“Well, what do YOU want to do?”

December 12, 2009 at 12:27 am (Uncategorized)

Motherhood is wonderful but, as we all well know, there are plenty of aspects to complain about at times. One descriptor I haven’t heard frequently is “boring”. I’m talking boredom for both mother and child here. I don’t know if that’s exactly the right description, but bear with me here. I am going somewhere with this.

I love spending time with my son. However, he is four and a half months old and a boy. He can’t walk or talk and his interests are pretty much still limited to eating, sleeping, pooping, and bright, shiny, sparkly things. (That last one was a relatively recent, very welcome addition.)

Now that he is awake more and more aware of the world, he wants more attention, although he is capable of amusing himself at times. (OK, OK, maybe he amuses himself at times by watching reruns of 7th Heaven that I just happen to want to watch.) This isn’t a problem most of the time. Usually, feeding and dressing him and me and getting him down for his naps takes up plenty of time. Add in some walks around the neighborhood, Itsy Bitsy yoga sessions, or the occasional errand, doctor’s appointment, or weekly visit to my sister’s house, and we have a pretty full schedule.

Lately, we have been having wintry weather (for Austin) and he has been eating faster. What’s a mom to do when she can’t take the baby outside, she doesn’t even want to think about going to the mall, and he doesn’t want to do Itsy Bitsy Yoga or play with his toys? What do you do when you find yourself looking at your baby and thinking, “What am I going to DO with you until your next nap and/or feeding?” Suddenly, you realize that, as a thirty-year-old woman, you really don’t have much in common with a four-month-old baby boy, except for your love for each other and, of course, 7th Heaven.

Thank goodness, I found lists of games by age on Baby Center. Not only do I have new ways to amuse my son, but I have a new idea for a blog entry: “How to Revitalize Your Relationship by Putting Funny Things on Your Head.”


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Feeling thankful that …

December 1, 2009 at 11:21 pm (Celebrities, Relationships, Uncategorized)

my mom and I can have a whole conversation about whether Kimberly Williams-Paisley was prettier during her “Father of the Bride” phase than she is now. Mom thinks now. I voted for her “Bride” era, but mainly because I like her hair curly. Although, come to think of it, she was prettiest of all in Father of the Bride, Part 2 when her hair was short and not curly at all.

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The TV is your friend

November 21, 2009 at 12:30 am (Babies, Husbands, Motherhood, television)

That whole “no screen time for children under 2″ thing? Not workin’ for me. Luckily, I talked to my mother-in-law on Wednesday and she said she let my husband watch lots of TV when he was little. Actually, she thinks that’s why he learned to talk so soon. He is super-smart and definitely not a TV addict, so I feel much better now about letting Max stare for a few minutes here and there while I take a breather.

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Morning inner monologue

October 21, 2009 at 12:34 pm (Uncategorized)

“You will make my coffee, damn you! I will have my coffee!” (To our new Keurig coffeemaker, which we’ve only had about a month.) Hmmm. I said way worse things out loud while attempting to put on a new crib sheet and after knocking some of the recycling off of the counter while my son was sleeping yesterday.

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Kittymomma anniversary

October 18, 2009 at 11:08 pm (Cats, Uncategorized)

October 6 marked my seventh anniversary as a kittymomma. (As for the reason it has taken me two weeks to finish this post, well, that’s another story.) I can’t believe it has been seven years since I brought my little Siamese kitten home. I remember feeling terrified to hold her the first time. I had never held an animal of any kind. However, by the time she lay stretched out on my lap later that evening as I watched 7th Heaven with a cute little kitty smile on her face, my terror was long gone. I remember thinking, “This is going to be pretty cool.”

And it definitely has been. On this blog, she has been known as Cookies and Cream (or CC), but her real name is Belle. I named her after the heroine in Disney’s Beauty and the Beast. I had been working on finding a name for her for two weeks and couldn’t come up with anything that seemed to fit her. However, I saw a commercial for the initial DVD release of the movie and it suddenly occurred to me that Belle might work. I looked at her, tried it out, and that was it. Unfortunately, since it had taken me so long to name her, she still thinks her name is “Baby.” Oh, well. They’re both “B” sounds, right?

Regardless of her name, she has been a good friend to me for seven years. She is the sweetest, best-behaved cat ever. She is responsible for awakening a love for animals that I never knew I possessed. She is also responsible for at least six other cats being adopted in to my family. (Two of which are my two boys.)

I was a 23-year-old grad student when I brought her home and now I’m a thirty-year-old wife and mom to three cats and a baby boy. Belle came to me during the most difficult period of my entire life and I give her a lot of credit for bringing me out of it and helping me to get where I am today. Thanks so much, little Belle-cat. I love you.

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Free to breast-feed

September 19, 2009 at 2:44 pm (Babies, Breastfeeding, Etiquette, Life, Motherhood, Parenting, Uncategorized)

My son and I finally made it to our first postnatal yoga class today. I didn’t actually end up doing much yoga because my son, like most almost-two-month-olds, needs to eat every three hours. Also, he takes about 40 minutes to  nurse. I admit, this has kept me from attending the class before, because I didn’t want to spend most of it nursing instead of doing yoga. However, the writing is on the wall. I’m not going to be able to do anything unless I am willing to feed him during some part of it. So I went, but I took a bottle of breast milk with me, since he usually bottle-feeds quicker than he nurses.

My son has taken a bottle from me several times and he usually gets at least one a day from my husband, so that I can have a break. However, he wouldn’t take it today. So, since several other women were nursing their babies, I decided to go ahead and nurse him.

At first, I felt self-conscious nursing without a cover in public. However, I soon became completely comfortable with it. In fact, I felt liberated. Before I had a child, I was fine with women breast-feeding in public, although I assumed it would be best for them to cover themselves up, to avoid catching flack from people. I thought it must be easy to just toss a cover over yourself and the baby. I was wrong. I have a nursing cover. It is very difficult to get the child in and out of the cover without exposing yourself somehow anyway. You either have to flash people or place the child under there and then fumble with your clothes, blind and one-handed. Also, it is sweltering under there (I can only imagine what it feels like for my son.) and trying to get him latched back on  five thousand times while I can’t see him makes me want to pull my hair out.

Everyone says “breast is best.” They want all of the moms to breast-feed because it is better for the babies, but most people would prefer you stay trapped in the house for three months doing it. I’m sorry, but that is just not realistic. If people are going to get judgmental about a mom not breast-feeding, then they shouldn’t be judgmental about a mom doing it in public. A mom still has to have a life while breast-feeding, especially if she has other kids and/or a job. Plus, it’s better for both mom and baby if they aren’t trapped in the house 24/7. For the first time today, I didn’t feel limited by breast-feeding. I didn’t feel trapped. I actually felt like I was breast-feeding and living at the same time. I didn’t feel like I had to drop everything to feed my child. I didn’t have to stop my life. I was sharing my life with him.

Honestly, I think most moms probably aren’t self-conscious about nursing without a cover. At least, like me, they would find out they weren’t once they tried it. I think it is other people’s attitudes that make a mom self-conscious, rather than her own feelings. It’s not what the mom or baby is doing, but other people’s thoughts about breasts that are the problem. The fact is, I had to look really closely at the moms in class today to tell if they were nursing, even without covers. They were very discreet about it. They weren’t flashing their breasts around or letting them hang out when a child wasn’t latched to them. The fact is, our society is prudish and many think of breasts purely as sexual objects. Come on, people. It’s breast-feeding, not flashing your boobs to get Mardi Gras beads. And yet, some of the same people who probably pay money for those Girls Gone Wild DVDs, give nursing mothers dirty looks in public.

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Maybe cravings aren’t a myth

June 7, 2009 at 4:30 am (Babies, Uncategorized)

I have not had any cravings to speak of during my pregnancy. At least, not until the past couple of weeks. All of a sudden, my wants are much more specific (For instance, a brownie, but it has to be a brownie, not HEB Brownie Bites, and it has to be chewy and crumbly, not cakey. With no nuts or icing.) and I tend to get more frustrated if they aren’t fulfilled quickly. I had cravings earlier in pregnancy, but it was more like I was extremely susceptible to suggestion. If I didn’t get it, it wasn’t the end of the world. Now I’m at the point where I spent last week intermittently peeved with my husband, because he hadn’t caught my hints and surprised me with kolaches and a mocha from It’s a Grind. (Although I kept saying I probably shouldn’t have the coffee every time I mentioned it to him, so you can understand why he might not act on it.) Usually, I am pretty direct about asking him to get certain foodstuffs for me, but suddenly, I was irrationally hoping he would catch my hints and surprise me.

Not only am I expecting mind-reading from my husband, which I have always striven not to do, but I am finding it much more difficult to resist unhealthy cravings. I have had tater tots two days in a row. Today they were cheese tots. (Mmmm. I’d eat more right now if I could.) I am keeping my fingers crossed that these bad habits won’t carry over in to my postpartum life. I thought I left the fast food cravings behind in grad school!

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decisions, decisions

June 6, 2009 at 5:56 am (Babies, Uncategorized)

Well, my husband and I have finally made some more progress on the baby to-do list. We finished purchasing the furniture, decided definitely NO (Capitals intended.) on circumcision, and decided that the baby will be ok sleeping on his own in the nursery. Every single website seems to contradict the previous one about the relative dangers of sleeping alone or with the parents, so we went with the solution that will probably provide the least amount of stress to all human and feline occupants of the house. He is probably more likely to be in danger in our room from our extremely friendly 17-pound black cat than SIDs. (No flippancy intended. I take SIDs very seriously.)

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third wheel

June 5, 2009 at 4:30 am (Babies, Uncategorized)

I don’t think sex is embarrassing and I certainly don’t want to raise my son to think so. However, am I overreacting to be uncomfortable when my son raises a ruckus in utero when I’m thinking about it???

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baby on the move

June 4, 2009 at 12:07 am (Babies, Uncategorized)

Most of the time I love feeling my son move, but I have to admit, the hiccups are annoying. I don’t even like it when I have hiccups, so it drives me a little bit nuts to feel him hiccuping in there and not be able to do anything about it. We have yet to have them at the same time. I wonder if holding my breath would help him? I kind of doubt it.

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