Mama Said There'd Be Days Like This

5-Months of Sheer Bliss and Harmony

Yesteray, when I was trying to leave the house to pick up the kids from school Tova pooped out of her diaper and leggings. She was sitting on her little rug. I swooped her up before it oozed out on the rug and changed her in a jiffy, new pants and all. I put her down on her rug to wash my hands, as I was drying my hands she pooped out of her diaper again and onto her jeans! I grabbed her, noticed the poo had met the rug, ran with Tova to her changing table. Changed her in a jiff with new pants and socks and shirt and then ran back to the rug to clean up the sqiurties before Maggie did. Put Tova down on her bouncy chair, sitting like she was in the above picture, and cleaned up the poo. I started to put her in her car seat, 5-minutes to go until the bell rang at Petra and Soren's school when . . . kerpow! Out the diaper, out of the 3rd pair of pants for the day and onto shirt #2 (no pun intended). Back to the changing table, new diaper, new shirt, new pants and new socks because she kicked her little feet into her messy dipey. I tossed that mostly nakey baby into her car seat, threw a blankie over her and sped off to kids' school a la Cruella DeVille where I arrived 5-minutes late. We ran to get Annike from her school and then raced home to get to all those poo-ies on the changing table before Maggie did. Whew. Arrived home to all the poopies in their diapers and not out on the lawn just in front of the doggy door. Cleaned it all up as well as the rest of the house because I had worked the night before and don't nobody cleans up after themselves when Mama is workin'. This, of course, makes me huffy so I get to cleaning the rest of the house when I realize that I have 37-seconds to get girls to gymnastics. We fly out the door with leotards half-on, arrive to gymnastics with warm-ups underway. I collapse in a chair, phew, take off my fleece and holy crap! . . . there is orange baby poo smeared across my white shirt.

This is my pesky brother Chad.

This is my pesky brother Chad. He was a rotten kid. No, really. I can say that too cause I’m his poor younger sister. Don’t come to his defense, he grew out of it, but there was a time there when he was rotten.

He did a lot of older brother things to me when we were kids. One time he cut my hair and told my mom a ghost did it. He got away with it and I had to go round town with hair chopped up like a jack-o-lantern’s mouth.

One time he positioned me at the end of the driveway while he stood at the top on his bike. He told me to stand still if I knew what was good for me. But, after the hair cutting incident I knew what was good for me was to get the heck out of his way so I took a step to the right as he came careening at me with his bike. Anyway, apparently his plan was to swerve to his left at the last minute, thusly, sparing my marshmallow white visage and all my 3-year old baby teeth. Cept, I was three and didn’t know about that tricky ending. I took his cherry red Schwinn to the mouth. I doubt he got in trouble. There was no justice in my home when I was wee.

One lesson I learned quickly was to stay away from Chad while he was playing Axis and Allies with his nerd friends cause, for sure, I’d lose an arm. You’d be surprised about nerdy boys, they’re not the wimps that the movies make ‘em out to be.

I also learned the hard way that she who interrupts Chad half-way through his Star Trek movie watching marathon, especially if Wrath of Khan is playing, shall not have a mouthful of teeth for much longer. Talk about knuckle sandwich.

One time, retaliation on my part involved me throwing a blender at my brother. I didn’t really think that one through, I guess. I got in trouble. My brother got off Scott free. He never got in any trouble. He was the good one. My parents thought he had all the brains between us kids and implored me to leave him alone so that he could use his brain in peace. They were a little smidgey wrong though, cause I got some of them brains too.

He wasn’t so bad all the time, though. One time I was hopping over the frozen waves on Lake Michigan in early January. I was just a little kid not using the ¼-brain that got passed down to me (remember, my brother got most of the rest). I fell into a crevice between the waves and got lodged in the ice. My moon boots were just feet above the icy, frigid water that was at the bottom of the crevice. Every time I screamed or tried to pull myself out I ended up just sliding a little bit further into the crevice. Fortunately, my big brother, who loved Kling-Ons more than me, came round at the right time. Grabbing me by my wrists, he heaved me back up onto the solid ice where I bear hugged his ankles for sparing my lowly life. Then he whomped me on my skull for being dumb. That’s okay, that boy saved my life.

Now he’s grown up a bit. He’s not so crazy about Star Trek, or Star Wars, or NASA. Turns out, he was even smarter than everyone first thought he was. Which, of course, I knew. I got smarter, too, and learned to stay away from him until he went to college where he took a class about little sisters not being so bad. He graduated from undergrad. Then he went to NYC where he lived in Harlem and went to graduate school. He’s so smart. He just got nicer and nicer, too. Then he went off to San Diego where he got his PhD. Eventually, he ended up in DC. Now, he’s married and has a super-smart little boy. He works at this one academic place that you probably have heard of but I’ll leave you guessing. He teaches people all about the science of politics. He’s not an engineer or a mathematician like everyone said he would be. He’s a teacher! A good one. He could tell you all about Australia and how it came to be. If you wanted to know what the heck happened to Yugoslavia, or whatever it’s called these days, he’d be someone to ask. He’s got all sorts of data about what exactly is the trouble with Tribbles and that doesn't even have anything to do with his dissertation or that big old book he just got published. On top of that, he knows the names of all the space crafts and what type of paneling they’re using these days.

He’s an environmentalist. He is one of the early Prius owners; he and his super-genius wife have one car between them. They walk to their grocery store, Whole Foods, of course. They take public transit when they can’t walk. A solar powered light illuminated their walk-way at night. A vegetarian! He takes his son to France so that Milo can learn French. And talk about parenting, he’s probably one of the best papas around. He respects children. Plus, he’s a feminist (he probably doesn’t even lock his wife in the basement if she talks to him during a viewing of Wrath of Khan). He’s so darn modest that he’ll deny most of everything good about himself.

Anyway, today is the day that my brother was born 35 years ago. Happy birthday!

Good News, Bad News

Petra, on chair, got a clean bill of dental health. Annike did too. Not so for poor little Soren (in the back playing with the light). Poor fella is headed back to the office next Monday for some drilling.

There was a cleaning at the dentist. There were 3-cleanings. 2-good reports for Mommy and Daddy. 3-good reports for our future orthodontist. 1-good report for mouth germs everywhere.

Petra brushed Tova's mouth.

Tova doesn't have teeth, yet. No reports to report on that front.

Petra's first trip to the orthodontist of Phase 1 of Operation Straighten 'Em Out will occur this summer. Soren will be 2-years behind that. I imagine Annike will follow suit.

Six!

Big news for our mighty Viking boy . . .

Newborn Soren

Six year old Soren.

Today, 4/25/2009, is Soren's 6th birthday. Gotta tell ya, time flies. Sho nuff.

The New Bottle

Tova's new bottle arrived on Friday. Courtney, our neighbor, was the first to feed her with it because she's had success bottle-feeding Tova in the past. As a precaution we introduced it to her:

Looks familiar, but a little off.

Let me give it a once over.

Doesn't seem quite right.

This is pretty strange . . .

what in God's name is going on here?

Seriously, is this some kind of joke?

This is just so upsetting!

Makes me wanna puke.

We're still trying . . .

In My Shirt

Okay, so we are darn near desperate to get Tova to take a bottle. I have many, many apprehensions about starting solids before 6-months. However, if she won't take a bottle when I start my new job on May 5th then we'll have to introduce the pureed avocado whether we like it or not.

Due to arrive tomorrow, but after I return from work for the night, is our new $12 Adiri bottle. We also ordered a 3-pack of the First Years Breastflow bottles, with their nipple within a nipple design they are supposed to imitate the mother's breast. If you ask me, that sounds more like a birth defect . . . which leads me to what I am, at this exact moment in time, doing.

I have four artificial nipple stuffed into my bra right now. My SIL, a champion of breastfeeding, sent me a link to a Berkeley chat room in which a lactation consultant and midwife recommended that the nursing mother places bottle nipples skin-to-skin before she leaves for work so the nipples have the mother's scent on them. This is the reason why there are no pictures on today's post, I've got 4-supernumerary nipples and it ain't comfy.

Lastly, I am wearing a shirt of Lars' with my mommy-lovin' all over it so that when it comes time for her to eat he can wear the scented shirt and use the scratch and sniff nipples.

If this doesn't work we have the four final hold-outs before the banana hits the baby food grinder: the boob shaped Adiri bottle, the birth defected Breastflow bottles, sippy cup, and the final suggestion of having her sip expressed breatmilk through a straw.

Oh man, I just answered the door with my supernumerary nipples standing at attention while wearing an over sized flag-of-Norway t-shirt. God save that poor soul's eyes from needing to pecked out of her head.

Helllllllp?!?!

Petra and Her Teeth VS Happy Air: Part One

Petra has an extra tooth. We were hoping it would come down before her top, front right tooth came down but it didn't. Dr Houri, our dear friend and pediatric dentist, decided if she removes Little Guy next to Righty, maybe just maybe, Righty will move over just a bit to allow that lousy old extra tooth to descend. Then, of course, as soon as it descends she can nab it ASAP so that Righty can go back where he belongs before it's too late and he's set up camp in Little Guy's spot . . . permanently. You know, cuz while I have a lot of good feelings about the British in general, man oh man do they have some gnarly teeth.

Oh, the joys of Happy Air. The freedom. The warmth. The jolliness. Once that little mask of nitrous oxide was snugly cozied up to Petra's schnoogie the whole world became a better place for that girl. She started singing "If you're happy and you know it clap you hands", poor Dr Houri had her work cut out for her cause it just doesn't seem simple to me when you gotta remove a tooth from the mouth of a little girl who is hootin' and hollerin' and clappin' up a blessed storm. Then she began laughing full belly chuckles every time she said the name 'Maddie', can't say why our dear Maddie is so funny to Petra, but she darn near ruptured her spleen with all her laughing. Later she got a bit somber while telling Dr Houri all about how she did the math and she'll be too young to be in the 2016 Olympics, but perked up when Dr Houri asked her about Maddie again. She didn't make a peep when Little Guy came out and when he was placed in her hand she held him up to the light, observing it like it possessed magical, mystical, rainbow-unicorn powers.


Once the extra tooth comes down, we're back to lovin' on the Happy Air for a little R&R and yanking.

This morning she's $5 richer cuz' apparently that sneaky Tooth Fairy places a premium on pulled-out nitrous oxide teeth.

Skepticism

There were some mutterings with my last post that Tova couldn't really sit on her own. Some people even suggested that my mom was propping her up. As if it is so hard to believe that my 4th little baby isn't as precocious as the rest of my mini-Vikings. Petra and Annike sat on their own at 4-1/2 months and both walked at 10-months. Soren sat on his own at 4-months exactly. Is it that hard to believe? So, instead of coming home after work this morning and sleeping I instead took pictures of Super Nova Baby Tova for all you skeptics, sans Gramma.

Now isn't she just about the ding cutest baby on the globe?

Sitting there all by her big ol' baby self.

Precious and cute.

Always very drooly.

Sitting. Unassisted.

In your face!

Yum!

There ya have it all you doubting-something-or-others.

Of course, sometimes she plops over.

The real problem on our Viking frigate is Tova and her eating disorder. Any advice out there for working parents who have tried everything to get cute Miss Sittin' Up to take a bottle and still no luck? I start my new day job in a matter of weeks, the deadline is upon us!!!

I May Be

I may only be 4-months old . . .

but I can sit all by myself.
Tova (and Gramma), 4-months and 6-days old.

I may be small . . .

but I can shred on my daddy's 10-foot surf board.

Petra, age 7-11/12ths.

I may not look hard core . . .

but I am the world's best hip-hopper.

Soren, age 5-11/12ths.

I may be just one person . . .

but there's enough of me to go around.

Annike, age 3-7/8ths.

What if . . .

Mr. M, Petra's 2nd grade teacher, approached me the other with Petra's IEP packet for her speech therapy. He asked me to fill it out and turn it back in. Then he smiled at me and said, "guess what Petra wrote in her journal."
Apparently, Petra had written quite a bit about a new work scenario for me. She detailed how I would be starting a new job in May, but not until after her birthday. She wrote that I would go to work just while she was in school and be home with her when her school day was done so that she could have friends over and so that I could take her to gymnastics "whenever". She went on to comment that I would never work at night or on the weekends or another holiday ever again. I was really liking the sound of her journal entry. It gets even better, though, she said that the new job would pay me more and that I would "get to work with Mr. Doctor OB," . . . remember him? Mr. Doctor OB's office is about a 15-minute walk from my house. Man, I love that little girl and her imagination.
.

Thing is, it's true. Mr. Doctor OB asked me to come work for him. I thought he was nuts, but some folks close to me encouraged me to pursue it. They also encouraged me to tell them that I was available only while the kids were in school, etc. Mr. Doctor and his colleagues decided I was worth it and hired me to start in May. I'm a little nervous about it all since the last time I actually saw Mr. Doctor there was a speculum between us but Lars has informed that I must get over it. Hopefully, I'll just never bump into him while I'm there, ya know, working at his very small office, ya know, the same hours as him. I know, get over it . . .