girlfiend

I just added the latest to my book list (too lazy to link- it’s in the sidebar) and realized that the number can’t be right. I’m sure that I’ve read at least half a dozen more books than I’ve remembered to write down.

My memory for books is totally shot. In the past couple of months I’ve gotten books from the library, read the first three chapters, thought they sounded vaguely familiar, then looked up the titles only to find that I’d read them- and added them to my book list- before.  At some point the same thing will happen again only I won’t be able to find the title on my book list since I never remembered to write it down before returning the book to the library.

It is irritating and an argument for purchasing books instead of borrowing them. I fondly remember the days when I used to drop $50 on books just because I was in a bookstore. Now I just take my kid to the bookstore to play with trains while I drink overpriced coffee (paid with by gift card) and go to the library to read books.

Anyway, the latest book on my list, A Lion Among Men? In a word, Meh.

The baby turned six months old last week. The occasion was overshadowed by my mother’s field trip with the Fiendling (see below) but it was not forgotten. While the Fiendling wasn’t eating and the baby was napping I managed to bake a half birthday cake (for everyone but the baby, of course) that I took to my cousin’s house later. Banana chocolate chip cake with chocolate frosting. It should have been peanut butter icing but my cousin’s daughter has a peanut allergy. The chocolate was a fine substitute.

Back to the baby.

He can sit unassisted (though not for very long) and spends lots of time playing on his belly. I fear he’s getting the idea that true mobility is an option, but for now he just accidentally moves himself about. He’s hit the super-grabby stage where nothing is safe. The poor baby has had “curry fingers” a few nights this week and my hair is often entwined in his pudgy hands.

The teething is well underway. He got two on the bottom last month and the top two have just broken through. I fear there are more to come, sooner rather than later, but the good news is that he’s a trooper and though the teeth clearly bother him, his sleep is only interrupted once or twice a night.

I love that he’s predictable. He naps in the morning and naps in the afternoon. Every night he’s ready to go to sleep by 7 but can last longer if I need him to. I know he’ll wake up for the first time at either 2 or 4 and that I’m guaranteed another 3 hours (or more) after that. He prefers to sleep in his own crib and he almost never falls asleep on me.

He’s not quite ready for solid foods. The grabby hands made me think he might be interested but his first encounter with a banana just confused him. Since then I haven’t tried to give him anything but my mother-in-law gave him some banana the other night. To prove how much I’ve grown I didn’t even throw a fit that she gave my baby solid foods without asking when he’s clearly not eating solids yet.

He really is extraordinarily good tempered. Even when he’s fussy he smiles and giggles a bit since he’s never quite sure if he really *wants* to be fussy. He only ever cries when he’s hungry, tired, or hurt, and aside from the times I’m forced to meet his brother’s needs first he rarely cries for very long. He’s
at such a fun stage that the Fiendling really likes him now and gives him toys to play with when he cries. He’s at such a fun stage that the toys sometimes even make him stop crying.

He is the happiest, giggliest, funniest little baby. He loves to be kissed under the chin and tossed up in the air. He laughs like a maniac when you kiss his belly and laughs even harder when there are sound effects involved.

And of course he’s adorable.

The stats:
Birth weight- 7 lbs 9 oz
Birth length- 20 inches

6 months weight- 17 lbs 6 oz
6 months length- 27.5 inches

I know that the beginning of this story doesn’t have much to do with the end but it’s all related in my head and right now I’m so angry I can’t really separate it. So bear with me.

Let’s start with my mother’s tenant. She rented her (furnished! more on this in a minute) apartment to some guy for a lot less money than she wanted because some Japanese businessman backed out at the last minute. The first time she went into the apt after the guy took the lease she found a dog, an extra bed, and a huge mess. She was pissed, but let it go.

Fast forward to last month. She went back into the apartment to look at things and found furniture and lamps missing and a bigger mess. She looked at some bills out on the table and saw a woman’s name. She left a note and the woman, a nurse in the apartment for three months, called back and said she was renting the place through an agency. My mother was furious and distraught over her missing furniture.

Months ago, when she told me she planned on renting the place furnished I told her she was out of her fucking mind. She’s got thousands of dollars worth of furniture in that tiny little studio. Renovating the place took forever and cost her a fortune. Boyfiend and I went in to pick up a few things she didn’t have room in her car for the night before the guy’s lease started. She seriously left everything. A stocked refrigerator and freezer, booze, saran wrap and tin foil, expensive framed prints, silk pillows, everything.  I called her annoyed that she was leaving so much stuff behind. She told me she didn’t care about any of it.

Until she learned that the guy is subletting. Now she cares. Because he’s making money off of her stuff she was in tears with fury. I told her not to do anything stupid and Boyfiend hooked her up with a lawyer/realtor he works for. The lawyer found out the dude is making $700 a month off of her place so she evicted him. Now she’s got no tenant and she’s stuck paying the mortgage on two places with the money she makes on her pension. This past weekend she moved back into the city for a while.

Since she’s here she decided to take the Fiendling, by bus, to the Franklin Institute to see some train exhibit and go out to lunch. She imagined it being some special grandmother/grandson field trip with lots of food she imagines I won’t allow him to eat and lots of toys she knows I won’t buy him in the overpriced gift shop.

Today was the big day. I never psych him up for things in advance because disappointment is huge and loud when you’re 2 1/2 so I didn’t even tell him until this morning. Then she called at 9 and said that there was no train exhibit. It’s only there for the holiday. Instead of taking him out she wanted to come here and just babysit him instead.

I said absolutely not and went to the Franklin Institute website. I don’t know what special train exhibit she was talking about but the train I remember from when I was there as a kid is still there. She probably just didn’t feel like going.  Even though it is a huge pain in the ass for me to pack both kids into the car in the rain, drive to my mom’s, drive back here, go back to her place to pick him up, and head all the way out to Conshohocken to my cousin’s at the start of rush hour, I told her that she should take him anyway.

I said he was eating breakfast and the baby was napping so we’d probably leave within the hour. It was about 9. 15 at the time. I got him to her place by 10.30. I handed my mother a small bag that she can fit in her purse with a few disposable diapers (since I know she doesn’t know what to do with the cloth), some wipes, a small snack and a sippy cup. She looked at the bag and told me that she was just going to leave it at the front desk and get it when they return from the museum. I wanted to grab her and smack her, but instead I explained that he’s not potty trained, not by any stretch of the imagination. If he took a crap in his diaper he would have to stand in it while waiting for the bus then sit in it on the bus home. I told her that she has to take the diapers and the wipes and the cup and the snack. Then I left hoping for the best.

I didn’t hear from her again until 2. She called and told me that they were back, the Fiendling was resting on her couch watching TV and that I should come pick him up. The baby was napping and I had no intention of waking him so I waited until he was awake, fed and changed and got into the car. She called again at 3 to ask where I was and I told her I’d be there in 5 minutes. When I got there they were waiting in the lobby. He was happy to see me and thrilled about the new trains she bought him at the museum. She told me they had a great time. They took the bus there, a cab back (no car seat!), and she changed his diaper.

On our drive to my cousin’s I asked him about his day. He didn’t have much to say about it but told me about the new toys she bought him. I asked him what they ate for lunch. He told me he saw candy. I pressed further- did you eat any candy. No, he just saw it. It was red and green and white. I asked if he ate french fries. No. Grilled cheese. No. Pizza. No. Pretzels. No. At this point I started to panic. It was 3.30. I’d dropped him off five hours ago. She told me she was going to take him out for lunch but when she described the day when I picked him up there was no mention of lunch. Could it be possible?  I called.

I asked her where she took him for lunch. She told me she didn’t. I asked her what she fed him. She told me she didn’t. He wasn’t hungry. He wasn’t hungry!  I said okay and hung up before my head exploded.

She had my son, my 2 1/2 year-old underweight son, her grandson, for close to five fucking hours and she didn’t feed him? She was responsible for my baby. I let her take him into the city without me. I trusted her with my son and she didn’t feed him because he said he wasn’t hungry? He ate breakfast at 9 and it was close to 4 and my poor kid hadn’t eaten all day long.

At my cousin’s he ate grapes, carrots and a hot dog. Then he ate some noodles and a few lollipops. Then he ate pizza, a cookie, some cake and another lollipop. We got home and he ate another hot dog. My mother’s head is so far up her ass sometimes it’s a wonder I survived my childhood.

There are many more things I’m bad at, but these have been bugging me lately.

1. Closing lids all the way. I have a terrible habit of leaving lids ajar or loose which often results in messes and spills. You would think that I would have learned my lesson by now but I have not. Drawers fall into this category too. When ever I straighten up my bedroom, closing the drawers all the way is the first order of business.

2. Folding laundry. I am very good at getting it washed and dried, but once it’s brought upstairs it sits, wrinkling in the baskets until I need the baskets to bring up another clean load. Then the Fiendling knocks the baskets over and jumps in the clean clothes, only he calls it helping me fold the laundry.

3. Getting dressed in the morning. I am not a morning person. I will be up for hours before I can bring myself to get dressed. In the winter I blame this on my freezing cold house- it was 58 degrees in here all morning. But in the summer I have no excuses. Just laziness.

4. Getting my children dressed in the morning. I will change their diapers, but clothes? Why should they need to be dressed when I’m so comfortable in my pajamas.

5. I was going to add eating in the morning. The Fiendling eats hours before I do and then I’m scrambling to shove some food in my mouth when we’re running out the door. But really, it’s not just eating and getting dressed. I pretty much just suck at mornings. I’m completely useless.

I just uploaded a bunch of wedding pictures to facebook and thanks to childbirth I will never be that thin again. It’s a good thing the Fiendling is awesome.

Today he ran away from me at the playground with two of his little friends. They started booking down a huge hill to the field below. I had the baby on my chest and did not feel like running down that hill to get him. I yelled for him to come back and he did. He actually turned around and came back. It was the first time that calling for him worked.

We’ve been using a sticker chart to get him to sleep in his own bed all night. After he gets 7 stickers he gets a prize. We’ve been stuck at 6 for days. As much as he wants new trains he likes sleeping in our bed better.

He sings all the time now. He sings while he plays and he sings to his little brother. His sweet little tuneless voice is precious.

The other day we had lunch with some friends. His little friend asked if he could have a bite of orange. The Fiendling said yes and passed him the bowl. The friend said thank you and the Fiendling replied with you’re welcome. It was so freaking cute to see two two-year-olds have such a polite exchange.

He refers to hamburgers as handburger sandwiches

He prefers to eat most of his foods frozen. He’ll eat frozen waffles with frozen blueberries for breakfast, frozen veggie corn dogs, frozen broccoli and frozen strawberries for lunch, and frozen spinach nuggets, frozen corn and icy peas for dinner. He’s outraged that I can’t freeze his breakfast cereal. He often demands to eat his noodles frozen. With butter and cheese.

Getting him to sleep is still a process but I’ve become pretty zen about it. Instead of getting angry and frustrated I’ve learned to take deep breaths and go with it. He’ll only be little for so long. I know that in a few years I’ll be sad that he longer asks me to hold him when he’s trying to fall asleep and I’ll miss the way he takes my hand and rubs it against his face.

Rules are starting to make sense so he asks a lot of questions to clarify which he then answers himself. “I can pick my nose in the bathroom? Oh, yes, I can pick my nose in the bathroom. I can pick my nose in the car? Oh, I can pick my nose in the car. Does the playroom at the gym have a bathroom?  Yes. Does grandmom’s house have a bathroom? Yes. Can I pick my nose in the kitchen? No, I can’t pick my nose in the kitchen. It’s both charming and revolting.

When I’m nursing the baby before bed or a nap and he falls asleep on me, sometimes, when I stand to put him in his crib, his little face will scrunch up and his mouth will open, rooting around. I’ll then go to the closest surface- a shelf, the arm of the sofa, or a table- rest him on it, stick my boob back into his mouth, and continue the short trip to his crib.

Obama is declared president-elect. Footage of thousands of people cheering and crying. Boyfiend asks, “Is that Kenya?”

No. It’s Morehouse College. It’s a surprise we get invited anywhere.

Watching the results on ABC, Boyfiend says, “I don’t want poor, stupid people voting. That’s the last thing we need.”

After pausing for a moment he added, “Statements like that are why we didn’t get invited to an election party.”

Yes, exactly.