Livingston, I Presume

Broken promise

I've always told myself that I would never blog about my children's bowel habits. After all, junior high is hard enough without written evidence of bathroom indiscretions. And I'm sure that by the time Emerson and Connery are in junior high, kids will be able to download all relevant material into their Google BrainPan and use it against each other willy-nilly*.

That said, I can no longer keep silent on the subject of Emerson's butt. Put simply, she is the baby equivalent of John "The Biscuit" Cage from Ally McBeal, but instead of a fresh bowl, she likes an open diaper. She showed this proclivity early on, waiting to unleash her furies all over the exam table at her first pediatrician's visit at five days old. She has continued apace. When we stayed for a week in Great Falls, she hit the door frame from a good four feet away.

Her favorite trick is to let us get her all cleaned, balmed, and very nearly re-diapered and then do her extra business. The most immediate result of this little trick is that the fresh diaper is ruined and we have to get another one. (Don't you realize every one of those diapers costs 27 cents? We could have started a college fund by now!) Truly it pains my Scots-heritaged heart to waste diapers in this fashion. I can often be heard moaning softly by the changing table as she merrily sneezes and soils simultaneously.

Don't tell me to wait longer after feedings to change her. Believe me, I've done--and I do--that. Yesterday I waited some 45 minutes and included copious amounts of tummy time to move things along, but it wasn't until the diaper was opened that she chose to use it for what God intends diapers to be used for. And while I'm fast, I'm not usually fast enough.

There is one saving grace. While Emerson is like John Cage, her butt is like the Fire Swamp from the Princess Bride. Let me remind you of the key section:

"What are the three terrors of the fire-swamp? One, the flame spurt - no problem - there's a popping sound preceding each.  We can avoid that."

I'm not going to call it a popping sound, exactly, but there is a noticeable noise preceding most of her, uh, flame spurts. Still, when the noise is heard, one has only seconds to react. And usually those seconds are consumed by groaning and rolling my eyes heavenward because it's impossible to move the fresh diaper out of harm's way.

*Welcome, potential suitors! Please ignore this entry, as I'm sure by the time you're reading this in 2024 just before you plan to ask Emerson to Space Prom or whatever it is you have these days, we will have gotten this problem firmly under control. Honest.

Sure sign that you're a parent

When presented with the opportunity to do the family's grocery shopping all by yourself, you find yourself feeling the kind of joy previously reserved for Christmas morning. That insane woman, grinning madly on Aisle 12? It's me.

Spotted at the drive-thru

You: Vaguely teenaged girl with bright green fake nails driving a beat-up SUV while simultaneously talking on a cell phone, smoking a cigarette, and going through the bank drive-thru.

Me: Not-so-young mother of two driving a minivan, giving my undivided attention to the task at hand, namely conducting a bank transaction that I initiated by, you know, driving into the drive-thru. Well, I was a little distracted by having to glare and roll my eyes at you. Not that you noticed.

You: Then showing up in MY personal coffee shop less than five minutes later, still talking on the cell phone and still not bothering to cut off the conversation long enough to actually speak to the guy taking your order. He owns the shop. Did you know that?

Me: More with the glaring and the eye-rolling. Not that you noticed.

Hey, I'm all for the multi-tasking. In fact, I find the inability to multi-task while nursing to be one of the more frustrating aspects of early parenting. If only I could nurse and blog! Or nurse and clean the kitchen. Or nurse and shave my legs. At least this time I can nurse and talk on the phone, thanks to Bluetooth. But I digress. Anyway, I'm down with the multi-tasking, or whatever the young people would say these days to indicate approval. But that girl? I can't be down with that.

If you choose to conduct some kind of face-to-face business--whether that's banking at the drive-thru or buying groceries or ordering a latte--you should damn well take a moment to finish up your oh-so-important mobile phone conversation so that you can give your attention to the person trying to serve you. And don't get me started on the driving while smoking AND talking on a cell phone. Put a sandwich in the other hand and we've got a roving deathmobile because she's steering with her knees.

Or all this hostility could just be a desperate attempt to distract myself from my own shortcomings. Case in point? I almost didn't go through the drive-thru because I was going to walk in to the bank. Until I remembered that I had a baby in the backseat. That's right, I forgot about the baby. Perhaps I shouldn't be bragging about my multi-tasking skills.

The center cannot hold

Check out The Dad, getting all serious about the scary, scary topic of marriage between TEH GAYZ with his always-light touch:

Our lives are being torn apart, I know it! Keep listening.

No, that's not it. That's kissing. You can't tell kissing from the upending of everything our country stands for? Boob.

It's well worth reading the full post.

Four weeks? Seriously?

I cannot believe that Emerson was born four weeks ago--and that my last "real" update was longer ago than that. No one bothers to tell you that the work required for two kids is not just twice as much but exponentially more. How anyone outnumbered by their kids manages to survive is beyond me.

That said, we do seem to have a sweet-natured baby in Emerson. She's so relaxed that when we took her swimming last week she fell asleep in the pool. That's pretty damn relaxed. Of course we have the standard newborn stuff--nursing every two to three hours, diaper changes that double as personal attempts for the poo-distance record in Guiness, baby acne--but we really can't complain. In fact, I think that's why it's taken me so long to blog about the whole thing--I have this feeling that if I commit in print to what a great baby she is that I will be tempting the fates. Superstitious? Me? Why do you ask?

She's been unreasonably good all along. I went into labor on the Saturday morning of a holiday weekend, was checked in by 11 a.m., and had her at 5:33 in the evening. It wasn't even a full day's work, really. The whole birth was trauma-free enough that I was able to sit on the ground outdoors only five days after she was born. I could barely sit on a comfy chair for weeks after Connery was born. If someone had asked me then to sit on the ground, I would have just laughed at them. On second thought, given my state of mind post-Connery's birth, I probably would have cried and snotted on them.

The first week after Emerson's birth, we had the able help of my mom and dad. They left just in time for the beginning of Chip's two-week vacation/paternity leave (of which more later) and then we all went to Great Falls on the last Friday of his leave. Connery, Emerson, and I stayed with my parents until just yesterday, while Chip had to go back to work on Monday (not before having to switch cars with my parents after our van refused to start in the parking lot of Chili's). My parents brought the three of us home yesterday afternoon--a four-hour journey that Emerson slept through entirely.

Many of you have asked how Connery is adapting to having to share the spotlight. Overall, I think he's coping as well as could be expected. He is very gentle and loving with Emerson--sometimes perhaps too affectionate, as he would like to hug and kiss her pretty much 18 hours a day, including when she's sleeping, nursing, and having her diaper changed--and seems genuinely interested in her. On the other hand, he's cottoned on to the notion that negative attention is still attention and has done his level best to attract whatever he can. I think he's decided that parental attention is much like publicity--there's no such thing as bad. I think it's a very good thing that we signed him up for Montessori camp most of the summer.

I am going to try to catch up on some of the things I've missed blogging about during this blurry four weeks. In the meantime, I thank all four of you remaining readers for your patience and hope that you'll forgive my protracted absence.

Mommy, enough with the pictures

Words again soon. I promise.

Happy together

Du jour

Connery and his little sister. Shame he doesn't like her.

Debut

There is far too much in my brain to write just now, so I'll rely on an old standard. I figure three pictures should be worth 3,000 words. Right?

Thanks for all your well wishes.






 

What a Trooper!

Greetings all loyal LIP readers. Chip here again. Emerson Rose Ritter was born today, 24 May 2008 at 5:33 pm. She weighed in at 8 lbs 6 oz and measured 20.5 inches. Mommy and baby are doing great. More information and pictures to come. Thank you for all your good thoughts and wishes!