We Now Return to Our Regularly Scheduled Nonsense

No more Teacher Voice, because really? Ick.



Aaannnnnyway, yesterday marked a new milestone for Al. He attended his first rock concert.

That's right.

I took my 4-month-old to a METAL concert. {Insert Devil Horns here.}

Dudes, before the hatemail starts rolling in, let me clarify that it was an outdoor concert, and it was free, and it was an all-ages sort of thing, and we wanted to support a friend, so we went, dammit.




Al loved it. Well, actually, he slept through it. Right after this photo was taken, the band cranked up, we covered his ears, and he was out like a light. (See? All those months that I listened to Rob Zombie while I was pregnant equipped my son with the oh-so-useful skill of sleeping through rock concerts. I'm sure this will come in handy again someday. Or not.)


Because I love live music of all breeds (OK, so I'm not a huge Bluegrass fan, so shoot me), I was especially excited to be attending a concert! Of the Rock & Roll variety! A competely un-mommy thing to do! Except I probably looked just a smidge out of place, what with my khaki mom-shorts and practical button-up white cotton sleeveless shirt amidst the sea of black. But I didn't care, nor did the metal dudes.

Hmm, I can't seem to find a page for "Baby's First Metal Concert" in the baby book. What gives?

In Which I Use My Teacher Voice

Lately I've noticed some cattiness in the hallways comments of the Blogosphere. Now, this kind of behavior is usually left to the more well-known kids' sites, and unfortunately, some jealousy and bitterness is bound to emerge over there. That's not to say that the upperclassmen (upperclasswomen?) aren't affected or hurt by the trolls, but I think it's reasonable to assume that they can expect a few fruit-loop comments and they've pretty much learned to ignore the haters.

But recently, there have been some very hurtful and hateful comments written--by "mothers," no less--on the sites of some of our own. Basically, what we've got here is a case of moms bashing moms, and that is just bad and wrong.

First off, let's get something straight: We are all in this together, like it or not. In 20-30 years, our children will be taking on the world. Our babies will either be our leaders, teachers, protectors, cooks, writers, and builders, or they will be our terrorists, bullies, thieves, rapists, murderers and vandals. Whether or not our partners are involved or passive, whether or not we work at home or out of the home, whether or not we Ferberize or co-sleep, we--the moms--are the most important people in our children's lives. We are the ones with the most influence on who they will become. Some call that notion a cliché, but I think it's just true.

So when mothers decide they would rather belittle one another than build each other up, that shows me that the bully-moms either a) don't understand the magnitude of their job, or b) want their babies to grow up to be as mean and petty and hateful as they are. In motherhood, energy and time are precious commodities. Some of us have chosen to use our surplus resources to maintain our sites and share our experiences with one another. For the most part, I think writing our entries and reading our peers' thoughts helps us to navigate these unpredictable waters of motherhood with a little extra buoyancy. I know that's the case for me. But a busy mom (is there any other kind of mom?) who chooses to use her extra time and energy stores to berate and criticize another mom for her ideas and choices and writing style (which, my God, how effing petty) scares me. Is that the kind of nurturer she is? Is that her mothering style? If so, I hope I'm effective in teaching Al how to gracefully interact with bitter tyrants.

Here's my promise to you, my fellow mommies: I will do the very best that I can to raise Al to be a good man. I will teach him to protect those who cannot protect themselves, to treat girls and women with respect and honor, to be honest, kind, hardworking, and decent. I understand that most of what he learns will be from the examples that the Mr. and I put forth, so I will be especially careful with my words and actions toward others.

I know that most of you subscribe to this same philosophy, and for that, I am grateful and hopeful. For those of you who would rather bully and belittle and be bitter, you've made our job a little harder, but we'll handle it.

Blessed

Our day began at 4 this morning. I fed Al, started the coffee, and began to get ready. The Mr. stirred about 30 minutes later, and because Al couldn't stand to be left out of the early morning festivities, the three of us congregated in the bathroom to brush, dress, and somehow prettify ourselves at that ungodly hour. We were on the road by 5:15am with fresh McMuffins in hand and a sleeping baby in his carseat.

At 7:30, we arrived at Children's Medical Center in Dallas. We parked, gathered our bearings, and found a deserted waiting area where Al could have some breakfast.

By 8am, we entered the pediatric GI waiting room. I signed us in and we found a couple of seats. Al cooed and gurgled and played and then fell asleep before we were ushered to our exam room. We undressed him (so much for that nap), the nurse weighed and measured him, and in just a few minutes we met our doctor.

Our doctor, whom I shall henceforth refer to as Dr. Wonderful, was one of the kindest, gentlest fellows I've ever met. He asked us a million questions about our home and our water and our allergies, and he had us recount the entire story, from start to finish. We talked about how the blood would appear, then disappear, only to appear again the next day. We happily (yet guardedly so) reported that since we had switched to Pregestimil, Al had had nothing to eat but that and breastmilk, and his diapers had remained blood-free for almost two weeks. He then pressed, poked, and prodded Al, who cried for the first time during the entire appointment. Believe me, the child has learned that a doctor wearing rubber gloves is not a good thing.

In the end, Dr. W declared that Al is suffering from nothing more than a Milk Protein Intolerance. Our prescription: keep doing what we're doing (breastfeeding, no dairy, Pregestimil for supplementation) and he'll probably grow out of it by his first birthday. Dr. Wonderful is a dad himself, he said, and because Al's diapers have been blood-free for the last 13 days he didn't want to subject Al or us to any scoping of the baby's innards.

Whew.

However, we'd have to be content with only a very strong suspicion, rather than a definite diagnosis, of the dairy protein intolerance. Dr. Wonderful listed the other possible causes and his reasons for ruling them out. Had he been a betting man, he said, he would place a lot of money on Milk Protein Intolerance. That was good enough for us, we decided.

And then we came home. But not before we breathed sighs and prayers of relief and thanks. During our few hours at Children's, we saw sick chidren and hurt children, children wearing paper masks, and children with scars from ear to ear. None of those children could control the unfair lot in life they had been dealt, nor could their parents. Before we left Dr. W's office he said to us, "That's a beautiful healthy boy you have. You are very blessed."

Blessed, indeed.

I'm Too Sexy for My Onesie

Y'all, check out the sweet 'do:

















Yeah, we know. The comb-over is sporty.

Don't hate me because I'm beautiful.

More Holy Random Crizzap

For the record, Pregestimil tastes like rotten donkey ass and Al hates it. Hhhhhhaaaaaaaaaates.

And speaking of The Record, have you taken a gander at this? I have no idea why she stayed past page 2 of the declaration.

Supply & Demand: My Life in Numbers

Visits to the pediatrician since this post: 2

Diapers of which semi-solid contents have been scraped into a sterile cup: 2

CBCs: 2

Average number of diapers containing blood per day for the last two months: 1

Ounces of supplemental formula that Baby ingests daily: 4-6*

Cans of opened, yet unusable, formula in my pantry: 3**

Probable explanations for bloody poop: 2

Definite causes determined for bloody poop: 0

Pediatric gastroenterologists in our town: 0

Miles to Pediatric Gastroenterologist’s office at Children’s Medical Center in Dallas: 108

Appearances of blood in diapers since appointment was made with the specialist: 0***

---

*My work schedule, although generally kickass, does not allow for me to pump the 9am feeding.

**We started with the standard garden-variety formula, but Baby was gassy. So we switched to a gentler formula. Then, I suspected that gentle just wasn’t gentle enough (because hello?! blood!), and switched to a hypoallergenic. Now, the pediatric GI says that if we must supplement, we’ve got to use the Big Daddy of All Hypoallergenic Formulas, at least until the pipes heal, assuming that damaged intestines are the source.

***When the new doctor told us to switch to Pregestimil for the time being, we couldn’t find it anywhere locally, so I ordered it from drugstore.com. While we waited for UPS, I dipped into the freezer stash of breastmilk and started feeding The Boy breastmilk only. The next day, and every day since then, have been blood-free. Um, hello? I’m an idiot. If I had done that 8 weeks ago, I imagine we’d not be planning a trip to Dallas next Thursday because whatever is bleeding would have healed already. So, folks, any suggestions for increasing my milk supply? I’m going with whatever works, and it’s looking like exclusive breastfeeding may be the answer (again, duh!). I’m just afraid I can’t maintain a supply to meet the demand.

And in case you really might have some advice, I nurse The Boy at 6am and put him back to bed. Then I pump at 7:15 before work. I don’t have a break until 11:45, when I pump again (and thanks to this contraption, I can eat lunch at the same time). Then, there’s another break and pumping session at 1:30 and again sometime between 3:15 and 4:00. At that point, I head home and nurse as much as Baby wants (during the day, he follows a predictable 6-9-12-3 eat-play-sleep schedule and recently shows signs of readiness to move toward a 4-hour schedule), usually right when I get home around 4:30 (hello-Mommy-I-missed-you nursing), again around 6 (nutritive nursing), sometimes again at 8, and then right before going to sleep for the night between 9 and 10. He’ll usually wake at 1am and 4 am to eat. I’m not taking any supplemental herbs for increasing milk supply, aside from the occasional beer.

Baby eats 15-18 ounces while I’m at work, and I pump between 12 and 16 ounces daily. If I could squeeze another 4-6 ounces out each day, we’d be good to go.

Y'all, I feel like the poor dude in those Milk of Magnesia ads
whose wife/mom/whatever keeps rambling about his toileting troubles.
Gah, Mom.

Deep Thoughts

Why don't they make plastic popscicle sticks? You know, maybe something along the lines of the stick that pushes up the pusher-upper part of a Push-up?

See? I really like popscicles. And the frozen juice varieties are pretty darned tasty. But the feeling of a wooden popscicle stick scraping against my teeth? Makes my butt muscles squinch up.

This and That

I need to get something off of my chest.

Here it goes:

Then is an adverb (usually) that means "at that time," or "soon after that." For example, I changed his diaper, and then he promptly shat again. (The past tense form of the verb to shit makes me happy.)

Than is a preposition or conjunction that is used with comparative adjectives or comparative adverbs. Example: That diaper's shit was more foul than the previous diaper's shit.

Maybe I'm just easily irked, but when people use then instead of than it bothers me. For instance, reading "That shit was nastier then any shit the baby had ever shat" makes me want to scratch my eyeballs out. ('Cause baby, it was nastier than any shit the baby had EVER shat. And that ain't no shit.)

Have any of you noticed this too? Surely I'm not alone here, right? Or am I just a freakazoid who should get over the then/than confusion and deal with my affinity for the words shit and shat?

And yeah, I know my grammar is not perfect either, and no, I don't give a shit.

Six

OK, kids, there's some stuff going on around here at the Casa de Jezer and it's not wonderful. Not horrible, but just not great. I'll fill you in later, I promise, but for now? Not in the mood to talk about it. (So why did I even bring it up? Hell, I dunno. Sorry).

No, wait, I DO know why. I brought it up to make the point that I'm really needing some light-hearted diversion, and behold! I've been tagged by Her Bad Mother. She must have sensed my need (cause she's bad like that, you know).

Today's tag topic: Six Weird Things About Me. Or rather, six things about me that I've never told you before (because I'm not sure if it all qualifies as weird. You be the judge).

1. I have worn non-prescription reading glasses just because I wanted to wear glasses. Yeah, I went to Target, browsed the reading glasses section, picked up the weakest pair of lenses in a trendy-nerdy-intellectual-style frame and wore those babies until I was reeling from nausea. Just to look cool. At least I thought they looked cool. And, umm, yeah, I was an adult when I did this.
2. I compulsively peel the labels and stickers off of lotion bottles, hand soap pumps, and pretty much any container that sits still long enough in my presence. If the label leaves sticky crap on the container, I'm always armed with goo remover. I keep a bottle at home and a bottle at work.
3. I have a paper and pen fetish. OK, maybe fetish isn't the right word. But I love paper--colored paper, ruled paper, fancy paper, silly paper, writing paper, drawing paper, even graph paper. And pens? Oh, how I love pens. Ball-point pens, felt-tip pens, Sharpies, paint pens, calligraphy pens. But I do not like gel pens.
   
4. When I was a small child, I had an imaginary friend. Her name was Maggie. She was about my age and she had short curly brown hair. My mom had to set an extra place at the dinner table for Maggie. She disappeared when my little brother was born.
   
5. This is not weird, but it's something you didn't know: I speak, read, and write Spanish fluently. For 13 years, I have taught students who speak either limited English (grade 4) or exclusively Spanish (grades K and 1). And no, I do not wish to engage in a debate about U. S. immigration laws, thanks.
6. I cannot whistle. Well, I can make an airy whistle-like noise with my lips pursed, but can I whistle a tune? Nope. Can I whistle loud enough to catch someone's attention? Not even. This makes the Mr. laugh.

And there you have it. My six things.

Now, the rules say that I must tag six more people, but people, I don't even KNOW six more bloggers. Well, yeah, I do, but they all either a) already did it, or b) just had a baby, and hello?!--we know what that's like, right? So, if you are reading this, and you haven't done this one already, consider yourself tizzagged, yo. That means you, ninepounddictator!

Oh, and if you do it, you're supposed to leave me a comment saying that you did it so I can read yours and see just how weird you are. 'Cause we mommy bloggers, we're crazy like that, you know.

Brain Fart

I've got blockage. No, not the intestinal kind. The brain/verbage/bloggage kind. I have plenty to say, I think, but once I start trying to get something down, it goes nowhere.

The fact that I have the attention span of a four-year-old on Skittles and red Kool-Aid doesn't help. Y'all, I'm having trouble even reading entire entries at my favorite sites, so actually writing an entry? WhatEVER.

Work is good. The baby is good. Mom taking care of the baby is good.

I think I may be getting PMS. I kind of have the urge to flip everyone off and to slam doors just for the fun of it.

Oh, and I received a swimwear catalog in the mail this week. No, not the catalogue (They gave up wasting postage on my cheap ass years ago).

Evidently, I belong to the target demo for this kind of swimwear line:



















Just lovely.

The Secret of My Success

So, a couple of weeks ago, a debate ensued about the notion of false advertising as it pertains to a woman’s weight and appearance. I won’t bother linking, because, gosh, the links are everywhere, but if you want to read some ideas that are strikingly similar to my own, read what Her Bad Mother had to say about it. She’s got the links if you want to read along. I realize that that is so last week, and I admit that my recent return to work has caused me to fall a bit behind on my blog reading and posting, but bear with me, OK?

But I couldn’t help but think about this and how my own experiences and behaviors may contribute to the “false advertising” out there. I have a tendency to look and act way together when I am completely not together. So much so, that a few years ago, a colleague of mine suggested that I give a workshop on “How to Seem Organized Even When You’re Not” (because often, in my line of work, it’s all about the image).

Here are some examples:

• In college, my papers were often written the night before they were due. I usually got As on them. My master’s thesis was written in a week. It also earned an A.
• People often comment on the neatness and organization of my classroom. I can never find shit in there.
• A few years ago, I would stay out drinking in the bars until ungodly hours of the night, and then manage to show up for work and actually teach. I was once observed on one of those mornings and received a glowing evaluation.
• Last month, my sister-in-law admitted that Alex had given her baby fever and that she was thinking about having another one. “Think about that long and hard, sister,” I said. “Look at the hell I’ve been through these last couple of months.”

"But that’s the thing,” she said. “You make it look so easy.”

What the?

• During the last two weeks, a few co-workers have asked me how I lost the baby weight so quickly. Hello? I still have 8 pounds to go. And honestly, aside from breastfeeding, I’m not working that hard at it, and I hate to admit that. However, I have learned that properly fitting clothing and a decent haircut go a long way.

Now, as far as why I’m this way, I have only one theory: Growing up with my dad, it was all about the image. As much as I hated having to appear wholesome and friendly and clean and smart and perfect (because anything less would be bad for business), I learned very early on that looking one way and being another way were two totally different things. Honest? Not so much. Healthy? The jury’s still out. But that skill (if you will) has served me well in adulthood.

I don’t think I’m alone here. I think most of us women, and especially moms, have learned to stash the dirty dishes in the dishwasher and to put a smile on in front of company even though we just called the Mr. an Asshole (to his face, in front of the baby). In the real world we may still be inadvertently intimidating each other with our outer with-it-ness. But that’s why I love the blogosphere. We sit here in our burp-stained T-shirts and say, “You know what? I haven’t showered in two days and my laundry is piled in the floor and my kid will not sleep and my ass is huge and I’m about to lose my damned marbles.” Whether or not we’ll be better mothers for it, I don’t know. But I do know that I am a more confident and relaxed mother than I would be if my only other perspective of motherhood came from my own mom and my other sister-in-law, who I still believe are Perfect Mothers Who Really Didn’t Mind Cleaning Up Puke at 2am and Were Sweet and Perky and Fucking Made Pancakes for Everyone Four Hours Later.

I’ll probably never be comfortable with letting go of my relatively polished image in the real world, and that’s another topic to be explored at another time (It’s all about how I feel about me, not how I think others perceive me. I think. And, yeah, some control issues.). But being able to show my warts and seeing yours too is downright therapeutic and sanity-saving.