Eight Months

Dear Harry,

As you can see, this month we learned that you are no longer interested in sitting patiently and smiling for the camera. If there is a piece of paper nearby, it will go straight in the mouth and become damp and crumpled and slowly disintegrate, leaving big wet pieces in your mouth that I have to scoop out with my fingers (or just let you swallow them). Not that this happens often or anything. This was also the month when I realized that I have no idea how or whether one is supposed to discipline a baby, or at least prevent a baby from doing things that are harmful to him, or to, say, those around him. I should probably figure this out soon, though, before you gauge my eyes out with your pointy little fingers with their always-sharp, always-ragged nails or pull out all my hair with your grabby hands or bite my nipples straight off. Again, not that these things happen often or anything.
I feel like I missed you a lot this month. Like last month, I missed you because I saw you less than I did before. I just hate that this month was even less than last. I worked late more than once and made it home just in time for bath, or just in time for bed. And that makes me sad. I also had a Vestry meeting, and a Finance Committee meeting, and a Vestry retreat. Church is important, as is taking a role in its governance, but I hate missing time with you all the same.


You went to the park for the first time (and second and third) this month. You loved the swings. Really, really loved them. You also checked out a couple of different slides and the see-saw and those things that are mounted on a giant spring. The swing was definitely the biggest hit.

This month was also your first trip to Fenway to see the Sox. You mainly seemed to enjoy the folks sitting behind us who kept smiling at you and trying to entertain you (at the expense of your nap). We didn't see as much of the game as your dad and I usually do, and it was a bit chilly, and our seats weren't great, but it was fun anyway. We have tickets to many more games this summer, so I hope you had a good time!

Given that baseball season is starting, it seems fitting that it is finally warming up outside. You haven't spent a ton of time outside in months (with us -- you go outside at daycare every day, so long as it's at least 35 degrees, which I really like about your daycare), and I'm pretty sure you had no memory of those early times in the sun. I think your favorite thing about being outside is getting to spend time with the dog while he plays. Your love for him grows each month, and it's wonderful to watch that relationship develop. You started saying a lot of consonants this month, but my favorite is "Wu," which you say when you see the dog. I'm pretty sure it's woof. So sweet.

You tried some new foods, like you do every month. This month was pumpkin, acorn squash, barley, and mango. You seemed to enjoy them all, but I feel like you spit up more when you had pumpkin after a run of very infrequent spitting-up, so maybe we'll hold off on that for now. I wish mangoes weren't such a pain in the rear to prepare for you, because you really seemed to like them. On that note, I'm cool with you liking acorn and butternut squash, as well as bananas, as they are all easy and cheap. You also started eating some finger foods, mainly banana chunks, puffs, and cheerios. You tend to pick up food with your fists more than your fingers and then jam your whole hand in your mouth. Most often, the food sticks to your hand and you get very angry when you discover you didn't manage to eat anything. I know you'll figure it out eventually, though.
Finally, this month we got to celebrate our first mother's day together. Like every other holiday, we spent a lot of it in the car, driving to see all the ladies who love you, starting with the grammies and GG, then heading to Grandma and Grandpa's house. You chewed on some tissue paper, hung out in a box, and sat in your very own rocking chair for the first time. You and Daddy got me a potted lily, which was beautiful and should last a long time, just like my love for you.

I love you with all my heart,

Mommy

Wordless Wednesday: Goodbye Infant Carrier

Walking for Hunger Again

This Sunday, P, Harry, and I will be participating in the 41st Annual Walk for Hunger here in Boston. We are sorta hoping that we'll be able to complete the full 20 miles again this year but I don't know if Harry will last that long going between the wrap and the stroller. And P is feeling confident but hasn't done the walk for years (and doesn't do much exercising). So we'll see. If you care to support my efforts (even a small amount can make a big difference), follow the link below (or here!). If you follow that link to my Walk for Hunger homepage, you'll see that the same answer to the question of Why I Walk as last year.

But the 2009 answer to Why I Walk is because more people, and more children, are going hungry today than at any point in recent history, and there are fewer resources -- fewer soup kitchens, fewer food pantries, less funding -- to help them than ever before. I walk to do my part to raise some money and some awareness to help those who don't have enough money to buy the basic necessities that so many of us take for granted. For people like my pro bono client who told me yesterday that by the end of the month she eats mayonnaise sandwiches and saves the real food for her kids. Or my other pro bono client who waits two hours in line at the food pantry each week in order to get an onion, a potato, and a jar of peanut butter, and wonders what she could make with that. Because, seriously? How is that acceptable?

I know money is tight for just about everyone these days. If you can spare a dollar or two or twenty, please do. To make a contribution, click here. [end shameless plug]

Day Five: Damn You, 6am Wakeup

Even on day 5, it's hard. My calves no longer ache all the time (at least, not as much as before), but the workout in general is really hard. And doing it during the work week is extra hard. So I'm not only sore but sore and tired. So tired that I fell asleep on the bus Monday morning, and again during a training session when I got here. Well, not completely asleep but the nodding off kind of asleep I used to fall during my infant development class during college after pulling an all-nighter. (I don't know why it was always that class but I swear it was. I also don't know how getting 6-6.5 hours of sleep became the equivalent of an all-nighter but it clearly has.) I may need to start setting the coffee maker to autobrew so I can get a cup before we leave in the morning and avoid the exhaustion that sets in by 8:00.

It does seem to be worth it, though. Maybe. I think. I am feeling a bit fitter now than I was a week ago. I feel somewhat stronger. And I think muscles are now reforming beneath my layers of blubber. (Though there's still a lot of blubber.) Hooray for small victories.

Coming back to the timing issue, doing this over the weekend was not so bad. When Harry took a nap, I did the workout, then showered, and generally had time to spare before he woke up. Doing it during the week is much harder. I really wanted to avoid seeing a 5 on the clock, so I've been getting up at 6 on the dot this week. 6:00 - 6:07, I get changed into workout clothes, go to the bathroom, fill a water bottle, get the TV on, and get the program on. 6:07-6:33, I do the workout. (Yeah, it's 25 minutes, not 20, once you factor in the (very minimal amount of) stretching she does before and after.) 6:34-6:44, I shower and get dressed (usually just into something loungy, waiting to dress for work until I'm ready to leave in case someone spits up on me). Then I attend to the child.

Speaking of the child, Harry seems to have decided that whenever I get up is when he will get up, so he plays with his crib toy and/or with his little Piglet and Pooh Bear until P gets out of bed and retrieves him. P changes his diaper, and then they talk to the dog and read stories in Harry's room until I'm out of the shower and ready to feed him. We still get an hour or more of nursing and playtime in the morning before I have to get him dressed and finish packing him up. But the morning definitely feels more rushed now. And even though it's only 15 minutes earlier, I am not a fan of the 6am wakeup.

Damn you, 6am wakeup. I hate you, but I can survive anything for 30 days, I suppose.

Day Two: Feeling Shredded

But more like, say, cheese than in any bodybuilding kind of way.

Day One: Not so bad. It was a hard 20 minutes, but I forced myself to finish it. She kept reminding me that looking better/feeling more healthy wouldn't come for free and that if I wanted it to only cost 20 minutes of my time I couldn't dial it in. So I tried not to. Things that were more agonizing: jumping rope, push-ups, lunges, those front arm raises. Things that were less agonizing: jumping jacks, punching, ab work, squats.

Day Two: Much harder than Day One. People say it gets easier, but I know from experience that Day Two is often the hardest -- your body is still pissed at you for making it do something on Day One. Jumping rope was less bad than the day before but the push-ups were like slowly dying. I had to take a breather. Twice. In, like, thirty seconds. The ab work was a little easier too. But the rest of the stuff that was hard yesterday was as bad or worse.

I'm sure I didn't set myself up for an easier day tomorrow by going for what was supposed to be a hike but turned out to be more of a leisurely stroll this afternoon. We'll see. I am also really not looking forward to having to get up at an hour that starts with 5 on purpose in order to do this. Ick. 30 days. I suppose I can survive anything for 30 days.

Last Weekend (Catching Up)

Last weekend was the first nice weekend in a long while (like, five months). And we tried to cram many months worth of nice weekend activities into a single weekend. (But I also had to work, so we had to cram all those activities into small windows of time not occupied by me working.)

On Saturday, we took Harry to the park. He checked out the swings (a big hit, as you can see):

And the slide:


And some assorted other fun activities (he was not so sure about the springy animals or the seesaw -- they didn't do anything cool and we wouldn't let him eat them):


Then on Sunday, we took him to his first Red Sox game. So as to avoid posting pictures of P, here is a picture of Harry before the game (the only pregame photo in which Harry isn't bent in half -- he was really fixated on his feet):

It was hard to pay attention to the game, and our seats were in the shade where it was chilly, and Harry didn't get an afternoon nap, as the people behind us kept smiling and waving at him every time he would try to put his head down and you can't really tell people to please stop being nice to your kid, but the game was fairly fun anyway. And even if it wasn't it was Harry's first game. Of many. (We have tickets to eight (I think) Sunday afternoon home games this season.) We need to remember to dress more appropriately for the weather where our seats are (we have those seats for three more games) rather than the weather in general. And we need to avoid making plans with Ps cousin for after the game, as it left me more concerned than I otherwise would have been about Harry's lack of an afternoon nap.

All in all, last weekend was fun. Hopefully, there will be a post about this weekend before next weekend rolls around.

Isn't That Something You Do To Paper?

My dieting efforts have fallen a bit by the wayside lately. I've been eating badly. And opting not to get on the scale as a result. I know I need to get myself back on track but just don't feel like it, which is the same bad attitude that landed me in this fat situation in the first place. Needless to say, I should not have eaten an entire small Boboli pizza for dinner last night, even if I did use low fat cheese on it.

Historically, I stayed fairly healthy through exercise. I enjoy exercise. Or I enjoy feeling fit and seem more capable of knowing that exercise = fit than that not eating like it might be my last meal = less fat. But I no longer have time to exercise. Or, I have time but it would mean cutting into either time with Harry or sleep, neither one of which I am really psyched to give up. So I've been pondering this issue lately.

In my pondering, I've come to feel like everyone out there is into Jillian Michael's 30 Day Shred. It's only 20 minutes a day. I can do 20 minutes a day. Maybe. I can at least try. I guess. It's available On Demand from Com.cast. At least parts 1 and 2 are. So I'll give it a whirl. 30 days seems like about the maximum amount of focus I'm capable of giving to anything these days (like, say, my dieting efforts or my Wii Fit kick).

Mondrian

Is it me? I did it twice, and they were similar but different. In the first, I only listed one hobby, thinking there was no option to select multiple. In this one, I listed chose all that were applicable. I actually think the first was more me, oddly. Maybe I should stick to reading.

To view more, visit Niobe.

Common Bonds*: Ticks, Harry (But Less), Screwing Up At Work

As to the first, Buddy started acting funny ten days ago. On Friday, he was playing like usual in the yard. On Saturday, he started limping. By Sunday morning, he wouldn't put any weight on his left front paw. By Sunday night, he didn't even get up to play or hang out with us. Monday morning, we called the vet. It wasn't a sprain, like we thought. It was Lyme. Screw you ticks. Poor boy :( He is now on antibiotics for a month. Three pills a day. That have to be taken with food. And can't be taken with cheese. And our dog only eats his dog food when he feels like it. Unless it's sprinkled with cheese. It's been a bit of a challenge. On the positive side, the antibiotics seem to be working. By the end of last week, he was seeming himself again. Though he has no understanding regarding why he isn't allowed to play like usual.

As to the second, Harry has been doing a bit better with nursing, though the biting hasn't stopped completely. I took Nicky's suggestion (made by a few other as well) and tried Tylenol about an hour before bed, and it seems to be helping. The only two nights he has bitten me more than once have been the ones we forgot the Tylenol. And the biting has slowed down in general. Even better, he has gone back to nursing again -- the partial strike is over (though he does seem to nurse for shorter periods now). He struggled with the bottle at daycare last week too, so I'm trying not to take it personally. It does appear to be teething related.

As for screwing things up at work, I'm still feeling stressed about it. Probably fueled by the fact that I'm feeling somewhat anxious about work in general. But the senior associate stepped in front of the bus rather than throwing me under (especially admirable given that he is up for partner this year). So he may think less of me but I seem to have otherwise emerged from the giant fuck-up largely unscathed (though I may just be unaware of the realities of my situation). But it still sucks.

Much to share about the parts of the weekend I didn't spend working, but I'll save that for tomorrow and Wednesday.

* Any other Jeopardy fans out there?

Our living room occupies the southwest corner of our house. The west facing window is big. Really big. Huge in fact. It's ten feet wide. Yeah, ten. And it faces west, so it gets a ton of sun in the afternoon. In the winter, this is nice, as it gives a bit of extra warmth. And year round it gets a ton of light, which is also nice. But in the summer it gets hot. And in the four years we've owned this house, we haven't put up window treatments in that room. Clearly we need them. But we can't figure out a solution.

Here are the issues.

1. The size. No blind/shade/etc. company makes a blind/shade/etc. that is ten feet wide.
   
2. The fact that the window is actually five smaller windows (and the center plus the two outer ones crank out). So getting two blinds/shades/etc. that are each half the width means that any gap in the center will let in light. So we'd need to do five separate things. And we'd still risk having light come in between the blinds/shades/etc. since the frame between them is narrow.
   
3. As noted, three have cranks. So we need something that won't get in the way.

Anyone have any ideas? We're currently thinking of making (or having made -- I'm not much of a seamstress) a set of super-wide curtains with some overlap in the center (to avoid the light coming in) and hanging them on a long rod. We think we'd have to make the rod ourselves, since we haven't seen one long enough, but that should be fairly easy. It would have to be mounted on both ends and in the middle.

I must admit, I'll miss having that super-bright room, but it'll be nice to be able to have a little privacy on that side of the house, since that's the corner of our corner-lot (i.e. both sides of the room face a very close street).