Wordless Wednesday: Lil' Hollywood!

Pour Some Sugar on Me

More pics of the lil' dude eating . . . weird . . . but really, what else do almost-5 month-olds do? The lil' dude gets upset when I take pictures of her reading "The Giving Tree" to the dog or painting Mama's toenails. Some things in her life are private! After she mowed through a giant bowl of rice cereal + squash for dinner last night, we emptied out the pears leftover from breakfast. The starvin'-Marvin whining continued, so I came back to her highchair armed with a fresh container of peaches.



Apparently, and this might border on child abuse, but Gerber's peaches are sour. OMG, look at that face! I was laughing my ass off at my poor little baby. What are you feeding me? Poison??



MAMA, sugar! Add some good-old-fashioned-white-refined sugar to that bowl! That's how you grew up! SUUUUUUUGAR!!


She was like a little soldier at boot camp. "Thank you, Sir, may I have another?" as she winced to get the sour fruit down her throat, she would give a little shiver-shake and open her pink mouth for more. She was like her Mama taking Jag Bombs, gross, nasty, spit-spatter-yuck-yuck . . . OK. One more! Bartender? Look at her dominate!



I finally added a sprinkle of sugy to her bowl of killer peaches. Her eyes started to water . . . she didn't know if she had the strength to go on . . . she fought her battle like a superstar! I will never give up, you damn peaches! I will eat every last spoonful of your sour brigade! I . . . . WILL . . . . PREVAIL.

Who's Your Mama?

The lil' dude and her mama the week mama went back to work!

The Dad and I went to a wedding Saturday, and had assigned seating at the reception. Brides these days, so ambitious.
Anyways, the Dad was being polite and initiated conversion with the one couple at our table we didn't know . . . "How do you know the bride and groom? Where do you live? How long have you been married? Do you have any kids?" and so on.
It reminded me of being a Freshman at a keg party, "WHERE ARE YOU FROM? WHAT IS YOUR MAJOR?" then we'd all bong beers and pee in 5-gallon buckets in the corner of the basement.

After dinner, we found ourselves sharing a cocktail table with the new couple as we poured free booze down our throats, grateful for a the lil dude's fairy godmother and her babysitting abilities on a Saturday night.

The Dad had his cell phone out, showing our NBF's (and everyone else on the guest list) pics of the babe. The couple talked about their beloved baby, their Golden Retriever, and making the leap from pet owners to baby makers and raisers. We told them we went down the same path, bought a dog, kept him alive, remembered to go home after HH's to let him pee, getting his shots on time, and hanging a Christmas stocking on the railing with ours. Then, we had a baby.

The wife asked me if I worked, I told her I do. Full-time? Yes, FT. Out of the home? Yes, in an office where they require me to wear pants actually, and not swear so much.

She leaned in, to whisper, "do you bring your lil' dude to daycare?"
I shouted YES over the Chicken Dance.
She leaned back. "How do you do it?" with a most serious look on her face.
"Well, in the mornings, the Dad bri-," she cut me off.
"NO, no, I mean, how can you let someone else raise your child?" she asked, with her chin propped on her fist, looking very intent as I motioned to someone, anyone, to bring me More Free Beer.

"Ummm, the daycare lady does not raise my kid. She wipes her butt, feeds her, covers her with blankets when she sleeps. She makes her smile and takes her picture and gives her Tylenol shooters when her wee thighs hurt from shots." I said, and added, "She takes care of our daughter while we both work. She does not raise her."

"But," the wife went on, "don't you worry the lil' dude will learn to love the daycare lady because of the mass quantity of time she spends with her? Doesn't that freak you out?"

Well, it is STARTING to, new lady sans-baby I just met. I wanted to tell her where I went to high school and what my major was, in an attempt to sway the conversation to easier things.

Wife looked at me, "you must really love your job then, to make the decision to leave your baby at daycare. Husband and I? We have decided to wait to procreate until I am ready to not work Ever Again so I can devote all my time and energy mothering. Should be perfect!"

Perfect? Has anyone ever said parenting is perfect? Did anyone ever even entertain that notion while slathering cocoa butter onto giant bellies and asking for help getting up from the couch? Perfect? No such thing.

I know the decision we are making to both maintain FT jobs works for us. Absolutely, it is hard to not to think of the lil' dude sitting in the daycare lady's lap at 1pm, getting tickled, or rocked to sleep. Maybe I should struggle with leaving the house in the mornings more than I do. Maybe I should be a panicky mess as I spend 8+ hours away from my first-born each day. Maybe I should demand to see the seating chart at the next wedding before I send in my RSVP.

This whole topic has confirmed one thing howevs, and that is someone, likely everyone, will have an opinion on everything. If you are lucky, lucky like I am! you'll be told of those someones' opinions and judgements all the time. What you feed your kid, bottle or boob, fruits or veggies, putting them to bed while asleep or awake, going back to work or staying home. Maybe I should do myself a favor and keep all my supreme baby and parenting knowledge to myself to spare someone else my sweet Saturday night conversion and all-day Sunday emotional hangover.

What's in a Name? (aka the Birth Story)

Here is the lil' dude's mama at exactly one-week past our due date.

Weird that I was in the kitchen . . . it would be three more days before the lil' dude would finally make her appearance. Finally!
So, why the lil' dude? Which sounds so . . . dude-ish. Male, rough, unsoft. That's because the Dad and I thought for-shizz we were having a baby boy. We knew from the get-go we wished to have a delivery surprise, but we needed to call the growing bump something. We chose not to share our intended names with anyone. This made grandmas mad. Then, the lil' dude added insult to injury and showed up 10 days late! That last week+, I told the Dad if anyone held up the boy/girl envelope in front of me, I would've jumped on top of them and tore into that bitch like a club kid on E.
My otherwise calm, excited mood was flagging, fast. I could not plan anything else. I had every single piece of baby clothing in yellow, green, white, and brown. And I filled in the blanks with blue, because, ummm, we were so having a boy. I had raging insomnia, and a implicit need to bake. From scratch. I needed to have that baby. I needed to know if I had a son or a daughter.


Here is the first official photo of the lil' dude!

When we were in the hospital waiting for the Pitocin to kick in, we saw about 11 nurses.
"What are we having?" they'd all ask.
"Can I have a Reuben?" I'd smile softly, sweetly.
"No. Are you having a boy or a girl?" they'd scowl.
"We don't know, technically, but we're sure it's a boy," the Dad would say, slipping me another stolen graham cracker as the nurse turned her back for one sweet second.
So we sat, for 31.5 hours, hooked up to about 87 wires and tubes, me eating contraband crackers and apple juice, the Dad ignoring text messages and sitting patiently through One More Episode of "The Baby Story".
"Isn't it a little late for that?" the nurses would joke.
"Can I have a Reuben?" I would ask as I watched them leave the room.



No for real, here is your baby. She really belongs to you! (If you look close, you can see the Dad's delicious eyelashes, the most fab trait he would pass on to his lucky daughter!)

When the doctor came in to catch our squirmy kid, she flipped my gown up for 2.1 seconds to look at my giant belly and said, "Oh. We're having a girl today," as she put on her gloves and fashioned a ponytail on top of her head.
It only cost us $12,000 for her to be right.
4 minutes later, when she said, "GIRL!" and held the lil' dude up by her ankles (something still random to me, is this 1950?), I said in a much-louder echo, "GIRL"? and promptly burst into tears.
The Dad said, "You got your girl."
To which I said, "So did you."
When the nurse asked what her name was, I said it out loud for the first time. We had a baby girl, our lil' dude.



Told you about the pacifier on the way home! The combination of that, and the song "I Love the Cocaine" by Buckcherry, on the radio lulled her to sleep quickly.

When we were settled in our room later, and Mama had polished off an entire plate of cold roast beef dinner, with my fingers, it began to be a little more real. Girl.
The gifts of pink and the bears and striped outfits piled up. Girl.
Visitors would say, "Hi you little-bitty baby girl!" Girl.
I had packed a sensible green outfit to bring the lil' dude home in.



"It looks like pink barfed in her closet, and I don't mean the singer," someone would say.

The lil' dude was born on a Friday. I don't think I dressed her in pink until the following Wednesday . . . then things got all outta control! Christmas was just two weeks away . . . and to this day, it just don't stop. Girl! We have a little girl with one helluva tough nickname. Unless you count the ones like Cakers, Monkey, Peanut, You Lil' Missy . . . etc.

Wordless Wednesday: Ain't That the Truth!

Give Peas a Chance

Here is the lil' dude Going Green by eating her organic sweet peas last night.

No, we're not that type of family. Unfortunately. Or fortunately, I can't decide how I feel about the subject yet. She is eating organic peas in this picture because the spot on the shelf where there should have been Gerber's regular non-organic peas was empty and Mama wanted to buy some peas without having to go to another grocery store.
Anyways, it's Earth Day today, and the going green and organic movement is in full force so it just has me thinking about raising a baby in 2008.

I guess if the Dad and I had decided to raise the lil' dude in an organic environment, it should've started with my pregnancy. And it did not. At all. I'm talking almost daily ICEE's in bright red and blue, Hunt's canned spaghetti sauce (again daily), and plain M&M's. Yes, I took care of myself, but not in the organic sense. And the 31.5 hours of the lil' dude's labor and delivery were not experienced sans drugs. There were copious amounts of wonderful drugs.

The folks behind this organic trend are sm-aaaaart. So smart. The trendy simple packaging is so appealing to a marketing junkie like me. The clean, simple look to everything they make for babies has an allure . . . I can't describe it, but I know I want to run my hand across the whole end-cap of the aisle at Target where they have their organic product line displayed. Today, I discovered Gerber even debuted a line of organic baby clothing. Old Navy has a line too. So I can't say I can't find items at my normal shopping locations because I can. So why don't I?

Maybe I'm old-fashioned, or straight up lazy. Or trying to recession-alize my spending. I fell in love with a handmade stuffed elephant last weekend, but shoved it back onto the shelf when I peeked at its tag and it read $55.
I can get off the hook without much effort and say, "when I was a kid, there wasn't anything organic besides my grandma's vegetable garden," and I turned out fine. My mom used cloth diapers on both my brother and I, howevs. It wasn't trendy then though, my mom said the disposable diapers of yesterday weighed 13 pounds a piece and leaked like a sieve. That's like a whole other baby.
The lil' dude uses Pampers Swaddlers because that is what we chose from the get-go. The daycare lady said she would gladly use cloth diapers if we chose to go that route. And now, they make the most ridiculously cute cloth diaper covers ever . . . it was hard for me to resist ordering the pink camo and skulls ones just because. But, we throw our kid's diapers into the trash.

And, Gerber makes organic baby food. I can't even think if there was a price difference. If there was, it was pennies. Yet, I chose the non-organic flavs. Maybe there is a direct correlation between organically-fed children and their superior health. Maybe there is a direct correlation between organically-fed children and their higher instances of allergies and illness . . . pick up a book or Google it and believe what you want.

What if, when the lil' dude goes on a playdate or to preschool and has to bring a treat, she is the outcast for being the only little who eats non-organic food? What if it is the other way around? Maybe by then Keebler Elf cookies will only be organic. (Keebler cookies? Absolutely. And, our house watches TV too, lots of TV.)

I am not saying our house is anti-green. I wash clothes in cold water. We recycle. I have reusable grocery bags. We unplug things. I reuse the "Take and Toss" spoons the lil' dude eats her cereal with. I'm growing some veggies this summer. I try not to love Clorox Wipes and Swiffers and paper towels and Huggies Disposable Washcloths and my 11 magazine subscriptions too much . . . but, it's a throw-away world and convenience trumps practical sometimes.

Here's the lil' dude playing in non-organic bubbles.



When she gets a little older, and starts exploring her world, she'll try to eat things she is not supposed to. Like dirt. And bugs, and leaves off my Croton plant. Then, we'll sponge-paint her a onesie which reads, "Organic Baby: I Eat Dirt" and we'll live happily ever after.

Why My House is Dirty and Why I Will (Learn to) Not Care

This past weekend was my annual girls' weekend with the lil' dude's "aunties". It was, per us., a blast. We shopped, drank, drank, drank, ate, drank, gossiped, laughed, and danced. As a new mama, I am learning episodes like girls' weekend in my life will make me a better mother. When the hangover(s) subside, that is . . .

I returned home yesterday around noon. I was delighted to see the Dad and the snoozin' babe in her swing. I unpacked and put on sweats and showed the Dad the things I bought for the lil' dude. "Buy anything for yourself?" he asked, knowing the answer.
"Umm, booze, I guess."

Within minutes, the lil' dude woke up. I scooped her up and we played and talked about her Saturday at home with dad, how she wore her pj's for two straight days, and how she got to go get milk, the paper, and OJ at the corner gas station. I relinquished the kisses her aunties wished to bestow on her, and showed her the fun new things I brought home for her. Then, I put her on the floor so I could start crossing things of my to-do list.

She was pretty occupied for long enough for me to vacuum, sweep, shake the rugs, clean the kitchen, and upstairs bathroom. I took a break to load her in her stroller to head out to buy brownie ingredients in the delicious sunshine. When we came home, I positioned her into the corner of the rocking-recliner so I could finish my list.

The Dad, still possessed by the baby bug, sat in the sunny window blowing his nose and trying to nap.

As I preheated the oven for the brownies, the lil' dude began to wail. Emphatically.
I put her pluggie into her mouth. Still wailing. Real tears began to spurt from her sad eyes.

I stoked her fuzz-head. "Why are you so sad, lil' dude?"

"She misses her mom," the Dad offered.

I looked at him. I looked at the sad, pink baby in the recliner. Instead of feeling defensive about how I needed to get things done at home before another busy work-week and how I felt I maybe needed to redeem myself and house and family for spending the whole day prior, playing, I felt . . . that he was right. He was absolutely right.

So, I shut the lights off in the kitchen and above the stove and settled the lil' dude onto my lap in our fave chair. I grabbed her green star blanket, and we cuddled.

For two hours. I loved every minute of it and so did my once-again contented little girl.

The bottom half of my house is still dirty. I am learning to not care.
My to-do list is not complete. I am learning to not care.