Food Chain

A friend of ours recently had his first baby, and we asked him how it was going. I absolutely loved his reaction. He said:

Babies are totally amazing. They're completely helpless and immobile, and they make more noise than should be possible from something that small. Could it be more obvious that we are at the top of the food chain? Our babies are born yelling at the top of their lungs, "Hey, look at me! Totally helpless little morsel of food right here!!!"

Yep, we're lucky that we created tools to defend ourselves, because holy cow our children do everything in their power to try to bring about their own destruction. Ages one through five can basically be described as "I have the physical ability to kill myself in a bazillion different ways, and none of the intelligence to stop myself from doing it by accident." I am constantly amazed by how completely oblivious LL is to the dangers around him. Jump in front of speeding cars? Stuff handfuls of food into his mouth until he chokes? Grab at hot candles? Eat random leaves and flowers found outside? Climb really high onto things when he has no reasonable plan for getting down? Run as fast as he can, with his eyes closed? Yes, these are definitely the actions of someone concerned with his own survival.

Last week, Kermit crawled off the edge of a cliff without a moment's hesitation. Okay, not a cliff. A stair. Just one stair. But seriously, no hesitation, and he banged his forehead pretty bad when the ground ended up not being where he wanted it to be. (Also, S and I were both standing right there when it happened, so we're not exactly winning any parenting awards right now.)

Kermit's latest favorite game: he tosses his head waaaay back, to give me a chance to tickle his chin and neck. What kind of an animal has offspring who think that the most intelligent thing they can do is to purposely expose their jugular?

Children make a lot more sense when you think of them as The Top of the Food Chain. But I'm not entirely sure that they're better off for it.

Yellow

I have not been posting enough lately. Mostly because I have a bunch of looooong posts that I want to write, but not enough time to write them. But the longer I wait, the longer the (potential) post becomes, because it has to cover everything. Vicious cycle. So, in an effort to actually record everything that I want to record, I am going to try to convince myself to do more frequent, shorter posts. Starting with this little anecdote about LL, which I want to remember forever and ever so that I can make fun of him about it someday, and also because it is cute.

When LL was learning colors, he had an awful time pronouncing the word "yellow." I don't know why -- he could do all of the sounds and combinations in other words, but this one word was really hard for him. At first, I thought that he just didn't know the color yellow, but no, it was all about the word. The fun part was watching him COPE with not being able to say it.

At first, he would try to say it, and stumble and stumble over the sounds until finally giving up. Very frustrating for him.

Then he would just cry whenever I pointed to something yellow. This phase was very depressing, but thankfully didn't last long.

Next, he learned an important life skill that will someday serve him well in college: if you don't know the answer to a question, just answer the question that you wish had been asked!

Me: What color is the car?
LL: Blue!
Me: What color is the truck?
LL: Red!
Me: What color is the bus?
LL: School bus!
Me: Um, yes, it is a school bus. What color is it?
LL: School bus fast!
Me: Okay. What color is it?
LL: Say "vrooooom!" Has 4 wheels! Look -- door open here!
Me: What color is the bike?
LL: Purple!

That phase cracked me up, and lasted a long time. Eventually, he realized that he couldn't avoid the color yellow forever, so he made up a new word for it. Out of thin air. He just picked a sound that he could pronounce, and that was his word for yellow. He called it "arr." At first, we thought that he was abbreviating "amarillo," but he informed us that we were wrong.

The "arr" phase lasted quite some time. Long enough that I stopped noticing it, automatically translating "arr" to "yellow" in my head.

And then one day, he said yellow. And then immediately giggled and buried his head on my shoulder. (Adorable!) After that, I would actually hear him looking at books by himself and repeating the word yellow over and over again.

The part that kind of shocks me is that he was actually aware that he wasn't pronouncing it right, enough to be embarrassed about it. Which was weird for a two-year-old. Especially since there are a ton of words that he mispronounces, but this word was the only one that bothered him. (For example, he mispronounces the word milk. It sounds more like "meat." He's been saying it that way for almost a year now. Every so often, S calls it "meat" when talking to LL, and LL gets really mad at him and says, "No, Daddy! No call it that!" He thinks that S is mocking him by pronouncing it in the LL way. But it doesn't stop LL from saying it, and he doesn't seem embarrassed to say the word.)

LL has been saying "yellow" for a few months now, but he still pauses every so slightly before saying it, like he has to concentrate more than with other words. On the one hand, it's very cute. On the other hand, I cringe a little when I see him acting like he's scared to make a mistake. We are generally very careful not to correct things like pronunciation and grammar for him at this age, preferring to just speak properly in front of him and let him naturally absorb language. Not sure why he suddenly decided that it would be bad to make a mistake. In the mean time, every time I hear him say the word "yellow," I feel like a little bit of his babyhood is gone forever.

LL @ 3

LL turned three! This year marks the first time that he was at all aware of his birthday, and he sure made the most of it. He was so excited!!! Balloons! Presents! Cupcakes! Visitors! Parties! And we haven't even had his big birthday party yet. (We had a small celebration with just us the night of his birthday; he had a picnic in the park the afternoon of his birthday with one of his neighborhood friends; he had a party at daycare the next day; but his big celebration with lots of guests at our house isn't until this Saturday.)

On a related note: LL has eaten more sugar in the last 4 days than the entire rest of his life up to this point. If that is an exaggeration, it's not by much.

We always try to buy toys that are fairly low-tech (no batteries, encourage free play, etc.). I came up with a pretty good list of gift ideas, then gave them all away to other people who asked what he might want. For our gift for LL, I decided to get him some dress-up clothes. He loves running around the house in his Halloween costumes from the last two years, so I thought that it would be a good choice. Then I went looking for dress-up clothes. You know what's left after you rule out dress-up clothes in the princess genre? Almost nothing. You can buy individual outfits, but they're usually expensive (eg, a full pirate costume for $40). But it's really really hard to find a trunk of assorted dress-up stuff for boys, like you would find for girls.

Actually, even if I had a girl, I would be frustrated by this. The girl dress-up stuff is entirely princess stuff, slutty outfits, and high-heeled shoes. Kinda makes me glad that I have boys.

I finally put together a decent trunk of dress-up options. They're mostly hats, which are the best parts of dress-up outfits anyway. We have hats for: firemen, policeman, farmer, train engineer, safari person (?), wizard, race car driver, construction worker, pirate, and cowboy. There are also a few (rather silly) accessories: pirate scope, binoculars, compass, magic wand, glasses. And I got him a super hero cape.

LL is totally afraid of the super hero cape. I don't know why. He has yet to try it on, and he keeps hiding it. S and I have been wearing it around the house, because we think it is really cool, and we told LL that it gives you the ability to fly, but he wants no part of it. As far as I know, he doesn't know what a super hero is (he's never seen any movies or books with super heroes in them) so if he just didn't know what it was, I'd understand. But what in the world is making him actively hostile towards it?!?

Somewhat related: I asked LL what he wanted to be for Halloween, because I want to get costumes squared away now, before things get even busier around here (Jewish High Holy Days, S's parents visiting, me starting a new job someday). S and I thought for sure he would want to be a pirate, and I had already bought a companion parrot costume for Kermit, which I thought would be adorable, but then LL informed us that no, he would really prefer to be an owl.

Owl costumes are hard to come by. And most of them are ugly.

One more aside: I've been having way too much fun with joke possibilities that go along with having the kids dressed up as an owl and a parrot. I told S that he should dress up as a rock, so that they can be Two Birds and One Stone. There are also good possibilities if I can convince S to wear a George W. Bush mask. (You know, a bird in the hand....)

LL's birthday gift from Kermit was an abacus, because there's a picture of an abacus in one of LL's I-Spy books, and he loves to point to it and tell us that when he's older, he wants to have one of those. I couldn't really figure out what age is old enough for a kid's first abacus (it doesn't quite elicit the same debate as the appropriate age for a first cellphone) but I decided that surely three years is old enough. So now he has an abacus.

S is so thrilled that LL wanted an abacus that he now seems convinced that LL is going to, I don't know, reinvent calculus or something. I'm pretty sure that he just likes all the colorful beads.

For LL's party this weekend, at which we are expecting 12 (!) kids, our theme is bubbles. I bought ingredients to make several gallons of home-brewed bubble solution, we're filling some relatively untippable buckets with the stuff, and letting the kids go wild. I have a bunch of plastic wands in various sizes, but we also bent some clothes hangers into roundish shapes, and created a few more homemade bubble blower things with string and straws and the like. I'm very excited about it. I also predict that the adults have at least as much fun with the bubbles as the kids do.

Stream of Consciousness

No unifying theme. None. At least, I don't think so. If you find one, let me know.

Kermit slept through the night. Twice. And then immediately got sick. Now he's back to waking 2-5 times each night, and I'm even more exhausted than before. It was like glimpsing an oasis in the desert, and now it is gone.

I have two (two!) final round interviews this week. I believe that I have a decent chance at getting offers for both of them. Interviewing for jobs may be my least favorite thing to do in the whole wide world.

I am desperate to get a job, desperate to get back to some semblance of normal life, and yet every time I think about actually getting full-time childcare for Kermit and starting a job, I cry. A lot. LL is so happy being at Natasha's during the day that I don't even blink about sending him there, but Kermit is so tiny and snuggly and fun, and I've never been away from him for more than a few hours, and it's making me weepy. I still want to go back to work, but apparently my hormones are intent on making me miserable about it.

I predict that Kermit will be crawling within the next 30 days. I set him on the ground surrounded by toys, and he immediately throws one of them out of reach, then goes up on all fours to try to retrieve it. Every time. He's 7.5 months old right now. LL didn't reach this stage until 10 months, and didn't crawl until 11.5, so I'm kind of in shock about the possibility of early mobility.

Can you say "possibility of early mobility" 10 times really fast?

S went to a bachelor party on Saturday, and he got shot. Sort of. Not really, but there was a gun and a bullet and an injury, so why nitpick, right? I don't know much of anything about guns, and I'm a little unclear about what happened, but it went something like this: (1) S tells me that the bachelor party is going to involve guns and alcohol. I am supremely uncomfortable around guns, and I get mocked when I ask, horrified, "In what order?!?!?" (2) S assures me that they are going to a shooting range before doing anything else, and that everyone will be very very safe, and that I have nothing to worry about, and to stop prefacing sentences with, "And if I'm a widow next week, ...." (3) S becomes the envy of all his friends when they hear me saying, "Guns? Really? Are you sure you don't just want to go to a strip club?" (4) S comes home extremely hung over, sporting what looks like an ugly black eye. Between (3) and (4), something happened where S shot a pistol and the hot shell casing (?) flew into the air, ricocheted off a wall (?), and lodged itself between the safety goggles and S's eyelid (?), leaving an ugly black burn mark. I'm particularly unclear on how something like that happens if you're wearing safety goggles. Also, I have not at all changed my opinion on guns, at least as they relate to bachelor parties.

S and I went to a wedding on Sunday. (Ironically, a wedding having nothing at all to do with the bachelor party on Saturday. That wedding isn't for another two weeks.) We had Rosie come and watch the kiddos, and it was our first night out since before Kermit was born. The minister referenced Steve Jobs twice during the ceremony. He told us that the bride's mother had recently passed away but was watching the ceremony from heaven, despite the fact that the bride's mother had just walked down the aisle moments before and was sitting right in front of him. He started reciting a quote about love, then realized halfway through that it was actually about death, not love, so he apologized but then felt compelled to talk about death for a while. And, bizarrely, he kept making references to rock climbing.

Ever since he got his Big Boy Bed, LL has been insisting that either me or S sit in his rocking chair until he falls asleep at night. If we try to leave, there is much crying and carrying on. We warned Rosie that he would want her to do this, but when she sat in the chair, he told her, "No, that's okay, I'll go to sleep all by myself." And he did. WTF?

I made the mistake of telling LL that his birthday was coming up. He's a little unclear on what a birthday is. He is also completely unclear on units of time. I have had this conversation with him two or three times a day for the past several months:
LL: Is it my birthday today?
Me: No, not for a few more weeks.
LL: After naptime it will be my birthday?
Me: Um, no....
LL: Oh, I will play, go to the park, eat lunch, then it's my birthday?
Me: No, you have to eat like 30 more lunches before it's your birthday.
LL: I'm not hungry. Is it my birthday now?

LL is talking nonstop these days. It's amazing how his speech is getting more sophisticated day to day. Some of it is pronunciation, some of it is speech patterns, some of it is vocabulary. Really cool to watch it unfold. People told me that I would want him to please just be quiet for a little while! by the time he reached this age, but it hasn't happened yet.

We leave next week for yet another wedding (our fifth one this year) but this one is several hundred miles away, and we're driving. I am ... apprehensive. LL is pseudo-potty-trained. Kermit hates the car and rarely falls asleep in his car seat. This particular drive has large gaps between exits and random bouts of stop-and-go traffic. Almost every single time we've done this drive, S falls asleep and I have to drive the whole way. I've been stocking up on car activities for LL, but I have a sinking feeling that we're just going to end up singing songs for 9 hours straight, punctuated with random crying. Wish us luck.

The Great Potty Train

Today is Day 26 of officially potty training LL. It is going well, I think, though slowly (by design). Our approach:

Stage 1: This stage was all about awareness, not really training, and it started sometime around 2 years old, maybe earlier, I don't really remember. We bought a simple plastic potty (the Bjorn one that everybody has) and put it in the bathroom, without comment. If he asked, we told him that he could sit on it if he wanted to. He often sat on it while S or I went to the bathroom, usually keeping his clothes on, but sometimes asking us to pull his pants down, rarely asking us to remove his diaper as well. When he was in the bathroom with us, we narrated what we were doing ("First I pull my pants and underwear down, then I sit on the toilet. Now I'm peeing!" etc.) We bought him a potty book (this one, which is nice and simple and funny). We let him flush the toilet for us. And when he was in the bath, we pointed out to him when he started peeing. Eventually, he started trying to pee in the bath, until he was able to do it whenever he wanted. Then he started occasionally asking us if he could sit on the potty to pee, and when he did, he almost always managed to go a little, and when he did, we all clapped and exclaimed over it. We even called Grandma a few times. It was all very cool and laid back.

Stage 2: This (short) stage was about immediate preparation, for about a month. When S or I took LL into the bathroom with us, we started asking him if he would like to go potty, too. If he said no, we dropped the topic for the rest of the day. (Side note: while watching me pee one day, LL suddenly realized that I have different plumbing than he and Daddy have. He pointed dramatically to my crotch and said, "Uh oh, Mommy! Where did that part go?!?" And thus LL was introduced to the difference between boys and girls, along with names for anatomy that we hadn't gotten around to yet. Fun times.) We talked about how we pee in potties or diapers, but not in underwear or pants. He was able to be naked in the house for periods of time, during which he would tell us about how he was not going to pee on the floor. (He was very fond of not peeing on the floor.) We talked about poop a lot. I took LL with me to Target and let him pick out Big Boy Underwear, and we talked about how he would wear it when he was ready. There was much general excitement.

Stage 3: Home potty training! This is the stage we're in right now. We started on a Saturday. When LL woke up, I asked him if he wanted to wear underwear instead of a diaper. Then I set the alarm on my cell phone to go off every 15 minutes with a gentle chime, and he would go sit on the potty. Some of the time he peed, and some of the time he sat for 10 seconds before telling me that he didn't have to go, maybe he'd go next time. A few notes about how this stage is going:

- The morning went great -- no accidents, lots of success -- but at the end of the day, he had three accidents all in a row. No big deal, it was his first day, but I got the sense that he didn't quite have the energy and attention span to do whole days yet. So, we started doing half days of potty training for the next week, either mornings or afternoons, depending on what else was going on that day, working our way back up to full days.

- On the second day, I started seeing LL dancing around a bit between those 15 minute intervals. When I asked him if he needed to go pee, he told me no, he would wait until Mommy's phone rang. We tried for two days to convince him that he could go whenever he needed to, he didn't have to wait for the alarm, but he didn't believe us. Thus, we had to discontinue the use of the alarm. We loosely kept track of the time, and asked him to go sit on the potty every 20-30 minutes. By Day 5, he was occasionally initiating it himself, and by the end of the week, we had stopped asking him to go, letting him go when he felt that he needed to.

- He still runs to the bathroom whenever my cell phone rings. That Pavlovian thing happens fast!

- He will not poop in the potty. (I hear this is common with boys.) When he needs to poop, he asks us for a pull up, then lets us know when he's done so that we can change him back into underwear. Each time he does this, we ask if he would like to try pooping in the potty instead, but so far, the answer is always no.

- After one week, he decided that he wanted to pee standing up. I think that he learned this at daycare, because S had been sitting down to pee when LL was around. So, we have a little stool in front of the toilet now, and LL pees standing up every time. He has very good aim, so it has been less messy than I feared, and S taught LL to wipe up the edge of the toilet bowl with toilet paper, so not too bad.

- LL has become an underwear fashionista. He likes to change his underwear several times a day, to try all the different designs. Telling him that we only change underwear during the day if they get dirty seemed like setting up some really bad incentives, so we've been going along with it.

So, here's where we are:

- If he's at home and awake, he wears underwear and goes to the bathroom on his own.
- When he needs to poop, he wears a pull up.
- When we go out, including when he's at daycare, he wears a pull up. (He can't wear underwear to daycare until he masters the pooping part, and I'm hesitant to bring him out even to the grocery store in underwear until that happens as well.)
- When he's sleeping, he wears a pull up. I don't see this changing any time soon. The kid pees a whole heck of a lot in his sleep.
- He has an occasional accident, but they're getting less frequent.
- We did not do sticker charts or M&Ms or prizes or anything like that, but we do have a potty song and dance that is performed every time LL (or his bear) successfully go potty. It ends with a high five. LL is very fond of the potty dance.

The next stage is going to have to be pooping in the potty, but we're waiting until LL lets us know that he's ready. I'm in no particular rush, and his progress so far is fine with me. Amusingly, we hadn't talked about potty training in front of LL, just sort of did the steps that we wanted to do. Then one day, he heard us use the phrase "potty train," which apparently conjured up for LL all sorts of images of choo choo trains filled with potties, and he has been much more enthusiastic about it ever since. He really does love his trains.

Bullets

Oy, I haven't written in a while. Part of it is that I'm busy (cf, two small children). Part is that I'm exhausted (cf, two small children, again). Part is that I was sick for a ridiculously long time. Part is perfectionism (I have so much that I want to write about, but I want to write it well, so I procrastinate on each post until I can do it properly). But now I'm hopelessly behind in what I want to record here! So, a quick bullet list, most of which will be expanded into a series of much cooler posts in the near future.

- I've started interviewing for jobs. Blech. I hate interviewing for jobs. I'm already growing tired of jumping through the hoops.

- Kermit turns 6 months old next week. It's so cliched to say it, but geesh, where did the time go?!? He has two teeth already, he's chewing on everything he can get his little paws on, he loves standing up, he wants desperately to learn how to sit up straight on his own, and he is ready ready ready to start eating real food, thankyouverymuch. Also, he loves to nap. Also, he is seriously the smiliest baby in the world, which is fairly impressive for a teething refluxy kid. Especially one that's constantly being stepped on by his older brother.

- LL has suddenly exploded developmentally. He's sleeping in a big boy bed, he's trying new foods with toddler abandon, he has suddenly found his voice and is carrying on full conversations, and he's progressing nicely with potty training. And he's nearly as tall as me. Well, not quite, but he's suddenly a heck of a lot closer than he has any right to be, since he's not yet three years old. Bedtime is getting ever-so-slightly better, but still kind of sucks. When things calm down a bit on all the other transitions he's facing right now, we will really need to do something about bedtime.

- Why yes, I did slip in there that we started potty training LL. It's been about two weeks. We're taking a very very very laid back approach, which is going fairly well so far. I've cobbled together a lovely low-stress technique that so far has resulted in a lot of successes, a few accidents, several conversations about the differences between boys and girls, and a weird pavlovian thing where LL needs to pee every time my phone rings.

- One of my resolutions is to cook more dinners at home. Also, I'm trying to lose some of that lingering fertility/pregnancy weight. Also, I'm tired of LL eating yogurt, cottage cheese, crackers, and fruit (and very little else) for every meal. Also, nobody ever taught me meal planning, or even much cooking, and I kind of feel like I've been blindly winging it for 15 years. Which might have been fine when I was cooking just for me, but now that I'm responsible for feeding two human beings, both of whom will hopefully grow up having healthier views on food than me, their overweight mother, I decided that I really needed to educate myself and make some changes. I've been reading lots of books. I've also been slowly integrating new ideas into our household, in the hopes that I can get some new behaviors ingrained while LL and Kermit are little, and before I go back to work and have much less time for planning. Summaries and book reviews will be coming soon.

- S and I went out to see a movie this week!!! For the first time in like a year!!! It was awesome! We saw Super 8. Highly recommended. I really liked it, and not just because it was two hours during which nobody pulled on my shirt and whined, "Mommy! Mommy! Mommy!" Also, I got to go to the bathroom before and after the movie all by myself.

- I got my hair cut last week, and my stylist asked what product I've been putting in my hair. I told her that my baby is teething right now, so he chews on his hands, then grabs handfuls of my hair, and I sort of just let his saliva accumulate there all day. I started going to this particular high-end salon when S and I were first married. I'm not sure that I'm quite their target clientele anymore.

Yep, those are the highlights. More later.

Back!

We just got back from visiting my family. The trip was exhausting but wonderful. We stayed at my parents' house, and my brother and his entire crew drove in and stayed there as well, and it was so much fun to have all the cousins together. (I must say, though, that 11 people was a bit much to be staying in my parents 3-bedroom house, especially when it includes 5 kids ages 4 months through 11 years.) The last time LL saw any of these cousins, he was only 9 months old. This time, he was old enough to actually play with them, and he had such a good time. We also got to go to several of my favorite hangouts from when I was a kid, see a few of my oldest friends who are still in the area, and eat some food that I can't get where we currently live. (Oh frozen custard, how I have missed you! Why oh why is frozen custard only available in like three cities in the US? It is the most fabulous food on earth.)

LL has been talking for weeks about wanting to see the oldest cousin, B, who is 11, so we thought that he would spend the whole time trailing after him. Instead, he happily played with LiLi, who is also two. The middle cousin, age 7, spent the entire time playing with Kermit, which freed up the 11-year-old to play with S the entire time. (Have I mentioned how much all kids, especially the 8-12 set, love S? He's amazing.) With both my children happily occupied, I got to spend some quality time with my brother, which is very rare these days. I tried to soak up those chunks of time when no one was sitting on my lap or whining for a snack. Yay, vacation!

Now we're back to reality. Kermit's eating got worse while we were gone, and we've switched him to a new reflux medication in the hope that he'll start eating a normal amount. He ate well yesterday for the first time in a month, so we're hopeful. (No more breast feeding, though. The most he has nursed in the past week is for 30 seconds, and my milk supply is practically gone, so I think that our breast feeding time is really over. I made it 5 months this time, not even close to the year that I had hoped for.) We're so desperate to get calories into Kermit whenever he'll take them that we've been willing to offer him food whenever he asks. And he seems to prefer the majority of his milk between 10pm and 7am, which sucks. We can barely get an ounce into him at each meal during the day, then he gulps down 6 ounces at each feeding in the middle of the night. Once he seems truly better, we're going to have to do some behavior modification on that one.

LL was healthy the whole time we were gone, then immediately came down with another cold when we got back. Not too bad, but he's coughing a lot, which keeps waking him up at night, which of course requires me to get up at night and calm him down. Between LL's cold and Kermit's weird eating patterns, I haven't slept much since we got back.

Next up: I need to get a job. Kermit turned 5 months old yesterday (an update on him, and an update on LL, since it's been a few months since I devoted a post to him, will be coming as soon as I have the time to write them). I had planned to stay home with Kermit for 6 months, so... I should really try to find a job soon. I've enjoyed being home with him, but it is obvious to me that I would not be happy long-term as a SAHM. So, resume revisions this week, and sending out a few feelers to see where I am. Ugh, I hate looking for jobs.

Family Resemblance

Background information: I'm Eastern European Jewish. Pale skin, green eyes, dark brown curly hair. S is Japanese. Fairly light skin, dark olive-shaped eyes, black curly hair. Yes, he's 100% Japanese and he has curly hair. It's rare but it happens. Relatives on both sides of his family have wavy hair, but if there were a contest for curliest natural hair on a Japanese person, he would win.

One of the fun things to do when a baby is born is to play the "Who does he look like?" game. This game gets a little more complicated, however, when the parents are of different racial backgrounds. S and I have always said that LL just looks like himself. Yes, we can see tiny pieces of each of us in him (for example, he most definitely has my chin, poor kid!) but he doesn't truly look like either one of us. When he was a baby, however, S's family insisted that LL looked like me. When I finally asked some of them what specifically made him look like me, they universally answered that he looked white. (And apparently all white babies look like me....)

It's not uncommon for children of mixed race backgrounds to look more like one race than the other, and we've even seen full siblings who look like they are from completely different racial backgrounds, simply because they inherited specific features from mom vs. dad. So we were curious about who Kermit would look like.

Now that we've visited S's family, the verdict (from them) is in. In the words of one of S's aunts, "At least this one looks Asian!" They insisted that Kermit looks Japanese, with the undertones of "thank goodness!"

Okay, that's all very interesting. But here's the kicker: Kermit looks exactly like LL did as an infant! Seriously, you take photos of each of them at the same age, and I can barely tell them apart. We made a stack of photos of Kermit and intermixed them with a bunch of photos of LL at the same age, and nobody can reliably tell us which are Kermit and which are LL. In fact, when people struggle to find differences between them, the only reliable indicator that we've found is that Kermit's skin is actually more pale than LL's was at this age.

S and I have chalked it up to a case of people seeing what they want to see. We've also done a lot of joking about how S doesn't need to worry about the paternity of the kids -- if there was a mixup with the sperm at the fertility clinic, they must have made the exact same mistake the second time, too, because LL and Kermit obviously have the same parents.

I'll also note that most people truly don't think that LL is Asian at all. I think the mass of curly hair throws them off. And when I was out with Kermit today, someone asked if my husband was Mexican, and insisted that the baby looks Hispanic. So perhaps my kids just look vaguely exotic, in an indistinguishable way? Welcome to the modern post-racial world!

Looking at photos of LL from his first year, his face changed a lot over those twelve months, so we know that it's likely that Kermit will change in different ways and end up looking completely different from his brother. But for now, whenever anyone asks me and S who we think Kermit looks like, we just say that he looks like LL.

LL's First Joke

Today LL invented his very first joke! We're very proud of him. Are you ready?

"What color is Baba's car?"

"Blue!"

Insert hysterical toddler laughter here!

You see, it's funny because everybody knows that Baba's car is actually white.

The best part of the joke is watching the totally evil look on LL's face when he says what he knows to be the wrong answer, then tries for all of one second to suppress his laughter.

He followed it up with these gems:

"Mommy's car is blue!" (My car is actually gray.)

"Daddy's car is blue!" (S's car is green.)

"LL's car is blue!" (If LL had a car, I'm pretty sure that it would be red.)

He practically fell off his chair laughing at that last one. Then he very soberly informed us of the correct colors of each of the cars, because jokes are always funnier if you explain the punchline.

Let the years of bad knock-knock jokes begin....

Focus

Nothing quite like the feeling of finding out that you've been focusing on exactly the wrong things.

Last weekend, both my kids got sick. LL was a feverish toddler mess, but he had weathered colds before, and I figured this one wouldn't be any different. Kermit's symptoms were newer and more mild, yet he was the one I was concerned about. I knew the drill with toddler colds -- you bring them to the pediatrician, and then you listen to the lecture about how viruses just need to run their course, take them home, keep them hydrated, nothing else to be done. It almost always feels like a wasted trip. Kermit, however, was barely one month old. Surely a cold in a one-month-old deserves a bit more professional attention!

So Monday morning, I called and made an appointment for Kermit to see Dr. K. And as an afterthought, I checked with the advice nurse to see if maybe possibly it might be a good idea to bring in LL as well? I expected the "don't be a hyper-protective mother" speech, but instead the nurse rather pointedly mentioned that lying on a couch for four days without playing or eating isn't exactly normal behavior for a two-year-old, so yes, bring him along to the appointment.

When Dr. K entered the exam room, my speech to her went something like this: "Kermit has the sniffles, and he doesn't have a fever or anything, but he's coughing, and he's only four weeks old, and I'm really concerned about him. Also, LL has been a feverish mess for four days and counting, but I'm sure he'll be fine soon." And then she examined both of them, and said, "Sorry, he has pneumonia." And I said, "Oh my goodness, Kermit has pneumonia?!?!" And she gave me the oddest look in the world, and I'm paraphrasing here, but she said something along the lines of, "No, you dolt, I'm talking about LL! You know, the one who's really acting sick! Kermit just has a cold, and it'll run its course, keep him hydrated, call if it gets worse. But LL, goodness gracious, he's really sick!"

Anyway, I felt like an idiot, because the whole time that LL had been sick, I'd been focused on making sure that he didn't pass it to Kermit. And not only did I fail at that (as if there were any doubt that Kermit would catch LL's cold) but I had somehow totally glossed over how very sick LL was. I was completely focused on the wrong kid.

So, I spent the next several days obsessing over every detail of LL's recovery. Was his fever dropping? Was he drinking enough? Was he eating more? Exactly how much more active was he than he was the day before? On Wednesday morning, Dr. K called to check on the kids. And I gushed over how much better LL was compared to when she saw him on Monday. As for Kermit... well, he wasn't getting better, but he wasn't getting worse. You know how colds are, they need to run their course.

By Thursday morning, however, as I gleefully dressed LL to head to Natasha's because he was remarkably and gloriously better, I looked down at Kermit and realized that he hadn't really eaten much the night before. And he'd spit up massive amounts of milk at his last several feedings, even though he's generally not a spitty baby. And he had been fussing at every feeding since Wednesday afternoon. And he seemed to be sleeping more than usual. I'd told Dr. K on Wednesday morning that he wasn't getting any worse, but by Thursday morning, I had a sinking feeling that he actually was getting worse now, and maybe we should bring him back to be seen.

I made a follow-up appointment for Kermit for Thursday afternoon. When I made the appointment, I kind of thought (again) that I was doing the over-protective mother thing, but by the afternoon I was glad that we were going. Still, I felt a bit silly leaving the kid with pneumonia to fend for himself at daycare while I brought the kid with the run-of-the-mill cold back to the pediatrician.

Then again, Dr. K never once said this about LL, but she said it about Kermit on Thursday afternoon: "Sorry, but this baby can't go home with you today. He needs to get to the hospital. We're calling an ambulance to take him there. Right now."

For several days, I had obsessed about Kermit's cold and missed that LL had pneumonia. And I then over-compensated and fixated so much on getting LL over his pneumonia that I completely missed that Kermit had suddenly, very suddenly, gotten a heck of a lot worse. For the second time in one week, I was focused on the wrong kid.

I'm currently admitted to Children's Hospital with Kermit, while LL is at home with his grandmother. I totally didn't see it coming, but my toddler with pneumonia is at home without his mommy because, remarkably, he is not the sickest child I have. We think that Kermit has some sort of respiratory infection, probably RSV, but we don't know for sure quite yet. His oxygen levels keep dropping, so he's getting help breathing, which thankfully is giving him enough of a boost that he has also started eating more. We've been told that he will be here for at least two days, probably more. S keeps telling me that I should feel proud of myself for realizing that Kermit was getting worse and insisting that he be seen; apparently when I made the follow-up appointment, S thought I was being silly and that Kermit was just fine. And yet, I cannot shake the feeling that I'm failing miserably at the mommy-to-two-children thing, because I can apparently only pay attention to one of them at a time, and it always seems to be the wrong one.

The Good and the Bad

First, the good news:

The Packers won the Super Bowl! The Packers won the Super Bowl! The Packers won the Super Bowl! The smallest town with a professional sports team in the US has defeated the mighty Big City! The Lombardi Trophy is back in Title Town! Cheeseheads rule the earth!!!

Now, the bad news:

Our house has been hit with the plague. I mentioned that LL was feeling a bit sluggish and under the weather on Friday? He continued to spend 100% of his time with his feverish little body draped over me all day Saturday. And all day Sunday. After breaking out the animated movies Friday and Saturday, we switched to football on Sunday. This was absolutely a one-time-only, just-because-LL-was-sick sort of thing (definitely not something that I would have done under normal conditions, even with my Packers in the Super Bowl) but we watched eight hours of pre-game shows on Sunday. Eight hours! Do you know what people have to resort to in order to fill eight hours of pre-game? Let's interview every player on both teams, even people you've never heard of. Let's interview people who used to play for both teams but don't anymore. Let's interview people who have ever played in a Super Bowl. Let's discuss exactly how much of a jerk Ben Roethlisberger is, and whether anyone cares. Did you know that it's really cold in Dallas? Let's talk about that for a while. Here's the history of the cheesehead. Here's the history of the terrible towel. Did you know that the Packers coach grew up in Pittsburgh? Let's find out which team his former neighbors are cheering for! Did you know that Michael Douglas is cheering for Pittsburgh? Did you know that Catherine Zeta Jones is a huge Green Bay fan, because she really likes cheese? Did you know that John Madden, George W. Bush, and Cameron Diaz sat together at the Super Bowl? Does anyone who is not literally being held down against their will by a toddler actually care about all of this??? And then, when all eight hours of pre-game were over, we still had a full Super Bowl to watch. With commercials. All told, we watched 12 hours of football on Sunday. I am now officially footballed out.

Normally for LL, watching NFL games is a full-body sport. He runs when the players run. He falls down when they're tackled. He does all the referee hand motions. He yells, "Touchdown!" and "First down!" and "Go Pack!" But for this Super Bowl, he sat quietly on the couch with his head buried in a pillow. When the Packers scored a touchdown, we got a faint smile, but he didn't even have the energy to lift his arms for the signal. I convinced him to eat an Oreo cookie, and it was the only food he'd eaten since Friday. Really pathetic.

Also, by Sunday morning, both Kermit and I also had coughs, congestion, and slight fevers, so nobody was having very much fun. S was still healthy, so he was hiding out as far away from the rest of us as he could manage.

When nobody was any better Monday morning, we went to the pediatrician with both kids. Kermit has a run-of-the-mill cold. Except that he's barely one month old, and no cold is run-of-the-mill at that age. We're keeping a close eye on him.

LL's cold has progressed to pneumonia. And an ear infection. He's on antibiotics. We're trying to convince him that he needs both food and oxygen to survive, but he's not getting very much of either one right now.

I was told to provide LL with whatever he needs most (to sit in my lap, 24 hours a day) and to provide Kermit with whatever he needs most (to nurse every hour, 24 hours a day) and to be sure to get plenty of sleep so that I recover, too. Anybody notice how completely incompatible those things are?

And the kicker: the pediatrician suspected that this might not actually be a run-of-the-mill cold at all. She thought that it might be whooping cough. (Yes, LL and I are both vaccinated against it, but this particular vaccine is notoriously unreliable, so it was a very real possibility.) We were in panic mode until this morning, when we got the lab results that came up negative (thankfully). But if nobody's better by next week, our pediatrician wants to re-run the test, because it apparently has a high false negative rate.

But hey, at least the Packers won, right?

Trial by Feverish Fire

My mom has been staying with us and helping out since before Kermit was born. She's planning to stay until Kermit is 6 weeks old, since that is when I'll be able to lift LL again. She's been doing a lot of cooking and shopping for us, as well as helping a lot with LL. But she also promised to attend my nephew's birthday party this weekend, so she left on Thursday to go there, with plans to return to our house Sunday night. Thus, S and I would be on our own with both kids for four days, our first time ever.

The idea was for this to be a very light practice run of life with two kids. My mom prepared several meals before she left, another friend was planning to bring us dinner on Friday, and we had a small Super Bowl party planned for Sunday (Go Pack Go!) which would provide some extra hands and entertainment for LL. Still, we were a little nervous about being on our own, since we've gotten used to having my mom around to help.

Mom left Thursday morning, and the rest of Thursday went just fine. We got dinner on the table on time, and got both kids to bed with relative ease. S and I were actually feeling pretty good about ourselves! Until 1am or so, when LL woke up crying. S went to check on him to discover that he was burning up with fever. Great.......

All of Friday and Saturday have been spent trying to soothe a sick sick sick toddler while also trying desperately to keep him and his germs away from not-yet-one-month-old Kermit. For me, this has meant sitting on the couch holding LL and watching movies, then handing him off to S while I scrub myself raw to try to decontaminate myself before feeding Kermit, hoping that my breast milk has enough antibodies in it to help him to fight off the cold, then handing Kermit back to S so that I can go back to snuggling LL until Kermit's next feeding.

Before this illness, LL had seen exactly one movie in his entire life (I was heavily pregnant and exhausted and home alone with him, and it was the only way he would let me lie on the couch for 90 minutes). In the last two days, he has seen eight movies. Er, three movies, repeated several times. (Four viewings of Finding Nemo ("fish movie"), three Kiki's Delivery Service ("train movie"), and one Beauty and the Beast.) He insists on being in physical contact with me the entire time, alternating being in my lap, over my shoulder, and lying with his head on my legs. When I need to get up to feed Kermit, LL lies pathetically on the couch asking me when I'll be coming back to him. I swear I saw heat plumes rising from his feverish little body. (103.5 midday today, and that was after being dosed with Tylenol.) The only food I've gotten him to eat has been a yogurt shake that he sipped throughout the day, along with as much juice and water as I could force into him, because he's getting awfully dehydrated.

Luckily, Kermit seems happy being held all day by S. (If he were old enough to have a parent preference, I don't know what I'd do, because LL has been refusing all comfort from S and insisting on being held by me.) Unsurprisingly, I am now developing a cough and sore throat, which we're hoping will skip both Kermit and S. I'm a little fuzzy on the science, but my being sick means that there will be additional antibodies in my breast milk, which should provide additional protection for Kermit, right?

One particularly sad side effect of all of this is that we've had to cancel our Super Bowl party. The last time my Packers were in the Super Bowl, I watched the game in my dorm room and made all my friends chip in a few bucks for the meager snacks that I bought for the occasion (most of the food had been stolen from the dorm dining hall). In other words, I've been waiting a long, long time to host a real Super Bowl party featuring my Green Bay Packers. Instead, the four of us will be watching it quietly at home. If I can keep the coughing, sneezing, and feverish delirium to a minimum, it will hopefully still be a good time for all. In the mean time, we're all counting down the minutes until my mom gets back to make us a giant pot of matzo ball soup.

Go Pack!

Two Weeks?!?!

Wow, time really flies when you're on-the-clock 24 hours a day with both a newborn and a toddler!

I've been meaning to give some sort of update, and as usual, I put it off until I can write up the "full" update that I really want to write, which never happens, and thus nothing gets written. So, these here are some random thoughts that I wanted to get down, and I expect that there will be more random stream-of-consciousness-type posts over the next month as well. You do what you gotta do, you know? I still need to write up Kermit's birth story, too. Later. I promise.

Kermit:
He's an eating machine! This kiddo latched onto my breast on his very first try and never looked back. He's so loud gulping milk that it's kind of embarrassing. Babies are supposed to regain enough weight to be back up to birth weight by their two-week appointment; at Kermit's appointment, we discovered that he was a full pound above his birth weight, prompting our pediatrician to point at my breasts and ask if I'd opened a Dairy Queen in there. (S was so amused by the question that he has taken to calling me his Dairy Queen. My Wisconsin roots make it that much funnier for him.) When he's not eating, or asking to eat, or complaining that he's hungry again, Kermit is a very calm baby so far. And very snuggly. I'm very much enjoying all the newborn snuggles.

Also, not to jinx it or anything, but Kermit just might be a good luck charm for my Green Bay Packers, since they haven't lost a single game since Kermit was born. We have photos of Kermit and LL both wearing their Packers jerseys and appropriately sized cheeseheads, watching the NFC championship game, and there is much excitement around here for the Super Bowl. We normally host a Super Bowl party for our friends every year, and I've dreamed about being able to host one in which my Packers are playing, but I'm not sure if I can pull it off with a one-month-old....

Lots of family visited during Kermit's first week, through his bris at 8 days old. The bris went wonderfully, other than Kermit waking up during the naming part of the ceremony and deciding that he was hungry again, and then bawling loudly for the rest of the ceremony, until I could whisk him away to be fed. Yes, that's right, he stayed calm through the circumcision part, then freaked out during the part where he was just hanging out in Grandpa's arms listening to the rabbi. We had a much smaller turnout at the bris then we had at LL's, which was disappointing (for example, not a single friend or coworker of mine, from my job or from school, attended the bris) but I kind of saw it coming. Second kid and all, eh?

After the bris, things quieted down, and everyone except my mom left. She's been staying with us since, which has been awesome, because I don't think we'd be eating without her. Or rather, we'd be eating pizza for dinner every night. Late.

LL:
LL has been a little champ! He's very attentive and loving, showering Kermit with kisses, telling us when Kermit needs to eat (every single time he cries, apparently), bringing him blankets to keep him warm while he sleeps, rocking the bouncy chair when he fusses. If only the kisses weren't full on the mouth, and the blankets smothering Kermit's face. It's a little Of Mice and Men, if you know what I mean.

I'm not allowed to pick LL up until my 6 week appointment, which seems to be the hardest part for LL to deal with. I've explained to him that Mommy has an owie (he investigated it himself to see how bad it was; he found the incision quite fascinating) and that I can't pick him up or carry him until the owie gets better. Every day, he asks if the owie is better yet, and looks a little sad when I tell him no. And today, he forgot and jumped off a chair into my arms; I caught him, but it hurt like hell, and he could tell that I was in pain. When I put him down, he walked away, then returned a moment later to ask if my owie hurt, at which point he told me that he was sorry and he kissed my stomach to make it better. So I guess he understands the limitations fairly well.

He has also caught on shockingly fast to the new rhythms of our household. Every time Kermit cries, LL runs to me and says, "Oh Mama! Baby needs to eat! Open shirt! Open shirt!" And then he attempts to help me pull out a breast. We haven't really gone out with both kids yet, but I'm really looking forward to him doing that in public.

The toughest times for LL tend to be when he's hurt and when it's bedtime (he wants to snuggle on my lap, but I can't lift him into his crib, so he cries when I need to hand him over to Daddy). All compounded by the fact that he got his worst injury ever this past weekend, when he tried pulling his pajamas off a wooden hook wall-hanging thing and the whole thing fell off the wall and hit him in the face. I was right there when it happened, and he immediately buried his face deep into my shoulder and wailed in agony, while I held my breath and wondered exactly how much blood there was going to be once he pulled his face away from me. He ended up with a huge gash across the bridge of his nose, tons of swelling, and two black eyes. He is currently very proud of his injuries, though, and stops to admire himself in every mirror he passes, and recounts the story to everyone, since everybody has been asking him what in the world happened to his face. (I like to point at two-week-old Kermit, shrug, and just say, "All brothers fight, right?") LL is definitely more clingy than usual, and he's been acting uncharacteristically defiant towards the end of the day, but overall, things have been more smoother than I expected. (I say, confidently, after only two weeks....)

Bullets

- I am officially full term. Labor is theoretically imminent at any time now, but I'll believe it when I see it.

- Given LL's giant head when he was born, we had an ultrasound today to attempt to estimate Kermit's head size (and the rest of him, while we're at it) so that we have a little bit of information on what we're in for if we get the opportunity to try a VBAC. We'll get the final results at a regular prenatal appointment tomorrow, but early signs seem to show that he's big, but not Guinness Book of World Records big. So I guess that's something.

- It's a little hard to believe that he's so big, considering everyone I meet seems to agree that I'm not really showing. I'm 37 weeks along, which is 8.5 months. I'm measuring between 38 and 39 weeks, which is almost 9 months. Kermit is definitely measuring close to 39 weeks. And yet consensus from friends is that I look 5-6 months pregnant, tops. At a holiday party this weekend, when I told people that I had 3 weeks to go, everyone (and I do mean everyone) assumed I misspoke and corrected me with, "You mean 3 months, not 3 weeks." Nope, I really do mean 3 weeks.

- Here at 37 weeks, I have gained 16 pounds. Apparently, it's all baby.

- We should really pack our hospital bag. I keep having fits of contractions, and after each one, S panics a little and says, "We need to pack our bag!!!" Then we get distracted with other things.

- On the plus side, our house is finally coming together. The guest room is almost clean enough for someone to sleep in it, and the rest of the house is almost ready to be presented to guests. Almost. We made a lot of progress this weekend. My mom arrives on Friday.

- I'm sick. I managed to not get sick at all while pregnant with LL, and other than a small cold during my first trimester, I thought that I would escape this time, too. Guess not. So far it is very mild (wicked sore throat, slight cough, mild congestion, occasional headache). S and LL had this same thing a few weeks ago, so I do have some idea of how it is likely to progress. The good part: it doesn't really get any worse. The bad part: it lasts forever. They're both still coughing, after several weeks. Can I tell you how much I dread going through labor with a sore throat and cough?

- LL's new favorite snack: hot herbal tea. S had been making himself a lot of tea, to soothe his own sore throat, and LL was very curious. So, we made him weak tea, diluted it with cold water to cool it off, sweetened it with a bit of honey, and served it in a very grown up ceramic mug. He's totally enchanted by it. Every morning he asks for "hot tea! hot tea!" and then questions us extensively once we give it to him, to make sure that it's actually "warm, not hot!"

- We set up Kermit's bassinet in our room yesterday. LL is very intrigued.

- Any suggestions on how to keep a curious and persistent toddler from climbing into a bassinet?

Transitions

Before LL was born, I remember hearing from lots of women that they felt guilty while pregnant with child #2 because they felt like they were ruining the life of child #1. I thought that was incredibly silly. Lots of children are able to survive the indignity of having a younger sibling. And as a younger sibling myself, I rolled my eyes at the thought that an older child was somehow entitled to even more time alone with his parents than he had already received, when the younger child was never going to get any years alone with Mom and Dad at all.

But now I'm biting my tongue, because yeah, I understand the feeling. LL's life will change dramatically when we bring Kermit home. Right now, our lives revolve around his schedule. Everything we do is tailored around making sure that he gets his nap on time, he eats at his accustomed times, and we're home for his bedtime. He thrives when we keep him on schedule, and melts down when the schedule gets too far off. (A little variation he can handle, for a few days, but after that he gets really cranky.) But schedules are impossible with newborns. I don't remember much from those early days, but I definitely remember the randomness of it all. And the afternoons of playing non-stop with LL, or making him the center of our morning routine as we all get ready for the day? Not going to be possible anymore.

So yes, I feel a bit guilty about how much LL is going to have to adapt, even while I also feel like he'll benefit a lot, in the long run, from having a sibling. I picture him crying for me and my being unable to respond because I'm dealing with a Kermit crisis and it breaks my heart. LL is so totally mommy-focused these days (from asking me to do everything for him, to being completely consumed with my welfare -- he helps me up from the couch, and brings me my slippers as soon as I get home from work -- it's very cute) that I really don't know how he is going to handle needing to share my attention.

But I also feel bad for Kermit. LL will have had a good two years alone with Mommy and Daddy. He got the instant responses when he needed something and full attention during play times. He had two parents putting him to bed almost every night, sharing bedtime stories and rocking him to sleep. Kermit is never going to get that much dedicated attention. Right from the very start, he's going to have to share us with LL, and wait his turn, and be patient sometimes. Which yes, is probably a healthier way to grow up, in the long run. But I'm a firm believer in spoiling babies a bit when they're very young and don't understand what's happening around them and are helpless to help themselves. And Kermit is just never going to get that kind of unconditional spoiling, even when he's very very little.

I'm sure all mothers expecting their second child have some of these feelings, but they're made worse right now by the fact that LL is just so darn mommy-focused. If I am at home, he wants me to do everything for him, and completely rejects S. Everything S tries to do for him is met with a plea of "Mama do it!" It's getting kind of ridiculous. I mean, the three of us are eating dinner, and LL wants more milk; S stands up to get it for him, and LL snatches the cup out of S's hands, saying, "No! Mama do it!" Then he sweetly hands the cup to me, saying "More milk, Mama?" And if I try to assure him that Daddy is an excellent milk-pourer, he cries. Not a manipulative cry... just a very sad, plaintive one. Breaks my heart.

Blame it on the pregnancy hormones, but I'm suddenly feeling very very guilty for the rough transition coming up for LL.

Labor Anxiety

People have started asking me whether I'm nervous about labor and delivery, and I'll admit that I've been giving it a lot of thought lately. I'm actually not all that nervous about the actual labor and delivery part. I feel like I remember a fair amount about my labor with LL, and I don't feel like I'm being selective about what I remember. I remember some goods things (the anticipation; the growing excitement as things progressed; a sense of adrenalin-induced empowerment that I didn't really expect to feel once I started pushing; the incredible sound of his first cry) and of course, lots of things that were perhaps necessary but not what I would classify as "good" (frustration at the slow progression of early labor; annoyance that I couldn't walk around much; fear and disappointment when we found out that a c-section was necessary; and of course holy crap I remember a whole lot of pain). Overall, though, it wasn't a process that I dread going through a second time, though I am hoping for some fairly significant differences this time around.

During my pregnancy with LL, I spent much of my third trimester consumed with thoughts of labor. I'm not sure the right word to use. Not fear. Not dread. Anxiety? Let's just say that I was really really worried about it, because everyone seems to rank it as the most painful thing in the world and you don't know how long it's going to last and I had no idea what the pain was going to be like so my mind started inventing all sorts of crazy scenarios. This time? I'm honestly not all that worried about the actual labor and delivery. I'm bizarrely looking forward to it, actually, since I'm so excited to possibly do it without pitocin this time. And maybe even successfully deliver a baby without a c-section! This time around, rather than something to bring about anxiety, it just feels like a challenge. I can handle a challenge.

Having said that, there is something that I am feeling completely anxious and panicky about: how LL will handle my time in the hospital. I'm getting very freaked out about this. I have never spent a night away from LL, much less 3 or 4. LL has been put to bed by other people (grandparents, babysitters) but I have always been there when he wakes up in the morning. Things that are currently keeping me up at night:

1. Making sure that LL is taken care without too much panic if/when I go into labor. The possibility of going into labor during the holidays is making this particularly stressful. My mom has agreed to fly into town when I'm just short of 38 weeks, so that she can stay at our house and care for LL if I do go into labor, which is fantastic, but now I'm obsessing about what happens if I go into labor before she arrives. It's ridiculous because LL had to be induced at almost 42 weeks, and I'm suddenly worried about going into natural labor at 37 weeks, but still... I can't get it out of my head. We have a few friends lined up to possibly come to our house and stay with LL for a few days, but it would be very stressful for LL and that makes it very stressful for me.

2. If I do end up with a c-section, I'll need to be in the hospital for four days. That seems like a very long time to be away from LL. More and more, the main reason that I'm hoping for a VBAC is just so that I can get home sooner.

3. Another problem with a repeat c-section: when LL was born, I wasn't able to pick LL up out of his bassinet for at least a week, possibly two. I wasn't able to change his diaper for the first week, either. Every time I wanted to hold him, to feed him, to comfort him, someone had to pick him up and gently hand him to me. That was annoying but manageable, because S stayed with me in the hospital and did all of the baby-lifting for those first several days. This time around, we think that it would be easier on LL if S spent nights at home, so that he's around for LL's morning routine. But I don't know how I manage to care for Kermit overnight, including all those night feedings and diaper changes, if S isn't with me. As far as I can tell, my only option will be to let the nurses bring Kermit to the nursery after S leaves, but that kills breast feeding. So I'm kind of at a loss. If I have a c-section, it seems like S will have to stay at the hospital, and I worry about how LL will handle us both not being there in the morning.

4. I can't decide whether LL should visit me in the hospital or not. Does that make things easier or harder? On the one hand, I'm sure that he'll want to see me (and I'll want to see him!). On the other hand, what happens when he realizes that he needs to leave with Grandma and I'm not coming with him? Will that just make it harder?

5. Last week, I had an evening filled with lots of suddenly strong contractions. They eventually died down, and I was fairly certain the whole time that they were Braxton-Hicks and not the real thing. Nevertheless, they were shockingly strong and frequent, and I had to carefully breathe through them. I wasn't yelling or anything, but I was grimacing from the pain. And WOW, it freaked LL out. He kept coming over to pat my leg and talk to me and give me kisses, but mostly he just stared at me with a frightened look on his face. I kept reassuring him that Mommy was fine, everything was okay, but he was really very concerned. So now I'm worried about how he'll handle it when I'm in real labor but haven't left for the hospital yet. I guess from this perspective, it would be best if I went into labor in the middle of the night while he was sleeping, so that he wouldn't have to see me in pain, but I hate that then I won't be able to say goodbye to him before we leave.

So, yes, I'm worried about labor, but not for any of the reasons that I was worried the first time. And when I write them down, even these things seem very minor. Women manage to have babies without completely scarring and traumatizing their toddlers all the time. Things just work out. But I'm agonizing about it nonetheless.

Falling Behind

I am starting to truly feel beaten down by everyday life. I'm at a point where people ask me, "Hey, how's it going?" and I answer, "There's a lot going on, and I'm a bit tired, but things are good!" And then I start listing the things that are going on, and people start looking concerned. And asking me if I would like to sit down. And calling S to express concern. And gossiping to each other about how it's fairly remarkable that I'm still walking around. Um, yeah. Things are getting just a bit overwhelming.

I'm desperately trying to finish the full draft of my dissertation, which is getting harder as baby brain takes over and pregnancy carpel tunnel interferes more and more with typing. I'm desperately trying to figure out the job situation (I had one more grueling interview earlier this week, and it's likely going to be my last one before Kermit arrives, so I hope it was a good one!). We still haven't really purchased anything at all for Kermit, though I did sort and wash infant clothes last weekend, so we've moved from "completely unprepared" to "almost completely unprepared." Which I guess is progress? Our bedroom is going to be doubling as a nursery for the first few months, but we have done no work at all to make room for the things that need to be in there, much less purchasing or moving those things into place. My mom is going to be staying with us for several weeks, starting around Christmas, but it is currently impossible to even walk into our guest room, much less unfold the hide-a-bed or expect anyone to comfortably live there. It's completely uninhabitable. (As an example: the guest room doesn't even have a door. And the door to our guest bathroom doesn't latch properly. Nice, huh? We don't have overnight guests very often.)

I have an ever-growing list of things to do before Kermit arrives and none of them are getting done. My top priority right now has to be finishing the dissertation, because it has to be done before Kermit arrives, and preferably several weeks earlier. Number two is getting through the last of the job interviews and making a decision about a job for next year. But I'm reaching that point in pregnancy where I don't want to be doing any of those things anymore. I just want to be nesting and preparing for Kermit. But I haven't been allowing myself to do any of the baby prep things because I need to focus on the dissertation. And wow, nesting is one of those powerful hormonal deep-rooted instinct things, so suppressing it is making me fairly miserable.

To top it all off, LL is sensing that I have less energy these days and that I am trying to get S to do a bit more of LL's care. And LL is pushing back. Big time. For weeks now, LL has been insisting that I do everything for him. Every other sentence out of his mouth these days is, "No, Daddy! Mama do it!" S is not allowed to pour him milk. Or get him food. Or wipe his face. Or change his clothes. Or change his diaper. Or read him books. Or open his curtains. Or put on his jacket. Or pick out socks. (It's ridiculous -- S hands him a pair of socks; LL says, "No Daddy! Mama do it!" LL takes the socks back to his room and returns them to his drawer; LL runs to me, takes my hand, drags me to his room, opens his drawer, and points out the exact same socks that he just put back there, which I then hand back to him. What exactly has he accomplished other than tiring me out and making S feel unloved?) So even when S is home and theoretically helping to share childcare responsibilities with me, I am still doing all the work.

I'm exhausted. I'm restless. I'm having horrible dizzy spells several times a day. I'm unable to concentrate on the things that need my focus right now. I'm unable to take a break from the things that are tiring me out. And I'm 32+ weeks pregnant, rapidly running out of days to get things done. Anyone have any thoughts on how to slow down time?

Parlor Tricks

I know that I'm not the only one who enjoys teaching my young child totally useless and random things just because it's funny to watch him do it. LL has two new tricks, both of which were his idea. (As in, he started doing them, and yes, I then encouraged them. Because damn they're funny.)

1. He can dance and sing backup for Gladys Knight's Midnight Train to Georgia. Yep, he just joins right in with the Pips. The fact that they're most often singing train noises ("woo woo!") definitely helps. We thought this was just a passing fad, like (thankfully) his bizarre obsession with Ke$ha, and his addiction to the Beyonce / Lady Gaga song Telephone, but this one seems to be sticking around.

2. He knows a shocking number of football referee hand motions. He's been watching a lot of football with me each Sunday, but his interest reached a whole new level when he noticed a referee making the roll-your-hands motion for "false start." He thought it was awesome, and immediately showed me how he could imitate it. Since then, he has added the hand motions for holding, face mask, touchdown, fair catch, and first down. We're trying to teach him pass interference and intentional grounding next. S and I have been having fun calling these out to him in random order just to watch him do them all. Though I'm starting to think that he only likes football referees because they dress like zebras.

Either way, I figure this is all very useful knowledge, because already he has two excellent career options. Football referee, or Pip.

Beep Beep!

I'm not sure how else to put this: LL loves transportation. In particular, he loves pointing out to us whenever he sees various forms of transportation. And when he points them out, we absolutely must verbally acknowledge them (by name) or else he just gets louder and more insistent. Airplanes (which must be called "jumbo jets"), trains, buses (anything bigger than a car), cars (which are identified mainly by an enthusiastic "vroom!" noise), bikes, and car horns ("beep beep!").

A typical drive home from daycare goes something like this:
LL: "Bus! Bus! Mama, look -- bus!"
Me: "Yep, that's a bus."
LL: "More buses! Mama, look -- more buses!"
Me: "Yep, there's another bus."
LL: "Oh, wow! Mama! Jumbo jet!"
Me: "Yes, I hear it, too. There's a jumbo jet outside."

I usually find it rather charming, since he hasn't been talking for very long and his little voice just tickles me.

This past weekend, however, we went out of town for a wedding. I'm not going to go into the details of two eight-hour flights less than 48 hours apart, while 28 weeks pregnant, with an energetic toddler in tow. The less said about that, the better. But, I will ask you to imagine the above described transportation-loving toddler, who has lived his entire two-year existence in the quiet suburbs, transplanted for two days to Manhattan.

Have you ever taken a cab through midtown Manhattan while needing to verbally acknowledge every single bus, taxi, and car horn? I don't know how his little body managed to keep up with everything that he needed to talk about. ("Bus! Bus! More buses! Beep beep! Beep beep! Oooh, vroom! Vroom! Vroom! More buses! Beep beep! Wow! More buses! Beep beep!") I hope that our various cab drivers were amused.

Whenever we were inside a building, out of sight of the multitude of buses and cars outside, LL could not stop talking about the fact that he had been on an actual jumbo jet. Two jumbo jets! And a choo choo train! (The "choo choo train" was in fact a monorail that took us between two airport terminals during a layover. But considering that LL was also positive that the luggage carrier on the tarmac was also a choo choo train, there was no use in us explaining such fine distinctions to him.)

S thinks that LL would be much happier living in a city, where he could see as many buses and trucks and cars as his little heart desires. I, however, am awfully glad that we rarely see more than a half dozen buses on our way home from daycare. I just don't think that I could take saying "Beep beep!" that many times every single day.

Security

When LL was just two months old or so, he semi-adopted his first security object. It was a little white burp cloth with blue stars and blue embroidered embellishments along the edges. One of my mother-in-law's friends made him a set of three similar cloths, but he only liked the one with the blue stars. He smiled when he saw it, he gripped it tightly when we gave it to him, he liked rubbing his cheek against it, and he seemed to sleep better if it was nearby.

The starry burp cloth was replaced by Froggie Blanket, a small dead-simple square quilt that I made for him out of some flannel with lily pads and frogs on it. LL briefly wanted to bring Froggie Blanket with him everywhere he went (and I added "make back-up Froggie Blanket out of leftover fabric" to my to-do list) but it quickly evolved into a sleepytime-only thing. He holds onto it at naptime and bedtime, and likes to hold it while being rocked, but in the morning he gives it a hug and leaves it in the crib. Occasionally, if he's sick or feeling particularly needy, he will want to hold onto it a bit more, which we let him do. It usually doesn't leave the house (he naps at daycare just fine without it) but it does join us on outings every so often. And he always always knows where it is, in a sixth sense sort of way. (Every once in a while at bedtime, we won't see it, but we just need to ask LL, "Where's Froggie Blanket?" and he will always know where to find it. Even that time it was stuffed inside the salad spinner in the back of a cabinet.)

I'm not a very artsy-crafty person. I do some occasional knitting or crocheting, but that's about it. And I've been known to go years between projects. But I love that LL is attached to the Froggie Blanket that I made.

But, little boys grow up, tastes change, new security objects are identified. We have a new must-have security object in our house. It's not exactly replacing Froggie Blanket, which is still required in the glider and crib at all times. This is more of an additional new friend. It's only been a week, so it may end up being short-lived, but LL's behavior with this thing has been sudden, dramatic, and different than anything he has ever done before. The object of his affection: a small stuffed zebra named NoNo.

I mentioned a little while ago that zebras are one of LL's favorite animals, and though he knows the word "zebra," he insists on calling them "no-nos" for, um, literary reasons. When we went to the zoo with Grandma and Grandpa, he spent a long time exclaiming over the zebras. As we were leaving, I helped my dad to pick out a little stuffed zebra at the zoo gift shop, for him to give to LL for his birthday.

LL thought the stuffed zebra was cool, but it pretty much stayed with all of his other toys. The fact that he played with it at all was a minor miracle, actually. We own a lot of stuffed animals in various sizes and species, and LL almost always ignores them. There's one monkey that he briefly liked playing with, because the monkey wears overalls and the overalls have a real zipper that goes up and down! not to mention monkey-sized shoes and socks, but other than that, LL just wasn't a stuffed animal or doll kind of kid. When I was trying to get him off of the starry burp cloth, I offered him a bear named Bingo at the same time as Froggie Blanket, and he was completely uninterested. (I'm wondering, in fact, why I even encouraged my dad to buy the stuffed zebra in the first place.)

So, the zebra sat in the toy box for a week or two. And then suddenly last week, when I was trying to get LL to climb into his high chair for dinner, he suddenly exclaimed, "NoNo!" I thought at first that he was just being defiant, but no, he was talking about the zebra. He dug it out of the toy box, climbed into his high chair with it, placed it carefully next to him at the table, and proceeded to feed it dinner. (Luckily, I was able to convince him very quickly that zebras don't eat yogurt, because that wasn't going anywhere good. It turns out that zebras survive mostly on goldfish crackers.) And ever since then, NoNo has gone everywhere with LL.

NoNo eats all meals with LL. He is clutched along with Froggie Blanket at bedtime. He rides toy trains. He reads books. (It is very important that NoNo be able to see the pictures.) He goes to the grocery store. Observations about the world are carefully explained to NoNo in long, complex sentences that only LL and NoNo completely understand. (I pick up individual words, but that's about it. I know that NoNo has been told about grandparents and shoes and jumbo jets, but I'm not sure what details were revealed.) So far, the only time that NoNo is left at home is when LL goes to daycare. Possibly it's because one of his friends there has a bear that she carries everywhere, and some of the other kids like to take it from her to make her cry, so LL might sense that NoNo won't be completely safe there. When he leaves for daycare, he gently kisses and hugs NoNo, then leaves him carefully by the door to wait for LL to come home again.

I am just blown away by this behavior. I know that kids like role playing, and they get attached to stuff, and they humanize animals. But I'm a little amazed by how suddenly LL adopted this particular friend. It's very cool to watch. It's also adding a bit of confusion to our household, because when LL yells, "No No!" we need to interpret whether he's talking about his zebra or saying "no" to something. But oh, so much fun to watch!