Sleep-crying is a thing. It’s as pitiful as sleepbarking (by Seamus, not LB) is cute: real baby cries but you can’t comfort them because they’ll actually wake up and then you’ll regret everything.
I used to hold my breath a lot: would these snorks and soft sobs wake hir or would ze shuffle off to sleep? Don’t know why I bothered. Oxygen deprivation for me wasn’t going to affect the outcome for hir. Wakefulness was either a need for a cuddle, or a full bore scream and arched back of misery that meant FEED ME. Which, in my sleep deprived haze, would often be misinterpreted as “I’m sad, soothe me”. Less than 1% of the time is the latter, why do I always forget?? Oh right. Sleep deprivation.
But it got easier
Ze cried all the time. For months, it was a constant cycle of crying baby, change hir diaper, soothe soothe soothe, feed the baby, soothe soothe soothe, crying baby, try again.
We walked hir, we rocked hir, we patted hir, we sang, we shushed, we passed out sitting up with a baby cradled in our arms.
Not a single thing made hir sleep better or more.
Then ze stopped. Either ze got older and less anxious or hir needs were being met. Who the hell knows? All I know is ze wouldn’t sleep through the night for months. Some nights, we’d be up with the dawn because we’d hardly gotten back in bed much before that.
There was that odd night back in Month 4 ze slept through for a solid 9 hours like a horrible, torturous carrot ze was dangling in front of us. It would be 3 months later before it happened again for a few nights and then it’d stop.
Suddenly, 4 or so months after that ze did. No warning. Just started sleeping through and waking at 5 am. Then started sleeping until 6 am. Once, ze slept til 730.
Lesson learned? It can get better. But nothing we did had any influence over it. I used to be terrible at dealing with uncertainty and after a hard year of training find that while it may not be comfortable, it won’t keep me up nights.
But not easy-easy
That’s not to say we don’t still have our moments of frustration. As ze grows and explores, ze will confuse and frustrate us. We forget, every so often, that ze is just a baby still because ze has grown so fast and is so amazingly interactive.
My favorite age
A friend said that whatever age you’re at, you’ll revise that to be your favorite age. I used to love babies best at Months 3-6. But now I think he was right, I adore LB at this age even more than I did when ze was fresh-baked, or when ze was just learning to lift hir head, or when ze finally learned to hold hir own bottle.
I miss those earlier days with that sort of wistful nostalgia when I realize ze is no longer willing to cuddle. Once ze became mobile, that was the end of baby+mom liedowns together. Ze simply cannot stay still, period. But despite all the exhaustion running after hir now, I love it.
Now is: climbing onto furniture without help, proudly showing off “gentle pets” for Seamus, mischievously crawling and poking at sleeping Dad’s face, industriously pulling down books and folded laundry faster than I can put them up, mad dash crawls with top of the range squeals as ze tries to beat me to the Forbidden Anything Zones, curiously tasting anything ze touches and pulling faces, then sticking out hir tongue for me to remove tasted and rejected item.
Now is a busy time. There’s the nonstop exploration of all the same things, repeatedly. The thrill of discovering new things in the recycling to bang around and share with Seamus. The excitement of pulling out Legos to share with me. Discovering how to put things back where they came from. That last is a much coveted skill but as I understand it, it’s going to take some time. Ze’s working against muscle memory and instinct when putting things back in the box, you can see this when ze places a Lego back in the box, ponders for a second and grabs it back out.
The first step is the hardest
LB took five steps in a row, racing toward hir teacher with delight. Ze has been trying hir sealegs since, taking a step or three here and there, aiming hirself for a relatively soft landing or hurling hirself the rest of the way at us.
I adore hir face
Even when ze is crawling right over my throat to get to the toy on the other side of me, across me being the straightest line from Point Baby to Point Toy, I adore hir.
Ze might be in danger of being spoiled if I thought love was money or love was indulgence, but I think love is support and boundaries and equipping hir with as much skill, knowledge, and confidence to take on the world.
Therefore, no, I will not pick hir up every three minutes just because ze would like to hitch a ride and they always pick me up at daycare! They surely do but I am not a mule-momma and I need to conserve my strength for the most important things.
Oh, right, more importantly, as my parents always said: we say no, and we tell you the hard truths because we love you. Someone who didn’t love you would have no interest in doing the difficult jobs that help you be a better person.
May I always have the strength and clarity to love and guide LB as I was loved and guided in the early years.
Here’s a question for you
It’s been fun putting together monthly updates but now that ze has achieved a full year, we’ve stopped counting in months. Would anyone still like to see monthly updates or have you had enough?
For those of us in the latter category, if and when we escape, we often vow to ourselves never to go through that again. It was one of my strongest motivators to get the hell out of Dodge (debt, that industry, that job), build a career where I could write my ticket, and never again be subject to the unsavory whims, or drunken flirtations and grabby hands, of a petty tyrant.
People think that Michael Scott from The Office is funny, and I think I can see the hint of “but he means well” that makes it possible to laugh at him.
Y’all, take Michael Scott, take away any good intentions, replace them with pure solid selfishness and disregard for humanity, and that’s the level of bad we’re talking about. The shenanigans that people can laugh at, I suspect, are because most people think that’s a parody. An exaggeration. They don’t imagine there are people for whom that’s a reality. I could never really sit through much of The Office without feeling the urge to vomit because that, minus any funny, was three of my former managers.
Is it any wonder that the friends from those former jobs that I keep in touch with feel like friends made in foxholes?
Over the summer, my old friend and ex-colleague, C, told me that our former Toxic Manager (I’ve had a few) from 12 years ago started texting her. That TM was fired years ago for incompetence, but out of the blue, sent a mass text to a handful of former employees with a personal life update, ending with “if anyone still cares about me”. Friend who is far too kind for her own good, sent a nice reply back with a congratulations and “hope you’re well”, and worried to me that she was being uncivil in not extending a hand of friendship to someone clearly in pain. Perhaps I shed my humanity a long time ago but I pointed out that TM was piling guilt on a former employee who was never a friend, and if she’d been any good at her job, she wouldn’t have expected it. A true friend wouldn’t have, for example, have welcomed C back to work after bereavement leave with massive guilt trips about how hurt she was that C didn’t confide in her about her father’s death and her feelings. C was then forced in the awkward position of having to try to comfort TM and her hurt feelings over C’s loss. True story. But like I said, C is too kind and attributes her kindness to others who are wholly devoid of consideration for others.
Well, it’s happened again. Except this twist is magnificent.
A friend, Z, left the company specifically because of a TM, without another gig lined up, and eventually found a job at a start-up. He was far from the first. TM had driven out at least 4 other people before this, and if TM hadn’t left, Z would soon have.
He was so much happier, and he soon proudly welcomed into the world his new baby. Everything was coming up Z.
A few months ago, he said that TM was interviewing at his company! This was after TM had been fired for incompetence at a company that doesn’t easily fire. Of course, I felt strongly that he should speak up. He has strong and valid concerns about TM from personal experience, and TM’s work history is consistent. Warning: contains bullying and petulance.
Apparently, Z did. And his company went and hired that terrible TM again.
So Z quit.
And invited us to his retirement party.
Z and I weren’t close, we just kept in touch over the years, but I am ready to throw on a dress, make some sparkling confetti and pop a champagne bottle. And that’s before we even get to the retirement party!
Because, y’all. Z is maybe 40 years old and even with a new family, they can afford for him to quit instead of sacrificing his health and sanity working alongside someone whose track record for the past 20 years has been to torment colleagues and underlings like you wouldn’t couldn’t believe.
This is why we save.
*wipes away a happy tear* I entertain the notion of early retirement a lot, for many reasons, but this is a favorite. The freedom to walk away from any bad situation because you can and you want to is amazing.
Our 2016 financial goals are pretty normal. How about some personal goals this year? Setting quarterly goals last year was a good format, even if I missed the target on several of them. This year, I’m taking a different approach to the goals because, as it turns out, I don’t need motivation to work more or harder but I do need some motivation to do things that are just good for me.
In that vein, these won’t be assigned specific dates since they’re more fluid.
Reading
I have missed reading so much. 2015 was not my year for reading books. It was my year for reading comics on the phone app, but only once in a while, when breastfeeding or so tired I couldn’t sleep. This year, I have a stack of books on my shelf, by my bedside, and a subscription to Marvel Unlimited. Now the real problem is if I have some time and accessible books, I will read til the dawn breaks.
Travel
We have firmly decided to tackle travel, and flying, this year with LB. Thanks to all your reassurances, I understand that mostly it won’t be a huge world-ending thing but we do have to take a few outlier things into account: my uncertain, but certainly limited, energy levels; overall travel costs; balancing the time off with our work and vacation time.
We’ve got a late summer Hawaii visit on the books, along with a spring visit to the packed-to-the-gills Emerald City Comic Con. I’d dearly like head to New York and soak in the wonders of the Hamilton musical while visiting with dear friends we haven’t seen in ages. Even my addled mind admits that’s probably too much to manage this year though, because you start with New York and find yourself adding on New Jersey, Maryland, and Virginia/DC because how do you go cross country and miss this friend, or that friend?
If we do Maui and the Big Island, I’d love some food and adventure recommendations!(more…)
The good: I took an extended (for Americans) maternity leave with only partial salary. I needed every minute of that time to recover from LB’s delivery, so I’m grateful that we fought to make that happen.
We hosted family and friends throughout the year, traffic to our wee abode was easily four-fold higher thanks to the draw of a fresh-made baby. This wasn’t cheap between feeding them and housing them but we managed to stay within budget.
We even traveled and enjoyed some of it despite the massive increase in gear and logistics. Lowering expectations made a big difference. (more…)
I’m a fool. Was offered the opportunity to go back to sleep somewhat peacefully and I squandered it. LB got up at 1:30, upset about something, nursed hir back to sleep. Ze was nestled peacefully against my arm so it seemed like the perfect time to put hir in the crib.
Ze protested, but it seemed like a token protest. I covered hir up with a light blanket so it wouldn’t feel like a shock going from my body heat to a cold crib and crawled back into bed. No sooner did I settle: *squawwwwwwwk*
I ignored it.
*squaaaaaakkkkk squaawwwwk*
Still not listening.
*SCREEEEEEEEEEEEEE* for ten minutes.
Ok ok ok geez.
Ze was unbelievably pleased to be grumpily bundled back up into bed with me, even after a half recumbent diaper change because who would appreciate their infant to stay STILL when being changed in the dark? No one, says LB, so to show my appreciation I shall writhe and wriggle as hard as I possibly can which is pretty hard since you feed me so well, and it’ll therefore be impossible to fasten that diaper with fewer than five hands and an elbow.
Ze didn’t try to play when we got back to bed, thank everything, but hir idea of “settling down” was a series of flopping from back to front to back to front to back, burying hir face in the comforter I’d piled at the foot of the bed to prevent another Great FaceFirst Launch Off the Bed, squeaking and doing a Baby Gregorian chant. If I didn’t know better, and I don’t, ze could have been summoning the Greater Gods of Baby-induced Sleep Deprivation. I’m tired.
After about an hour of this, LB was content to mostly stay still with one foot propped on my ribs, the other on my chin, hands reached up over hir head in an attempt to create a tiny human bridge between me and hir father, still doing that odd Gregorian chant / kitten yowl every 20 seconds in case I might fall asleep. Cute. But when ze was evicted from this womb I’m pretty sure there was a clause in there about not kicking me in the ribs anymore. Ze is in clear violation of hir parole.
Two hours later. I realize that ze has finally stopped emitting any sounds and movements have slowed to nearly a standstill. Oh blessed sleep.
***
Related: The baby food lie: blast from Nicole & Maggie’s archives still holds true. I vaguely remembered the information in this post if not the post itself and with full endorsement from our pediatrician (which was nice but not strictly necessary), proceeded with not very reckless abandon.
We are working on food and not food categories. Food goes into the mouth and is eventually swallowed. Not food includes: any part of Seamus. Confidential documents. Electronics. Remote controls. Any of my comic books. My toes – dear god why would you chew on my toes?? Head bands. Shoes. The dishwasher. Power cables. Furniture. Seamus’s leash. Seamus’s collar. Seamus’s toys. Seamus has made a bid that anything associated with him should be off limits to being eaten. I agree.
Things that still aren’t food but I can’t be bothered if ze chews on them: Legos. My arm. Tags. Bedding. Pillows. Blankets. The drying rack.
It’s a steep learning curve here.
***
Mimicry has suddenly started happening here. We always echo back at LB when ze vocalizes because it’s funny, ze has started echoing back at us when we do it to hir. Everything is just funnier when you’re an infant.
Actions, too. If we do a thing, ze tries to, sometimes. Right now ze is in an ET phone home phase: holding hir index finger out to touch PiC’s when he holds up his hand. Ze won’t do it with me, though. I guess it’s just a daddy-kiddo thing.
***
Word babbles are happening. Ze suddenly added about 5 more consonants to hir 2 vowels. Conversations are still not deep but they’re entertaining. Except when it’s “I’m putting your legs in your pants. KEEP THEM THERE” or “STOP worming away when I’m diapering you!” Then I vaguely wish for five months ago when ze could barely flip. But I guess that’s less language and more Infant With Shit To Do.
***
Ze thinks it’s funny to elicit a reaction out of us by licking inappropriate things. I just figured out ze was just playing me when ze leaned over to the wall, glanced at me, waited til I looked, then licked the wall. Then chuckled at my expression.
***
Teeth are starting to happen. Ze was remarkably pleasant when they started breaking through. Then two days later, it all went to hell. Ze was clingy, upset, every little thing was the end of the world. Dosed hir with Tylenol while we waited for the teething tablets to arrive and we were back to normal. Getting new teeth is a tough business.
Best part: ze is genuinely curious about this “teeth” thing and occasionally pries open PiC’s mouth to investigate what’s going on in there. That’s also just a daddy-kiddo thing, ze has no interest in my teeth. I think it’s for the best.
Things we love
LB most preferred to chew on my arms when hir gums were uncomfortable but when those teeth finally poked through, that was a no-go. A combination of frozen teething rings, hard teething toys, and teething tablets saved us all. The tablets were miraculous for those middle of the night wake ups when ze couldn’t stay asleep.
We introduced sippy cups a while ago, but while ze is willing to drink water, ze hasn’t quite got the hang of the whole thing.
Last we checked, I was dreading phone replacement. Dragged my feet, in fact, even though the phones were being outrageously non functional: turning off randomly, refusing to turn back on, “the camera is not connected” messages. Neither of us wanted phablets, which is where all the newer smartphones today are headed, and we definitely didn’t want the $1000+ bill that comes with two new phones. But it seemed like the best we could do was a certified used phone for about 20% less and any used electronics from an unknown seller always makes me nervous.
During our intense research period, PiC was gifted a new to him used phone, and that was a huge relief. I bought him a new case and charging cords, he did SIM card surgery, and he’s set! I deleted a bunch of apps and data from my phone and that’s helped a little bit so that I don’t have to rush out and replace it with something expensive. We were looking at the Samsung Galaxy 6 but it’s huge and so’s the price tag.
I made pantry dinner twice last week. A couple other nights saw us reheating leftovers, and then we had take out.
Our lives, post-baby, still revolve around dinner and what to have, and who’ll make it happen.
Things that have to happen before we can settle down and adult for the night: walk the dog(s), feed the dog(s), feed the Inchworm, play with the Inchworm, bathe the Inchworm, feed the Inchworm again, put the Inchworm to bed.
This is after a 12-14 hour day of working and Inchworm-related activities, so, at some point, it doesn’t really matter how we make dinner happen, just that it does happen. Sometimes I’m inspired and have enough short breaks to whip it up delightful oven miracles. Sometimes PiC gets home to an explosion of toys, an Angry Inchworm, épuisé wife, and that means he should magic something out of the pantry or the crisper.
We both work, and we both have to eat, and our schedules are topsy turvy most days. I’m pretty Type A and live by my calendar but these days I’m relaxed enough to count myself happy if we both get our work done in a reasonable time and we both get nourished.
Right in this instant, I’ve only ever been more tired a couple times in my life but I’ve never been this sure that this is the best life right now. I have my baby family, we’re both working and building our careers, and we both have to compromise to make it work.
I think it’s our healthy relationship barometer. When things aren’t going well, dinner is later and sketchier and more often eaten separately and standing up. When we’ve got our bits and pieces in the right bins, we have a bit of a warm potato pass off. I might have started a side or an entree cooking, leaving the finishing touches to PiC while I wrangle the kidlet, or I might have a one pot meal finishing up when he walks in the door so he gets to walk the kids. Other nights I have exactly two brain cells still keeping each other warm in the frosty cavern of a mind and he’ll arrive with a basket of Korean fried chicken to go with the cold rice I’d made lots of the day before.
Every day there’s a compromise. He takes the early morning shift (and weekends) so I can sleep. I sleep an extra hour or two so that I can take the all day shift. We split the evening duties because we’ve both worked long days and some things are easier with four hands and a knee.
In other words: symbiosis.
Frankly the only one who’s losing out on this equation at the moment is Seamus who is nursing hurt feelings over my pushing back my dining chair and accidentally running him over a little. I’m sorry!
Actually he’s having a bit of a rough time overall: he doesn’t get our undivided attention, LB likes him too much and therefore he comes in for a share of slobbery kiss attempts he’s not much into, and he’d like to play more. But all of these things would be, minus the slobber, wishful thinking even without LB because we have to be really careful of his skin.
It’s not doggy heaven but he gets fed enough and regularly, he has three beds and more warm places to rest his grizzled muzzle than he can use, he’s well loved, gets walks three times a day and sometimes we run into his fellow doggy the Titan and they have a mighty clash-romp.
Other compromises: I still do all our tax planning and financial stuff. I love it, and I’m a control freak. He does our auto maintenance: repairs, routine checks and gassing up. I do most of the laundry, he’s got the dishes and most of the sweeping and vacuuming. Travel planning: me. Grocery shopping: him. Electronics, purchasing and fixing: me. Clothing, picking out sporting goods, fun gear: him.
Nothing’s perfect, we have our little tiffs when one or the other is flat out of patience and exhausted but they’re rare. We’re getting better at saying: I’m so tired, can you do X for me please.
Like when he ran his first road race since LB came along. He does 99% of the morning duties. This time, he mentioned that he really needed a good sleep before he went out running, so at 5 am when ze was burbling away, I dragged myself up to take care of hir for a couple hours. He was immensely grateful and made sure I had some time to rest to make up for it later. We don’t keep score, per se, we’ve just been practicing listening a lot more.
