Adventures in Teething...

Trying to come at this whole topic with wit and humor is difficult for me because I'm a first time mother.  I mean, I'm a reasonable person...I see the humor in all some of it. I really do.  But I haven't been able to process it long enough yet to tell it like a favorite old story of mine...like the tales we tell around the dinner table at virtually every family gathering.  One of my favorites about my older siblings:  Remember the time Dan had to pee, but thought Mom wouldn't let him leave his room during nap time to use the bathroom (probably because he was always inventing reasons to leave the room during nap time, and she had gotten wise to his ways)? Yeah...so he peed in a plastic bag and hid it in the Fisher Price barn in his bedroom until the day that Krissy found it, shook it up a little, thought it looked like beer, and convinced Dan to try and take it downstairs, put it in a cup, put the cup in the fridge, and see if Dad would see it and think, "Ah yes...a nice refreshing glass of beer...that's just what I need."  Ah...the best laid plans of an eight year old and a five year old.  Don't worry...Dad caught them en route to the kitchen with a bag of pee (Or was it beer???  They're just so similar.) and put the kibosh on the whole thing.

Anyway, so back to present day...Sammy's teething.  And at first it was just cute.  He'd grab things with a little grunt and then put them directly into his mouth.  He'd start chomping away with those little gums like it was his job.  And everything was covered with a thin layer of slimy drool.  Adorable, right?

And then came yesterday.  He sounded the first alarm at everyone's favorite time of day...3 AM.  I thought he just wanted to nurse, but quickly discovered that wasn't the case.  In fact, he didn't want anything at all.  He didn't want to rock in the rocking chair.  He didn't want to be put in his crib.  He didn't want to be carried around the house as I swayed him slightly and gently sang "My Favorite Things" in his ear like some sleep deprived Maria von Trapp.  And how do I know he didn't want these things?  Why the screaming, of course!

But it was all good.  I was planning to get up then anyway.  No seriously, I was.  Remember my husband's new job that I was telling you about?  3 AM is the new normal.  Well, technically our alarm was set for 3:30, but who wants an extra 30 minutes of sleep on a Thursday morning...when you've been barely able to keep your eyes open all week as you adjust to this crazy new schedule, and don't sleep well at night because you're paranoid that you'll sleep through your alarm?  Not me.

So, we were up.  All of us.  And as Hansen (that's my husband, for those of you who don't know...and yes...that's his first name) proceeded to shower and get ready for the day, I somehow was able to calm Sammy down and get him back to sleep.  Hansen left the house at 4 AM.  Or it could have been 4:30.  I don't know, that early in the morning, it's all the same to me.

Since I was already up, I decided to start working.  I work from home on Thursdays and I wasn't sure how fussy Sammy would be that day, so I figured I'd get as much done early in the morning as I possibly could so that for the rest of the day, when Sammy was awake, I could be a little more flexible with how I spent my time.  It was a good plan.

Sam slept until about 7.  When I heard him fussing, I got up and took him into my dark bedroom so that I could nurse him in bed.  That's what I do when I'm hoping he'll go back to sleep after eating.  And it worked like a charm.  Unfortunately, I also fell asleep.  But only for like an hour and a half, during which time I had a crazy dream about taking care of a baby that wouldn't stop crying.  I know it's really not that exciting to hear about other people's dreams, but...at the end of the dream Hansen came up to me holding Sammy and I demanded to know who that child was, because clearly the screaming child I was holding was Sammy...and there aren't two of him!  Hansen pointed at the baby in my arms and calmly replied, "Oh...that's our demon baby."  And then I got mad at him for saying that and I bit him on the finger really hard.  And then I woke up.  Totally bizarre and a little unsettling.

After I woke up, Sam was still asleep, so I put him in his crib and got back to work.  He slept for another hour, so I had a really good head start on my work day when he finally woke up for good around 10.  When I went in his room to get him up and change his diaper, I first fished around in his mouth to try and find those new chompers that were giving him such a hard time.  And find them, I did!

Sammy's first tooth.  Don't worry he's not as unhappy as he looks in this picture.  No babies were harmed during the taking of this photo.

It's kind of exciting!  Teeth!  Already!  But it makes me a little sad, too, knowing that he's growing up so quickly.  I knew he wouldn't stay a baby forever, but he's just such a little sweetheart and I'm trying to make these times last, as people have advised me to do, but he just keeps growing and changing so much that it's hard to keep up!

Anyway, after finding the teeth (he actually has one tiny one coming in on the bottom, too, but I couldn't get a picture of it), I proceeded to change him.  Somehow while I was exploring in his mouth, the little stinker managed to poop his diaper, and it had already started to leak out the side of his sleeper.  Oh joy.  How does he do that?  Wouldn't I have heard it?  I usually do!  Now he's stealth pooping?!?  Quite a skill.  Oh well, the mess wasn't anything that I haven't dealt with before, so I got him undressed and then I went to give him a bath.

Bath time went predictably well.  Baby boy loves his baths.  But then I realized that I had forgotten his towel.  Before you judge me for leaving the bathroom to get his towel while he was still in the tub, let me just assure you that the water had been drained out of the tub already, and he was sitting calmly in his little bath seat.  I was back in the bathroom within five seconds, but apparently that wasn't quick enough.

What I noticed first was some yellowish, baby poopish residue on the bottom of of the tub near the drain.  I thought to myself, "Wow...did I really do that bad of a job with the wipes when I took his diaper off?  Was there really that much poop floating around in his bathwater?  That's gross!"  And then I went to pick Sam up out of his bath seat and realized that he had pooped...right there in the sanctuary of cleanliness.  So what else could I do?  I started the water running again and took the detachable shower nozzle down so that I could spray the poop down the drain and rinse Sammy off.  It didn't take very long, as there wasn't a lot of poop.  But then, just as I was hanging the shower nozzle back on the wall, he pooped again.  A lot.

Anyway...long story short...I cleaned up the fecal matter, cleaned up Sam, got him dressed, and the rest of the day went pretty well.  But man...that was an exhausting day!  Teething...not my favorite part of this gig.  And they say he's going to get 20 of these things by the time he's two or three years old?  Yikes.  Pray for me.

Note to Self: Don't Screw this Up!

Okay...this is it.  The time is now.  No more thinking about it.  I'm starting this blog.  Doesn't matter that a giant spider (truly...giant...I don't exaggerate about these things) just tried to kill me.  Doesn't matter that I just tried to kill him back...and failed...and now have no idea where said giant spider may be lurking, as his heart boils with vengeful rage.  I'm doing it.  The baby is sleeping.  It's 6 pm and I'm actually done with work, at home, and in my pajamas.  Granted, I worked from home today, so I never actually changed out of my pajamas this morning, but that's beside the point.  These perfect circumstances may never align again to present me with such a grand opportunity, so I'm running with it.  Or writing with it.  Whatever.

I've been putting this off because I don't want to screw it up.  I decided about a week ago that I wanted to give this a shot, but I've been finding every excuse to NOT begin.  I'm not completely clueless about blogging (read:  I've Google searched the phrase "how to start a blog"), so I know I'm already doing it wrong.  I don't have a particular passion for a specific topic.  I'm not an expert in any field.  I have no knowledge to impart.  I just like to write.  I used to be good(ish) at it.  And I kind of, sort of think that I might like some people to read what I write.  Maybe.  We'll see.

So, in spite of the fact that I'm pretty sure I'm doing this wrong, here I am:  Laying next to my son on the floor of his bedroom (because he woke up about 20 minutes ago, shortly after I finished writing the first paragraph of this post), writing away.

There have been a lot of big changes in my life this year.  For starters, I gave birth to the sweetest little dude I've ever met, and I can't believe how completely I loved him from the very first minute I saw him.  Before that, actually.  He's now almost five months old, and judging by how often he's had my fingers in his mouth today, I'd say he's probably teething.  So, he hasn't been his most cheerful self this week.  But he also bursts out in a belly laugh whenever I make a sound like a chicken (which, consequently, I've been doing pretty frequently)...and it's just so perfect that I almost don't mind the inconsolable screaming that happened earlier this afternoon.

The second big change, related to the first, is that I have started working two days a week from home.  Since my office is over an hour away from where I live, it is such a relief to not have to drive in every day like I've been doing for the past six and a half years.  And it's saving me a lot of money...though where that money has gone, I haven't a clue.  Maybe Oreos and ice-cream?  Anyway, working from home, while also caring for a 5-month-old baby, has presented a whole host of new challenges.  And I expected that, really, I did.  But that doesn't make it any easier.

I've never before had to stop in the middle of a work day to change a poopy diaper which starts leaking through two layers of clothing almost before I have time to react, and quickly turns into a disaster that requires at least 30 minutes, a bath, and a completely new set of clothes.  Nor have I ever before stopped in the middle of a work day to let someone gnaw on my finger (don't worry I washed my hands after the diaper change).  But these things are important.  And I'm not about to let motherhood completely pass me by so that I can get my spreadsheets finished and log out of my computer by 4:30.  Which is why, until recently, it was not uncommon for my husband to come home from his job (managing a local restaurant) after closing up for the night to see me still plugging away at my computer in the late hours after my son had finally gone to bed for the night.  These are looong days!  But every hour I get to spend with my son is worth it.

The third and most recent change in my life is actually a change in my husband's life.  He recently left his job at the restaurant to accept a position in a completely different industry.  After tomorrow he will have completed his first week on the job.  And he's exhausted.  Working at the restaurant, the earliest he would typically have to report to work was 9:45 am...and more regularly it was 10:30 am.  Now he's rising before the sun so that he can be at work (half an hour away from our home) by 6 am. And the word on the street is that he'll likely have to regularly start work between 2 and 4 am after he completes this first week of training.  I shudder at the thought.  We're hoping that somewhere along the line this job will turn into something that is worth all the effort, something that will really benefit our family.  We're hoping it turns into one of those "good things never come easy" type situations that people are always talking about.  But in the meantime, it's just grueling...especially for two night owls like us.

It also means that we've had to secure child care for our son for the days of the week that I'm in the office...something we never had to do before because his restaurant hours could be worked around my schedule.  After two weeks of frantically searching for someone that I feel comfortable leaving my child with all day, and someone whose rates we could actually afford to pay, we finally decided on a care giver.  She's wonderful.  But I still don't like leaving my baby all day.

So, we're all adjusting; trying to find a new work/life balance that we feel satisfied with.  It doesn't really make sense that I would attempt to add blogging to my already overwhelming to do list, in my already overbooked schedule...especially when I have nothing in particular to say. And yet, I write on.  I mean, not today.  Today I'm done writing.  I have a mountain of clothes to fold.  But, you know, in the future...I'll write more inconsequential reflections on my personal life in the future.  And if you care to read them, you're more than welcome.