sueeeus

• What happened to my emailed blog comments?  Why are they not being sent?  Did they stop before or after the WordPress update?  Before, I think, but I can’t be sure.
• When one is strapped to a breast pump every so many hours, one has time to do things like upgrade blog software, fiddle with graphics software and design birth announcements.  In half hour increments.
• Heavens, I’m tired.
• Feeling happy after a percoset a few days ago, I noted to Gadget that I’ve not noticed any real post partum depression yet.  He replied that he likes it when I’m depressed, because then I like to spend money and buy things.
• Ha Ha Ha
• He was (mostly) serious.
• Every now and then I gently bring up the topic of the snip.  Most recently, Gadget said, “Tell you what, I get the snip, and you get me that motorcycle.”
• Ha Ha Ha
• He was serious.  (I’m fairly certain.  He really wants that stupid bike.)
• If I were five years younger, I might want to consider having another child.  I’ve always wanted three, or at least for as long as I can remember.  Two boys and a girl.  But now that I’m 43, and have this most beautiful and wonderful baby, I’m feeling my age and can’t imagine how I could possibly go through the newborn days again.
• I can’t fathom how mothers of three and more do it.
• My mother had nine, and I’m finally beginning to cut her a bit of slack for how lackadaisical I perceived her mothering to be (back then).
• Is it just mine, or do all three- going on four- year olds have serious obedience and defiance issues?
• How does one teach a three- going on four- year old what a lie is, and why not to do it?
• Today he played outside and got covered in mud.  As boys do.  Then he took a shower, all by himself.  He even remembered to take his socks off, and he set the water temperature correctly, and he even lathered himself up with soap.  I’m so proud of him!  It’s the most grown up thing he’s done so far.
• Pumping isn’t so bad, really, but it certainly forces a particular structure into one’s life, for which there is very little latitude.

We have a new world order around Chez Squished. The boy is sleeping alone. Through the night. All night. In his own room. Without a bottle. A moment is in order to digest the magnitude of this fantastic milestone. Of course, measures have been taken to make this come about. It’s been a journey, beginning with the decision, for safety’s sake, to put him in his own room, followed by a fairly successful first night. We learned that the tension style safety gate in his doorway makes him feel too abandoned or trapped. I found a set of Kidco safety gates on Craigslist for a bargain, and we now have a very secure stairwell. I’ve put tension gates in the doorways of the other rooms, and left his room open, and my room open. He now has a free path to our room should he need it, if he wakes up afraid. Simply having an open doorway has done wonders for his perception of things. And, since I’m married to Mr. Gadget, we now have the child on nighttime surveillance.
The camera is mounted so that I have a full view of my munchkin all snug as a bug in a rug. Mr. Gadget claims to have had these gadgets all along (the usual story), and is just retrieving them from the places where he’s had them squirreled away. I do know that he won the mini DVD player in a company raffle, so that gadget is legit. The others Not so sure. But I’m not complaining. In my sleepy stupor I can press a button and check in on my sleeping munchkin. I can see if he’s scooted his way out of his blankets or if he’s scooted himself into the corner. Tomorrow is our first Saturday with this arrangement, which means I can sleep in (or at least pretend to). I’m looking forward to seeing if he wakes up happy and comes looking for me, or if he stops to play with his toys along the way.

A first. A very good first. Last night the beautiful boy spent the night, alone, in his own room. He fell asleep very early, around 6 p.m., because we got off schedule during the weekend. So he awoke around 10 and played for a while. We took him to bed around 11 and both of us lay down with him, hoping for him to settle. With no bottle. He squirmed, he squirmed, he tossed, and turned, he whined and fussed, he… This is starting to sound like Dr. Seuss. Anyway, it went on. And on. We finally caved and gave him half a bottle. He inhaled it and was none too happy when it was all gone, but I did the deft binky switch maneuver, and he went for it. It helps to be too tired to fight. I tiptoed out of the room, but he heard me, lifted his head, and started to cry. Oh, the most heart wrenching how could you leave me cry. So I lay back down and got snuggly buggly again. Which I like very much. It only took an extra 5 or 10 minutes, and I tiptoed back to my room. His door is open and gated, my door is open and down the hall. The monitor is on. I can hear him if he needs me. He slept until morning. Ahhh, bliss. I’m crossing my fingers that it wasn’t a fluke and that he’ll make it through the night tonight.

When I awoke to whimpering at 4 a.m. the other day, and found my child lodged beneath my dresser, I decided it’s time for him to learn to sleep in his own room. We had his room ready when he came home from the hospital with him, over a year ago, but never actually used it. It began to collect things, until it was filled with bags and boxes and ribbons. It had become, and stayed, the gift wrapping room. We moved all the non-baby things out, and I put a cube shelf unit in his closet for his clothes (which were conveniently in the laundry room until now). We gathered most of the toys from around the house and arranged them on shelves for him. We left a few of his favorites downstairs. I put a queen mattress directly on the floor and finally found a use for the crib bumper that I’d worked so hard to make him, over a year ago. It is now a queen mattress bumper. It’s just a bit longer than the two sides of the mattress that meet the wall, and they provide a little amount of cushion when he’s scooting himself across the mattress in the middle of the night, half asleep. He does that. Like a little mole. His face is down and he scoots on his stomach with his butt up in the air, scoot scoot scoot, here, there, back again. He moves quite a lot in his sleep. We’re working on a night-night routine, and I’ve been sleeping with him until he is familiar with the room. I’m also weaning him from night time bottles. This is alot to throw at him at once, but I’m tired of washing sheets every single day, if I don’t wake up at 2 a.m. to change him (and risk waking him as well).

He likes to have me right where he is, so it’s hard to get anything done. I’ve been trying to clean out my spare room and turn it into my craft room, thus giving myself precedence over my non-existent guests. I finally got him to take a nap, and he had a nice long rest. He just woke up and I’m marveling in the moment. I can hear him happily playing and singing and cooing and having a good time. I don’t want him to see me and decide he has to cry until I come be with him, so here I am, blogging, but more importantly, hiding from him. Hiding from my own son!

It’s been about twenty minutes. He’s been alone long enough now, and is starting to lose interest with the things in his room. I must go snuggle my Boo!

It’s all my fault. I should have checked the diaper bag before we left the daycare. But I didn’t. Instead, we went merrily on our way. Once home we had dinner, a bath, got into the jammies, and settled down for a bottle, before night-night. It was then that I realized we were sans binkie. No problem, I thought. He’s not addicted. He can manage a night without it. But he squirmed. He writhed. He tossed. He arched his body into unnatural contortions. He whined. He whimpered. He. Didn’t. Fall. Asleep. This went on. And on. We have a couple of backup binkies. The Soothie was his first favorite. He used it for several months. I lost one, and we managed to survive with the remaining one until he decided he no longer liked it. I found it and tried to give it to him. But it just wouldn’t do. I tried his teether binkie. He likes to chew on it, but not suck on it. He knew the difference. He spit it out and continued to writhe.

It’s all my fault, this addiction. He wasn’t dependent before, but a couple of months ago he started grinding his teeth and I just couldn’t stand that sound. It was worse than fingernails on a chalkboard, or running your finger around the rim of a glass to make it ring. It was excruciating to hear. So I’d stuff the binkie in his mouth the instant he started grinding. Bad mother. Bad mother.

I handed the writhing unhappy and exhausted child to the husband and went upstairs in search of something I vaguely remembered stashing away with other baby things passed on from friends, over a year ago, when I was stocking up and preparing for motherhood. Aha! A bag of binkies. They weren’t the right kind (when things like nipple confusion mattered), and they were used, so I’d never actually brought them out before. But this was an emergency. I gathered them all and brought them downstairs, sterilized them, cooled them down, and offered them to the unhappy child. He would have none of it. He’d open his mouth, taste it, then fling it across the room. Soon the lot of them lay scattered and dejected on the living room floor.

The husband shook his head at me and said, “That’s why I always check the diaper bag before we leave.” Yes. Right. But we won’t go into that.

“Shall I go to the daycare and get it “ he asked. “No, it’s too late,” I replied. So I sent him to the store. I wanted my baby to get to sleep, poor little guy. It couldn’t be just any binkie. It had to be a specific kind, and we’ve only seen it in two places. Babies R Us and _____. For the life of me, I couldn’t remember the name of the store where we’d happened to see the exact kind in stock. I thought of getting them for backup or emergencies, but decided that the love bug is nearly a year old and should be weaning from it shortly, and surely we could manage on the two that we already have. Surely they will last as long as he needs them. Of course, a few days later I was washing one of them and noticed he’d chewed all the way through it and it had become a choking hazard. In the trash it went, with no further ado. Still, I thought we’d be able to make it with the one remaining. “Babies R Us is too far away. I think it was Albertson’s“, I finally said. “And if not, it’s probably Price Savers or Rite Aid“.

Off he went. I tried giving the boy a bottle again. His routine is to drink all but the last half ounce in his bottle, spit it out, take the binkie, and crane his head and neck into the shape of a question mark, and drift off contentedly to sleep while clutching my hand and fiddling with the heart charm on my bracelet. It’s his routine. Poor little guy was so exhausted that he did fall asleep while drinking from the bottle. Daddy arrived an hour later, after going to Albertson’s, Rite Aid, and having begged the checker at Price Savers, which was closed, to show him the styles they carried by holding them up to the glass of the shut door. Not the right ones. They were nowhere to be found. He finally tried Target, and what do you know. That’s where we saw them!

I put my sleeping boy to bed and placed the new binkie within reach so that when he started squirming at midnight, as he always does, he would find it, place it in his mouth, and drift contentedly back to sleep.