Truism:

Do not grab a cat's tail immediately after using one's hands to eat pancakes with honey.

(I give unto thee kitchen supplies, a clean bathroom, a kid in the Emergency Room, and cold pancakes.)

So, the day started off well enough. Jess roused me around 8, as usual, and I went into the living room to peer blearily at my computer. Instead of my computer monitor, there was a big green box.

Kevin got me a nice sushi-making kit complete with condiments and all the stuff I'll need to make sushi (except, you know, all the raw fish and vegetables.) I really like sushi. The big problem is that Kevin can't eat it, since we never know exactly what's in what pieces. This gives me a chance to make our own sushi so that I know Kevin's not about to poison himself.

And then he got up about an hour later (9 am? On a Sunday? Wow!) and cleaned the bathroom and mopped the floors as part of my present. We ran some errands (the shower curtain finally decided to stop pretending that it was in one piece and like 4 of the ring hooks broke) and then got ready to go out to dinner.

My father was planning to treat us to dinner at Les Most Expensive Thing on the Menu Ristorante. A nice Italian place down near Va Beach, which actually has a dress code. We got dressed up and drove down, finding the place by only having to make one illegal u-turn. We were a little early. That's typical, as if you don't plan for at least 20 minutes of traffic, you get an hour. It's nearly impossible to be ON TIME around here. You're either late, or early.

We go in and first thing they've got the reservations wrong. I said on the phone that I needed a table for 5. They didn't have one available, but were going to try and work that out. I took Jess to the potty while Kevin waited for my Dad and Denise. We were coming back from the bathroom and Jess ran ahead to see her Daddy...

To compensate for the lack of a table for five, the restaurant put a chair in the aisle and Kevin was sitting in it. Jess ran towards him and fell. She struck the chair with her head and lay still on the floor for a minute before letting out an unholy wail. I shoved a waiter out of the way to kneel on the floor. Jess flung herself into my arms, screaming. I held her for a minute, trying to calm her down, then pulled back a bit to look at her.

She was bleeding. My god. The blood. It painted her cheek and was in her hair, running out of a gaping cut on her face, just over her eye.

It didn't take more than a minute or so to decide that we needed to take her to the Emergency Room. I tried to call my dad on the way out to the car, but he wasn't answering his cellphone. Fortunately, the hospital wasn't far away. They were unexpectedly not busy - I can't remember the last time I was the ONLY person in an ER waiting room. Jess had mostly calmed down by the time they showed us into the back room, and while she wasn't exuberant or anything, she was talking with us and smiling a little.

The lady across the hall from us had come in because her engagement ring was stuck. On her finger. She'd slid it on and couldn't get it off. She'd cut her finger trying to get it off and the knuckle had swollen incredibly. A pulse-ox test showed that her circulation to that finger was completely cut off. Despite that, she argued with them for nearly forty minutes, trying to get them to NOT cut the ring off. Finally, the ER doctor looked at her and said "Ma'am, it's the ring, or the finger. One of them is coming off in the next few days. If you'd like to have a finger to PUT a ring on, I suggest you let us cut the ring. The jeweler can fix it."

Another doctor came in, looked briefly at Jess's eye and said "Yep, she needs stitches."

I winced. (Karen, go away for a few paragraphs, ok?)

He went off and got the suture tray and a papoose. This is a child's backboard and they proceeded to strap Jess into it so she could barely move. Let me tell you, Jess did NOT like this. Not even a tiny bit. As soon as her ankles were locked down, she started struggling. By the time they'd wrapped her all the way up, she was whimpering at me "Body stuck! Mama! Stuck!"

The nurse held her face still while the doctor gave her several injections of numbing medication around her eye. Jess didn't scream, she just struggled, barely breathing, trying to free herself. After he'd finished numbing her, the doctor started stitching the cut closed. Jess continued to struggle the entire time, turning completely purple in the face because she was so desperate to get out that she was barely breathing.

(Ok, Karen, we're safe again)

I'm not very good about this sort of thing, but Jess was so scared, I didn't want to leave the room and make things worse for her. On the other hand, as I almost passed out, I'm not sure I did her any good at all. After they were done with the stitches, I had to sit on the floor for a while.

My dad and Dee were out in the waiting room (still empty) when we were done. It was almost 10 o'clock by then. We decided to grab a quick bite to eat at the IHOP that I'd seen on the way to the ER. My dad and Dee had never been to an IHOP before, so it was a dining experience for them.

I barely touched my pancakes. The staff made much of Jess and brought her a free milkshake. She seemed mostly in a good mood until the numbing started to wear off, and then we went home. On the way home, Jess started picking at her stitches, and I didn't see, so by the time we got to the apartment, Jess was all bloody again. We cleaned her up as best we could, gave her some Motrin and put her to bed.

Yeah. Not the best of days.

(but didn't really want to know in the first place...)

1) everyone you know will tell you your child will 'know' when she's ready to begin potty training.

LIES! LIES AND SLANDER!

Your child doesn't know bupkiss more about potty training than you do. Your child may or may not want to imitate mommy and daddy and use the potty like a big girl. Your child may or may not care what other kids do. Your child will, most likely, pick the least comprehensible path towards toilet awareness and will not consult you in the process. You will merely get to flounder along in the back and pretend that you're in charge here. (Just so you know. You're not. There is absolutely NO way to force a child to use the toilet.)

2) All the best toilet training books and web sites will tell you not to freak out about accidents.

VERY HARD TO DO!

Accept now that while you are toilet training, you will entertain desires of throwing your kid out with the morning garbage. The plus side of this is that shit washes off. The bad part of this is, guess who gets to wash it out? YOU DO!! Isn't that exciting? If you have a sense of humor, it might take a vacation while you're potty training. This is normal, and you shouldn't berate yourself too much for it.

3) There are no instructions to toilet train. Go with what works with your child.

This is a fucking cop-out. However, there are also no instructions on a diaper box on how to put a diaper on your child. You'll just have to learn it as you go. Maybe by the time you have 18 kids, you'll have figured it out. Cop-out or not, I'm afraid I can't enlighten you much. We trained Jess in all the wrong ways offered by websites and professionals. (If you look up enough sites, you'll get lots of things not to do, but very very few things to do. We tried all the things suggested that you don't do. ie offering candy bribes, freaking out about accidents, getting mad, taking the child to the toilet every 20 minutes, etc.)

Some General Tips and Observations:

1) If you have long hair, consider cutting it. The longer your hair is, the more you should consider cutting it. If cutting it isn't an option, wear it tied back at all times. Kids don't have great aim.

2) Expect to go through at least one roll of toilet paper every day (this is only if you have a spouse and no more children. expect the number to go up exponentially depending on number of children). Plan ahead, and count your rolls before going to the grocery store, so you don't get caught halfway through the week without any left. Likewise, expect your water bill to go up. Expect your patience to go down.

3) Did I mention the hair thing?

4) Kids have bad aim. Even girl kids. I suggest removing everything cloth from your bathroom floor if possible. If not possible, put a big towel in front of your toilet or trainer toilet. Wash this frequently.

5) Kids either like flushing the toilet, or they hate it. If your kid hates flushing, thank the gods, at least you can do that yourself without too much hassle. If they love it, you may have to make flushing part of the reward system; ie, they only get to flush when they actually produce. Otherwise, see #2 about your water bill.

6) Make sure you have more underwear and pants (and shirts) for your kid than you reasonably expect to go through. If you do laundry every week, buy at least enough pairs to go through 4 per day. If you have your own washer and dryer, great! See #2 about your water bill.

7) Give up any hope of ever having a private moment in the bathroom again, as your child will become just as interested in your waste elimination as you are in hers. Expect to answer some very strange questions.

8) On the subject of questions; do not ask your child if they need to go potty. Asking them opens the possibility to them that they might not have to. Just tell them to go. Further, on questions: never ask a toddler a rhetorical question. Or a sarcastic one. Or a question that is an either this or that. Or one that can be answered by yes or no. Best not to ask your child any questions at all. It's just frustrating. If you're a sarcastic person by nature, expect to spend a lot of time beating your head against the wall. Eventually, your child will ask you about this. The answer "because I'm brain-damaged enough to think I can teach a 3 year old to use the toilet" isn't a good answer.

9) Did I mention that you should pull your long hair back into a pony-tail? I did? Good. Remember to do that, it's important for your sanity.

10) Recite the following to yourself every time you have a set-back. "This, too, shall pass." Continue to think that. False hope is better than no hope at all.

Conversation with a three year old can be a little difficult to follow, sometimes.

Jess: ::depositing an empty glass on my desk:: Ees empty!

Me: I see that. ::put the cup aside::

Jess: Where dideet go?

Me: You drank it, silly.

Jess: I no see eet!

Me: Um, no, you wouldn't. It's in your tummy.

Jess: Cho'kit mi'k? In Jessie's tummy?

Me: Exactly.

Jess: ::jumps up and down:: Ees stuck!

Me: That's good.

Jess has, at last count (just a few minutes ago while I was folding her laundry) fifty-eight socks.

The mathematically-minded of you will tap your fingers a minute and say "Oh, she's got twenty-nine pairs of socks."

The more parental of you will say, "Oh, dear."

I keep Jess's socks in the top drawer on the left hand side of her dresser, if they're matched and folded together. The ones that aren't are sort of scattered on top of her dresser in the vain hope that I might eventually find its mate.

When I finished folding the laundry, I had:

• one pink sock
• one pink sock, slightly different color
• one pink sock, with a longer cuff than either of the two above
• one not-quite pink sock
• one pink sock with white spots
• one white sock with pink spots
• one purple sock
• one purple sock of a slightly different color
• one purple sock with a shorter cuff than either of the two above
• one purple sock with butterflies on it
• one purple sock with flowers on it
• one off-green sock (more blue than green)
• one off-blue sock (more green than blue)
• one moss-green sock
• one olive-green sock
• one kelly green sock
• one forest green sock
• five white socks, one with a pink line around the toe, one with a gold line around the toe, one of a finer, thinner material, one short, and one long

(Yes, that means she's only got 18 pairs left in the drawer. SIGH.)

No, I haven't been posting much recently. I know. I suck. Sorry about that.

Anyway, last night after going to the polls (I decided at the last minute NOT to wear my lesbian shirt, as Jeremy so kindly provided me with an article about a pollster beating up a voter), Kevin and I went out to playgroup, following our normal Tuesday evening routine.

We got there and the crazy lady was already there. I almost turned around and left again, but Jess would have been disappointed, and there are certain things that I ought to learn to deal with for her sake, and fucked-up bitch-crazy ladies are probably the least of them. I suspect in a few years I'll have to learn to put up with fucked-up, bitch-crazy teachers, or psychotic principals, or something else even less pleasant that will be able to have a lot more control over my child's life.

Oddly enough, she was being mostly quiet for a change. The daughter-spawn was sleeping in the stroller while the two boy-menaces were running around.

There weren't very many people there, either. Two sets of twins - the unfortunate Britney and Avril, and the even less fortunate Cloe and Cleo (I shit you not. Some people are insane) - were there, plus the Cleo/Cloe's mom's two sisters and their kids. (Aime and Katrina. I know, because Cleo and Cloe were yelling for their cousins the entire time.) There was also a tiny brunette girl wearing a brushed blue velvet outfit who was a terrible tattletale. She ran back to her mother every 15 seconds in tears because: someone broke in line, someone touched her, someone looked at her funny, someone breathed in her air (yes, she really did actually say that.)

So, I thought maybe things would be ok. I sat down with Kevin (coincidentally as far away from the crazy-lady as possible) and let Jess loose on the world. Or at least, a small, plushed fenced in portion therein.

About twenty minutes passed peacefully enough (or as peacefully as it can, with nine 6 and unders running around like lunatics). Mostly Jess avoids the crazy-lady's kids, as they're older and faster than she is. Tonight, the younger one (Damien Alexander) is hanging around Jess a little more than normal, and on at least one occassion, the two boys are attempting to play "ring around the rosey" with her. Jess is... confused. Eventually, Jeffrey Allen (crazy lady's oldest son... you know, she never actually calls them Jeff or Jeffrey or Damien or anything, it's always Jeffrey Allen and Damien Alexander) did this pile on thing where he and Cleo and Katrina all went down the slide in a heap (the tiny Cleo in the middle between 6 year old Jeffrey and 5 year old Kat, there was 3 year old Cleo).

"Jeffrey ALLEN!" I groan. There she goes again... she immediately starts screaming at her sons, detailing their crimes towards humanity. No going down the slide like a layer cake. No tunnels. No pile ons. No. No. No. Every time she screams No at the top of her lungs, Jess stops and nervously looks around before continuing to play.

The other children, who were being rather well behaved up until this point - well, aside from the tattletale, who was back sobbing in her mother's arms because Jess had a sock on inside out (she did, actually, but why this was necessary to cry about, I've no idea) - start getting a little rowdy. Cleo and Cloe start pushing each other off the slide. Aime keeps going up the slide after Jeffrey Allen and grabbing him around the middle before they go down the slide together (which is causing his mother to yell at him MORE.) Other parents are starting to get involved, hauling the children away to various time-outs.

Crazy-lady's daughter wakes up and starts to cry. Rather than comforting her, Crazy-lady starts yelling at both her sons for waking up their sister. Finally, Crazy-lady says they're going to leave, and tells the boys to put their shoes on. Both boys start crying, wailing, screaming, and promising to be good. Crazy-lady relents, and then continues to yell at them for another 10 minutes. At one point (and I couldn't see what was going on because Crazy-lady was blocking my line of sight) she yelled at Jeffrey Allen to stop scratching someone, that he has sharp nails like a girl and she was sick of being yelled at by other parents about it.

We leave. We've had just about enough.

A new resturant has opened up in the mall's food court; Filipino food. (There's also a sushi bar that's new, but Kevin can't eat sushi.) We inquire about ingredients and get a sample plate of food. Cabbage stuff and noodles: not too impressive. Spring rolls are spring rolls, mostly. But these chicken wings? Yummy. They were so good, I got back up and ordered another eight of them. The manager of the Filipino place was nice, friendly, and pleased to see me again. We chatted a bit.

I get back to our table and Jess is merrily eating one of the chicken pieces. She tilts her head to look up at something. I blink and look closer. Bruises. All around her throat under her chin. And fingernail marks. She looks like she's been throttled. I point them out to Kevin, who promptly goes into a slow burn.

I didn't actually see when this happened, but you know, I can make a damn good educated guess...

Sigh. I don't really know what to do, now. I don't want to take playgroup away from Jess. She doesn't get out of the house often enough as it is. But I also don't think these kids and their mother are anything but a bad influence...

Every week, we take Jess to playgroup. (Unless she's sick, because you know, we're nice parents and don't want to spread germs to other people. Or unless I'm sick, in which case I usually send Kevin by himself. Or if Kevin's sick, in which case we just don't go. But we're mostly not a sickie household, so generally, every week on Tuesday, Kevin comes home from work, we get Jess into her shoes and head off to Lynnhaven Mall)

The play-area at Lynnhaven is really nice. The floor is covered with several layers of foam before a colorful carpet was put down, so falls are generally unremarkable. The whole thing is done up in an ocean-scene, complete with giant whale tunnel, giant octopus, turtles and whales to ride, and four slides (shaped like a shell, snail, pirate cave, and whale's tail).

There are padded benches around for the adults to sit and chat and the whole thing is fenced in, so there's not much chance of a toddler wandering off (well, unless some STUPID FUCK leaves the gate open, which unfortunately happens a little more often than perhaps it should) and it's relatively clean. All the toy things are coated in this foam stuff and then a thick layer of rubbery plastic that's painted. Easy cleaning, easily repaired, hard to hurt yourself. Jess loves it because she gets to run around and scream. We love it because it's safe and she likes it. The mall loves it because we drive all the way to Va Beach to go there, and we shop at that mall, and we go to the movies over there, rather than the mall that's right across the bloody street from us.

Well. Usually we leave the house right after Kevin gets home from work.

I woulda... Except that I was playing Warcraft and some girl helped me out with a quest, and I told her I'd help her out with her quest, and... it was a collection quest. And for the first 20 minutes or so, we got exactly none of 5 items. And then we got four. And Kevin came home... and... it was another 20 minutes before the last one finally dropped. Typical.

Putting off leaving for that long got us right into the middle of the worst traffic between here and Lynnhaven, so a normally 15 minute drive took almost half an hour. Except, you know, we coulda taken the interstate. We almost never do, because the interstate at 5:30 is a nightmare. And the back roads are a nightmare at 6. SIGH.

The first half hour of playgroup was relatively fun. Jess ran around like a maniac with some four year old boy and there was another father there who was, honestly, funny as hell, although a little too loud. His comic timing was great, tho, and Kevin and I spent most of the time alternatively making sure Jess wasn't yanking the arm off her new boyfriend, and sniggering at the things this other guy was saying.

Then... She showed up. We've had dealings with Her before. I call her the psycho-lady. She's got three kids between ages 3 and 6 and a half. She's got all her kids on various different kinds of psyche meds, and she honestly ought to go on them. Her kids seem fine to me, she's the one who's completely nucking futs. She yells. Her threats usually go something like this, "If I have to tell you one more time not to say 'bananapants', I'm going to wring your neck." "What are you, my personal critic? If I wanted to be told what to do, I'd still live with your grandmother."

A few minutes after they arrived, Kevin and I are giving each other significant looks.

"Where's my cell phone?" She says. She digs through the diaper bag and her purse, naming every single item in there. Finally she comes to the conclusion that she must have left it in the movie theater.

"Ma," says the six year old, "You shoulda checked before we left, to see if you had it."

"Jeffrey Allen," she snaps, "You are six and a half years old. If I wanted to be told what I shoulda done, I'd have brought your father with me."

"But Ma, if you had checked then we wouldn't have to go back," he says. Personally, the kid is right. She should have checked before she left the theater. (I admit to frequent not-checking myself, but that doesn't make the kid any less right.)

"What I shoulda done," she mutters, putting the little girl into the stroller, "was have an abortion."

Jeffrey Allen looks at her sullenly. "Bananapants."

They leave.

Kevin turns to me. "Sweetie, we gotta leave, before they come back."

Today Jess has:

• Refused to hold hands while crossing streets and in stores
• Taken down an entire rack of movies at the Target
• Stolen and opened a candy bar (from the bag of junk food Kevin and I bought, not from a store)
• Threw a tantrum when requested to eat said candy bar in the kitchen rather than smearing chocolate all over the rug, thus getting candy bar all over her face, shirt and hair
• Threw second tantrum when parent attempted to wash her face
• Put sticky candy-covered hand on TV screen

and Kevin is currently on the floor removing 6 Little People, one pen, three crayons, a keychain Simon Says, a plastic ring, and two shapes from her shape sorter from the subwoofer.

Jess and I are watching Mulan together...

We get to the part where the village has been destroyed and Jess turns to me.

"No puppies? No dollie? No? No... no... all gone... No kitties. All gone."

She sounded very, very sad. Sort of like the way she sounds when I won't give her a cookie.

"No cookie? No no no. No Dess cookies. No cookies. No."

Now there's a real trajedy for you.

Conversation:

Jess: ::tugging on my sleeve:: Nack?

KT: Oh, sure honey. There's some of this morning's cereal left if you want it. Or you can have a cookie. You want a cookie?

Jess: ::stops dead and looks at me:: duH!

Sometimes, no matter how hard I try to do things wrong, I end up doing them right anyway....

For Jess's birthday, Kevin and I decided to get Jess a slide for her birthday.

So, I find one online that's ok, and in our price range. But we were a little tight money-wise because of vacation (well, not really, but I didn't want to dip into our savings) so I wanted to wait until Kevin got his paycheck.

That happens, and I go to order the slide. Regular shipping is going to cost $15 and take 2-3 weeks. Not going to be here on time. Express shipping might get it here on time, but is going to cost $80. Um. Great.

So last night we went to the Wal-Mart, since Wal-Mart was the online shop where I found the slide, and I figured we could just buy one there. Nope. They only carry that sort of thing in the store during the summer. They shipped them all back about two weeks ago.

Greaaaaaaaaat.

So, today, we went over to the Toys 'R Us.

They had a huge ass banner across the store "Buy Toys! Get Toys!"

We go in and there are hundreds of signs "buy this toy and get this one free!" "All purchases of more than $50, get $10 off!"

So we inquire and the exact slide we wanted was there. And in the buy one/get one catagory... plus, the slide was $39.

We ended up getting the slide ($39.99 - $10.00), a work-bench play station ($24.99), an 8-key keyboard ($19.99 - $19.99) and a fold-and-play train set ($19.99 - $19.99). Total order = $57.26.

So... sometimes even when I delay and delay about something, it turns out ok. If I'd done things on time, Jess would have gotten 1 present from us; the slide.

Jess doesn't speak English very often. Usually she just baby-babbles or uses a word in context just long enough to verify that yes, that's what this means.

Today, she piled up a big stack of toys onto the coffee table, then knocked the entire coffee table over, spilling toys everywhere and making an enormous mess (and I might add, giving my cat yet another nervous breakdown, as he was investigating the toys at the time.)

She looked up at me from the mess and announced proudly, "Baby Happens!"

Yep. She sure does.

I'm tired.

I got up early yesterday because of a 5am sneezing attack (whatever trees are reproducing at 5am really should knock it off) and spent all day running around like crazy to get almost nothing actually accomplished. I went to bed around 11. Kevin came to bed three hours later and woke me up. At 5:30am, I'm awake and sneezing myself sick again.

Jess is up and perky at 7:30, so rather than continue to lay in bed and think about wishing I could get back to sleep, I get up.

Somewhat after Jess has finished eating her cereal and come to me for her morning hand-wash (she's either taking after me, or I'm getting her habits ingrained, because she always comes to me when her hands are sticky. I hate being sticky, myself, so...) I announce to her, "Mom wants a hug."

Rather than her usual - which is to clamber into my lap and give me a baby-kiss (pushing her face in my general direction and saying "Mwa!") - she runs off.

"No hug?"

A moment later she brings me her stuffed hippo. And runs off again. When I blink at her, she comes back, takes the hippo away, then pushes it up at my face. "Mwa!" she says and runs off again.

Well....

(As a note, this will be the second time I've attempted to write this entry, so bear with me if it isn't as funny this time.)

Jess has recently become disillusioned with the idea of taking a nap mid-day... I don't know what I'm going to do when she stops napping entirely. I use her naps to take a shower (because she screams hysterically if I'm in the shower. no, I don't know why) or make myself lunch or clean the living room or do the dishes. Or take a nap myself.

Jess's "usual" naptime was from 12:30 until about 3:30 or so... a good, solid nap in the middle of the day. Over the last few weeks, she's been pushing it up until she's not going down for her nap until almost 2, not going to sleep until 3-3:30 and getting up around 6. Which does not, of course, make her even remotely interested in sleeping at 8:30, which used to be bedtime.

I've been trying to insist right back and move her naptime back to a more convenient time of day. This has not met with loads of success, since she'll scream/cry/fuss from whenever I put her down until 2ish, where she'll start babbling to herself until 3-3:30... etc.

The other day, I decided enough was really just enough and even if she wasn't sleepy, she was going to bed Right Now because Mom needed a nap, even if she didn't.

Howl. Scream. Cry. Bang side of crib against the wall. Scream. Cry. Cough. Cough cough. Scream. Cough. Silence.

KT . o O (Oh, thank god.)

Mutant Mommy Brain . o O (I wonder if she's ok in there. She didn't sound good.)

KT . o O (She's fine. She's sleeping.)

Mutant Mommy Brain . o O (Maybe she's not sleeping... Maybe she's... dead.)

KT . o O (She's not dead.)

Mutant Mommy Brain . o O (Are you suuuuuuuure?)

KT . o O (Yes.)

Mutant Mommy Brain . o O (Really?)

KT . o O (Yes, really.)

Mutant Mommy Brain . o O (I'm not sure. She sounded really distressed. Maybe she's choking.)

KT . o O (She's just sleeping!)

Mutant Mommy Brain . o O (Choking. To death. Already dead... dead. dead dead dead.)

KT . o O (Will you shut up?)

Mutant Mommy Brain . o O (...)

KT . o O (Whew.)

Mutant Mommy Brain . o O (Dead.)

KT . o O (Oh, for pete's sake.)

Mutant Mommy Brain . o O (You should check on her... then I'll feel better.)

KT . o O (No. If I check on her and she's not sleeping, I'll just upset her again.)

Mutant Mommy Brain . o O (So? Better than being dead, isn't it?)

KT . o O (Go. Away.)

Mutant Mommy Brain . o O (Dead... nice little funeral. I'm sure you can afford that... and I bet it'll be lots of fun trying to explain to your father that his ONLY GRANDCHILD choked to death because you were busy playing WARCRAFT!)

KT . o O (FINE.)

::gets up and checks on the baby. Who is sleeping. SLEEPING.::

KT . o O (Are you happy now?)

Mutant Mommy Brain . o O (Yes.)

KT . o O (Good.)

::plays warcraft for a while::

Mutant Mommy Brain . o O (Dead.)

KT . o O (god. just kill me now.)

Mutant Mommy Brain . o O (Dead. dead dead dead.)

For those who want an update, here are the answers to the most Frequently Asked Questions about the baby:

Q - What words can Jess say?

A - Thus far, we've got book, mama, daddy, penguin, ball, balloon, juice, out, whale and dragon. I know there are other words she's said, but for the most part once Jess has established that a given word identifies a given object, she goes off, content in the knowledge that she never has to tell me again. She thinks I'm a fast learner, I guess. Which is to say that she doesn't use the word, ever again. I can't decide if I'm worried about this or not. (I also - maybe - think she's said shit once.)

About Dragon: I have a large plywood dragon... thingie hanging from the ceiling. My mother bought it for me as a birthday present while we were in New Orleans. There's a small fish attached to the belly by a length of fishing line and when you pull the fish, the wings flap. It is a very silly thingie and Jess, of course, loves it. Yesterday, she identified said thingie as a "bag inn!" "Yes, sweetie, that's a dragon," says I.

Today, cleaning the house up a bit for my dad's semi-weekly lunch visit, I was using the dust-buster to sweep up some cracker crumbs. Jess does NOT like the dust-buster. After I'd put the terrible thing back up on the wall, she came out of her hiding spot beneath Kevin's desk, pointed at the dust-buster and announced, very firmly; "bag inn!" "Um... well, sort of," I admitted.

Q - What is Jess's favorite toy?

A - Oh, let's see... mom's phone. Dad's phone comes a close second, although since his doesn't lock and she might actually accidentally call someone in Taiwan (she hasn't done that, but she has managed to call work and his voice mail) she doesn't get to see Dad's phone much. She likes bottle caps, plastic forks, her hairbrush (as long as I'm not trying to actually brush her hair) my shoe inserts, Kevin's blue button-down short sleeve shirt that I was supposed to be repairing a tear in, anything small enough to stick in a shoe or under a seat cushion, straws and balloons.

Oh! You meant actual toys... hmmm. Well, she likes this weird florescent pastel lamb that Lori got her a few years ago for Christmas. No, I don't know how something can be florescent and pastel at the same time, but trust me, this is.

I might add that her favorite place to play is right in front of the front door. And she likes having as many toys around her as possible. My cleanup routine is almost always immediately followed by Jess dragging 70% of her Very Large toy collection over to the tiled entryway. Needless to say, getting into and out of our apartment is... dangerous.

Q - Nose?

A - Yes. And mom has a nose. And dad has a nose. And baby has an ear and mom has an ear. And dad has an ear. Yeah, yeah. we got the nose thing down.

Q - General stats

A - Jess weighs 22.6 pounds. She is about 29 inches tall and has a hat-size of 18 and a half inches. I think. I couldn't actually find the little piece of paper the nurse gave me, so I could be wrong by an inch or pound or so in any direction. More importantly, Jess wears size 18 month clothes, mostly. She can still fit into a lot of her size 12 month, but they're all mostly winter clothes and some of it is tight if it snaps between her legs. If it's a dress or a shirt or pants, she can still wear 12 month. The 18 month stuff is a little big, but hey, she's still growing. Shoe size, she's too big for a 4, but not quite into the size 5, but they don't make baby 4 and a 1/2s so we're stuck with the shoes that are a little too big.

Q - What's Jess's favorite food?

A - Generally anything that Kevin and I are eating. She likes cheese, maccaroni and cheese, hot dogs with cheese, grilled cheese sandwiches and... did I mention she likes cheese? I wonder where she got that from. Hmmmm...

Easier to say what she doesn't like. She doesn't like pickles. She doesn't like apples. She doesn't like soda. She's not too keen on my lemon-meatballs. Or onion rings. That's about it, really.

PS - If there are questions you'd like answered, post them below and I'll do my best

Yesterday, I brought up to Matt some of my parental concerns. This is one of the nice things about having friends with children close-ish to the same age as my daughter. They care about my concerns about my daughter (and even if they don't care, they pretend to care effectively so that later, I will pretend to care about their problems. Works out well.)

< aside > Oh, completely aside here, have I ever said how grateful I am to all my friends? Reading some other "mommy blogs" and they all seem to talk about the mommy-drive-bys where either some well-meaning stranger or malicious friend will snark on how you're raising your child. "What do you mean you stopped breastfeeding already? Don't you know that unless you breastfeed until they're 6 years old that they won't get into Havard?" Obviously I've had a few mommy-drive-bys from random assholes, but my friends do not do that. Ever. Not once has anyone said anything to me about the way I raise my daughter. I appreciate this. A lot. < /aside >

Anyway, before I so rudely interupted myself...

My concern is that I've been a sort of hands-off parent. Jess mostly doesn't like to be read to - she'll snatch the book away or wander off. It's not that she doesn't have the attention span, because she'll sit looking at her books on her own for 20 minutes at a clip. So I don't read to her much.

The doctor was concerned at her 6 month (or maybe it was her 9 month) appointment that Jess didn't wave bye-bye. Nobody ever waved bye-bye to her. I almost never leave and Kevin's always gone before she gets up in the morning. After we made some effort to wave at the baby , she picked it up pretty quickly. It just hadn't occurred to us that it was some sort of mile-marker.

Jess likes to play by herself. She doesn't usually mind if you want to play with her, altho sometimes she does. But mostly she's perfectly happy doing whatever it is she wants to do without much structure to it. (I try and do "arts and crafts" - which is mostly to say scribbling on a piece of paper - once a day, and that's supervised because I don't want to clean up broken crayons or have drawings on the wall) But, mostly she likes to do things on her own and figure them out on her own - she sometimes gets HIGHLY hostile with me when I try and show her how to do something. She likes being left alone, so, most of the time, I leave her to her own devices.

(The other thing Jess doesn't do - most of the time - is show off. She has her few words that she uses (Mama, Boo, Dada, Balloon) but trying to get her to say them for someone new? Uh-uh. No can do, Mom, sorry.)

Anyway, Penny (and her parents) were down recently and I was really impressed with Penny's cognitive skills - she can point to pictures in books and identify mouth and hands on dolls and identify parts of her own body, as well as has a mostly comprehensible vocabulary of about 20 words or so. Of course the "is that a hat, Penny?" and she puts whatever it is on her head is always extremely cute. Jess doesn't do anything like that. She responds to a few simple commands. "Bring me that, please." "Come here, please." "Go play with the cat, please." "We sit down, please." (by the way, the please might have been a mistake, but I'm hoping it works out well in the end - Jess gets three pleases before she's in trouble.)

So I've been slightly concerned that Jess was behind - not because she wasn't smart or developing normally - because I have been a slack parent.

After talking about it some with Matt yesterday and not really feeling that reassured - my fault entirely, not his - I brought it up to Kevin while I was getting Jess ready for bed.

"Well, I'm just worried about her development," I said. "I mean, she doesn't point to her nose when you ask her 'Hey Jess, where's your nose?'"

Jess, in the middle of getting her diaper changed, mashes her finger down on her nose. Kevin raises his eyebrows at me, then leans down and says to her "And what about your *ear*?" Jess uses the other hand to grab her ear. Kevin gives me a Look and says "What problem?" and walks out of the room,

Sigh.

Conversation overheard between a four-year old girl and a seven-year old boy.

Girl: You have an earring!

Boy: Yeah.

Girl: Boys can't wear earrings!

Boy: Obviously they can!

Jess: ::pointing to Kevin:: Bah-bee!

Kevin: ::shakes his head:: No, I'm the Daddy. You're the baby.

Jess: ::emphatically:: No!

Kevin: What? I'm not the Daddy?

Jess: NO!

Kevin: What do you know about this that I don't?

Jess: Bah-bee!

Kevin: Spouse? Your daughter is ratting you out.

About four weeks ago, I rather casually remarked to my friend Karen that I was craving brownies. Nice big fat brownies. With no nuts. I hate walnuts and pecans, I really do. They taste like tree-bark. (And yes, I've actually eaten tree bark before, don't ask stupid questions.)

In a very Karen-like fashion, she decided to make brownies and mail them to me. Which was nice. The brownies are, of course, long since gone. However, I left the box on the floor and Jessica decided it was her new toy.

It's a smallish box. Not quite as long as a shoebox. It says "this side up" and "fragile" on it in black marker. I've folded the top flaps inside.

When Jess first figured out the whole filling/dumping activity, it was with this box. She'd stack her colored stackable rings in it. Then take them out. Then put them back in. On and on for hours.

Now, one of the things she likes to do is either drag stuff over to the box and put it in, or put stuff in the box and drag it around. (Note: Need to get the girl a pull/push toy).

Yesterday, in Jessica's box: half a paper airplane, the tv remote, a little blue koosh toy, three fruit loops, and a green baby spoon.

Today, in Jessica's box: my old cell phone, a blue baby spoon, a green baby spoon, the orange stacking ring, her toothbrush, and Spot Helps Out.

Jess has been saying "mama" on and off for a couple of weeks now. About 70% of the time, she means me. The rest of the time she means the television or her stuffed animal or the door or... well just about anything, really. So I wasn't counting it as her first word, since I wasn't really sure she knew that it was a word and that it meant something. It might have just been a sound she was repeating.

Five or six days ago, Jess was digging around in her toy-basket. (Her toy basket is this very-tall backpack like thing my mother brought down for us. Jess gets into it by climbing up on top of a floor cushion and leaning waaaaaaaaaay over into the basket. Every once in a while, she tips into the basket and I have to go rescue her. Which I almost always find very funny and Jess... does not.) Anyway, she pulled out her little board book Guess How Much I Love You and dragged it across the room with her.

She stopped near my computer desk and hit me in the leg with the book. "Mama!" she declared. "Buk!"

"Why so it is," I said. I then sat down on the floor and read it to her.

Yesteday, I was sitting on the sofa chatting with Kevin and Jess came over with two books that I'd checked out from the library for her; Spot Helps Out and Spot at the Fair. She really seems to like the Spot books (there's a whole series of them) and we're not really sure why - they're short, fat little books with scalloped edges and the stories take all of about 2 minutes to read. She handed me one of the books and I read it to her. When I was done, she handed me the other one. I read it to her. We switched back and forth between the two books several times before Kevin was ready to go out and it was time to stop.

"Bye Spot." I said, putting the book down on the coffee table.

"Bye." said Jess. And then she waved at the book.

Sometimes it seems like a few weeks at a time pass before Jess learns something new and then suddenly she'll learn a whole bunch of new things all at once and I'll be sad that I didn't get time to enjoy each one seperately.

- she has learned to give things to other people.

this was followed rapidly by developing what I'll call the "psyche" manuever - holding something out and then snatching it back as soon as you touch it.

- she has learned to take something out of her mouth after putting it in.

this is very handy, since previously when I saw the piece of string/bit of plastic/piece of cat food go into her mouth, I had to fish is back out. Now when I say "What are you eating, there?" she sticks her hand in her mouth and pulls out whatever it is for inspection.

- she has learned to campaign.

This is a two-fold learning process. For one, she has learned to stand behind something (like the coffee-table) and babble loudly, making gestures and waving her arms around and looking exactly like a presidental campaigner and say absolutely nothing that makes any sense. Secondly, she's learned that if she if she wants something she's not supposed to have, she has to distract you first. By, say, spilling her milk on the floor and while you're cleaning that up, she'll get up on tip-toes to steal your hershey kisses. My daughter, President of the United States. I can just see it.

- she has learned to play nicely with the cat.

The cat gave her a wicked set of scratches on her hand the other day after she pulled his tail and now she's being very very gentle with the cat when he'll deign to go near her. Some people might think we should punish the cat for that, but you know what? He was here first, Jess needs to learn that not everything in the world is nice, and as long as he's not peeing on my bed out of jealousy, the cat is doing nothing wrong.

- she has learned to help with dressing herself.

In other words, she knows to pull her arms down after we pull the sleeve over her hand, or to reach up when we're putting a shirt on. This is very, very helpful. On the other hand, she's also learned that there's interesting stuff in her dirty diaper that we don't want her to mess with, which makes her more curious about what's in there... and you can just imagine the mess. Or maybe you can't. In either case, I suspect she's gotten good at the dressing thing because she's going through two outfits a day sometimes.

- she has learned about doors and that there is interesting stuff on the other side of them.

In this way, she's much like a cat, always on the wrong side of a closed door. Of course, for her, this means any door - cabinet doors, VCR doors, the baby-gate. Things open and close (well, except 90% of our stuff is locked) and she thinks this is very cool. When the baby gate is open, she'll charge down the hallway at top speed headed for the bedroom. (this is highly amusing to watch). Sometimes she'll look over her shoulder and crawl faster if she thinks I'm chasing her.

- shoes are very interesting.

I have no idea why, but she loves to play with shoes. My shoes, Kevin's shoes. She'll play with the laces (or untie your shoe if you're over here visiting.) or take the inserts out or fill them up with cheerios.

It's been interesting, watching her develope... now, if she'd just figure out how to take out the trash...

I was doing the laundry today and accidentally left the baby-gate open. When I came back, Jess had trucked out of the livingroom and was nowhere to be seen...

It didn't take me long to find her, though. She was in the bedroom.

When I picked her up, two pennies and a nickel fell out of her mouth. Great. Guess I need to look for diaper deposits.

So, Dad was here yesterday and he took us out to lunch at Kyoto's, a local hibatchi place.

I love hibatchi. So does Kevin. We just have to be a little careful and ask the rest of the table (since they won't sit you in seperate groups) if it's ok to have any shellfish orders cooked last so that Kevin's food won't be exposed to any allergens. I've never yet met anyone who wasn't cool with this idea (what are they gonna do, anyway? Insist that Kevin die at his end of the table?) so that's fine.

The group sharing a table with us was a bank area manager and some of his employees and I think a girlfriend. It was a very educational discussion, as they were talking primarily about bank robberies that had been attempted and what had happened to the various perps. I saw Kevin restrain himself several times from asking questions, and honestly, there are a few questions I would have liked to ask as well. Guess we're playing just a little too much Shadowrun recently.

The girlfriend had never had tried sushi and said so in a hesitant little voice when asked, so of course, the manager had to order a huge sushi sampler and forced about three pieces of sushi on the girlfriend. She was... not really happy about this. However, I think I was the only person who noticed she spit a piece of tuna into her napkin and let it fall under the table. I only noticed because I had to keep bending over to collect Jess's toy.

I had an order of fried tofu as an appetizer. I know a lot of people don't like tofu (including my dad and husband) and I don't try to force it on anyone. I, however, really enjoy it. Somewhat to my surprise, I gave a small piece to Jessica, who also really liked it. She ate about half of one of my blocks (there were three blocks in the appetizer).

"Do you really think you should be feeding her that?" my dad asked. I looked at the tofu which Jess was happily chewing up.

"Why on earth not?" I responded.

"Well, she might be allergic to it."

I stared at him, then shook my head and continued to feed the baby bits and pieces of tofu. "I seriously doubt that, Dad. She drinks soy-formula instead of milk-based formula."

This was the first time my dad had ever been to Hibatchi, so when the cook showed up to do the show, he was quite impressed. I was mildly less than impressed, but I've seen very good shows (of course, I've seen a few really bad ones, too) and this guy was about average. He did do the onion volcano well, however, and I've seen that one botched several times, so I guess he wasn't too bad.

Jess seemed to enjoy it as well and for the first time, she waved bye-bye to someone. The cook. Hmph. (The pediatrician last week was sort of astounded that Jess didn't wave bye-bye, but we haven't been making any effort whatsoever to teach it to her either. It hadn't occurred to me that it was anything important. Jess shakes her head "no" and will almost always come to me if I ask her to "come here", so it hadn't occurred to me that bye-bye was a developmental milestone we were missing. Jess rarely sees anyone say bye-bye. I mean, Kevin's off to work before she's awake, and I so rarely leave her with anyone else... ah well, shows what we know, huh? Anyway....)

Kevin and I took turns feeding Jess pieces from our lunch - chicken bits, carrots, clumps of fried rice, scrambled egg bits, small pieces of green beans and zucchini - all of which she enjoyed immensely. It was the first full meal she's had that didn't include any baby-food at all. And she seemed pretty happy with that.

It wasn't until the bank-manager and his party stood up to leave that one of the girls in the group noticed that we had a baby with us at all! Heh.

My friend Karen ia Jess's god-mother.

This might be a somewhat lopsided honor from a household that doesn't believe in God.

Actually, that's part of the point. I don't believe in God and Kevin doesn't believe in God, but freedom of religion (which also means freedom from religion) is something we both believe in with great fervor.

Which means we think Jess should be able to make her own decisions about religion later in life.

The problem, as I see it, is that Jess isn't going to have any practical knowledge. I seriously doubt that Kevin's going to give up part of his weekend to take the baby to church (assuming, of course, that he eventually gets the promotion he's looking for because if he doesn't, he's going to start working Sunday through Tuesday and every other Wednesday starting in about a month).

Also, Kevin and I aren't exactly the best people to go to with Bible questions. We're both cynical and somewhat snarky about Christianity and the bible. But Karen is rather devout and not the least bit bothered about the fact that we aren't. And I seriously doubt she'd ever criticize our lack of faith to our daughter. Therefore, in the original meaning of the word, we "hired" Karen to look after our daughter's spiritual development. Should she decide she wants to develope that way.

But that's not why I'm grateful to Karen today....

Karen's been one of the most generous contributers towards our daughter's upkeep. Whenever she decides to go baby-shopping, Jess ends up with quite a few outfits and cute toys. And since our budget is pretty tight, we're very grateful for her support.

Last time she came down, Karen brought a big bag of clothes, including about 2 dozen socks. I had mentioned before she came down that Jess's socks were all too small. Not that I'd had any luck keeping the bebe in socks and I was debating about getting any more socks that Jess wouldn't wear.

Two of the packets of socks Karen bought were booty-socks, the same kind that I can't keep on Jess's feet for more than three minutes (if that.)

However, the other two packages were bobby-socks.

The other day, Jess had managed to scratch the excema on her ankle up to the point where it was really inflamed-looking and I opened the package of socks thinking maybe I could keep them on her feet long enough for the anti-bacterial cream to soak in.

She wore them all day.

YAY!

Jessica is normally a good baby.

And I'm not just saying that because I'm her mom...

Jess is normally a very calm, easy-going sort of baby. She's easily entertained, not given to large amounts of fussing, is quiet even when she is fussing, goes to sleep without too much trouble, sleeps through the night 12 hours, has only been sick once since she was born and is generally polite in public. A happy, smiley, easy to live with, low-maintenance baby.

Wait, wait, before you kill me...

There are some hard parts in my life as a parent, too. For one thing, I rarely have any time to myself when I'm not being the mom. Originally - some 2 months ago or so - Kevin and I agreed that I could have one day off a week to do something. (Usually this actually meant a few HOURS off while I went to a movie or something.) But recently we've had too many things to do and very little spare cash. And there's really no way that I want to go to the Mall for a few hours and do nothing for a few hours just to get away from the baby. At least at home I have my computer.

Secondly, I have to deal with myself all the time. I know that sounds weird, but honestly... there's something just difficult about being a stay-at-home mom, particularly in these days of two-income households. Obviously we have a significant shortage of disposable income. I also have a serious guilt issues to deal without about not working and generally feeling like I'm "lazy" and "slack" even though I know for a fact that I'm NOT. But man, I feel like it. And some of the casual comments I get from time to time don't really help. I know people are not trying to make my feel guilty or pathetic or stupid or whatever, but... I do anyway.

Third, because Jess is rarely sick - she's had one cold in her entire life and she was miserable and screamy through the whole thing, and I was sick at the same time, so we were both miserable together - she has no immunity. I don't mean immunity to illnesses, although she's probably not got much of that either. I mean, she's got no tolerance to not feeling well. Falling down, even if she doesn't bump her head, is the Absolute Worst Thing that's ever happened to her, ever ever as long as she can remember and she's just sooooooooooooooo sad.

Kevin and I also don't have much immunity. Since Jess is rarely cranky or fussy, we don't have much tolerance for the occassional bout of childhood grumps. Our nerves get frayed a lot more easily, I think, because we're not innoculated to crabby-babiness. We didn't get all this crank back when she was a new baby and we were still 100% overwhelmed by babiness. We're getting it now. Now that we're pretty sure the baby won't break if she bonks her head or starve to death if she's not fed the second she gets hungry or any of 15 thousand other things. Which means we have got almost no patience.

Jess is teething.

Yesterday, she didn't want to go to sleep. As soon as we'd put her down, she'd start crying. Kevin ended up letting her stay up an extra 2 hours or so and crawl around before she finally went to bed. This morning, she was just whiney. She didn't want to be held, she wasn't hungry, she didn't want to play, she just wanted to crank a little.

And she didn't want to take her nap this afternoon either. We finally had to put her to bed and let her cry for almost twenty minutes before she went to sleep. After her nap, she was even More Sad than before she'd gone to sleep. She sat in my lap and wailed for almost forty minutes. She didn't quite throw up, although we had a few scary coughs where I thought she might throw up.

It took us a while to figure out that teething was her problem. My shoulder was soaked from baby tears. I have a severe headache. Kevin's nerves were quite frayed. And I was on the verge of tears myself before we finally clued in and dosed her with the baby motrin and the ora-gel. (I know, I know, the pediatricians don't recommend it. they can bite me.)

At least, finally, the motrin has kicked in and she's back to being mostly normal.

Mostly.

Jessica has always been a good eater...

She took to solids (smushies) pretty much right away and there are only a few foods she really doesn't like. For instance, she doesn't like any of the "meat with meat gravy" foods that smell and look like canned cat food and honestly, I don't blame her. (The only reason these foods exist is to make sure your child doesn't have an allergic reaction to the meat before going on to more tasty options like Turkey Rice Dinner.) One she learned there were options, she decided she didn't like prunes very much either. She's not a huge fan of the usual baby favorites, either - she'll eat applesauce or pears or peaches, but it seems that she's just humoring me.

Her most favorite is sweet potato, followed closely by peas. She likes squash, carrots, green beans, granola, maccaroni and cheese, spaghetti and meat sauce.

Recently we started offering her finger foods - animal cookies, crackers, small bits of stuff from whatever we were eating.

This may have been a mistake.

Jess has now realized that She Can Feed Herself and it's made her a lot more impatient with the whole spoon fed jarred baby food. She's spent a lot of time recently trying to grab the spoon, or failing that, the bowl or jar of stuff. (Last weekend we tried her on fish sticks, which she liked a lot. In fact, she ate about eight of them.)

Yesterday, frustrated by her grabazoid behavior, Kevin said "Heck with it" and handed her a small spoon and stuck the bowl of maccaroni and cheese to her high chair tray. (Re: Bowl. Great concept, bad execution. They come with these suction cup bottoms that are supposed to make the bowl stay stationary. Too bad it takes Jess about .005 seconds to flip the bowl over.)

Jess played with the spoon for a while, jabbing both ends into the food before bringing it to her mouth. She tried grabbing the food with her left hand, putting it on the spoon with her right hand and then trying to eat the food before it fell off. It didn't take her very long to realize that the spoon was Evil and Terrible, at which point she threw it on the floor and began stuffing macaronni and cheese bits into her mouth with both hands.

At this point, I am officially giving up on baby food. She wants table food, that's great! It's cheaper - I can get more food for less money. Now I'll use the money I save to buy something to put down on the floor to make clean-up easier.

My daughter.

Almost eight months old. She's wearing my current "favorite outfit" - changes every three months because she outgrows her clothing every three months - a white onesie with crocheted sleeves and collar and a purple jumper with a hippopotamus in a bathing suit on the front.

She's sitting in the one open space in house that isn't otherwise occupied by furniture, a rectangle of about five feet by three feet just in front of my rocker, to the left of the coffee table and just before the complete clutter of swing/exce-saucer/old computer that seperates the living room from the dining room. Not that it is a dining room. That's where our computers are. We eat either in front of our computers or in front of the TV. I put her there on purpose because she has a dreadful habit of sitting and playing contentedly for a while before throwing herself over onto her back as hard as she possibly can. If there's nothing but carpeted floor in the way, she'll wail and fuss and go back to being cheery in about three seconds. If there's something else in the way - like a coffee table leg, for instance - she'll cry a lot louder and not be at all happy and I will feel like the Worst Mother Ever (tm). I'm already working on being a Bad Mother, as I am not sitting over next to her to prevent her from flinging herself onto the floor and wailing like a banshee, but instead at my computer, reading other people's blogs. I'm personally of the opinion that getting a bump or three on her head, while painful, will eventually encourage her to abandon the idea breakdancing for a living.

The cat is sitting a Reasonable Safe Distance away. Just close enough that he can see her and yet not close enough to have his tail grabbed and stuffed in a greedy mouth. Jessica is mostly ok with this, as she likes to watch the cat, although she occassionally expresses the desire to have him come a little closer. She has attempted bribery. Coyly, she'll pick up one of her animal crackers (there's a small stack of them nearby and a wide swatch of crumbs around and on her) and wave it in his direction. Curious, the cat will creep forward, belly to the ground and claws dug deep into the carpet as if he expects at any moment to be scooped up and deposited in a bucket of water. He gets just close enough to sniff at the cracker, then gives the baby a disgusted look, backs up and lays back down.

She is surrounded by some of her favorite toys: a turtle "activity book" with a completely moronic story line and badly scanning rhymes, but has velcro bits and bells and rattles and squeezies and crinkly material in the shell; the silver rattle my dad and step-mom gave her for Christmas; a white tiger stuffie that was a promotional thing from Exxon; a penguin that plays Jingle Bells if you squeeze the belly; and her newest aquisition, a yellow Wocky from a Happy Meal at McDonalds. She explores all of her toys carefully, picking up each one in turn and giving it a thorough inspection with hands and mouth (usually coating it as all well in cookie crumbs)

And even in the middle of her playing and exploring, as busy as she is, when I look over at her and say her name, she looks up and gives me a huge smile, so much so that her eyes are crinkled up and she looks as if she couldn't possibly be happier in the whole world right now.

Jess has been relatively good about sleeping recently. (Pardon me while I burn sacrifices and knock on wood and chop off rabbits feet just in case God is watching and it going to mock me just for saying that. Ok, I'm back. Where was I? Oh yes, sleeping...)

However, she's started sleeping on her stomach... there isn't anything I can do about this unless I never want to sleep again until she's a year old, so I shrugged and moved on with my life. I put her to sleep on her back. If she rolls over in the middle of the night, so be it. The only solution is to buy one of those over-priced "sleep positioner" bullshit pieces of polyfoam crap and honestly, I don't have $30 for something that Jess will just roll over and laugh at. She would! And it wouldn't keep her from sleeping on her stomach anyway.

In any case, she's decided recently that the crib is the place for sleeping and unless she's very, very tired, won't nap anywhere else in the house... so when she starts getting yawny and rubbing her eyes (and sucking on her thumb), I pick her up and deposit her in her crib.

I am, by the way, a Very Bad Parent, as Jess has a light blanket and a stuffed Bee in her crib with her. Also, a pacifyer. Which most of the time she can find and put into her mouth right-side up, although she frequently puts it in backwards and upside down as well, so maybe it's just random.

I put her to bed on her back, gave her the bink (pacifyer) and handed her the stuffed Bee. (Go look at the link so you can see this toy. It will be important later) and said "Nite nite, Jess." Jess looks up at me solumnly, then drops the Bee and proceeds to attempt to roll over onto her stomach.

I go take a shower. After the shower, I peek in on the baby. Sleeping. On her stomach. Still breathing though. I checked. I shrug and decide not to wake her up.

After talking a bit online, I go to get dressed. The baby's been asleep for about an hour or so, but I'm still trying to be quiet as I go into her room to get my clothes. (it's really "our" dresser now because her clothes are in 2 of my drawers and there's no room for "our" dresser in my bedroom) I stepped on something crinkly on the floor (I think it was an empty Babies R Us bag) and immediately Jess snaps her head up from her nap and gives me that gummy "Oh! Mom! I'm soooooo happy to see you!" smile.

I grin back at her, then blink. I take a step closer to the crib. "What in the hell...?" She's marked on the left side of her face, a big red sleep welt.

Shaped like a B.

From sleeping with her face on her stuffed Bee.

Well, Happy 6 months to Jess today.

Six whole months, and I haven't damaged the baby yet. (well, that we can tell... all that television watching won't have a noticable effect for several years)

Pretty good for someone who thought she was going to be a sucky mom.

I was going through Jess's clothes today. She's not quite ready to be out of the 3-6 month clothes (thank god) but it's getting close. We might get another month or so out of them.

I took down the box of her 6months+ clothes that I packed away before we left the old apartment and started sorting through it...

So far, for 6-9 months, I have:

4 girlie dresses (all from Leah Gregory. Thanks, Leah!)
5 jumpers (one from Kevin's dad and the rest from Bye Bye Baby)
3 Onesies (from Dad & Dee)
3 pairs of shorts (from Leah)
1 raincoat (from Scott and Jean)
4 sunhats (three from Babies R Us and one from Bye Bye Baby)

Need:

at least 9 more Onesies (I like to have a dozen)
at least 4 more pairs of shorts
at least 4, but preferably 7 lightweight sleepers
at least 2 more jumpers
1 or 2 pairs of bebe shoes (hey, she might start walking... and I like baby shoes)

Time to go shopping again, soonish.

Being a parent definately has its ups and downs. We all knew that. If I didn't know it when I got pregnant, I definately knew it by the time the baby was born.

Me: ::small complaint about morning sickness::

Parent: ::smirk:: Just you wait until you're up at 2 am to give a bottle.

yeah.... just wait.... ::sigh::

The toughest part I've found about being a new parent isn't the changing diapers (with new, interesting technicolor poo, now that we've started solid food) or the 2am feedings (in my case it's the "mom, roll over" every two to four hours. I can't remember the last time I got more than 2 hours of consecutive sleep.) or the occasional meaningless (but loud and frustrating) case of the crankies.

It's not even the unsolicited (and not followed) advice from Mother, Mother-in-Law, and strangers in the grocery store.

Or the complete strangers coming up to make conversation. (and gods, some of them are very very strange.)

Or everyone constantly saying "what a cute little boy" even when (gak!) I've actually dressed Jess in a PINK DRESS.

Or the mutant worrybrain becoming the mutant mother worrybrain.

It's those little smirks and the "just you wait...."

Jess started solid food about a month ago. She took to rice-cereal with no problems. She loves it.

"Just you wait til you try vegetables..."

She likes vegetables. Squash, sweet potatoes and carrots went without a hitch. She especially likes carrots.

"Just you wait til you try green vegetables..."

Guess what?

I'm still waiting!

(Green beans went off without a hitch.)

I mentioned the other day that the pediatrician's office gave us the Very Hungry Caterpillar book, right?

Well, Kevin read it to Jessica last night.

"In the light of the moon a little egg lay on a leaf," Kevin reads. He points to the pictures. "Leaf. Egg. Moon." He turns the page.

One Sunday morning the warm sun came up and - pop! - out of the egg came a tiny and very hungry caterpillar." He points to the pictures again. "Sun. Pop!" Jessica giggles. He turns the page.

"He started to look for some food. On Monday he ate through one apple. But he was still hungry." Pointing at the pictures. "One apple. Pop!" Jessica giggles. I giggle.

He continues to read the entire story interspersed with pointing at the caterpillar and saying "Pop!"

My child is going to grow up thinking the poor caterpillar's name is Pop.

So...

Jess had her 4 month appointment on Friday. And she was exactly four months old, then, too.

We had her dressed up in her Very Hungry Caterpiller © outfit which turned out to be a blessing in disguise.

We took her back into the doctor's room (a very small room - usually the check-up rooms are bigger. This one was somewhat larger than a closet) and took off her coat and hat.

The nurse was enraptured over the VHC outfit.

"Oh! How cute! I didn't know they had outfits for it. I've just GOT to give you the book. It's a 1-2 year old book, but you can have it early." And she snuck into the book closet and presented us with a copy of the Very Hungry Caterpillar which was extremely cool.

Kevin had never seen the book before. He had no idea why we had an outfit with a caterpillar on it.

We got Jess out of her outfit and measured and weighed her. She is 24 &fraq3/4; inch long, weighs 12 pounds 6 ounces, and has a head circumference of 16 inces. This puts her at 45%, 75%, and 45% for national average. Jess's doctor tells me it's not the percents themselves that are important (which is good - no need to encourage the whole "you're fat" mentality at this age) but the curve. As long as Jessica continues to develop along the same curve (which is to say, at 6 months, she should still be 45/75/45) as she is on now (and was on at birth) with a variance of 5-10% either way, then she's doing well. It's when she falls off her birth-measurement curves that there's a problem. Like, say, if at six months, she's 20/70/10, that would indicate a problem.

We talked with Beth for a while - the lactation consultant (or breast nazi, whichever you prefer) and decided to go ahead and start feeding Jessica solid foods. She already liked jello and was interested in watching what Kevin and I eat. (Dr Chen was, by the way, not at all happy about the jello. Apparently jello has an allergen in it. But as Jess doesn't seem to be allergic to that, I'm not too worried about it)

Also, we were told to get vitamens for Jess. (Ok, maybe I'm being snide here, but if breastmilk really is the baby's perfect food, WHY does Jess need vitamens? Isn't she supposed to get all the nutrition she needs from breastmilk?)

So we go out to the K-mart (since Kevin needed socks anyway - someone is stealing his socks when we do the laundry. I refuse to believe that the dryer is eating at least 2 pairs of socks a week and he was down to having only 4 pairs left from a minimum of 12 pairs) and got rice cereal and 4 baby bowls and 4 baby spoons (with the color-changing rubber coated safety tips) and 2 jars of baby food squash. We also happened to give in to temptation and bought a copy of X-men United. Bad, evil us.

After we got home, I mixed Jess up a small bowl of rice cereal. I have decided that rice cereal tastes like vaguely sweetened wet paper. I can't, for the life of me, figure out why babies would like it. And, as I understand it, a lot of babies don't. Their first reaction to rice cereal is "Hey, woman, you trying to poison me here or what?" Not Jess. She thought rice cereal was extremely cool, opened her mouth for each spoonful and seemed disappointed when the bowl was empty.

The next day we went to Babies R Us to get the vitamens, which Dr Chen had assured us that they carried. They did not. Not only didn't they, but at least four cashiers had never even heard of them. Well, they lost out on that sale. We'd picked up a few other things that we needed (that are easily available - and cheaper - in other stores) on the basis that "we were there anyway", and we put them all back.

I had already made the grocery order, so after our failed outing to Babies R Us, we went to pick up the groceries, and fortunately, the Farm Fresh had all the baby stuff we needed, even the vitamens, which were, for some strange reason, behind the counter at the pharmacy department. Or maybe it's not so strange. Baby vitamens are about $10 for a tiny little bottle. Anyway, we got home, put the groceries away, and attempted to administer vitamen drops to Jessica.

She's normally pretty good about taking medication. She makes some faces the first few times, but she usually doesn't spit it out.

She would NOT take the vitamens. I don't blame her. The stuff even smelled bad. And what's worse, the bad smell didn't go away. The bad smell lingered around the baby until I gave her a bath. I've got a call into the pediatrician to ask really, how necessary are these vitamens? And if I could use something else. Gerber makes vitamen drops that are supposed to be apple flavored. Anything's got to be better then these things.

So, that's what's up on the baby-front...

Recently, Jessica's been very interested in watching Kevin and I eat...

This is supposed to be a sign that it might be time to start the baby on solids (well, mushies, more like it, as baby "solid food" isn't solid.)

Displays curiosity about what you're eating. Your baby begins eyeing your steak or reaches for your forkful of mashed potatoes as it travels from plate to mouth.

Of course, they also recommend not starting solids until six months, although that seems to vary depending who you talk to.

Jessica's been fascinated with the whole eating process for about a month now. And Kevin and I aren't adverse to letting her smell or taste what we're eating. Just a taste, mind you. A dab of yohgurt or a drop of ice cream or a tiny bit of salad dressing. She usually spits it out and looks at us with the same hurt expression that the cats do when we offer them something. "That looked so much better when you were eating it!"

Last night the Brookses came over for dinner. I made Atkin's friendly soup (Cream of Rueban Soup), salad, and Jello for dessert. We put Jessica in her buzzy-seat so she could be in the kitchen with us while we ate.

She was watching Kevin with his Jello so raptly that he offered her a spoonful. "I didn't really expect her to take it," he protested.

But she did. The whole spoonful. And slucked eagerly on her romper front where a little bit of it had spilled. Fascinated, Kevin offered her a little bit more. Which she also promptly ate. And cried when he ran out.

Great. Our child's first solid food - strawberry jello.

The package says "9 months and up" but I figured what could it hurt... the worst that'll happen is she's not even vaguely interested...

Jess never took her eyes off the tv for the entire half hour....

Couldn't find this snapshot earlier, so here it is now...

First Halloween!

Posted by tisfan at 09:06 AM

People keep asking me for pictures of the baby and I am bad.

I have not yet started seriously working on the photo-album thing... but I will, eventually...

In the meanwhile, here's some more pictures for you.

Enjoy!

Here are some pictures... these'll have to hold you rabid baby fans until I can figure out this photo-album thingie that Jeremy and Liz are trying to help me with...

I meant to post this picture and forgot...

kawaiiiiiiiiiiii!