The Nonnies

The return.

2007-03-08T20:33:00.000-08:00

I've determined to make this into a non-whiny blog (which may be difficult, given my propensity toward dramatics). Nonetheless.

Yesterday I walked out to find the 13-month-old Buddy standing on the kitchen table. He was just starting to stand up from the stinkbug position, looking around, and laughing maniacally. He has since tried it out several more times, so the chairs' new home is the top of the table.

He spent a hefty portion of today pushing the laundry basket around (upside down) and then climbing on top of it, laughing and laughing because he was so pleased with himself. The little stinker.

As of today, the signs he produces are

baby
food
water
milk
car
shoe
ball (which he also says)
duck
hot (learned after touching the light bulb of a lit lamp--yikes)
different
more
cracker
hurt
all done
book
baby

I think that's all. And I also think that's all for now.

The fear.

2006-10-15T21:55:00.000-07:00

I'm afraid of a lot of things with regard to Baby Nonny. These fears come and go with a sort of ebbing and flowing, and I imagine a lot of them are common to other parents, but I don't know, since I only have my own experience to deal with...

I'm afraid inadvertantly raising Baby Nonny poorly, and in some terribly unexplainable and horrific way raising a son who is an abuser, a bully, a thief or worse, some kind of serial killer.

I'm afraid that because I lack normal social skills myself and am incapable of even maintaining a regular amount of conversation in my relationship with the Nonny Spouse, somehow I'll mess up Baby Nonny's social skills, leading to the above fears, or perhaps just rendering him autistic or generally emotionally dead to the world.

As an extention of another fear that I mentioned on annegb's blog I'm afraid of doing something silly or stupid and nonsensical and somehow my stupid act leading to Baby Nonny's untimely death. I think most parents must be afraid of that.

But, more than any of these fears, I think I'm most afraid of having to answer Baby Nonny if he asks why Grandma and Grandpa Nonny don't sleep in the same room anymore, or, perhaps even worse, the eventuality of his asking me why they don't live in the same house like his other set of grandparents.

I think it's because I don't know what the right answer is.

The masculinity.

2006-09-10T21:54:00.000-07:00

So, truth be told, I'm not a very masculine man. In fact, I'm pretty much a sissy-boy. My parents encouraged me to play one sport (baseball) growing up, and they did so somewhat begrudgingly. I played for two seasons, in 3rd and 5th grade, and I managed to break my finger at the hands of one of my own teammates the second time, so as you can see, I was a pretty wimpy little kid. My parents also blessed me with a wonderfully diminuitive stature, so in addition to being a wimp, I'm puny.

This is fine. I don't have "small man syndrome" or whatever. Occasionally, I wish I was slightly taller, so that it wouldn't be so awkward when the Nonny Spouse rests her head on my shoulder, or so that I could reach things on those elusive top shelves in the kitchen, but generally, I don't mind being short and wimpy. It's a total non-issue. It's who I am, and I've honestly never regretted it.

The reason I'm making this non-issue an issue is because I've noticed recently 2 very distinctive things that I find incredibly unexpected.

The first is that I've found myself become increasingly protective of my "territory" over the last couple of years. Baby Nonny's birth has accelerated this process, and now I have become obsessive about protecting his and the Nonny Spouse's physical safety. Me. The weakling who can't bench press more than like 20 pounds. Like I'm even going to be able to stop anybody who really wants to get at my family. Nevertheless, at the slightest sign of potential bad-guyness (you know noises in the brush outside our apartment in an alleyway that's fallen into complete disuse, noises in the night that are probably perfectly par for the course in our new apartment but sound like there might be somebody rumaging around out in the kitchen) my fight or flight reflex turns on completely and I'm in fight mode. Flight is not an option. I must protect my family. Aaaarrrrrrrr! *rips off pieces of raw meat with his teeth*

The second is that I want Baby Nonny to "be a real man." It's funny, because I'm in no way shape or form, "a real man." I don't crave athletic competition. I'm a computer programmer by profession, and I like jazz music. I'm pretty much the proto-typical definition of "a girly man." And yet, I feel compelled to make sure that Baby Nonny grows up "a real man." If he falls down and bonks his head from a sitting up position? Great. It'll toughen him up. No, we can't dress him in that pink t-shirt, I'm sorry. I don't care what Aunt Helga will say, it's not manly enough. No, I won't stop throwing him around, he needs to get used to athletic activity. In fact, give me a couple more sports balls, please. We've got to teach this kid some fundamentals.

It's not that I don't like these parts of myself. It's just that, well, I didn't expect them to actually be a part of who I am. I'm the puny kid who always got picked last for any type of ball game and constantly came in from recess with a bloody nose because my face was at everybody else's elbow-level. I'm the kid who ran in the house and locked the door when the neighborhood bully (a year or two my junior) came running my way.

Who knew I'd be this masculine?

Not dead.

2006-08-22T23:06:00.000-07:00

We're in the throes of moving here--I feel like our beautiful little basement apartment is having a bad case of the stomach flu and barfing us out. It's disgusting how much (needed) junk we have. I vow to set fire to my possessions before moving again. At first, I vowed never to move again, but living permanently in (a) a two-bedroom apartment in (b) Provo doesn't exactly fulfill my life goals. So I had to revise my oaths. Maybe I'll forget how much I despise moving before we have to do it again. Even better, maybe I can convince ANM to make the next move the last one. (This is the part where I close my eyes and dream about having a garage and a basement and many, many, many closets. Oh, it's too beautiful. I must return to the reality that is the maze of boxes surrounding me before I start to cry from the very thought of being settled.)

The Fathers' Lounge.

2006-07-30T20:06:00.000-07:00

Often, in the middle of Sacrament Meeting on a sunny and incredibly hot Sunday afternoon, it suddenly becomes my turn to extricate Baby Nonny from our place on the church bench because he's become too unruly for public consumption. This means I hustle a somewhere-between-whiny-and-screaming-his-head-off, relatively exhausted little boy out the back of the chapel, with an attempt to make as little impact on those worshiping around us as possible. I often make eye contact with several older members of our ward who are smiling knowingly at the cute scene and smile in return, knowing that they know what I'm going through, but feeling somehow that doesn't really ameliorate my situation at all. I gently back into the push-bar to open the rear doors, and slip through the little opening I've just created. It's at this point that the real trouble begins.

You see, when a wee lad needs a nap at church, there's not really anywhere a dad can take him. The first problem I confront on exiting the chapel is the foyer: usually it's filled with 2 or 3 sets of latecomers who are talking relatively loudly, or those who have exited the chapel before me, with kids who are also refusing to take their naps, and are being quite vocal about it. Not exactly a nice, quiet place. So, the foyer's out.

Next, I start to walk the halls. This is generally okay in between classes for about 30 seconds. After 30 seconds somebody will inevitably enter the hallway from a classroom, screaming to their friends (if they're under, say, 16) or approach me or someone else and talk loudly (if they're over, say, 25). Also not good for putting Baby Nonny down for a nap.

Before the blazing inferno of a summer was upon us, at this point, I would simply exit the building, and walk Baby Nonny to sleep outside, with the breeze blowing and the noise of a major thoroughfare in the background. It was a pretty good approximation of the white noise that the fan in his room produces, although the light situation really seemed to bother him. (That pesky sun and it's 29 septillion times the brightness of a 100 watt light bulb... Bah!)

Since we've been hitting scorchers above 100°F lately, I've been faced with my old problem again: where do I go to help my son calm down and take a nap? Now, I know, I know, there's really no such thing as a quiet place in the church. Not even the Mothers' Lounge is quiet, or so I'm told. So, I hunt in vain. The gym works okay, especially if walking is effective in lulling him to sleep. However, it also becomes problematic when little kids (and sometimes child-like adults) come stomping through in between classes or decide they want to play there. Plus, the gym is big, and I can't exactly claim the whole thing for me and my little boy.

So, the next best thing is usually the stage. When you pull the curtains on the stage, you drown out a significant portion of the noisy clod-hoppers in the gym. This is good. Also, for some strange reason, the stage in our church has an old leather wheelchair which is extremely good for rocking the baby to sleep. Unfortunately, there are little tiny three year-olds, with parents who have no respect for other people, who love to stomp through the stage when their church meetings end, which for some reason is approximately the same time Baby Nonny needs to nap.

So, today, I chose a new tactic: finding an unused classroom. I've tried this tactic before. It usually gives you at least a good 20 minutes of silence. The biggest problem with it is that in any relatively normal sized LDS chapel, all of the rooms are going to be used at some point during each hour. Meaning, that somebody's going to open the door and scream at the top of their lungs and then say, "Oh, sorry! I didn't think anyone was in here..." right before their class starts, causing Baby Nonny to wake up and start screaming back at them.

So... My beef is that there is no Fathers' Lounge. We need one: a place for dads to take their kids where there is peace and quiet, and there will be no disturbances. The Mothers' Lounge will be for feeding. The Fathers' Lounge will be for sleeping. It's about time, don't you think?

(P.S. High Priests will always be welcome to doze off in the Fathers' Lounge if the meetings become unbearably burdensome on their sleeping habits, but only if they promise not to snore.)

The hair. It's important, okay?

2006-07-20T20:57:00.000-07:00

So. What was it? Four weeks ago? The baby started the hair pulling in an I-am-Tarzan-and-I-will-now-swing-through-the-forest-using-the-vines-that-are-your-hair kind of way. Inevitable, true. Awful, however, and absolutely not to be allowed. Can anyone stand to have their hair pulled? They must because I know long-haired women with babies. I, however, have had my hair in a ponytail for a month now in an attempt to keep my relationship with my own child pleasant. So far, it's worked quite well. Perks:

Whenever I take my hair out of the ponytail, I'm pleasantly surprised by how long it is (I chopped it all off and donated it to Locks of Love right before Baby Nonny was born, so, in a way, it's kind of miraculous that I can even get it into a ponytail now. I digress.).
It takes an amazing thirty seconds to get the ponytail in. Fabulous.
I feel extraordinarily beautiful when I actually spend the ten minutes to dry my hair. Really, it's incredible. This is at least partially because I feel like a pinhead with a ponytail. Oh, well. It preserves my relationship with the baby.

That is all.

The questions.

2006-07-17T21:10:00.000-07:00

Two quandaries:

ANM is about to start working from home. This is very exciting because it means that I will be able to take a shower every day. I can't think of anything better. Also, I imagine myself being all housewifey and making sandwiches or soup for us for lunch every day. I probably won't, but I do know where the aprons are should I need to become Donna Reed in the near future. Anyway: this is the quandary. I'm not sure how I'm going to refrain myself from bugging him while he's home. I mean, I like him (that's why I married him). I'm going to constantly be like, "hey! let's go the library!" or "you want to go swimming?" But he will be working. And I will have to leave him alone instead of talking to him or making him take care of the baby while I do whatever I want (which is really what I imagine work to be for him: doing whatever he wants). Curses. And yet: yay!
This is the real problem. We got in an accident over the weekend--a lame, stupid accident in which no one was hurt and the cars still functioned, although ours will now no longer pass inspection before the end of the month. And it's basically totalled. So we have to get a new car. And since now we're a real family with a child and all, the question is this: do we get a family car? Or a normal four-door? I really don't think I can do a mini-van at this point in my life. But a Subaru Outback wagon--maybe. Will we need such a big car in the near-enough future? I don't know. Or really: will the car last long enough to make it worth our while? Gambling. I suck at it.

The whining continues.

2006-07-11T21:16:00.000-07:00

Sometimes I can just feel my world closing in on me, which is ridiculous. What is so suffocating about housework and taking care of a baby? I can't explain it. But on days like today, the only thing I can think of to relieve the pressure is to break things. There's something about shattering glass that I imagine would be very cathartic. I just want to hurl glass after glass after bowl after mug against the wall until we have nothing left but paper plates.

The hideosity of the whole thing, though, is that if I were to give in and do it, I'd have to clean it all up. And I'd probably cut myself or get a glass shard stuck in my toe. And that's the reason I don't.

The requisite Monday blog.

2006-07-10T11:31:00.000-07:00

I'm having a hard time with the whole anonymous blog thing, mostly because it has become a whiny blog and whining is really not something I can abide. You can ask ANM. Well, actually, don't. He'll probably say that I get mad at him whenever he complains about anything and then promptly spend all my time complaining. This may be true.

Perhaps I will return later if I can think of how to write something in a non-annoying way.

The hunt.

2006-07-03T20:26:00.000-07:00

The only thing I can think about lately is moving, which we're doing in roughly a month and a half to a place we haven't found yet. I'm alternately excited and devastated about it because it heralds in a new stage in our little family life.

We're starting grad school in the fall. Both of us. ANM's plans are amorphous and ever-changing. My goal is simply to get a Masters in English so that I can teach freshman writing. Thus I won't have to worry about keeping my teaching certificate current when I'm staying home with kids (graduate degrees don't expire) and if I want to go back to work, I won't have to sign my life away like I do when I teach public school. The perfectionist in me comes tearing out and I end up spending more time at school than at home. I don't want that.

So in the fall I will become a part-time mom and a full-time student (which will also involve teaching a whopping one class). I hope it works. I hope it's okay. Before school starts I will attend a week-long training seminar, and I think I'll probably cry the whole first day, feeling guilty and sad about leaving the baby as ANM moonlights as Mr. Mom for a whole week. After that week, though, I only have to be on campus in the mornings. ANM will be on campus in the afternoons. And we will be eating baby carrots and bananas for every meal since neither of us will have time to cook.

That's the plan. If we hate it and it doesn't work, we'll drop out. But in the meantime, I must find a place for us to live. I don't want to live in a dingy rathole that will suck the very life out of us. But we probably shouldn't be splurging as we take the vow of poverty that is grad school. I keep hoping that one of us has a rich relative or friend down south who's going to call us up and say, "Hey! I've just joined the peace corps/decided to go on a mission/chosen to go on Sabbatical for the next two years, and we'd really like you to stay in our walking-distance-to-campus-dishwashered-and-washer-and-driered house while we're gone!"

So far it hasn't happened. And all the places we've looked at have been alarming--either because of price, smell, or lead paint.

The change of plans.

2006-06-26T21:03:00.000-07:00

Today, right now, I think the problem is that I didn't really ever expect to get married--not because of some self-esteem issue or firmly-held feminist convictions. It's just that I didn't have very many boyfriends--or dates, for that matter.

There was the high school boyfriend. In a fit of adolescent idiocy, we were an "item" for basically all four years of high school, and when it ended, I was completely devastated in that dramatic way that only a naive 18-year-old girl can be. Woe was me. How could I ever go on. Blah blah blah. Finally, I came to my senses. And now he is bald and fat. Ah, fate: thank you for being cruel to him. (Kidding. Kind of. Mostly.) That, however, is beside the point.

Then there was the college boyfriend. In a surprising twist of fate, he turned out to be gay. Enough said? Mmmm, no. That's really what you get for falling for your good friend who is exceptionally good at counseling. OF COURSE he's gay. His entire wardrobe was lumberjack themed at the time, though, so it wasn't completely obvious on first blush.

I got home from my mission in time to be thoroughly disgusted by every boy who took interest (however slight) in me: the guy my family refers to as "sweat-wart Mike" (his name really does say it all); the guy who took me to the children's section of Borders on a date to read books but could not, as luck would have it, read very well and then promptly wrote the date up in a charming article for The Daily Universe; the elder from my mission who, after being rejected several times on the phone, came to the US so I could reject him in person; the guy who deigned to ask me out and gave me a mission report for several hours, although he'd been home for about eight years; etc.

ANM had all the puzzle pieces, including the ones that others had lacked: he was motivated, kind, intelligent, hot, interesting, fun, curious, funny, and straight... I could go on. I spent several weeks in shock when he told me he wanted to date me. The entire year before we got married I felt like I was living in a dream, playing boyfriend/girlfriend with a figment of my imagination. But I wasn't: I was just dating the perfect man. And the obvious thing to do if you have the perfect husband and the perfect relationship is to have a perfect family.

Nothing like a little pressure.

It's not that I didn't want to be a wife and a mother. I did. I do. I just didn't really plan on it, per se, because I never found anybody I would've loved to be married to until I was 25. So I never thought about how many kids would be the perfect number or if I wanted boys or girls or what names I really liked or how I would cope with the isolation of staying at home all day with a demanding little emperor. I just wasn't one of those girls whose dream since childhood is to be a wife and a mom.

I'm not really good at it. I don't love it every day, or even most days recently. But I have to remember that this IS what I want, regardless of how hard and mind-numbing it is. Because it's also beautiful and fun.

[Note to self: find way to talk about being a mom that is a happy medium between exalting it and bemoaning it.]

The report.

2006-06-21T21:01:00.000-07:00

The good news: I get along MUCH better with my mother-in-law on her own turf. She's much more fun when she's in her element (which is in her large-and-in-charge kitchen).

The bad news: Six days is still a long, long time.

More good news: You wouldn't believe how good Baby Nonny was on 3/4 of the flights. We flew Southwest, so we got to preboard. Another bonus (because preboarding when you fly on the cattle car is such a bonus): not one of our four flights was completely full, so they let us take the car seat on and have a row all to ourselves. Nice. Especially when that row was the very front one with all the leg room.

More bad news: The one flight the baby didn't do well on lasted three hours. And we didn't get a special row that time. But we did get lots of dirty looks from all these old ladies sitting nearby. Were they old maids who resent children? Did they have hemorrhoids? Were their hearing aids turned up too high? I'll never know. But I was certainly getting fed up with them turning around and ogling my pathetic attempts to remain modest while breastfeeding an exhausted and wailing baby about 9,000 times in a cramped space. I had all kinds of good comebacks if they'd just opened their shriveled mouths.

Some more good news: I really like the small town where ANM grew up. It's charming and quaint and very much a college town. The houses are all nearly a hundred years old with huge yards and squirrels and rabbits and beautiful gardens. There's only one fast food place in town and everybody rides bikes. It's like a made-up town out of a book. I like it a lot.

Some more bad news: There is no way I can escape in such a small town. "See you, guys! I'm off to... the college library!" "Hey! I just saw a squirrel! I've gotta go chase it!" Breaks would be helpful, I think, in my relationship with the mother-in-law. But then it would also be helpful if she wouldn't bash all Utahns ever. But I digress.

Even more good news: Granny Nonny loves her one and only grandchild.

Even more bad news: Because she has spent the last month alone after her husband flew the coop, the MIL appears to be dealing with all kinds of guilt and self-worth issues. If the baby, who was "asleep" upstairs with the baby monitor turned on, stirred at the same moment that she (I kid you not) turned the newspaper page, she would say, "Oh, no! I woke him up! I'm so sorry! I'm so noisy!" "No, sweet MIL, you did not wake him up." We went through this several times a day.

Following along with this pattern which I am now finding annoying but am too lazy to change, good news: After a month of hiding out, the FIL has announced that he plans to return home.

Blah blah blah: It it not clear whether he's happy about this or what he plans to do upon his arrival.

In conclusion: I hereby swear off all traveling with a child who doesn't like to sleep anywhere other than his crib.

The trip.

2006-06-14T13:58:00.000-07:00

The best thing about today being today is that it's the closest we've been yet to 7:40 p.m. next Tuesday, which is when our return flight will land. We leave bright and early tomorrow morning (hours before Baby Nonny usually wakes up) for a time zone two hours ahead of us with a two-hour layover on the way. What was I thinking when I scheduled that flight??

I'm dreading this--and the travel is a mere slice of the entire dreading pie I have here in front of me. Other factors:

I'm getting sick. I've had a conspicuously sore throat for days, a headache, a runny nose, and waaaay swollen lymph nodes. As a rule, I behave rather badly when sick, in spite of my valiant efforts to do otherwise. And a tendency toward bad behavior isn't going to be at all helpful to the situation I'm about to walk into.
When we planned this trip two months ago, I felt like I'd timed it perfectly since it fell just between all our other obligations and smack dab on Father's Day. And then the father ran away. So instead of spending Father's Day with the one father we rarely get to see, we will be spending it with (a) no fathers and (b) a woman who (rightly) cries nightly because HER FREAKING HUSBAND RAN AWAY. ARGH! Excuse the minor outburst.
I will have to endure more assigning of the baby's physical features and general behavior to the Nonny genes. This is much more annoying than it sounds. Norwegian lips, anyone?
And, finally, my relationship with the MIL is really one that is best maintained under bright, sunny, and short circumstances. (This is at least partially because the woman does not listen to a thing that you say.) Thus the enormity of the situation presents itself: her husband has left her; she has no children at home; we are staying for six days. There will be no brightness. There will be no sunniness. There will be no shortness.

There will be much guilt (how can you possibly dread a visit to someone who so desperately needs it?). There will be much biting of tongues behind fake smiles (ha. yes. Nonny toes. oh. yes. Nonny eyes. yessirree, bob. Nonny earlobes. tee-hee. Nonny voice. et cetera.).

Well. I can say this: it's closer now to 7:40 p.m. on Tuesday than it was when I started. Fifteen minutes is nothing to sneeze at.

The dialogue (alternate title: The pettiness).

2006-06-11T21:11:00.000-07:00

Baby Nonny whimpering slightly in my arms tonight around seven p.m. after a long (aren't they all?) Sunday.

ANM's Sister: I think he got that from me.

Me: He got what from you?

ANM's Sister: The whimpering. I bet he got that from me.

I choose to say nothing since I have nothing nice to say and try very hard not to roll my eyes. She is completely serious.

The ketchup.

2006-06-02T21:29:00.000-07:00

I have this to say: it must suck to be a picky person. And by "a picky person," I mean specifically "ANM." Geez. The poor man is always having to ask what comes on stuff and ask for exceptions and remember to get things. Me? I take what I get and I like it. I have no aversions to mayonnaise or fry sauce (Utahn, born and bred). I don't shudder at the sight of lettuce or cold cheese. I never pick things off pizza.

Tonight we got hamburgers at a local place. And since we swear allegiance to the drive thru when at all possible, ANM has to ask first, "Can you tell me what comes on a mushroom swiss burger?" through the annoying 20-year-old intercom system. A non-native English speaker is like, "gwat?" And thus it begins. Then he has to tell them multiple times what we wants and doesn't want, have them repeat it back to him, etc., etc., ad nauseum. When we finally get home and all set up to consume our gourmet meal, he realizes: he forgot to ask for ketchup. It doesn't bother me that we've been out of ketchup for roughly six months. I take whatever they give me. But ANM goes queasy at the idea of fry sauce and so thus his meal is ruined.

It's kind of pathetic and tragic, really, the way he can't enjoy anything except his handful of acceptable and warm foods.

And in conclusion, my main worry right now is that his extreme and unwarranted pickiness will rub off on the baby. I will end up having two (or, perhaps, some day in the far distant future, more) people who look at normal food products with fear and loathing in their eyes and thus I will be forced to eat Kraft macaroni and cheese three times a week for the rest of my life. Now THAT is something to inspire fear and loathing.

Solidarity.

2006-05-27T20:59:00.000-07:00

My grandpa is a gruff and formal man who spent his life barking orders and calling my grandma "Susan" because although it wasn't her name, it was his favorite. He never hugged me--it was always a handshake--until I got home from my mission. He bought all of his grandchildren their first pair of glasses (if they needed them--which everyone in my family did) because his parents were too poor to afford them for him when he was young.

He has Alzheimers disease, has had for a long time. It's been a long time since he recognized any of his grandchildren or even his children. Overall, this has made for some very funny things (not the least of which is Grandpa patting his 80-year-old wife's belly and saying, "Are we going to have another baby?"). But now he's degenerated to the point where he can't walk consistently or get himself to the bathroom, so my grandma had to put him in a home. That was almost two weeks ago. She's completely beside herself and says that Grandpa has declined quickly in the short time he's spent in the home. A week ago, she called my parents and asked them to fast that the Lord take Grandpa.

That same day, ANM's father arrived in town in an attempt to sort through his own marriage and depression from the vantage point of several hundred miles away. I don't understand what's going on (and neither does his wife, who is left at home to worry if her husband is coming back). His children sit and worry about what to say to the father who made makeshift puppets for them out of gloves, taught them alphabets of sundry languages as small children, and never tutored them in jazz or German although he offers now to do both for children who are not his own.

He asks if I consider Toni Morrison's Beloved the best novel of the past quarter century but reveals no reason for running away from his wife. ANM intercepts a mysterious call from a 22-year-old girl with an area code that matches the place his father just left. The girl leaves a vague message, claiming her family (nearly 2000 miles west of where she is) called, but she fails to take caller ID into account. I am horrified. ANM and his sister are furious.

And so we send cards to Grandpa that he can't read and pictures of the baby he can't remember is his first great-grandson. We drive to see my father-in-law and talk meaninglessly, and I feel remotely like Nick Carraway.

It feels like hitting your funny bone--jarring and unpleasant and without much you can do until it finally goes away.

The complaint.

2006-05-23T22:30:00.000-07:00

I have something of a confession to make (except if I'm making it to no one, does it really count?).

ANM's family has more family pride than any other group of people I've ever met, including rabid team-supporting sports fans. They're fiercely loyal and solidly confident in their Nonniness. A good group of people to belong to, right? They are. Whenever his parents call, they say, "How is our son treating you?" They're funny and smart and I generally like them a whole dang lot.

The problem, though (and this is the part where I complain), is that their Nonny pride is exclusive. I know they don't mean it to be, but for just a second here, I choose not to be an adult and to vent on my anonymous blog. May I never be found out.

If truth be told, I am not a Nonny. This should be surprising to no one, since here in the good old U.S. of A. we don't usually marry our relatives. I can handle the exclusion as it relates to me. Ha ha, yes, the Nonnies are all great people in spite of the familial craziness. Oh, ha, yes, I, too, enjoy the legacy of Grandma Nonny's accent. Et cetera, et cetera, ad nauseum.

I don't do so well with the exclusivity as it relates to my baby, however. Mentally, I get it. Baby Nonny does, after all, bear the Nonny name and he is the first grandchild to ANM's parents as well as mine. Examples:

BN has a dimple. This may be the cutest and most unexpected thing about him, as neither I nor ANM nor anyone in our extended families has a dimple. Nonetheless, ANM's sister one night declared quite positively that the baby got the dimple from her. She smiled to prove it. Except she doesn't have a dimple.
When ANM's mom came out to "help" after the baby was born, she assured me that BN has Norwegian lips. NORWEGIAN LIPS, I tell you. This is important because she is half Norwegian, ANM is a quarter Norwegian, and BN is an eighth Norwegian. If you can tell me what Norwegian lips are, I will be grateful.
ANM's father insists that BN is bald. If he were bald, I would accept it graciously and move on. BN, for example, has a lopsided head. I am the first (second, actually, since ANM was the one to point it out) to admit this. But my baby is not bald. It bothers my FIL that I think this. It bothers me that he can look at the half-inch long blond hair covering his grandchild's head and declare baldness. This actually has nothing to do with being a Nonny, but it bothers me.
BN's long fingers come from ANM (whose man hands are, hmmm, the same size as mine) and his toes (which are freakishly long and all the same size) are also Nonny toes, even though every Nonny I have ever met has normal looking toes.

You can see how this can go on and on.

So I understand that people like to pick babies apart and assign their characteristics to various relatives. But for some reason these comments just get under my skin--they're like boils. They just keep growing and growing and getting more and more tender and eventually they look like a minor mountain sprouting up from your arm and--I'm going to stop this metaphor now.

I guess it's that I have devoted my life for the past four months to this baby; I grew him in my body and still keep him nourished with myself. And yet every time the in-laws see him, all they see is their own puny (and oftentimes imagined) contribution.

It's plagiarism.

The cookie.

2006-05-18T21:48:00.000-07:00

We are in a cookie rut. Well, we were. You see, ANM and his mother have this weird fixation with which of them makes the better chocolate chip cookies when they use the same exact recipe. There is no difference between the cookies when they don't alter their original recipe (ANM's mother occasionally goes all health-freaky and refuses to put the yolks of the eggs in the cookies; can it possibly make that much of a difference? Don't answer that question if you're going to say "yes" because <rant> I believe that if you're going to be all freaked out about the irrevocable damage that cookies are doing to your innards, you should be eating some form of dessert tofu and leaving cookies to the rest of us </rant>. But that could just be me.). Anyway. Since ANM is so proud of his chocolate chip cookies, they are basically the only form of cookie we have eaten for roughly three years. This has been hard on someone like me, whose first word was actually "cookie."

However. We have recently discovered the Reeses peanut butter chip. This chip, combined with the chocolate chip in ANM's holy and sacred cookie, transforms an otherwise delicious but somehow tiresome cookie into a delectable treat. In fact, tonight I was the one to make the cookies. They're in the oven even now, filling our nighttime house with that sweet cookie smell.

Losing post-partum weight? Why?

p.s. I love your cookies, ANM.

p.p.s. I did not, though, mix the dry ingredients separately as you instructed. I don't think the cookies have suffered. (But because you read this before eating one, you will insist that they are subpar. Ya te conozco, mi amor.)

The stats.

2006-05-14T21:41:00.000-07:00

Number of naps Baby Nonny took today: 0
Number of squares I have eaten from my Mother's Day Symphony Bar handed out at church: 8
Number of molten chocolate cupcakes I ate at my parents' house: 5
Number of molten chocolate cupcakes everyone else ate at my parents' house: 2
Number of hours BN spent crying because he was so tired: too many
Number of babies present in relief society today when the YW took over Primary: 10
Number of dresses I tried on before returning to my post-partum two-skirt collection: 6
Number of paintings given to me by a very handsome man for Mother's Day: 2
Number of pairs of shoes sitting in our living room at this moment: at least 5
Number of asparagus spears I had for dinner: 9
Number of things on yesterday's to-do list: roughly 86
Number of things I accomplished yesterday: 0
Number of stories read to BN tonight: 3
Number of songs sung to BN before he was totally zonked: 2.5
Number of times I have looked at the lights on the baby monitor in the last minute to quickly detect any variation in sound coming from BN's room: 14
Number of talks given in church today: 3
Number of times I steeled myself for the Saintly Motherhood Talk: 3
Number of times the steeling was unnecessary: 3
Number of days I wish the weekend were: 4
Number of times that I have thought about A. Nonny Mouse's need for a haircut today: 7
Number of toenails with chipped nail polish: 9
Number of gargantuan two-year-olds lumbering through the chapel today: 1 (but he's big enough to be more)
Number of donuts I'd like to eat tomorrow: 3

The seashell.

2006-05-11T15:17:00.000-07:00

I have a problem. (Well, I have many problems, one of which being that I prefer blogging to doing camp director-type things, in spite of the fact that camp is in less than a month. But who in their right mind calls a woman who is EIGHT MONTHS PREGNANT to be the camp director?? Answer: God.) The problem to which I am referring is the fact that I am constantly hearing my baby crying. Is he crying? No. Or sometimes: yes. But is it physically possible that I can hear that theoretical cry? Generally no.

Example: On Saturday we went to a wedding in two separate cars; the baby went with ANM. After EXCELLENT behavior from the three-month-old for several hours, he finally lost it around 9 when we were heading home. I helped ANM pack the wailing child in his car and then headed to mine--on the other side of the parking structure. I listened to Baby Nonny cry pathetically all the way to my car and felt the exhaustion roll over me as his wails reverberated throughout the parking lot. Five minutes later as I closed the door to my own car, I realized that it was, indeed, impossible for me to hear him half a mile away, through various levels of cement, and two car doors, regardless of how hard he was crying (unless I have a super power! Maybe I'm a superhero...!).

The same annoying thing happened today when I put him down for a nap and darted off to take a shower. He was asleep. ASLEEP, for pity's sake. I set up the baby monitor so I could hear it and heard him crying all through my 30-second spray-down. I turned the water off and--he was fast asleep. Still.

It happens when I leave him napping and run upstairs to put a load of laundry in. It happens when I wake up in the middle of the night and scare ANM to death as I pop bolt upright in bed.

"The baby's crying!" I say.

"No," ANM mumbles. "He's not. Go to sleep."

It happens when I leave him with my mom while I run errands and I approach her house.

Perhaps my head is like a seashell. You know, how if you hold a seashell up to your ear you can hear the ocean regardless of if you're on Manhattan Beach in LA or the middle of a cornfield in Nebraska? Only in my head a baby is constantly screaming.

No wonder I feel like I'm going crazy.

27. Next stop: death.

2006-05-10T22:50:00.000-07:00

So, yeah: I have a child; I've graduated from college; I have to pay bills. None of this makes me feel old. What does make me feel old is the fact that my sweet mother is having a 40-year high school reunion this year (WHAT??) and the height of all the trees in my parents' neighborhood.

My dad is a tree salesman and we each had a tree in our backyard growing up. My tree was a dwarf apricot of some kind, and I outgrew it by about second grade. As I recently walked around my parents' neighborhood, though--which was a brand new development when they moved in 27.5 years ago when I was almost three months old--I was amazed to see how tall all the neighbors' trees are. Those pines are taller than the houses! They look like they could be fifty years old.

That's all. Nothing deep. Just turns out that 27 is a lot older than I thought.

Wow. Today was a good day.

2006-05-06T21:12:00.000-07:00

Baby Nonny was incredibly good and patient, considering all the paces we put him through today.

First, he slept the whole night, once again. I know, I know. It's normal and natural, but it's still seems like it's been so recently to me that he's started sleeping through the night that it still feels like a huge miracle every night.

Then, as soon as he woke up from his long winters nap, we headed over to the Nonny Spouse's parents' new house, to help unpack. I did some manly heavy lifting (you should see me, I'm ripped ;)) while Nonny Spouse did a TON of unpacking. Then, when the heavy lifting was done, I helped unpack some more. Baby Nonny patiently waited for us to be done, took a 20 minute nap with Granny Nonny, and then was a generally good spirited boy on the way home.

Next, the mad whack crazy part of the day started. We were supposed to go to Nonny Spouse's cousin's wedding, today. Baby Nonny absolutely needed a bath, and there was no way we'd make it to the wedding on time if he got one. So, I sent the Spouse on her way, and prepared to give Baby Nonny a bath. First step in my preparation? I needed to shower myself. I stationed his little swing just outside the bathroom door, and got in the shower, and he was a veeeeeeeeery good boy the whole time. I peaked my head out a couple of times during my shower to make sure he was okay, and he grinned at me both times.

Then, I had to shave. Towards the end of my shave (which was a long one because I hadn't shaved for like a week...) he started fussing a bit. As soon as I picked him up, though he quieted down. Then, I realized that the shirt I'd intended on wearing to the previously mentioned wedding was dirty, still having Baby Nonny's poop all over it from the last time I'd worn it.

"Well, crap," I thought to myself. (Pun intended.)

So, I got another shirt out, but the new shirt, while incredibly stylish and rebellious because it was non-white, was also incredibly wrinkled and not so well-kempt-looking. So, I had to put Baby Nonny down again, while I ironed the shirt. He fussed a bit about that, but I was able to placate him by paying attention to him. (It's always fun, and kind of funny, when all he really wants is somebody to look at him.) The shirt done, me all under-weared up, but not wearing my suit, I realized it was time for the bath...

I got all the towels ready, and got baby nonny almost undressed. I took his little bath out and put it in our shower (we don't have a bathtub...). Then, I put him in his swing, and held the little baby bathtub up to our showerhead, to fill it with water. I held it up there until it was so full I almost dropped it (which wasn't very full. The reason I almost dropped it was because it's so awkwardly shaped and also probably because I'd been doing so much heavy lifting earlier in the day... My lats and bis hadn't had a proper recuperation period.... *snicker*). So, I finished undressing him the whole way, and sucked in my gut and put him in the tub.

He cried. He cried and cried and cried. He hates being wet, apparently. (We're definitely going to have to make sure this kid gets some serious swimming lessons, because otherwise, he'll be so adverse to water that he'll never learn and probably end up drowning at some point.) I hurried, because by now we were running mega-late, and I thought we might totally miss the pictures and everything. I dressed him up in his cute little argyle sweater wedding outfit that the Nonny Spouse had prepared for him, and though he fussed while I dried him off, he quited right down as soon as I started dressing him (usually doesn't happen that way: usually he screams bloody murder after his bath for like a full half hour before realizing that he's not wet anymore and that everybody has almost lost their patience with him), and before I got the sweater on him, he totally fell asleep!

Then, I threw him in the car and we went to the wedding. We got there with a few minutes to spare, and he slept the whole way. He woke up as soon as I put him in his stroller and he gave me a big smile. Off we went. He made it through the next 5 hours, and two diapers, with only half a fussing fit when he got hungry. He was cute to the people he needed to be cute for, and he was generally playful the rest of the evening. Hallelujah.

I have to say this about my experiences today. I have tons of respect for all you mothers out there. That quite obviously includes you, Nonny Spouse, but I want to single you out specifically: I don't know how you make it through every day. It was stressful enough for me to be fully in charge for a few hours, and he was relatively good today. Thank you, thank you, thank you for the excellent mothering you do. I think one of the most wonderful qualities you have is your patience. I know he and I both try it often, but I am eternally grateful for how much of our trash you put up with, and I know one day he will be too.

Baby Nonny saves himself.

2006-05-05T06:16:00.000-07:00

Baby Nonny has not been having good days. He has, in fact, been having patently bad days. I keep wondering if he's sick, but he has no fever, no cough, no drainage, no diarrhea. What he does have is a good pair of lungs.

Monday was particularly bad. He cried and cried and cried all day long. My mom (an old nurse) said she didn't think he was displaying any signs of ear ache or anything. I fed him more; I changed him more; we walked about a million miles (and my 75-year-old neighbor said he was going to turn me in for child abuse after listening "to that child cry." He was kidding. I think. I hope.).

It didn't help matters at all that my period was three days late. (TMI? Hmmm. That's the beauty of the anonymous blog.) It seemed generally impossible to me that I was pregnant again--both physically (I have an IUD) and emotionally (Baby Nonny is only THREE MONTHS OLD!). Nonetheless, I totally freaked out. I figured out that the possible due date would be about three weeks before BN's first birthday and then I, along with the baby, was inconsolable.

The next day was slightly less bad. My pregnancy test was negative, and BN was pretty good in the morning--but then he lost it in the afternoon again. After five hours, of alternating crying/feeding/crying/feeding, I put him on my chest and lay down on the bed at my wits' end. He was still screaming his little lungs out (and I'm sure my neighbor was listening at the door, phone in hand, just waiting to call Child Protective Services).

Mostly to drown out the hard-core crying that hadn't stopped for hours, I started to sing. Again. For the millionth time. And it's not like I can sing. But I did anyway. I sang all the Primary songs and soft hymns I could think of (no "In Our Lovely Deseret" at this juncture, or, well, ever). After about thirty seconds, BN stopped his pathetic wailing. He turned his little head and looked at me with those wise blue eyes and just watched. I sang for upwards of half an hour, until he finally fell asleep.

Last night, I was "helping" the Nonny Mouse put BN to bed. I thought rocking the baby and singing to him in his dark room would help him feel sleepy. He sat on my lap and looked up at me and smiled and smiled and smiled. He didn't get sleepy, but I decided not to give him away.

Sunday rant.

2006-04-30T22:31:00.000-07:00

So here's the thing. It took me six weeks to get to the point where breastfeeding Baby Nonny didn't reduce me to a quivering puddle of tears. It hurt so freaking bad (oh, so eloquent) that I cried just thinking about it, not to mention the incredible inconvenience of it all. Every two hours? I couldn't go anywhere because I didn't feel comfortable nursing him in public because I was afraid I was doing it all wrong (in spite of the nurses' and lactation consultants' assertions to the contrary), and besides, who really feels comfortable just whipping it out in public? Not me.

But I so wanted to breastfeed my baby. Health and attachment benefits aside, it was simply what I envisioned as part of me being a mother. I had grown this baby in my body and I expected to be able to do what I was designed to. The difficulty in getting it all figured out, therefore, was unexpected.

At the end of the painful and terrible six weeks, I took BN to church. I was dreading going into the mothers' room--since BN was born in the middle of a ward baby boom that's still going on--and facing all those women blissfully nursing their babies and deepening their mother/child bond as they did so.

Instead of the herd I expected to encounter, I found myself with two of the ladies I serve with in YW--one mother to an eleven-month-old, one bottle feeding her six-month-old niece. They oohed and ahed over my six-week-old boy and I changed his diaper as slowly as I could, hoping they'd both leave before I began the rather wet and loud process of trying to get BN to latch on and eat--a process that usually ended with both of us in tears.

My sneaky idea didn't work. I threw away the wet diaper, sat down to feed him and they were both still there. And somehow, for like the second time ever, everything worked out. He latched on; he ate; he didn't squirm and just open his mouth and bounce on and off my breast repeatedly, getting more and more frustrated but never even trying to suck. It finally clicked.

In the eight weeks since then, breastfeeding has become a lot easier (and having normalized hormones doesn't hurt either). But I would just like to say this: I kind of like the mothers' room. I like it because it's private and it's somewhere you can take a screaming baby and I can skip out on our weird, weird, weird Sunday school classes with a completely legitimate excuse. But, really, I kind of hate it.

For a church that's so family-oriented, it just seems like it should be acceptable for women to be able to whip it out and feed the baby as modestly as they'd like while staying in sacrament meeting or Sunday school or young women or relief society. If it happened all the time, it wouldn't be scandalous, and women would actually have examples of how to breastfeed. Imagine that! Maybe that wouldn't make it any easier, but having to hide in seclusion while you figure out how to get your body and your baby to work in harmony sucks.

And that's all I have to say.

Mice and Other Very Small Creatures.

2006-04-21T16:04:00.000-07:00

I made it to a doctor's appointment by 9:20 this morning after showering, blowing my hair dry, and putting on make-up, all with Baby Nonny in tow. Pretty impressive, even if I do say so myself.

The natural outgrowth of this, however, has been a borderline cranky baby (waiting for the doctor took half an hour short of forever so he totally skipped his morning nap after I woke him up to get him dressed and fed before leaving) and a mommy in pretty dire need of a nap. So about 45 minutes ago, I crashed with the baby on the big people bed.

I dreamed that I was at my parents' house--the house I grew up in and the house they're moving out of in less than a month--and I was making cookies. I opened the sugar container and was disgusted to find mouse droppings. You know how in dreams your emotions are always just a little off? Well, this time I was annoyed--and really super annoyed--because my parents get mice every winter, and clearly it has to be their own dang fault. In my dream, I was doting on the fact that they had a total infestation while I was on my mission where they caught over thirty mice in the basement before borrowing a friend's cat. They saw neither hide nor hair of that cat for about two weeks, and they didn't feed it either. Apparently, it lived off its killings. So I was reviewing all of these revolting mouse facts and thinking how my own parents had ruined this cookie making excursion of mine (and those cookies were going to be good, too, dangit!) as I dumped the comprommised sugar into the trash. Just then, I felt a little mouse-like wriggle on one arm, and I jumped so hard it woke me up. I lay there for a few seconds trying to catch my breath and get my bearings when it happened again. I jumped out of my bed and looked with horror at where I'd been lying only to discover sweet Baby Nonny, opening and closing his fist and slowing waving his arm in his sleep.

He has more droppings, it's true, but at least I know where he's been. And he doesn't leave them in the sugar bowl.

Ah, inspiration.

2006-04-18T16:53:00.000-07:00

Inspired yesterday by The Wiz, I found the following fulfilling fact: my high school boyfriend is both bald AND fat. (Of course, I am not as svelte as I once was either, but I have Baby Nonny as an excuse.)

Also yesterday (inspired partially by myself but mostly by a Southwest ticket deal and our recent tax return), I bought tickets to fly back east later in the summer to visit the in-laws. I will cross the awkwardness bridge when we come to it, but now I'm wondering about my sanity in booking eight-hour flights with a four-month-old in tow. I'm nervous about him crying inconsolably in the plane when there's nowhere I can take him. I'm worried about him having his first attack of diarrhea the day we fly. I don't know if we can take both a car seat and a stoller with us. Eek.

Benadryl?

Disgruntled.

2006-04-17T15:21:00.000-07:00

Baby Nonny is currently reposing in my arms, which is generally where he takes his afternoon nap. This is probably the sign of a bad mother, but he's been sleeping about nine hours a night for a couple of weeks now after which he wakes up, eats, and sleeps for one or two more. And I must be honest: I rather like the afternoon cuddle time. Plus, it gives me some good take-it-easy time since what can I do with a sleeping baby in my arms? (Answer: more than I'm willing to admit.) The one major drawback is that it reduces my typing ability by far more than 50%. Who knew that old left hand was at all useful?

I don't understand my in-laws. It's not like we have a bad relationship, exactly. It's not one of those where the MIL bad mouths the DIL and is constantly undermining everything the DIL does. It's just... undeniably awkward. I'm not sure either I or they really view me as part of the family. Example: when we recently blessed BN, my in-laws turned out in full force. It was fine. I mean, it was awkward, but it wasn't bad. The thing that was bad, though, is that after it was all over and done with, I was looking at all the pictures that ANM had taken that day and found this beautiful family picture with the great-grandparents and my FIL and the Nonny aunts and uncles and my SILs and a family friend. Right in the middle of the picture is ANM, looking handsome, holding BN in his little blessing suit. And where am I? Rather (conspicuously, I would say) not there.

The Nonny Mouse and I have only been married for about two and a half years, and we (and my familia) live on opposite sides of the country from the rest of the Nonnies, which doesn't help. And I've developed this social anxiety about talking to them on the phone, which helps less. It's a combination of fulfilling the expectation to be funny and smart plus trying to be gracious about accepting unsolicited advice plus dealing with the constant encouragement to become a writer (which has never been in my plans, really, but is the one sort-of-bridge between me and the MIL). [Pause to say that BN just giggled in his sleep.] All of this usually equals, "well, I'll just talk to them when they get here/we get there," which has happened fewer than ten times in two years. It's bad.

I don't know what to do. Well, yes I do. I need to talk to them more often, stop complaining, and get over myself. I just don't want to yet. It will be more awkward before it gets less awkward, I'm afraid, and I'm not ready to up the awkward factor just yet.

OCD rears its ugly head.

2006-04-08T23:12:00.000-07:00

In the immediate weeks following Baby Nonny's birth when my mom would come over and take us on brief outings where we mostly sat in the car but left the house and felt immensely better, she told me that the safest place for the car seat is in the middle of the back seat. I accepted this information at face value, because that's what you do with any information my mom provides. She's just always right, and that's that.

Well, when I tried to put BN's car seat in the middle seat of my own car, I found out that the middle seatbelt is too short. So I strapped him in behind the passenger's seat and away we went. It only took me the length of our street to realize the reason why the middle seat is the safest: if anyone hits the car on the passenger's side, it means bad, bad news for the Nonnies.

Ever since then, thoughts of errant drivers and messy broadsided wrecks consume my thoughts if I'm the one driving. If the Nonny Mouse is driving, I don't think about it. But when I drive, I have to fight not to obsess about it or else I will totally freak out during the ten-minute drive to my mom's house.

I need to find a way to extend the seatbelt. And I need to do it soon.

So far today...

2006-03-31T15:14:00.000-08:00

So far today, I have:

washed, dried, and folded three batches of laundry, with one more in the drier. This is more impressive when you take into account the fact that the washer and drier are upstairs (we live in a basement apartment) in the garage.
cleaned the kitchen sufficiently so I can prepare myself food without getting depressed about living in squalor.
loaded and unloaded the dishwasher.
declared the chrysanthemum officially dead and thrown it away.
discovered a pacifier under the bed while looking for the rest of ANM's dirty socks. How did it get there?
dropped off medical bills to ANM at the office and subsequently showed off BN to anyone and everyone willing to look at him, which was most of the corporation, it turns out. He obligingly smiled and cooed the whole time and then fell asleep in the car like the charming child he is.
gone grocery shopping and rewarded myself by purchasing some powdered sugar donettes. MMMMM.
fed the baby for a combined total of 2.5 hours, perhaps more.
cleaned BN's drawers out and took inventory of what we have in the 3-6 month clothes category.

Now it is 4:45 p.m. According to Dr. Sears of The Baby Book, I should also have exercised for an hour somewhere in there. Clearly this advice is for the new mom who has her own housewife and can therefore ignore the family's food and clothing needs and focus on more immportant things like the state of her abdominals. This is disappointing because I did so want to concentrate my efforts on being able to wear cute jeans again without injuring myself or the jeans. I guess I could start by eliminating the powdered sugar donettes.

Nine weeks

2006-03-28T16:02:00.000-08:00

I have put my iPod on "shuffle" and am rather nonplussed. I swear, there's only three Christmas CDs on there. Maybe four. I have ONE classical CD that I hate (what possessed me to put it on? And why am I too lazy to take it off?). And yet what do I keep hearing? Christmas music and that terrible classical CD.

So I feel kind of ambivalent about my iPod. This is because I have a hard time making a decision about what I want to listen to, so it seems "shuffle" would be nice, right? But no. Why does it do this to me? I don't know.

In other news, it was Baby Nonny's two-month appointment today. When was our last appointment? 42 days ago, and its sole purpose was to make sure BN was gaining sufficient weight. The doctor begrudgingly said BN's weight gain was "adequate, not breathtaking, but adequate." Today, though, BN weighed 10 pounds 10 ounces, which is 42 ounces more than 42 days ago which is a weight-gain of an ounce a day. HA! Put that in your pipe, Medical Community.

Then he got shots and it was terrible and I hated it. He was so cute and happy and smiley and cooing and showing off his dimple when we first got to the doctor's office and he left red-faced and whimpering pathetically. Terrible.

Even more terrible was the idea I had just an hour ago when BN was cute and happy and smiling again. I had just cleaned up a rather egregious poop and thought I should take the bandaids off to see if he had bruised from the vaccines. The way to remove a bandaid is to rip it off quick, right? It hurts less that way, right? Ummm.... I am now revising my bandaid-removal thesis. Maybe the way to remove a baby's bandaid is to leave it until it falls off by itself, not unlike the umbilical cord stump. Or maybe ripping it off and inflicting even more undue pain will make him hard and manly, which is really my top priority.

Is this really necessary?

2006-02-25T12:55:00.000-08:00

So, when it comes down to it, I'm what you might call a minimalist. For example: although I really like to eat, I am currently (and often) starving to death because all the food we have requires some level of preparation. And if that preparation is anything more than insert-spoon-and-enjoy, it's not in the running for something to eat. The point? I don't like to do things that will require a lot of extra fussing for no particular reason. I probably should have emphasized this personality trait a bit more to the bishop before I accepted the call to be the camp director because people may be horrified when it becomes clear that I don't intend to have anything to do with scrapbooking scissors or raffia of any kind. But I guess we'll just have to cross that bridge when we come to it.

Anyway, you might be able to see that my minimalistic approach to life has become quite problematic in the last month what with Baby Nonny and all. I am, as yet, unwilling to breastfeed in public and who knows where you change a newborn in Utah's public sector in January? (Except that it's February now, I guess. Same thing.) There's all the gear, and the fact that he will probably spit out and lose his pacifier. And then we have the fact that the child cannot yet walk. This shouldn't be surprising, given the fact that he is a mere month old, but it turns out that car seats are a lot heavier than I'd anticipated. This is particularly problematic given that he weighs but a fraction of what is to come.

So even though I've ventured forth a few times in the month since Baby Nonny was born, it hasn't been fun. I feel like there's a two-hour countdown clock that starts the minute he stops eating and the race begins--quick! change his diaper! is the bag packed? where's that stupid purse? Thus we waste at least an eighth of our time getting to the car. Precious minutes are lost as I wrestle the car seat in and out of the car and I walk awkwardly into whatever establishment I've decided we have to go to as I make a concerted (and so far successful) effort not to smack the car seat and the baby I've worked so hard to keep alive into anything that might be permanently destructive. I also have to spend my time worrying about three main things:

How is the child doing? Is he about to explode scatalogically at any second? Is he going to start screaming, which would be totally out of character and thus indicative that one of his major bodily systems has shut down? etc.
How much time has passed? I don't have a watch, so I have to rely on my inner clock, which doesn't actually exist. This is a problem.
Is anyone attempting to steal the child at any moment? I'm not sure why I can't convince my subconscious of the difficulty involved in whisking off a car seated child, but the fear remains deeply imbedded. I have not kept this beautiful child alive for so long merely so he can sold on e-bay to the highest bidder. The fear that he will be stolen requires me to constantly look at him instead of whatever I'm looking for (most recently, a bridal shower present for my sister. I'm still not sure what I ended up buying her.)

Can you see how this is not a positive experience?

So, until future notice, I've decided to stay home. I really don't need to ever leave the house since the Internet and my mother both bring me everything else I'd ever need.

The point of no return.

2006-02-18T22:21:00.000-08:00

Today I had my first solo flight with Baby Nonny. I was excited for the chance to finally prove my mettle. I was going to be Super Dad. Grandma Nonny was flying in to see him and the Nonny Spouse had a previous engagement, so I was large and in charge, or so I thought. As soon as the Spouse got on her way and I got Baby Nonny all situated, fast asleep in his little swing, I jumped in the shower, with about an hour and some change before Grandma Nonny's flight was to land. I figured I had it made. I'd even have time to give him a bath during my solo flight.

I checked on him as I got out of the shower, T-minus 35 minutes 'til Grandma Nonny's flight would be landing (which is when I should have been getting in the car to get her) and he was still fast asleep.

"This'll be a cinch," I thought. Upon further reflection, I decided I'd better just go online really quickly to double-check that the flight was on time. After a quick little rappa-tap-tap on the keyboard, I realized, to my horror, that it was actually T-minus 5 minutes, since Grandma Nonny was going to be arriving 25 minutes early.

"Well, crap, Nonny! We better check your diaper and get on the road," I told him. Sure, he wouldn't get a bath, but I'd still been able to get almost everything else I needed to done before the Granny arrived, right? I was Super Dad, for sure.

I put him in the little jury-rigged changing station we've got organized in his crib, and started the whole changing process. I moved his clothes away from ground-zero, and placed a clean diaper under the one I presumed to be dirty.

As I started rolling up the diaper and realized he hadn't left any weapons mass destruction laying around in there, I said to him, "See little dude? We're going to be just fine! You're going to meet your Grandma today."

A little wipe here, a little diaper-roll there and we were ready to go. I lifted up his legs to better adjust his diaper, and realized, quickly, what a fatal error I had just made. A little gurgle came out from ground-zero. Then, all heck broke loose. Baby Nonny had just given his intestines the order to fire at will. His yellow, seedy sludge began to be expelled with such velocity that there was no time to put up any defense. It shot out all over the blanket he was lying on, all over the outside of his new clean diaper. It sprayed like buckshot on the crib railings and through the slats. And, worst of all, his muzzle was aimed squarely at that most vulnerable part of the human body: my face. That's right, I got a face full of El Nonnito's most potent venom right as I wanted to be rushing out the door and making a good impression about how capable a dad I am to Grandma Nonny.

I quickly covered ground-zero up with a semi-used diaper (hey, in an emergency, such temporary measures are sometimes necessary) and ran to the bathroom to survey the damage. I've never had poop on my face before, so I wasn't sure how to react. The gunk was all over my shirt, which I'd chosen to show off to my Mom how much I love my job (it had my company logo on it, but it looks way casual -- like, "Yeah, I love my place of employment. They even help me relax on the weekends!"). I took it off, hastily trying to make sure I didn't exacerbate the mess on my face. I looked in the mirror, and double checked: Yep. There was, indeed, crap all over my whole face. 2 dozen or so little bits of baby-poop-yellow baby poop. Yuck!

I washed my face with water. Baby Nonny was by now begining to fuss.

"Don't worry, little dude, I'll be right there!" I called out to him, knowing he'd have no idea what the devil I was saying, but hoping that my saying it in a high-ish tone of voice would give him some measure of comfort.

I looked in the mirror again. Sick. The stuff hadn't come all the way off. I washed again, this time more vigorously. I checked again. Measured success, but there was still some remaining. A third scrubbing, a check, and I'd gotten it all off, so I headed back into the war-zone to begin some major toxic-waste-spill cleanup.

Somehow Baby Nonny's outerwear had escaped any serious damage in the melee, so in order to save the time it would take to totally redress him, I quickly transferred him to another blanket to finish the job I'd initially started out with. I realized that his innerwear had been compromised, so I slipped a new onesy on him, put his outerwear back on and transferred him back to his swing. He, of course, fussed through this whole process. Then, I went to work cleaning all the things that had sustained casualties: the crib wiped down quickly with regular baby wipes. The used diapers were easily disposed of in the diaper pail, as were the soiled clothes which went, of course, to the dirty clothes hamper.

Then came the dilemma: the blankets and my shirt were poop-drenched, and if I didn't clean them immediately, they would remain poop-stained for time and all eternity.
But, if I did clean them, I'd probably be late for picking up Grandma Nonny, let alone not being able to surprise her, like I'd planned, by showing up with El Nonnito at the baggage claim (we're gate people in my family, and even though you can't meet people at the gate any more, I could sense the disappointment in my Mom's voice when I told her I'd pick her up curbside so I wouldn't have to expose El Nonnito to all those germs at the airport...). I decided that I really did like the shirt, and that the Nonny Spouse definitely liked the blanket, so I'd better take the time to clean them...

Ten minutes and much yellow-dish-soap-and-warm-water later, I was packing up Baby Nonny and putting his car seat in the car. As we drove out of our neighborhood, I checked the rear-view mirror to make sure nobody was behind me, and I could go as slow as I wanted so I wouldn't jerk him around in his car seat. As my eyes unfocused on the road behind me and I started to bring my attention towards the road in front of me, I noticed it. A yellow, chunky spot of poop, right next to my eye. It must have been hidden behind my eyebrow, and I couldn't see it because it kind of blended in.

At this point, I made a decision that all parents must make at some point in their lives. I've always wondered when this time comes, but it clearly does come to all moms and dads. I only had one option for getting the poop off my face, and as disgusting as this particular cleaning method has always seemed to me, in this moment of my life, that poop was my enemy, and I would have done anything to get it off. I came to the conclusion that my only way out was to use my own saliva. I grimaced, and then quickly licked a finger on my left hand and rubbed it on my temple. No dice. The spot was still there. Clearly, I couldn't lick that same finger again! It had just touched poop! So, I licked another one, and tried to get it off. Again, little success. I moved to the right hand. Marginal success this time, but there was still some there. One more finger licked, and the poop was gone.

I know, I know. It's sick, and it's wrong. Saliva was never meant to be used as a solvent. But what else could I have done? Just don't tell Grandma Nonny.

Newsflash!

2006-02-17T10:41:00.000-08:00

Baby Nonny officially has a belly button. This is much more exciting than I was anticipating, possibly because I didn't realize how disturbed I was by his bit of umbilical cord until yesterday when (1) I took a q-tip dipped in rubbing alcohol to it for the first time and was thoroughly disgusted by the crusty blood that flaked off, and (2) the stump fell off, leaving me feeling quite conflicted about how to dispose of it, mostly because disposing of it in any way would involve touching it (ANM, on the other hand, wanted to put it in a ziplock bag and save it).

First of all, anything referred to as a "stump" has ugly issues. Don't you think? I don't mean to be insensitive here, but just think of the phrase "bloody stump", and I think you'll get my drift. And secondly, just because I didn't want to pick up the umbilical stump doesn't mean I'm wimpy. I mean, I deal in poop all day, but that doesn't mean I pick it up in my hands to dispose of it.

Day 22.

2006-02-15T10:39:00.000-08:00

[A baby] is a loud noise at one end and no sense of responsibility at the other. --Ronald Knox

Three weeks in (or out?) it's hard to tell the difference between what I think and feel and where the sleep deprivation begins. To this point, Baby Nonny shows little sign of personality other than intense interest in fluorescent lights and a strange but apparently consuming desire to headbutt my bosoms at every available opportunity (which is every two hours) regardless of how hungry he is. He also participates in excessive and gratuitous stretching.

Really, I find him baffling. The wiles and whims of the small child are an enigma. Why does he not sleep after he eats like babies are supposed to? Why doesn't he complain when he's uncomfortable? Is there a reason why he makes mad sounds when he's sleeping even if his diaper is clean? Is there logic to anything that he does, or is it all just synapses firing? Now, mind you, it is important in times like these to remember that I am no 14-year-old mother. Yet it seems impossible to just take all things baby in stride.

Exhibit A: When Baby Nonny was (2.25 ounces) under his birthweight at his two-week appointment, the doctor told me to feed him more. So Nonny and I sat down and had a little chat. At first he blatantly refused to honor the doctor's orders, but after sticking my bosoms in his face repeatedly I eventually wore him down and he cracked under the pressure. Overjoyed was I when, just two hours after his most recent feeding, he ate for fifteen whole minutes--five more than usual! Woo-hoo! Of course, seconds later, I watched in horror as Baby Nonny opened his wee mouth and unleashed the full fury of a fifteen-minute feeding in projectile vomit form upon me. Crap. Unfortunately, this scenario played out twice before I caught on.

Exhibit B: Yesterday--or the day before? or maybe Monday? polyphasic sleep does nothing for my IQ--I left Baby Nonny unattended in his Fisher Price swing. He was asleep (of course he was; it was time for him to eat) and dang I needed to go to the bathroom. I heard him making his sleeping moans whilst I went about my business so I figured he was okay, maintaining status quo and all that. Uh, no. Not really. I found him, minutes later, slipping horizontally out of his swing, with his head nearing the ground. Woops! Two issues here: (1) why did he not cry at being turned upside down? Did he like it? Had he even noticed that the blood was rushing to his small head, turning it a lovely and not unmanly shade of red? (2) When did he develop the ability to move?

So today Baby Nonny will be taken back to the doctor's office to be weighed again. I'm a little bit nervous given that our attempts at double feedings have failed so violently. Also, now there is the fact that I nearly dropped the child to pursue my own selfish interests. Hopefully the doctor won't be able to tell.

Fatherhood books.

2006-01-21T22:58:00.000-08:00

Last year, on my birthday, A. Nonny Spouse got me a book called, The Joy of Fatherhood by Marcus Jacob Goldman, MD. It's a good book, it really is. It has lots of great "Baby Blues" cartoons that are inserted at topically relevant places. It also talks about feelings a lot, probably because the author is a Psychiatrist.

Occasionally, it also includes a quote from a first-time father. Sometimes, they're pretty durn funny:

"I'll never forget seeing my son for the first time. He was all wrinkled and gray. His head was pointy, and he was covered in slime. I felt so guilty becase I didn't love him right away. I thought he was the ugliest thing I had ever seen."

I don't think that our son is going to be the ugliest thing I've ever seen. I already feel fairly bonded to him, although I believe and hope that the bond I now feel is tenuous at best when compared to the relationship we'll share some day. But, I must admit I'm worried that it's going to be harder than I anticipate at first.

Cold Feet

2006-01-18T10:47:00.000-08:00

So, I'm due in six days. I alternate between being really, really excited to sleep on my stomach again and being really, really freaked out about, you know, never sleeping again and being bitten in sensitive places. I'm not so much terrified about labor as I am about being responsible for a completely incompetent human being.

Also, I'm wondering if I should be doing something to memorialize our last few days of coupledom. I'm not sure what exactly that would be other than spending a lot of money on movies for the next week--and then I'd have to live with the fear of my water breaking in the movie theater (which does have its advantages, don't get me wrong: it would be dark so I don't think anyone would see, I wouldn't have to clean it up, it wouldn't happen in my new bed that I love with a greater love than I thought possible, etc. We would have to leave the movie, though. See? I'm just not sure the advantages outweigh the disadvantages. You tell me.).

And the child doesn't have a name yet. In fact, we've talked about this ad nauseum for nine months (and male-specific for twenty weeks) so that really, I'm worn down. DH could probably convince me of any name at this point with very little effort. Except John. I hate the name John.