Here’s what it might have looked like if Charlie had come with us when we first went to Boston together a few years ago:
Archive for June, 2007
Funny how the thought of your baby coughing up blood puts things in perspective.
For example, last night when I was playing with him on the floor of the nursery at 2:30 AM I was not sleepy and frustrated, I was happily reflecting on what an honor it is to be entrusted with this precious child to love and raise.
And as he was screaming snotty, miserable sobs into my shoulder at 3:00, I wasn’t making a mental note to Google “gypsy baby brokers” the next morning, I was peacefully grateful for his otherwise good health and my good fortune at having a normally even-tempered boy.
Ha ha HA. Who do you think I am, Mother Theresa? I mean, I am grateful and I know I am lucky, but who thinks like that in the middle of the night?
But when he finally did fall asleep contentedly in my arms at 3:30 I was grateful to have one more opportunity to let him fall asleep close to me where I could admire his sweet, peaceful face and feel his warm body snuggled tight against me. And now I am being sincere.
And when I put him in his crib and he stayed asleep? I did a little silent happy dance right there next to the crib and whispered “Thanks for going to sleep, sweet boy, but you know that thing I promised about the race car was a metaphor, right?”
I’m spending the day getting ready for our trip. I bought Charlie some disposable diapers (even though I’d love to find one of those ‘Your bag was inspected by the happy, friendly TSA’ cards inside a bag full of dirty prefolds, we’re trying to simplify). The kid wears SIZE FOUR diapers now. The boy on the package is STANDING UP PUSHING A LAWNMOWER. Important preparations that have been completed include going to Starbucks, making a packing list, going to Target for wipes, leaving Target with wipes, a cord for my iPod, and Pack and Play sheets (pink ones because that is what they had). Better get moving.
Dear Baby Cold Medicine Manufacturers, you jerks:
Next time you think it would be fun to make medicine purple to match its grape flavor, don’t. May you never “wake up” (after a long, long night listening to your baby cough because your product doesn’t work) to find your baby covered in little drops of what looks like dried blood only to smell it and realize that it’s not blood, it’s the ineffectual cold medicine you gave him before bed. Because that? Is really really scary.
Angrily yours,
Needsaventi
We are going back to the House of Pain and Germs today. Where no matter what is wrong or not wrong with Charlie I am either over-reacting, under-reacting, wrong, really really wrong, a silly first timer, or negligent. Yipee!
I’m getting Charlie’s ears checked. Because he has another cold. Because apparently he gets colds in the summer when it’s ninety degrees outside and not in the winter. Not even when we took him on a plane to Pittsburgh in January when he was two months old. He screamed for several minutes last night when I dared try to nurse him to sleep. Charlie’s never really been a screamer, so when he gets that upset you think maybe something could be wrong. But they don’t follow that line of reasoning at the House of Pain and Germs. They just roll their eyes and tell you to give him Benedryl for the frillionth time ($20 please).
Of course Charlie might have been screaming because he didn’t want anything else to eat. Last night for dinner he had five or six veggiepuffs (which are Cheerios that cost three times as much), a tub of Gerber applesauce, half of a YoBaby, and an entire banana before I cut him off. When he was in the bathtub I noticed that his belly was pooched out like he’d just eaten Thanksgiving dinner and had unbuttoned his pants and fallen asleep in front of the Texas-A&M game.
Alright, since the allure of the LeapFrog activity table is wearing off and I’m still in my pajamas and the diaper bag is still unpacked, I better go.
UPDATE: It’s a cold. Ahahahahaha.
Tonight’s activities:
Stupid dissertation that I hate so much? OR
“The Office” marathon
Biter biscuits are a huge hit. He gnawed this one into a mushy spike.
Charlie’s ready to go to sea
Ryan and I are going on a trip next week to Boston where Ryan has a job interview. Last summer when I was just a few months pregnant with Charlie we went to Boston and had a lovely time imagining that we lived there and were subway experts (Except for the one time when we had to get on the train without a valid ticket because our all-day pass didn’t apply to above ground trains or something like that. It was extremely unclear at the station and the driver looked at our tickets and then motioned angrily at the little machine where you’re supposed to put, I don’t know, tokens or something. That time we acted like we didn’t know what the crap we were doing. And possibly we pretended not to speak English).
I’m sure my shorts and flip flops gave us away as tourists. Or maybe it was the way we giggled with excitement every time the train came into the station with that big burst of warm air blowing all the discarded Dunkin Donuts cups around.
That’s me at Harvard. I convinced Ryan that this would be clever and artistic.
So while Ryan’s at his interview, my job is to look for an apartment where we can live if he decides to take the job. I will have Charlie with me. What a great way to practice for my future of urban stay-at-home-mom/freelance scientist! Free from the constraints of driving, the city is at my doorstep offering a buffet of educational and cultural activities to enrich Charlie’s mind! Except after Ryan talked to a realtor today the search area has been widened from just Cambridge and Somerville to most of the eastern half of Massachussets and also part of New Hampshire (where maybe we could afford rent AND food). Do I need to mention that I currently live in a state where you can drive for twelve hours and not cross into a neighboring state?
This is where my dream of efficient urban living begins to get a little shaky. Mostly because the thought of hauling Charlie around two of the original thirteen colonies BY MYSELF is s-c-a-r-y. I take my dog with me when I have to go to the mailbox by the meth-lab apartments less than a hundred yards from my front door for heaven’s sake.
I’m hoping we can find a rental agent who will walk around with me and prevent me from taking Charlie into a crack house. Or from giving up and signing a lease on something that costs $2500 a month and is described as “ultimate bachelor pad, river views, mirrored ceilings, black marble jacuzzi in living room” strictly because I can see Whole Foods from the front door and wouldn’t have to walk far at night if we needed something. Although Charlie would love it if we had a “pool” in the living room, Ryan would not be pleased.
I should go now. I have to go buy some dark “don’t f*** with me” city clothes. And practice not smiling at every damn thing I see. And looking for apartments that are just ghetto enough for us to afford.
Just checking in because I am still recovering from the weekend of nonstop fun and have nothing interesting to offer you. Except I deposited my paycheck and bought stamps today. And we had pancakes and scrambled eggs for dinner. Because for some reason we only have like $12 left in our grocery budget for the month. And we need to save it for more YoBaby because Charlie grabbed me by the collar tonight when we ran out during dinner and told me he would “cut me” if we ever ran out again. Last night we gave him some peach YoBaby at a restaraunt where we went to celebrate Father’s Day and he cooed little satisfied sighs between bites before scowling and slamming his fists on the table when he saw the next bite wasn’t hovering in front of his mouth.
Father’s Day was nice. Charlie took him to Sonic for a Coke in the morning (and then again after church because we survive on caffiene around here) and I took him out for all-you-can-eat spaghetti in the evening. Unfortunately I was such a zombie Sunday after staying up so late with my wild friends Saturday night that Ryan didn’t get much rest Sunday. He said he enjoyed every minute of it, though. He is so good to me.
Here is a picture for you:
Charlie says “Where is that waiter? I asked for a sippy cup fifteen minutes ago!”
The house has been packed up, the moving van is gone, the sale of the house has closed, and A and her husband and another one of our friends leave tomorrow. Two more of our friends move back to Puerto Rico in the next two weeks. But tonight we partied like it was 1999 (And by that I mean when we were all nineteen and single and had nothing better to do than have a good time… and when we still enjoyed wine from a box).
What started out as a barbeque morphed into a gender-segregated living room dance party (for the girls) and backyard cigar party (for the guys, minus Ryan who had to take Charlie home to bed) once all the food was gone (I wasn’t able to contribute music from my iPod like the other girls because apparently I have a thing for laid back pot smoking music from the sixties and seventies and there are surprisingly few Simon and Garfunkel songs as conducive to ass-shaking as say, Shakira). Oh and before that we all talked about our boobs and various GYN adventures like normally happens when there is a gathering of women and a big box-o-wine. It was the perfect send-off.
It was so hard to say goodbye. The thing I really couldn’t handle though was when A said goodbye to Charlie, or when she started crying after we hugged goodbye for the third time after we watched one last episode of Big Love together.
I wish them well, but this really stinks.
When my twenty-three pound alarm clock o’love went off this morning, I opened my eyes and was most pleasantly surprised to see that the sun was already up. And I wondered what had become of the crippling exhaustion I have been fighting daily for the last two weeks. Could it be? Did he sleep ALL NIGHT without requiring nursing, rocking, singing, or the video of Al Gore’s presidential debate appearances?
I should back up a bit here, because Charlie is only one reason that I haven’t been sleeping, up until last night anyway. Our neighbor’s three dogs have been barking all. night. long recently. They sit literally four feet from our paper-thin track house window (once Ryan locked himself out and I was nursing Charlie down in the nursery and Ryan stood outside the window and asked me to come let him in as if he was standing right next to me talking) and bark. Two nights ago around 1:00 am it finally got to me. I opened the window and said “Be quiet stupid dogs!” in a not yelling but not so friendly tone of voice before collapsing onto my bed as they barked even louder.
I went to the family room to read my book for a few minutes, hoping it would knock me out so I could sleep there for the night. A bit of time passed and then I heard a strange noise and looked up to see Ryan dragging our queen sized mattress down the hall, a big proud grin on his face. He set it up by the fireplace and the TV and tucked in the sheet the way I like it. We turned on a movie and were both out within thirty minutes.
Until an hour later when Charlie woke up wanting to nurse.
Last night I fell asleep (ASLEEP!)watching Sex and the City reruns and eating cookies. And then Charlie slept all night save for one pacifier replacement. Oh this headache free, clear eyed, might live until noon without the aid of a Venti ANYTHING feeling is PRICELESS.
Here are some pictures of Charlie from the last couple of days.
A friend who is a nurse had these for her son and gave them to us when he outgrew them.
He was way more into trying to eat the grass (baby’s first hash brownie?) than playing with the more appropriate toy I brought outside.
Oops! I meant, “Here is Charlie in a vinyard.”
A tribute to my friend A… (who is MOVING. the nerve)
Published June 14, 2007 Uncategorized 3 CommentsOne thing that really sucks about grad school is that you make wonderful friends and then their husbands get offered really awesome jobs and they move to freaking Kansas. I remember when I met A. We were at a department barbeque to welcome the new students and after a few minutes I tentatively asked her for her phone number and said something along the lines of “Wanna be friends?” because I could not then, nor ever will be able to behave normally in social situations. We now share shoes, a hairstylist, and an OBGYN.
A few weeks after the barbeque A and her husband had a Halloween party at their house. Ryan and I went as a Catholic school girl and a priest. I was momentarily concerned I would offend A, who is Catholic, but she took one look at my costume and said “I wore the same thing a few years ago but I made it look A LOT trashier. And they made ME answer the door when the cops came!”
That’s A on the left (she and another friend were Axl and Slash) and my other A friend, now Charlie’s Godmother.
The A’s took on the role of social directors for our little group of friends, planning trips to the Drive-In and to concerts, and this little get-together where we used an ax and a truck to remove a dead tree from their yard.
She and her husband and all of our friends here have truly become a family; we share eachother’s joys and hurts, commiserate over the mutual frustrations that come with being in school and have shared countless shopping trips, movie nights, happy hours, cookouts, baby showers, wedding showers, and birthdays. This year, when Charlie was three weeks old, A and her husband hosted almost all of us along with my parents and my sister and brother-in-law for a Thanksgiving potluck.
When I was pregnant, she made me brownies and then we laid on her couch, her hand on my belly, waiting for Charlie to start swimming around in response to my heightened blood sugar. When Charlie was born, the A’s and the other A’s were among the first visitors to the hospital (the first were my advisor and his wife, not awkward at all “Great to see you! I’d get up but I still can’t feel my legs. Oh, and don’t mind the bag of pee hanging from the bed”). They brought Ryan dinner and crammed around my bed in the tiny room and passed Charlie around and fussed over him until the nurse came in and forced me to go on a long overdue walk around the nurses’ station (IV stand in tow).
A week before Charlie was born, we all went to a party as some of Hollywood’s infamous party girls. I was Brittany Spears.
That’s Pink, Paris (A), Nicole (Charlie’s Godmother), me, and Jessica Simpson. We all hoped I would go into labor at the party because what a great way to show up at L&D!
A loves Charlie like a nephew. She babysat for us once and reported that she checked frequently to make sure Charlie was breathing by sneaking into his room like a ninja and leaning over the crib and putting her ear close to his mouth. She is going to make a really awesome mother one day.
The moving truck comes tomorrow and they leave on Sunday. I am going to miss them so much.
