Two sticks and some string!

That is our current weather and I’m loving it! Foggy and breezy baby!! Although there was other more gloomy gloom today. Chipotle was closed. How on Earth am I supposed to celebrate the birth of this great nation with carnitas if the best place in town for carnitas is closed? It was freaky. We drove all over town and all kinds of places were closed. Like more places than are closed on Thanksgiving. Really? Did our founding fathers leave the relative comfort of their homes in order to come to a new world only to have all the shops  close in celebration 200+ years later? I think not. Tomorrow there had better be some fried pork

Ps. It isn’t even dark yet (and did I mention the fog?) so if your illegal fireworks wake my kid I may have to kill you.

First, my baby turned a year old on 20-June. It freaks me out to think about how much has changed in the last year. It seems like everyday there is a change in him – he does something a little different than the day before or he looks a little older. I can’t think about it or it will make me sad. I don’t know why it makes me sad as he is growing into this awesome little person, but it makes me a little sad anyway.

Less than one hour old.

364 days old.

Another change – which is possibly the world’s worst kept secret at this point – we are moving to Denver this summer. I’ve been reluctant to write about it here for fear of jinxing it, but David starts his new job on 4-August. There is so much to do that I fear my head will pop off, or my hand will die of writer’s cramp, if I start making lists.

I can hardly wait to be back in Denver. We’ve been searching for houses on the internet for several weeks now and I love looking around the town, even if it is only on Google Earth. My Jessika and her family are there. We’ll have Sunday dinner. And we can trade babysitting. And we can have family vacations. I have a hard time sleeping if I start thinking about the fun we’re going to have!

We’d like to sell the house in the Bay Area in order to have a next to nothing mortgage in Denver. If we can’t then we’ll rent it out until the market improves. With an eye towards selling, we met with a real estate agent who looked us both in the eyes and asked if we were willing to rent a storage space because about half of our stuff needs to leave the house before it goes on the market. We spent a good portion of today packing up boxes – which seems unfair since the new company is paying for our move that includes someone to come pack up our crap. Ten book boxes and six clothing boxes later the books in the master bedroom are packed up and the closet is way clearer than before I moved in. Eight trash bags of my too big clothes went to charity. We have a little more work to do in the bedroom, but we’re off to a good start. Only two more bedrooms to go! And the whole downstairs.

After packing up stuff to help our little home appear bigger we did what any American family does. We went book shopping. We thought Nathan might be getting bored with his books. He only has a few dozen board books. Now he has another dozen or so. When we got home I packed up all the “big boy” books with the real paper pages, save Mo Willems, and I’m pleased as punch that my kid probably has six or seven book boxes of books. I love that he loves books! He sits quietly, muttering syllables under his breath, turning pages and “reading” to himself.

One bright side to putting the house on the market – aside from having next to nothing in the house and it ultimately meaning we’re heading off to Denver – is that we’ll get our cleaning people every week. That idea makes me woosier – in a good way – than the mountain of chores we have.

David was cleaning out the hazardous waste in the garage this weekend.  Think extra paint, wood stain, old weedkiller etc.  He had the truck all loaded up to take to the recycling center when he asks, “There are a few cans of ready mix formula in the garage should I take those too?

I love him!

Ps.  The ready mix was for the earthquake kit - in case something happened to me.

How come no one ever told me about this? Six TRILLION miles to a light year? So the North Star (300 light years) is so far away that the calculator on my Mac needed to insert letters into the final number (1.7597088e+15) of miles? Crikey. That’s really freaking big. I do so hope Nathan got David’s smarts. Pretty only gets you so far and that distance appears to be lying in bed going “No freaking WAY!” and then googling light years and stuff. All because you read there is going to be a mission to the sun and how cool is that?!?!

And isn’t this ironic? You wouldn’t know it because you weren’t here this afternoon. But I was and I think my humble pie is rather ironic. We’re having the master bedroom and the kitchen painted as well as having the last of the baseboards installed. One of the painters is quite the conversationalist. I know about his divorce (she answered the door to the process server and called her husband to the door without ever telling him she wanted a divorce). I know how much alimony he is paying ($284.75 a month until the day he dies). I know he has new blinds and how much they cost (four set and $380). None of that is ironic, I know. No, what is ironic is that he was going on and on and on about how he changed all the electrical outlets in his house over the weekend. He actually said, “but see I can do that because I’m a painter.” I sort of just blinked. Multiple times he threw out that he could change the outlets because he is a painter. Then he let me know that he can change outlets without flipping the main breaker. Because he is a painter. I was just sitting there wondering how he could have missed the pieces of paper hanging upstairs that show David has multiple advanced degrees in electrical engineering. David could switch all of the electrical outlets in our home without throwing the breaker in his sleep. Although he doesn’t because changing the outlets in your sleep is stupid. As is changing them without flipping the breaker. So I’m thinking, “Dude. Yes. You are a painter and guess what? I am paying you. Not because I can’t paint. But because I don’t want to paint. You being a painter doesn’t make you smarter than me. It makes you willing to do a job for which I am willing to pay.” I tell you I was smug! And maybe more than just a little bit elitist.

It turns out that David is way wicked smart and knew the equations to figure out how far away is a light year without having to google them. I mean I knew he was smart and I’ve never once considered myself on par with his brain, but he could also tell me what the little “e” and plus sign meant on the calculator. Although I did stump him on what is the number called when it has twenty zeros. Mostly because it would appear there isn’t a name for a number that large. That’s okay through because I don’t think I am going to the North Star anytime soon. Not if it’s going take me 10,000 years traveling at some asinine speed of 25,000 mph to get to our closest star and it’s only 4.3 light years away!

ETA: He is currently sleeping and I shook him awake to mention that there is a number called a “thousand million million million” and asked if that maybe had twenty zeros since it sounded so big and all. “No - that’s <insert explanation here.>” IN HIS SLEEP PEOPLE!!

We’re having a heatwave. I tropical heatwave. And it really is a tropical heatwave - what with the humidity being all high and stuff. It was warm enough today that the first watermelon salad of the season has been eaten. Yum! Ribs were BBQed, as was corn and a loaf of sourdough bread. Supper certainly didn’t suck tonight. But there is a book out there that says you don’t care what I had for lunch, so without further ado I present my kid who got to play in the fountain at the mall today…

I love my son more than I could ever hope to even begin to express. I felt a strong overwhelming sense of something for him from the day I found out I was pregnant and all the doctors were touching my shoulder and telling me they were sorry and we could try again in three months. He is a fighter and I respected him for that.

While I love him, it is only recently that I fell in love with him. I am a smart woman - I can do fractions and stuff, but even still I had an idealized notion of what is a mother and what is parenting. I knew it was going to change our lives dramatically. I knew I’d be tired. However, television shows and movies and Hallmark cards all make it out to be this state of bliss. It is not. It is freaking hard work. Being a mother is the hardest thing I have ever done. Hands down. Nothing even comes a close second.

There were days, no weeks, where I was convinced we weren’t bonded. That he doesn’t really love me and I blamed myself. I blamed myself because I had a c-section and allowed them to give me morphine, which meant I couldn’t go to the nursery to see him. We were separated for most of his first day. He latched on and nursed well the very first time – in the recovery room before they whisked him away. When he finally came back we struggled. Why? Because no one explains that breastfeeding is hard. And it is harder still when your baby is jaundiced and wants to sleep and the nurses just want to shove a bottle into his mouth. Hard, I’m telling you.

All they tell say about breastfeeding is that the first few hours of your child’s life is incredibly important because that is when you will bond with them. How is that even possible? You have no idea who is the tiny person. He don’t know you. All either of you really wants to do is sleep, but on different schedules and in a strange and scary place called a hospital.

And how do you get to know someone who is different every single day? Nathan went from sleeping almost twenty-four hours a day – I had to literally shake him awake every couple of hours in order to feed him and clear up the jaundice – to someone who fought sleep and we were lucky to get nine hours a day out of him. From someone who hated to nurse to someone who would cluster feed for hours on end. (No one tells you about cluster feeding, do they? No. They. Don’t.) Someone who hated baths to someone who squalled if you reached for the towel to get him out of the tub. Someone who woke every three hours at night to someone who slept right through. And all of these changes generally took place over the course of a day. Okay, maybe a couple days, but they were fast. Wicked fast. Case in point, Wednesday all of the sudden Nathan refused to go to sleep without a ride in the car. Just stopped sleeping in his crib unless a car ride was involved. Why? What happened that necessitated a car ride?

So you have this new person for whom you are responsible twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. Their moods and personality change on a dime. And it’s a dime you can’t see for the constant lack of sleep. And sometimes you look at this person who just this week has learned to “communicate” by opening his mouth and screaming at the top of his lungs and you wonder, “What the hell? How did I get here? What is wrong with me that there are still days when I don’t get to take a shower? Other women get to put on make-up. Other families live in clean houses and wear clean clothes. Other women have time for friends – even ones that live outside of their computers. WHAT IS WRONG WITH ME? WHY IS THIS SO FREAKING HARD?”

It’s like some big secret. Shush! Don’t tell people how hard it is going to be for the first year. Why not? The books don’t tell you. The books taught me how to be pregnant. I can totally do pregnancy. What they didn’t teach me was how to be a parent. Why can’t we take the sparklies off the first year of parenthood and point out that it is freaking hard? That guacamole doesn’t come out of t-shirts. That you have to take the bumpers off the crib every time you change the crib sheets, and oh, by the way, you’ll be doing that a lot and bumpers are bitch what with all those ties.

I have an idea. As mothers why don’t we start being honest instead of competitive? Why not ask a mom how she is doing with breastfeeding and offer her a quick sympathetic story of how you cried and cried and finally literally screamed to have someone take the baby away because he wouldn’t latch and it hurt and you were afraid he was going to die of starvation, so please in the name of all that is holy please take this kid away and give him a bottle! Maybe be compassionate when you see an exhausted mom instead of pointing out how your child sleeps thirteen hours a night and naps three times a day?

Mommying is too hard for us to not be honest. By continually competing with each other we are perpetuating some myth that we can do it all perfectly and do it all without help. And if you can’t do it all perfectly with another set of hands then you fail. Doesn’t matter that your baby is happy, healthy and rested, if you served something frozen that wasn’t organic then you failed your family.

Now having admitted this is the hardest, most stressful thing I have ever done, I will also admit it is the greatest thing I have ever done. I think the Army says it is the hardest job I’ll ever love. Or are they the ones who will do more before 9 am than I’ll do all day? Clearly they haven’t been a parent. Anyway, David asked me today if I had reached that point in Nathan’s childhood where I would say to someone who asked why I was a parent, “You wouldn’t understand.” I replied that I think I am. Maybe it’s not that people wouldn’t understand, but more that I couldn’t articulate exactly what parts make all the crazy hard parts work. Like the outrageous giggles he lets out when David carries him into the bathroom and I’m drawing his bath. The way when I lay down with him for his afternoon nap he nuzzles in close while he is all sleepy and puts his hand on my arm – kind of a “just making sure you’re still there” sort of moment. Watching him do something for the first time. A look of confused wonder comes across face. Then he does it a second time and you can almost see the wheels spinning in his head. The third is a charm because he looks over at me radiant with pride. The way he smells of blueberries. The overwhelming feeling I can’t even begin to describe when he crawls over to me and says “Mom-mom?” and lifts his arms for a cuddle.

So while I still have moments where I miss the flexibility of my old life, and maybe the pedicures, I love my son and I wouldn’t change our relationship for the world. Happy Mother’s Day to the hardest working people on the planet: moms.

Ps. Did I mention it’s hard? Because it is, really.

Who needs a blogroll when you have an RSS reader? And why have I been avoiding a real reader for so long? There is only so much you can do with LiveJournal’s syndication feeds. And we’ve got family slaving away to make sure I love my reader. And I do love my reader. I can’t believe I didn’t drink the kool-aid before. The euphemism kool-aid because anyone who has been around me for the last 19 months knows I drink mass quantities of actual kool-aid what with the pregnancy and then the nursing and no one making a diet pop without evil chemicals. And now I am rambling and me with over 355 blog entries to read. Courtesy of my new reader. Yay for readers!

We saw that on a bumper sticker today and it might be my new personal motto. It’s up there with “If your dog needs a sweater then you need a new dog.” It is faster and easier to say and really is much more relevant when yelling at the car that just cut you off. Twice.

I broke my blogroll and it makes me sad. Not sad enough to stay up for hours trying to figure out what I did, but sad nonetheless.

My apologies to whoever wrote “April showers bring May flowers.” I wrote a little poem about today’s weather:

April showers bring May flowers
But in April 91 is no fun
It makes clay of the dirt
And leaves everything looking burnt

Yeah, ok, it could use some work, but it’s hot here. My brain is hot. I may expire.

And while I may expire, Nathan thinks it’s perfect watermelon eatin’ weather!

Nathan and I thought we’d do the social thing today.  So this afternoon we met up with some mommies.  Oy.  “Everyone, this is Michelle who needs to learn to put her baby in the bouncy seat right outside the shower.  Michelle this is everyone.”  Really?  Dude!  Why didn’t I think to put him in the bouncy seat in the bathroom instead of getting out of the shower no less than three times before the shampoo was fully rinsed?  Oh, that’s right because he is too freaking big for the bouncy seat!  But, hey, thanks for making me feel like a jackass in front of large group of people.  Rock on!

After that I needed a coke.  We hit the Burger King drive-thru just as the high school was getting out.  Again, I say oy.  In front of us were five kids in a tricked out Hyundai.  Yep someone has too much money and yet not quite enough money.  “Can’t really afford a nice car so I’ll pour every red cent I can get into tricking out my mid 1990’s Hyundai!”  Firt they each took a pull of their pop and then returned them.  All five of them.  Now Nathan is crying because he really wants to be asleep, but doesn’t want to be asleep.  The huge bags of food come up next and they paw through them before handing them BACK!  It’s Burger King.  It’s crap.  I know it’s crap.  You know it’s crap.  Take your crap and move on.  Finally – 13 full minutes from when I decided to start timing – the Hyundai starts pulling forward.  At a snail’s pace.  They actually stopped just far enough ahead for me to get excited about maybe getting my coke and quenching the thirst that threatened to kill me.  And then they stopped.  They were all checking out who was inside the Burger King.  If you really cared who was inside the Burger King then why not go inside in the first place. I laid on my horn until they started moving again.  Just left it blaring.  The cashier applauded and gave me my king-size coke for free.  Don’t screw with the thirst.

My new favorite meal?  Trader Joe’s carries raviolis filled with mascarpone cheese and mushrooms.  Boil them up.  While that is going on take some of their sun-dried tomato bruschetta topping and mix it with heavy cream in a small skillet.  You can use nonfat half and half if that’s how you roll, but here with the extended nursing we allow ourselves a few extra calories now and again.  That’s it.  You’re done.  Freakish good and done in under five minutes.  You’re welcome.

Rock! Chalk! Jayhawk! KU! KU!

They didn’t choke.  Well done!!

Someone needs to help me NOT order Nathan’s first birthday cake from here.  They are so pretty.  And it only happens once.  And after seeing her storybook cake (in the children’s section of the cake gallery - just ANOTHER reason not to do your entire site in Flash) don’t you think she’d do an amazing Pigeon book cake?!?  Help!

I eavesdrop. There I said it. I eavesdrop. Tonight at supper I was listening in on the conversation the couple in the booth behind me were having. He was explaining he could get her a better job at the J.C.Pen.ny’s where he worked. It would pay her $12 an hour versus the $8 she is currently making. She politely thanked him and expressed what seemed like sincere interest went on to explain that her car uses a ton of gas and she can’t afford to commute any further than she is already. I just about dropped my fork. They were talking about adding a grand total of about 20 miles to her daily commute. David pointed out that once you figure in taxes and gas she wouldn’t really come out that much ahead.

I realize the current government is thinking things look great, but I think we might be in a little deeper than they imagine. We paid $4.09 for gas this weekend. I took pictures because it’s the first time we’ve ever broke the four-dollar mark:

We had lunch with my dad today. He is getting on a sailboat tomorrow and spending the next six-weeks sailing to Mexico. Tough life. Anyway, he wanted to say good-bye to Nathan so we had lunch. Later he called and raved about how smart is Nathan. How observant is he. How he seems so alert and interested in everything and everyone. I just listened and followed up with, “Yeah, but I gotta go because right now he is eating his ‘Good Night Moon’ book.” For every spark of brilliance he brings us right back down to earth with something like trying to ingest a book.

Oh and no he isn’t crawling yet. And I know it is important that he learn how to crawl. I promise we won’t send him off to college either still nursing or without the ability to crawl. So stop asking when I’m going to wean or when he is going to crawl. Have we met? Have you met my child? The answer is “when he is ready and a not a moment before.”

And so I don’t end this all angst-y: We got a Dyson. I want to marry it. Seriously

Anyone else think there will be a mini Baby Boom nine months from Earth Hour?

~*~

The Murano is starting to leave us tell tale clues that it might be time to find another family car. While the Miata is such a pure joy to drive, we usually have to leave someone at home alone. And since Nathan isn’t allowed in the front seat it has to be him. And CPS really frowns on that so we thought maybe the trunk. Nope, save yourself some time. Babies cry a lot in there. No, what you have to do is get a commuter car that will hold your family. David is leaning towards a mini van for the family car. I’m leaning towards a zippy little thing to get him to and fro faster and using less foreign oil. Global warming, baby, we’re all about it! We observed Earth Hour and everything! We just disagree about how to solve our current car issues. We’ll figure it out I’m sure.

~*~

While we were discussing the cars I planted myself fair and square in the “Girl Camp.” “I guess my only real request is that whatever we get has leather seats because they are easier to clean and if it could be a light blue with sparklies that’d be cool too.” I should slap my own forehead. Although the Chrysler 300? In the pretty clearwater blue? I had the briefest desire to roll around naked on one of them. Then I remembered we left the sunscreen at home and it was between 10 - 2 which we all know are the prime burning hours.

So for now Nathan will continue to ride in the trunk or we’ll continue to hope the transmission on the Nissan doesn’t fallout on 101.

~*~

The baby bucket car seat, the swing, and the bouncy chair went into storage today. For three milliseconds there was great joy in my living room returning to a real room that wasn’t designed by Fisher Price in a Rain Forest Jungle theme. And then my kid looked at me and smiled really big - so proud of the fact he was standing next to and playing with his blocks on the coffee table. It was all I could do not run screaming after David to bring it back! Bring it back! I’m not ready for him to grow out of babyhood and into toddlerhood just yet. Yes, he has four full fledged teeth. I understand the tote was full of clothes, socks, and shoes he has completely outgrown. Sure, he is beginning to put words and ideas together in a way that makes sense. Is it a delight to watch? Well of course. However it doesn’t mean I’m ready for my petit garcon to grow up. Not yet. Look at this face:

How can you not want to spend every single second with him plotting whatever he is plotting behind those eye brows?

We got raped by Ticketmaster this morning. I mean this morning we got tickets to see Eddie Izzard this summer. I’m very excited! Although paying all the fees from Ticketmaster rather sucked. I love the fact they charge me a fee for me to use my own ink and paper to print out my tickets. I think I’d rather they just wrap the fees into the price of the tickets so I wouldn’t have to complain about the fact that every time a new screen pops up in the order process there is a new fee added to the total. Ignorance is bliss and all of that.

So. So I’m dealing with pneumonia again. Stronger, faster, better inhalers this time around. In the beginning it was cool because David decided to sleep in the nursery with Nate so I could sleep completely undisturbed. (Let’s get real for a second. I’m the one coughing. I think there was a little bit of self preservation in their moving into the nursery, but it was a sweet gesture anyway.) That was over two weeks ago. I miss the boys in my life. Sure the king-size bed allows for sleeping diagonally, but, really, the cat takes up most of the bed regardless of who is in it. So the one really making out here is the cat. That and David has taken off of work for two weeks to care for Nate while I can’t and I am noticing a change in Nate. He prefers his dad now. I’m hoping this is temporary, but I’ll admit I’m a little afraid there has been some permanent damage to our relationship. And if it is, I guess I still have the cat’s adoration.

Ps. I should shout out that while lately he has preferred his dad over me, I got called out first! He says “Mamamamamamia” and it is the sweetest sound I have ever heard. I should be working on teaching him “Dada” but I am evil.

And another Ps.  Rock Chalk!  Jayhawk!  KU!  KU!  Big something or other champs and seeded first in the NCAA brackets.  That should allow them to choke well and good this season.  Choke!

I’m sick. And now I’m whiny about it. I started coughing Sunday night. Monday it felt like someone had beaten me and left me on a racetrack for cars to run over. Repeatedly. Monday night came the fever that I thought had peaked at 102.7 - I would be wrong. Wednesday found a doctor telling me, “Yeah, well, sometimes we guess wrong with the flu shot and you get the flu anyway.” Um, thanks. I haven’t been out of bed for more than an hour since we got home Monday evening. Yes, it is Friday morning. I honestly don’t know how single parents do it. David has taken this week off of work and basically brings the baby in to nurse and then they disappear again. He has done all the cooking. He is making sure I take all of my medications. He has done everything. And I’m on hold with the pediatrician’s office or you’d think I was still in Minnesota.

Oh wait. You didn’t know we were in Minnesota. We flew out a week ago last Sunday and stayed eight days. (Yes, that means I flew on a plane and gave everyone my flu - well everyone in first class anyway.) David’s maternal Grandma passed away. And while we are, of course, sad, we are thrilled she lived to 92 without really any major health problems until the last month or two. She met Nathan on several occasions. She had pictures of him all over her apartment. We got there in time to say goodbye and she passed very peacefully. Almost all of her family gathered to celebrate her life. I’m not sure any of us can ask for more than that.

Okay, maybe we can ask to not get the bleeping flu after getting the bleeping flu shot in September like we’re supposed to. And maybe we can ask to hit yarn stores while in Minneapolis/St. Paul - although I get why we didn’t. So maybe we can just ask for the bleeping scheduler to pick up the hold and to not get the flu.

As we were getting in the car to go to supper tonight we saw a woman walking her dog.  The little dog was wearing a sweater.  Presumably said sweater was to protect the dog from the cold air.  But here’s the thing, I wasn’t wearing a sweater.  David wasn’t wearing a sweater.  Even the baby wasn’t wearing a sweater.  This caused me to theorize aloud: “If your dog needs a sweater then you need a new dog.”  I liked the sound of it in my ears and thus a new motto was born:

If your dog needs a sweater then you need a new dog.

Ps. Feel free to use it in your own life.  Especially if you are unlike me and actually have a dog.

As most of you know I’m not working in graphic design right now.  I spend my days looking after Nathan and we’ve decided I will do so until he goes to school.  So for the next several years.  That leaves my domain.  I’m not letting it go, but what should I do with the top page?  Do I move my blog over to it?  Do I just let it sit there and languish?  I open to all ideas, except for Wes’ because I’m pretty sure he is going to suggest porn, but I could be wrong. 8-)