The other day, I took Ezra with me to Old Navy. He walked in the store and suddenly his eyes lit up, he shrieked for joy, and then? This happened:
Yes, he ran up to the little girl mannequin, gave her a hug, pet her hair, and then tried to hold her hand. He didn’t want to leave her.
And this, you guys, is why I need to get Ezra some more friends. Mama may be an introverted loner, but baby sure ain’t.
Embiggening? Embiggenning? In any case, despite telling myself that I am going to start eating healthy, really, really, for real this time, my diet for the past week has consisted of:
Which may explain why I’ve gained five (FIVE) pounds since moving here. Living at my mom’s may be delicious, but it’s certainly not good for my waist line.
A few weeks—okay, months—ago, Cris and I decided we were going to start the Couch-to-5k plan. We were certain. We were dedicated. We even spent a bazillion dollars are REI on running stuff. Witness the shoes:
That’s how dedicated we were to running every other day.
As of today? We’ve done the ‘Week 1 Day 1” plan three separate times. And that’s about it for that. The crazy toe shoes sit by door unloved, the Jillian Michaels dvd gathers dust by the tv, and I sit here with my ever-widening ass planted the couch.
Not cool, lady.
I’ll get my ish together once we’re settled in the new house. I swear.
That is, if we get the house. Some last minute ridiculousness on the day before we were supposed to sign has caused a flurry of panic and stress and despair.
Which would be fine, if I was one of the people who stopped eating when stressed instead of one of those people who stress-eats her way through a gallon of ice cream and self-loathing.
I don’t know. Fingers crossed or something. I’m going to bed.
As soon as Cris walked in the door after work, I threw my arms around him, buried my face in neck, and said “Can I leave, please?” The desperation must have been pretty obvious in my voice because he shooed me out the door and told me not to come home before 10. So now I’m at Starbucks, alone. Never mind the two large, loud groups at surrounding tables. Never mind the near panic attack I had when the barista wouldn’t stop asking me questions (What do I want? What size? Sweetened? OMG I DON’T KNOW PLEASE DON’T MAKE ME MAKE ANY DECISIONS JUST GIVE ME SOMETHING AND LET ME SIT IN PEACE FOR THE LOVE OF GOD). And certainly never mind the laundry and mess and various chores that await me at home. And really, really for serious never mind the fact that there’s about a 90% chance that Ezra won’t be able to go sleep without me. Never mind it all because I feel utterly spent and I have no chance anymore to just sit. To be still with myself and let thoughts swirl around in my brain until they begin to fall in place and make sense. No chance to recharge and regroup. I get occasional moments, sure—a half-hour here, a couple hours there—where someone will take the baby off my hands for a while, but that time mostly gets spent furiously catching up on work I’ve been putting off. Or laundry or grocery shopping or cleaning up Ezra’s toys for the millionth time in a day so my parents don’t get mad at me. I feel like a jumpy, punchy bag of guts and unresolved strings of thoughts. It’s messy. I don’t like it.
Seven Six weeks to go until the house is supposed to be done. It will be awesome. The house itself, of course, but even more than that, I’m looking forward to getting my home back. My sweet, quiet, cozy safe place with my little family and my kitties and awesome king size bed. I’m going to run around and jump on couches just because I can. I’m going to let Ezra play with his toys on the table without getting yelled at.I’m going to snuggle up with Cris and read a book while he plays video games after the baby has gone to bed. I’m going to lock myself in one of the empty rooms and spread out on the floor in my underwear and sleep for twelve hours straight.
It’s going to be out of control.
Yes! Finally, finally, Cris was offered a job here. Starting June 1st, our family is no long split between two cities. This is fantastic.
The last morning Cris was here and woke up for his commute to the Bay Area—at a time that is scientifically known as ‘the buttcrack of dawn’—Ezra woke up and had a complete meltdown when he realized his dad was leaving. I don’t think any of us could have taken it much longer.
I have no idea how we’re all going to fit in this house without driving each other completely mad. It’s a small house and there are already too many people in it and now Cris will be here full time. And I don’t even know when our new home is supposed to be completed, so I can’t cope with the crazy crowdedness by counting down the days and holding my breath. Also? My desktop computer suddenly decided it wouldn’t turn on one morning and I may have lost all my photos from the past forever. Also also? Ezra has suddenly learned what this whole ‘separation anxiety’ thing is all about and he freaks out if he’s not within finger-grabbing distance of me at all times. Also also also? My insomnia has reached epic heights. Awake all night and exhausted all day.
How did I go from YAY HAPPY to OH BOO HOO ME in five seconds? I don’t know. But all I’m saying is, if I don’t end up in some homicide-suicide scenario on the local news by the end of the next month, I will be verrry proud of myself.
Did you miss me? What was supposed a couple hours of downtime to make my blog all pretty and new turned into nearly a month as we packed (mostly), moved (kinda), and got settled in (sorta).
We decided we were going to move to Sacramento to buy a house, the lease on our apartment in Alameda was up, I got the official okay from my job to work from home full-time, Cris had what seemed to be pretty good job lead here, so. All our stuff got packed into storage and we moved in the guest room at my parents’ house while we look for a place of our own. Except then Cris’s job didn’t end up transferring him to Sac yet so he’s still in Alameda, spending most nights at his mom’s, while I live with the baby at my mom’s.
What?
Yeah, exactly. Good grief. We’re still waiting for Cris to get a position here and who knows how long that’s going to be now. This wasn’t exactly what we had in mind. I miss him and the baby misses him and he misses us and we’re all a big grumpy pile of OMGWTFBBQ :( :( :(.
We’ve been with my parents’ for a couple weeks now and it’s finally starting to feel less like a family vacation and more like This is Real Life Now…and it’s all going well enough but I still I find myself wondering what exactly I’ve got myself into here. Working from home is awesome, of course, but the ‘work’ part isn’t totally…working. Ezra is a handful. A fantastic, adorable, happy handful, but a handful nonetheless. I still have to find a way to get that balance between ‘baby time’ and ‘work time’ and ‘me time’…because right now? We’re getting dangerously close to that ‘mommy is going crazy and has been wearing the same stained pajamas for the past week’ time.
Cris needs a close job, I need some kind of nanny/babysitter/daycare thing, and we all need our own sweet little home. Until then, we’re just gonna keep on keeping on.
So it goes.
Nothing is happening. I swear. Days are just blurring together, each one the same as the last. Work, sleep (kinda, sometimes, if I’m lucky), eat. Lather, rinse, repeat. Big changes are on the way, but…just not quite yet. Right now? I’m stuck in a holding pattern, I guess. Just waiting, waiting, waiting.
Ezra has an ear infection and a face full of snot, and I’m starting to cough right as Cris is getting over his bronchitis. The time change has thrown everything off and I’m feeling the familiar winter blues starting to creep in slowly, and someone said it’s almost Christmas!, and wait, what have I done with this year? Where did it go?
On the drive home last night, a car swerved into my lane with no warning, right in front of me as I was going 80mph. I had to slam on the brakes and swerve into the shoulder. We were fine, THANK GOD, but… it was close! So close. And so scary. I had to call Cris to talk me down because all I wanted to do was pull over on the side of the road and have a good cry.
I’m just tired. Tired isn’t even the right word. I’m exhausted. In my bones, straight down to the bone marrow. I keep seeing glimpses of this perfect life we’re both working towards, but… it’s just out of reach. For now. And the current endless drudgery of crappy jobs and terrible/terrifying commutes and barely getting to spend any time together as a family… it’s no good. It’s stupid. There’s no room to breathe.
So, uh, yeah. It’s been two weeks? Huh. How’d that happen?
And what do I have to show for it?
Well… this:
and this:
Aaaaannd that’s it. Life’s been crazy, I’ve still been sick, work has been ridiculous, etc, etc. Having a baby with insomnia makes everything pretty hazy. The nightly 3AM BABY PARTY TIME is losing its charm.
The baby got his first haircut and we had an awesome birthday party in the park for him and Cris and I decided we’re going to move soon and I’ve finally figured out what I’m going to do when I grow up. I want to blog about all this stuff. One day? Maybe?
But man, I’m tired.
Ezra pooped.
The squirty kind.
The kind the oozed right out of his diaper and all over his pants.
Right as I was carrying him to the car to drive home yesterday evening.
Right into my hands.
And on my shirt.
Yeah. Not the best drive home, I’ve ever had.
And when Cris suddenly shouted for me in a panic as he was putting Ezra to sleep last night? Yeah. It was because the baby had projectile vomited all over everyone and everything.
We’ve made it eleven months without out any of these, uh, eruptions, so I guess that’s not too bad, but: OMG EW.
Ezra didn’t seem to mind too much himself. We ended up bringing him back to bed with us and he spent the next 90 minutes giggling and laughing and sitting up and doing everything but going back to sleep.
I was so tired this morning that synapses in my brain were firing off in random directions and I ended up applying my deodorant directly to the top of my head.
The white streaks in my hair add dignity, right?
I’m not sure what it is, but I’ve been feeling my current lack of a social circle pretty keenly these days. I think it’s the weather here—wildly vacillating between perfectly sunny and warm and gloomy foggy gloom—making me long for loud backyard barbecues and cozy dinner-and-a-movie nights, and leaving me wildly unfulfilled. I’m happy to do these things just with our own little family of course, but man, I’m starting to feel a bit lonely and restless and depressed. I have amazing friends, but they’re all scattered across the country now and the only one who lives within, oh, 90 miles or so, also happens to be the flakiest girl I know—lovely and charming and funny and awesome, yes, but also undeniably undependable. And all the emails and facebook and phone calls in the world don’t really make up for having someone to try out a new recipe on or watch Gossip Girl with or catch a 9 o’clock movie with after the baby’s gone to sleep.
I know it’s not healthy to rely on Cris for meeting 100% of my social needs at all times, and it’s not a great idea for me to keep whining to him about how we could just move to LA or Sacramento or SOMEWHERE! ANYWHERE! PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE!!!! until he wants to punch me in the face*. So I should just get some new, shiny friends, right?
Right.
But I don’t even know how to find friends anymore. Certainly not from my job, and it’s not like I have the time to take a class or uh… go to bars? What else is there?! And even if I could find potential new friends, I’m lucky if I can get out of the house having brushed both my teeth AND my hair, and my glazed-over eyes and monosyllabic muttering after yet another sleepless night? Probably not gonna impress anyone. I’m pretty much entirely unprepared for normal human interaction at this point. So, I don’t know. I guess I’ll put up a post on Craigslist in case anyone is looking for a drooling, probably unshowered new lady friend to talk about baby poop with. But hey, I make good tacos at least. That’s gotta count for something.
*No people were actually face-punched in the making of this post. He did accidentally elbow me in the head last night though. Or should I say “accidentally”? Meanie.
Sleep Issues. We haz them.
So, Ezra is a fantastic baby. Of course. Obviously. He is the cutest, bestest, smartest, funniest, happiest, amazingest baby in the whole world times infinity. Fact.
But the boy HATES going to sleep. Hates it with a fierce passion. The type of hatred one typically reserves for IRS audits or Holocaust deniers or that asshole right in front of me at Starbucks who ordered the last cheese danish.
The very second we try to lay him down to sleep for nap time or bedtime, my otherwise superhappy baby transforms into The Beast Who Shall Not Be Tamed. There is screaming and yelling and crying. Flailing and smacking. Rending of garments and gnashing of teeth. Heartbreak. Misery. Despair.
And after the forever long it takes to soothe him to sleep, the whole scene is usually repeated around 2 or 3 in the morning, when he wakes up and decides playing is so much better than stupid sleep.
I’m at a loss, really. Ezra hates being alone. I’m okay with that. I’m okay with rocking him to sleep if he needs it. I’m okay with us cosleeping. The thing he does as he drifts off to sleep? Where he grabs my finger tightly with one hand and then uses the other hand to rub my arm softly? It’s pretty much the sweetest thing ever. I’m going to be a sad panda the day he stops doing that.
But what is killing me is how hard he fights sleep no matter how exhausted he is. He’s been like that since he was a newborn, but now that he’s outgrown the swaddle and learned to sit and pull himself up on his own, it’s so much harder to keep him laying down long enough to close his eyes. And when one of us holds him down firmly, he just stares. Eyes locked wide open, barely allowing himself to blink. Because as soon as he closes his eyes, he starts to fall asleep, and this is just ENTIRELY UNACCEPTABLE. IT IS PARTY TIME PEOPLE, NOT SLEEP TIME!
After two increasingly frustrating hours trying to get him to take his nap yesterday, I actually yelled at him for the first time. He sat up and laughed at my “WHY WON’T YOU JUST SLEEP?!?!” outburst like it was the funniest joke he’s ever heard and I immediately felt like a giant douchebag and tried to relieve my guilt by taking him to the living room to play…so, yeah, Ezra: 100, Mommy: -100000000.
How does this ever end? We have a bedtime routine. We have baths and books. We have a relaxing, quiet environment. I’ve tried putting him to bed earlier. I’ve tried putting him to bed later. I’ve tried feeding him more or less. I’ve tried music and rocking and walking and white noise. I’ve tried tylenol and teething tablets in case it’s from any pain. I’ve taken him to the doctor to rule out anything more serious. I’ve read books and websites and tried everything I can think of (except for letting him cry it out, which I just don’t have the stomach for). I have NO IDEA what to do anymore. I mean, besides doing my best zombie impersonation every morning.
(I guess the one benefit to having horrible insomnia my whole life is that I’m pretty experienced in (just barely) getting by on a pitifully small amount of sleep. Yay? )
After complaining to my mom about our Endless Sleepless Nights and the epic fog of sleep deprivation that is currently holding my brain hostage, she offered to pick Ezra up this Friday night and take care of him until Sunday so that we could have the weekend to ourselves. To party. And by ‘party’, I mean ‘nap’. And by ‘nap’, I mean ‘sleep for 36 hours straight’.
As much as I love my mom for offering, and as much as I realize how incredibly lucky I am that this is even an option for us, I hate hate hate the tailspin of self-doubt and confusion that offers like this throw me into. Do I want my mom to take Ezra for the weekend? On the one hand: NO YOU CAN’T HAVE MY BABY! He’s MINE! I will miss him so much if he’s gone all weekend! It’s the only time I get to spend with him besides fighting him for sleep every night! I want to snuggle with him and play with him and help him walk across the living room and chase the cats! I want to see his hilarious expressions when trying new foods and hear him babble away for hours! I want some sloppy, drooly open-mouth kisses and some sweet, sleepy hugs! I want to take pictures of him and go to the beach and have a baby dance party, darn it! Stay away from my baby!!!
Aaaand on the other hand: OMG YES PLEASE! Please! I will be able to sleep! And do laundry! And sleep! And finish all the work that has been piling up and finish watching season 2 of Veronica Mars and drop off all the crap that’s been accumulating in the ‘Drop Off at Goodwill!’ box corner of the living room! And sleep! OMG, did I mention sleep! Maybe we can have some people over for dinner! Maybe we can have some drinks! Maybe go see a movie! Maybe sleep more!
And on my third, mutant hand (and this is where things get really fun in my head): What kind of a selfish cow of mother would hand her child off to someone else for days just so she could sleep in?! Why would I mess up my baby’s already precarious sleep schedule for a chance to plop myself in front of the tv and eat cookies uninterrupted? How sad and horrible of me! My baby clearly deserves a better mother!!!
AND ON AND ON IT GOES.
I have no idea which of my many hands will be the winner come Friday, but I am already completely exhausted just thinking about it.
A better writer could turn this into an awesomely hilarious post, but the truth is I can barely even think about it for more than a couple seconds without kinda wanting to die. But I have to write it here for posterity’s sake at the very least because one day, many years from now, Ezra is going to wonder why his mom is completely insane and I’m going to point back to the night I found a dead body in my living room, strewn about all Dexter-style. Okay, it was a bird body. But still. I’m getting ahead of myself.
In an effort to ignore battle the constant stench of cat poo filling our apartment, we decided to move the litter box to the balcony and just leave the sliding glass door open all the time. The cats are beyond thrilled with this arrangement because it means constant outside access, and in their little kitty brains, constant outside access = 100% win. If the food and the so-fun-to-annoy Humans weren’t inside, they would happily sit on the balcony forever and ever.
Ollie—the younger, insaner more energetic kitty—has become completely obsessed with birds. He sits for hours, precariously perched in attack mode on the edge of the balcony, watching the birds chirp and flit about on the nearby trees.
We thought it was cute.
Until last Friday.
On Friday, we came home from a late dinner and put the baby to bed and got all jammied up and were ready to start a movie. We walked into the dim living room with stuff scattered all over the floor and I though gee, our living room is so messy. And then I thought wait, I just cleaned it the morning… So I looked a little closer and then turn to Cris to ask “What is that?”
What?
That stuff!
Oh, huh.
Is it-…
I think it’s a plant? The cats must’ve brought one in here!
No, wait, is that—
Ohhhhh shittttttt.
Is that… No. No.
Ohhh shittttttt.
Oh my god. Please tell me that’s not a bird. No. No no no no no.
We slowwwwwly turn on the light. We gasp in horror at the scene in
front of us. Bird feathers. Everywhere. Smears of blood all over the carpet. A dead bird, right next to the couch. Wait! Correction: half of a dead bird. A leg thrown near the recliner. Guts and innards casually
tossed about. It was brutal.
I then proceeded to calmly and gracefully clean the mess up.
Ha! Kidding! I then proceeded to whimper like a little girl and hide under the blankets on the bed while facebooking about the incident and occasionally peeking out to yell at ask Cris if he was done cleaning it all up yet.
After a night and morning full of soap and ammonia and baking soda and scrubby brushes and vacuums and whatnot, I think we’ve got the living room back to a non-revolting state, but I was thisclose to giving up and moving back in with my parents.
[I told this story to a friend, and she was all “Oh, yeah, my dumb cat brings me dead birds all the time”, all like hey, whatever about it. Am I just the biggest baby ever?]
[The best part? The other half of the dead bird was never recovered. I am so afraid of it popping out and attacking me when I least expect it.]
This is me today:
Oh, who am I kidding? This is me every day. The transition to being a person with a long-ass commute has been difficult, sleep has been rare, my job has been ksljdksajiowejkjfaskl;aafase, and I’m pretty much just a grump. Not that things have been all bad, of course, but my ability to gracefully deal with life’s minor setbacks (oh no, we’re out of cat litter! darn, there isn’t a new episode of Burn Notice this week! oops, someone forgot to put away the leftovers last night!) is tragically missing.
I took a couple days off this week and headed to Sacramento while my friend’s baby was in surgery. Surgery went well, my mom doted over Ezra and changed all his diapers and baked me cookies, and I spent a lot of time lounging around doing nothing. Cris joined us on his day off and we all splashed around in the pool and ate junk food all day.
I’m not sure why life can’t be like that every day.
From now on, I’m going to be trying veryveryvery hard to 1) write here every day, and 2) stop being such a grumpball. Wish me luck. And cookies.
I have all these posts I’ve been writing in my head about cute things like father’s day or Ezra’s first tooth, but… not gonna happen. Because, seriously, internet? I am in quite a funk lately.
So, let’s see. C started his new job that’s all of one block away from our home. Lovely for him. And for us, since it means no more getting home at 8pm or later, just in time to put the baby to bed. That’s no fun. I kinda like my baby and I kinda like spending time with him, strangely. But previously, we commuted. C would drop me off at my job downtown, and then drop the baby off at his mom’s house and then drive a few minutes to his job. Minus his stupidly long work hours, it worked perfectly for us. Now that he’s working in the east bay, I need to drive myself, drop the baby off all the way on the other side of SF, and then come back downtown to my job. And since there’s no longer 3 people in the car, I have to pay the $4 (soon-to-be $6) toll and wait in the soooo slowwww non-carpool lanes (it took me forty-five minutes just to cross the toll plaza), and then I have to pay for parking at work. Which is $30 per day. Of course.
It took me 90 minutes to get to get to work this morning (and I live exactly 14 miles away (OMG)), and it cost $34.00. Did you know that spending $34 a day will equal approximately ELEVENTY BILLION DOLLARS in one month? True story. This is just AWESOME.
And then there’s the fact that Ezra—my adorable sweet baby, the light of life—is sick. He is feverish and sad and miserable and clingy and I just feel completely awful for him. I just want to snuggle him forever and make him feel better. The past couple nights, he’s been waking up every couple of hours and screaming inconsolably. The only way I could get him to calm down last night was by taking him to the kitchen at 2am and distracting him with some avocado and a little glass of water and a clip from Yo Gabba Gabba on my iphone (bad mommy!). He cried the whole way in the car this morning, and when I took him out finally to take him to his grandma, he was covered in snot and tears and it was the saddest. thing. ever. And he cried so hard when I left.
Heart? Broken.
And add onto this the fact that Ezra’s constant nighttime screaming has done nothing to stop Cris from getting a full night’s sleep? And waking up in the morning to chirpily say “so, did the baby sleep well last night?”? And that yesterday’s promises to take care of the baby last night and make me coffee this morning so I wouldn’t CRASH AND DIE on my way to work were TOTAL LIES? Yeah. I’m going to a very shrill, bitter place. It’s not pretty. And while I’d normally add some disclaimer here about what a wonderful father/boyfriend/fiance/whatever Cris is, I spent the better part of last night fantasizing about violently shoving his stupid snoring buttface off the bed, so I’m just not feeling it this time.
See? Not pretty.
Bleary-eyed resignation and a constant internal chant of ‘this too shall pass’ are all that’s getting me through the day right now.
Okay, that and Starbucks.
(p.s. i have spent the last, oh, FOUR HOURS trying to upload a picture of Ezra to add to this post and IT IS NOT WORKING. Today can go die. )
I’m going to start this post with a picture of my baby’s bum:
I’ve really got nothing to top that.
Ezra is rolling and flopping and squirming like crazy in his quest to learn how to crawl. He does some pretty epic downward dog poses and then launches off head-first into whatever is in front him. And then he cracks up. Funny stuff.
The not-so-funny stuff is the part where he’s so gosh-darned excited about moving that he refuses to lay still in bed. No matter how late is. No matter how tired he is. And especially no matter how tired I am. Even half asleep and whimpering, with eyes closed, he tries to squirm on to his tummy. So either I hold him and he open his eyes and starts screaming at me. Or I let him roll over and he opens his eyes and starts trying to launch himself off the side of the bed while laughing adorably. And then crying because he’s just so sleepy.
And he does this for hours before finally falling asleep.
And then he wakes up a few times throughout the night and repeats the madness just for good measure.
In other words: Man, I could use a nap.
There’s a new manager at my job, which means we spent an hour of the day in a meeting room, going around the table as every one introduced themselves. When it was my turn, I found myself saying “I’ve been with [company] for six years”… and then everything froze for a second. Because…holy shit. SIX YEARS?! How did that happen? How did six years happen just like that? I never wanted a career at this place. They were just first company to hire me after I moved back from France and when I accepted the job, my thought process literally did not go any deeper than “Yay, I can get a new cell phone!” And now it’s six years later and I’ve got a Real Job and my own Real Beige Cubicle. I spend hours in meetings and I develop programs and I produce beautiful reports and I make a good salary and I have great benefits and a flexible schedule and…I am miserable.
I really don’t want to end up in some Dooce situation where I’m fired for talking about my job online, so I’ll just leave it at that. Miserable.
OMG.
SO MUCH.
It kinda hurts to admit that, but really, this just isn’t The Way It’s Supposed To Be. The Way It’s Supposed To Be is never going to happen, I know that. It involves long afternoons on the patio with lemonade and good music, cozy dinner parties with good friends, bbqs and beaches and lazy days, a charming old house by the sea and a big backyard with a trampoline and a couple dogs and an ancient tree with a tire swing. Naps on hammocks, full bookshelves, an overflowing garden. A gaggle of ridiculous, happy kids. Stolen kisses. Bedtime stories and homemade cakes and impromptu dance parties and craft projects and cartwheels and vacations and hugs and uncontrollable fits of laughter.
Noticeably absent from this list? Jobs that keeps Cris and I away from home for 10+ hours a day.
Or any job, actually. So unless I have some unknown relative die and leave me millions, I realize this is just my silly, happy pipe dream. But even so, I feel like leaving this job would get me One Step Closer. And I think that’s a step I’m finally ready take.
Sunday’s plans: Take the baby to the beach, relax, take pictures. Go to dinner at a friend’s house.
Sunday’s reality: Go to beach. Forget towel/blanket and various other necessities for relaxing. Get mad at camera for suddenly throwing up ERR 99 errors instead of taking pictures. Decide we have time for a quick trip to Target. Take way too long at Target, spend way too much money, and end up out too late to go to friend’s house. Get home late and grumpy.
Wednesday’s plans: Get off work early, cook dinner from recipes I’ve been wanting to try, do laundry and work on website while watching Glee.
Wednesday reality: Realize that Cris bought the wrong tomatoes, peppers, potatoes, and bread for fancy dinner. Whine and complain while Cris makes (admittedly delicious) baked fish and rice. Spend 2 hours trying to get the baby to sleep. Pass out while watching Lost.
Plans to work out this week: HA!
I know I’m grumpy and pessimistic right now, but, seriously. Is anything ever going to go as planned again?
So back in February, we tried to join some local parent group thing to maybe make new parent-friends in our new town. We ended up in the huge basement/playroom of a beautiful old house owned by a sweet, rich couple—you know, the kind of people who have strollers (yes, plural strollers!) that cost more than my car. We walked into a room full of people and their tiny screaming babies, and tried to make with the pleasantries. Complimented and cooed at each others babies, ate some snacks, talked about jobs or the weather or whatever. You know the drill. But we left feeling kinda silly and awkward and OMG SO POOR!, so… yeah. That was that.
This morning, I’m shopping in this cute little baby boutique near home, and one of the ladies from that parent group comes up to with a big smile and a hearty “Hi!” and I smile back, surprised about running into someone I actually knew! She’s impossibly tall and slim, a stay-at-home-mom who teaches yoga on the side just for fun!, and has a super cute 12-month-old boy who played with Ezra during the playdate thing a couple months ago. She seems nice, I think. She sees me looking at the stroller she owns, and starts going on about how wonderful it is and we talk for a bit.
And right as I’m thinking, hey, maybe we gave up on that parent group too soon, maybe she can be my new mommy friend!, she says “So, when’s your baby due?” with a huge smile.
And then I died. The end.
The baby woke me at 5:30 this morning. I stumbled into the kitchen to get a glass of water before feeding him and briefly wondered why it was so bright in there. And then realized the refrigerator door had been left wide open. Since 10 the night before. OOPS.
Bye bye new groceries! Bye bye delicious leftovers I had lovingly packed for our lunches! Bye bye roast, waiting to be cooked!
It’s a sad day in this house :(
I woke up this morning to some homemade pancakes, but… oy. Have you ever heard of trypophobia? It’s basically a fear of clusters of holes, especially holes with things inside them. It sounds ridiculous, I know. I tried to google some images I could provide as examples, but the first page of the google seach had me crawling under my desk wanting to cry.
Anyway, Cris made delicious pancakes. And he put walnuts in my pancakes. Because I asked for walnuts. Because I love walnuts. But when I looked at the plate, I saw the walnuts had sunken into these very disturbing holes in the pancake and I just wanted to vomit. I want to vomit just thinking about it now.
Okay. I’m going to stop talking about vomit and pancakes and my stupid phobias now.
We’re still working through these stupid colds and life is full of misery. My parents came up yesterday to visit with all of us the baby, and my mom made me a big bowl of her delicious chicken and dumpling soup. Cris was supposed to pick me up from work at 4:30 so I could come home early, slurp up a big bowl of soup, take some medicine, and sleeeeeeeeeep. Foreverrrrrr. But a bunch of ridiculous drama unfolded and I didn’t get home until 8:30…coughing, feverish, exhausted, and starving, with a bad case of the chills and a bladder that was about to explode. Definitely not the highlight of the week.
What was the highlight of the week? I have no idea. I really want to stop being all doom and gloom and full of woe, but things have just been a bit sucky lately. Let’s see… I had my annual review at work and got a 2% raise. That’s good, I guess. It almost makes up for the 20% of my last three paychecks that have mysteriously vanished, right? Right? No? Well. Crap, I got nothing then.
Next week will be better. Pinky promise.
I have so much to do, but, woe!, I seem to have come down with a cold. Which I caught from my baby. Sick baby + sick mama = NO FUN. The past few nights, Ezra has decided to remind us that he’s not feeling too great by waking up every couple hours and SCREAMING SO LOUD OMG SO LOUD. The only thing that seems to console him is to sit him on my lap and gently rock him for hours as he stares off into the distance, all pitiful and morose and snot-filled. Sleep? What is this ‘sleep’ you speak of?
I had scheduled Monday and Tuesday off of work so that I could enjoy some time with Cris and Ezra during Cris’s last week of family leave, but spending the whole time on the couch or in bed whining about miserable I felt and worrying about the baby was not exactly what I had in mind.
And now, I’m back at work with a ton of stuff to do and an inability to concentrate on anything for more than two seconds because MY NOSE! MY HEAD! MY THROAT! OMG MISERY! HEY LOOK TWITTER! Plus, my annual review is tomorrow morning. AWESOME.
Having a baby and a full-time job is taxing enough for me (really, how do so many people do this? I am so weak!), but add a (relatively mild) cold to the mix, and I’m just done. I need a margarita and a bottle of nyquil, stat.
I feel like I’m caught in a holding pattern. Most nights, we get home with just enough time to put the baby to bed. Then we make a quick dinner, eat—usually while watching tv, of course—and go to sleep. Work, baby, sleep. Work, baby, sleep. It’s not exactly happyfuntimes and I’m just waiting for something to give…a new job, a winning lottery ticket, something. I’m not exactly sure what, but man. This just can’t be the new normal, right?
Oh, world! You are full of so many crazy people. Ezra woke up and started crying his poor little head off while we were out today, and right as I turned to Cris to say ‘Hey, let’s go home right now so I can feed him!’, this crazy old lady with crazy old lady makeup practically jumps out of the aisle, shakes her finger at me, and squawks “Geez, why don’t you give him a bottle or something?”
I just looked at her and said What? dumbly because I’m a little slow in the morning and I really couldn’t figure out who she was or why she was yelling at me and, I mean…what??? Feed him? You mean these baby-things need to eat?
I had been told that this whole ridiculous parenting-advice-from-a-complete-stranger thing was going to happen all the time, so I guess I’m pretty lucky I made it so long, but I hope any future random strangers can at least provide me with some better advice, because really, crazy clown-makeup lady? Feed him? You think?
