Happy Half Birthday to QT!

Have six months really gone by since the birth of Little Boy Bean? Here a couple pics of the big guy. I would like to say that he really does wake up this happy every morning. It's the hours preceeding it that are suspect.

QT

All Smiles

Here are a few more recent pics. Yesterday was the Christmas Concert at the Lady's school. It was everything you would expect from a group of 3's and 4's. A lot of off key, super cute caroling.

Getting ready to perform



The Ladies hugging post performance



The Three Beans

 

Where am I? What day is it? Did I miss Christmas?

I have been in a fugue state for the last couple of weeks just trying to stay caffeinated enough to get out the door before collapsing in my bed (with QT) at the end of another long day.

Did I mention my husband has been out of town since December 2nd and that all the stress and unpredictability that comes along with it manifested itself into a hideous canker sore inside my lower lip that hung out for like a week and made it painful to talk and smile. I somehow found the strength to still eat a ton of unhealthy stuff including bacon wrapped dates and an Italian combo, but I digress.

I think I handled it okay this year. Work actually helped. It gave me a bit of distance from the kids so that when I got home I was able to actually give them the attention they deserved, while still trying to clothe, bathe (not consistently) and feed them (they love pasta--having it every night is not a form of child abuse).

I mean it wasn't great on those nights that QT refused to string together more than an hour and a half of sleep and I would wake up right before the alarm was set to go off, hoping that it was hours earlier and I could go back to bed, before realizing that I had slept for the last hour and a half on about six inches of mattress space, while my almost 6-month-old apparently took up the rest of Lionel, my spacious king-sized bed.

It also wasn't great when I lost it on my neighbor over a pumpkin. Long story, but the essence of it was that the "principal" of not throwing things into adjoining yards was being violated. I guess throwing a ginormous pumpkin covered in non-toxic paint (hand crafted by the Ladies), over the side of a fence into the embankment owned by the state that leads up to an interstate is somehow tantamount to just carelessly lofting it into your neighbors flower patch. I mean there are like rusted metal things and bodies buried over there. I certainly wouldn't throw trash back there, but a biodegradable pumpkin that has been providing nourishment to "Squirrley-Squirrel" our friendly neighborhood squirrel isn't going to open the flood gates to illegal dumping on the interstate side of the fence. I mean did making my dad go back over the side of the fence to pick it up and put it in our garbage can really make any difference in the scheme of things? Now that giant, colorful squash is rotting away in some dump, while Squirrley-Squirrel has to forage for food in the cold New England winter, forced to gnaw his little rodent teeth on rusted metal parts and our Christmas Tree from last year.

Granted, I might have been a little over emotional and clearly, there was no need to get my Irish up over something as trivial as a pumpkin, but I was "living in a powder keg" and she was "giving off sparks" and sometimes life isn't as pretty as that giant, colorful pumpkin, and sometimes you throw a temper tantrum at age 35.

Moving on. . .

We have managed to keep busy over the last couple of weeks although we haven't done one bit of Christmas decorating or shopping and I am not sure when any of it will actually get done. Here are a few pics from our many adventures.

Oh, and as of the writing of this blog post, my husband is in the airport at SFO and soon to be boarding his plane home. My plan is to hand him QT as he walks in the door, jump into Lionel, pull those covers up tight and try to get a little rest.

The Wild Woman and QT

The Lady and the Wild Man make a gingerbread house

The Lady, Wild Woman, Wild Man, The Little Lady, and QT with their Aunt and Uncle enjoying some fro yo

How to Try to Sell Your Home with Diaper Cream on the Lampshade

Step 1: Buy a 2 bedroom condo at the height of the housing market as an almost married couple.

Step 2: Be impressed by the bells and whistles (Hardwood floors! Granite counter tops! Stainless steel appliances!)

Step 3: Pump out three kids (on average one every 22 months).

Step 4: Watch the bubble burst.

Step 5: Start thinking about moving when you find out you are pregnant with your 3rd kid (let's say around October 2010).

Step 6: Do nothing for almost a year, despite living at the beach the entire summer--an ideal time to put the house on the market so that it can be shown without said three kids wreaking havoc and questioning why you are moving, organizing or storing any of their things.

Step 7: Start to wonder why every time you get into bed you smell A&D ointment. What we call in our house "moonie cream."

Step 8: Realize that not only had a certain Little Lady used it in some artwork she made for you, but had actually emptied the entire container on your bedside table and rubbed it into the lampshade.

Step 9: Turn lampshade to face wall.

Step 10: Finally contact a Realtor, spend an inordinate amount of time cleaning your stainless steel refrigerator so it screams, "I am stainless--please buy this house!"

Step 11: Shove as many things as you possibly can into drawers, cabinets and closets.

Step 12: Try to coordinate an 11 am Realtor open house, while leaving at 7:45 am, after having to watch your husband dismantle your 5-month-old's bed to open up the room, all the while hoping that things will still be in some sort of order after all three of the kids wake up.

Step 13: Profusely thank your mother and your amazing Tues/Thursday sitter for removing your children from their home with the hopes that these Realtors will come in, look past the still toy cluttered "master" suite currently occupied by two ladies and try to sell the place to another young couple with the promise of hardwood floors! granite counter tops! stainless steel appliances!

Step 14: Pray that people actually come to look at the place.

Step 15: Pray that it isn't in the middle of nap time.

Step 16: Pray the Little Lady doesn't find the new container of moonie cream under the bathroom sink.

Pump it up

Dear Other Pumping Mom,

We have only crossed paths a couple of times, those times when I couldn't get away from my desk and my every three hour routine had been disrupted. When I rounded the corner to find the door to the lactation room closed, the "in use" sign engaged and heard that steady grind of the pump through the closed door. Luckily, I could take advantage of the empty room next door and on those few occasions when I heard you leaving the adjacent room, I was tempted, for a moment, to peek my head out the door and say something like "Hey, I stuff my nips in hard plastic and hook them up to a vacuum too."

When I first got here I wondered if there was anyone else using the room, I checked the mini fridge to see if someone was storing their milk in there, took into consideration if the chair was moved, the door left open or propped up against that "Caution Biological Materials" bucket. Eventually, I started seeing signs of you, a discarded paper towel or two in the garbage can. (Aren't there are a lot of paper towels available there? I wonder if you too, ever took a few extra because you had run out at home and knew you wouldn't have time to stop on the way back, and I mean hey, there are stacks and stacks of them there and clearly there aren't a hundred people using the room and someone is taking the time to restock them, so really aren't they asking you to throw a few in your bag as you close the door behind you?)

I have often thought about leaving a little note on one of those paper towels. I read a book called "Nursing Mother, Working Mother" where all the women at IBM who were using the same room to pump would write little notes back and forth to each other about pumping and working and trying to stay sane. While this book was enjoyable, I decided that my time is best spent checking facebook and playing Bejeweled on my iPhone.

I wonder OPM, what you do while you sit in that chair for 15 or 20 minutes at a time, a couple times a day. Are you one of those moms who slipped a photo in the appropriate plastic covered area on your pump so that you could look at a picture of your child, personalize the experience, help to let your milk down? Or are you like me, who tries to make a few phone calls, even though the reception in the room is terrible, and the constant drone of the pump has a tendency to drown out whoever you are talking to? Do you check your e-mail? Try to read a two-week-old US Magazine that you have folded up and stuffed into that boxy, black bag? (Although magazine reading isn't that doable in there, because the counter is higher than the chair and if you try to put it on your lap it just gets tangled up in the pump tubes.)

Do you lean back and wonder if it is possible to nap in a chair that only goes to mid-back, while you attach your breasts to plastic suction cups and hope that you are producing enough milk? Maybe you are one of those uber-milk moms, where it only takes you five minutes to get five ounces, or maybe you are like me, walking around with your left boob a full cup size or two larger than the "milk dud" on the right, hoping that you pump enough for a full bottle because the baby is 15lbs 14oz and is eying table food with his big blue eyes and you know that it doesn't matter, where, when or what he eats as long as he gets something, but you, like me, would prefer it to be breast milk.

Is this your first child or your third? Have you always worked here so you are accustomed to the lactation room, taking for granted the fact that it is in an actual medical center, is clean, has a door that locks, a fridge, a pillow for your back, a working sink? Or have you pumped in conference rooms hoping no one knocks on a door to tell you a meeting is supposed to start in there in two minutes? With the battery attachment in the back seat of your car? Or in the handicapped bathroom that had just enough of an ick factor to skeeve you out, but had a lock on the door? Have you forgotten your pump yet and had to turn around in rush hour traffic to retrieve it? Or worse yet, gotten to work and realized you forgot the plug, a membrane (it will not work without that little white piece), or even just an ice pack for the cooler?

Are you pumping yourself full of fenugreek and oatmeal cookies? Are you sipping mother's milk tea and gallons of water? Are you wondering why there is so much hair in the garbage can in the lactation room? It is because I am shedding like a dog. (Also, I have been finding some grays. Not cool. The last thing I need to be doing, is putting on plastic gloves and trying to dye my hair over the tub.)

Are you hoping that this is all worth it? That the more you pump means the longer you can feel connected, knowing that your baby is still getting something of you, even though you aren't even in the room with him?

OPM are you as tired as me? Do you find yourself singing "Pump up the Jam" by Technotronics, because lack of sleep and the whomb-whomb sound of the pump have made you insane?

Pump up the jam
Pump it up
While your feet are stompin'
And the jam is pumpin'
Look at here the crowd is jumpin'

Because I am.

I am also grateful that somewhere in this big building there is another mother pumping away and I am not alone.

OPM, perhaps one day I will pass you in the hallway, our black bags a telltale sign of the connection we share. Perhaps I will give you a knowing grin, maybe we will nod heads in awknowledgement of our shared experience but until then, if you get a chance, leave me a note, there are plenty of paper towels in the lactation room if you are looking for something to write on.

Yours in all things boob related,
Bean

Big Fat Pity Party

So this is going to be a bit of a pity party--be prepared. . .


How did I get to be a full-time employee in a Corporate (with a capital C) company? How did I go from poo foot and puke on my sweatpants to PowerPoint and ID badges? And how do I deal with the overwhelming and crushing guilt that keeps me up at night?

Oh wait, it is really QT who is still keeping me up at night because I have yet to cut the cord and make sure he is put back in his bed after each feeding. I usually wake up in the morning with him wedged in my armpit, while I have contorted my body into something that resembles both the fetal position and a backbend.

I am not sure if I was mentally prepared for this big of a change in my life. I am not sure I will ever be able to adjust to the role of "working" mother, because clearly, I was barely holding it together when I was working part-time. As my sister, who has it much more together than I ever will--with two-kids, a very demanding work schedule and who is on the partner track at her law firm told me--"this is just your new normal."

I wish there was a summer vacation involved.

I wish there were mornings where I didn't have to kick QT off the boob in order to get in the shower on time, mornings where I didn't have to leave before the Ladies woke up.

I wish that I had more than two pairs of pants, two pairs of flats and three cardigans that are work appropriate. I wish that three of those things weren't right now sitting on my dresser covered in baby puke.

I wish that after I paid the sitters there was something to show for it (perhaps a new shirt, because seriously, it is getting pretty dire, I really was wearing entirely too many pairs of yoga pants and until I drop the last of the baby weight, I am not squeezing in, sausage style, to some of my sweaters.)

I wish that 10-3 was the standard work day.

I wish that the copious amounts of peanut M&M's I have consumed in the last few weeks to combat my stress didn't taste so delicious.

I wish that all the Halloween parades and playdates and school events that I will miss in the next few weeks and months and years will be worth it.

and

I wish that my "new normal" affords us the opportunity to grow as a family, to take advantage of the time we do have together, and for me to provide the purple room with the bunkbeds that the Lady wants and a yard for her to run and run and run.

There is nothing more heartbreaking then your two-year-old saying "Bye Mama" on her way to the ER.

It has been one of those weeks.

The Little Lady is at the ER with her father, she has croup and her breathing has been labored and here I sit, waiting for any information to come my way and feeling like I should be there, while knowing she is in totally capable hands and that I need to be here for the Lady and QT.

It did make me feel a little better when she requested that she wear her Twinkle Toes to the hospital, but not much.

I think that what I have realized in the past few weeks is that as hard as I strive to find that balance in my life that sometimes things just suck, and in these times of imbalance, I have to figure out how to make it work anyway.

How was Your Day?

The Little Lady is always asking my husband "How was work?" or "How was your day"? She has also been known to wake up from her nap and ask, "How was my nap?"

Usually, she doesn't stick around for the answer, well Little Lady, here is the answer to your first question.

How is my day? How is my day? I am going to go pump for the second time and then go try to take a nap in the car, all the while hoping that you and your brother and sister are being well cared for by a sitter who I think might be overfeeding your brother and who is starting with another family next week so she can no longer help us out.

So Little Lady, because your dad will be away for all of next week and your grandma is holding down the fort with the Wild Ones and I am scrambling to make sure all the hours I need are covered, I will answer your question by saying this, if I knew anything about tweeting, I would tweet with the hashtag #fuckyoubacktowork.