Dear Sabine: Month 11

Dear Sabine,

I can't even believe you are 11 months! In one regard I can't believe you're no longer a newborn. Like, how the hell did ELEVEN months go by already??? But on the other hand, you have never been a baby. You were born a person. You act more like a three year old, I'd say. And the most notable thing about you (other than not acting your age) is that you refuse to sleep. What the hell.
If there was a game or battle or something where the object was to just keep staying awake, my kids would win it. Hands down. You don't get tired. You fight sleep until it knocks the shit out of you. Today you were up around 6am and you stayed awake through all of the morning routine getting ready and out of the house stuff, you stayed awake through the car ride to gymnastics. You stayed awake all of gymnastics, whereupon I let you grab on to one of the uneven bars and I let go of you. You just stayed there, hanging, by yourself. I see a future in gymnastics for you. You also like to imitate Jacob's forward roll. You get into the down dog yoga position and just hang out there being funny, then I flip you over so that you complete the motion and you crack up.

But back to the non-sleeping - so you finally fell asleep after we left gymnastics but when we go to book club you woke right up. And then you were awake for the next four hours. Back at home you were screaming at me in this deep scream that comes from your gut and there was nothing I could do to stop you. I started thinking that I was terrified this is the kind of kid you're going to be. The kind they like to label 'difficult', and that I might have trouble connecting to you, and maybe we wouldn't be the best of friends when you're older. It's my sincere hope that when my kids are older they will like their mom and want to be friends with me. It's one of my fears that you guys won't. But then you finally fell asleep and your body shook with those post-cry tremors for ten whole minutes, after which you proceeded to take the longest nap of your life. So I don't know, maybe it was just exhaustion.

Sabine, you are such a funny, quirky little baby. I'm sure I've said that before, but I can't say it enough. You do funny shit all day long and you know it's funny. Lately you've been crawling through our legs from behind and then when you get to the front you look at us and guess what, crack up. You hang out on the couch and look out the window, then you climb up to the top of the couch and press your little face up to the window screaming baby obscenities out the window to the passing cars. There's a bunch of other stuff you've been into this month which I've been keeping track of throughout the month, so I'll just go through the list:

You toss things to see if they roll like a ball, then you scream and chase after them. You do this with anything, blocks, random toys, shoes, socks, a cup, anything.

You loves little seats, climbing into them, getting down and doing it all over again. The potty chair, the carseat that's sitting in the house, the Bumbo, the booster seat, but the baby rocker is your favorite. The other day you climbed into it, put your arms out on each arm rest and started leaning your body back and forth to set the chair into its rocking motion. You totally knew what you were doing.
You've taken a recent fascination with opening and closing doors, especially the baby gates we have around the house. You sit there on one side opening it, then closing it, then peeking your head around the side to alert us to the fact that you've just done something amazing. You say, "Eh, eh, eh" to get our attention and when we look up you give us the biggest, most proud smile.

When we're roughhousing you lunge at us and pounce on your victim. As you move through the air you shriek to warn the recipient of the incoming attack. Then you proceed to put your wet mouth all over us and wipe snot from your nose onto our clean shirts.

Lately you've taken to experimenting with objects in containers. You start with a basket and then put a block into it. You peek inside to see what it looks like, then put the block out and throw it across the room. Then you look in the basket again. You do this repeatedly, which one would think to be boring for the onlooker, but no, I am fascinated watching you do these these, learning about object permanence and getting to see the wheels turning inside your little brain.

You LOVE throwing things off of ledges or off of the staircase. You especially like having people pick them up and give them back to you so you can do it all over again. I call this the Gravity Game. Again, it's fun watching you learn about your world in this way. You'll be playing with an object upstairs, a sock, for example, and then finally you can no longer take it, you stick your bony arm through the railing and let go, then you look at me like, "Where'd it go?"

We can't keep you down, high chair, swing, stroller, you stand up in all of them. You're just too skinny to have all 16 pounds of you held down by a nylon strap. We tighten the belt, pack you in with blankets, nothing works, it's inevitable that at some point I'll turn my back on you, only to turn back around to see you standing up in the swing with it breezing back and forth through the air and I'm ten feet away. All I think then is: Acrobat.

You'll stay in the swing for a very, very long time. Actually, I don't think we've ever tested your limit but at the park the other day you were in one of those high-backed handicapped swings for 45 minutes. I kept thinking you had fallen asleep but when I would go to check you'd look at me like, "What? Did you forget I am of the non-sleeping breed?"

And oh how you LOVE your bath. Possibly your favorite thing ever. If you hear the water running, you shoot into the bathroom as fast as you can and it's all we can do to get your clothes off before you just dive right in. You splash around like your life depends on it, you shriek, put your face under the water, and come up laughing. I can only remember a couple times where you've asked to come out of the bath.

You love being outdoors . The few times I've left you with someone the last of my instructions as I'm walking out the door are, "And if that doesn't work, just carry her outside and let her be outside for a minute, watching the cars go by or something." You're clearly a nature baby, and by this fact alone we are sure you were sent to the right family.

Actually, we've never questioned that you were sent to the wrong family. I can't say that about everyone. From the moment you were layed on my chest at birth, I looked at you and the words that came into my mind were Oh, it's you. There was recognition in your eyes too and it was the most clarity I ever felt in my life. We waited for you and then you were here and pretty soon I imagine we won't be able to remember a time when you weren't with us.

Love,

Mommy

They are serious

I saw an ad in a parenting magazine yesterday. At first I thought it was a joke, but no, they are serious. I tore it out so I could show Zach. He also thinks it's insane. So it's not just me. In fact he laughed and said, "Maybe that's what I should do, invent some stupid thing and make a million dollars off of it. Tell me right now what's the dumbest thing you can think of for parents to have for their kids, that's what I'll invent."

Now normally I would hesitate posting about something like this for fear of insulting someone I know, or someone who might read this post, but seriously, if you are a friend of mine and you have one of these, just keep it hidden from me when I'm at your house because I will definitely laugh at you.

I mean even the name of the website alone is laughable: Baby's First Head Gear. C'mon people! This is going overboard.

Lastly, let me also add a disclaimer that maybe, perhaps I can see a special needs child needing one of these, and if that's the case I promise I won't laugh at your child, maybe just the ears that they've put on top of the darn thing.

Happy Mothers' Day To Me

This is how I got to start the day:

Then Jacob picked me some flowers. From our garden. He cleaned out the tulips. All but one of them. I'm proud to say I smiled, thanked him, and proceeded to find vases in which to display this loving act:

Later on was bathtime and getting ready for bed:

(That little stinker of a baby wanted something from the top of the dresser so she
climbed the bed and then the bed rail to get to it. A tenth month old baby.
And would you look at her little, round toosh.
I know what I'm having for breakfast tomorrow)

(A little incentive to put one's jammie pants on?)

What more could a mother ask for?

1 AM: A play-by-play

1:10 am: Zach wakes me, there's pee in the bed. A quick assessment is made on his part. He decides Jacob wet the bed. I, however, am covered in pee. So is Sabine. I wonder how the hell three humans are soaked in pee from only one bladder. I conclude that Sabine has also leaked through her (doubly-stuffed) diaper.

1:11 am: I'm only half aware of the things that are happening because as it is we've been asleep for a very short while. Sabine woke up from what turned out to be just a nap at 8pm. She was awake for the next three hours.

1:12 am: I somehow manage to open my eyes. Zach is going into action. It amazes me how good he has become at the middle-of-the-night routine. I used to be the one who was fully functional in the middle of the night. Ha. Something just struck me - though we are failing miserably in the bedtime routine area, we have gotten this 'wee hours of the morning' routine down pat.

1:14 am: Zach has escorted Jacob to the bathroom and I hear a stream hitting the toilet water. Check. I realize I am sitting up in bed and a new diaper has magically appeared at my side.

1:15 am: Zach and Jacob re-enter the bedroom. I'm still sort of coming to. Oh yeah, I am wet, and starting to get cold. We are arguing about who will change Sabine's diaper. I am wet with pee, and on this night Zach is not. I win.

1:16 am: I find a cold, wet washcloth hanging from the hamper in the bathroom. I don't care where it has come from or what it is wet with. I use it to wipe pee off my skin.

1:18 am: I've managed to change my clothes and Sabine is ready for me. She has a dry diaper on but no clothes. Zach has removed the two, count 'em, TWO bed covers that we keep on the bed so that 'accidents' may go there. Funny, there are still puddles in the bed when the covers are removed.

1:19 am: We question aloud how the hell pee got under the bed covers, then remember whose lives we are living and oh yeah it all makes sense. Why wouldn't that happen? Why bother with bed covers anyway.

1:20 am: I got to the bathroom the get a bath towel. Lay it over the giant pee puddle in the bed. Then lay on top of that. Grumble about how I JUST washed the sheets and hung them on the line to dry two days ago.

1:21 am: I commence nursing Sabine, Zach begins his first attempt at getting clothes on Jacob.

1:23 am: Jacob is sideways in bed, naked from the waste down, kicking and thrashing at Zach as if he's trying to kill him. Zach is repeatedly attempting to put underwear on Jacob.

1:24 am: Jacob has underwear on and Zach throws the jammie pants across the room. Fuck it we both agree.

1:25 am: Lights Out.

We're so immature

Dog obedience the other night was actually really good. The lady was a good public speaker and very entertaining. But I do have to admit I was snickering at her in the beginning when she was setting up the microphone and was all, "Testing, testing, one-two." There were 15 other people in the room so I didn't think it was necessary.

Zach was so against going to dog school. He grumbled about it and I had to cause many fights getting him to sign-up for the class (it's through the college, so can you say tuition waiver). And then we went and he thought it was great, and most importantly he thought it was great and got all, "Gee, good thing I made you come with me to this thing." Like it was his idea. So I am making a mental note to add this to my arsenal of I-Told-You-So arguments for future reference.

I think we'll get some good information out of this class. I actually think some of this stuff can be applied to the human children. Bonus! But Zach and I both agree that knowing what to do is one thing, finding the time with which to do it is another matter altogether. Already we've completely forgotten to be practicing the letter we chose for her. This letter, as in one letter of the alphabet, will be her cue that we use in training. We're supposed to be saying it to her all the time, giving her treats when she looks at us when we're saying the letter, or whatever, basically letting her get to know that letter, and to like it.

So what letter did we choose? We went back and forth, how can we just pick one letter when there are 26 to choose from? Should we pick J for Jacob, G for Ginger? What to do, what to do. Finally it came to me in a flash. "F!" I shout-whispered to Zach in the middle of class. And he totally got it right away. It's a word that I shout out loud a lot because I try not to swear in front of kids, so I'm constantly shouting things like "Ef!", "Sugar!", "mother!", "Sonofa....!", and so on. Add to Ginger's F-letter, well, we'll be attempting to train Mango on our own at home, so, naturally, she'll be U.

We're going to have so much fun with this...

Teach me to fish!

What is with these kids of mine and their non-sleeping?? It is 6:30pm, Sabine has been awake since 9:45am when she woke up from a 45 minute nap. Before that she'd woken at 7am after being awake for several hours through the night. Really, she was awake for more hours than I care to recall just being in the bed, awake, sometimes cute, sometimes nasty. She wanted to play, she wanted to nurse, she wanted to slap us in the faces. All of that she did. Zach and I were miserable and yelling at each other because we couldn't figure out what to do but all we knew for sure was that if we didn't get to sleep we were surely going to die. To recap: My 10 month old baby has been awake for the day for almost 12 hours of the day, 45 minutes of that was spent napping.

We can't go for more than a few days before having a really hard night or really hard day in regard to the non-sleeping. I thought we were doing well for a while, she was going down for a couple naps a day at a pretty regular time. And then Tuesday happened. This Tuesday was horrible, I was a horrible mess, Sabine was 16 pounds of cranky misery. We made public fools of ourselves, etc, etc, etc.

When I'm having a day like this my mom and Jamie usually end up baring a lot of the weight. They show up and swoop down like angels to take the baby out of my arms so I can breathe. Tuesday was just a total wash and I don't even want to relive it. Today was Tuesday all over again, and by the way, Zach was working, he's always working. At Jacob's t-ball game today I was about to lose it because Sabine was freaking out screaming really loud as I was trying to put her to sleep and then my mom showed up and gave me my arms back. When Sabine still didn't go to sleep I started losing it again, telling my mom that I'd had plans for after the game and if Sabine didn't fall asleep now she'd fall asleep in the car and that would be the end of our plans.

My mom told me that she would leave the game with Sabine. She would drive to my house and sit in the car while Sabine slept in her carseat and that I could take Jacob to the store like I'd planned. I told her that was crazy for her to do that, to go out of her way like that. I felt helpless, like nothing could make the difference. I still feel like that in this moment, like no amount of working on this sleep schedule thing will make it come true. I told my mom that perhaps Sabine would fall asleep on the way home and she'd get a nap, thus possibly going to bed at a normal time and possibly enabling Zach and I to get sleep tonight, but that would be like giving a man a fish. You know the adage: Give a man a fish, he eats for a day, teach a man to fish, he eats for a lifetime. I want the secret to this sleep thing, I want somebody to give me a freaking clue, tell me what I'm doing wrong, tell me what to do to get her to sleep!!! I want someone to teach me how to fish!

Just so I remember when he's older...

Often times I can't recall the when my kids stopped doing a certain behavior. Some of these things I'm relieved to find out have stopped, but others I really miss. Tonight Jacob has spent a long time with Smitty and Pilchard, feeding them, dressing them for bed and carrying them around as he's gone about the house. Right now I looked over to see him peacefully rocking in the chair with a quilt over his lap and a couple of pointy blue ears sticking out from the blanket.

"Are you nursing Pilchard?" I asked.

He shook his head yes. This is one of those childhood moments I wish I could bottle.

Obedience School

We are taking Ginger to obedience school tonight. I've been waiting for this class since before Sabine was born. We tried to get into it last year but it was full. So now we are going, as if we needed something else filling up our already packed calendar. Zach and I are having a preliminary discussion here. We've got the 4 PAGE LETTER because dog school is that big of a deal. This first night the humans go without the dogs. The letter says to bring their leashes and the collar they are currently wearing. I assumed that means bring it attached to the dog next week. Zach thinks we need to go remove her collar and tags right now and submit them this evening. We'll see about that.

The thing is we're being so careful because we're afraid to do something wrong. This lady who teaches it is the premiere dog trainer in the area. I;d say her services are quite coveted. But she is not a nice lady. I've spoken to her on the phone and when I hung up I almost had to cry just because she made me feel like such a moron. Other people I know have had experience with her, and they all say she's a B-I-T-C-H. Hoo boy. Here we go.

But I'm kind of excited to do something like this with Zach. You know, something other than fighting about the house and being stressed out about the kids. It'll almost be like a date because my mom and Jamie are going to watch the kids for us tonight. Who's wants to make a bet about how long it will take me to publicly embarrass Zach?

I had to fill out a sheet to bring tonight, on our agenda for dog training: Overly submissive & a general inability to understand or be understood by other members of the household. Sound good enough for the World Leader of Dog Training?

Murphy's Law in action

My life continues to live up to my blog name. Constantly. Tonight Zach went to a party for a guy he knows who's getting married. I was ever so happy to let him go and was positive I'd be able to get the kids to bed myself and would have everything under control. Not so.

The first couple hours went well except for the fact that the kids were still awake. At 8:45 everyone was hungry and still awake. I put Sabine in the high chair and started feeding her tiny, tiny shreds of pretzel, which is what Jacob was having (except bigger pieces). Then I gave her a peeled grape in the Baby Safe Feeder. This two food items were new and I knew I was taking a risk because I am one of those people who feeds the baby only cooked, mushed and approved (meaning they were given on three consecutive days and proven not to be allergenic to Sabine) foods. She downed the food and then started choking. I pulled her out of the chair and with a little help from gravity she threw up the contents of her stomach. Then she threw up the contents of her stomach again on another part of the kitchen floor.

Fun times.

I decided it was definitely time to get her to sleep so I put her on the couch (because we don't have a changing table) pulled off her diaper and started stuffing the new one (note to self: must remember to have diaper stuffed and ready to go before pulling off old one).

Let me interject to say that yesterday I finally cashed in on my Christmas present from my mom: Professional carpet and couch cleaning. The couch and the nice rug in the living room got cleaned. No more food on the couch and no more dogs on the rug. Just a few hours ago I decided the cushions surely were dry and I pushed them back into place.

Can you see where I'm going here? Sabine flips her little body through the air and stands there looking out the window, tapping on it making noise while I'm fumbling with the diaper. Then she makes another kind of noise and I realize she's peeing on the couch. The nice, CLEAN couch! I mean seriously? It just got cleaned! She managed to hit four separate cushions at once because of the place she happened to be standing. Oh the talent.

Oh, and can I also complain about this regularly scheduled napping thing? It's been a couple weeks now where Sabine has been taking these 'regular' naps. It's nice, about 10am she sleeps, maybe for an hour or so. Then again in the afternoon, I couldn't tell you what time though, maybe 2pm. Today, we were at Jacob's T-ball game and Sabine fell asleep at the regular time but when I went to put her in her carseat ten minutes later, she woke up. The 10 minutes was just enough to take the tired out of her so that she wouldn't go back to sleep in the car or when we got home. She didn't go to sleep until after 12pm, which would have been ok if she could have slept for a few hours, but we had to leave the house around 1:30 to meet the guy from Craigslist with the bike for Jacob. So that was a big dilemma. Even though her nap was only an hour I thought she'd stay awake the rest of the day because it was already the afternoon. Not so. She fell asleep around 4pm. That screwed uo bedtime which ended up beingba 10pm thing. So my question is, how do you implement regular naps without being a slave to the clock?

Oy with the hats already

Jacob is playing T-ball this year. He has been so excited about it - more excited than we've ever seen him about anything else. He got his uniform a couple days before the first game, which was last weekend. My first reaction: "Oh my God, another hat. This is what playing baseball means. He's going to get a new hat every year, a hat that we must keep forever and can never get rid of, huh? Where are we going to keep all these hats??" I'm actually very stressed out about this. I am a minimalist and having clutter around the house wigs me out. Here is a picture of Jacob's hats:

The only hat here that we actually bought is the Carhartt hat. Upper left is a Yankees hat that Jamie found at the thrift shop at Church. Then there's a souvenir hat my mother-in-law gave Jacob. The green one in the middle is the John Deere hat that was the 'goody bag' at Gus's birthday party - all five of the boys have those same hats, they're like their gang jackets. And add to that the T-ball hat. This doesn't include the two hats Mango has chewed; one of those was the baby baseball hat Jacob had worn and I'd had pulled out for Sabine to wear. The other was a teddy bear wearing a baseball which I was given before Jacob was born and Mango chewed a year or two ago. The other one not pictured is his Muck hat and that was last seen somewhere near the Badlands. Sadly we don't know where it disappeared. That was my favorite damn hat because he wore it so well, and I was so proud of the way he insisted on wearing it all the time.

Anyway, back to T-ball. Jacob had his first practice in 30 degree weather, and it was snowing. See:

It was so funny being there though. It was a weird rush of emotions, like here we go this is the beginning of a long career of sports - sports practices, interacting with other sports parents, dragging our asses to games in the sub-zero weather, getting up at the ass-crack of dawn for a double-header, rushing through spaghetti dinners to get to the weekday practice...all that. We're ready for it though. It gives us something to plan our schedules around, if nothing else.

Jacob is more than ready, he's like Yeah, I was BORN for this! He doesn't waste time getting ready, well, not all the time. He jumps out of bed like he was a morning person and starts pulling on layers of Under Armor and polyester baseball pants, brushes his teeth and slathers on sunscreen.

So the first practice was in 30 degree weather. The first game was in 90 degree heat with the bright noontime sun blazing down on the field. Those poor kids. They didn't even have a chance to prove they could stay on their feet for a whole inning. It was just too hot. But damn were they cute in their oversized uniforms.

Oh, and one game is all it took to prefect the scratch-and-yawn:

Dear Sabine: May 1, 2009

Dear Sabine,

You are ten months old and then some. You have a few words in your vocabulary; ones that aren't necessarily words per say, but in the technical sense, they are words. Most of your 'words' are just various strains of the 'D' sound. Da for Daddy, Doh for Dogs, deedee for Jacob, Dee for Tree. You love trees. You point to them and ask us in your little way to talk to you about them. You also love lights. You reach your arm up to the ceiling and use the sign for light. You ask for music by singing and shaking your hands in the air (very similar to your 'all done' sign) like you are using shakers. You do not have a word for me. You either have a word for something, or a sign for it, for me you use the nurse sign. Our relationship to this point in a nutshell.

Other things you love: The swing in the back yard. You crawled up to it today and put your arms up like you wanted to be picked up. Jacob pushed you in it for a while and you just cracked up the whole time. You favorite hang out spot these days is on the back of the couch, looking out the window that faces the driveway. From there you can observe every person who comes and goes. Ginger. You crawl up to her, pet her and she goes crazy wagging her tail. It's so funny to see you do this because it looks like you know what you're doing, you know, you're gentle and you don't smack her around and stuff. Pretty much all dogs you love. I think they may be your favorite thing. You squeal as you take a deep breath kick your legs around trying to get to whatever dog you see.

We're guessing 'dog' will be the first official word you say with all the proper letter sounds in order because we hear you practicing it a lot under your breath, adding in the middle 'oh' sound with more emphasis sometimes, and you've got the 'g' sound as well. The other sound you use is the 'b' sound. That's the one that you'll do just after we've fed you a bite of mushy food, so that it all comes spraying back out into our faces. I think you're starting to use it while you're tossing a ball around the room. Yes, you do that. You throw a ball and then go chase it across the floor. You do this completely by yourself and sometimes with objects that are not round. Soccer player? And the other day you held a piece of chalk in your left hand for about half an hour, at times brushing the ground with it, hard enough to leave a mark behind. Lefty?

People are always asking me if my experience of having this baby is much different from having Jacob as a baby. I tell them that for the most part it's very similar. And that's true. Most people I know have kids that are polar opposites of one another, but you and Jacob seem a lot alike. One thing I can say though is that with him everything was so gradual. Potty training lasted from 18 months to three years, it was not a weekend affair like so many people I know have made it. We say he started walking at about 10 1/2 months. I can't say I remember an actual first step, it all sort of blended into an eventual walking. First words, couldn't tell you really. I don't know if it's because I am now a second-time parent so I'm primed to recognize these things, or what. It's probably a little of that, also probably the fact that I write so much more of this stuff down now (a fact that causes me a horrible amount of guilt because I can't remember Jacob as a baby). But I do think that you are like a swift gust of wind. You're so ready to be walking, you could be doing it already, you just don't feel like it yet. I fully expect that ones of these days you'll just start walking across the room like you've been doing it your whole life.

Tonight while I was putting you to sleep (a job usually reserved for Daddy, unless you have fallen asleep nursing) you kept pointing to the window as the shade was blowing in the wind. You were using a word that sounded like your Daddy word, but I think you were saying 'that'. I think you were asking me to tell you about it, to give you a running commentary about your world like we always do, but it was Bedtime and I was not giving in. I just layed there with my eyes shut pretending to be asleep and you jsut kept on saying it and pointing. There was nothing in your experience that told you what to do with that, with someone ignoring you, so you just kept on asking, sure that I just hadn't heard you.

Speaking of tonight's bedtime, it was a different kind of going to bed tonight. For starters, it took two whole hours. I had two hours to myself at home tonight while Daddy and Jacob were at a baseball game. And of course it took two hours to put you to sleep. When they left I got a nightime diaper on you and brought you upstairs to nurse you. That you did, but you were still awake afterwards. I've been asking the question lately of when will you go to sleep on your own, meaning like when will you lay down awake and go to sleep like that, you know, not in someone's arms. So after you nursed you layed there all peaceful, but awake. It was very weird at first, but then I thought to take advantage of it. I thought I could sooth you to sleep like that. Even though that failed, I'd already started the process so I couldn't go back on it and start over a different way. Not unless I want you to have major sleep issues like Jacob. You spent all that time laying there, calm, but not asleep, gently playing around, but not getting too excited. Even though I wanted you asleep, it was so nice and so weird to witness that kind of quiet activity, not much about your is quiet. Anyway, two hours after it started, you fell asleep curled against me, not nursing and not in a vertical position, so that's good. That combined with the fact that I used the phrase morning nap in coversation last week without air quotes, I think that means we might be ok.

Love,

Mommy