waxtablet@gmail.com's blog

"Grief teaches the steadiest minds to waver" -Sophocles

There is a story in our local news today that is sticking with me.  Police were called to a home in Lewiston to a report of a woman attempting suicide.  It turns out she had fallen asleep while her infant son was in the tub and the baby drowned.

I have so much empathy for this woman.  I think I know the level of exhaustion that tempts you to lean your head back against the wall for a moment, or rest it on the edge of the cool, cool tub.  Were I in her shoes I suspect that my first impulse, too, would be to try and end my life.  It might seem preferable over living on in grief, guilt, and madness.

We are nearing 20 months in this journey (a drop of time in the bucket, I know), and what I have learned, more than anything is how American society is failing to provide the support mothers -- all mothers -- need.  There is no community of support, except for what you build for yourself, and if you are far from your "people" (as my Grandmother called them) you're basically unsupported.  I don't know if there is anything that can be done ... in some ways I know the Internet is making things a little better than they were five or ten years ago (at least a new mom can reach out to other people like her, if she has the access and the knowledge of how to find them).  There is an interesting article in the current issue of The Atlantic which touches on the idea that "the suburbs" as a building concept is sort of on the decline, and walkable "lifestyle centers" (what you and I might call "communities") are now the new hotness in the housing market. 

I find myself wondering if this trend, combined with the nostalgia that all us post-boomer and gen-x parents have for a time when children ran free and wild in packs in the streets, might in fact turn the tide a little bit, and that we might begin to recreate the idea of a true neighborhood where we cared about and looked after one another.  Its an interesting dream.

On the other hand, I'm still not really interested in talking with my actual, physical neighbors (although we nod and wave and they brought over a nice gift when E was born).  I just don't see having geography in common as having enough common ground to build a friendship over.  

All of which is just a long way of saying "I don't know what the answer is".  But I think a first step is to look around every day and see if you see someone who might need a visit, a moment, a phone call, a helping hand.  Or a nap.

"The secret we should never let the gamemasters know is that they don't need any rules. " - Gygax

Josh is home with the baby today.  I'm encouraging him to bake bread and do E's laundry.  We'll see how that goes.

Carter's brand sleepers are now on my "can't buy" list -- the feet are too small for E, even in the 2T size.

Last night just before bed (and I mean "as I picked him up to carry him upstairs") E demanded - demanded crackers and apples.  So, after some fussing, I gave in and fed him milk and bunny crackers and an apple.  He ate it all.  Every bit.  An entire half apple, about forty bunny crackers, and eight ounces of milk.  This, on top of him having chicken and green beans and carrots for dinner.  I sense a growth spurt in the offing, which is annoying since we only just got him into the 2T size and I have all this spring stuff I bought in 2T.  If he's going to be wearing 3T come summer I'm going to have to do some hardcore shopping.  Sigh.

For Christmas I bought some tickets to the Opera for my mother, and the performance is tonight.  She says she's coming down no matter what the weather is (I called and confirmed they are, in fact, still holding the damn thing), so I guess I'm meeting her for dinner at 5:45 and then we'll be seeing La Traviata at 7:30 pm.

I don't mind going to the opera, really.  Opera is fine, although I don't have the same detailed appreciation for it my mother does.  But the weather is icky and the timing is bad and all and all I find myself wishing it had been canceled.

I'm sort of weirdly pleased at all the blog time and mainstream press Gygax is getting in death.  (Of course, one might wish he had gotten this much recognition in life, but perhaps he got enough.)  Here is his NY Times Obit.

I think I might walk over to JL Coombs at lunch and buy some overpriced slippers.  I'm very tired of my feet being cold and damp at work.

Babies See Pure Color, but Adults Peer Through Prism of Language

My computer (Firefox) at work won't keep me logged into websites when I close my browser and its driving me crazy.  Our IT guy thought it might have something to do with the spyware protection, but that doesn't seem to be it.  I've checked all the obvious settings.  I've never had this issue with Firefox before.  Any ideas?

"Family isn't about whose blood you have. It's about who you care about."

Its been ages since I've written, I know.  So much and yet so little has happened.  I get up, I work, I come home, We play, I get spit up upon, I go to sleep.

The baby rolls over now.  For a while he kept getting his arm stuck underneath him, and it caused him no end of wailing frustration, but that phase has passed and now he holds himself up on his elbows like a bored boy reading comic books.  Locomotion is next, and soon, I fear.

With Mama

Here we are on the Sunday after Thanksgiving, at my Grandparent's farm, gathering greens with which to decorate my mother's house.  My Grandparents both passed away many years ago -- I'm ashamed to say that I cannot recall the year that either of them passed.  My Grandmother died before the baby's father and I were together, so it must have been 15 years ago or more now.  My Grandfather did meet My True Love many times before he left us.  My son is named for him -- and for his father, too.  Funny how these two most important men in my life shared the same name, yet neither were ever called by it (and my son is not called by it either).

My grandparents basically raised me, as my mother moved to Maine from NYC to raise her baby in a cleaner, more supportive environment.  So I had the luxury of growing up with three parents, and running free in the beautiful woods that surround the farm where my grandparents lived.  They bought 90+ acres of land in Maine in 1965 (including a ten-room farmhouse with attached barn and two outbuildings) for $13,000, and struggled for years to pay it off.  But pay it off they did, and after my grandfather died my greatest fear was that my mother would be forced to sellt the land for taxes and those beautiful woods and fields and rock walls where I roamed would be destroyed for sub-divisions, or worse.  Instead, my mother has created a land trust, so the farm will stay in our family for

Groovy Hat

generations.  We have tennants living in the house now, and they have a little boy who shares my grandfather's name too, and he runs wild in the woods where I roamed as a child.  Up in the loft of the barn The boy's father found the swing that my grandfather built for me when I was a child, and he's rehung it from the highest rafter, so the The Boy can swing where I once swung.  When we were there on Thanksgiving, the boy's father clucked over our little baby boy, and told me to come by, any time, when I was ready for our baby to swing on the swing too.

Now I'm crying as I'm writing this.  So much love they had for me, and I am so proud to have brought this beautiful boy into the world.  I hope I can pass the love and reality of their lives on to him -- that they aren't just "my great grandparents," those people who live only in photographs on the mantle piece.  I hope, too, that he is able to learn to love the land at the farm as I do, even though distance and those pesky too-low ceilings keep us from living there full time as we would like.  I can't wait to show him the beaver dam, and the wide stone walls built by 19th century farmers as they tried to clear fields for crops, and the giant granite rock shaped like a dinosaur head that a glacier left laying on the hillside a million or so years ago.  I can't wait to teach him an oak from an elm from a birch tree, and to lie on the hill with him and watch the clouds and listen to the chickadees sing. 

But all of that will have to wait.  He needs to learn crawling first.

"The sun is but a morning star." - Thoreau

My baby is three months old today.  Happy birthday, little guy!

His father and I were talking today on the way our lives were different now, and how things seem to be now as they have always been.  But I'm going to try not to go all Dooce on you.

Instead, I'm going to tell you about the baby monitor.

I hate the baby monitor.  It somehow manages to magnify every sound in a three block radius, while at the same time picking up in the background a country/western radio station which fades in and out like a message from the outside world in a B-quality monster movie.  Tonight I was in the kitchen baking cupcakes, and I could hear the baby's dad snoring in our bedroom (via the monitor) louder than I could hear anything going on with the baby himself.

This, I tell his father, is the reason why I bring the baby into our bedroom every night to finish his sleep in the co-sleeper next to my head.  But it isn't true.

In fact, the other night, the thing I dread most actually happened.  I was asleep in my bed with the monitor sputtering and hissing and twanging away next to my head, and to my room open and the door to the baby's room also open and right across the hall.  And the baby started to cry, as babies do.  And I didn't wake up.

His father had fallen asleep on the sofa waaayyy downstairs, and finally, after who-knows-how-long, the crying got loud enough and scared enough that it woke him up.  He came upstairs, fed the baby, changed him, comforted him.  And I didn't wake up until he woke me up by handing the baby to me.  You cannot imagine how bad I feel.  This is, in fact, the exact thing I had dreaded and the reason I have always resisted putting the baby to bed in his big crib in his own room.   And now, of course, not by my own planning, I have the very excuse I need to keep him in our room a bit longer - probably until he hits the 20lb limit on his co-sleeper, in fact.

But none of this is the real reason I want him sleeping next to me.

Here's the truth:  The baby wakes up at more or less 4:55 am on the dot every morning.  His father and I have to get up at 6am anyhow, so I bring the baby across into the bed with me and let him nurse for an hour or so while I sleep.  I never really thought I'd be able to fall asleep with someone sucking noisily and joyfully at my nipple, but such are the strange ways of motherhood, I've found.

So the alarm goes off at six, and dad goes off to get in the shower.  Usually around this time baby is asleep again, and I disengage from him, stretch my hip, and maybe give him a kiss or whisper in his ear.  And he wakes up.

And he looks in my face, the first thing he sees every morning.  And he smiles at me ... one moment his face is the model of post-sleep confusion - where am I?  What time is it?  Why am I awake?  ... and the next this expression of pure joy spreads across his face like beams of sunlight creeping into the room, and I am afirmed for the rest of the day.

In not to much longer, baby boy will be too big for his co-sleeper, and he'll sleep through the night, and I'll no longer have an excuse to keep his father from leaving him in his crib (all alone!) all night.  Morning will come, and he'll wake to the mobile and the froggy and the blue sky.  And I'm sure he'll smile at me when I come in to collect him to start his day.

But it won't be the same. 

"Those are my principles, and if you don't like them... well, I have others." - G.Marx

No poop today that I'm aware of.  Poop yesterday (and Evan's Daddy made me clean it up, the rat bastard - what does he think I am, the mommy or something??), but (blessedly) no poop Saturday while we were on the road.

(someday I will tell you the secret of why this poop tracking is so important, and why cleaning it up is a job more noxious than poop duty is for most parents....  But today is not that day.)

I'm afraid that I am a bad liberal.

I was considering how bad a liberal I am this evening as I was buying certified organic milk in a real glass bottle, and was paying through the nose for it.

You see, left to my own devices, I would buy much more organic and whole food than we normally have in the house, but Evan's Dad feels the expense and difficulty of doing so doesn't justify the end product, so the compromise in our relationship is that things that I buy that only I will eat (like this whole milk I'm gleefully drinking, or most vegatables, or Ice Cream) I can buy organic so long as I pay for them.  Other stuff, or anything he buys, however, will be whatever he feels is the best value at the time.  He understands that once the Little Guy is old enough to eat food, that food will probably be as much organic as I can get away with, at least at the start, and I think he's ok with that.

But then there are the diapers.  We were given a starter set of GDiapers when the Little Guy was born, and I love them and use them when I can (although I find they don't work well for overnight).  But I'm reluctant to foist flushable diapers on our daytime caregiver (she has other babies in the house and the changing station isn't set up near the bathroom), so he spends most of his day in disposables.  For that purpose I would prefer to buy and use Seventh Generation diapers, but...

(and here's where the Bad Liberal part comes in)

... the Little Guy's Grandmother buys us a package of diapers (usually Huggies brand) just about every week.  They are retired military and as such get to buy stuff at the base commisary at a greatly reduced price.  So in the nearly three months since the Little Guy was born, we've yet to buy a package of diapers, and we do, in fact, have a ton of diapers sitting in the closet awaiting use.  I've even given away a bunch of unopened packages of newborns and size 1s to the local women's shelter, as the Little Guy outgrew them before we had a chance to open them.

Now, were I a Good Liberal, I would do one of two things:

+ I would look a gift horse in the mouth and ask her to buy Seventh Generation instead of the brands she's buying us now, or...
+ I would donate all her gift diapers to said women's shelter and spend my own money on the diapers I prefer.

I have not, however, done either of these things.  Partly I don't want to rock the boat - the ones she buys are name brands that work well, and are inexpensive for her - how rude would it be to say "Hey, thanks for the gift but I don't like it, can you keep doing it but buy this other brand instead"??   And, partly, its that we're cheapbroke - we have less money than we used to have, so spending money on something I don't need to buy is a luxury I don't have right now.

But another part - a big part - is simple inertia.  I know the two brands I mentioned above are better for the earth, blah, blah, blah, but I'm not committed enough to the "cause" to put my money where my mouth intstinct is.  In this way I am no different than most other typical Americans.  Sure, I do what's easy - for instance, we've stopped shopping at Wal-mart, because it was pretty easy to do so.  But turning down free diapers is hard.

So, while spending $3.00 + on a quart of organic whole milk today I realized that I am, indeed, part of the problem.  Just another lazy American willing to let the planet go to hell in a handbasket all to save a couple of bucks.

Good lord.  Next thing you know I'll be voting Republican.  Oh.  Wait....

Damn. 

"What can you say about a society that says that God is dead and Elvis is alive?" - Irv Kupcinet

No photos today - I've taken some, but have not had time to extract them yet.

Poop yesterday and poop again today, however - and, as a bonus, both times while he was at day care.  Woot.

I have to admit, its days like today - global warming, loss of basic rights, impending war with lots of people - days like today that I feel quite guilty for bringing the Little Guy into this ugly world.  I know that all we can do is love him as much as we can, and hope, but I sometimes suspect that by the time he's an adult there won't be much of a world left for him to enjoy.

"Gratitude is born in hearts that take time to count up past mercies." - Charles E. Jefferson

No cute photo today, sorry.  No poop today, either.

This was one of those very long days that I dread.  Up at 530 am, in a panic, because its 530 am and the Little Boy did not awaken me at 200 am or 455 am as he normally does so clearly he must be dead.  (He's not, obviously.)  Then get him fed and dressed and off to see The Lady (as we call his daytime care provider; her real name is Carol) with Daddy when Daddy goes to work at 700 am.  Then me showered and dressed and milked and off to work by 830 am.  Work until 500 pm, then a short car trip across town to my other job, where I stayed until 930 pm, then came home.  This morning he was basically asleep for the hour or so I saw him in the morning, and he was asleep when I got home. 

Given all this, plus my level of exhaustion, is it awful of me to wish that he'll wake up at 200 am, just so I can snuggle him?

When I got home the Dad was watching the tail end of Jericho on the Tivo, and I watched about a half hour of it, which was a total mistake on at least two levels.  First, good child of the Cold War that I am, I spent a great deal of my Junior High and High School years thinking in detail about what would happen if The Nukes were to come, which, given my very vivid visual imagination was detail to an amazing level, and having a repeating nightmare so vivid and realistic that I can tell you about it in painstaking detail even now, some 25 years later (but I won't).   Second, there was a baby in an incubator in several scenes, which is a big trigger for me recently.

(Side note, and slight spoiler:  Can someone explain to me why the healthy people got to stay in the nice tidy City Hall and all the sick people got sent to the Salt Mine???  That seems like poor prioritization to me.)

The Little Guy's Dad calls it the "CSI syndrome" and we discovered it right after the Little Guy was born.  Somehow the hormones related to motherhood have triggered in me some weird reactions when I see stories about babies or toddlers in pain - very strong, visceral reactions that I never had before.  We found this out when I was watching a Law & Order rerun which featured the discovery of an infant's skull, whereupon I promptly burst into tears and had to shut the TV off.  I suppose its normal - the protective reaction that nature wants me to have in order to keep my baby safe, but its damned annoying when I can't watch simple fictional crime dramas in peace.    And that's just fiction.  I made the mistake of reading a couple of news stories on-line about this homeless mother in New York whose four month old daughter drowned in a bucket of her mother's vomit at work (a story which I suspect will be dragged out in some argument against co-sleeping in the not-so-near future, I might add) and ended up spending 25 minutes in the bathroom, weeping.  So as you can imagine, the sight of this infant facing Nuclear Peril drove me from the room fairly quickly, and is haunting me even now. 

There are days, many days, when a vivid visual imagination is a pain in the ass - know what I mean?

About a week ago, we had to take the Little Guy to the cardiologist, to make certain that he doesn't have a serious heart murmur (he doesn't).  The waiting room was full of these tired, drawn looking parents and their sickly looking babies ... tiny babies, fragile looking things, many of them spindly and slightly blue and translucent looking.  Sad babies who, I'm sure, don't smile or laugh or even have the energy to look up at their mothers and fathers and coo adoribly.  And I know for a fact that all those exhausted mothers and fathers love their babies as fiercely as I love mine - more so, perhaps, because they know much better than I how fragile this is and what a risk they took just by deciding to bring this new tiny life into the world.

I'm thankful for ten fingers and ten toes.  For two perfect little shell-like ears.  For chubby baby thighs and that little button nose.  For wide toothless grins at 3am.  For burps that would do John Belushi proud.  For dimpled elbows and knees.  For a strong heart that beats.  For a rumbly little tummy.  For poopy diapers (when we get them). 

... and now I have to go, because I miss him despite the fact he's just in the other room.  I have to go stand by his crib and gaze at him again ...

"People who say they sleep like a baby usually don't have one." - Leo J. Burke

Pout Face

MJJJ asks, we leap to obey.

Not a current photo, but one of my faves.  a ton more on Flickr, if you want to browse....)

No poop today.

In trying to get the Little Guy off to sleep just now, I reflected on the fact that practically the last thing he does before he goes to sleep is burp. 

Bleah.  There are many ways in which I'm fairly sure its quite awful to be a baby, and this is one.  Not only do you go to sleep with formula-burp in your mouth, but you wake up with it, too, all fermented.  Although, at least, after his ped recommended that we start mixing his formula with Chamomile Tea instead of plain water his burps have not been quite as noxious - a more pleasant Chamomile scent, actually.

Side Note:  For some reason every time I have to come up with the word Pediatrician my brain delivers up the word Veterinarian instead. What woudl Freud make of that, I wonder? 

I often reflect on what the Little Guy must think about as we cart him about.  Tonight I put him in his crib wide awake and wiggling, which is unusual, as he normally dozes off with his warm bottle and all the snuggles.  But tonight I had to pee, so I tenderly plunked him down, gave his mobile a spin, shut off the light and dashed for the bathroom, leaving him looking after me with those big dark eyes, brow knitted, slightly puzzled.  Moxie once wrote "A little baby has no knowledge of the world and also no sense of time, so there's really no way a baby that small can understand that you're in the other room but are still in the world. For a small baby, if you're not there, you don't exist, and s/he's alone in the world."  That has stuck with me, and was running through my mind as I was peeing, actually.  As I left the room, did I walk out of the world to him?  Did I cease to exist?  At 11 weeks old, is he old enough to know that I'm coming back?

When he was three weeks old, his father went to Pennsylvania for a week (which was very traumatic for Daddy - "I've missed a quarter of his life" he was heard to say), and I will swear to anyone that the Little Guy missed his Daddy terribly - I believe that's when he learned to fight sleep, as he tried and tried to stay awake until his Daddy got home.

Truth to be told, its part of the reason I am fighting his father so hard about having him sleep a full night in his "big crib" - I can't stand the idea of him waking up alone in a dark room and thinking he's all alone in the world. 

Plus how else would I put my hand on his tummy just before I fall asleep to make sure he's still breathing?  Hmmm?

At The Fair

At The Fair

Thanks, tracicle.

I should be sleeping.  I was going to be sleeping.  But suddenly its 2:00 am and I suspect that the minute my head hits the pillow The Little Guy will start to fuss, and then I'll be up anyhow, so why go to bed?

We went to the county fair today, hoping Little Guy would love all the lights and sights and so forth.  Honestly, I can't really tell if he did or not.  But he was, indeed, one sleepy little boy when we brought him home, and I managed to prove to his dad that we can, in fact, navigate events such as these successfully without a stroller, so that's a win.  And we got to see swine.  And a Llama in serious need of orthodontic work.  And livestock is always fun.

But for some reason - maybe that it has rained earlier in the afternoon and lots of people thought it might rain again - it seemed kind of empty, and an empty fairground always seems somewhat forlorn.  Plus, the carousel, which we'd hoped to put The Little Guy on (yeah, he's only 12 weeks, what's your point?) was closed for most of the evening until after he'd dozed off completely.  I have more pictures, including Max the Llama (see above) and also some from the exhibition building, of the awesome entries in the scarecrow contest (ah the irony of a scarecrow who looks like the Tin Woodsman...).  Perhaps I will post them tomorrow, if I can find the time......

Right.  Off to bed.  Something I should have done hours ago.  *sigh*  I can't wait until he sleeps through the night.....