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!