Quote Of The Day: The Worst Thing

The scene: It’s Saturday night, and in an exceedingly rare exhibit of “going out and doing something like normal humans,” TFW and I are at the House of Blues for a Social Distortion show. We’ve left the baby at my sister’s house, and even though I made sure he was sound asleep before we left, I continue to fret as we wait for the band to start playing: what if he wakes up and my sis can’t get him back to sleep because he’s all tripped out that he’s in a strange place and we’re not there?! Or what if he’s teething — I didn’t give her the Tylenol instructions! What if he never stops crying??

(Never mind that my sister has two children of her own and is perfectly capable of caring for a toddler; my brain is impervious to such reason when I’m on a worrying tack.)

Eventually, TFW gets sick of me and tries to shut me up: “I’m sure he’s fine, come on now. What’s the worst thing that could happen?”

That shuts me up, all right; I’m nice and quiet for the next several minutes while my brain conjures up every terrifying “worst thing” that could theoretically happen to my poor defenseless baby while his selfish Mama is out singing 20-year-old punk rock songs with a bunch of neck-tattooed compatriots. I’ve considered earthquakes, suffocation-by-stuffed-animal, kitchen fires caused by microwaved popcorn, and freak roof collapse and am just seconds away from pulling out my phone to check in when the band mercifully comes out to the stage and puts a stop to my insanity.

TFW motions to me to inch our way a bit closer to the front. I follow, but not before grabbing his arm and harshly whispering: “Don’t ever ask me that question again.”

PS: Bubba was fine and slept the entire time we were gone.

What a Difference a Year Makes: Merry Christmas!

I barely remember last Christmas. No, I wasn’t drunk — I had a 24-day-old son and hadn’t had sufficient sleep in, oh, 24 days. I remember precisely four things about Christmas 2011:

1. I was really, really tired.
2. I had no clothes to wear since I thankfully no longer needed maternity gear but wasn’t even close to fitting back into my real-people clothes yet, so I made my poor sister dig through every item in her closet in an effort to find something loose enough to lend me so that I wouldn’t look like a hobo during our family party. I think I tried on 10 different items to no avail before finally finding a big enough shirt, which I of course paired with leggings because actual pants simply weren’t an option for me until Bubba was about 3 months old:
3. I was really worried about the prospect of drunk relatives — supply of which is certainly not limited — demanding to hold my fragile new son and me not being able to come up with a good excuse with which to deny their request (I had a vision of someone insisting upon holding him and then tripping over one of the seemingly countless children in the house and/or one of their toys on their way outside to grab another beverage), so poor Bubba spent most of the day literally strapped to my chest:
   “Sorry, he’s all cozy in here! You can hold him later when I take this thing off…” (i.e. never)
4. I didn’t buy a single present for the baby — not because I’m a terrible human being (although you could make a case for that), but because I am cheap and saw no reason to spend money on presents for a baby who didn’t need anything and surely wouldn’t know the difference — and I felt kind of bad about it despite my sound logic.

Everything else was a blur. I don’t remember what gifts I received or gave (I did buy gifts for people who were old enough to understand…as far as I remember, anyway), what we ate, or who was there — it was just another of the many, many sleep-deprived days I slogged through during Bubba’s first couple months of life, the type where you spend the whole day slack-jawed and staring blankly into space, just hoping you don’t fall asleep while standing up because smacking your head on the floor would suck.

This year, things were different!

Quote of the Day: While You’re Up

The scene: TFW and I are snuggled up on the couch watching Top Chef, pausing it every two minutes to talk about how much better each dish would be if it didn’t involve seafood. In addition to all the breaks to critique these chumps’ food (because obviously we know what we’re doing and could do so much better ourselves), I’ve also gotten up twice to check on the baby, despite the fact that he’s been sleeping soundly for hours and definitely did not require any “checking”.

About halfway through the show, TFW decides he needs some water and heads to the kitchen. Not one to waste an opportunity, I strike:

“While you’re up, can you go check on the baby for me again? Oh! And bring me a snack! Something good; I don’t know what I want. Ooooh, can you make some tea, too? Please?”

He stops in his tracks. I get the obligatory eye roll, and this response: “At what point are you going to stop with this nonsense?!”

I’m actually not sure if he was referring to my compulsive need to constantly verify the baby’s alive-ness or my demands for snacks, but either way, we all know that the answer is NEVER.

(Almost) Wordless Wednesday: Christmas Non-Card

Despite my post-Halloween pledge to do better with future holidays, I have already fallen short by failing to participate in one of the most basic Christmas traditions: the adorable photo greeting card! I actually did think about it in plenty of time and was minutes away from logging onto Snapfish to whip something up, my mind already envisioning the look of joy on each recipient’s face as they opened what would surely be the cutest card they’d receive this year…but then I remembered that once the cards arrived from Snapfish I would have to address them to everyone and actually mail them out, and that sounded like an awful lot of work for which I did not have time.

But while you won’t be getting any mail from me this year, I assure you we are indeed in the Christmas spirit over here! I’ve been making sure Bubba enjoys all the traditional holiday fanfare, like:

Decorating and un-decorating the tree, multiple times daily:

Wrapping presents in the nude:

Donning seasonal pajamas (and still refusing to surrender that empty giftwrap roll):

Wearing a Santa hat for 10 seconds at a time and then ripping it off:

And of course, just being generally cute and wintery:

Please print this post out, put it in an envelope, and pretend I mailed it to you. Happy holidays!

The Juggernaut

I’m sure this is going to come as a shock to some of you, because of how undeniably cool I am, but the man I married is a bit of a nerd.

Not that there’s anything wrong with that!

Obviously, I’m not the least bit cool either (twist! The first sentence of this post was facetious!), but there are all kinds of different nerds in the world, from the pocket-protector wearers to those poor fools who have convinced themselves that dressing up in anime costumes is in any way defensible. I myself am of the frizzy-haired “square” ilk of nerds; I prefer reading quietly to clubbing and there’s nothing better than a joke where no one gets hurt. My husband, on the other hand, is the type of nerd who plays Magic: The Gathering (don’t ask me why that stupid colon needs to be involved in the name of a card game) and not only makes no effort to conceal this fact but also sees no reason not to incorporate MTG terminology into his everyday lexicon as if normal people are actually going to know what he’s talking about.

Top Ten Tuesday: One Woman Babysitting Club

As a hardcore fan of The Babysitters Club (where time never advances and the local parents have collectively decided that a group of tween girls are better equipped than they to do the bulk of the child-rearin’), I spent my elementary school years just counting down the days till I’d be old enough to babysit. Thanks to my conveniently-aged little sisters and my stellar reputation as a responsible and well-behaved (read: nerdy goody two-shoes) young lady, I was able to secure my first babysitting job when I was 11. For three hours on a Friday evening, I watched my sisters’ friend and her little brother while their parents went out for dinner; we ate pizza and watched the Disney Channel (which was extra awesome because my parents did not spring for such primo entertainment options at our house) and I was paid fifteen dollars for the pleasure!

I was hooked. The BSC had not led me astray: babysitting was everything I dreamed it would be! And with my winning combination of work ethic, wide open availability (come on now, do you really think a teenaged me had better things to do than babysit?), and low rates (and by that I simply mean that I never had the courage to TELL clients what to pay me and would just accept whatever cash they would give me), I had no shortage of jobs. I babysat several times a week throughout junior high and high school, and I am so glad I did. Not only did it fill up what would have otherwise been some seriously boring weekends while simultaneously ensuring that I always had plenty of spending money (helloooooo, Forever 21 shopping sprees!), but I also learned a lot about kids and parenting along the way. Interacting with so many different families led me to many little epiphanies throughout my babysitting career, and now that I’m a parent myself I think about these life lessons more than ever. Allow me to share some of them with you…

The top ten lessons I learned as a teenaged babysitting addict (and by that I mean I was addicted to babysitting…not that I was an addict who babysat):

The Crazy Files, Volume IV: Jinx!

If you read my entirely-too-long account of Bubba’s birth earlier this week, you may have noticed that I seemed completely blindsided by the labor and delivery process, as if I were one of those imbeciles who claim to have not known they were pregnant despite the 9-pound kicking and rotating and hiccuping human being enjoying residence within their womb. I’m sure you’ve all been scratching your heads for days now, wondering why such a clearly brilliant woman (humor me) would do such little planning for such an obviously consequential occasion, particularly one for which there was no shortage of time in which to prepare (specifically, nine months). Forget those “I didn’t know I was pregnant” nutbags — what kind of incompetent excuse for an adult knows full well that she’s pregnant for nine months and is still that unprepared to give birth?!

(And if you haven’t yet read that delightfully self-indulgent two-part tale, what the heck are you waiting for!? It includes the word “mucus” AND features a near-topless photo of a very-pregnant me, wherein you can bear witness to the spectacle of a seriously stretched-out tattoo. What more could you want? Go read it!)

Allow me to answer your question: a crazy person, that’s who.

The fact of the matter is, I spent my entire pregnancy in a constant state of fear, certain that something was going to go wrong at any minute. During the first trimester I was convinced I was going to miscarry (a prior miscarriage and some intermittent — but ultimately innocent — bleeding in the early weeks ensured that this possibility remained firmly in the forefront of my mind at all times). Later on, I worried about stillbirth, chromosomal problems, birth defects, the cord getting wrapped around his neck, early labor (probably caused by too much worrying), emergency c-sections, me dying during childbirth…name a hypothetical pregnancy/childbirth-related catastrophe and I assure you I spent a sleepless night or 10 panicking about it.

Wordless Wednesday: 12 Months of Bubba

December 2011:

January 2012:

February 2012:

March 2012:

April 2012:

May 2012:

June 2012:

July 2012:

August 2012:

September 2012:

October 2012:

November 2012:

December 2012:

Memory Lane: I Had a Baby! (Part 2)

If you’re just joining the fun, make sure to go back and read part 1 of this thrilling saga, wherein I Jedi-mind-tricked myself into going into labor to avoid an electricity-related inconvenience.

With TFW out of the house and all of the busy-work things I could think of already done (and still no electricity!), I had nothing to distract me from the increasingly excruciating contractions. Within 10 minutes of his departure, I decided my sisters were filthy liars who had doled out malicious advice — they seriously thought I should continue riding it out at home for hours more?! I wanted to be in the hospital and hooked up to some drugs RIGHT THAT SECOND.

You see, since I had decided long before that I would have an epidural when the time came, in the months leading up to my due date I very stupidly gave absolutely ZERO thought to how I was going to deal with all the labor I was going to be experiencing before I got the epidural. It’s not that I didn’t realize I would be in labor for a while before getting the epidural…I just didn’t realize how painful it was going to be and how important it was to be prepared. So as the contractions got more and more painful and closer and closer together, I had none of those classic breathing/meditation/relaxation strategies smart women practice to fall back on.

So I just kind of freaked out.

I called TFW and told him to hightail it back home ASAP and deliver me to straight to Epidural Island. I started calculating how many more contractions I would have to live through before getting some sweet, sweet relief: “if he gets home in 10 minutes and then it takes us 15 to get to the hospital, and then figure another 20 to get checked in and whatnot, I’ll only have to feel 9 or 10 more of these. I can do that. That’s doable. Anything more than that and I might die.“

He returned home a few minutes later to find his wife in bit of a panic. I knew logically that the baby most likely wasn’t going to just fall out of my loins on his own within the next few minutes, but everything was suddenly feeling really real (and really, really painful) and I just kept repeating: “we need to go now. Please let’s go. I really want to be in the hospital right now. PLEASE.”

And yet despite my urgency, I still made him pause and take this photo right before we left the house:

I believe my exact quote was: “WAIT! We need a picture of my belly at the peak of its freakishness!!!”

Peak Freakishness documented, we were ready to head out (don’t worry, I put a shirt on first). The hospital is only about five miles away, so I started feeling more calm the moment we pulled out of the driveway. Relief was in sight! I’d have doctors monitoring my son, and, more importantly, drugs coursing through my veins, within the hour!

Memory Lane: I Had a Baby! (Part 1)

14 years ago when my sister Danica had her first son, our other sister made her a custom baby book that included something I thought was very cool: a page for Danica to write down her “birth story” — when she went into labor, how she felt, and so forth. Danica took the prompt very seriously and filled about three pages (she had to tape in extra notebook paper, if I recall correctly) with every detail from the first contraction to her son’s grand entrance many hours later, and I remember reading it and thinking it was so special that my sister and her son would always have this meticulous account of his birth to look back on. I made a mental note of it and vowed that when my time came, I would definitely do the same.

Of course, like just about everything else I thought I’d do and/or make for this kid (I’m totally still going to make him a baby blanket someday, I swear), I dropped the ball and never got around to it. I’m the worst.

But luckily for Bubba, myself, and for YOU, my seven loyal readers, my memory is fan-freakin-tastic! It may have happened 365 days ago, but the events of my dear child’s birth are as clear in my mind as what I had for dinner last night (Chipotle burrito: pinto beans, carnitas, extra cheese; don’t judge). I don’t have a baby book in which to write things like this (see previous paragraph re: me being the worst), but I do have this blog and that will have to suffice. Plus, if I’ve learned anything in my 29 years, it’s that people love reading long, drawn-out stories about dilated cervixes (cervii?) and epidurals, so…here you go: