Knocked Up

Wobblerhood

2008-07-24T02:47:00Z

I think there's a category missing in the newborn-baby-toddler-kid-preteen-tween-teen-young adult continuum. Axel's no longer a baby. He's not yet a toddler. He's a half a toothed wobbler.

He's got one tooth, just one half of a tooth, jutting up - a daring incisor that's shimmying through his gum.

He can stand up on his own - as of last night, when I looked down to see he'd pushed himself up to standing using the low shelf of our oak desk.

He's since repeated the feat by gripping onto the baby gate, the coffee table, and the handle of the big drawer underneath the oven, and then trying to hold on one-handed and being shocked when he thuds to the floor. As with most developmental milestones he's reached, I cheered, and then, after he'd gone to sleep, I cried. Each time, he achieves the milestone sooner than I expect him to, sooner than I'm ready for him to, and each one is a step away from me and toward independence. I'm all for independence. I'll be delighted if he decides he wants to check off the potty training box by two. I want him to move out and go to college and get a real job that pays enough to cover a decent apartment and all the soy yogurt he can eat. But he's my baby, he's my boy, and I want to hug him and hold him in my arms while he's still smaller than me and willing to sit still for even a minute.

He can feed himself. Well, sort of. Some of the time. When it's Cheerios, and when he remembers which end of the sippy cup goes in his mouth.

Axel crawls at the high speed rate of twenty belly pulls a minute. He doesn't just babble, he babbles with a purpose. Sure, the purpose isn't at all clear to me. Maybe he's telling the green wooden frog about inflation and skyrocketing food prices. Maybe it's about how he wants me to start serving him Belgian waffles for breakfast. But I can tell by the earnestness of his pronounciation that he's got something important to say, and he's going to say it. He's also developing comedic timing - I swear he does that sticking your tongue out/thwppppt/spitting noise in the middle of diaper changes just to make me laugh. He giggles and grins and flirts and has a sense of himself, and of how he can relate to other people.

All these things - high speed crawling, pulling up to stand on his own, feeding himself, carrying on conversations with stackable wooden rings about the recession- make him seem to be a little beyond baby but not quite toddler. He doesn't yet toddle forward, or talk. But, for the past month, he's seemed like more than a baby. I get the feeling he'd be offended to be called a baby - if he had a firm grasp on the English language and knew what the word meant. There should be a word for this past babyhood but not yet a toddler stage, for the little ones who cry to be put down to crawl but can't yet demand mac and cheese, for those whose chubby legs wobble beneath them while they stand but don't take a step, who reach out for their parents and cry when they leave the room but can't yet say their names. So - unless someone out there knows of a better word for it - I'm calling this stage wobblerhood.

Baby Time

2008-07-20T20:56:00Z

We're in a new time zone: babytime. Time follows a new set of rules that keep changing all the time. The hours and minutes move more slowly than it does in the rest of the world. It can take one baby hour to fill fifteen minutes of standard time when you're stacking cups again and again for a baby to knock down. Yet time moves faster, too. In thirty seconds of standard time spent wiping down a highchair in the kitchen, a baby can magically work his way across the living room and end up sitting in the corner next to the couch.

Babytime doesn't allow for sleeping in and lounging with the paper and a cup of tea. You can't stroll for hours and eat a late margarita-filled lunch. Meals must be eaten at very regular intervals. Naps must be taken. If the baby drill seargant's food and sleep commands are ignored, there will be hell to pay in the form of daytime fussies and nightime waking and extra push ups. Those foolish enough to mess with the baby schedule will quickly learn the error of their ways.

Our lives are now structured based on invisible babytime watches. We do not go out to dinner at 6:30 pm. Waiting more than ten minutes for a table doesn't work. A missed nap re-sets the babytime clock. A long nap is a temporary babytime time-out, a two-hour return to Mountain Standard. We need an announcement to come over the speakers when childless friends come to visit, reminding them to set their clocks back, that they are now entering babytime. The only antidote for the jetlag is caffeine, combined with a generous dose of baby grins, drool, and cuddles.

In eight months of standard time, I've lived a few baby time lives. It feels like my son has always been around. Is there ever a time that I haven't been singing You Are My Sunshine, trying to recall if there's more than one verse? Can there have a been a time when I didn't bop around the kitchen, waving my arms in the air, to make Axel laugh? How could I have thought I was so busy before Axel came to fill my days and nights with storytime, bathtime, pot and a spoon playtime, and endless repeats of diaper changing time? How could there have a been a time before Axel's warm little body filled my arms and his soft hair tickled my chin? It seems that I've always been Axel's mother, even before he was present.

But still it feels like he just came home from the hospital yesterday, figured out how to roll over five minutes ago, started sitting up thirty seconds ago, and now he's crawling across the alphabet mat on the floor on a mission to finally capture the most elusive and coveted target of all: the dog's tail. He's changing at full speed, sprinting over milestones and dragging me, his slowpoke mother, along behind him.

There's a clock in Axel's bedroom that receives a signal from the master atomic clock and so keeps perfect time. The battery is low on Axel's clock, so the hands hover at 9:05 for three hours, or spin around ticking off hours by the minute as it tried to find its bearing. I haven't changed the battery though it's been alternating between whirling and freezing up for weeks. It's a visual reminder of how time has been reconfigured that sits up on the shelf next to the sock monkey and the storybooks with shredable paper pages. It keeps baby time. That's my standard time zone.

Adventures in Baby Food Land

2008-07-16T14:13:00Z

My husband has the culinary chops in our house. I'm more of a side dish-maker and baker, and creator of the occasional huge vat of soup. When it comes to Axel's food, I've become the head chef. Maybe it's because I'm already a milk-making machine, so, while Sean's feeding the grown-ups, baby feeding duty falls to me. So, I make much of his food, and I love it. That's because it's pretty easy - it's hard to mess up peach puree. There's no hacking up a piece of chicken to make sure it's really, truly cooked through - or having to touch slimy, cold raw chicken in the first place. There's no spattering oil or three-page recipe to follow. Just rinse, chop, steam, and whir, and you've got jars full of good mush. That's the sort of cooking I can handle.

Plain soy yogurt is Axel's first, great food love. Yes, he's eating again, though he much prefers to dine in his own personal restaurant with a parent or two to fetch errant spoons than among the baby hordes at daycare. When he won't take a bit of anything else, he'll still slurp soy yogurt off the spoon. Sweet potatoes are usually acceptable, along with spinach and most fruits. I sing a little song to go along with the yam (or sweet potato - I don't understand the subtle differences of root vegetables): Delicious and nutritious, that's the yam/Delicious & nutritions, that's the yam/I like to eat it but my name's not Sam/Delicious and nutritions, that's the yam. I suppose you could substitute any food for yam. It's a versatile ditty. I realize I sound like a total dork. Well, that's what children do to you: bring out all of the embarassing, dorky tendencies you spent so long trying to hide. And I had a lot of dork in me. Pretty soon I'm going to be running around dressed up in a giant banana costume, breaking out a jazz-hand filled dance routine to get Axel to crack a grin.

While pregnant and woozy on hormones, I bought two babyfood cookbooks and started reading through the recipes. Non-hormonal me would have thought it is unnecessary to have a cookbook about how to make purees. It's true that there's not much to using a food processor, but there were actually helpful tips in the puree section for those of us who are not culinary geniuses, like waiting until after the peaches have been steamed to remove the skins. They slide right off, and you won't cut your thumb with the peeler. Not that I've ever done that... The books are chock-full of toddler-aged goodness I can't wait to attempt. Mini muffins! Homemade graham crackers! Cinammon cookies! Yum after yum on each page, all of which Axel's not quite ready for yet. I just might have to do a test run of the homemade graham crackers.

He's in the mush with a few chunks phase, and just starting to figure out finger foods - during his first experiment with Cheerios late last week, he got three to his mouth. The dog got twice that, and the highchair swallowed up a dozen more. Axel found the Cheerio eating experience to be hilarious - little round o's to grab and put in his mouth? Food with a big hole in the middle? Nothing could make him giggle more (except, perhaps, his mother attempting lyrical jazz while dressed up as some type of fruit). He even forgot about the recent indignity of face cleaning while pushing Cheerios across his highchair tray. Other self feeding adventures have included piles of sweet potato and squash - they've got the right clumpy texture for grabbing and gumming. He's made a few spoon-feeding attempts but has not yet figured out the mouth open + spoon in combination that leads to success.

I want to branch out from bananas and peas, and give Axel a chance to explore beyond soy yogurt island and plum city. I'm trying to build up my baby/toddler recipe mix while I've got the energy to do it, before I get in a mini english muffin pizza rut - not to hack the mini english muffin pizza, because those are pretty delicious. So, I'm wondering, what are your favorite recipes? Favorite sources for recipes? Your babies' or toddlers' favorite foods?

Tooth Tease

2008-07-13T16:56:00Z

Axel's been teething for four months. Drool soaks his shirts. He gnaws on knuckles, ice cold plastic rings, and everything else - you name it, he gnaws it. If the Tooth Fairy had a penny for every time someone has told me Axel's teething, she'd drown in the Pacific Ocean under the weight of all that useless copper and never make it through her tooth collection route.

A pinhead-sized bit of white can be glimpsed in the upper right side of his mouth. It's been hanging out since the first week in May, just checking out the view of Axel's tonsils. That little white dot in the top of his gums is just a tease, stringing me along. Apparently his teeth don't want to rush anything. They don't want to barrel into his mouth like a cold turkey cannonball into the pool. They're testing the waters. Taking their time. Making sure they're ready for a long-term tooth/mouth relationship. When people tell me Axel's teething, I used to say, "Yes, seems like it," and now I just shrug. Who knows if he's teething? Maybe he's just an excessive drool producer who likes to put things in his mouth - in other words, a baby.

We've used the "He's teething" explanation a lot in our house. Fussy at 3 pm despite good naps and reasonable food/milk intake? Get out the teething tablets. Waking up at 1, 3, and 4:30 am? Teething. Doesn't want to take a bottle or nurse? Sore mouth - from teething. Angry at innanimate objects for no apparent reason? Teething. Breakdown in the middle of Target? Damn teeth again. If there's no other clear sleep/food/illness/injury explanation, it's teething. I use teething as often as hormones are used to explain the insanity of teenagers. Since no teeth have actually appeared, it now feels a bit silly to use teething to explain slightly off behavior. If the real explanation for any of these things were teething, wouldn't an actual real, live tooth have shown up in the days following a given episode? Teething does sound better than saying there's no explanation - or at least no explanation I'll be able to decipher.

I know there's a difference between teething and the actual cutting of teeth - teething can take months, while the eruption of a tooth through the gums is a much shorter process. But at this rate, it seems quite possible that Axel may be toothless until the age of ten. We might have to invent stories about how he lost his teeth so the other kids don't make fun of him and his gummy smile - hockey puck to the mouth, halfpipe rim to the chin, fighting off ninjas in a dark alley. Or it seems that, if this amount of lead-up occurs for every single tooth, he'll be teething up until his baby teeth start to fall out.

Really, it's just a matter of time before Axel's teeth commit to coming out. They can't hide out forever. Maybe a flood of pearly whites will follow the first, brave tooth that leaps from gum to mouth. I guess I'll just have to wait a little longer.

Hands Off the Baby Ma'am

2008-07-10T01:34:00Z

People keep trying to touch my baby. Strangers at the grocery store. Women at outdoor festivals. Sales people at stores. Slightly intoxicated men at barbecues.

I'm not germ-phobic. I let Axel gnaw on a lint roller yesterday morning. I give him spoons that he's dropped on restaurant floors. I've watched him grab a fistful of dog hair and then lick it.

While I'm pretty relaxed about dirt and boogers, I care a great deal about personal space. In my dancing shoes days, I frequently elbowed those guys who seem to think it's okay to come up behind you and put their hands on your waist while your dancing with your girlfriends. I really wanted to smack people who touched my pregnant belly. I don't think it's ever okay to touch a stranger without first exchanging names, unless it's a life or death, pulling someone from the jaws of a lion situation. This goes double for babies and small children. Cuteness doesn't make it okay to pet them without permission. They're not stray puppies. It's like cheek pinches from a great aunt - the great aunt can't help but be inspired by the pinchees adorableness, and the pinchee can't help but want to bite off the pincher's fingers.

Most recent example: Sean had Axel strapped to his chest in the Baby Bjorn, and a woman at an arts festival came up and grabbed Axel's foot. Think, now, about where babies' feet dangle when strapped to their fathers' chests. Since the woman was making goo-goo faces at Axel, I'm pretty sure she intended to grab his foot, but I'm not positive.

The most grabby are women in the 50 plus age range. Maybe they need more frequent visits from their own grandchildren. Axel is a shameless flirt, and he smiles and stares, mostly at women. He loves the ladies, and they love him right back. I like that people smile at him and talk to him, and tell me that he's adorable. I like that babies make people friendlier. The world would be a better place if people were as nice to each other all the time as they are to babies and the adults who are covered in their drool. But I'd much prefer if people looked and talked but didn't touch, or if they asked permission. Since Axel's slowly approaching the stranger = danger phase, and sometimes explodes into tears at too much stranger all up in his face, I'm even more against personal space intrusions without warning.

Maybe I need to treat Axel like a china shop, and dangle some sternly worded signs around his neck: Please Don't Touch. Ask Management for Assistance. You Break It, You Buy It.

Keep your hands to yourself, strangers.

Hairspurt

2008-07-07T04:01:00Z

Lately, a few people have asked me when I'm going to cut Axel's hair. It's true that he seems to have gone through an overnight hairspurt.

His mane has gone from slightly unkempt to wildly disheveled. The top sprouts up like a bunch of carrot tops and the sides dip below his ears in a way that seems more mullet than mop-top. It's a little elf wig coveted by an elvish-speaking Dungeons and Dragons playing 7th grader, maybe a little Dark Crystal, as one commenter noted.

I'd been waiting for all his hair, which has been with him since birth, to fall out, so the growth and thickening snuck up on me. I thought I'd be contemplating baby Rogaine, not Great Cuts, up until he reached two.

I'm wary of going near a baby's head with a set of scissors. The only time his head seems still is when he's asleep, and something tells me that a styling session for a sleeping baby would end with no sleep and less style. It's hard enough trimming his nails, and there are only twenty of those compared with thousands of strands of hair.

What's more, his hair is too light and fine to stay flat so, even if it were cut, it would still stick up as it does now. Some thick gel might help keep it in place, but I don't even use product, as they say in the salons, on my own hair, so I'm not going to start greasing up my kid. The only time Axel's going to look cute with his hair sticking up every which way and crusted peaches on his eyebrows is now, so I figure why not let the kid be a little grimy.

That said, it does grow down past his ears on the sides, and it doesn't seem that a little snip to clean things up would be so bad. I don't want it to get brush and curl length. I'm not interested in untangling any rats' nests or nurturing any rat tails. And then there's the, "Isn't it about time you cut his hair?" comments to take into account.

So, I ask you, when will it be time for Axel's first haircut?

Food and Fears

2008-07-02T02:53:00Z

My son is in danger of starving. He's going to waste away to nothing but a set of big blue-to-hazel eyes and wild light blond hair. Yesterday, at childcare, he only drank two ounces of milk. Today, he cut that to an ounce and a half. He spent the days showing off, crawling around the room by putting down his right hand, then left, then pushing off his left foot. Hand, hand, foot, repeat, until he'd criss-crossed the soft mat and the not so soft carpet. I think he's trying to dig a groove in the shape of a 747 around the exersaucers and bouncy seats. He has no time for nourishment - he's got important tricks to practice, a substitute teacher to seduce with his big grin and drool, and a roomfull of babies to impress. Soon he'll lose a few of the slow-to-come pounds he's put on. If it keeps up, he won't just crawl out of his pants, as he often does now; they'll fall off him the minute I pull them up.

Perhaps I'm overreacting. I am his mother. Food and health-related overreactions are six line downs in the job description. He's a wee boy. It's true that he chowed down on oatmeal, peas, and yams at dinner. It's true that he nursed well morning and evening both days. It's true that he took a few mouthfuls of solids while at daycare - but far less than the jars he'd been gobbling while on vacation. It's true that he just came back from a week and a half trip, and so he hasn't been at childcare. It's true that he's still been on the cheerful side, even though the stranger anxiety seems to be popping up and he sobbed both mornings when I left him. It's true that he's somehow got enough energy to investigate heating vents all over every room.

It's also true that he's never loved the bottle. His father and other caregivers have had to spend an hour to get him to take 4 ounces. There was a time when he drank about fifteen ounces during eight hours away from me, but only on a few occasions months ago. More often, he had five to twelve (on a good day), and, lately, he's been dropping that range to a max of ten. While he's had a few ounces of formula here and there, most of it has still been breastmilk. He's refused a few formula-only bottles, and, since he'd been consuming less, I've been able to (barely) keep up with his consumption, so he hasn't gone off mama's milk as much as I thought he would. Honestly, he's always been finicky about nursing, too - and the past milk avoidance fuels my concern. He seems to have a love/hate/sometimes indifferent relationship with liquids. He's not a drinker. He's too grown up for milk.

That said, an ounce and a half of milk and a few baby-sized mouthfuls of food doesn't seem to be enough to sustain a crawling machine. I'm left wondering what's going on, and in a watch-and-wait and try not to be too neurotic situation. Is the low intake a temporary dip connected with a new skill? Is it because, while on vacation, he nursed 98% of the time, and had been almost bottle-free for a little under two weeks? Is it a little-known side effect of the baby jetlag (which hasn't otherwise affected him)? Is this big fluctuation totally normal? Is he giving up the milk because he's now on solids? And if that's it, why isn't he eating solids like he did on vacation? Did the salty sea air bump up his appetite? Do mashed in Colorado bananas taste worse than mashed in Hawaii bananas? Do I just have a more tantalizing spoon technique than the ladies at his childcare center? Does he need a Vegas-style bottle with an umbrella to make him a drinker? After two days, it's not panicking me enough that I'm calling the doctor. I'll be able to sleep tonight (assuming the child lets me). Still, I'd love some advice.

Vacations, With and Without Baby

2008-06-28T22:38:00Z

Before having a baby, my man and I took the sort of vacations that left you more tired when you came back home than when you left. We packed our days full of kayaking, hiking up to secluded waterfalls, museums, getting lost on foot in new cities, eating a few too many tapas and lots of espresso and Diet Coke to keep us going. With baby, a few hours at the beach felt like enough activity for one day.

During one pre-baby trip to San Francisco, after riding a scooter around the city, checking out the two headed calf at the Ripley's Believe it Or Not Museum, a little shopping, and eating a few fish whose lifeless eyes stared at us from our plates, we still tried to run through an art museum in the fifteen minutes before it closed. I couldn't tell you which museum it was or what was inside of it, but we made it before closing time, went inside, and could check it off our list, and still got to the hotel in time for free wine and cookies at 6 o'clock.

With Axel, my vacation aspirations were much lower. I didn't want to scuba dive and eat at the best restaurants and see the volcano erupting and cram thirty two activities into thirty three hours. My only desire beyond spending time with my son, husband, parents, and brother and sister-in-law in Hawaii: to try to surf, and to to sit by the ocean, read, and sip on a smoothie. I didn't get to have the smoothie while reading next to the ocean, but I got to sit by the ocean, read by the pool, and have a smoothie on separate occasions, got up a few times on a surfboard, and spent lots of time with my family, so the vacation was a total success.

Before having a baby, we used to take pictures of the scenery. We have countless shots of elaborate European cathedrals, mountain goats on steep rocky slopes, waves crashing on the beach. On this vacation, when we took out the camera, it was to capture Axel's first toe dipped in the ocean, or his gleeful grin while being swung through the air at the back of the luau action - not to snap shots of the pig coming out of the cooking pit, like all our fellow tourists.

It's easier to travel without a baby. There's no stroller to lug through the airport, no carseat, no double-checking of diaper supplies, no nursing, no rocking for an hour and praying that the baby will give in to sleep before boarding the plane home. My husband and I won't wander into a little nameless cafe in Paris and get coffee and cake, just the two of us, for another twenty years. There's no napping on the beach.

We've got another person in our life; we're a party of three. Traveling requires more planning. It's not so bad for an adult to be stranded with just one change of underwear, but having only one clean diaper on hand is a messy poop emergency waiting to happen. The change of pace takes getting used to. We had to remind ourselves and the family we were traveling with that we couldn't just wedge Axel into our former vacation approach like a purse-sized dog. We paced ourselves more, we relaxed on the beach, by the pool, and rolled around on the grass with our boy. The highpoints were more personal: Axel crawling across the living room floor to chase after an empty water bottle, splashing around in the pool, calling out "abba abbbbba" at the other airplanes after our flight landed, standing up and crowing while taking a bath in the kitchen sink, sleeping in my arms while I sat on the beach. It was different. It was slower. Some might say more boring. But I thought it was pretty close to perfect.

Aloha

2008-06-23T01:36:00Z

We're in Hawaii, and so, obviously we survived the 3 am wake-up, drive to the airport, flight to LAX, two hour layover, flight to Hawaii, and four hour time change. Axel flirted with other passengers, rolled around on the dirty airport and airplane floor, and stayed pretty happy for a kid who'd been confined to a small space for far too long. We brought along a bag of toys, diapers to cover a wee army, and enough food to spoon him full of solids every two hours. Bananas are a great distraction for monkeys and lap infants.

Once in Hawaii, Axel took another short nap, and managed to hold off bedtime until 6 pm Hawaii time the first night - that's 10 pm Denver time, or the baby equivalent of an all-nighter. The combination of frequent mini-meals, naps, ocean breeze, entertainment from two grandparents and an aunt and uncle, and exposure to sunlight while slathered in sunscreen helped him get through jet lag and get on a pretty regular bedtime/waking schedule, though he's using the vacation as an excuse to wake up every few hours and guzzle some tryptophan in the form of mama's milk.

So far, Axel's tip-toed in the ocean,

splashed around several pools without leaving any poop behind,

eaten sand, broken out in a rash from one kind of sunscreen (I blame the parabens!), battled sunburn with a full bottle of another kind (California Baby), toured a small family-run coffee plantation,

tried to grab a gaggle of geese at the coffee plantation, grabbed a cat's tail at the coffee plantation, went to a luau,

ate enough solids for a baby three times his size every day, helped make a canoe,

attempted to sample multiple mai tais, pulled himself up to sitting twice, and polished his crawling skills. The combination of sea level and tropical air launched him into a whole new category of baby - the almost-proficient crawler. I'll just go to the kitchen to grab a few chocolate covered macademia nuts, and when I come back he's made it four feet and is lolling about underneath the glass-covered coffee table with a spatula in his mouth. His parents took him to Hawaii and all he got was this lousy increased mobility.

We're here until Friday when we take the red eye back to Denver - and will be using even more of your tips, so thanks! I predict that, by the end of our trip, in addition to wearing out his parents and four other extended family members and ingesting a little more sand and a lot more mashed sweet potato, he'll be so good at crawling that we won't be able to plop him on the floor in a non-babyproofed room or on a beach towel and expect him to be in the same general place for more than a minute. I'm going to sip a few more mai tais and try to read a few more books - or at least chapters of the books I've brought - while I've got the chance. When we're back home, we'll be in full crawler-containment mode.

Vacation All I Ever Wanted

2008-06-17T12:33:00Z

We're flying out to Hawaii at 6:20 am tomorrow morning. I'm scared. I'm not afraid of heights; I'm afraid of a level 10 total baby meltdown of epic proportions while on an airplane hundreds of miles from land. During our less than delightful return flight from Boston, Axel filled me with awe of the power of his rage. It's gotten even more powerful since then - when his face is cleaned after dinner, he yells with such force that I worry that the neighbors think we're beating him with a shovel. The kid can yell. When he's angry or sad or, worse, a mix of the two combined with a big shot of sleepy, he wants everyone in a ten block radius to know. He's got a good set of lungs on him, that's for sure.

He's in a more vocal, but slightly on edge, place lately. I think it's because he's old enough to see want he wants, but usually can't get his limbs together enough to go forward instead of backward. Seeing a delectable purple parrot that keeps moving further away from you no matter how hard you try must be infuriating. If someone dangled a chocolate cupcake in front of me and then snatched it away again and again I'd be a little pissed off.

My father asked me the other day what our plan was for the plane. To try to hold on to our sanity, I thought. I've tried to mostly go with the flow as a parent, which isn't always natural for me because I'm the sort of person who, when asked to go with the flow, says "OK. But first can you show me the map of the possible places this flow might go, so I can have a fully stocked pack? And do you really know how to read that compass?" I give Axel toys he's dropped on the floor to put back in his mouth - though I draw the line at toys dropped in a field of goose poop. I've tried to decipher and follow his cues and nurse him when he's hungry. He's led the way to a pretty rough nap routine. I didn't care when, at our free Gymboree class, he wanted to do 360 degree belly spins and try to eat my shin while the other babies sat up and stared at the slightly creepy stuffed clown patting their cheeks, though the teacher said things like, "Let's all say hello go Gymbo! Axel, do you want to say hello to Gymbo with everyone else?" Axel is seven and a half months old. If he wants to rock back and forth on all fours and stick out his tongue and go "btttthhhhhfffffttt," that's totally fine. Lighten up, Gymboree lady, and keep that clown where I can see him.

Going with the flow on an airplane, though, is not so easy. There's only so much flowing to be had in confined space for 150. He won't be able to move around, there will be no exersaucer for jumping, and it's a long couple of flights from Denver to Hawaii. We're bringing our aresenal: new squishy monkey book, wooden pirate toy, stuffed giraffe, a few jars of solid food, other relatives to help entertain him, my courage to do lots more very public nursing, prayers that jet lag won't be a problem after we land, and a pediatrician-recommended herbal stress reliever called Rescue Remedy. With the huge force of tiny Axel's personality, I think an elephant tranquilizer might work a little bit better.

I wish I could look forward to the trip, but I'm stressed out about the flight, on top of the work I'm trying to wrap up before I go and thinking about the work I'll be doing while there, and spending far too much time trying to pack the perfect tropical vacation with baby suitcase. I wish I didn't care what people think when my son wails. It's easier not to when I'm not thousands of feet in the air and any meltdown is only temporarily public. I'm bringing along a few sets of ear plugs. I'm wishing on lots of stars and horseshoes that Axel will stay quiet for a few hours. I promise to keep my tray table in the upright and locked position if the mighty flight attendant goddess will smile down on us. But, in case my prayers go unanswered and you're on the plane with us, my apologies in advance for the bumpy flight.

If you have any expert traveling with a spirited baby tips, tricks to defeat jet lag, or pull with the gods of mini bags of pretzels and stick-on wing badges, please share...

Attack of the Wild Hippo-Loving Baby

2008-06-16T00:57:00Z

For Father's Day, we took an extended family trip to the zoo. My folks came with Sean, Axel, and me to check out the formerly wildlife and have a picnic. Axel's inner monologue during his day at the zoo went like this:

"Yeah! I'm outside of the house. I love people. I love motion. I love to eat socks. Oh no! I'm trapped in my stroller! Why are there all these legs passing me by? What is everyone looking at beyond the fence? Why do I have to wear a hat? Why does my mom keep on pointing at things? Doesn't she know that I have furrier animals than that at home that I can touch and crawl after? What is that big lumpy thing in the distance that isn't moving? Why can't I put goose poop in my mouth? Why can't I get a handful of monkey? Why can't I eat the carousel pole? Why is everyone thwarting me? Oh, dude! I have socks and I can eat them! That is fantastic."

It was a confusing, but good, day for a baby. Axel did see some hippos blowing bubbles, moving penguins, swans, and monkeys, and he also briefly pondered the goat in the petting area - the goat that decided my shirt looked like lunch and didn't want to let go. Other than that, he was more interested in the inanimate objects the zoo had to offer, like railings, grass, his feet, his grandmother's water bottle, and the shiny gold poles on the carousel. Things that could be captured and put into his mouth. Babies and goats have a lot in common.

I also brought a pretty fantastic Father's Day picnic, if I do say so myself, including homemade cupcakes. They were delicious, even though I used ricotta instead of mascarpone because I got confused by the range of soft Italian dairy products available at the store. The lunch, combined with the fritatta I made my husband this morning, used up all of my limited though enthusiastic culinary efforts for the week, if not the month. Someone who confuses mascarpone with ricotta is probably not a natural whiz in the kitchen. Sean knows his way around a saucepan, which is why I got him an assortment of fancy spices for Father's Day, along with a new shirt to add to his spit-up stained shirt collection.

Seven months is too young to appreciate the animals, wonder how the Alf-crossed-with-a-pig tapir got its black and white chunked coat, or get depressed about the gerenuk's limited space to run, but you're never too young to experience the joys of the carousel and eating your own feet.

Working Girl

2008-06-12T03:34:00Z

When do you stop thinking about what you want to be when you grow up? When I was eleven, I was going to be president. Specifically, the president of the United States of America, not the president of the International French Fries Dipped in a Hot Fudge Sundae Fan Club. I even had my running mate lined up. I'm not sure when I decided that politics was not for me - maybe around the time I realized that politicians have to speak in public a lot and a career in politics is thus an unwise choice for someone who would rather dig out her appendix with a ballpoint pen than talk in front of a large crowd. Other career ambitions I let go: drummer (I only played for a few months), Rockette (too short), first female quarterback in the NFL (I've never even liked football, so who knows where that idea came from), professional Cabbage Patch doll namer (that's probably not even a job).

I always planned to be a mother. I also used to think I'd stay at home fulltime with my kids - before launching my presidential campaign when my kids were in middle school, of course. Most of the time, I like my job at a local community foundation. Let me take a moment to acknowledge how lucky I am - I work four days each week, I don't punch in or out, I have generous benefits, I work with good people, and I don't have to abide by one of those antiquated pantyhose-required policies. I'm not a single parent and I'm only trying to care for one healthy baby. My work/home life balance, as the magazines call it, is closer to an easygoing teeter-totter than a rollercoaster. I know I have nothing to complain about.

Some weeks are harder than others. Sometimes I wish I could spend more time with my son. Monday, for example: my husband was on shift, so he left the house by a little before 6. While he was headed out the door, I nursed Axel, both of us in our pajamas. I then scrambled to get us both ready and load up the car. Axel was having a don't-put-me-down-Mama morning, and though I've gotten pretty good at doing things one-handed, I dropped the bag with my breakfast in it and splattered soy yogurt all over the kitchen floor. I plopped Axel in his exersaucer, and he promptly released an enormous runny poop the color of spinach, which spurted out his diaper, all over his clothes, down his leg, and all over the exersaucer. After cleaning him, his toy, the floor, and myself, we finally got out the door - both in new outfits. Let me just say that the day at work was not my favorite. It was a struggle just to pump seven ounces of milk, less than half of what I usually get. By the time I got back down to daycare to pick up Axel, battled traffic, and made it home, it was after 6 - Axel's dinner time - and so we rushed to begin the dinner/playtime/bedtime routine. By 8:15, when he was asleep, I was exhausted, and still had to do breast pump and bottle clean up and preparation for the next day, feed myself something decent, and do more work. Oh, and clean up the dog pee on the living room floor (thanks, Angus).

When I got to daycare earlier that same day, Axel sat on the floor, gnawing on the blue plastic arch of a floor gym. He'd crawled out of his shorts - most of his pants are too big in the waist for him, though they're the right length. As I walked over, he grinned and reached up toward me, then started giggling. I dressed him in his shorts and socks, and he laughed some more, either because he knew he'd just pull them off as soon as he got into the car or maybe (as I like to think) because he was so happy to see me. Most of my waking hours with him were spent frantically getting ready to leave the house, in the car, or getting him fed and ready for bed. It was the sort of day that prompts me to do frantic budget projections for one-salary, rice-and-beans living.

Days I'm alone with Axel aren't necessarily easier or better. They, too, contain explosive poops and a dog who believes it is his duty to eat one sock out of each pair of Axel's socks. There are nap battles, frustration when Axel gets fussy, countless mugs of tea that grow cold before I can drink them. At work, I get a chance to sit down and drink my tea. What's more, I like working outside of the home. At least, I think I do. Most days. I don't know. I can make a hundred general arguments for working outside of the home or for not working outside of the home, but I'm having a hard time sorting through what it means to me.

I guess I'm officially a grown up, though I don't always feel that way. I can check off all the boxes my eleven-year-old self associated with being a grown-up: have a child, hire babysitters, drive, can answer Trivial Pursuit questions that aren't about cartoons, have purchased a lottery ticket, can eat all the bomb pops I want without my mom nagging me. When I was a kid, the lives of the adults around me seemed set. They had decided what to be, and that's what they were. Or, if they hadn't decided, they still were something - a lawyer, a librarian, a bagger at the grocery store, a father - and that was that. Their lives were as permanent as I thought my blood-sister bonds were. Now I know that their lives weren't fixed. I've only kept in touch with one of my blood sisters.

I know that parents who stay at home with their children or who work from home have a unique set of challenges. Neither choice works for every family, and neither choice works for every family all the time. Choice is a luxury. My father has always told me that having options is the best position to be in, and I agree. But this philosophy can get me into trouble - sometimes, the challenge is deciding to close off an option, to diminish the choices available to yourself. Sometimes options are closed off easily or naturally, sometimes choices are clear, and sometimes they're a tangle. We can't have it all all of the time. I will never be a Rockette. Katarina Aurelia Sunshine the Cabbage Patch Kid will never come rolling off the production line. Grown-ups don't always know what they're going to be.

Father's Day

2008-06-09T13:01:00Z

It's almost Father's Day - time for those gift guides that always include something for the grill, gadgets, a moneyclip or paperweight, a shaving kit, and a oversized mug with a clever golf-related pun on it, like "Fore! Strong coffee only." No, I'm not a golfer. How'd you guess? Judging from these lists, every father in America must have a garage full of BBQ gear to go with his MP3 playing de-icer that's also a nose hair trimmer and makes pretty good waffles in a pinch. Who makes these lists? Is Ward Cleaver behind them? Does anyone ever need (or want) a paperweight?

My man likes to cook, and he throws food on the grill from time to time - but I don't think he wants to have a silver-plated set of tongs to use to flip his jalapeno turkey burgers. He doesn't play golf. He doesn't have a red tracksuit and heavy gold chains to go with a moneyclip. I refuse to buy him anything battery-operated that supposedly slices, dices, and opens a cold beer, all while playing a medly of classic rock.

More and more it feels like holidays are bumping up on one another, just one Target circular after another based on the newest holiday/gift-giving theme. I'm all for celebrating life and the people I'm lucky enough to have in my life, I love a good surprise, and I'm a sucker for any occasion that can include a meal with family and friends. Still, I'm overwhelmed by the holiday pile-up. Can't the greeting card/unnecessary crap peddlers give us all a break?

I do want to express my appreciation for Sean as a, well, totally awesome father and husband on his first Father's Day. He takes care of Axel, and he makes me rice pudding when I'm sick (as I was this past weekend, and let me tell you that vomit + nursing is not a good combination). He's a one man slicing/dicing gadget in the kitchen, he goes halfsies on nighttime baby duty when he's not at work (which apparently doesn't always happen), and he's not all that bad looking, either. Axel loves him, too, of course - that's what I interpret Axel adoring stares and big grins followed by drops of drool on his father's head to mean. I've got some ideas that don't involve batteries or charcoal or sandtraps but, since my husband reads this blog, I can't post them here, or I'll ruin the surprise. Axel is focused on the unique squishiness of the yoga mat right now, so he isn't really a big help in the gift giving department.

How about you? What are you getting for the fathers in your life? What's the best Father's Day gift you've ever given or, if you're a dad, received?

Aliens Among Us

2008-06-06T13:58:00Z

Babies are a little creepy. Sure, they're tiny miracles, all adorable and snugly, and ad campaigns are launched on their wee chubby toes and cheeks, but sometimes they give me the sort of shivers I get upon hearing that someone's pinky got cut off in wood shop or seeing someone's elbows bend in a direction the human elbow should never go.

Axel was wailing the other night with such force that I thought he had to be in pain - it couldn't just be from the lotion I was rubbing on his arms after his bath. I looked down at his wrist and shrieked because it had been broken or dislocated and I was a horrible mother and hadn't noticed for who knows how long. Actually, his wrist is fine and, yes, I was overreacting just a tad and, you're right, it's possible Axel gets some of his dramatic tendencies from me. His wrists do look misaligned, though. Baby wrists sit at a funny angle, the oddness of which is exacerbated by the mushy layer of undeveloped muscle that is the baby forearm.

The next night, Axel sat in his highchair, happily rubbing pureed yams all over his face, and the evening sun lit up the whispy hairs on top of his head. Then I noticed that that those hairs were moving up and down, because the little soft spot on his head was pulsing along with his heartbeat. Then his head spun around and pineapple Jell-O came out of his forehead. OK, there wasn't any Jell-O, but still, it just looked wrong. I avoided touching his soft spot for months - feeling it beneath my fingers gave me the shivers - and had forgotten about it until I saw it moving again.

Other weird things: babies don't really have kneecaps, just some sort of mush (yes, that is an official medical term) between their upper and lower leg. Axel's foot got caught in the laundry basket and got a small cut - enough that it drew blood and has now scabbed over (note to Axel it twenty years: it was your dad's fault. I wasn't even in the same room.). The child didn't react a bit. Try to wipe rice cereal off of his face, though, and he acts as though you're pulling out his spleen through his ear with a pair of tweezers. Think about that: actual injury, no reaction. Face wiping, big reaction. Do babies have some amazing ability to withstand pain, or misaligned neurons? And then there's babies' ability to tolerate crap all over their faces, including snot dripping all over the place and crusting underneath their noses, which is, if not creepy, sort of gross. What's more, babies have the oversized head and big eyes of all the official alien photos from the black and white tabloids, the ones they run right next to the shots of the man pregnant with triplets and the two-headed bat that has read Romeo and Juliet.

Don't get me wrong - I think my son could beat a dozen puppies in a cute contest. I think he's shown unmistakeable signs of genius (you know, like banging a wooden spoon against a pot all by himself). I hug and kiss him when he's covered in all sorts of slime, plan to encourage him to roll around in the mud, and am not averse to getting dirty myself. But sometimes the miracles of his little developing body give me the creeps.

The Great Sleep Saga, Chapter 10

2008-06-04T03:19:00Z

Yup, it's more on sleep again. Babies are supposed to be sleeping 14 - 15 hours at seven months between naps and nightime - or at least that's what I remember reading somewhere, but I can't seem to find the source. I know for sure it's a lot and, since it takes up more than half of Axel's day and not nearly enough of mine, it's frequent blog fodder. I'm no sleep expert, just another momma trying to make her fumbly, bumbly way through the bleary-eyed wee hours of the morning.

We've had some sleep successes. Axel can now fall asleep on his own most nights. I wouldn't have believed it was possible three months ago. I thought I'd be rocking the child and singing My Favorite Things until he grew armpit hair and I had the unsquelchable urge to rip the whiskers off of every kitten I saw and gorge on schnitzel with noodles. Gradually, the sleep situation has gotten better, and you needn't worry about any poor kitten's whiskers or my pork consumption.

Here's a list of things that have contributed to our bedtime success:

1. We stick to the bedtime routine like a lemon cupcake to vanilla buttercream frosting. Nothing will interfere with the bedtime routine - unless it is baby-initiated or a natural disaster.

2. Our nightly routine: some mushy solids at about 6, playtime, bathtime at 6:45, baby massage/baby wrestling and yelling about the ignominy of diapers at 7:00, board book reading and page nibbling at 7:10, nursing at 7:25, and put the boy in his crib (with the humidifier on for white noise and moisture in the high alpine desert of Denver) at 7:45. This schedule shifts forward or backward a bit depending on when Axel woke up from his last nap, if my husband is on shift and I'm alone and exhausted, or if Axel seems ready for bedtime earlier. By the time we get to the books, Axel knows what's coming (sleep) and he's ready for it. I used to rock him and tunelessly sing from my vast repertoire of Beach Boys and Buddy Holly songs after 7:45 because he needed it, but I gradually cut back on the rocking and eventually got to a place where I could just put him down.

3. I put the boy down on his side and he promptly rolls to his belly. A few months ago he started choosing to sleep on his stomach, and now we've found that putting him down on his back, he gets all riled up and ready to rumble - and that requires more intervention, and no one wants that. When he's put down on his side, he looks around, rolls on to his stomach, wiggles a little, and then passes out.

4. We do not immediately intervene with all fussing. If it's been extended and is passionate (for us, that means 2 - 10 minutes and stronger than a few half-hearted whimpers), we'll go in and provide some love. At about five and a half months or six months, I discovered (in a moment of frustration and exhaustion, after putting him down after the bedtime routine and a little rocking because he wasn't asleep yet, I was seasick with all the damn rocking, and I really wanted to sit down and eat already) that he would briefly squawk and then babble to himself a bit before suddenly - almost too quickly, so abruptly that I thought maybe he'd choked on his own thumb and had to go check on him - going silent and falling asleep. He's figured out how to trigger his own awake time on/off switch - it's not a gradual dimmer, it's a switch with just two settings. Also, after six months, we decided that, if he did wake up before midnight, he would first be given a chance to sooth himself back to sleep; if that didn't work after after a little bit, my husband would go in - but there would be no nursing before 12:01 am. He's still nursing once per night, but no longer does he nurse each time he wakes up. I wanted to reinforce the links between other ways of going to sleep.

5. Axel is now in his own room. He has been for about two months now, and it was time for both of us to have a little more space. That means I don't jump immediately at his every whimper, and I have at least a few minutes of semi-coherent mushy night thinking on the walk from my room to his room to remind myself to wait at his door and see if he really needs me or if he's just fussing about and setling himself back down to sleep. He also doesn't hear us move, and he doesn't smell me right next to him and think, "Mmmmm, mmmmmilk."

So, our combination for moderate sleep success: own room, bedtime routine, white noise, a little bit of fussing, clinging to every small success, and a whole lot of luck and fairy dust. Maybe the solid foods started in the last month have helped fill up his belly, maybe he thinks all those bears and hippos in the Boyton books have the right idea about bedtime, maybe he's just tiring himself out more with all his activity. I've also got a suspicion that the introduction to sometimes falling asleep on his own that occured during his three days a week at daycare helped with sleeping at home.

All that said, he still gets up once a night between one and three to eat, and every so often more than that. Once per night seems very reasonable to me, and I'm thankful it's just once, given that he used to wake up so often I stopped counting. He also does this evil 5 am waking for the day thing from time to time. I have no idea what to do about this except stare up at my ceiling, listen to him talking to himself, and wish that he would sleep longer.

Naptime is a whole different story. Axel's got a morning nap (starting at 8 - 9, depending on when he wakes up in the morning), and an afternoon nap (starting at 12:30 - 1:30, depending on when the last nap ended). Once in awhile he throws in a third late afternoon nap. When it's naptime and he's getting tired, I scoop him up and get him ready for bed, and then try to get him to sleep by a variety of strategies. It often becomes a back and forth battle with Axel almost falling asleep then waking himself up to yell and remind me that he's tired and he wants to sleep. His morning nap is pretty short - rarely over thirty minutes - and it's often harder to get him to go down for the morning nap than the afternoon nap. My theory is that he will be better off when he's down to just the afternoon nap, since that one always lasts longer, sometimes as much as two hours, and is a smoother transition for Axel. My second theory is that I'll keep on wishing as hard as I can that it will get better, and maybe the nightime sleep fairy that's helped us out with rain down her blessings on naptime. My third theory is that the gradual trial and error that seems to have helped with the bedtime routine will eventually help us more with naptime. Some things haven't changed: I've still got enough rotating sleep theories for a dozen dissertations.

We're making progress, one night at a time.

Pool Party

2008-06-01T23:04:00Z

Today was an important summertime first. No, Axel's not old enough for bomb pop-induced brain freezes or hot dogs and beer at a baseball game, but he's the perfect age for the chlorine and pee- filled pool water.

I spent all afternoon packing up our bags, making sure we were ready - extra swimsuit and rashguard, dry clothes, diapers, sunglasses, hat, pool floaty thing that wouldn't blow up, multiple towels, three kinds of sunscreen, etc. etc. etc. If our car had broken down on the way to the pool and we'd be stranded in a secret ditch in the middle of the city, we had enough gear with us that we could have camped out for four days and survived.

After being tortured with gobs of thick white sunscreen, Axel arrived at the pool ready for action.

He waded right in to the baby pool, dressed for a safari in his head to toe SPF wear.

He did his best Gilligan impression.

Then Axel made a new friend, who generously shared a naked baby doll with him. Axel bit down on the baby's hard plastic head. At the same time, he did the unthinkable - no, not peed, though he probably did that, too. He pooped.

And some of it leaked out of his swim diaper and trunks and into the pool. At least, I think it was his - it did look a bit more solid than usual, so it might have belonged to his new friend (legs pictured above), but, as CSI: Denver wasn't on scene, we'll never know for sure. We did change his trunks and swim diaper, and they were soiled. I know, ewwww..... I had the brilliant idea that I'd clean up by trying to pick up the poop with a napkin. Yeah, the paper napkins disintegrated, and the poo floated away toward the filter. If you're reading this and you were at the same pool we were at, I'd like to offer my sincere apologies that my son infested the baby pool waters.

The little girl who had been in the pool with Axel soon got out, and promptly put the baby doll inside of a pink bucket, head first. Maybe she was trying to communicate her disgust over my baby's accident, or maybe she was apologizing for her own.

After about thirty minutes in the water, one accident, and one outfit change, Axel was done, and we dried him off and got him dressed to head home. He then discovered the best thing about the pool - the chance to play with the beach bag.

He had a far better day than the baby doll.

Roly-Poly

2008-05-28T20:13:00Z

It seems that Axel may have mistaken himself for a doodlebug - the woodlouse, also known among all the Kick the Can players in my old neighborhood as a roly-poly. The child thinks his purpose in life is to roll, especially when he's on the changing table or getting dressed after his bath. Attempts to prevent him from rolling are not appreciated. In fact, he seems to think that any of them - the changing table strap, my hand on his stomach, a stuffed giraffe head attached to a blanket (actually, a bodyless giraffe is a little creepy now that I think about it) - are just mean-spirted attempts from the man to keep him down. He throws all fourteen pounds of himself into resisting such attempts, at times devolving into hysterics over the horrors of being forced to stay on his back and not play with a pack of baby wipes.

Hey, I'm all for motion. He can roll and spin 360 degrees and crawl backwards all he wants when I'm not trying to wipe the poop off his butt or put on a new diaper. All I want is a few minutes of motionlessness, or of motion restricted to arm waving or his newest talent, shaking his head while giggling, to keep him from sitting in a dirty diaper. I explain this to him, but babies are far lower on Spock's illogical scale than Captain Kirk. He hasn't come close to falling off the changing table, but he has created some particularly disgusting poop messes through all this wiggling about.

Short of investing in a baby straitjacket or getting the dog to sit on his chest during diaper changes, what can we do to keep him on his back and mostly calm? He's too young to be bribed with chocolate. Any brilliant roll-preventing insights from you experienced parents out there would be appreciated!

Six Things

2008-05-25T03:32:00Z

Mothergoosemouse tagged me with this meme:

1. Link to the person who tagged you.
2. Post the rules on your blog.
3. Write six random things about yourself.
4. Tag six random people at the end of your post by linking to their blogs.
5. Let each person know they have been tagged by leaving a comment on their website.
6. Let your tagger know when your entry is up.

Since I've been producing saline like I'm a nose spray factory, I thought I'd list a few slightly random things that have made me cry. Some truly sad, some happy, and some just embarassing.

1. The new Visa commercial narrated by Morgan Freeman. Morgan Freeman's elegantly paced, deep voice alone got my throat choked - "There are six billion of us....we don't always agree.." something about coming together and...he had me at six billion. The final image flashes the words "Go World"bover a cluster of hands clasped together and it's the nail in my extra-cheddary cheeseball coffin. I've got the antedote so I can save my tears for something worth crying about: I just need to think about 17% APR, and the central question of the Summer Olympics: how do the synchronized swimmers hold their breath for so long and keep their lipstick looking so fresh? http://usa.visa.com/microsites/goworld/?ep=v_sym_goworld

2. Axel can fall asleep on his own. This should have been an occasion for tears of joy. Instead, about a week in to my realization that Axel would rather thrash about and talk to himself for a few minutes all by himself than be rocked into slumberland by his mama, I blubbered about Axel growing up and not needing me any longer. He has his own room, his own crib, his own going to bed routine that doesn't include me - and in another week he'll be boarding the bus to his summer job flipping pancakes to earn enough money to buy his girlfriend a pet pony. Or so went my logic.

3. My Life Without Me. Have you seen this movie? Terminal cancer, young mother, and a hairdresser obsessed with Milli Vanilli. Good stuff. If I ever need a good cry, this movie is guaranteed to kickstart the waterworks.

4. Hunger. Not my own hunger, but that of all the people locally and internationally who don't have enough to eat. With the rise in food prices, international natural disasters, and the pressures of the US economy, I've been thinking about it more and more. I won't turn this post into a dissertation about poverty and hunger and malnutrition; basically, I'm trying to figure out what I personally can do, like learning more about community food security and sustainable food production and distribution, planting a vegetable garden, and personally supporting international poverty-related organizations and local food pantries.

5. This beautifully written post by Megg: http://www.babble.com/CS/blogs/loveisblind/archive/2008/05/20/questions-questions-questions.aspx#comments. There seems to be a lot of crying going on among Babble bloggers lately.

6. Going through photos of Axel as I load them onto my computer always makes me a little weepy. Each picture reminds me that the moment won't happen again, that Axel will keep getting older and wiser and less willing to have his picture taken a dozen times a day. Here are a couple recent shots:

"Reading" himself a bedtime story:

Trying to capture my camera during brunch:

Yeah, I'm investing in Kleenex.

Since I'm playing by the rules on this one, I'm tagging Zellmer, MidLifeMama, Ewokmama, AmyinMotown, Laura, and Mama Tulip.

Make New Friends and Lose the Old Ones

2008-05-21T13:45:00Z

Can we talk about friendship? In the last six weeks of pregnancy, I was pretty focused on just getting my bloated, achy self up the stairs or some french fries. I wasn't much fun as a dinner companion, nevermind someone to meet up with for drinks at 10 pm. In the first four months of Axel's life, I was afraid to leave the house after 5 pm, with or without Axel. He had an explosion of fussiness that could only be calmed by nursing, lots of bouncing while sitting on the exercise ball, or rocking back and forth while loudly shushing (not side to side - only back and forth) on three or four nights a week. Since it was impossible to predict which nights those would be, and because I didn't want to inflict his cries on anyone not directly related to him by blood, I stayed in. What's more, I didn't have the energy or desire to get out much. The limited time I had was pretty much spent getting outside and going on a walk or a run, or on basic hygiene. Lunch or brunch I could do, but though I was physically there, I couldn't always fight my way through the sleepy fog to have a conversation that would hold the interest of anything more evolved than a clam.

Clearly, I was not the best person to have as a friend. Maybe I'm still not, though I think I'm a bit more of an engaging conversation and shopping partner than I was before. While all the new baby shake up was going on, I told myself I'd just be out of the loop for about four months, but then I'd get right back in to my old loops. I'm still the same person. The same people would still want to hang out with me, right? Maybe that's right, but we're not hanging out. Maybe I'm not the same person. Maybe I'm less interesting now because, despite my son's adorability, not everyone loves stories about baby poop - which, by the way, I try to restrain myself from sharing.

It's not like, in my absence, my space was saved in my friends' lives. This isn't the line for the bathroom at a football game. They're busy people. They have things to do and places to go, and kept on doing and going while I've been nursing and diaper changing. They're in relationships, they're going to graduate school, they have new jobs, they have other coworkers to get Indian food with who don't spend their lunch hour with a breastpump. Not that many of my local friends have children - just a couple, some of whom live a 45 minute drive from us, a drive that previously seemed short and now that such a trip involves complicated naptime and nursing-related planning seems like it might as well be in California. It's not that I never see friends - I went to a roller derby bout (which, by the way, is super fantastic) with a group of girlfriends. It was fun, though, after dinner and a half a beer and watching tough roller skaters whirl around, my chest was full and aching, and I couldn't think about anything other than getting home to my baby and breast pump. It's that it rarely happens, and I often feel like I'm in an uninterrupted spin cycle of goo goo ga ga and returning work-related voicemails.

One of my friends still hasn't seen Axel. We've been friends since we were fourteen. After a school dance, we ditched our dates and met up with a couple of guys from another school, and hopped a fence to get to the hottub at a condo complex, ripping our dresses in the process. We were bridesmaids in one another's weddings. We live ten minutes away from each other, and we haven't gotten together in nine months. Her life has changed, and mine has, too. I know that this happens, that people go in different directions, but it still makes me sad.

I miss singing along in the car with B-52s songs. I miss dancing until my feet ache and are covered in blisters. I miss the late-night laugh fests you have with groups of girlfriends, and, as embarassed as I am to admit this, slumber parties. Maybe, once you have children, you're no longer at the top of the list for people to call to go get margaritas or to go try on expensive shoes you know you'll never buy. We're all busy. I forget to call. I forget to email. I can't always leave my house after Axel's in bed. It's not just that others aren't calling or emailing me. It's not like I can drop everything to go lay out by the pool anymore - and, even if I could, I would worry about skin cancer and wouldn't want to anyway. But I'm still up for brunch or a playdate, or dancing or PBRs at a dive bar. I'd even watch Grease or a Christan Slater movie marathon and toilet paper a house or two. It's too bad that you get too old for slumber parties; Pump Up the Volume and those white chocolate dipped Oreos probably aren't as good as I remember them being anyway.

I've grown closer to a few people, now that I have Axel - like my running partner and friend Adrienne. My relationship with my husband is richer, and there's new depth to my already close friendship with my own parents. I'm thankful for all this, and for having a healthy and cheerful baby. But, honestly, within the flurry of baby and work-related busyness, I'm still a little lonely.

The Stubborn Tortoise

2008-05-18T23:26:00Z

I wouldn't say that I'm a runner. Instead, I'll say I run. I'm not any of the things I associate with runners - a past high school or college runner, fast, elegant, someone who knows her PRs, totally confident about using the word "fartlek" in a sentence, an A cup. Pre-baby, I'd done three marathons and a half a dozen or so half marathons, with a whole mess of 5 and 10ks. Even though I plod along at the pace of a stubborn tortoise, I love to run. It helps me think, and, sometimes, it helps keep me from thinking. I love running alone in the cool pre-dawn hours, or in the silence that late afternoon snowfall brings to the city. I love the sort of shaky high that comes when my whole body's spent, but I know I can keep going just a little further, and how everything - the view of the mountains to the west of Denver, or the sight of Axel in his stroller, his lips sucking on an imaginary pacifier in his sleep - seems stronger, brighter, deeper, more real.

I kept running through pregnancy, until the evil of sciatica just made it too hard, around six months or so. Then, I walked and, from time to time - usually when I was filled with hormonal pregnancy rage about someone telling me I was bigger than a Volkswagen - I'd run a mile or two. Three weeks after Axel's birth, I started running again, though very slowly and for no more than a few blocks in a stretch. By the time he was two months old, I was running two or three miles at a stretch a couple times a week. My primary motivation for running was getting out of the house, and having a few minutes alone in which I didn't have to rock a colicky baby, in which I could feel a little bit like myself. I would sneak out for a bit on days when Sean wasn't on shift, lugged Axel in the jogging stroller with the infant carseat attachment on days when Sean was at the station for 24 hours and the baby and I were getting fussy indoors, and wedged runs into the spots of the week where I had enough time and almost enough energy for it. I didn't - still don't - have the time to drive across town to the gym, or to figure out how to get all the work/baby schedules to align so that I can take 90 minutes for yoga, but I could throw on my shoes and run, even if just for two or three miles. Axel's usually pretty happy in the jogging stroller, as long as it's under an hour and, the times when he very loudly lets me know he is so over being strapped down and spits his pacifier at me in disgust, his yells are a good motivator for sprinting the last half mile.

When I was pregnant, I had the very, very ambitious plan of running a marathon in June - seven months after having a baby. Yeah, that's not gonna happen. The longest run I've been able to do before today was ten miles, and, halfway through, I had to run back to our hotel (this was in Cape Cod), nurse Axel, and then went back out in the wind and rain. On another run around a local park, Axel was rebelling in the stroller and I thought that, this time, it was out of hunger, so my running budy and I pulled over our strollers, and I wrestled my way out of a sports bra and tried to nurse Axel on a park bench, underneath a blue flannel blanket. It was very, very public nursing. These are not long runs of the sort I used to do, and running as a nursing mother is a new experience. I had to have pretty industrial sports bras before, but now my sports bras go by the name of Helga, and they beat my leaky bosom into submission and dig grooves in my shoulders.

Another thing that's kept me running: my friend Adrienne. Adrienne and I work together, and she has a four and a half month old chubby bundle of baby love named Mateo. We've been running on the trail near our office once a week over lunch and sometimes on weekends, talking about our boys, working, new motherhood, and all that comes with it. We've gotten cheered on by other women at the park - I guess they felt the sight of two women running with children under six months deserved vocal support, which we appreciated, though not as much as the time a guy in a pick-up honked at us. Yeah, we're sweaty postpartum pin-ups. A coworker started calling us the Rubberband girls - as in, they had babies and bounced right back. While that's flattering, I don't really feel like the flab left around my belly is bouncing anywhere but up and down - though it's my own fault because, even after an eight mile run and breastfeeding, I don't really need to eat half the batch of oatmeal raisin cookies I just made.

On one of the runs we talked about doing a half marathon. I was thinking maybe October. Adrienne wanted to do the local Colfax Half Marathon in May. She'd done it for the past few years, and had done the math, working out the time up to the race and the number of miles to run each Saturday. This was about six weeks ago; I was worried I couldn't do a half but, I figured, if Adrienne, who had a baby two months after I did, thought she could do it, I could, too.

The half marathon was today, starting at six am. During the race, our conversations about our boys, wearing socks during labor, and the unique deliciousness of the Snickers bar helped pass the time. It was different than the races I've done in the past. Slower by about a half hour, for one, and it included more bathroom breaks (two. Thanks, Axel.), but I also felt stronger and happier. We carried and delivered healthy babies, nursed them for their short lives thus far, and could still run 13.1 miles. At the finish line, our husbands and babies were waiting to cheer us on. Though sore and sweaty, I felt great. We both sprinted to the finish line, and I thought, we are mothers, we are runners, and, in this moment, we are fabulous.