True Mom Confessions Can Bite Me.

I'm a semi-regular reader of this great blog--Motherhood Is Not For Wimps--and she just had a post where she made her own confessions and called for the confessions of other moms. A year ago, I would have been horrified by some of them. What kind of person doesn't change sheets regularly?! Cobwebs are an abomination! Etc...

Seven months in, I have a few of my own.

• The guilt I felt about going back to work and putting Ava in daycare was balanced by an equal amount of relief. Three months of staying home and being at her beck and call was exhausting. Work was, and often still is, like a mini-vacation. I have come to see the 4 Daycare Ladies as my colleagues. They are an integral part of the village that it takes to raise Ava.
• That said, the best part of my day is invariably the moment where I walk into her classroom and she sees me and literally drops what she's doing and smiles.
  
• Rob does a disproportionate amount of late night feedings and dirty diaper changes (sometimes simultaneously). I'm aware of it, and once he sees this admission I'll likely never hear the end of it.
• I keep the house clean at the expense of getting sleep. After some serious reflecting about this, I've come to realize that it's my way of ensuring that even though I'm a mom now, and my priorities don't come first, I'm still in here. I like a clean house, dammit, and therefore the house will be as clean as I can keep it.
• When people tell me how cute/happy/wonderful Ava is, I get all gracious and humble, when what I really want to say is "Yeah, I know."

There are a ton more, but these came to mind first.

It is interesting that revelations like mine (and those on that other blog) are presented as "confessions", rather than "this is how our family functions; deal with it". When did it become necessary to put on a show and make it seem like we're in complete control with little effort? I'm reminded of an email I received from my friend Amy (hi Amy!) near the end of my pregnancy. I've known Amy since 6th grade. There aren't a lot of secrets or surprises between us anymore. So this email that I received on January 6, a day after my due date and 4 days after another friend had just given birth and I was so jealous and tired and sore and BLAH... this email that so very nicely praised how well I was handling the home stretch of pregnancy and how zen I sounded, triggered something in me, and my reply was this total stream-of-consciousness spew of wrath that GOD I would have loved to post here but it probably would have raised eyebrows and inspired some well-intentioned but poorly-received advice.

What stopped me from writing about how tired and scared and sore I was? Why couldn't I be honest here about how irritating the teasing and questions (jeez, people, my cervix is NONE of your business) were getting? Why should we be embarrassed when we talk about how hard this is and how sometimes it's vitally important to keep a little bit of ourselves in the spotlight.

I've mentioned that I'm part of an online community. The original topic that brought us together is not related to pregnancy or childrearing, but that's the most common bond. Recently, another new mom and I were discussing how hard the first weeks are, and how sometimes you just feel alone because after the first couple of weeks, people stop bringing food over and gushing and visiting and suddenly you're on your own and it's fucking terrifying (it's my blog, I can use the F-word once in a while). Within a few minutes, others joined in, echoing the sentiment of "why don't we tell other soon-to-be moms this?!" Why is it so hard to admit that it's a struggle? Why is there this feeling of needing to defend the decisions we make and when we finally own them, why do we have to call them "confessions"?

Dammit, we're doing the best we can. All of us. Any day that ends with your whole family going to bed in one piece is a victory, and anyone who says "Oh, you stay at home? Really? Hmm..." can piss off. Anyone who says "How long did you try to breastfeed?" can just blow it out their asses. Everyone we see is fighting some kind of battle, and nobody has the right to make anyone feel like they have to defend their strategy.

Blog As Baby Book

I have one of those baby books that you're supposed to update with pictures and milestones. It's been on the shelf since mid-March. This has become the official record of Ava's development.

Milestones that seem to be happening all at once:

• Today a tooth broke the surface. Bottom left front. Pictures will hopefully follow, but she's tricky so we haven't caught a shot yet.
• She is moments away from crawling. She'll get on two arms and a leg but one leg is in the wrong place and she can't quite maneuver around it. But it's close.
• Last week I was sitting on the floor with her. She took both my hands and pulled herself up to a standing position. This freaked us out completely
• Right now? She's clapping. For no reason other than it makes her happy
• She likes watching people wave, and sometimes she waves back

Big things are coming.

The Sponge Migration

You've seen it on Discovery Channel when they show the ocean floor--these creatures that seem completely stationary actually do move, but they have to use time-lapse photography to show it. So they set a camera up and film for 8 hours and then they speed it up and it looks like rush hour. This is what we have going on in our living room.

Ava is not crawling. She never was too thrilled about "tummy time", which is what all the Advice Givers tell you that is THE MOST IMPORTANT THING YOU CAN DO FOR YOUR BABY'S DEVELOPMENT because it forces babies to learn to push up off the floor with their arms. Yeah, we hate that here. But she does love to sit and play with her toys. We plop her down on the floor and put some toys within reach, or just out of it, and she will amuse herself for half an hour. She doesn't topple over very often anymore. She'll just sit and play and talk to us and to herself and to her toys and everybody's happy.

This week I noticed that she wasn't where I put her. She was in the same position, but instead of being next to her playmat, she was 3 feet away playing with the fishbowl that Auntie Beth gave her (she loves it!). And then 15 minutes later, she was next to the Jungle Thingy with the spinning balls but she didn't creep over, she didn't roll. I don't know how she moves.






She just kind of rotates and reaches for something and when she sits back up she's a foot away. I don't know how she does it. We lack the technology (and patience) to do time lapse, and if our video camera can speed up I don't know how to do it. But she moves. I don't know how she moves, but she moves and it's FREAKING ME OUT.

In a related story, we're going to start childproofing the house this weekend. Because if she's this sneaky at 7 months (holy crap, 7 months!) we are totally screwed once she can get up and walk around.

Hot Town, Summer In The City

On Sunday, we were at Bob&Katie's to celebrate their son's 9th birthday. He was the first baby born in our circle of friends, and we often marvel at how hard it must have been to be the first parents out of all of us. I don't know what we'd do if we didn't have the wisdom and support of our close friends who have done this before.

Ava wore a fancy dress and had a lovely time :)


She spent the afternoon watching the kids run around. She watched the grandmothers sit and chat. She watches everything. She's always craning her neck, looking around, taking it all in. Daycare Lady told me that sometimes, she's so tired and just barely awake, but she keeps one eye open so she can see what the other babies are doing.

We're going to skip town this weekend and head back up to the cabin to get out of the heat. August in Las Vegas is not for the faint of heart!

Perhaps The Answer Is More Obvious Than That

There have been times in the past 6 months where we proceeded with much fanfare and confidence in an entirely incorrect direction. Early on, we tried to stop hysterical, purple-faced crying with a binky and a 3AM car ride, under the auspices of "She's tired, and this will soothe her." The appropriate solution to such a situation was, in fact, feeding her.

And then we had a terrible issue with "How are we going to keep her from getting spit-up all over her clothes and causing a rash if we don't change her quickly enough?" Yeah. That's what bibs are for, genius.

The most recent example of the view of the trees being blocked by the forest is in the previous post regarding orange food. Ava did not sleep on two days when she ate orange food. Ava hates orange food! No more orange food! Hooray!



I'm reminded of a scene from one of my favorite movies:



Orange food is like the cans. Ava is the guy with the gun. And we're Navin Johnson.

Hey, Einstein, maybe she's teething. Maybe the reason her sleep is changing is that she's 6-1/2 months old and her freaking teeth are coming in. Maybe her little mouth is starting to hurt because underneath the surface of her little gums ARE TEETH.

Oof.

In a related story, Baby Tylenol is a marvelous solution, allowing her to sleep, which allows us to sleep. And since sleep begets sleep, she is now back in the habit of sleeping through a big chunk of night. And so are we.