Yay, I can fail at this too!

I was so excited to make my own baby food. Really, I felt so jazzed about the whole thing.  I was reading up on recipes before Thing 2 could sit up and was already figuring out what I'd make loooong before I was actually making it.  I was having one big hippie, rainbow-shittin', successful-mama-moment dreaming about how I was going to do something wholesome and right for my little boy.  He would grow up all strong and noble, knowing how to write in cursive, match his own socks, and win the Nobel Prize -- despite my failure at cloth diapering -- all because his mommy made him his first foods.

And it has been one big massive failure.  He hates it. Anything. Everything.

I tried rice and oatmeal first, even though I was biting at the food-processing-bit, and he had super fun allergic reactions.

Oatmeal Art ... unfortunately,
 consuming it made him violently ill

So I researched, and decided to start with orange/yellow veggies first and move to the greens, then fruits.  This is supposed to lay down pathways in the brain that lead to healthy eating habits later.  Supposedly by eating things in this order he would be less likely to develop a sweet tooth -- which led me to believe my mother was giving me chocolate by IV at 4 months of age, but this is beside the point.

I talked with my awesome pediatrician, found websites, read books, then went to websites with simple how-to-recipes that a monkey could follow.  A brain dead, blind monkey ... with a peg leg.

I tried sweet potatoes first.  I grinned like a fool and my husband took pictures.  Baby shivered like a naked man lost int he arctic and gagged like I had asked him to lick a live 9V battery, but he got used to them and eventually he would eat them with only a minimal shudder. But he would eat them.

Yams? Um, two bites then he mutinies.

Squash? Oh hell-to-the-no. You'd swear its torture.

Carrots? Ha!

Avocado? If he could run he would have.

So I figured maybe I just really suck as a baby chef.  Really, who would be surprised by this particular development?  Bought carrots.  Jarred carrots.  He tried those and while it made me feel like less of a failure as a cook (he ate even less of those than he did mine) he still wouldn't eat them.

Giving up I bought pears today.  Pears are yummy. They are fruit, the thing I had intended to not give him until after we'd successfully navigated the less sweet and tasty stuff.  I bought Gerber in a plastic bin, didn't even attempt to make them as it is a lot of freaking work for him to gag on and refuse.

Sigh. Nope.

Now he is sick of the sweet potatoes and won't eat them anymore either.

"Oh Lawd, that airplane is back!"

I let him play with it, play with a spoon, eat in a high chair, on my lap, eat it warm, eat it cold ... in a house, with a mouse ... and a partridge in a pear tree … he wants nothing to do with anything I give him that is "food" ... but he is quite into breast milk still. He also loves to watch people eat and grabs at our food.

I know nutritionally he is fine, I know he can continue this way more or less for a bit. He is about 32 inches long and weighs 23 lbs or so ... not like he is wasting away or anything. I am just baffled. My oldest was inhaling baby food by this age.


I just can't help but laugh that I walked into parenthood this time around thinking I was sooo open minded and was going to do so much better than the stumbling act I did a decade ago with Thing 1.  Well in the immortal words of Lennon, life is what happens while your making other plans.

the genius that is Dobby

(just sharing because it cracks me up)

I will admit to not only being a Harry Potter fan, but also to being mini-obsessed with J.K. Rowling.  She's my hero, plan and simple.  Every time I read anything about her I find myself comparing me to her, which puts me at a ridiculous disadvantage to be sure, but I too was a single mother, want to write a book, have red hair ... but I could read an article discussing that she is female, likes to breathe air, and eat food and would spend the length of that article stupidly exclaiming "me too!" like I was having some kind of major epiphany.

But this morning, while standing outside shivering waiting for the dogs to go numbers one and two before the sun was up, I realized the real brilliance of her writing.

Its not well developed characters with emotional range and problems far superseding the seriousness of those previously seen in books of this genre or for this age group.  Its not the ridiculously complex horcrux/hallows thing that makes me scrunch up my nose and think every time I read it like I am a 12 year old giving it my first go.  Its not any Nazi allegory or the sheer length of the tomes that nevertheless people willingly devoured in under 24 hours either.  No, no, the real literary brilliance of the whole thing lies in Dobby.

Yes, Dobby.

The silly little house elf, and all of his kind, they are the true brilliant spark of Harry Potter.  Creatures that for the first few books Harry isn't even aware of because the mark of a good house elf is that they really aren't noticed.  They move, unseen, in the wee hours of the morning completing tasks that everyone simply assumes will be done.  Unpaid, unappreciated, silent creatures that single-handedly make a household run.  The only time that the existence of such menial tasks is even really noticed is when a house elf is not present to complete it, thereby making it the annoying responsibility of a disgruntled wizard or witch who inevitably will suck at the task because they've always had a damn house elf.

Why, you ask, is this the ingenious gem in the midst of seven huge volumes?  Well isn't it obvious?  We all have our own Dobby, and only a woman, a mom, could write about it so subtly that not everyone would instantly notice?  Harry Potter's mom was killed by He Who Lacks a Nose, sure ... but he had Dobby and Kreature for a time in addition to the harried but lovable Molly Weasley.

Standing there wishing the dogs didn't have to smell every, single blade of grass before they poop on it that epiphany hit me.  We do have a house elf in the mommadeaux abode.

I am Dobby.

So this begs the real question: Where is Hermione and her S.P.E.W. badges when I really need her?

evidence that my child is a horrendous dictator in the making

Following a title like that I am sure you are either thinking "oh my gawd, she's horrible" or "Ha! Preach on sistah, I have one of those kids too!"  Your response of course entirely depends on your being a parent or not being a parent.  Or maybe you are a parent without a sense of humor ... good lord, how do you survive?!

Anyway, my child is only 7 months old and I am pretty sure he has all the makings of a horrendous, terrifying dictator in the making.  I already shudder to think about how the history books will portray his sheer mad brilliance, and I hope history doesn't look down upon me too harshly because, as you are about to see, his path was set long before I started to pretend I had control over this.

{Editors Note: I still pretended I had control of him as a human being from the moment the little line on the pee-stick formed right up until about a few weeks before my due date, when I realized I had truly zero control over anything having to do with this kid beyond incubating him.}

With no further adieu, the Top 5 Reasons My Kid Will Someday Be a Terrifying Dictator:

1. His nickname in the womb was Voldabean.  As in a morph of Jellybean and Voldemort.  Yeah.  At 13 weeks I had my first ultrasound, and it looked like a jellybean with a heartbeat.  I thought it was cute -- this kid hadn't given me any morning sickness or unpleasant preggo symptoms as of yet so I started calling the little gender-less blob my Jellybean.  Fast forward to the Jellybean turning into a Sasquatch sized member of Cirque de Soleil in my tummy who left me with horrendous heartburn, back pain, early onset of contractions, and thought his "due date" was merely a laughable suggestion of date he should avoid arriving on at all costs... I started saying I was going to give birth to Voldemort.  Voldabean was the compromise.

2. His little baby hands can out-do any Chinese Water Torture trial.  Oh. My. Gawd.  I don't care how short I trim those nails, they are daggers.  Maybe he is like Wolverine and can retract them, I don't know.  To add to this he has this adorable habit of squeezing his hands open and closed right as he falls asleep.  So right as he drifts off he starts slowly, delicately, gouging four small trenches in your arm and all you can do is put up with it, or wake him up.  Yes, I have scars.

3. He has a sick sense of humor.  Not all dictators have this, in fact many don't thus why they are so uptight and horrible.  But my kid?  He has already learned to apply his gasp of the ironic in order to manipulate me. Example: I am with this child nearly 24/7.  I am the focal point of his world, and nearly always there trying to teach him and help him.  Who did he roll over for first?  My mom.  When he learned to do the much harder back to belly roll over, who did he do that for first?  St. Paul of Bunyan.  After days of working with his slowly emerging and adorable ability to clap I was gone from his side maybe a couple hours only to return and find him perched on St Paul's knee clapping furiously.  When I excitedly said "he's clapping!" St. Paul replied, "oh he's been doing that for like an hour now."  Don't even get me started on how the little traitor babbles "Dadadada" constantly.

4. His sense of timing is flawless.  Timing is everything, everyone knows this.  And so does my baby.  Case in point: child holds off on a blow-out until just the right moment.  Like the I am running late wearing my favorite shirt and only clean jeans in the house, go to pick him up and put him on my hip and ... I'll spare you the visual.

5. He is so stinkin' cute and perfect he could convince you to do anything.  It has been said that the greatest, most horrible dictators of our time were, for all their tyrannical cruelty, still very good leaders.  This is how they were able to convince so many to follow them, no matter what.  I assure you, Thing 2 could make you do anything.  Anything.  Between his perfect little round-bald-baby-head, big blue eyes framed with perfect dark, curly eyelashes, and adorably chubby cheeks ... my kid could kick the Gerber kid's ass.  He sneezed yams into my eye the other day, and I am the world's biggest sissy with eye stuff.  The word "contacts" makes me shiver just at the thought of touching an eyeball, but there I was with globs of grainy yam in my eye sockets and he laughed, and I was okay with it.  That gummy little smile could melt Satan's heart.  This child can already convince you to do anything, so I can only assume that this skill will be honed and of greater threat once he practices some more.

So let the record show, someday when my child is trying to overtake a small country or is working at the Motor Vehicle Division, that I saw the signs and tried to intervene.  But then he gave me that cute little gummy smile and used sign language to either sign "mama" or "bitch" (they look really similar) and I know whichever it is, it refers to me, and I just melted.  Sorry world.

socks ... in the dishwasher

People say stupid stuff.  Some people, however, are overachievers.

I slept like a baby.

Who in the hell says something that dumb, unless of course its following an all-night-drink-til-you-wet-yourself-bender because that's what my baby does.  I actually put laundry in the dishwasher yesterday.  I blame lack of sleep.  I woke up with my left eye swollen and oozing green toothpaste, but I am not sick.  I think my left eye, rebel that it is, was just pissed it didn't get to stay closed that long.  The right eye was more understanding and merely was bloodshot and felt like it was holding a sandbox.

Apparently at about 6.5 to 7 months of age babies go through a separation anxiety phase.  Haven't looked that up on any milestone charts because I am living it and hardly need some PhD's confirmation that hell exists.  Thing 2 is learning that we are not one person, that I can actually be separate from him.  I think this is further evidence my child is a freaking genius because he can grasp abstract concepts because I don't think we have actually been physically apart since his birth, twenty-nine weeks ago.  At any rate, he sleeps for about an hour then freaks out and needs held.  He also should be about 6 feet long by the end of the week because he wants  to eat about every 20 seconds.  

But back to my point, "sleeping like a baby" is a phrase either first uttered by one sarcastic SOB or someone who has never even seen an effing baby.  Go ahead, embroider that shat on a pillow, I know you want to.

Now on to my day where I try not to appear narcoleptic.

the Definition of Motherhood is ...

I saw something on facebook the other day that said something to the effect of motherhood = free labor and while I fully agree with this sentiment, it stuck with me and made me think.

The next time it crossed my mind was on my most recent 2 and a half hour flight.  You see St Paul and Thing 1 got up to pee twice each during the flight.  We had not followed the no fluids prior to the flight rule, I guess, because I had to go wicked bad too.  But did I go?  No.  Why not, you ask?  Well its simple: I was holding a sleeping baby.

You know, the sleeping baby everyone evil eyed while we walked down the aisle to our seats.  The baby that everyone prayed would sit very, very far away from them.  The baby that looked too young to bribe with fruit snacks or promises of presents once we landed.  That baby.  And he was sleeping.  We got on that plane, walked the four miles down that aisle with the tentative evil eyers and story tellers ("oh we flew once with my son at that age and never again, it was awful" -- really lady, gee thanks for that anecdote!) paying too much attention to us while some jackhole 50 people in front of us took forever to stow their carry-ons.  Once we finally poured our four selves, three backpacks, camera bag and jackets into those impossibly snug, funny smelling three seats I immediately set to work.  Got him as tired and hungry as possible and began feeding him so that he slept/ate through take off and beyond.

So while St Paul and Thing 1 got up for round two of the potty dance and my bladder was reaching the critical point, I looked down at the most angelic little sleeping baby in my arms and knew, just knew, that if I got up and handed Thing 2 off to St Paul there was a snowball's chance that he'd stay asleep.  Between my own waning sanity and the silent prayers of those around us I figured my bladder would just have to hold it.

And that my friends is the definition of motherhood:

Motherhood is holding it when you really gotta go -- even though your children ruined your ability to hold it to begin with -- because if you just wait and keep that kiddo sleeping then your family won't be material for everyone else's gripes on the drive home from the airport.  

"How was your flight?" 

"Oh there was this baby ..."