The Buzz

I have been cutting Pete's hair for almost four years now. This tradition started after he came home with yet another unsatisfying professional haircut. He asked me if I would do it next time. The idea of this struck fear into my heart because he's oddly particular about his haircuts, and it's so curly, I had no idea how one would approach the actual cutting. So the last time he went to get a professional cut, I sent him to my guy, and I went along to watch the process. After that, I cut it. He has never complained once about any of our home haircuts. He's gone twice, that I can think of, to get his hair cut professionally since I started cutting it, and he has been unhappy with the results each time.

See, he says I am smart, but then he doesn't listen to me.

I told him to go back to my guy, if he was frustrated that I did not have time to do it, but he tried out someone else. The cut was wrong, and you could not even see the color. Again, I told him to go back to my guy. He didn't. And he came back looking like he was either ready to go under cover over at the RNC or join the marines:

He even took along a picture of himself with a short haircut to show the girl, but maybe he accidentally showed her a picture of his infant son, because now they really look alike (aside from the pacifier). He says he will listen to me next time this conundrum comes up.

I'll believe it when it happens.

Home Alone, 3D

The Boy and I had our first overnight alone this past weekend. Rockstar Dad had a gig on Friday night and an out-of-town gig on Saturday night, leaving Finn and I to fend for ourselves for the better part of a weekend. Before he came home from the hospital, I had been thinking that I would need someone to come and stay with us for the night, and the two people who came to mind were my best friend, Kira, and my mom. Kira works the Renaissance Festival, so she was busy, and my mom was heading out to a miniature convention in Denver (That's not a very small convention, it's a convention for dollhouse enthusiasts, but I love making jokes about smallness. Never gets old for me. I am simple in many ways).

But by the time the weekend rolled around, I was fine with the idea of being alone with Finn. I am not worried about those uncomfortable silences when we don't have much to say to each other, and I don't think he's going to judge my poor grooming skills. I am pretty sure by now that I am not going to accidentally harm him through ineptitude, and he has been doing very well on his own, breathing and heart-rate wise. I was a bit concerned about sleep, as when Pete is home, I get almost three unbroken hours, but there was nothing to be done about it. I just had to ride the wave and hope for the best.

We did very well, thankyouverymuch. We slept in the bedroom together overnight, and he woke up (or I did) every three hours or so for a diaper change and some boob. As we are only talking about the period of time from about midnight to 7 or 9:00 a.m., it works out to two or three times up for about a hour with a little bit of light napping in between for me. It goes by pretty quickly, and then we are back out in the living room, in the light of day.

The concepts of Day and Night have very little relevance to me anymore, anyway. Night is something to be gotten through with as much "sleep" as possible, and Day follows night. I try to get a few things done when he consents to sleep in his basket and not on me, and it's working out pretty well. I did finally have to give up the ghost of working from home at the moment, as the solid blocks of time are not long enough to accomplish much of anything aside from making and (hopefully) eating a sandwich, pumping once or twice a day, and doing a dish here and there. (I don't bother with napping.) Admitting that I am not a superhero is difficult; I so wanted to believe that I could do it all, but I can't. This maternity leave will have to be a real maternity leave, and I am just fine with that, now that I have realized my limitations. I only get one chance to be the mother to a newborn/infant once (most likely), and it's important to get it right.

After all, I doubt that as my life draws to a close, I will be wishing I had spent more time at the office. I'm not that type of gal.

The Leash

Over a month ago, one of Finn's doctors made the decision to keep him on the caffeine for his apnea spells. This meant that he would have to come home on an apnea monitor and on the caffeine, but it meant that he could come home sooner.

The monitor is a blessing and a curse, as so many things are. It tells us when he has apnea, bradycardia, or a fast heart rate, so we have the security of being able to see that he's still breathing and his heart is still beating. But he's on a seven foot leash, and we have to drag the thing around with us when we want to move him from room to room. It means that I am tied to that seven foot area when I am home alone, and he needs to be held.

Tomorrow, we are going to do our first download of information, which means we have to find a land line to use as we got rid of ours months ago. The nurses at the apnea program at Children's will then evaluate the data and decide if he needs to stay on the caffeine. My guess is that he won't need it anymore. In that case, they will want him to stay on the monitor for a couple of weeks to see how he does off the caffeine.

(Fritz likes to lay directly in front of it, so we can't see the lights.)

It will be odd not to have it. I am used to glancing at it periodically to see those green lights flashing, but I'll just have to get used to life without the crutch. I'm sure I'll be checking on him more and more, and waking up often to make sure he's still alive, which is probably not much different from any other first-time mother.

Feel free to ignore this one, it has nothing to do with the baby.

Finn slept through the speech last night, but I'll be able to tell him he was there.*
He also slept through the announcement this morning that John McCain had chosen his granddaughter** as his running mate. I guess he can't use the whole "experience" campaign tactic anymore.***

*Notice how I am shamelessly using my child to make this post relevant to this blog when it would be more appropriate on kittywhumpus? Get used to it, son. I will not, however, be putting him in an Obama Onesie.

**Cheap, ageist joke. I am not surprised at the choice, really. It's a purely political one that hopes to get at former Sen. Clinton supporters and young up Sen. McCain a little. He's basically chosen his Obama. One could say that Sen. Obama chose his McCain in Sen. Biden, but Sen. Biden is qualified to take over should Pres. Obama be unable to govern. Both these candidates should be choosing someone serious as their running mate because of the possibility that they may not be around to finish their term in office, and I don't feel Sen. McCain's choice reflects that reality.

*** I really hate it when people take an otherwise a-political space and make it political, and it just goes to show you how things are really only bad when other people do them.

Just kidding. I'll take this sort of thing back to kittywhumpus as this campaign continues, unless I truly feel that it's a policy issue that relates to our lives and Finn's future.

p.s. Dear Senator Obama,
There's no such thing as "Clean Coal Technology."
You may as well say that you are going to pour research dollars into faerie power.
love,
Karen

Someone's in the Kitchener

It was either really brave or really stupid, but I just raced the baby on kitchener stitch. No, we were not going needles to needles, he's napping, and I had a graft to accomplish. It's only the second time I have done one, and when I got to the point in the recipe where it told me to kitchener, I remember thinking "No, it's not the thing I am thinking of. It's something else. Something that confuses me less" knowing full well that I was in what is called "denial," and it was the exact same confusing thing.

I understand kitchener, in the abstract. It makes sense, and I can see what is going on, it's just that I get lost. "As if to knit, drop; as if to purl, leave; as if to purl, drop; as if to knit, leave." Once I get into a rhythm, I am fine, but then if I start thinking about the rhythm, like "Hey, I am into a rhythm," I get lost again. I was even thinking, as I stitched "as if to knit, drop..." that maybe I had the hang of this, then I thought "No, you will never remember how to do this; you will always need to get out the book," and then "Wait... did I already 'as if to knit' this?" All while thinking "oh, he's grunting... is that awake or still asleep grunting... just one more minute..."

I suppose there are some geniuses out there who can hold a conversation and kitchener. I am fine with saying that I will never be one of them. For now, I am pretty impressed that I got this:
and I still have this:Ah, how we must realign our perceptions of true accomplishment once we reproduce.

poor fritz

This picture pretty much sums it up for him: life has changed, and he's not pleased about it. All he can do now is gaze on, forlorn, as his favorite person plays with his new pet. We have to make sure to give him his due cuddles, though, or I fear he will start to fade. He's going to be 19 in a little over a week, and we'd like to keep him around for awhile longer.

The Sound of Music is playing on the television, and The Captain is approaching Fraulein Maria in the gazebo while my son sleeps to my left on a pillow on my lap, fresh from fussing in his basket because he does not want to be alone, and he does not want to eat (unlike Fritz, who prowls, yowling, about the house, looking for the one who will feed him), so I sit, one boob out, unused, and a diaper cover on the needles to my right as the crickets chirp outside the windows at 5:34 in the afternoon--a sure sign that fall is approaching--and my best friends are drinking and cavorting at a house party in Wisconsin because life goes on even though it changes, still here I am, here we are, and somewhere in my youth or childhood, I must have done something good.