Rocky Mountain Babies

One of the things I love about my dad, in addition to his being a Mac and digital Nikon enthusiast happy to pass along the scraps, is his utter contempt of all things hot and humid, which is why you won't see him in Memphis in August. Instead, he and mom chill out in the Keystone pad in Colorado where humidity is banished at the gates, night time temperatures hover in the 40s and bakers with dreams of giant, buttery goodness offer up chocolately, butterscotchey cookies a mere scenic drive away. For the first time in two years, the whole family with babies in tow converged on the house for a week of hiking, eating, fly fishing, hottubbing, Harry Pottering, and generally doing nothing. Except working on my Memphis Magazine fiction contest entry when everyone went to bed, or when there wasn't a Flight of the Conchords episode on, or more cookies that needed to be eaten...

The weeks leading up to the trip found both of us stressed to high heaven, worried about the altitude's potential affect on the bebe. The Keystone house is at 9500 feet - anything above 8000 is considered high altitude. I know I feel like crap the first day or two after getting there, but what about the bebe? Screaming doesn't tell me if her head hurts, if her nose is dry, if she's dehydrated, if her brain is swelling and about to explode... You can pretty much find what you are looking for online, so a few keystrokes informed me that swelling of the brain is indeed a potential threat travelling from sea level to altitude. Several panicked phone calls and emails later, mom informed me that she had polled the Colorado neighbors who swore up and down that their grandbabies had visited when they were brand new - and no, their brains didn't explode.

And neither did Harlow's. Aside from eating every couple of hours around the clock like a newborn, all was well. I have pics to prove it, although it looks like we never even left the living room.

Overprotective

It's days like these that I can begin to understand why a girl may grow up to write treacly pop songs, shave her head and forget to wear underwear for a week.

We're trying hard not to be such freaks over the well being and safety of our child. But you take a pontoon boat, 45 degree water, high altitude sun and near non-stop images of my child sinking like an adorable stone to the bottom of Lake Dillon and we let that parental freak flag fly. To Harlow's dismay, we took full advantage of the life jackets on board, cramming her into a heavy knit sweater and then stuffing her into an inflatable jacket so confining it made her arms stick straight out at the sides, so she kinda resembled a rainbow colored 747 ready for takeoff. She couldn't bend at the waist, reach her hands to chew on them - much less do anything but blink or scream - so scream she chose. I can't say I blame her. I spent most of the trip functioning as her shade, holding up a large windbreaker to block any and all sunlight in the vicinity. And then there was my 11 month old niece, doing baby gymnastics in her father's lap just to taunt us. It wasn't until the Cristal and Wheat Thins got passed around that we started to relax. Because you can't be that classy and stressed at the same time.

HAPPY!

I'm happy! I swear! Here are some things that make me happy!

1. Tonight's pre-pre-birthday dinner at the anti-foodie Mecca, Benihana

2. Saturday's pre-birthday dinner at Automatic Slims.

3. Colorado and Harry Potter for my birthday.

And happy pics!

Murphy

This was our first baby:



Murphy was found in Highland Park, a rougher burb of LA (you've got street cred, Jen!) and a fitting home for the 4 mo. old scrappy, sweet boy who was scooped up wearing a collar so tight it was about to choke him. The couple who found him fell in love but couldn't keep him, and after random emails made their way across the internet to me, Caleb and I picked up our feisty, pukey-in-the-car bundle of love and brought him home to stay.

And there was much love, and fighting with cats, and working with trainers, and chasing squirrels, and charming passersby, and nearly getting a doggy agent and the moving to Memphis and trying to kill the UPS guy and lunging at people on walks while I was pregnant but promises that no matter what, we were a family and he was loved and the growing denial that something was wrong but nothing was going to change. And then Harlow happened.

We had been warned that your pets become just that after the birth of your child, just pets, not the sweet baby that you rolled around with and took 1000s of pictures of in stupid hats and bored people at dinner parties with stories about how CUTE he was at the dog park (except you can get away with those stories in LA because no one has kids - they have dogs, too). But what I was not prepared for was how fast the change happened. How Murphy went from beloved pet to walking allergen, to a nightmare of sharp claws and shedding fur and behavior problems. The problems had started before we had moved - the rising aggression, the lack of respect on his part, the rising neglect on ours, but then there was the baby, and suddenly, here was this dog who tried to kill whoever rang the doorbell and wouldn't stay or behave on a leash who was constantly ignored. A BORDER COLLIE who had nothing better to do than herd the cats because he wasn't being taken on long hikes and exericed properly.

So it really should not have come as a surprise when he tried to bite the kid at doggy day care. The kid was fine, no skin was broken, but my heart was. Murphy is a good dog. We were warned by more than one trainer that due to his intelligence and stubborn streak that he was not the easiest dog for first time dog owners. But we didn't care. He made us really happy. We were a great fit as we were avid hikers and dog park aficianados and had access to kickass doggie day care. And now we have none of that, and it makes us sad because he is sad. He still gets morning and evening walks, but it's not the same. We are trying harder, looking into agility classes and working on commands and just simple time spent. But the bottom line is that we do not have the time we used to, and Murphy is suffering because of it.

Screw Polka Dots

You know what?

Stacey was right.

Screw the polka dots.

Flickr Rocks

Milestones

An interesting funfact I've picked up from those evil, evil parenting books is that when babies cluster feed, i.e. demand dinner on average every 1-2 hours for, ooh, what, the past week or so? It's in preparation for a growth spurt - which could be physical (and I'm sorry sweet babe but really? You? Needing a growth spurt?) or a mental one, as if they are preparing for a developmental milestone. With Harlow crazy for hunger this past week and to my eye not appearing to need much in the way of poundage, I got all excited wondering what she was going to be pulling out of her tiny bag of baby tricks. Rolling over? Pulling up? Teething? The teething thing has been on our minds lately with the sudden manifestation of howling banshee shrieks when she's hungry, but today when I was feeding her next to a Missouri soybean field - more on that later - I swear I saw the tiniest white fleck on her gums. There's no mistaking that there actually IS something tiny and white on her gums, but if it is a tooth remains to be seen.

Milestone recaps of the week:

1. She cannot be contained. She's been sitting in the bumbo, building that core and neck strength, and now she can (briefly) pull her self up by her neck when she's in her stroller.

2. She giggles. Usually it's at the ghosts that hang out in the ceiling, but today, she looked right at me and giggled. Twice. And I didn't even do anything funny. Being the eternal straight man in my romantical pairing, I rather enjoyed being the funny one for once.

3.She met her uncle, cousins and cousins' cousins.

Caleb's family reunion was this past weekend, so we had our first roadtrip up to Southern Illinois, and Harlow could not have been more fabulous, sleeping and hanging out in her seat like a seasoned veteran. Aunt Lara had told us how excited the boys were to meet their cousin, but privately I had my doubts. How excited could a 5 and 7 year old be about a baby? Apparently massively. They could not get enough of her. They hated it when she was asleep because it was less time they got to spend with her. They fought over who could hold her, competed over making her smile, brawled over who could carry her carseat. And the first thing Thomas said when he laid eyes on Harlow?

"Wow. She has a lot of muscles."

The ride home was a little trickier, not because of Harlow but because I was feeling charitable and offered to drive part of the way home so Caleb could hang out in the back with the bebe. We munched on m&m's, laughed, talked politics, and listened to the sweet song Caleb improv-ed on his guitar to his daughter, when he realized we - or I - was lost. We had driven about 30 minutes in the wrong direction because like the cliched girl driver I have become, I just assumed Caleb would tell me where to turn. So that kinda messed up our feeding schedule, which brings us to lunch next to a soybean field off the interstate somewhere in Missouri. Which leads me to my top 10 favorite places I've breastfed so far:

10. The aforementioned soybean field.
9. BBQ Fest
8. Inside a private plane
7. The backseat of a moving car doing donuts around a gas station.
6. The beach
5. India Palace
4. The Lodge in Giant City, underneath the giant elk head
3. in what used to be my old bedroom at my parents' house
2. Mothersville

And my #1 Favorite place I've breastfed?

1. A restaurant called Booby's.

Rockstar Babies

When my husband is not playing the part of sweet, studly baby-raiser, mower of grass and putter of things on high shelves, he can often be found with a guitar in hand or with pen to random scraps of paper, breaking off little pieces of song that put my writerly notions to shame. It's been a tough year with a new town, a new job, a new baby, and a new CD that needed some love and care whenever he found the thirty minutes of free time to devote to it. And last Saturday night all that sweat and angst paid off as he released his badass CD into the world at Otherlands in front of devoted fans.

It's a shame Harlow wasn't really in the mood to celebrate.

The little lady has been seriously cranky as of late. I know we are the last parents who deserve any pity as she has been -and still is - a sweet, mellow baby doll. But the cranky has come from nowhere we can determine. Teething? Is it something to do with that rash on her leg? Memphis?

The likely culprit from those polled?

It's her personality emerging.

But what if we liked her personality before?

I finally found a window of time to get my hair done last week, and after about two hours of blissful head rubbing and trashy magazine reading, I got a frantic phone call from Caleb. He was in the attic, the one place he thought he might not be able to hear our baby screaming while her Nana tried to coax her to take a bottle of mom juice. 7 minutes later, I sprinted through the front door and swept up my red-faced, tear streaked exhausted little screamer and peace reigned throughout the kingdom. For a bit. The screaming seems to be centered around feeding - the timing, the amount, the force of the letdown - all of which are mysteries wrapped inside the enigmas that are my boobs. I think it's time we go back to Breastfeeding 101 at Mothersville.

I also think it's time to clean off the dried poop on my leg.

Florida

Why is Harlow crying?

Is it because she is preparing for her first ever swim lesson?

Is it because she has already fallen in love with the sugar white sand, the sound of the ocean, her Nana and Pop's undivided attention and will be leaving soon?

Is it because her mother looks like she should be working the pit crew for Formula Un?

Florida was warm, caloric, grandparentastic and over way too fast. Like the rockstar baby she is, Harlow smiled, ate and napped on the plane and turned on the super wattage for Nana and Pop who were beginning to wonder if their grandchild was perhaps a reincarnated narcoleptic. Caleb and I managed to steal a few blissful soaks in the ocean - as blissful as keeping one eye open for bull sharks can be - and had a lovely dinner out with Lauren and Tommy. Sans baby. For the first time ever. We got a nice soaking our last afternoon there, and the ocean got really still and tangled up with algae. It kinda looked like the earth underwater.



Back at home, Harlow has decided that things would run much more efficiently if she told us what she wanted, so she has been using those brand new vocal chords to coo, la, gah, screech and what we can only guess is a pretty good Stephen Hawking impression. She turned 3 months old a week ago, the date that the fourth trimester ends and things start to "get easier." As much as I like to deny that I am a superstitious person, the very fact that every baby book I've read has insisted things get better after week 12 meant our super sweet, easy , mellow baby was getting ready to reveal her true nature. Which, apparently, is still very sweet and mellow but with a couple of Glenn Close-worthy I WILL NOT BE IGNORED freakouts when dinner was not ready fast enough. That was new and the staff quickly took note.

Ooh - last night? 9:30 PM to 5:30 AM. And right back to sleep until 7:30. Hell. Yes.

3 freakin months!

Baby girl is officially 3 months old and is already making Tyra proud. She brought the fierce today in our photo shoot...when she wasn't wondering what that giant, black lens hovering inches from her face was.

Today's ensemble - Totally Appropriate for Protesting the Pope on SNL.

Housecleaning

I'll admit it. When I started this blog, I was more than a little pissy. I wasn't psyched about our move, I was dog tired, my back was already killing me - it was was what, like, 6 weeks into the whole shebang? Even though I was excited about my pregnancy, I felt a basic, black blog seemed the appropriate choice for my mood. The little black dress of templates, if you will. 12 weeks on the otherside, I'm still a little pissy, but not so much, and to celebrate, I felt it was time to spruce things up a bit. (OK - truthfully - the fact that I now actually have readers stopping by made me feel like my poor sweet blog got caught in its skivvies. And now my blog gets to do that montage thing like in teen comedies, where the shy, awkward but totally hot girl gets her braces off and gets a spray tan and does some crunches while her little brother looks on in disgust and then she comes to the top of the stairs in slo-mo and...

Polka dots!

I'm liking the polks dots, except polks dots make the text do strange bendy twisty things around my photographs, but it's a little sunnier, right?

Speaking of sunnier, I haven't spent much time talking about Mothersville. One of the hardest things for me to leave behind in LA was an amazing, diverse, supportive circle of girlfriends - friendships that took a loooong time to cultivate. Especially in a city not known for sweetness. Wouldn't you know we move into a house just minutes away from one of the few places in Memphis that makes me stop moaning over our move and actually grateful we did so? I think it was week 3 with the bebe that I managed to slap some makeup on and get myself over to Mothersville. Suddenly I'm rotating work shifts with some very cool chicks while our (truly) fearless leader and grand poobah finally gets her maternity leave on. And if this afternoon's wonderfully bracing conversation is any indicator, the homesickness is gonna clear up sooner than I thought.

Oh - the Hilary Swank Thing was brought up today and Caleb had a brilliant observation. Hilary Swank is so totally our lovechild. We BOTH kinda look like her. His recommendation? We go as her for Halloween. Him: Boys Don't Cry. Me? I'm thinking maybe Karate Kid 2.(Edited to say that I think I was thinking Karate Kid 3. I think the chick from 2 might be little trickier for me to pull off)

Generations

Today was a lunch 3 months in the making. Baby girl finally got to meet her great grandfather. Four generations eating biscuits and dumplings and cake together. I was proud to see that she actually stayed awake for a portion of our visit and got to flash those dimples she got from her grandmother. She also spectacularly blew out her diaper and got to go pantless for the rest of her visit since her mom forgot to pack backup bloomers. But that little H&M top was so cute it didn't matter she was Porky Piggin it.

She's just days away from the magical 3 month mark and seems to be in dress rehearsals for a big finale. We haven't had another night where she didn't wake until 6, but she's getting closer and closer. Last night she woke once at 4:30 and we slept until 8 and man if I didn't feel rested. She's smiling so much of the time and starting to laugh which truly is the cutest sound I've ever heard. Of course, it can't take Avery's laugh which is truly something spectacular. It now comes in 2 varieties: the woodpecker and the mad scientist. Both can stop a room cold and crack up everybody in it. Hell, her Nana even posted it on You Tube.

Pretty in Pink

I know that I'm not supposed to mind when curious passerbys ask if they could say hello to my son, when they guess that my son is 4 1/2 months old, when tell me that my son is just precious while my sweet baby girl blinks up at them. It's just that nobody ever guesses correctly. I suppose it's my fault that I dress her in green and blue and beige - I'm just stubbornly refusing to believe that the only way people will know that my daughter is in fact my daughter is to throw her in some frothy pink concotion. I've got nothing against pink. I wear it often. But why in baby fashion must it be paired with the bows, the lace, the frilled, the (shudder) smocked? After a day of strangers commenting on my sweet boy, I caved and put her in what I thought was not only cute, pink but kinda subversive faux-preppy in asmuch as an 11 week old can be subversive ensemble. I called it The Future Bride of James Spader, complete with an actual polo logo on the dress. We proudly took her cute pink self to Fresh Slices for lunch - where the sweet old lady next to us asked us how old our son was.


The Future Bride of James Spader in one of her many tummy time fashion shoots.

wow

6:20 AM

Harlow went down around 9 PM last night.

And she's still asleep.

I woke up at 6 in a slight panic. No baby in the bed? I craned my neck over. There she was in the bassinet. Still breathing. I couldn't help it. I had to check.

She's stirring now. Good thing - my boobs are about to explode.

And somehow I forgot to mention...

...that Harlow slept through the freakin night! Down at 8:30 and up at 4:30 for a quick meal. Then she and I didn't move until 8:30.

I would have been more excited if I my boobs didn't feel like they were about to explode and my body felt like it lost a few rounds with a prizefighter.

Baby Part 2: Electric Bugaloo

Already, the questions.

Well, they really aren't questions, more like assertions. The "when" you have another baby, not "if." This comes from other parents, the ones with two+ who tell us it's a foregone conclusion that we will succumb, we will come around. I think I can speak for most people that - like most people - when I was younger and childless I envisioned having the 2, the package deal. I have a sister who I adore and couldn't imagine not having in my life - but that's the thing. It's all I've known. I've been doing a little polling, and the #1 reason cited by parents of 2 I've talked to on why they've had 2 is...guilt. The "I would just feel so bad if he/she were all alone" justifcation. I know there's a lot more going on here than just a crisis of conscience, but is that really the best reason for having another child? I know several "only' children, and they are some of the most outgoing, confident, self-assured women I know. Asked if they regretting not having a sibling, uniformly they said it would have been nice, sure, but there were always kids to play with - but more importantly - being an only child was all they knew, so it was cool.

Obviously it's too soon to start seriously contemplating going through the whole rigamarole again. But this is what's got us spooked. Both me and C can't help but be ruled by our superstitions. Harlow has been an insanely easy baby, so logic (or superstition) would suggest that the second child would be the spawn of Satan. C seems pretty certain that one would be more than fine.

Me? Talking about just having one gives me an illicit thrill, like we're doing something naughty. Probably not the best reason for having just one.

pleazzzzzzzzz

Holy crap.

Baby Girl has started sleeping through the night.

From what I understand, "night" is defined as a 5-6 hour stretch, and if that is the case, she started this hat trick a few weeks back. Except it wasn't our night. She's go down around 8:30 and wake up at 3 as if she had never eaten food in her little lifetime, grunting in that crazy, primal, doesn't-seem-to-be-originating-from-her-body sort of way. And then, miracle upon miracle, she'd go back to sleep. And then grunt and roll around and push me to the outermost corner of the bed. But at least she was getting sleep.

I'd been reading about starting a nightly ritual to get baby in the mindset to traipse off into the land of Nod, so we've been trying to establish one. She gets a bath which she really seems to like, not just merely tolerate. Then comes the shoehorning of the p.j.s which she is clearly just tolerating and then everyone's favorite - a bedtime story. For my first mother's day my dad tracked down a copy of Splish, Splash and Splush, one of my favorite books as a kid (read: I apparently made my folks recite this one to me about 20 times a night), so that made the inaugural cut. Last night was Caps for Sale. I picked this up at Davis Kidd because the cover really spoke to me. Here's this roughly drawn gentleman who is giving off a French vibe and wearing a stack of caps while monkeys watch him from the trees. Funny hats, monkeys and France - It just screamed Caleb. When I showed him the book, his eyes went wide with recognition. Apparently this was HIS favorite book as a child, and you could see the goosebumps on his arms as he flipped through it. So wussy ducks and scheming monkeys and comfy pjs and a warm bath led up to her fallingl asleep around 11. She flirted with the idea of waking up an hour later but then gratefully was down for the count. And next thing we know it's 5 AM. She was crying she was so hungry and could barely remove the hand she was furiously sucking before pouncing on me. And I was so excited I couldn't go back to sleep. I'm hoping the novelty of this will wear off soon and everyone in the bed will get a full night sleep, say, before the teeth start coming in and we start this all over again. But right now I'm pretty psyched.

Parenting is hard

Thursday was the dreaded visit to the peds, the one where we felt like we were essentially rolling the dice with our baby's life by allowing her to get her shots. In typing this I know how stupid that must sound, that if any of the dreaded diseases prevented by the immunizations were to make a resurgance we'd be begging for the meds. But after reading account after account of babies havin reactions and dying after the old Dtp, we were absolutely terrified. Our doctor wasn't as sympathetic as I had hoped, but she laid out a good case for why - I mean, in the years she's been administering the shots, she hasn't seen a single reaction. So we decided to go ahead and do it. And for reasons unknown to us, it took the nurse over half and hour to come in and give her the shots - 30 minutes of us rethinking, sweating and generally freaking out.

But she got her shots. She was really fussy and upset for 48 long hours after, but baby girl is ok. Her parents are just big wusses.

Baby girl is also now 14 lbs. 6 oz and 24 inches long!!

I have a Menorah down there?

We see Harlow's pediatrician tomorrow for her 2month (technically her 2 1/2 month) checkup, an appointment that has inspired eagerness, curiosity and absolute dread. We'll finally get an answer to whether she's too big, we'll see how much she's grown and then there is the whole shot business that has me absolutely terrified.

But what has been preoccupying us the most lately? The proper care and washing of our baby girl's most delicate parts.

The past 2 trips to the doc involved her specifically instructing us on making sure to wash out the "cheesy" substances that were hiding out there since birth. On our second trip she checked and apparently we hadn't done a thorough enough job, a topic we dicussed as we were giving Miss H her bath for the evening. She had said something about leaving one part with the cheesy stuff alone but that other part? That would need to be cleaned, most definitely. So where, exactly, were we supposed to be washing? And thus ensued one of the strangest arguments in which we've ever participated. The labia majora or minora (which phonetically brought to mind a candelabra stashed in the hoo-ha)? And where the hell did they end and the thigh begin? There were pictures drawn in the air, diagrams consulted on the internet, (try googling THAT topic), and much giggling and a pretty terrible realization.

My husband knows more about my anatomy than I do.

Rip Van Winkle

Harlow sleeps a lot.

This shouldn't be surprising as she is nigh on 10 weeks old and from my understanding, aside from smiling and showing off her genius linguistic skills, is supposed to be a sleep champ at this age. But according to acquaintances and random people I meet out and about, we have a very. special. baby.

"Will you just look at her? She's just sitting there in her car seat. ASLEEP."
This said by the framer as if he was discussing a pet frog who wore a tuxedo and sang Hello My Darlin on cue.

We went to a baby shower for the head Mama of Mothersville, and everyone joked about Harlow was just doing her thing, sleeping in polite company. At 10 weeks, her reputation has proceeded her. She roused briefly to eat and take in the new digs and then promptly fell asleep.

For another four hours.

This was after trying to wake her with kisses, encouragement and some weird Hall N Oates-esque song Caleb made up called BABY WAKE UP. Wasn't doing it. I mean, even for her this was excessive. I googled "my two month old sleeps too much" and added "all the time" - and not surprisngly, nothing came back.

Because apparently that wouldn't be considered a problem unless you're a paranoid freak me.

And that's why my baby is a genius

I'm throwing my hat in the ring. Just like every parent who pounces on a syllable and predicts their 2 month old to be a linguistic savant, I can't help but just come out with it.

Harlow is a genius.

My girlfriends are taking a trip to Croatia this summer - without me. As Caleb and I were talking about it while playing with Miss H, I said Croatia and Harlow said "Cr." Caleb and I stopped and looked at her. Then at each other.

"Croatia" said Caleb.

"Cr" repeated Harlow.

"Croatia," I whispered.

"Cr" she insisted.

Then she started cooing and smiling and moving onto some other pertinent topic like pacifiers. We just sat there in awe. Surely not, we thought. But there was the other night when we were saying goodbye at dinner and Avery started waving goodbye and Harlow and Harlow looked and slowly started opening her hand in direct imitation of her cousin. I had never ever seen her open her hand like that.

But then, it's probably just baby gas.

But I think she's a genius.

Oops...

I might have to kill the dog.

I suppose it's not entirely his fault that his mission in life is to kill the mailman and that his babycrazy parents have entirely abandoned his training and are only mildy surprised that he is now a barely restrained, raging beast and that when the doorbell rang - courtesy of the mailman - and Murphy ran to try and kill his nemesis, he ran over the baby.

He managed to give her the slightest scratch on the leg and a big, gaping hole in my heart. I never ever want to hear her cry and scream like that again.

Of course she's fine, much comforting and cursing at the clueless dog ensued.

Both of them, poor babies.

I may still have to kill the dog.

Parents Day Out

Grandpa John came down for the weekend to visit the bebe and give us a very special gift - couple time. Caleb and I decided we'd try to see a movie which was perfect because Pirates of the Caribbean opened. And not so perfect because it was 3 hours long. I happened to get up this morning around 6 after feeding H to pump my near-exploding breast, so she had milk while we would be away. She was also likely to sleep all afternoon anyway, but a 3 hour movie + trailers + a giant coke and my still incontinent self = an acute inability to focus and enjoy Johnny Depp and his eyeliner. So we decided to see Waitress.

Oh criminy.

The first sign that things were amiss were the old folks. Not that I have anything against old folks, you just don't typically see them flocking to the cinema en masse. The MidSouth chapter of the Keri Russell Appreciation society? The problem with old folks (we're talking mid 70s here) at a movie is that their hearing isn't so great and you typically have to endure the WHAT DID SHE SAY? and the stage whispered narration of the entire film. A fragile old guy took the only available seat next to me after his wife repeatedly and vehemently pointed - from the row behind us - that that was where he was supposed to sit. he obeyed. He smelled strongly of tobacco but at leats, like me, he didn't seem to be getting the film. And then he laughed the dirtiest laugh during the unexpectedly intimate sex scene. So maybe his hearing was bad but his eyes were just fine.

The movie itself was just bad. I really wanted to like it, but there was no chemistry, no connection between the actors, just - nothing. Our eyes met in the dark in silent agreement. Buzzed off our giant coke and milk duds, we ditched and headed to Macy's. Neither of us bought anything and spent the majority of our time, sans cell phones, trying to find each other in the mall. But at least we were doing it together.

It's been a weird weekend for Harlow. Weird eating patterns, sleep patterns, and oy - her worst night ever last night. Up at 1:30, wide awake, and making so much noise. None of us got much sleep. I'm hoping tonight gets better.

Wide World

Sunday we walked over to the Long's for Drew's post triathalon party and finally got to tour the inside of their amazing home. We sat out on the crazy-long porch and ate and drank and when Harlow started to get a little fussy, I took her back inside. The second we walked into the entry, she stopped fussing and with mouth wide open, kept her head on a constant 180 degree swivel to take in the house. She was fascinated! Back outside, she looked up at the trees and at the plants like she couldn't get enough. It was seriously adorable.

She's eating weird. She's starting to eat closer together - like at 6, 8, 9:30, in preparation - or so it seems - to sleep through the night. But lots of fussing, pulling off and on the nipple, fussing. Still wishing the breastfeeding came with a trouble shooting guide.

And my poor breasts. C doesn't get it, thinks I'm whining like I'm 60 and done for. But unexpectedly they went back to normal size tonight, except, they don't don't look normal, at least not like before. It makes me sad. But she's worth it.

From News of The Weird...

I just started my period.

Um...what?

Mother's Day

I got to celebrate my first mother's day this past Sunday with all my moms around me - my mom, sis, and Sue gathered at the Gtown house to eat fried chicken and pound cake and enough carbs to make me look 3 months pregnant. Unfortunately there are pics to prove it. Fortunately my boobs look so large in my dress you hopefully won't look at the poochy stomach. The weekend was a bit exhausting as Harlow decided her mother's day present would be a growth spurt which required her to have a boob in her mouth every hour - on the hour - for abour 48 hours. Needless to say I was a bit grumpy about the whole arrangement.

She'll be seven weeks tomorrow and every day brings a new wonder. She can lift her head 90 degrees when she lies on my stomach (but can't seem to repeat the same feat on the floor). She's been giggling which is the greatest sound in the world. And the cooing! We lay her on the floor so she can check out the nursery and she starts making these high pitched squeals and wriggles her whole body. Too cute. I laid on the floor with her and we read her first book on color - I swear she did not turn away once. She really liked green and purple and the brown shoe.

Baby's All Growns Up

Yesterday was Harlow's magical six week mark, a day in my mind that had become synonymous with Christmas, the White Sale and rainbows giving up their pots of gold. My brain trust of moms, the ones I call my collective crystal ball for gazing into Harlow's future, told me to wait for six weeks, because then everything gets easier. Like magic. Now don't get me wrong. Harlow is a dream baby - esp after some of the horror stories I heard over at Mothersville - but she's still a baby. One that doesn't come with a manual, so What to Expect will have to suffice. Like my moms, WTE says that I should be feeling lots more comfortable now. I believe "diapering one handed" and a "pro at burping baby" was among the accomplishments listed. Paving the way for your child's crippling claustrophobia from severe onesie bungling is not. (And why has no one invented the velcro onesie yet??)

This week brought lots of explosives - explosive diarhhea that blew out her diaper. Explosive pee that stained our sheets 2 nights in a row. Explosive spit up that could have tagged the cat 10 feet away. She hadn't been truly hard before, but this week was getting a little trying. So it was with a little trepidation that I woke on the big 6 week mark. I didn't feel any different. Harlow didn't seem any different. Except when we came back from our walk and she was howling at the gods for depriving her of food, I wasn't AS stressed as normal. When her spit up flowed like lava through the canyon that is my cleavage, I didn't mind it as much. And then something - well, kinda like magic happened. She smiled. A lot. repeatedly. She giggled. She said "la" and I about fell over. Her first syllable. And WTE says she's only supposed to be on vowel sounds. Walking her around, she kept her head up on her own - for a few seconds before collapsing - but STILL. Suddenly my six week old baby seemed like a real baby, one fascinated with her mom even with her history of trying to smother her with onesies. And I'm ok with still being inept at some things. Five weeks ago I was afraid to feed her if it didn't seem to jive with her "schedule." Now I understand her hungry cries and feed her, and sometimes feed her when I don't understand. Five weeks ago I played her father's songs on Itunes for her lullaby. Now I makeup songs about bicycles when I pump her legs and don't care how terrible I sound. Two weeks ago I thought I was gorging my increasingly plump daughter and thought something was wrong with my milk. Now I feel blessed I make enough milk to feed an army. Five weeks ago I thought this was easier than I thought. Now I know better, and that knowledge makes me happy.

I stil have no idea what I'm doing, and the most important six week lesson I've learned is that it is just fine.

6 weeks (almost)

Miss Harlow is nearly 6 weeks old which means my big six week checkup is Friday. The one where I basically get the yay or nay to resume my sex life and live with the fear that I will instantaneously become pregnant again. Some camps would have you believe that breastfeeding exclusively is a natural barrier against such a horror, and it makes sense. When the milk comes in and the baby nurses, the estrogen levels plummet and prevent ovulation. (I could technically not get my period for another year, but 6 months seems to be about average.) As long as the baby demands such exclusive attention from the mom, the body won't allow her to create an interloper to take its place. Again, makes sense. Yet. I've done enough lurking on message boards and read too many warnings to take that leap. And since my readership seems to be exclusively made up of family members, I'm gonna leave it at that.

Harlow is thriving, and by thriving I mean HUGE. The girl can eat. We're not operating under exact science here by stepping up on the scale with her and then jumping back on the scale solo, but if those calculations are correct, she's 13 pounds. That would be nearly doubling her weight in 6 weeks! At the 1 and under group, one of the moms introduced us to her 7 week old daughter - who is much smaller than Harlow. I'm learning quickly that there really is no system of comparison, only that as humans and moms we will continue to do so.

And so the momnesia doesn't take over completely...

This week she's been sleeping a lot, we think due to a (HA!) growth spurt. She tends to wake at 5 AM and is WIDE awake, but she's so fun to cuddle with. Even in the dark I can see her smile and take in the room with her still spooky eyes. She swivels her head around to see you and has started making these cute high pitched coos. The constant spit up that is pretty much after every feeding - not so cute.

More me time

If the past 72 hours weren't obnoxiously me-friendly to begin with, yesterday I had 2 quick but delightful hours at the hair salon to get my seriously nasty rats nest groomed and apparently, frosted. There's this particularly distinctive look that some southern women rock, this stripey, white blonde thing, and somehow "subtle partial highlights" resulted in my new, stripey blonde mom do. Not happy. What are you gonna do.

And then there is the whole mystery ailment. I guess you call it an ailment. About a week after I gave birth, Inoticed that the skin around and on my knees hurt. A lot. Like, soft cotton sheets brushing against it felt like someone was lighting a match on my knee. Anytime I would put my knee on the bed, the floor, a chair, it flared up with pain. But I mainly ignored it with everything else going on. And then my knee started to go numb, and that caught my attention. My mom floated an interesting theory. One week before the pain came, I had a needle put into my spinal cord for the epidural. Now I have an intense nerve pain and numbness...in my knees. Yeah, it doesn't make much sense to me either, but I don't know what else to blame. It's kinda freaking me out. I'll see the neurologist on Monday.

We had a couple milestones today. Harlow has just started smiling when smiled at which rocks. my. world. but today, I swear she laughed. She'd been smiling and I started laughing and smiling back and then she starte wiggling and then let out this little mini squeal. It's a laugh in my book. She also reached out and touched a bunny rattle I held up to her. Next week she'll be getting her driver's license.

On the road again

Miss Harlow has proved herself to be quite the little traveler. Because I am too dog tired to be witty, here is a recap of our travels over the past 72 hours:

Saturday:

Technically not her first concert since that would be her daddy's, but the Memphis rock n romp seemed to pass muster. She slept the whole time while mommy and daddy drank from the keg and listened to electric guitars. From a safe distance. Musta been 50 kids running around. The nicest compliment I got - some girl told me my post-preggo pilates bod made her want to vomit.

Sweet.

Sunday: A little trickier as our post church lunch date with mom and dad coincides with her feeding. I happen to have pumped, so I feed her my milk from a bottle in the back seat while Caleb drives us to lunch. She sleeps the whole time. We then take her over to Lauren and Tommy's to celebrate Wilson's dedication and Grace's baptism. Everyone stares at her intently. She sleeps. A breif interlude at home and then we're off to Nana and Pop's where she decides to get a little cranky. But after a feeding, C and I head out to Baby Gap to use our big ole gift certificate. WE're halfway there when we realize it's the first time we've been anywhere just the two of us since she was born.

Monday:

Her goodwill toward me is starting to run low. She accompanies me to the doctor's office - aw hell, she 's crying as I type this.

Doctor's office
Petra cafe
Target
grocery store

equals

rockstar baby

Pilates!

Nana and Aunt Lindsey came over today and brought Christmas early. The gift of me time. I hightailed it over to the pilates studio and got my first official workout in since Harlow arrived a month and day ago. My body still feels like jello but wow did getting stretched out feel amazing!

This week I haven't been blogging because every spare moment has been devoted to cleaning up my novel pages for a writing competition. I advanced to the second round (yay!) but waited until the last minute to turn in the pages and so the home stretch for revisions found me on my own, pulling out everything in my bag of tricks to stop Harlow from screaming which ultimately was holding her in my arms while typing one handed. Then Murphy threw up at my feet, she started screaming again and I rang up daddy who was out having a boys night. And like the sweet daddy he is, he hurried home to find his sweet baby girl asleep. But I got them pages done.

next week I'll post about Mothersville, this very cool mommy-centric shop in Cooper Young that had a breastfeeding support group and a 1 and under play group, both of which I attended for the first time this week. Finally got to meet some cool moms.

Reason #30127 why I love my husband

I won't go into specifics, but C has been a bit incapacitated and unable to help with the bebe at night. So I've been having to do the bulk of the grunt work and yesterday the combo of sleep deprivation, massive parenting insecurities and a very, very fussy baby hit hard. Lots of tears, self-doubt, embarassment and exhaustion. And then my sweet, sweet husband kicked me out of the house with a list of movie showtimes and told me to go have fun. So I did. I got me a coke, a slice of pizza and a matinee screening of Hot Fuzz. Which I kinda enjoyed. When I wasn't missing my baby girl and husband.

What I've learned so far

Parenthood is the combination of gut instinct and abject terror performed one handed.

Babies can cry for no reason. Loudly.

Sleep is a beautiful, beautiful thing.

It's amazing what one can accomplish on 2 hours of said sleep out of, what day is it today?

Harlow is eating like she is preparing to hibernate underground for the winter. I haven't the heart to tell her that she has to get through a Memphis summer first.

Vanity doesn't go away. I'm trying to pretend that I don't mind my poor little one's greasy, broken out skin.

My heart is tripled in size. At least. As much as she exhausts me, challenges me,makes me doubt my abilities as a mother and a human being, she fills me up with a love that hurts to feel it.

And good God do I love sleep.

Friday

I remember paying close attention to something I read in one of my baby books before I gave birth, a caution to parents not to be fooled by the sweet little angel in the hospital, the one that slept for 7 hour stretches and didn't cry and pretty much just looked cute and chilled. They said to wait until you got home and give it a couple days and then sweet baby would introduce you to the real little one behind the curtain. So I did. I did't make any presumptions that the marathon sleeping, chill baby we brought home would stay that way. And then 2 weeks passed. She wasn't sleeping for 5 hours anymore, but that was ok because she was, well, chill. She didnt' scream, she didn't spray poo, she batted those spooky blue eyes and smiled in her sleep and pretty much made anyone within a five foot radius fall in love.

And then Harlow met her digestive tract and everything went to shit.

Fortunately Nana was over the first night the piercing, godawful shrieking cries came out of my sweet baby girl's body and they only lasted about 2 minutes - but it was enough to reduce me to tears. Why was she sounding like somebody was stabbing her body with a knife? A call to the pediatrician's office resulted in the expected - give her some mylocon drops, say a Hail Mary and good luck. Caleb and I were a little iffy on the drops and I happened to find some homeopathic version at MOthersville so we gave some to her. And lo and behold it worked. The only thing is that fructose is one of the ingredients and I really wasn't keen on giving my child sugar. And then the painful, gut wrenching screaming started again and I suddenly knew what it was like to be one of those parents with best intentions. The one who was only going to use cloth diapers and make baby food and only give her the purest of nutrients. Give screaming baby the stuff with the sugar. Baby stops screaming. Peace reigns. For a bit.

This was my first full week unassisted. Caleb was back at work, no family was safely within reach to pass her off so I could steal 30 minutes reading a magazine in the tub. And she made the most of he time. She was pretty much wide awake when daddy went to work and then would stay up until she go tired of looking at the ugly dolls and stripey burp cloths I trotted out for her amusement. And those wide awake stretches got longer and longer until today where she basically decided nope, no sleep for me no sleep for you, so let's get this party started. The problem was that I skipped my nap yesterday so I pretty much was extremely ill-prepared to handle the meltdown. She is 3 weeks and a day and again, thanks to the baby books, I knew to expect the 3 week growth spurt, i.e. lots of fussing, demanding and eating around the clock. But the thing is that sweet baby is putting on the pounds. She's gained like, 3 pounds in 3 weeks. Now I'm no pediatrician, but that sounded a bit excessive to me. The "Whoa!" exclaimed by the pediatric nurse I talked to when I called concerned didn't make me feel much better.

(An internet search a bit later mentioned that breastfed babies' weight gain are judged by the percentile scale developed in the 1970s when most babies were bottle fed. The WHO has since updated their chart to relect that breastfed babies gain weight much more rapidly in the first 3 months and then suddenly drop off until 12 months or so. But apparently most pedes don't know this.)

So this afternoon Harlow was screaming. For what I had no idea. I had fed her, burped her, changed her, walked her, promised her a new car on her 16th and nada. I put her in bed with me and shushed and held and rocked her but nothing. And I was getting dangerously tired. In a fit of exhaustion I curled my entire body around her and willed all the love I had in my body into hers.

And she stopped. And apparently so did I. 1 hour later I woke up, my daughter curled up peacefully in my arms. 2 minutes later she was screaming again, but so it goes.

smile

A few minutes ago, after I had fed Harlow and ate some cereal and watched her squirm and grunt and dance close to the edge of crying, I went to her rescue. Immediately upon picking her up, she let out a huge burp, which made me laugh.

Then she smiled at me. And that made me cry.

I know it sounds like it was wishful thinking, but she smiled 3 times in a row. She looked at me, gave me this gummy smile and then crinkled her whole face up with it. 3 times.

It was the most beautiful thing I've ever seen.

Week 2

We're practically into 2 1/2 weeks but I've hit the Wall, the big, fat Great Wall of No Sleep that makes simple things like updating a blog feel like a Herculean task. Thursday was Harlow's 2 week check up at the peds which meant our maiden voyage in the car together. It is understating things to the inth degree by saying I was a tad stressed. Caleb and I conducted a dry run with the car seat and it was surprisingly simple, but this was the thing - how could I drive the car and not be in the back seat with her at the same time? What if she cried or got scared or spitup or missed me? The only compromise was the backseat mirror which I managed to rig to show the top of her head. So I got her, the car seat, the diaper bag and me in the car, only to find that the landscapers had taken over the driveway next door which is literally connected to ours. So, I try to back up, the baby crying, the car frantically beeping at me not to hit the landscapers or their truck or the wheelbarrow or half dozen boulders scattered haphazardly around and CRUNCH. There went the plastic casing around the passenger side mirror. I am happy to report that, unlike my car, I did get my baby to the doctor in one piece. She got a glowing bill of health - she's up to 8 lbs 5 ozs already!
She also got the go ahead to attend her daddy's first ever Memphis gig at Otherlands, and naturally, she was a rockstar. Slept in the sling the entire time while everybody oohed and ahhed over her cuteness.

dreamland

I want to see where Harlow goes when she dreams. Apparently it's a pretty fabulous place, because it makes her smile. Her whole face lights up, dimples are revealed and sometimes she sighs. It's a beautiful image contrasted with the rest of her face; her eyes tend to roll back in her head Exorcist-style during REM sleep, freaking her mama out.

Okay, I make light of it only to mask the emotions it wrenches out of my gut everytime I see that smile. I'm jealous of that place she goes to in her dreams because it makes her happy in a way that I'm not able to yet. I know I just have to wait and be patient until she'll start sharing those smiles with me.

She's also hilarous to watch as she nurses. Caleb and I have given a name to her alter ego - Dominique Piglet. The "D" for the French Buster Keaton Dominique Pinon, and Piglet, because she sounds like exactly like a little hooved squealer when's she hungry. She latches on like I was the last soup kitchen on the last block in town and then slowly starts to fade, overloaded on oxytocin, when suddenly she decides she's had enough. She makes a little satisfied grunt, flings herself backwards off of my breast and falls limp into a food coma. She makes me feel like the most appreciated chef on the planet.

updates

I can't believe I haven't mentioned our one and only official outing with Miss Harlow. We went to see the pediatrician, Caleb on an empty stomach and me crazy with stress and a big storm front passing through. The wait took forever and Harlow screamed and screamed at getting weighed and measured. But the pediatician is fantastic - smart lady, tough cookie. Like her a lot. Unfortunately she felt that Harlow still looked a littel jaundiced so we had to go back to the hospital and get more blood drawn. Fortunately the timing worked out as I had royally f-ed up the car seat base in trying to be proactive, so he got to track down the car seat safety lady while I got to comfort my poor baby girl while they squeezed more blood out of her ankle. But her billie rubin levels were fine (how this is a scientific measure and not a country singer is beyond me) so she gets to be stripped down to her diaper and sunbathe which is going over just fine.

And I seem to be bouncing back slowly but surely. I'm doin 20 minute walks daily. And I never EVER thought I would say this, but I kinda miss the belly as it is shrinking away. It was my proof that she was inside. I miss her on my walks, not having her there. I'm sure once it warms up again and we can put her back in the stroller, I'll get over that fast.

She also had her first bath today - which she hated. And I finally pumped, and wow did I feel like a new person. A new person without hot. giant rock hard milk ducts in their boobs.

5:30 AM

5:30 AM. Chocolate poptart in one hand, bag of frozen peas on my swollen boob. Caleb and Harlow in the big green chair, and we're watching the original Island of Dr. Moreau.

Good times.

Seriously, I mean it.

p.s. Caleb does a really fab impression of Michael York.

p.p.s I'm so not buying that "no animals weren't harmed in the making of this film"

Week 1

Today Harlow is officially a week old. Today Caleb and I are officially tired, awed, freaked and love drunk over our girl. It's absolutely earth shattering the feelings she inspires in me. Love, terror, fear, adoration, appreciation, humility. Today she spit up right in my face. I felt like I had just been through a rite of passage. Congrats. You are a mom. Now try and wipe off that spit up while you change her next to the giant pee stain and try to get that onesie over her head without smothering her.


My milk came in on Tuesday, and by milk I mean rock hard plastic jugs like the kind you find in the dairy section at the store that switched places with my breasts in the middle of the night. The fantastic news is that the nursing is going really, really well. I truly can't get over my luck at how I gave birth to a future professional food eater and she latches on like nobody's business. But then there is the rest of the day when she's not nursing, and my boobs feel like they are going to explode. They have to be D cups by now, and as the rest of my body is slowly shrinking back to normal, they just seem to get bigger. Anytime I leave the house I will have to have Harlow with me so I'm not mistaken for some wannabe porn star.

Have I mentioned how we have the most fabulous baby on the planet? I don't know what kind of blood sacrifice is going to be required of me in the future for my sweet deal, but right now we are loving our super mellow, typically sleeps about 4 or 5 hours at night rockstar baby. She rarely if ever screams, and she's really making motherhood go down easy.

But then there are the hormones. The ones that came with the milkman. These are nasty, supersize freak you out hormones. The kind that zapped all your confidence as a mother and a human being, that make you think you are going to royally F up your child or worse - you'll turn your head for one second and the big bad world will get her instead. I thought I knew fear before having a child. That wasn't nothing.

I think I'm gonna go love on her right now.

Welcome to the World, Baby Girl

It's quiet, here on the otherside.

I'm watching my five day old daughter sleep in her bassinet, the sounds of gurgling intestines and blood flow and odd but fantastic choice of background music. It's supposed to mimic the sounds of my womb which, according to the cd, is a world of fuzzy tv reception, constantly running vacuums and a demonic septic pump. But it gets the job done.

So.

I have a daughter. I am a mother.

And it's okay. It's more than okay. I had been so prepared to be terrified, overwhelmed, scared and depressed that I was wholly unprepared for the utter happiness and joy I feel at being Harlow Mae Sweazy's mother. How about that name, by the way? It took us 2 days of making lists and throwing them out and starting over from scratch, but we finally landed on a name beautiful enough to honor our gorgeous little girl.

Let's back up. I tossed and turned all night before the induction. It was just too surreal. Set alarm. Shower. Check in to the hospital at 7:15 to meet the baby. But that's what we did. They led me back to the delivery room by myself which was a little jarring. I know I threw C a pathetic smile as they took me away, and basically they needed me to sign a bunch of paperwork and vouch that my home was a safe place to take the baby and then C was allowed into the birthing suite. Sweet nurse Donna hooked me up to an IV, Diane came in and broke my water, the pitocin kicked in, and within a few short hours I was dilating steadily. I got to feel a few contractions but I made sure to have my epidural doc stop in asap, so nothing was worse than a really bad menstrual cramp. The way it should be. I kept hearing this terrible sound coming from the hallway, and I asked who the crazy lady was. She would be the one in labor without the epidural. I could feel my contractions as my uterus balled up and released, but with no pain. The fascinating thing is that I would suddenly feel exhausted after an intense contraction and then feel the endorphins rushing through me, all without the pain. Brilliant.

I was more than a little stunned when Donna announced that it was time to start pushing. I had just been happily chatting with John and Pat, clueless that I was 10 centimeters dilated. Diane came in, and the pushing began. Caleb held one leg, Donna held the other, and little pleaser me tried to push as hard as I could with a numb pelvis. Fortunately the epidural started to wear off just a smidge toward the end and i could feel better what I was trying to do. And after 40 minutes of pushing and a 2 degree cut, at precisely 2:20 PM, my daughter came screaming into the world. I couldn't have been more surprised if a giant pink unicorn had come galloping out of my vagina. A girl. I was so convinced it was going to be a boy. But now, truly, I wouldn't have it any other way. Gorgeous, mellow, already a heartbreaker, my little girl has already made doormats out of me and her father. They keys to the car? No problem. A pony? It's yours. She's the most beautiful thing I've ever seen. I now just wish sometimes she was still inside my belly, because in there, aside from the dangers of too hot baths and feta, she was safe. Now she's out in the open, and she' sjust going to have to get used to me sticking to her like glue so the big bad world will keep its filthy mitts off of her.