Not Eggs-actly Parents of the Year.

We first introduced eggs to O just after his first birthday, when we got the all-clear to give him everything except peanut butter from his pediatrician.

We made him scrambled eggs one morning.

He ate them no issue. But as he was eating, he got a rash around his mouth. Which we stupidly ignored. An hour later, after a 6oz bottle of milk, he puked everywhere.

So we thought that maybe we should avoid straight up eggs for a little while. Because egg allergy is common in babies under two.

A few weeks later, we let him try some meatloaf which had been made with egg whites.

And he got the rash again. Wisely, we ended the meal and did NOT give him milk that night. And thankfully, he did not throw up.

The few times he’s had bites of egg, he’s continued to get the rash.

So we’ve avoided.

So at O’s 15 month well-baby appointment, when he was due to get his MMR vaccine, I mentioned to the pediatrician about his allergy, and we decided to get him tested at an allergist before we went ahead and gave him the vaccine.

Because did you know that the MMR AND flu shot has egg proteins in it? (I didn’t either.)

Anyway. So we went to the allergist. And the skin test for both egg yolks AND egg whites came back positive. And so did the bloodwork. Came back with a high allergy to eggs.

Apparently, high enough that the allergist gave us an EPI PEN for a reaction.

Just in case.

Anyway. For the past month or so, Baby O has been having trouble in the early part of the night. He’ll cry in his sleep. And wake up in the early part of the night, asking for milk.

A couple of nights ago, he cried out in his sleep – enough that I was worried and checked in on him. He was sitting up, swallowing and swallowing, and swallowing. He didn’t want his bink in his mouth.

I KNEW that he was going to throw up.

So I picked him up and faced him at me. In the hopes that if he threw up it would be on me instead of the carpet or his bed.

Luckily he didn’t get sick. He went back to sleep almost right away.

And two hours later he wanted milk.

It got me thinking – what could he have eaten that bothered him?

He had eatetn his usual meal that night. Some buttered pasta. Cheese. Blueberries.

It wasn’t until the next night when J asked me: “Does the pasta have egg in it?” that I even THOUGHT to check.

We have been giving him Barilla Plus pasta. Because it has protein in it and is made from more whole grain than regular pasta.

Want to know what the source of protein is?

Egg white.

So.

For the past 6 months, at LEAST, we’ve been feeding our son once, sometimes TWICE a day, something which has an ingredient in which he has an allergy.

Where the allergist gave us an EPI PEN to treat a reaction.

We didn’t realize that his crying at night, and possibly the waking for milk was because his TUMMY WAS BOTHERING him.

And the times he’s puked for what I thought was no reason? (“Oh, maybe it’s just hot. Maybe he’s getting sick. Weird, he seems FINE now!”)

It’s because we’ve given him something his body can’t handle.

I mean, obviously, we didn’t do it on PURPOSE or anything. And now we know. And we’ve gone through all his food, checked the ingredients, and luckily the only issue has been the pasta.

But I wish I could describe the level of guilt I have now that I know that it was something WE did which HURT him.

So yeah.

We are TOTALLY a shoo-in for Parents of the Year.

Two years ago.

… I got our postive beta from our last ditch IVF cycle.

That positive beta turned into our wonderful, adorable, unbelievable, amazing son.

There are days where I sometimes still can’t wrap my head around the fact that he’s ours. Because I was so convinced that we would never be parents.

And I really wish I had the words to adequately capture the depth and breadth of love I have for him.

How lucky I feel every time he smiles at me.

Or holds his arms up to be picked up.

Or says “mama.”

Or snuggles with me at night, his head against my chest.

He is more than I could have ever hoped.

(Re) Defining a Good Weekend.

3pm, Sunday afternoon.

House is CHAOS.

Groceries on the kitchen table.

Dishes in the sink.

Toys strewn over the floor.

Laundry piled in the bathroom.

J is outside, FINALLY attacking the shin-length grass with the mower.

O is asleep.

I am sorting through pictures to upload on our website.

Of the Children’s Museum we visited yesterday. Where O ran around and touched everything. And pushed buttons. And turned wheels. And opened boxes. And tasted (gross!) dinosaur bones. And ate lunch on a bench, watching a churning river. And played with Baby B.

Where J and O BOTH took naps when we got home, and Serenity got online and caught up on blogs, and played mindless face.book games, and RELAXED. Where she was so RELAXED that she went to bed at 8:30 last night.

And of the beach we visited this morning. Where O ran headlong into the waves this time. Where, even though he had a cold and we had no change of clothing for him (towels and diapers thank goodness!) J waded into the water with him. Where he giggled and giggled at the waves when the tide was coming in. Where he carried with him a piece of driftwood and used it to dig in the sand.

Where we came home and played in the pool after lunch, even though O was tired and fussy and starting to get a little feverish.

So.

Yeah. It’s going to be some work to clean up and then prepare for the week ahead. So it did take me a full two hours to get through the kitchen and prepare lunches and run laundry and fold laundry and clean the toys and clothes. And I’ve JUST now showered.

But.

It’s been a fantastic weekend.

His Beary Best Friend.*with pictures!

A week ago, at 5:45pm, I got a call from O’s daycare. The toddler room teacher was leaving, you see, and he wanted to “better explain what you’ll see on O’s sheet for today.”

O had a rough morning that day.

Why?

The toddlers were going outside to do waterplay, and he wanted to bring his bear blanket outside too.

His teachers initially said no, because they knew that Bear would get wet and dirty. And then O wouldn’t have him later in the day.

But he threw such a fit that they finally decided that okay, they’d try it and see what happens.

And it went exactly to what they expected. Bear got wet, very wet. And dirty.

And his teacher said: “O was pretty unhappy when we had to hang Bear out to dry.”

So we decided, on the phone, that we’d bring an EXTRA bear blanket for inside. So that he would have one that was okay to get dirty, and one that was for indoor use only.

He now has TWO which he keeps there. TWO!

I KNOW that Baby O loves his bear blanket. I mean, I have pictures of him at 2 months, soothing himself to sleep with Bear.

But in the past couple of weeks, Bear has become Very Important to him.

HE CANNOT LIVE WITHOUT BEAR.

He walks around the house, hugging Bear. He’ll eat his dinner as long as Bear is nearby. And towards the end of the meal, he reaches out and says “beAH!” until we give it back to him.

At night, he sleeps with Bear curled around his forearm.

And this very morning, on the way to daycare, he hugged and babbled and rubbed Bear’s head.

As if Bear were his best friend in the world.

I will admit that initially I felt a pang of guilt that O was attaching to his Bear. You know. Because it’s my FAULT. Because we’re not around as much as he needs.

I know, again with the guilt. I tell you, it’s HARD not to fall into feeling that way.

BUT. I’ve been reading lately that a toddler using a transitional object to self-comfort is a good thing. Not only because he can help comfort himself when I’m not there. But because he’s starting to realize that he’s an individual, independent. Separate from J and I.

And Bear helps him with the Big, Bad World out there.

I really do love that he is starting to show a capacity for loving someone, all on his own.

I love that he’s got a friend to have with him when he feels unsure, or uncomfortable.

And I love that I thought enough in advance that we have THREE Bears in use. One in his crib. Two at daycare.

(And one in a ziploc bag in storage, just in case.)

My mother tells me that I was as attached to my Grover doll as O is to his Bear. And my MIL says that J had a hippo (named Hermione) which he used to carry with him everywhere.

So Bear’s in good company.

*Update: First – I want to let you all know I wasn’t REALLY feeling guilty. Really. I had a moment of guilt which pretty rapidly disappeared once I googled “toddler transitional objects.”

And because I want you to fully appreciate his bear love, I’ve attached a couple of pictures of him with Bear.

The first is when we introduced Bear to him, back in June 2008 (he was just under three months old at this point).

This one is of him showing Bear how to use the computer:

And finally, THIS video which I took about a month or so ago. Where he is loving on Bear without knowing that I was filming him. (He’s KISSING Bear – the open mouth “biting” that he does is exactly what he does to me when I ask for a kiss.

And really, the cuteness at the end – where he tries to get me to smile – is too much for me.

Shedding the invisibility cloak.

Apparently it’s pretty easy to put on an invisibility cloak.

Just have a kid – and a cute one at that.

I sound like I’m complaining. I’m not – not really anyway. For the most part, I’ve never been the sort of person who WANTS to be the center of attention.

Nor do I have the capability of conversing easily with people I don’t know. (In fact, I SUCK at small talk.)

So O is a great attention deflector. Hey – look here! A cute kid! Don’t bother looking at ME to see that I haven’t really slept in weeks nor made the time to weedwhack shave my legs/tweeze my eyebrows.

Just look at the kid- WAY more worth your while, trust me.

The only problem with this strategy?

Is when you get used to deflecting attention away from yourself in your, well, MARRIAGE.

For the past few weeks, I’ve been noticing more that I seem to be invisible to my husband. Until I brought up the topic this weekend, I couldn’t remember the last time he LOOKED at me.

Or kissed me (without some agenda, anyway).

Or told me I looked good.

Or even LISTENED to me when I talked.

And this weekend’s haircut was more because I wanted to scream at him “HEY! LOOK AT ME!!!” moreso than because I really wanted my short hair back.*

To be fair, it’s not all J’s fault.

I am SO tired most of the time. And generally I don’t have much energy to devote on our marriage. To making him happy.

In fact, lately it’s all I can do to get through each day without crashing.

And so. If I have ANY free time, I try and steal it for myself. To decompress and unwind.

So that I don’t have to be ON.

Course, that means that our marriage, OUR relationship, has suffered quite a bit in the meantime.

Because even when we go out on “date nights,” we end up talking about business, or current events, or O. We skim the surface of our lives, never really focusing on CONNECTING.

And this weekend it finally blew up. And J and I had a long serious talk about the status of our relationship.

And as we were talking, I realized just how unhappy I am.

Which was a revelation to me. Because I thought, for so long, that having a family would make me happy.

And I love O more than I ever imagined I would be able to love anyone.

But that love? Doesn’t equal happiness. At least, not for me.

So now we’re in the position of having to WORK at our marriage again, to make things healthy. And work at parenting. And work at, well, work.

And I confess that yesterday, as I thought about all the WORK I needed to do, I was utterly DEPRESSED.

Because I’m not sure I CAN do it all. Be a good mom, be a good wife, work my busy job, juggle errands and chores and summer barbecues and birthday parties and 5ks and visit with all the family and friends we’ve been neglecting… and still leave time for me in the end.

Seems IMPOSSIBLE when you think of it that way. It’s too much.

About the only solution I could think of, this morning during my run, was to let go of the expectations I think other people have of me. And just do what works for ME.

Because this sort of work? Is the most important kind of work there is.

For my marriage. My FAMILY.

*Well, I still DO want my short hair. But I also don’t want a “mom cut.” And there was a point where my short hair made me look EXACTLY like MY MOTHER. And so when my hairdresser suggested the bob instead, I agreed. Out of fear that I’d leave there looking like my mom.

When is a haircut more than a haircut?

I didn’t chicken out.

Not exactly, anyway.

I DID manage to convince my hairdresser to cut a good portion of my hair off this weekend.

Not as much as *I* wanted, though.

Seriously.

WHY IS IT that the people with scissors don’t believe a woman when she says “I want to cut my hair. I want it SHORT?”

I mean. I’ve had short hair before. As in boy short in the back. I had it long enough to tuck behind my ears, but everything else was short.

And I LOVED my short hair. I colored it funky colors, because I was in my 20s and single. I loved that it was quick to do. I loved that I just had to muss it and go in the morning.

So when I went in on Saturday, I wanted her to CUT IT OFF. All of it.

But she convinced me that I should try this first. And if, you know, I wanted to go shorter, I CAN.

Still.

I came out of there disappointed.

Because I need a CHANGE right now. I’m tired, and I’m in a rut, and I’m feeling somewhat shackled with responsibility. And invisible, and mediocre, and boring.*

And I could REALLY use feeling a little funky and irresponsible right now.

What better way to have some fun than to cut my hair, just cut it all OFF?

I mean, IT’S JUST HAIR. It will grow back.

But instead. I let her talk me into trying a chin-length bob.

Which, you know, is FINE. And practical. And better than what it was, I guess.

But not even CLOSE to what I was hoping for.

________________________

*More to come on this, I promise.

Why I love my husband.

[a couple of days ago]

Me: “I’m sick of my hair. It’s too long. I made an appointment to get it cut on Saturday morning… hope you don’t mind if I cut it all off.”

Him: “What, like Sinead it? Shave it all? I like short. But I’m not sure I want yours to be shorter than mine.”

Me: “No. I’m just going to have her cut it so it’s off the back of my neck.”

Him: “Mmmm. I like it. Go for it.”

[This morning, when he left to take O to the grocery store...]

Him: “Don’t chicken out!”

On transitions and guilt.

When I first had Baby O, I figured out this one thing pretty quickly.

When you have a kid, there is SO much for which you can feel guilty.

Like not being able to BF for the full year.

Or not having the time (or wanting to spend the $$) to puree the freshest, organic foods for my baby.

Or not taking him to see Santa this past Christmas.

Or not taking enough pictures of him, or putting them up on our website timely.

Or not having planned a big birthday party for him.

Et cetera.

But.

Being a working mom?

Could be the biggest single cause of mom guilt.*

Because truthfully, during the week, we see O for a couple of hours a day. An hour in the morning. An hour in the evening before he goes to bed. Some nights we don’t get a chance to do much but eat dinner and take a bath before he needs to be in bed.

I’ve gotten through the past year of work reminding myself that O is thriving at his daycare center. That socialization is a good thing. That forming an attachment to other people is healthy for O.

I’ve made friends with a couple other moms, and O has made friends with their kids.

And truthfully, I feel that I am a MUCH happier person being a working mom. I crave intellectual stimulation. I need the rigor of a regular workday to stay motivated and on top of things.

So I tell myself that the QUALITY of the time we spend with O counts JUST AS MUCH as spending MORE time with him.

And it helps the guilt. A lot, actually.

But.

BUT.

This past week? The guilt of being a working mom has been really hard to shake.

Despite the sleep issues last week, I had a great time on vacation with O. He’s at an age that is just SO MUCH FUN. He understands SO much of what I say, and he’s picking up words and new skills hourly, it seems.

And this week, his first real week in the toddler room, he’s having a bit of a rough transition. To the schedule. To being away from mom and dad. To all the activity, the noise, the kids.

So over the course of this week, then, morning dropoff has gotten worse and worse.

To the extent that he’s tried to climb right back into my arms as soon as I put him down. And for the past two days, I leave him in one of his new teacher’s laps, sobbing and fighting to get to me.

And then I leave daycare feeling like absolute SHIT. Even though I KNOW that he gets over his sadness fairly quickly, and the reports we get each day are pretty positive.

But I KNOW he’s not comfortable there yet. Because he needs his bear blanket – he’s taken to taking it EVERYWHERE with him at school. We have one for outside and one for inside there.

He doesn’t do that at home, not nearly as much.

And it’s mornings like this morning where I spend my drive to work talking myself out of feeling like a crap mother.

Because I WANT to spend more time with him. Because he WANTS to spend time with me. Because I’m forcing him to do something that makes him unhappy. Because he’s UNHAPPY.

And I hate the idea that I’m making decisions that are the cause of his unhappiness.

I know, I KNOW, that daycare is good for him. The socialization and stimulation that he gets at school is excellent for him. And learning that things change and he’ll have to adapt is a lesson he’ll need to learn, too.

And having a HAPPY mom benefits him, too.

But this part is just HARD. On the BOTH of us.

And there are times where I just can’t escape the guilt, as much as I want to.

_______________________

*If I allow it.

Wordless Wednesday: I wonder what the cousins are plotting?

Click here for more wordless wednesday images.

Vacation SHOULD be a four letter word.

Thank FREAKING GAWD we’re home.

Seriously.

Actually, it wasn’t nearly as bad as I had anticipated.

First topic: SIL. I always feel bad bitching about my SIL when I spend more than an afternoon with her because she’s actually pretty NICE. I enjoyed the mom talk with her. I never felt excluded. We shared tips and kid food and both of us watched our kids play and I never once felt like we were playing the mommy competition. It was really nice, actually.

Bane of my existence for the week?

Sleep.

I know that change in routine is tough for toddlers. And O is NOT a sleeper, not even close, since we’re still working with him on the overnights. So that first night, when we got there, we made sure we stayed the course with O. We did our normal routine – milk, then a book, then his bink and blanket. And we put him to sleep in the separate downstairs room. He slept pretty well – was up early when my FIL and J went fishing, but didn’t do too poorly, even with the new place.

When my SIL and nephew got there on Sunday, though? That’s when all hell broke loose.

We put the boys down to sleep together. I knew when my SIL suggested it that it probably wouldn’t be that good of an idea. But I figured we should at least try. Because there really wasn’t another bedroom that either one of the boys could sleep in. Because the alternative was that they’d have to sleep in our rooms instead.

They went down VERY easily, which surprised all of us. And I expected that at 4, when the guys got up to fish, O would wake D up because he wouldn’t be able to go back to sleep.

I didn’t anticipate him waking everyone up at 11:30. And then when I went downstairs to try and get him to sleep again, D woke up and absolutely lost it. Because I wasn’t his mommy and it was the middle of the night. Poor kid.

Abort. While K soothed D back to sleep, J brought the pack and play upstairs to our room.

And thus began THE.LONGEST.NIGHT of my life.

Because we had changed things up in the middle of the night. Because O was now in OUR room, with both of us. Because everyone else in the house went back to sleep. He was up for FOUR FULL HOURS. He’d cry when we put him in the pack and play. If we ignored him he’d drop both his bink and his bear onto the floor and then YELL. We did try the cosleeping thing, but the bed was too irresistable for him to resist playing with – was a giant playground. The hours ticked by, and O was no closer to sleep. Finally, at 2:30am, in desperation, I threw on my jeans and took O for a long car ride, telling J that he should at least get SOME sleep before he was supposed to go out fishing.

We drove until 4am, when my eyes couldn’t stay open. (O of course conked out within the first 15 minutes of driving.) I ended up sitting in the parked car, shivering from exhaustion, until the guys left the house at 4:30 to hit the boat. No sense in bringing him into the house if he was just going to be woken up by people.

We slept until 7:30, the two of us. And then he was awake, ready to start his day.

The rest of the week? Wasn’t as BAD, per se. But wasn’t very good. He’d wake up in the middle of the night and want to play with us. We tried to ignore him, which worked. Sort of. Usually he went back to sleep within the hour without us having to do anything.

But one night we finally went out to sleep on the couch when he was up, because he started the whole “I dropped my blanket” rigamarole.

And the whole week I was tense and listening. We tried not to turn over at night, so that we might wake him up. We bought a little CD player and played music ALL THE TIME. And even on the last night, when my SIL and nephew had left and we took over their room, I woke up overnight three times, listening for O’s cry.

Nope. Not restful at all.

It wouldn’t have been so bad for J and I if we weren’t already sleep deprived from a hellish week of work for the BOTH of us the week BEFORE vacation. The night before we left J worked until 2am. And the night before that we were both working until midnight. We were both pretty spent BEFORE we got there.

The sleep thing just pretty much sucked, that’s all.

But otherwise, really, I can’t complain. Weather was fantastic there – only two days of rain. We went to the beach, where O walked all over the place, and darted in and out of the waves and giggled, and dug in (and ate) the sand. We went for ice cream, where he had his first whole kiddie size ice cream (strawberry). We went to the store, and cooked dinner, and ran around outside, and played in the lake, and listened incredulously to our son, who is picking up words like nobody’s business. (Seriously. He nearly DOUBLED the word he knows in the week we spent with him.) We watched the two cousins play, and get into trouble. And yell and smile at each other over the dinner table. And we watched a little sadly when O, on Saturday morning, looked eagerly for his cousin first thing in the morning.

But yeah. Thank goodness we’re home.

I didn’t realize just how wound up *I* was all week until yesterday evening. When Baby O went to bed, I nearly crashed with the exhaustion.

So yeah.

Vacation?

Not nearly the sort of relaxing, do-nothing, catch up on rest sort of time it USED to be.

Still though. It was awesome to spend a full week with O. Even if it wasn’t all that restful.