Mondays are generally big days for my blog, so I tried to get something posted this morning. In fact, since Friday I’ve been trying to write something I like and it hasn’t been working out. I’ve been typing away for a few paragraphs, then deciding I don’t like it, or I don’t feel it, or it isn’t what I meant at all. Some J. Alfred Prufrock shit. I will just write about my day.
Some nights, I fear the screaming will drive me mad.
I changed Pringles’ diaper, clipped her Snuza Go onto the front, snapped her Gerber onesie, and swaddled her in an Aden and Anais swaddling blanket. The one with the monkeys. How’s that for product placement? None of these companies is paying me squat. Today, I seem to have lost my swaddling mojo. I’m usually a swaddling champ. Aden and Anais blankets are a thin muslin fabric and they’re huge and stretchy, so swaddling with them is a dream (still no money coming my way). I’ve even thought of taking a video of myself swaddling because I am generally so awesome at it. How much would you love to see a video of me swaddling Pringles? Show of hands? Anyone?
I thought so.
I just couldn’t get it today. It started early this morning after the 3:00 diaper change/feeding. She had those little hands out in less than fifteen minutes. Pringles’ startle reflex is such that she cannot sleep without being swaddled. She will look completely peaceful and asleep for a few minutes, but then BAM! she will throw both arms over her head, frown deeply, turn down the corners of her mouth and wail.
It would be adorable if I had slept more than four hours in a row even once the last nine weeks.
Tonight, she started crying while I was changing her. She often stops when the diaper comes off, since my little nudist just adores that. When she’s super fussy, I can take all her clothes off, lay her on a waterproof pad and just let her be naked. She grins her gummy grin at me and coos up a storm. Not tonight! Tonight it was not just soft crying, but loud screaming.
Viva hates bedtime. Show me a two year-old who doesn’t. I mean, she loves the stories and the jammies and the cuddling. Sleep she abhors.
Odie is also pissy tonight because after a long weekend, he has to go back to work in the morning. Extremely early in the morning. His alarm will go off at five and he will likely snooze until 5:15 or 5:20. After a twenty minute “fuck the environment” shower, he gets ready and is out of the house by 6:30.
As Odie tries to mop the soy sauce off of Viva (she wanted edamame beans and “dip” for dinner; hello, tofu scented poop), she asks me, “Mommy, are you going to come to bed?” I tell her no, Mommy needs to nurse the baby, and Viva LOSES HER SHIT.
There I am, swaddling my infant on the bed (sans swaddling mojo) and my toddler is crying her broken heart out because I’m not doing bedtime with her. I shoot Odie a pitying glance and carry our screaming baby to the living room.
Thank heaven for boobs. I miss the days when all I had to do to get Viva to sleep was whip out a boob. Even at 20 months when my milk was gone, she could fall asleep suckling me. No one misses those days more than Odie, because he NEVER had to do bedtime.
I don’t know whether it is my advanced maternal age or my temperament, but sometimes I am amazed that I do not yell and scream in such moments. I don’t exactly feel calm, but I keep it together. I am bound and determined to be different from my own mother, a screamer.
And like we need one more person screaming in this house.
When I got to the living room, the dog looked at me like, “I have to think about getting my own place.” Wait until she finds out I have plans for a mobile grooming van to pull up in the driveway later this week.
Today was a hell of a day. It was hot, so I had the bright idea to make quiche at 1:00 in the afternoon. My friend Kate had dropped off some fresh eggs from her chickens and zucchini from the garden, and the veg was going to spoil if I didn’t cook it. So I carmelized some onions in butter, added the zucchini, then poured 2 eggs, salt and pepper, 1/2 cup of milk into a prepared pie crust and topped with grated gruyere cheese. Thirty-five minutes at 350 degrees and my house was like the penalty box in Hell. The quiche was delish, however.
Not exactly on the 17 Day Diet, either, but screw that. We’ve exhausted the weight loss possibilities of egg whites and spinach. Both of us are doing well, but with a less extreme plan. We borrowed the diet’s philosophy of one day on, one day off. Today was clearly “off.”
Now, if only my friend Kate would get a dairy cow and get to milking her, we could feel great about our choice to consume milk and cheese. A goat would be cool too. I love chevre.
Then we went to our local park. It’s hot and humid the past two days, very unlike Southern California summers, which are dry. Viva thrilled Odie by being willing to kick a soccer ball around for a few minutes. The man has practically been salivating over the idea of kicking a ball with his child. When she is old enough to play Frisbee, for him this will all have been worth it. I have to admit, it was good fun kicking that Dora ball (it’s a-Dora-ball, get it? Never gets less funny) while Odie had Pringles forward facing in the Bjorn.
Viva was over it pretty fast, though, when a little girl pedaled by on a Barbie bike. Viva announced this was her “new friend” and chased after her, attempting to join in a game the adults of her family were raucously playing. After being shooed away by some of that party, Viva sat on the sidewalk and announced she was “very, very sad.” The only remedy? A piggyback ride. From me.
“Run faster, Mommy!”
How do I explain to my young child that not only am I overweight, I’m too old for this shit. The argument for having kids in your 20s, perhaps the only winning argument, is this. Piggyback rides and “let’s jump off this wall, Mommy,” the latter being how we spent the NEXT twenty minutes.
Good god, I am hurting tonight.
The Summer Video Infant Monitor is telling me Viva and Odie are peacefully asleep (another company that isn’t paying me). Time to scoop Pringles out of the Snuggle Nest (raised eyebrow) and hope she stays out during the transfer to the Arm’s Reach Co-sleeper (ahem?).
Labor Day indeed.
And here, for no reason at all except motherly pride:
