Don't break the baby!

[6 month update]

I amaze myself every day! It's a wonder that a small, fragile, dependent little thing like a baby has survived being in my care for the past 6 months. Honestly, I can remember that first night in the hospital after he was born. He slept in my room and never left my side. He was laying there sleeping in his little baby bed placed next to my hospital bed. Each time that he would wake and cry, it caused fear and terror in me. I was afraid to touch him. I didn't want to break him.

I held out on changing his dirty diapers and let the nurses, family, and other visitors do that chore while I still could. I not only depended on the nurses to change his diaper, but also to swaddle him since I just couldn't seem to do it as well as they did. I remember there was this tough Russian nurse that would come in and swaddle him so tightly, it reminded me of deli meat wrapped in that waxy paper. When the pediatric nurses came in, they would ask, "Did Helga swaddle him?". The only time I really touched him during that time was to practice nursing, which started off badly for me as well. He just wouldn't latch on.

When we were released from the hospital, I was on my own, but my mother and sister were usually around, and I depended on them a lot. Especially to clothe him because that scared me too. Can you imagine being THAT scared to break your own baby? A couple of days after our release, we were admitted back to the hospital because Diego had jaundice. Where my mother was concerned, I was OK because the pediatrician reassured me that it was common. Once relieved of that concern, I was somewhat happy we'd be back in the hospital: the nurses would take care of Diego's diapers again!

During those 2 extra days in the hospital, I learned to nurse better with him thanks to the nurses. I think the nursing made me bond with him more. Since he had jaundice, he had to stay and sleep in the nursery. I only got to see him every 3 hours when it was time to nurse. This made me miss him a lot. By the time we checked out of the hospital the second time around, I was mentally ready to take care of my newborn on my own. Well, ok not exactly on my own - my mother was there but you know what I mean.

Fast-forward 6 months, hundreds of dirty diapers, bottles, and restless nights later and I'm amazed at what that fragile 6lb little baby has become - an 18lb husky little baby boy. I was so happy to learn that at 6 months SIDS risk is substantially minimized, though I don't take it lightly. But it's great to finally feel like I've got it down, and I'm not going to break my baby.

I can just enjoy my 18lb baby boy who is starting to bear his own weight while sitting, squeal with delight, and grab things. He's on track to sit on his own and crawl. And trust me, I'm preparing for that because with crawling, comes a whole new plethora of ways that my baby could break!

Supermom? No. Superbaby? Yes!

[5 Months/3 weeks]

No!!!! I was looking at the date of my last post, and it's been over a month since I wrote anything. Shameful, shameful. I really intend to keep the updates rolling, since this is a critical time where many details will be forever lost in my memory if I don't record them now.

Since my return from paradise, I've experienced other whimsical adventures by my son's side. He is now fully capable of grabbing objects in front of him (as proven last night while my husband dangled my favorite gold heart necklace in front of him). He has also learned how to roll over from his tummy to his back, though he doesn't do this too often. I've heard many stories of babies that skip crawling all together, and go straight to walking/standing. Whereas I don't doubt these stories to be true, I've always considered them the exception rather than the norm. However, Diego seems to be on this track. Each time I put him on his tummy, he tries to practice crawling, but gets frustrated and starts crying. Then I sit him on my lap, facing me, and pull him gently upward by his arms, and then his own legs do the rest naturally. Suddenly, his strong, husky legs catapult him upward (I'm really there just for support), and in an instant he is an amazing standing baby. Each time that he stands, he proudly smiles at the feat that he has achieved as if he somehow knows how amazing it is.

Despite what an amazing superhero he is, he also succumbed to a terrible cough a few weeks back. I was a bit worried that it was the whooping cough, so I took him to the doctor's office. His pediatrician told me that she wasn't concerned, so I was relieved, though I too had been sick. Actually, at this moment I'm feeling like I may be getting sick again. Since I gave birth, I've been sick a total of 3 times. This is a bit worrisome for me since, previously, I could go a year without getting sick. For now, I'm writing it off as the stresses of motherhood and exposure to daycares, but you better believe I'm trying my best to improve my immune system.

For the most part, daily life is going well. I recently had a couple of friends come over to visit Diego. My friend commented about how happy I appeared to be. She wanted to know what the "bad" stuff in my life was. I honestly had a hard time thinking of something. I specified that as for the motherhood part, the hardest thing is that I don't get a break (OK - the Bahamas doesn't count). But seriously, I don't know how I can stress that sentence: "I don't get a BREAK!" It's on-going, and I doubt it will end until well after 18 years from now. The repetition can drive you crazy: bottles about every 3 hours, boiling water, washing bottles, waking up in the middle of the night whether you like it or not, changing diapers, giving baths, doing laundry to keep those cute clothes from staying permanently soiled, dropping off to daycare, picking up from grandma's, getting his diaperbag ready every morning, the incessant crying, trying to figure out the root cause of the incessant crying, implementing the corrective action to subdue the incessant crying. It's times like these that can cause person who loves schedules and lists, much like myself, to go bananas!

Speaking of bananas... Diego is also eating now. The doctor recommended we wait until 6 months, but after one of those episodes where I was "trying to figure out the root cause of the incessant crying", we determined the answer was hunger. And what a hungry little boy he is. Oh- and he really likes bananas. Asparagus and zuccini: not so much.

They grow so fast!

One of my favorite things to be sarcastic about is the age-old saying "They grow up so fast." It's so overly-used, that I like to be dramatic when I say it, clasping my hands together at my heart and making an emotional face. It was only a matter of time that the saying would catch up to me as it did last night.

I flew in from the Bahamas with my husband. 5 wondrous, yet home-sickening days in the Caribbean had left me refreshed and yet missing my baby. As soon as I got home, I made sure to greet my golden retriever because at this age, he is more conscious of my actions than my son. As soon as he calmed down, I looked over at my sister holding Diego, and was amazed to see what appeared to be a 7 month old baby (he is 4 months right now) smiling back at me. Not only was he more beautiful than I remembered him, he also had a present for me. When I sat him down on the bed, I noticed him focusing on a toy next to him and actually reaching out to grab it! This was a milestone that I had been impatiently waiting for, and it finally arrived. 5 days people. I was only gone 5 days.

Clasping my hands to my heart, "They grow up so fast!"

What gives?

I was on Youtube minding my own business, well sort of. What I was really doing was watching mom vloggers, vlog about their children, so I wasn't minding my own business so to speak because I was actually on the brink of voyuerism (minus the perverted nature of course). But it's welcome because why else would these women put themselves on the interwebs for the world to see?

I can speak for them too, because I do the vlogging now too. So anyway, back to my point. I was sending a purely innocent message to a new YouTube mom vlogger that I found. Her son is one month ahead of mine and I wanted to tell her that I enjoyed her videos. After I wrote that comment, I decided I would go to her personal YouTube page and invite her to be friends. I was just about to press the friend invitation button, when my pupils gravitated towards the bottom of the screen. I saw the image below.

What gives, man? What gives?

Click on the image. You'll see username Ladiesman....

Message from Beyond...

I'm seriously thinking that I'm being sent a message from beyond. I hope this is the last time that I will touch on this tired topic. Last night, my husband, son, and I snuggled on the couch together to watch one of my mailed movies, and just like he annoyingly does every single time, my husband decided to turn on the REGULAR television to see if there was anything good on. And when I say regular, I mean REGULAR. Our TV has been a bad boy lately and will only show us basic channels. We've been living sans cable for over a month now.

That's not the point though. I looked over to my husband and said, "Why do you ALWAYS do this? We get ready to watch a movie that I paid money for, and you would rather watch whatever is on TV, and a movie that WE'VE ALREADY WATCHED to top it off!" In this case, it was the movie "Transformers". It wasn't even the latest one; it was the first one.

As usual, he didn't understand what the big deal was and continued watching the movie. About a quarter way into the movie, Sam Whitwicky is trying to sell his great-grandfather's glasses, which by some miracle have the coordinates to the "All Spark" etched on them, and all the transformers are trying to get a hold of the glasses. They are able to locate the glasses by accessing the "interwebs" and finding Sam Whitwicky's eBay page listing the glasses for sale. Sam's eBay user name just so happens to be: LadiesMan217!

3 times in one week. It has to be a message from beyond. It just has to. That's all I will say.

Open Captioning

I've always had an OK relationship with grammar and punctuation. I know the difference between "then" and "than". I know when to use "it's" and "its". I like to use a serial comma. It bugs me when I see that "you're" and "your" have been misused. I can go on and on here peoples, but don't get me wrong I'm not a snob.

Yet the other day on my last post, I was confused. I used the term "ladies' man" and I would have sworn up and down to you that there is an apostrophe at the end of "ladies". It's a possessive apostrophe. When I think of a ladies' man, I think of a "man of the ladies". Therefore, he belongs to the ladies, hence an apostrophe is required.

However, as I went looking for a picture of the ladies man--made famous by Saturday Night Live-- I was surprised to see the title of the movie contained no apostrophe. I was surprised, yet I couldn't see how writers could let a huge mistake get through like that on the cover of a movie!

'So it must not have an apostrophe then', I thought to myself. And I proceeded to remove all my apostrophes from my post (except I missed one).

Later that day, as I snuggled with my husband and son on the couch to watch "New Moon", by sheer coincidence the term was brought up again. My husband likes to watch movies with the closed captioning turned on. There is a scene where Charlie is trying to convince Bella that Jake is better for her than Edward. Then he says something along the lines of, "But what do I know? I'm just a terminal bachelor. Yup, a real ladies' man."

And there it was. The apostrophe. It just felt so right to see it there. Unfortunately, being well-versed in closed captioning and some of the outlandish mistakes I've seen --sometimes the closed captioning person doesn't even try-- I knew this was not redemption. So I Wikipedia'd the term Ladies' Man and found the entry indeed included an apostrophe. However, there have been 7 Ladies Man films made since 1931, and only 3 contained the apostrophe.

I'm sure no one cares, and the term is probably exempt from the restriction of being written only one way, but for some reason it really bugs me.

-Shirley (Apostrophes' Woman)

4 Month Old Ladies Man

I'm serious--he's a ladies man. I joked about it in a previous post, but it's just so apparent now. He's surrounded by the ladies. He's either going to be a ladies' man or swing the other way, but either way, he's always hanging out with females.

Case in point: his Uncle Will's graduation on Saturday. This party was not intended to be the family party--that was scheduled for Sunday. Instead, it was meant to be the "friend" party where all of Uncle Will's "Boys" would be coming over, eating tacos from a rented taco truck, chugging beer on a beer-ski, and taking shots on a shot-ski.

The party was going to have a 90s theme and DD was ready with his Run DMC shirt and converse shoes. Unfortunately, it got cold and his outfit was "ruined" with an old-man sweater. But that didn't stop the ladies from coming. Little by little the babies came, until the office became a pseudo-day care. In total, 5 children (under 2 years of age) came to the party--and they were ALL girls! DD, as if sensing the number of girls around him, was on his best behavior to my amazement!



My little ladies man turned 4 months recently. He weighed in at a whopping 15 lbs., 15 oz. and measured 26 1/4 -in long! That's more than two feet tall! Tall, dark, and handsome... that's how the ladies' love him...