Posts (page 2)
Happy St. Pattys. We are all trying to recover from a series of colds here stretching all the way back to Feb. 11th. Oy. I *think* we are on the mend though. Cross your fingers! Here's what I've read while under the weather.
Tweak by Nic Sheff: Depressing memoir of a teenage drug user. I say depressing because now I'm all worried the kiddo will turn out like that. How will I screw her up?? Time will tell. The book was a real page turner though.
American Academy of Pediatrics Guide to Your Child's Sleep by George Cohen and Solve Your Child's Sleep Problems by Richard Ferber: I guess we'll see if Lorelei's sleep problems are better understood and/or solved. She's not a bad kid, she's just going through a needy spell with the colds and the time change and all...
Speaking of sleep problems, gotta go put the kiddo back to bed!
I thought about putting this story in the baby blog but figured my husband might get annoyed since he comes off like a total jerk. He blames his behavior on Nyquil.
Anyhow, Lorelei has been having problems sleeping lately, probably because we (mostly me) kind of spoiled her when she was sick with RSV/ear infections by rocking her to sleep every night and walking with her in the middle of the night while waiting for the tylenol to kick in. Prior to this, she'd been able to soothe herself to sleep at night and for naps at home for the most part and rarely woke us up at night (a dream child!).
The kiddo got better, but still wanted middle of the night snuggles and rocking to sleep, because who wouldn't? This became even more of a problem now that I'm sick and not getting well very fast due to lack of sleep. So we (mostly Eric) decided that we needed to be sterner with her and just lay her down in her crib, give her some pats on the back until she calms down, then leave her to get back to sleep on her own. We put her to bed about 15-20 minutes early last night because she was so tired--she doesn't nap at day care because they are understandably too busy to hold her while she sleeps and that's the only way she's napping lately--and she went to sleep fairly easily. Eric was good enough to turn off the tv while she ate her bedtime bottle which helped in my opinion. Usually Keith Olbermann is blasting which doesn't help anyone relax. She cried a bit when she went in the crib but I went back in and patted her on the back and she calmed down and went to sleep.
She then woke up at 10, crying sleepily. So I went in then, laid her down (because she always stands up at the end of the crib to cry for me), gave her a pacifier, and tucked her in. By the time I tucked her in she was back asleep. I then went back to sleep since I went to bed at 8--as I said I've been sick and not able to sleep much so it's pretty much all I can do to stay up till she goes to bed most nights.
I was woken up once again at 1am by sleepy crying. I went in her room and repeated the procedure. This time she started crying right after I laid back down. I was too tired to get back up, plus she didn't sound too serious, so I figured she'd probably fall asleep in a few minutes. So I was laying there, trying to decide when or if I should go back in, when Eric sits up in bed and yells, "What the hell do you think you're doing? Can't you hear the baby crying???"
Understandably confused, I told him I was just in there and she was fine, and weren't we supposed to be letting her get herself back to sleep anyhow? He growled at me that something was 'obviously wrong' and that I was horrible for letting her cry and not checking it out. So for some reason I did not just punch him in the nose and go back to sleep, or tell him to go check on her himself, but instead went to the kiddo's room, laid her back down, tucked her in, and rubbed her back for about thirty seconds (she's getting to the point that when I come in the room, she lays herself down--progress?) until she fell asleep. This time she stayed asleep until 6. Eric did apologize when I got back into bed but I was a bit miffed. Seems like it's not just me who is opposed to letting her cry it out!
Feel free to give sleep suggestions. I'm thinking earplugs and a separate bedroom from Eric may be a good start! Actually I hear that we are still pretty lucky that she only wakes up a couple of times in the night and *usually* will go back to sleep within 15 minutes...
This was inspired by a comment I made on Mother Popper, and is something gender related (of course!) that has been bothering me a lot the past few months. I've been on the Obama bandwagon since I read Dreams From My Father (such a well written, thoughtful, inspiring book!) but I have been having a hard time with how the media is covering the presidential race on the Democratic side. I was just commenting to Eric the other day that, based on this campaign, race is not really an issue anymore in our country, but gender certainly is. An example from Hillary's 60 Minutes interview, when Katie brought up the 'Miss Frigidaire" nickname Hillary had in school (http://rubyurl.com/Evw0) and the people protesting Hillary's events by chanting 'iron my shirt' -- it's just downright depressing. Think about how it would have played if people were chanting 'pick my cotton' at Obama rallies, or if Katie asked Barack about his basketball playing ability (although come to think of it I have seen this in some interviews)?
The way women in the U.S. are treated if they attempt to enter
'masculine' space is despicable and I am really starting to feel
for Hillary. Not enough to vote for her, but enough to feel ashamed for
how she's being treated and to wonder what I could do to help make
things better.
A librarian colleague of mine is expecting a baby. Her job is very similar to mine and she has a delightfully entertaining blog so I was looking forward to hearing how she adjusted to parenthood and balanced work with family. Then she announced she was quitting her job to consult for a few years while the baby was small. When I heard the news, it felt like a punch in the head, which was really odd. Why was I so invested in what a virtual stranger was doing? I think I am feeling very alone in the academic library workforce. Only one of the librarians here has a young child and the child is not that small and the librarian is a male, so we can't really relate. Some of my virtual colleagues have children but more often than not they drop out of the work force for a while or have spouses that do so. That's not really an option for me, nor do I want to stop working. But I am feeling the societal pressure a lot lately, and maybe that's why I'm reacting so strongly to this. Why can't I stay working and take the kiddo to day care and not feel guilty? She's happy, I'm happy. I just wish I didn't feel like such an outsider doing it, though.
I can't remember what-all I've read since the last time I updated, but here's a few:
The Audacity of Hope by Barack Obama: I loved Dreams From My Father, but this one was much more like the typical "vote for me!" presidential biography. Still fun and interesting, but not as good as the other.
Mother Shock by Andrea Buchanan: This book was great. I read it in about two hours, it was that good. Couldn't put it down. I think I may have read this one before the kiddo was born but it had a lot more meaning now. It was a memoir of the first year of a mother and compares the experience to the 'culture shock' people get when first living in another country. Very well written and very much what I myself went through and am going through.
I Am Legend by Richard Matheson: I will probably not get to see the movie until it's on DVD so I decided to read the book. Very interesting story! Wonder how true to the book this movie version was, especially the ending. There was some small print on the front saying "and other stories" which I didn't notice, and ended up getting terribly confused after the main story was done and I was reading the short stories...
In other news, one of our cats has been sleeping with the baby in her crib for a couple weeks but I didn't catch him at it until this afternoon. It's kind of sweet--they really have a special relationship and even though part of me is freaking out that the cat is sleeping with my precious little baby, I know he won't hurt her. But maybe it's not good for her to be breathing in cat hair all night. I certainly don't enjoy it. The other cat, perhaps sensing the lack of love, has taken to sleeping on me. She is so light (less than 6 pounds) that I don't even notice she's laying on me until I wake up to sneeze.
If anyone would like a cat, I have one that I will *pay* you to take right now. She's cute but can't read a clock. It is three am, you stupid cat. Shut the heck up and leave me alone.
Why am I up at three? It all started when my husband decided to wake me up when he went to bed because I was apparently snoring. So that was fun. When I got back to sleep from that, the kiddo woke me up at midnight. She is learning how to stand and walk and sometimes she decides to practice in the middle of the night, then gets annoyed that she can't sleep. I got her back to sleep, then she woke up again at 12:30, then at 12:50, then at 1:15, then at 1:30, at which point I decided to try to camp out on her floor so that I could at least snooze between wakings.
By 2 she was snoozing peacefully and my back was killing me from the floor so I tried to go back to bed but hubby was snoring this time. I tried waking him up but he sleeps like the dead (which is why I'm always the one up with the kiddo--convenient, huh? I bet this kiddo has cost him less than ten hours sleep since she's been born). So I went out to sleep on the couch but my back was still killing me from the floor. About 2:40 I remembered that the couch folds out into a bed so I popped it out and laid down. It was very comfortable and right as I drifted off to sleep Lolli decided it was time to run around meowing at the top of her lungs, which she is still doing at 3:20. So I guess the sleep I got from 9 to almost midnight will be it for me tonight, because by the time the cat calms down, the baby will be ready to get up.
Sometimes I don't know whether to laugh, or cry, or start smacking cats and husbands...
Both hubby and the kiddo are sleeping and I should be doing about a million things but instead I'm taking a few minutes to sit down (a rarity at home anymore) and browse the interwebs (even more of a rarity). It's so nice to be able to sit and rest and enjoy something without my sweet kiddo crying to be picked up or my dear husband asking me "what are you doing?" and hanging over my shoulder while I use the computer. It's rare to have any time alone anymore. Welcome to parenthood, I guess!
Hope you all are having fine holiday seasons. Things are proceeding apace here. The kidlet is flirting with crawling even when asleep, and I hear hubby waking up now from his nap. Guess I'd better get dinner on....
Usually when I write a book post I like all the books. This is because if a book sucks, I stop reading it. I don't have any hard and fast rules like Nancy Pearl's 30 pages minus your age or whatever it is. I just read and if the book isn't at least mildly engaging, I move on. Too many books, too little time! Ahem. Anyway, here's a stack of stuff I'm returning to the library today:
Dave Barry's History of the Millenium (So Far): This was just a collection of his end-of-the-year newspaper columns since 1999. Maybe he's running out of money and pulled something together really quick to sell. Once I realized that I had read everything in it once before (sadly, about thirty seconds after I checked it out), I put it in the 'return' pile.
How Smart is Your Baby? by Glenn and Janet Doman: It does have a catchy title and I thought it would be about developmental milestones and so on, but it's a regimen for making your baby smart. Tips include: build a crawling track for your baby all the way around your bed so your baby can do laps while you sleep; blow an air horn at your baby to see how she responds to threatening sounds; create flashcards for your baby of increasing difficulty and start running through them when the kiddo is a week old; and so on. I skimmed through this one just because it was too amusing to put down, but it was not a book I'd recommend for serious, baby-smartening reasons. And if you are trying to smarten up your 1-week-old, you may have too much time on your hands. I was lucky if I got my teeth brushed every day at that stage.
Forced to be Family by Cheryl Dellasega: I thought this might be helpful for getting along with in-laws but it turned out to be a collection of horror stories. I guess it made me feel better...at least there are no fist fights with my husband's family (usually).
What Mothers Do by Naomi Stadlen: This one wasn't truly bad, it was just poorly written and very redundant. I'd recommend Mask of Motherhood by Susan Maushart on the same subject.
What the Other Mothers Know by Michele Gendlmn, Ilene Graff and Donna Rosenstein: This one wasn't bad either, just not really for me. It tries to cover birth through college which I think is too large a scope, and it's written for yuppies with lots of money and nannies and such.
Before I Die by Jenny Downham: This was one of those popular young adult novels where the teenage girl is dying of some illness (in this case, leukemia) and does typical teenage things and then dies at the end. Why do people read these books? That is what I asked myself after speed reading it in three hours while wiping tears off my cheeks.
The Gun Seller by Hugh Laurie: Yep, that Hugh Laurie. Dr. House (among other roles) wrote a book. And you know what? It was actually the only decent book in the bunch. I loved this book. Hugh Laurie writes a good funny story in the detective/mystery vein. Thanks to Fauxmiddlechild (I think!) for pointing this one out to me.
Gotta go, hubby wants to use the computer...
Eric and I went shopping for baby clothes last week and he kept bringing me over 'boy' clothes to look at, and I kept saying no. Then he said, "I thought you weren't going to give in to gender stereotypes!" Eek! Am I going to turn my little girl into a princess?? I hope not. I don't know, I just want her to look like a girl and not a boy. It shouldn't be so important to me. It's silly to assign gender identities to children. I feel like I should turn in my NOW membership, quit my job, and stay home and bake pies if I give in to society and buy her 'girl' clothes. Why can't stores just sell 'baby' clothes and leave the whole gendering thing out of it???
So anyway, that's the latest parenting crisis/guilt trip I'm dealing with. Lorelei will probably turn out just fine in her brown Pooh overalls that Eric picked out, even if they are boyish. And she'll probably be fine in the pink fluffy stuff we got by the truckload at the baby shower, and she will probably be okay in the gender neutral black pants and circus-theme onesie I picked out (that took me about 45 minutes to find). But I feel like I'm damaging her baby psyche for life if I put her in a dinosaur sleeper, or denying years of feminism if I put her in a Disney Princess shirt. Hopefully she turns out less neurotic than her mom, if nothing else!
