Sibling baths, some outside time, and helping out around the house

Believe it or not, this is the first time they've been in the tub together. Will is an exuberant bather and I wanted to protect Laura as long as I could. I know this isn't the greatest picture but I think she looks way fatter than she is in this one, which I think is really funny for whatever reason. She's the least fat baby I've ever been around, in fact.

Will was so excited to be in there showing her the ropes. Laura was just kind of confused for the most part. But she soldiered on and I think she ended up liking having a bathing companion.

Can't you see I'm busy here, people? I've got some important calls to make.

My calls were great. They just reaffirmed Mommy and Daddy's assertion that I am very possibly the world's sweetest child. Forever and ever. Case closed.

(You can't see them here, but her two top teeth are finally, finally starting to poke through.)




This picture reminds me of middle school dance photos, with the boy's arms placed awkwardly around his date's waist. Not that I have any of those myself or anything . . .



This was unprompted, I swear. I just happened to capture the half a second that Will decided to be affectionate. He's usually kind of embarrassed to give kisses and requires a little bit of prodding and/or begging.

This may be my favorite picture I've taken of the two of them. It makes me think of how they may look someday far in the future when they're talking to each other about how crazy their parents have become and just how they're going to go about getting us into some assisted living facility. I'm so glad they have each other. There is just no replacement for the lifetime of shared sibling experiences and shorthand that develops between sisters and brothers. Plus there are always those humiliating childhood pictures to remember together. (Hello, bunny costumes. Right Jessie?)



Here is what Will and Daddy have been up to this morning. It's pretty elaborate and involves three different tiers. I think Jamison is more excited about getting Will more tracks for his birthday than Will is going to be when he actually gets them.



Hardwood floors! With a side of mess.

Will is "helping out" with the nails in his wall that need to be removed (by pounding them farther into the wall). He wanted to measure the distance between them. He proclaimed it to be about 29 inches. Close enough.

And now it's time to get to work on that last slipcover. (I'm a very, very accomplished procrastinator. I'm thinking of offering an online workshop or maybe an ebook on the topic.)

I Should Be Ironing Slipcovers and Bedskirts

An alternate title could also be, "I Should Be Calling the Post Office To See Why We're Currently Still Receiving a Stranger's Mail" or perhaps "I Should Be Cleaning Our (Surprise!) Wood Floors To Get Them Ready to Paint." Then there's the equally dynamic "I Should Be Cleaning Out the Fridge and/or Pantry." But what it really boils down to is some or other version of this: "The List of Uninteresting Household Tasks I Should Be Doing is Surprisingly Never-ending, Regardless of How Much Time Stay at Home Moms Appear to Have on Their Hands:  A Study in the Lengths I'll Go to in Order to Avoid Certain Mundane Chores While Still Appearing to Do Something Somewhat Productive."

While I should be spending some q.t. with my ironing board, I'll regale you with the various things happening around these parts. First, a simple Ikea bookcase for the top of our stairs set off a chain reaction of events that has resulted in our upstairs (our bedroom) being torn apart for the past two weeks. When Jamison removed the shoe molding to anchor one of the bookshelves to the wall, he also discovered that we did indeed have wood floors on the stairs, landing and in our room, despite our previous belief to the contrary. We had thought that we had some sort of weird wood-ish substance, mainly because our earlier attempts at ascertaining the presence or absence of wood floors revealed a putty-colored surface that kind of looked a little bit like wood.

Turns out it actually was wood that had been painted. So instead of simply removing the shoe molding and anchoring the bookshelf, Jamison spent the majority of Saturday-before-last ripping up carpet and padding, staples and tack strips. I had been looking forward to having some more storage upstairs and being able to move the stacks of books in our office right now to their home and maybe getting everything clean enough to maybe do some sewing up there but now it looks worse than ever. Oh well. I'm just glad we made the discovery. Now onto researching how to paint the floor. (I know, some people would just practically die to think of painting wood floors. I'm not one of those people.)

Wow. That was boring, wasn't it?

Now onto something a little strange. We're receiving a complete stranger's mail. It started a few weeks ago when we got the change of address confirmation in the mail. The confirmation listed a number to call if the information was incorrect, which I did. I was told to go to my local post office and tell them the problem. To say that I have approximately zero confidence in my local post office is a bit of an understatement. After explaining that no such individual by the name on the confirmation resides in my house, I was met by completely blank stares. So after wording our predicament a few more ways, the lady finally understood what I was getting at and said something vaguely like, "Huh. We should probably do something about this." But it seems as though nothing has been done, as we've been the recipients of mail for "Jack" ever since. Jamison, however, is not complaining because this mail has involved a Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Edition. Bonus.

As if it isn't weird enough to be getting someone else's mail (and that he's also changed his address to ours with Sports Illustrated and other various places, since they now lack the telltale yellow label when the sender doesn't know the recipient's new address), there's another level of strange at work here. His name is Jack, but I noticed one piece of mail was addressed to John. And then I noticed another piece of mail addressed to "John W. whatever his last name is." Do you see where this is going? The next piece of mail revealed that his name is actually "John William." What are the odds? (Actually, back when we made an offer on the first house we ended up walking away from, one of the previous owners' names was John Will, which is what Mom calls Will. Coincidences abound. If we were living in an Alanis Morissette song, we would be dripping in irony-that-isn't-really-irony.)

What is not a coincidence is the effect the recent time change has had on us and our morning routine. This one has been particularly rough, especially on Laura, who takes forever to go to sleep and then is grumpy when I have to wake her up in the morning and/or for her naps when we have to go get Will at school. I feel her pain, though, since I seem to be wide awake at midnight here lately and that never happens. (That could also be due to the state of chaos our bedroom is in right now, though, since I find it hard to relax in the middle of such a huge mess.)

Yesterday morning was a prime example of the havoc the time change has wreaked on us, as Laura (our reliable 6 a.m. wakeup call since pretty much birth) slept until nearly 7. Which wouldn't be so bad if she were a faster eater, but it takes her about forty-fiveish minutes to finish up with her nursing session and then I have to get Will's oatmeal started before he gets up (the kind you make on the stove, not in the microwave, of course) and then get everyone dressed and out the door in a mad rush, so it's vital to everyone's health and sanity that I get up at six every morning that Will has school and get Laura fed and settled into her high chair with some Cheerios. So. That didn't happen. I was trying to juggle feeding Laura, fixing oatmeal, waking Will up at close to 8 (we leave at 8:30), hurrying him along with the oatmeal eating, etc. etc.

And then, just as we get ready to leave, I realize that Will has locked the bathroom door (no one is in the bathroom but I really need to brush my teeth before leaving) and that Laura has a dirty diaper. So I go out in the rain and flag Jamison down (he'd just left for work) and he took Will to school as I spent a good bit of Will's time at school (a) searching for the key to the bathroom door and (b) trying to get it open. I was not successful on the latter. (I'm writing this while listening to NPR coverage of the devastation in Japan and realize how completely silly and insignificant this all sounds. Forgive me. It's my way of childishly avoiding dealing with the reality that things are unfair and crazy and there's really no rhyme or reason in anything to do with life here on Earth, unfortunately.)

So. That's what's happening around here. (This was shockingly long-winded and meandering, especially since it's only 4 pm and I should thus still have my wits about myself.) Hopefully my next update will include commentary (and pictures!) of the ins and outs of painting wood floors...

Today's public embarrassment

On the bulletin board outside Will's classroom was another list compiled by Will's class answering the question "What does Mommy do while I'm at school?"

Will answered, "She goes home and does nothing."

Nice.

Late Night Knitting

Pardon the pictures, but these are about the best I can do with a somewhat uncooperative model. This is the hat that I stayed up late finishing Wednesday night. The hat itself wasn't difficult but I don't like knitting in the middle of a messy house so my general order of things tends to be cleaning before knitting. Will picked out the colors himself and of course decided after I got that yarn that he actually wanted red instead of orange. As you can see, this wish was not granted.



Now he wants me to make an even, even, even bigger one (his words) for Daddy. And perhaps a smaller one (my words) for Laura.

It's Late and I'm Pretty Sure I've Lost My Mind: Ruminations from What Appear to Be the Darkest Recesses of My Brain

Everyone knows the old adage about a picture being worth a thousand words but I wonder if the reverse is also true? Is a thousand words (give or take) also worth a picture? If so, I owe you some pictures. Stat.

I haven't really been taking all that many pictures here lately, since most of them look like this:

But when you happen to be the very cutest baby ever born, you can get away with it. Seriously, we've become those parents. You know, the ones who sit around saying, "I really can't believe how cute she is. How did we have such a cute baby?" I know, cute baby, blah blah blah, every parent is thinking the same thing right now: Sure she's cute but not as cute as mine. 

I mean, really. Look at that face. Two-dimensional pictures just don't do it justice. Nor do they squeal and blow raspberries the same way she does. (Or at all, I guess.)



It's crazy that she's already 11 months old, isn't it? It's also crazy that most of her clothing is for a baby half her age. She obviously dipped pretty heavily into my side of the gene pool size wise. She was advanced even as a fetus. (Boring alert: there is nothing more boring to me than hearing/seeing/reading someone brag about something kind of mundane that their kids did or said, so I just bored myself. [Some bragging is justified of course, like getting into MIT or inventing Spanx or forming a wildly successful boy band, among various other noble and/or courageous acts and deeds.])



This picture doesn't really look like her, maybe in part because you can finally see her two little teeth that have taken their sweet-ass time coming. (See also: top teeth in beginning stages of poking through as well, restless nights and shortened naps.)

Don't let Will's innocent expression fool you. He and Mr. Bear were probably planning a bank heist or something. Mr. Bear was apparently going to either hit the slopes or spend some quality time in his wood shop making cabinets after the heist.



Laura's hair here (she had baby food on her hands and pulled her dirty hands through her hair, resulting in this 'do) reminds me of the scene in Tommy Boy (which, kind of sadly, I can quote from at length) where Chris Farley is losing it in a potential client's office and pulls his hair which also results in his hair sticking up like a madman.



Sometimes it's surprising to me how much they really like each other.

Laura is often surprised at the force of Will's love, too. Rightly so.

Another day, another bruise from another head wound (Will, not Laura).

There is a reason that this picture shows the sink bathed in an ethereal, heavenly light. It is a miraculous event. I almost didn't want to take a picture so I didn't startle him into realizing what he was doing, kind of like when we stay out of Will's way when he's happily occupied with something that isn't sharp, toxic, or too obnoxiously loud.

This is the same man who places items that are supposed to go in the trash can on the counter directly on top of the trash can, mind you, so this was quite the event. (Obviously I'm kidding, but not about the trash on the counter bit. He really does help out around the house, so long as it's not something he classifies as "woman's work." Again, I'm kidding. He's only slightly misogynistic at times, depending on the current phase of the moon and other variables too minute to be named.)

I just reread the previous paragraph and realized that I've apparently become partially insane. (Charlie Sheen just called and he wants his crazy back.) I blame it on the fact that it's 10:08 and I'm still awake. Yes, I'm that boring.

Further proof that I'm that boring, besides getting overly excited about Jamison washing dishes (and even documenting it for posterity with pictures and also with my little diatribe above): recently telling Will that I was totally jealous of the neighbors' new recycling bins (and him asking repeatedly why); also, staying up until almost 11 last night to finish knitting Will's new hat.

I'll try to come up with something a little more coherent here soon. Maybe even something that refrains from mentioning Tommy Boy, Spanx, boy bands and Charlie Sheen. With all of those things, this only had one direction it could have gone...

Edited to add: My copy editor/husband would like for me to make clear that he never uses the phrase "woman's work" except in jest. He also said to include something that alludes to him being the best husband ever. And that he makes sure to at least rinse all of his dirty dishes to make my life a little easier and sometimes he loads or unloads the dishwasher. The refuse on the counter, though, is 100% fact. It doesn't rinse itself into the trash receptacle.

Birthdays, Birth Days

I wrote this forever ago but never got around to actually doing anything with it. I hope it makes some small amount of sense.

*****

Since it's nearing their birthdays, I've been thinking a lot here lately about the kids' births and how they were so incredibly different and what that means now. And while I'm not one of those people who want to do the whole re-creation of birth since they feel as though they were robbed of it, I completely understand being disappointed in how the birth of your child went. (Obviously, I'm not disappointed in the general outcome of either of my kids' births, as they're both healthy kids, for which I am unspeakably grateful.)

Will's birthday was not ideal, to say the least. Since he was a month early, the last thing I was expecting was to have a baby that afternoon. (Truth be told, what I was really planning as I was waiting on my doctor was what I was getting from the Taco Bell drive thru as soon as I left the doctor's office.) I had been sent home from the hospital the day before (and promptly parked myself at a table at the nearby Olive Garden as soon as they were finished monitoring me) as one of those women who I said I'd never be: the false alarm woman.

But suddenly the alarm was no longer false and, before I could really catch my breath, he was there. I felt like I had just watched a movie about someone else having a baby instead of actually having a baby myself. I didn't get to hold him until nearly five hours after he was born, which seems completely crazy to me now. Of course, the delay didn't diminish my overwhelming love and the almost crazily primal urge to protect him. But we had trouble with breastfeeding, with supplemental feeding systems and pumping being mentioned less than 24 hours after his birth.

I had only just had him and I felt like I was already a failure (way to go nurses and lactation consultant-mission accomplished!). It wasn't the greatest start, not by a long shot. What I would do now to have those hours to do over. I feel like I could've done so much better for him. For us. I was just so completely clueless and didn't even know that I should have stood up for myself a little bit better (or stood up for myself at all, more accurately). I only breastfed him for six months with the last few weeks of those six months being a battle involving a bit of force on my part, which I blame partly on his first few days of life and what went on then and partly on myself and my inexperience and lack of knowledge. And, if I'm really honest, it's also due to the fact that breastfeeding is really effing hard. There's really no two ways about it. It just is.

This time around, though, I certainly felt more present for Laura's birth, mainly because the first 12 hours of it were punctuated with regular, rather acutely painful reminders of her imminent arrival. My doctor was so laid-back about her birth throughout my whole pregnancy that I just sort of trusted that things would go well. And they did. (When we were talking at an appointment fairly early on in my pregnancy about a VBAC and my chances and so forth, I told him that I really wanted to avoid another c-section but that I also wanted to be realistic since I knew things didn't always work out the way you plan them. His response to me, and I'll never forget this, were these exact words: "But sometimes they do." And I know it sounds silly, but at that moment I knew that (a) I had chosen the right doctor and (b) things would work out in the end. I was right about both of those things.)

In any case, I held Laura immediately. I got to look at her with all her new-baby stickiness  and talk to her and have the kind of experience that any new mother deserves. A few minutes later, she latched on like it was something she had done for years. From our first few minutes together, I had complete confidence in her and in myself and that hasn't waned in the ten months she's been here. (Also, she'll be eleven months old Monday [what the?] and we're still going strong on the breastfeeding front. Such a difference this time around...)

While no parent, regardless of how with-it they appear, never really has it all together all the time, the second time is so much easier. Laura hasn't always been exactly an easy-going baby but I've never felt the sheer panic we felt with Will, like we were making life-altering decisions on at least an hourly basis, decisions that could change the course of his entire trajectory through life because we didn't feed him the oatmeal with the DHA added to it. Please. We shined (shone?) our only-child spotlight just a little too brightly for just a little too long on him, I fear. Oh well. You know what they say about hindsight.

*****

I cleaned out our closet the other day. The maternity clothes stayed, as did the bouncy seat and co-sleeper. I just couldn't get rid of them. I'm not ready yet. I'm not saying we're having another baby. But I'm not saying we're not, either.

*****

Sometimes things go the way you plan. But sometimes they don't.

Sadly, he's right

Yesterday as I was reading the bulletin board outside Will's classroom after dropping him off, I noticed that his teacher had posted a list that compiled student responses to what I'm guessing was some sort of book or discussion on love and families. It was headed "My family loves when I . . ." and featured what each child had said to finish the statement. There were many sweet answers, like "put my toys away" or "share" or "give them hugs."

Will's answer? "Am quiet."

Do we sound like cruel parents or what?