mrsodie2

I'm trying to savor these sweet days home with Baby V before Odie is done with work for the summer.  I'm certainly looking forward to his vacation and our family time, but these mornings of being home alone with my baby will be over forever.  As you already know, I have to go back to work the last week of August, so Baby V and I won't be spending a sweet September together, watching Today on NBC and playing in our jammies.

So, in the spirit of "Be here, now," I'm enjoying this morning with Baby V.  Odie leaned down to kiss her goodbye when he left for work at 6:45 a.m. (I know, "ouch!" right? That's the life of a teacher), and he woke her.  We usually snooze until at LEAST 7:30, sometimes as late as 9.  But they got some cuddle time before he left for work, and I'm glad for that.  It must be hard enough leaving for work in the morning, but having to see V and I snuggled in bed must make it that much tougher.  For that reason, I'm glad he got to see ME drag my tired ass out of the warm covers to stumble to the bathroom (yay, alone!) and rinse the sleep crackers out of my eyes.  Probably made it easier to leave.

I think Odie and I both dreamed of cat murder early this morning as our Orange One batted one of V's noisier toys around the house, meowing and trilling as though it weren't 4 a.m.  That's pretty much her routine.  Note to self: put the baby toys away before bed.  Not only does it suck to walk out to the living room in the morning and see it is a disaster, but the stupid cat can't play with her toys in the wee hours of the morning if they're all safely in the toy boxes.  I keep meaning to have the house in some sort of order before bed, but I just collapse in my chair when Odie gets home from work and then I'm USELESS for the remainder of the evening.  The wine is a big reason.  My 1:00 a.m. headache last night tells me perhaps TOO big a reason.  Time to cut back, I think.  It's so easy to fall back into the three glasses a night routine of the pre-pregnancy days.  Especially when "the night" starts at 4:30 and ends around 10.  What's 3 glasses of wine over 5 1/2 hours?  A headache, apparently.

I just finished spooning yogurt into Baby V's mouth while she signed "more" before every bite.  I think she's starting to get what "more" means.  She used to think it meant Cheerios, because that's what I'd always give her after saying and signing "more."  For a while, when I asked "Do you want some more?" she'd look at the Cheerios box.  She also signs "All Done!" early in all her meals.  And during diaper changes as well.  "Dyyyyy-pooooo!" she calls them.  And often, "poo" is right on.  She will fart now and smile and say "poop."  She also says "pee pee," and once she said it and then did it and I got RIDICULOUSLY excited.  Potty training is in our future.  It looks like day care will play a role.  Wah, I wasn't going to think about day care this morning.  Too late.

Baby V just grunted until her face turned red and said "Poop," so off I go.

(What Baby V is doing while I write)

Two more Mondays after today and then we won't count Mondays anymore for ten whole weeks.  I'm hoping that Odie and I will start switching off more on some night time parenting.  He's awesome during the day, but he's never done bath time.  I'm not a fan of bath time either and I'd like us to try a bath sharing enterprise.

I love my Blackberry.  Yesterday I ordered a water table off of Amazon.com WHILE playing with my daughter in the park.  Hopefully it will arrive this weekend.  The summer heat is upon us, although it's not suicidally hot yet.  A water table is exactly what it sounds like.  It's a toddler-height plastic table that holds water.  Apparently, toddlers like to splish splash and play with toys in water, so you set this thing up on your deck or in the back yard and fill it and let them have at it.  Odie is super excited about it so maybe that means this weekend they will play together for hours and hours with the water table and I can sit and watch Season 3 of "Lost."



It's funny to watch how into toys Odie still is.  To me, playing with toys is tedious.  I'd rather wrestle or walk or throw her in the air.  But Odie will play with the toys whether Baby V is interested or not. He gets super excited about going to the toy store.  Yesterday he bought her a squirt boat (like a squirt gun, only shaped like a boat) and taught her how to use it.  And of course, there is nothing like the unrestrained childish glee of a husband squirting his wife in the face with a toy water gun.

Today I'm making day care calls.  I have a tour set up at one school for Thursday morning.  Maybe this will work out better than I thought.  Maybe even as well as I'm hoping.

Mondays are often days for starting diets again.  I'm very frustrated and stalled out here.  I was touched and inspired by my friends' encouragements, posted to my last blog about the subject.  Now that I have to go back to work in August, I feel like my time table to lose weight and get a workout routine going just shortened considerably.  I have to start a workout routine while I'm on vacation, because I will never start it while I'm working and trying to maximize my time with my daughter by rushing home from work.

I am a planner, but not a follow through-er.  I have boxes of journals from my whole life full of plans.  Diet plans and workout plans mostly.  Every week, I say I'll start going to the gym on Monday.  Here it is, Monday, and I can think of countless other things to do.  And not do.  Ug, hello, inertia, my old friend.

On Friday I received my notice from the school district that my request for a leave of absence has "unfortunately been denied."  I had just arrived home from The Little Gym class we take every Friday and I grabbed the mail out of the mailbox as I went around the car to get Baby V out of her carseat.  I saw the envelope.  I felt its thinness.  And I KNEW.  When I received my paperwork for my maternity leave, it was THICK.  Every document had a copy for me and a copy for HR.  This envelope obviously only contained one sheet of paper.

I opened the passenger door of my car so Baby V could have some fresh air, but I left her in the car seat while I tore the letter open.  Heart pounding, I scanned the first lines.  All I had to see was the word "unfortunately" to confirm my gut suspicion.  I burst into tears, which mystified my daughter, who surely knew what crying was, but had never seen mommy do it before.  She looked at me intently.  I told her, "It's okay, Mommy is just sad."

(Like she is right now because Mommy is typing and not letting her pound all over the keyboard)

It hit me like a punch in the face.  No sweet September with my baby while everyone else went back to work.  Going back to managing teenagers in a classroom.  Trying to get young people to shut up and sit still while I try to teach them "standards" in preparation for that all important state test that they don't give a shit about.  Meetings.  Commutes.  DAY CARE.

Damn it, I was so optimistic about my chances of getting the 2nd year off, I didn't put her on any waiting lists.  Come tomorrow, my new full-time job is finding day care for my daughter.  Five days a week.  7 a.m. to at least 4 or 5 p.m.  It makes me nauseated to think of all that time away from her.  Leaving my daughter with other people (and paying them through the nose) so that I can take care of OTHER people's children!  It feels unnatural.

I'm not going to feel to sorry for myself.  Don't worry.  I know that a whole year off with my daughter is more than most people get.  I have friends and colleagues who sobbed on their commutes to work every day, leaving their babies who were only weeks old while I sat in my chair nursing and watching DVRd episodes of my favorite shows.  It was truly a gift, what I received.

I was looking forward to doing it all over again in September.  My disappointment is profound.

Still, it isn't like I don't have choices.  I have Odie's blessing to quit my job.  I am choosing to NOT give up my career.  With the world the way it right now, it's insanity to give up a tenured teaching position in a desireable district.  I'm going to ask my boss for a 4/5 assignment.  To you non-teachers out there, that means I teach 4 classes instead of 5 and I have no prep period.  If I could teach 8-12:30 and then go get Baby V from day care and be home by 1:30, this work thing would be easier.  Plus, I'm planning to get knocked up again.
 

There is the "blessing in disguise" factor.  We are going through our savings more quickly than expected.  If I work this next school year and get pregnant, then I can take the following year off and be able to save money this year.  We could not possibly save money this year on one salary. Me staying home with baby #2 without going back to work would mean the end of our savings and possibly going into debt. Odie thinks we should make the sacrifice for Baby V and have me quit my job.  However, he doesn't want a second child.  His plan would be me staying home with Baby V for another few years and then putting her in school and looking for another job, hoping the work environment will improve in 4 years.  We'd have to tighten our belts a LOT, but it could be done.  If I were 28 instead of 38, I'd do that because I'd have over a decade to have another baby.  As it is, I see myself having another 2-3 years to have that second one.

We fought about this at dinner last night.  The hardest thing in a marriage is when you don't see things eye to eye.  It isn't a communication problem.  It's a difference of opinion.  He wants one thing, I want another and there is no compromise.  One person gives way to the other.  Hopefully without too much resentment.  Hopefully I'm not the one who gives way.

Having a child is hard work.  I've heard that the mistake people make about having a second child is that they assume it will ONLY be twice as hard.  And for us it will mean more day care too.  I think it's fair to assume that my district won't give me a second year of leave for baby #2 any more than they would for Baby V.  Bastard-coated bastards.

So on August 26th, I will once again be standing at the front of a classroom full of teenagers.  And joining the Facebook group "Teachers Counting Down the Days Until Summer Vacation."


 

I am putting an end to twiddling.  When Baby V nurses, she has a very annoying "free hand behavior" that I have mentioned before.  She pinches and rolls my other nipple between her thumb and index finger.  More often than not, she has fingernails like little razor blades and this "free hand behavior" is very painful.  Excruciating.  Last night she wanted to nurse every hour.  Along with nursing, she twiddles my free nipple (there's no freedom for my nipples), not only causing pain, but encouraging the milk to flow from that side as well.  The result is a sticky mess all over me, her, and the bed.

I've let it go on because I've been afraid she'll wake up if I don't let her do it.  It sounds ridiculous that I've put up with it, but sleep deprivation makes one do bizarre things.  Last night, around 2 a.m. after almost constant nursing from 8:00 that included painful twiddling.  I had ENOUGH!!!

I had to get up with my baby at 2 a.m. and stay up with her until almost 4.  She was BESIDE HERSELF with anger, sadness, and frustration (I think) that she couldn't have her twiddling.  I covered my free nipple (FREE AT LAST) with my hand and she pulled at my hand, tried to wedge her hand under it, scratched at it and wailed the saddest, most pathetic cry.  But I didn't give in.  I was too angry and in too much pain.  I'm all for baby-led most things (weaning, sleep, feeding), but I'm starting to feel like my young child is a little dictator.  She's not an infant anymore, and I've decided that she can handle a little disappointment in her life.  I'm willing to tough it out and have some bad nights.  Odie was awake with insomnia anyway, so he wasn't getting any extra sleep disturbance.  He's had it pretty easy anyway.  He's never had the night shift even once her whole life.

She didn't stop nursing every hour.  I think she has a new tooth coming in because THANK GOD that is not typical behavior.  But I kept my hand protectively over my breast and prevented her twiddling even after we'd gone to bed.  Usually in the morning between 6 and 9, she dozes and nurses in bed with me, twiddling away.  Today, she still did the former, tried desperately to do the latter, but stayed asleep.  I have faith that this will work.  If I'm lucky, she'll attach to a "transitional object" because sleep training is in her future, just three short weeks away...

Stay tuned.

 

My "baby" is 13 months old today.  One year ago, I was still suffering mightily from the episiotomy and all of the muscle strain I experienced carrying a baby for 40 weeks and then pushing all 7 pounds and 12.5 ounces of her out of my lady parts.  Happily, I had DVRed episodes of Conan O'Brien every morning to take the sting off of my all night nursings and the exhaustion that resulted.  DAMN YOU, NBC and Jay Leno!

I'm thinking a lot about her newborn time as my friend Sara (http://eyesofmyeyes.wordpress.com) approaches her due date next week.  I remember that last week of pregnancy well.  She knows on an intellectual level that her life is about to change, but she has no idea how much. No one does until it happens.

I've been pretty useless lately.  C- for housework.  A solid B for babyrearing.  C- for wifeness.  F for blogging.  I rarely sit down to the computer, and if I do, I experience what's happening now.  Baby V is coming over to me, grabbing my lap and crying "Up! Up! Up!" because she wants to be picked up.  If I pick her up, she'll say "Nummy!" and grab at my boobs.  So then I'm nursing her for a few minutes, then she wants back down so she can run around, repeat 100 times a day.  So I tell her "No, I'm not going to pick you up right now" and I've effectively taught her to say "No."  She goes around to all the things she's not supposed to touch and demonstrates her understanding: Touches trashcan and announces "NO!" with a big smile.  You get the idea.  TODDLER.

Nothing is more fun than playing with the stuff out of the kitchen cabinets and drawers.  I replaced the utensils in these drawers with her toys and she doesn't touch them. 

Today is Tuesday, but it's like Monday because yesterday was Memorial Day.  I have to pay the rent at the bank and while I'm out, I figure I'll swing by the grocery store.  The diet is a bust.  I'm doing just awful.  I do not have the motivation to bloom.  I'm not sure I would even if I found myself in the position I described (death, desertion, divorce - the three Ds).  I might just settle in with tubs of cheese and shrug, THIS IS MY LIFE.

I predict my family and I will do some swimming and lounging over the summer.  I have never put on a suit and swum with the crowd, always preferring to hide it away.  This year I want to swim, so I have to get it in gear.  Sigh.  It sounds wretched.  Eating food I hate, exercising, drinking water instead of Diet Coke.  No wonder I don't have the motivation!  It's going to be hot this summer, and I'm tired of being the sweaty fat girl.  In fact, I am no longer a "girl" and am in danger of becoming the sweaty, fat old lady.

Now that V is 13 months, the "baby weight" excuse is wearing, well, THIN (irony).  Time to either do something about it or accept that this is what I look like and stop trying to change.

I have never been so excited for summer in my life.  For the past ten years, I've worked summer school EVERY summer except the last two.  Two years ago, I MADE a baby in the summer, and last summer I had a newborn.

Last summer was hard.  Odie and I were adjusting to being parents.  It wasn't so long ago that we were newlyweds.  Pregnancy and parenthood changes a marriage. Not surprisingly to me now, it often destroys a marriage.  It tested ours.  Last summer was more full of tension and fighting and tears than it was of joy.  I'm not slamming Odie here.  He did the best he could, and I did the best I could.  I was hormonal and fat and terrified of the responsibility I'd taken on by having a child.  He was making the adjustment to father and sole provider while still trying to be somewhat young and have a good time with his friends.

My dad told me recently that fatherhood is nothing like motherhood.  That dads don't go through it the way moms do and they NEVER will.  I know Odie loves Baby V more than he's ever loved anyone or anything, including being young and free.  Including me.  But I also know that the love was not an all-consuming, full-body CONNECTION of the soul like it was for me.  I fell in love with my child in an almost romantic way.  The love was instant for him too, but it was easier for him to walk out the door and go back to the person he was before.  The person I was before died in the delivery room and I was reborn someone else.  I think Odie felt the weight of responsibility in a different way.  And it didn't always feel like a blessing to him.  He needed to get out and away from us sometimes, and back then I didn't understand that and so we fought.
 

But it's a year later and everything is different now.  Baby V isn't a helpless little larva-like being anymore.  She's a full fledged little human with giggles and teeth and little curls.  She looks adoringly at her daddy while he reads to her.

 

She loves the swings at the park.

I can't wait for this summer because Odie will be home from work and we get to play with our daughter.  We have 10 whole weeks to enjoy everything Southern California has to offer: beach, mountains, desert (and the over 100 degree heat of our own, non-air-conditioned house).  We get to BOND. 

I couldn't just give you the taste of the ex-boyfriend story and leave you hanging.

I'm not going to call him Jim anymore, because I actually DO have a friend named Jim now.  Jim Krieg.  And he wrote a book for kids called "Griff Carver, Hall Monitor" (buy it here! www.amazon.com/Griff-Carver-Hallway-Patrol-Krieg/dp/1595142762 ).  So from now on, let's refer to my ex-boyfriend as "Tiger."  Because he plays golf and is obsessed with golf and it cracks me up on the inside.

So it's Mother's Day, and I wake up and check my phone and see that I have a notification: "Tiger has sent you a message."  I have to admit, I get a little adrenaline shot from this.  Not sexy excitement, mind you, just, "WHAAAAAAAT?" a la "RAAAAANDY" in "Funny People."  And when I check Facebook, he sent me the message late at night on Saturday, like around midnight.

And I am SO happy.  Why?  I'll tell you why.  Because the guy for whom I was never good enough, never pretty enough, never girlfriend or wife material enough for is so bored in his life that he's emailing me at midnight on a Saturday.  And call me crazy, but that just makes me feel like I won.

And to make it even more delicious, his message says something like, "When did people get so uptight about sex?  Is it our age or is it just the people I know?"  Clearly baiting me into a discussion that involves sex.  I will have you know that I behaved very appropriately and did not flirt or write anything even vaguely suggestive.  I told him that I didn't know what he was talking about and maybe too many of his friends were Republicans.

He then asked me if my husband got jealous or if he has access to my Facebook and email accounts.  This is where it got interesting for me.  I almost got up and ran around the house yelling, "I WIN!  I WIN! I WIN!"  He DOES regret not picking me.  SUCK IT, TIGER!!!  I wrote that my husband was not a jealous man, having no reason to be, and that while he did have access to those accounts, he never looked at them (due to the first thing).  I could not resist paving the way for him to write something to ME that he would not want HIS wife to see.  Petty?  Maybe.  Satisfying? Definitely.

He wanted my opinion about his theoretical plans for a birthday celebration.  He wrote that he wanted to go to Las Vegas for a birthday and that he wanted to hire some "local entertainment."  I asked him, "Just to be clear, we're talking hookers here, and not Celine Dion or Cirque de Soleil, right?"  to which he vehemently replied that strippers are NOT hookers because hookers are for sex and strippers are for looking.  The writer/rhetoric and argument teacher in me wanted to argue that his prelude was that his friends are too uptight about sex and if he was only talking about strippers then what was there to be uptight about?  But I didn't want to pick a fight.  Much.

My ex-boyfriend who is married with many kids writes me after midnight on a Saturday (technically Mother's Day) to ask if I think strippers on his birthday is out of line.

If you do not understand why I found this so personally fulfilling, then you've never been rejected the way I have, and I congratulate you for not having to live through that.  Not for one second would I want to be with this man.  Every lingering wistful feeling of "what if?" died with that email from him.  Died laughing.

It has been so long since I've written.  I think about it every day.  I even jot down notes on my Blackberry's notepad so that I don't forget all of my ideas.  In the last few weeks, Baby V has become a different baby.  A toddler, in fact.  She's walking, climbing, talking and taking up all of my energy and time.  When Odie comes home from work, I've been collapsing in front of "Jeopardy!" with a glass of wine and failing to nurture my creativity. 

There is so much to catch up on.  I am going to finish Baby V's birth story.  I have never written it down and I must, and soon, before the details get away from me.

I have a very fun update on my Facebook stalking of my ex-boyfriend Jim (which actually turned into his stalking of me).  It involves strippers.  Stay tuned.

The Bloom Project (TBP) is underway, but stalled out a bit.  Let me explain.

TBP is based on the idea that when a woman unloads a husband or a husband unloads a woman (it could also be a boyfriend), the woman blooms.  I was reminded of this recently while having breakfast with a friend of mine whose husband recently left her.  She looks great and is doing impressive things with her life now that she has unloaded him.  I don't want to unload my husband, but I do want to bloom.

I want to lose weight, look fantastically younger than I am, move through my life with poise, manifest exciting opportunities for myself, and WRITE.  I have always loved to write.  It is a part of my soul.

But it's more than that.  I've never been a woman who moves easily through my life.  Literally.  I get my purse caught on doorknobs.  I hook my sweaters on ragged edges of things.  I drop food on my shirt and lap.  I bump into people and things.  I can't keep my purse on my shoulder.  Me trying to carry a diaper bag, a baby, and my keys is downright tragic.  My hair is always shedding and the long hairs stick to my arms and tickle and irritate me but always stay annoyingly out of my reach to pluck them away.  I'm terrible at parallel parking.  I can never find my shoes.  I have chapped lips, dry skin and split ends.

In general, many married people get settled in.  Odie will still love me if I don't wash my hair, shave my legs, or put on make-up.  He will stay married to me even though I have 30 extra pounds, only seven of which are from having the baby.  He won't complain that I don't moisturize, accessorize or exercise.  I am a wife and I am simply not motivated to improve myself the way I would be if I were single.  My friend Lauren recently wondered why she couldn't be motiviated to look good for LIFE the way she was to look good for her wedding day.  I concur.  The Bloom Project hypothesizes that I need to put the effort into my appearance (and my inside life as well) that I would if I were trying to get me a man.  The goal being to make the man I have happy.  It also posits that if I look the best that I can look, I will also be the best that I can be.  The best friend, writer, mother, and wife.  That's it in a nutshell.

So where am I with that?  Hmmm.  It's hard to stop eating like a pregnant person.  Eating while pregnant was some of the deepest satisfaction I've felt in years.  And without my daily glasses of wine, I needed it.  Nursing made me hungry in a manic, bottomless way that was almost worse than pregnancy.  So (you guessed it) the weight hasn't melted off.  I have, however, lost and kept of the original 3 pounds I talked about in my last weight loss post.  So we're good there.  I've gotten in the habit of some self denial in the food department and introduced some healthy eating: oatmeal, fruit, Ezekiel cereal, green beans and whole wheat bread.  Baby steps there.

Where I've always been SUPER lax is personal grooming.  This has improved.  I use moisturizer on my whole body every day.  That may not sound like much, but I have NEVER USED IT.  I've also started shaving my legs once a week.  Here is where my Scotch-Irish heritage really pays off.  I'm not very hairy, and once a week is plenty.  I exfoliate.  I use sunscreen and moisturizer on my face every day.  Before Odie comes home, I change out of my pajamas and put on foundation, mascara, and Chapstick.

What this has done for me is change the way I think.  Yes, Odie will love me if I do none of this.  But doing it has helped put me in the mindset I want to be in.  It makes me feel a little better about myself to put effort into my appearance.  I like smelling good and having soft skin.  Many would argue the "smelling good" part since I just LOVE LOVE LOVE patchouli lotion.  I soften it up with some lavendar oil.  I believe in aromatherapy and those two scents lift my spirits.

This is only the beginning.  I have many more goals.  I'm not sure I won't always get my purse caught on the doorknob and spill food down my shirt, but I think that I can look much better while doing it.