I’m a generalist, or maybe just undecided.
Friends who are not parents: give cute newborn outfits
Friends who are parents: give large-size clothing, 6m at the smallest, 9m and 12m common, some 18m or bigger.
Friends who are grandparents: give cute clothing in small sizes, because they can’t resist it. Also, noisy toys.
The child’s own grandparents: give books and toys, frequently. Also: noisy toys.
We went to the Big Box Home Improvement store (to look at paint colors and buy painting supplies) while my mother watched the sleeping baby.
And that was five months ago.
Yes, getting babysitters is a project for this summer.
And yes, we have suggested to both grandmothers that they move to our city, but these modern grandmothers have lives of their own.
- Counting on nap time or nighttime to get work done is a bit like counting on office hours to get work done.
- Or perhaps worse. My students are more consistent about avoiding office hours unless we schedule a conference than Zebediah is about sleeping.
- That said, it was a glorious day when he started napping in bed instead of on my lap or while being carried, so I’m not really complaining if the naps last anywhere from 20 minutes to three hours.
- By the way, isn’t the whole point of office hours to be available for unscheduled time with students?
- Part of the problem seems to be professors at our university who tell students not to bother them during office hours.
- But maybe I’m just not interesting enough anymore. When I was younger and teaching in Old Colony, students came by just to chat in English and ask me about song lyrics. And we didn’t even have scheduled office hours.
- The relationship between students and teachers is quite different over there though. Both more formal and more familial.
- I just submitted an paper proposal online. The online form insisted that I was over the word limit in my title, abstract, and bio, although Word’s word count tool told me I was under the limit on all three.
- Even counting a hyphenated surname as two words, my own word count of the title comes up under the limit.
- My very first conference paper, in graduate school, included the word “fertility” in the title. Was it a sign?
- I tried to write this proposal before traveling, so as to avoid the whole last-minute thing, but it didn’t happen.
- If I found enough time to find and buy a house, I should be able to find the time to write. It’s harder to do the latter with the baby, however. Meredith Small may have been able to write with her baby in a sling (I read that in an interview once, somewhere), but Zebediah doesn’t approve of sedentary sling-wearing anymore.
- About that house: walk through tomorrow, closing on Wednesday. Yikes.
- About that trip: mutual love fest between Zebediah and his paternal relatives, especially his great grandmother.
- I think he may have a thing for southern accents, or it may just be the great-grandmother charisma.
- It seems a little sad to me that Zebediah has no relatives except his parents nearby, but I suppose to him it will be normal. As a child, I didn’t even know anyone from my father’s side of the family, and I don’t remember worrying about it at all.
- My husband doesn’t seem too warped from having lived far from his extended family for his first twelve years.
- I think Zebediah has already been on more planes by six months than I was on by 14 years.
Amongst the pile of hand-me-downs we got recently were a couple of baby buntings, just as I was looking online to buy one. This means I don’t get to buy a jungle-print bunting with my REI dividend (”I’ve never seen such a large dividend,” said the cashier–for IVF3 I decided to hell with privacy and put a lot of the fees on my REI VISA card). It’s just as well, since Zebediah will probably only need something that warm for a week or two around here.
I thought I might want to know the words to “Bye baby bunting” when Zebediah does wear his bunting, so I looked it up in the Annotated Mother Goose. The version in that book begins “Bee baw bunting.” A note says “bunting” was a term of endearment.
More interesting was another lullaby (?!) on the same page, “Baby, baby, naughty baby,” that threatens the “squalling” child with a cannibalistic Bonaparte:
And he’ll beat you, beat, you, beat you,
And he’ll beat you all to pap,
And he’ll eat you, eat you , eat you,
Every morsel snap, snap, snap.
I bookmarked the page for Mr. Luo. ZX doesn’t cry that much anymore–except when he’s home with his dad while I’m at group therapy, which happens to coincide with a fussy time of day.
Am I warped, or do other parents wonder about this?
How can I promise always to be there for my kid, when so many things can happen to prevent it? Aside from the fact that eventually, the best case scenario is that the parent predeceases the child, I could get hit by a truck tomorrow, or die of cancer in ten years, or who knows what.
Maybe I’ve read too many children’s books. All those orphans.
Amongst my friends, I know women who as children lost their mothers to suicide and cancer. Then there’s the old abandonment by father, but that is a choice, so it seems different. (Suicide may seem like a choice, but I’m counting it in the category of illness. I remember the slide, way back when, into believing that the people I loved would be better off without me. On the other hand, I didn’t let myself do it, because I’m stubborn, or as the doctors say, have a “strong superego,” so there may be an element of choice.) My father’s father died when he was a teenager.
And it’s not like the middle-aged people I know who’ve lost parents took it in stride, with an “Ah, well, natural order of things and all that, tally ho.”
I think Jody has it right. You make the promise through actions, not words.
And count me among those who found the book I’ll Love You Forever creepy. This was a few years ago, and I was assured that it was touching to all mothers, but I still think it’s a bit much, although I’m all for loving your kid forever and getting loved back.
Every time Zebediah’s sleep gets worse, I look at Moxie’s sleep regression posts and find out he is just about on schedule. Last Sunday, after I nursed him to sleep at 7:15 and nursed again at 8:00 and 11:15, it occurred to me that if he’d been born on his due date he would have been exactly 4 months old.
Today’s post (or rather, the comments) is therefore just up my alley.
I think he is sleeping longer at night the past few days, but I’ve been falling asleep while nursing him and can’t quite remember when we nursed by the time morning comes.
On the bright side, we have achieved, at least for now, napping without being held, so life is good.
After many false starts, they are starting to build condos on the lot behind our home.
Unfortunately, Zebediah is too young either to have appreciated the trees and deer that formerly were to be seen in the lot or to enjoy the bulldozers and other heavy machinery currently working there.
I’m just as happy, though, that he is also too young to want to play in the construction site. I have happy memories of exploring such sites as a kid, but hypocrite that I am, I don’t want my child wandering around there. I also remember playing in the big trenches that were dug in the alley when the city was putting in new pipes and in the new greenbelt before it was finished–there were dry fish in the soil they used for fill. Are fish good for fertilizer? And of course, there was the excitement of climbing down to secret platforms underneath the end of the pier.
Just FYI, if you and a friend jump off a wall with extra large umbrellas in an attempt to mimic Mary Poppins, the umbrellas will break.
Also, it is inappropriate to throw water balloons at the county busses from outside the public library. Speaking hypothetically, of course. I’m sure no child of mine would even consider such a thing.
I learned after college that sleep deprivation is like alcohol in that it affects one’s judgment. I didn’t learn this during college, because I was too sleep deprived, and too therefore too busy doing things like going to the library for ten hours instead of sleeping and then nodding off in the library every fifteen minutes, or staying up all night doing assigned reading and then falling asleep in class.
So, it doesn’t do much good to have a baby that sleeps 4-6 hours at the beginning of the night if you stay up until he’s been in bed 4-6 hours, which I’ve done twice now.
It’s a slippery slope. He goes to bed early, so often we are eating dinner after he’s asleep (it’s a lot easier that way in any case). The only chance I have to pump is when he’s asleep. He’s not sleeping in the sling as much these days and doesn’t like to be in it if I’m sitting down, so I’ve been doing things like airline tickets and car reservations and paying bills online.
You know how it goes. Once you’re on the computer, Bloglines is right there.
Anyway, I’m feeling like a fool, but I do have airline, hotel, and car reservations for baby’s first wedding.
HaHaHaHaHa
