12 months and counting, continued

the sixth month
~daddy dates~ i'm just going to be blunt. leaving blake alone with marcus worried me. from day one, i had been b's sole caregiver, forever at his disposal. and on the off chance that i wasn't the one "care-giving," i was looming in the background, micro-managing. it's not that i was worried that marcus couldn't handle blake or figure things out. i just really felt like i knew what he needed, when he needed it. giving up that control was almost beyond my control. i can't really explain it. but it happened. daily. much to marc's annoyance, i'm positive. in the first five months, i had only left the two of them alone for a few hours on two occasions. for both, blake cried for a ridiculous portion of the time, leaving dad and baby incredibly frustrated with one another. (now that i am reflecting on this, it seems clear to me that this only occurred because i was always taking over at home instead of letting marc figure it out! shaking my head again.) needless to say, i had a fear of going out for more than 30 minutes at a time. so we lived that way. but when the new year rolled around, i was in desperate need of a haircut, some new clothes that would actually fit, and a some overdue molly time. and by molly time, i meant a long, consecutive amount. marcus was incredibly understanding of all of this, somewhat to my amazement. and so we made a plan.... marcus and blake would drop me off at the mall in order to meet said needs. meanwhile, they would make a long drive out to bass pro and enjoy a little male bonding. :) we planned according to blake napping on the car ride and prepared his future bottles and diaper bag. if it wasn't for the "plan," who knows how much i could have actually enjoyed myself away from them. but since we did have one, i set in my heart that i was not going to micro-manage from my cell phone once they dropped me off. if marcus needed me, he would ask. and he never did. before long, i was basking in the solitude of my day. after five glorious hours alone, i headed to the exit. when the boys pulled up, i half expected to hear screaming from the back seat and be snapped back to reality. but quite the opposite. both were practically glowing. it was then that it hit me that this day away was not just for me, it was for all of us. giving them room to learn about and from one another proved to be a priceless experience. he did go on to tell me the details of their afternoon together, and i actually felt a great deal of pride in my boys. so capable! who knew? :) nowadays, one of my most favorite things is hearing about moments from daddy/blake days. they are the kind of precious moments that all three of us can cherish.
~free "classes"~ in december, some good friends invited us to a christmas sing-along for families. i was intrigued, because it took place in the music classroom of their daughter, who was just over a year old. a baby music class! i went fully expecting to be enlightened about how these people can actually teach babies! of course, it was great to see our friends, and the experience was cheery and spirited, but by the time it was over, i was feeling enlightened in a totally different sense. for years i had been hearing about baby classes...swim lessons, gym, yoga, sign language, music.....the list goes on. it's enough to leave parents stressed about what their child is potentially missing out on by not attending this long list by the time they're three months old. but the gift of this classroom experience was that i left saying what everyone, deep down, already knows......this is something i can do at home. for free. sure, i wanted blake to have experience with music and rhythm and motion and rhymes....but would it ruin him if the music came from pandora? the rhythm was from bouncing on my lap? the motion and rhymes were from things like patty-cake? of course not. i left the music classroom with the gift of letting myself off the hook. would i be doing my child a disservice by preventing him from going to these kinds of classes? up until this point, i was pretty nervous about the prospect of this. and pretty nervous about broaching the subject with my penny-pinching husband. but there are other ways. my mom didn't take me to any baby classes. she took me to the library every week. and, lo and behold, i was reading before i went to kindergarten. she let me wear floaties until i was 4 and then started proper swim lessons. and, miracle of miracles, i was on a swim team for the next 7 years. i didn't touch a musical instrument until i started piano lessons at 5, yet somehow i managed to learn the skill. my mom didn't prep me with infant-toddler classes. she just did what every great parent innately does...she gave me experiences. and life is often a better teacher than any class will ever be. so i went home that day, put on my teacher hat, and started planning a life of experiences for blake. cds, radio and impromptu a cappella singing; check. daily reading and weekly library story time; check. park visits, sand box digging, playing chase, and homemade obstacles courses; check. baby sign language books, websites, dvds, and a little old-fashioned perseverance; check. bouncing in the swimming pool and blowing bubbles in the bath tub; check. the reality is, the older he gets, the more creative i become and the more fun we have. :) and all for the price of.....zero.

(disclaimer: while i do see the value of baby classes for child socialization and [more likely] parent socialization, i am a tight-wad. so there's your real reason.)

the seventh month
~becoming blake~ it is right about this time that we began to really meet blake. by this i mean that we started to see tiny glimmers of a personality coming out. he was no longer a little butterball blob of skin, but was slowly showing intrigue, sadness, and frustration in his eyes. his eyebrows became a lot more active. he giggled at silly noises or faces, and expressed curiosity with new textures, foods, objects. he tried to mimic us. he started to make his preferences known. a real individual was starting to take shape. two things of note as this change was occurring....first, a recurring statement in our house had always been, "this is a little human!" we both said it as though we had to remind ourselves, out loud, that he was actually a real person. babies seem deceivingly similar to pets the first several months. they don't react to you much, but you sure better react to them. you kind of just feed them and clean up after them and make sure they have a place to sleep. but for the first time, we found our "little human" revealing himself to us, without having to remind ourselves. there was a person in there! second, we had kind of been mulling over the name blake for the first few months....we weren't second guessing it, but kind of wondering if he really seemed like a "blake." in all honesty, it was hard to tell. i mean, what is a blake anyway? my mom then made the valid point that our precious baby would become blake to us. all prior notions of what other blakes were and looked like would be overshadowed by who our blake evolved into. she couldn't have been more right. thinking about who he is now, with all of his personality just bubbling out of him, there is no mistaking that he is blake. our blake. exactly the blake he is supposed to be.
~blame it on teething~ our friends had a baby about a week before we did. it has been fabulous to "compare notes" with them and share stories as our boys grow older. when their son started teething at three months, i prepared myself for blake starting soon. i knew that he might get cranky or restless or drooly or snotty. but since he had never teethed before, i didn't know what combination to expect from him. so when he was about three and a half months, i began to look for signs of emerging teeth. if he had an off night, i felt pity for him....maybe he was teething. let's slap on some orajel and rock for a little longer. if he was cranky for an afternoon.....maybe he was teething. let's get out the chew toys from the freezer. if he seemed exceptionally drooly (which was literally every day).....maybe he was teething. let's bust out the drool bibs and gum stimulator. this was a weekly occurrence. little did i know that he would not bud his first tooth until he was nine months old. yes, that's right. i spent over five months looking for teething solutions when they had absolutely no relevance. it seems even more silly when i realized that he isn't that "bad" of a teether anyhow. when i actually saw the first tiny tooth just starting to crater its way up, he had only one "rough" afternoon. the rest was cake. not a care in the world. he now has 7 teeth and you would never know that teething is even an issue for babies. mr. carefree. i'm counting myself blessed on this one.

the eighth month
~he won't remember~ during the first year, i had been feverishly trying to capture every "first" that blake experienced. it is amazing to think about how i get to witness everything this tiny human sees and does for the first time. everything is new. i remember when he was only a month or two, he would be so captivated and calmed by being outside. and it dawned on me, everything is so bright and big and colorful and....new. what must it be like to have never done or seen anything and then be suddenly overwhelmed by everything? surely you don't remember. nor can i. which i suppose is most of the joy of having children: seeing things through them because we have no possible way of remembering it all. and neither will they. which leads me to this story....
the rodeo was in town. marcus' family had recently given blake a cowboy hat, and i was trying to coordinate our schedule to include a trip to reliant...mostly just get a picture at his "first rodeo." as the weeks passed and the rodeo started coming to a close, i began to worry that we weren't going to make it there at all. i was lamenting this fact to my mom when she said, "why? he won't remember it anyway." well what a fine point. why does everything we do for our children when they're babies seem to be self-indulgent? we dress them up in veritable costumes, drag them all over the place, and take a bajillion pictures of them sitting next to something cute....all for our own enjoyment. i practically do it every day. well, maybe not the dressing up part, but the pictures and places can be relentless. but my (always) wise mother really put things into perspective. why not save some of his "firsts" for when he can actually enjoy and remember them himself? in the thousands of "new" experiences he is going to have in his life, there are so few that he will remember. by the time he's old enough to remember how much fun he has playing in the sprinkler, he will have been doing it for years. by the time he remembers going to the children's museum, he will have been there a dozen times. so yes, i do think the bigger experiences are the ones well worth waiting for. i would love for him to remember his first rodeo. remember the cows scrambling around, remember the smells of greasy carnival food, remember riding on his dad's shoulders so he can see the horses over the fence....rather than just seeing that mom took a picture of him wearing a cowboy hat and sitting next to a hay bale when he was 7 months old, just so she could remember. don't get me wrong. i'll keep taking the pictures. but i'm willing to wait for the memory-making moments too. it'll be worth it. thanks, mom :)

the ninth month
~taking off~ marcus will hate me for admitting this, but he used to be a great baby-comparer. we knew all of about three babies outside of blake, but every one of them seemed to be faster, smarter, more advanced when it came to milestones. meanwhile, our little boy was just kind of stuck. he had no teeth. he couldn't crawl. he didn't talk. he was just barely starting to have a day when he didn't spit up. it was a dreaded waiting game for a father. is my boy going to be able to keep up? i tried my best to remind him that 1) all babies develop differently. 2) blake was a month early, so he might be a little behind in some things. 3) he had only been in the outside world for 8 months. a pinprick of time. learning motor/language/cognitive skills from scratch takes a lot of effort. and practice.....lots of practice. so the two of us assumed roles of coach and cheerleader. with daily reminders that those roles required a large dose of patience. he would get it when he was ready. and he would get it. i think it was only when marcus came with us to blake's monthly checkup and the doctor explained the normal window for crawling and walking, that he finally understood. no amount of pushing for it would help. it will happen eventually. and it did, of course. this month was the beginning of it all. first rocking on his hands and knees. then inching. then crawling. then cruising. then standing. then walking. then running. and now there's no stopping him. oh, marcus. be careful what you wish for. :)

the tenth month
~the uninterrupted meal~ as blake became more mobile and we transitioned him more and more to solid foods, i made a sad discovery. my ability to sit down and enjoy a meal from start to finish was rapidly disappearing, like a great vanishing act from a magician, never to be seen again. for starters, preparing 5 mini meals for a mini person each day takes time. so my breakfast and lunch suddenly started to happen in the midst of preparing/feeding/helping him eat/cleaning up. it is a grab-what-you-can, when-you-can. for dinner, i tried a different approach. i am a firm believer in family dinners around the table. so i figured, why not start now? that way it will always just be. i envisioned it going something like this: i prepare the meal. i announce that it is ready. we all fix our plates. we sit down in unison. we converse lightly as we enjoy the food (blake babble included). we clear the table and clean up. sigh. in a perfect world, i guess. around this month, it started to go something a little bit more like this: i get what i need out of the pantry and fridge for dinner. i begin to THINK about preparing the meal and then blake needs a snack. after his snack, he bangs on the pantry door and wants more of something else. he then clambers at my leg(s) and moans for me to pick him up the entire time i am trying to stir a pot and chop an onion and clean up raw chicken juice. then he's thirsty. i manage to distract him for five seconds with a piece of wax paper and scramble to finish the vegetables before he notices i've walked two feet from him. when i turn around, he's digging in the ALWAYS OFF LIMITS trash can and i have to whisk him away, screaming, before he eats potato peels or throws his stuffed animal on top of an empty tomato can. when i finally have everything thrown together an hour and half later, i summon for marcus. he makes his plate. i start making mine and blake's. b instantly needs a diaper change. when we return, marcus is on his last bite. blake and i begin our meal, but now he's only interested in rubbing greasy fingers all over his face and hair. he eats four bites of random chunks and then signs "all done." meanwhile, i am cramming my own bites in between scooping corn off the floor, holding his plate down, getting him more water, getting myself a napkin, and squishing potato out of his nose. i attempt to clean him up and ignore the horror on the ground below while he gets down to play in the living room. this human parasite from the kitchen earlier now wants nothing to do with me. by now i also have indigestion and barely want the rest of my food. i take a deep breath and try to finish my plate at the table alone before heading to the kitchen to wash up. yes, the days of uninterrupted meals are long gone. i know they'll get better as he gets older, but for now i'm riding the waves of hurricane dinnertime. the messy cleanup is perhaps the worst part, but i have become best friends with my dust buster. i never knew that a tiny vacuum could bring me such joy. thank you, charlotte gilder, for the wedding gift that keeps on giving!

the eleventh month
~my little janitor~ speaking of vacuums, i think my child might be destined to become a custodian. i'm sure it is because he sees me cleaning things around the house, but he has an absolute fascination for cleaning tools. with each passing month, i catch him more and more engaged in janitorial tasks. he loves to dive into piles of laundry, both dirty and clean. he's great at loading the dryer....and unloading the dishwasher. trash cans are like a magnet. whenever i have the swiffer out, he has to give it a try. he growls at the vacuum cleaners in the closet and implores me to turn them on. he can dust with the best of them. we've even caught him using the plunger in the toilet! it's admirable really. i wish i had the same zeal for cleaning. he's going to be one of those kids who begs for chores, i have a feeling. maybe i need to get him a little bucket of cleaning supplies for his next birthday. he'd love it.
~the rear-view mirror~ one day i was thinking about what baby items i would definitely recommend to a first-time mom. a few things came up here and there, but all i could really focus on was my absolute favorite....the car mirror. for those unfamiliar, it is a mirror you place on a back seat headrest so that you can look in your rear-view mirror and still see your tiny tot in his/her rear-facing car seat. for the first many months, this item proved to be invaluable in determining whether he was catching a nap or not. but the older he got, the more i realized what a joy the mirror is. it is a chance for me to stare at my child when he is totally unaware. i catch the delight on his face whenever a favorite song starts up. i remember watching him discover how to use his munchkin snack catcher all by himself for the first time. he figured out how to blow raspberries in that mirror. i see him chasing shadows when we drive down a tree-lined street. i love his little eyes darting all around when i talk to him as he looks for my voice. many times we'll play "what does the _____ say?" and i can stare at him while he raises his elephant trunk or crinkles up his duck nose. recently, i captured him in a situation that truly tickled me. it was perfectly silent, and he suddenly started giggling, squealing, and raising his hands high up into the air over and over. maybe it was merely dust particles streaming in the sunlight through the window....but i'd like to think he was talking to angels :) i guess what i love most about the mirror is that he is forced to sit still. he loves the car (thankfully!) and it is truly the only time he is in one place for an extended period of time....which gives me many, many minutes to just gaze and enjoy the face of my very own angel. my heaven on earth.

twelve months old
well. we made it to a year. everyone in the family kept saying, "it went so fast!" but i don't feel the same way. i literally spent almost every second of that first year with blake. i saw and did everything he did. so i caught every passing moment and cherished it. it seemed exactly as fast as it was supposed to be. just life, in real time. i am so blessed to be able to stay home with him and to live each day as his mom. we are a unit. a unit i have always longed to be a part of. God knew what he was doing when he gave me this particular baby in this particular year of my life. it has been an incredible beginning to an incredible journey to come.

12 months and counting...

if you haven't noticed by now, i'm a big fan of saving up months' worth of information and then cramming all into one blog (read procrastinating). so, here is a "summary" of my days in this first year as a mother. they are just a taste of the triumphs and shortcomings that scattered their way into my forever altered daily life. no book, website, advice, or planning can prepare you for the day-in, day-out journey of motherhood, and these are the lessons i learned through trial by fire. don't judge me too harshly...

the first month
~worry~ i am not sure how i neglected to prepare my brain for this. however, one does not spend the days of pregnancy thinking about how much worry is going to accompany the sweet bundle of joy you have eagerly been waiting to deliver for 9 plus months. to be honest, the level of worry really quite shocked me. i guess the magnitude of responsibility just overwhelms you once they arrive. every single moment of their lives depend on YOU. i couldn't help but worry if he was uncomfortable or in pain or eating enough or growing properly. every peep or squeak or snort made me think something must be terribly wrong. granted, we did have a baby who spent the first day of his life intubated because he couldn't breathe efficiently. that kind of beginning doesn't exactly put your mind at ease when it sounded like he ceased to exhale. overall, i think the mother bear instinct to protect and nurture, no matter what the cost, truly consumes you from the moment they come out....and the sum total of so much desire and willingness to give them your absolute best is just a whole lot of worry. so it begins....
~ breastfeeding~ i will be the first to admit that i had a great misunderstanding about the ease of breastfeeding before i tried it myself. i was one of the great critics of women who gave it up because it was "too hard." after all, it's nature's way....it should be simple, right? simple, yes. easy, no. the concept is what is simple: your baby has the means to alert you when hungry for food. you have the means to provide said food. HOW-EV-ER, there is a multitude of learning that goes into perfecting this relationship. one of my lactation consultants put it this way, "the first six to eight weeks, you are teaching your baby how to eat." say what?! i thought they were supposed to know how to eat! that's what they are "naturally" born to do! but she was right. there is an art to positioning them just so, to teaching them how to latch, to making them drink when they would rather sleep, to keeping them satisfied. it is a dance that had to be rehearsed over and over and over. it. is. work. i distinctly remember the moment when all of the work finally paid off. the first time i plunked blake down in my lap and he knew just what to do and how to do it with minimal assistance from me, i couldn't help but beam. it just seemed so....easy. ;)

the second month
~sickness~ every time you feel like you're starting to get the hang things in the parenting world, something is bound to come and bring you to your knees. my first (of many) experience of this nature came in the form of a little something called gastroenteritis. for those not privy to webMD terminology, that's stomach virus. stomach virus attacking a helpless, one month old baby. stomach virus that lasts for 13 exhausting days. we've all had one of these in our lifetime. it tears up your insides and knocks you down. i wouldn't wish a tummy bug on anyone, least of all my newborn child! it is pure torture watching a baby (MY baby) clenching his tiny body in half with stomach cramps every few hours. i remember hearing him cry after a few days in and his cry had changed to this sad, sad hoarse little cry. HEARTBREAKING! he slept far more than normal (and that's saying something for a four week old). he snuggled constantly (sniff). he blew through diapers. and this is where i add salt to the bleeding wound...before this episode, i had not been using diaper cream at all. i guess in my new mother head, diaper cream was only needed if there was a problem. it never occurred to me to use it for prevention. and because of the now caustic nature of his diapers, and the constant changing/wiping every half hour, and the lack of preventative measures.....this precious, undeserving child developed a horrendous rash, on top of his already ailing body. how do you forgive yourself for something like that? how?? as i sit here typing this, i am shaking my head at the naivete of this bad mother moment...only to realize that i will be humbled by experiences far more "stupid" a hundred more times before this life is over. my poor child.
~swaddling~ everyone knows that babies like to be swaddled. i knew it too. i had gotten those velcro-wrap swaddles and dozens of receiving blankets before he was born. i was armed and ready. but when he came home, for some reason i thought he wouldn't like it. here was my (completely ridiculous, new mother) reasoning: in all of his ultrasounds, his hands had been up by his face. in the hospital for the first week, he had slept on his side with his hands by his face. thus, i deduced that he liked to sleep with his hands free. (here i am yelling to my old self, "he doesn't know what he 'likes!' he's been living in a watery cocoon for 9 months!") anyways, i recall one sleepless night, early on, when he kept waking himself up with his hands. i finally broke out the velcro-y swaddle and attempted to swaddle him...loosely enough so that his hands could still stick out, mind you. new mothers are brain-dead. what good was that going to do? so, after re-swaddling him this way three times in a row, i resolved to the fact that he just didn't want to be swaddled. thus continued weeks of very little sleep because i ended up with him on my chest or next to me in the bed. and we all know that you only half-sleep this way because you are terrified you're going to drop them off the side of the bed or roll over and crush them. zombie level commence. until one night, i had had it. i was going to swaddle him, arms down, no matter how much he protested. he cried for all of 30 seconds, while i was pinning his arms down and wrapping him up. and then he slept. soundly. revelation. i am ashamed to admit that it took another month before i realized i could (and should) swaddle him like this for naps during the day as well. i spent weeks with him either tucked in my moby wrap or not napping at all which made for one cranky baby (and often, momma). jot another one down in the what-not-to-do-with-the-next-baby category.
~the crib~ in the midst of all this swaddling nonsense, and when b was about 6 weeks old, i came to another realization. blake needed to be in his own room. he had spent the first month and a half in the napper next to our bed. but i was never going to get much sleep if he was in the same room with me. every twitch he made woke me up. plus, i no longer felt like i had a husband. marcus had taken to sleeping on the floor, in another room, or on the floor in another room most every night to accommodate the mother and child nursing and sleeping situation. blake and i practically lived in that master bedroom. it was becoming suffocating. i was also wondering what the point of having a baby monitor and an entire nursery was if we weren't going to use them. so i emailed marcus at work and announced the move. i charged up the monitor, toted the napper downstairs, and put the rocking chair back in blake's room. operation big boy crib was a success. a small part of my normal self started to creep back in that night. the self i had long forgotten was in there. baby steps.

the third month
~be prepared~ taking blake to the grocery store/on errands with me was a regular occurrence. his diaper bag was always stocked with pacifiers, diapers, gas drops, spit-up rags, clothes, you name it. i actually loved going out with him. i could pretty much guarantee that he would fall asleep on the car ride or shortly after being in the shopping cart. he was ever the peaceful, sleeping baby that people peered at and cooed over. so one afternoon, i took marcus' truck to walmart to get the oil changed and decided to do some major grocery shopping while i waited. i had chosen not to pack a bottle for this particular trip, because we rarely were away from home long enough to make it to the next cycle of feeding, and i didn't anticipate this trip being any different. so we left the truck, loaded up in the cart, and he fell asleep. i went about my merry way, casually strolling up and down the aisles (grocery shopping is therapeutic for me, by the way). before i knew it, i had a cart laden with the entire food section and a baby waking up from his nap. and then he started whimpering. i tried the paci. not what he wanted. i decided to try changing his diaper. still crying. then i decided to just nurse him, standing in the bathroom. one employee came into the restroom and, when she saw us, notified me that there was a family restroom next door. (what is it with people and breastfeeding?!) anyways, he wasn't satisfied with the nursing. i thought it might tide him over, but it actually made him more upset. so i had no choice but to hurry through the check-out line. but it's pretty difficult to "hurry" when your cart is overflowing....and you still have to pick up your truck from the oil center. needless to say, my "always peaceful" baby was screaming bloody murder for the entire check-out process. i was mortified. i think everyone around me felt sorry for me, but i couldn't help but think they were annoyed and thinking all kinds of things about my terrible parenting skills. the cashiers on either side and the people behind me were offering up suggestions to calm him down. i knew what he wanted though. after 30 grueling minutes (it was probably more like 3) , i finally decided to just take him out of his seat, slather on some hand sanitizer, and stick my finger in his mouth. it worked. for as long as i could make it work, it worked. then he cried on the way back to the automotive department and while i was loading up the groceries. for some reason, he decided not to cry on the way home, but that was okay with me. poor starving baby. sigh. we never left the house without formula again. i also have never had a screaming baby in public again. lesson learned.

the fourth month
~just let it happen~ if you are a first-time mom and a control freak like me, you are bound to keep a daily log of your child's eating, pooping, and sleeping habits. it makes you feel like you have some semblance of control, when there really is absolutely none. so i did it. i mapped out his dirty diapers, wet diapers, nursing minutes, bottle ounces, nap periods, and night sleep from day one. i will say that i did drop the diaper count after about 2 weeks. the feeding chart dropped off around 3 months. but the sleep chart i kept. perhaps because it is what i had the least control over but wanted the most control over. i tried looking for patterns in his sleep habits by shading in boxes of representative time (there are no patterns, just fyi). i wrote wake times and sleep times and re-wake and re-sleep times. i literally had a memo sheet in my cell phone that i updated every 30 minutes or so. psycho. HOWEVER.....i do remember waking up one day during this month of his life and telling myself, "this is so unnecessary. stop." and i did. holy, amazing liberation. did you know that when a baby wants to sleep, he gives you signs? and when a baby wants to wake up, he does? i did. i just couldn't see the forest for the charts. in hindsight, it seems like SUCH a wasted effort. but then, parenting seems to be an ongoing game of hindsight. i'm learning, people.....
~make it work~ nail clipping. what a dreaded parent obligation. i say this because it is literally like trying to perform microsurgery on the wing of a conscious hummingbird. in the beginning, the manuals and websites all told me to "do it while they're asleep." this is an absolute joke. in the beginning, i didn't dare touch him if he was asleep! and/or i was trying to sleep myself! also, if you will remember, my child had to be swaddled for every sleeping occasion once we got past those first few weeks. so how are you supposed to clip nails that are tucked inside a blanket?? my next choice was to try and clip them while he was nursing. he was calm, distracted, still. seemed ideal. but i could only seem to manage balancing him/clipping when he was on the left and my right hand was free. it just never worked with the reverse. so i was left with a baby with daggers on one hand and mere cuticles on the other. i needed a solution. badly. enter streaming digital media. up until this point, i had really tried to not let my child see the television. it put him into a trance. it overstimulated his senses. but all of a sudden, i connected the dots. this trance could be just the ticket for nail clipping! i looked up some baby einstein videos on youtube and plugged blake in. the response was instant. limp arms, wide eyes, totally and utterly distracted. i clipped to my heart's content. it was so simple! to this day, i still clip his nails this way....because it works! it is the most relaxing part of our week sometimes :)

the fifth month
~spit-up~ babies barf. it's a known fact. mine just happened to be the kind that barfed large volumes and all day long. when he first started to really spit-up in the first month, i looked up how long it was supposed to last...one day of cleaning up huge puddles of milk spew was enough to have me searching for an end. the all-knowing internet specified that spitting up peaks at four months. so we had no choice but to wait patiently (sort of) for four months to arrive. this means we dealt with an increasing quantity of regurgitation for four months and then, somehow, expected it to just stop. yeah right. re-read above and you'll notice that it says PEAKS at four months. if you look at any mountain peak, it does not merely "drop off" on the other side. there is a downward slope, just as steep as the upward slope. and so we had no choice but to wait patiently (ha!) for the rest of the "down" months to pass. he would soak through multiple receiving blankets every day. i'd like to say that you get used to it, but you really are just wishing every day that this would be his last day of spitting up. i finally asked our pediatrician when he thought blake would stop. he laughed (yes, laughed out loud) and said, "usually when they can fully sit up on their own or support their torso upright consistently." he was right. the majority of the spitting up lasted until he was about 8 months....which is when he started sitting without ever tumbling over. it definitely did taper down as those last 4 months went on, but it was a lonnnnng time coming. i have the stained clothes, carpet, and furniture to prove it.
~the sleepeasy solution~ i needed sleep. or i at least needed more consistent sleep. it's hard not knowing when your human "alarm clock" is going to go off each night/morning. it's even harder being the sole person who can put said alarm clock back to sleep. blake required a certain holding and walking routine in order to be put down in his crib. if i was lucky, it would last 20 minutes. if i was unlucky, it would take up to an hour of walking, setting down, picking up, walking before he would stay asleep in his crib. and please remember that babies don't just need to go to sleep once a day. so why, you ask, would i torture myself with this type of time-stealing routine for nearly five months? here is my reasoning...everything (and i mean everything) says that letting a baby cry him/herself to sleep is only appropriate once they reach four months of age. i KNOW that there are tons of parents out there who do it at 2 weeks old or whatever, but for me, i was waiting for the four month mark, come hell or high water. it just seemed developmentally appropriate to me. so i waited. and then, since he was born a month early, i waited four weeks longer, just for good measure. i wanted to be absolutely sure i was committed to the cry-it-out thing. consistency is key (for all parenting purposes, really), and i didn't want to be second guessing myself. so on the weekend before his 5 month birthday, i began a process called the sleepeasy solution. it is a step-by-step guide about how/when your child should sleep. and it is, let's just say, incredible. i don't need to go into the details of the book to sell you on it. i will simply tell you the results: 12 hours of sleep every night for 8 months and counting. plus two 90 minute naps per day like clockwork. heaven on earth? i think so. this baby has been trained! and to tell you the truth, those first several months of cuddling and rocking him to sleep are equally as priceless. i'll never get those moments back again. i think this finally counts as one of my triumphs in parenting. yay, me :)

halfway done. more to come...

movin on...sort of...

when we first packed up our little apartment in houston and moved to st. louis in 2009, i was admittedly charmed. while visiting in the months prior to moving, i had seen the ruddy old brick buildings of downtown, the green "countryside" not 20 minutes from the city and the colossal arch along the mississippi. these quaint "differences" seemed to beckon us to start the next chapter of our life together there. so we did. and as we drove away from st. louis one last time this past december, i couldn't help but feel a piece of my heart tear off just a little and stay behind. i had no idea what intrigue and fulfillment we would discover there. it was a magical place. for so many reasons. enough reasons that i feel compelled to share just a fragment of the joy it shared with us. maybe these will beckon you to start your next adventure there too...

four seasons: for people who are familiar with 4 seasons, this might not sound like that big of a deal. but coming from houston, where the two "seasons" are either hot and muggy or warm and muggy, st. louis was a virtual paradise.
i arrived nearly 3 months after marcus. he began work in march, while i finished up my school year in houston. when i arrived in illinois at the dawn of summer, i couldn't contain myself. it was gorgeous. green everywhere. sunny. breezy. just the right temperature of "warm" during the day. i was in heaven. i would take walks in the late morning without breaking a sweat, and at night we would sit outside and stare at the stars, smell the fresh cut grass and wallow in the sheer perfection of a calm night. when summer started to fade into fall, there was no mistaking it. gold, red, auburn, rust, yellow. massive clusters of trees would speckle themselves with autumn. crisp air and crisp leaves. sweater weather, i like to call it. halloween and thanksgiving now seemed to exist more than ever before. gradually, the leaves fell. on my drive to work each day, i could see the trees slowly shave down until they were bare....in the most naked, branchy, wintery sort of way. when the first snow came and dusted every limb, i felt like i was living in a postcard. and truly...bundling up in a winter coat and gloves and scarf because i actually NEEDED them was quite refreshing. drinking hot chocolate made sense. keeping an ice scraper in the glove compartment was finally worth it. boots were no longer just trendy footwear. real, authentic winter. and just as the cold would be about to overstay its welcome, you would catch a glimpse of the tiniest green buds on those long naked trees. you could literally watch them blossom with each passing day, until suddenly, all was green again. such visions of color and raw nature flood your mind looking around that place. sigh. it really was quite perfect.....
now, i won't lie. not every day was glorious. the second summer we were there, many a day was disgustingly hot and sticky. and the winter months could certainly whip up a hellish layer of ice and a relentless, frigid wind. but the point is, there was a distinction. there was enjoyment and anticipation of four different periods in the year. there is something good for your soul to see things cycle around you....like all is right with the world. and it really feels "right" there. i just may miss the seasons the most of all...

birds: maybe it's because there is nothing but concrete for 1000 miles in all directions in houston, or because the only bird that seems to exist is the ugly black crow, but i rarely remember seeing many birds in all my years of living there. which is a pity. take it from a lady who has a bird decoration of some sort in nearly every room of her house....birds are fascinating. so imagine my delight to see a straight menagerie of these feathered creatures virtually everywhere in st. louis. top sightings on the list:
~ robins ~ the street leading up to our neighborhood was rife with them. i'm talking the massive, full-red-breasted, take-a-dangling-worm-to-your baby, robins. one afternoon in the spring, i found a perfectly crafted nest perched on an eye-level ledge of our house. inside were three blue eggs. i felt like a kindergartener, i was so excited. several days later, i remembered the nest and returned to find three tiny, matted babies squeaking for their mother. i soon noticed her flying low back and forth across the adjacent lot, watching my every move. within a few days, the nest was empty. then i spotted two tiny bird bodies plopped in the yard. the third baby and the mother were nowhere to be found. i don't know exactly what happened, but i felt a little sad that my "class pets" were no more.
~ cardinals ~ how appropriate, right? i always thought they almost seemed like a cartoon character that doesn't really exist until i had several cross my path at some point or another. they really are beautiful. nothing cartoonish about them.
~ swallows ~ my experience with this species is not so appreciated. do not be fooled by their tiny size and delicate, wispy, forked tails. swallows are ridiculously territorial. RIDICULOUSLY. maybe it's because they're on the smaller side, they feel like they need to put up a bigger fight??? all i know is, on several occasions, i was terrified to go out of my front door or turn a certain corner during a neighborhood walk on account of their nest building location choices. if you happen to intrude within the 20 yard radius of their little "project," commence ear-piercing squawks and dive bombing. i am not exaggerating. and they work in packs! so it's not just one little birdie you're defending your life against, it's five! marcus had to use a pickaxe to crumble down the mud-caked home they were constructing on our porch. twice. and when that did not dissuade them, he had to resort to hosing it down until every last morsel of dirt was gone. i had nightmares, i tell you.
~ geese ~ because we lived in a fairly newer neighborhood with many vacant, grassy lots, bird flocks found our fields to be great rest stops on long journeys. several times each fall and spring, we would find dozens of huge, beautiful, black-necked geese settled in the open spaces, digging at the ground with their bills. it came to be a regular sight in the mornings or late afternoons. one of my favorite moments was on one afternoon as i was finishing up a run. i entered our neighborhood and a small flock had just taken off from the corner lot. their massive wings, flapping in unison, created such a downward thrust just above my head that i actually felt the "wind" through my hair and on my shoulders. it felt like i was a part of them. very neat.
~ starlings ~ we all know that birds migrate south for the winter. you typically picture it as far off v-shapes in the sky, making their way to hang with the flamingos in florida. but when the cool air of fall came our first year there, i was shocked and amazed at the reality of starling flock migration. imagine what a swarm of bees might look like. then double it. no wait. multiply it by 1000 until they are so numbered that they blend into one dark cloud. only the cloud is completely liquid, changing size, shape and direction at a moment's notice. these bird clouds are so captivating that i often caught myself overly distracted while driving. they loom above like one giant living creature in the sky. perhaps it was because we lived right along the mississippi river, but the show would go on for weeks. like a gray, midwest version of the aurora borealis. i tell you, i looked forward to their coming and going each season. how tiny it makes you feel. i just may miss the birds most of all.......

running: if you have known me for a very long time, you would know that running was always one of my least favorite things in the entire world. it's sweaty and tiring and leaves you out of breath and just plain HARD. i had no desire, whatsoever, to ever attempt to run even one quarter of a mile. ever. enter my sister. our first thanksgiving, the entire family was gathering at our new place and she proposed that we all run a 5k together. we agreed to indulge her, in the name of family camaraderie, though inwardly i was fighting it pretty hard. we began a nine week "training" plan in september to build some stamina. again, my commitment to training was half-hearted. even on the morning of the run, i was glad to just be getting it over with. but, oh did something change that day. call it the contagious adrenaline of the pre-race crowd or thrill of running with hundreds of other people in unison or the encouraging cheers of the spectators along the course, but something lit up inside my during that first race. my mental state changed from "WHY am i doing this?" to "i can totally do this!" it was an incredibly exciting transformation.....and i rode that high to my next race, and my next, and my next. if you have known me for a very short time, you will say that running is one of my most favorite things in the entire world.
so what, you may ask, does this have to do with st. louis? here i have to refer back to my first love about the midwest.....seasons. the truth is, if we had lived in houston when my sister had asked us to run a 5k, i have absolutely no doubt that i would not have caught the running "bug" the same way i did up there. running in heat and humidity is oppressive. it sucks the life out of the experience. and houston packs about 325 of such despicable days. but st louis.....oh you beautiful place.....is the sheer opposite. there are only about 40 days in winter and summer combined that i would consider "difficult" to run in. the rest is so pleasantly ideal. couple that with the miles of running trails, FAR from highways and smog. i honestly believe that st. louis is what helped me grow that initial runner's high into a life-long passion. i just may miss the glory of running most of all.......

social opportunity: our life as a couple in houston was very one-note. on the weekends, we pretty much hung out with a small group of friends at a house or local bar or restaurant. and that was the extent of our social life. the big events were never worth driving 100 miles to or fighting through thousands of people to see. the museums and attractions were pricy and, again, far. outdoor activities were a bust because of the heat or the lack of open space. we also lived in an apartment, so hosting company was non-existent. i don't remember disliking our "social life," but it was definitely predictable and very vanilla. so the never-ending list of possibilities that st. louis provided was just the spice we needed to liven our lives up. :)
~ freebies ~ most every public attraction in st. louis is free. the zoo, the science center, the art museum, citygarden, union station, the AB brewery, the outdoor theater.....the list goes on. of course you can pay for "upgrades" like certain exhibits or better seats, but the point is....it's WORTH driving to town for....and they aren't what you would expect to get for free. they are actually quality places to visit. even the casinos are free fun if you just go and watch other people blow their money!
~ the gateway arch ~ this thing never gets old. drive by it, lie under it, run up to it, ride to the top, sit on the stairs below, search for it along the horizon....it's amazing every time. living somewhere that there is a national landmark was fabulous. the fact that it was THIS landmark was even more fabulous. how stainless steel can be so beautiful, i have no idea. but it is. oh it is.
~ events ~ cardinals' games, mardis gras, oktoberfest, marathons, st. patrick's day parade, weekly summer music performances at the botanical gardens, (hot air) balloon glow, brewfest, taste of st. louis, first night....THE......LIST......GOES.......ON.........never a dull moment. each one a worthwhile memory-maker.
~ camping ~ this one is a little off the beaten path....more south missouri....but we were so very fortunate to be invited by a friend to join the most PERFECT CAMPING EXPERIENCE IN THE WORLD! marcus and i have always loved camping. grungy tent and campfire living for a few days. bring it on. the downside to camping in texas was that we always had to go to a public campsite (which was usually crowded for a holiday weekend) and the window of good camping weather was minimal...you can just plain forget about camping during the summer. so our offering was no privacy and the wrath of the sun. when our friend told us about a private strip of land along the current river, we were stoked to go along. we had no idea how perfect it would be. no neighboring campers. no park rules. shaded by tons of trees. instant access to the river. we could shoot off fireworks, empty our guns, build huge fires, skinny dip, scream at the top of our lungs, go racing down the dirt roads....you name it. absolute freedom to be one with nature. sigh. it was perfect. we made 2 return trips before the summer was over. it is unlikely that we will ever find such a match made in heaven again in this lifetime. it was so worth it, in fact, that we have considered making the endlessly long drive there and back just to experience it once more. we shall see....
~ entertaining ~ our hosting capabilities and opportunities increased by ten fold after we moved. not only did we have a house, but it was large and had guest quarters and a yard and plenty of space for entertaining. we played host to superbowl parties, sangria parties, the beer olympics, baking parties, thanksgiving guests, dinner parties and just plain ol' get-togethers. it. was. great. i just may miss our social life most of all.......

blake: no. st. louis did not give us blake. but we did start our life with him there. we had been planning his existence from the moment we bought that house. i waddled up and down those stairs while i was pregnant with him. we bought and put together his crib in that nursery. it was the first home he ever knew. he took his first bath in that kitchen. he slept his first nights in that master bedroom. i rocked and nursed him by those windows. i took naps with him in that basement. we learned to be a family between those walls.

on our final day of packing and loading that house, it all hit me. the furniture was all cleared away and the emptiness of the space started to overwhelm me. i started to cry. how could we leave? how could all of these amazing months and years be coming to an end already? how could we ever capture the greatness of this place anywhere else???

and then i looked up and saw the only thing we were leaving behind. letters that we had stuck above our bed when we moved in. i took a picture of them because no matter how much we would miss everything, i knew that what they said was true.