Days Like This

My hair is dreadful, no make up and 3 new chin pimples. My outfit hardly qualifies as such, but it was the only thing that was clean this morning. The laundry just piles up & dishes are never ending. I feel like as soon as I get one thing done, it sprouts back up just like a weed. I've been stressed before, but standing in the line at the grocery store with a full cart and screaming baby looking all a mess, only to know I am going home to dirty clothes & dishes... I am thinking this is my limit.

I mean what do you do when you know you look dreadful & everyone in Kroger is staring at you thinking "can you please quiet that baby". It doesn't help that the cute girl behind me is all done up, clearly on her lunch break with only a to-go salad and Figi water in her hand. I motion for her to go ahead and pick the baby up and he instantly stops crying. Great, now I am faced with the challenge of unloading a full cart, one handed.

Bless the store manager who comes up as I near the front of the line and starts to unload my cart for me. He is a nice Indian man named Abob and has just made my day. I was used to men doing nice things for me when I considered myself hot, but I was usually just annoyed. Now looking my worst, this kind man is doing something for me, maybe out of pity, but something in his eyes tell me that he's a father. And while I am convinced only single dads have any clue of what us mothers go through, any parent probably can relate to this situation.

So I get in the car, get loaded up and take a deep breath as a step into the driver seat. Sometimes my favorite thing to do is just drive. I turn up the music and decide to take the long way home, hoping that the baby will fall asleep on the way. This is usually the case, but today Dylan just cries half the long way home - so I opt to turn on the cut through street taking me a quicker way. When I pull into my driveway I just get the baby and my keys and head inside. Who knows how long it will be before I actually unload the car. I change a diaper, fill a bottle and rock my little man fast asleep. My mind is running a million miles a minute all the while, so as soon as I reach my kitchen I get started on the dishes. Next, laundry room... and thirty minutes later - I remember the groceries. Thank God its a cold day, so even the milk is still cold. I can't even fathom the dinner conversation, over rice & green beans (because that is all that was in my pantry prior to the grocery trip) where I explain to my well meaning, yet clueless to what my day entails, husband how I ruined $200 worth of groceries.

After I get all the food put away, I realize that I may have a good 20 minutes to take a quick shower. Its like a day at the spa to me right now, except for the fact that I am slowly loosing my hair for unknown reasons. None the less, I am so happy to be in this hot shower right now it almost feels like its my first shower in days... oh wait... it is:)

Stay at home moms get a bad rap. I know when I was a childless working women, I never understood why stay at home moms complain so much. I mean, who can be stressed when you get to spend the day in your PJs playing with your precious baby. Guess its just one of those things you can never explain or understand, you just have to live it. Flip side is a guess the working moms don 't get to sit down until 9pm, whereas I don't get to sit down until about 7pm, when my husband has been fed & dishes cleaned.

I know for sure we place a lot of pressure on ourselves, but at the end of the day your job is to keep the home clean & baby healthy. Its taken me a year to get over going in public less than perfect & to ignore the stares from strangers when my child is a little loud in the Dog Food aisle (I mean people, its Kroger, not the freaking New York Symphony... cut the eye rolls please, I don't care that you are 90 yrs old & don't like kids... just get your granny pampers & mind your own business). Its taken me a year to not add stress to my day if the baby is having an especially fussy one by forcing myself to get the floors done. Its taken me a year to realize that while my job isn't earning a paycheck, I am working harder than anyone I know that has to drive to work. And that last statement comes from a person who worked an extremely stressful job. What difficult is the emotional test you go through every day and the pressure we put on ourselves to be perfect. We have the time to be perfect mothers, wives, daughters, sisters, friends... we feel the desperate need to make sure everyone we love knows how much we love them.

Sometimes though, you need to pick up the phone & ask for help. It may feel like a tiny defeat as you say the words to your mother in law "can you come watch the baby for a few hours" but after you have had those few hours to leisurely go through target, or go and get a manicure, you can reset your thinking back to relaxed. Because us moms, working or not, don't really even get a break when we sleep. We sleep with one eye open and our ear to the ground for the slightest hint the baby might be choking on something in his crib. We are jolted out of bed at 3am while our husbands sleep soundly away when the baby shrills a cry for no reason. Some may even wonder... how did I get here? Who is this person and where did her high heels go?

Here's the thing though, want to know how this day ended? My husband walked through the door and picked up our son and they both smiled like crazy at each other. Then they both just started laughing for no reason, or I guess for a reason only a father son duo would understand. Then I drank a nice glass of wine while Jon fed the baby and put him to bed. I tried out a new recipe and it was delicious. We watched a movie we had been wanting to see and went to bed a little early. Nothing spectacular but a long enough break to remind myself how happy I am. That not every day is like this and while some of them string along in a row, eventually I find myself dancing in the living room with my perfect son to "Days Like This" while reminding him that this will be the song we dance to at his wedding.

Then I remember, its going to just blink by and one day I will look back on this time and either regret ever letting myself get so stressed, or totally forget there was ever a bad day. Its just like anything else, you have one bad day and you think "thats it, my life sucks" and then a good day rolls along and you think "everything is perfect". Its just that as mothers, those days are amplified by a million. And to be honest, while the bad days are even more difficult now... the good days are like peeks into what heaven will be like.

not all rainbows & butterflies

This week has been hectic as can be for us... ok for me... I can't imagine Dylan having a hard week with his mommy catering every need, so I will just go ahead and give myself credit for being stressed to the max and still getting through the last few days.

Jon left for Orlando Sunday around 12pm, which means that I haven't had a break since then. I never really realized what those extra 2 hrs a day did for me until they have been totally taken away from me. Usually Jon gets up with the baby in the morning and takes over bedtime routine from 6-7. Its a great system, but even so I would still think that he had it easy with only 2 hours of selfless time. Now that I've regained those duties, I am realizing that his presence and two hours of help are priceless.

On top of being minus 2 extra "me time" hours a day, my son has decided to boycott naps this week. He hasn't napped since Saturday, which means that I have had no time to breath. To sit down and just decompress. I finally had gotten to a point where when I put the baby down for his nap, I would either sit and read my book or shower. I save the chores for while he is awake since I am constantly up and moving then anyway. Before I had this figured out I was trying to get MORE chores done while he was sleeping and found myself in a state of total exhaustion. So this method has worked well for us, until Sunday of course.

Why the sudden change you ask? It would be sweet and extremely irritating to assume this nap protest has been brought about by missing his daddy. And while I let Jon think that all he wants, the truth is that he learned to pull himself up in his crib Sunday morning. It was an exciting shock to walk in Sunday morning and see him standing up in all his proud glory. Until of course I realized that afternoon that standing up is his immediate response now when I put him in his crib. I have spent the last 3 1/2 days regretting the fact my child is developing normally with this little pull up milestone. If that makes me a bad mother, then I am making up for it in the patience I have exhibited this week, so no judging.

If this was not enough, a new tooth has decided to make its debut this week as well. Here I was last week worried that Dylan was not developing normally because he couldn't pull up and only had 2 teeth... when what I should have been doing is relishing in the fact he was not teething and sleeping like an angel.

If you have never dealt with a teething baby before, let me fill you in on what I have been going through. Teething means that your baby is not happy at all and instead of normal baby poops is pooping grown up 300 lb man poops... gross? Well, lets add that this lovely diaper filling is extremely runny and almost impossible to to change without getting some of it on you. Experienced moms are just nodding right now, if you are not a mom yet you may have stopped reading by this point. In any case, this is the reality of teething.

On top of not laying down & teething... my son woke up yesterday morning with a runny nose & seems to be coughing today. Fabulous.

We are also learning the word NO this week. Being that he is more mobile, he is getting into everything. First he thought the word was hilarious. Then I started to firm up my tone and he would immediately shed crocodile tears. Which of course my response is to pick him up and apologize. So instead of me training him, be began to train me. At least my patience is wearing off to the point where I don't feel the need to apologize for telling him not to pull the printer down on his head and we seem to be advancing in that arena. Mommy 1. Dylan 28.

No wonder my hair has been falling out. Its actually been over the last few weeks that I am noticing way more hair falling out than is normal for me. I thought it may be a delayed symptom of pregnancy, that I had been told might happen. However, after a visit to my doctor yesterday she is convinced it is not that. She tells me I need to get more sleep, slow down & find ways to reduce stress in my life. And no, she does not have children. I also have some blood work being done next week to test for Thyroid issues & Lupus, but until then I am thinking reducing stress and getting sleep is going to be the challenge of the year so far.

Reading back through my entries so much of what I say is glowingly happiness, but I've always promised to be straight about motherhood. There are days like this where you just think... you have reached your limit. So far I've learned a lot of what goes into being a mom is to stuff all those immediate thoughts & emotions to things to a place way far back in your mind so that it doesn't show through. Thats what it means to be selfless... if you are tired, you overcome it, if you are overwhelmed, you overcome it, if you are angry, you push it away... you do all this for the benefit of your child, so they have a happy & well adjusted mother.... so they in turn are happy and well adjusted children. Its just that some days its more difficult than others and sometimes you look back and think... how long have I been doing this? Sometimes, you just need a break. This is one of those sometimes for me!

Luckily, Jon gets home at 12 tomorrow and the first thing I am going to do is handover his beautiful, exhausted, teething, snotty child so his beautiful exhausted wife can shut herself in her room, run a bath and read a book.

tips for decorating your nursery

As a first time mom, the thought of putting together a nursery was exciting and daunting all at the same time. I spent weeks searching through stores and websites for the perfect decor, I even bought a decorators magazine to come up with the perfect room for my little baby. There are some things I wish I had thought of, some things I wish I had known and some things I wish I had not sacrificed for the sake of a perfectly decorated nursery. So for those of you wondering where to start and what you might need to know, here are a few tips from me a year later...

1. the crib.

This is the most important piece of furniture in your nursery... not the changing table, not the crib set, not the rocker... far and away you want to start with the crib. Here is what you don't do:

Don't...

.... pick out a crib based solely on its looks

.... pick out the most expensive crib thinking it must be the best

.... buy the crib online

.... don't buy a dark wood crib, no matter what your decor is going to be!! why? because guess what, when the baby is about a year old, can pull himself up & teething, he will eat your crib alive. seriously. the crib will have little bite marks and actually bite off pieces of wood. so if you are dead set on wood, go for natural wood color... but better off just getting a plastic crib.

Do....

.... ask the process for lowering the bed, some require you taking the bed fully apart to lower it. Your goal should be to get the safest crib, that has the simplest method for lowering. (you will lower the crib every 3-4 mths as your baby grows)

.... print out a list of baby crib recalls and refer to it before you purchase any crib... here is a list (this one includes all recalls for 2010 so you might want to take it along before you register http://babyproducts.about.com/od/recallsandsafety/a/prodrecalls.htm)

another really helpful link about crib safety: http://www.babycenter.com/204_cpsc-proposes-new-crib-safety-rules_10334570.bc

2. The bedding.

There is actually a lot more that goes into picking out baby bedding than what is the cutest. First you should read about crib safety & decide for yourself if you will opt for a crib bumber. If you don't know what a bumper is (as I did not) it is the soft lining that ties to the crib that the baby sleeps around. Kind of like a pillow for the edges of the crib, I got mine at Pottery Barn because I loved it:

However, the concerns with the baby bumper is that while they are learning to sleep in their crib they may press their face up against the side and suffocate themselves. The other concern as they get old is they may somehow figure out to pull it off and wrap it around themselves. The case with us is that I didn't know this about the bumper until Dylan had been sleeping with one for about 2 mths. At that point I knew that he had already figured out how to turn his head when sleeping and had the ability to change positions in order to breath. (at first when you put them down they dont' know to turn their head) - but Dylan had figured this out. Still, I decided to take out the bumper because I was scared, but then he began to hit his head on the bars so hard it woke him up and gave him bumps. So now its back on and I am not concerned about it being there. It really needs to be a well researched personal decision.

3. The decor.

I found my decorations at Pottery Barn, I basically loved the entire spread and bought the whole thing... from the bedding, to the curtains to the decals on the wall. I decided to go with a nuetral design scheme that would allow me to use it for our next child, whether it was a boy or girl.

However, I did pick out the colors based on theories about how colors effect a person's state of mind. You want your babies room to really be a relaxing place, because they basically will only spend their time sleeping in there. But I did want a suble element of stimulation for when he gets a little older and plays in his room...

Some research I used:

Depending on the hue, color can over stimulate or depress. It is usually in the tertiary colors that we find the right balance. The following is a list of attributes that are widely assigned to primary and secondary colors.

• Red: (think passion) stimulates, arouses, heightens awareness.
• Blue: (think water; the ocean) relaxes, calms, transfixes.
• Yellow: (think sun) recharges, energizes, revitalizes.

Secondary colors create gradations of the feelings attributed to primary colors.

• Green: (Blue/Yellow) stabilizes, balances.
• Orange: (Red/Green) cheers, orders.
• Purple: (Blue/Red) protects, comforts.

4. The Chair...

You are probably going to want a chair in the babies room, you want some kind of rocker for sure. However, I would advise against the popular choice of a glider. They are great and you think its an obvious addition to any nursery, however, you are going be spending a lot of time in this thing. The fact of the matter is that you probably will move this chair to another area of the house for the first couple of months, like the living room or bedroom. The reason is that you will be getting up every 1-2 hrs feeding and rocking back to sleep. The glider is fine for a little while, but if you are stuck in this thing for over 20 mins, then you can't recline and the arms and very baby holding friendly. My suggestion, really, is to get a recliner. We bought the glider first & then went out and got a recliner (actually we had to ask our parents to buy it for us, because we spent so much $ already on the other nursery furniture)... however I spent about 6 mths in this recliner. So if you can afford both, go for it, but if you can only have one or the other - I highly suggest recliner. You may not find it in the pages of Pottery Barn, but when you are on your 28th hour straight awake and stuck in a chair for 2 hrs because every time you move the baby wakes up.... you are either gonna thank me if you take my advice or wish you had.

5. Get it all done by your 6th month!

Don't let it all fester there in a room, unorganized and in boxes. We had showers up to 3 weeks before the baby was born and I was so immobile from being swollen and so full of a baby that I really couldn't move around a lot or bend over at all. So my husband and I had to get it all together in a weekend before the baby was supposed to arrive.

In your second trimester you will probably feel the most energized and ready to start nesting. Don't let yourself get wrapped up in the things that don't matter & try if you can to have all your showers done by the 6th month. That way you have plenty of time to organize the gifts & decorations before the baby is here and you don't feel rushed or overwhelmed.

6. Safety First (so not sure why I put it last)

Things to think about... if you have a video monitor, make sure you buy one of those wire covers to go from the video source to the plug. The source has to be near to the crib, so you want to make sure there is no possible way for the baby to get their hands on the wire.

Plug covers... you may not think its something you need to do right away, but go ahead and do it. Things happen in a blink with a baby, one second they are not crawling - turn around and look back and they are. So be prepared well in advance, it will bring you a comfort to know that you don't need to constantly be on alert for when you should go ahead and do that.

Don't put shelves above the crib. There are obvious reasons when you think about it, but you don't want to worry about the shelving falling or items from the shelves falling into the crib. Better just to skip that all together and go the decal route... or nothing at all.

7. The Window...
If you want to decorate the window with the cutest curtains you can find, go for it. But definitely get a shade for behind it. Nap time doesn't work as well when the room is full of sunshine...

I think the overall point is to try to go for functionality over trying to win decorator of the year. When it comes down to it you need a safe, dark, comfortable room for you and your baby. Be sure to ask other moms their advice on what makes a nursery all of those things, for me - its everything mentioned above.

Blue Skies & Sunny Days

It is such a beautiful day today! Its the first day in what seems like 10 million days that the sun is shining and you can actually break out the rainbows. Dylan and I have nothing that has to get done today, which is the first day in weeks that we have a free day.

When I was pregnant I got a great piece of advice from a stay at home mom I met at another friends baby shower. She told me that I needed to make it a priority to get out of the house, at least once a day. To be honest, the first 6 mths accomplishing that was extremely difficult. You wouldn't think it would be, but babies have a very tight schedule. They nap every 2 hours, when they get up you have to change them, feed them and then once you are done with that you really only have an hour before they need to go back down again. If you can squeeze a quick trip to the grocery store or Target in that hour - you are lucky. But then its almost not worth it because you are rushing through everything to get home again before your cute little ticking time bomb goes off. One day, I was smack in the middle of target with a half full cart and just picked the baby up and had to leave the store. When babies are ready to go, they let you and everyone else in the store know it.

Now that he is almost a year, we have gotten ourselves down to about 2 naps a day. He usually takes a morning nap and an afternoon nap, so from the hours of 11ish to 3ish - we can do whatever we want! Since it is so beautiful today, my plan is to grab a blanket and sit outside for a while. Then after lunch, I'm gonna load him up and I am thinking we will walk around the new LaFayette Village - try and make it over to the spice market.

Lately I find myself thinking it all must be a dream, that I am about to wake up. Eight years ago my husband was this hot boy I went to highschool with that I had a severe crush / obsession with and for an entire year chased around Wilmington. Now... he is the man that surprises me on Valentines Day with trips to top rated Spas, beautiful dinners & champagne and strawberries. I wake up to him every morning playing with our baby, tickling him and making him laugh the way only daddy can. A year ago I was in a job that was fulfilling in many ways, but emotionally exhausting to the point that I had to shut myself off when I wasn't at work. Now, while I miss work... I am totally free to embrace all my life has to offer me. Its a wonderful blessing... I feel like I am in one of those stages of life where you are just praying that when that shoe drops eventually... it won't happen for a while. That you can just hang onto this moment... indefinitely.

I don't really feel guilty about being happy either. Its a great feeling, that didn't come without a cost. Now that I do feel so blessed I look back on the last 2 or 3 yrs and realize how unhappy I really was. How disconnected from myself I was. For me, the thing that saved me was having a baby. It was physically & emotionally the hardest thing that I ever endured, but most things in life that are worth a damn usually are not easily obtained. So I am proud of myself for the choices I made and the path I chose for myself, and for the determination to get to this place come hell or high water. Even in the darkest days of my post pardum, I knew that I was going to never be one of those people who cry in their beer and feel sorry for themselves. Life truly is what you make of it... its all about choices... good, bad, hard and easy... your state of being is a direct result of those choices. Even if your choice is to deliberately and shamelessly follow a boy around that you are in love with until they give up and let you win. Sometimes crazy pays off... sometimes in totally backfires on you... but taking risks means you are making a choice to accept the pain that may follow if you fail.

I think that having the baby is just what changed my life, but it doesn't mean that having a baby does this for everyone... but there is something that does bring everyone to this place. The thing is... whatever that thing is... its individual. Its different for everyone, it changes for everyone depending on what stage of life you are in. It may be choosing to go back to school, or deciding that you don't want to be a salesperson anymore - you want to be a golf pro. It all comes down to knowing what that "thing" is for you and going for it.... identifying your lifechangingly good "thing" and then deciding to take the leap.... win or loose.

Today I am going to spend the day soaking in my blessing, being thankful for the stage of life that I am in and enjoying it. I'm going to bug Jon all day to take off work early until I see him walk through the front door... play with the baby and sit outside for as much of this beautiful day as I can.

Great News

Today a surveyor knocked on my door and told me that the city is planning on digging up my front & back yard. Fabulous. I knew that work was going to be done eventually and in the grand scheme of things I am grateful the city is doing something. Everytime that it rains, the creek in our backyard overflows and our backyard looks like a lake and you could go white water rafting in our front yard. The street floods and cars can't even drive through it.

But, we had planned on selling our house before all this reached our door. Now, of course no one will buy a house with a bulldozer in the front yard. I even discovered yesterday that there is some kind of mysterious sink hole that is indefinitely deep in our front yard. Meaning, the exact spot that I stood in to hang up xmas lights this year, there was only about a foot of packed dirt keeping me from sinking to the bottom of the earth.

Now, our front yard is basically at a standstill. We can't make any improvements until this work, which has no identified start date or end date... is finished. We can't sell our house, we can't fix it up, we may not be able to enjoy the front or back yards, probably not be able to open the pool this summer & won't even be around next year to reap the benefits of all this work. Well hopefully... this house is a pain in my ass!

Dylans bday is next month and there is no way that I am going to have people here considering the state of my yards right now. I had considered doing a big party with friends and everything, but since it looks like we will have to use a family members home and our family runs about 30 deep between Jon and I... looks like we will have to really do up his 2nd bday next year.

Arrrrrg.

Is my baby normal?

This is a question I find myself asking recently. I know that my baby is adorable, and that the doctors say he is developing normally... and to me of course he is perfect, but its a worry that I think comes along with being a mother.

We mothers begin the worrying as soon as we decide we want a baby, before the baby even exists. We worry we won't get pregnant, we worry we can't get pregnant... then we finally do and the worrying that our pregnancy is abnormal begins. We worry that every little new thing going on in our body is a sign something is wrong and seek reassurance in doctors and family members. Then the labor becomes a worry, hoping that everything will go ok, the baby will be delivered ok... that he will be healthy and there won't be any complications. The fact is worrying doesn't change anything, but we all do it and its the nature of being a mother.

For some reason, after the baby got here, all healthy and beautiful, I still worried about him. But it was the kind of worry that made me want to keep him sleeping in our room until he was 11 or so, just so I could see for myself he was breathing through the night. Or that bumps on his head meant permanent damage, or accidently getting shampoo in his mouth meant that I had poisoned him. Its been almost a year, and these normal worries of a first time mom have gotten much better. I am a lot calmer about the obvious things that if they don't hurt me, then he is probably going to be ok... but now a new set of worries are kicking in.

He's at the age where development becomes the forefront of our daily thoughts and activities. He's crawling, but its not on his knees... its more of what we jokingly refer to as an "army crawl"... I didn't think he could hold his own bottle, until I caught him doing so when I wasn't looking. As soon as he saw me he dropped the bottle like it was stolen merchandise. This is when I realized that I may be coddling him a bit too much, but at least I discovered his is ABLE to hold his own bottle. He isn't waving, like the baby in our mommy & me class... and he only has 2 teeth. We just started on solid foods, that he seems to be doing great on... but he doesn't pull himself up (at least when I am looking) and isn't standing on his own... like other babies he is friends with.

So, out of fear of my baby being under-developed, I did some research on normal development in the first year... and here is what I found... this is for 7mths to 12 mths

but if you are curious about your baby and they are in a different age group click on the link below... its from Baby Center, a website I highly trust:

http://www.babycenter.com/baby-milestones

Child's Age	Mastered Skills (most kids can do)	Emerging Skills (half of kids can do)	Advanced Skills (a few kids can do)
7 months	Sits without support Drags objects toward herself	Lunges forward orstarts crawling Jabbers or combines syllables Starts to experiencestranger anxiety	Waves goodbye Stands while holding onto something Bangs objects together Begins to understand object permanence
8 months	Says "mama" and "dada" to both parents (isn't specific) Passes objects from hand to hand	Stands while holding onto something Crawls Points at objects Searches for hidden objects	Pulls self to standing, cruises Picks things up with thumb-finger pincer grasp Indicates wants with gestures
9 months	Stands while holding onto something Jabbers or combines syllables Understands object permanence	Cruises while holding onto furniture Drinks from a sippy cup Eats with fingers Bangs objects together	Plays patty-cake and peek-a-boo Says "mama" and "dada" to the correct parent
10 months	Waves goodbye Picks things up withpincer grasp Crawls well, with belly off the ground	Says "mama" and "dada" to the correct parent Indicates wants with gestures	Stands alone for a couple of seconds Puts objects into a container
11 months	Says "mama" and "dada" to the correct parent Plays patty-cake and peek-a-boo Stands alone for a couple of seconds Cruises	Understands "no"and simple instructions Puts objects into a container	Says one wordbesides "mama" and "dada" Stoops from standing position
12 months	Imitates others' activities Indicates wants with gestures	Takes a few steps Says one wordbesides "mama" and "dada"	Walks alone Scribbles with a crayon Says two wordsbesides "mama" and "dada"