(Don't) Mind the Gap

Please ignore the man behind the curtain. And the absolutely massive gap in our postings. What can I say -- things have been a wee bit crazed. There was buying a house which went through successfully and apparently just in the nick of time before all the lenders decided that yes, you really do need to have real downpayment money. And see, I am not opposed to the idea of needing to put a little on it considering what the financial instituation is doing, but in this area, 5% can easily be $25,000 and who is realistically going to be able to save that much to put down on a first house? Also, I completely acknowledge that it is a choice to live here and we could live in an area of the country that is less expensive, but with our families being here that matters to us and hello, then we couldn't indulge in another major stressor namely, Brian's job.

But before we get to that back to the house. So when we found a property that was being foreclosed upon and was actually in an area that was a very modest drive from most things (in particular both of our employers) and was actually in our price range, we went for it. Then there was the moving (which technically isn't finished yet so let me give a shout out to our entire library that is still in the apartment along with all the stuff in the storage room.....) and all the time Brian has to put in painting the new house and laying flooring before we moved in because so help me, the carpet was so intensely skeezy I think I might have come down diptheria if I had to let Abigail touch it. Then shortly after we actually managed to move in, a routine plumbing call turned into the need for a video inspection which showed that the waste water pipe running under the yard had basically crumbled.

Now $8600 we have a new pipe. And I even got to sign a waiver saying that this work was going to have a serious impact on our yard. That bit was in BOLD. As if the fact that the plumbing company told me that there would be a backho wasn't enough of a clue. I mean, who has been suing them over some petunias that I needed to sign this? But whatever, the point is we get to do fun things like flush toilet paper again.

But yes, back to those stressors. So Brian is wrapping up his first year in first grade at Sidwell (if he's very good he might just graduate to second grade!)...no, but seriously, it has been an amazing experience and there are times we can't quite believe that he is teaching at one of the most progressive schools in the country and working with children of people who don't just KNOW PEOPLE but who ARE PEOPLE. Like real people that you politically would care about as opposed to simply celebrities (for example, if we had stayed in Atlanta another year, chances are decent Brian would have been teaching P. Diddy's oldest because his mama is apparently keeping it real by keeping her boy in public school. Who knew?) But new grade + new school + private school being totally different than public school = serious professional stress. After Brian's first full year as a teacher, I said, "wow I never want to go through THAT again" (and we aren't even talking about it being my job). Yeah, famous last words. Not quite as bad, but definitely brings back the PTSD-esque memories. So we are in the final crush before the end of the school year and I will be glad for him to have a year under his belt. Teaching is never easy, but having some experience in a particular situation makes a world of difference.

As does co-teaching apparently. While Brian has enjoyed the times that it has been just himself and the students, he is getting a lot out of team teaching (and that is really team teaching as his co-teacher has 15 years in first grade, half of that at Sidwell). And that makes me feel better because he has always been such a collaborative person that I see him grow in ways that wouldn't necessarily have been possible working on his own. But it also means that he now has a "work spouse" -- at least I have a cuter butt than Jeff so Brian still has a reason to come home ;)

My full time day job has been pretty copesetic; I've gotten some pretty nifty assignments in the last few months and I am even working on a paper with a colleague. Plus, I've had the chance to do some work for Princeton Review's R&D department on some new GRE material and I have really enjoyed that. I have always gotten a kick out of technical writing as well as editing and this has been very much along those lines.

The point being: our emotional asses have been roundly kicked by all of the "life changes" we have been choosing to engage in. Yeah, choices. Makes adulthood seem less glamourous than the posters.

But wait, you say, isn't there a third party in all this brou-ha-ha? And yes, in fact, that third party is now fully mobile. Abigail's mobility kicked in at right around 12 months. She crawled for maybe a week, but basically went from sometimes scooting when she sat to walking. And now that is running when possible, climbing at all opportunities and doing her best to make it through doorways and gates to find out what tempting fun might be on the other side. Beyond the physical explosion, there is the verbal one as well. As of today, she is probably up to about 25 words and that includes "bubble" that just got added yesterday. We have lots of animal names and sounds as well as the occasional phrase (bless you, how are you) -- not everything is consistent, but it is clear enough. And she has a great sense of humor which I can tell you keeps her alive when she then also decides to start shrieking for no reason or tries to stay up for an hour in the middle of the night. Not so much with that as your little baby self needs to go back to sleep and is not nearly grown enough to want to be cruising the infomercials at 2 AM. Oh and have I mentioned that she is still ginormous? 15 month checkup put her official stats at 33.75 inches and 28 lbs 13 oz. For those of you still not up on the CDC growth charts (and really as if you have anything better to do?) that makes her the size of your average two year old by height and almost two and a half year old by weight. Apparently we grow them to grow fast. Mercifully she has slowed down enough that we have been in the same size diapers for about four months now. I think that is the longest we've been in any size....and she still has a few more pounds to go before moving up again....woohoo!

I feel the need to wrap up with the political thought I had last night when talking to Brian in our power-outage-extra-dark house: that though I am sad to see Clinton leave the race and not get the nomination, I at least get to say to my daughter that someone who looks like her became president (can you tell I am hoping for the best on this one?). And Brian pointed out to me that I could have said that whether it was Obama or not...and that is true which also makes me happy. But at the moment I am still bucking for a combined ticket. Can we talk about a political juggernaut and capturing the spectrum of voters? I believe we can. If we can all just get along.

Teeth and Hair and She Isn't Even a Teratoma

Abigail was eight months old yesterday and I am having a hard time believing she had really been around that long. Yet all of her changes and growth would indicate that this is in fact entirely probable. As of yesterday, she weighed in at 23 pounds, all long legs with thighs like cedar trees and round baby belly and glowing baby cheeks. She starting cutting her first tooth earlier this month, a bottom left, only to have the right one start popping out just basically a day later. Now the top two are doing the same thing, one right after the other. She is taking the same "go big or stay home" approach to teething that she did to pooping. I was wondering when her teeth would start showing up as there had been lots of drooling for months, but nary a bump. Not that I was begging for her to have them, but one does like to be aware when these things are happening.
In addition to this dental accomplishment, she now sits well enough to enough baths in the "grown up" tub. Can I tell you how nice it is to not have the entire bathroom soaked with her splashing in the baby tub? Now she can splash all she wants and she will have to get a whole lot bigger to be able to soak the bathroom now, although I know that that too will come in time. This still has not changed her utter dislike of being put into her PJs, but at least just about every other aspect of her nighttime routine is pretty settled, right down to taking her vitamins.
But I think the vitamins are contributing to another recent problem: constipation. We started her on solids right at the end of August and that was when things started stopping. At first, it was my fault because I was starting her on banana and banana can be very binding, but we got that moving after a pooping hiatus. From there, I have been trying to get prune juice into her (and limit her banana intake), but man, does she not like it. I even beefed it up with Karo; however, getting it into her has been a whole other matter. I have tried feeding her oatmeal which she tolerated for two days and then stoutly refused. Last night, I even tried making baby oatmeal with peach nectar (because she LOVES peaches), but that was just as much of a no-go. I managed to sneak some of it into her with her pears, but we will see how long that ruse lasts. At this point, she is eating applesauce, mango, sweet potatoes, banana, butternut squash, carrots, pears, peaches and avocado. In terms of purees, meats will be next in another month or so, but until then I am trying to figure out how to start her on finger foods.
Ah yes, finger foods. For most parents, the issue is "how can we keep things OUT of her mouth?" so the question of how to get the baby to try a food is a little moot because if you put it in front of her, she'll pop it right in there (at least once). Not so with our little P-nut (who is now also D-sticks for drumsticks due to the size of her legs) who will put her fingers, our fingers, her burp cloths and that is about it into her mouth. Every now and then you will see her chew on one of her toys, but that is a rare thing. Now I am not complaining about not having to be concerned that every little scrap of paper and bit of trash will make it into her maw, but it does complicate the prospect of getting her to pick up something solid and yet edible and get that into her. However, I know that this too will come in time; I highly doubt we will be following her around the elementary school cafeteria waiting for her to open her mouth so we can spoon in lunch. And by the way, the complete and total trust exhibited by her baby-bird-way of sitting there popping her mouth open for another spoonful of something she likes is incredibly endearing. More proof that cuteness is one of the ways they protect themselves for their own survival.
And this of course makes me think of her adorable hair! Now that she isn't on her back all the time, the back of her head is having a chance to hold on to its hair plus the stuff on top is getting longer. We even occasionally get a baby tangle and her cowlick is only getting longer with its curly infrastructure. She isn't a huge fan of having her hair brushed, but puts up with it galantly and I love watching what her locks are doing, although I know that all of this may well change drastically. Daddy and I still plan on dreadlocking her in a few more years, much to the chagrin of both of the grandmothers.....
I have also been superpleased with her adjustment to daycare. When Brian started teaching at Sidwell the beginning of last month, she started with their infant daycare program and it has been a wonderful experience. I love the fact that she is around other little ones, although she is currently the youngest, and her teachers are very loving, very practical women. It makes me comfortable knowing that my parental standards and requests are being honored plus she gets to be on campus with Daddy! That is always good too. She is sitting up so well and reaching for things further and further away from her and though they keep working with her on tummy time, she continues to hate it so I think she will go straight from pulling up to walking and skip crwaling. At the moment, she loves to be held to standing and if you put your hands out, she can pull herself up basically without help, but can't do so while pulling on a stationary object (doesn't quite have the dexterity of grip for that yet).
However, even with all of these changes, she is still nursing well and I am so grateful for that because of all the work that it has taken for us to get to this point. I have even basically abandoned her nursing pillow because she is long enough to kind of half-sit, half-recline in my lab, even when in the glider. And I absolutely love that. I am still pumping for her bottles and nursing her pretty much on demand when we are together. She is still getting up about once a night to eat, but that is really OK with me because there are plenty of times when she rustles around and goes back to sleep so it's not like I have to be on call every hour or anything.
And speaking of sleeping, we have even been able to stop swaddling her! She has been napping unswaddeld at daycare, but still getting wrapped up at night. With the acquisition of some warmer PJs, we have been moving away from the swaddle and now I love seeing how much she is able to migrate around her crib in her sleep. She has even started talking in her sleep, as much as babbling can be considered talking. That usually means she is close to waking up, but it is pretty trippy to go into her room, hear her carrying on and realize she is still completely out. Silly girl!
And that makes me think of my new favorite thing: the Ergo baby carrier we got. I am all about baby wearing and had been so disillusioned when she was really little and hated every carrier we put her in (Bjorn, Snugli, sling). She learned to tolerate the Bjorn, but that became anathema by early summer. The sling was more consistently successful, but it broke - in the sense that the fabric ripped away from the stitched backing (downside of gi-normous babydom, I suppose). But the Ergo has been great - she is comfy, it is incredibly comfy to wear and she only starts to complain if I try to stand absolutely stock still; so long as there is some kind of movement she is cool. And I have even been able to get her to nap in it! Even while hiking at Great Falls! In October heat that could have been early June! So I am all about our Ergo right now and hope to continue using it until she can really walk all on her own.
So downsides? Trying to figure out the balance of two full time working parents. Our commute. Other than that, mamahood is a kickin' ride. Even when I feel like it is kicking me down the stairs ;)

She's Gaining On Us!

Abigail has just recently turned five months old and this is the first "month birthday" on which she has not seen a medical professional. There were formal check-ups at one, two and four months. We had her ears pierced at three months. On each of these occasions, she was weighted and measured so I wanted to keep the trend going of having length and weight measurements even if she didn't need to be seeing a doctor. And so drum roll please...she is now weighing in at 18 pounds, 6 ounces and measuring in at 25 1/2 inches. This is great for five months and so when I say she is gaining on us, I mean it quite literally. I couldn't be more proud of her weight gain because she is still being exclusively breastmilk fed which means that the food I am making for her is nourishing her so well.
But since I also work full time, this isn't just about me, this is also about people like her Nana and her daddy and her aunts, Susan and Stacey, making sure that she gets her bottles of expressed milk. I work hard to pump it out and they have worked hard to make sure she drinks it. The bottle had been a point of contention with Abigail, but she seems to have settled into a good pattern with Brian now that he has been home with her every day for just over a month. He has worked out his own strategies with her to get her to eat and not be too disgruntled about the fact that it isn't coming straight from a breast.
However, she isn't just gaining in weight, although that is wonderful. She is also gaining in her abilities. She seems to want more than anything to be able to sit up though she lacks the needed strength and coordination. She still doesn't particularly like to be on her tummy, but will roll onto her side and sort scoot/migrate herself across the floor given enough time. Abigail wants to be mobile, wants to be exploring and though this leads her to some very loud protests when strapped into her carseat for longer than she thinks she should be, it is incredibly gratifying and wonderful to see.
She is also gaining in her sense of humor and her sense of fun. While I do my best to be creative in playing with her, this is really where Brian shines the brightest. He can turn anything into a game and I am so glad he has this summer with her because I see him laying down the foundations for a great sense of fun and enjoyment in just interacting with her world. I want her to be able to be entertained by almost anything and he is stimulating her curiousity as well. I may have a hard time with that once she is genuinely mobile and able to be much more destructively "curious", but we'll cross that bridge when we come to it ;) For now, we are so proud to be the parents of a P-nut who is making gains across the board!

In Daddy We Trust

Before we ever got pregnant, before we ever started trying, Brian and I talked a lot about why we wanted to be parents and when we thought that should happen. We went back and forth on reasons and timing. Sometimes we were more against it than for it. All of this seemed like good preparation - if you are going to make such a big decision, you hope to do so with some real consideration for why.

The one thing I never doubted though was that Brian would be a great father. I trusted in that even when I wasn't sure how I would do as a parent myself. Not only did he have this amazing rapport with children, the instinct just seemed to be there. I felt like he could be a work outside the home daddy, a work inside the home daddy, really just about any kind of daddy that he set his mind too.

But then there came the struggles of this past school year. He was in an immensely challenging classroom and there were times when I began to doubt whether he could put the emotional resources into being a stay at home parent during the summer. As his time to take over at home approaches, I became more and more apprehensive. However, since I still wanted to believe that he could do it and because he actually needed to do it (our daycare would not kick in until the beginning of September), we forged ahead. His first day or two and home with Abigail were not confidence inspiring for me because she fought him on bottles, on naps, on just generally being at home with him, but I kept telling myself that it would just take time.

And now I am glad that I simply let it unfold. He is learning about her patterns. He has worked to get in tune with what her signals are. He has demonstrated more patience for her at times than I might have been capable of in the same situation. And seemingly crucial for her, he can sit in a room with radio static playing which helps to put her to sleep, but which gives me the most blistering of headaches.

Hearing about him work with her (since I am not there during the day, I have to get the reports via phone) and then seeing her smiling face at the end of a good day makes me realize how well placed both my instincts and my trust were. I knew that he was the person with whom I wanted to parent and I was glad that I kept my anxieties to myself and simply let things play out. Brian is exactly the capable parent and wonderful daddy that I knew he could be; I just needed to let that come to the surface on its own. It makes me very happy for Abigail that she has someone so terrific to be part of the team that is raising her and it makes me happy for myself as I see this wonderful dimension develop in my partner, my best friend, my spouse.

Baby Weight

This is where I am going to be totally shallow about body image, but bear with me. Before getting pregnant, I had a few concerns about what pregnancy would do to my body and whether I would ever be the "same" again. While I very much wanted us to have a child, I didn't necessarily want the experience to turn me into a "before" picture for one of those faddy diet pills that isn't really proven to work, but makes millions anyway. This was compounded by the fact that before I got pregnant, I wasn't in Playboy bunny shape anyway - heavier than I needed to be, not obese, but somewhere in between.

So during my pregnancy, I watched what I ate, but wasn't fanatical about it. There was enough going on that it wasn't like I parked myself on the couch with hot and cold running Ben and Jerry's for weeks on end (not that one wants one's Ben and Jerry's to be hot, but you get the idea). For the first part of my pregnancy, we were wrapping up in Atlanta, which meant finishing up with my full time job, finishing up two summer school classes, teaching two classes of my own and finishing up with some tutoring students while also packing for the interstate move. Then when we got here, I was working part time for The Princeton Review office in Northern Virginia which meant a bus-to-train-to-train-to-bus commute plus teaching many evenings and some weekends. All of this while job hunting and trying to go on interviews, etc. Then I got a job - yay! - in November, but I still had teaching commitments that carried me through the end of January so I was then balancing new daytime job plus some continued evening commitments. It wasn't until February that my evenings freed up. With all of this going on, I did still try to exercise as routinely as I could. Some days that meant simply climbing stairs at work, but hey, you do what you can.

But for the most part, it seemed to work. I managed to gain only a reasonable amount of weight and by the time Abigail was six weeks old I was back to my pre-pregnancy weight. This was a great relief to me because my one goal was to not have the pregnancy pack on any extra baggage. I attributed most of this to the fact that she is being exclusively breastfed which means an extra 500-800 calories a day is leaving my body in the form of food for her. Well, I have been fortunate enough to have this trend continue. I haven't been big on weighing myself, but I just had a physical and I am now several pounds less than when I got pregnant. While Abigail is certainly a lot of work and I have been trying to exercise at least some these days, I have to keep chalking it up to the breastfeeding. I pump routinely when I am not with her and feed her on demand when I am. I think that this extra expenditure is keeping me from becoming something that would qualify for the Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade and I couldn't be happier about this little side benefit.

On the other side of the weight coin is Abigail's poundage - she is gaining like a champ and that couldn't be making me happier either! I love the fact that I am the one laying down the roundness in her cheeks and the chub on her legs. She even has chubby knees and I know that all of this is good for her because she will need these stores as she grows more and more. Every time I look at her legs and they remind me of a shar-pei puppy, I smile. She is doing her job by eating and growing and I am doing mine by giving her the best food with which to do it.

Finally Father's Day

Since Brian was traveling for work on his first official Father's Day, we had to put off the celebration. Then the following weekend turned out to be no good for his mom or his sister. And so we finally were able to pull it off two weeks after the real thing! But even with the delay, it was wonderful to celebrate the fact that he is really a daddy now. It really was a family affair with his mom cooking ribs and fried chicken at his request; he keeps saying she can't really tell him how she cooks that chicken and I say he should buy a pack, take it over and just watch her do it as the magic unfolds! But chicken aside, Father's Day served as sort of a good "check in" on the fact that he has been a parent now for just over four months and is growing by leaps and bounds at it. The change of jobs has helped as has him having the opportunity to spend more time with Abigail. I am firmly convinced that all parents should be given a serious block of time to be home with their children - it just facilitates bonding in a way that is seems so much harder to accomplish if you always have only a few hours a day. I also realize that that can be something of a luxury depending on where one works and what one does.

I did manage to survive Brian's time away with everything in tact. It helped that we had done some planning ahead when it came to things like meals and that I made plans to be out of the office a bit. I think it would have been an entirely different story if I was cooking every night and working every day. It made me that much happier though to be celebrating Father's Day and acknowledging that I have this great partner, this great team player on this parenting adventure. And it is especially cool that this team player's sister gave him an OptiMash Prime Mr. Potato Head (since the new Transformers movie is due out shortly); now our Darth Tater has someone to fight! Families can be the best....

Daddy Is Trippin'

Brian has been hired by Sidwell Friends School to teach first grade (yay!), but one of the first things they asked him to do was go to a week-long conference in Wellesley, MA. Totally cool that the school wants him to do this and is paying for it, but when I heard the news, I was also struck fearful by the prospect of being on my own with Abigail for a whole week, balancing working and full time baby without another set of hands around the house.

Now to anyone reading this who is a single parent, you have the right to scoff and say "a week?!? trying doing that ALL the time" so I want to be clear from the outset that I know this doesn't sound like it should be that big of a deal. But for lo these first four months, I at the very least knew that Brian would be home by the end of the day. Now it means all me, all the time and that has felt very daunting.

Abigail and I took him to National Airport yesterday morning to fly to Boston and once we saw him through security, we headed home. I had a wonderful friend over (hey Belen!) for a chunk of the day which was very nice and so far all is going smoothly. This makes me appreciate that much more the sacrifices that people make to be single parents and further convinces me that I would have never signed up to do this all on my own.

I am also in a position to be able to take a bit of leave this week - since Brian was supposed to be on full time daddy duty as of now, I then had to rescramble to coordinate family to take care of her and I have taken on two days myself. Now what if that wasn't an option? What if I didn't have paid leave? Or had been forced to use it all as part of my maternity leave rather than most of it being an unpaid leave of absence? This only serves to reinforce my absolute consternation about the state of early child care in this country. She isn't in daycare yet because there would have been no spot available. My company, though large, does not have an onsite daycare facility, but on the other hand, I have good allocations of sick and vacation hours and a boss with three boys of his own who is relatively empathetic to the juggling act that is parenthood mixed with working outside the home.

I am hoping to survive this week with both my desire to be a mother and my sanity in tact. We'll see how that goes....