A poorly constructed metaphor about my baby and Bon Jovi.

We listen to a lot of music in this house. Pandora radio is always streaming over my iPod so that we can accomplish the most basic of tasks. The only way I can get any housework done is if I dance and flail wildly enough to entertain Doobie from across the room.

He has definite favorites - The Killers, Journey, and Ingrid Michelson get a lot of air time. Lately, though, he has been favoring Bon Jovi's song It's My Life. It's his theme song. I don't approve. I don't know how it sneaked its way into our mix but its stuck now.

"It's my life
It's now or never
I ain't gonna live forever
I just wanna live while I'm alive"

He takes this to mean that he should be busy "living" instead of sleeping. All the time. Sleep is for losers. Why sleep at night when you can wake up and yell every 3 hours?

He used to be so good at sleeping at night. We would put him down at 10:30 or maybe 11 and he would sleep until 8AM. It was glorious. I had plenty of energy to play with him all day long because I got to rest up for quite some time without him.

But ever since he's been rolling, we've had to stop the swaddle and our house has turned into an all night rave. Want to know who is always up and partying at 3AM? We are. The tinny crappy classical is pumping and we're trying to rock him to sleep. The second we put him back down he turns his crib into a one man mosh pit.

We're fighting a losing battle. No matter what we've done we can't get him to sleep. The doctor said we can now put him down on his tummy because he flips within 5 minutes of us putting him down anyway. When he flips, he moves too far to the side and gets his arms stuck. He screams when he can't get his arms out. We disentangle him and he is fine for a little while. We thought that adding the  Breathable Baby Bumper would stop him frmo getting his arm stuck and maybe let us sleep at night but...


We were wrong. I think he hates the bumpers because he can't see out. The bumpers look nice and they were a snap to put up, but Oliver just isn't having any of this. He would take a scuffed up face over not being able to see.

In fact,Privacy Information I think his hatred for the bumpers is what made him do this yesterday:

It is mildly terrifying because he isn't good at balancing. In fact, moments after I took that picture he got so excited that he let go and fell straight back. He doesn't have the fear of falling yet so he doesn't try to catch himself with his arms or drop to his knees... He just dead man trust-falls straight back and his skull thumps on the mattress.

I asked Oliver why he feels like he has to do this, and all he could do was quote this stupid Bon Jovi lyric:

"You better stand tall
When they're calling you out
Don't bend, don't break
Baby, don't back down"

What can I say? I guess it is his life. And it is now or never.  I foresee a few trips to the ER in this kid's life. Curse you, Bon Jovi.

Lent, and why I hate it.

Lent is here. Roll out the fish fry signs all around the Midwest. Cue the McFishNasty sandwich commercials. I hate Lent.

Before any of you lay into me... I get the point of Lent. Really, I do.

Except that I'm not Catholic, and I don't care. So I will be eating steak. Please don't give me any flack about it because you're not going to change my mind. It is fine and dandy that y'all do that thing you do, just don't expect me to join you. And at the very least, you can look at it this way:

Somebody's gotta keep the beef industry afloat. That person will be me.

So yes, Holier Than Thou Perkins Patron, I am going to enjoy my burger. I am sorry if I offended you. And I'm certain that you will be getting plus 10,000,000 heaven super bonus brownie fun time points for mouthing a prayer at me. Thats exactly how things work, I'm sure.

SO! Now that I've admonished that woman from Lent 2008, I can continue with my updates. I feel much better.

Non swaddling is really not flying in our household. There has been much wailing and gnashing of teeth. (How is that for Lenten suffering, Perkins Woman!?!?!!)

He just won't sleep very well at night without being wrapped up. He falls asleep and stays asleep for a few hours but he is constantly waking himself up at night with his unstoppable flailing of limbs. Sometimes he does go back to sleep on his own, but it still disrupts my sleep and makes me grumpy. I wish I could turn off the part of my brain saying, "What!?! A single mew coming over the baby monitor?! WAKE UP FROM YOUR DEEP SLUMBER RIGHT NOW!"

I do get a decent amount of sleep, but it is interrupted and fretful. It doesn't help that Oliver is grumpy the next day, either. I've been swaddling him for naps. That way, I can leave him on the bed next to me and watch to make sure he's not on his tummy. I wish we had one of the gurney board things they strapped him to when he had his EEG. He couldn't roll over AND he could be swaddled. Luxurious.

Yesterday I managed to make it to the SPHC meeting, but it wasn't easy. Oliver was sleeping and I had to wake him up to get ready to go. Obstacle one. I changed Oliver, fed him, and changed him before I got ready to go myself. As soon as I had everything together and was getting him strapped in to his carseat, cue explosive poop. Obstacle two. After I re-changed Oliver, I got him back into the carseat, out into the car. But then I had to clear the snow off of my car. Obstacle three. Then I made it there but there was no parking in sight. Obstacle four. I finally found a spot and dropped my change holder under my car. I had to fish it out of the nasty slush. Obstacle five.

The good news, is:
1. I did not quit even though it was hard to get him out the door. It was tempting to go back to sleep.
2. The meeting was worth it. People were totally nice there.
3. There was Snickers salad.

All in all, I'll take that as a win. Now if I could only shake this low iron tiredness/weakness, I'd be all set for today. I think I'm going to attempt more cupcakes later this afternoon. So far, my decorating skills suck but at least they still taste good.

Running on empty.

Last night was another night of thrashing in the non swaddled world. Oliver has been so cranky lately that I'm going crazy. He was so agitated and angry this afternoon that I had to bust out the swaddle again. Within 30 seconds of swaddling him, he stopped crying and fell asleep. He has been sleeping for 2 hours now. He must be tired from not sleeping last night, too.

While he was napping, I tried to get on top of some of my school stuff. It is very hard to think about going back to school in the fall. Part of the reason I'm worried about it is just because I don't want to leave him. I know he'll be in good hands with my parents, but I still feel like nobody will/can do as good of a job as I can do.

Honestly, somewhere in my head, I know they are completely capable of giving him the same level of care that I can. It will be different for him, though, and it is hard for me to recognize that different doesn't always mean worse. It'll be good for him to get used to different people and different things but... there is just so much that I've learned about him that seems to invaluable when I'm caring for him.

I know all of his sleepy signals. I know so many little tricks to keep him happy. I'm an expert at tucking the blanket around him in his swing so that he doesn't get cold. When all else fails, I'm always able to comfort him with breastfeeding, and nobody else can do that. Letting somebody else learn their own tricks and techniques for his care will be hard for me.

And as hard as leaving him will be, just going back to classes is an even scarier thought to me. The few times I've been back, I've felt out of place. I feel like people are looking at me when I'm carrying Oliver. I feel like people will take me for a professor's wife, a babysitter, something - but not a student. I didn't think it would feel so hard to be a "nontraditional" student. I feel like I already had to try hard enough to find study buddies, and now I have just one more thing to overcome. I'm just not that good at meeting people.

In order to find people that can relate, I'm going to my first Student Parent Help Center meeting tomorrow afternoon. The few times I've actually made it in to the center, I've felt very welcomed. The students in the computer lab were very kind. The advisers were unbelievably strong advocates. They helped me sort through the health insurance disaster I had before Oliver was born. They've pointed me in the direction of so many good resources. They're currently helping me to rectify some issues that came up regarding my student status and my transfer between colleges.

Oliver received exceptional Christmas gifts from an anonymous donor through the Help Center's Adopt a Family program. They offer a free meal, free printing, free computer lab... so many wonderful things. It would be stupid for me not to take advantage of all this, so I made sure to set my alarm for the group meeting tomorrow afternoon. I'm going to do my best just to put my anxiety aside, relax, and meet some people like me. It would be nice not to be "the only one" anymore.

I've sent in all of my appropriate forms. I'm just waiting to hear from my college so that my transition back to classes next fall will be a smooth one. As terrifying as it is to go back, it is important to me that I do and I want to do it right.

I'm knocking one more thing off of my New Year's Resolution to-do list. Wish me luck.

The Fall of the Swaddle Empire.

Swaddling? It's my best friend. It makes Doobie sleep like a baby. Or, actually, like a rock. Like a baby rock, maybe.

But as all good things do, it is coming to an end and I am losing my mind. We've had to stop swaddling him because he rolls over onto his tummy in his crib and can't flip back over. I wouldn't worry about him being on his stomach, except that since his arms are tucked in he can't use them to roll over again if he needs a breath of fresh air. You know, all that Back to Sleep mumbo jumbo about rebreathing, etc. (More info here if you don't know what I'm talking about.)

The only solution I can see is to stop swaddling him, and that is turning out to be horrifying. He doesn't sleep well, and he is constantly waking himself up. He is crabbier during the day. A few times I've woken up to find his little arms stuck through the crib slats and his face mashed up against the bars. For a couple of hours this morning he had two bar shaped red marks on his forehead as a little reminder of all the baby vs. crib action that went down last night. It sounded so rough over the monitor that I bet it would sell on Pay Per View.

And I will confess: I can deal with poop. I can deal with being bitten and scratched. I can even handle a good amount of crying but so help me Lord if I do not get enough sleep. Things get ugly. I get stupid.

I put a box of macaroni in the oven, once. Frequently I look away from Oliver for a moment and find that I am shoving a pacifier into his eye, or holding him semi upside down, putting his pants on backwards and inside out. I have gotten up to prepare a bottle for him a few times before I've realized that I usually breastfeed him. I've gotten the mail with no pants on.

There is a direct correlation between hours of sleep and my intelligence.

Something had better change quick because this bear market is killing my economy.