TEETH!

As Jane requested, here's a photo of Sore.n's teeth. Although I claimed there was a third one peeking out, now I'm not so sure. It may just be a whitehead of the gums. I realize there's probably no such thing, but that's my story, and I'm sticking to it. The front bottom two are growing daily, however. Take a look!

In other news, my AF returned this week. I felt some vague cramping (luckily, not (yet) the kind of intestine-ripping endometriosis cramps that I'd grown to know and love since they gave me some insight into how one might feel if one were shiv-ed in the prison cafeteria), but otherwise it was a complete surprise. This now means I need to think about whether to go on any sort of BCP in the (likely vain) hopes of controlling the endometriosis. We also need to think about when we want to try to produce baby numero dos, if such a thing is even in the cards. We'll see.

And now, a question: what are your children's favorite books? Right now, Sore.n appreciates most books equally since he views them as teethers, but my personal favorites are There's a Wocket in My Pocket, But Not the Hippopotamus, Goodnight Moon, and these two really nifty books.

Bad Mommy Story

I planned to be all clever and take some photos to illustrate this story, but I tempted fate with my last post and have ended up with a bitch of a cold (which involves coughing for hours each night until finally falling into an uneasy sleep on the couch at 4am), so you'll get the text-only version.

So, a couple of days before we left for California, I was on my daily afternoon stroll with So.ren and our dog. We rarely vary our route, which takes us through our pleasant, leafy neighborhood of bungalows and other houses of the small-town wooden variety (why, no, I'm not an architect; how did you guess?). I tell you this because it makes the events that transpired all the more inexplicable.

So.ren rides along in his car seat, which I snap into a stroller frame. The frame, as you may be aware, allows the car seat to clip onto a bar, and then the frame itself has these little tabs that you pull in over the car seat to keep it from coming dislodged in the front. I always check both parts before we head out, and I had done so that day, though I've noticed that sometimes the tabs get jostled on the walk and aren't really doing their job, so maybe that had happened here.

We were cruising along at a fairly rapid pace, which is how I like it, when the stroller contraption hit a piece of uneven pavement. It stopped; the dog and I kept going. I smacked right into the stroller, overturning it. But wait - it gets worse. When the edge of the car seat hit the pavement, it came detached from the stroller frame, and landed UPSIDE DOWN on the sidewalk. I wiped out beside it.

Now, luckily, I had strapped the crap out of So.ren into the car seat, which I don't always do on walks. So he was just hanging in there upside down, looking perplexed, but no part of him hit the sidewalk. (I had the handle in the proper roll-bar position, too.) Approximately 10 people witnessed this event, and came to inquire as to whether we were injured or just stupid (that last part was implied). Fortunately, we were okay - Sore.n didn't even cry - but visions of how badly this could have gone have populated my brain ever since. Poor little boy! I had two shins full of gnarly bruises, which meant I then had to explain how I'd gotten them to anyone who saw my legs, which I suppose was a form of penance.

That little boy is pretty stoic, I have to say. He weathered that well, along with, this week, a cold and THREE TEETH. We didn't even know they had come in - sure, he drools a lot, but he's been doing that for a while, and he wasn't abnormally cranky. He obviously doesn't get his equanimity from either of his parents.

Introduction to flying

Last week, we went to my husband's 15th college reunion in California. This was So.ren's first plane trip, and, boy, did he get an introduction to flying in the modern era. Our scheduled routing was through O'Hare to SFO, but despite the fine weather everywhere we were to be flying through or over or vaguely near, things did not go as planned. How naive we were when we saw the words "on time" listed next to our outbound flight! How gullible!

When we got to the gate at our local airport, the flight time had suddenly moved back by an hour. Fine, we thought - we can still make our connection. But then I called United, and they told me it would actually be even later than that, thus making it less likely that we would make our connection, which "might be delayed, but might not be." So I ingeniously rerouted us via Denver, since that flight was on time and, FYI, Denver is closer to SFO than Chicago. By this point, we'd be in the airport for four hours. Our local airport is small, which is usually nice since it makes check-in, etc., much easier, but when you're trying to amuse a fidgety baby, O'Hare starts to look a lot more appealing.

So we got on the Denver flight. Problem #1: we were assigned seats behind the exit row, which is apparently not allowed when you have an infant in a car seat. So after some adept three-way trading, we ended up in approved seating. That's when problem #2 arose: of all of the seats on the plane, the only one with an issue was the one So.ren and his car seat were supposed to be strapped into. The seatbelt had somehow become wedged between the seat and the wall, and this required the captain and another passenger to engage in some major contortions to unhook it, a process that took approximately 20 minutes while every single person on the plane stared at us (or so I assumed) while So.ren wailed in his car seat in the aisle until I rocked it for about three seconds and he passed out cold. Once he was in the seat, the flight had been delayed about 20-25 minutes. But So.ren had a good time (pictured). We thought everything was going well when we got to Denver and the flight attendant read out our connecting gate information.

Just to be safe, we checked the gate on the monitors, as advised, and found that our flight to SFO was cancelled. There was one later flight, but since the cancelled flight had been a 777, there were 300+ people trying to get on it and no chance for us. We ended up rerouting to San Jose, but our luggage was still scheduled to go to SFO. Fortunately, an airline employee in the Red Carpet Club (which I spent 55,000 miles to join earlier this year) took up our cause and ended up getting our bags on the correct flight. We did, however, have a Priceline (ie, non-refundable) reservation for a car in SFO, so that was money down the drain. It ended up taking us 13 hours to get to our friends' house in Menlo Park. So.ren behaved admirably, by which I mean he mostly slept on the flights and in the car.

Our return trip was better - everything was more or less on time, though we didn't get home until 1am Monday morning (but that was as planned). I am completely exhausted. So.ren has a cold that he picked up from either our hosts' kids or any of the people of any of the planes, since all appeared to be sick. Oh, well - I guess his immune system is getting a workout. I was sick a ton as a child, but nowadays I'm the only person at home or at work who doesn't seem to catch everything that comes through. I am, however, aware that the fact that I have voiced this aloud means that I will presently come down with consumption.

I have a major Bad Mommy story (with me as the star) to tell you, but I need to take a couple of photographs to illustrate the anecdote properly. Stay tuned...

Two weeks, where did you go?

I meant to post many times over the past two weeks, but because my husband was out of town, it turned out that I had, oh, approximately four seconds to myself during that time. And four seconds is just not enough time to post, even if your posts are as banal and unthought-through as mine are. My mom did visit for the second week, but the help she provides is more of the cooking/cleaning/errand-running variety, with an ongoing monologue and a few compliments thrown in. She isn't exactly chomping at the bit to oversee the childcare routine. She did, however, hold the baby during our first attempts at rice cereal, though the photo I have selected from these adventures is one where my husband is holding the baby. My mother is not that flat-chested, nor does she have ripped pecs.

There are many moms who receive my enduring respect. Moms of multiples. Moms of special-needs kids. Moms with PPD. SAHMs. Full-time WOHMs. But after the last two weeks, my current #1 must be single moms (though I suppose single moms of special-needs multiples may trump). When I was pregnant, I read Anne Lamott's book, Operating Instructions, which is a great thing to read when you're pregnant and not a single mom-to-be, since you can appreciate the honesty of the book while simultaneously thinking, "Well, it won't be that rough for me since I don't have to go it alone." And when you do have to go it alone, it's temporary. I really don't know how people manage. When I was in my late 20s and swingle, I thought that if I ever found myself still unattached at the impossibly old age of, say, 35, I would have a kid on my own. And that might still have been the right thing for me to do, but it sure wouldn't have been as simple as I was envisioning it. To make a long story slightly shorter, I sure was glad when my husband returned late Friday night, though I was quite displeased to find that he was SICK from burning the candle at both ends (and poor hygiene). So I didn't get a break right away, but I did have someone to nag, which was nice. (An aside: our baby nurse told us that she had once worked with a woman who was a single mom of triplets - she and her then-husband had done IVF, and about halfway through the pregnancy, she found out he'd been cheating on her for months, so she ditched him. That man deserves a special place in hell.)

And in other, happier news, congrats to Thalia on the birth of her beautiful daughter. And please be thinking of Hopeful Mother today as she delivers her twins via c-section!

The final tally

Our little boy got four months of breastfeeding. His last breast milk was ingested on Friday - I'd pumped it a couple of days earlier since I was heading out to the family reunion at the ungodly hour of 4:30am. Anyway, four months feels pretty good, even though it was about 80% formula for the last month. The pump and I parted ways more or less amicably. I'm currently enduring a bit of engorgement and possibly a plugged duct, but I'm hoping that'll subside soon. I'd say I don't know what to do with all the time that not-pumping frees up, but it turns out there's a long list of tasks-in-waiting that are prepared to jump in.

Some tasks, however, we just can't get done. Like, the handle on our upstairs toilet is broken. This means that in order to flush, we have to reach into the tank and pull the thingamajig with our bare hands. It looks easy to fix - like you'd just take the handle, arm, and chain into a home store and get the new part. But that's the kind of stuff we just don't have time to do. So I called the handyman. He was out of town. I called again. No call back. I should call again, but at this point it's been two weeks, and now it just seems perfectly normal to flush the toilet by reaching into the tank. It's funny how you can get used to disarray. Our living room seems clean by comparison to how it was at the beginning of So.ren's life, but an impartial, dispassionate eye would undoubtedly report it to the health inspector.

My weekend away from the boys (husband, son, dog) was good. I missed the little fellow, but it sure was nice to have two days of not being on the baby clock at all. In hindsight, however, it would have been an easy trip to take him on - short flights on regional jets (which are mellower to board) with lots of family waiting at our destination. Instead, his first plane trip will be next month, when we fly many hours to go to my husband's college reunion. Anyway, the family reunion was really fun, and I found an old photo of my father that bears a very close resemblance to So.ren. My husband won't admit of the resemblance, however - my father has a cleft chin, and I'm pretty sure So.ren does as well, but my husband dislikes cleft chins.

So.ren had his four-month checkup today. He got more shots, which he found to be unsuited to his preferences. He was 16 lbs and 26.5 inches, which are 75th and 95th percentile, respectively. Tall and thin! Maybe he'll be a runway model! His head was 80th percentile. The pediatrician said we should consider starting solids relatively soon since So.ren occasionally puts back a lot of formula, but I think I am going to hold off for now because he's gone back to eating more modest amounts of food (as would be appropriate for a runway model).

I keep feeling posts a-brewin' about infertility but haven't pulled them together yet. I must do so. My husband, however, is out of town all week for work, so I'm a harried single mother for the moment. I am very anxious about tonight, my first night ever alone with the baby. I hope he'll be a first-rate sleeper and all smiles and sunshine during his awake times and that he'll issue forth tidy BMs smelling of tuberose and gardenia.

Baby at a diner

This past weekend, my husband's father and aunt came to visit. They hadn't met So.ren yet. He was perfectly charming, offering up lots of smiles and the occasional seismic fart. We took him out for meals for the first time (we ate; he didn't) - an outing to a diner (pictured) was successful, while an outing to a more upscale lunch spot was less so, though it wasn't catastrophic.

This coming weekend, I am going solo to a family reunion in South Carolina. I'm nervous and excited all at the same time. It'll be nice not to be thinking about naps and feedings and baby activities all day, but I will miss the little fellow. I hope I can get a couple of good nights of sleep in, too, but I'll probably wake up and be unable to go back to sleep, since that appears to be something I like to do.

I would feel guilty about my weekend away, except that my husband is about to go on TWO multi-day business trips. One is for most of next week, and the other for most of the following week. That'll be a lot of time in charge. Time to eliminate the dream feed!

In other news, So.ren was plugged up for a few days, then pushed forth a dry, hard lump that was reminiscent of the concrete marbles of my Z0fran era. This caused him to wake up crying. The pediatrician told me to give him diluted prune juice, and let's just say this hasn't been a problem since then. Wow!

Where does the time go?

Being back at work for real has really cut into my personal emailing, internet shopping, blog-commenting, message-board-reading, etc. Moreover, I can't get away with not showering. And all this showering means that I am hyper-aware of the massive quantities of hair that I'm losing at present. If you need a toupee, I could weave you one.

Pictured above is the superhero known as FLYING BABY! He doesn't really have any superpowers to speak of just yet, though he does emit a winning smile periodically.

One year

A year ago tomorrow, So.ren and another blastocyst were transferred through my byzantine cervix. This timing has nice symmetry since my milk supply has suddenly essentially dried up, so it may be that he gets exactly one year of being housed/nourished by my body. On Sunday night, I pumped nearly 5 oz. Monday night, it was 2 oz. Last night, 1 oz. I have no idea why this is, but so be it. Maybe it's because I returned to work for real this week. Or maybe I ate something that dries up milk. Anyway, I am going to try to get one or two more nursing sessions out of him so I can be sentimental about my short-lived, complicated breastfeeding career.

Here's a photo of So.ren and his father. My husband is very musical, unlike me, and so So.ren gets concerts every evening and sometimes even during the daytime on weekends. I'm hoping he'll inherit the ability to carry a tune and play instruments and whatnot. Yes, whatnot!

Three months

Here's a photo from last week on So.ren's three-month birthday. We think he looks a little like ET sometimes - he raises up his wide head from his skinny little neck. And then he requests to phone home. And we're like, you dummy, you're already home!

So.ren hosted his first dinner party the other night. Some other babies (and their parents) came over. He was perfectly charming, which was great since keeping up appearances is essential - this is what I've learned from watching "Ma.d Men." Have you watched it? I love it. Very sly.

Escape from Babytraz

This is where I found our young lad this morning when I went in to get him. You'll note the sleep positioner and crib pad perpendicular to him and half the length of the crib away - that's where he was placed after his dream feed at 10pm last night. You'll also note the hyperbolically named 'miracl.e blanket' scrunched between his legs. As this is the second time this week I've found him out of his swaddle and his appointed sleeping place (though the last time was less dramatic), I think we can safely say adjustments are needed. I've put on the Breath.able Bump.ers to keep his limbs inside the crib, and I've ordered some sleepsacks for when the swaddle just doesn't cut it at all anymore. Our little man is mobile, though I'm not exactly sure how he got himself to where he ended up.

The baby nurse is gone, but we have the college students starting mid-week. I go back to work for real in a couple of weeks, so I'll be easing in between now and then. I'm still breastfeeding, if you can believe it, but work will put a crimp in this since I don't plan to pump there. I expect to be totally done in the next month. In mid-September, I'll be going to a family reunion sans husband and baby, so I suppose I'd better be done by then.

Back to the salt mines

I returned to the office for the first time on Friday, just for a couple of hours. I'm doing the same today. Things aren't in as much disarray as I had feared. Moreover, I am practicing Being Efficient, since I will only have childcare for 30 hours a week. I know, 30 hours is a pretty large number of hours, but I also need to squeeze in exercise, errand-running, personal upkeep, and world-saving during that time, and I'm sure there's lots of inefficiently used minutes involving sharing info with the nannies, etc.

So we hired two nannies/babysitters. One will be on duty three days a week from 8am-3pm, and the other will work 4-5 hours two days a week. They are both college students. Neurotically, I made them take an all-day CPR/infant first aid certification course on Saturday, then had them train with the baby nurse for much of the day yesterday. They did quite well, and I am pleased with our choices so far.

It has been lovely having the baby nurse back. She's here three more nights. I will wait a few more days before I report on any napping progress because I think we need more data points.

Off-topic

I got an i*Phone last week. I don't think I've been an early adopter of any sort of technological whizbangery since about 1995, but I had to get a new phone because my old one was SO outdated that AT*andT would no longer support the Whatever Technology it ran on. And my friend works at App*le and gave me her 25% employee discount, so I went for it. I love it and carry it with me around the house and spend hours updating my settings and contacts and watching "Di*ck in a Box" on You.Tube. I am sort of afraid someone will steal it, though - something that was NEVER a danger with my old phone, which is approximately the size and shape of a microwave oven.

The best thing

You know how when you're enduring infertility, the worst thing that people can say to you (other than that perhaps you weren't meant to have children) is that they'd never do IVF (or IUIs or whatever)? Well, it turns out that the best thing someone can say to you when you're having breastfeeding problems is that they never would have been able to stick with it if they'd faced your hurdles. One of my friends (who breastfed her daughter for 18 months) said this to me the other day, and that made me feel better than just about anything I've heard or thought.

In other news, So.ren's napping is a complete catastrophe. He often resists going to sleep, and when he does, he'll wake up and not be able to go back to sleep. And then he's crotchety because he's tired. There are hours of crying each day now where there used to be maybe one in total. The baby nurse returns on Thursday - I just hope I can last until then. I am having massive anxiety about all of this and can't eat or sleep well. I just have no idea how to get him back on track. I sit outside his room (as I am doing right now) and listen for peeps or cries so that I can soothe him before it escalates to the point of no return.

This may be like showing a photo of your own urin*e, but hey...

Here's a photo from a couple of weeks ago of my best pumping output of the day (usually 3+ ounces total...after 8+ hours of no pumping). It's gone down since then, for I'm only pumping twice a day, and I currently have a plugged duct or twenty. But I thought I should have a record that there were occasional pumping sessions when, if you didn't know that it had been all night since I had last pumped, it looked sort of like a normal person's pumping output.

In other news, I am feeling great anxiety. You see, So.ren's naps had, in a word, gone to shit. He would wake up after 30-40 minutes and then work himself into a lather, thereby making it very challenging to get him back to sleep. So we moved away from the self-soothe model and returned to the parental-soothe model in the hopes that he'll be better rested and will re-learn how to fall asleep (and get himself back to sleep if he wakes up). This, in turn, means that I sit right outside his room, listening for peeps. There is no sleeping while the baby sleeps, since I am too nervous to nap since I'm sure he'll cry at any second. I would not do well in Iraq, I'll tell you that. So far, he does seem better rested, but I'm not sure he's learning anything about getting himself back to sleep. (Note, though, that he is totally able to do this at night, for some reason.) The newborn specialist returns late next week, so I hope she can get this on track. In any case, we'll have childcare starting in mid-August, so at least I won't be stuck in the house all day long. And tonight I plan to have my husband on duty while I take a Uni*som in the hopes that I won't wake up like I did today at 3am, after which I was unable to go back to sleep, despite the lack of a crying baby. (The baby was there, just not crying.)

I think I am also anxious because this is the time of year when people leave town, either for good or on long vacations. Summer is so lovely around here, but it's also always a bit sad since friends move away. The current culprits are TLB and Brando, though we wish them the best of luck in Northern Michigan, where they're headed!

Photos galore

This is a post of many photos. First, Susanne asked in the comments of a couple of posts ago about getting back into shape post-c-section. Here's a shot taken of me a few days ago. I definitely still have the post-pregnancy pooch and about 5-10 intransigent pounds. I looked and weighed the same at about two weeks postpartum, which I thought was sweet, but it seems less sweet seven weeks later. I know that some people retain about that much weight to breastfeed, so we'll see if it comes off now that I am starting the weaning process. In terms of training, my OB was fine with whatever exercise I want to do. For the half-marathon, I'll be following this schedule, though I am not starting it until next week at the earliest. It looks manageable. (As an aside, at my podiatrist appointment last week, they kept me waiting for ages, which meant I finished the New Yorker that I brought. I was then left with what was in the room, which included a home-design magazine from 1996! 11 years old! I felt quite altruistic when I left my July 2007 magazine there for the next waiting patient.)

Here's a photo from So.ren's two-month birthday on Saturday. Apparently, he thinks he's four, five, or six, depending upon how you want to read his hands. As you can see, he got to wear an outfit for the first time. Until now, it's been all onesies and sleepers. Check out that plaid! And that smile! He's also started to laugh, though not always at what we think is funny.


And today he had his two-month checkup, which included shots (and an hourlong wait, since the pediatrician didn't realize she was supposed to be in - pfffft). The beleaguered little fellow is currently sleeping, and we hope it continues until his appointed wakeup time at 1pm. He was 11 lbs, 13+ oz, and came in in the 50th percentile for everything - length, weight, head. What a champ!

Now that he's had his first round of shots, I'll be tapering off the breastfeeding. I'm already down to pumping three times a day. I'm hoping to cut one today, leaving two (in case you couldn't follow that math), and then I'll start cutting feedings. I have mixed feelings about all of this, but I am focusing on the pros of the situation, which include the following: (1) no more feeling like an abject failure every time I pump a measly 3/4 ounce, (2) new ability to leave the house for more than an hour or two at a time, (3) no more plugged ducts, thus allowing for jogbras and, relatedly, jogging, (4) caffeine!, (5) booze!, (6) sleeping on stomach, and (7) shortened feeding times, resulting in more playtime. (Note: I know many people do drink caffeine and booze while breastfeeding and that it is no big deal, but I just haven't done so, and then I decided to make them prizes for getting to nine weeks.) I have also decided to feel proud for getting to nine weeks (and probably ten total, since I'm just starting to drop nursing sessions) instead of lame. Yay!

We've also been interviewing nanny candidates. Around here, that means college students. We've seen some good ones and hope to make a decision soon. Since the pool is mostly college students, we may need to get two, given class schedules, etc. One nanny candidate did do something rather dumb - she had a 1:45pm interview with me and called at 1:45 to get directions. Then, in the interview, I asked what she could point to in her experience to demonstrate that she's very reliable, and she said punctuality. Ha!

Really? Fayemus?

Jane sent me a link to Gawker's Most Pretentious Baby Name Contest of 2007, and my darling little boy's name made the list of runners-up. But, c'mon, look at the names it's with! Are any of these real names, other than the one we chose? Pffft.

I look forward to finding out what the finalists and winners were. They must be doozies!

Pictured above is my pretentiously named son in his pretentiously hipster CBGB onesie, taken at an unpretentious barbecue over the weekend.

I would like an adult-sized one of these

This papasan swing is the coziest thing ever - that pod is lined in fleece and a synthetic suede-y fabric. It looks quite relaxing to me. So.ren isn't allowed to fall asleep in there anymore, but we do stick him in at the end of playtime as a kind of soothing mechanism before we go upstairs and he screams and screams about being put to bed.

In other news, I need a goal, and getting into shape seems like a good, not-mentally-taxing goal, so I am thinking of running a half-marathon in October. Really, I'd like to run this marathon in April, but that's easy to say from my position on the couch. I've run two half-marathons in the past, but I was younger then, and I also lived in an area where I could train on lovely trails, whereas now I do not. Also, the reason I've never run a marathon before is that my knees and feet are shoddily constructed. Still, I harbor delusions of grandeur, and by grandeur I mean intense pain, blisters, and chafed and bleeding nipples (and I'm not referring to breastfeeding, for once).

To further these foolish dreams, I am visiting the podiatrist today to get fitted for orthotics. I was fitted for them in the past, but then it turned out that my podiatrist was a boob. In addition to my delusions of grandeur, I harbor delusions that orthotics will solve not just my physical ailments, but also global warming, the Iraq war, and the problem of evil, by which I mean Dick Cheney. We'll see how that goes. In the meantime, I'm walking daily and plan to start more high-impact, jog-bra-requiring exercise once I'm done breastfeeding. A week from today, So.ren gets his shots, and that's when I've decided I'm free to quit. Until then, I'll keep nursing and pumping, though perhaps not as rigorously as I have been.

Late-onset colic?

Our darling little boy has become a really large pain in the ass the past few days re: naps. For a few days, he didn't want to go to sleep. Today, he's gone to sleep well enough, but then wakes up and is totally inconsolable. I've spent hours attempting to soothe him while still keeping him in his crib, with little success. I'm hoping he'll rethink his new policies and return to the old routine. He's still sleeping pretty well at night at least - let's hope he doesn't dispense with that, too.

We have a sitter tonight so we can go out to eat with my brother, who's visiting. We're going to put the baby to bed for her in the hopes that he'll then snooze the whole time we're out. Fingers crossed....

Travelin' man

Have you ever noticed how many baby clothes label the baby as such? Like, just in case you were wondering why this guy was so short? Oh, I get it now: he's a baby! Anyway, you can't tell it from this photo, but that baby was visiting some friends a couple of hours away. This was our first experiment in deviating from our schedule, though we stuck to it pretty well - he napped in the car at roughly his normal naptimes, and he had an eat/play/nap/eat/play cycle at our friends' house while we all sat around observing him and eating snacks. Good times. And get a load of that fat baby belly!

Here's a photo from today on a foray outdoors. The dog seems to have accepted the baby into the household, or he's at least become resigned to his presence.

This week, my brother arrives for a visit and a crash course in infant care. If we spontaneously combust, my brother will get So.ren, so he needs some education in the basics.

Blowout

No, I'm not referring to my Fourth of July plans, since we don't have any. I'm referring to the longshoreman-like farts and robust bowel blowout our little boy had yesterday afternoon. This came as a relief to all of us, not just him, since he'd been extra-cranky all day long, refusing to take naps and engaging in other sorts of nonsense. This was unlike him; his cries of LA LA LA even drove me to tears at one point. But once he'd finally worked out his, ah, issues, he was a perfect angel for the rest of the day/evening. And let me give a shoutout to my husband, who came home early to help me deal with the angry lad. So far, today seems better - we had an issue with the most recent nap, but I think that was due to the crap (ha! crap!) swaddle I'd executed, so I fixed it. Fingers crossed.

Anyway, this experience made me realize that if I were given a choice between having breastfeeding difficulties and having a colicky baby, I'd take the former. I'll pretend that I was given that choice.

In other news, I had a moment of complete perspective distortion this morning. As you know, I am home the whole day right now since we're hewing pretty closely to the schedule the baby nurses implemented. They're down on the whole leaving-the-house thing until the baby has his routine down and also until he's had his shots. So when So.ren is napping, I spend a lot of time on the Internets, or listening to a book on the CD player, or reading the New Yorker - all with the TV on CNN on mute in the background. Lately, there's been a bunch of coverage of floods, this pro wrestler murder-suicide situation, etc. So today when there was news of a foiled terrorist plot, my first reaction was that at least there'd be something interesting on TV. I have since recovered my sanity and should point out that I do not wish terrorist attacks on anyone.

I've also noticed that whenever So.ren is sleeping, I always think I can go run an errand or take a walk. Then I remember you can't do that. Ideally, this initial sense of freedom will simply go away and I'll forget I ever felt it.