Drive by.

Work is nuts right now, so I really only have time for a quick update.

So we figured out the reason for Baby O’s night waking.

Teeth.

Two of them – one of the central incisors, one lateral incisor (thanks D!) have popped through his gum. His other central incisor is threatening to pop through.

I’m pretty relieved, actually. One – because I thought that his night waking was because he misses his bottles.

Two – because I was DAMN tired last week.

Three – because maybe, just maybe, Baby O won’t be the only kid in kindergarten who only has two teeth.

Last night before bed we gave him a dose of tylenol, just in case. And wouldn’t you know it – he slept through until 6:45 this morning.

WORD.

Even better, I had a freaking FANTASTIC run this morning. 10 minute miles… where I SPED UP for the last quarter mile because I wanted to go fast.

And I realized something.

I am a runner who LIKES to go FAST. I’m not so much an endurance runner. Or a marathoner. (Yet. Though a marathon IS on my “things I will do before I die” list.) Slowing down when I’m tired = PAIN.

But speeding up through the pain? Reminds me of being a kid; the fastest one on my block. I get goosebumps. It makes me smile.

(Course, right now it only lasts for about 10 minutes or so. Will have to work on sustaining speed for the full 5k.)

Either way… Sleep + excellent run = VERY GOOD MORNING.

Friday. Obsession.

Thank freaking goodness it’s Friday.

Baby O slept well last night. Was up at 3:30, coughing, but we gave him a little milk, then shut the monitor off*, and he slept until 7:15 today. Woke up in a fine mood, so that’s good.

Thank you ALL for your comments and suggestions on the Puck situation. I think our plan right now is to work with him over the next couple of weeks. Give him more attention, add another litterpan to the upstairs bathroom, try the kitty prozac.

But J and I did discuss the possibility that if he continues to pee outside his litterpan, we might need to find him a new home. Not because we can’t deal with the cat pee – honestly we can take up most of the rugs in our house, and were planning on replacing the carpet in the foyer with hardwood anyway. And as much as I bitch about it or freak out that he’s RUINING our house, he’s my cat and I love him.

But it’s mostly that HE’S unhappy. He’s lost 4lbs since November of 2007, which is significant. Personality-wise, he’s changed too. He used to curl up in our laps EVERY TIME we sat on the couch. Now? He rarely snuggles with us; choosing instead to sleep on the bed upstairs most of the time.

I just want to make things as easy on Puck as possible, that’s all. It’s been hard, since Baby O LOVES him and really wants to interact with him now.

Anyway. IF the new tactics we employ don’t work (and they MAY NOT), we have talked about the possibility of finding him a home. We’ll talk with the vet. We’ll ask around and see if there are any old ladies (or men) who will dote on Puck the way Puck needs doting.

In the meantime, though, we need to work through it.

But. New sneakers.

And obsessing.

Apparently I need to obsess about SOMETHING in my life. I don’t really want to obsess about Baby O or work.

So right now? It’s running.

I HEART my new shoes. To the extent that, yesterday afternoon when I was driving home, I wondered if it would be wrong to go outside for a run, even though I had run that morning.

So um yeah. I’ve been on this site daily, mapping new routes, and adding ‘training sessions.’ I’ve spent time googling how I can run faster and calculating (and recalculating) what time I’m HOPING to do for these 5ks this summer.

I can’t wait for my next run. I look forward to running. In fact, J, Baby O and I are heading to Maine this weekend, and last night I eagerly packed my new running shoes.

Course, when I’m actually RUNNING, since I’m pushing myself, I pretty much feel like quitting. Because yeah, it sucks when you’re out of shape to try and push yourself to run harder and faster.

But then I get that rush of endorphins, the goosebumps, the HAPPINESS…

… and I want more.

In the grand scheme of things, being obsessed about running is’t all bad. There are worse things to obsess about I’m sure. You know, like gambling. Or gaming. Or Baby O meeting every one of his milestones ahead of the curve. Or something else.

But yeah. You could say that I’m just a LITTLE obsessed.

Truth of it is, running makes me feel GOOD. Like there’s something in my life I can control. And when I look in the mirror these days, I FEEL better about myself. Stronger. Fitter. Like I CAN do it all – be a mom. Work full time. Focus on myself.

Is it any wonder I am obsessed then?

*As a note, Baby O’s room is RIGHT next to ours. In fact, his crib is against the same wall our headboard is. If he were to scream, we’d hear him. Last night he was just chattering to his bear blanket, and at 3 in the morning, tired overwhelms cute. So I turned the monitor off. Gladly.

Mojo update.

So I took Puck to the vet today again, to rule out kidney/bladder infection. She weighed him, asked me some questions, and told me that likely it wasn’t physiological, given his history. We’re to keep an eye on him, of course, but as of right now his bloodwork is normal, and every time we’ve done a urinanalysis on him, it’s been normal.

So we decided to put him on a stronger medication – real kitty Prozac. The other stuff we used apparently is pretty mild.

And we’re adding a second litterbox to the bathroom on the second floor, which is where Puck spends most of his time during the day and night anyway.

And we’ll take up the carpet on the foyer floor, which we were planning to do anyway, and cover it with hardwood. (We’ll just have to do it sooner, because I suspect that at the first really hot and humid day, our house will reek of cat pee.)

And we’ll have to go from there.

I thought we had been making such strides on getting Puck acclimated to Baby O. And maybe we HAVE been – maybe this is just a step backwards in the whole thing.

But I love my cat, and he’s been my only constant since college. It’s not fair to give up on him because he’s peeing because he’s stressed out.

That’s how I feel today anyway. I WANT to make this work.

And for the Baby O update? Not only was he up at 5:30 this morning, but he only took ONE nap at daycare today – in the morning. We’ll see how he does tonight.

We’re out of Mojo today, thanks.

I was GOING to post about my rocking new sneakers. I mean, seriously. I had NO clue how BAD my old ones were until I strapped on my shiny new trainers last night. I felt like a freaking KANGAROO, they were so bouncy.

And so I shaved a full MINUTE off my usual run this morning.

Even better? My ankles and knees aren’t achy right now.

So yeah. Great gym day.

But then I went home before I went to work. To get coffee. Drop off my gym bag. See the baby and my husband.

And J met me at the door and told me that he found yet ANOTHER place where Puck has been peeing.

And then told me that Baby O, who was fussing in the kitchen, got up at 5:30 and “never went back to sleep.” (After, mind you, him having been up at MIDNIGHT last night. He was back asleep by 12:30, but there’s something that’s interrupting his sleep.)

In one fell swoop, those endorphins pumping me up came all crashing down.

Fucking cat. In the past however many months, he’s peed on THREE different rugs. We were able to take two of them up, get them cleaned, and stash them in the attic until we no longer have animals.

This is a NEW place on the stairs landing – on the rug he ruined when we brought Baby O home.

This place sucks even more, because it’s not even OUT OF THE WAY. You step in the fucking cat pee when you walk down the stairs.

I’m so fucking DONE with the cat pee. I’m sick of finding a new place he’s gone. I’m sick of wondering where the NEXT place he’s going to go is.

So yeah. That sucks.

The Baby O sleep thing, well, that at least is temporary. I hope anyway.

But today? No mojo here.

Just a big drag.

Oooooo, that smell… Can’t you smell that smell?

A couple of months ago, I thought that it would be a good idea to try and get Baby O to start eating meat.

He’s tried some ground turkey, and pieces of chicken, but he’s not really much in the way of meat right now. And truthfully, I’m okay with this, since he has only two teeth (and a tendency to cram his mouth full of food).

But I started thinking about his protein intake. Or lack thereof, since meat really isn’t his thing. We did try eggs, but twice now he’s had a reaction to the whites. And the yolks he’s just okay with – not a huge fan.

And so I hit upon a solution a little while ago. Beans and tofu.

So we’ve been trying all sorts of tofu. He seems to like the flavored the best.

In fact, his FAVORITE, now, is a tofu hot dog, which every time we give it to him, he shovels into his mouth as if he is afraid we’ll take it away if he doesn’t eat it quickly.

I mean, it’s HEALTHY. Well, healthier than a real hot dog, I suppose. Have to watch the sodium, but there’s no MSG or nitrates in them. And they’re easy – just cut em up and go.

However.

We discovered very quickly the downside to his love for the tofu dog.

The mornings after he has one (or two, depending on how hungry he is the night before), when you walk into his room…

… the whole room reeks of garlic.

Gone are the days where he smells of baby powder (and there was that one time when I had a half pint of Ben and Jerry’s Cake Batter ice cream, and his diapers smelled like cake batter for days) and baby laundry detergent.

Now he gets FUNKY between baths. Dirt. Drool. Sweat. Old garlic.

You know that smell – when someone you work with comes back from lunch and you are DYING to offer them a mint.

That’s my Baby O.

And in the mornings, when I’m snuggling with him while he drinks his bottle, it’s all I can do not to gag. It’s STRONG.

But, you know. He LOVES those tofu dogs. And there ARE worse things he could smell like, I suppose. (Skunk, for example.)

And at least he can repel vampires.

Finding my Mojo: A book review.

When MotherTalk emailed about a couple of new books we could read, one caught my eye.

Mojo Mom: Nuturing Your Self While Raising a Family by Amy Tiemann, PhD.

Happened to be one of those times where I was feeling super stressed by the to do list. And work. And feeling a little lost in everything that we needed to do.

I signed up eagerly.

So when the book arrived, I expected it to tell me exactly how I could do it all. The author started off by telling me “Mommy Mojo is the feeling you get when you are at the top of your game, juggling the many facets of your life and keeping your own needs in balance with family needs. It is the joyous feeling of becoming yourself and liking that person… it is power.”

No pressure, Amy… but I wanted ANSWERS.

So I read through it. Fast and furious, I turned the pages, expecting that the next page was going to be the one where she told me how to manage it all.

It’s not like that at ALL. There weren’t any answers for me. I closed the book and thought: “Yes! I agree with you. We need to support more moms, working moms, stay at home moms. Yes, I WHOLLY agree that the ‘Mom Wars’ phenomena is perpetuated by the media and extremists. I GET IT. But the fact is, I work full time and I miss out on stuff and I’m tired and feel like I’m beholden to my to do list and I DON’T KNOW HOW TO CHANGE IT.”

And initially I was upset about the book. I felt gypped – as gypped as one could be for getting a free book, anyway.

But last night, in preparation for writing this review… I reread it. Because with books, I am judgmental, and I generally get a lot more out of a second reading. And I really to be balanced in my review.

Holy SHIT she makes a lot of sense.

The whole premise of the book is that motherhood fundamentally changes you. And all the pregnancy and child care books don’t prepare you for this shift. In the span of a few short days, you leave the hospital with this newborn baby. You will never be the same person you were.

In the early days of having Baby O, when I was completely overwhelmed, and sleep deprived, I’d often think back to the times before him longingly. Where I could get out and go for a run every day before work, where my hardest night was because I had some insomnia. The vacations. The relaxing. Et cetera. And I found myself mourning that life. But of course I couldn’t really talk about it, because I mean, hadn’t we spent three and a half years trying to get pregnant? I should be happy. Yes, it’s okay for me to feel overwhelmed and tired, but it WASN’T OKAY to actively MISS my “old” life.

The first thing this book showed me, though, was that it was, in fact, OKAY to mourn that other life. Because it’s “tempting to romanticize miraculous tranformations.” She uses the image of a caterpillar turning into a butterfly. And she says, “I bet you have never asked yourself, What about the caterpillar?” Because I’ll tell you something. I did focus on the caterpillar. I wondered if I was ever going to find the time, energy, and self-focus (selfishness, I thought at the time) to be happy with ME again.

Chapter three of the book describes her idea of the four phases of “getting your Mojo back.” From the initial survival mode, you move into a period where you assess and reconnect with your desires for your life. Then you’ll set your priorities and goals, and finally begin taking baby steps toward these goals.

Now, see. Only a couple of weeks ago, I was in phase two. I WANTED to start pursuing my own interests… but I didn’t see where I’d have the time. I posted about it, even. I wanted to get out and have fun. I wanted to feel STRONG. I wanted to lose weight. Yet I felt guilty about asking J to do more. And selfish. And so I held myself back because that my priorities were screwed up.

But then I decided to sign up for these 5ks this summer. And J and I decided to hire someone to clean our house twice a month. And we determined that we’d have one day a weekend where we’d get out and have some fun as a family. But most importantly, I made a decision to simplify my life. To let go of the guilt of being a “bad friend” when I just didn’t have the time to stay in touch as much as I wanted.

Really I just decided to accept that I am not the perfect mom. There are other moms who are more fun. Who successfully juggle more than I do. Who buy organic and bake healthy homemade muffins for her kids.

What makes ME happy? Having a goal. Planning on how I’m going to reach that goal. Doing something physical like running, even on the days where I can’t manage to run more than a mile or so. Having a glass of wine just because. Cooking. Taking a walk.

And that’s the essence of this book. Finding the time, and the energy, and the motivation to do things for yourself even though it feels wrong (at first). And knowing that there’s an ebb and flow to this time and energy. That though today I may be on top of the world after getting all of our chores done this weekend while also getting out on both days with Baby O… it might not be that way tomorrow.

And that’s okay. I’ll keep working on it.

A love letter.

Dear Baby O:

Every night, when you’re asleep, I tiptoe into your room to turn down the music on the classical station.

And every time, on my way out of the room, I stop at your crib. And look at you.

And I marvel.

You’re getting SO big. Your face has lost its baby roundness.

And always, I find you asleep on your belly, your arms thrown out in slumber, your hand always touching your beloved bear blanket.

I can’t believe how fast the past year has gone.

Scratch that – 13 months. Because, tomorrow you’ll be 13 months old. And though I don’t actually COUNT in months anymore, I keep track of them.

You’re turning into such a character. A chatterbox; you are talking from the very moment you wake up until you go to sleep. Your language is all your own; it has got its own cadence and words. I wish I understood it more so we could really TALK. But that’s coming, right?

And oh GOODNESS the adventures you go on in our house. Like the other night, where in 30 seconds flat you had climbed all 13 stairs and made your way into the bathroom where you tried to climb into the tub. Or when you crawled behind the stereo speakers and played peek-a-boo with me (where all I could do was hope that you wouldn’t notice the wires coming from the back).

And though nowadays you prefer to be down, and exploring, you don’t mind being held so I can give you kisses. In fact, you giggle and smile when I make that loud smacking kiss noise against your cheek. And then you lean in for more.

I LIVE to see you. My two favorite parts of the day? To see you first thing in the morning, and when I come pick you up from school.

Each time, you give me a big smile and begin chattering. It’s like you’re as happy to see me as I am you.

I love you SO much. And I wish I had the words to tell you just how happy you make me. How fortunate I feel to have you in my life and be your mom.

Wordless Wednesday: Sneakers. Memories.

(Thanks, E, for the idea!)

Reminiscence.

This morning was my first “training run” for my two 5Ks this summer. Wasn’t too hard at all – just a 1.5 miler. Which is one of those distances where, if you get tired, you can speed up to make it go by quicker.

As I was putting my sneakers into my gym bag and thinking about the nice shiny new pair I was going to get, perhaps even this weekend, it struck me.

My gym sneakers have a lot of miles on them.

They ran off weight before my wedding, when I was completely freaked out about having pictures of me taken in a white dress.

They carried me through many summer mornings on the bike path when I ran off the stress of wedding planning.

They helped me run off the stress of a new marriage.

They helped me run off the stress of many busy seasons at my job.

They helped me run away from the worry that something was wrong with me when we couldn’t conceive for 6 months.

They carried me through infertility.

Through the doctor’s visits. Through the tests. Through the surgeries. Through shots. Through the fear that we’d never be parents.

And they carried both Baby O and I when I was finally pregnant, and walking through my morning “workouts.”

They’ve helped me push his stroller to the park on the weekends.

These running sneakers have been my constant over the past five years.* And though I’m not typically the type of person to hang onto things because of the past, I admit that the idea of tossing them into the garbage pains me.

But then I think about a shiny new pair of shoes. Who will carry me through two 5Ks this summer.

What will the NEXT five years be like?

_______________

*Ok, yeah, so maybe I should have purchased a new pair of shoes a while ago. But I mostly just wear them at the gym now, and they’re still comfortable.

Puttin’ money where my mouth is.

Back in August of last year I looked into doing a sprint triathlon.

Briefly.

Thing is, I’m not a good swimmer.

But you know, I thought I could make it work. I went to the pool one day and swam for a full 10 minutes before I thought I was going to drown.

And I never made it back to the pool. Seriously never did.

So I gave up on the idea.

But now? I’ve been losing weight. And being back at the gym two days a week just doesn’t FEEL like enough for me. I keep MEANING to do more, but then I’m tired at night. And on weekends we run errands and do other things.

Fact of the matter is, I need SOMETHING to MAKE me work hard again. Because it’s too easy to not make it a priority right now.

So.

Today, I signed myself up for a 5K on October 3.

I sort of HAD to, you see. Because it’s to raise money for suicide awareness and prevention.

And it struck me as I was looking at the online registration form.

The 15th anniversary of my cousin Amy’s suicide is next month.

So. Despite the fact that I can barely eek out a 12-minute mile right now…

… I have signed up to run three of them in October.

Even better. To prepare? I have requested registration forms for ANOTHER 5K in August.

So. Um.

Time to get a new set of running shoes. And get outside. And run.

And maybe, just MAYBE – next year I can do that triathlon.