is also a book on breastfeeding that I picked up exactly once to search the index for ", alcohol and".

A Little Neglect Helps Me Stay Sane.

At 3 and a half weeks of age, Leah is getting quite proficient at holding her head up. She can do it for five or six seconds at a time, and when she's really on a roll, she'll do it a bunch of times in a row, making her not unlike a turtle peeking out of its shell. She seems pretty impressed with herself and likes to show this trick off to visitors - and who can blame her? It's about all she's got, other than, "Hey, isn't it cool how you put food in my food-hole and you never quite know which end it's going to come back out of?"

I'm sorry, but she's boring. I feel like I spend large portions of my day (and night, as it were) waiting for her to DO SOMETHING. If you don't have kids and want an idea of what this is like, go to your kitchen and get a potato. Put it on a mostly flat surface and stare at it, making comments about its peaceful apperance until it moves.

Yeah.

Spend enough time with that potato and you'll start checking every so often to find out if it's breathing. And that is the day, if you are a normal person, that you will realize your brain is completely broken.

When I had my first Breath Check Day, my eyeballs bugged out of my head and I made myself put the baby down and go do something else. Why? Because I realized that if I did not, the higher-functioning parts of my brain were in very real danger of becoming atrophied, making me completely unable to have conversations about Real Things with people who might not want to talk endlessly about my attempts to put my daughter on A Schedule.

So now Leah spends portions of her day doing things other than Hanging With Mommy. She chills in her swing (and now that her vision is improving and I'm convinced she's not going to be cross-eyed, I run the mobile, which she thinks is the shit.) She sleeps in her car seat. This is beneficial to her because she gets stimulation from somewhere else, and it's beneficial to me because I can type with two hands. This makes me happier, so that when she fusses about being overstimulated by X activity and needs to be scooped up again, I do it without complaint...

...Usually. One of my parenting books said it was OK to let the baby cry a little before attending to her starting at 3 weeks of age, and I highlighted the fuck out of that. So now if she's crying and I'm, say, changing a load of laundry or taking out the trash or trying to come up with a synonym for "ejaculate", I don't feel bad about wrapping up that task before looking in on her.

Someday, Leah will need therapy, and this is mostly all my fault. But because completely giving myself over to her would mean I'd need therapy NOW, I consider it a fair trade. "Doc," she'll say, "My mother is the source of all my problems because when I was an infant, she used to stash me in my swing while I slept so that she could have both hands free to write porn."

And when that day comes, I will gladly accompany her to that therapy appointment and defend myself, and I will have all of my mental faculties about me when I do it.

(Just kidding about the porn thing.)

(Probably.)

I Have No Advice For You.

At the time of this writing, my daughter is two weeks old. It's 1:30 in the morning, and I'm wearing a green spit-up rag on my shoulder. The spit-up rag is clean. The rest of my shirt is covered in baby puke. However I keep the rag there because I am eternally optimistic that she will, at some point, learn to control the direction of her vomit so that it lands where it is supposed to. This is good practice for when she someday goes to college and inevitably drinks much too much at at least one really good party. I was always a good puker, and I'm hoping she inherits that trait from me.

A little background: My husband, Dan, and I have been married slightly less than six years. We have between us 14 years of post-secondary education. We are things like "intelligent" and "logical" and "witty" and "capable of holding a discussion about current events and/or politics." And yeah, I put all that stuff in quotes, because two weeks ago, we went to the hospital and came home with this:

And now we have conversations about poop. Color, consistency, frequency. I can tell you without a doubt when little miss Leah Danielle last took a shit. I cannot tell you with the same degree of certainty what day it is or when I last took a shower. Furthermore, nearly everything we thought we knew about parenting prior to the birth of our daughter was dismissed out of hand by the child immediately upon, or directly following, her arrival. Everything we thought we knew is wrong, right down to exactly what time of day normal people are awake. Intelligent? Logical? Pffft. Our brains have been reduced by cuteness and lack of sleep to a couple of atrophied mush-piles. I would wager that at times, Leah is the smartest person in this house.

I will not be handing out parenting advice, because if there's one thing I've learned, it's that every child is different and knows his or her own mind, and anything I might write that even vaguely resembles advice (eg: "For the love of God, if you value your sleep and/or freedom, do not ever do this to yourself, EVER") is going to be completely useless to 90 percent of the people who read it. If you're here, you're here to be entertained. I will try to be funny, because if there's two things I've learned, it's that every child is different AND if you don't approach parenthood with a sense of humor, it will very slowly drive you mad.

So it's like this: Hi. My name is Becky. I'm 30 years old and a new mom. I exist on a maximum of 4 hours of sleep a night, and I'm reasonably certain I should not be trusted to operate a car or a toaster on most days, and yet the universe has seen fit to entrust me and my life-partner with the care of a newborn Human Child. Because at least five people have indicated that I might possibly be funny, and because it's a distraction that keeps me from opening a Twitter account when there's nothing on TV between 3 and 4 a.m., I will document the raising of said Human Child here. I invite you to watch.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I need to go change my shirt.