It's important to be warm

Sunday midnight: back from Toronto. Toronto was great, maybe I’ll post pictures someday. They’re some great shots. (I tease you.)
Monday: Benjamin gets horribly frightening stomach flu like I had two weeks ago and is sent home from day care. Short-lived, but scary. Considering that he’s never so much as still, lethargy is not a word that should describe him, ever. Nor is gray. Both happened.
Tuesday: No day care (see stomach flu above). Therefore, no work done. Also canceled several of my plans for the day, including the attempted weekly swim. I did get to go to my new-mom-low-back-pain study, which seems to have helped. There is fuss and complaint including absolute verification that the boy is on a total bottle strike (suspected since last week). Well, at least he’s not starving, because he’s obviously eating all night. The difference in my right versus left is telling that tale, since the side he sleeps by is visibly (to me) more, shall we say, productive. We’ve switched sides.
Wednesday: Benjamin not the picture of health, but obviously much, much better. I continue reading The No-Cry Sleep Solution to try to mend his wicked ways as far as sleep goes. Step one has been he and I both going to bed at 9:30 (thus the reading) to get him to wind down. Progress is slow, but working, gently. Again the pattern of no work done during some of my most productive hours. Sigh.
Thursday: Canceled the planned third installment of his 4th month vaccinations due to not being 100%. Benjamin still has stomach complaints, including a few pained shrieks, which while disturbing, are far, far less scary than lethargic, gray-lipped puking. It seems that everything will henceforth be compared to how terrified I was on Monday.
Friday: Here we are, off-kilter, bearing a raft of various physical complaints, but mostly remaining sane. That’ll have to do.

Filed by joy at 9:46 am under baby, life
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We had a fantastic time in Toronto, though I remember why I hate interstate driving, now more than ever, in the driving rain, in the dark, with a hollering baby, hitting a possum (I think I only got the tail).

Happily, at least one of the key moments has been documented by my Official Roadtrip Buddy Zig. She tells it well. Enjoy.

Wally.

Filed by joy at 6:15 pm under travels
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For Benjamin’s 5th month birthday, he and I, a carload of props and baby gear, the milk pump, the daring and gracious Zig, a wing and prayer, perhaps a partridge and pear tree, are all heading north to see Toronto. We have Benjamin’s attitude-twin to visit, another non-sleeping, always-needing-to-be-held crankypants type of baby, as well as his long-suffering mother to commiserate. We figure on a bottle of wine while watching the two boys tell one another *all* about it.

I keep these links and notes for stuff I mean to blog about, but I haven’t seem to have much time lately. I wonder what I’m doing…

Instead of letting it get any longer, here’s a dump:
knitting as graffitti
bed jump
ought to exist safety labels
Name Voyager is soooo cool. Plug in names to see when they were popular, see their variants, etc. For example, Adolf dropped off pretty much when you’d expect it to have in the U.S.

To make up for the fact that I can no longer find that awesome Postsecret card that talks about wanting to pick a fight when breastfeeding in public and because I’m actually considering trying to figure out how to use the breast pump while driving so I can hand milk back to Zig so she can pacify the boy, I offer you a song:

(Sing to the tune of “Be our Guest,” from Beauty and the Beast, taken from Babytalk Magazine)
See our breasts, see our breasts–
Everywhere, half-naked chests.
While we nurse,
The prudish curse
And wish we’d button up our vests.
Sorry folks, look away
If we’re too decollete,
But this is what boobs are made for,
Not those Wonderbras you’ve paid for.
We refuse to go feed
Hunched in bathroom stalls–indeed.
We’re appalled that you would make such rude requests.
Would you agree to eat
Upon a toilet seat?
See our breasts, see our breasts, free our breasts!!

Filed by joy at 9:07 pm under travels
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It’s been nuts around here. First with the work and busy-ness of it all, but that’s typical. The wee boy started daycare, which was supposed to make it all more possible, yet of course I tried to pack three weeks of lists into the first day, then got depressed when I didn’t get it all done. Not to mention that I’ve been struggling to store up expressed milk not just for daycare, but in case I get sick or need a few hours away. The boy downed nearly all the stocked milk (that took me well over a week to save up) in the first day of care. 12oz. The second day I brought him food since clearly the milk wasn’t going to be enough. He ate two entire containers of applesauce and 8oz of milk. Both days he was hungry when I came to pick him up. Oi vey. He is nothing if not enthusiastic.

Thursday evening I caught a stomach bug and ended up clearing out my entire digestive track, from both ends, yes even simultaneously, over the course of six hours. I never threw up once while pregnant, which was a source of some small pride. I despise bowing to the porcelain god. Thursday night, to be sure to kill off any sense of pride I still had, the boy got formula. The bathroom floor is no place to nurse, even if I could’ve pulled myself off the floor to attempt it.

So, big failures to me. I know that it means nothing in the long run. I am well aware he will survive both solid food early as well as a few bottles of formula. It’s not the ideal set in front of me, but nothing thus far has met with the incredibly high standards I’ve attempted. Parenthood is not just about humbling yourself, it’s about losing yourself completely, then finding a way back to the other side to do your best to remain a person. That’s my theory for now. I’m still working on the personhood part.

After a day in bed, hurting, I’m now farther behind than I was, plus exhausted. At least I had the foresight to buy a the last two seasons of Buffy on DVD recently. Last night, we three puppy-piled in the bed and watched the musical. Good TV may not cure things, but it does alleviate some of the pain.

My mamas’ group shared this awesome cartoon recently. I’m not going to take much meaning from the fact that my first born may yet be treated more like a second.

Filed by joy at 12:48 pm under baby, life
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