Bring back the sun, dammit
♫ My name is stegosaurus
I’m a funny-looking dinosaur
On my back are many bony plates
and on my tail there’s more.
♫ Sometimes another dinosaur
will try to start a fight.
I don’t use fists; I use my tail.
It has four sharp, sharp spikes.
That’s the Stegosaurus song. It runs through my head constantly.
So anyway. I promised more today, regarding work. It went well. I surprised myself with catching on rather quickly to the new editorial system and production flow. But I was training at the far-away office instead of my usual, so I’m looking forward to going back Friday and rearranging my old desk and getting files organized on my computer and making a little baby shrine out of photographs.
Being away from him was OK, because I had that practice last week. I didn’t cry. In fact, it didn’t really hit me until I came home and saw him again. So I think we can do this.
So we’re supposed to have folks over for our cookout today. When we planned it, on Monday, the forecast was 70° and sunny. Today, the forecast is 48° and rainy. Sucks.
PLUS the ants are back, PLUS Iain said he saw a cricket, PLUS Mister Obese Squirrel not only ate all our birdseed but he bit the heads off our crocuses, too, damn him.
Bah.
bear hug
That wasn’t too bad
OK. I survived. Owen survived. Iain survived. I think we can do this.
Work, it appears, is like riding a bike.
And now I’m tired. More tomorrow … I planned this really well. I have the day off.
I totally called it
He woke up hungry this morning at 3:45. I knew it.
Fortunately Iain took that one. Owen didn’t wake up until 6:11, which is about normal. We got up, hung out, watched the Smurfs [lord, I watch a lot of TV now], had a bottle and some coffee.
Now I’m just procrastinating.
It’s not that I don’t want to go; I just really like living according to my own schedule. Deadlines are going to be a hard habit to get back into.
Just a bunch of boring random crap
All righty. Tomorrow I go back to work. I think I’m ready. I know the difference between the black arrow and the white arrow in InDesign.
I need to prepare some coffee and pack my lunch and figure out what the hell I’m going to wear. I guarantee it that tomorrow the boy will decide to start his day at 3:30 a.m. I just have this feeling.
Nothing else is happening, friends. The weather was nice and will hopefully get nicer this week, because we’re having a cookout on Thursday. Somebody I live with bought 52 steaks from the door-to-door steak man, and it wasn’t Owen.
Watched a few disaster movies this weekend [Shaun of the Dead and The Day after Yesterday or whatever that Jake Gyllenhaal (drool) vehicle was called]. Disaster movies: Not so much when you have a baby. I kept picturing our house being flooded and then overrun by zombies and had to freak out.
But then I got over it and decided to be a zombie, much in the same way young children decide to be dinosaurs or ponies. Iain withstood my Undead imitation manfully for about 45 minutes, so he gets mad-props for tolerating the hopped-up-on-goofballs wife.
We went to Home Depot today and bought ant poison and gladioli bulbs and ornamental grass seeds and a file set and a big bag of potting soil. We didn’t get the table saw OR the dremmel kit, but maybe next time.
And speaking of shopping, can I just say how happy I am that fashion has embraced the return of flats? Hip-hip hoo-fucking-ray for ballerina slippers. Fuck those stillettos, man. After having been pregnant I don’t think I can ever wear heels again.
Hmm. Well, that’s all she wrote, boys and girls. I hear public television coming from the other room, so I’ll take my leave.
Deluxe Muppet Show DVD on deck
Sayeth Pete: Disney is working on a season-by-season collection of The Muppet Show complete with UK skits, to be released sometime this year.
I’m so excited I can’t even stand it.
I can’t explain in mere words my juvenile obsession with anything Henson; suffice to say that The Boy is made to watch Sesame Street [weekdays, 9 a.m., MPT] daily and once these come out we’re never leaving the house. We’ll just hunker up, mother and son, talking in the Kermit voice to each other, and Iain will stride through saying “Losers!” because he doesn’t like the Muppets. But I love him anyway.
Tabula Rasa
Owen turns three months old this week. The fourth trimester is over; he’s a big boy now.
He used to be this little lump of baby who was pretty oblivious to the world around him, when he wasn’t crying to be fed or changed or what have you. Now he’s drinking it all in: his hands, pictures on the wall, Mom and Dad. When we read him “Dinosaur Roar” and “Goodnight Gorilla” before bed, he actually looks at the pictures. It’s awesome.
And as we were reading “Goodnight Gorilla” and I pointed out the little elephant in the corner I realized, “Holy shit, he doesn’t even know what an elephant is.” Can you imagine not knowing what an elephant is? He’s a total blank slate. I could raise him to think that elephants are little blue critters just three apples tall, and he wouldn’t know any better. I wouldn’t do that, of course, but that’s the awesome power of parenthood. Total mind control.
Timing is everything
So we are giving The Boy a bath last night, right? And he pees in the bath. And then we take him out and dry him off, and he spits up all over his naked self until it runs into his armpits. So we bathe him again, take him out and dry him off. Then he spits up. Again. It runs down his naked belly to his navel. Bathe him again. We’re laughing because this kid is so deadpan during his act.
So I lay him on the changing table with his pajamas. I reach for a diaper. He pees in the biggest, most perfect arc I’ve ever seen. It drenches the wall. Soaks my sweater. And, of course, lays in puddles on his clean pajamas and undershirt. I look down and sure enough, he’s soaked the clean diaper before it ever made it onto his butt.
Sheesh.
So I find him new clean clothes. A new diaper. Doing my damnedest to have this kid be clean and dry at the same time. I look up, and what do I see? A shit-eating grin and a huge pile of spitup, right on his clean PJs.
Laugh or cry, you know? I chose to laugh. It’s a good thing he’s so cute, or he’d so be out the window by now.
Prep/school
Happy Easter weekend. Iain’s spring break starts today, which is cool. We kept the boy home from school and are hanging out today as a family, eating bacon, drinking Mountain Dew and watching Kill Bill again. Well, we parents are watching it; Owen’s napping. He’s not old enough for Rated R yet. I’m trying to drum up the energy to go rent something now, actually.
So I keep finding more and more baby clothes I didn’t even know I had. He gets changed at least twice a day, plus pajamas at night, and there are still tons of things he hasn’t worn yet. You can see here part of the outfit his great-uncle Danny and great-aunt Nancy gave him. [It claims to be size six months, but look how tight it is! My little chubby.] There’s also a matching blue cord jacket and overalls with a tiny green polo horse embroidered onto it. Owen could care less, but I rather like dressing him up in Ralph Lauren and pretending we’re rich.
Lame, lame, I know.
The beautiful agony
Owen is dozing in his bouncy seat beside me, making these bizarre chirpy sleepsounds, like a bluebird dreaming.
I have yet to have a day where I drop him off at day care and manage not to cry. His teachers are so kind, though, and give me hugs before I leave. This morning, I stayed for at least half an hour, so worried that he would start to cry. I simply cannot leave him if he’s crying. So I stuck around and gave him a bottle and waited til he fell asleep before I left.
I have a persistent conviction that he’s going to get baby depression. It’s absolutely stupid, because those ladies take great care of him; I should know, I’ve logged enough hours there already. I guess it’s just another projection, a manifestation of guilt that I could leave him with strangers, BLAH BLAH BLAH. You know the drill. The worst part is how free I felt today, cruising along in the rain along the outer loop of the Beltway, off to get my car fixed. Unencumbered.
But that doesn’t last long. By about noon or 1 o’clock I feel itchy and nervous, like I left him on the roof of the car or something, and by 2 o’clock I can’t stand running errands and doing chores anymore and I must must must go get him. Then I’m giddy and excited and my heart starts pumping and I go 33 in a 25 just to get there quicker.
And then I’m there! And he’s asleep! And I pick him up anyway! And that’s the best part of my day, that moment when I pick him up and everyone else disappears. Ecstasy.
So I bring him home and hold him on my lap for a good two hours straight, not moving from the recliner except to change his stinky butt.
I’m kind of glad that I’m giving us some time to get used to it, the sensation of being apart, even if it’s only for a few hours. But I also feel idiotic for leaving him when I don’t strictly need to. BUT it makes sense to leave him warm and dry and fed with capable people instead of hanging out for an hour or two in a cold and wet and muddy auto garage.
Makes for difficult napping, I understand.
Say “unacceptable” again!: I can’t get enough of Supernanny. The beautiful, delectable Jo Frost and her sensible child-rearin’ ways. Every week I tape it [Mondays, ABC, 10 p.m.] and on Tuesdays we watch it over dinner. I watched Nanny 911, and that is just a shoddy imitation. They may be British nanny types, but they don’t have the mad skills Jo Frost does. She prefaces her straight talk with warm, sincere praise, and she’s just generally a warm, sincere-seeming person.
But this is what I notice: every week, there’s a good-looking rich family, with a stay-at-home mom and a bumbling, distant dad. The kids are rambunctious, the three-year-old [there’s always a three-year-old] is mind-bogglingly ill-behaved, and there are issues with dinnertime, naptime and listening to Mommy. Mom is distraught but utterly ineffectual, and Dad is aloof and unrepentant. Oh, and the mother, without fail, is seen wearing a pink velour leisure suit AT LEAST once.
There’s a serious essay on America’s attitudes toward parenting and family values lurking inside that show; I just don’t have the energy to pick it apart.
Stone cold fox: So I was returning a hideous shirt purchased at Old Navy in a fit of postpartum dementia and decided to tramp across The Avenue in the rain in what was obviously a second fit of postpartum dementia to get my hair cut at the schizophrenic hair salon [“Am I an upscale salon or a cheap chain? Can’t decide! Can’t decide!”].
Turns out it was a very good move.
Now, I detest getting my hair cut [as you know]. My head is all bumpy and my hair is big and goofy, to put it mildly, and stylists are always so judgmental. The judgment, it radiates off them in giant stink lines. They can tell everything about you down to the tiniest, most embarrassing moment [like that time you put a rat — a PET rat, but still — on your head and it pooped in your hair, as rats are wont to do].
And male stylists! The worst! They don’t have the vagina, the PMS, the years of socially-sanctioned self-loathing [aside from the gay thing, I guess]. They don’t have the experience of what it means to be a woman with goofy hair. And they just tut-tut under their breath because you are not a waifish, delicate Audrey Hepburn type. But really, those male stylists, they have no idea.
So anyway. I totally set myself up for disaster, going to the mentally-confused hair place without an appointment in the rain in The Avenue AND being assigned a male hair stylist. I was pretty much doomed to 45 minutes of uncomfortable, judgmental silences and a half-assed haircut [“why waste time on the plain girls?”].
BUT but but. Mister Male Stylist has the magic fingers, my friends, even more accomplished and intuitive than the last lady.
Long, boring hair story short, I got a really good cut. And with the rain today, it’s transformed itself into an 1930’s permanent wave kind of thing, which is just rad.
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