Baby Hell

Well, just when I thought things were getting better, life (aka, Noah) throws a big fat old ugly crying wrench at me.

All of a sudden, he's been crying his head off instead of sleeping as if he never learned to sleep in his crib.  Last night, I actually let him cry for 2 hours in his crib before finally rescuing him.  TWO HOURS!  Judah never cried that long when I sleep-trained him--45 minutes tops.  But Noah has the stamina of a team of wild horses, apparently.  The dude cried like he was being dipped in battery acid for TWO HOURS and probably would've kept going if I had the heart to let him.

In general, Noah's napping/sleeping has deteriorated to the point where I absolutely dread nap times and bedtimes.  At some point I know I will be asking myself to make the impossible choice--pick him up and risk 'spoiling' him or let him cry for a long time and feel myself shrivel up and die.

Noah and his horrible eye infection.

To make matters worse, whenever Noah cries for a long time his eye infection gets much much worse.  In general, his eye is not getting any better and it's making me beyond frustrated and sad.  It looks so flaming angry and red after a big cry session--like something that spawned from the evil of Mordeth in Shadar Logoth (so sue me, I'm a fantasy nerd going through the Wheel of Time series while I'm waiting for G.R.R. Martin to take his sweet honey time finishing Book 7-9 of Game of Thrones.  Any day now Martin!)

Anyway, where was I?

Oh yeah, hell.  Baby hell.  A land where everyone's tired and cranky but nobody sleeps.  Ever.

Population: me.

Ramblings of the Sleep-Deprived

I'm tired.

Bone. Tired.

Everyday I fall about an hour more behind in my sleep deficit.  This entire week was full of crap sleep.  I usually have a couple hours of insomnia each night, but yesterday Noah decided to wake up and cry his ever-loving head off no less than 6 times in the night.  Ugh.

However much Noah deprives me of rest, he more than makes up in chubbiness.  That sentence doesn't really make sense.  I'm tired.

I really think having babies is a young person's game.  I'm just too old for this no-sleep sh*t.  I think once you hit 30+ you just can't live off 5 hours of sleep like you could in your early twenties.

I remember my good ol' college days--clubbing until 2:30 am and then stumbling to class at 8 am and feeling just fine and dandy.  But now.  Oh man, if I don't get at least 7.5 hours I'm in a world of hurt.

But Noah's not the only one causing us to lose sleep.  Judah has gotten into a new phase of being scared at night.  He wakes up around 2 or 3 am and screams his head off until one of us drags him into our room to sleep with us.  And once there he proceeds to squirm around and kick us a couple times every hour.  Joy.

So, in short, we are tired.

So tired in fact that we actually had this very pathetic conversation last week.

Spouse: If you could magically push a button and make our kids painlessly disappear, would you?

Me: Isn't that like...murder?

Spouse: No...I said "disappear."

Me:  Isn't that like what the mafia says when they want someone murdered?  'Disappear', 'taken care of', 'sleep with the fishes'?

And then we just had to laugh at how sad our lives had become.  Of course we love our kids and couldn't imagine life without them.

But yeah, if I had a magic button, I would totally press it from 10 pm to 8 am in the morning.

Week 17 and 18

Today Noah had his 4 month check up.  He's still hitting his percentile curves exactly--95th percentile in weight, 90th percentile in height and 50th percentile in his pee-wee head.  That's my boy.

His main medical issues are some dry skin around his eyes that may have gotten infected and some major eczema all over his body.  Not a big deal as medical issues go.

Noah and his puffy red eye condition.

Throughout the appt Noah kept demonstrating his amazing athleticism by continually rolling onto his tummy and grabbing the stethoscope with a baby death-grip.  Show-off.

Finally started sitting in the Bumbo last week (yes, I know it's supposed to be on the floor)

Life with Noah is getting slowly easier although it really is hard to roll with the punches.  I STILL can't figure out his routine from day to day.  Sometimes he naps for 40 min and sometimes it's 2 hours.  It's pretty impossible to predict.  And then just when I think I have things figured out, of course it changes.

Ah babies, they sure keep you on your toes.

One Brief Shining Moment

Lately Judah has been turning into a super-whiny and irritating guy.

He is really into changing his mind a thousand times--I want juice, no I don't want juice, no I WANT juice, no I DON'T want juice, etc.

And anytime things don't go his way (which is a lot--no lunch! no dinner! no nap! no bedtime! no leaving the park! no going inside! no going outside!) this demon face is sure to rear its ugly head:

So let's just say Mother's Day was no picnic for me.  Or, as my friend put it--every day is mother's day!  Ha ha ha ha.

But there was one shining moment today that I will hold on to forever in my memory bank of treasures.  I was getting ready for church in the morning, wearing a dress (which is rare for me), and had just pulled my hair back in a pony-tail (also rare), when I hear Judah's little voice behind me saying,

"Mommy, you look like a princess!"

What?  Wow, I never hear that word.  All day, every day I only hear about policemen, robbers, batman, robin, jokerman, and the occasional fireman.  So of course it made me feel...like a princess.

And I can think of no better mother's day gift than that.

The Meaning of Mother's Day

Judah brought home some mother's day gifts he made at daycare.

The best kind of bouquet--lasts forever!

Silly little things but it made my heart swell with joy.

So cute and a wee bit drooly.

He said, "It's for Mother's Day," so I asked him what Mother's Day means.

And he replied "It's for loving you."

Man they teach him well at that daycare!

Week 15 and 16

We are slowly, ever so slowly inching our way out of the deep dark hole called "having a newborn."

Noah's congestion has cleared up a lot in the last couple weeks, which makes me think he probably just had a lingering cold.  Phew.  Of course, being the control-freak that I am, I'm already wondering how I can prevent another horrible cold from happening to Noah--probably nothing more than I'm already doing.

Also nap-training is getting a tiny bit better.  Noah will now sleep a solid 45 min - 2 hours with only a couple minutes of crying.  Much improved but some days are still better than others.

And I met a couple more mom friends in my neighborhood so I don't feel as isolated as before.  One of them even invited us to her son's birthday party last week which was a major highlight for Judah.

Things have improved so much we even went on our first fun family outing in 4 months--a trip to the zoo of course.

Judah takes a rare break from his police attire to put on his "fireman" uniform.

Judah asked if the super-croc was "real" and got me tripped up explaining fake fossils for extinct animals.  Brain melt.

Obviously he had to drive the fire engine since he was a fireman that day.

This, ladies and gents, is what pure joy looks like.

But don't get me wrong, things are far from perfect still.  I still curse the mornings (but more so because of sleep-deprivation than not having the will to live).  I still miss Judah like crazy when he's away at daycare (even though I know I still don't have the energy to handle him more at home).  And we still have nursing issues--I won't bore you with the details but let's just say plugged ducts suck.

But despite all that, I find myself falling head over heals in love with my fat goober more every day.  It's amazing how different brothers can be.  At this age, Judah was so visually curious and wanted to see everything that he only wanted to sit in the Bumbo.  His core muscles became freakishly strong and he sat upright really early on.

Noah on the other hand is perfectly content to be in his reclining bouncey chair and can't sit in the Bumbo at all.  But he LOVES tummy time.  Noah is always trying to roll onto his tummy and once there, can actually lift his butt high in the air and inch forward.  OMG he's almost crawling!!!!!

I think we have a crawler finally!!!!

I'm allowed to be over-excited because Judah never learned to crawl.  He detested tummy time and went straight from sitting to standing to walking.  That guy had no patience for being close to the ground.

My two boys are so different in so many ways (though physically they're pretty similar--big and fat with a little head).  And I couldn't possibly love them more.

And What the Police Gonna Say?

For the last 2-3 months Judah has been obsessed with being a policeman.

 He refuses to wear anything that isn't blue because he wants to always be in "uniform."  He especially loves the "police" t-shirt in the picture so much that I finally just bought 2 more so we could avoid the inevitable epic meltdowns when the shirt had to be washed.  (If you look closely at my last few blog entries, you can see this shirt in almost every pic of Judah).

Judah imagines he's being a good policeman by helping wash dishes.

But dressing like a policeman is not good enough for Judah anymore.

Now he wants to know every aspect of their lives and whether his life comports with that.  Almost everything I say to him is followed by a question about police.

For example, I'll say, "Do you need to go potty?"
And Judah responds, "Do police go potty?"

Or I'll put some mac 'n' cheese in front of him and he asks, "Do police eat mac 'n' cheese?"
He still hasn't realized the uncanny coincidence that the police love eating everything that mommy has happened to put in front of him--especially turkey and broccoli.

But by far the most annoying thing is Judah's need to gauge how a policeman would respond to any given situation.  About 500x a day Judah wants to know "What the police gonna say?"

For example, I'll say "Listen to mommy or you're going to get a time out."  And Judah will say "And what the police gonna say to me?"

I usually just turn it into a kind of morality tale--"Umm, the police are going to say--you better listen to your mommy or else you're going to jail."

But other times, it's just so random.  Today I said "You love eating mangoes!" after watching him inhale several mango pieces.  And Judah said "And what the police gonna say?"

What?  The police don't give a rat's butt about how you love eating mangoes.  Weirdo.

Instead, I mumbled something about how eating mangoes will make you stronger so you can catch the robbers.

That's what my life has become--a constant attempt to imagine what the police are going to say to my 2 year old in any given situation.