Let's recap the last 6 months, shall we?

Cat allergies [removed the cats], RSV, ear infection, viral meningitis, ear infection, asthma, ear infection, ear infection, gastroenteritis, roseola, ear infection, and now, pneumonia.

Sort of late but ditching the daycare situation and looking for a nanny we can't afford.

In the midst of xrays, 4 a day nebulizer treatments and what seemed like endless series of oral steroids and antibiotics I have even forgotten the name of my blog so I apologize to the 2 or 3 people that were even reading it.

It's been a hard few months .. very hard.. with little sleep, frustration, stress from work and baby. Now that we found out he has pneumonia 3 days ago and looking ahead to even more nights of no sleep and days packed with treatments he will forcefully fight against with every fiber of his little but strong body, I do feel like I might be at the end of my wits. I have no vacation left due to his various sicknesses, I have to return to work but there is no way I'm putting him back in a daycare, and my body is falling apart due to struggling 24 lb baby.

There we go .. a perfect hello-again post full of bitching and self-pity. It's all I got, folks!

So much happened I'm exhausted just thinking about it..

We moved, hubby finished a gizillion of square feet of wooden floors, a room and 14,172 things in the house, house got rented, renters move in tomorrow, we moved in the apartment, said apartment in such crappy shape - although completely remodeled - we actually got a refund on our first month's payment, still living out of boxes and piles which is driving me crazy, a bunch of stressful crap at work, etc.

Bubu turned 6 months and is almost sitting but he's still teething, got a cold and has horrible allergies which means he's Mr. McSnotts and can't breathe and wakes up a dozen times a night.

My hairdresser is on maternity leave and the other dude totally botched my hair - we have a picture appointment on Monday - and now I look like a Romulan or a little boy, still can't decide which. Oh, and my period is 3 days late which means I'm a little freaked. Mind you, I was 5 days late last time I found out I was pregnant.

I have this weird thing about doing something that lands me in prison for like a week. I could sleep at night .. and I could catch up on my friggin reading.

.. but, baby G. is wonderful, and sweet, and pulls my hair and rubs his snotty nose on my neck and face and it feels like love, or kisses; that soft little nose, like a little petal of sorts.

.. i'm tired.

Daycare

Thank you all so much for the kind words. Your experience and opinions are very valuable to me. They have helped me those first couple of days when I had to drop him off.

Today is his fourth day and you were all right. And he LOVES it! He has a posse already (a couple of one year olds who are at the most his size .. :). I am so happy he goes there now. He seems to really enjoy himself and we finally found something that helps him use up all that energy. As a result he falls asleep easier as well and is calmer in general. He loves observing the other kids and has pretty much taken over the jumper.

Failure

It's my blog so I can bitch damn it!!!!

If you haven't clicked on the back button, then here's the story. Here's what I never confess to anyone including my diary. Here's what takes a glass of wine and a couple of weeks of lack of sleep to confess: I am a failure. Yes, my dear reader, with all respect, you've wasted your time. I, am a failure. 1999 I started a company which failed because the friggin shopping cart wasn't stylish enough I didn't deliver on time. Then in 2000 I got a grant and I failed again because a company in town seemingly was going to deliver the same product in the same time frame - the paranoid freak in me figured the grant was set up solely for research purposes. No matter, another business - which netsuite matched about 60% - was waiting for funding in 2002. Ok.. so netsuite swept the market .. I had something better in 2003. ... and then I gave up. I was doing it all, after all, for my parents.

My dad refused membership in the communist party, a requirement at the time in the country, so his life was particularly hard. My mom didn't have it any better. My parents always strived to do the right thing. They didn't care about acceptance or deliverance, only about the rule of law.

Long story short, I was here, I had ideas, I had opportunities, I should have been able to help when the corrupt government seized all their belongings and they were left with nothing. I couldn't help with anything .. I used the neutral to go down hills because in 2000 i could not afford the gas. At the same time I was dating someone who thought that because I was foreign and studying in the US I must have been rich .. what a moron! Anyway .. I feel like I have failed. Somehow my parents made it through .. justice prevailed despite what everyone believed. But now, another failure. My son, my only kid, picky and teething, has to go to daycare at 5 months. Let me count the ways I have failed....... too many, or do you want me starting again from 1999?!

My Gregory, my sweetheart, takes an hour or more to fall asleep in our arms because he's teething badly. He passes out in our arms or his bed and then suddenly awakens because his arms try to itch the gums or cheeks or whatever is itching on his face. And I am at work .. staring at A FUCKING SCREEN when my baby needs me to hold and love him. Why?! Because I have failed, .
... so many times. And now, I get to fail again.

Cravings .. for real!

WTF? Cravings like pregnancy cravings. Probably stress.

Please to provide perfectly steamed artichoke with lemon rind, butter and wine dip juices for my pleasure. k thx.

Andrea, you're totally right, I highly advised you not to use a walker but we've succumbed. We went to Babies'R'Us and got this walker. To 'test' it we put some shoes on the little and put him in. Insta-smile and kicking. The more he wanted to come towards me the further away he got backwards. It was hilarious. We dropped the $60 and got it.

Mistress La Spliffe, if you see this, i would need to start a whole new blog to adequately respond to the comment about "institutionalization". I might write a book instead. The more entranced I've become in what my career is currently the less options I've felt were available to me. Also a lyric came to mind when I read it "You don't like the system but you're fighting to keep it". I forget who that is however.

The funk is back

The little is not so little anymore.. almost 19 lb and stronger than I seemingly. He wants to walk but can't even sit yet. Wants to play with things that require dexterity but hasn't mastered moving his fingers yet so he's constantly frustrated at something. So we hold him standing, hold him sitting, hand him toys, show him stuff, move him from sling to table to bed to jumper to bouncy chair to bumbo seat with tray with toys because his attention span is 15 mins at best. As a result hubby's neck is all screwed up, my tendonitis hurts horribly especially in the right wrist, my upper and lower back are screwed .. all in all we're doing a lot of business with our chiropractor.

He is awesome however .. so much fun I would love nothing more than to stay home with him, teach him things, play with him, hold him when he cries. But I can't .. so blah!

New things he's doing as of this weekend:
- reaching with both arms towards us if he wants to be picked up
- reaching towards things he wants if they're not within reach
- slowly crawling if we assist by providing something for his feet to push against
- grabbing EVERYTHING in sight .. pens, purses, toys, cloths, dishes, my bottle of olive oil while i'm making a salad

Given that he's not even 5 months yet I'm pretty amazed and impressed with these behaviours. This does mean he requires a LOT of energy from whomever is taking care of him. More often than not this person is hubby and he is exhausted. Today we're getting a walker .. it's not the safest thing in the world but he'll be supervised while playing in it and if it saves our backs and wrists so much the better.

Depressed.

Don't know why.

.. in the meantime, more of the littles:

Yum

What do you mean there's no more??!

The leap

The next few steps have been taken. Now it’s time for the leap and I would greatly lie if I didn’t say I’m getting cold feet. The plan is to move to Virginia in the November time frame. Probably one of the stupidest financial moves of our lives HOWEVER we’ve always wanted to leave the Midwest and this is a great opportunity. Timing is also good as baby G. is not old enough to care where he is and before he gets into school I would really like to find HOME, wherever home is.

We've lived under a star of impermanence here as we've always talked about moving. Well, I would really really like to be somewhere "for the foreseeable future". I was on the airline's website choosing the flights to and from and it really hit me: other than the commitments we have made regarding this move, at the moment there is nothing driving my desire to leave this place. Certainly later I will care, but currently, as long as I have a bed and a roof over our heads I really couldn't care less where I am located geographically. Is it that I've adjusted to living here and despite having been so obsessed with leaving I just don't mind the place anymore or is it that I have been so tired that I really don't care? So of course, this makes everything a lot harder especially since a financial sacrifice is required.

I think it's safe to say I'm kinda freaking out.

It's June already?!

Time to freak out a little.
1. The renters move into our house August 1st.
2. Hubby has a ton of work left to do until they move in.
3. Although we are moving OUT we have nowhere to move INTO for the next 5 months.
4. Nanny can only work every other week.
5. I have 4 classes to make up.
6. The insurance company is totally screwing us on the L&D.
7. We're flying to DC in 3 weeks to find the area we're moving to in November.. with the little.

Long time .. and some post-blue moon philosophizing

It's been a loooong time since writing last. It's been very hard to write in the past year, even in my private non-digital diary. I have so much to say nothing comes out. And then, after a while, the only thoughts that come to mind are related to baby G. I was thinking about how many other topics I have knowledge and experience and thoughts about on a daily basis yet most of the time the only thing I can say is "You is such a cutie .. but you can't haz cheezburger yet." I know, not APA formatted .. what can I say .. i've had a beer and feel rebellious. Talking about 'i' and the APA .. the whole business of 'I' kind of bothers me .. there's a lot of you out there I should be calling You .. me, on the other hand, .. i'm an 'i'.. not and 'I'. That's not because i don't believe i'm an important member of society who is making her community a better place and raising a good citizen of the United States and the World in general, but because only very few people deserve a capitalized letter .. i am not one of them. I mean really, for a nation of Christians (94.4% based on the ARIS study) the only words capitalized because of something other than their placement in the sentence are I, God and Him - when referring to God. What about You?

Teething

Baby G. is teething! Mr. McSpits is now Mr. Droolsalot. Can't wait to see his toothy smile .. i bet it'll be adorable. Until then he's fussy and not all too happy about this new situation. He doesn't have the holding of objects down though so although we have a rubber teething thingy he can't use it without help. So hubby's spending the day rubbing baby's gums. Cute!

I know where that picture was taken :)

.. randomly browsing random pics on a random site and I bump into a familiar sight ..


Heart Breath by ~ForkTrip on deviantART

Blubber

How in the world did I end up 10 lb lighter after giving birth than I was pre-pregnancy but with 10 times as much blubber? Seriously! I have this party to go to on Saturday and I've been looking forward to it because 1) we've made very few friends in this city and 2) the friends we have don't throw parties. Unfortunately out of the 4 stores I went to I only found one dress I liked and I look like crap in it .. due to the blubber. And I want to feel pretty damn it!

Stole this image from http://lucidscarlet.deviantart.com/journal/18426004/

If i spend one more hour in this cubicle i'm gonna go nuts!!!

First mother's day

Hubby went golfing .. got to spend the entire day with baby G. He was awesome and sweet and cuddly and playful .. best day ever.

The silly things parents do or Whatever doesn't kill them makes them stronger

I saw Naomi's post and it reminded me of something that happened a couple of nights ago. Baby G's been sleeping through the night pretty much, just getting up at about 5AM asking for some cuddles - I know, ADORABLE! But a couple of nights ago he got up screaming at 4ish obviously wanting food. Hubby went to take care of him since I had to get up for work in a couple of hours. After what seemed like a long time of screaming I got out of bed to see what was going on. I walked in on my husband, my son's father, talking to his 3 month old and saying: "You see this bottle?! I'm gonna put it right here until you calm down. Then you can eat."

It was 4AM after weeks of taking care of him constantly and I'm sure he's getting tired of dealing with Fussy McSpits 24/7 but I flipped. I don't think I have ever talked to him in that tone ever before and am not planning on doing it anytime soon. I think all I said was "What are you doing? Give him the food!!". He immediately gave him the bottle.

Seeking nanny ..

OK .. husband is going crazy with baby G who has the energy of a toddler and a body of a 3 month old who can't even hold his head. He constantly needs holding, talking to, walked about, interacting with, etc. Neither of us can bear the thought of him crying so it's 6-7 hours of keep-baby-entertained-and-happy (with enough time in between for either of us to freak out about getting as much done until he gets up from his nap, usually involving his laundry or washing his bottles). The grand majority of the time the little cutie is just all smiles and happiness .. as long as he's not bored. He likes looking at the butterflies hanging above his crib, loves staring the the wall full of books in his room (probably because of all the colors), talks to the animals hanging on his bouncy chair but does none of these things for more than 15 minutes at a time.

So we're looking for a nanny who can come watch him at our place because there is no way I will put baby G. in a daycare at 3 months of age. Around 1 year or so it's probably a good idea to have him be more social but until then he's a baby, more importantly he's my baby so I want him somewhere I feel comfortable with with someone I can trust, someone who will treat him like I treat him as broke as it might get me. I think we're looking for 2-3 days for about 4 hours at a time. Problem is the only person I would trust with baby G. has a baby of her own with just as much energy requirements so I highly doubt she'll be interested. I have to say I have never met anyone with a more similar attitude towards parenting to mine. Next step is interviewing, and installing web cams all over the house. I know, that may seem paranoid but the voices in my head say it is not .. and they're usually trustworthy.

In other news I'm throwing a surprise work baby shower thing in less than 2 weeks and for some reason signed up to do the cake. Why? Because I like feeding people ... it's one of the things I like best. Desert is really not my thing but that's another story. Bottom line is there will be at least 35 people there. 35 people?! Before 35 people RSVPd in 2 days I had this idea of chocolate cake cut into cute little squares, injected with something yummy and raspberryish and with a hard chocolate glaze. Now I'm just thinking Betty Crocker's Brownies. But that just wouldn't be fun.

The 8 things tag

I'm giving into the tagging thing. Andrea tagged me for this:

8 Things I'm Looking Forward To

1. Moving
2. Baby G. being able to hold his head up on his own [oh so close!]
3. Next Friday
4. Making rolled fondant for a cake
5. Cooking the fillet mignons in the freezer
6. Traveling for fun again
7. Losing my baby belly fat
8. Not being broke! - the fillet mignons were a gift, a wonderful gift

8 Things I Did Yesterday [Saturday]

1. Slept
2. Made a mean arborio rice and chicken casserole
3. Petted the cats!!
4. Watched a documentary - Enron, the smartest guys in the room - the first movie I have watched since giving birth
5. Continued to have HOPE
6. Changed, cuddled and fed baby G.
7. Had a bratwurst with mustard and Corona .. yum!
8. Did baby laundry

8 Things I Wish I Could Do

1. Read more often [baby books don't count]
2. Run my own business
3. Read more often!!
4. Be a morning person
5. Sew better
6. Get over "the house is still being renovated" and have people over already
7. Clean mussels - I have developed a 'weirdness' when dealing with cooking live sea creatures I never had before
8. Travel more

8 Shows I Watch

1. The Daily Show
2. The Colbert Report
3. Fareed Zacharia's GPS
4. Good Eats with Alton Brown
5. The Soup (all the Hollywood you need)
6. The Family Guy
7. American Dad
.. Jellybean Mama helped me remember about the last three which remain stale on my DVR for about a week when I remember .. wait! isn't new Soup on Fridays?

8 People I'm Tagging

1. Jellybean Mama of http://jellybeanmama.blogspot.com/
2. Ally of http://guiltynoodles.wordpress.com/ who has actually vowed herself to blogging silence so this might not work very well
.. that's all I got

Hernia, allergies and prevnar vaccine side effects .. oh, and INS

The interview went well. In a week or two I should get a letter that tells me whether I'll get my citizenship or not. I'm nervous although I don't see why I wouldn't get it.

Baby G. cried for an hour straight after coming home from getting his first shot of prevnar. This is not typical of him. Hubby got so exhausted he actually had to put him in his crib for 5 minutes and take a break. I wish I had been home to switch holding him :( instead I was at work while my baby was crying his head off and my husband was going crazy. His sneezing and coughing are a sign of allergies (inherited from his dad) and we found out he also has umbilical hernia which seemingly is no big deal.

Rainy day - temp post

Stoked

.. or spazzy from the caffeine.

Bubu got a clean bill of health .. hurrah! .. and we are totally broke. Boo! The fact that hubby's car broke and we had to replace the transmission AND the timing belt in the tune for almost $4000 did not help the situation especially since we both took time off from work and hubby doesn't work full time anymore. This should teach us to put extra money in a savings account instead of stuffing it all into the 401k. So the etsy idea is becoming more and more appealing. Maybe I will surface from anonymity and shamelessly plug my goods.

Also, I'm trying to get hubby to tweet baby happenings .. how much food, when, where they are, etc. Might sound lame but it would save a lot of phone time. Plus I ask the same questions every day. I would be able to be with them .. virtually and would maybe make him feel less alone, not that I've heard him complain about that.

Poop is now a topic of conversation

Baby G. is amazing .. every morning around 6:30 he poops. Every morning. Around 6:30. He lets out this very specific scream to let us know he needs to go, we take off his diaper, put another under his butt and he goes. It's amazing. I think he hated sitting on poop so much that he figured out a way to communicate to us that he's going and he doesn't want his diaper on when that happens. I don't know how, but we got the message. So he goes and then we put a new diaper on and he gets the biggest smile in the world .. like a big "thank you!!".

Albuterol and boobies

Boobie doctor says everything seems to be pretty "garden variety". Again, can I get a bit more commitment on these assessments? Like "you've got nothing to worry about". I need to go back in 3 months for another ultrasound. Seemingly now it's too soon after breastfeeding. I think I'll just stop worrying about it.

Baby G. can't breathe because of bronchiolitis and now is on a nebulizer with Albuterol which he hates. That's 10 minutes of fun 3 times a day for both him and us but he can breathe better since he got on it. We can't have him on it for more than 7 days so hopefully by Tuesday he'll do better without it.

I don't want to go to work tomorrow.

Uhm ..

[wallpaper]

I have a new wallpaper for the same reason I'm watching some random show on TV - Expedition Alaska .. some gorgeous shots - I'm hanging out aka not doing anything, on purpose.


Can I say it's a bit frustrating? Like I'm wasting my time. There's homework, dishes, packing, books I haven't touched in ages but I really just want to sit here in front of the dumb box and do nothing. So that's just what I'm doing .. nothing.

Time is a luxury.

2 months and shots .. and little red dots all over his face and neck and a watery eye with yellow gunk that won't go away and failing classes and ..

Baby G. is seeing the doctor today with daddy. I wish I could go but I'm stuck at work so I made a list of things to talk to the doc about because 1) i tend to forget things and 2) i make lists for everything. With all the sleep deprivation hubby has been pretty touchy about things lately so I gingerly approached the "I won't be there but here's my list" issue because I don't want him to think I don't believe he's capable of asking the right questions, etc. He's never been sensitive about things or egotistic in his actions or anything like that but since about a month ago when sleep became ever more scarce he has been quite unlike himself sometimes. With baby G. being as high maintenance as he is I am sure it is pretty tiring for him to do the "nanny thing" 12 hours a day. I do envy him though. I'd much rather be tired from dealing with baby G than dealing with work.

So .. the shots. We're doing all of them except for the DTaP which we'll wait until 1 year or so. Pertussis season seems to be June to September which is a bit scary because we're going to a big family reunion in May and flying in June. But we're paradoid so we're giving him a shot every 2 weeks instead of all at the same time.

In other news I've been courting etsy.com because I have some mad skillz of my own and with hubby having dropped work down a little extra $$ sounds great. Plus it's a reason to do something I love: bake and cook. We'll see.

Basking in the sun

Where did I leave off?

I'm so tired I don't even know if that's the right expression for what I'm trying to say. Point is .. I'm taking a little break from working. On tuesday I had the dreaded breast ultrasound which wasn't as bad as the last one which hurt like a *&#$!@ ... the results? The tumors are probably not malignant. One has increased in volume so I'll probably have a biopsy after talking to my booby doctor next week. Because I took time off work to do that however I've had a couple 12 hour days in the aforementioned gray/tan cubicle. Problem is the sleeping is so bad I finally get my booty in at work late enough that I work until 8 or 9 which means seeing very little of the little and generally doing much less than cooking, watching 30 mins of the stupid tube and going to bed.

The limitations I've noticed in my vocabulary are due to the fact that I am not reading anything not related to baby eating, baby sleeping or baby crying. And let me tell you .. those articles aren't very lexically complex. Which leaves me searching for words when I try to express myself most of the time .. resulting in a very frustrated an already cranky and tired Chris. I also used to read about photography and take a lot of pictures. No more. I also used to read about the biochemistry of food and cooking. Not happening. I also used to try my (already carpal) hand at knitting. I used to paint, tend to a dozen or so herbs I used in my cooking (they have all met a horrible parched death), play pool quite well thank you very much and watch Fareed Zacharia every Sunday (which I have to qualify with "I don't agree with some of his positions"). The point is I miss all those things so much .. and as much as I was starved for creativity before, now it's painfully .. PAINFULLY more so. Did I mention I usually read about 3 nonfiction and one fiction book? I miss that so much. So much. Not more than I love baby G. though so .. there it is. Trade-offs. I wish I could work part time or something like that but that is not happening so until then hubby takes videos of bubu and when I get home although he is usually crying and tired and fussy I get to look at the videos of him smiling and playing at 11 or 12 in the morning. Makes me wanna cry.

It's official: spring has come to the midwest

After yesterday's post I have decided today's requires a bit of color. Any suggestions on colorful plants that don't require a lot of natural light? I haven't been able to find any.

Tomorrow is an exciting day because I am only working 2 hours. Hurrah! I also have a lot of homework to do which blows. I'd much rather hang out with baby G.

Talking about baby G. .. he's grown quite a bit lately and today he is 8 weeks. He's about 24 inches and (we think) about 11 lb. He now has adorable squishable kissable fatty folds on his legs.

Drab

The cubicle walls are a dirty tan, the desk is a cheery combination of tan and gray, the phone, computer and monitors are all gray and the speakers are tan. I've been trying to figure out if the fake ceiling is a light gray or a light tan but the florescent lighting doesn't afford too much depth to colors so I can't really tell.

I have a few days a year when all this gets to me and today is one of those days.

How can I not miss you so much that my heart hurts?

Crazy month

So I finally took the plunge .. yessir .. at the end of this month I have my citizenship interview. After 12 years of being here and a good dose of American cynicism - because the very qualities that make me as American as I can be are the very same which prevented me from becoming an American on paper - I'm finally committing. What can I say .. I guess I got a good dose of HOPE. So now I will have to swear that I will bear arms on behalf of the United States among other things.

Other things this month: baby G's vaccines, getting my tumors checked out and a visit to the boobies specialist. I can't wait for May.

A little bit of sanity

Now that mom is gone we've settled into a sort of routine. It still involves a bit of unexplained crying but I can't complain now that we know what to expect and know how to handle it (rocking for 15-20 minutes calms him down as long as he continues to be held).

He gets bored very easily though and since now he spends so many hours awake but cannot play or hold his head it's pretty tiring to always entertain him. I'd guess he's awake for about 5-6 hours and out of those only one (in small 15-20 min bits) he spends in his chair looking at hubby or outside. Do they usually require this much entertaining this early on? The little dude is not even 2 months.

On our own

Mom left today. In about 23 hours, 3 flights and a 6 hour drive she will be home and 23 hours away from us. After all the anxiety I felt about her coming here and the first couple of weeks filled with disagreements the rest of the time was very pleasant and now I wish she didn't have to leave. I already miss not having her here. Although all the cleaning and cooking was nice it has more to do with the fact that this was the first time we had a chance to spend time together and connect. When I was home she was always working and since I have moved here we've never spent more than a few days together and even then it was with a bunch more people. It's been nice and I'm looking forward to having her come back in a few months.

Today I also had my 6 week post partum check and everything seems to be back to normal. I'll be seeing my midwife for my yearly in December so we parted with a hug as to seal the end of this journey we took together. She has been amazing.

Third day at work

Today I sneaked at lunch and went home to see baby G. I got there just in time to see him finish eating and rocked him to sleep. Leaving for work knowing that I'll have to stay an hour longer to make up for lunch sucked.

Looks like I'll be able to work four 10 hr days and stay at home on Friday and Saturday while hubby is working. He gets to stay home with him Monday through Thursday. I'd be lying if i didn't say I'm jealous but between the two of us I am the one who absolutely has to keep a full time job. I am trying to learn to take satisfaction in things that are not as much fun as holding him or feeding him but that are just as important: providing financially, providing insurance and good health care, etc. Still, sometimes it doesn't make being at work any easier. Thankfully for most of the time I get distracted enough with work however that my heart doesn't just break in half thinking about how much I'd rather spend time with him than in front of a monitor.

An ultrasound and a specialist

In a couple of weeks I get to have another ultrasound of my breasts and go talk to a specialist about it. He will compare the two ultrasounds and possibly suggest a biopsy to rule out cancer. Given that I have no breast cancer history in the past couple of generations most likely the tumors are benign but I am still freaking out a bit about the whole thing. I feel like everything is kinda standing still until I find out exactly what's going on.

First day at work

I'm exhausted today and felt like i was going to faint a couple of times .. have got to get more rest.

I miss my little guy. His baby fuzzies are starting to fall off and yesterday he started putting his fingers in his mouth purposefully. He started cooing as well.