No photos today - I've taken some, but have not had time to extract them yet.
Poop yesterday and poop again today, however - and, as a bonus, both times while he was at day care. Woot.
I have to admit, its days like today - global warming, loss of basic
rights, impending war with lots of people - days like today that I feel
quite guilty for bringing the Little Guy into this ugly world. I
know that all we can do is love him as much as we can, and hope, but I
sometimes suspect that by the time he's an adult there won't be much of
a world left for him to enjoy.
No cute photo today, sorry. No poop today, either.
This was one of those very long days that I dread. Up at 530 am, in a panic, because its 530 am and the Little Boy did not awaken me at 200 am or 455 am as he normally does so clearly he must be dead. (He's not, obviously.) Then get him fed and dressed and off to see The Lady (as we call his daytime care provider; her real name is Carol) with Daddy when Daddy goes to work at 700 am. Then me showered and dressed and milked and off to work by 830 am. Work until 500 pm, then a short car trip across town to my other job, where I stayed until 930 pm, then came home. This morning he was basically asleep for the hour or so I saw him in the morning, and he was asleep when I got home.
Given all this, plus my level of exhaustion, is it awful of me to wish that he'll wake up at 200 am, just so I can snuggle him?
When I got home the Dad was watching the tail end of Jericho on the Tivo, and I watched about a half hour of it, which was a total mistake on at least two levels. First, good child of the Cold War that I am, I spent a great deal of my Junior High and High School years thinking in detail about what would happen if The Nukes were to come, which, given my very vivid visual imagination was detail to an amazing level, and having a repeating nightmare so vivid and realistic that I can tell you about it in painstaking detail even now, some 25 years later (but I won't). Second, there was a baby in an incubator in several scenes, which is a big trigger for me recently.
(Side note, and slight spoiler: Can someone explain to me why the healthy people got to stay in the nice tidy City Hall and all the sick people got sent to the Salt Mine??? That seems like poor prioritization to me.)
The Little Guy's Dad calls it the "CSI syndrome" and we discovered it right after the Little Guy was born. Somehow the hormones related to motherhood have triggered in me some weird reactions when I see stories about babies or toddlers in pain - very strong, visceral reactions that I never had before. We found this out when I was watching a Law & Order rerun which featured the discovery of an infant's skull, whereupon I promptly burst into tears and had to shut the TV off. I suppose its normal - the protective reaction that nature wants me to have in order to keep my baby safe, but its damned annoying when I can't watch simple fictional crime dramas in peace. And that's just fiction. I made the mistake of reading a couple of news stories on-line about this homeless mother in New York whose four month old daughter drowned in a bucket of her mother's vomit at work (a story which I suspect will be dragged out in some argument against co-sleeping in the not-so-near future, I might add) and ended up spending 25 minutes in the bathroom, weeping. So as you can imagine, the sight of this infant facing Nuclear Peril drove me from the room fairly quickly, and is haunting me even now.
There are days, many days, when a vivid visual imagination is a pain in the ass - know what I mean?
About a week ago, we had to take the Little Guy to the cardiologist, to make certain that he doesn't have a serious heart murmur (he doesn't). The waiting room was full of these tired, drawn looking parents and their sickly looking babies ... tiny babies, fragile looking things, many of them spindly and slightly blue and translucent looking. Sad babies who, I'm sure, don't smile or laugh or even have the energy to look up at their mothers and fathers and coo adoribly. And I know for a fact that all those exhausted mothers and fathers love their babies as fiercely as I love mine - more so, perhaps, because they know much better than I how fragile this is and what a risk they took just by deciding to bring this new tiny life into the world.
I'm thankful for ten fingers and ten toes. For two perfect little shell-like ears. For chubby baby thighs and that little button nose. For wide toothless grins at 3am. For burps that would do John Belushi proud. For dimpled elbows and knees. For a strong heart that beats. For a rumbly little tummy. For poopy diapers (when we get them).
... and now I have to go, because I miss him despite the fact he's just
in the other room. I have to go stand by his crib and gaze at him
again ...
Not a current photo, but one of my faves. a ton more on Flickr, if you want to browse....)
No poop today.
In trying to get the Little Guy off to sleep just now, I reflected on the fact that practically the last thing he does before he goes to sleep is burp.
Bleah. There are many ways in which I'm fairly sure its quite awful to be a baby, and this is one. Not only do you go to sleep with formula-burp in your mouth, but you wake up with it, too, all fermented. Although, at least, after his ped recommended that we start mixing his formula with Chamomile Tea instead of plain water his burps have not been quite as noxious - a more pleasant Chamomile scent, actually.
Side Note: For some reason every time I have to come up with the word Pediatrician my brain delivers up the word Veterinarian instead. What woudl Freud make of that, I wonder?
I often reflect on what the Little Guy must think about as we cart him about. Tonight I put him in his crib wide awake and wiggling, which is unusual, as he normally dozes off with his warm bottle and all the snuggles. But tonight I had to pee, so I tenderly plunked him down, gave his mobile a spin, shut off the light and dashed for the bathroom, leaving him looking after me with those big dark eyes, brow knitted, slightly puzzled. Moxie once wrote "A little baby has no knowledge of the world and also no sense of time, so there's really no way a baby that small can understand that you're in the other room but are still in the world. For a small baby, if you're not there, you don't exist, and s/he's alone in the world." That has stuck with me, and was running through my mind as I was peeing, actually. As I left the room, did I walk out of the world to him? Did I cease to exist? At 11 weeks old, is he old enough to know that I'm coming back?
When he was three weeks old, his father went to Pennsylvania for a week (which was very traumatic for Daddy - "I've missed a quarter of his life" he was heard to say), and I will swear to anyone that the Little Guy missed his Daddy terribly - I believe that's when he learned to fight sleep, as he tried and tried to stay awake until his Daddy got home.
Truth to be told, its part of the reason I am fighting his father so hard about having him sleep a full night in his "big crib" - I can't stand the idea of him waking up alone in a dark room and thinking he's all alone in the world.
Plus how else would I put my hand on his tummy just before I fall asleep to make sure he's still breathing? Hmmm?
I should be sleeping. I was going to be sleeping. But suddenly its 2:00 am and I suspect that the minute my head hits the pillow The Little Guy will start to fuss, and then I'll be up anyhow, so why go to bed?
We went to the county fair today, hoping Little Guy would love all the lights and sights and so forth. Honestly, I can't really tell if he did or not. But he was, indeed, one sleepy little boy when we brought him home, and I managed to prove to his dad that we can, in fact, navigate events such as these successfully without a stroller, so that's a win. And we got to see swine. And a Llama in serious need of orthodontic work. And livestock is always fun.
But for some reason - maybe that it has rained earlier in the afternoon and lots of people thought it might rain again - it seemed kind of empty, and an empty fairground always seems somewhat forlorn. Plus, the carousel, which we'd hoped to put The Little Guy on (yeah, he's only 12 weeks, what's your point?) was closed for most of the evening until after he'd dozed off completely. I have more pictures, including Max the Llama (see above) and also some from the exhibition building, of the awesome entries in the scarecrow contest (ah the irony of a scarecrow who looks like the Tin Woodsman...). Perhaps I will post them tomorrow, if I can find the time......
Right. Off to bed. Something I should have done hours ago. *sigh* I can't wait until he sleeps through the night.....
