This Is How I MomSolving the puzzle of motherhood one piece at a time

It seems like finding time for blogging is currently quite a tough thing. Like any stay at home mother, from the time I get up until the time I go to bed my life is dedicated to my son. Since he’s not mobile yet (though we’re working hard on sitting up), he’s mostly in some way attached to me, which makes getting any kind of work or play done hard.

When he naps, I usually try to help my husband with the business side of things or do stuff like, y’know, cooking, which leaves me all of an hour after I bring the baby to bed at 9:30pm. I try to find some time to read or take some photos outside to practice when the time allows, but it doesn’t happen as often as I’d like.

For some reason, Logan used to nap a lot longer when my husband and I were still alternating sleep schedules and I had a lot more time to, well, do stuff. I kinda miss it, but having more time with my husband is definitely a nice trade-off and the overall better solution. Rarily, but at least sometimes, we have time to do things like these…:

…But with taxes due (we don’t get returns, we have to pay – a lot), and expanding the home business, things have been stressful to say the least. Oh well, things are getting better. We did have our 2-year wedding anniversary and picked up this little guy to celebrate!

We named him Nocturne (nerdy gaming reference) and Logan LOVES him. He’s a 10-week old bombay kitten. I also decided to finally give in and get a jumperoo and it has probably been the best baby purchase I’ve made to date. Logan loves to jump and jump and jump and play with the toys for up to half an hour at a time, and that’s HUGE for him. Normally he gets bored and wants to be picked up or otherwise entertained after 5-10 minutes.

Yep. Loves it.

Since the weather has been getting a lot nicer, I’m making an effort to take Logan out more, so he can discover the world. He hates bright sunlight in his eyes and he hates the cold, but he’s been pretty appreciative of spring so far.

So anyway, that’s what we’ve been up to. Times are busy, but the productive kind. I hope that the stressful phase will alleviate within the next few months, so we can enjoy Logan’s first summer to come!

Just some of the exciting things we’ve been up to!

My son is very particular when it comes to going out.

1. He doesn’t like the car seat, but he’ll tolerate it temporarily, so long as the car is moving. If there’s a red light, you bet he’s wailing.
2. He likes the Ergo, provided a) it’s not too cold outside and b) it’s not too hot from my body temperature and c) he can see everything.
3. Going out for dinner is allowed so as long as we take him out of the car seat and let him sit on our legs when we arrive.

If all conditions of the Ergo are met, he’ll be happy to go for walks or even go grocery shopping.

Grocery shopping sometimes poses a problem since my body temperature heats up while we’re walking around in the store and baby might end up getting uncomfortable, at which point I either remove some of his or my clothing. Yesterday, he reached that point while we were at the check-out line, so I didn’t bother removing any clothing; we were gonna be out in cold air again within a few minutes.

Cue a friendly store clerk walking up to us and asking how old he is. “3 months”, I respond. “Oh really! When was he born?” Semi-unusual question. “On November 1st.” “My granddaughter was born on the 2nd!” Awkward Oh really! and laughter on my part. Meanwhile, Logan continues to crank since he’s still hot. Store clerk: “Aww, you want your mommy to feed you, huh?”

I know she meant nothing bad, but that statement really didn’t sit well with me. Yes, I went to your store without feeding my baby first, just so he’d have the worst experience possible. I probably haven’t checked his diaper in 10 hours either, while we’re at it. I really do wonder why strangers like to presume things about babies. It’s not the first time that’s happened and I’m not sure when it became common courtesy to walk over to a mother handling a crying child and offer random advice as to their predicament. I’ve never done it. I’d never pretend I know what’s up with a child I’ve never met in my life.

Speaking of crying children, while we were at the store yesterday, I checked out their Carters sale (and picked up two adorable one-pieces). The toddler sale was in the same area as the baby sale, and a perhaps 2-year old boy was throwing a tantrum. Logan glanced over at him and shot him the most irritated look as if to say “What is WRONG with you?!” I’m sure that in 2 years, he’ll completely understand, but it still made me laugh. Babies have the best expressions. They just seem so honest.

My husband is awake until I wake up in the mornings and then goes to bed himself. We started this schedule shortly after Logan was born to help out with my sleep deprivation, but it’s proven to actually be a pretty good arrangement as well as his work goes. He gets a lot done at night. Since he has a pretty big event coming up at noon today, I went to bed extra early last night (8pm!) and he was stuck with the task of entertaining baby for 2 hours and then putting him to bed.

I woke up to this e-mail in the morning:

“After two hours of trying every last thing I could to make baby happy with no success, with him finally passing out in his own strangely fast way, I have a deeper appreciation for what you do.

I love you! Really!

Precious. Cue fuzzy feelings. Also cue happy feelings I dodged that bullet. Homeboy didn’t nap yesterday afternoon, I bet he was cranky. But with someone so cute, you forget all about the cranky in a heartbeat…

Before I met my husband, I wasn’t sure if I ever wanted to have kids. Two months after we met, he asked me out on a date. Three months after our first date, we were getting married! We spent about a year in marital bliss until the baby fever came along. I probably had a worse case than him, but he was completely on board with trying for a little mini-us. Our finances were stable and we felt emotionally ready – well, as ready as we could be anyway.

However, it took a good 9 months until we finally saw the two lines on a test.. in fact, we’d given up trying and just didn’t do anything to prevent it as peeing on a stick and seeing negatives month after month was stressing me out. One day.. I’m not quite sure why; perhaps I was thinking about having a Baileys coffee or my period was late, I decided to pee on a stick just to make sure. I waited the three minutes without peeking at it, as I was sure it was going to be negative again. But, low and behold, when finally the three minutes were up and I was getting ready to discard the evil stick, I quickly glanced at it and had to do a double take.

Two. Lines.

Two.

Two.

Pregnant.

I couldn’t believe it. I went downstairs in shock and called out to my husband that he can’t let me fall down the stairs for the next 9 months, or something equally silly. I couldn’t quite believe it and wanted to do another pregnancy test (it could’ve been a fluke, right?!), so hubby ran to the store and came back with no less than 4 tests. Just goes to show what a sweetheart he is. Of course, all the other tests just confirmed what I already knew.

But, on to the point of this post – my husband. The man who made me want to have children and who is hands-down the best father I could ever have hoped for. My husband loves L with all his heart. He’s not afraid to change diapers (in fact, L’s very first diaper was changed by my husband as I was still recovering from delivery and the nurses didn’t want me to walk around too much), feed him, take night shifts with him, love him, comfort him when he’s crying and play with him.

My first month with L was a bit of an emotional challenge for me, and my husband was the one to keep me sane during it. Whenever I was having a hard time, whenever I ended up crying.. he was there for me. Whenever I missed him, he’d cut his sleep short so we could spend time together. Whenever I really needed a break, my husband would take the baby so I could recharge my batteries.

I hear, read and see about so many bad fathers and bad husbands and I feel so, so blessed to have this wonderful human being by my side and helping me to bring up our beautiful baby boy. He’s my best friend, lover and the best father I know.