I.O.U.

I've been meaning to write post after post for at least the past week, but Internet, I'm so tired... How tired am I? Well.... It's been so busy around here, from morning till night (with less reliable baby naps in between for recharging my brain). Anil is working tonight, and Maya is in bed, and I'm catching up on TV that I've saved on our DVR--the kind that Anil will scoff at if I watch it around him (Lady GaGa episode of "Glee," anyone?). And I thought about making popcorn. But I'm too tired to want to sit here putting piece after piece after piece in my mouth. Eating popcorn has become work. So IOU more posts as soon as the effort required to eat popcorn ceases to be exhausting.

addendum to regression

(Is that an oxymoron?) Read the post below first.

Just today a friend from grad. school described working on his dissertation in these terms:

"feels like a lot of mucking around with occasional
movements forward"

Sounds eerily familiar, right?

It's not a regression--it's the new normal

Okay, Internet, I'm going to come out and say it because jinxing myself isn't an issue anymore. Maya was sleeping through the night last week. From 8 p.m.-7 a.m. And it was GLORIOUS. I was afraid to say anything for fear of jinxing our good fortune. But, alas, it was short lived, for now anyway. This week she's been waking up again, earlier than she has for at least the past month or so. It started out as waking up twice, at like 2 and 4 a.m., and I was freaking out. But now it's just once between 2-4 a.m., then sleeping again till 7. She seems to wake up and squawk sometimes, but then settles herself back down. So it's not that bad. Just a bummer after I got a reminder of what a full night's sleep could feel like again. And because until now she'd been sleeping later and later (before the full night she'd go till at least 5 a.m.), it felt like progress.

Apparently, though, what we're experiencing now is known as the four month sleep regression. Maya is 16 weeks old this Saturday. (Is that her four month mark or is it May 30?) I Googled "four month sleep regression" though, and it seems more like a term that exhausted and frustrated new moms have coined because it makes us feel better about a new normal that is defined by inconsistency and reality falling a bit short of expectations. At four months, I think we expect to have made so much "progress," because before babies, life had a tendency to be somewhat linear. And we have progressed, in leaps and bounds. But we have these grand expectations of things returning to some semblance of normalcy, like the normal we've known pre-baby, and I don't think that ever actually happens again.

At three months, my friends and I were saying we felt pressure to have it together more in some ways. Like we couldn't walk around in stretchy pants with unwashed hair anymore, give the gas station cashier our laundry receipt instead of our debit card, and excuse the whole mess that is seemingly our life with, "Oh, I just had a baby." Nope. Three months sounds more official than "8 weeks." Get it together. (Yeah right.)

Take that to four months, and you're still waking up at night, there's still a prominent spare tire around your waist, and you realize that you've done things like lost your own health insurance card only to find your daughter's card residing snugly in your wallet--a perfect metaphor for how her needs replace yours without you even realizing it. Meanwhile though, the baby that is causing all this turmoil for your gradually recovering self-identity is growing and developing by leaps and bounds. Maya is rolling over front to back, and is scooching herself around the floor as if trying to get to the burrito place across the street. See?

She's settling herself into sleep better. Her head and neck control is out of the park. She's grabbing everything. So no wonder she's having some sleep issues. The consensus seems to be that with developmental progress comes sleep regress. But that doesn't meant it's an actual regression.

I mean, my whole life is a regression if you want to look at it that way. I sit around in pajama pants longer than I will ever admit and my hair was falling out of its elastic band yesterday at the gym because it was too greasy to stay bound during jumping jacks. But in another sense, my life is more evolved than it was when my personal hygiene was never in question. Does this look like regression to you? And no, she was not watching "Fresh Prince of Bel Air," but don't you feel like she should be holding a remote?

My sister-in-law once said something along the lines of, you realize you're a better parent not when your kids become more predictable but you become more adaptable. I'm learning what I can do on interrupted sleep and disrupted personal upkeep, and it includes making an adorable little person smile a billion times a day. I'm all she needs to stay alive and grow. I feed her, and I take care of her, and she keeps doing new things. I call that pregress. Wait, I'm tired, I meant progress.

"Why is it always such a disaster?"

That was what my friend, a new mom herself, desperately asked when we attempted to meet at a mall last week. Our babies are 10 weeks apart, so we were pregnant together last summer and fall and have clawed our way through new motherhood together. Wait, did I say "have clawed"? I meant are currently clawing. It's ongoing.

We were attempting to meet at a mall north of Boston that's in between where we both live--I live on the south side of the city and she lives a bit north. It was supposed to be an easy 20 minutes or so for both of us. I texted her when I left, so you can understand why she called me to check in about an hour later.

At that point, her son hadn't wanted to nap in the morning, so she was desperately pushing him around the mall in his stroller because he'd protest as soon as the motion stopped. I, on the other hand, was reluctantly still in motion in my car because I was so tired and braindead when I got into the car that I headed to the wrong mall. And I headed there without the GPS because Anil is working in Worcestor this month and has it in the other car. So I was navigating with Google maps on my iPhone, but only at red lights because Oprah's "no phone zone" series has made me too scared to even look at my phone while driving now that I have precious baby cargo in the back seat. I realized I was going the wrong way about half way there, then found myself driving through Harvard Square and taking a route through complete suburbs for the next hour, only to finally get onto I-95 for literally one minute until I took the exit for the mall. Then, of course, it was right in front of me, and I could see how ridiculously easy it would have been to get there if I'd had my brain locked in from the start. The saving grace was that Maya slept on and off for most of that fiasco.

I'd refused to call my poor friend who was circling the mall waiting for me, because I couldn't acknowledge that this was all happening. I was afraid that if I admitted that I was turning around in a suburban dog park when I was supposed to get to the mall an hour ago, and that I was about to pee in my pants but couldn't just run into a gas station anymore (more like hobbling in carrying Maya's car seat--I kind of shuffle like Igor in "Young Frankenstein"), I'd lose whatever semblance of determination and sanity I was pretending I still had.

But seriously, why is it always such a disaster? It seems like I can't do anything simply anymore. Any time I try to "wing it," pandemonium strikes. Then when I try to plan it, everything still blows up. When I finally got to the mall, it felt like it was 105 degrees in there (post on my abnormal temperature range to come... ooh something to look forward to, right?), which made Maya fussier than usual. I wore her in the Bjorn so that I could keep my friend's son in motion while she tried to find what she needed, and it worked for him, but Maya wasn't so content, and it didn't help either of them that I kept running us into racks of clothing and sides of dressing rooms. My friend didn't find what she needed, and we were both too frazzled to get to really talk.

After we called it quits, I took the interstate home, thinking it'd be an easy drive, but taking 95 bypassed where I live completely and I ended up like 20 minutes further south, so I still had to backtrack through a different suburb to get home. Oh, and even though I fed Maya before we left the mall, she screamed the whole way. You know how they torture prisoners sometimes by blasting rock music? They should just put them in a car with a recording of my screaming baby.

I just thought I'd write a bit on an example of the complete disaster scenario that's now a normal part of life, lest you, Internet, think it's all cute hair styles and giggles for us. It's not bad. It's just normal new motherhood insanity. Anil and I try to do a lot with Maya, and I go nuts when I'm home too much, so I end up setting out on the town with little M a lot, and sometimes it goes great, and sometimes it all falls apart. Usually it's a combination of both.

party in the back

Maya woke up with a total Kate Gosselin hairdo yesterday (pre-extensions, she doesn't have that much hair); combed forward in the front and all spiky in the back.

This is what she thought of the comparison.

kickin' it

No pressure, but I can't wait for peewee soccer. In like six years.

Mother's Day... yay me!

I really felt like I EARNED this day. Birthdays have always felt special, but now I feel kind of entitled for having been celebrated just for existing. The one being born doesn't do all that much work, let me tell ya. In fact, I now think my birthday should be more about my own mom than me because she worked a hell of a lot harder on that day than I did (though to be fair, I was three months early, so I worked pretty hard to stick around as well). On Maya's first birthday, I plan on having a party for her during which she smears cake all over her face, but then I'm having a party for Anil and me. Cause we will have earned a celebration of that year. (And again, to be fair, Maya deserves a party for being continually smushed into my pelvis for three hours while trying to be born.)

So, Mother's Day. The first thing I did was sleep in! Anil took Maya and Bailey outside to play, and I slept till 10:30 for the first time since before giving birth (unless you count the first couple of weeks when Maya would sleep until 10 or 11 a.m., but since she would have been up until about 3 a.m. and then every three hours in between, I don't consider that "sleeping in," or really sleeping at all). Then Anil made me breakfast.

My request for the day was to take Maya on her first swan boat ride. So we headed out to the Public Gardens, all bundled up. Yes, like in layers and coats. You never know if the New England weather will cooperate with any given plans, so we've learned to adapt and make it work. It helps to be stubborn. For our anniversary one year, I planned a picnic on the Esplanade complete with champagne, then that day, that day in JUNE, was cold and misty with rain. But I wouldn't give up; we just wore fleece and guzzled champagne in an attempt to stay warm. In this case, we got out Maya's fleece bunting that we thought we were done with, and I got out my down vest that Anil got me in size medium that I thought I'd be done with (um, not because of the weather though--I just thought I'd be able to zip up my size small by now!).

Here's the story on pictures though. My mommy brain that thought I'd charged my camera battery was mistaken, so we couldn't take my super awesome camera. And this after my mom sent me a beautiful frame for Mothers Day for this swan boat picture that I was already obsessed with taking. We thought we had it covered though. Anil gave me a pocket-sized video camera that morning. It's like the Flip video camera, but seemingly better. It's got some extra features and, get this, can be used in the water (because Anil thinks Maya will catch her first wave this summer, surfing before she can even crawl). I wanted an easy camera like that to take random videos (and yes, post them here!) of things I wouldn't get out the "real" video camera for. Like Maya hiccuping. Stay tuned for that; not even kidding--she's so loud people stare at her in restaurants. Anyway, this video camera takes still photos too... but apparently they're very very close up. So most of the photos Anil took are of half of my face and the top of Maya's head because he wasn't far enough back.

This is the best we got. Kinda feels like you're sitting right next to me, huh? Sort of uncomfortably close?



Here's the first fruit of my Mothers Day gift, check it out! Be wary if you're prone to motion sickness though. We learned from this that the camera works best if you hold it in one place as opposed to waving it around panoramically.

The hair! The hair!

Maya's hair is out of control. I realized the extent of its ridiculousness when had water problems up here over last weekend. From Saturday through Tuesday we had a boil water order because of a broken pipe that supplies water to Boston and its suburbs. Maya and I walked around the reservoir near us both weekend days, then I went home and assumably showered in it as they pumped from it for emergency water. Usually its not used for drinking--we know because we let Bailey swim in it and wanted to make sure we weren't going home and drinking from it!

When I couldn't give Maya a bath for three days (she sticks her tongue out for her entire bath and I wasn't about to boil and cool that much water), her hair got all emo style--greasy, dark, and combed toward her face and over her ears. We listened to a lot of Conor Oberst on those days. 

Fortunately the emo hair didn't make her mood all sensitive and introspective.

Also, I think she's actually getting a mullet. 

Say what?

Here are a couple of pictures I've taken on my iPhone over the past few weeks. Maya's expressions just crack me up.

Face out!

Maya is a few weeks past three months old now, with excellent head and neck control if I do say so myself, so we've started facing her out in the Baby Bjorn. I've literally been looking forward to this since I got pregnant. It feels like a milestone because it means she's more able to interact with the outside world, and maybe I feel a little less overwhelmingly responsible for her because she's not just a little baby pod attached to me--she can support her own adorable head, even with the weight of all that hair. Also, the world is so exciting and it's equally exciting to have Maya facing out towards it. 

The other day we met friends for ice cream then did errands around Coolidge Corner, the busy part of our neighborhood, so Maya saw lots of people, traffic, and the T. It's just funny to walk around all of these things in the city with Maya riding on me, awake and aware, and think about how she's seeing it all for the first time. She's been out and about with us since she was 3-4 weeks old, but until now we've strived to have her asleep while we're out because the Bjorn was like baby valium. 

This is us last week on Maya's first face out. She started out pretty psyched. We went on a walk with Anil and Bailey.

Then this is how she ended the walk. Old habits die hard :). 

Then this was us that weekend, going for a walk on the Esplanade, my number one favorite spot in Boston in the spring/summer. Note the crazy Boston spring weather--one day it's in the 50s and the next it's in the 70s. Maya's favorite position in the Bjorn is tongue out, as you can see here. I wonder if they make a drool guard for this thing.