How to Disappear Completely
Thursday, July 08th, 2010 | Author: Erika

Wait, what?  Today’s Thursday?  And I haven’t written anything on my blog since Friday?  Have I been on vacation?  Certainly not.  Did I fall down a well?  Not that I know of.  Was this week a giant black hole that I’m just now tumbling out of?  Why yes, yes it was.

Where to even start?  Here’s the quick and dirty breakdown of what the heck happened to me this week, broken into bullet points to encourage me to get to the point:

  • Saturday: We have the minivan!  Gandalf the White made the journey from Oregon to our garage and I’m in love.  It’s the coolest car I’ve ever driven and I love it so much I want to buy it a Best Friends necklace and make it promise to never take it off.
  • Monday: We met some good friends in Seattle and had an adventure.  This adventure involved impromptu cupcakes, a dog spanking (seriously, this lady hauled off and spanked her tiny little dog for barking at another dog), Aidan’s pants falling off at a restaurant, and my first attempt to breastfeed him at a restaurant (success!).
  • Tuesday: Driving around like a madwoman getting Gandalf’s exhaust emissions tested (pass!) and getting him registered with The Man.  Gandalf now sports his very own Washington license plates.
  • Wednesday: Sneak attack heat wave that threw our house into chaos.  On Sunday, it was 60 degrees outside (worst 4th of July weather EVER).  Yesterday?  90 degrees.  We were not prepared, and every store in the whole state was sold out of the kind of portable air conditioner Wes researched and selected.  Fussy, overheated, non-nap-taking baby in one hand, keyboard in the other, I prowled Craigslist until I found a comparable air conditioner and nearly blackmailed the owner into selling it to us.
  • Thursday: Running around Home Depot with a baby strapped to my chest, trying to find various components to optimize our air conditioner.  Learned all about different kinds of insulation and circuit breakers, including the grim knowledge that unless we get a dedicated circuit (read: expensive custom wiring) our air conditioner will continue to overload our circuit breakers unless we turn everything upstairs off while it’s running (read: showers in the dark will continue).

Yeah.  That just about sums it up.  There was working and cleaning and laundry in there too somewhere, and I also made homemade eggplant parmesan before the heat wave rendered my kitchen useless.

On a completely related note, does anyone have a spare Hawaii vacation lying around that they don’t want?  I know someone who might be interested…

*Massive kudos to anyone who gets the reference in the title of this post!

Category: Gandalf the White  | 4 Comments
The Notorious C.I.O.
Thursday, July 01st, 2010 | Author: Erika

Oooh, I just know I’m going to get tomatoes thrown at me for this post, but this is another one of those posts I feel that it’s important to write.  If only so that other moms in similar situations won’t feel like they’re alone.

Well, there’s nothing for it but to just rip the Band-Aid off, so here goes: I am referring to letting your baby cry it out.

First, I’ll start with some back story.  Since he was about 1.5 weeks old, he’s always been a fantastic nighttime sleeper (I credit the miraculous swing for that).  Daytime sleeping, however?  Not his cup of tea.

Difficult to get him to sleep in the first place (despite heavy eyes and fussing, he’d always assure me a nap wasn’t necessary), and he’d inevitably wake up every 15-30 minutes, and take another 20 minutes of shushing, rocking, swaying, bouncing, and walking around to get him back down.

What should have been a three hour nap (he’s always needed a one hour nap in the morning, and a three hour nap in the afternoon, I’m so lucky!) would stretch into five hours of exhausting soothing on my part, exhausted wailing on his part.  Wes would come home and find me with a sore back and frayed nerves.

He wasn’t getting much rest (how can you get any good sleep when you’re awake every 30 minutes?) and I was starting to feel like I was going to lose it.  I dreaded every afternoon nap, especially when I started to feel like he was just manipulating me.  I’d walk into his room when I heard him screaming, and the minute he saw my face he’d stop screaming and give me big, goofy smiles.

That was when I decided to do some research.  I started asking a bunch of moms I know what they would do, and the answer was nearly unanimous: Let him cry it out.

Now, crying it out has such a bad reputation on the Internet.  This post, which I read while I was researching crying it out, was particularly condemning.  For every article or post I saw that warned against the method, however, I saw hundreds of other posts from parents saying that with a loving approach it was great.

I weighed the pros and cons, and decided to try it for a week, starting when he was four months old and using the original Ferber method, not just locking Aidan in a room and letting him cry for as long as it took.  When I knew Aidan was tired, I would make sure his diaper was fresh, make sure his belly was full, and then rock and cuddle him until he was nearly asleep.

Then, I put him in his crib, tucked him in with his blanket, and closed the door.  He’d immediately start crying, so I went in after one minute and shushed and held his hands, then left the room again.  He’d start crying again, so I went in after two minutes.  Wash, rinse, repeat at increasing one minute intervals until he was asleep.

After about a week of this, he started putting himself to sleep, and self-soothing himself back to sleep during his daytime naps.  He stopped waking up every 15-30 minutes, and waking up from his naps happier and better rested.  The amount of time he spent crying before each nap decreased, to the point we’re at today, where he grumbles for about a minute before falling right to sleep.

I’m certain that crying it out isn’t best for every parent and baby, but I just thought I’d throw this out so that if you want to try it you won’t feel like your child will become a sociopath because of it.  I asked a bunch of moms, and of the ones who did it, none of their kids seemed to me to be less secure, less empathetic, or more aloof.

So there we go.  Let the tomato throwing commence.

Category: Aidan, Opinionated much?  | Tags:  | 11 Comments
Thumb Sucker
Wednesday, June 30th, 2010 | Author: Erika

Aidan and his thumb 17 weeks old

Aidan discovered his thumb last week.  Of course, by “discovered” what I really mean is “fell madly and deeply in love with”.

When I was pregnant, I was sure I’d be able to get him to use a pacifier instead of his thumb.  I rationalized that surely it would be easier to wean him from a pacifier than from his thumb.  After all, you can cash in pacifiers for a new toy, but you can’t exactly remove your child’s thumb, can you?

Then, Aidan was here and I stood at the ready with three different brands of pacifiers, ready to try them all to find Aidan’s favorite.  This proved a fruitless endeavor because Aidan did not have a favorite.  He would tolerate the pacifier in his mouth as long as I held it there, but the minute I left it in there without assistance he’d spit it out and grin, like it was this fun new game we had just come up with.

Co-conspirators in thumb sucking.

When he was angry, pacifiers only made him more so.  They did nothing to pacify, in other words.  In fact, for the first four months of his life, he self-soothed without sucking on anything, really.  I have no idea how, perhaps he was laying in his crib counting little tiny baby sheep.  Who knows?

Anyway, I was hanging out with two of my nieces the other day.  The older of them, Caroline, used to suck her thumb when she was a baby, whereas her sister, Kaylie, favored pacifiers.  I told Caroline that Aidan enjoyed sucking his thumb too, and wasn’t much of a pacifier kind of guy.

She beamed, then leaned down and murmured in Aidan’s ear, “That’s ok, we’ll just keep that between the two of us.”

And that’s one of the reasons I’m so glad Aidan’s cousins live so close.  Because every kid needs a cousin to conspire with.

Category: Aidan  | Tags:  | 6 Comments
Taunting Big-Footed Women
Tuesday, June 29th, 2010 | Author: Erika

Did you know that pregnancy can make your feet grow?  And that that will, in return, reliably reduce you to tears while shoe shopping?

I’m a tall girl, but my feet have always been a manageable size 10.  Sure, my pants are consistently too short, but my feet were still a nice, normal size, and shoe shopping was one of the few kinds of shopping I enjoyed.

Until I had an adorable, squishy little baby (incidentally, who was called Squishy).

Now I have size 11 feet.  I have an adorable baby and feet that are too large to fit comfortably into any of my shoes.  After getting fed up with my toes rubbing against the inside of my ancient tennis shoes while I walked, I decided to find some new shoes.

I got my feet remeasured, and was aghast to learn my feet had grown to an unruly size.  Not to be deterred, I figured that surely I’d be able to find size 11 tennis shoes.  I mean, how hard could it be?  There are taller women than me running around all over the place, I doubted they all get their shoes custom made.

That was when I ate my humble pie with a side of ice cream.

You guys, no one makes shoes in size 11.  You get to size 10 and then you get nothing.  We looked everywhere, and my despair grew with each successive store where sales people made horrified faces and told me they had nothing for me in-store but could always order something (which, dude, how not helpful is that?  Like I’m just going to guess about how my feet will feel by trying on shoes that are too small?  Or, worse yet, just ordering without trying them on?).

Every time I walked by rows and rows of shoes that were off-limits to me and my giant freak feet, I cried.  I mean, I can deal with being tall, with the short pants and no leg room in cars or on planes, but to be deprived of shoes now too?

After watching me dissolve into tears for the fifth time, Wes decided I needed to go shoe shopping at Nordstrom.  Nordstrom, where they sell pretty shoes to pretty people and make you feel like spending twice as much is a good deal because of the famous excellent customer service.

On Saturday, I got all dolled up (putting on eye shadow and eye liner counts as getting dolled up) and we strolled into Nordstrom fully expecting to leave there with shoes and self esteem.  That the shoe salesman botched the sale boggles the mind.  Perhaps it’s because he:

  1. Told me he’d rather be watching the World Cup than helping me find shoes.
  2. Brought out only one freaking pair of shoes for me to try on, then told me he had nothing else in my size (which, seeing as he was so enthusiastic to be doing his job right then, was probably a great big lie).
  3. Tried to convince me that, even though I told him the shoes he brought out didn’t feel good on my feet, I should wear them around for a week because he was sure I’d grow to like them.
  4. After I assured him, in no uncertain terms, that I disliked the shoes, he brought out another pair.  When I slipped them on and told him they felt tight, he looked at me like I was stupid and said, “Yeah, they’re 10’s”.  I suppose when you taunt big-footed women with shoes they can’t have because of their giant feet, they’re unwilling to buy things from you.

With nap time for Aidan fast approaching, we ran over to Lady Foot Locker, where the saleslady (named Jazzy) brought out ten different boxes of shoes for me to try on.  She enumerated the features and strengths of each pair, and was patient as I tried them all on and walked around the store.

I finally settled on a pair of Nike shoes that feel like heaven on my feet.  So the shoe problem has been resolved.  I remain in shock over the abysmal customer service I received at Nordstrom, but I’m so happy with my new (very purple!) shoes that I’m willing to stop complaining about it.  Now that I’ve written about it on my blog, of course.

Category: Fashion  | 7 Comments
Mini Super Soldier
Monday, June 28th, 2010 | Author: Erika

Aidan and I just returned from his 4 month check-up, where we learned the following things:

  • He’s a really tall little guy.  His height is in the 85th percentile!  He grew almost 5 inches in the last two months!
  • He’s more active than most babies his age, and his motor skills are way ahead of the curve.  His pediatrician says he’s able to do things she normally tests 6 month old babies for.
  • He’s talkative!  She said that he’s found his voice earlier than most babies.

In short, he’s super baby!  He hasn’t really put on much weight (almost 2 pounds in two months) so he’s just long and lean and strong and very very busy.  I told Wes that I gave birth to a miniature super soldier!

The exciting thing is that we get to introduce fruits and veggies now!  This is a great time to introduce fruits and veggies as it’s fresh produce season.  I can’t wait to get myself a Beaba and start getting Aidan’s face messy with delicious victuals!  We probably won’t start weaning him until he’s 6 months old, but for now we can introduce him to fruits and veggies to get him on the right track.

The thing is, it’s incredibly gratifying to hear other people praising how unique and awesome and completely mind-blowingly incredible your child is.  I mean, I spend all day astounded by how busy Aidan is, how much he talks and how fast he outgrows pants, but then to hear someone else marvel over the same things is so much fun.  Like getting to induct new members into the Aidan Mitchell fan club.

Of course, he did get more shots so the appointment ended on a tearful note.  Though, in Aidan’s defense, he took them like a man.  He cried a little, and then seemed more angry about the whole affair than upset.  He mustered a smile for his grandma after the shots, but then went back to angrily exclaiming his displeasure about his shots.

As much as I enjoy conversing with Aidan’s pediatrician, I’m always glad to have a couple months in between visits so Aidan has a chance to take a break from shots.  This round wasn’t nearly as traumatic as the first one, but it is in no way easy to see your precious little guy in pain.  No way, no how.

Category: Aidan  | 6 Comments
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