Mr. Sandman, Bring Me a Dream. And Whiskey for the Baby.

You know what's funny about having an infant live at your house? How you never, never, ever get to really sleep again. EVER. (Sleep deprivation may have perhaps contributed to the rambling quality of this post, now that I think about it.)

I know, I know, you have a friend who has a friend whose baby started sleeping through the night at eight weeks, right? Well guess what? I think your friend of a friend is a big lying liar who wants to impress people at parties by talking about his or her excellent-sleeping baby. In fact, I only have one person I trust who claims with a straight face that her baby sleeps through the night for eight or more hours, and I think she feeds her baby whiskey and Vicodin. As far as I'm concerned, babies who sleep through the night are like unicorns: lovely, but mythical.

This weekend Matt and I spent time with some friends of ours (we'll call them "Sam" and "Sarah") who excitedly confessed to us that they are expecting a baby; Sarah is eight weeks along. We were and are thrilled for them, and we spent much of the visit oohing and aahing and talking about their upcoming attraction. About thirty minutes into the "hooray you're having a baby!" conversation, though, Sarah began talking about how her pregnancy symptoms are making her miserable. (Just to be clear, I am totally sympathetic on this point. I remember how miserable pregnancy can be, even though the ultimate outcome [Gabe the Chubby and Delicious] was excellent for me.) Specifically, she talked at length about how she's "so sleep deprived" because she has to wake up twice a night to pee. She went on for a while about how sleep is really important to her, and how this has taken a toll on her. Sam nodded gravely and held her hand as she regaled us with her tales of repeated nocturnal bathroom visits.

I couldn't help myself - about four minutes into her speech I rolled my eyes so hard I'm surprised they didn't fall out of my head (yes, I am evil and judgmental, thank you very much). And I wasn't alone in my evil judgment, either: as she talked and talked, I could feel Matt tense up next to me. He never quite relaxed again during the remainder of their visit, and the minute we closed the door behind them after kissing them goodbye and congratulating them for the hundreth time, Matt turned to me and said, "They are so screwed. They are so screwed." I just shrugged my shoulders and nodded. He was right. They are doomed, doomed, doomed.

We haven't had a solid night of sleep in months. MONTHS. (Actually Matt has had one single night of good sleep: the night after he pulled a muscle in his back and his doctor prescribed him a muscle relaxer sufficient to fell a Shetland pony. It knocked him out cold and made him a little groggy even the next day. I won't even try to describe my jealousy when the baby began howling at 4:00 a.m. and he didn't so much as twitch.)

You see, without fail, Gabe wakes up at least once a night to eat. We "dream feed" him at 11:00 p.m., but that doesn't carry him through til morning. He needs one more feeding. Usually this takes place between 3:00 and 4:00 a.m., but it can happen as early as 1:15 a.m and as late as 5:00 a.m. The exact time doesn't really matter to me anymore. I know that at some point in the wee hours Gabe will start to cry loudly enough to wake Matt and myself, and I will stumble in and feed him, then rock him, kiss his fat cheeks, lay him back down in his cozy crib, and hope like hell that he falls back asleep easily. If he cries a second time before 6:00 a.m., then it's Matt's turn. (I used to feel guilty about making him take a turn, but nearly eight months in I've decided it's only fair to share.)

So back to Sarah and Sam. As we watched them pull away in their car, it occurred to me that maybe it would have been kind of us to try and adjust their expectations slightly. Maybe we would have been better friends if we had honestly told them that the nightime peeing really wasn't a big deal, and that they had many more long and sleepless nights in their future. But I couldn't do it for two reasons.

First, because you can't understand it until you're living it. When I got pregnant I knew, on an intellectual level, that I would be very, very tired as a new parent, but I didn't understand the depth of the exhaustion that awaited. No one can. Sleep deprivation is cumulative. It wasn't until I had gone several weeks, never sleeping more than three hours in a stretch, that I grasped completely what Matt and I had gotten ourselves into.

Second, I didn't want to break their spirits by telling them that I find Gabe's current dream-feed-then-up-at-least-once-a-night situation to be totally and completely livable, and that I actually think we're lucky. But it's true. His once-a-night schedule is not that bad. It's certainly a huge improvement from Gabe's first twelve weeks of life, when he would wake up every two hours like clockwork, whether he was hungry or not. (That was tough, people. That was really tough.) It's also much better than my friend L's baby who at 14 months old wakes up three times a night to eat.

Do I like getting up at 3:27 a.m? No, but I don't really mind it. There is something sweet and fine about curling up in the big armchair with my baby in the middle of the night, feeling his soft breath go in and out, feeling the weight of his little body against mine as he eats his late-night meal. Often after he has finished he will smile up at me sleepily, and his small hand will reach up to pat my cheek. These moments have a delicious, stolen feeling to them - I know when I am old and gray I will remember how Gabe used to pat my cheek and smile his milky smile.

So I didn't say anything to Sarah and Sam. I just watched them pull away from the curb, and I smiled a little to myself, thinking of the long nights that await them in the coming months. Or not. Maybe they'll get one of the mythical babies who sleep through the night at three weeks, and I will feel like a big fat idiot about this entire dumb post.

Three Things

1. I hate the 405.

Not to rehash my Thanksgiving post or anything, but my good gracious, Los Angeles traffic is absolutely unbearable sometimes. I left work at 4:00 today in order to meet my parents and my grandparents for dinner and sort of kick off the Christmas festivities (I wanted to sneak out even earlier, but forces were conspiring against me - I actually had to, you know, work at work). The trek from Burbank to the South Bay took me no less than two excruciating hours. All I can say is that I have the best baby in the whole world, because for one hour and fifteen minutes of that time he chatted happily to himself in the backseat, working on his pronunciation of "da da da da" and smacking his Very Hungry Caterpillar rattle onto the arm of the carseat enthusiastically. Next he cried for ten minutes, then blissfully fell asleep for the remainder of the drive, all while I was practically eaten alive with guilt for forcing the poor lamb to be in the car for so long. These days I feel worse and worse about working so much and leaving him in day care for so long, and I just flat-out miss him most of the time. Spending such a big chunk of our precious mommy-baby time stuck in a hideous (and pointless - there was never any clear cause for the gridlock!) traffic jam was almost physically painful to me. But I digress.

2. The drive was totally worth it.

I arrived at the designated restaurant feeling miserable and generally beat down, and I'd been driving in traffic so long that my right thigh was literally cramping from going back and forth between the gas and the break. But much like the night before Thanksgiving, I was so, so glad we'd made the trip. I adore my grandparents, and they adore me, and they really adore Gabe. After about ten minutes of watching them talk to him and play peek-a-boo with him, the treacherous drive on the 405 was all but forgotten. (That's a lie. I remember every wretched minute of the drive. But I'm trying to say it was worth it. I'm not very eloquent right now, OK?)

3. I miss my friend Heather.

This has nothing to do with Nos. 1 and 2 above, but it's been on my mind a lot recently, so I wanted to post about it. About four months ago my wonderful, big-hearted, empathetic, always-willing-to-listen, hilariously funny friend Heather moved across the country with her lovely husband and two fabulous children. The move was absolutely the right decision for their family, but goddamn I miss her. (I miss her husband and her kids, too, but I miss her most of all.) Heather's kids are five and three, so she has been there and done that as far as babies are concerned, and she gives the best and most level-headed advice of anyone I know. Plus I think the two of us sort of think alike, maybe because we're both lawyers and ridiculously type A.

Anyhow, the holidays are making me feel nostaligic and a little wistful, and more than anything I wish I could go over to her house with a bottle of wine and we could order a pizza and feed her kids (organic, unprocessed, baked) fish sticks and just talk for a couple of hours. We still talk, of course, and email, but it's not the same. I want to give her a squeeze and show her how big Gabe is getting and see what awesome purse she's carrying these days, and it's hard to effectively do those things on the phone or over email.

This is actually really selfish of me, because the move has been about 1,000 times harder for her than for me. I just miss her, whereas she has to live in a new city and make new friends and get her kids into new schools, and do new things, ad infinitum. But there it is, universe. I miss my friend Heather, and I love her, and hope she and her family have a Merry Christmas.

Plague

I am sick again. How is this possible? Didn't I just have the flu about three weeks ago? Actually now that I stop to think about it, it seems like I have been sick off and on for, oh, I don't know, about three and a half months.

In totally unrelated news, Gabe started daycare about three and a half months ago! Isn't that funny? What an amazing coincidence! No chance those two events could have anything to do with each other, is there? Ho, ho! It's so amusing!

The silver lining to the constant low-level illness (and this is a big silver lining, Dear Readers), is that while Matt and I have been trading the same cold back and forth literally for months now, complete with coughing, aching, runny noses, etc., Gabe is doing great. He has been sick exactly one time. It lasted about forty-eight hours; he had a low-grade fever and general fussiness. (And can I just say: thank goodness his illness was brief and mild. That forty-eight hours nearly broke my heart. I am such a freaking wimp.) Plus Gabe might not have even been sick for real that one time. His doctor opined (yes, of course I rushed him to the doctor like a typical overreacting first-time mom) that he was probably teething. Who knew teeth could cause a fever? Babies are so weird.

Anyhow, the moral of the story is that Gabe is immune to all of the plague germs carried by the fourteen other snotty-nosed babies at daycare, while Matt and I succumb to each and every virus we encounter during the twenty minutes of drop-off and pick-up. I think Gabe is sneaking out of his crib at night and stealing vitamins from the bathroom or something.

OK, I have to go cough and blow my nose and feel sorry for myself now. Distract yourselves with this picture of the chubby chubkins nom nom squishy cheeks. Mmmmm, delicious!

Noel, Noel. (Dreidel, Dreidel, Dreidel.)

We put up the Christmas tree this weekend. I always get a little thrill of excitement when retrieving the boxes of ornaments and decorations from storage, unwrapping the angels and snowflakes and Santas from their tissue paper, plugging in the strands of Christmas lights to make sure none of the bulbs have burned out.

Of course, this year the little thrill was better than usual, because of this:

There are many reasons I love this photo: the old-mannish sweater; the slightly elfin chapeau; the chubby legs sticking out of pants that are decidedly too short ("Capri pants are not a good look on baby boys," my good friend Wendy would say). But most of all I love, love, love that open-mouthed grin. Here, take a closer look, why don't you:

Could he be more charming, I ask? Could he? I think not. He was just so pleased by the whole thing, so enamored with the lights and fascinated by the ornaments. He would have cheerfully spent the entire afternoon examining the giant thing full of colors and textures that had magically appeared in his living room. It even motivated him to work on his scooting. (Although he still hasn't figured out how to go forwards, and thus he spent much of his time accidentally propelling himself away from the tree. Much frustrated grunting resulted.)

Anyhow, as far as Gabe is concerned, the Christmas tree is the best toy ever. And he hasn't even noticed the wrapped packages underneath the tree yet. Never mind that I suspect the wrapping paper will entice him far more than the actual toys contained in the wrapping. As far as Gabe is concerned, Christmas decorations are a huge success!

Wait until we get to the menorah! That involves fire!

Success!

Applesauce, people. After a month of trying a startling assortment of homemade, organic, all-natural foods, what does Gabe decide to eat? Applesauce. Gerber applesauce.

I know, I know, I should only be feeding him cereal and green vegetables and maybe a Cheerio or two at this stage of the game. I definitely shouldn't be giving him anything as sweet as applesauce. I can hear you clucking your tongues and shaking your heads sadly as you read this, undoubtedly thinking to yourselves, "If you give him applesauce you'll never get him to eat green beans." "He'll hate vegetables forever." "You've ruined his palate." But for the first time in my almost-seven-month-long career as a mother, I don't feel guilty for failing to follow the Good Mom Rules. I've got to be honest: I'm just glad he's eating something.

Of course, I use the term "eating" loosely. When I say he "ate," what I really mean is that he smeared his hands around the bowl to feel the squishy processed apple goodness, then stuck two fingers in his mouth and sucked a little food off of them. Next he allowed me to put four tiny bites into his mouth (two with the spoon, two with my finger). Last and perhaps most effectively, he dipped his teething toy into the applesauce and then gnawed on the teething toy enthusiastically.

Hooray! Maybe he won't be the only exclusively bottle-fed child in his kindergarten class. Maybe he'll have bottles and applesauce in his little lunch box. I am so relieved.

The Holidays Begin

My Wednesday before Thanksgiving included the following:

• Baby with miserable, miserable case of diaper rash who howled every time you changed his diaper;
• Rain, rain everywhere, and my umbrella mysteriously missing from my car (perhaps one of the cats took it?);
• Being forced to skip lunch because of an inane conference call with fifteen people all talking over each other at ever-increasing levels of both volume and indignation;
• Sneaking out of work to rescue my little dumpling from daycare so we could "miss the traffic" and head to my parents' house for dinner;
• Being caught as I snuck out by a senior lawyer (although in an act of kindness, he simply wished me a good holiday weekend and then decided to sneak out early with me);
• Discovering upon arrival at daycare that Mr. Chubkin's diaper rash was much worse (so bad that he would howl if you so much as approached him holding a clean diaper), and that as a result he planned to fuss intermittently all day;
• That we had not, in fact, missed traffic, and that the drive to my parents' house would take upwards of two hours with aforesaid miserable diaper rash baby in the backseat;
• The wailing and the moaning that escalated to nearly inhuman levels after approximately one hour and forty minutes in the car;

And then, when nearly all hope was lost...

• Seeing my grandparents (Gabe's great-grandparents) standing in my mother's kitchen, literally welcoming us with open arms, so thrilled to see me and the baby that they could hardly speak, but instead could only kiss and hug us; and lastly,
  
• Watching my grandparents take turns reading "Pat the Bunny" as Gabe gazed up at them with his sweet, serious eyes.
  

In short, Wednesday was a great, great day. Truly, a great day.

Talent

All moms think their kids are talented, I know. But it turns out that my baby really does have a special talent. Can you guess what it is? Nope, it's not speaking, or walking, or composing sonnets. It's pooping! (You may remember that in my very first post, I threatened to write about baby poop. It was not an idle threat. You'll know to take me seriously from here on out!)

That's right, Gabe's pooping skills are prodigious. It's not just me who thinks so; his daycare teachers agree. Every single day last week, he came home from daycare in a different outfit than I had dressed him in that morning. Why, you ask? Because every single day he managed to have a poop huge enough to stain his outfit! That's right, he's the baby that diapers cannot contain!

At Gabe's daycare, each child has a "daily sheet" on which the teachers track bottles and food consumed, naps taken, and diapers changed. On Thursday his poop was so big that the teacher who changed his diaper remarked, "Wow!" on his daily sheet. She also drew a little smiley face. I sort of wish I had been there; I've personally never seen a dirty diaper that inspired me to draw any kind of illustration.

I wonder what other talents lie dormant in my little lamb! Perhaps I'll discover that he's capable of projectile spitting mashed bananas? (Of course, I would probably need to convince him to ingest more than an eighteenth of a teaspoon of bananas at any one sitting in order for him to hone this skill.) In any case, I am so proud of my little poop machine. He really is quite charming, you know.

A Brief Love Letter

Upon re-reading my first post I realized two things: (1) I may have accidentally depicted my husband Matt as unhelpful and disengaged; and (2) those were some really unflattering pictures of Gabriel.

The second item is easily remedied: here, everyone, look at my preshus wittle baybee! He is sooooo cute! I mean seriously, do you see those fat little cheeks? Don't you just want to smooch them? And trust me, the back of his neck smells so good. It makes me a little giddy just thinking about that powdery, slighly milky smell.

The first item is perhaps not so easily remedied, but I am going to try. The thing is, Matt is pretty much the best dad ever. Seriously. We have many friends who also have small children, so I have observed many, many dads in action. And these guys are good dads; they help with midnight feedings, they read books to their kids and do all of the voices, they coach winless AYSO soccer teams.

Matt just smokes them all.

It began while I was in labor (a rather drawn-out affair, lasting approximately forty-seven hours and followed by an unplanned c-section). Matt spent two solid days and nights in my hospital room perched on the most uncomfortable bench in all existence, rising only to bring me ice water when I needed it, to hold my hand when I felt scared, or to update our parents on my progress ("Three centimeters dilated." "Three centimeters dilated." "Three centimeters dilated." "OK, they give up, they're going to cut her open now."). He was brave for me during the c-section itself, making little jokes to keep me calm and cheerful.

When they actually lifted Gabe over the surgical draping so that we could see him for the first time, that was it. Matt was a goner. I have never seen a daddy so thoroughly entranced by his child. While I recovered, he spent that first evening trailing along behind a nurse as Gabe was weighed, measured, and bathed, all the while with this crazy, goofy grin on his face, his eyes locked on this new little person.

Six and a half months later, that grin still hasn't gone away. Every morning, when Gabe begins stirring in his crib, Matt is up like a flash to go see him and kiss him and change his wet diaper. Matt has replaced all the "rock en Espanol" CDs in his car with children's music (including a particularly painful "Mickey Mouse Sings the Hits" CD that I purchased on a whim and found unlistenable), and he sings along heartily because "Gabe likes to hear my voice in the car." Matt, formerly the biggest social butterfly I've ever met, who used to have dinner plans with various friends no less than six nights a week, now dashes home just on the hope that Gabe will still be awake and ready for a bedtime story.

In short, Matt's entire universe has shifted to put this one tiny person at the center. And sometimes I look at them in the mornings as they sit on our bed, Matt and Gabe both bent over the sports section (Matt not even trying to read about his beloved USC football, but instead letting Gabe crumple up the newspaper because "Gabe loves paper, isn't that funny?"), and I am so overwhelmed with love and gratitude that I can hardly breath.

I am blessed to have this wonderful man as my husband, and Gabe is blessed to have him as a father. We are so very, very lucky.

Hi, Internets!

Well, well, I am starting a blog. I hope no one at work finds out. They're kind of mean and they would mock me relentlessly for this. (Kidding, work people! You're all awesome! You know I love you! Please don't make fun of me! Seriously, don't make fun of me. Please?)

I'd like to tell you that I'm starting this blog because I am a great literary talent, and have many lofty things I want to post about, but neither of those things are true.

I'm starting this blog because I have a baby and that means I'm totally obsessed with my baby and I want to write about him.

And lofty topics? Well, I really just want to talk about solid foods. (Oh come on, it could be worse. I could want to talk about baby poo or something. Maybe I will talk about baby poo, now that I think about it. Maybe next week.)

More specifically, I want to talk about the fact that my baby (Gabriel, six months old, requisite chubby cheeks and delicious baby thighs and big blue puppy-dog-style eyes) hates solids and refuses to eat them. Haaaaates them. Refuuuuuuses to eat them. Clamps his tiny, tooth-free gums together and purses his lips and turns his head and tries to swat the spoon away every time I come at him making airplane noises and smiling encouragingly.

You should have seen how excited I was on his six-month birthday, the very first day that I was allowed to give him solid food, per his pediatrician's instruction. I researched exactly what kind of food we should try first (organic brown rice cereal with probiotics, of course), and I went to three different stores before I found the exact right brand. Then, with great fanfare, I mixed it up exactly according to the directions on the label for "baby's first feeding." A chemist whipping up a batch of life-saving cancer-fighting miracle drugs could not have been more precise than I was mixing the serving of rice cereal. I even used a charming dinosaur-themed bowl that I'd purchased especially for this occasion.

Finally, practically trembling with anticipation, I put a brand-new bib around Gabe's chubby neck and sat him down in his gleaming high chair. Then I dipped the rubber-tipped safety spoon in the cereal and guided it towards his mouth.

Gabe, who is a pretty easygoing little guy, decided to give me the benefit of the doubt, and after a few moments of watching me make ridiculous cheerleader-type faces he obligingly opened his mouth.

I felt so happy, and even a little smug, as I fed him the first bite. "He's going to love solid foods!" I thought, mentally congratulating myself on my excellent mothering skills. "His weight gain will be excellent this month, and his pediatrician will be so thrilled!" I began to have visions of feeding him vegetables and fruits (all homemade, and organic of course), and then medleys, and meats, and finger foods, and eventually we'd work up to gourmet dinners from Melisse, the fabulous French restaurant on 11th and Wilshire! He was going to be such a great eater, and love food so much!

It was at this point that Gabe made a face I can only describe as "horrified" as he spit out every last molecule of the cereal.


My husband, who had been watching the entire production with a poorly concealed air of amusement and disdain, now began openly laughing at me. "What did you think was going to happen?" he asked. "You didn't think he was going to eat it all, did you?"

"Go get the video camera," I snapped. "We need to be recording this moment for posterity."

"OK," he replied, gamely going off to find the video camera so he could preserve our baby's rejection of organic brown rice cereal in digital high-definition. I could hear him chuckling as he fished the camera bag out of our storage closet.

I tried for fifteen full minutes to get Gabe to eat just a tiny, little, bitsy bit more of cereal. It went something like this:

Me: [smiles] "Gabe! Here's some delicious cereal for you!" [waves spoon enticingly]

Gabe: [presses lips together, grimaces]

Me: "Here comes the airplane into the hanger! Open wi-i-ide!!!"

Gabe: [smacks spoon away with angry fist]

Me: [cereal now splattered on shoulder and in hair] "Let's sing a song! You love to sing songs! How about the ABC song? A-B-C-D-E-F-G..."

Gabe: [fussing a little now]

Me: "...H-I-J-K-LMNOP..." [sees a tiny opening between lips, rushes in with cereal-coated spoon]

Gabe: [gags, begins to cry]


At this point an immense wave of guilt hit - I had made my baby gag and cry! - so I gave up, scooped him out of the high chair, and unceremoniously dumped the tyrannosaurus bowl in the sink. I apologized to Gabe about fourteen times while I tried to calm him down, distract him with an elephant rattle, and wipe cereal off of his face, chest, and hands all at the same time.

Of course, my husband managed to capture all of this with the video camera, right down to the cereal crusted into every fold of the brand-new high chair. Because, really, we wouldn't want to forget these magical memories.

Rice cereal was a failure, people. A FAILURE. And sweet potatoes have been a failure, and oatmeal and carrots. Why won't the baby eat???

OK, that was far too long for an initial entry. Welcome to my blog. More soon! Aren't you excited?