Monday, August 17, 2009

I am being stalked.

Bored out of my SKULL, people. Once the baby goes to bed, I usually have no trouble finding things to do to keep myself entertained. But today my brain is all flebbbthpt. Like a decomposing jellyfish.

The Child has been teething for, like six weeks, I swear, and it's FINALLY started to poke through. Poor thing. She's utterly miserable half the time, and she woke up last night and three nights ago, completely distraught. We have some teething tablets that help for a little while, but if I want her to stay asleep for more than an hour, I have to give her Tylenol. Liver failure, here we come! Just kidding. I haven't given her that much. Yet.

I do handle these episodes better when I know the reason for them. If it seems she's just grouching because she woke up on the wrong side of the crib that day, I'm all selfish angry mom (I try not to be, and I continually remind myself that I'm lucky just to have a living, breathing, healthy baby, but still... I'm selfish and human). When I know she's hurting, it's not quite easy for me to drag myself out of bed in the middle of the night, but it makes my cold, dead heart flicker with just the faintest signs of tender compassion.


In other news, we believe she has some words. WORDS. MY BABY MAY BE TALKING. *sob* So far, we think it's just "mama" and "dada", but maybe also "hi". She waves hello and goodbye, but it's usually ten minutes after the target of her waving has disappeared from view. She also puts her arms up when she wants picked up. And she can climb onto our bed all by herself. She also climbs off the bed, face-first. We let her do this for a while, thinking it would hurt, and she'd learn, but she never did. She just started not caring. Face planting is fun!

She plays Where's the Baby? with blankets and shirts, even though half the time she's unclear on the concept called Actually Hiding Your Face from View. She holds the blanket about up to mouth-level and peers at you expectantly, like, "Hello? I'm PLAYING here, and you aren't playing back? Are you stupid?" Or sometimes she'll just be sitting in the middle of the floor by herself while I go about my business, and she'll start doing it, expecting me to immediately notice. The evil side of me likes to watch from the corner of my eye while she lifts blanket, puts it back down, turns to see if I'm watching, lift, let down, peek, lift, let down, peek, and then finally squeak to get my attention or crawl over and get up in my face so she can chew on my nose.

It's slowly dawning on me that I gave birth to a person. A Someone who will one day go to school, play sports, learn an instrument, fall in love, have babies of her own. I'm so very excited for those things, but they make me sad because I know that if she does those things, she won't be a tiny, snuggly baby anymore.

Do you people remember this:



This was seven months ago. SEVEN. That explosion your hear is the sound of my mind blowing up at the same time that my heart shatters into a million pieces (brain is too flebbbthpt to think of anything but clichés). Thank goodness for 2.0, or this growing up and turning into a little girl business would have killed me already.


Remember how I was all gung-ho about the Oil Cleansing Method a while back? Well, no, you probably don't, but I was fully gunged to the ho. I've never had nice skin. I've never had awful skin, either. It's just always been ick enough for me to be discontent but not ick enough to warrant going to a dermatologist. It also responds very badly to typical acne spot treatments like salicylic acid and benzoyl peroxide. No idea why, but it always seemed to flare up right before prom, and like an idiot, I'd get out the acne treatment gel, hoping this time it would work, and then I'd wake up the next day with Scale Face and cry.

Anyway. I first read about this and thought, "OIL? On my SKIN? On PURPOSE?" But then I tried it. And lo and behold, it worked! And I was thrilled! Mostly because it's much cheaper than the Neutrogena stuff I'd been using. But then I started thinking, well, maybe it's just that I'm pregnant, and I did start having pretty nice skin during second trimester, and it's not THAT much better. Maybe a little, but not a ton. And then I had the baby, and my skin stayed nice, but sometimes skin changes permanently during pregnancy, so I still didn't really know.

Well, this time around, I didn't get first trimester skin at all. A couple flare-ups, and slightly splotchy skin, but nothing like the horror of last time. The other day I ran out of oil mixture and went back to my old Neutrogena standby because I was too lazy to pour a little oil into a bottle. HOLY COWS. First trimester skin was back, and it was UGLY and MEAN. Because I'm an idiot, I kept using the Neutrogena for about a week and a half, and it was still horrible. Two days ago, I finally got around to changing back, and the change was immediate. I have my skin back! And now I can evangelize with full confidence!

(Unlike the website, I don't think this is guaranteed to work for everyone, but if you're like me and your skin responds poorly to even the expensive stuff, or you just want to try something new and see if it will save you some money, just try it. For a week or two. Seriously.)


So, you people know how I am afraid of bugs and spiders and everything in between? (And how on EARTH are spiders part of the animal kingdom? They should make a whole separate kingdom just for horrors of nature, and call it the evil kingdom) These things are stalking me. The other day James and I went on a walk and passed a beetle so huge I was almost not afraid of it because it could have been a puppy. It was black with red or orange markings and two or two and a half inches long. Then, on Friday, I went out with some friends. I was in the middle of a bar in downtown Madison when I looked down and saw another beetle on my leg. I think it was a patent leather beetle, but I'm not sure. I made a scene and hurt a hip muscle. It was embarrassing. Night before last, I was about to snuggle up to my laptop in bed, when I looked over to see a spider scrabbling eagerly toward me. I killed it with my power supply. I do not know how I did this without waking the baby, whose door was open. For the first time in my life, I encountered a spider and did not scream like a teething baby.

2 comments:

  1. Kudos for making me giggle throughout your entire post. Also, that video is completely adorable and now I want to play youtube-pong because your video reminded me of one of my videos and then of course you'll have to show another one and then *I* will have to show another one and so on... except I'll probably screw up the sequence because can you believe I am only THREE WEEKS FROM POPPING!... And then I get one of those! *points at your video*

    Anyhow, back to talking about you... gunging to the ho, "could have been a puppy" and imagining you ignoring the peekaboos really tickled my funny bone.

    Also, I totally know what you're saying about losing the baby-ness. Sigh!

    Check out Catherine (Her Bad Mother)'s post on the same subject. Bring tissues. http://herbadmother.com/2009/06/hello-goodbye/

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  2. The peekaboo game is so cute. My little one is just a month younger than yours, so I like being reminded what's coming up! I just started playing peekaboo with her after reading your post, I'd forgotten that game. She says thank you, she loves it!

    As for bored out of your skull, you should start playing Dawn of Discovery (computer game) like me. Then you won't be bored, you'll just waste all the time you should spend doing stuff around the house! Much better! :)

    So awesome that she's talking already! A prodigy. :) Enjoy it! It's so fun when they say your name.

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