Nothin' to prove...

I wrote this months ago but never published it for some reason... probably because it felt whiny. But it was authentic, too. I know that people who are waiting for a baby will feel like this is a stunning display of ingratitude, but just because I love my life doesn't mean parts of it aren't hard. And I've been letting fear of looking ungrateful keep me mute. So, muzzle off, I got nothin' to prove... Being a full-time mom is a darn sight different from working for the money. Any fool could tell ya that. I was expecting a full-on bliss-fest, reveling in my freedom from deadlines, elated by the utter absence of time sheets from my weekly routine, and never having to scramble to assemble a demo because somebody else failed to prepare properly. And, honestly, all of that has materialized and I bliss out about it, for about 3 minutes at the end of each day.

I spend the rest of my day catering to an audience who shows no glimmer of approval for good work but screams bloody murder her disapproval. And in my zen moments, I know she's not so much screaming disapproval of the quality of my work as screaming her discomfort, boredom, and digestive upset. But I lose such mental clarity in the midst of the screaming. So, working for a baby is all about tradeoffs. I rather expected this, but I'm surprised at how much I miss the positive feedback I used to get.

One of the things I liked most about my ex-boss is that he always passed along positive feedback and doled out plenty on his own when he saw us doing good things. The other thing I liked a heckuva lot about him was that he stayed out of my way until asked to intervene and didn't make my job any harder for me to do. If you ever find yourself in management, I think you should replace your WWJD wristband for a "Is this making my employee's job suck?" bracelet, if only for the duration of your work day. As it is, I'm working for a boss who never gives positive feedback, who gives tons of negative feedback, and who gives negative feedback whenever her mood sours. I know I'm really the boss, but again, I refer you to the bit about losing my mental clarity when the screaming gets loud.

The only way to keep my head glued on straight through this is to disconnect from it sometimes. On really good days, that means I go out for a little exercise while baby Z naps, or I go grab dinner with a friend (eating with both hands and an empty lap, woo!) On bad days, I call in pizza and let her scream at me from her playpen while I fend off the pizza-loving dogs with my feet and snarf two slices.

I'll let you guess what sort of day today was... at least the dogs didn't actually eat any of my food tonight. Last night they got half of it while I was up dealing with the screaming boss baby.

Profound Motherhood Moments

I don't have much to say these days. I know this is not news, as it's pretty much what I've said at the beginning of every not-really-a-post post I've made since we brought Z home. That said, I do occasionally post an update to Facebook, and I have successfully managed to do a string of these on the topic of motherhood. Since all I've got of the publishable variety these days are profound thoughts in 140 characters or less, I strung a bunch of 'em together to make this list. Enjoy!

Profound Motherhood* Moments

* I call them Motherhood moments because I am a mother. If you are a Father, you probably have experienced some of these, too. Though a few of them are quite specific to Motherhood, feel free to think of them as Parenthood moments if that makes it more fun for you...

1. (On Dec 29, just 14 days into motherhood...) I just spent 20 minutes (over coffee) trying to remember if I've showered since Christmas. (I have.)
2. I had someone else's barf on me three times between 6 and 10 this morning, and I was more worried about her than me or my pajamas
3. babies will sneeze without regard for what else they are doing. Like nursing, say.
4. the cuteness of baby sneezes is potent enough to de-horrible horrifying things, like snot in your cleavage.
5. You can't be your kids' friend because sometimes you have to pick their noses. And as we all know, you can pick your friends...
6. all but 1 of my PMM's has been about wearing snot, and that one was about wearing barf. #gamechange
7. Installed see-the-baby mirror in car. Driving is now COO-fest instead of waa-fest. Zoe is definitely a social critter now.
8. I'm proud of my daughter for figuring out how to suck her thumb. She has been working daily on taming her spastic arm motions and refining her "gig 'em" for three months to arrive at this milestone! You can remind me of this in three years when I'm trying to get her to STOP sucking her thumb.
9. Zoe slept 7 hours straight last night (and counting!). And just like all my friends said I would, I woke up in a panic to make sure she was still breathing...
10. She pulled my hair this morning. Take me down to the Ponytail City...
11. she fell asleep on her tummy and woke up on her back. She doesn't get to lie on the couch again until she can climb onto it her own self.
12. I know I'm a grown up because I just did my laundry BEFORE going to see my folks..
13. Zoe is sleeping in her own crib. How did she get so big?!?!
14. I just let Zoe grab me by the hair, pull me close, and chew on my nose. Insanity IS hereditary, you get it from your children...
15. Greenies: Puppies:: Smashed Bananas: Babies. Truefax.
16. Frozen cookie dough is a totally legitimate short term coping skill.
17. I can stop tears of frustration, pain, loneliness, boredom, and general grumpiness by picking her up and hugging her. I will cherish this superpower every day while I have it.
18. No matter how much chicken gravy or sweet potato you amend it with, pureed chicken feels like pureed chicken on your tongue. Especially when it's hiding under a tempting blob of apple sauce on a baby spoon.
19. the kids' song about how the little one said roll over - I'm crowded/I'm lonely was totally written by some one whose baby had a cold.
20. You know a nursing session with a newborn is done by counting how long between the baby's swallows; you know a nine month old is done when she zrbtts you.

I'm still a woeful slacker when it comes to writing. I just don't have much to say that doesn't revolve around what's going into or coming out of a baby, and that's not fun for anyone to read, even me. Also, I'm not sure I can string together a coherent paragraph if it has to be longer than a Facebook status update today. I'm okay, but Z is teething and, well, if you're a parent I don't have to explain that. If you're not, I couldn't make it make sense if I tried. Here's a little video I made, kinda stringing the timeline together of how we got here. Much love to The Polyphonic Spree, the background music is their song "Section 26: We Crawl" from their album The Fragile Army.

Content!

I haven't been doing a lot of writing lately. (Duh.) What I have been doing is snapping photos and making little movies, mostly for the grandparents, to keep them updated on what Zoe is up to. Since content beats no content, I'm sharing. Also, if any of you have a recommendation for a good waterbaby instructor in the Dallas/Richardson area, I'd love to hear it. I'm at a stall for teaching Z how to back float. She won't relax and only wants to flip over onto her tummy. Until she gets strong enough to get her face out of the water, that is NOT a survival strategy. I think I need help.
I'm getting reasonably good at using the basic capabilities of iMovie, too. I like the finished product so much better than bare naked video snips!

Peek-a-stinkin'-boo!

Z is getting so ... interesting lately! She is discovering new tricks and capabilities almost every day. The latest thing I kinda blame on her messy eating habits. We have to feed her in nothing but a diaper because she stuffs her thumb in her mouth after every bite. This leads to a large mess on her hand which she gleefully wipes on her feet, her other hand, her belly, her neck, her hair, her ears, and anything else in range. Thus, after every meal, we sit her in the sink and wash her off. Then we carry her over to her changing table to get toweled dry and into a clean diaper. While toweling her off, we play peekaboo to distract her from her usual complaints about being wiped clean. (Girl loves a mess, I tell ya!) So it was with glee we discovered this week that she has been paying attention, and she is now capable of doing the peek-a-boo herself! All we have to do is provide sound effects...

Letter to Z's First Mother...

Here we are at six months! This time has been special, and rewarding, and sometimes hard, but so full of love. We named our strong girl Zoe Savannah, Zoe for a college mentor of Rose's and Savannah for my great-great-grandmother. Because she was so tiny when she came home with us, we nicknamed her “Little Chicken” at first. It was half-descriptive and half a joke about how Rose had been nicknamed Little Turkey (for being so large) when she was brought home by her parents. After a couple of months, we realized how embarrassing that might be as she got older, so we have switched to more conventional nicknames like Sweet Pea, but I made up a song about a little chicken that goes to the tune of “I'm a Little Teapot” and we still sing that one with her in the car.

She's growing at a wonderful rate, right on average for height and weight and progressing beautifully, according to the doctor. She's been getting all her shots and hasn't been sick at all. She eats well, and just started on solids in the past month. She loves, loves, loves bananas. I think they're her favorite. She scrunches her face up and giggles when she gets them! She also seems to be pretty fond of oatmeal, but nothing makes her as happy as a smashed banana.

She has been rolling over for a couple of months now, and really enjoys rolling around on a blanket on the floor and playing with her toys. She always likes to come back to one of us and touch base, but then she rolls away again to explore a monkey or a bear. Her favorite new thing is her feet, of course, since she found them she spends about half her day in touch with her toes. Besides that, she really loves looking at and touching faces. I had to stop wearing hoop earrings because she was snagging them with her fingers, and I've had to start wearing my hair back to keep her from tangling her sticky fingers in it all the time. It's been such fun, watching her figure out how to grab and chew on Rose's chin!

She just got two teeth in at the same time, right around 5 ½ months, so we are both gingerly switching her onto teething toys that are NOT our faces or hands. She handled teething very easily and only had a couple days of mild fussiness as the teeth were breaking through. She can already chew on some soft veggies, like steamed carrots and broccoli, and she adores the occasional pizza crust, or any bread with a tough crust that she can gnaw on with her new teeth.

We just took a family trip down to Austin over Memorial Day. We stayed with my sisters and my nieces and my parents, swimming and eating and sucking on popsicles and swimming some more all weekend long! Zoe's cousins just love her. The youngest cousin is almost 4, and she really loves to help with feeding and changing and getting Zoe dressed. The other two are twins, one loves to sing her lullabies at bedtime and the other likes to hold her. My parents are completely in love with her and enjoy all the funny little sounds she makes and her gorgeous smile. My dad calls her Miss Vannie because that is what he called his great-grandmother who she is named for and he likes to carry her draped over his forearm at night when he helps us put her to bed.

Rose's parents are just wonderful with her, too. They have us over for dinner every week, and they have picked up some baby toys and a high chair so that she can be comfortable at their house. They have a little crib for her to nap in and some clothes for her in case she makes a mess of what she's wearing. Rose's dad loves to carry Zoe around and sing to her in Yiddish. Rose's mom likes to hold her and give her a drink from her sippy cup. Zoe is not a great drinker yet, but she's very enthusiastic about trying and they both get a kick out of it.

Ever since Memorial Day, she and I go swimming almost every day in our neighborhood pool. Rose comes with us on weekends and stays amazed at how easily she took to the water. She loves to hold onto people and play with floating toys, or to float herself, and she especially likes to kick. She knows how to hold her breath and put her face in, and she seems to be trying to work out how to blow bubbles. I have a silly little song about a motorboat that makes her smile every time.

We sing a lot, just playing around the house. I sing her lullabies to put her to bed at night and sing kid songs during the day when we're going on walks or when she's in her jumper while I'm working in the kitchen. She never did like a bouncy seat very much, but she's quite fond of her swing. She lets us know when she's ready to be out of it by kicking and twisting and generally trying to wriggle out from under her seat belt. She definitely figured out early on how to let us know what she likes and what she doesn't. She's not much for lying down and doesn't like to be on her back at all if she can help it. She is totally a side-sleeper, but she really loves to fall asleep on her tummy, laid up on Rose's chest. Her first few months, she slept in a bassinet in our room. Once she started sleeping through the night (about the same time she figured out how to suck her thumb!) and did that consistently for a month or two, we graduated her to the crib in her own room. She is a great sleeper and takes at least one good nap every day, but often two good naps and a long sleep through the night. We're very lucky in that regard!

I don't know how to say it deeply enough, or strongly enough, or meaningfully enough, but thank you. Our daughter is precious, and we love her completely and are thankful every day for her.

Science in our Hearts

I recently read an article that really helped make sense for me out of a phenomenon I've seen all around me recently. I think of it as the hallmark of internet-based discussion: people with opposing positions on a topic can read the same fact-packed article on that topic and come to opposing conclusions about the validity of the facts it contains. It happened with me and some of my friends about the Planned Parenthood "sting" videos that came out in late January this year. When i heard about the videos, I immediately connected them in my mind to the ACORN videos that were used to shutter the voter-registration organization. After a detailed investigation of the video, it was shown to have been edited to smear ACORN, which was later exonerated. So I assumed that this Planned Parenthood video was more of the same. People with an anti-Planned Parenthood bias assumed it was representative of business as usual at Planned Parenthood. At the end of the day, I was pleased that the one clinic manager was fired, as it appears she acted heinously and inappropriately, and that Planned Parenthood reported what it thought might be a sex-trafficking ring to federal authorities for investigation. At the end of the same day, my friends thought it wasn't enough to fire the one clinic manager, because they took her not as an outlier, but as a representative example of the group. They also thought that the report to the FBI came AFTER the sting video was released, as a defensive move, and not as one motivated by actual concern for the health of potential victims of sex trafficking. We were all reading the same articles, we all saw the same events unfolding. It reinforced my belief that I can trust Planned Parenthood (most of the time) to do the right thing. It reinforced their beliefs that they cannot trust Planned Parenthood (most of the time) to do the right thing.

It turns out that that's the way the human mind is programmed to work. According to the article, "It would seem that expecting people to be convinced by the facts flies in the face of, you know, the facts." And that, my friends, is the heart and soul of internet-based discussions, comment wars, flame wars, and bulletin boards. Once you've established that you disagree with someone, they can say anything they want, and you're unlikely to listen to any of it, except to rationalize why it's wrong, to refute their facts, and to question the validity of their sources. It turns out that the well-educated are even more susceptible to this. Those who don't know much about a topic, but have strong feelings about it anyway, tend to be slightly more amenable to changing their minds when presented with facts about the topic. Those who know a lot already tend to use their education to pick apart the science, even when the science is good.

The article is full of fascinating examples of how and why exactly this stuff happens, from the Iraq/Al Qaeda link to the Vaccines/Autism link, and especially regarding climate change. It turns out that if you want someone to change their mind on a topic, you not only have to approach them with facts, but you have to present the facts wrapped in values that person already holds.