Friday, June 18, 2004

We're off to Minnesota for a week tomorrow so no blogging for a week or so. I know my vast public will be SO disappointed!!

Thanks to Rich's inattention to details, we now have an extra thousand dollars. He didn't know we were escrowing our insurance, so he went to pay it. But I said he didn't have to, and I was right, so GO ME.

Eric was really fun today. Rich surprised me by telling me he had to day off. He didn't want to tell me ahead of time in case it didn't work out. But last night he brought home "50 First Dates" and said we could stay up late and watch it because he didn't have to work tomorrow. Fifty First Dates was way better than I expected. David Lindsay-Abaire who I went to college with wrote a play about a woman who lost her memory every time she went to sleep. The movie stole much of that plot, but it wasn't dark like David's play.

It took me two hours to get Eric to take a 40 minute nap. sigh.. My breasts are completely flat from all the nursing.

Breastfeeding was such a monumental struggle for me for the first few months. My nipples split in two and it was the most painful thing I've ever done (including labor). I had to stop nursing on my right side and just pump because my nipple was so badly damaged. I almost gave up after 12 weeks, but it got easier. From the time I started nursing in the hospital it was so painful. I couldn't believe it. Every time he latched on my toes would curl and I'd try not to scream. I took naproxin three times a day just to get through the pain. It hurt when I wasn't nursing and it hurt more when I was. But it just started to get better and then it stopped hurting completely. I can't believe how easy it is now. I'm so glad I stuck with it.

Now I just have to worry about weaning him..

It's always something!!!

Thursday, June 17, 2004


Look.. he's a standing Man! Posted by Hello
From Rich about his morning with The Boy:

"Yeah we had much fun. After breakfast and a change we went to the park. We played on the swing ... he didn't think much of the slide ... he had a great time in "the tube" standing and looking through the holes until he fell on his butt ... then we played in the sand with the bucket and met "Colin" who was also wearing 18-month size clothes but who was actually 18 months old! Once I could no longer keep him from eating the sand and sticks (I could keep the sticks out of his mouth but it was hard ... he got the sand past me once or twice) we headed home and I cleaned him up. He drank a lot of water/juice (sand probably made him thirsty) and he fell asleep in my arms around 10:10. When I left around 11:05 he was still asleep in the crib."
I'm a little creeped out by the adds at the top of my 'blog. A rant about the Catholic church has caused "Meet Catholic Singles" to pop up. Not that I have anything against Catholic singles. My husband was a Catholic until it was time for his confirmation and he told the priest that he didn't want to say those things. And the priest said OK. And that was that. I don't think he's been in church since, except to go to weddings.

Eric slept well last night, but he woke up at 6:30 and nursed and chatted for a half an hour before Rich finally got up and played with him. I swear he knew it was Thursday-- the day that Rich spends the morning with him.

I'm always on the cusp of sleep deprivation. I do crave a full night's sleep-- no brief awakenings to pee or to nurse, just straight through sleep. It sounds better than chocolate cheesecake to me at this point. Although last night was entirely my fault. I decided I wanted to finish "A Dark Adapted Eye" by Barbara Vine/Ruth Rendell. But Eric woke up around midnight and I took him into my bed as per usual. I ended up with about 10 pages left which I finished on the T this morning. He is doing better (knocking on wood and crossing my fingers). I can put him to bed between 7:30 and 8 and not hear him cry or anything until 11 or 12. Last night he wasn't even crying. I just heard him waking up and moving around on the monitor because I was awake. I went into his room and he was sitting up in his bed blinking and rubbing his eyes. I changed is super-wet diaper (which usually elicits sobbing at that time of night, but he seemed pretty cheerful about the event last night). I honestly don't know when he woke me up to nurse -- or if it was once or twice before our 6:30 AM chat/nursefest 2004. He sleeps snuggled up between me and his dad.

I work with so many college-aged men. I see them and think that their parents must have blinked and whoops.. their boys were off to college. This baby time is so brief, so unique. I know we'll have a battle to get him our of our bed at some point, but I just don't care. I love having him snuggled up against me in the night. I know he's safe and loved. And he knows it too. When he sleeps alone, he wakes up and cries and he's disoriented. When he wakes up with us he's happy and chatty. Fortunately for us, he's not a thrasher, he's a snuggler. Yeah.. a snuggler.

Wednesday, June 16, 2004

Rich and I finally got a chance to take in a movie last Saturday. We saw Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. It's a little dull to watch a movie like that when you know from the start that this scary dog chasing Harry is really his beloved godfather just trying to clear his name. I think it was better than the other movies, but it was a little lacking in exposition at the end. If I hadn't read the book, I would have left it more confused that I should have. I want to see the Stepford Wives, but I don't think we'll be getting to another movie any time soon. We're just in TiVo country now! That's how we watch T3-- Which was incidentally a setup for T4.. However how were they to know that Arnold was to become governor of California and hence not available for Terminator movies. I'm sure the franchise will continue.

When we went to see Harry Potter, Sarah watched Eric for us for 3 hours. She was SO tired chasing after the two of them. We came back to her house and she and Zaida were sacked out on her bed with Eric between them bopping around. He of course fell asleep in the car on the way home.

I've been so happy at home lately. Eric has gotten genuinely affectionate. He give hugs and snuggles, and big wet sloppy things that I think he thinks are kisses. But they're completely lovely. I've always considered myself a very loving person, but parenthood has brought out another level of love that I didn't know about. It's like discovering a color that you've never seen before. It's new, complete, profound and overwhelming. I love him so much. It's going to be so hard to watch him discover the world is unfair. But we just have to teach him that he's strong and that he can handle it. Part of the reason it's so important to me to work, is to that we will have the money to pay for private school if we need to.

Yesterday we were playing and he almost pulled my nose off my face.

It was cool.

Monday, June 14, 2004

I had a bar-b-que for my birthday on Sunday. It was just lovely. We ate and ate. I made a great marinade with balsamic vinnegar, maple syrup garlic, thyme, evoo and rosemary. It was VERY tasty.

I'm a little sick. My throat hurts and I'm extra tired. I made some turkey burgers and salad for dinner and now I'm chilling with The Husband and watching T3, which I never got around to seeing. I wish our computers fixed themselves as fast as The Terminators.

The Boy is doing fabulous. He's pulling himself up to a standing position and he'll start cruising any minute. he's so obviously proud of himself every time he does it.

I'm reading "A Dark Adapted Eye" by Ruth Rendell. I saw a BBC miniseries based on it YEARS ago. I loved it, it was so spooky. But now I remember the little boy in it loses his family because his mother kills his aunt, and everybody is too ashamed of what happened to take him in. I can't bear stories about sweet little boys being unloved. I'm a big dork or a big softie. I can't quite make up my mind which.