Dogs and Cats and Babies, Oh My!

I have been spoiled, I admit it. Since we moved back to Kansas, Rich has mainly been working from home. After he took three weeks off when Declan was born, Rich just went back to work upstairs. Although he wasn't available every second, he was always there. Then, everything fell into place and he was able to take two months off between projects. This has never happened before, and will probably never happen again. It all just seemed like great timing and circumstances. We've been in a bubble with Declan for a few months, but now the bubble has popped and Rich is off to New Jersey on Monday.

To be specific, he's going to be working on the Jersey Shore. I don't know anything about this place except what I've seen on True Life: The Jersey Shore on MTV which showed a bunch of oily bo-hunks with gold chains and hard-as-plastic-hair. Think the Gottis or Joey from the new Real World. At least it's by the ocean.

So, I'm now going from constant dual parenting to constant single parenting (during the week). Needless to say, I'm stressed. I keep telling myself to master The Secret. Although I didn't read it, I get the gist: think positively and positive things will happen to you. I'm really bad at this. I tend to mope and complain and anticipate the worst. But I'm not a kid anymore so I'm trying The Secret. Maybe I'll end up with billions like Oprah. She likes the secret, and I'm assuming she uses it. If she can do it, so can I.

I wonder what The Secret or Oprah would have to say about my dirty little, non-warm-and-fuzzy secret: I hate all my pets right now. Yep, you read that right, I hate my pets. This was one of the things people warned me about that I refused to believe. These animals were my family, namely Hunter who was my particular pet. I didn't mind that he sometimes peed in the basement or whined to go outside constantly. I put up with our dog Scooter's jumping up and begging for food all the time because he was affectionate and sweet. My other cat JJ was never around and had never done anything wrong, so how could she get on my nerves?

Now Hunter, who we throw outside every time we get a chance, hangs with the neighbors more than us. Although he hasn't peed, it might be because we've set up barricades to prevent him from going upstairs, into the basement, and in the guest bathroom. JJ won't leave me alone and growls at the dog constantly. And Scooter follows me around, tries to eat Declan's toys, and intentionally aggravates JJ. I can't deal! I feel like a prisoner in my own home.

I think I'm going to put ads up on Craigslist while Rich is away. Wish me luck.

New Pics

As you can see, rice cereal has been going well. Declan's really enjoying it. It hasn't lived up to the sleep hype though. Although it has been presented and insisted upon as a surefire remedy to Declan's night wakings, they are as persistent and frequent as ever. I guess it just goes to show that there are never any guarantees as far as babies go.

FYI

I fixed my comment settings so anyone can comment. You don't need a gmail account anymore!

Three Teaspoons

Now that we've started giving Declan rice cereal, we decided that I'd try to pump in the morning so that we could mix the cereal with breast milk. All I'd need to pump is three teaspoons worth. That's not even one ounce. Babies Declan's age often eat up to five ounces in a sitting. This should be a piece of cake. Except all I could muster was a paltry two teaspoons. Two! I'd be afraid that I'm not making enough milk, but one look at Declan tells me he's doing just fine.

So what gives? I hate pumping anyway, I feel like a cow, it hurts, and obviously I'm not very good at it. These are my struggles.

I read Babycenter a lot, which can be good and bad. What gets me is that there seem to be (you know how I feel about the baby liars) so many women with babies who always seem to come in on the easy side: they poop every three days, they take a bottle like a champ, they love to fall asleep in their car seats, and I've already talked about the sleeping thing. And don't even get me started on the women who post on the "I feel so gross, I haven't lost my weight" threads. I've clicked on those a few times thinking I'd found some kindred spirits, but I found women complaining that they have three pounds to go or they'd lost all the weight but they were still wearing that dreaded size six. Or they list their prepregnancy weight as 120. I flip off the computer screen sometimes. And I mean my middle finger, not turning it off. Then I make myself feel better by reading their profiles and realizing that they are 18 and living with their parents. Then I feel bad because I'm not being the bigger person...then I don't.

The thing that always gets me is that I always seem to come in on the other side. I haven't lost all my weight yet, and I definitely didn't weigh 120 when I started. Not to mention the baby stuff. We all know Declan isn't sleeping through the night, if anything he's gotten worse, he drools a lot, he is so so on the bottle thing, he wants to be held all the time, and he refuses to sleep in his car seat, swing, baby chair, and sometimes anywhere other than my arms. Dr. Sears calls him a "high need" baby. So do I.

I'll never forget this lady I used to work with who looked at me with pity in her eyes and told me that my next one would be a good baby because all babies can't be this hard. Her babies all slept through the night at eight weeks. Her labor was five hours long. She weighs 120.

*On an unrelated note, I'd like to share something that cracked me up yesterday. Allison Taylor emailed me to tell me that she'd been laughing all day about bigfatbaby. Her son Luke is nine months old and basically has the same stats as Declan so she's dubbed him littletinybaby. I told her I was jealous because at four months Luke's grandma probably didn't get winded holding him for five minutes.

Declan's First Cereal

So Rich and I are exhausted. Since he turned three months old, Declan's sleep habits have deteriorated. Now, he gets up as much as he did as a newborn at night. So we bought a sleep book, started charting his sleepy times, and obsessed over the possibility of a food allergy. Then we read up on teething and realized that he could start the process as early as three months. Great. Now, not only do we have a sleep problem, we've got a teething problem. Instead of making any decisions right away, we decided to wait until his four month appointment and ask the doctor.

Then I saw a tooth bud. What?!? Those aren't supposed to sprout until six months at the earliest! But there it was, white, lumpy, and on the bottom far-right inside of his mouth. Wait...aren't babies supposed to get their front teeth first? I did feverish research about irregular teething patterns and found out that they do exist, but they are rare. The only problem was that all of the pictures I saw showed teeth growing from the top of the gum line. This bud was most certainly on the inside of his gums. Instead of freaking out, I suppressed the images of sideways teeth protruding out of the mouth, jumbled and long, and yellow, and decided to wait until our doctor's appointment.

Now keep in mind that my doctor rolls her eyes at me a lot. Especially when I pull out the list of things I want to talk to her about. She mumbles something like "great, you've got a list". This all started at his one week appointment when I was convinced Declan was at risk for Autism because he wasn't making eye contact yet. And at his one month appointment when I wondered if she could tell me if he was going to have an "innie" or an "outie". You know, regular, pressing issues.

Anyway, the time came to show my doctor the tooth bud. She examined his gums and said that she felt the top and bottom teeth under the surface (my vision changed to only one mangled tooth sticking out of Declan's mouth) but said nothing about "the bud". Nothing! So I showed it to her. Or, I tried. It's not easy to get a four month old to keep his mouth open while you probe inside. "It's just normal gums" is what she said. What? Did she not see the white, protruding bump that looked like a tooth? Nope, she didn't see it. She just shrugged her shoulders and announced that he was normal. The imagined tooth shrunk back to a normal size in my head. Then I started imagining that it was a tumor...

Anyway, the point is that she recommended Rich and I give Declan some rice cereal. She said that because of his size he'd probably be ready. I really wanted to wait until six months. I enjoy breastfeeding and I do believe the longer the better. But, that wasn't in Declan's plan. As any of you with kids know, you kind of have to follow their lead once in awhile, and this was definitely one of those times. Declan has been waking up at night every three hours, starving. I can't make a bottle because the boy eats everything I make. And most of the time he's hungry again in under two hours.

I wasn't sure what to expect with the first rice cereal, but Declan, while not exactly as excited as I'd imagined, accepted it, as you can see. I wasn't sure if I'd call it a total success until I saw what happened afterward: Declan was in the best mood. I even took him to Target (his nemesis) and he just kicked and smiled and cooed the whole time. After that, I definitely consider it a success. Now time will only tell if it gives Rich and I some much needed sleep. I'm a believer in Murphy's Law, so chances are I'll be up all night, but here's to hopin'.

Groovy Toes

So I said he was advanced, didn't I say that? A couple of mornings ago, Declan was lying on his stomach when out popped two totally clear words: groovy toes. He thinks toes are groovy, and frankly, I do too. I mean who else's kids can say groovy toes by four months old? Maybe Einstein's...maybe.

Of course what we have here is some exaggeration, not about what he said, groovy toes definitely came out of his mouth, but about the sense behind it. Does Declan have any concept of any words? He can maybe loosely identify his name, I know this because he turns toward me when I say it, but other than that goo and gaa are all that Declan means to say. He's had a few other accidental words come out, namely baby and bye. But even though I think he's absolutely perfect, not even I would claim that Declan's words accomplished anything other than making me smile, which I did. Then I made up a song about groovy toes. It goes like this: groovy toes, groovy toes, groovin' all over the wo-o-o-orld. Groovy toes, groovy toes, for every boy and every gi-i-i-irl. I sang it to Declan all morning long. I sang it so much that Rich now knows it too.

You may have noticed those two, horrible band aids on Declan's thighs. They're there because we had his four month appointment this morning. Along with painful shots (yes, I vaccinate him, no, I'm not interested in reasons why I shouldn't), we learned that Bigfatbaby is in effect! Declan is 17 pounds, 12 ounces and 27 inches long. For those of you without kids, our doctor told us that those are average EIGHT MONTH OLD stats. Declan is four months old today. Big Fat Baby!*

*Declan actually has a good proportion for his height, he's just big. I don't want him reading this when he gets older and getting a complex.

Current Photos

Here are the most recent pictures we have. Declan went for his first swim on The Fourth, and we were expecting him to kick and smile, but he just calmly floated around, taking everything in. He'll be four months old on Friday and if you scroll through the photos you can see how much he's changed! It really is amazing that just four months ago he was in my stomach. Oh how things have changed...

Bigfatbaby

These pictures show, as I am proud to tell, the emergence of bigfatbaby. Declan was a big boy at birth, 8 pounds, 12 ounces and 20 1/2 inches, but by two months he'd grown to 14.7 pounds and 24 1/2 inches. We're going to his four month appointment on Friday and we already know he's over 17.5 pounds. Seriously. There are eight-month-olds smaller than that!

This was fun because Declan began "waking up" at this point and was smiling and playing more.

Declan 2-3 Weeks

He's changed so much since these and I sent out a lot of them on email so it's kind of redundant to post these, but I want to have all of his pics here. During Declan's first few weeks on the planet, KU won a championship. I have a picture of Rich holding Declan while he watches the last few moments. Priceless. Now, I'm not going to claim that Declan's arrival ushered caused the championship, but since he was conceived, KU did have the best sports season of all time. I'm just saying...

Currency

Currency can be anything that is coveted in a situation. In college, beer was currency, wherever it was, we'd go. More beer = better, After college, career and location became currency, whomever was succeeding there seemed to be in the best place. Ironically, once my career came together and I loved what I was doing, I had Declan! Now, my currency is different than I ever imagined it would be: sleep. Rich and I count our sleep hours every morning and the person who got the least sleep wins. I've always been a sleeper and many nights I clocked in ten hours. Declan, however, does not seem to need sleep. I go to bed at 10pm and get up at 9am and am lucky for eight hours. Last night, for instance, Declan got up every hour and a half. When he was eight weeks old he was sleeping five to seven hour stretches, but we haven't even had four hours of solid sleep for a few weeks now. Even though he's tired, he refuses to sleep! You can see in the picture above that Declan has huge bags under his eyes, but he's wide awake, ignoring his tiredness because he's so excited to experience the world.

This brings me to my second point about this new currency in my life: lies. Moms are proud of their children, as they should be. I've found though, that moms also want their children to appear perfect. This starts as early as the delivery "Susie came in three hours! I pushed once and she popped out!", "I had no pain in delivery, it was perfect". These all create the myth of the perfect baby (who will then become the perfect child "Jennifer has an IQ of 5000!"). Most moms I talk to or moms that post on babycenter.com say that their kids sleep through the night, yet every book I read and every mom I talk to who currently has a little one say that sleep problems are very common. So, what gives? Lies! Or we'll call it softening of the truth. Why do they do it? Because they want to seem like successful mothers, I think. But the kicker is that kids seem to have their own agendas regardless of what adults find appealing so I think it's a bit silly to exaggerate the truth about your little one's sleep habits. I've never been a liar, if anything, I should probably soften the truth a little bit more. So, I'll tell the truth about my precious boy: that kid does not sleep well. It's a struggle to put him down for naps and to keep him asleep at night. He's not sick, he's not hungry, he just wants Mommy and Daddy to put him to sleep.

I'm sure this won't be my last posting on this topic because I anticipate problems in the future, but for now be aware that I may seem just a little bit slow when we talk. When you see me, I might look like I just rolled out of bed, because I did. My house might be messy, and Declan may not be dressed up in a cute outfit. These are my daily challenges. I'll get there (I hope) but for now, I'm often a hot mess.

So here is my first try at embedding a slide show. I know most of you have seen his first pictures, but I thought if I was creating a site for him I should be comprehensive. What a day this was. I know a lot of people expecting babies, and the only advice I have is to accept whatever circumstances come your way. I was blessed with a relatively easy time, but I also opted for the epidural, which, let's be honest here, is like a little slice of heaven. I know there area many who believe in natural childbirth and who think the epidural is Satan juice, but I'm a proud epidural momma.

Technology

So I think the last time I laughed really hard was when my friend Amy sent me a Facebook friend request. We've been friends for a long time, but she's moved around for work so I haven't seen her in awhile. As we get older, things change, right? Well, I took a look at her Facebook page and in the top, right hand corner, a mystery unfolded. Under her personal stats, for the section "interested in", Amy wrote "women". That certainly was news to me, the last I knew she was making out with a Mo Rocca doppelganger at my bachelorette party. But she had just moved to San Fransisco, so I thought there was a possibility she was trying something new.

Now I had to decide if Amy had changed her lifestyle drastically and forgotten to tell any of our friends or if she was just a little technologically confused. After this, a bunch of things happened, all which involved the phrase "not that there's anything wrong with it". I consulted mutual friends, weighed the likelihood, and ultimately decided that it must just be a mistake, but how do you tell your friend that all the people who've looked at her Facebook now think she's come out of the closet?

Eventually someone broke the news to Amy, who was a fantastic sport and thought it was as funny as I did. She did call me just to let me know that no, she was not a new lesbian, she just didn't understand how the whole Facebook profile thing worked and thought she was saying she wanted to find people who liked shopping and nail salons. She then promptly switched her "interested in" to "men" which made me laugh even harder.

The point of this story is that I'm a little technologically slow at the whole blogging and posting pictures and videos thing, so you may see some weird things here while I try to figure it out, but bear with me.

Thank you for coming.

So Rich told me he'd create a website. I think there's one out there, but it's not finished. Here's the reason why: when you have a little baby, everything else becomes minute, like smaller than a bunch of iotas floating around on a pinhead. For instance, Rich has been home from work with me since June 6th. Normally, when people have time off of work, they DO things. Not us. We bounce, eat, bounce, watch TV, bounce, change diapers, bounce, sleep for an hour, etc. It really is amazing how consuming having a baby can be. I'm sure some of you are already thinking "bo-ring, I don't want to read some cliche about how parenting has changed Lana's life". Tough. It's the truth and you all know I tell it like it is.

So back to the website...I keep asking, he keeps putting it off. Surprisingly he can still clock in about three hours of Romance of the Three Kingdoms X each day (for all you lucky people that don't have a video game obsessed husband, it's a strategy video game kind of like Risk). But I digress, so we've taken over three hundred pictures of Declan since he's been born. I know this because I secretly loaded them all onto my dad's ipod when he wasn't looking (you're welcome) because he said he'd rather see Declan in person than look at pictures and it made me mad. Until now, I've been sending them out every few weeks all while feeling sheepish because I don't want to be "that mom", the one who thinks everyone wants to see a hundred pictures of her baby, but notice I send them anyway because the truth is that every mom is "that mom". We'll talk about how Declan is "advanced" another time. Seriously, he is. I swear.

It's like I had wine and I can't stop talking, except this time I'm interrupting myself. Back to the website. So basically I decided that the website is just not going to happen so I should just take the reins myself and viola, here's my blog. It's called The Declan Report because I'll post all my pictures and videos of the babe and this way people can choose to look or not. It's mutually beneficial.

If you like it, let me know. It will give me encouragement to continue.

p.s. Please excuse grammatical errors. I'm running on limited sleep here.