Love to the Fourth Power

Four years ago, this guy stood in a garden and married me. I couldn't be more grateful.

I love him more with every year.

I've said it on more than one occasion. My iPod is magical. Placed on shuffle, it never fails to enlighten me.

This morning, it shuffled only to two songs on my short drive to work, two songs that I rarely ever hear.

You Found Me by Kelly Clarkson

You found me when no one else was looking
How did you know just where I would be?
You broke through all of my confusion
The ups and the downs and you still didn't leave
I guess that you saw what nobody could see
You found me

February Song by Josh Groban

Morning is waking up
And sometimes it's more than just enough
When all that you need to love
Is in front of your eyes
It's in front of your eyes

molars suck

Hey, molars! You suck.

Even now, I just ran upstairs because he was crying in his crib, but I stopped outside his door. What could I do for him? Nothing. I don't have a magic soothing touch to make it better. That's one of those great lies you discover when you become a mom.

I breathed silently, listening as his frustrated cry was defeated by sleep. An entire evening week of orajel, ibuprofen, teethers, and it isn't getting better. What haven't we tried? Baby dentures?

I remember commiserating over my teething infant with Angela, who said, "Wait until molars." I get it now. It turns out we spend a large portion of our second (and third) year on this earth in horrible pain. This explains a lot.

In other news, my husband ran a half-marathon because, *shrug*, why not? One of his best characteristics is his ability to follow through, even when he does little or nothing to prepare. He started a new job today, too, *shrug*. After a few weeks with him as a stay-at-home dad, now we have to get used to being single parents all over again. While Fletch is getting his first molars. Yippee.

Fun.

He eats an ice cream cone better than I do.

sweeper

is the carpet clean yet?

all right, let's vacuum!

it puts the lotion on its skin

rare moment of happiness

at the park

hi, daddy!

End Note: Between Fletcher and I, we managed to wear three different states on our T-shirts in these pictures. Weird.

Chef Boyardon't

I go home on my lunch break to test just how short one hour can be.

Take 20 minutes off for driving there and back.

Take 10 minutes off for helping to get Fletcher changed into a fresh diaper and outfit, and playing.

Take 10 minutes off for preparing my lunch and Fletcher's lunch, attempting to feed us both, and staining us both with Chef Boyardee's Red Sauce From Hell (or RSFH, if you will). I wipe it up and turn away to try to put a spoonful of food in my mouth, and Fletcher picks up his bowl and dumps it all in his lap.

Take 6 minutes off for changing his outfit and wiping the stains into his feeding chair and the rug under the table.

Take 3 minutes off for helping Fletch drink his milk.

Take 10 minutes off for Fletcher spitting up the RSFH while he's running across our living room, and we get busy wiping the stains into the carpet.

In the last minute, I get to say goodbye to a little boy who knows I'm leaving, who doesn't want to let go of me, who throws a fit if I set him down. During this last minute, Andy's doing what he can to clean the rug, the carpet, and whatever else was hit with the RSFH. And he's asking me why I'm not leaving.

When I walk out the door, it all stays with me. I don't take a "break" and leave parenting behind me for the afternoon. If those 60 little minutes were stressful, you can believe the rest of the day will be. I can't stop hearing his tantrum voice and wishing I were there to help clean up the mess.

Instead, I'm at work, where a slew of tasks waits. I'm here, with stained pants and an almost empty stomach, shirking responsibility for two minutes so that I can write this. It feels as though everything I want to do – personally, professionally – is all compounding on me as every moment passes, and it is too overwhelming to manage.

As I pick up my professional to-do list and my stomach rumbles, I'm wondering how hungry Fletcher is, and what his daddy will feed him while I'm away.

I'm guessing it won't be Chef Boyardee.

teamwork

The fallout of a baby with a cold, ear infection(s), and eye infection taking two doses of amoxicillin per day, is the diapers. I think the medicine may have worsened that part of his cold.

While I was beginning my Thursday (getting out of the shower this morning), Andy was ending his Wednesday (getting home from work around 6 a.m.). The daddy-baby bonding time was cut short by a dirty diaper of such epic proportions that I was recruited to help. Stark naked.

Want to know how far up his back the poop went? Sure you do. His neck. I think we even found some poop in his hair.

Nothing finishes off a shower better than nakedly attempting to wipe down a squirmy baby who's wearing a poop coat.

As the only one who wasn't naked in this scenario, Andy did say he felt left out.

This time, Andy and I worked together and no one threw anything. He wasn't inefficient or questioning. I was thorough and not temperamental. Still naked, I got Mr. Squirmy into a new pair of pajamas. Andy faced the task of cleaning out the disgusting old pajamas and doing a load of laundry.

Crisis over, I was able to finish getting ready for Thursday, Andy was able to wind down from Wednesday, and Fletcher was able to take another dose of medicine, which will surely keep our lives interesting.

a future in haircutting, I have not

speaking

Andy: Say "mama."

Fletcher: Mmma mmma

Andy: Mama

Fletcher: Mmma mmma

Andy: Dada

Fletcher: *fart*

That kid knows.

fight | 10 months old

This is my new favorite picture. It makes me want to kiss my computer screen.

This is the official 10 month picture.

It was suggested to Andy that "month days" aren't all that significant. We know it isn't like a birthday,  but whenever the 23rd of the month arrives, it feels special.

Given his new mission for self-destruction, I'm pleased to be able to say he survived another month. It wasn't for lack of trying. He bruised up his cheek and had an entire piano bench fall on his head (and then on his body).

We also had our biggest fight. During his bath last night, he insisted on standing in his bath duck and yelling at me. I tried being patient, kind, silly, repetitive, distracting. It didn't matter what he was doing or what I was doing, he was YELLING. So eventually, I was YELLING. And we DID NOT LIKE EACH OTHER. Then bedtime came, and I lay alone in the quiet thinking about it and feeling guilty and absolutely worn thin. And I missed him.

 He had his first guitar lesson.

He spent some quality time with Grandpa.

He rediscovered his long lost love.

And he rode in a stroller for the very first time without the car seat.

Here are the rest of the 10 month pictures!

I've been listening to Holly Brook lately (a.k.a. Skylar Grey of Dr. Dre's/Eminem's "I Need A Doctor").  These lyrics belong to her song "Curious."

I think that I think too hard
And I don't give enough credit to my heart

I'm so damn curious to know
And there are too many unanswered questions
That we hold onto

Portraits of your loved ones
Are more than what you see
All the elements they capture
Are more to you than me

update

Writing blog posts is getting frackin' hard. Not the "writing" part, but the "using a computer without the baby wanting to grab at the keys and eat the screen and chew the cord" part.

So what's happened lately?

• Time inexplicably passed again. He's almost 10 months old.
• He got his seventh tooth.
• He's doing quite well eating small bits of "real" food. 
• I went to take a quick potty break, and when I got back he had climbed eight stairs and scared me to death. More than once, he's climbed the entire flight while supervised. A cardboard obstacle was built to stop or slow him.  Or trip me.
• He made friends with an almost-one-year-old at a baby shower on Saturday. There was a bit of cute monkey-see-monkey-do. 
• On Sunday, I threw a dirty diaper in frustration. I may or may not have been aiming at my husband's head. He may or may not have forgiven me. There wasn't that much poop in it. 
• Husband complained about baby food stuck in the carpet again, as if it is preventable. Wet Cheerios stick to everything and dry like glue. Just look at my shirt.

Mostly, I've been worrying a lot. When I first became a parent, the things to worry about were all obvious and expected, and I'd mentally prepared myself to handle them. But now, the things I worry about don't have solutions.

I don't know what I'm going to do when he outgrows his car seat. Sure, we have a different car seat ready for him, but it's not like his original. It doesn't slide into multiple bases in multiple cars. It's a big item that's meant to stay strapped into one car. Are we supposed to buy another one for our other car? And what about the grandparents' cars? And what about the fact that my car is the size of a toy and the idea of fitting a larger car seat in it (let alone taking it in and out repeatedly) is like a bad joke? We can't afford to trade my car in. My husband's car is older and will be the one that gets traded when the time comes.

Then there's nursing. I've obsessed over breastfeeding woes before, and it's getting worse. I used to provide at least eight ounces while at work. About four months in, that started getting difficult. Suddenly I was only able to provide six ounces while away from home. Now I'm LUCKY if I get a total of four ounces, because there is just no let down reflex. Even with this problem, though, I never had to worry about feeding him when I was home -- it was only the pump that my body stopped understanding.

But last night I couldn't get a let down with Fletcher, so now my worries are compounded. Eventually his tiredness won out over his hunger and he fell asleep. Then I went to bed with my failure, wondering what was happening to me, what I was supposed to do. I know he isn't starving, but... my baby went to bed hungry? What kind of mother am I? I'm so angry with my body, as it fails me time and again.

I'm not supposed to have a bad back at my age, yet it feels like someone has grabbed hold of each muscle and twisted. I've lost mobility in my neck, shoulders, arms. I've forced myself to learn how to accept the constant pain, even as new joint pain joins the party.

Is being able to feed my baby when he's hungry really too much to ask? I've done everything right. Why can't it do what it's supposed to do? For the first time, I really feel trapped by my body, because now it isn't just about me.

You know it's a sad state of affairs when you dream of winning the lottery so you can do things like see a health care professional and get a car with four doors.

valentine

More than 10 years ago when I went on my first date with Andy, I was too nervous to eat dinner in front of him so I only ordered a cookie, and even that I ate self-consciously.

Today, as I was rushing out the door on my lunch hour, I took the cover off a big chocolate cake and proceeded to shovel it into my mouth by the forkful as he and the baby looked on.

Real love isn't pretty.

Happy Valentine's Day, sweetie poo.

that gagging sound you hear is my husband choking on my cooking

One week ago, I made oily slabs of rubber steak for dinner. In my defense, the time we had to cook and eat before Andy left for work was about 20 minutes.

In a voice that expressed just how fed up I was that my natural cooking skills were once again missing in action, I told Andy I had ruined dinner. Don't even try it.

He did the good husband thing -- it's probably not that bad -- and bit in.

Immediately, with a jerk of his shoulders and a loud gagging sound, he spit the turd food back onto his plate. He couldn't help it. His heaving disgust was followed quickly by his chagrin at failing so profoundly at the good husband thing.

That night, I spent a decent amount of time upset by my huge, flopping failure and all the ones before it. Annoyance took its place. Then weariness. "I'm done," I told him. "I'm just done with cooking."

I wish that were true, but it isn't an option.

I can say with complete sincerity and with no underlying meaning that Andy has been making better dinners than I. That neither of us knows what we're doing, but he's made better decisions, with better results. That I'm proud of him for taking on a large amount of the cooking, as well as the other household chores and child raising. That I expect to continue being let down by recipes as well as my instincts, but I'm resigned to continue to try, because we need to eat and it isn't fair to expect Andy to cook every meal.

But you know what? My failures have been so horrendous that I'm kind of proud of that too. I'm probably the only person on planet earth who could make something so bad that my good husband would gag on it.

two weeks in photos

letting it all hang out on thanksgiving

from left to right: grandpa tom, fletcher, random scary old lady, great-grandma katie

walker, making it work

daddy loves sleepy baby

video games tire him out

an oops photo that i have decided is "artistic"

piggyback

does his cap fit yet? maybe not.

yum. cat.

whoooaaa, dude

a drink after a hard day's work

*slurp*

ditz

I'm driving along in the dark last night, on a narrow road made bumpy from all the semi-trailer traffic it gets. There's a gentleman ahead of me driving 30 mph in a 40 zone, so I zip on past him. A short distance ahead, I reach the patch of road where there are no houses, no industrial park, no streetlamps to light my way. That's okay; I know this road really well.

Then my headlights go out.

It's pitch black, as in I can't see the road, can't see the side of the road, can't see frigging anything. I don't know if I'm going off the road or into the middle of it.

I'm hyperventilating. I'm pushing buttons and pulling levers with wild abandon. It turns out windshield wiper fluid on a frozen window does NOT help in this situation.

I look in my rear view and note that the geezer is still driving so slow that his (functioning) headlights are an awfully long way back.

An oncoming car flashes its brights at me. Part of me thinks, "Crap! That person thinks I'm a ditz!" The other part of me thinks, "Turn those brights back on! I'm blind, here!"

I finally reach a four-way stop, blessedly lit with streetlamps, and I pull over. It takes two full minutes to find my hazards (maybe I am a ditz) and then I wait impatiently for my husband to arrive.

When he does, it feels like my Superman has come. My car is still demented and neither of us knows what's wrong with it, but it doesn't matter as long as I have my hero. I follow his car home, where I am safe.

But then, this morning the service rep on the phone says that I probably had one light burned out for some time now and just never noticed. Right. Everyone thinks I'm a ditz.

change

You hear all the time that all things change and you can't avoid change. Nowhere has that been more obvious to me than with my baby.

There's nothing I could love more than him, which is why it is so jarring to wake up one day and his personality is barely recognizable. The sound of his voice is different. The way he laughs is different. His cry is different. The way he nurses, his appetite, his reactions are all different.

When I tried to communicate how lost I feel, Andy said, "Do you think I came home from the gas station with the wrong baby?"

It could be a growth spurt. It could be his (two!) teeth. It could be the natural way these things go. The same thought kept occurring to me today -- this could be the way things are now. The crying and apparent anger and unhappiness might be more than just holiday confusion and teething. This could be the baby's personality for the foreseeable future.

After spending half an hour crying for no obvious reason, something he never used to do, he's now sleeping, and I'm breathing deeply and finding anchors -- comforting things that haven't changed, that I can count on to stay the same.

My love for my baby hasn't changed. If anything, I love him more in his time of need.

My love for my husband hasn't changed. If anything, it's stronger in my time of need.

My home is still here. My job is unchanged. I am still me.

For better or for worse. In the laughter and the tears. I can't promise I won't break down and cry whenever he does, but that's okay. We're a family and we have each other.

Ten things that didn't suck but now they suck just a little bit

10) Office Lunches. Free food isn't worth going ten hours without the baby and having to add another session with the breast pump to my work day.

9) Pumping. It used to be easy. But the twins have caught on that this isn't natural and this contraption isn't really a baby. Now they must be beaten into submission. Twice a day. And sometimes on weekends. Especially on holidays.

8) Holidays. I'm new at this. Eventually I'll figure out how to haul a baby, diaper bag, breast pump with car adapter, boppy pillow, teething gel, toys, blankets, and spoon feeding supplies to six different places in three days plus a trip to Wal-Mart during the busiest shopping weekend without forgetting the baby's jacket or, you know, having a meltdown.

7) Shopping. It used to be great to browse around, especially at Christmas. Now there aren't words dark enough for how much other shoppers at our Wal-Mart suck. The gift I have for repressing my feelings among these rude, inconsiderate, clueless strangers will fail one day soon, resulting in a volcano of cart-crashing rage.

6) Teeth. They are so not worth what it takes to grow them.

5) Toys With Catchy Music. Get it out of my head. Get it out of my head!

4) Cats. If the baby's blanket is on the floor, a cat will be on it. If the baby's toy is on the floor, a cat will be playing with it. If neither of these is the case, the cats will be on the kitchen table, on the kitchen counters, or in the kitchen sink, doing their damnedest to get cat hair on every single surface.

3) Driving. We don't really fit in our cars anymore. Even without my family and the required bags, my back pain has gotten to the point where I despise sitting anywhere, especially my car.

2) Showering. It was one of the best parts of the day. It would relieve some of my back pain, it was relaxing, it was great to be clean. Now it takes twice as long as I dash in and out of the bathtub to rescue the baby who has found some new crevice to roll into and smack his head.

1) Independence. Andy and I always were independent of each other, with nearly opposite schedules, and it worked fine. Now, sometimes it's like being a single parent.

My husband is awesome and I am insane

I've always known that my husband is awesome. I've never been able to put it into words exactly why he's awesome. I just know that he is.

"It's my birthday," I thought to myself today. "I need to come up with a birthday-themed post for the blog." It was nearing the end of the day, though, and I still didn't know what I wanted to say about today. About aging. About gifts. About parties and excess cake and you're-only-as-old-as-you-feel.

Then I read this post by Single Dad Laughing. And I started crying. This article really has nothing to do with my birthday except... I realize that there is nothing I want or need for my birthday except the family I already have.

When I began the article, I was thinking the usual things: "Okay, another article by an urban, 'sensitive' guy who's pretty good at reading between the lines when it comes to women, and I wonder if I should be offended that all women are being lumped into one category and all men into another, and oh-shut-up-Lindsay-you-don't-have-to-be-so-PC-about-everything-it's-just-an-article..."

I thought to myself that he has a good point. He's probably right. If men did act/speak differently (i.e. stop giving us cues that tell us these "perfect" women are what get your attention), then we might not have so many issues with trying to become perfect.

AND THEN IT HIT ME. *cue tears*

I am married to a man who doesn't do this! Holy crap! He doesn't give cues that these "perfect" women are what he wants. He doesn't crane his neck when a pair of nice legs goes by. He doesn't allude that he wants something other than me, whether the topic is appearance or personality or behavior.

And more than that? He tells me ALL THE TIME how he loves the way I look. All those personal, secret flaws I have that seriously bug me? He loves them. He thinks I'm beautiful. When I accuse him of pandering to me (in the vein of "Yes, dear" and "No, those pants don't make your butt look big"), he sincerely tells me that he isn't. And I think he's telling the truth.

I'm not the only woman who feels like I should do something about the way I look. I should do something about the way I cook/clean/take care of the husband. I should buy all these self-improvement magazines because there's so much I could be doing differently and if I were better and just a little closer to the ideal, wouldn't our little family be that much better off? I want to be what someone else wants me to be.

My husband just wants me to be me.

Holy crap!

I'm married to someone so awesome!

But... what if I'm not worthy of such a great husband? What if, by letting me know that I have worth, he's proven that he's a much better spouse than I am, because I may not be letting HIM know his great worth?

Aha! A flaw in the article by Single Dad Laughing. WOMEN ARE INSANE.

* * *

I'm not going to count the days and weeks of Fletcher's age in my post titles anymore because, frankly, I can't count very high.

I had it pointed out to me that my professional bio on the office website probably shouldn't state that I live with my husband and baby because, well, he isn't going to be a baby for long. But I'm leaving it the way it is. Because if it says that Fletcher is a baby, then a baby he shall be, because EVERYTHING YOU READ ON THE INTERNET IS TRUE. Right?

Right.

So if I want him to stay a baby forever, why do I love watching him grow? Why am I happy that he has made such great progress with spoon feeding? Why do I get excited each time he lays on his stomach and raises his little baby butt in the air like he's just *this close* to crawling? I shouldn't want him crawling. The house isn't ready. I'm not prepared for a tiny MOBILE creature who puts everything in his mouth. This is going to have disaster written all over it.

18w 4d album

Today, I'm catching up on the photo album.

my family

cheese!

whoa!

squee!

slick

pajama party

strike a pose

the men of the house

goodnight

30w 3d husband

Another year has passed for Andy. Even though he was stuck at work, I tried to fill his birthday with good things like apple pie and pizza and cookies and balloons. And lots of love.

He has this thing with "joking" about what a worthless/useless loser he is, mostly when he is at work or feeling down about his working situation. It isn't that he's ungrateful for the job. The truth is... if he didn't deserve so much better, there would be no reason for him to be this dissatisfied. If he wasn't worth so much more than his employer has made him, he wouldn't feel demoralized. If he wouldn't make a great asset to the companies to which he has sent his resume, he wouldn't be so dejected by the lack of response.

Honey, you are far -- so far -- from "loser." There's nothing I can say to make your job suck less. But I can remind you of what you already know so well: I am on your side in all things. No one could ever love you more than I, except perhaps this little person whom we've made. You can think of that the next time you sling your arm around me in the middle of the night and find that you're unable to sleep with all the kicking and scraping and swimming around that's happening in my belly under your arm.

You put that little kicker there and I love you for it, just as I love you for being so funny, for the way your brain works, your common sense, the way you laugh, how you're not afraid to pick fights with strangers, how you force hugs out of people, how you clean the house when you realize I'm not going to, how you care enough to get angry when I'm mean to you, how you try to protect me from my own gullibility, how you see the beauty in small things like a well-made guitar, how you pour your love out to your cat, the way you're unafraid to be honest, the million small ways you have of showing me you that you love me too...

Happy Birthday.

From one of "our" songs... "No One Like You" by Scorpions:

I just need you like never before
Just imagine you'd come through this door
You'd take all my sorrow away
There's no one like you
I can't wait for the nights with you
I imagine the things we'll do
I just want to be loved by you
No one like you