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Archives from 2002-2006

I was feeling my oats when I got ready to leave the house yesterday, probably because I can officially wear my Cruel Girl jeans again without creating a giant mound of squashed-up bellyfat above the waistband thankyouJEBUS, and so I paused to take the unusual-for-me step of applying a “lip plumper“. What can I say, after spending the past month day wearing sweatpants with unwashed hair I had the desire for a little cosmetic indulgence, even though I was just driving to daycare and back.

A full twenty minutes or so after putting on what I swear was a tiny amount of this ridiculous lip-irritating goo, I absentmindedly kissed Riley on the cheek. And . . . uh . . . well.

Remember that scene in Fight Club when Brad Pitt licks his lips and coats them with lye, chemically burning his lip print into the back of Edward Norton’s hand? That’s soooooort of what I did to my own child:

Now, despite his woebegone expression in this photo he actually didn’t seem to notice it at all, but I watched in sheer horror as two red lip-shaped marks appeared on his cheek, and despite my careful swabbing with cold water and a soft cloth, turned into raised WELTS.

The good news is that they disappeared entirely about a half hour later, the bad news is that I stupidly told my husband about it, who acted as though I had purposefully crammed toothpicks in the boy’s eyesockets. “Why,” he asked dramatically, “would you WEAR something that BURNS?”

Well, I guess I don’t rightly have a good answer for that at this point. It certainly wasn’t in order to damage my 2-year-old’s dewy-soft FACE, but don’t any of you bother competing for that coveted Jackass Parent of the Year award—I’m pretty sure I’ve got this one in the bag.

We have officially entered the six-week mark since Dylan’s birth, and I feel as though some critical milestone has been reached. Things feel much better in a multitude of small ways, and I’m not sure if there have been actual changes and improvements or if I’m just adapting — or maybe there’s been a happy combination of all three.

The baby is definitely not barfing as much, which brings me great joy. It’s much easier to feel good about a caring for a creature who isn’t constantly and unpredictably about to firehose a gallon of curdled sour milk onto your lap, you know? We’ve cycled through a few different formulas and are back at square one with the regular non-specialty stuff, so I don’t know if that was ever the problem. Maybe it just took a while for his tiny system to get programmed into Digest Mode instead of EJECT, PREFERABLY INTO SOMEONE’S BRA.

I think I’m getting better at knowing what he needs, too. Babies are like little puzzles, you have to constantly figure out if they’re hungry or tired or bored or what, and even if you do decipher what the hell is up their ass, providing the appropriate response can be complicated. Like maybe he’s tired, but he won’t just obediently fall asleep, he needs to be wrapped like a burrito so his flailing limbs won’t rake out an eyeball and stuffed in the swing with the stupid 7-minute-only audio set to white noise, NOT music. Or maybe he’s bored, but plopping him down on a blanket and moseying off to file your nails isn’t going to do the trick, he needs someone’s face to be hovering inches from his own while hearing “WHO’S a tinytopus? Is it YOU? Is it YOUUUU?”

He has become WAY more fun in the last week, much more interactive. I mean, we’re still talking about a 6-week-old baby here, he’s not exactly a lively conversationalist, but he’s losing that blurry newborn I-Have-The-Mental-Capacity-of-a-Housefly vibe and starting to become more aware of his surroundings. He’s well on the way to smiling, not quite busting out the full social smile yet but doing that full-body baby thing where their wiggling and pooched cheeks tell you they’re happy.

I like to nuzzle his face with my own and pretend that his excited openmouthed lunging means he’s trying to give me a kiss, rather than attempting to latch onto my nose and furiously suck it inside out.

My overall mood has improved to the point where I have stopped thinking this was the worst move I ever made in my entire life, and maybe that’s not something that needs to get printed out and saved in the baby book but it is sort of momentous nonetheless. I have no doubt we will have many hard moments and days ahead, but by god I am glad to be past these first weeks. I feel like I’ve been in boot camp, without the rock-hard abs to show for it.

Speaking of boot camp, how many pushups can you do? Real ones, with arms bent to 90 degrees and not using your knees, I mean. I can do about ONE, which I discovered last night on a “I wonder how many pushups I can do?” whim. That seems sort of pathetic, like what if the zombie apocalypse descends and I need to be able to, I don’t know, perform a life-saving pushup? My goal is to be able to do ten by next week. Stay tuned for details of my inevitable failure and humorous groin injury.

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