!!!!!!!

I can't believe I forgot to post this yet! I was so busy getting excited about my buddy's visit and laughing at the baby care diagrams that I forgot to feel sorry for myself about something huge.

Anonybabe preferred her dad last night.

I had an inkling we were in the midst of a shift when two nights ago, I came home to find Anonyhubby and Anonybabe watching Family Guy. The TV is usually on when I come home; that's nothing new, but Anonybabe crawls excitedly my way while I struggle to get my wet boots and coat and hat off in time to swoop her up and give her a big hug before nursing her. This time Anonyhubby was holding her and standing in front of the television, arrested as he was mid tidying up by some joke. Both of them looked over at me long enough to greet me when I walked in, and then their eyes swerved back to the cartoon. They were pleased enough to see me, but you know, Stewie had started his own company and was firing Brian, and it was all in such captivating full color.

Then last night it was the same pleasant enough greeting. She endured my meal & nursing, and even smiled and laughed with me a little, but mostly just wasn't that into hanging out. Dad got home and she was all smiles...I gotta admit, he is a lot more fun to play with...he growls and throws her in the air and everything. I mostly do something that I think might be fun and then look expectantly at her for a reaction. Usually she gets pissed if Anonyhubby tries to take her and put her to sleep, but last night she was really fighting the sleep in my arms. Squirming and pushing against my belly with her feet. I had really wanted to put down since I felt like I hadn't really connected with her after work, but finally I broke down and called Anonyhubby in to take her. She went without a whimper! I told him I wanted her back if she started crying, but she didn't. I fell asleep feeling kinda lonely and she fell asleep in daddy's arms .

I've totally been predicting this day, and I figured I'd be sad, but I immediately wanted to go into full-on ya-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta, put on a side show to ingratiate myself to the baby mode. I knew my boobs couldn't captivate her forever. SIGH.

Sharing the wealth

Anonyhubby called me today sounding kinda shaken.

"She pooped today," he told me, "and it was the size of a baseball. Like, literally the size of your fist. She didn't even grunt that hard. First of all, how do you get something that big out, and second of all, how do you get it into the shape of a ball?"

He sounded like he was eyeing her from across the room, like she was going to call the mother ship at any moment to beam them both up for their anal probes.

Baby do's and don'ts

Go here for more on the ins and outs of childcare.

And here's the fetching chap I totally stole this link from.

Be Fried where the Street Ends

When I was in grade school the girl I hung out with most and I got a couple of "Best Friends" necklaces. They consisted of a heart pendant that had been split down the middle, lightening bolt style, so that my heart half read "BE FRI" and her heart half read "ST ENDS". We never really were best friends, more extremely shy girls who clung to each other for companionship in an area that had slim companionship pickins.

But my buddy who is coming to visit me next weekend from Denver is true best friend material. (I just chose to share this blog with her last week so she'll be reading this now...Hi, buddy!) We are the dorkiest of dorks together...laughing at really stupid and crass shit. She and Anonyhubby are probably the only two people who truly know that I like mah humor course, and while Anonyhubby just shakes his head and looks a little helpless when I make dick and vagina jokes, my buddy laughs uproariously and then comes back with something six times as funny.

In an eerie-but-true tit-for-tat, my buddy, who just happened to get pregnant with her first child six months after I did, planned to visit me around my due date in the hopes that she'd get to be there for the birth. My water broke the day she flew in and I got to see her and laugh with her the first week of my daughter's life. I planned a visit to Denver a couple of weeks before her due date, since her family was already visiting around the time her baby was due. Her water broke the day I was to fly in and I got to spend the first week of her daughter's life in her home. It was amazing. It really did feel like I was a tool in my daughter's coming-into-being, like I wasn't the one calling the shots, so sometimes I imagine that our daughters are fated to be in each other's lives.

Anyway, she's flying all the way from Denver to Chicago with her baby girl and I am t-h-r-i-l-l-e-d to get to see her. You may spot us at Frontera. We'll be the obnoxious mamas packin' babies, squirting drinks out of our noses as we guffaw at each other's jokes.

Glutton for punishment

So what this siren song called makin' babies anyway? For all intents and purposes, Anonyhubby and I have it easy with Anonybabe. She is not overly fussy or demanding. She smiles and coos and is cute enough that we get a kick out of her. But parenting is hard. The sleep deprivation, the poop, the remembering to take care of all their needs at first, the worrying you're going to kill them anyway, the smell, the fissure in old friendships, the lack of sex, and on and on. It always sounded horrible to hear other people talk about it, and it is. But then you would always hear, "oh, but it's worth it." And it also is. I mean, look at this:
And that's just looking at her, and that's after having her face smooshed through a vagina; she's way more fun and adorable now. But fun and adorable as she is, why am I thinking of having another? I really have no good answer. I like the idea of a nuclear family, that odd little galaxy with its own gravitational pull put together by the likes of us, even though I know that that enveloping togetherness is in some ways an illusion. It's so odd to look at putting together a family from this end, as a kid it all seemed so inevitable: my parents, my siblings, my house. Now I see all of the choices and random elements that go into putting a living situation together and it's kind of freaking my shit out to see how patchwork the process is. It only took a few months of overwhelming biological urge to procreate and now we have a whole human being inextricably linked to our lives. I could just as casually get pregnant again, and boom! another nuclear blast to our lives.

Actually, I think #2 would be a nuclear blast whereas #1 is more like a little TNT boom. I've heard that the first child doesn't change your life so much; you can still hang on to some semblance of your former life & self. But with 2 it starts to get hairy. Soon after I had Anonybabe I was standing in line behind a pregnant woman at a boutique. I told her congrats and she kind of grunted. "Is this your first?" I asked. "No," she stated "The first one tricks you; it tricks you by being all cute and then you think it's a good idea to have another." She was visibly drooping. When I was flying to Pittsburgh we stood in line to board the plane behind a man who was leaving 5 children at home. He always makes his business trips as short as possible so as not to leave his wife at home alone with them too long. His youngest was 2ish and his oldest is 17. "I've been changing diapers for 15 years," he said, and he looked it. Poop. Poop had been a part of his daily life for fifteen years. Ya'll. Doesn't that give you the shivers? He looked beaten, haggard. Happy, but without the energy to enjoy it if that makes any sense.

But those are strangers; the people I really know who have more than one kid are happy with their lot. What are Anonyhubby and I going to be happy with? When I blurted to Anonyhubby, "let's have another" the other night, he responded "no!" and then murmured how he's just...so...tired. I think he can't imagine having any more love to give. Neither can I, but I haven't met Anonybabe 2 yet. This story just doesn't feel complete yet. Not that I have anything to plan for or worry about as I'm not getting any anyway.

Notch in the Headboard

As of last night. This is very unspontaneous of me, but if I can get some nookie in once a week, be it good, bad, or ugly, I'll feel a lot better about my relationship with anonyhubby. We just need something - anything - to ensure that we're doing something together on a regular basis. Since we don't macrame or wine-taste together, sex it is. We've got the tools; we've got the space. If and when Anonybabe sleeps, we've got the time. It may be artificial and forced to count the times Anonyhubby and I make it as an indicator of the health of our relationship, but.... I don't have a "but", at this point it doesn't really matter if I'm being artificial and forced. When you're in ill health it sucks to monitor your eating or exercise habits, but you do it anyway to get yourself to a point where you don't have to pay so much attention anymore. Anonyhubby and I are out of the honeymoon period and I feel like the relationship needs maintenance if it's going to keep running properly. It might not help, but one good pounding a week is a prescription that certainly couldn't hurt anybody. And I can attest that going without for three monthish stretches hasn't been helping. So I'm pencilling in a weekly session of "together" time...yep...right here between "showering" and "climb mount laundry".

Time distracts you from all wounds

After crying on your shoulder on Wednesday's blog, I should 'fess up to the good day Anonybabe and I had on Friday. If we were lovers we would have been smiling at each other's sunlit faces as we ran hand in hand through a field of wildflowers. Our day was just that good. I woke up bizarrely chipper. I think Anonybabe could have been the infant from hell and I would have just gazed lovingly at her and said "oh YOU". But she was in a great mood too. Just the gift I needed from mother nature after Wednesday's sobfest. I think the good, bad, and ugly of returning to normal after birthing a child are all coming about, complete with the glorious hormonal mood swings mama estrogen has seen fit to give me since the tender age of twelve. Anyway, I slowly came down off of my beatific high so that by Sunday night I was my usual self. Meaning, in a good enough mood but also touchy.

So what was Anonybabe doing that was so goddam special? The usual generic cute baby stuff: laughing every chance she got, crawling around & exploring, splashing gleefully at the side of the bathtub...and then some nuts and bolts things that made my life great: pooping these little compact turds that were easy to flick in the toilet, pushing her water glass away gently when she didn't want a drink instead of her usual violent downward yank that sends water spilling onto her lap or the floor, hanging out when I needed her to hang, sleeping when I needed her to sleep, eating when it was convenient to eat.

Thank god for the magic days, they give me the fuel I need to coast through the crappy ones.

Write-diddy write, right?

I got my first assignment from an online writing school that I signed up for recently. Hopefully this is not a rip-off. It doesn't look to be. Anonyhubby thinks otherwise, but he suspects everything is a rip-off. At least he still lets me do what I'm gonna do without giving me much flack. And I'm gonna take this class! It's supposed to help me get at least two articles ready to submit to magazines for publishing. It would be sweet to write for pay, but at the very least it would be even sweeter to overcome my fear of submitting, writing, or even thinking of publishing articles.

I have Anonybabe to thank for helping me go out on a limb and take this class. Writing for public consumption has been a dream of mine for a long time, but horrifying, irrational fears have kept me from trying it much. I don't want to be the mom who never tried to do what she really wanted to do, I want to be a good example, and so, the class. It may or may not go anywhere as far as actually getting anything published, but right now I'm just so proud of myself for putting me out on any kind of limb that I don't much care. I took a baby step! I'm gonna heap at least as much praise on myself as I do on Anonybabe for her first steps.

Keep crying, and I'll give you something to cry about!

I cried last night, in bed, holding Anonybabe. Crying is more of an event than it used to be. In my teens and early twenties I would get a good cry in once a week, every two weeks, tops. But apart from a couple of hormone-infused, goddammit-this-is-overwhelming-how-the-fuck-did-I-get-here jags at the beginning of Anonybabe's life, my eyes have remained pretty dry for the last 7 or 8 years.

But last night, I just didn't want to be around her. All of my prancing around to make her laugh and smile seemed tired and old - I didn't want to do it. And it may well be my imagination, but I think she's starting to really catch on to the fact that I leave her behind when I go to work on purpose and she's starting to get a little pissed off. She is shrilly happy when I'm in the room, thoroughly angry when she gets handed to dad for food or sleep, and now seems to expect something of me when I walk in the door.

Crying sessions start best with a little sleep deprivation, and we were both coasting on just a little sleep. The night before, Anonybabe had inexplicably woken up at one in the morning ready to play. Anonyhubby and I took drawn-out turns coaxing her back to sleep. Then she and Anonyhubby slept until 10:30(!*@&) yesterday. To even things out, Anonyhub only let her take one nap so she'd be ready to conk out at 10pm or so. 10 came and went, no sleep. I handed Anonybabe over to dad at some point to let him put her down, but I was feeling a little guilty. For leaving her behind to go to work. For not paying attention to her once I got home so I could cook dinner. For not really wanting to interact with her. And finally for making her cry when I yelled at her for biting my boob during her 9pm nursing. I mean, I have to because biting the nipple with those sharp little incisors is not an option. Her face completely crumpled when I did it; I actually saw inner turmoil in my 10 month-old's face. She just clung to me and looked sad for a while. So at 11:30ish I called out to hubby to bring Anonybabe in so she could lay down on the bed with me. I kept trying to push her pacifier on her while she kept trying to comfort nurse, with the result that she scratched me in the face. Hard. I took her hand and told her "no" so she did it again and went back to nursing. And that's when I teared up. And once I started crying I just let the momentum build and had a good self-pitying sob to cleanse my palette.

Anonybabe is the very person I least want to have power struggles with but that is my job. We have kind of been in the baby honeymoon period and I see signs that it is about to end. So I'm blubbering about all of the work I have in front of me. I have to grit my teeth and be a mom and when I'm getting clawed in the face by a child who is just learning how to express her likes and dislikes to a very tired and disheartened mommy...I don't know. I don't get to take the "ow-you're-hurting-me" tack anymore. I don't get to take the pain she inflicts personally. I have to be a grown up now. And getting scratched in the face by a 10 month old is nothing. I know this. Which makes me feel more sad and overwhelmed.

So I cried like a baby about it for a while. And now I'm blogging it so I can get to a place where I have some semblance of a grownup & positive outlook about the job ahead of me.

I like not being in the honeymoon period with my husband anymore, so chances are I can learn to like having a real working relationship with my daughter. Without all of the violins playing in the background and little snow white birds tweeting around my head about how gorgeous and perfect she is. Right?

Tallywhacker tally

Oh man. Sorry to those of you who actually know me for this unwelcome peek into my bedroom, but the hubby and I managed to have sex last night (yea!). Which prompted me to check my blog to see when we did it last. It's been over six weeks (boo!). I suppose I should go with the condom-half-full mentality and celebrate the increase in frequency that this represents. But every six weeks sucks. How the hell do you maintain a marriage on that? I know, I know; people weather a lot worse, but I don't have to like this.

Food Nazi intervention

Forgot to mention that I relaxed my deathgrip on Anonybabe's eating regimine this weekend, and how! (And when I tell you what she got to eat you'll realize what an uptight killjoy I usually am...when I told Anonyhubby he fake gasped and informed Anonybabe she'd better start coffin shopping). I meant to pack quite a bit of food but didn't; and when we got there it was freaking cold and it just didn't make sense to make a special trip to the grocery store for food when she would actually be okay eating what was in the house. Drumroll, please:
crackers! not whole grain!
havarti cheese with herbs, not raw, natural, or unsalted!
pineapple, not organic!
cantelope, ditto!
sourdough bread, made with white flour and preservatives!
cream of wheat, with a year-old expiration date!
peas with added salt!

and as a kicker, when we went to brunch on Sunday and for various reasons it ended up taking 2 hours longer than we thought it was going to and I was unprepared with food for her:
butternut risotto cakes that were salty as all hell and may or may not have had egg whites.

She seemed to enjoy her weekend eats thoroughly. And I seem to be coming down from my ivory tower food mentality little by little. Yea, me!

Up up and away - The epilogue

Epilogues are at the end, right? Where you wrap things up? I'm too tired to look.

I'm exhausted. Pittsburgh was fun, my friends were lovely. I even kind of reconnected with this friend (who is fun to be around because she's smart as a whip and just so darn perceptive...if only I could see her putting some effort into being my friend. Plus we tend to bring out the uptight nerdiness in each other).

Anonybabe was fine as long as she was in my arms or near me; she didn't look nearly as unhappy as she was with the in-laws, but she would definitely sit tight-lipped on my girlfriends' laps until I picked her up. She shut down, too, when my friend's 5 year old tried to show Anonybabe how to play with some baby toys they had in the house, stuffing hats roughly on her head and hugging her with stuffed bears. Anonybabe was safe in my lap, so she just stared open-mouthed at the girl until she got lost in doing some puzzles. Only then did Anonybabe crawl out of my lap to investigate and stare up at this older girl. Anonybabe is such a gentle little soul. It breaks my heart a little to see her be so shy.

Her cough is getting worse rather than better. We tried the home remedy of rubbing Vicks vapo-rub on the soles of her feet and then putting cotton socks on over them in the hopes that would help. It didn't keep her from hacking intermittently last night. I think her coughing woke my friends up quite a bit over the weekend, although they were too polite to complain about it.

Anonybabe tends to pick one syllable every two weeks and use it to describe everything, and as of Friday, that syllable is "ooooooooh". It's very cute. The whole world is a wonderland. She also greatly enjoys grabbing my nose and hearing me say "honk". She'll do this over and over again, which hurts like a bitch when her fingernails haven't been clipped. She's also cottoning on to mimicry. Last night she threw her hands up in the air, so I did the same; then she'd slam them down on her high chair so I'd hit the table. A light when on in her eyes and we did this five or six times. Loved it! I swear she's trying to mimic certain words too, although this has been very sparse. I do think "ooooooooh" she picked up from Anonyhubby.

I thought I was going to go home and make dinner tonight while Anonyhubby did homework, but I think I'll be picking up dinner on the way home. Too tired to think!

Up up and away

As I sat at my desk just now, loudly rattling my way into a little bag of wonton crisps to put on my Trader Joes salad - I realized I am like the poster model of the stereotypical office worker who doesn't work: I blog and check my email, interrupted by snacking and going to the conference room to breast pump while I read novels twice a day. It's a sad little game we are playing here at my workplace, where we pretend to be productive and the bosses pretend there is enough to do to keep us occupied. I suppose I could do things like micro-organize the back files, but then I'd miss out on good salad eatin' & blog writin'! And since nobody cares about the backfiles anyway, here I am.

It's amazing what a couple of nights of good sleep will do to your outlook on life. I'm very much looking forward to a trip I'm taking to Pittsburgh this weekend to see some college buddies. A couple of days ago I felt too tired to even think about it. Anonybabe is coming with; Anonyhubby has had too many sick days now to take the weekend off and we couldn't find a babysitter for the weekend. Good food and lots of wine and laughter should abound. I'm glad Anonybabe will get to see me this way, with my girlfriends. I'm glad I get to see me this way. It's a different kind of good time, of course, than being with the hubby. He...well, I was going to say he likes to laugh but I don't know that that's true. He likes to enjoy himself: going to hear a good band, watching a documentary, planning a garden, writing a song, taking a long walk to downtown or the north suburbs and back, going to a movie - these are things that fill Anonyhubby's pleasure well. Drinking wine and getting raucous and attempting to make your friends laugh, not so much. He's very wary of substances of any kind, including alcohol. I'm generally glad he's the temperate sort, but sometimes I wish he would loosen up a lot. But that's for him to sort out (or not) as he wishes. I married him as an uptight so-and-so and I love him as such.

As for me, I plan to get girly with my very girliest of girl friends: wine, food, spa time, shoe shopping, all while trying not to neglect my darling daughter as I get lost in enjoying myself.

The girl who hated bedtime

Can I do a long self-congratulating post here? A while ago, I made up a bedtime story for Anonybabe that I love love love. I tell it to her when she is exhausted and fighting the sleep (pretty much every night that she feels well). It's about a girl who hates bedtime.

It always starts out the same way: "once there was a little girl named Anonybabe who really hated bedtime. When it was time to go to sleep she would cry and fuss and kick and yell and roll around on the floor and holler 'no!' and pout and sulk and hit the bedroom wall. Basically she was a terror. Because she hated hated hated to go to bed. Why should she go to sleep when there were so many better things that needed to be done? So one day she decided that instead of bedtime she was going to have adventuretime. That night, she took her bath and brushed her teeth and when her parents went in to put her to bed, she lay calmly under the blankets in her fuzzy pajamas and gave them each hugs and said 'goodnight mother, goodnight father; I love you both and pleasant dreams!'. Her parents looked closely at Anonybabe and then looked at each other and shrugged and left the room. Maybe their daughter had finally decided she liked bedtime.

Then Anonybabe threw back the covers and took off her pj's (she had her clothes on underneath) and called to her best friend Francis (a handsome stuffed cat) and they both climbed out the window to have that night's adventure. And what do you think they saw?"

From there I ad lib anything. It's great fun. Of course right now Anonybabe could care less what I'm saying and singing works a lot better than talking at getting her to sleep. But I'm hoping someday she'll be into that story and that I can keep her body from climbing the walls by keeping her mind occupied.

Humpday

Well, ladies and gentlemen, I think we're over the hump. Anonybabe is still coughing like a pack-a-dayer, but mostly she is back to her old self (complete with frantically protesting bedtime).

I can't tell yet, but Anonyhubby seems to be doing better too. After over two weeks of sickness, our tempers are short and we've had a few good and disheartening rows, but last night at least was nice and mellow. Our fights suck but lately I do seem to learn something about Anonyhub and how he ticks through them. I learn another way to make things work. I wish we had a more peaceful way of communicating, but there it is. At least I feel like we're groping our way towards a better place in our marriage - it gives me hope to know that the fighting isn't necessarily in vain.

On to happier fare: Anonybabe stuck out her tongue yesterday in response to Anonyhubby. It cracks us up. Also, she seems to have the base of a couple of words: she'll say "puh" and her face will light up when we bring up apples, and the same light bright of a face with "boo" when we talk about reading a book with her. Of course "bu, bu, bu" is kind of her description for everything right now, but it seems to me she does it with a little more joie de vive where books are concerned.

Snot and hacking and crying, oh my!

Damn it people. I want a break. A big one.

I was very mommy dearest last night. I wanted sleep and I wasn't getting any. Anonybabe would sleep only if she was in my arms and I was completely vertical. No lying in the bed, no sitting in the lazy boy, no sitting anywhere where I could actually sleep. And I wasn't happy about it. And I let this poor innocent baby know it. Plenty of "what the fuck's" to go around. Plenty of "What?....WHAT?"s.

Anonybabe has been really off of her food since around new year's, and she finally started eating in earnest yesterday, so naturally we let her set to in a big way. The result was a night of gastronomic discomfort. I would slather orajel on anonybabe's gums, thinking she was teething (by the way, I got just a little dab on my lips last night and that stuff is strong) and five minutes of crying later she would fart and quiet down.

Hubby and baby are still sick. Have been off and on since Christmas. Nothing serious, according to the pedi, just a series of one common ailment after another. I took the last day and a half off of work to care for them. Hubby was feeling better yesterday afternoon so I got an hour and a half to myself at a local coffee shop. there were three babies there playing together and it made me want to go home and see my sweeties. I'm such a sucker. I should've taken more time alone to refuel.

Sometimes, ladies and gentlemen, love bites.

Le Sigh

Man, last night was rough. Anonyhubby and I probably got 2 hours of sleep between the two of us. Anonybabe is a perfect storm of unhappiness right now, what with her nose running like a spigot, incessant sneezing, a rattling cough, diarrhea, no appetite, fever, and -- the cherry on top (or possibly the cherry of causation) -- what look to be 4 teeth coming in at once.

I'm all for letting the body do its thing, so I decided to let her sink into her fever sans Tylenol, until about 4am when she hadn't really gotten any substantive sleep, was crying inconsolably, wouldn't nurse, wouldn't make eye contact...it was scary. So we gave her a half dose of Tylenol on top of the Orajel we'd been using and she almost immediately perked up. Nursed for the first time in 8 hours and instead of her zombie-like crying, popped off of my boob to comment on the situation: "Bah!" And then gnawed her pacifier to sleep, complete with "gnyah gnyah gnyah" sound effects. The respite only lasted 30 minutes or so, she was up and down again after that.

I don't want to take away all of anonybabe's pain; I think the body has amazingly evolved ways of working things out for itself, but I gotta give Tylenol and Orajel their props; they really saved the day...er...night last night.

Baby be gone

Okay, I am addressing this to all two of my readers, but does anybody else out there have experience with IUDs?

Much as pregnancy and childbirth were a surprisingly spiritual and fulfilling experience (I'm not even being sarcastic here), as soon as they were over I was very very sure that I didn't want to be pregnant again for a long time, if ever.

So as soon as possible I got an IUD put in. Not the copper kind that just give your womb an inhospitable metallic tang, but one that releases hormones to make sure that not only will my womb remain barren, but my periods will remain light. So far, it's a little slice of birth control heaven, but there are a couple of things that creep me out about it.

1) The hormones. Not only are they leaching into my bloodstream, and thus, anonybabe's, but...it just don't seem natural, ya'll.

2) There's something living in my womb, an antifertile gadfly, if you will, always making sure that my uterus is too busy hiking up its skirts to avoid touching it to have the time to grow a lining hospitable enough for a bambino. I'm all for sticking things inside me but this smacks of holding on to your shovelled parking space in winter with a random piece of junk. A little crass and again...not natural.

3) The brochure casually mentions that about 10% of women who use this form of birth control develop cysts in their uterus. 10%!!! Supposedly a lot of them just go away when you take the IUD out, but some have to be surgically removed. These seem like neither kind nor reasonable odds for my uterus.

4) Supposedly it is very very rare for something to go wrong with these things, but when it does it goes spectacularly wrong: ectopic pregnancies, punctured uteri, embedded IUDs that have to be removed surgically.

Would I rather take an infinitesimal chance that I will lose my uterus or a larger chance that I will accidentally gain a lifetime of love? When I put it that way....

Anybody got any horror stories about IUDs? Even fourth hand accounts? The part of me that really really doesn't want to be pregnant right now is battling it out with the part of me that thinks I should be a little more natural in my birth control selections.

Touche, Mr. Not Brian

http://blog.newsweek.com/blogs/ibreeder/archive/2007/10/12/breeder-reader-.aspx

Picture this - or - a lot of petty ramblings you might want to skip

Ah, the holidays. Thank god they're fucking over.

Not that I had a bad holiday season, per se, there was just a lot of running here and there around the country, and the fact that I have a lovely little being dependent on me for basics like food, waste removal and getting from point A to point B was never more apparent.

So now we are settling back in at home and I have time to reflect over the yuletide with the in-laws. Which is a strong reminder of why I made this post anonymous and have not shared it with anonyhubby.

Not that his family is so bad. Over the years, I have learned to appreciate how in their own special way they are generous, and hardworking, and love their children and grandchildren. I'm sure after a nice visit I could go on, but at the moment those are all the compliments I can muster up. Part of the problem has nothing to do with being good or bad; they are just so entirely different from my family that I found myself retreating in shock after meeting them the first time. And it's been a long slow haul since then learning how to just let them be themselves without getting all worked up about the differences.

But I'm being much too general and kind; let's gossip about specifics shall we? Like I said, this really wasn't a bad visit. I had to go fishing for complaints, and the ones I reeled in are really too small and should be tossed back in...but hey, it's the holidays; I'm gonna indulge.

First there's the stuff that doesn't really bother me, but is tiring nonetheless: the 7 & 5 year old boy nephews that are loud and want to play always. They just had a little sister born 2 months after anonybabe. They are always in her face, trolling for a smile and they sometimes get it. But most of the time, no matter their sweet intentions, they made the babies cry. They must have learned their wooing techniques from their grandpa, who makes his voice lower and lower and gets closer and closer to anonybabe in an attempt to win her over.

In return, she gives him a look of utter distrust, which causes him to guffaw and her to jump. Padre-in-law made me jump and earned my stinkeye when he allowed her to play with a spoon he'd been using to fish jalepenos out of his chili with. "Ahem," I offered calmly in an attempt to fit in to the neglectful atmosphere, "Could you maybe take that spoon away?" "Oh, she's just got the stem end," he says and then continues to chat distractedly away, as I watch her grab the fiery side with her hands and then put the end of the spoon in her mouth. She only fussed a little and anonyhubby was quick to wipe her hands before she rubbed her eyes. Padre-in-law acts like we are all overprotective and crazy. He and his wife are of the "crying is good for their lungs" camp. I've been keeping an eye on him since I found out that he let anonyhubby fall down the very tall basement stairs when anonyhub was a wee tender baby himself. Not that we can't all make mistakes. I'm sure I'll make worse ones with anonybabe. But...I don't know...the way the story was related made it sound like grandpa's babysitting skills on that day were par for the course.

The in-laws also pooh-poohed anonybabe's fever, which started the day of our trip (a six hour drive one way) and then our reticence to use baby tylenol without a thermometer around to check her temp, and then the fact that she was extra clingy. (Turns out she had Roseola). Have you ever read "Guess How Much I Love You" by Sam McBratney? It was the first book the in-laws gave our daughter when she was about 6 weeks old, and to me it pretty much sums up their attitude towards kids. A little rabbit wants to tell a big rabbit how much he loves him, only to always be one-upped by the big rabbit. It has this weird dismissive vibe towards the young rabbit. A patronizing "Oh how cute that you have your little feelings...too bad they aren't as big and important as mine". This is probably not the point of the book at all but I can't help but see it that way. Especially in the way anonyhubby is always trying to get his parents' approval and they are pretty much blind to anything but themselves.

Like for instance: Anmom-in-law wanted a family portrait made and some "proper" 8x10s of anonybabe, so on Saturday evening we all traipsed to Sears and sat on a dirty white backdrop and proceeded to take some tacky pictures to make anmom-in-law happy. They really were tacky. In one jewel of a shot, anonybabe is sitting on the grubby backdrop while anonyhubby and I flank her on our stomachs. We were supposed to be looking at the camera, but both looked at her when she gave a rare laugh (the camera lady scared the shit out of all of us) so there's a shot of us leaning on our fists, lying on the floor, gazing lovingly at our smiling daughter between us. And then there are the 8x10s of anonybabe which are just..not cute.

And then there were the shots of the in-laws with all four of their grandchildren. During the shoot, mom-in-law sat both baby granddaughters on her lap as she kneeled on the ground. She wasn't paying attention, so at one point anonybabe slumped forward just as the shutter went off and then she fell to the ground. Of the 3 or 4 grandparents/grandchildren shot, this is the one picture that mom-in-law picked. When I looked at the rest of the proofs, I saw that most of the other shots were more flattering of everyone else (not of anonybabe, she looked like she was being sent to prison camp in all of them) but madre-in-law picked the portrait that was the most flattering of her. Sigh. At least we were at the mall & got an Icee out of the deal.

I really wish I were less on edge when I go visit these people. I spend a lot of time hating everything about their house and their manners instead of just relaxing and trying to make lemonade out of lemons. Any advice?