Moxie

Orbs of Nutrition: normal.

No mastitis, just a plugged duct that is gone already. Hooray for El Pequeño the Hoover (or maybe the Dyson).

The heat broke, too, so walking around isn't such a viscous experience anymore.

However, I am thoroughly sick of stuffing dumplings. I'll explain when I check back in on Monday or Tuesday.

I even wrapped the present yesterday

I have a confession to make.

I haven't been taking my flax seed oil capsules.

I know. I'm the world's biggest pusher of flax seed oil capsules, but I keep forgetting to take them. Plus I've just been so cocky since it's my second baby and surely I don't need the magic oily pills to keep my problems at bay.

Right. I've been starting to feel a little stressed out and tired, in that "everything's just really hard" kind of way that indicates the very very beginning of depression (you're nodding your heads now, those of you who know what I mean). And, ha ha!, I have a nasty plugged duct that wants to turn into mastitis.

I woke up this morning with that feeling in my right boob that just screams out "plugged duct at 7 o'clock! danger!". So I found my flax seed oil capsules, popped three, popped some prenatals (also forgotten recently), drank a big glass of water, and set up to nurse through it. (Do not fool yourself into thinking that I did this as soon as I woke up. I actually wrenched my head out of the co-sleeper, wiped spit-up off my bicep, changed a diaper, made some cinnamon-raisin toast with not too much butter but "more butter than that, Mama!!" and kissed my husband good morning. Then I took the pills.)

When you have a plugged duct, the best way to get rid of it is to nurse it through. The best position is to put the baby's chin at the plugged place. I prepared to do this by putting El Pequeño on his back on the bed, and hovering over him to lower my nipple into his pretoothed maw. El Grande was there and didn't know what I was doing, but he watched with great interest and then made his grand pronouncement:

"Lower the Orb of Nutrition."

See what I have to put up with? He really thought he was the funniest thing ever, and went off on a Dr. Evil-style riff.

Dr. Evil voice: Lower the Orb of Nutrition!
Frau voice: Lower the Orb!!
Dr. EVil voice: This milk is fricking delicious!

I am married to a dork.

So after I nursed (the pain tells you it's working, yessiree) I could practically feel the battle royale taking place in my boob. The little angel sitting on my jug was saying something sweet and light like, "Oh, let's just make it a simple plugged duct. She can nurse through it and it'll be gone in a day or two!" but the little devil sitting on the other side of the hooter was snarling, "I demand mastitis! Chills, fever, sweating, and swelling! Swelling, I say, until this one's twice the size of the other one!"

I popped two Tylenol and rounded up my two boys and walked through someone's armpit to get to the subway to go to one of the outer boros for a birthday party. (No, not Brooklyn. One of the outer boros.) If you saw Entourage last night, it was kind of like trekking out to Malibu, except I was with El Chico instead of with Turtle, and no one got road rage, and I didn't smash anyone's windshield with a golf club, and I didn't book a movie of the week for NBC. But I did answer the question, "Is the next stop J's house, Mama?" 17 times. (I am not exaggerating. There are 17 stops to El Chico's friend's house, and he asked at each one.) An hour later we struggled up the steps out into the heat and blazing sun to a backyard party full mostly of people I didn't know. The birthday boy's father forced me to eat three hot dogs. I broke up several preschooler fights, tried to console El Pequeño because of the non-stop teething, and worried constantly about sun exposure. I sweated constantly for three hours. In the blazing sun. After the cake (made with this! which I covet!) we packed up for the trip home (which turned into rush hour a few stops from our apartment--ha ha!) and sweet, sweet Manhattan.

I am now in the delicious air conditioning, with El Pequeño asleep and Els Grande and Chico at the water park. In two hours I will be asleep, and in the morning I hope to wake to find that the angel has won the Battle of the Boob.

Must take more flax seed oil.

Progress Report 2

Split lip: healed.
Toe: healed (mostly).
Cat pooping in tub repeatedly: continuing apace. Why does she do it? I've been spraying the spot with either bleach-enhanced cleanser or strong mouthwash, but if I forget to spray on one of those things she poops there again, even when her box is pristine.

Oh, the teething! Poor child is not even 11 weeks old yet, but there are two little nubbins right there under the surface just waiting to break through. The little guy didn't take a single nap all day, then collapsed on the boob at 6:30. I'd be thrilled if he'd wake up in the morning with two little teeth poking through.

What would possess a person to get tattoos on her elbows only? I can understand if your elbows are part of a larger tattoo starting somewhere else, like the upper arm, but the woman I saw today had no other visible tattoos (legs, arms, neck, etc.) and two red flowers (they looked like poinsettias, although I can't imagine that's what they actually were), one on each elbow. Ouch. Tattooing only the boniest parts of yourself must be some pleasure-pain thing I can't really get into.

I'm officially sick of the humidity. And Bob the Builder.

Morning conversation

El Grande: You can stay inside with Mama and El Pequeño and do your construction while I go to my meeting, and then in the afternoon we can go to the park.
El Chico: Didn't you see the weather report? There are supposed to be showers in the afternoon!
El Grande (looking at me with an incredulous look): He's right, you know.

It's beginning to be like that LL Cool J movie in which they train the sharks but then the sharks get too intelligent and go after the trainers.

Oh, who am I fooling?

I need this blog to process the stuff that happens to me. I can't realistically take a hiatus. So here goes.

Yesterday, El Chico split his lip open in church. It was the end of church during the organ postlude and El Chico was reaching down to pick up all his toys to put them in his backpack. One of the toys, incidentally, was Talking Lofty, who comes into play later in this entry. Talking Lofty, who came with batteries pre-installed, has actually not been anywhere near as loathesome as I thought he'd be. He did go off accidentally during the service, but El Chico kind of gets a pass from everyone at church--even the kid-haters--because he's generally super-quiet (although a dervish of silent activity) during church. And because he figured out by watching other people that everyone dips their bread into the wine during communion, and started insisting on doing that himself when he was around 22 months old. All the communion assistants now just know to bend down to let him dunk when he comes through the line, and that cracks people up. But I digress.

El Chico bent over to pick up some cars and and banged his mouth, hard, on the top of the seat back in front of us. A few seconds later he started screaming in pain (as the mom of grown-up kids next to me said, "I knew it must have hurt a lot because the longer they wait before they cry the worse it is"). I hugged him, but when I pulled back to look at him there was blood streaming from his mouth. So I grabbed him and ran to the bathroom. Fortunately, I washed it off no teeth were involved, just a big fat split lip. Two cookies later (and a check-out by one of the nurses in the congregation) he was running around with his friends.

Later that night I was walking innocently across the living room (after both kids finally went to sleep for the night--who would have guessed that the infant would be the easy one sleepwise?) when I stubbed my toe on the little white cylinder toy that came with Talking Lofty. Only I didn't stub it exactly--the toe sort of bent underneath my foot. I iced it with frozen peas, but it still hurts and it's hard to walk on. I don't think it's broken, only sprained, but I'm still seriously hobbled. Amazing how something so small is so important for movement.

When I told El Chico this morning that I hurt my toe on his toy so he had to make sure he picked up all his toys every night, he looked around and said, "You didn't trip over Daddy's shoes?' (which were right in the middle of the floor). He's sly, that kid.

So now El Chico and El Grande are off at the new favorite waterpark playing with our friends. I'm stuck here at home with the Drooling Squaller. Who is only content when I'm walking around. Which kills my toe.

Today I feel like a cross between Lucy Ricardo and Erma Bombeck. Only without the humor, of course.

Oh, Gosh

I didn't mean to alarm anyone. I'm fine, but I have a baptism and brunch to plan, a family vacation to plan, paid work, proposals for work that I hope will be paid, and I still haven't done our taxes. Procrastination is not my friend. So I'm cutting myself off cold turkey until I catch up on most of it.

Hiatus

I'm going on hiatus for a little while. Too much stuff going on.

Another boring bullet-point post (now with updates)

1. El Grande chose my new colors for me. I like 'em. He wants to do a crazy flashy banner for me, but I'm happy with my apple photo and the new colors.

2. I was subjected (trapped under a nursing baby and couldn't reach the remote) to a new Jenny Craig commercial yesterday starring everyone's fourth-favorite Scientologist (after Tom Cruise, Rob Thomas [see update], and Beck, of course). In it, Kirstie Alley is talking to a friend on her cell phone (we don't know the friend--they met at summer camp and she lives in Canada). KA gleefully squeals about how much weight she's lost--"I'm almost invisible!" Am I the only one who thinks this is really, really creepy and sad?

3. Does anyone know why talking Lofty is so much more in-demand than any of the other Bob the Builder trucks, including the vastly superior Scoop? I've been getting outbid on Lofties left and right on Ebay, and they've consistently been going for two or three times as much as the other character trucks.

4. We finally switched El Pequeno into cloth diapers. We started with disposables because of the meconium, and when I tried cloth a few weeks after he was born they were too big for him and he couldn't kick his legs. But yesterday, I realized he was literally pissing away his college fund in the disposables, so I gave the cloth ones a try and they fit. Hooray. Virtually free diapering makes me veeery happy. Every time I chuck a cloth diaper into my awesome PUL diaper pail liner I get a little miserly thrill.

5. A few nights ago, El Chico woke up in the middle of the night and started screaming "Daddy! DAAAAADDYY!" in a scared, panicked voice. El Grande hightailed it into his room to find that in the night El Chico had flipped 180 degrees in his bed, then fallen out of bed and gotten his legs wedged under his dresser. He woke up and was out of bed, facing the wrong direction, with his feet trapped. We were at a loss for words.

Updates:
2. Boxing Octopus reports that imdb.com reports that Rob Thomas denies being a Scientologist. He also denies being gay, but that's not the part of the rumor that offended him. "He says, 'If I were gay, Tom wouldn't be on the top of my list...It would be Brad Pitt. I'm more offended by the rumors saying I'm Scientologist.'"  TC wouldn't be at the top of my list, either, Rob.

3. I hate Lofty. Despite working at the most nurturing contracting company in the world, he persists in having zero self-esteem, and we never hear anything about his being in therapy. But El Chico is obsessed with Lofty right now, asking me every day, "Did Lofty come yet?" So I gave in and ordered one from a store on Ebay. When it comes I just won't put any batteries in it--there are no batteries in our Scoop and El Chico hasn't noticed. I hope that lasts.

4. Emma, we had the whole load of cloth diapers from when El Chico was a baby, so really have no costs in diapering except for laundry costs. I, personally, use unbleached cotton prefolds inside velcro or snap wraps, and find it an easy and effective system (way fewer blowouts than with disposibles, IME). My husband finds it easy, too. If you want details of my actual system I'll have to put them in a separate post.

Attention Pregnant Ladies

Q: What can make a mom of an infant feel better on a day that included:

• Non-stop drooling and teething pain from her tiny son
• Crying and fussing on and off all day from said baby, because of the discomfort he's in
• A trip outside to try to get both mother and baby in a better frame of mine that ended up with the mother's wiping out on the rainy sidewalk and skinning her knee*?

A: Knowing that the baby will sleep at night.

Yes, friends, I have a dirty little secret. El Pequeño sleeps really, really, really well. From the day he was born he's been a good nighttime sleeper. For the first few weeks he woke up 2-3 times a night to nurse. Now usually he wakes up once.

Once.

At 8 weeks.

Oh, and did I mention that he's slept 8+ hours three or four nights.

I'm as shocked as you are, really. El Chico was "a good sleeper" because when he woke up he'd eat and then go right back to sleep. Since he was in bed with us, he'd cry to wake me up, chug it all down, then go right back to sleep for a few hours. El Pequeño's really baffling me, though, because he doesn't even cry when he wakes up to nurse. He just makes a little "uh, uh!" sound to wake me up. If I don't wake up right away to shove the boob in his mouth he kind of whacks me with his little arm. I've heard him cry in the middle of the night maybe half a dozen times since he's been out. And he only wakes up once. (If I didn't have a nutjob cat, a husband who talks in his sleep, and an unpredictable 3-year-old I'd be very well-rested.)

Since both kids have been in bed with us as infants, that can't be the reason El Pequeño sleeps so much better than his older brother did (although it is the reason I don't even have to sit up to nurse in the middle of the night). The only things that can account for his Rip Van Winkletude are a) his innate personality, and b) the flax seed oil I took during pregnancy. There's nothing that can be done about a kid's personality, so let's focus on the flax seed oil. I'd read somewhere (I'm too addled to Google for it to add a link) that mothers who supplemented with Omega 3s in the third trimester had babies who slept better from the get-go, so I took 2 1,000 mg flax seed oil capsules every day of my pregnancy. Is this what made El Pequeño such a champion snoozer? Who knows. But it can't hurt to try it yourselves.

If you're on the fence, think about the difference between 3 hours of sleep in a row and 5 hours of sleep in a row. It's a big difference. Go get the flax seed oil**.

* Fortunately El Pequeño was in the Ellaroo and didn't get hurt when I fell. My knee looks like crap, though.

** It also prevents constipation and makes your hair shiny. If you keep taking it after you have the baby it prevents PPD and plugged milk ducts, and keeps your cholesterol low.

Updated to add: Amy found the abstract I saw. Thanks, Amy!

8 weeks

A Letter To My Sons

To my two precious, brilliant, sweet boys,

Shut up, shut up, shut up, SHUT UP!

You with the crying, and you with the non-stop chatter--enough! I am about to jump out of my skin.

If you weren't so sweet I'd ship you in a box to your grandmother for a few weeks.

Love,

Your Mother

I've never understood when people say that it gets better at 8 weeks. That hasn't been my experience either time. At 8 weeks I just feel so stressed and tired of dealing with the fussing and crying and constant neediness. I'm ready for the baby to just calm himself down. And maybe walk to the store to get me a cold drink, while he's at it. Enough with the drama already--the gas isn't that bad, every need is being met, so is all this crying really necessary? It's like a drop of water drip drip dripping into my brain pan.

Of course this time it's compounded by having a 3-year-old who is dealing with his feelings about a new sibling by erecting construction projects in our apartment. He ropes off all the hallways and doors with "construction tape" so he can work on his projects. So I can't go anywhere in the apartment without hopping over string or untying the sling to pass by. I understand that construction is his way of playing at having control over the situation, but it's really making me crazy. And then he talks about it incessantly. "Mama, I need to use your sling so I can put construction tape up over here so that NO ONE can go in to my job site because I'm the worker guy! I'm Bob the BuIlder! And this is my site and I have to do work here! So you and Daddy can't go in here ("here" being the kitchen) because you aren't worker guys!" Oy vey.

I wish I could find my journal from when El Chico was 8 weeks old. I clearly remember a moment in the kitchen. I'd just been walking him back and forth, back and forth, so he wouldn't cry. All of a sudden I saw with such clarity that I'd ruined my life and that I'd never get my body or brain or soul back from this sweet, beautiful little incubus I loved so desperately. I wish I could go back there and give myself a hug and say, "It's going to be OK. Someday you'll really enjoy being his mother, and you'll have yourself back, and your marriage won't actually fall apart. You didn't ruin your life--you made it better. Now is just the sucking part. Stop worrying about your body--you'll lose all the baby weight and then some--and eat some chocolate to make yourself feel better."

This time, I'm finding solace in a Carl Hiaasen novel and the promise of a Pilates mat class later today.