Pain in the neck

I have emotional whiplash from loving/hating my husband.

I remember about 2 weeks ago feeling all warm-fuzzy about how great he is and how I love that he takes care of the house and Anonybabe and supports me emotionally and is cute and has common sense and morals...and he paints and plays guitar and listens to the presidential debates!

And this weekend he couldn't say boo without me hating his guts. His common sense and morals in particular were getting on my nerves. Why does he want to take extra time to scoop out the car in the morning? Isn't this the same guy who is always so worried about me getting to work on time, and now he wants to hold me up? Also, he stayed after work one night to talk to the parents of one of his teenage co-workers...people he really likes and they really like him too. They think he's funny and nice and I agree. But he lost track of time and didn't call me to tell me he was headed home until midnight. That wasn't the problem. I figured he was taking some much needed time hanging out and was just gearing up to call him just to make sure he was still a-okay. But he apologized up and down for not calling, saying over and over again that he was sorry and that not calling was unacceptable. That got on my nerves. Mostly because he loses his shit when I don't call to say where I am and I wish he would lighten up about it. I love getting so lost in enjoying something that I lose track of time; I find it very relaxing. So the fact that he always rejects this as evil and inconsiderate just bothers me.

Obviously I still have a little venom in my tank, but I'm winding down. We ramped things up Friday night by talking about ways we are not on the same page when it comes to child-rearing, religion, socializing, and housecleaning. Four topics that should never be aired at once if you want to have a nice weekend with your spouse.

In & Out

From the time she could grasp objects in her hand, Anonybabe has delighted in emptying toy baskets, sock bins, bookshelves...anything that had things in it that she could get out, she would do so with relish. We have video of one of the first times she pulled herself up, it was on a box of CDs that Anonyhubby was pricing to sell on Amazon. She immediately got lost in pulling cases out of the box and tossing them onto the floor. Before long she was leaning so far into the box that her little feet were dangling off of the carpet, CDs flying over her shoulder . If we needed to keep her occupied, we would always just give her something to empty. She also has a little affectation that to us is cute, but to others who have no reason to like my daughter might be eyebrow raising: she always tosses things aside with a flick of her wrist that implies "ugh! This old thing." It makes her look like a horrible baby snob.

But yesterday was a watershed day; she actually deigned to put something in a container. And she did it again today! Anonyhub and I were both very happy to see this; me because now I don't have to worry about her having some emptying-only OCD, and Anonyhub has misty-eyed visions of the two of them organizing closets together someday.

!!!!!!!

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.