Owen, last night at storytime:
“I’m a have ALL this Easter.” *cups hands* “MMmmmmm.” *gobbley face* “Here, Mom. You have Christmas.” *dumps imaginary pile of Christmas into my outstretched palms* — *pause* — “Ooops! I spilled de Easter all onna bed!”
Poor kid. Got his Easter all over everything.
I have to wonder: is this an early grasp of surrealism/right-wing artifice/consumerization of spiritual rites? Or have we been reading Owen’s Marshmallow Chick a few times too many?
We’re painting. Owen is helping. We’ve got the floor and counters waiting to be installed. Iain has jury-rigged (jerry-rigged?) a cutting station outside for sawing the counter and cabinet faces. I am so, so tired of the kitchen things being everywhere but in the kitchen. And of not being able to put the baby down and help. But at least things will look nice when they’re done — Iain has 10 days to get this done, because then the last Harry Potter will arrive and he won’t be doing anything but breathing and reading until he’s finished it. Heh.
Oh, it’s official, we’re redoing the kitchen (on a shoestring, as always). Iain will be refacing the cabinets this week, and soon we’ll replace the counters and floors and repaint. Vinyl, laminate — did I mention the shoestrings? How about bootstraps?
I found some fabric at Ikea that I like and will be sewing tea towels and curtains. All that’s left after that is choosing a sink and some mid-range black appliances and hopefully this weency little ‘80’s throwback will be, if nothing else, slightly less icky.
So hey. I’m sitting here on the couch, drinking coffee, watching Iain take a razor blade to the doorway to the kitchen. I have a feeling he’s going to rip up the linoleum next, and we’ll find ourselves suddenly in the midst of a kitchen renovation. Which I will not complain about, because our kitchen is as ugly as Shrek’s butt. Ask Owen, that’s ugly.
This is pretty much how it goes in our house: I fall into a sobbing bad mood and Iain tears up the (hideous-ugly) carpet to make me feel better (thus launched our living room home-improvement project). Or, Iain has been sitting around the house unoccupied for more than two days and gets bored and starts picking the paint off of something (how our bedroom renovation got started) or we spend a little too much time watching HGTV at my parents’ house (how the bathroom got underway). At any rate, the end result will be a big fat giant improvement over the previous style.
Also, I have been a-hopin’ and a-wishin’ for some sewing time. I have a million projects in my head: doll quilts and a tote bag, for starters (thanks, Sew Mama Sew — you’re way too inspirational for my own good!). I also have a big pile of old clothes and thrift-store sheets I want to cut up into quilts. And I have baby presents to make for some people. And I have been throwing around the idea of an Etsy shop for some time, if I ever make enough stuff to sell.
And I have been thinking of selling the maternity clothes I made — do you think anyone would buy them? Maybe I should just hang on to them in case there’s a next time. Actually, opinions one way or the other re: Etsy would be appreciated as well.
So, yes. I predict we’ll be emptying the kitchen of foodstuffs and dishes before the day is out, and dropping many hundreds of unavailable-to-us dollars at Home Depot over the next few days. And of course I’ll be flickring the whole thing, because I’m silly like that.
… comedy hour over here. (Not pictured: Owen licking the baby. Not pictured: me dropping the Pop-Tarts.)
Today Cormac had his one-month well-baby appointment today: 9 lbs, 6 oz. Up two pounds from his birth weight, right on the curve. I’m doing it! I’m breastfeeding him and it’s working.
Somewhere over the last week, while we were visiting our parents, breastfeeding went from painful and difficult and requiring a complicated pillow support system to … kind of easy. (KIND OF, I said.) I can do it without pillows. I can latch and relatch as needed. It’s mildly uncomfortable, not painful.
I guess if you do something 10 times a day for three weeks you eventually get the hang of it, eh?
I’m so glad I made it over the hump. I don’t really know what to expect now that the super-rough newborn days are over and we’re not nursing every two hours, but I’m slowly growing more confident that it will work out, you know? And I feel pretty proud that I’m doing it. One day at a time, just like the alcoholics.
Inspired by dioramama, expiration date and one I wrote when Owen was two weeks old, I present to you: the schedule.
I … have to say. It’s pretty boring. And I’m so tired that I just can’t make it funny. I’m sorry, you guys.
12 midnight: Mac wakes up to eat. Nurse him sitting up so that he eats properly. Hand him to Iain for a change while I lube up the milk machines with lanolin.
3 a.m. Mac wakes up to eat. Repeat actions from midnight.
3: 45 a.m. Entertain the illusion that Mac will go to sleep peacefully after eating.
4 a.m.-6 a.m. Mac grunts, groans, strains, stretches, whimpers, whines, and otherwise loudly indicates his displeasure and disapproval of the act of digestion. Sleep is not possible, on account of the loud. Note Iain’s snoring and resolve not to hold it against him, especially since he sometimes takes Mac into another room during this bitchfest.
6 a.m. Mac eats. We nurse laying down and fall asleep.
7 a.m. Owen wakes up. Usually he insists upon some sort of complicated imaginary play involving dinosaurs, pirates or “spacemans”. Lately I have been very fortunate that someone else will do this while I sleep.
9 a.m. Mac wakes up to eat. Again! Sense a pattern? Feed him and wander out to kitchen to eat breakfast and see what’s happened in the last two hours. Putter. Mac has awake time and Owen usually plays outside.
11:30 a.m. Feed Owen lunch.
12:30-2:30 p.m. Owen goes down for a nap sometime during this period. Then it’s time to feed Mac and HE goes down for a nap.
2:30 p.m. Surf one-handed while eating lunch.
2:58 p.m. Fall asleep sitting up.
3 p.m. Hey guess what? Both boys are awake and hungry. More play time.
6 p.m. Family dinner time. Everyone eats dinner while I sit on the couch, feeding the baby.
God, this is boring to write. Is it boring to read?
8:30 p.m. Wrestle Owen into bed. Endure half hour of “Mama? I peed/pooped/am too tired to sleep/need you to check my elbow for some reason.”
9 p.m. Mac wakes and wants to eat.
10:30 p.m. Mac is finally done with this loud groany grunty thing. Can finally swaddle him and put him in his crib to sleep. We brush teeth and collapse into bed. I try to fall asleep.
midnight: Mac wakes up to eat. Repeat previous 24 hrs for next 24 hrs.
We’ve been pretty lucky to have had our relatives helping out the last week, and also lucky that Cormac’s every-two-hours has gone up to every-three-hours. When does it go to every four? Or more? Since Owen was bottlefed from two weeks, I really don’t know what to expect now, with the breastfeeding. Oh, well. I figure we have the rest of the summer to figure things out; Iain and I don’t go back to work until mid-August. So that’s pretty cool. Unless by some freak chance a school in PA decides to hire him, that is. And it’s looking like the chances of that happening this year are very close to nil.
Anyway. Rambling. Waiting for the baby to wake. It took me three days to write this post, so I imagine that’s a trend that will continue.
They are very, very cute. And they keep me very, very busy. And I am getting very, very little sleep.