Teething Blows

Tags

parenting, teething

And that’s pretty much all I have to say about it right now. Why do babies grow teeth months before they even need them?

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Send In The Clowns

Tags

breastfeeding, insomnia, Louisa, medical transcription, moving, panic, parenting, postaweek, postaweek2012, sleep deprivation, teething

I have begun composing this post no less than 100 times in my head this past week, but every time I had a spare moment the baby was napping (which was rare) I have either been taking a test (more on that later), trying desperately to get a bit of housekeeping done (which I did not accomplish – you should see the place – ermahgerd it’s a nightmare), or taking a lightning-quick nap because when the baby sleeps, I should be sleeping. Yes, still. I know some of you have babies that were wonderfully sleeping through the night at 3 months old and hey, good for you. Mine? Isn’t. And probably won’t be for a while because I’m breast feeding. She still has to get up at least once, sometimes twice in the night to be fed. And I’m okay with that. Sortof. I mean, I sometimes still hate breast feeding because when Lou is having a growth spurt (like now), or teething (like I suspect is also happening) she wants to eat more all day long, and man are my nipples sore.  But I’m still not giving up on the nursing, because I’m super glad that she isn’t drinking formula. For various reasons that I needn’t go into because I’m not one of those judgy moms who thinks everybody should do everything my way. Nursing works for me. It doesn’t work for some people.  Sorry about all the boob and  nipple talk. But this is, after all, a mommy blog of sorts and titties are bound to come up sooner or later. Whoops. Did I go off on a tangent? I did. Well whatever. Point is: It has been a circus up in this joint for a while. So many things happening. I finished school (yay!) and had to take a giant test (ugh!) which I passed, with honors (YAY!). I had planned to take my time and explore their graduate job placement assistance thingie at my leisure and to find a job when it was right, but the school I chose apparently makes good on their promise of graduate job placement assistance and they emailed me about 2 really good job opportunities, both of which I felt obliged to apply for. When you’re a medical transcriptionist, applying for a job consists of taking a transcription test, because duh – if you can’t measure up to their transcribing standards, why would they hire you? So I hurriedly updated my resume (with the help of my excellent school (by the way, if anyone reading this should be interested in transcription and wondering which school and etc. blah blah etc. let me know and I’ll go on and on about it – just didn’t wanna take up the whole blog and bore everyone else who already has an excellent job that they love – (ha ha ha – who really loves their job? Nobody I know!))) and sent it to both places. Then I was up to my eyeballs in transcription tests, phone screenings and filling out applications. All whilst arranging baby wrangling duties with my husband, or doing it myself. I also had a few anxiety attacks (because, let’s face it, that’s what I do when any sort of change occurs), which meant that even when the baby WAS sleeping, I wasn’t. Nothing like a little insomnia to ruin your week. The good news is that I got a job!!!!!! When we moved here nearly a year ago I decided not to get a job for a while so that I could just concentrate on starting and finishing school. And then all hell broke loose (I got knocked up etc etc – I wrote about it earlier so those of you who are regulars already know the whole story) and things took a little longer than I thought. October 14th was the anniversary of my last day of work. I have been unemployed for a year. Which really was okay because my pregnancy was nutty (how many effing sonograms did I have?) and the first 3 months of a baby’s life are… well… overwhelming sometimes and I’m really glad that I didn’t have to worry about a job throughout any of that. I’m not sure when I will be starting, probably not until after we move (IN TWO WEEKS!!!!!), but it’s nice to know that I will soon be bringing in at least a little bit of income. I will only be working 20 hours a week, but every little bit counts. So that happened. As did our second wedding anniversary (how the hell have 2 years passed? HOW?) on the 17th, and little Louisa turned 3 months old. I have had (and managed to keep not only alive but thriving) a baby for 3 months?! I still sometimes look at her (and see my face looking back, by the way, which is a little bit freaky) and think to myself: HOLY SHIT I’M A MOM. I am responsible for another human being, and she will be a part of me for the rest of my life. It’s really amazing. Oh yeah, and the other thing that happened. Jason’s parents found him a truck. It’s free (long story about their amazing connections that would take an entire blog to explain so I won’t). So he sold his car that hasn’t been running but just sitting around, gathering dust and getting stolen. Somebody bought that thing. It was a dude buying it for his 16-year-old daughter, which made me smile because I remember when I was 16 and my dad was helping me find my first car. And then I felt old and cried myself to sleep. Not really. I haven’t been sleeping, remember? And I don’t cry about getting old, because who really gives a shit?

So yeah. My house is a gigantic mess, my baby is slobbering all over the place and fussy (plus vomiting more often – bleargh), and my mom is coming to visit next weekend (which is cool because she is bringing Louisa’s Halloween costume that she made – I promise to post pics because it is soooooo effing cute). Oh and we have to like, pack and move and stuff. Cue circus music.

Good Times

Tags

dreamy baby, grandparents, parenting, postaweek, postaweek2012

I don’t have a ton of time right now as the baby is napping and I’m trying to make a meal, but the past couple of days have seemed so magically better that I just wanted to drop in and say so. Really – if you’re a new mom who is freaking out and wondering if you’re ever going to get the hang of parenting and feel normal again – YOU WILL!!  I don’t know what happened this weekend – it’s not like Louisa started acting differently or anything, but I suddenly just feel like I’m getting the hang of this whole Mama thing. It only took 2 & 1/2 months, not bad right? I mean, don’t get me wrong, I still have moments where I remember how thin and well rested I used to be, and days where I long for conversations with adults, but I wouldn’t trade this stay-at-home-mom gig for anything.

My parents came to visit on Saturday and Lou behaved beautifully the entire time. On Sunday Jason and I took the babe to the park and for a drive in the car and again she behaved beautifully – no screaming at all! That night we thought we’d test drive her crib, which turned out to be a really stupid idea. She went to sleep at her normal time, 10:30ish, but woke up 45 minutes later and was in a reallllly bad mood. She screamed for a while, and then stayed up until 1 in the morning – oops. Needless to say, at that point we put her back in her cradle thing and decided to try the crib again later. I’ve been making her nap in it all this week hoping that eventually she’ll get accustomed enough to it to sleep at night. If not I guess we’ll fight that battle when we have to (which is in about 3 months, as that is the maximum age on the cradle thing according to the website). Jason had Monday off for Columbus Day (which is wacky considering he doesn’t work for the state or the government – just a really nice company apparently), so his mom came to visit us. Louisa was a DREAM. Last time his mom came she (the baby, not Nana) slept almost the entire time. This time she was smiling and singing and gabbling – it was awesome. After Nana left we shoved the baby in the carseat and took her to Costco and the grocery store and she again was wonderful. She kicked and played in her stroller and just took everything in. Maybe 3 months is just the magical age where babies stop fussing so much in public? Who knows. Anyway, since then I’ve just been having so much fun being a mom to her. I have a new game where I pretend I’m eating her feet and she just lauuuuughs at me. And she is in love with her playmat, kicking and batting at things like she is on a mission. It’s awesome. So I guess this post was longer than I meant it to be. I’m just so in love with my daughter! And look at her! Who wouldn’t be?

chatting with herself in the mirror.

Proud Mama.

Singing with Daddy.

some days are diamonds, some days are stones

Tags

breastfeeding, broken water heater, drama, ruined treasures, shitty apartment, stinky carpet

And some days are rivers of wet, stinky water flowing from your busted water heater onto everything in your storage shed, and all over your bedroom carpet. Why couldn’t the damn thing hold on for 5 more weeks until we have moved out of this shit-bag apartment? Siiiiiiigh. And why were the boxes on the bottom of the stack the ones that held a bunch of my husband’s photos and all of my journals (chronicling my life from 1986 through the present)? Why didn’t we put boxes of useless things on the bottom? In fact, why were we stupid enough to store things like that outside? Oh right, because this place is entirely too small for the two of us and all of our shit and we had nowhere else to put it.

So yeah. This morning I sit in the midst of my stinky, water logged treasures with maintenance men traipsing through my apartment (one of whom is acting very annoyed that he has to be here – really dude? I’ve been without hot water and all of my shit is ruined) as I try to breast feed my daughter and go about my day. I know, I know – shit happens. Water heaters break and I really shouldn’t be complaining about my first-world problems, but I hate this apartment and the management so much that I just want to hurl handfuls of smelly, rotting carpet at their faces. The good news in all of this is that I thought that I had lost my journals. For some reason my pea brain didn’t remember packing, moving, and storing them all even though it was only a year ago (I blame it on pregnancy/childbirth… that’s a legit excuse, right?). Now I can read through them (despite the fact that they’re dirty and stinky) and laugh at my younger selves. I’m particularly excited to see what my life was like at 8 years old…