Tuesday, December 30, 2008

I found "bidet" in Boggle yesterday!

We got a rocking chair with our Christmas money. Most awesome non-necessity ever. Next to the bouncy seat. I can sit Grace on my lap and read to her, and she doesn't flip out.

In fact, I just spent about half an hour reading to her, and she was silent and still (almost) the whole time. Not sleeping, just listening.

Call me superstitious, but I've long believed that something makes children act up during church/prayer/Bible reading. I'm kind of half joking, but that does seem to be the way it goes, even with children who are too young to know they're supposed to be bored and fidgety.

Grace is no exception. I could do Bible reading with enthusiasm and try to do all the voices, and she would fuss the whole time. I could read her a fairy tale (no pictures) in a monotone, and she would listen, quiet as a mouse. And it doesn't matter what order I go in. I remember being a kid and dreading Bible reading after dinner. It seemed to last hours. But she's three months old. Her entertainment is my voice. So I don't know what the deal is.


Whose bright idea was it to manufacture scented diapers? Probably the same person who invented scented tampons. Talk about lipstick on a pig.

It seems that the more inexpensive the diaper, the more heavily scented it is. This makes no sense. Neither does wanting my kid's butt to smell Powder Fresh (just like my armpits, which, don't get me started). If her diaper is clean, she smells just fine on her own. If her diaper is dirty or wet, Powder Freshness only makes it nastier. So just lay off, diaper manufacturing people.

I can't believe I have to buy Huggies (slogan: Wrap your baby's bottom in solid gold (at least, that's what we're charging you)!) to get diapers that don't reek from a mile away. I'm thinking of just making my own diapers out of old towels, used Wal-mart bags, and duct tape.


We go to Indiana this week. I'm much more excited about it than I was last week. Grace seems to have turned a corner. She's been pleasant for whole days at a time. Sunday and today she cried for a grand total of about ten minutes each. So this trip no longer has the inner me cowering in a corner. And I'm excited to see family. I like James's family. But this time of year is so exhausting (and we don't even engage in half the level of activities most families do). I just want it to be OVER. Also, I'm getting chubbier, and my grandma-in-law will cram cookies down my throat until I barf.

The sad part is that I will enjoy every single one of those cookies. Ugh.

Friday, December 26, 2008

I did not forget My Brest Friend

You can design your own holiday sweater. I am in love with mine:

From We Hate Sheep, behold! my magnificent design:

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The pandas are key to a good holiday sweater.


Christmas was... exhausting. Good, but exhausting. Thanks to The Child.

She Does Not Appreciate going places. She is a homebody. She'll take a bottle from me with almost no fuss now. For this reason, I thought, "Yes! I can get out of the house for a few hours! James can watch the baby! It will be awesome!" So I skipped off to Madison to visit with Hebrew Friend. We watched the new Batman movie. We started a puzzle. It was fun to just get out. On the way there, I kept whipping my head around in a panic to see the empty car seat base before remembering I hadn't left her in a parking lot somewhere.

James called me a couple hours later. She wouldn't take a bottle, no matter what he tried. She'd scream and scream and scream and then fall asleep. I told him to swaddle her, give her the pacifier, and then pull the old switcharoo. He called me not long after. No such luck. Sound asleep, and she'd purse her lips together tightly every time he tried to feed her. Who says toddlers are the strong-willed ones? I really hope this isn't foreshadowing.

So I came home and fed her. I still got out for a while. It was nice.


We spent Christmas Eve at my mother-in-law's. Grace slept like a rock all night, but I, of course, kept dreaming that she wasn't sleeping or that it was ten in the morning, and I'd let her go fourteen hours without eating or that she'd stopped breathing, and then I'd be just getting back to sleep, and James would twitch. I hope there comes a day when I can sleep in the same room with my daughter. She doesn't even make noise--at least not any that I can hear over the fan. But if she's in the room, I don't sleep.

Anyway, Christmas Day was fun. My mother-in-law (who just had her second knee replacement surgery a month ago) cooked a huge breakfast with muffins and eggs and bacon and coffee. I ate almost all of it, and everybody else had to forage in the snow. Grace screamed a lot, but after a while we all went deaf, so it was okay.

She really loves this dress. The tights, too.

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James and I got some sweet loot. Of note: two sets of king-sized flannel sheets from mother- and grandmother-in-law. Also some very, very generous gifts from both of them. And then a bunch of gadgets and knick-knacks and other things ranging from useful to silly to tasty.

I gained forty-eight pounds. Grandma-in-law makes amazing mints and cookies. I challenge any of you to resist.

But the real Christmas winner was The Child. She was buried in loot.

Literally:

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I'm thinking there will be A Talk with the relatives once she's old enough to get the Wrong Message about Christmas from all those presents. Until then, we'll enjoy torturing her and taking ridiculous pictures.

Oh Crap.

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Wednesday, December 24, 2008

I would like to join a nudist colony.

I am becoming increasingly irritated with clothing manufacturers.

My latest pet peeve is tags sewn right into seams. Well, it's not my latest pet peeve since it's bothered me forever. It's just the one I'm going to whinge about now. Especially when those tags are on the side of a shirt, near the really tender part of the torso. Those are the worst, because they often create a bulgy spot in your shirt, right where a love handle goes. If I had love handles. Which I TOTALLY don't. The only way tag placement could be worse is if they were put in the armpit. Or the crotch.

I hate the feel of tags. Most of them itch or poke enough to hurt. I can think of several better ways to attach tags to clothing:

1) Make them of soft, nice material. Not shards of plastic.
2) Put them somewhere the skin isn't so sensitive. Say, the heel of the foot.
3) Make them of the kind of material that just rips off. I love those.
4) Use a whole extra five inches of thread and give them their own seams. That way I can remove my tags without my shirt falling apart.
5) Print them directly on the clothing. But don't use an ink that is also an allergen. Carter's did that once. That's an expensive recall.
6) Some combination of the above.

Instead, most of my shirts have huge, unrippable, sharp plastic tags sewn into the seam of the side of my torso. And all my pants have tags that are long and ouchy. This is not fun if they happen to infiltrate your underwear.


Tonight we go to my mother-in-law's house for Christmas Eve and Christmas. Hopefully The Child does not screech like a banshee all night. We've never tried having her actually sleep in the pack and play's bassinet before. It may be a very sleepy Christmas. But this is just the trial run. Next week, we make the five-hour trip down to Indiana to visit The Grandma-in-law, who is both awesome and a little scary to me at the same time. We will also be seeing many others of the Whine family, and I'm pretty sure The Child is going to make me look like a completely inept mother. That's okay. Then I'll have something to write about.


Firefox's newest upgrade has forced me to us Safari all the time. I like Safari a whole lot more than Internet Explorer, but compared to Old Firefox, it sucks. What were the Firefox people thinking? Why mess with a good thing? I miss you, Old Firefox. Please come back. I'll make you dinner.


I have to pack for our two-day outing. This used to mean throwing shampoo, conditioner, other toiletries in a bag, and then dumping a small selection of clothing in, too. Now it means bringing twelve outfits for each of us because The Child has plenty of stomach contents to share, and share she does. It's Christmas every day here! Also, the bouncy seat, the sling, forty million burp clothes, eighty-seven diapers, wipes, a pack and play, a bouncy seat, a swaddling blanket, sixty pairs of socks, a car seat, fourteen different varieties of Items That Soothe, a sling, and bottle-feeding and -cleaning equipment (I really like my eggnog, but probably shouldn't share it with Grace, though she might be easier to deal with if she were happily drunk).

When we get home, it'll be like moving in all over again. Only this time I won't be sixty-two months pregnant. That's a bonus.

Saturday, December 20, 2008

Weeeee!

The Child, she is going to bed at 9-ish and waking up at 8-ish. Don't hate me. If it's any consolation, she's a lousy daytime napper.


I've had a mild sore throat for two weeks now. I also wake up in the morning with my sinuses cemented shut. I think it might just be dry air (yes, we have a humidifier, but the baby gets it in her room), but then the hysteric in me screams TONSIL CANCER YER GONNA DIE!


I need things to write about. I would like to write more articles, but I'm a little stuck. My areas of knowledge: kid, Hebrew, really lousy housekeeping. Maybe I should raise my child in a Yeshiva in exchange for substandard custodial work.


We had some friends over today, George and Ellen. Those are fake names that I will probably forget by the time I talk about them again. Mostly we just stared at each other. James and George played with the Wii for a while. Ellen and I alternated between staring at the baby and staring at the TV. Sadly, it's the most fun I've had in weeks.

Does anyone else get fits of giggles every time "Wii" is used in a sentence? There's no way not to make it sound just a little dirty. I played on the Wii today. It's not our Wii. My brother in law lent us his Wii. There are so many Wii games out there! A Wii is hard to get if you don't have any money.

Oh my gosh. I need to go to bed.

Monday, December 15, 2008

I want a birthday cake with lots of fiber

I think the baby is already learning how to talk. She coos at me, I mimic her, she'll coo some more, and we go back and forth like that for ten minutes. If I don't mimic her, she doesn't keep cooing. Maybe this is just a case of overblown parent ego, but I think we're raising a verbal genius.


Speaking of mom brain, I had a mom moment a few days ago. I was feeding the baby in the living room, and I heard the floorboards in the hall creaking. They were creaking the same way they do when James is sneaking up on me. But James wasn't home, and there's no one else in the house with me who could be creeping around the hallway. So I flipped out and was about to shove the baby under the couch, when around the corner came... a cat. I stared at it for a long time before I realized the she lives here. She's been living here for four months.

Also, I've been wondering how on earth my glasses get so gross and nasty so quickly after I clean them. The other day it all came together. I had my face buried in the top of Grace's head, and I noticed her hair dragging across the front of my lenses. Oh... yes. That makes sense.


Do you all want to know what else makes me crazy? The use of "B-day", "B'day", "Bday", etc., in place of "birthday". Why? Because I always read it as "bidet". Also, it's almost always inappropriately capitalized.

Happy enema! Enjoy your colon cleanse!

Friday, December 12, 2008

This was supposed to be longer, but the babe's mad

I went shopping today with a bunch of church ladies. It was a lot more fun than it sounds. I brought the child, and she screamed almost the whole time. Motherhood rocks!

(actually, I'm loving it; but gushing about my pweshus just isn't entertaining)

I bought a sweater. A sweater that fits. And do you know what? I look skinny in my sweater that fits. Do you have any idea how that feels? No? Swallow a freakishly large watermelon. Let it stretch out your stomach for approximately fourteen months. Cut watermelon from stomach. Cry every time you look in the mirror for the next two months. Finally break down and buy something flattering even though you just know you'll fit back into your pre-watermelon clothing again someday, and you just don't see the point in wasting all that money on a new wardrobe. Cry again, this time because you look like an actual woman.


I thought that, with the baby sleeping like a rock every night now, someone would eventually hand my brain back to me.

So why did I try to smear deodorant on my nipples instead of lanolin the other morning?

Tuesday, December 9, 2008

Blah.

Well, that answers that question. We most certainly cannot go for walks outside to keep mommy sane and in shape no matter how bundled up we are. We made it about a block and a half before Grace started flipping.out. I am pretty sure she didn't even scream that hard when she got her shots. When we got back, I put my fingers to her face and extremities to see if maybe I'd underdressed her. Nope. Everything toasty warm, and not too toasty warm either. She was just right. So. I'm inside for the rest of the winter. Awesome.

Update: I totally didn't mean to sound as depressed as I did. A little perturbed, yes, but not all WOE IS ME PLEASE GIVE ME SADFACES. Sorry about that.

Anyway, we don't have a mall 'round these parts. We have a Wal-Mart, but it's across town and has fluorescent lighting, and I only have a car every other week.

I can get exercise indoors, but I love the outdoors. It's not just sunlight I miss, though that's a big part of it (those full-spectrum light bulbs are GREAT). Not that it was sunny today. It was all BLARGH, but not that cold, just gross and snowy. And Grace Did Not Appreciate It, so maybe I'll try again next time there is no wind. Oh, who am I kidding. This is Wisconsin. There is always wind. And not just the hot air that escapes my cake hole from time to time.

Thursday, December 4, 2008

Your not doing it right

James Wagner writes for The Los Angeles Times, and yet he can't manage to remember the difference between "its" and "it's". It doesn't bother me as much when most people do it, but when you have a job that requires a degree in journalism, I certainly hope you can tell the difference between "its" and "it's". James Wagner and My Brest Friend are trying to give me aneurysms.

Oh. So I typed all this up, and then went back to the link to see what paragraph it was in, and they've fixed it! So maybe it was just a typo. Kind of deflating.


What's this DePhoMo thing? Whatever it is, I don't like it. I was just breathing a sigh of relief with the passing of NoJoMo, when along comes DePhoMo. This is ridiculous. JaLoPy is next, I'm guessing.

Monday, December 1, 2008

Could have sworn she was 30 pounds. Update at bottom.

My Ginormachild is 13 lb 12 oz, 24.25", with a head circumference of 16.25". 95th percentile across the board.

She also got her vaccinations today, and she would like to tell you all that she Does Not Appreciate them and that she Feels Utterly Miserable. Or, she would tell you if she weren't so busy passing out in funny positions. I forgot how hard it was to burp a baby this floppy. Poor thing. I'm just glad I suddenly had to pee right before they came in to stick her. James got to hold her. He's totally wrapped around her finger, but her misery doesn't really bother him. It does me. Well, when I know she's in pain. Otherwise I just laugh. But pain is different.


My new nursing pillow came in the mail today. My Brest Friend is indeed my best friend, despite the lame pun being an automatic strike against it. Deliberate misspelling for the sake of a catchy titles makes me crazy. I also hate "congradulations" on graduation cards. Notice how we never talk about my grammar mistakes (and deliberate, flagrant violations, such as the excessive use of parentheses and sentence fragments) here. Pot, kettle.

I did use a generic Boppy at first, but quickly grew to hate it. It was nice at first, but she then gained a couple pounds, and it was useless for nursing. I highly recommend My Brest Friend (oh my gosh just typing that makes my teeth itch). I ordered mine through the BabyCenter store on super big sale and with free shipping. I wish I'd tried BabyCenter sooner. They sell things so much cheaper (if you can catch it on sale, which you can, since they have crazy sales all the time) than our Wal-mart does.

I promise you neither BabyCenter nor the makers of MBF (I can't type it again) paid me to tell you all that.

The sling I ordered also arrived, but the verdict is still out on that one. I put Grace in it today just to see, and she started to fuss. She may have just been grumpy anyway, though. She does look awfully cute in it. Maybe I'll just put her in it for short periods of time every day until she gets used to it. If she does take to it, life will be so much easier. I'll be able to do things around the house without having to listen for her screams every three minutes. Cooking a simple meal takes an hour and a half. If she doesn't get used to it, I'll just save it for the next kid.


More shameless advertising on my own behalf, in case you missed the last entry: I wrote a thing. You don't have to like it, but it'd be awesome if you read it.

I have to go. Sad baby needs love.


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Freshly Vaccinated Baby is Not So Fresh



Update: The verdict is in:

Not so bad
Is not so bad after all.

It's much cuter if you can see all of her.