Apr
13
April 13, 2006
JB and I trade off on whose turn it is to take care of Riley when he first wakes up in the morning. This has been an outstanding compromise and has prevented an untold amount of resentment from building up over who is the better actor when it comes to faking a deep and impenetrable slumber (“Hey. Hey. I think the baby’s crying.” “Shit. I mean, uh, SNZZZZZZZZ.”).
Yesterday was my turn, and Riley woke up at 3:30 AM, working rapidly from a blurred whine into a full-fledged angry howl while I staggered out of bed and groped my way to the kitchen, stubbing my toe on his exersaucer in the dark (“Cow! Vaca! MOO!”). I went to bed last night smugly secure in the knowledge that *I* wouldn’t be the one getting up just when REM mode kicked in, and the boy slept without a peep until 7:15, when he began happily babbling to himself and playing while JB took a shower, got dressed, and leisurely got a bottle ready.
Hello? Did I not carry that child for almost a full year inside my own body? A little favoritism in my direction, is that too much to ask?
Other than the occasional wee-hour wakening, which truthfully is never that bad because he pretty much hoovers a bottle and falls right back to sleep, Riley has been spectacular lately. I feel the need to give press time to this fact, because I’ve certainly griped enough about his less-than-desirable stages, such as the tooth that we worried might in fact grow to become a giant razor-edged tusk protruding from his left eye socket, given all the discomfort it seemed to cause him, and The Week O’ Aqueous Feces, which coincidentally was the same week we found out what a diaper “blowout” actually entails (a powerful washing machine, for one).
Riley is so curious about everything these days, and so pleased by so much. He trails his hands through my hair and marvels at the sensation, he ecstatically bashes a plastic measuring cup against his highchair tray and crows over the noise it makes, he squinches his face and laughs with delight when we gobble his belly. He makes a ridiculous old-man-sucking-a-lemon face as he runs his tongue over and over his new bottom teeth, he literally shakes from head to toe with excitement over the dog catching a Frisbee. He smiles so easily and so often, it makes my heart strain its confines, it makes me feel like a bright and shining beacon.
Whenever I’m out in public without Riley, I want to grab everyone who passes me by and tell them that they’re not seeing all of me, that the whole of my parts just isn’t visible at the moment. Hi, perfect stranger, I just wanted you to know that I have a little boy at home who is a sparkling Christmas snowfall, a firefly-studded August evening, and a million birthday candle wishes all bundled inside a rather spiffy pair of feety pajamas. Yes, pleased to meet you too.
We seem to be at a new level of understanding Riley’s needs because the drudgery is at an all-time low; there is very little crying on his part, or frustrated temple-rubbing on our parts. These are such good times, such a makes-everything-worthwhile streak, I can hardly believe it’s me living this charmed life.
Click! Flash. File: Save As. Stay, stay this moment. What a wistful joy it is to look forward to everything that’s next, while everything that happened today fades away.
I never imagined that parenthood could be as hard as it occasionally is, but I also didn’t anticipate how much humor one tiny person could bring into our lives. In the last few weeks he’s started expanding his belly to insane proportions while we’re diapering him, just like a horse inflating in order to shake the strapped-on saddle afterwards. It is the silliest thing to see, his brows flatted in concentration, his tiny stomach puffed into a taut round beachball. Oh, he banishes every imaginable bad mood, that kid.
Riley makes me laugh so much, and while it is often at his expense (“Haaaaaaa, you have a washcloth/diaper/perfectly balanced apple on your head!”) I like to think he enjoys our laughter as much as we enjoy his.
:::
While I wish I could cheer you on your way with a festive display of My Son’s Gert Big Belleh, I do have a link that is definitely share-worthy: WHEE!
If that doesn’t about make you soak your gauchos, I don’t know what will.
:::
Cheeky monkey.
Apr
12
April 12, 2006
I haven’t been shopping for clothes in ages, mostly because 1) we don’t have a shitload of extra cash right now, and 2) the ambitious gym routine I had planned to embrace wholeheartedly in an attempt to jettison the post-post-post-POST-partum flab has not panned out very well, in that I have gone exactly zero times, and so I hate the idea of buying outfits for this “temporary” body when ANY MINUTE NOW I’m going to stop eating toffee-flavored Klondike bars after 9 PM and will magically fit into a size 8 again.
You know. Any. Minute. Now.
I don’t aspire to much fashion-wise, really–the best I can hope for is some crossover between “cute” and “comfortable”. The notion of fitted clothing has become completely foreign to me, along with shoes with heels and mascara. If I’m not at home having Gerber Stage 2 banana smeared into my hair, I’m bolting out the door to my uber-casual job; why not live in the same frayed pair of Levi’s day in and day out?
“Because it’s unattractive?” Oh, be quiet.
When I was driven from my home last Friday due to Contractor-Itis (symptoms include an increasing desire to throttle the next person who walks through your living room shouting into a walkie-talkie), I took Riley to daycare and, with several hours to kill and no particular plan for doing so, I went to Target.
Color me tacky, I know, but I love everything about Target, even their craptastic el cheapo plastic shoes that rip your feet apart. I love their junky purses and giant makeup aisles and their baby outfits and their housewares and their diabolically clever advertising. And they sell clothing, too; mass-produced items made from shoddy materials at rock-bottom prices. Hooray! If quantity over quality is your fashion mantra (then embrace me, O Sister), Target even beats Old Navy.
So I spent an entire afternoon tooling around in Target’s women’s section, trying on various things. And if we are to assume that the styles being hawked in America’s discount retail department stores are representative of actual clothing trends some number of months ago, then my heartfelt prayer is that everyone is OVER both the skinny jeans and the gaucho pants. Because oh my GOD.
I left the gaucho pants alone, being pretty much convinced that strapping a large cotton tarp to the tops of my thighs would do nothing to conceal the effects of those ice cream bars (“What would you do for a Klondike bar?” – gain twelve pounds, apparently), but I couldn’t help it, I tried on a pair of the skinny jeans.
Hey, you know who looks good in skinny jeans? Heroin-addicted English punk rockers circa 1979, that’s who. And no one else.
That is the story I’m telling myself, anyway, to help ease the mental anguish caused by seeing myself in the fluorescent-lit Target dressing room mirror, wearing a pair of size 10 skinny jeans. From the knees down, it looked as though I were balanced on two toothpicks, and from the knees up, it appeared that I had morphed into a giant fleshy pear. The only reason the heart palpitations brought on from this arresting vision did not kill me outright was the desperate fear that I would in fact be caught dead in an outfit I wouldn’t be caught dead in.
I did find a cute hoodie along with a shirt filched from the Junior’s section (size XXXXXXXL), but man, I’m still reeling. I can only hope that the next time I buy clothes–say, fall of 2007–someone will once again be manufacturing decent pants with legs that neither end at the knee nor taper to an ankle-crushing point, a waistline that doesn’t sit half a fucking inch above the hipbone, and with undamaged fabric rather than artfully created vertical goddamn RIPS.
Whew. Excuse me, I need to find my moment of zen.
Ahh, much better. Babies are far more fun to shop for, anyway. You can come home with an armful of clothes and it will all fit, it was all cheap, and the recipient is guaranteed to look fabulous.
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