Dear baby boy,
Today is a day to celebrate! Today you turn 7 months old . . . and it's also Christmas! I honestly cannot believe you are already 7 months old. I know I say that the time is passing so quickly, but SEVEN MONTHS OLD? That sounds so old. You aren't even in the first half of your first year any more. Seven months is the land of real food and mobility, and how can it be that you are here already?
You woke up this morning (after sleeping allllll night! More on that later . . . ) and we cuddled together for longer than usual after nursing. One of my most favorite things about you is how cuddly you still are. After you eat, you lean into me sideways and rest your head on my chest, fiddling with my shirt straps or my fingers and cooing. I love these quiet moments we have together, and I like to think in those moments that you are just as blissed out as I am, that your heart is just as full as mine. We then headed into the living room, where you got a big play box as your present! Your eyes grew large and you immediately wanted to start moving the animals and beads on top of it along their wires and opening and closing the doors and tabs on the sides. You even grabbed on when we stood you up and stood along side it, playing for several minutes! You also got a new book that you appear to love to chew on.
Your sixth month was filled with busy. We came home from Thanksgiving in Dallas and you promptly developed croup. You sported a terrible barking cough that struck me to my very core. You had one really, really bad night where you just couldn't sleep, so your dad and I took turns holding you, rocking you, shushing you, taking you into the steam-filled bathroom with the hot shower running and then right out into the cold winter air to calm your lungs. True to form, my tough little man, you were over it in about 48 hours and back to squealing with delight and belly laughing and babbling. Every day you amaze me with your strength and your happy disposition.
After that we were right into December, and you did the most amazing thing. You slept ELEVEN hours straight. And not just once. You did it for almost three solid weeks! The first night I woke up at 5 a.m. and panicked, but there you were in the monitor, sleeping peacefully. Yay! We are heading to Dallas again to celebrate Christmas tonight, so I have my fingers crossed that three nights sleeping in the pack-and-play won't throw you totally off your new-found sleep awesomeness.
You are still little hit-or-miss with solid foods. We have figured out the main problem is that you want to feed yourself. You want nothing to do with the spoonfuls of food coming at you, but if left to your own devices, you are quite content to pick food up off the tray and put it in your own mouth. This makes it somewhat hard on us as far as food options go--though your first tooth is alllmmmmosssttt in, you can really chew up much of anything right now. Thank goodness you're still nursing like a champ and I'm not too worried about your solids intake just yet.
You continue to surprise and delight us with your physical strength and skills. You are starting to be able to mimic motions that we show you. When we wave at you, you wave back, wagging your arms all around (since you're not too good at refined movements just yet) and smiling. When I clap, you try to bring both hands together like mommy. You try so hard to pick up freckles off my skin or printed flowers and designs off the carpet. You can turn the wheels and dials on your toys when we show you how. And for the most exciting development, as of today, you can sit up on your own! I love watching how quickly you catch on to things, and I'm so excited to watch you grow and continue to delight and surprise us for years and years to come.
As brave as you are, as adventurous, as curious, as fearless, still, still, baby boy, still your favorite spot is in my arms. And you know what? It's my favorite spot for you, too.
Happy 7 months, big boy.
Love,
Mom
Sunday, December 25, 2011
Saturday, December 24, 2011
Merry Christmas!
I got all crafty today and made salt-dough ornaments. If you, too, feel the need to get crafty, please allow me to make the following suggestion: plan ahead and starting hitting the gym about a month or two before making these. Forget cardio--focus on weight lifting. You really need to bulk up in order to pin your six-month-old down, hand extended, fingers splayed, and pushed firmly into the dough. You think I'm kidding, but I'm not. Six-month-olds are freakishly strong. Oh, and just ignore the screaming. You're not hurting anything other than their pride.
Your welcome in advance.
Happy holidays from our family to yours.
Your welcome in advance.
Happy holidays from our family to yours.
Friday, December 16, 2011
Friday, December 9, 2011
Why We Work
TH read the post. The post about him and how I feel like his parenting has taken a dive with little man.
He came up to me while I was changing a diaper and told me that he'd read it. I wasn't all that surprised. He knows about this blog and he reads it from time to time. I'd never write something here that I would keep private from him, and in reality he and I have had talk after talk about the things I wrote about.
He said he was glad he'd read it. That it was a wakeup call that that night with little man, when he was crying and we didn't know why, would have just dropped off his radar, but that reading my take on it, my reaction to him, my thoughts, made him realize that maybe it shouldn't. Made him realize that it may have been a bigger deal than he was making of it, at least to me.
He said he agreed that a large part of the "change" in his parenting he thinks can be attributed to my own confidence this time around. It's not that he's worse, it's that before I really leaned on him to help me get through, and now that I'm so much steadier on my feet as a parent, I'm seeing faults in him that I didn't notice before. Relativity and all that.
And then we left it at that. I'm not sure we really reached a resolution other than "I read it and I'm glad I read it," but so many of our conversations don't really have resolutions these days. Either the issues are too big to solve in the three minutes we get to discuss them, or we're cut short by the needs and demands of our kids, or we choose to spend our time playing with and enjoying our children rather than hashing out uncomfortable topics with each other. Regardless, we left it at that.
And the next morning, my baby woke up with a nasty, barking cough. Thoughts of "whooping cough" spread through my mommy mind like wildfire. I had just been out of work for an entire week over Thanksgiving, and it was Monday morning, and I was panicking.
And TH said that he'd stay home. No guilt trip. No heavy sighs or looks of panic. Just calm, "I got this, honey, go to work." And I could feel the stress melt off me (at least, as much as it can when my 6-month-old sounds like a coughing, barking seal). He made an appointment with the pediatrician and I met them there and my baby had croup. We were warned that the night would be rough.
And it was. My daughter has never been sick like that before. She's always been a sleep machine, even when dealing with a random cold, which is really all she's ever had, so we've never done the "up all night" thing with her. I think I got maybe 3.5 hours of sleep that night, and TH got even less. Because he sent me to bed from 11-2 and tended to little man's crying misery. And when I got up I had to force him to go to bed to get rest. He hovered around us, asking what he could do to help. At 5 I finally crawled back into bed, and when little man woke about 30 minutes later, crying and coughing, TH was the one to get up and hold him while I slept another precious 30 minutes until my alarm went off.
It was the worst night we've ever had as parents. Being up all night with a sick, crying baby, sitting in steamy bathrooms, taking him into the cold night air, rubbing vicks, shushing him, holding him upright so that he can sleep, and then repeating it again for hours and hours hit us like a ton of bricks. And right through it all, I felt like I had a partner again, someone on whom I could lean and depend. Someone who was helping to make it easier rather than just adding to my stress.
My husband read the blog and stepped up his game. And that's why we work. We work because for the last 16 years, he's made me believe that I never have to settle. We work because, though he's far from perfect, he busts his ass to get as close as he possibly can. We work because I'll never give up on that fact, and because I have always recognized, from the moment I met him in high school, how rare and valuable that really is.
I'm a lucky woman.
He came up to me while I was changing a diaper and told me that he'd read it. I wasn't all that surprised. He knows about this blog and he reads it from time to time. I'd never write something here that I would keep private from him, and in reality he and I have had talk after talk about the things I wrote about.
He said he was glad he'd read it. That it was a wakeup call that that night with little man, when he was crying and we didn't know why, would have just dropped off his radar, but that reading my take on it, my reaction to him, my thoughts, made him realize that maybe it shouldn't. Made him realize that it may have been a bigger deal than he was making of it, at least to me.
He said he agreed that a large part of the "change" in his parenting he thinks can be attributed to my own confidence this time around. It's not that he's worse, it's that before I really leaned on him to help me get through, and now that I'm so much steadier on my feet as a parent, I'm seeing faults in him that I didn't notice before. Relativity and all that.
And then we left it at that. I'm not sure we really reached a resolution other than "I read it and I'm glad I read it," but so many of our conversations don't really have resolutions these days. Either the issues are too big to solve in the three minutes we get to discuss them, or we're cut short by the needs and demands of our kids, or we choose to spend our time playing with and enjoying our children rather than hashing out uncomfortable topics with each other. Regardless, we left it at that.
And the next morning, my baby woke up with a nasty, barking cough. Thoughts of "whooping cough" spread through my mommy mind like wildfire. I had just been out of work for an entire week over Thanksgiving, and it was Monday morning, and I was panicking.
And TH said that he'd stay home. No guilt trip. No heavy sighs or looks of panic. Just calm, "I got this, honey, go to work." And I could feel the stress melt off me (at least, as much as it can when my 6-month-old sounds like a coughing, barking seal). He made an appointment with the pediatrician and I met them there and my baby had croup. We were warned that the night would be rough.
And it was. My daughter has never been sick like that before. She's always been a sleep machine, even when dealing with a random cold, which is really all she's ever had, so we've never done the "up all night" thing with her. I think I got maybe 3.5 hours of sleep that night, and TH got even less. Because he sent me to bed from 11-2 and tended to little man's crying misery. And when I got up I had to force him to go to bed to get rest. He hovered around us, asking what he could do to help. At 5 I finally crawled back into bed, and when little man woke about 30 minutes later, crying and coughing, TH was the one to get up and hold him while I slept another precious 30 minutes until my alarm went off.
It was the worst night we've ever had as parents. Being up all night with a sick, crying baby, sitting in steamy bathrooms, taking him into the cold night air, rubbing vicks, shushing him, holding him upright so that he can sleep, and then repeating it again for hours and hours hit us like a ton of bricks. And right through it all, I felt like I had a partner again, someone on whom I could lean and depend. Someone who was helping to make it easier rather than just adding to my stress.
My husband read the blog and stepped up his game. And that's why we work. We work because for the last 16 years, he's made me believe that I never have to settle. We work because, though he's far from perfect, he busts his ass to get as close as he possibly can. We work because I'll never give up on that fact, and because I have always recognized, from the moment I met him in high school, how rare and valuable that really is.
I'm a lucky woman.
Friday, December 2, 2011
My Daughter is Beautiful and I Tell Her So Every Day.
I read this article a while back. At first blush, I was all, "Yeah! Girl Power! Love us for our minds!" But after a few days of realizing that my mind kept wandering back to the article, I finally acknowledged that something just wasn't sitting right.
The essence of the article is that while it seems to be everyone's default nature to gush over how cute little girls are, you should fight against this urge and avoid commenting on their appearance, instead talking to them only about their interests, what they're reading, etc.
Seems like a good idea, right?
As a mother of a little girl, I am all too aware of the dangers and pitfalls that lie ahead for my daughter. It seems like girls have to deal with 95% of all the self-esteem, depression, body image, and sexuality issues. (Maybe it's because nobody is really talking about how these things affect men, too. But I digress.) Hell, I AM a woman. I had to grow up and deal with all these things. Deal with never feeling skinny enough, or never knowing how to do my hair or makeup the right way, or not having the "in" sense of fashion it seemed like all the other skinnier, prettier girls had.
But here's where I diverge from the author of that article. I know my daughter has a lifetime of dealing with these issues ahead of her. A lifetime of every magazine photo making her feel inadequate.
So rather than ignoring the issue, why not tell her that she's beautiful? Why not build in her a sense of self-confidence from an incredibly young age? Why not leave no doubt in her mind as to how beautiful she is, so that when she starts to be confronted with these images that have the potential to make her feel like she doesn't measure up, she instead tosses her gorgeous brown curls, rolls her luminescent hazel eyes, and recognizes that feeling for what it is: a giant load of horse shit.
I tell my daughter that she's beautiful every.single.day. I use words like pretty and gorgeous. I want her to know without a shadow of a doubt that she is the most beautiful thing I've ever seen in my life.
And you know what? I also tell her how smart she is. Every.single.day. How funny she is. How friendly and sweet she is. What a good sharer she is. How strong she is. How brave she is. How impressive she is with everything that she says and does and thinks.
None of these are mutually exclusive. You don't have to pick one of these. And really, what a disservice you are doing to you own child if you do. Children, daughters, aren't single faceted. They deserve to develop a totally confident sense of their whole self--their mind, their spirit, and their body.
So if you have a daughter, please make sure she knows just how beautiful she really is.
The essence of the article is that while it seems to be everyone's default nature to gush over how cute little girls are, you should fight against this urge and avoid commenting on their appearance, instead talking to them only about their interests, what they're reading, etc.
Seems like a good idea, right?
As a mother of a little girl, I am all too aware of the dangers and pitfalls that lie ahead for my daughter. It seems like girls have to deal with 95% of all the self-esteem, depression, body image, and sexuality issues. (Maybe it's because nobody is really talking about how these things affect men, too. But I digress.) Hell, I AM a woman. I had to grow up and deal with all these things. Deal with never feeling skinny enough, or never knowing how to do my hair or makeup the right way, or not having the "in" sense of fashion it seemed like all the other skinnier, prettier girls had.
But here's where I diverge from the author of that article. I know my daughter has a lifetime of dealing with these issues ahead of her. A lifetime of every magazine photo making her feel inadequate.
So rather than ignoring the issue, why not tell her that she's beautiful? Why not build in her a sense of self-confidence from an incredibly young age? Why not leave no doubt in her mind as to how beautiful she is, so that when she starts to be confronted with these images that have the potential to make her feel like she doesn't measure up, she instead tosses her gorgeous brown curls, rolls her luminescent hazel eyes, and recognizes that feeling for what it is: a giant load of horse shit.
I tell my daughter that she's beautiful every.single.day. I use words like pretty and gorgeous. I want her to know without a shadow of a doubt that she is the most beautiful thing I've ever seen in my life.
And you know what? I also tell her how smart she is. Every.single.day. How funny she is. How friendly and sweet she is. What a good sharer she is. How strong she is. How brave she is. How impressive she is with everything that she says and does and thinks.
None of these are mutually exclusive. You don't have to pick one of these. And really, what a disservice you are doing to you own child if you do. Children, daughters, aren't single faceted. They deserve to develop a totally confident sense of their whole self--their mind, their spirit, and their body.
So if you have a daughter, please make sure she knows just how beautiful she really is.
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