hair-brained mama

thanks for all of the happy birthday wishes! between this blog and facebook and all of the sweet phone calls i got, i felt so loved, it was wonderful!

i had a great birthday. tristan woke up at 6am but i had no idea because josh got him out of bed and kept him quiet until he had to leave for work at 6:30, so i got to sleep in a bit. then my friend sara showed up with a starbucks mocha for me and a birthday gift. the phone kept ringing all day and then josh got home from work early. he was going to bbq some carne asada, but it was raining, so we decided to order in some greek food instead. it was SCRUMPTIOUS, though next time i'll be tempted to order tristan his own meal since the little scavenger kept begging us for scraps even though he had already eaten!

while we were out to pick up the food, we stopped at the grocery store to grab a few ingredients for josh's amazing deep dish brownies that he made for me. tristan usually loves wandering up and down the aisles, giving strangers huge grins, but for some reason every time i tried to put him down, he'd start fussing and cling to my legs. once we got home we discovered why he wouldn't walk anywhere....in my haste to get the food, i had put his shoes on the wrong feet! never done THAT before. poor little guy was getting his legs all twisted up!

after dinner i relaxed in a bubble bath with a glass of wine while the smell of brownies wafted upstairs. once tristan was in bed, josh and i enjoyed large glasses of milk with his mouth-watering brownies and cuddled in bed while watching a dvd on our laptop. oh yes, and i got some great gifts as well, including money from tristan to get a pedicure at a spa!

my pedometer officially sucks, so i admit i haven't been wearing it lately. i took 10 steps with it on and checked it and it said i took 23 steps. as much as i appreciate its generous spirit, i'd rather have something more accurate, so i think i may look into getting a better one. especially since sara and i have been walking 4 miles the past 2 days.

tristan is enjoying the semi-freedom of his wearable blanket by choosing to sleep on his tummy. i really hope i don't jinx myself by saying this, but he's been sleeping through the night regularly for about 5 days now. he no longer has 2 naps a day, but instead has one nice, long nap. last week i was trying to push the timing of his nap later and later and found that he'd only nap for about an hour, so instead i brought the timing waaaay forward, to 10:30 and that must be the magic number because he's been napping for about 2 1/2 to 3 hours and it is WONDERFUL! he still wakes up early in the morning no matter how late his bedtime is, so we put him to bed around 7pm and enjoy a nice evening alone. life is good. :)

28 on the 28th

party. tristan's crib. 11:30pm.

so, the whole swaddle-weaning thing is not going so well. who knew that, even after i'd sewn the armholes of the wearable blanket shut, my son would somehow get his arms out of the neckhole? you'd think that being so intent on breaking free, he would be happy once less confined, but no way. tonight was the first night that i really tried VERY hard to get him to sleep with his arms free. 30 minutes of tears later, i gave up and swaddled his arms. he dropped off to sleep for about 15 minutes (enough time for me to get nice and comfortable and sleepy in my bed) before escaping AGAIN. so now, rather than being interrupted from my precious sleep, i've decided to vent a bit and get interrupted from the computer instead. so far i've re-swaddled him 4 times and it's not even midnight yet. oh, there he goes again...

its times like this when the thought of having another baby scares the spit out of me. how am i supposed to handle a nursing infant who doesn't know night from day, when my oldest hasn't really gotten the hang of sleeping through the night yet and considers 5:30am a great time to wake up for the day?

my mom has promised me that having such a tricky child will ensure that my next one is a breeze. i've told her that means that if my next child despises sleep as much as tristan does, then she gets to keep it!

oh no, don't go thinking i'm about to announce that i'm pregnant or anything. we're not planning on making another little person yet, but as the months go by and the time we agreed upon looms closer, i find myself getting nearly panic stricken with the idea of having two.

that is when i breathe deeply in and out, and while i'm breathing out, i'm praying for God's peace to surround me and to take all of my anxieties away. there. that feels better already.

he's been quiet for about 10 minutes. dare i get warm and cozy in bed again? yes, i think i dare :)

a confession

okay, so maybe i have two confessions. the first one being that i forgot to put on my pedometer twice this week and then today i didn't think that there were enough steps on it by this evening, so i let tristan play around with it while i lazed on the couch and when he was done with it i was quite proud to see that i had taken over 9000 steps with his help. so i don't think i'll qualify for the whole walking-club-step-comparison thing this week.

my next confession is more difficult for me to admit to. its a bit humbling. you see, josh and i, in our two years of marriage before becoming parents, often talked about things we would NEVER allow our children to do. we'd see kids throw the biggest tantrums in the grocery store or hear stories about five year olds who still needed a pacifier at night or imagine the disruption of a child sleeping in our sacred bed with us and we'd shake our heads and say "OUR kids won't do that." well, so far we've managed to avoid most of the typical "accidental parenting mistakes" that others have made. (and i pause here to clarify that i'm not suggesting that co-sleeping is a mistake, as i know that many parents choose to do this on purpose; i'm just using it as an example of something that we never wanted to get into) however, there was one tiny little thing that we never expected to become such a big deal.

it all started when tristan was only weeks old and had just found his voice. he cried and cried in the evenings for hours and we had no clue how to shut him up. i happened to find a dvd that my sister in law had given us called "the happiest baby on the block" (which is great for new parents, by the way) and it showed different ways to help calm a crying baby. one of those ways was The Swaddle.

as soon as we had watched that dvd, i dug out the Swaddle Me blanket i had gotten before tristan was born and put it to good use. its a bit difficult to say how well it worked because, as you well know, tristan pretty much cried his eyes out for the first 6 months of his life. (okay, perhaps that's a bit of an exaggeration, but it sure felt like it!) but i do know that we relied on that swaddle to keep him asleep at night because as soon as one of his little arms broke free, he would start wailing away. soon it became apparent that we needed a second Swaddle Me blanket just in case the first one got puked on or peed on or pooed on. that happened a lot. then, it became apparent that he was getting a bit large for both of his blankets, so we got the next size up. finally, when he outgrew that one, i thought i may as well try to get him used to sleeping without it. um, that didn't go too well. basically, if i put him to bed with even one arm free, all i'd hear was him babbling away in his crib for 30 min, then he'd start whining for 10 min, then start crying for another 10 min then he'd start SCREAMING until i went into his room and re-swaddled him tightly. as soon as both of his arms were securely wrapped, he'd fall straight asleep. i decided that he wasn't ready to be un-swaddled yet, so i went online and ordered the biggest size they had.

well, time went on and tristan grew bigger and soon he grew out of that biggest Swaddle Me blanket. i tried getting him used to being un-swaddled again, with the same results. in desperation, i ripped an old pillow case in half, wrapped that around his body, then used the velcro wrap from his smaller blanket to wrap around the bottom half of his arms and, finally used that largest blanket to wrap around the top half of his arms, leaving his legs free. this seemed to work fine, but i can't tell you how many times i wondered, as i secured his arms under 3 layers of cloth, how in the world i was going to teach his future wife how to swaddle her husband-to-be, just so he'd sleep well at night.

since his first birthday, tristan has been escaping his swaddle in houdini-like fashion. i've no idea how he manages to wriggle out, but every time he does, he wakes up crying his little eyes out. since they don't make Swaddle Me blankets for one year olds, i had to get creative. i ended up buying this Wearable Blanket in XL and i simply sewed the armholes shut! then i wrap one of his old swaddle blankets around his arms to keep them tight. my hope is that eventually i'll be able to loosen the swaddle so that he gets used to it being not so tight, then i'll cut open the armholes so he can put his arms out if he wants to.

THERE! my (long winded) secret is out! i've been so embarrassed to tell anyone that my 12 month old son is STILL swaddled. but now you know. so, my request is that you comment and share with me that one thing you vowed your children would never do.....but ended up doing anyway

the new Queen of Sedentary

so, i decided to take lovella up on her walking challenge and purchased myself a pedometer the other day (every time i say the word pedometer, josh cracks up because he says that it sounds like a medical tool used to measure feces or something). to be honest, before i had even strapped the thing onto my waist, i was already feeling a bit smug about blowing lovella's goal of 7000 steps out of the water. i mean, i run after a toddler all day long PLUS take a walk every day. i thought it would be a piece of cake. hmmm...well, i guess i now know that i DON'T walk as much as i though i did. but only 4785 steps? i'm feeling a bit disgusted with myself, but also hopeful because now i am even more motivated to get my step count up. especially since i've posted it on my blog for all to see. i'll let you know when i reach 7000 and then i'll up my goal even more.

my mom's visit was great. it was nice and relaxing to have her here all to myself! unfortunately, tristan got sick a few days after she arrived, then had to get his 12 month shots, so he wasn't quite the picture of happiness that he normally is. by the way, he now weighs nearly 27lbs and is still in the 95th percentile for his height and weight. it was great leaving tristan with josh one afternoon and going out for lunch and a bit of shopping with my mom. now that i'm in the process of weaning tristan, i'm finding the freedom so nice. right now i still nurse him once a day (before bed), but i'll wean him off of that feed this week hopefully and then i'll have my body back to myself!! that is, until we decide to make another baby and start this whole thing over again. *******************************************************************************

yesterday josh's parents invited us to go to the souplantation with them for dinner. since tristan woke up at 4:45am and didn't go back to sleep until a short nap later on (i know, poor me!) we knew he'd need an early bedtime, plus josh got home from work early. so we decided to eat an early dinner. we ate at 3:30. it was actually quite nice! we filled up on all sorts of lovely salads and soups and rolls and, of course, desserts and were in no hurry to make it back home. tristan was asleep by 6:30pm and josh and i watched the movie "everything is illuminated" until our eyelids got too heavy. (although it is a Premium Film, we've seen it once already, so we turned off the Rigid Search of Alex and the Jew named Jonfen in order to Repose). we turned out the lights and went to sleep at 8:30!! i've been known to retire to bed at such an hour before (especially during tristan's first months of life) but i've NEVER seen josh go to bed so early before. it was awesome! i slept like a log until 5:45 when tristan demanded to be let out of bed and i felt splendid :)***************************************************************************

i'm leaving you with "before" and "after" pictures of our backyard. see what a difference a few inches of rain can make? we'll be sure to enjoy our temporary grass before it dries up and disappears until next january.

before the rain

after the rain

A New Mom's Attempt at Survival Part VII: Epilogue

i suppose i can no longer call myself a "new mom" now that i've been one for a whole year already. over the past few days i've done a fair bit of reminiscing about the last year, especially what was going on in our lives exactly one year ago. one year ago today was our first full day home from the hospital with our precious little bundle. my mom arrived in the evening and everything is sort of a blur in my mind because i was very much in shock and in pain and more in love than i've ever been before.

i've learned more about myself in the past year than i have in the previous 27 years put together. waking up this year on january 1st to tristan's little voice chatting in his crib, i felt an overwhelming sense of accomplishment. i've made it! i have made it through an entire year and not only is my child still in one piece, but i'm in one piece as well! i tiptoed into my little boy's room and began singing "happy birthday to you!" and the smile that lit up his chubby little face is one i'll never forget.

it was a wonderful day. tristan napped well and awoke to his cousins and other family members ready to bestow him with gifts. his eyes lit up when he saw everyone there and they kept shining all day long. he got some amazing gifts including super cool books and enough pants to open his own clothing store! he enjoyed his first taste of sugar, though after a few small bites of his cupcake, he was done and happily watched us all enjoy our cupcakes. after the food and presents we all went to a nearby park where he smiled and laughed and smiled some more as he went down slides and on swings and played in the sand. i know he is a blessed little boy to have so many people that love him dearly in his life.

so, what exactly have i learned in the last year?

*i've learned that, amazingly, my body is able to function on 2 hours of sleep. my mind is another story.

*i've learned that when my own baby smiles up at me for the first time, everything else suddenly doesn't seem to matter as much as it did before.

*i've learned not to be ashamed to admit that i need help. in fact, it's okay to beg for help when i really need it. and if that help comes in the form of medication, that's okay too.

* i've learned that i have some amazing friends and family who genuinely care and support me. i've learned just how God's amazing love for me is reflected in the people who serve Him.

* i've learned how to make my own baby food.

*i've learned (for the most part) to do what is best for my own child despite what others may think, or the advice they may give.

*i've learned patience....and selflessness.... and that the phrase "this too shall pass" is really true.

*i've learned that just when i think i've got this whole motherhood thing down, something else changes to throw me off and keep me humble.

*i've learned that my husband is a greater daddy than i ever dared to hope for.

*i've learned how to change a poopy diaper in all sorts of odd places. and how to nurse in public without flashing everyone.

*i've learned that God has given josh and i such a great responsibility, but also such a wonderful blessing. and i've learned to thank God for this blessing every single day, no matter how hard that day has been.