Month: October 2008

Can I do it?

best weekend of year
book festival mania
what does mama do?

This weekend is the Texas Book Festival. It is the best weekend of the year. Usually better than my birthday and almost as good as Christmas. So many authors, so many books, such entertaining sessions, many nerdy discussions, corn dogs, beautiful weather, fresh-squeezed lemonade, fun, fun stuff.

Last year there was free chocolate! And Gordon from Sesame Street! And George Saunders! And I accidentally talked to Vendela Vida on some rickety stairs!

But this year… this year I don't know if I can go. We are on a very precarious breastfeeding schedule. Precarious in that I want Ike-a-saurus to breastfeed all the time, and he is not super crazy about it. He can do it, but he's still not very efficient and so the bottles are winning out. This is not what I want. So I want to nurse him as much as possible. And I still have to pump to keep up my supply. Those two things will not be easy to accomplish while I traipse around the grounds of the Texas Capitol. Not to mention the fact we can't actually bring him out of the house yet.

So I could go for an hour or two, but after parking and all of that, I wouldn't even make it to one session. I could bring the hand pump and just let the booger stay home with daddy and enjoy his bottles, but where does one hand pump? In the car? The bathrooms are way too packed at the festival, and hand-pumping in the potty, gross.

But maybe I should do it. Sarah Bird is going to be there. And Susan Orlean screening Adaptation. And a Myth, Magic and Mayhem panel with Rick Riordan. And a discussion about Roald Dahl and British spies. There's just so much.

On the other hand, this year doesn't have the Sherman Alexies and the George Saunderses, so maybe I wouldn't miss much. Oh, who am I kidding?

This weekend is as close as one can get to just piling books onto a sidewalk and joyously rolling around in them. Maybe I can go for just a bit.

Halloween scramble

halloween scramble
not breakfast or a new dance
mom's night before plight

"I want to be an FBI agent!"
"Wait. I want to be a cowboy. A zombie cowboy!"
"Or an alien cowboy."
"What about something scary? I want to be something scary! With blood!"

I am making the wee one stick with FBI agent. We already have the sport coat (a snazzy double-breasted job from Goodwill we found a couple of days ago), some black pants, and an awesome skinny tie. All we need is an ear doodad and a badge and the costume is done. Except that everything is too big and he doesn't have a white shirt. These things, I think, can be frantically remedied 10 minutes before trick-or-treating. That's my plan anyway.

The wee-er one, on the other hand, is not so easy, or quite as full of ideas. I have been trying to get her to wear a ballerina costume we have courtesy of my sister, the dance studio owner. No go. Maybe the ladybug costume from last year? No go. What about a ghost? Uh-uh. She is mostly interested in dressing up like the wee-er one. Not like an FBI agent, but actually like the wee-er one, even down to wearing his underwear over her pull-up. She shouts down any other suggestion, though if I had a size 2T black suit, I would so make her be an FBI agent, too. That would be incredibly cute.

Ike-a-saurus, he's easy. He will be the Future President of the United States and preside over all of us and our Halloween mayhem. Maybe he will issue tax breaks for all of the candy I have bought and then eaten. A charitable donation to the crazy.

Now I have to get the damn printer to work so I can forge an FBI badge. Maybe I will also print out a giant picture of the wee one's face and turn it into a mask for the wee-er one. That might just be very excellent.

Listen up, inventors

Learning how to eat
challenging for mom and babe
our gullets need help 

I am finding myself trapped on the sofa a lot. I get Ike-a-saurus into the perfect position where he stops grunting like a tiny goat and I realize, Shit. I'm starving. But I can't move for fear of awakening the World's Smallest GoatPig, and his bitchy aquaintance: Joe the Gas Bubble.

What I need is a Rube Goldberg-ian contraption that would allow me to pull a lever or push a shiny button whenever I need a snack-sized Snickers, or a ham sandwich. The lever could whack a piece of flint, setting off a spark that lights a match. The match could gently warm the tail feathers of a chicken until it squawked into a megaphone. The vibrations from the megaphone would start a tiny little earthquake on the desk globe we have. This would make the globe shake across the table, knocking over some dominoes. The last domino would fall into a bucket, which would fall to the floor and flip on the pantry light switch, via a pulley system. The light switch would activate some solar powered robotic fingers on the pantry wall, that would grab a box of Cheez-its (or some candy bars, or maybe even a banana). The fingers would drop the box into a small toy dump truck waiting on the pantry floor. The weight of the box would push down the dump truck's on switch and the truck would zoom out of the pantry and into the living room, where it would crash into a pile of assorted legos. This would send the Cheez-it box flying into my lap.

Or I could hire a butler.

Or I could remember to get food before I sit down.

Things exhaustion has taught me

1. Driving might not be a good idea

2. Emotions are fun when they lie just barely under the surface. Happy! Angry! Sad! Happ—snoooore.

3. Narcolepsy while feeding a baby is messy

4. If I am not careful, I will be able to justify shaving my head because I HATE MY HAIR. IT IS TOO LONG AND AWFUL.

5. Farts make me laugh even more than normal

6. Trying to hook the tubing from the breast pump directly to one's nipple does not work

7. Don't mull over how you got poop on your elbow. Just wash it off and move on.

8. If you have to tie a string around your finger to remember you have other kids, do it!

9. Wait until you are coherent before shooting off an email to Typepad telling them how much you FUCKING HATE the new composition interface (hello, my computer already is almost on fire all the time, your complicated slow ass template is going to make it explode). If this advice is not heeded, your email will look like this: Hate sucky suck assholes! Fix it old way now, before I fall sleep! Blog sjfgheuibkj.

10. Even if your neighbors are getting new wood floors put in and the flooring looks so pretty, do not try to bribe the installers to put the flooring in your house instead. Your neighbors will get mad and also the installers don't speak english so you just look even crazier than normal.

11. Babies smell really good even when they don't

12. Grown-ups do not tend to smell really good even when they don't

13. I want red patent leather peekaboo slingback heels. I can wear them to buy nipples.

14. It is not still July

15. Popcorn and grapes make an OK lunch

16. The Law of Poop says it won't come when you wait for it, much like the boiling water scenario. But when you are trying to sleep, watch out.

17. Reaching into a pot of boiling water to grab a pump flange is going to hurt

18. Shouting about insurance to your spouse helps nothing, even if he started it

19. You can never have too many blue sucky nose syringe things

20. What was I talking about again?

Forgetting

All time is no time
Whole world becomes upside down
Such tiny havoc

With all day and all night revolving around feeding and digestion you’d think I’d be reminded to eat. And yet I’ve been up since 2, then brief nap until 4:30, then up at 6 for good, and all I’ve eaten is one piece of bread. Now he’s asleep, he’s just eaten, I am pumping. When I’m done do I sleep or do I eat? The möbius strip of motherhood.

Approaching the second night…

should remember this
and yet it is new again
blame the exhaustion

Last night I got 17 minutes of sleep. The rest of the time was spent trying to figure out how to keep my hand on Ike-a-saurus while he slept, to make sure he was still breathing. Turns out, neither of my arms bend the right way to achieve this with the bassinet.

The other two kids, when they were infants, just slept tucked up under my armpit all night, but this guy is still so tiny, I am afraid my arm might work as a middle of the night nutcracker. Oops.

I also tried sleeping with my head on the edge of the bassinet so I could keep an eye on him, but I was afraid the weight of my lolling head would tip the bassinet off it's base and catapult the baby out the window.

Then, of course, there was the pooping. It went like this:
Ike: grunt grunt grunt grunt (10 minutes later) grunt grunt grunt grunt (30 minutes later) grunt grunt grunt grunt POOOOOOP.

Me: Holy crap, did you HEAR that?

Husband: snooore

I would get up, change the diaper, and as I was washing my hands, POOOOOP.

Ad infinitum.

(And, hello grunty, baby! No crying, just little pig/goat grunts all night long. It is like sleeping in a very cold, much nicer smelling barn.)

Also, we had some exorcist moments of the milk shooting from mouth and nose. It's a good thing Linda Blair was not wearing a snap up body suit during that mess, or the movie would have been ten hours long while we waited for them to change her clothes. ZIP UP BODYSUITS, BABY CLOTHES DESIGNERS. MAMAS WANT ZIPPERS. Not 42,000 snaps that get all fucked up and make you wonder what monkey dressed your baby in the middle of the night until you remember that you are the monkey.

The good thing about 17 minutes of sleep is that they are the deepest, most blissful 17 minutes ever. So nice and rejuvenating for the monkey mom's complexion and sanity.

I am looking forward to my 17 minutes tonight.

Suddenly, it’s closer than we think…

doctors toy with us
is he ready, is he not?
it's making me nuts

Can you imagine sitting with this sweet little guy – your sweet little baby – and then having to LEAVE HIM every night? How many times can a heart break? All I can say is, eat, Ike, eat. Go, Ike, go. I'm going crazy over here.

4lbs 13oz. He is officially more than twice his birth weight. I just want to eat him.

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