Where the Boys Are, Ed. 39/5

It's been rough slogging this winter, to be sure. The Little Guy has been stuck in newborn phase for what seems like an insanely looong time. I feel as if I have been living in the movie Groundhog Day, with the exact same activities: screaming, pooping, feeding, not sleeping. Repeat. And then, all of a sudden, the day dawns and he is five months old. Almost halfway to a year old. Crazy, no?

The Little Guy can now play quite happily in his exersaucer for about 10-15 minutes. He mows down on every toy in sight, covers it with drool, spits up, then spins around to do this to another toy. His feet touch the bottom! He bounces up and down! He chews on everything that can fit in his mouth! He's a miracle child!! Okay, well not really. I'm not going to sign him up for the enriched program at school yet or anything. He's kind of like a puppy, actually. Everything goes in the mouth. But he does seem to get the hang of toys rather quickly, though.

This afternoon, after an impromtu feeding in High Park, my mom - ever the agent of change - and I decided to switch the stroller around so that the Little Guy was sitting in an actual seat, instead of ensconced in the Coccoon. It was like a whole new baby! Of course, I didn't have a head hugger, or a proper stroller blanket on me, so we stuffed the Boy's snowpants around his head to stop any jiggling, and hoped that the little blanket from the Coccoon was warm enough, coupled with the sun.

Although we had a seat available in the stroller, the Boy walked all the way from the daycare to Timothy's, where he promptly demanded a juice and a cookie (No wonder he doesn't eat dinner. I'm a baad influence, but I'm breastfeeding and I was hungry dammit!). Did I mention that he was wearing UNDERWEAR?? The SAME underwear that I put on him at 9am??????? I made him sit on the toilet at Timothy's (it was a big juice..), and he was none too impressed with me. But then, he walked all the way home without an accident. I daren't say more, or it will probably never happen again...But the fact that it happened AT ALL is nothing short of a miracle.

The Boy's latest thing is to point out all the things that are the same colour. "Look, that's lello, same as that!" He's also finally showing more initiative. He picks out his own clothes in the morning, and attempts to put them on. He wants to put his own coat on to go outside. He even tried to brush his own teeth the other yesterday. Just chewed the toothpaste and toothbrush and left the water running, of course, and saw no problem with that. But hey, it's a start. And a far cry from the "you do it" of yester-days.

I feel like we're finally breaking out of the Groundhog circuit. What a difference a day makes. And a little sunshine.

There are worse things I could do...

My 35th birthday so far:

2:30am Feed the Little Guy

3:30am Little Guy finally swaddled and asleep in bed. Answer emails (What? You don't answer emails in the wee smalls? Pshaw.)

3:50am Boy awakens from nightmare. Convince him that new stuffed puppy will protect him.

4:00am Go to bed.

4:30am Still awake.

5:00am Still awake.

5:30am Still awake.

5:50am Fall asleep. Have nightmare about Mr Earth losing his job.

6:00am Boy wakes up and demands to watch "Bo on the Go" which is a terrible show that is not on till EIGHT O'CLOCK.

6:05am Consider PVRing Bo on the Go, but don't want anyone to think I actually like it.

6:15am Bring Boy into bedroom, turn on Treehouse and go back to sleep.

6:30am The Little Guy wakes up. Feed him.

7:00am Change and dress the Little Guy in Abominable Snowman outfit:

7:15am Come to terms with fact that Little Guy is going to hate me for this when he's older. Laugh maniacally.

7:30am Put Little Guy in bassinette so that he can scream while brush teeth and hair, and put on some clothes.

7:45am Dress and change the Boy. Tell him for the gazillionth time that it's TOO EARLY for Bo on the Go.

8:00am Watch dreaded Bo on the Go. This show stinks. Realize I never should have promised he could watch it.

8:30am Try on wonderful new chef hat from master sewer Sage. It fits like a dream and looks cute as hell. This girl has some mad sewing skillz:

8:35am Discover that somehow stupid Pull-up has leaked and the Boy is soaking wet. Change the Boy

8:40am Since said leak happened while Boy was lolling in my bed watching damned Bo on the Go, must now strip bed and do load of laundry.

8:40am Feed the Boy and the Little Guy at the same time. Think I should become honorary Vishnu Goddess.

9:00am Load boys in car and drop the Boy off at daycare.

9:30am Come home and decide to clean out kitchen cupboard as the Little Guy is sleeping nicely in car seat and dread waking him. I rarely clean, but when I do, it must be done RIGHT NOW.

10:00am Go to put sheets in bed and realize I haven't folded the laundry from yesterday. Crap. Fold laundry and put it away.

10:15am The Little Guy is still sleeping in the car seat. I am a Bad Mother. Take Little Guy out of car seat and put him in comfy vibrating chair in the hopes that I can shower while he sleeps. He does. Hallelujah!

11:30am Feed Little Guy.

12:00pm Remake entire bed.

12:30pm Entertain Little Guy by reading him the last 5 pages of my novel out loud. (What?! He told me he likes it! And he gets to learn lots of fancy words..)

1:00pm Attempt to make and eat lunch one-handed while the Little Guy screams.

1:30pm Nap with the Little Guy. Thank the lord for small favours.

3:00pm Feed the Little Guy.

3:30pm Blog while holding increasingly heavy baby. (What?! He told me he likes it when I blog..)

4:09pm Try to fix spacing problems in HTML and give up. Too tired.

How's your day so far??

Second Helpings

Before having kids, we were both convinced that we wanted at least two children. (Mr Earth would like three, but for that he will have to take a second wife..) Then we had the Boy. Neither of us are big fans of the new baby phase. Our "A material" really only works on an audience that can talk, laugh and interact. Add to that an obscene amount of visits to lactation consultants, serious sleep deprivation due to pumping and tube-feeding, numerous late-night visits to emergency to get a hernia pushed back in, double hernia surgery at 2.5 months, colic, isolation and almost-depression...well, we got a little gun-shy.

At about a year, things got really good with the Boy. There was laughter, and words (even if the word was often No!), walking and so much more. I went back to work, and life returned to some degree of normalcy. Our lives had changed drastically, of course, but in a very good way. And we also got some of our pre-baby lives back. It was hard to think of going back to those early baby days. But we still wanted another.

We had the Boy though - sunny, easy-going and pretty darn close to perfect. We had a really good thing going. What on earth could possess us to mess that up? In the end, we made the Non-Decision. To simply Stop Preventing and See What Happens. It was the only way we could reconcile wanting another so much and yet wanting things to stay exactly the same.

You can guess what happened. Fate made the decision for us. And yes, I do believe in fate. I do believe that we were meant to have two, or it simply wouldn't have happened. A naive viewpoint, maybe, but that's who I am and I like that about me.

I was scared, so scared about what life would be like. I thought about all the things that could go wrong, and then some. I thought I would keep putting all my love and attention into the Boy, and would have none left over for the new baby.

What I didn't expect is to like it so much. I don't know if the Little Guy is easy-going by nature, or I made him easy-going by being so relaxed myself. I don't feel like I'm being weighed and measured, and found wanting. I don't feel like every mistake I make will Ruin His Life. In fact, I don't feel like I'm making mistakes all that much. (Nobody's perfect, though). On top of that, I think I may actually like newborns just a little bit..

I'm afraid to say that it's going well in case I jinx the whole thing. So we'll just treat it like Fight Club, ok? And what's the first rule about Fight Club? We don't talk about Fight Club. We'll just let his face do the talking for me:

Little Boy Blue

Willing to take a gamble? Here's the million-dollar question: If a household contains two children - one who is a 1 month old, and one who is almost 3 years old - who do you suppose is doing the vast majority of crying these days??

If you guessed the newborn baby, I'm sorry to say that you are wrong. (My money was on the baby too.) Suffice it to say that the Boy's adjustment period is not going well.

It's funny, because when I was pregnant, one of my biggest worries was that when the baby came, I would want to spend all my time with the Boy. You see, I am not a person who loves the newborn phase all that much. Yup, they're pretty cute, but that's about where my interest stops. On the other hand, I love kids. I love the non-stop questions. I love the not-so-funny almost-jokes. I love making crafts, and playing with toys. I love going to the park. I love the simplicity and energy of children. Yes, I even love tantrums.

But non-stop tantrums? Not so much. These days, were lucky to get through a half hour without a tantrum. Nothing we can do is right. Nothing is enough. I'm exhausted, and it's not the lack of sleep that is the problem (although it's kicking my ass, too). We are desperately trying to show the Boy how much we love him, and how important he is to us, but the message is not getting through. To my mind, the Boy is lucky in that he had almost three years of undivided parental attention. The Little Guy will never have that - the curse of the second child. But you can't reason with an sad kid who has lost the spotlight. (Well, you can't generally reason with three-year olds, period..)

It doesn't help that I haven't had a good night's sleep in a month and my patience is very thin. It also doesn't help that my beautiful Boy, my easy-going sunny Boy, someone who is normally a bright shining light in my life, is now a perfect mess. It certainly doesn't help that I think I'm at fault for not handling the situation better, and making his adjustment period go more smoothly.

The Little Guy, with his straightforward pattern of eat-sleep-cry-poop seems like an oasis of calm in comparison. If only I could find a cure for the my little Boy's blues.

All I Want for Christmas

Dear Internets,

I need your help. I don't think that I'm the World's Worst Photographer, but the litany of unusable photographs I've taken would say otherwise. I do know how to work our camera, but every time I take a bunch of photographs, I know that some of them - usually the best ones - will probably be out of focus or otherwise unusable. This is driving me crazy! I actually really like taking photos, especially when those photos involve my beautiful boys. I feel like I am losing a part of their childhood to either a crappy camera, or crappy photo skills. Or both. Either way I lose.

Could someone please PLEASE suggest a great camera to buy? One that is preferably foolproof, and easy to use for dummies like me. Please don't make this be the norm in my children's albums: