Monthly Archives: July 2008

Just another day in paradise. Part ??

3 Replies

Miss Marcie came over for lunch. We had big salads. 🙂 (Janet–I put in lots of cheese to up the fullness quotient.) It was awesome to get to see her. I’ve gotten to see her more in the past few months than I have in a long long time. Yay!!

Today I am cleaning. I’ve dusted. I hate dusting. I’m doing laundry. I’m finishing up the stuff in the kitchen Noah didn’t finish this morning. I think I’m going to clean the bathroom. Cat box is on my list. I may even get around to mopping.

I feel like such a good little housewife.

State of the Munchkin (cause she’s not a Lizard anymore)

8 Replies

I’m not sure where the transition happened, but it did. She’s a person. She’s a rather happy person all things considered. 🙂 Her fussing has changed in both quantity and quality. At this point she fusses like the cat does: mostly to communicate a direct need and once in a while just to hear herself. She is starting to want more physical autonomy in the form of mildly assisted sitting up. When I give her self-sufficient support (i.e. not me holding her) she is happy to play and interact with me for 30-60 minutes. I think that is so cool. She is smiling and laughing and cooing during these sessions more than she isn’t. It is surprisingly fun for me to play with her for an extended time.

There is nothing resembling a schedule in our lives. No solid patterns of what is ok and what isn’t. Yesterday she refused to nap in the swing despite doing it consistently all of last week. She stayed in bed after we got up this morning, which she hasn’t been willing to do before. She didn’t start fussing until after she had a really poopy diaper (and hey–I would fuss then too) which means she had been up for a bit because she doesn’t poop in her sleep or too close to waking up. So she was awake and alert and by herself for at least a few minutes. Very cool!

Last night she found her thumb for the first time. She’s always liked sucking on her fist, but she finally pulled the thumb off separately. If she does that to self soothe I’m going to be ok with it. I find it especially funny after a dad this weekend tried to walk me through forcing a baby to take a pacifier. Uhm… yeah, I’m not forcing my daughter to take a pacifier. He assured me that it would be better because she would spend less time on the boob. Right. Yeah. Uhm… no. He didn’t believe me when I said I was ok with her being on the boob when I had her in the wrap. Oh well.

Fussing in the car is still our most consistent fussing and even that isn’t certain. I’ve now had a couple of trips during morning nap time where she slept through the whole process because she was deeply asleep to start with. I think I should start trying to leave the house with her around 11-1 when possible. 🙂 She was even awake and cheerful for the whole trip from San Francisco to Redwood City this weekend! Ok… she started fussing in the last five minutes, but she had a very dirty diaper so I don’t blame her. Mostly she still screams bloody murder in the car. I hear from Mo that this is very traumatic. For some unknown reason I can turn the radio up and ignore it really well. No one else seems to be able to and I feel bad for them.

I’m really enjoying parenting. It’s limited in scope at this point, but this is fun. Before I had her my belief was that I wasn’t going to enjoy the baby stage much at all. I’m glad I was wrong.

In other news

Leave a reply

Cause QOTD deserves its own post. 🙂 I’m a mad socializing fiend just now. I went from interacting with 75-175ish people every single day to being pregnant and physically miserable and alone to hanging out with Shanna all the time. My balance of alone time/people time is very confuzzled. I went up to the SOJ “family friendly” picnic today. It’s always nice to go to a lovely little summer-time picnic in San Francisco where it is FUCKING FREEZING. Jesus Christ. It was 58 degrees. I know that isn’t literally freezing, but when I come from hot-as-hell Fremont up to the city it’s pretty drastic and unpleasant. Oy. I should have brought gloves and a heavy coat. Silly me with my sweater

Much yay was had by all.

2 Replies

We had a very productive first part of the day yesterday. It was good. It included a trip up to El Sobrante to pick up our two cases of apple lambic. If you are an apple lambic fan I recommend checking out: www.thecellaronline.com

Then we went to a party! The hosts were some folks I have known in the scene for quite a while. I had a fabulous time. I got to reconnect with a lot of people I haven’t talked to much in years. I have this weird love/hate thing with the scene at this point. I love it because when I go hang out with people I have known for that long I feel extremely comfortable and secure. By golly those folks already like me or don’t like me and I don’t have a thing to prove. It’s a great feeling. But I also feel like many/most scene folk are too insular in that world and I’ve had a hard time with that for a long time. Like: dude, have more than one hobby. I’m certainly not in a place where I could be totally wrapped up in that world any year soon, but on Dore Alley weekend I like to stop and reflect. See, I played for the first time the night before Dore Alley in 2000. It’s my anniversary and I like that it is on such an obvious weekend. 🙂 I’m missing the event for the first time. It’s weird thinking about how my identity is shifting and changing. I like it and I’m happy, but it’s weird.

I spent a fair bit of time visiting with the other baby at the party. His father was one of the first people I ever played with so I’ve known him for a long time. We had a strained semi-hostile relationship for a while but at this point we get along pretty well. The little baby boy was born three hours before the munchkin. I think that is cool. 🙂 Munchkin and he were fascinated with each other. They ‘talked’ at one another and stared and flailed at each other. Very cool. It was kind of funny to talk to someone about how different our babies are at the exact same age. 🙂

So yeah. It was good and I’m happy. Today we get to walk over to the farmer’s market and buy lots and lots of vegetables for the upcoming week. Yes Pandora–more vegetables. 😛

Alcohol.

6 Replies

http://www.b4udrink.org/ is a website that will let you play with how different alcoholic beverages hit your blood stream and how long it takes to go away.

I’m comforted to know that I can have three margaritas in an hour and not be illegal to drive. Uhm, not that I have ever had three margaritas in an hour. And I wouldn’t drive for a long time with any three alcoholic drinks in an hour.

I’m not boring

13 Replies

I just need to talk to people who share my interests. Someone who will not be annoyed at my incessant conversations about All Things Baby. Luckily, I have an angelkatharine and she is quite thrilled to hear my baby-related babble. It’s great!

Yesterday was an errand-running day and she came with me! I went to Ikea to find picture frames (I actually like the super cheap ‘clips’ ones) and to restock on candles. I had a great time discussing decorating choices in the display rooms. Noah isn’t interested in doing that with me. 🙂 Then we went to Target for non-stick skillets which will allow Noah to make me breakfast with greater ease. 🙂 I found some clothes and I am quite thrilled about this. Lately I’ve been wearing two pairs of low-rise maternity pants and about five shirts over and over because other stuff isn’t fitting. Oh sure, I can keep wearing the generic stretch pants I had for maternity, but they wear out and aren’t real flattering. I really want to put maternity clothes away so that they aren’t worn out the next time I get pregnant. This is complicated by the fact that while yes, I now have jeans (w00t!) I had just uhm expanded into this size before getting pregnant so I have very little clothing in size 14. Noah is challenging to live with if you want to not gain weight. I apparently can’t stay thin. All of my size 14 stuff is work clothing and I don’t really want to lounge around the house that way.

So new clothes! Yay! I also have the new constraint of nursing accessibility. Whereas I don’t have a problem with raising up the bottom of my shirt (I don’t care who sees my stretch marks) it is a lot easier to have boob access from higher up. Raising a t-shirt in the wraps is kind of a pain then we get all sweaty together and I don’t like that feeling. So yay for shirts that lower for boob access. I also found some cute jammies cause I don’t really have any. I mostly have nightgowns and nothing is more fucking pointless than having to raise the bottom of a nightgown from your knees to above your boob for nursing. (Ok, there are probably more pointless things…) So now I have two-pieces and I’m happy. I also found two dresses that are nursing compatible. One is even cute and not black so I can wear it to the wedding next month. (It’s grey, but I’ll take that as good enough.)

And Noah got nearly drunk last night. It was very amusing. 🙂

Much celebration is felt. And now I sit very still and pray that the munchkin goes to sleep soon for a really long nap cause she was up longer than is strictly speaking awesome yesterday.

Having emotions

8 Replies

Yesterday I had some really intense feelings of anger/frustration. They happened mostly because I was tired.

So, Noah and I did a bunch of running around and errands for most of the day. By about four when we got home all three of us were tired. I wandered back to the bedroom and laid down with the munchkin. She wasn’t ready to admit defeat and sleep though. She has been kicking me a lot when she isn’t in the mood to be in the bed. I started to feel angry and put upon at this. I called to Noah a couple of times and he didn’t answer. So I went out to the living room and he was asleep. Instantly I felt enraged. I wanted to drop the baby on him and tell him to deal with her for a while. I wanted to grab something and throw it at him (not anything that would hurt him…like a pillow…).

But I didn’t. Instead I went back to the bedroom and laid down with Shanna and felt very sorry for myself that I didn’t get to have a break and he did. I decided that I didn’t like how I was feeling so I started trying to reframe. Shanna will only be this young and attached to me for a relatively short period of time. Right now it feels like forever but it really won’t be. At some point in the future she will prefer Noah and that will hurt my feelings too. I thought about how even if I did wake Noah up he probably wouldn’t be able to keep her settled for very long because she just doesn’t with him so I would be woken up again not long after going to sleep anyway.

So I held her in a position that is annoying for me, but she loves. She cuddled up and started nursing and quickly fell asleep. I curled around her and slept pretty well for three hours. I woke up feeling physically better and really happy that I didn’t do anything I would regret. I had my feelings and I moderated my behavior too.

I feel rather disgustingly proud of myself. 🙂

Appreciation

5 Replies

I appreciate that I have a brilliant husband who pays a tremendous amount of attention to me without assigning negative judgment to what he sees. He can help me figure out my motivations because he doesn’t hand me any of his own baggage in the conversation. There are no sly innuendos in the conversations.

He knows me better than anyone in the world ever has or ever will. Yet he doesn’t give me advice until I ask for it because he respects me. Can anything get better than that?

Scheduling

2 Replies

Tomorrow I am going to drop Noah off at work. That will put me in Sunnyvale early in the morning. Thus far I have no plans for how I am going to spend the day. I am open to lunch. I am open to hanging out. I think that bouncing around in the car as little as possible is best for Shanna, but otherwise please feel free to suggest something.

Interesting…

100 Replies

I have several friends who have had wonderful experiences with Landmark Forums. I have seen increased happiness and it is a wonderful thing. This website thinks that Landmark is a cult. I don’t have a solid opinion. Mostly I am struck by the similarity between how Landmark and Everytown seem to effect most people. I’m willing to bet that I would feel the same way about Landmark as I did about Everytown.

Apparently Landmark has tried to sue people who link to the video above. Very interesting.

Feeling all healthy and shit

7 Replies

In the past few weeks the following fruits and vegetables have been eaten (by me) in my household:
potatoes
tomatoes
lettuce (of three or four varieties)
carrots
leeks
celery
cucumber
brussel sprouts
eggplant
corn
broccoli
green beans
avacado
spinach
strawberries
grapes
blackberries
blueberries
raspberries
pluots
watermelon
plums

and Noah says parsley counts.

Holy shit. I think that is more variety of fruits and veggies than I normally eat in a year. No really–I’m not a vegetable person. w00t!

Patterns

Leave a reply

My daughter is going to be one to fight sleep. If there is anything even vaguely interesting going on she just doesn’t sleep and then she gets crankier and crankier. She hates the car.

But when I just stop. When I take away all stimulus she sleeps and sleeps and sleeps. She was awake as long as Noah was home today and bustling, then she passed out when everything got still. She woke up when I changed her diaper an hour ago and then went right back to sleep.

Well, I suppose she is communicating her needs in life pretty clearly. Too bad they sorta suck for me.