Alternate title:  How many pictures can momma take where Mason is NOT looking at the camera?????

(The answer is 38, by the way.)

Happy Halloween, from my little devil.

If you’re going to lean over and try to make your infant son giggle with a big, wet raspberry on the back of his chubby little thigh, it’s best to wait until after you get a diaper on.

You’re welcome.

At least once a week, I throw the little guy and the canvas shopping totes in the mommyvan and head to Walmart.  We always park close, because the wiggleworm hates to be carried across the parking lot.  If we take more than 10 steps, he starts squirming and tries to bungee jump out of my arms.  One day, he’s going to catch me by surprise and faceplant into the concrete.  Of this, I can be sure.  I’ve seen the preview in my mind’s eye at least 100 times.

We enter the store, and I attempt to simultaneously throw my purse and the reusable bags in the cart while fighting to get his feet under the handle.  Shoes have made this task much more difficult.  He shopped barefoot all summer long, and I could just slide those chubby little piggies across the plastic seat and through the metal legholes.  But now?  Curse you, Nike Size 5 extra wide!  The rubber soles stick to the seat while I attempt to buckle his knees with one arm and yank his feet through with the other.  And so it begins.

We walk past the floral case, where he tries to grab one of the brightly colored bouquets.  Oh, shit.  I forgot to buckle him in again, and watch in terror as his butt lifts from the seat while I pick up the flowers he’s thrown on the floor.  I shriek, “NOOOOOOOOO”, raising the ire of nearby shoppers who turn to stare at the deranged mother who dares to raise her voice to her precious little boy.  Ashamed, I buckle him in and mutter something about handfuls of Zoloft with an appletini chaser.

We turn the corner into the pharmacy, and stop to pick up yet another bottle of Infant Tylenol.  His belly still can’t take ibuprofin, so we dispense infant tylenol every 5-6 hours to take the edge off the pointy little molars trying to force their way through his gums.  Of course, there’s another shopper on the other side of the aisle; so we sidle up to the brightly colored bottles and I grab for the Tylenol as fast as I can.  By the time I find the dye-free cherry-flavored goodness, Mason has managed to swipe 4 bottles of children’s Zyrtec and throw them in the cart.  I heave a sigh and put them back on the shelf, while he grabs one of the tags off the shelf and drops it on the floor.  I leave it there and keep moving forward.

We stop to get a bottle of generic antacid for the dog, where he grabs a bottle of the pretty pastel Rolaids and shakes it until all the tablets are broken and dusty.  I take it away from him, and hide it waaaaaay at the back of the shelf.

Next, it’s over to the pet care aisle to get treats for the dogs.  While I put a couple bags of bones in the cart, he grabs 3 pink studded cat collars and tries to hide them behind his back.  Fourteen months old, and he’s already an accomplished kleptomaniac.  I heave another sigh, tell him no, and desperately try to push the collars back onto their plastic hooks.  He yells something unintelligible, clearly upset with me for taking away his treasure.  I watch him weep big, fat, woe-is-me crocodile tears and debate over leaving him in one of the tall refuse containers as we walk past the hardware section.

We meander through the crafts section, so he can admire all the brightly painted buttons and spools of ribbon.  He reaches for a bolt of John Deere fleece, but I pull his hand away before he can knock it to the floor.  I take pleasure in this small victory, and keep walking towards the baby section for diapers and poofs.

An elderly woman stops to talk to him, and my motherly pride is returned as he tilts his head to listen to what she’s saying.  He lets her softly stroke his hand, as if he understands when she tells me how much she misses her great-grandchildren (they live near Seattle).  As she shuffles away, she turns to see Mason give her a giant, excited, 2-handed wave.  She grins and waves back, and I think some of her sadness has lifted, if only for a fleeting moment.

We turn into the aisle of baby food, and my eyes scan the shelves for the jars of broccoli and chicken.  Another shopper turns down our lane, so I reluctantly move the cart next to the rows of glass jars and juice bottles.  As I walk to the front of the cart, he sweeps his arm across the shelf of fruit, sending glass jars smashing onto the floor.  The other woman glares at us from under her enormous bangs, and I scurry off to find a clerk to sweep up my mess.

I apologize and come back to the baby section and grab two boxes of diapers.  But before I can get them pushed under the cart, Mason has grabbed my purse and dumped the contents all over the floor.  I drop to my knees to scoop up the receipts and loose change and lipstick that I haven’t worn in three years, only to get clocked on the head by the jumbo box of Pampers my son has pushed off the rack.  I mutter a curse word under my breath, and resist the urge to bite the back of his leg.

I straighten up, dust off, and head to the dairy case.  As we walk past the glass doors, he reaches out and tries to grab the shiny silver handles.  I don’t notice when he catches one, and almost rip his arm out of the socket when I keep pushing the cart and he doesn’t let go.  He lets out a surprised yelp, and I keep walking while he glares at me for not stopping to let him open the door.  I get to the yogurt section, and put two packages of Yobaby in the basket.  But now, the cart is getting full, and Mason reaches around to pluck one of the containers to keep in his lap.  I let him hold onto it, thinking that it will keep his hands inside the cart.

I stop to get a bottle of fabric softener, and watch helplessly while he tosses the yogurt onto the floor.  It splatters all over the shelves, and I go off in search of another clerk to mop up another mess.  I can’t find one (I think they’re all hiding from us), so I pick up the cracked yogurt containers and set them back in the basket.

As we head to the front of the store, I see an old teacher of mine.  I stop to see how she’s doing, and Mason clearly doesn’t appreciate this pause in the action.  He picks up my hand and bites it; and when I ignore him, he pushes the neighboring stacks of Kleenex until the boxes go crashing to the floor.  She looks embarrassed, but I laugh it off and tell her that yes, he’s always this bad; and yes, he gets it from his father.  I start to pick up the tissue, and she goes off to finish her shopping.

When I’m done rebuilding the tissue pyramid, we walk past the wall of fruit for some grapes and apples and red onion.  While I’m digging through the onions to find one that isn’t half moldy, Mason discovers the roll of plastic baggies and starts unwinding them like a miniature Wheel of Fortune.  I reach around and grab the bags that have touched the floor, and throw them into the garbage with another huge sigh.  I feel defeated.

We finally make our way into the checkout lane, where Mason reaches out and starts maniacally grabbing packets of beef jerky and cashews and little boxes of breath mints.  Some end up in the cart, but most of them fall to the floor.  I finish unloading the cart onto the conveyor belt (noting that most of my goods are covered in yogurt), and pick up the wreckage where it’s scattered over the floor.  We push to the front of the conveyor, and he tries to grab the pen out of the credit card box.  I push a little bit more, and he reaches for the metal stakes on the carousel that hold the shopping bags.  Frustrated, I grab a plastic bag from the hooks, twist it up, and use it to tie Mason’s hands together like cheap temporary handcuffs.  He shrieks, but I turn my back to him and roll my eyes at the woman behind us who’s openly staring.

We get to the parking lot, and I fight to buckle him into his carseat while he twists and turns and arches his back.  Eventually, I get the harness clicked in and swear that next week will be better.

Maybe I should start shopping at Target.

So, hi.  How are things?

Remember us?

He’s the small, handsome one with the charming smile and the infectious giggle; and I’m the large, jiggly one who says “NO” and cries a lot.

I wish I could say that things are better over here.  That we’ve been to counseling and repaired the cracks in our marriage, and now treat each other with respect and kindness.  As if.

It’s hard to go for couples’ therapy when the other half of your couple is either working 15 hours a day or traveling to the south/east coast for some super secret tampon project.  He just got home from eight days in South Carolina, and leaves soon for a turnaround trip.  So, yeah, I’m still pretty much a married single mother over here.

And that will hopefully be the last trash I talk about my husband.  I’m trying to move forward, to figure things out, and the least I can do is use a little discretion.  Believe me, I hate to be guarded when this blog has been my therapy for the last eighteen months; but I would be devastated if he wrote hurtful things about me.  We’re not bad people.  Really, we’re not.  I think we just somehow lost our way.

I’ve tried to talk to my parents about it, but they don’t understand.  They’re old school; and think as long as The Husband is providing for his family, I should just shut up and play the part of the happy housewife.  I’ve been trying to smile and put on a happy face for Mason’s sake, but it hasn’t been easy.

I think about going back to work all the time, but decent paying jobs for someone without a college degree are pretty much nonexistent.  An office assistant job only pays $10-$12 an hour; and by the time I pay for daycare and gas and a new wardrobe, my finances are in the red.

How do single parents do it?  How do you work and pay daycare and make a house payment and manage to put groceries in the refrigerator?  And buy furniture?  And a washer and dryer?  Not to mention a car payment and luxury items like shampoo and basic cable.  Right now, we’re still together.  But if/when I decide to move out, I honestly don’t know how I’ll pay the bills.

I wanted to put some amazon referral ads on here, just to earn a couple bucks for my super secret separation account; but wordpress dot com doesn’t allow ads (yet wordpress dot org does).  Dammit.  So, either I lose all my archives and start over with a hosting account; or keep mommyblogging here without ads and find another way to cash in my chips.

And I hate whining about money, because I know we’re better off than a lot of people out there.  We’re able to scrape by every month by shopping the sales and buying cheap diapers and obsessively clipping coupons.

In the meantime, I’ll keep scrounging through the closets and the basement for stuff to sell on ebay.  I thought about becoming a Trading Assistant (where you charge a fee to sell other people’s stuff for them), but The Husband shot that idea down as “stupid” and a guaranteed failure.  Thanks for the support, honey.  Er, wait.  I did say I was going to stop publicly flogging him, didn’t I?!?  Ummmmm, well, never mind then.

Moving on.  Has anyone else given up on twitter?  In the beginning, I loved it.  Was a fun way to keep in touch with a core group of friends.  But now?  Not so much.  Like everything else, big corporations and celebrities and the media have ruined it for me.  I mean, come on.  Do Oprah and The Wall Street Journal really need to tweet?  Really?  Have we become a nation of such self-importance that we subscribe to Ashton Kutcher’s 140-character rambling about going to the grocery store?

Says the narcissistic blogger who tries to make her life sound interesting.

And with that, I have to go.  Mason’s top molars are trying to push through, and he’s in terrible pain.  Time for the rocking chair and another round of “100 bottles of milk in the fridge”.

Just another Saturday night in Suburbia.

With all the other bedlam in the house, I completely forgot to write about Mason’s one year checkup.

Weight: 22.75# (50th percentile)
Overall, the doctor was happy with this.  He’s a skinny kid, but he has so many eating issues that Iwasn’t surprised (more about this later).

Length: 31″ (90th percentile)
How can the child of two short, chunky parents be so long and lean at a year old?  Methinks we just got really lucky in the great genepool lottery.

Head Circumference: 49cm (above the 95th percentile)
Baby got back, at least when it comes to his noggin!

We went over so many things, most of which have gone previously unmentioned.

• He doesn’t talk much.  Only says Momma & Addy, but makes a lot of other sounds.  The stupid baby manual claims that he should be saying 6 or 7 words by now; but the doctor said 1 or 2 is fine.  By his 15-month appointment, he should know at least 5 words; but for now, he’s doing great.
• Mason’s inability to stomach baby Motrin.  He pukes every, single time I’ve tried to give him a few drops; and I always chalked it up to the taste.  But the doctor said ibuprofen is a stomach irritant, and his sensitive belly just can’t handle it yet.  So, we’re sticking with infant Tylenol drops until he’s at least 18 months.
• His long-suffering allergies.  Both The Husband and I have terrible seasonal allergies, and Mason definitely inherited our sniffling sensitivies.  But no Benadryl, period.  Apparently, it can make kids bounce-off-the-walls hyper; and as the doctor put it, “He’s bad enough now.  Imagine him hopped up on Red Bull, and that’s about the same as giving him Benadryl.”  We might be able to try Children’s Zyrtec next spring; but until then, we just have to ride it out.

• The fact that he won’t eat anything that has texture or that he has to chew.  We’ve tried Cheerios, goldfish crackers (regular and baby), mashed bananas, cut up grapes, bits of hot dog, bits of chicken, shredded cheese, cut-up strawberries/raspberries/blueberries, instant oatmeal, malt-o-meal, bits of string cheese, kernels of corn, bits of carrot and asparagus and peaches, strawberry jello, butterscotch pudding, scrambled eggs, fresh bread and toast, bits of deli turkey, pieces of a strawberry cereal bar, puffed cereal, mashed potatoes, teddy grahams, pancakes, french toast, and on and on and on.  He puts it in his mouth, then shoves it right back out with his tongue.  And he screams if *I* try to put it in his mouth.  She had no suggestions for this, other than to keep trying.  She said it’s probably related to his acid reflux & the amount of vomiting he’s doing – it’s most likely made him afraid to try new foods.
• Also?  We can’t feed him a dinner-type food, followed by a dessert, or he pukes.  It has to be Gerber puffs to start with (but only cheese – the zesty tomato & veggie dip ones come back up); followed by two jars of broccoli/chicken or two jars of sweet potatoes/chicken.  NEVER a jar of veggie followed by a fruit or dessert.  If we dare to try, EVERYTHING comes back up.
• And finally, the fact that he has such an active gag reflex & vomits at least twice a week (if not more).  Even with the $165/month Prevacid prescription.

After all this, she decided that he needs to see a gastro specialist.  His puking 2 or 3 times each week is way too much, especially considering he’s on an adult prescription antacid.  Of course, none of the GI doctors in our area treat infants; so we have to take him to Children’s Hospital on November 13th.

And because it’s a referral and not part of our network, we’ll have to pay the first $6,000 out of pocket, and 20% of the remaining balance.  I think it’s safe to assume that a scope will be well above $6,000 since he’ll have to be knocked out to have it done.  Furthermore, it’s in a hospital; and I swear to God, you can’t set foot in a hospital room without paying less than $5,000.

(Not that the money matters.  I worry that his esophagus is getting damaged from all the heaving, and we need to make it stop.  I’ll find a way, even if it means taking on an overnight job & getting a family member to take him.)

So, the long and the short of it?  He’s tall and skinny, with a big head and a bad belly.

And in spite of the 100+ puddles of puke I’ve waded through since his birth, he is now and will forever be the love of my life.

Here’s to a better year ahead.  We’ll get through this together, my boy.  I promise.

So, wow.  Thanks, everyone, for the unconditional support on the whole “Punching Bag” saga.  I tried to respond to individual comments today, but nothing happens when I hit <Submit Reply>.  It’s like my words are taking detours out into the cosmos, and can’t find their way back to the page.

Also, if you don’t know what I’m talking about, I made the entry password protected.  I’m not sorry I let everyone know what’s going on; but I admit, I should protect my privacy a little bit better.  If you want to offer some advice (or you’re just nosey as hell & hate being left out of the loop!), leave a note in the comments with your e-mail address, and I’ll send you the password.  And no, I won’t sell your e-mail address or start stalking you.  Unless you promise to spoon feed me peanut butter for breakfast and change Mason’s 3x/daily poop diapers.  In that case, I’ll be on your doorstep in 30 minutes.

Things were a little better today.  Big surprise, my family isn’t really giving me a lot of support.  I think my Dad’s exact words were, “You know we’ll back you up with whatever you decide to do.  But you have to realize you’re making a huge mistake.”  It makes me want to take Mason and drive to the coast of Oregon, without ever looking back.

I don’t know what to tell them.  They said they needed time to digest things.  As if my marital troubles are akin to choking on a piece of meatloaf.

So, for now, I’m trying desperately to get my life back in order.  It’s overwhelming, to catalog one’s entire existence in terms of living arrangements, financial institutions, and debt ratio’s.  But I’ll be fine, once the tears have all dried and my mind can rest.

I’ve been composing the entry for Mason’s birthday party in my head for the last few days, but haven’t had time to sit down & write it all out.  I haven’t been sleeping well, and the fog in my brain has returned with a vengeance.

My cousin’s house burned down during the night, and the family was left with only the shirts on their backs.  Or pajamas, as the case may be; since the fire started at 3:30 in the morning.  All 3 of them got out safely, but their home is a total loss.  It could have been so, so, so much worse; but they’re facing the long, difficult road of starting over from scratch.  Not an easy task, by any stretch of the imagination.

More to come.

52 weeks ago, I was waddling into the hospital to begin the course of events that would forever change my life.

I remember trying to rationalize the next day or so.  I would start the induction tonight, begin pushing tomorrow, and have the baby sometime tomorrow night.  Easy peasy lemon squeezy, right?!?

HA!

Instead, I was stuck in a hospital bed with one of those elastic bands strapped around my enormous belly, and some kind of hormone shoved up my hooha to try and get things going.  But Mason kept moving around & the monitor kept losing his heartbeat, so the alarms would vehemently sound every 15 minutes or so.  We tried to watch the baseball game on tv, but couldn’t focus on anything other than the thought of meeting our son.

That childfree life of ours seems like a distant memory, almost as if it never really happened.  As if we were simply killing time, waiting for our real lives to begin.

My older brother called me about 9:00 last night, to wish me a happy birthday. Jeez, I wouldn’t want you to take 5 minutes out of your demanding schedule to call me in the afternoon, while my kid is still awake & won’t be woken up by the phone or anything like that.  Oh, no, brother of mine.  You just do things your own way like always, and keep putting your needs ahead of everyone else’s.

I know that sounds really bitchy, but he brings out that side of me. He couldn’t even send a stinkin’ card or bother to call during the day. Oh, no. He makes a half-assed effort and calls when the day is all but over. I said something about feeling old, and could practically smell the contempt from the other side of the phone line.

You see, my brother, my own flesh and blood is ashamed of me.  God forbid he have a sister who’s F-A-T.  When we’re together (which is very rare these days), he can barely hide his disgust.  We don’t really speak to each other, because everything I say is silly or stupid and not up to his intellectual standards.  I can’t be myself around him, because he thinks I can’t see the eye rolls and the looks of revulsion behind my back.  But I do see it, and no matter how much I try to deny it, it still hurts.

Part of the problem is that I’m very close to my dad, and he’s not.  And my mother, too.  We’re not as close, my mother and I, but we still have a much better relationship than he does with either one of them.  Why?  Because we can all be ourselves when we’re together.  But then my brother shows up, and we’re all walking on eggshells, trying desperately to win his approval.  But it just never happens.

Like I said, it hurts.  But I accept the fact that we’re two very, very, very different people leading completely opposite lives.  I’m just tired of pretending to give a crap about him when the truth is that I don’t.  I don’t feel a connection to him, and I’m tired of acting like I should be honored when he decides to grace us with his presence.

He’s a jerk.  A condescending, arrogant, self-centered, jerk.  But enough about that.

Today my fine son and I took a little roadtrip to a nearby antiques dealer.  I’m thinking of taking his 1-year photos myself and ordering prints from a lab, rather than spending $300 at a studio.  I ordered a backdrop from an online photography store, but couldn’t find any cute props for a reasonable price.

Enter the vintage shop.  I really like this little slipper chair, and it’s priced affordably at $36.99.  I just hate to spend that much, knowing he’ll only sit on it once or twice.

If it would have been covered in a plain fabric, I would have bought it.  But I don’t want the print on the chair to overwhelm Mason.  We’ll see.  I’m going to think about it tonight and decide tomorrow.

I still can’t believe he’ll be a year old on Thursday.  There won’t be a big party – no party hats or crazy decorations or loud party horns.  Only us, the people he loves, to pepper him with baby kisses and tickle his belly until he falls into a messy heap on the floor.

]]> http://chubbymummy.wordpress.com/2009/08/23/i-knew-i-spoke-too-soon/feed/ 2 Kriss Chair Chunky Monkey