Exhibit One:
In other news I had my 6 week post-partum check-up yesterday. According to the doc, everything has pretty miuch gone back to where it's supposed to be. Yippee! Now I just have to stop being so fat. I've dropped nearly 30 lbs. since having him but my normal clothes still don't fit which could be a problem when I go back to work. I don't want to buy new clothes for two reasons: One, I am cheap as hell. Two, Buying bigger clothes would just allow me to wallow in my chunkiness and then I'd never be motivated to lose the weight. Playing chicken with my fat ass is also a dangerous game.
Calder is slowly but surely gaining worldwide noteriety. First was his majestic conquering of Facebook, then there was a Wal-Mart photo contest and now he is taking on academia. Yesterday my friend Erin came over and fed me dinner. Although she is super nice, the meal was not totally without ulterior motives. What she really wanted was to use Calder as her subject for a case study she needs to do for one of her classes. The tests were pretty much your basic child development stuff: moving, following objects with eye, vocalizing etc. Of course he passed with flying colors. My child is exceptional. Exceptionally evil that is. The whole time she was here, Erin kept remarking what a good baby Calder is. That is wholly untrue. Calder was putting up a front to make me look foolish, like I am complaining about nothing all the time. He even capped off his perfgormance by pretending to fall into a dead sleep from which he miraculously awoke five minutes after she left. Then the relentless screaming commenced. Perhaps Calder is in league with my landlord to slowly drive me crazy.
We are checking out a daycare this evening. Wish us luck!
Calder is six weeks old today! It's a good day! My new phone came! My Beers of the Month finally came!
Explanation: KT and Nate kindly signed me up for two months of a Beer of the Month club as "congrats on being able to drink again" present. The first months delivery came today with 4 different tasty looking beers inside. See?
Between breastfeeding and my fierce diet, the twelve bottles in this shipment should last me until the next one comes. Unless Bruce drinks them all of course.
In case anyone was considering buying me any gifts in the near future, here are some other ... of the Months that you could send my way.
Bacon of the Month
Cheese of the Month
Seafood of the Month
Jerky of the Month
and apropos of nothing, I present you with Bacon Salt
We are making progress on the daycare front. Bruce, Calder and I are going to visit a place on Thursday. (Yes, mom. She is licensed. I am not dumb) Wheeeee! I have also had several friends volunteer to be my Plan B "Nanny" if it comes to that. Thank god, I am doing enough CraigsList trolling as it is. I wish the stupid list of licensed daycare providers from Illinois Action for Children would come already. If you Google daycare and Chicago, you get more hits for doggie daycares than people one. That is just ridiculous. There is honestly something wrong with humanity if dogs have a better web presence than people. Then again, I update Elby's Dogster profile way more than I even look at my own MySpace so I am just part of the problem. (OK, maybe I am a little dumb) When that list finally comes through, I will start making phone calls. Hopefully I will have a cell phone by then. I awesomely borked my precious Chocolate last week by knocking if off the back of the couch and into a glass of water. The likelihood of the phone falling directly into a 3 inch diameter glass without knocking if over is very small but I managed it! (Fine. I am wicked dumb)
In Calder news, he is growing very fast. Although he still fits into the 0-3 month sized clothing, it won't last very long. I need to get out the stuff that is the next size up. I have even been rotating in some 3-6 month outfits that were laying around and when wearing them, Calder doesn't look like he is swimming in the clothes. The kid is a beast. A constantly eating beast. He's even got a little double chin. He is my own tiny, little Orson Wells. Calder is also having the same feet problem as his cousin Quentin. The footed sleepers fit his body but his feet and their freakishly long toes end up squished. Speaking of baby clothes, I have another issues with them other than the proliferation of pockets. My finger tips are freaking raw front constantly snapping and unsnapping things. Why are the snaps so tough to undo? Has no baby clothing maker every heard of Velcro? Anyhoo, a short hierarchy of baby clothes: Zippers > Snaps > Buttons. Buttons are just straight up craziness. Never put a kid to sleep in an outfit that buttons closed. You may find yourself blearily trying to staple your child back into his jammies at 3 am. Buttons are for overachievers, yo.
Calder has also started making his society debut. On Friday he went to his first restaurant, a nice sushi place in Old Town. Despite my most fervent prayers, Calder did not sleep at all during dinner. Fortunately, he seemed to respect the fanciness of it all and managed to keep the wailing to a minimum. It also helped that he had 8 teenagers competing with him to be the largest irritant to the rest of the patrons. On Sunday, Calder visited his first bar. Awwww. He takes after his mommy. It's not as bad as it seems, really. They serve food and stuff plus they eliminated smoking indoors in Illinois. After my softball game, the team headed to our sponsor bar. Bruce had practice at the same time as the game so we all went out for lunch with the team. Of course, in a loud bar with sports on eleventy million tvs, Calder slept like a lunk. Finally, for his grand public outing, Calder and his "friend" Gavin Jones are the guests of honor at the Super Bowl party. Pretty much everyone I know in Chicago will have met him after this shindig. It'll be fun to see the two babies side by side since Gavin's birth weight was approximately what Calder weighs now. That should be funny to see.
For once, this is gonna be about me dammit. This week is my last full week of paid leave. Although I don't have to go back to work for several more weeks if I don't want to, I will be really, really, ridiculously poor if I don't. Like, not paying rent poor. This means I need to find some sort of daycare situation and fast. Although, based on my sister's experiences, I knew it wouldn't be super easy to find a place for Calder, I did not realize it would be this insane. Apparently, around here, you need to get an infant on a waiting list quite early on. Such as, before the child is even conceived. That's just preposterous. I mean really what are you supposed to do? Be all, "hmmmm, I think I may be really irresponsible with birth control this spring, perhaps I should get on some wait lists just in case." Seriously. I haven't even gotten a chance to be outraged at the cost of daycare because I can barely find a place that has an opening for an infant. I found one ad on Craigslist that has a spot for a baby. We may go check out the place next week if Bruce has time but the way things seem, we will be lucky if they still have space by then. I will be keeping my fingers crossed.
If I can't find daycare for Calder in the next two weeks, I have crafted a potential plan B. Bruce will watch Calder at home three days a week while I go into work and then two days a week, he will go downtown and I will work from home with a babysitter to watch the, um, baby. Finding a two day a week nanny should be easier than finding a full-time daycare right? RIGHT??!!
Also, I am a big fat ass and have no clothes that fit. However, I am in love with my giant ta-ta's and would like to keep them.
Stop the presses. Calder stayed awake for over an hour yesterday without bawling. Today again he managed to stay up and play with me with only intermittent crying. Of course both of these times happened in the morning. Evenings he still wails like I am beating him with a cactus. Let me tell you, despite what the nurses told me, you should not wake a sleeping baby to feed him even if it has been 4 hours. You will end up with a writhing banshee until 3 am. Let sleeping babies lie.
Tomorrow is Calder's one month doctor visit. I am excited to find out what the little muncher weighs because it seems like all he does is eat. I am also looking forward to asking Dr. Merens about his cold. Although he is not always stuffed up anymore he still needs the boogies taken care of in the morning. Maybe I will ask her to take his temperature for me so I don't have to inflict that kind of emotional distress. I don't want to damage the child any more than I already have. I am pretty sure he will be telling his therapist about me and my constant nose suctioning several years from now.
Even more important than the doctors appointment, tomorrow is also Calder's one month birthday. Yay! However, this means I only have two weeks left on my paid leave. I still have no clue what I am going to do about that whole work thing. Hell, I may have been fired and no one's told me yet. I had kt checking on my email for me and she found out that my work computer profile wasn't active. So, um, hope that was some sort of mistake. But really, daycare. That's some overwhelming shit right there. How the hell does one even begin to locate the right place? Should it be near the house or near work? Home daycare or a center? Maybe I will win the lottery and I could hire a nanny. (haaaaaah) Perhaps Bruce should quit his part-time doctor office job and be a stay at home dad. Actually, that would be fab. I am trying to get him to tell me how much he makes a month from that job because if daycare ends up costing more than he makes, he should totally quit. He claims he wants to get a real full-time job so he can't stay at home but he has been talking that ish for ages. I will believe him when I see the interview suit come out of the closet. I would love to stay home with Calder but unfortunately, independent hockey coach does not come with the best health benefits. Damn me and my benevolent company.
Bruce and I are not experts in child development but we are pretty sure that Calder started smiling yesterday. I have seen the gas smiles and these were totally different. Plus, these smiles were in response to stuff we were doing, tummy rubbins and bloo-loo-loo-loots respectively. Calder's smiles are very cute of course since he is the cutest baby in the history of humanity. It's nice to see him happy right now since the boy has been so grouchy with his cold. He's till a bit snuffly but I don't have to suction the boogies nearly as often as I was a few days ago. Smiling also indicates another, more awesome situation. If Calder is smiling it means he has awake time where he is not eating or crying and that is a major relief. Quiet awake time means he's turning into a real person and not the screaming blob that he started out as.
And now for the important stuff. Can someone tell me why baby clothes have pockets? The pants Calder was wearing today had three. And a fake fly but that's a whole 'nother kettle of fish. (Seriously, the pants legs are held together with snaps, the fake fly isn't fooling anyone) What do babies need pockets for? What are they supposed to be carrying around? Extra binkies? Tiny little cell phones so the can call and cry at you remotely? Do they use the pockets to store the giant look of satisfaction they get when they take a particularly vicious dump? This annoys me because anyone familiar with women's clothing knows that it is nearly impossible to find nice things with pockets that actually function, hence giant annoying bags that end up as bottomless pits. Since it's election season and all I would like to state that I will throw my vote behind anyone who runs on a platform of taking all the pockets away from babies and giving them to women's dress pants. Who's with me?
We finally bathed the boy! He no longer smells bad an also isn't sticky to the touch. Calder seemed to like his first bath. He screamed bloody murder when I initially dunked him in the water but he gave that up pretty quickly. He didn't even protest when we were pouring the water over his head to rinse to soap out of his wispy little hairs. If I had known he'd like it this much we would have cleaned him ages ago. Of course he immediately peed all over me, himself and his little towel bag before we could get him dry and diapered but hell, at least he didn't drop a load.
Counting tonight's post bath watering, I have been peed on three times this week. I think I need a rubber apron. Or at least I need Bruce to be holding him more frequently. He hasn't been peed on recently at all. Lucky beotch.
Calder has been quite unhappy the past two days. He seems to have a cold which is making him very crabby. And difficult to feed. And put to sleep. And be in the same room with. I don't think he has a fever, not that I have checked yet. I am somewhat afraid to go there; it just seems kind of mean unless I'm really sure that it needs to be checked. Other than repeatedly sucking out the boy's nose, there does not seem to be much that can be done for him. I am willing to try any suggestions though.
Calder probably picked up this bug on his first road trip this past weekend. Bruce had to coach two games in Grand Rapids so Calder and I joined him. Calder was a great baby for most of the time, he slept almost the whole ride there and had no problems being in a strange place or being passed around by the hockey team. Lord knows no one loves a baby more than a passel of teenage girls. Two of them even volunteered to feed him and play with him for a while. Some people may have issues with letting random girls handle their newborn. Not me. My arms and tits need the rest.
I am not sure that parents automatically harbor unconditional love for their children. I think it's actually a very severe case Stockholm Syndrome.
I said this to my own mom; she did not think it was funny.
But it's difficult to tell under all his grime. I swear, we will get around to bathing him eventually. Perhaps his first real bath will coincide with the arrival of my fancy schmancy new camera. I will finally be able to document my child with more than 2.1 megapixels. I think my other two cameras will just die if shame when they meet their new sibling. Perhaps I should just send them to Outdated Technology Island where they can go hang with the betamax and the floppy disk. Ever since I ordered the new camera I have been loathe to take any new pictures. I don't want my child's memories to be recorded as inferior images. Not that I have missed much. My mom took plenty of pictures while she was here from the 27th to the 1st. Grandma was a godsend and probably prevented me from doing something crazy like getting a tattoo that says My Baby Hates Me or some such thing. Grandma also took nearly as many pictures of Elby as she did of the baby though, so the kid shouldn't feel too special. Grandma will be missed. Particlularly by Elby. Calder did take his first trip to Target today but really, that wasn't very interesting. Plus, I go there about eleventy hundred times a month so we can take pictures on another visit and just pretend. We also went to the doctor again today and the little bugger has gained a whole pound since his last visit. Not really surprising since all he does when he is awake is eat or cry and the only way to stop the crying is to feed him again.
I did take the prints of the first thousand or so pictures and put together some picture albums and and started working on his baby book. I need a favor from people though. If anyone has a newspaper from December 18th hanging around, lease let me know. I know it's sort of antiquated (who the hell reads actual newspapers anymore?) but leaving the page where it says "Newspaper clipping from the day I was born" blank seems odd. What if he grows up thinking that his mom didn't care enough to clip an article from the day he was born. Although he will most likely be thinking, "What the hell is a newspaper?"
... and happy two week birthday to Calder, the proud new owner of an actual belly button. It's a very cute outie for the time being. Just a few more days and the kid will be allowed to have an actual bath. This is a very good thing. In two weeks he has been given only 2 sponge baths and now he is filthy. I am not exaggerating. The poor child is sticky to the touch. We would have bathed him more but along with many other things, Calder really seems to hate sponge baths. Really, really hate them. Slippery, cold and angry babies are not a good thing. I hope a nice warm bath will be a pleasant change for both of us.
