POST!

Posting for the sake of posting. Meh. Time for bed.

Murphy's Law

There is a cloth diaper clause to Murphy's Law that states:

When the diaper pail has been emptied out and rinsed clean the very next diaper will be a poopy one. Just so the poo (residue, we flush the majority) sits for the longest time it can.

It's one thing that I hadn't considered in my diaper spreadsheet.

Bad Ideas and Monster Days

That last 3x non-fat latte was a bad idea. Seemed good at the time, but now I'm tired and still buzzing slightly from caffeine. I already don't sleep well alone. Coffee isn't going to help that cause.

Speaking of not sleeping...little M was quite the monster today. She didn't nap. Not one bit. Well, maybe a bitty bit. But not nearly enough. That's why I needed the coffee. To keep up wit her.

Maia has discovered the ability to pull herself up to standing in her crib. She has also discovered that her mattress bounces when one stand up on it. She has decided that sleep is for the weak and she would much rather be a crazy standing baby than a cheerful rested one. The rested one has to LAY DOWN for a while. The crazy baby gets to STAND UP and BOUNCE. Tough decision.

And it won't help one bit to drop her mattress the rest of the way down. She holds on to the side rail slats. She doesn't need the top bar at all. One friend has suggested plexi-glass and after a few more days like this I might just consider it.

It wasn't as though I didn't try to get her to nap. She just knows when she hits the bed. At morning nap time we read a story and had a bottle and she was blissfully drowsy when I put her down to sleep. As soon as her body hit the mattress, she began to roll about and sit up. I lay her down and turned on the mobile. Roll and sit. I lay her down again and left the room. 15 minutes later I go in again to lay her down. She sits up in bed, gets into a corner, leans into it and cries. After an hour of struggling with her, I give up and we got to the park. We play. We have lunch. It's nap time. She's full and I figure she's got to be tired by now.

She falls asleep in the car. I transfer her to her bed, still sleeping. Head on mattress...awake. Roll, sit, pull up and bounce. I make another bottle. We rock. She dozes off. I put her down. I leave the room and all is quiet. 5 minutes later I hear the distinctive squeek squeal of Miss bouncing. I head into the room and sure enough, there she is laughing away. I give up quickly this time.

Fortunatly, a friend calls and we decided to do coffee. We're both dragging. I think, "Perfect, Maia can sleep in the stroller". I changer her up, bundle her into the stroller and away we go. She refuses to sleep. Coffee is nice. We walk around downtown. We visit the bookstore. Maia pulls up on anything and everything she can. Still no sign of sleep. We walk home. Not an eye shut.

I need to attend a neighborhood meeting. I am so very worried about the impending Maia meltdown, I begin to sweat. We go off, bottle in hand, toys in place and a blanket for the grass. Maia does very well up to the very end when she just can't take it anymore. I bounce her to sleep on my shoulder. I pick up her toys. I gather the information from the meeting. Maia stays asleep through all this and the walk home. She stays asleep as I greet my brother. She stays asleep as I take off her hat, unsnap her jacket, and pull it off of her. She stays asleep until her head hits the mattress. Sigh.

Back to square one. PJ's on. Another bottle. Lots of rocking and snuggling. She's out. Until the crib. I leave her, exausted and trying to pull up on her bed. This is one determined baby. She finally passes out from sheer exhaustion after about 3 minutes of *light* fussing.

That was around 9 PM. I hope she stays down until 11 AM. Even if it means missing my group meeting. (darn)

Have I mentioned my lack of showering? No daddy break and no nap for Maia equals one stinky mama. Another bad idea from our monster day.

Best Line of the Day

From the "TSA: Traveling With Children" section of their website:

NEVER leave babies in an infant carrier while it goes through the X-ray machine.

Gee, thanks for the reminder. And what are the security screening guards there for, if not to remind you to not irradiate your children?

Tolstoy Revisited

Monday I gave Maia a bath. We do that on occasion. She loves the big tub and loves to splash. It's also a nice way to kill some time before bed when I'd rather play with her than cook dinner or pick up toys.

We like bubbles. Who doesn't? I usually squeeze in a good portion of Honeysuckle baby wash and let the bubbles pile up. This evening, the bubbles were especially high and piled at the tap end of the tub. I put Maia in the middle and she immedately headed for the tower of bubbles. She went in for a combined bubble smack tub splash and ended up with bubbles all over her face.

The results were rather amusing. She looked just like this:




I really expected her to start dictating "War and Peace" revisions at me. Her eyes were all big and serious, her hair sparse and wild. Dense, dripping, white bubbles forming her beard.

Come to think of it, my Mom has always claimed some Russian blood on her father's side of the family...

*sigh*

Sometimes I'd rather be fat than diet. Make that "most times"...

Downward-Facing Baby

I took a yoga class (for credit) last Spring while pregnant. My teacher was a very old guard hippie yoga guy who discovered yoga while attending SF state during the 60's. The highlight of one of his speeches was how yoga allowed him to make it through a three-month prison sentence.

He had his own yoga instruction book. It included several picture of his (then) very young daughter in various "natural" yoga poses. He said that babies and small children instinctivly preformed yoga because of the ways it helps strengthen the body.

OK. I get it. It was kind of out there for me, but the pictures were cute and he was a very good instructor.

Today Maia perfected Downward Facing Dog.

Just like the picture. She had her feet planted, head down, arms out-stretched, butt up and out. Perfect. She can't crawl, but darn if she can't do yoga.

What is it About Costco?

Really. Another Costco parking lot story:

We went a bit nuts at Costco Sunday and made a large, impulsive purchase. We bought a bike trailer for Miss M. We've been debating the merits of bike seats vs. trailers for a while now and had decided to go with a front-attaching bike seat when we came across the trailer again.

So we went trailer. It fits two kids (planning for the future), will allow Miss M to sleep if needs be on a longer ride which also gives us more flexiblity in our travels--and more time which is good if you're a slow biker mommy like myself. If John hauls it, it might actually slow him down to my pace while keeping his heart rate up. Good things all around. The trailer also has storage room in the back, great for trips to the farmers market, or grocery store. Best of all, we bought the style that converts to a stroller so we have a way to roll her about once we get to our destination.

It just seemed like what we really needed. Plus, it's Costco with their very liberal return policy if it doesn't work.

Back at the car, we realized just how big the dang thing is in the box. The BOB stroller was already in residence in the trunk of the Jetta. Plus we had our normal load of groceries and a looming trip to TJ's for more. Oh. And a suitcase. John is headed for Germany and needed one...that's another story.

So my super engineer husband is working hard to fit everything in the car. The trailer mostly fits in the trunk and the groceries fit around it. The BOB has the wheels popped off it and fits in the back seat. John is busy securing the trunk lid with a length of rope when the owner of the car next to us shows up with her two enormus carts of Costco goodies.

The car next to us is an extended Suburban. A monster of an SUV. That had been parked too close to us on the drivers side. That John had been bumping (with his body) in hopes of setting off an alarm system previous to the owner coming back. So the women in the Suburban unload groceries while John is tying down the lid of our nice little sedan. As the driver is getting ready to climb into her monster car she turns to me, looks at Maia and says: "One more and you'll be driving the Suburban too. That's just the way it is."

Ummm. OK. No.

I'm not sure I really understood what she meant. Yeah, our car was full, but it's not a normal occurance. If she didn't want the monster car, there are options out there that provide room, safety and fuel economy. And just because I live in the Valley and have a child doesn't mean I MUST want or need an SUV.

Please.

I'm waiting on my station wagon, thank you very much. Diesel. 40+ miles to the gallon. And I'll be able to out race that Suburban any day of the week.

Musing on Marriage

I've been thinking about marriage and the changes children bring to it. I've been thinking about the choices I've made and where they have lead me. I've been thinking about my baby and how she has changed me and my relationship with John and how we've become stronger--because if we didn't I could see how we could have been splintered apart. If you're not secure in your partnership before the baby arrives, he/she will only serve to drive the wedge deeper.

I'm sure that in some cases a baby makes a couple step up to the plate, so to speak, (I have a shining example of that in a friend of mine) but a baby is not a tool to test the resolve of your relationship with.

One of the greatest pieces of advise my mom gave me was this: "Marriage doesn't change a relationship, but children do". I am glad that I heeded it and waited until this point in my life to have children.

I met John at 25--well, just shy of my 25th birthday. I was careening out of control. I had the rock and roll lifestyle, sans heroin. I didn't have a clue what I wanted from life, I had subjugated myself into the image I thought others around me wanted. I lived through people, not for people. I was unbelievably selfish as I think most 20-25 year olds are. I was getting set to move out of town, across the state on a whim. Just because I could and I didn't want to be where I was anymore. I didn't want to be myself anymore.

Did I mention that I'd also just left an incredibly failed marriage? One with no children and of that I am grateful because we would have been awful parents at that time in our collective life.

Not an auspicious beginning for John and I. But, as Liz Phair sang in her earthy-ethereal way:

...But something about just being with you
Slapped me right in the face, nearly broke me in two
It's a mark I've taken heart
And I know I will carry it with me for a long, long time...

What came next was four years of dating and soul-searching and coming to terms with who we were as a couple. For me, it was coming to terms with who I was and what I needed on my own in order to be able to give of myself completely. If you don't know yourself, you can not know or love deeply another. It just doesn't work. You become an empty shell in that relationship and eventually break.

I have to give credit to my sometimes long-suffering then boyfriend. He encouraged in me in ways no one had ever before. Do you know it was he who suggested I look into the restaurant business which lead to cooking school? He helped me develop a passion and a career out of something I didn't think I was good enough to do. He helped by encouraging, by cajoling, by challenging me to seek more from myself than I thought was there.

I knew he was the kind of man who would make a great dad.

We didn't wait long after being married to start our family, but at 29 (just shy of my 30th birthday) it was time. It was the right time. I had grown in ways that surprised me during the five years from when I met him to when we started our family. He had grown in ways that surprised him. We had all the trappings of being "adult": a home of our own, no debt save for the home, and good jobs (at least his). More than that, we had a desire to share ourselves in a deeper way. The prospect of "family" frightened us, more than once we re-thought our decision, but we knew we were--if not ready--then willing to make the commitment.

Maia has changed us in so many ways. We drove to San Francisco this weekend and while she slept in the back we took the winding back road to give her the opportunity to sleep more and chatted about how much she has changed us. Ten months into this parent thing and already we don't quite remember what it was like before Maia. She consumes us and at the same time brings a meaning to our lives that was missing. We feel part of something larger than our own small perception of things. We are enriched even as she demands every last moment from us.

She has also brought chaos into our once somewhat ordered lives. This is the struggle. It is so easy to let yourself fall into the "baby trap". She needs so much from me, it would be easy to ignore John and what he needs. It is easy to ignore myself and my needs. To balance being a parent, a mommy especially, and a partner is no small task. This is the splinter, the wedge, the shattering, an infant can cause on an unstable marriage. To forget about your partner and your relationship is to lose what makes you strong enough to be a parent in the first place.

Of course, Maia comes first these days. But we're working on making sure our relationship is a close second. It energizes us to spend time with each other, as grownups, as friends, as lovers still. I don't want to lose the part of me that needs my husband as more than just the "baby maker". He is still my world and that is precious. Maia didn't make him that way to me, either. She simply cemented our foundation and gave us another way to show the other how much we care.

She has changed us. We are blessed by her because we were blessed by having found each other first. She has changed us because now we have to work at what used to come easily. We have to be creative in the ways we grow our relationship. She has amplified all that is, at times, rough in our relationship but has also amplified all that works so very well for us.

I came to this place in a roundabout way. But the destination is one I would not change for the world.