Messages to Mommy

Owen's first unambiguous message to Mommy: daytime napping sucks and I'd much rather spend the whole day awake with you [because you're so hip and cool and interesting and an amazing singer and dancer and you're basically the best mom ever]. The implication is that I have 2 to 3 hours of baby-free time per day, which has made blogging a little more challenging. So in order to get in my one post for the week, I'm copping out with a video post. More next week!

A less obvious, but oh-so endearing message to Mommy:

Said bear costume and big boy stroller

Finding the Time

Aaron and I don't have a clock in our room. We've always used our phones as alarm clocks, and now that the prospect of oversleeping seems like a divine gift rather than a fate to be avoided, this doesn't seem like the time to invest in one. So in those groggy moments between the first middle-of-the-night baby cry and fumbling to find my phone and check the time, it's deceivingly difficult to answer a seemingly straightforward question: have I been asleep for 40 minutes, 4 hours, or 4 days?

The answer lies in the context clues. If the neon lights are still glowing above the restaurant outside our window, it's before 4:10AM. If moderately incoherent guys are stumbling loudly down the sidewalk, the neighborhood pub just had last call and it's just after 2:00AM. If I can hear the faint hum of street sweepers outside, it's between 3:00AM and 5:00AM. If I feel mind-numbingly tired and have to pry my eyelids open with two fingers, it means I'm back to reality and that feeling of restfully sunbathing on a beach in Fiji was just a dream.

By dawn, it really doesn't matter if I've shut my eyes for 15 minutes or 15 hours -- after 75 days of oft-interrupted sleep (coming on the heels of 9 months of nights punctuated by potty runs), I feel pretty much the same: really, really tired. But there's something about clock time that has a helpful placebo effect. Yes, I may be equally tired regardless of the numbers on the clock, but if I wake up to find that it's already 3:00AM and quick mental math says that Owen has slept for 7 hours straight, I feel an optimistic (albeit hazy) moment of delight. That we're making progress. That things are falling into place. And that maybe I wasn't really sentenced to sleeplessness-for-life without the possibility of parole.

The Funny Hat, which will make for endless fun when Owen's a dating teenager

Deviously figuring out how to watch TV when Mama leaves the room

Odd sleeping positions, coupled with a fragile slumber that I'm too petrified to disturb, are great for building mommy biceps

Owen meets his first set of great-grandparents!

Surely scheming about something

Happily hanging with Grandma "La La" Fisher

Endless Thanks

What I'm most thankful for this year...

So unbelievably thankful for the healthy, bubbly, immensely lovable little boy who entered and enriched our lives almost ten weeks ago. Equally thankful for the abiding love and support of our family and friends as we've transitioned from "husband and wife" to "daddy and mommy."

Happy Thanksgiving!

Growin' Owen

Yesterday marked the completion of Owen's 2nd month on the planet. We celebrated with shots. Not the tequila kind. The pneumococcus/diphtheria/pertussis/polio/hepatitis kind. But much like the tequila variety, these shots made poor little Owen feel awful (and his parents feel even worse) and he spent his 2-month anniversary of life whimpering or passed out. Guess we'll aim for a more positive commemoration next month.

Recent Milestones

• Weight: 12 pounds 6.4 ounces
• Height: 23 inches
• Rolled over for the first time! (tummy to back)
• Set a record for most blood-drawing scratches to the face in a single day (geez, who's the bad mother who won't cut his fingernails?)

Getting to be a big boy

Strategic Censorship

With little ears around, you really have to watch what you say. True, Owen is just now mastering the art of eye contact and perfecting the purposeful smile; it might be a while before his vocabulary expands to include more than uhh and ooh and wahhhhhhh(hhhhhhhhh). But it's never too early to start censoring objectionable four-letter words. The one I'm particularly worried about?

Dada.

I (half) (jokingly) started omitting dada from my conversations with Owen, for fear that it would usurp mama's rightful place as baby's first word. C'mon, the only baby-pushing dads do is with the assistance of a stroller. Pretty sure that whole Occupy My Uterus thing ought to at least entitle us moms to the pleasure of hearing our new names first. So yes, Owen hears mama about 39,809 times a day and hears dada...hmm...less frequently.

But not to be outdone, Aaron one-upped me. Why just censor a word when you could reimagine it entirely? Aaron decided he should teach Owen that mommy's name is...mooftard. Yup, that's right. I'm Owen's mooftard. (I'm pretty sure the F-sound will keep Owen from articulating this anytime soon -- ha, bad choice, Husband.) A sort of linguistic arms escalation ensued and obviously Aaron needed to be renamed, too. You can now find him listed under Owen's kaka.

Mom, Dad, Mark and Cindy: we promise not to defile grandma and grandpa. So long as you continue agreeing to occasional babysitting gigs.

This week's pictures are from our first little vacation together. We rented a house in the Berkshires (hills in western Mass) and spent 5 days singing and cooing, eating and drinking, and loving our time together as a family.

Random Observations from Week 8

A few disjointed (because my brain no longer does "coherent") observations from this last week of motherhood:

• Mommy Camo: Counterintuitive though it may be, white has become the smartest clothing choice for hiding stains. White is the color of breast milk, breast milk is the main ingredient in baby puke, and baby puke happens to be my most-worn accessory and hair product of late. Though I appear clean in my crisp white Oxford, you'd be appalled if you looked at me under a blacklight. But due to a finite wardrobe, I abide by a new rule of thumb for clothing changes: if you can't see it (and can only faintly smell it), it's probably getting worn.
  
• Come Fly With Me: We took our first flight this weekend with Owen, who defied expectations and passed the airworthiness test with flying colors. The most amusing (but only in hindsight because he didn't freak out) part was watching the hopelessly demoralized faces of fellow passengers when they walked past our aisle, followed by the cooing and praise they gave "such a good little baby" after we'd landed. Someone sitting behind us feigned surprise while we were deplaning: "Oh my gosh, I didn't even know there was a baby on here!" Oh right, lady. Everyone knows the finely tuned Baby Radar of non-parents-of-infants would never allow this potentially toxic noise polluter to go unnoticed.
• Don't Leave Home Without It: Pre-Owen, I had a straightforward mental checklist when leaving the house: keys, wallet, phone. Needless to say, that list is no longer comprehensive. The new checklist looks something like this:

* keys, wallet, phone

* baby

* diaper bag containing: at least 4 diapers + necessary clean-up implements; one change of clothes for the inevitable Why-Do-At-Home-What-You-Could-Save-For-Public-Places Diaper Explosion; a second change of clothes for the less-appreciated Double-Header Explosion; plastic bags to contain the biohazardous aftermath of said explosions; lead pacifier plus several understudies

* take one last look in the mirror to make sure you have a shirt on

Quite a look

No time to re-dress him before he passed out

Always intrigued by his daddy

So excited about overalls

The eventual result of being overtired

Wow, who let in the mom with the screaming baby?

Updates from Week 7

We just passed the six-week mark and Owen is keeping us more amused than ever. He's very alert now, which makes it so much more fun/less awkward to have full conversations (albeit one-sided) with him. We discuss bricks and leaves and and ceiling fans and the competing importance of breast milk and coffee in the morning. We read books and take walks. I apologize for living in Boston as his little nose reddens in the cold, and promise that it doesn't always snow in October.

His newfound ability to smile means that I spend a fair portion of my day doing utterly ridiculous things trying to get a big gummy grin. I do arm-flailing dances that make Elmo seem sophisticated. I speak in a sing-song tone that is -- at minimum -- two octaves higher than my "adult voice." I make up pet names that may eventually impair his ability to learn proper English. (Today he is Mr. Moopongo, a name that bewilders both baby and spellcheck.) As it turns out, most of my tactics are overkill; his biggest grins come when his scanning eyes simply settle on my face -- and those, of course, are the most rewarding kind.

Recent Milestones

• Eight hours of uninterrupted sleep!
• Lots of cooing and
• Mommy finds her first gray hair (crap.)

You can't hide from Mommy Cam

A Serious Man

Soprano style: all he's missing is some chest hair and a New Jersey accent

Halloween at my new moms' class (wish you could hear the soundtrack -- it wasn't exactly quiet in there)

Questioning the logic of our outing in the snow

Dad's turn to be embarrassed by Mommy Cam

No ability to fight back = having to be ridiculously outfitted by Mom