Cynical Mom

Need help deciding how to write this blog post

I have a couple possible openers to this one - you tell me which one is better.

 

Option #1:

You know how on Dateline they'll bring a blacklight into a random hotel room and turn it on and *gasp* show you SPECKS OF FECES on the pillows? And then you wonder - gee, that'd odd - how did SPECKS OF FECES get on those pillows? What kind of deranged former customers were in this room - poo-flinging monkeys?

Well, that's what you wonder after you're done wondering things like:

#1: Who was the person who first discovered that you could use a blacklight to see poop?

#2: After they discovered it, did they publish the discovery in a scientific journal?

#3: What scientific journal would actually publish such a discovery in the first place?

#4: Assuming that the discovery had long since been discover-ered, who was the first person at Dateline who came up with the idea of using a blacklight to find poop in hotel rooms?

Well I'm here to say that - yes, it was us. It was because of my family that Dateline reporters line their fat pockets with money made from the millions of viewers who are engrossed by the Investigative Reportering showing that there are specks of feces left around in hotel rooms from previous "guests".

 

Option #2:

Soon after meeting my husband, I discovered that he was a very clean man. I've worn off on him over the years and brought him down to my level of slovenliness for which I hold on to a tiny (really, not that big at all) bit of guilt, but there are a few things he's stuck to that I simply don't care about:

#1: Crud on the bottom of the shower. One of the blessings of being near-sighted and wearing glasses is that by definition, I never see crud in the shower because I'm not wearing my glasses.

#2: Misc things called "germs" on kitchen appliances. One of our longstanding arguments is around the necessity of using the "SANI-CLEAN" setting on the dishwasher. He maintains it is of the utmost importance if we don't want to be eating off of dishes that may have stray specks of feces or other such germy things on them. Whereas I say that it takes too damned long to run that stupid cycle and since we still eat off of dishes we hand-clean like pots and large bowls that certainly don't go through any hand-based SANI CLEANing, then there's really no point in making all the dishes go through it.

Regarding #2 in particular, he's always felt strongly that when we stay in a hotel with a kitchenette, that we must not use any of the kitchen implements because you never know what kind of specks of feces or other such wonderful goodness they have on them.

I never understood... until this past week, when a certain young member of my family was responsible for putting specks of feces onto kitchen gear in a hotel.

 

 

OK... which one is better? Which should I go with? Ah, nevermind. At any rate, I learned an important lesson this past weekend while on vacation with my younguns: When you sniff something while Audrey's in the bath, and you say to her: "Audrey now remember, is it okay to poop in the bathtub?" and she says "noooooooooooooo not okay poop inna bathtub; poop goes inna diaper or inna potty!"...DON'T BELIEVE THE LITTLE BITCH.

 

And oh yeah, the kitchen implement in question was a nice plastic pitcher they were playing with in the bathtub.

 

:-)

# include <stdo.h>

We have achieved a [somewhat] regular practice of [mostly] getting some urine into the toilet instead of his pullup.

Hurrah!

I learned my lesson quick... it only took me a week's worth of $10-per-poop presents to realize that the boy was far more motivated not by a new train [gasp!] but by the ability to 'pretend drive' our car. This includes "pretend turning on the radio" and "pretend rolling down the window", as well as putting on our seat belts for real "so we can be safe!".

He regularly makes me reset my expectations. I have to remember the joy he gets in life and that when I am seeing the world through his eyes, I need to be him and not me.

It's all good.

P.S. The title of this post is toooootally funny-in-a-geeky-way-but-I-suppose-you'll-just-call-it-dorky, I swear.

The fourth wall of the fourth trimester

I know some women fall in love with their babies the instant they are born, or even beforehand. That's not how it worked for me, the first time around - it took weeks. I realize this is a scandalous admission, to some, like acknowledging the audience's existence in the middle of a play.

I remember it very clearly, the minute I pushed out my son... they put him on my stomach and the very first thought I had was: 'Dude. Did I just make that?'.

There you have it right there, the most inspiring story of pregnancy, birthing and motherhood, sure to inspire legions of women to follow in my footsteps and procreate so that they too can experience the joy of 'holy crap, what just came out of me?'.

I have always been a voracious reader[1] so naturally, when I found out I was pregnant[3], I instantly stocked up on all of The Classics. I remember reading about all the endorphins that would rush through my body during birth and breastfeeding, and I personified the supposed endorphins as mighty little superheroes rushing around my body from site to site, roaring battle cries as they raced from site to site.

But somehow after 14 hours of labor and one hour and fifty seven minutes of pushing ("After two hours, we're going to use the vacuum" says my OB), I didn't actually feel the endorphin rush. The only rush I felt was the Oh-Crap-I-Just-Had-A-Kid-What-The-Hell-Am-I-Supposed-To-Do-Now rush, the anti-rush of coming down from my epidural high and starting a hearty new dose of percoset.

When they placed him on my chest, I remember thinking how beautiful he was, and wondering how I'd created such a beautiful little thing. A beautiful little squawking thing who didn't stop screaming for the first 2 hours of his life. A beautiful little squealing thing who sucked the life's blood out of me in more ways than one.

A few days later, I was off [most of] the drugs, healed enough to move around a little bit, but still not quite believing what had happened to me. Eventually I healed, physically and mentally... over the next couple of weeks I'd watch him watching me and peer into his eyes, and I started to get to know him and eventually, fall in love with him. And three years later, oh my god it pours out of me sometimes. I invent games whose entire purpose is to get him to give me hugs and kisses so I can just nuzzle his delicious little soul.

Nine months ago (two and a half years after Jared was born), I gave birth to Audrey. It was an entirely different pregnancy and an entirely different birth. As soon as she came out of me I felt an outpouring of warmth, like I'd known her for ages but only just met her for the first time (as if the womb is like a chat room).

At the same instant I had two distinct thoughts: "Hrm, she's kind of ugly"[7] and "OhmygodIlovehersomuchIcan'tbelieveit". Both of my children were explicitly planned, but the second time around I knew she was our last, so part of it was me just trying to etch every last minute into my brain. And going through parenthood with Jared the first time around had grown my heart plenty and taught me how to really really love.

And I knew that no matter how I felt that first day, love would continue to grow and grow, and not just the matrix of love between myself and each child, but between the kids and their dad, and especially between the two of them. At nine months old and three years, Jared watches out for "his baby"; when she cries he gives her hugs and kisses and pats her head and says "It's OK, Audrey.... It's OK." For her part, she follows him with her eyes everywhere he goes and since she started to crawl a while back she now will patter after him and try to play with his toys or even just reach out to touch him and giggle.

[1] True story[2]: when I was a kid, we used to have contests at school aimed to encourage kids to read more, if your parents signed a letter saying you read 30 books over the summer you'd get free shit and things of that nature. My parents, however, would YELL at me for reading too much because I would take a book to every dinner, every car ride, every family event and just stick my nose in it rather than socialize.
[2] Why do I feel the need to specifically call out that this is a true story? It makes no sense. But for some reason it just fits.
[3] It was just like those commercials... I had specifically purchased a butter dish, I peed on a stick and then put it in the butter dish and put a big timer on top of it and my husband and I clutched each other's hands and stared at the dish until the requisite number of minutes had passed, at which point I insisted that he lift up the dish because I just couldn't.[4]
[4] Just kidding. Actually I was 1500 miles away from my husband visiting my family, and spent the day shoveling shit[5] from a pile onto the garden. I woke up feeling sick as a dog in the middle of the night, and a lightbulb went off - "Maybe this is morning sickness!". I had a pregnancy test with me, so I took it... the second line was so faint that I had to wake up one of my sisters to fact check it for me.
[5] They call it "mulch" but *I* know what it really is.[6]
[6] When I needed to fertilize my garden a few years ago I went to the local home store to pick up some mulch... I was very amused that they had two styles: chicken shit and bull shit.
[7] She got real cute real fast though.

I am an elbowfeeding activist

Blogging Baby posted last month about a woman breastfeeding her eight year old. What's most interesting to me isn't the actual content, but the comments on BB, specifically the "Sick", "Wrong" and "Freakshow"-type comments.

I keep thinking "Yep, pretty grody... but why are people freaking out about this?" Both the mom and the kid want it. It is not physically harming anyone. You could argue emotional harm, but that's pretty much par for the parenting course (and really, let's be honest - part of being a parent is about emotionally harming our kids, just not in the same way in which our parents harmed us).

What it really comes down to is that we can't let go of the breast as a sexual object. As a society, we're starting to move back to breasts being OK for feeding... up to a certain arbitrary point.

To put it another way, if it was elbowfeeding instead of breastfeeding, would anyone get this up in arms about a mother who elbowfed her eight year old? The idea of breastfeeding an eight year old is totally squicky to me... but let's take that time and energy spent ranting at this woman to ranting about child abuse and domestic violence.

You know you're overtired when...

You're looking for your glasses which you swear you put down on your computer desk somewhere, but you can't find them... so you think hey, maybe I'm wearing them. So you put your hand up to your face with perhaps a little too much velocity, and somehow manage to simultaneously poke yourself in the eye, scratch your cornea and slap yourself in the face at the same time.

In retrospect, the hand configuration that this maneuver requires is a tricky one to master. And to think I just stumbled on it out of pure dumb luck... what's chances?

I just need a couple of nights to catch up from this massive sleep deficit, and then I'll be sane, I think... I love this part of parenting, really I do. Really. Um.

Right, right, it's the oxytocin system, sure

I've often read about how the % of mothers still breastfeeding decreases significantly over the first few months (from ~70% at birth to 36% at 6 months to 18% at one year) [1]. Given that I'm all about "whatever works for mom" when it comes to feeding babies, my interest in this number is not concern for the babies who aren't getting breastmilk after a certain age, but for the many moms who want to continue breastfeeding but find it too difficult once they return to work, due to unsupportive working environments[2].

I just stumbled on this article that claims:

"However one major reason why women stop breastfeeding is low weight gain and growth rate of their baby," Steven L. Bealer of the University of Utah points out.

Riiiiight. Leading to a groundbreaking conclusion of:

"if the efficiency of the oxytocin system can be improved, perhaps it will encourage mothers to lengthen how long they breast feed their children."

Dude... come on. It is SO not the oxytocin system. Go find something useful to study, like the flow rate of ketchup. Come to think of it, bring these guys who think the increasing obesity rates are a result of a virus with you.[3]

[1] For some reason, the idea of the CDC having goals for breastfeeding rates in 2010 amuses me. I think they should have a scorecard, and report on their progress at a monthly status meeting in front of their vice president.
[2] And the fact that breastfeeding while working is a TOTAL PAIN IN THE ASS.
[3] OK I admit the data described in that article seems mildly interesting, but I just have to love our eternal optimism as a society that we can find some magic pill to fix our weight problems that are of course caused by something other than how we eat too much, too often and don't move very much.[4]
[4] And I am fully guilty of all three offenses.

Plotting

Girl's Gone Child recently blogged about her son not crawling yet and got the expected spate of "Don't worry, kids grow at their own rates" comments (I nearly added one myself).

Jared didn't start scooting until 9m (in the most adorable army-crawl) and didn't really get far until 10m. And then he didn't take his first steps until 14m with actual predictable walking happening around 16m. All along I worried about it, was my boy slow, blah blah blah can you tell I'm a first-time parent blah blah.

Fast forward a couple of years, we're doing this whole thing over again. Audrey's about to turn a whopping three months, and I'm already starting to plot on how I can keep her from becoming mobile until she's ready for kindergarten.

I've covered most of our floors with a super-slick covering so that she won't even discover that such a thing exists as traction, much less master it herself. I'm going to be binding her legs together as soon as she shows the first sign of mobility so that she can learn from the beginning that Mama Don't Want Her Babies To Move, They Need To Stay Small Forever And Not Grow Up. And because I can already tell she's a genius and will figure out some way of mermaid-on-land-squirming that will make her semi-mobile even with the binding, I'm going to add weights to the binds and some industrial hook-and-loop fastener so that I can stick her to the carpet, couch and select places on the walls.

The first time around with parenting, I really didn't know what I was doing. This time, I've got it all figured out.

From the "duh" files

Survey says: motherhood's tough.

Now what I'd like to see is a survey from fathers, in order to compare and contrast the answers. A demographic breakdown would also be nice.

OK I realize it's not the most scientific survey in the world, I just like reading about this kind thing.

Multiple kids & photo albums in the digital age

I am the youngest of five children. My parents carefully made separate photo albums for each kid, and to this day I am still very aware (but understanding) that there is only one or two albums of pictures of me, and many many more of the older siblings. As much as I'd always wished there were more albums with just pictures of me when I was a kid (because who wants to look at pictures of other people, I ask?), I still appreciated that I had my OWN albums, where I could be assured that I was in every picture.

Fast forward near-on thirty years. I have been keeping my son's pictures on our web site in a /jared directory. Naturally, when Audrey was born, I created a /audrey and started putting pictures there. What to do when I have pictures of both kids, then?

I hadn't decided what to do, so in my indecision I then decided to make copies of those pictures in each of their directories. This means I then re-generate the HTML pages from the raw images multiple times, and I re-upload the same files to the website, and I use twice the storage for a fair amount of pictures than is technically needed.

Tonight I finally sat down to think about it, and realized that that was exactly what I wanted to do for my kids (and hey, it is only two after all). Jared and Audrey will each have their own website and they'll know they are in the pictures on that site. Disk is cheap.

On sleep, or the lack thereof

I have read a dozen or two books on parenting, breastfeeding, newborn care, etc. And it seems that without fail, every one of them that talks about overnight feedings will feel it necessary to throw in a comment about how really, that overnight time is a very special time for mom/baby bonding, and we'll miss it when it's gone, so we should really treasure it while we have it.

I think that those parts of the books were written by the authors when they were past that stage.

Oh yeah, and while I'm at it: for the authors who wrote books that say that cosleeping is great for breastfeeding because you get so much more rest since you don't have to get out of bed... come over and babysit overnight. I will give you a bed to sleep in. You'll see.

Do they make baby ambien?