life with baby

Single Mom, 4:17 AM

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I became a single mom for the week at 3:44 am this morning, according to my upstairs bedroom clock as Brian pulled away.

I realize that no one is coming back to shut off the light upstairs. (Brian, honey, you left the light on upstairs. You also left your spare camera battery and charger. Guess you’ll have to be sparing with photo taking..) I turn the light off, and realize I need my alarm on. I turn on my alarm for 5:45. Gotta hit the bathroom too. Lights out again.

I immediately hear everything. Ev-er-ee-thing. My ears are ringing, at a couple different tones. I spend a few minutes trying to determine if they are all in my ears, and I have decided I am pretty sure one tone is coming from outside, pulsing at some 30 second intervals. The windows are open. I hear a gunshot coming from Jameson’s room, which is really him pounding the bed with his feet, or coughing. My God, does he do this every night? And Sasha, making a nest in her bed.

I’m thinking, great, Jameson already got up to eat at 1 am but only from one side. I am lopsided and uncomfortable on top of hearing my loud household and suburban neighborhood. Is this how it is for full time single moms? Hearing every little noise, wide awake for no reason at 4 am? I have a lot of practice going back to sleep. I get up every night to feed Jameson. I am good at this.

I look up at the clock. 4:03. Only 15 minutes have gone by. My ears are still ringing.

This week is going to s.u.c.k.

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life with baby

Sloppy Sitter

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On Friday last week, Mr. Jameson discovered that *gasp* hands can be used for balancing!

In typical Jameson fashion, it happened suddenly, without preparation with my camera. I put him in the sitting position and expected him to immediately flop over as usual and BAM! … nothing happened.

(Bam is not, perhaps, the right word to use right there…)

Since then we’ve put him in various locations to demonstrate his new awesomeness. He can last for a little while now, though he’s still what we’ve been calling “sloppy”.

Here are a couple highlights:

Jameson on the right and his new friend Mark, just one week younger.
This is the infamous Grass Face* in all its crying glory. Photo courtesy of Brian!

*Remember Grass Face?

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life with baby

and now, for your evening entertainment…

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Brian and I typically eat dinner after Jameson goes to bed. Lately, he’s been having an earlier bed time, but last night was an exception because we had yet another financial adviser appointment. (This guys is really good and methodical, and I think we have a few more appointments to go before we’re done setting up all our plans.) Brian’s mom watched Jameson and we got back later than usual.

Cut to Brian and I sitting down for dinner around 9 pm last night, and Jameson is still wide awake and relatively happy in his crib. He’s allowed one small stuffed animal bear in his crib. It’s not large and we didn’t start putting it there until he was about 5 months old. I put it there because sometimes he’s not a fan of being rocked to sleep, and thought it might help soothe him.

Not last night. Our evening entertainment consisted of watching Jameson roll around in his crib on the video monitor (not full rolls, just half rolls to the side and back). He was rolling around with his bear in one hand and pacifier in the other “yelling” at his mobile or his little bear or pacifier, or maybe just to hear is own voice.

Seriously, we watched him for about 20 minutes at dinner, cracking up. No TV entertainment could possibly be better. [I’m being serious, this is the highlight of my life]

And speaking of rolling around, the past couple days we have been finding Jameson with his feet through the slats on the crib. I never put on the bumper that came with my crib set(mostly because it’s awful to change the sheets with it on. I mean, SIDS aside, no one ever tells you that traditional bumpers are a pain like that!). Anyway, I am thinking maybe now it might be helpful. Though, so far, we haven’t woken to a screaming baby that hit his head or anything.

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life with baby

Because Blog, Photos, Baby Book Aren’t Enough

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I decided to buy this book, the One Line a Day: A Five-Year Memory Book based on the recommendation of another blog I read, Simplify. Her baby is adorable. Tangent: For some reason, after having Jameson, I have all-baby fever. I like to read and look at other people’s baby photos. Not even to compare, just to look at babies. Love.

Anyway, I take photos every week, I write in here, and I even have a baby book which I am (poorly) keeping up with, but I’ve decided to try this as well. Unfortanately it has dates on it… so I will be starting mid-year, which doesn’t sit well with the perfectionist part of me, but leaving it go until next year and missing all the fun memories seems worse.

I also hope it will help remind me of the great things that have happened in the past week, because I am very forgetful now (Brian can attest, I have mommy-brain to the max). The link reference there indicates that I am now super awesome at being a mom, and pretty much crappy at everything else. At least, that’s what I got out of the article. ha.

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general life, life with baby

Date Night

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Finding time to spend just the two of us is more difficult than ever with work and baby, but Monday movie night is helping us get that time together. It’s becoming a mini date night almost, after Jameson goes to bed.

It started a few weeks ago, Brian got a code for a free first night’s rental for Blockbuster Express (their version of Redbox… Redbox is in more locations and is generally more convenient, but who can pass up free?). And maybe it’s working for them, because they keep doing it! (Here’s a site that has a promo code for this week)

For us, we watch the movie Monday night and return it on Tuesday so we never pay. So far, we have been using it more than our Netflix via snail mail. Okay, we still do watch a lot of Netflix via streaming, but I had a Netflix DVD sitting on our console for about two months, no joke (for the record, it was Green Zone, and I ended up finishing it last week finally; it was pretty good).

Anyway, I have a standing list of movies, in the order that I’d like to see them, that I just kind of add to each week for Brian to choose from. So far, Brian has been avoiding my chick flicks. *sigh*

Love & Other Drugs
Life As We Know It
The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest
Tangled
Dinner for Schmucks
Letters for Juliet
Chronicle of Narnia: Voyage of the Dawn Treader
The Last Airbender
No Strings Attached
Narnia
The Kings Speech
Tron

Some weeks, I am just too tired, and Brian gets a movie for himself to watch. But for the most part, this has become a nice new routine for us. I suppose when Blockbuster stops, we’ll go back to Netflix movies, but I like the dedicated night for movie watching.

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life with baby

The Boys

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On Monday, our friends JP & Lisa came to visit with their son Jonathan for a little cookout. Jonathan was born 7 weeks after Jameson, so he’s one of the closest friends in age to Jameson. Jonathan was also born 4 weeks premature. Look at him now! He is almost 2 months younger and he and Jameson are the same size!

(For the record, we did not dress them alike on purpose, but how cute!)

(And I really can’t wait for our new couches…)

Which just makes me wonder about how different babies are. Jonathan from what I gather is a voracious eater. Jameson is just.. ho hum. I’m pretty sure from day 1 that unless he was starving, Jameson has never been super interested in eating.

Take our solid food trials… I have read that breastfed babies can wait until 6 months old to start eating solids, but my old co-worker’s son who is exactly Jameson’s age started early (he is formula fed, just for reference) so we just couldn’t wait to get started ourselves. We did however wait until he was 4-1/2 months old, after we got the doctors go ahead.

And flop. Some days are good, some days are bad. It took about 3 weeks for Jameson to get the hang of opening his mouth for the spoon. I mean he just finally got it recently. And some days are still just bad. I just talked about his love for carrots and what do you know, last night he wasn’t having any of it.

I am speculating again, and we all know that speculating really just gets us no where, but I am just dying to know what’s going through that little baby brain of his. Is it the teething? Was he just too tired? We are still putting him to bed between 8-8:30 most nights, and it’ll vary depending on his nap schedule at daycare, so we do have him go down for an evening nap that we usually have to wake him up from. Ugh. I don’t know.

His 6 month appointment is approaching at the end of this month, so I will be very interested to know where he lies on the percentile scale. Oh well! At least he and Jonathan make good pictures together.

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general life, life with baby

Lettuce

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I go to the farmers market for the lettuce. I do, seriously. Someone from some small little internet news business took a photo of Brian. When she asked why he came there, he said for the “fresh produce”. Laughing, I corrected him with what I firmly believe to be the reason we go. The Lettuce, with a capital L. There is nothing like farm- or garden- grown lettuce. It is soft and crisp at the same time. Light, but still filling. Excellent with just a little oil and vinegar or lemon juice.

Lucky for me, it was also the only thing really there this early in the season. Maybe I was just dreaming, hoping for something a little more… but really it was just lettuce and some starter plants. We did go ahead and get some herbs which we’ll plant in pots (since we have no garden this year)

So no fresh produce for Jameson just yet. We did go to the grocery store then and buy him some more Gerbers Nature Select foods. We bought more of his favorite carrots, some peas, bananas and prunes. I am sure there are a lot of theories out there as to the order things should be done, but I figure after cereal, its a free for all (except meat, and food with more than one ingredient, or food that is too thick… I am not that crazy), just space some things out a few days and make sure there is no bad reaction. So he’s getting a mix of fruit and vegetables, we didn’t start with vegetables cause they taste bad or anything. I myself like vegetables better than fruit, actually. Not that that has anything to do with his likes and dislikes.

For the first time the other night, Jameson finally opened his mouth properly for the spoon. I think he likes the carrots. We had them for a couple nights, but when we switched to peas, spoon eating became a struggle once again. But then on Sunday night he decided he liked peas. So we will keep at it!

P.S. We are famous now, because my quotation was in the little article along with Brian’s photo. She seemed to take it literally though when I edited Brian’s comment, because Brian is quoted as saying that we come for the lettuce. haha.

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life with baby

Memorial Weekend

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So far, we’ve had a lovely weekend. Brian took off work on Thursday and Friday, so we had an unheard of 5 day weekend. I guess you might call it a staycation. We spent Thursday seeing the Hangover Part II (which I enjoyed almost as much as the first, even with the same plot line) and then running a few errands but otherwise enjoying each other’s company.

Friday was spent more or less the same, relaxing at home and outside whenever we could. Jameson also spent a few hours at the new daycare where apparently he has decided he is the big kid and can pull off other babies socks. So cute! I wish I had seen it. Apparently he was cracking himself up while doing it and even the teacher commented on his funny catching-his-breath baby giggles.

Saturday after the farmers market we enjoyed a little family cookout for Brian’s birthday at his parents. And along with a few cute moments like this:

Jameson also discovered chewing on his toes! I was pretty excited, because the doctor informed us at his 4 month visit that not all babies play with their feet. But I think it is so adorable!

The dessert I made was also a hit. I’ll be sharing that soon too.

Sunday, I did some photo editing. I try to stay away, but I just can’t. It’s not work, it’s play! I love it. We also went over to the neighbor’s cookout. Jameson was great for a couple hours before he needed another nap. This little guy is sleeping all the time now, maybe a growth spurt? I do think he’s teething though too because he has two little bumps. (Even the daycare ladies agreed with me, so not a false alarm like last time, I think!).

Tomorrow we are having a few friends over ourselves, with JP and Lisa and their son Jonathan. She is currently on a special diet, and since we are both nursing, I found a recipe I clipped out of a Better Homes & Gardens a while ago for a non-alcoholic drink called June Bug. I even found some sorbet that is dairy free for Lisa. Hopefully it turns out good, it sounds very tasty.

I hate for this weekend to end, but I know I have an exciting week ahead at the new job.

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life with baby

Grass Face

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For a while now I’ve been telling everyone that I can’t wait for Jameson to sit on his own so I can plop him in the grass and take lots of photos. I’ve been dying to take cute grass photos.

Well, we finally did put him in the grass even though he can’t sit on his own. The neighbors stopped by on Sunday and we had a classy impromptu photo shoot.

However, Jameson did not have the grinning, excited face I was hoping for… in fact, I think he was a little concerned about the grass… most of our pictures turned out with a concentrating face, concerned face, or crying. I deleted those last ones, haha.

Oh well. We’ll try again soon.

By the way, his onesie says “Peapod v 1.0 just out of beta”. We are nerds, after all. My friend Emma had it custom made for us when Jameson was born, and he finally fits in it. So cute!

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