Mar
20
I took Dylan for his pediatrician checkup this morning and after the doctor verified that he’s pudgening up at a respectable rate, and pooh-poohed my description of the unpleasant eating/spitting up period he went through (“Yes, babies tend to do a little spitting up until around 6 months of age,” she said, at which point I considered grabbing her stethoscope, yanking her close, and shouting directly into the chestpiece: “I AM TALKING ABOUT A SCREAMING-WITH-PAIN BABY WHO SPRAYS VOMIT INTO YOUR FACE EXORCIST-STYLE, DOES THAT SOUND LIKE ‘A LITTLE SPITTING UP’ TO YOU?”, but decided against it because 1) she was in charge of the needle that was soon to be plunged into Dylan’s defenseless thigh, and 2) whatever, he seems a hell of a lot better in that department now so my need to advocate on his behalf has switched to “Is it okay if I laugh at him when he goes cross-eyed, or should that actually be freaking me out?”), she noted that he tends to turn his head to the left and advised me to encourage him to turn the other way as often as possible.
“If you notice that it’s more than just a preference, that his neck seems to be weaker on that side, we should get physical therapy involved,” she said, “so just make sure to keep an eye on it.”
What? How the hell do I know if his neck is actually weaker or if he just likes the view off to the left? Physical therapy? The kid is 6 weeks old, he’s like a flailing squid! His shit is still under construction, nothing works worth a damn yet — I mean, drop this boy in the forest and he’s TOAST: no survival skills whatsoever!
So anyway, I guess I’ll be keeping an eye on that. I suppose if his head starts drooping off to one side like a thirsty tulip we’ll know he needs to do some neck crunches, or something. I sure am glad to have something to vaguely worry about, my Fret-O-Meter was running dangerously low.
In other news, some of you know I also write at ParentDish, but did you know how often I write over there? I shoot for two posts per day, and the reason I write so often is because they pay me per post. They do not pay a LOT per post, and therefore the only way to earn a halfway decent check at the end of the month is to write, write, write.
I like earning this money because it’s enough to make a positive impact on our budget, and it makes me feel good to get paid for something I generally enjoy doing. The audience at that website is so large, it’s inevitable that some readers are going to disagree with me no matter what I say (or point out the various ways in which I am a bad person, or be offended by my choice of words, or generally treat every entry as a giant stick which has somehow become rammed up their own ass), but while I don’t enjoy receiving sanctimonious comments on a regular basis it isn’t so bad that it makes the experience unrewarding. I figure as long as people are ragging on me and not my kids I can shine it on. Plus, some of the more hyperbolic commenters are truly entertaining with their responses—I had no idea there were so many ways to wind someone’s chain. Is any subject free of controversy? The answer is NO!
Also, in some perverse way it has been helpful for me to have so many writing obligations during this time of maternity leave. It just makes me feel more productive, which helps combat that I’ve-been-working-like-a-dog-all-day-and-have-nothing-to-show-for-it feeling. And having even more ways to connect with people and hear their parenting stories makes the isolation of staying home each day a lot more manageable, despite the occasional foamy-mouthed nutbar.
So anyway, if the all-mommyblog-all-the-time stuff doesn’t turn you off, you should come visit me there. Sometimes I slip in a cuss word or two!
Lastly:
I don’t always burn my child’s face with cosmetics, sometimes I put boxes on his head and tell him it’s a crown. “You’re King Tab!” I say, and he’s like, dude, this is bullshit.
Mar
19
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.
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