Why I Am Stupid

An Essay

by Jessie

Last night I awoke suddenly and looked at the clock. It was 3 a.m. and Gabbie was still sound asleep in her crib; a record in light of the past few weeks of frequent awakenings. Being a paranoid mom, like most are, I decided to check on her to make sure she was still breathing. As I looked into her crib I noticed that she had flipped over and was sleeping on her stomach, a no-no according to current experts.

What to do? Well, that paranoid mom side took over, and I decided to flip her onto her back. As soon as I did that she started tossing and turning, which lasted for about two minutes, and then she started to cry. "She's probably hungry," I thought to myself, since it had been eight hours since she last ate. So I got her up to take her to the couch to nurse.

On the way there, I noticed she was a little stinky. "Time for a diaper change!" I whispered to my snuggly baby. "So what if it wakes her up?" I thought to myself, "Nursing always puts her back to sleep." Oh, I was so mistaken, my friends. Changing her (wet, not dirty) diaper woke her up but good, and she stayed awake while nursing, occasionally patting my shoulder, as if to say, "It's alright mom, you'll survive me being awake." Then she filled her diaper.

Diaper change number two (no pun intended) also woke her up even more, so there I was, three in the morning, with a wide awake baby, laying there in my arms, smiling at me with her most charming smile. "Time to go back to sleep!" I chirped at her. She smiled back and continued to look at me and smile until, thirty minutes later, her eyelids started to droop, and she finally fell back asleep.

This is but one example of my stupidity during the past twenty-four hours. The other occurred yesterday afternoon, while Gabbie was playing on the floor, and I was watching, while working, from the couch. "Oh how cute," I thought to myself, "she's got her thumb inside her pacifier and is sucking it." She seemed to be having fun, so I continued on working, keeping one eye on her and one on my spreadsheet.

A short while later, she was still doing the same thing, but pulling the pacifier out of her mouth every so often to complain a little bit. "Well, put it down and play" I chirped to her, thinking how cute she was all the while.

Ten minutes and much whining later, it occurred to me: maybe the pacifier was stuck on her thumb, and maybe it's uncomfortable, and maybe she can't just put it down. So I got down and peeled the pacifier from her poor thumb. And I apologized for being a kind of dumb mom.

Lessons learned? Leave a sleeping baby lie, and maybe pay some attention to a playing baby, every once in a while.

Feeding my Obsession

For those of you out there that watch America's Next Top Model, who do you think is going to take it all in the finale tonight?

Here are my thoughts:

McKey annoys the crap out of me for some vague reason that I can't seem to put my finger on, but the judges seem to love her the most, so she'll probably win.

On the other hand, I love the other two contestants, and am torn between Sam and Annaleigh. I think I want Annaleigh to win.

Also, isn't she a total ringer for Meg Ryan?

Gabbie at Five Months

Since she's very nearly six months old, I figured I should do the month five update.

Our little princess, sound asleep.

Gabbie is getting quite mobile these days, rolling all over the place and getting to nearly everywhere she wants to go. Thankfully the places she wants to go are usually quite near where we set her down, but I'm not going to assume it's going to stay this way forever.

One of her very favorite places to go is to wherever her toys and/or pacifier are. She has two favorite toys, one a fish, one a frog, both brightly colored teething toys. This morning these two toys were at the bottom of a pile of a bunch of toys, and she dug through the toys until she found these and pulled them out. She's getting quite good at this too - picking up the things that she wants. She also plays with two toys at once, banging them together and squealing in delight.

She's getting bigger way too fast.

She absolutely loves her cereal. When it's time to eat she gets very excited, bouncing up and down in her chair. I can't wait to see how she reacts to vegetables starting next week. We're starting with sweet potatoes on Thanksgiving day.

She's still a mommy's girl, reaching out for me when she's excited to see me or upset. Aaron keeps trying to get her to reach for him, but she hasn't really done it yet. I feel bad that this seems to hurt his feelings, but there's not like I can really do anything about it. She also won't go to sleep for him, just for me. I'm probably going out with a friend this weekend (to see the Twilight movie) so they'll be on their own for a few hours. I'm hoping they have a great time, and I'm pretty sure they will.

Speaking of sleeping, it's going semi-okay. She sleeps some nights (like last night) and not so much on others (like the previous night). Most nights one of us still ends up on the couch, Gabbie sleeping on our chest, and us lightly sleeping for a few hours before switching off to the other parent because we're exhausted and our back aches. It seems to be shifting to a few more nights with good sleep as time passes, so hopefully we'll make it to the other side eventually. All of this from my baby who slept through the night for the first three months of her life!

There are still some worries about her hips, and we go in at the beginning of December for an x-ray and consultation, so we should know more then. Having her out of the brace has been wonderful, for her and for us. I'm really hoping that things will be great and we'll be in the clear, but am also realistic and will do whatever I need to for her so that she can make her way to 100%.

I can't believe it's been almost half a year. It seems so much longer than that; like she has always been a part our lives, and yet I can't believe how fast it has gone. My baby is turning into a big girl much more quickly than I expected, and while it's fun, I also find myself missing my tiny little baby. That must be why people voluntarily have more than one child after suffering through babyhood, with it's lack of sleep, copious bodily fluids, and recovering from giving birth.

The Cherry on Top of the Crap Heap That Was Yesterday

Just before noon yesterday, my cell phone rang. I had to dig into my purse to find it, while driving down the street, figuring it was my mom and she usually keeps calling until I pick up. Without looking at the caller ID I flipped open my phone and said hello.

It was the director at Gabbie's daycare, with the opening line, "Gabbie is fine, but..."

She fell off of a table.

It was picture day yesterday, so they had an infant chair set up on a low table over a matted floor. They put Gabbie in the chair, stood up to take the picture, and she rolled out of the chair, off the table, and onto the floor. She was completely unharmed (just a little scared), but that's besides the point. She's a very active baby. A very fast, active baby. You can't leave her anywhere where there's a possibility she might fall or bump into something or pull something on top of herself, because the odds are she'll do it. These people watch her every day. They know these things.

I sat through a brief conference call after the call from daycare, but couldn't hold out any longer than that. I needed my baby. So I cut out of work early to go pick her up, and we cuddled and napped all afternoon.

Aaron was a little more freaked out than I, mostly I think because I was a fast, active, accident prone kid as well, and I turned out just fine. There were some close calls though, and I would desperately like to avoid those with my daughter.

I called my mom last night and apologized for all those times that I did things like this, even those times I didn't mean to, just like Gabbie didn't mean to roll off the table. Mostly because my heart stopped for a second when I heard she fell, and that was a horrible feeling. I know this is just the first of many times that I will have that feeling, and I dread them all.

More Lists

On my "Bad" List this morning:

• My husband - who woke up late, took forever in the shower, didn't pack up any of Gabbie's stuff or get her dressed, and therefore made me 20 minutes late to work. Yes, he does plenty of good stuff (like grocery shopping, which I totally appreciate), even getting up with Gabbie last night so that I could sleep. However, doing the crap he did this morning to me on a day when I'm not feeling so great? Puts him on this list.
• Speaking of not feeling so great, my 3rd cold in 5 weeks also makes this list. I am tired of being sick.
• Having to work to make a living. I would much rather be in bed than here at work, where I am extremely busy and therefore can't skip out. Grrr...
• The moratorium we've put on eating out. I didn't want what we have for lunches today, but I have to eat it. It's either fast food or a new bedroom set, and the bedroom set wins out. I shouldn't be eating all of that bad food anyway.
• The dead animals all over the roads on my way to work are squicking me out to the nth degree. There have been some really gnarly kills along one road that almost make me gag. And they stay there for weeks, since our road commission apparently is trying to save money or something.
• Mother's milk tea. It's not the best tasting thing by a long shot, but I'm drinking it and doing whatever else I can to up my supply since Gabbie is eating so much that I'm having trouble keeping up with the demand. I hate necessary evils.

I feel like I can't spew out all of this hatred without some goodness to compensate, so here's my "Good" list:

• Hot Caramel Apple Cider
• Good books (I'm about to start the 3rd in the Twilight series, and although they're not my favorite, I can't seem to stop.)
• Warm sweaters
• A husband who does the grocery shopping, the laundry, and the dishes. And who hugged me this morning and vowed to do something later that would make me smile. I guess I may have to let the other petty stuff slide. He really is a good guy.
• A snuggly baby who wants nothing more than to cuddle up with her mom and dad. Even though the sleep issues can be annoying, we're only going to have such a small portion of her life in which we get to hold and cuddle her like this. I'm taking full advantage and reminding myself of this fact regularly, so that I can turn any annoyance into gratitude.
• And like ususal, the things I'm thankful for in my prayers every night: a beautiful, healthy daughter, a handsome, loving husband, more than adequate shelter, an abundance of food, a comfortable life, and a wonderful family who loves us.

And look at that. I'm feeling better already. Gratitude really does work!

The Things I Do For Love

There are many things I do for Gabbie that I never really envisioned myself doing. This list includes:

• Regularly attaching my breasts to what is basically a vacuum,
• Picking someone else's nose,
• Carefully inspecting someone's private parts to determine if there's a rash,
• Sniffing someone's rear end to see if they've messed their pants,
• Laughing when someone else pees on my arm and floor,
• Giving up all sorts of foods and other ingestible substances, including and especially my beloved peanut butter.

The list goes on and on, but I happily do it all. It doesn't hurt that she's unbelievably cute and I love her more than anything else on earth. It's amazing what all I'll do for this little person.

  

FAIL!

Five days in and I forget to post. At least it's better than last time when I forgot at around day 26 or something. Much less effort wasted this time. Since I sucked so much at posting, I'm going to try my hand at commenting  more, so my goal is five comments a day for the rest of the month. We'll see how I do with that.

In other news, I must say that I miss dirty diapers caused solely by breast milk. And that's all I have to say about that.

Just a quick observation tonight...

because I can't bear pulling myself away from the election coverage for too long.

The observation is this: people should not call other people who have small children after 8:00 p.m. While it is nice that people are finally RSVP'ing for the baby shower that is this coming Saturday, it would be nicer if they didn't wake up the baby I just spent an hour trying to get to sleep in her crib. Grrr....

The best thing about Mondays

Is our two favorite comedies - The Big Bang Theory (Aaron's fave) and How I Met Your Mother (mine). We can definitely use the humor on days like today when work was beyond busy and we're so far past tired it's ridiculous.

Speaking of things that are ridiculous, you know what else is? My level of nervousness about the election tomorrow. So nervous, and so opposed to what my husband thinks, that we have outlawed talking about it at our house. This makes watching the news impossible, as neither of us is capable of watching it without comment. So we're pretty much on a media blackout outside of the above mentioned shows.

(As I type this Aaron is breaking this rule, while at the same time admitting that it's likely my side will win. I sure as heck hope so.)

This rule was doubly applied after heavy discussion of some anti-Obama conspiracy theories this weekend. Very interesting and aggravating stuff. I can't believe what some other people will readily believe. I'm going to be glued to whatever television I come near tomorrow. Unfortunately, instead of spending the day reading CNN and the like while pretending to work, I'll be stuck at an all day strategic planning meeting. Should be an interminably long day. Perfect.

Baby's First Tailgate

Yesterday morning Gabbie and I headed to my alma mater for her very first tailgating experience. It was cold, so we didn't stay out too long, but we definitely had a good time. Plus I got to have hot spiced cider and an iced sugar cookie for breakfast, and it doesn't get much better than that. I wish we could have stayed longer - there was something delicious smelling on the grill, and lots of other food coming out when we left - but we had to get out of the cold and home to help Aaron put together her new crib (which, no, she didn't sleep in much last night).

That's alright. The incredible amount of cuteness of her in her new gear almost made up for it.

Gabbie says, "Go Green!"

In Celebration of the First Day of NaBloPoMo...

I am going to share Aaron's new favorite cookie. I tried one, but only one due to Gabbie's apparent sensitivity to peanuts. But, I had the world's best peanut butter to use up, so I wouldn't be tempted, and I needed to bake some cookies as a thank you to a friend who let us borrow his truck to pick up the crib we recently bought for Gabbie.

So, yes. Go bake these cookies using this peanut butter. You won't regret it. I promise. Well, you might be sad that the recipe uses up the majority of the jar and so you won't have any left for any other use, but otherwise you'll be happy. Enjoy!