dear henry,

Mama's birthday is coming up soon. Oh! And mother's day. I thought I'd help you out with the shopping by giving you a suggestion or 34.

I'd really like this in sterling silver. Your initial and birth date, of course.

You can always check out my Amazon wish list which includes several Lane Smith books for you. And I think I added some toys for you as well.

And if none of those things look good to you, I could really really really go for a good night of sleep.

Love,
Mama

i am a rockstar.

It is 8:05 a.m. and I have already done the following:

Fed Henry cereal and bottle
Changed his diaper
Played lots of games
Made my bed
Showered and dressed
One load of Henry's laundry, folded and put away
Made 4 bottles for the day
Cleaned up puke from couch
Put Henry down for morning nap

Henry has been waking up at 5:30 so I guess he deserves some credit for my rockstarness.

wow.

I can't stop laughing.

This is amazing.

Hall of Fame, indeed.

no kids allowed. in this post.

I cannot believe I only post about kid-related shit. Who am I? What have I become? Yeah, yeah. I know. I've become a mom. I've been racking my brain about non-kid-related shit to write about and have come up with nothing. Nada. Zip. Zero. Big. Fat. Goose. Egg.

I lied.

I came up with one thing. But it makes me want to punch myself even more. Wait. Two things. And since I really don't have much self-esteem left in me anyway, I'll go ahead and share with you.

1.

I saw this car on the road yesterday. I don't know why but I hated it. I wanted to run over it with my big ass granny Camry.

That's all.

See why I want to punch myself? That's all I came up with.

But wait. It gets worse...

2.

I went shopping for clothes. It was awful. I didn't even know what size I wear. I hated every minute of it. First of all, I don't have money for new clothes. Second, have you gone shopping for new clothes lately? It appears the ruffle monster has the flu and has vomited ruffles all over everything. Third, I don't have a job yet so I didn't even know what kind of clothes I should be buying. I decided that I should get stuff that I could wear at home and out and about. The most important thing was that they needed to fit.

After much stress and sweating and bitching and moaning, I came home with some nice new clothes and they even fit. And some of them have ruffles. Punch me now. I realized that it has been a very long time since I have worn clothes that actually fit. It feels kind of nice to not have to hike up my pants every few minutes. The problem now is that I have to get a belt that fits. Henry likes to tuck his toes into my belt and stand up while I'm holding him. I tried my belt on with my new clothes and I can see daylight between the belt and the pants.

Shit. My non-kid-related post just turned kid-related.

good morning.

Henry woke up super early this morning. It's 7:10 and I'm trying to talk him into going back to sleep for a while. He'd rather look at himself on the screen of my phone.

ouch.

A couple weeks ago I bought a kickass jogging stroller. Then it got all cold and snowy and who wants to jog in that? With a baby? The lady I bought it from (it's used) said the kid would love it and would fall asleep by the first mile. I played it cool and was all, "oh that's great," but on the inside I was all, "great, by the time I'm done he'll be falling asleep."

Today it was chilly but at least it was sunny so I bundled Henry up and off we went. I'm doing a Couch to 5K program because I thought it would be nice and easy. Silly me. I was already tired from taking care of a baby all by myself every night. Now I'm also physically exhausted. It's almost 8 p.m. and I think I need to go to bed. Why does jogging make my eyelids so heavy?

The lady was right, Henry fell asleep around the first mile. I ended up going 2.1 miles.

Tomorrow is going to be hell.

lately.

I sleep when I can. Henry and I have our little bedtime rituals that go pretty smoothly on days we get to be together. Because of our family situation, there are days we are not together and those nights don't go as smoothly. I have been careful to not automatically diagnose the problem as "Henry's not with me," and have instead kept track of the nights he has struggled and the behaviors he exhibits. This is my life. Always double guessing. Always making sure this is about Henry. Not me. Not his dad. Last night we were up quite a bit, he had a hard time going to sleep and then had a poop attack in the middle of the night and instead of going right back to sleep, he needed to hold on to my face and coo at me in the dark for a while. Then when he finally went back to sleep, I had to get up and clean up poopy clothes. I'm exhausted. Tonight he did the thing where instead of falling asleep on his own, he grabbed my hand with both of his hands and held it tight to his chest. If I tried to pull my hand away, he woke up and tightened his grip and looked at me as if to say, "you're not going anywhere, woman." These nights break my heart because I never want him to feel like he has to physically hold on to me so I don't leave him. They make me question every decision I have made about our family situation. But I still feel I am doing the right thing for him. This afternoon I laid down with him when he took his late afternoon nap. I fell asleep for a few minutes and it was the best sleep I've had in days. I think he slept well, too. I can always tell when he got a good rest because he wakes up just as happy as can be. Smiling ear to ear. Talking to me softly. Squealing at Barbaro Garbey. These times make me know I'm doing something right. I'll sleep someday. For now I'll do everything I can to make sure Henry wakes up happy as often as possible.

two things.

Henry can't get enough of

1. Looking at himself in the mirror

2. Hanging on to his toes

nap time, please

Since Henry has been sick he has wanted to spend a lot of time right here.


I look like I've had 16 hours of sleep in the past 4 nights because I've had 16 hours of sleep in the past 4 nights.

i hate snot.

And Henry has lots of it. I'm not going to tell you how I am getting rid of it because I almost throw up just thinking about it right now. But it works and that is all that matters. At least that's what I'm telling myself. Actually, it's what I'm telling myself and it's true. When he's stuffed up he can't breathe with the pacifier in his mouth. He can't sleep without that stupid fucking pacifier. I have slept about 3 hours a night for the past few nights. So yeah, I'll do whatever I need to do so he can have that pacifier so he can get some sleep.

It's really gross.

My mom is a pretty awesome mom and even she's all "Eeeewwwwwww yeah I'm not doing that." She's even volunteered to do some pretty nasty stuff since Henry's been around. She's cleaned up after epic shit storms. Been puked on. Helped when he took a shit in the tub. She adores this kid so much that sometimes I feel like I have to show her my caesarean scar to remind her that he is mine and not hers (speaking of c-section scar, I just remembered I never finished writing about the beautiful childbirth experience...hmmm... perhaps it wasn't so beautiful?).

There are two things my mom won't do.
1. cut his fingernails
2. this

Now I'm not the only one throwing up!

Sorry.

It really does work. He's sleeping soundly right next to me.

Yuck.

testing testing... rhubarb rhubarb

I'm gonna try this whole blogging from my phone thing. Maybe I'll actually get around to posting more than once a quarter. Maybe not.

I'm exhausted tonight so I'm not going to write lots. Henry doesn't seem to be feeling great and has been fussing in his sleep about every 10 minutes since he went to bed at 8. I had crazy insomnia last night so am not looking forward to being up again tonight. And if he isn't feeling good, he really needs to get some good sleep so his little body can get healthy. His dad is scheduled to visit tomorrow afternoon so I hope he feels better.

Here's a photo of him during tummy time the other day. Now that he can roll over from his front to back, he doesn't spend much time on his tummy anymore! He loves to look at himself in the mirror (who can blame him?) so he'll stay for a couple minutes now.

ugh.

I'm such a blogging disappointment. Blogger disappointment? Disappointing blogger?

I suck.

I want to be better.

At blogging.

And other stuff too.

Here's a list of things I currently love about being Henry's mom:

• He looks for me when I'm not holding him or interacting with him.
• I teach him stuff, like how to say "mama" (yeah, okay, so it might be more like he says, "mamamamamamamaaaaa")
• I can make him laugh.
• When he's really tired he'll make a certain noise. I'll hold him close to my chest and he'll push away from me, look me in the face, make the noise, give me a little grin, and then take a dive back into my chest, falling asleep before his head makes contact.
• He likes to play with my face. Tonight he had a death grip on my nose. I couldn't stop laughing so he thought it was fun. Thank god I cut his fingernails earlier today. Ouch!
  
• Making plans for the two of us.
• Watching him watch the world.
• Being able to understand his cues. Tired. Hungry. Need to have quiet time. Ready to rock out on the jumperoo. Need hugs.
  
• Singing to him before putting him to bed.
  
• Every night right before I kiss him goodnight and leave him to fall asleep, I tell him one thing I especially loved about the day with him and I tell him one thing I wish for him for the next day.

This kid rocks.