Fame!

Calder and Elby are internet celebrities.

Why Don't I Write About the Baby for Once

No word on the results of Calder's head x-ray yet. Hopefully the doctor will get back to us as soon as she looks at the films. So I guess we just wait for now.

Calder is really starting to get his sh*t together now and I find it endlessly fascinating. I think I spent 20 minutes on Sunday watching him try to insert a toy frog into his mouth. To be fair I was trapped at a hockey rink in the 'burbs all day and was rilly, rilly bored. Although he is starting to pick things up in the pinchy style more, he's still mostly batting at stuff so it was pretty funny watching him trying to coerce the frog into his mouth with two tiny, clenched fists and a seriously pissy look on his face. Like, he couldn't understand why the from wouldn't just stick to his hand to he could munch on its legs. My son is a Frenchy in then making. In addition to becoming an enthusiast of French cuisine, Calder's also turned into a major drool factory. He slimes everything in his path. Our couch pillows make it look like we have been invaded by an army of slugs and when you carry him, you have to point him away from you to avoid getting slurmed. Even Elby is like, "Dude, you need to get your business under control". Despite the fact that his mouth is a faucet, Calder has started to vocalize quite a bit too. Variations of "Buh" and "Gwaaaah" seem to be the extent of his vocabulary for the time being but hey, it's not like he has that much to talk about anyways. He can only tell me about how this one time he pooped his diaper and it was gross before the story starts to get old.

Now that Calder is finally getting interesting I am going to start taking videos of him. Although I am sure some people would disagree, I just didn't think it was worth wasting the tape to film him crying/sleeping. The crying I would just as well forget and although when he is sleeping he is cuter than a pile of baby beagles looking at pictures of kittens, it still doesn't make for very interesting tv. Speaking of sleeping, the experiment to put him to bed while still awake is still on and going pretty well. We've only had two nights where I had to go in and feed him a bit more to stop him from crying. The other nights he either cries for a few minutes and then quiets himself down or else he goes right out. Like plop down, eyes shut, zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz. He takes after his mommy. How sweet. And I am hesitant to mention this because I don't want to jinx myself, but Calder slept through the night three times in a row. Great googley moogley I might eventually not feel like half baked ass from the lack of sleep. Though he woke up at 2 am this morning, for the three nights before that he stayed asleep until at least 5 am. If this pattern keeps up I may just stop acting like such a punchy bitch all the time. I will however continue to yell at the people on my softball team because if you try to stretch a single into a double on a field with an outfield that is 5 feet deep, you deserve whatever nasty things come outta my mouth.

Skokie It Is Then

After a very long, arduous search we have finally come to a decision about daycare. It's not ideal but it'll have to do because if Bruce can't ever go to work, we ain't gonna be able to afford daycare when we do get an ideal situation. On March 3rd Calder will begin attending Swift Child Care & Kindergarten in Skokie. This is the one I mentioned before that was a great center but waaaay out of the way. Every day we are going to have to drive Calder out to Skokie, come back to the house to park the car and then get on the train like we normally would. It's kind of a pain but it's much easier than trying to do the whole trip using only public transportation which would take a CTA bus, a Pace bus, the Metra and the L. Or some combo of three of those four. Who knows, maybe it won't be that bad. What will I bitch about then? Oh, my TV is breaking down, there ya go. TVs are the new dishwashers.

The only foreseeable problem left is Bruce's hockey schedule. What is going to happen on days when Bruce has to leave for hockey before I can get home from work? I have no idea. Maybe I can teach Calder to use all four forms of public transport. He's young and has much more energy than I do to hack that kind of commute. The only way to guarantee this won't be a problem is to have two cars, which means I am never going to rid myself of the Echo. I really, really wanted to be able to set that car on fire. It's not like we can get an new car now anyways since Swift is also a pretty expensive place for Calder to go. Coddamn it. I was only one number away from none of this being a problem. But no, my luck only comes in teeny, tiny doses. Instead of winning 10K or 250K, I win $150 in the Mega Millions. Boooooooo. One hundred and fifty does buy a lot of diapers however. So yay I guess.


Oh, Calder will go to get his head checked out on Monday morning at Children's. Hopefully everything will be normal. Keep your fingers crossed for him. We wouldn't want him to be stuck wearing some ridiculous head reshaping helmet. All the other babies would make fun of him. Hell, I'd make fun of him.

My Kid Has a Weird Head

Calder went to see Dr. Merens today for his two month check-up and most of it went pretty well. Poor little dear got 4 or 5 shots but apparently took it like a trooper. I guess anyway, I wasn't there. Since this was Bruce's first solo trip to the doctor I sent him with a list of questions to ask and this is what I managed to get out of him. Calder is now 12 lbs, 10 oz and 22 3/4 inches. 60th and 50th percentiles respectively. He head is 25 in circumference which is also normal. That's about the only thing normal about his head however. Although you can't really tell from most of his pictures, Calder has a large lump on the back left side of his head. This lump, a cephalohematoma really, is fairly big and has been there since birth. Initially is was soft and squishy and all the doctor people told us it was swelling and it would eventually go down. Well sure, the swelling went down but the lump is still there and now it's hard like the rest of his skull. Silly baby is deformed. Although Dr. Merens is not overly concerned about the lump (she said it looked much better), she did write out a prescription for Calder to get his head x-rayed at Children's just to check it out. As if daycare wasn't giving me enough to worry about. Now I can spend my time at work obsessively googling head deformities. Hott. He doesn't have an x-ray appointment yet because the hospital hadn't received the fax when Bruce called but we'll try again tomorrow.

Dr. Merens also suggested that we start trying to put him to bed before he falls asleep, something we have been afraid to do up 'til now because disturbing Calder while he is sleepy but not out usually results in a massive crying jag. While Bruce was at his hockey game I braced myself and attempted to put the boy to bed. After I got him in some jammies, fed him and read him a book he started to get droopy lidded so I put him in the pack n play (he's still in there A. because we thought me going back to work combined with a new sleeping arrangement would be too much change all at once and B. I am lazy and like the idea that I don't even have to get out of bed to feed him when he wakes up in the middle of the night). Well, a few goodnight kisses later I left the room with a promise to return in 10 minutes if he was being crabby, knowing in my heart that if he started crying, it would really be closer to five. Well it turned out that it was a non-issue. Calder went out like a light, never heard a peep out of him. I did check on him after ten minutes just to be sure he hadn't been kidnapped by the goblin king or something. I am not used to my son being so cooperative so I just assumed that he wasn't even in the room anymore. But yup, still there, fast asleep. Hoorah! However, Goblin King, Goblin King, if you wanna come hang out and watch American Idol with me, that'd be cool too.

Daycare Update #I Give Up

Every minute I spend dealing with our daycare situation, I die a little on the inside. To wit:

Last week Bruce sent me a posting from CraigsList about a home daycare place. It was perfect. Right by our house. Convenient for my commute to and from work. There were even photos attached and the place looked really big and bright. Yay! So today we went and looked at the place. It was really easy to get there and I did get right to work after the visit. Also the pictures didn't lie. It was beautiful, a home daycare that was essentially set up like a small center with the entire first floor of a two-flat given over to it. Real cribs in the sleeping rooms, not just some shabby Pack N Plays like we had seen at other places. There were toys and books all over the place, an arts and crafts area was set up off to one side and educational posters covered the walls. The place was as clean as any space that routinely housed a handful of children could be outside of a hospital. The girl we met, while only 24, was really sweet and seemed genuinely invested in the kids. Her mother, whom we did not meet, was also involved so we didn't really have to worry about her youth. The three children that attended the daycare were already there and appeared to be quite content. And there were only three kids so we could have left Calder there this morning since space was available immediately. Holy crap, after all the previous daycare shenanigans, this place was perfect.

EXCEPT IT'S NOT LICENSED BY DCFS

Shit.

(Sorry Mom, I am getting really upset about all this)

Two Months Old!

Well, it has been two months since I squeezed Calder's big round head outta my hoo-haa. Congrats little baby on surviving with me as a mother for that long. I think Vegas was only giving me about 3.5 weeks. Although I may not be the best or most capable mom in the universe, there are a few things I have learned over the past two months. I can now change a diaper in the dark in less than 2 minutes. I can (almost) use chopsticks left handed. I can remember way more children's songs than I had previously believed. (You will not even understand how fun it is to rock out to The Ants Go Marching while making up your own lyrics. The little one stops smack a mime? Heck yeah) I have also and most importantly, learned to function with little to no sleep. Anyone who knows me well may find this difficult to believe. I need sleep like a fat kid needs cake. Or should I say like I need cake cause I am still fat too. Going back to work while sleep deprived is a bit harder than I expected it to be but fotunately, my job is not particularly physically strenuous or mentally taxing. In fact, it's wicked easy. Like cake (Damn, there's that cake again) Despite this, sometimes I still tempted to go off like I am going to pump an dthen just take a nap in the phone booth. Who would even know? It's not like they are going to come in and check on me. When I am pumping I even put a sign on the door to prevent anyone from accidentally wandering in. I am pretty sure that would result in scars from which no one would recover. I would consider quitting at that point. Pumping is just too undignified. I suppose I am carrying on in my family's dairy farming tradition though.

As for the boy he is progressing well. He is becoming quite the champ at whapping the toys that hang from the handle on his car seat and on the Boppy Gym. His head control is pretty good too. I can't wait until it's good enough to get him into one of those sitter stools and a jumperoo 'cause that boys haaaates laying down. He likes to be up and looking at stuff and is quite fed up with the ceiling. He already tries to stand, all you have to do is keep him balanced upright and he will support his own weight for a few minutes. His life is not all puppies and cake however (I need to stop with all this cake shit) After some particularly vicious baby acne he now has some pretty fierce dry skin. Also possibly some cradle cap. I spend more time tending to his skin care regimen than I do my own. Hopefully I can ask is there's more than can be done for him when Calder goes to the doctor on Wednesday for his two month well baby visit. It couldn't be sooner. We are running low on diapers and are waiting to buy more until we find out how much he weighs. I am guessing somewhere around 12, 12 1/4. Bruce thinks he's somewhere in the 14s. Hopefully, Calder can keep his bowels in check until then so we don't run out of diapers before his visit. Otherwise I am going to be forced to tape dishtowels to his ass. Also, could someone please tell my husband that generic diapers are ok? He's so brand loyal it creeps me out. Especially since Pampers and Huggies are actually twice the price of generics. If we are going to have to send our kid to a 1500/mo daycare (still up in the air stop asking me about it) then we need to make some budget cuts. I am fairly certain that budget diapers are still of good enough quality. For the love of sock monkeys, they are for wrangling poo, how special do they need to be?

Oh, and Calder is now on Facebook. No I didn't do it. His page comes courtesy of one of Bruce's little hockey girls. So I guess, be his friend or something. Or poke him, whatever the frick that means. No really, could someone please explain the poking thing to me?

Happy Valentines Everybody!

Babies in the Age of Technology

Despite the fact that he can't read or write, hell, he can't communicate at all outside of screaming, Calder has his own email address. halfpint.turpin@gmail.com. I don't even have gmail. I am sure his Facebook page is soon to follow. I bet he will have more friends than me too. Don't bother emailing him though. I doubt I will remember to check it that frequently. I really justed wanted to make him an Amazon wishlist so I don't have to list every book he owns any time someone wants to get him a present. I am not a goddamn librarian.

Gratuitous baby photo:

I HATE DAYCARES

This whole process sucks major. We spent last week looking at four more daycare places. Two of those were great but waaay out of the way. Both of them would give me at least a two hour commute each way. That won't work. The others we looked at, although close to where we live, were kinda crummy and Calder would so not be down with that. I look at daycare as a chance to get him out of a filthy house for a while each day, not the chance to send him to another filthy house. Oh and after Bruce and I decided that we could totally eat ramen, cut down our cable bill and stop drinking (riiiight) in order to afford fancy downtown daycare place, they tell me now that the spot won't be open until April but if I want, I can put three bills down now to reserve it. WTF people. This daycare shite is a scam.

So today, my first day back at work, I spent a good portion of my time calling several other places but of course they are done full up. As I see it, Bruce and I are left with four options:

1. Put the money down on expensive downtown place and cobble together some sort of arrangement for the few days a week that Bruce goes down town. Since I am not spending money paying someone to watch my kid, I may as well pay someone for the possibility that maybe someday they might take care of him. Effing A, people. The temporary arrangement isn't clear yet. This could be any combination of friends and strangers. Basically, anyone willing to watch the boy for 35/day.
2. Suck it up and make the redonk commute to Skokie, Rogers Park, Logan Square etc. I don't like my house enough to want to spend any amount of time there right?
3. Go back an call a bunch of home care places around here until I die from exhaustion. This would seem logical but I really don't want to do it. For one, I am sick of this crap already. I don't want waste my time looking at some woman's living room any more. Plus a lot of the home care people are not native English speakers. Now I would have no problems leaving Calder with an ESL caretaker the issue is that I am really, really, ridiculously bad at understanding people with accents. Combine that with the fact that I am generally not listening to 30% of what people say to me (It's true. I will not hear approximately 1/3 of what you say to me) and my daily interaction with the daycare provider would go like this

Daycare Lady: Wwah wah wah waaah wah wah
Leah: What?
Daycare Lady: Wwah wah wah...
Leah: Um, ok.

Normally, this sort of thing wouldn't affect my life greatly because I don't really care that much about what other people are talking about whether it be about scrap booking, how much they hate work or "Hey, watch out for that pole." But this is my child we are talking about. I should probably know what the hell is going on with him.

4. Pray for a miracle such as a space opening up due to a tragic quad buggy accident. Would I even send my child to a daycare that has tragic quad buggy accidents? A this point? I have one word for you. Youbetcherass. Or perhps we could win the lottery and then I could buy a house near the nice daycare in Skokie so the commute would only be in one direction. Other scenarios, while not miraculous include convincing Bruce to quit all his other pursuits and
open his own daycare right here in our apartment or rearranging out whole place and hiring a live in nanny from Craigslist.

So after all of this you may ask, "How's the baby doing? Remember, you have a baby?" Calder is doing really well. He sleeps at least 4-5 hours on most nights and is spending his awake time as a happy little guy in increasingly longer chunks of time. We did have kind of a rough day on Sunday. Before softball I was trying to cut his nails and ended up making him bleed. I ended up crying for about twenty minutes about that. Then right as we were about to leave, I noticed that the cuffs on the jacket he was wearing were too tight and were making his hands turn red and swell. Since I didn't want his little hands to fall off I panicked and cut the jacket cuffs with scissors ruing a perfectly nice, perfectly expensive little baby warm up suit. I am going to write Rebok a strongly worded letter about their faulty, baby hand killing warm up jackets.

Looking to Swap...

One kidney for daycare for my infant.
If a kidney isn't needed, I can`also offer one of two of several other bodily organs.
Please contact with description of curriculum and a note detailing which organ is desired.

Yesterday I went and visited another daycare. This place is a center that is really close to my office. The place is really fantastic. They take kids, infant though kindergarden, and teach the hell outta them. All the children are given language lessons in Spanish and Japanese, even the babies. While I was there I saw a class of two-year-olds identifying letters of the alphabet. I am fairly certain I couldn't tell A from B when I was two. Even though it's located in a fairly busy area, safety isn't a cencern. The building is nice and secure, you have to be buzzed in and they even have a webcam so you can watch your kid all day and make sure the staff isn't handing out beatings or something. Sounds great right? It's so fantastic that it makes me completely effing depressed. Why? you may ask. Because it costs $1500/month to send a kid there. I knew what the tuition was before I visited so why did I go look at it knowing that it was so expensive? Originally, when I called just to ask about the place, the woman said there was a waiting list and to get on it you had to take a tour/ So I said sure, whatever just to be polite since she had just spent ten minutes telling me about the place. Plus, no one wants to tell a complete stranger that they are wicked poor so I agreed to a tour since I was going down to the area for a meeting anyways. I figured the trip would be a nothing gained, nothing lost kinda thing. We don't have the money but it doesn't matter since they don't have the space. Great. Fine. Whatever. So of course, at the end of my tour, this chicky tells me that one of their families may be moving and that there would be an open space in th baby room. God fucking dammit. I am so in love with this center, they may have an opening and now I have to tell this lady that after all this song and dance, we can't do it. Shit. So I chickened out, told her to call me when they find out for sure, went and bought a lotto ticket and then went to the Gap. I hate myself.

Oh, Danggit!

At least the baby's still cute.

Daycare Updates

Yesterday Bruce, Calder and I went and visited our first daycare. It was a small in-home place run by a woman named Nancy. She seemed really nice and appeared to run a great place. All of the kids were just hanging around playing together and being content. While we were there three different parents arrived to collect their young 'uns and all three tots started screaming when they realized it was time to leave. If that's not a ringing endorsement, I don't know what is. Bruce has reservations because Nancy's home is a bit "far away". It's less than 4 miles from our apartment. In Chicago city terms, that's near unreachable. It doesn't help that her home is by the Blue Line which isn't really convenient for either of us but it would only require one bus to get from our place to hers so it's not un-doable. Bruce is just lazy. And anti-bus. Actually, Bruce is just being a humongous pain in the ass about all of this. Claiming I know more about this ('Cause I have has so many other children that I have put in daycares. I am like I fungus, I send millions of spores out and find them nice daycares to stay in where they can develop into well socialized mushrooms.) he hasn't helped me call any centers or home providers. Jackass. So today, after I waited 20 minutes for the Screamapillar to fall asleep in order to allow me to make the phone calls and set up some more visits, he questions how we are going to afford daycare at all. Um, isn't this an objection you should have raised, I dunno, 11 months ago? He isn't just being unhelpful, he is being straight-up counterproductive and I am going to have to slap him in the face with a trout or something if he doesn't get with the program soon. I need to be back at work by the 11th cause we ain't gonna be able to afford nothin' if I'm not getting the dolla dolla bills y'all.