More on Baby O. And early toddlerhood.

Because I swear, it was like a switch went off on his first birthday. POOF! Where my baby was now stands a toddler. In all his glory.

Watching him play now is amazing. He’s starting to GET concepts like in and out. He’ll take blocks out of the basket they’re stored in, one by one. Lately he’s been stacking them, then knocking them down. Then pushing them out of the way in his patented move we call “ZAMBONI!” – where he takes his hand and swipes at the blocks until he has a path. Or they’re far away. Then goes and gets them, and puts them back INTO the basket. Then takes them out again. Rinse, repeat.

He rolls balls all over the house, and follows them. To roll them the other way. He smiles when we bounce them. Depending on how high, we might get full on actual GIGGLES.

And the little manipulator KNOWS when he shouldn’t be doing something. He’ll crawl towards the plant in our dining room, then stop and look at me. To see my reaction. And smile when I shake my head and say, “Baby O, uh uh.” And then he’ll crawl closer, and stop and smile. To see my reaction. And then reach out and bat at the plant anyway, even though he knows that I’ll come over there to redirect him.

His babbling has changed, too. It’s like he’s TALKING now, speaking his own language, and we just don’t understand it. It’s a mix of vowels and consonants, and it’s not repetitive. He’ll mimic what we say when we say something, too. His handful of words include Mama (“meh-meh”), Dada (“da-da”), More (“MAH!”), night-night (“nai-nai”), and Baby (“bee-bee”).

He is signing “All Done” and “More” now, though his “more” sign is a clap. He’ll use “All Done” discriminately, too – not just at mealtimes. Like when I’m changing his diaper or getting him dressed in the mornings, and he just wants down – he’ll fuss and sign “All Done.”

He is still eating well – (so far, anyway!) in fact, there are days where I’m amazed at the amount of food he can pack away. Seriously. His favorite foods include pasta, blueberries (literally CANNOT GET ENOUGH of them. He double fists), tofu dogs, strawberries. He will try anything once, but if he doesn’t like it you can bet that he’ll just stick his tongue out and deposit the offending food onto his chest.

And though he LOVES his bottle, we’ve started weaning him gradually off of it, since he’ll need to be on sippy cups in order to move out of the infant room to the toddler room. (Which is currently slated for July.) We started this week; it’s gone fairly slowly, but I’m heartened from today – he drank almost all with the exception of an ounce. And his daycare provider thinks that we can move him to all sippies at school next week.

He uses the daycare climber all the time, and from the reports we’ve gotten, not only has he gone up the stairs on it, he’s come down the stairs too. He’s getting “more daring with his body” than he has in the past.

And maybe, just MAYBE he’s starting to get better with the stranger anxiety too. Last weekend he warmed up to our friends’ kids within only a few minutes, and on Sunday he was actually FRIENDLY with Heather’s husband for most of the night – which is unheard of.

And with his second haircut, when we asked the stylist to cut it “as short as possible,” he looks so much like J, it’s crazy. His hair is lightening up so now it’s a dark blond.

Physically, he’s still little – at his one year appointment he was 18lbs, 13oz. But 30 inches. J calls him “the stringbean” – he’s long and skinny, so much so that when he stands in the bathtub, I’m sort of taken aback by how skinny he looks. He’s definitely got a build similar to J’s when he was little.

Emotionally, though we can redirect him when he’s doing something we don’t like, he will let us know when he’s unhappy. He’ll scream and kick and throw his body around when we pick him up to take him away from, for example, the stairs. For now, it’s short-lived, since he’s pretty easily distractible. But he knows what he wants and isn’t afraid to let us know when we’re messing it up for him.

It’s going by so quickly. But it’s so much FUN. Every morning when I go into his room, and I see him standing up, smiling at me, I am filled with love for him. I’ve never EVER felt this way before anyone before. And we’re having so much fun.

Whenever anyone asks me how I’m enjoying motherhood, I say “Baby O was the best thing that has ever happened to us.” It’s really true. He’s amazing, and I am SO lucky to be his mom.

Why I still hate baby showers.

This past weekend I went to a baby shower for a friend from college.

Believe it or not, I was actually looking forward to going. A was due in April with identical twins, but had them at 26 weeks when her water broke on New Year’s Day.

Her babies are still in the NICU. In different hospitals, since one of the girls needed surgery to correct a preemie condition in her eyes. She’s back at work. From all I heard, she didn’t WANT to have a shower because she wants to spend as much time as she can with them. The girls are doing okay, really well given how small they were when they were born.

I was looking forward to the shower because then I could do SOMETHING for her. Even if it was as little as getting her girls sleepsacks and crib sheets.

Because there is so much more I wish I could do for her. I wish I could tell her that I know what it’s like to be scared. And to feel like an outsider in a world full of blissfully ignorant people.

But I digress. So I gladly went. And I got there, a little early, and picked a seat and sat down. And people started trickling in.

The vast majority with big pregnant bellies.

That didn’t really bother me. Not really. Because after all, I have a baby at home. Who has been a balm to my soul, who’s allowed me HEALING from the pain of infertility.

And then someone at the table announced that yes, she was pregnant. 14 weeks.

That didn’t bother me either.

But then someone asked her, “are you going to find out what it is?”

Her answer? “Of course. I’m a planner.”

After that, things started going downhill. The squeals “OMG! I’m pregnant too! Do you think it’s a boy or a girl? When will you find out? How long were you trying?” made me want to vomit.

(I’m not kidding, either.)

And at some point during the shower, I leaned over to my best friend J and said “This is seriously like my worst nightmare.”

It wasn’t until yesterday that I realized why the shower bothered me so damn much.

It took me, personally, a lot of heartbreak and blaming myself and fear and worry to realize that having a baby was NOT UP TO ME. And the resentment I feel toward women who get pregnant on their timeline is directly correlated to how much they think that they’re in control.

Let’s look at the girl who’s 14 weeks pregnant. The planner. She and her husband got married last October. They just bought a house last month. And she’s pregnant. Of course I don’t know for sure – I don’t know what goes on behind closed doors – but the only conclusion I can make is that everything she wanted happened on her timeline.

Which promotes a VERY BIG UNTRUTH.

We are told as little girls that if we work hard, and try hard, we can ultimately succeed at anything. ANYTHING. We can make our lives look the way we want them to just by working hard.

And it couldn’t be further from the truth. I mean, shit – look at the SHOWER ITSELF. It was for a woman who has gone through HELL because she delivered her babies early.

So wait. Does that mean she FAILED? Because she couldn’t carry them to term? And of course I don’t know for sure, but I can guarantee you that, on some level, at some point in the past few months, poor A blamed herself. How could she not? Her body failed her, when it mattered most.

Just the way I blamed myself when we couldn’t conceive. I tried everything when we cycle – Exercising. Not exercising. Acupuncture. Abstaining from alcohol. Abstaining from sex. Meditation. Losing weight. And I was SO quick to blame myself when a cycle didn’t work.

Because, you know, if I had just worked HARDER, maybe we would be pregnant.

So in that room that day, I looked for my infertile cohorts. There WERE some, right? I mean, 1 out of 7 couples are infertile. There had to be someone who was in my boat.

There weren’t any. (To be fair, two of my friends that I know had problems weren’t there.) I felt very alone, and very much the exception to the rule. And it brought up all those feelings of failure again.

Because well, maybe I WAS a freak.

Granted, I will say that my best friend was quick to say, during the discussion of “planning” for a baby that they were fortunate in that it happened right away. And she was sweet enough to call me afterwards, too, in the hopes that she didn’t offend me by saying that they had thought about planning to get pregnant.

I wasn’t upset about that, and I told her so.

See, it’s not about the fact that I’m bitter that women can get pregnant on their timeline anymore.

(I’ll be honest, though. A few years ago? Yeah, okay. It was about that.)

But I’m infertile. It’s our reality that we can never just have sex and get pregnant. That’s OKAY. I’m okay with it, I’ve accepted that.

Here’s the thing. I don’t resent a woman because she can get pregnant on her timeline. Not anymore.

I resent a woman for TAKING CREDIT for it, though.

Because it’s NOT UP TO YOU. You got pregnant because you ovulated and a sperm fertilized it and made an embryo which was chromosomally normal. It had nothing to do with you and everything to do with biology and statistics and things that are much bigger and wider than our little lives.

And it wasn’t my fault that we couldn’t get pregnant for so long. And it wasn’t A’s fault for having her twins so early.

And as she sat there, away from her babies, opening up gift after gift after gift, all I could wish was that people could SEE that. That we should sit there and be thankful for miracles. That her 26 week old babies are, for the most part, THRIVING. Maybe even 20 years ago, they might not actually be alive today.

Bad shit happens to good people. Good shit happens to bad people.

But at the end of the day, it’s not up to us. Not any of it.

(Okay, so maybe it’s not baby showers I hate.)

Wordless Wednesday: A Milestone.

Thank you to my good blogger friend Heather for this video, thankfully she had a camera on hand!

Solution?

I’ve been remiss. Meaning to get to the computer to let you all know that I really, really REALLY appreciate all the advice and comments.

J and I have decided that we cannot go on living the way that we do. And it’s high time we fixed it.

I’ve been looking into hiring a housekeeping service. Right now I’ve gotten one quote which is a little higher than I’d like for it to be, but I’ve got a couple other options.

And we’ve designated one day a week as our “play” day. Granted, we couldn’t put said day into place this Sunday because of a family THING that popped up (my FIL with a bum shoulder wielding a chainsaw, if you wanted the details). But Baby O and I went and got a haircut (okay, HE got the haircut), and we went over my blogger buddy Heather’s house for dinner. It was a nice day, and very few chores got done.

So we’re working towards a solution. I think the biggest thing for us is to make sure we PLAN fun in. We can’t wait until the day of in order to do something fun. Because that’s when the “to do” list starts eating away at us.

I have more to post about things that Baby O did this weekend – milestones galore! – and a rant about baby showers (I still freaking HATE them. The one I went to this weekend? Was like my worst NIGHTMARE. I’m not lying when I tell you that 90% of the WOMEN IN THE ROOM, with the exception of a few, were pregnant. I wanted to puke, it was that bad.) but I’m stealing a few minutes before dinner, so I should get going.

Thank you ALL, so much, for the support. Hopefully I’ll have some time to fill you all in soon.

Escape. (aka: a rant.)

I’m not sure what it is. Maybe it’s the fact that “spring” in New England means grey, damp, 50 degree weather, where you end up wearing wool socks to bed until about June, when all of a sudden it’s 80.

Or maybe it’s because the winter has been filled with sick, and I’m just tired of trying to manage it.

Or maybe it’s the fact that I’ve officially spent more than 6 months as a working mother feeling like I’m always working to get through a freaking to do list. Because, see, I am married to a man who is never happy because there’s always SOMETHING MORE he thinks he should be doing.

But right now?

I want to run away.

I dream of taking Baby O to a place where it’s sunny. Where we don’t have to worry about chores, about work, about sick. Where it’s just he and I, where I don’t feel some sort of pressure to be up and DOING something. Where I don’t feel like I have to justify playtime for me. For Baby O.

I’m tired of living life as if everything we do is yet another TASK. I want to have some fun. To show Baby O the world. Park. Woods. The beach. Animals. I want to take him into Boston to the aquarium. The museum of science. To Maine.

There is so much I want to DO.

J keeps telling me he feels the same way. But that he’s overwhelmed with all the stuff that needs to get done and can’t figure the best way to prioritize.

So we’ve gone back and forth, back and forth for MONTHS now. How do we simplify? How best to prioritize what’s really important? When will we feel like we have TIME to get out and do something fun?

Thing is, we don’t. We NEVER have time to do something fun. So we have to focus on MAKING the time for fun, right? Except that when I try and schedule something fun in, it stresses my husband out. Because it’s less time for him to have time to get things done.

That was the discussion we had, again, last night. J acknowledges that he too WANTS to do these things. But feels constrained by the to dos. So instead he works through his list, hoping that at some point it’ll ebb enough that he’ll have time to, you know, PLAY with his son.

What I don’t understand is this. We are not the ONLY ONES who are working parents. Plenty of other people make it work, and have fun with their kids. How is it that we can’t possibly let go of all the freaking responsibility and just go have fun? Why can’t we just BE?

We have so much to be thankful for, so much we’ve been blessed with. A great son who is fast turning into a little BOY. And I don’t want our little boy learning that mom and dad don’t ever do anything fun because they’re always “busy” with chores.

I want so much more from our life than what it is right now. And, aside from going off and doing things just Baby O and I… I don’t know how we’re going to fix it. I suppose I just have to make the plans to go into Boston and get to the aquarium in order for him to get on board with doing something like that. And just deal with the fact that he’s going to be all stressed about the fact that he’s NOT doing the million other things he should be.

I don’t know what the answer is. All I know is that I want Baby O to experience the world. And the best way to do that that? Is to SHOW him.

*sigh*

I love my husband. I’m just really frustrated with him right now. Which sucks. Because he’s working SO hard to keep our life going smoothly. And he’s a good man. I hate feeling resentful of him like this because I KNOW he’s trying to do the right fucking thing.

It makes me feel small. And selfish. Like I should shut my trap and just deal with the fact that I’m lucky enough to have a husband that cares. He’s a good father. He’s a good husband.

And there’s a little voice inside me, saying that I’m an adult now, this is real life.

Maybe this is MY issue and not J’s at all.

*sigh*

Maybe I just need a vacation.

Or maybe I just need to shut the fuck up.

And quit expecting too much from people.

Wordless Wednesday: The Toddler Circuit.