Tales from La La Land

Today I took you to daycare for a trial run before you start full time next week.

I would be lying to you if I didn’t say that last week I was counting the days until today. Don’t get me wrong, we’ve had a great summer, but I was looking forward to having one day all by myself.

Then I woke up this morning with a pit in my stomach. Everything we’ve done for the past 2 months (including your epic meltdowns over … well, I’m not even sure sometimes what you’re crying about to be honest) whether hard or fun, we’ve done together. Some days you are in a better mood than other days, but just having you there while I’m cooking dinner or taking a nap or sneaking onto Facebook before you realize I have turned my attention away, has become a part of my life.

I’ve learned to live my life with you in it. I’ve learned how to do almost everything one-handed. I’ve learned to eat cereal and drink coffee in under 2 minutes. I’ve learned every street around Brentwood as you really, really like taking walks. I’ve learned that you prefer to take walks in the Bjorn so you can be close to someone and see everything there is to see. I have learned that we’ve got exactly 50 minutes in the stroller before you get really pissed. I’ve learned that sometimes when you cry really hard it’s because mommy forgot to burp you and you need to let out a man-sized belch. I’ve learned that you will nap for exactly 30 minutes 4 times a day, and not a minute longer. Therefore I know exactly what I can get done in 30 minutes or less, and Rachel Ray should watch her back because I am thinking of pitching a show about how many things a person can accomplish in 30 minutes or less. And it doesn’t involve EVOO for fucks sake (EAR MUFFS, sweetie).

I’ve learned that no matter how frustrated I get at times, one smile from you can make everything easier. You have the ability to take away all my worries and guilt that I might be doing something wrong.

When I dropped you off today, you started to cry a little and then Noushin (Nou-Nou as the other kids call her) took you and you just gazed at her with big eyes. She has that baby-whisperer thing, I think. Because I’ve never seen you have that look except with me or daddy (and that’s only on a good day). I think you are in good hands.

But I am counting the minutes until you come home and we do bath time and you scream your face off when I take you out of the water to dress you. I never thought I’d look forward to that part of my day.

I miss you, buddy.

XO

Mommy

Well, after 10 weeks, it’s now official: Harper has been hazed.

For years, Sanch has tolerated us. I was too lazy to look through all the blogs, but there are way more stories. Like the time Laef took Sanch in the shower with him. Or the time we put a onesie on him.

He still gets his fair share.

I used to feel guilty that maybe Sanch was feeling neglected. Now I’m starting to think he’s actually happier. There’s just not enough time for us to torture him. He is also quite aware that we are preoccupied and knows that he can sneak on the counter or in the bedroom, and enjoy both for an extended period of time before we realize he is M.I.A.

Anyway, yesterday I decided to take Harper to the pool. She turned 10 weeks old so I figured double digit weeks qualified her for such an activity. And, also, I am running out of things to do with her. Well, things that are free. How many fucking walks around Brentwood can a person make in a 10 week period? I will tell you: TOO MANY.

Little babies shouldn’t be in the sun too much, but the pool we went to had lots of shade, and we used the kind of suncreen our pediatrician said was OK so don’t yell at me.

Before we could go, however, we had to make a quick trip to CVS for some Little Swimmer diapers. Turns out they only carry size medium, which is for babies that are 24 lbs. Harper is almost 12 pounds. I bought them anyway.

Laef is not the only MacGyver around here.

Athletic tape is this family’s duct tape. It will fix anything.

She’s a fashionista in training because once she had her suit on, you couldn’t see anything wrong.

Fuck.

I really need to go back to work.

Because right now I’m that lady I used to see everyday when I was driving to work. The one dressed in Lululemon from head to toe pushing a ridiculously overpriced stroller jaunting into Coffee Bean before making a quick stop at Whole Foods for a $12 gallon of milk. Then maybe on her way back she pops into Compartes for a selection of $2 truffles that are the size of a nickle. And, if time permits, and the baby is still happy, she might grab a quick Jamba Juice and two videos from RedBox.

(If Laef is reading this, that is totally some other Brentwood mom and not me).

If Laef is not reading this, fuck, that was totally me today.

Here’s the thing. Harper and I have spent the past few weeks walking around Brentwood killing time, being outside, hanging out together. We used to go to CVS  every day and make up shit to buy. Like hangers or something. If we were feeling really brave, we’d go to the post office and buy a book of stamps.

Harmless stuff.

Now I’m just 2 weeks away from going back to work and I can’t even think about it. Because while I am looking forward to being able to eat my lunch with two hands, I can’t even begin to think about not spending my days with Harps. I feel this clock ticking, and every moment I have with her is a memory created. (At least for me anyway).

I am going to miss out on so many hours with her. Even if it’s just watching her lips do funny things while she naps. Or picking lint out of her toes. By the way, how come no one ever talks about how much lint is between a baby’s toes? Or is that just my nasty baby?

OK, so not that Harper knows anything about $2 truffles, but when we’re outside on the perfect August day, it makes me want to do bad things. Things that don’t involve picking lint out of her toes or wiping shit off her neck. Some days I just look at her and say, “Ok, sweetie. We gotta get out of here! Let’s go buy something fun at Lululemon, and then grab some sushi!”

She has no idea what the hell we are doing, but she loves this idea because it means she can suck on the baby bjorn until it’s soaked.  I love the idea because I’ve never been home at 1 p.m. on a random summer day. I’ve only dreamed of being anywhere but at my desk. I’ve done so well until this point in avoiding the pitfalls of lunching with ladies or shopping or buying things I don’t need.

But we’re nearing the end of a long road. It’s been almost one year since I found out I was pregnant. My life changed completely for 9 months. Then it got really real for 6 weeks. The past 3 weeks have been like nothing I’ve ever known. This little peep has totally won me over.

Now I’ve got 2 weeks left before I go back to work and into my real world.

Excuse me if I’m avoiding reality by indulging in expensive chocolate.

So the other day, Harper and I were cruising around Brentwood (she in her Bjorn, me sweating my boobs off) making up stuff to do and she spit her pacifier (we call it a bink, and I have no idea how that happened. I never thought I’d be a person who used the word bink) out of her mouth, and I wasn’t quick enough to catch it.

I have learned two things about pacifiers: When they drop on the ground they roll hella far and shit goes HAYWIRE if you don’t have one handy AT ALL TIMES.

Anyway, I watched in slow motion as her pacifier rolled off the sidewalk and into the middle of San Vicente. It stopped in the middle lane and I debated in my mind for 10 seconds if we could survive the rest of our walk without it. Then I wondered what people would think if I was the woman who got herself and her baby run over for trying to retrieve a pacifier from the street. I figured people would TOTALLY understand, so I looked both ways and the baby Gods must have been watching over us because there were no cars coming. I grabbed the pacifier and ran to Jamba Juice to rinse it off (I have heard that if this was my second baby I wouldn’t have given a shit and she would have had it back in her mouth sans washing, but luckily for her I quiver when I think of her having street mouth. Now or ever).

When we left the hospital we had a healthy supply of these pacifiers:

I really don’t know what is so special about them. I guess they are for newborns up to 3 months or something. We have other pacifiers in the house, but they all say 3 months or 6 months. So we have stuck with the green soothies. At one point we had one in her crib, one in the pocket of the rocking chair, one in her swing, one in her vibrating chair and one in the stroller. All of our bases were covered.

The day I ran into the street we were down to one in the house and one in the stroller.

This was one day after I left the house and started walking down the street to the grocery store and realized I forgot to bring a pacifier. Fuuuck. I really do not want to walk all the way back and get it. Can we make it? Maybe I can buy one at Ralph’s if she loses her mind. Maybe she will fall asleep.

And I have finally realized a better way to get my answer. Would I be able to live without my blackberry while going anywhere at anytime?

Hell. No.

Do I almost cry, become fidgety and have anxiety when I leave it at home on accident?

Hell. Yes.

Not only have I not found much time to blog about this whole parenting experience, but I didn’t exactly find most of the shit we were going through during the first six weeks all that funny or blog-inspiring. We did have our moments where we’d have to laugh in order to stay sane, but I wasn’t exactly chuckling when she would wake up 25 minutes after laying down for a nap. Actually, there were times when I would actually start crying when she would wake up.

Sleep deprivation is no fucking joke.

The joke is actually that people are expected to raise a baby on barely any sleep. Have you seen those people who do meth and don’t sleep for days? They pick their face off and think people are coming to get them. It felt like we were doing meth for a while, and yet needed to make sure Harper was safe.

It made no sense.

But in the last week, things have started to change. It feels like we’re coming out of a fog. She sleeps most of the night now. She actually smiles at us. She coos. She’s still a pain in the ass when things aren’t exactly the way she needs them to be, but that will probably be the case for 18 more years.

When I think back to the early days, I can now laugh at the following:

I thought it was always going to be like the first four days. Harper slept all the time. I actually wanted her to wake up in the middle of the night because I was excited to see her. I remember thinking that everything was so easy. No problem. This baby stuff was a piece of cake.

Bullshit.

It’s called adrenaline.

And it wears off.

Just when the adrenaline wears off, the tears start coming. They will tell you that it’s normal, but you will still wonder what the fuck is going on when your mother in law walks through the door and you start crying (I don’t recommend this). You might also wonder why you’re crying every time you look at the baby. Or when it’s morning. Or evening.

I wasn’t sad. But I have never cried more than I did during the second week.

That phase passed, also. Not without Laef asking me if I thought I could invent a baby mascara. Like something double waterproof. Because everyday I insisted on washing my face and putting on some make up. And everyday I would cry until my face looked beat. Laef would be super sweet and give me hugs until one day he couldn’t take the fact that he had changed his shirt 62 times in three days.

Which is almost as many times as I changed my underwear in the first three days.

A lot of things change with your body. A lot. So many that you’re not sure which part to be most depressed about. I mean, is it the fact that even though you’re super proud of yourself for being able to walk 3 miles a week after giving birth, you have to come home because you pissed your pants? Or is it the fact that your stomach feels like jello?

The hardest part about dealing with everything is that I didn’t have a lot of extra time to see or talk to friends. Sometimes it felt like we were in the Harper vortex where we couldn’t even break free for a simple text message. We would also go days without leaving the house. In the middle of a gorgeous summer. It felt like life was passing us by and we were stuck inside contemplating where Harper would take the best nap. Or if she had taken a shit. Or if she was upset because the AC was at 75 instead of 74.

These were the topics that were super, uber, majorly important.

And sometimes that made me sad.

But the truth is, the real friends are there when you’re ready. Real friends will understand, and be the first to meet you for a drink when you have time.

And no matter how shitty you think your body looks, or how sore your boobs are, your husband will absolutely start inquiring about sex prior to the 6-week mark. While you might want to kick him in the balls to explain that the last thing you are ready for is anything having to do with anything down there, you will take a little pleasure in the fact that he still wants to after what he witnessed in the delivery room and beyond.

Here’s the thing about babies: they read minds.

And they’re selfish.

They get to poop, eat and sleep at will while we frantically try to do all three within the 15 minute span that they sometimes give us during the day.

But, seriously, Harper has been sleeping soundly in her swing for the past 20 minutes. The list of things I wanted to do during today’s morning nap included:

1. Eat

2. Pump

3. Pee

4. Wash my face

5. Put on real clothes

6. Watch Alexander Skarsgard on Regis and Kelly

7. Write a blog

8. Sweep the floor

9. Unload the dishwasher

10. Read my gossip sites

The good news is that we are making progress as she approaches her 7-week birthday. It used to be that she had to be held or rocked in order to fall asleep. However, per Posh Jrs. request, rocking and holding must be done while standing up and doing laps around the house. If you so much as think about sitting on the couch PJ will cry. If you even consider stopping to look at your phone mid-lap, PJ will cry. If you make a pit-stop in front of the TV to watch SportCenter’s Top 10, PJ will immediately open her eyes and no longer be sleeping.

So when she finally does fall asleep, we can put her in the swing or her crib.

And then the clock starts ticking.

Sadly, I always start with cleaning. While I’m cleaning I will run down the list, and determine what I want to do next. And, inevitably, just as I’m finishing picking up the house and loading the dishwasher, thinking about the amazing nap I am about to take, I hear little whimpers.

She is waking up. Because I am pretty sure she’s inside my head, and because taking a nap does not involve her, it must be sabotaged.

In fact, I ran a huge risk googling how to spell Skarsgard for this post. You can’t waste precious moments. You have to move from one task to the next, and hope she doesn’t notice that you are DOING ALL SORTS OF THINGS FOR YOURSELF!

Laef and I share the “carrying her around” duties when he is home. We both have sore backs. She’s getting heavier. So we finally just started setting her down in the swing or her vibrating chair to hope that she’d allow us a break. Thankfully, it has started to work. She has even started to lull herself to sleep in the swing.

Since I have resumed running last week, Laef is usually with her for a while later in the evening. She doesn’t really like being put down later in the evening. That is her designated fussy time. It is also when the Cardinals are usually playing.

The other day I came home from a run to find Laef sitting in a dining room chair watching the Cardinals from across the room.

Laef: “I faked her out! Because our chairs are so high, she thinks we are standing.”

Me: …

I mean, it’s like a fucking treat that we get to sit down. Or watch a baseball game.

Or write this blog!

I’m going to quit while I’m ahead!

P.S. It’s easy to do everything for someone who looks like this: