maternity leave

I find myself increasingly tired as I become more pregnant and I find my son increasingly energetic as he gets older.  So I no longer have the time or inclination to keep writing on a daily basis.  I might start again next year depending on how I feel.

Wish me luck.

Bye.

Long car trips

Taking a child on a long car trip is an adventure that depending on the age of the child and the length of the car trip could be a hellish endeavor not worth attempting or a way to force family to spend quality time together with minimal distractions.

For children two-years-old and younger a long car trip is an hour or two and is best survived if you begin the trip around the same time that you would normally begin nap time.  That way your child falls asleep in the car (hopefully early into the trip) and with any luck stays asleep for the entire trip.  When all goes to plan you have a sleeping baby and the car ride can be pleasant.  But be warned if your child wakes up during the car ride you will have problems.

First thing my diaper clad son does when he wakes up is pee.  Which is cool for potty training purposes, he wakes up I sit him on the potty, win.  This is a lame deal when he wakes up in the car.  He wakes up, pees his diaper, and cries.  So then we need to take the next exit find a good place to park and take him out of the car seat and change his diaper.  So far so good.  But once he is freed from the car seat, he has no interest in returning to his car seat.  He will cry and do everything he physically can to make it difficult to buckle him back into his seat.

So great now we have a crying baby and many miles still to go.  This sounds bad. (It feels bad.)  But then you remember, babies have a short attention span.  And if you can make a sufficient distraction your baby will forget why crying was a thing and maybe wiggle to the music instead of being miserable.  Which I feel makes the whole car ride better for everyone involved.  Just remember getting angry at your child is likely only going to make the situation worse.  Your kid was unhappy you don't want to make them scared in addition, how will the crying ever stop?

Be happy, have a good time, and with any luck your child will follow your lead.

Older kids while still not enthusiastic about long car rides can be given diversions to help make the ride more bearable.  You knowing your child(ren) know best what to hand them to make happiness a reality.  As your children get older, car rides can get longer, but remember children have smaller bladders than adults.  I recommend a rest stop every two hours or so.  Of course you would pull off sooner if your child requests a bathroom break.  Nobody wants to be in a car were an accident took place.

Babysitting

It's hard to say who babysitting  is harder on when it's the first time you let your first child enter the care of someone else while you go off to do what ever it is that you couldn't really bring a baby along for. (Especially if you are a stay at home mom.)  You and your baby have an understanding of sorts, the baby needs things and you do your best to fulfill these needs.  When some one else is left in charge, your baby is going to have to deal with the fact that you are not there!

As a baby, that has got to be scary, if you have no command of language and don't understand why mommy is gone!  You need things!  And now there is some one else trying to give you what you need?  Nooooooo! Mommy or Daddy do these things!  Why is some one else trying to do the things that Mommy and Daddy do?  I want my Mommy! I want my Daddy!

You get the idea.  It's not easy on the baby who's world you've just given a paradigm shift.  Guess who else it's not easy on.  The baby sitter!  Baby sitting is not generally thought of as a hard job.  I remember as an older child taking care of younger children with out incident.  But there is a big difference in being in charge of someone who you can have a functional dialogue with and a baby.  Yes you can tell the baby what's going on, and explain that mom and dad will return after their movie is over, but the baby will not understand.  The baby will be upset.  And it can be stressful spending a couple hours with someone who is vocally unhappy with the situation and needs constant distraction to keep the tears at bay.

The first time I let my son be babysat, I had my mother and brother tag team the babysitting game.  My son was in the capable hands of not one but two adults that he had spent time with before.  (Granted I was also there but at least he knew these people.)  My husband and I went to see a movie, by the time the credits began to roll I was a ball of nervous energy.  I physically could not make myself sit through the credits,  I had to get home to my baby.

He had just woken up moments before our car rolled into the driveway and we could hear him crying through the door.  Delirious happy is how my son could be described when he saw me come in the door.  And quick as a flash I had him cuddled up in my arms his tiny hands gripping my shirt with all their might.

Since then babysitting has been easier on everyone involved.   My son is happier to spend time with his extended family while I'm away, and I don't worry so much while he is out of my sight.  He still doesn't really want to take a nap without me, but then again he doesn't really want to take a nap while I'm home.  I'm just able to out last an obviously tired child in a battle of wills.

So take heart new parents, dates with your spouse can still happen even once you've entered the realm of parenthood.  You just have to plan ahead a little more than you used to.

Maternity Clothes

Maternity clothes tend to have an impressive amount of fabric and/or an impressive amount of stretch.  But when do you actually need to make the switch from your normal clothes to the maternity collection?  Well for me, I noticed the bones in my hips shifting before I started "showing".  And so my first pregnancy I had to deal with inane questions from my mother in-law like "Why do you need maternity pants?  You're not showing!" (said like an accusation).  Well I need maternity pants because even though you don't see a bump, there is still no way in hell my regular pants are going to button up anymore which is why I'm out shopping in yoga pants.

It is a mistake to go maternity shopping with anyone who is going to be less than kind about the sensitive subject of weight.  If your pregnant you don't need anyone around who is going to make you feel fat, the baby to be is doing enough of that and does not require assistance in that field.  That said, no you are not fat, you are pregnant, some people show sooner than others, some moms carry "in" while others carry "out" and then there is high or low.  Basically what I'm saying is there is a lot of variation in the realm of healthy and normal.  So even if you and your best friend got knocked up on the same night, you would not be guaranteed to look equally round through the course of pregnancy.

Don't feel bad if you need to jump into maternity clothes relatively early in your pregnancy.  And don't feel jipped that you don't get to wear your cute new maternity clothes for very long  if it takes you longer to get to the point where you need to wear them.

Basically you know you need maternity clothes, when the clothes you have begin to feel uncomfortable.  That said once they do start to feel tight go shopping right away, or you may find yourself making unusual clothing choices out of necessity when you finally do go clothing shopping.  Your husband's sweat pants may be fun to wear around the house, but do you want that to be your only option for walking out the door when you are going out into public?

Though how nuts you go with your maternity clothes shopping might be influenced by how many times you think you are going to be pregnant, I still recommend at least two different sets of maternity pants, two dresses and a handful of shirts to keep you decent.

And on the other side, postpartum, don't let anyone tell you when you need to stop wearing these big comfy clothes.  It took a while to gain the weight, it will take some time to lose it.  You gain more weight than the baby so that you can remain healthy while you breast feed.  I found my appetite drop significantly after the baby came out.  But that said a week after the baby was out I looked at my self and thought "well I look less pregnant".  Don't get me wrong I did lose the weight, it just wasn't over night.  If you're breast feeding the baby will literally eat your excess calories.  And that can make you more tired than a trip to the gym, which is fine because if you breast feed you are burning more calories than you probably would have at the gym anyway.

Foods and nonfoods

Small children seem to have a love of putting anything but food into their mouths.  Much to the dismay of moms everywhere. I want him to eat a nice steamed carrot, he wants to eat a nice red crayon.  I want him to eat a muffin and some eggs he wants to eat a book.  And on and on it goes.  When we had a birthday party and I offered him a cupcake, thinking we could take some cute messy photos, he wanted nothing to do with it.  I mean yes he poked it and flipped it upside down but out of all the things he tried to do with this cupcake, tasting it wasn't on the list.

It sometimes feels like kids have this innate backwards understanding of what to put into their mouths.  If it's food it will not pass the lips.  If it is not a food a solid effort will be made to chow down.  He tries to eat paper, I tell him no.  I try to feed him an apple slice, he tells me no.

Now I feel like the subject of Edvard Much's famous painting The Scream.

I'm not saying that my son doesn't eat solid foods, he does... sometimes.  He's just exceptionally picky, even by my pregnant-lady standards.  Needless to say meal times have become difficult in this house.  At least we can still both agree on butternut-squash-soup, but I refuse to let that be the only thing we eat.  I need a little more variety than that.

And what really gets me, is when I make food for him because I've seen him happily eat it a few days ago, and he will not even try it today.  This whole food thing bothers me to no end.  If we didn't need it to survive I would have washed my hands of it long ago.  Who needs this level of aggravation three times a day, everyday?

I don't feel like playing twenty questions every meal to find out what my son will take a few bites of and then lose all interest in.  And why is the food on my plate more interesting to him than the food on his plate?  It's the same food!  I just wanted eat something without my son playing with it first, is that so much to ask?  Apparently it is.  Some days I wait to eat until he's taking a nap so that I don't have to deal with his need to play with my food while I eat.

This sadly isn't always an option as there have been days where he skips his afternoon nap, much to my dismay.  I'll put him in his day bed, and do the whole naptime ritual with him, and he will look like he's about to fall asleep, for about half an hour.  Then he bounces up and wants to play or have a snack and what ever I was planning on doing during his normal two hour nap is now not going to happen.  Which is extra lame when I was hoping to use the time for food preparation.  Because now what are we going to eat?!!?!?  Ugh, I guess there is always cereal.

A little percussion

We took a trip to visit my father over the weekend and we looked at my son and thought, hey he's finally old enough to play with some of the musical instruments in the house.  (Now we didn't point him at the guitar or violin, we are not that crazy.)  My father pulled down some of the percussion section from his top shelf and placed it on the floor.

I handed my son a drum stick and had him sit in a semicircle of instruments that he could hit.  There was a gong, chimes, a tambourine and a bongo.  I gave him one brief demonstration of how each thing could be hit with a drum stick and let him go for it.  He had the idea right away and spent the next fifteen minutes hitting the instruments as he had been shown in a random order.  This went over better than I thought it would.  Fifteen minutes feels like an incredible amount of time for a small child to have focused on a single task without additional parental encouragement.

Of course it was only a matter of time before he felt the need to explore the items beyond the parameters of the initial demonstration.  He picked up the bongos and turned them upside down and tested out what happens when you try to put the drumstick inside.  Then the tambourine was turned over, this was a little more exciting than turning the bongos over because he flipped the tambourine back and forth a few times before investigating it while it was upside down with the drum stick.  He was clearly unimpressed when he flipped the chimes over.  And it was not physically possible for him to turn over the large wall mounted gong so he settled for simply pushing it into the wall.

After this he handed me the drumstick and wandered off.  Apparently it was time to chase my sister's cat.  (Thankfully the cat chose flight over fight when it came to dealing with an over enthusiastic toddler.)

It's weird.  After hiding from toys that make noise I feel oddly compelled to seek out more musical instruments for my son to play with.  I like to think that it's simply because these things are not electronic noise makers that once activated go on for a miniature eternity with electronic "music" that I have more patience for them.  But I think the real reason is that I have more interest in playing with musical instruments myself, than baby toys that make noise.

I miss sleep

If there was a way to cash in all the naps I intentionally skipped over the course of my life I would be one well rested mama.  I was the kid who didn't want to nap, the teen who didn't sleep in, and the adult who couldn't nap if I wanted to.

But pregnancy can disrupt sleep in a way that I find more frustrating than the way a baby disrupts my sleep.  At least when a baby wakes you up something important needs to be done for someone you love.  When you are pregnant waking up in the middle of the night to pee feels grossly unfair (especially if you still occasionally have to wake up at night to assist your baby who has just peed).

I frequently find myself wanting just one more hour to sleep.  And only when I am really lucky does that happen.  I find my self anticipating my son's naps and feeling unreasonably sad when he skips one.  It makes me wish that hiring help was an option for my family.

It's frustrating when people who are not parents act like being a stay at home mom isn't work.  All I can think is, are they insane?  It is a 24/7 job with no breaks.  And if you have anything less than a good attitude the world assumes you are a terrible person.  If the baby cries people look at you like you are doing it wrong.  And if you cry their are only condescending looks to be spared.

Which makes being a mom who has one child and one on the way a sanity sapping struggle.  When I was pregnant the first time around I occasionally found myself crying for no discernible reason.  Now that I'm taking care of some one else all day pregnancy induced emotional episodes seem selfish and even more out of place than they did the first time around.

At least when I was pregnant with kid number one, if I felt emotionally out of it, I didn't have to deal with people.  I could just go hide in my bedroom and no one would bother me.  Hiding is no longer an option.  And sympathy for how hard it is to be pregnant is significantly less the second time around.

People seem to think, "well you asked for it" to which the only reply is "shut up!" or possibly "I hate you!" because if you are the kind of jerk who is going to tell me "You asked for it" while I am having an emotional struggle you can go die in a fire or play on the freeway for all I care.

Yes I want to be a mom.  Yes I knew it would be hard.  Yes it is hard.  No I don't wish I had made a different decision... Unless you are talking about choosing a friend who would eventually be an asshole to me while I was pregnant, in which case, yes I wish I had the foresight to know which friends would be awesome to have while doing the mom thing and which ones I would feel happier never interacting with ever again.

Because I've got to say, nothing shows you who your real friends are like going through a life changing event.  And really I only have time to deal with people who will be cool with a sleep deprived me.

Some Assembly Required

So many things that we buy for our children are in fact 3D puzzles for adults before they look like the picture on the box.  And as your child gets older they will be more interested in the assembly process.  They're desire desire to be included will begin far before any ability to be "helpful" in the making things go better and faster sort of way.  But as long as your child can't choke on the pieces they grab or otherwise hurt themselves, it may be worth the decrease in efficiency to let them feel included.

The game of can you hand me that, is actually a lot of fun for small children.  And they would love it if you would explain what you are doing as you do it.  Whether or not they retain the information is not even relevant.  You are doing something different and interesting with your child.  (I mean generally speaking you only have to assemble any given object once.  So each adventure into the land of some assembly required is a unique experience.)

Now that said, don't be offended if you are trying to show your child how things work as you put their new piece of gear together, and your child starts playing with the box.  Boxes are fun and safe to play with.  And if your child is playing with the box, you are able to put the new thing together with fewer requests for the next part you need.

Even if you have just completed building a new toy for your child.  Don't take it personally or as some form of offence if your child is happily playing with the box it came in or anything else they might have taken an interest in while you were diligently assembling their new toy.  Your child is not belittling your work, or less grateful than he or she should be for the time and money spent on their behalf.  Rather your child is simply engaged in the task of being a kid.  Kids will play, it is how they have fun and how they learn.

So go ahead make the thing that you were going to make.  Then play with your child.  Whether it's with the new toy, or the box, or any other thing you might have laying around the house.  Be in the moment, and engage with your child on their level.  They will grow up soon enough.  And then you might find yourself missing the days when you could put your child in a cardboard box pushing it across the floor while making race-car sounds.

Don't eat that!

If you are pregnant there is a list of things you should not eat that makes sense once you think about it, but might not jump to mind when planning meals.  Basically you want to avoid anything that has a risk of giving you food poisoning.  For though you can vomit up the nasty germs making you sick, a baby in utero can not throw up.  And since this was bad enough news that your body thought the best best bet would be to expel the contents of your stomach, how do you think a baby who isn't fully formed yet will fare fighting against these germs?

No raw or under-cooked meat: that's right no sushi, and you want your steak (or any other meat product) well done.  These foods may host bacteria, viruses, and parasites.

No raw eggs: that's right be patient and cook the cookies I don't care if you like them better raw it's still a bad idea.

No unpasteurized dairy foods and no hot dogs or deli meats unless they are steaming hot.  Listeria monotonousness can cause miscarriage, stillbirth or other serious health problems.

No pâté or meat spreads, or smoked seafood or jerky.

No large fish: we are talking things like swordfish, king mackerel, tile-fish and shark.  You want to keep your mercury count low.  Seafood recommendations can be found here.

Also it is recommended to limit the amount of liver you eat as it has excessive vitamin A content which can cause birth defects.

Even unwashed fruits and vegetables can be a problem hosting a parasite called toxoplasma which can harm your baby in the making.

If you would prefer your information in a visual medium I found a slideshow on web MD that might interest you here.

With all these foods taken off the list of things to eat the ones I miss most are sushi and Caesar salads (the dressing contains raw egg).  Feel free to comment with what forbidden foods you missed while pregnant.

Crying babies

At some point or another if there is a baby the baby will cry.   When out in public there is nothing quite as mortifying to a parent or annoying to everyone else than a crying child.  And if it's not your baby, you can only speculate as to why the crying is happening.  Please don't do so out loud.  You are probably wrong and will be hated forever by the parent of the offending child. (You probably don't care, you hate them for having a child crying in public.)  But seriously if you see a parent dragging a crying child away from a store, it's probably because the child was misbehaving in the store.  The parent is not working on removing the child from public, so unless the kid says "Help, this isn't my mommy/daddy!" stay out of the way.  The noise will pass, and you being a jerk about it helps nothing.

But what if I think someone else's child is crying because of the way their parent is holding their arm?

Then you are wrong.  Believe it or not parents don't go out of their way to make their kids miserable in public.  Chances are a firm grip on the child's arm is in fact the parent attempting to save the child from throwing themselves bodily on to the floor for an impressive face plant.

No way! Why would a kid do something to hurt themselves?

You are asking me to peer into the mind of the overly dramatic children of the world.  But ok, here we go.  No not all kids are this dramatic (at least not intentionally so).   However  I must say there have been occasions when I told my son "No" for what ever reason and he threw him self head first at me, or at the couch or at a wall or even the floor.

Wait this is about parents setting limits?

Yes!  You don't want spoiled children running around in public, but you would love for parents to give their children whatever it is that will make them stop crying....  See how these things don't go together all that well?  I tell my son "No" you can't have the random thing on the shelf.  He cries because he is not getting his way.  Fine whatever.  He needs to learn crying will not get him what he wants.  Now a random passerby looks at me like I'm a terrible person.  I don't need this kind of aggravation! He's still crying so to better make my point I remove him from the store. He throws all of his weight into getting back to the forbidden items, which is still not enough to change the direction we are going.  Then I feel it through his arm, his muscles are tensing in the way they do just before he launches himself.  I lift him by the arm, (no way am I letting you do that here!)  Of course he's still crying and now I hear a random know it all say "she's hurting his arm." Like hell I am! I would tackle a wild animal if I thought that would keep my son from harm!

Of course once we get to the parking lot he can't remember what he was crying for.  I tell him he's all right and he believes me. The crying stops.  And there is no way, we are going back in there today.

So what is the take away from all this?  If you see a crying child, chances are you are also seeing a good parent.  Being a parent is hard enough without random people on the street trying to tell you how to do your job.

The age of discovery

It could easily be argued that as soon as you are born you are discovering things.  As an infant my son seemed very thoughtful, wide eyed and absorbing everything.  But I feel there is a difference in discovering you can move your arms and legs (which was at the time very exciting) and later discovering your belly button.

In the beginning a lot of what your child is actively experimenting with is there own body, to try and answer the question: how do I operate this crazy contraption?  "coo" did I make that sound? That's funny! Hehehe! The sound of laughter is even funnier! (As an infant my son was easily amused and would laugh at almost anything.

Then there is the discovery of locomotion. Being able to transport oneself from one part of the room to the next is big news too.  But it is only after the self discovery does the magic of the rest of the world truly seem to call.

When I take my son for a walk, he wants to pick up everything.  He'll pick flowers, grab sticks, pick up rocks, pet the fire hydrant, and hug street signs. He'll squat by the dirt and wave his hands through it if given the chance, and every puddle is beckoning tiny feet to do a stomping sort of dance.  Even when we are walking in the mall he will run to the potted plants to touch the leaves, and hug the columns that support the building.

And then the shy excitement of seeing other children or small animals.  His whole being seems to shout "I want to touch it! I don't know if it's a good idea but I want to touch it!  Mommy are you going to stop me? Because I'm going to touch it!"  He has a little dance where he looks at what he wants to touch then back to me then back to it, sometimes he pushes me towards what he is interested in if he's unsure, as if to say "Hey mommy, there is a thing, and it's cool, you go first!"

Other kids seem to be the most interesting and most confounding, to my son.  He has figured out that little girls like it when you hand them flowers, but doesn't really understand that once he gives them the flower, they are going to want to keep it.  Luckily flowers are plentiful and generally I can quickly replace the one he has given away with a new one.  So far most other things he hands children (like books at the library) the other kids seem to be willing to receive and give back.  So we are learning about sharing! Fantastic! We are also working on saying please and thank you, but you know, one thing at a time.