Aeroplane

Part of our little Palm Springs adventure was Benjamin's first flight. It actually went pretty well. We had an empty seat next to us, which rocked, and he was a happy guy the whole way. the people behind us actually complimented him on the way out, for being such an excellent baby. His second flight however, not quite so good. I mean, it wasn't terrible, but no one congratulated us on an excellent baby. He was just a teensy bit grumpy, and not embarrassed to express that. There was much nursing. One thing I did learn, is that while the hooter hider is very effective when everyone around you is seated, if you are seated, and everyone else is walking past you, like say in a plane aisle, they can see straight down it. Woo-hoo! Free show for all the other passengers! So I hope everyone enjoyed it.

More stuff I want to remember about the boy

Now that the Benbino is a little bigger (almost 5 months old!), he does a few more tricks:

• He giggles when you tickle him. Its almost a chuckle really. Marnie says he laughs more than any kid she has ever taken care of.


• If I dial the phone when he is nursing he whips his head around to see what that cool beeping is


• He can almost roll over from his back to his stomach, but he gets stuck on his side


• if we are watching tv, and he is facing away from it, he will crane his neck to try to watch, even if it has to be upside down, or to watch the reflection of the tv in the window.


• he drools and chews on his fists all the time. It gets his clothes soggy all over.


• yesterday for the first time, I saw him touch the soles of his feet together. It was very yoga-esque.


• he has some little patches of dry skin on his belly, and he loves it when I put lotion on him


• When I leave the room he looks around to see where I went


• If I call and he can hear my voice on the phone or on speaker phone he gets the furrowed brow and looks around for me.


• he is starting to watch us eat. He was very intent on Loren's noodles last night.


• He can grab toys and put them in his mouth now. He put both hands on his bottle and almost got in his mouth the other day.


• He grabs onto my hair and my necklaces very tightly. He has quite the strong grip.


• He is making all kinds of cool new sounds now. Its kind of like he is playing with his voice on purpose.


• He loves to stand and to bounce. You have to help him balance of course, but he has super strong chubby little legs.


• he is getting interested in the other babies at peps now. They lay around and stare at each other with these very big eyes. He might accidentally grab on to another baby's arm or hand, but he doesn't do it on purpose yet.


• he kind of wiggles when he is on his belly, like he is getting reved up to crawl. I really want him to stay stationary for as long as possible. He is just going to be such a big kid when he crawls, I don't think I can handle it yet.


• He is getting more and more little pants and overalls outfits and fewer one piece infant ensembles with feet. He looks much more grown up in his little jeans or khakis. Sometimes I have to put his yellow hooded ducky sweatshirt, or his puppy shoes on with those outfits, so he doesn't look too big. The tennis shoes and grey hooded sweatshirt with his jeans make him look like he should be carrying a backpack and riding his bike to class.

Guess who is a total moron?

I admit the title/photo is misleading here, but I didn't have another picture available. In case you were wondering I am the total moron. I am suffering from a severe case of "milk brain" which causes normally intelligent women to become bumbling, nonsense spouting, idiots when breastfeeding. I was at work today, in the little phone room, all set to breast pump. So I turn the pump on, and it starts making its litte whoosh-whoosh sound. And then I look down at my legs and wonder to myself, now why on earth would there be breastmilk squirting onto my jeans? Its because some total GENIUS forgot to attach the bottles to the pumping thingy, and so I was just pumping away, into thin air. Definitely not one of my smarter moments. I had a couple of similar incidents during pregnancy, one of which involved accidentally wearing black and pink teva flip flops to work, and the other calling my sister's cell phone number on a work conference call, on speaker phone. In a conference room full of coworkers. Ah, yes, the sheer joys of complete hormonal imbalance. Milk brain is also manifesting itself in my total lack of word recall. I just stutter and stammer, unable to come up with the right word, and inevitabley say the totally wrong thing. I had a conversation with a coworker yesterday, where I kept asking him if he had borrowed the disposable camera. He had no idea what the heck I was talking about, until he finally translated it into the digital camera. Its a good thing people around here have a sense of humor, and are pretty tolerant of my.... I have no idea what word I am looking for. Its not craziness, although that might apply, and its not inconsistency, although that sort of works too. Absentmindedness? Thickheadedness? Scatterbrain-edness? Well, a prize to the first person to come up with the right word.

Ouch!

Well, today was the little man's 4 month check up. The vital stats: 14 pounds (50th percentile), 25.5 inches (75th percentile), 42.5 cm head circumfrence (50th percentile), cuteness - exceptional (this is a professional medical opinion). Benito was on his very best behavior and doing everything he could to charm the pants off Dr. Brown. Metaphorically speaking. Which made it all the more sadistic to poke him in the leg 4 times. But we'll get to that, first the good stuff. He was so happy and chatty and fun, the doctor was totally enamored with him. She asked how we were doing with tummy time, could he hold his head up, and I said yeah, pretty well. She wanted the demo, so I put him on his tummy on the doctor table thing, and he immediately rolled over. I mean, split second. I have never seen him do it so fast. And we were all (my mom was there, as chauffeur/nanny/governess) kind of surprised and laughed, so the doctor picked him up and put him back on his tummy. Same thing. He wasn't on his tummy a nano second before he turned back over. He was totally showing off for her. She was appropriately impressed and made all kinds of nice noises about being super athletic, and how we would probably get to spend his college fund visiting him in Rome on his year abroad, because he would most likely get a full ride. She commented several times about how cute his little voice is, and what great sounds he is making. Lets see, what else... We are allowed to try to skip the middle of the night feeding, and see if he will go back to sleep when he wakes up in the night. Its only 2 months away from solid food - rice cereal here we come! Teeth are apparently just around the corner as well. It all seems to be going alarmingly fast. She felt my weird eye bump and said it was on my eyelid, most likely a clogged duct. I was sure it was eye cancer and would require immediate eye removal surgery, so that was a relief. So that was all well and good, and she said make an appointment to come back in 2 months, which I am just now realizing I didn't do, and waltzed out of there, all happy like, before the carnage began. Then Leilani the nurse comes in, and I feel like the Darth Vader theme song should always accompany her entrance. (She is actually very nice.) I explained very patiently to the boy that we don't want him to get Polio or Diptheria or Pertussis, they are all very nasty diseases, and that I have no idea what Pneumococcal disease or Haemophilus influenza type B is, but that I'm pretty sure he didn't want to get those either. He just drooled at me and let me know he was getting hungry, so it seems like he didn't listen at all. Most likely this is just the beginning of many years of being ignored that I have in store. Anyway, she lines up the 4 shots, and 4 bandaids, and he still had no idea what was coming. I let him chew on my finger, but the second that first needle went into his chubby little thigh, he started wailing. Its not so much the noise that bothers me, but those little tiny baby tears are just a killer. Tragically sad. As soon as she was done I tried to feed him, and he was trying to cry and eat simultaneously, which was so pitiful. Fortunately he did calm down pretty quickly and ate some and then zonked out. The rest of the day was apparently quite sleepy, and he has been asleep since I got home at 6:30 until almost 10, waking up only briefly to eat a couple of times, which I'm pretty sure he did mostly in his sleep. So its been kind of a big traumatic day for the little guy. On the bright side, it turns out there is a government fund to help pay for care if he has a serious vaccine reaction. I found that to be super comforting information. Sheesh.

Bad Blog Mom!

Well, if I am not the laziest blogger ever, I don't know who is... (Yes I do, its Miss Doxie, who we haven't heard from since 12/4. grrr.) But I did go all week with nary a post, which is sad. Soooo, let me think here, and try to do a quick recap of the week.

1. Peps on Monday night. The highlight here was definitely Luca. Benjamin and Luca were engaged in a staring contest for much of the night. They were fascinated with each other. It was very funny. I haven't seem him notice another baby quite like that before. Highly entertaining. Also, girl scout cookies and wine were my dinner that night, so that was good too.

2. I don't think I mentioned at all that Hillary was in town last weekend. Obviously it was much fun. She was here for a convention, so she didn't stay with us, but I got to meet up with her for brunch on Sunday morning. Eggs Benedict at Maxmillian's at the market - yum! I also got to play a little bit of tour guide for Jen and her mom Pam who had never been to Seattle which was cool too. In some supremely poor planning, I tried to shop all day, only going home once to feed the boy. I was in the Gap downtown with Hillary and Maija, boobs killing me, t-shirt soaked trying to decide what to do. I ended up coming home a little earlier than planned. Sigh. But it was great to have some girl time and help the two preggos look for maternity wear.

3. Big week at work with Matt trying to buy the Sonics. He was all over the news, and I have been overhearing lots of conversations with important people. I am really hoping he can pull it off. The Oklahoma City Super Sonics is too depressing to contemplate.

4. Went to REAP on Friday night. This is the second time I have gone since the boy's arrival. I have to say the first time was more fun. After the snacks and the wine, when we actually got around to talking about stocks, I was struggling to stay awake. Yawn. Not that it was boring, I was just a tired girl.

5. Had lunch with Felicity on Friday afternoon. She is coming back to work at Pine Street in a month! Yay! I am so excited to have her back. It will be much fun around the office. She also gave me a manicure gift cert, and a hilarious card with an angry baby on the front.

6. Saturday morning Benjamin rolled over from his back to his front. Sort of. In a cheating kind of way. Loren woke up and brought him in to bed with us when he wanted to eat first thing in the morning. So he was laying between us on his back, and he rolled over to his front, toward Loren. The thing is, with our old and crappy mattress, Loren creates a good downhill slope in his direction, so gravity actually did most of the work. He is very close though, and any day should do it on his own.

7. Went for a run with Auntie Cookie Saturday morning. Well, more of a walk with intermittent runinng interspersed throughout. It was harder than I thought, in more ways than I expected. First off, I ended up wearing two sports bras, as I have not had time to purchase a more heavy duty variety one, since the arrival of my new ginormous chest. Well that worked out ok, except that it was so tight around my rib cage that it was hard to breathe. My knee also started to hurt pretty badly about halfway around the lake. Apparently hefting around a bunch of extra weight for 9 or so months may not have been the greatest on my joints. And then of course there was the general out of shapeishness. Also I felt like I might wet my pants at any moment, but fortunately my bladder control reigns supreme. And Judith was a really good sport and let me walk all I wanted, and we went out for breakfast afterwards. We have many grand half marathon plans for this summer, so I have to get my act together.

8. Scott and Josie came over for dinner on Saturday night with a suitcase full of clothes for Benjamin. He is going to be one well dressed little guy. His dresser is literally breaking with the weight of all this new loot. Expect many new fashion platey photos coming up.

9. Today Loren worked on reseeding the grass and doing general yardwork, and Benjamin and I worked on a lot of nice long napping. It was excellent. And then Grandma Pat and Grandpa Lee had us over for dinner, which was good too.

Sleeping Beauty? I think not.

The last two nights the little trickster has woken up in the middle of the night again, ending his streak of, I don't know, weeks of sleeping through the night. I think he is just trying to keep me on my toes. Surely tonight he will revert back to his sleepier self. He actually laughed in his sleep as he was drifting off last night though, which was so darn cute that I forgave him for waking up the night before.

Then today, he did another new trick which just about did me in with its supreme cuteness. He was giving me the fake desparately hungry cry. Its not seriously desparately hungry, but more like the moaning the Harry does in when Harry met Sally when he is feeling sorry for himself. Only a little louder. So anyway, I start to feed him, and with his mouth totally full, he gives me two little "mmmmm"s. It was a little bit like in a coke commercial, when someone takes a drink and then goes "aaaah", or maybe the dinner scene in What About Bob. He has never actually talked to me while eating before, and he just seemed so satisfied with the whole thing. It was hilarious.

In a totally unrelated topic, I forgot, for the third Saturday in a row, to go to the "belly after baby" class. At this rate I will always have the post baby belly. But several fun things did happen today instead. Loren went snow shoeing all day (I didn't say I got to do all the fun things). Benito and the hound and I walked Greenlake with Wenmei and Cowboy and Zachary. Cowboy likes to show Maisy up by walking politely on a leash. We love her anyway. Wenmei gets a Starbucks discount, which has to be one of the best job perks ever. Its not free airline tickets, but its up there. We bumped into Shana at Starbucks, one of the many reasons I love my neighborhood. She is one of only a handful of the Beermonsters that has met Benjamin, so that was fun. Then Aunt Cookie and Annie and Madelyn came over. Cookie took some fantastic pictures of the boy (Check out Smiley boy on her blog: http://www.fernstromphotography.typepad.com/) and we went on another walk. Maisy was in heaven getting 2 walks in one day, but poor Annie scraped her knee in the second block, and couldn't stop crying the whole way. At one point she actually started wailing "boo hoo, boo hoo". It was so funny and cute, I couldn't stop myself from giggling. It seems impossible that my baby will ever get that big.

eau de spit up and Cartier

Well, the first week back in the office is all done, and I feel like it was pretty successful. It was an odd combination of worker bee/mom. I was wearing the suit, with the laptop, and the flat ironed hair, but I was running into the phone room to use the pump, and spilling breast milk on my pants etc. The charade continues though, and no one at work seems to have figured out that I am actually a 14 year old masquerading as a competent adult yet, so thats always good. And while I was tired, I never felt like I would fall asleep at my desk, like in the good old first trimester. The various child care arrangements worked out really well, and the only injury the child sustained was on my watch, which figures. He gouged his forehead with one of those razorsharp little daggers he likes to call fingernails, in the night while he was sleeping. I think the resulting head wound just makes him look tough, like maybe a he's pirate. He doesn't seem to bear me any ill will for leaving him all week either. Of course, he still doesn't realize that he can wilfully move his hands around, so he probably won't get to the angst and resentment toward me until sometime in the future, maybe next week.

Date night(s)

This was a good weekend for getting out of the house. I got to see count them, not one, but TWO movies in the theater. On Friday, Grandma Pat watched the papoose while Loren and I went to Il Fornaio and saw Juno. Ok, I know I have already seen it, but it was the only thing playing that I wanted to watch. Then on Saturday Judith and I went to Thai Ginger and 27 Dresses. Love a chick flick about bridesmaid's dresses. I mean, it wasn't a film by any stretch of the imagination, but it was mildly entertaining. It was the longest I think I have been away from the young laddie, and when I got home my shirt was soaked and my boobs were killing me. I was even happier to see Jammy than ususal.

Both movies showed previews for a documentary about the Chicago marathon that is only playing for one day, 2/21. I'm all inspired to go, in hopes that it will get me back out running. A girl can dream, right?

Then today, my mom and I went and got manis and pedis, so I'm all glamorous for going back to work tomorrow. I'm going to wear a suit and everything. Its very exiting. Or scary. However you want to look at it.

My life as a dairy farm

I had always planned to breast feed Benjamin. I know all the research says it is the best, and is directly correlated to higher SAT scores and athletic prowess, or something like that. It also seemed easier to me than having to mess with mixing and heating formula in the middle of the night. So there was no question I would do it, as I fully expect him to get a college scolarship, which he will need both good SATs and athletic prowess for. It turns out its really hard! At first it hurts like nobodies business. And it feels like nothing is happening, and there is no way he is actually getting any nutrition, or anything at all really, out of it. That phase lasts for 2 days. And then your milk comes in. Which doesn't sound like a big deal right? Wrong! My breasts were giant, and hard as rock. It felt like I had 2 footballs in my shirt. And they hurt. I mean really hurt. I couldn't sleep, couldn't move hurt. I was petrified that it would stay like that for all of breast feeding, and I would have to give up and feed him formula, and he would wind up at a community college. I think this phase only lasted a day and half or so, but it really sucked. After that, it still hurt for awhile when he would start eating. It seems like a design flaw that nipples should be made extra sensitive, and also have to withstand this kind of abuse. But that went away too, and Benjamin and I got the hang of it. At first, he wasn't that good with finding the right place and latching on. He has this wobbly little neck, and this old man face, and he would get this glinty determined look in his eye, and his mouth would be wide open. He would do sort of a wobbly necked swoop and dive in, and than a really enthusiastic chomp on, and the whole thing reminded me of a snappy turtle. Pretty cute actually. Now that he is an old pro at it, I kind of miss my snappy turtle guy. Another draw back to the breast feeding is the constantly leaky breasts. I feel like my shirts are always wet. Very attractive. It looks like I peed my pants, but somehow got my shirt instead.

There are some pluses though. Breast feeding is definitely the best diet ever. He is just over 2 months old, and I have lost all but 4 pounds of the pregnancy weight. I have been eating better than normal, and walking a lot, but still, I thought it would take a year to get back to this size. So that rocks. My stomach muscles are another story of course, but I am looking on the bright side now. So, other good stuff about breast feeding. Well, you get to sit down and rest for lots of 20 minute stretches, where you can't feel guilty about not doing anything, because you are doing something, something very important. And it is a good time to talk on the phone or read a book, or just admire the baby. And the baby does some really funny things too, so he is fun to watch. Lots of times when he is so hungry he is anxious and fussy, as soon as he starts to eat his little eyes roll back into his head, and I imagine he is just like a druggie getting his fix. I don't have too much experience on that front, but thats how I picture it. And when he is done eating and full, he goes into this very stoned looking blissed out food coma. Its also excellent snuggle time, and a great excuse to make people bring you stuff. Everything always tastes better when someone else gets it for you, right? So thats nice too. Also, your body makes all these happy hormones when you breast feed, probably to trick you into continuing to do it. So I get to have a little blissed out, happy relaxed feeling too, and I probably look just as stoned as he does. Another bonus is that the littke guy seems to like me, as I think he realizes that I am the food wagon. So that is nice too.

Pumping is another story, totally unpleasant. First off, it hurts some. And I haven't figured out how to do it with no hands, so I can't even change the channel or talk on the phone or read a book. And the whole apparatus is very dairy cow like, not attractive at all. Pretty embarassing actually. And of course I have my pump set up near the front window. Our house is pretty high up off the street, so passers by etc. can't see in. But our neighbor across the street and 2 houses down are even higher up above the street, and I'm pretty sure have a great view of the whole thing. Woo-hoo! Free show for them! And I have no idea what the lasting effects on my body will be, not good probably, but thats a whole other discussion.