Fruit in my dessert

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BH has been home since last Tuesday afternoon. His dad and stepmom came to visit for a few days and we hosted Thanksgiving with my parents, his cousin's family, and his aunt and uncle. BH cooked a delicious meal (and I set a mean table). It has been unbelievably fabulous to have him here. We have gotten to spend some awesome family time together - just the three of us, and I've gotten to sleep in past seven most days because he's been here to play with HD. At least once, I didn't get up until after HD went down for his morning nap. Lucky, lucky girl. I have felt slight twinges of guilt at these luxuries, but I've pushed them away knowing that it's good for me, good for making my slightly annoying cold go away, and good for BH and HD to have additional bonding/father/son time.

Except for two things. HD is now obsessed with BH to the point that he has cried bloody murder at least twice in the past twenty four hours when BH left him with me to go to another room. I want to love this and think it is just what I've always wanted - our young son to have the kind of attachment to his father that he has to me. An equal opportunity to have his dad as his favorite. But I'm jealous. And I know I shouldn't be. And I'm trying hard not to be. I should be thankful for the free moments it has allowed me to have in the last couple of days. And I am. If only I could remove the jealous bones in my body - I wish I knew which bones they were - they have caused me SO much trouble over the years.

Oh - the second thing. Tomorrow is Monday. BH goes back to work. I think HD and I will take turns screaming bloody murder tomorrow. Play date, anyone?

Gratitude Journal

On this, my 32nd Thanksgiving, I am putting into action the online gratitude journal that I've been meaning to do for so long. My hope is that I will post once a day a few of the things that I am most thankful for. I stole the idea from Oprah a while back and have been keeping it in a paper journal, but I feel like sharing (I almost always feel like sharing). My goal is to make it completely unfiltered, so if you must judge, please do so quietly. I'm going to share some of my previous entries to get me started. Feel free to share what you are thankful for via the comment section on the Gratitude Journal page. Find the Gratitude Journal here (or by clicking on the link to the right).

Gratitude Journal

On this, my 32nd Thanksgiving, I am putting into action the online gratitude journal that I've been meaning to do for so long. My hope is that I will post once a day a few of the things that I am most thankful for. I stole the idea from Oprah a while back and have been keeping it in a paper journal, but I feel like sharing (I almost always feel like sharing). My goal is to make it completely unfiltered, so if you must judge, please do so quietly. I'm going to start with some of my previous entries to get me started. Feel free to share what you are thankful for via the comment section.

November 27, 2008
1. A family that travels to be with us for Thanksgiving, just because we ask
2. A husband who loves to cook for this holiday and is amazing at it
3. A dad who says he's thankful for me meeting BH, because so much of what he is thankful for stems from that, and a dad who says that in front of a bunch of other people that he doesn't know that well
4. A mom who puts aside her own anxiety to help me with mine by supporting BH and me with preparations, interactions, and clean up of our big day
5. A sister who checks in throughout the day on days like today when we can't be together
6. Making it through year one with HD with flying colors

September 14, 2008
1. That BH's job makes it so I don't have to work unless I want to
2. That I can work and people want me to help them with work
3. Ice pack when my back hurts
4. Parents who take the day off to take care of my baby in NY so I can go to a professional event just because I want to
5. A husband who helps me see it's possible and pushes me to make it happen
6. The love I have for my baby that makes me miss him when he sleeps at night
7. Being able to read
8. A husband who knows how to make poached pears and does it because I think it's important for our participation in our local environmental competition
9. Barack Obama and Sarah Palin for completely opposite reasons - they are both opening discourse and moving us forward as a nation, if only inches at a time

August 24, 2008
1. A tired baby who can sleep
2. Old friends who mean it
3. Enough money to not worry
4. Text messaging
5. Someone who loves me enough to come back after I've been so terribly mean to him
6. The words, "I'm sorry"

August 23, 2008
1. My parents babysitting for HD last night so BH and I could go out to dinner with friends
2. Flowers from BH yesterday to celebrate the sixth anniversary of our engagement
3. Having so much stuff that we can give away new things to Goodwill
4. Craigs List and cash made selling bike, headboard, and rower ($50, $50, $500)
5. An awesome moms' group - online and off
6. Good friends like Auntie Fancypants
7. Loving neighbors
8. Chocolate croissants
9. Coffee
10. HD filling me up with love
11. Organized toys on repurposed shelf

August 9, 2008
1. BH
2. HD
3. Automatic ice maker
4. The Olympics
5. Good books (just finished The Dinner Diaries by Betsy Block)

Five years

Some things are hard to remember - some things that should be impossible to forget. For some reason I cannot stamp today's date, an anniversary, with the memory of an unbelievably horrible loss, without being reminded by the person who it hurt the very most. Every year it comes and I know its approximate timing, because I selfishly remember what was going on in my life at that time. But the date always escapes me. And I can't write it down because you don't write things like that down.

But, here are some things that I do remember:

• He taught us to ride mountain bikes on an actual mountain and made us feel so cool to be riding with him in the woods. He took it easy on us without letting us realize he was taking it easy on us.
• He drove us places, sometimes, but not too much, so he wouldn't seem like he was being too nice to us.
• I'm pretty sure he never made fun of us when we played with our dolls way past the "appropriate" age for playing with dolls.
• He didn't get mad at me when I slammed into the back of his brand new car with my car by accident. And he never told on me.
• He was the first to show me what it meant to be a Yankees fan.
• He loved his sisters so very much.
• He loved music (and his dog) almost as much.

Even though it's been way more than five years since I've known him, I miss him. I miss him for his sisters and for his parents, but I miss him for me too. The world was a better place with him in it. Maybe that's part of the reason why my brain refuses to remember the day he left.

Party preparations

This post started as an email to a dear, helpful, understanding friend who is a mom and is ahead of me in many, many ways, and, dare I say, has many similar obsessions tendencies to mine. Instead of emailing her, I decided to plagarize myself and post it here instead and send her the link. Is that a horrible thing to do? I hope not.

I went to the party store and got solid colors like you told me to (Target had a PALTRY selection). I put three colors on the floor and HD chose two, so we got orange and bright/lime green. I'm happy. Not ecstatic, but happy. I plan to bake my turtle cupcakes tomorrow afternoon and doing it in advance is making me feel slightly less anxious about it. Had to briefly abandon a full shopping cart in the aisle (I notified the staff, more so they wouldn't undo what I had already chosen, and less so to be courteous) to leave the party store due to HD's hunger. I was stretching the start of lunch time way beyond his means and he pulled my hair hard enough for me to scream out loud - really loud - to remind me of his actual age. Sometimes I forget that he's only going to be one and think he can hold out for things like lunch until, say, dinner, like BH and I sometimes do.

I fed HD the Trader Joe's cheddar cheese stick in pea sized pieces to get through the rest of the visit. Then, after shoving him full of Cheerios in the parked car, I did the unthinkable...I took him to a second (party store) location, so I could get the prescribed disposable pastry bags, the branded colors for the icing, and the appropriate baking tips for the pastry bags. [Note: When I first read that I needed to use baking tips #12 and #18, I scoured the rest of the instructions looking for those helpful "tips."] This way, if I fail, I will only be able to blame it on myself, not a product substitution. We picked out a birthday hat, some candles, and only called my sister 11 times and BH (in meetings) 4 times for help choosing between items and to successfully be convinced one last time not to do the Baby Sesame Street stuff (by my sister, not BH) - due to high cost and low appropriateness (HD has not seen Sesame Street). HD was an angel, likely because he was fatigued by the lack of food in his system.

I approach tomorrow afternoon's baking adventure with equal parts nausea, excited anticipation, and fear of failure - and I'm not even doing the icing part until Friday.

More Importantly

Today is Veterans Day. Thank you isn't enough, but thank you - to ALL the men and women and families who serve our country every day and night to keep people in this country and around the world safe from known and unknown harm. If you have family or friends who serve, thank you too. The rest of us could not live the lives we do without the sacrifices that you make, so thank you.

Not To Keep
Robert Frost (1917)

They sent him back to her. The letter came
Saying… And she could have him. And before
She could be sure there was no hidden ill
Under the formal writing, he was in her sight,
Living. They gave him back to her alive—
How else? They are not known to send the dead—
And not disfigured visibly. His face?
His hands? She had to look, and ask,
“What was it, dear?” And she had given all
And still she had all—they had—they the lucky!
Wasn’t she glad now? Everything seemed won,
And all the rest for them permissible ease.
She had to ask, “What was it, dear?”

“Enough,
Yet not enough. A bullet through and through,
High in the breast. Nothing but what good care
And medicine and rest, and you a week,
Can cure me of to go again.” The same
Grim giving to do over for them both.
She dared no more than ask him with her eyes
How was it with him for a second trial.
And with his eyes he asked her not to ask.
They had given him back to her, but not to keep.

Weaned

It's done. I didn't breastfeed HD today. I likely won't breastfeed HD tomorrow or the day after that, and perhaps, I will never breastfeed again. Before I started breastfeeding, I certainly didn't think much about it. Before I was pregnant, I'm sure I never thought about it at all (well, aside from the time that the nurse in my sister's post-delivery room told me I had great boobs for breastfeeding when I was all of 22). I definitely didn't think I would ever write about it.

It turns out, after all the drama, all the, "I don't know if I can do it anymore," all the "I really don't like it," "I'm doing it because they tell me I should," it's not as immediately freeing as I thought it would be.

HD did his typical-of-late, wake up on and off between 4:30 and 6, with a final wake-up call of 7:15. BH was up already and gave him breakfast. I got up 20 minutes later and started making the bed when I realized I hadn't breastfed HD (we had confirmed this plan the night before). I yelled down to the kitchen, "Hey, I didn't breastfeed him." BH replied, "yeah, I know."

Me: Is he eating breakfast?
BH: Yeah.
Me: Did you give him milk?
BH: Yeah, he's having it with his breakfast.
Me: But, he doesn't even need me? He's not acting crazy? He's not panting for me?
BH: Nope.

I went downstairs and sat next to HD who gave me a big good morning smile.

Me to HD: Um, so, you're done? That's it? You don't even need me anymore? What are you? A toddler? I can't believe this. It's so...anticlimactic.

HD to me: Yesshhh.

Okay, so I might have embellished his part, but we actually do think that YES is his first word. He just might not have said it at that time. I had a really hard time listening to him after my dramatic rhetoric was finished.

So there it is. It appears I was weaned, not HD. Now, I'm going to watch Lois do this so I can benefit from her insights and laugh like I mean it about this whole thing.

Nipples

I'm one of those moms who has talked to anyone who would listen for the last year about how the only reason I breastfed was because I was supposed to, because the crazy breastfeeding ladies doctors told me it was the best thing to do for my baby's health. It had nothing to do with the bonding time, the closeness, the love shared between me and my baby, or the wonderful experience of it all. I had a pretty easy time at the beginning. HD latched like a champ, I flowed like a fountain, and was really "lucky" that it all worked out. There was a hiccup called mastitis at six weeks that had me asking the doctors at the hospital to please "TAKE THEM OFF" but my memory is short, so I can call it a hiccup now instead of the life-defining moment that I thought it was at the time. There was crying and leaking and pain beyond belief, but I kept going because I "had" to. It became a competition with myself to not give up, to power through.

My original goal of six months came and went and it got even easier. Feedings and leaking decreased and I learned to live with breast pads and wearing a bra 24/7. By ten months,  the one or two daytime feedings that remained were a welcome respite from chasing HD around the house and provided 10-20 quiet minutes in our now rambunctious day.

Since I was home most of the time with HD and only breastfeeding him once or twice a day, I no longer needed to pump, and started to countdown to the year mark, dropping a feeding every couple of weeks. Now, I'm down to one feeding in the morning and plan to drop it as early as tomorrow. We got the clear to start whole milk a month ago and that's been going swimmingly for HD.

Today, HD woke up after only 30 minutes of napping and was super inconsolable. We were out of whole milk and I didn't want to start my flow going so I reached into the freezer for the last of our frozen supply, and for whatever reason, even though HD's been doing the sippy cup thing exclusively for over a month, I decided to put it in a bottle. We went up to his room and sat in his chair and I fed him like a baby...as if at 11 months and 3 weeks he's not actually a baby anymore. It was quiet. It was dark. It was peaceful. I wrapped his blankie around him and he laid in my arms like he never does anymore and I fed him his bottle. We couldn't have been closer and I felt all warm and fuzzy. And then I thought, this might be his last bottle. And I cried.

I know it doesn't have to be his last bottle, and I know I don't have to stop breastfeeding either, but I'm ready to be done with it all. I'd be lying if I didn't admit that I might have enjoyed breastfeeding - sometimes. I am going to miss it - a little. I do still plan to burn my nursing bras and any pads that are left over shortly after the weaning is complete.

$13

Two strangers saved me $13 today. HD and I made it to Bed, Bath, and Beyond with little fanfare. And, we had unusual retailic good luck: they had the cupcake mold I wanted to experiment with for his birthday that I had seen on sale in the circular. (Those of you who know me don't need to reread that line - I am, in fact, attempting to bake for HD's birthday, and no, I don't regularly read "circulars" but I'm glad I happened to see this one.) They also had a dustbuster, which BH and I decided we needed the other day, after cleaning up after HD's snack in the living room for not-the-first-and-definitely-not-the-last time. It took me asking an associate and a retrace of my steps to find it, but there it was, and HD and I were both excited to find it - it was the first good box to bang on that he had seen all day. There were all sorts of good things in that aisle, including steamers...but I walked away with only those two items, and grabbed a much needed 3-pack of lint removers at the last minute.

As I approached the cash register, I noticed the very mature woman in front of me had one of those impossible-to-miss Bed, Bath, and Beyond cardboard coupons and I immediately felt frustrated because I not only hadn't brought mine, I recently threw out a ton of them in a hasty moment of organization. Why would I throw them out you ask? Because we NEVER go to Bed, Bath, and Beyond. Not innocently, I pretended to say to HD, but was really speaking to the woman in front of me and the hopefully-sympathetic-cashier, "Darn, I forgot our coupon." It was a lie. I hadn't forgotten the coupon, I had thrown it out. Well, it worked. My fellow customer heard me and turned around and said that she was going to give me one of hers because she didn't need it. I thanked her profusely. Before she could give me hers, another woman, a mother perhaps a few years older than me, got in line behind me with another stack of the coupons. She too offered to give me one or more of her coupons. How nice. Seriously. So, these two women, between them, gave me three coupons for 20% off each of the three items that I had purchased. They may not have needed them for that purchase and they both had plenty (I learned that BBB will take expired coupons, so you can save them when you get them, which is why they had the stacks), but they didn't have to give me anything. They made my day much brighter. They gave me coupons and hope.

After thanking them again and again, HD and I went on our way, and my thoughts drifted to how I could pass it on today...let people out in traffic (check), tell the barista at Starbucks how me and my mommy friends drive from "far away" to come to that particular Starbucks  (check - I wound up starting a conversation with the assistant manager and we may actually hold weekly play groups/story hours at that store now), being as supportive and attentive to HD as I possibly could be (check - which may be why he had a bottle today, his first in a while, and perhaps his last - but that's another post).

None of this is necessarily earth shattering news (aside from the me baking part), but it's pretty fantastic. Maybe this is the kind of change we're in for, but I don't think that's why. Whatever the reason, pass it on. Or better yet, start it.

Office supplies are dangerous

When you have a baby, there are so many things that you learn to worry about, and even more that you don't think about until others tell you that they are worried about it or that you should be worried about it. And then you sit around and joke with other moms that if you think about it, you could really worry about everything. Today, I learned that it's not really a joke.

This afternoon, HD woke up from his nap, and, as is typical after he first gets up, he wanted to be on me. So I kept him on my lap while I Googled directions for an afternoon errand run to the exotic Bed, Beth, and Beyond (we don't have one nearby, so I was looking up the closest one, or maybe the one that would be most fun to go to because it is close to other fun stores like Target and Baby Gap. I do love efficiency...I digress). He pulled open the top drawer in my desk and was fiddling around with things in there. After a few moments, I put him down on the floor at my feet and he was playing with his toys. A few minutes later (efficiency is a strong point - decision making is not - I had continued Google mapping different stores for different errands, seeing what I could accomplish in one fell swoop), I noticed he was pretty quiet, still right at my feet. I looked down at him and noticed he had a bottle of White Out in his mouth. I hadn't even seen him get it out of the drawer. It was sealed shut, but I grabbed the dangerous chemical out of his hand before he had a chance to start sniffing it. Crisis averted. Afterward, he just kind of looked at me, mouth shut (his mouth is never shut), and I knew there was more in there, so I did a full sweep, with which he was fully compliant (also rare), and this is what I found (the three dimensional version):

I immediately felt the following things in the following order: shock, fear, guilt, fear, guilt, guilt, and more guilt. I imagined the paper clip that he must have already swallowed heading down his digestive tract tearing up one organ at a time and me never being able to forgive myself. I considered calling the doctor, but was too embarrassed and the rational side of me was almost sure that no other paper clips had escaped the drawer. Then, just to be safe, I went back to the floor by my desk and put the box of staples away (it makes a really fun sound when you shake it). We'll try running errands tomorrow, and I'll add this incident to the list of reasons why I need an iPhone.