Aug
24
There’s this commercial, I think it’s one of those shmoopy Johnson & Johnson “Anything for Baby” ads, where a woman is roused from her comfy bed in the dead of night by her blatting infant (the husband, of course, merely rolls to one side, snores heavily, and lets loose a gunshot-loud fart. I mean, I’m assuming that’s what he does). She comes into the nursery yawning with a look on her face like “Motherfuckerrrrrrrrrr”, but as soon as she picks up her baby she’s all, oh, who’s a widgey widdle pookums? YOU are! And during the diaper change she busts out with this retrained I-have-makeup-on-at-3-AM TV-version of an OM NOM NOM NOM on the baby’s belly. I think the tagline was something like “Midnight Snack.”
I saw that ad during my last pregnancy and I frankly found the whole thing obnoxious, because shut up, anything for baby. Oh, so it’s not enough that my sleep is ruined by the leg restlessness and heartburn and constant peeing and hemorrhoids the size of Concord grapes erupting forth from my poor, horrified rear end, I get to look forward to months of midnight poop-smeared awakenings and I’m not even allowed to resent it.
Now that it’s been a good six months and counting of being woken up every single night, I feel like I’m living that damn ad. Every night, somewhere in the wee hours between 2 and 5, Dylan starts squawking, and without even thinking I get up and trudge into his room. I never lie there thinking, well, THIS is bullshit; my legs automatically swing out from under the covers and I’m down the hall before my eyes are even halfway open (I assume this is some deep seated self-preservation tactic, drawn forth from some ancient reptilian corner of my brain to keep me from just up and smothering the child when he interrupts that shamefully hot cougar-vampire dream I was having about Edward Cullen).
Once I’m in there and sitting in the rocking chair with the lights dimmed and Dylan nestled in the crook of my left arm like a pudgy, feetie-pajama’d otter, contentedly taking deep pulls off his bottle, I rest my lips on the the top of his head and smell the summer-grass aroma of his hair. And then, when I change his diaper, I do in fact find myself unable to keep from smooching his puffed-out belly while his legs bicycle furiously and he makes that goofy, pleased “BMMMMM” sound with his mouth at me.
The whole process is fairly painless and quick: I feed him, change him (I’ve tried to skip the changing step but have found that it’s not worth the potential disastrous results), and I put him back down. He’s usually wide awake at that point, but for some glorious, mysterious reason he doesn’t complain. Occasionally I hear him sort of babbling to himself after I go back to bed, but for the most part he stays quiet and content until he falls back to sleep on his own — a far cry from the furious I WILL BURN DOWN YOUR HOUSES AND SHIT ON YOUR TOOTHBRUSHES attitude he displays when I put him down for his daytime naps.
So he isn’t sleeping through the night (this hasn’t changed since he started solids, and JB is still giving him a bottle around 11-11:30 whether he wakes up on his own or not), but it’s not a major inconvenience. Anything for baby, right? (Barf.) The real problem is that that’s what his routine is like if we put him down in the swing. If we put him in the crib, all bets are off: he wakes up after only an hour or two, he howls like a banshee when he gets put back down.
He’s not yet at the weight limit for the swing but he’s able to partially sit up in the damn thing (we strap him in, but that only contains his lower half) and then gets all whomperjawed, lying off to one side and grousing angrily. So clearly the swing’s days are numbered. But the swing means sleep! The crib means constantly getting up, and having to deploy long drawn out comfort methods to get him back down! My anything for baby capacity begins running real low after I’ve been up at 1, 2:30, and 4 AM, you know what I mean?
Anyway, I’m wondering if any of you inadvertently caused a Swing Addiction or similar with your child, and how you got over it with a minimum of suck-assedness?
Aug
20
Okay! Let’s move on from that foamy-mouthed business I posted yesterday, clearly I had a giant organic-tofu-stick crammed up my ass. If you’re still kind of pissed at me, please enjoy this proof that I have basically always been a total fucking goober. I was looking through some old photo albums today, and decided to capture a few of the more memorable images:
Here I am as a wee kidlet, and while I don’t think I was quite as consistently suspicious as Riley was/is, apparently I had my moments.
Not a bad looking kid overall, though, if I do say so myself. Look at that precocious 3-year-old, lording over her . . . uh, cake. Her cake festooned with — are those cat turds? Is that a cat turd cake? Or . . Vienna sausages? Okay, I’m pretty sure my mom wouldn’t have . . . MOM WHAT ARE THOSE BROWN THINGS OH MY GOD.
A little bit older here, and still fairly cute, if you forgive the insipid head tilt and . . . wow, rainbow heart necklace. Groovy.
Aw, look at the little ballerina! It’s adorable and nauseating, all at the same time.
HA HA HA HA HAAAAAAAAAA. Oh god. Sorry, Cat of My Youth. Sorry. Jesus.
And — oh. Oh dear. Well, we’ve really started to slide off the rails here, haven’t we? The glasses, the hair, the blouse, the . . . the TEETH.
Yes. Yes indeedy. Socks, shoes, shorts, shirt, visor. VISOR. SOCKS. VISOR. Yes. Ahem.
Say, why don’t we really take a GOOD look at those glasses. What are they, five, six inches thick?
Well thank god, we’ve moved on to the Era of Contacts, but sadly this is still preceding the In-Depth Headgear/Braces/Palatal Spreading Device/Tooth Extraction/Retainer Years. What a grill. Also, Eugene Levy called, he wants his eyebrows back.
Ah, the dorkily earnest gymnastics-themed photo. Xaaaaanaaduuuuuuuu…
Big hair, big earrings, denim jacket . . . ladies and gentlemen, the 80’s! I’m sure my ESPRIT bag was nearby.
Fast-forward a few years to my freshman year in high school, where apparently I strived for sort of a . . what, Flock of Seagulls vibe? I bet that hairdo took about a can of Aqua Net every day.
Please also enjoy the yearbook message written by the boy I had the WORST crush on. I remember I about peed my acid-wash pants when I saw the “hint, hint” part of his note. He was totally into the Punisher, CAN YOU TELL.
More years down the road, I think I was maybe 20 here. I was coming out of my goth phase in bits and pieces: still surly, still addicted to unflattering red lipstick, still dyeing my (ohmygodLONG) hair, but obviously was willing to forgo the standard black uniform for a frumpy flowered dress. I’m vaguely thrilled to see that I looked far more matronly 15 years ago than I do now.
Check it out: lame trying-too-hard Flickr self-portrait, before Flickr! Or digital cameras!
And then . . . hmm, not much documentation of my early 20s. I had, like, a LOT of hangovers.
Last one, I promise. This was taken eight years ago or so: JB and I before the children
All RIGHTY then, I think that’s more than enough. Thanks for coming with me on this humiliating stroll down memory lane! Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to start an orthodontia fund for the kids — I have a bad feeling they’ll need it.
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