thumbkin

Where is Thumbkin, where is Thumbkin?
Here I am, here I am!
How are you today, sir?
Very well I say, sir.
Run away, run away.

Just a little while ago I looked down at Ellie and she was sucking on her thumb. I haven't seen her do that before. Whole fist, yes, lots of fun to gnaw. Thumb only is a new one. Not sure if my friend introduced her to it earlier tonight - she mentioned that she introduced her kids to their thumbs rather than waiting for them to discover it on their own. Coincidence?? Either way, I'm well pleased.

I was surprised when the Thumbkin song popped into my head, though. That's one of those songs that I wonder if everyone knows, or was it one of the random, esoteric songs my mom taught me to keep me occupied? There are accompanying hand movements, you see, and anything that even remotely involves characterization - even just personifying one's thumbs - has always been a big hit with me. I vaguely remember wondering as a kid what the thumb was afraid of, that it was running away.

We went to my writing improv group tonight. It was my first time back since Ellie was born, and it was so fun. It's really nice to feel like I don't have to give up the things I enjoy in order to be a parent. She can just do them all with me! Of course, Little Miss Sleep-Through-Everything was wiiide awake during most of our meeting. But it was fine. I'd nursed her on the right side before we went, so I could nurse her on the left side during improv if she got hungry (and of course she did) and I could still write with my right hand. 'Cause I'm all planning ahead like that. (Mom tip #5: plan ahead like that. Also, learn to eat with your left hand.)

shot in the leg, and I'm to blame...

yeahh, I give looove a bad name...

Ahem. Sorry. Woke up with that song in my head this morning. (The original lyrics, though.) Woke up at 4:30 a.m., actually, worrying about taking Ellie in for her first vaccines. (Hence the made-up lyrics.) 

Yeah, I know the link to autism has been disproved, allegedly; I was more worried about the rare severe side effects ranging from seizures to, like, her intestines tying themselves in knots or encephalitis or whatever. When one of your children has died, it makes you a tad bit paranoid about shit happening to the other ones. As I explained to her pediatrician, who is awesome & very understanding.

Sooo, we're doing the Sears schedule, because I do think vaccines are pretty much necessary for the pooker's health as well as public health. (Mom tip #4: when freaking out about your child's possible death by rare causes, get as much data as possible on whatever it is you're freaking out about. The odds of a severe reaction are something like 1 in 2600, according to Dr. Sears.) So it was only two vaccines today instead of five.

She liked the rotatech syrup fine, and then it was time for her DTaP shot. Lemme just say: OMFG. When the nurse brought that needle out, I nearly had heart failure. It was so freaking long, and she stuck the ENTIRE thing into my poor baby's chubby thigh. Ellie, not surprisingly, screamed like a banshee and cried like it was her first heartbreak. I almost cried, too, she was so upset. But she calmed down pretty quickly, fell asleep, and seems to be doing pretty well. She had a mild fever an hour and a half after the shot, but her temp was back down an hour and a half after that. She's been a bit fussy, but she's so damn sweet & easy-going, she still hasn't reached normal baby fussy levels yet.

Knock on wood, she continues to do well. She's up to 11 lbs 3 oz, which I'd just like to note for the record is still 3 oz less than her dad weighed at birth. Yes, I think "holy shit" is the phrase you're looking for.

One last thing: yesterday I was talking to a woman I'd just met. "Well, enjoy it while you can," she said, referring to my darling, snuggly little pooker. "Once they start talking, they never shut the fuck up!"

All I have to say is, wow. I realize she was only half-serious, or maybe three-quarters serious (there was sort of an edge to her voice when she said it). But when one of your biggest regrets is that you'll never get to hear the voice of your first child, you tend to really look forward to talking with subsequent children. I am so glad this kid is my kid, and I hope she never shuts up.

Road Trip!

We're road-tripping fools, my husband and I. So last week, when he had a sales presentation about six hours away from our home, we decided to make it a family trip. I was stoked for Ellie's first road trip to happen when she was only five weeks old. Plus, we're planning another, longer road trip for the near future, so it was nice to take a shorter test run and see how the kiddo would handle it.

My hubby - we'll call him BB, for Best Beloved (not in a sappy way, more in a Rudyard Kipling way, just work with me here) - had to be there by 2:30 and we wanted to allow some extra time in case the baby had a nuclear meltdown or something, so he said he wanted to be on the road by 7 a.m. In a word: UGH. I usually get a little sleep around that time while Ellie's sleeping, depending on how fun and interesting the night before was, so I was a little apprehensive. Instead of my normal procrastinating, I got everything possible ready the night before, and told BB to wake me up at 6 so I could feed El Pookerino, get the last-minute stuff ready, and possibly - dare I dream? - take a shower, if time allowed.

So when the first words I heard that morning were, "Wake up, honey, it's 7:20," I freaked. Apparently BB had revised his departure time without telling me, which was just fine, since I got a little more shut-eye. While I fed the Pooker, he disappeared into the kitchen and soon the most marvelous smells of frying egg and vegetarian sausage started wafting into the family room. Ellie was still nursing when he called out that breakfast was ready, and I decided to multi-task, carrying her to the table and attempting to eat my breakfast wrap while she breakfasted on boob.

Mom tip #2: If you're eating while your kid's nursing on you, shake the fork (or wrap) up and down a few times before moving it from the plate towards your mouth. This minimizes spillage of food onto your kid. Although they don't seem to mind much, as long as the food isn't too hot or runny. I dropped some egg on the side of Ellie's face and she really didn't seem to notice. In fact, she didn't even blink when I picked the egg up off of her temple and popped it in my mouth. (Oh, come on. Like you've never done it. She was perfectly clean.)

Anyway, we managed to get on the road by 8. Ellie conked out quickly, as she usually does in the car, and I tried to restrain myself from checking to make sure she was alive every five minutes. (Apparently 'normal' moms do this sometimes, too, I was intrigued to learn. I thought it was a reflex caused by having a stillbirth.) At first I was actually undoing my seatbelt and hanging over the back of the seat to make sure she was breathing, but eventually I settled for Mom tip #3: If you're in the car and you want to check on your kid without actually climbing halfway into the backseat, just stick your hand in her face and feel around til she moves. For some reason, I don't have this obsessive need to check on her when we're driving around town; maybe it's just because we don't usually drive for longer than half an hour at a stretch, which is about how often I felt a need to do the still-breathing poke.

About three and a half hours later, we stopped for lunch. Ellie started fussing a few miles before the exit; what can I say, she has good timing. I fed her and then ate. I probably would have preferred that BB park the car so it was facing away from the fast food parking lot entrance, rather than towards it, as it was lunchtime and apparently half the town likes to hit up this particular establishment for a little midday nosh. I'd covered us up with a baby blanket, so it's not like I was hanging out tits to the wind, but still, I felt a bit on display. He'd figured I'd want to be able to see if anyone was approaching the car while he went inside to get us lunch, and he was right, but y'know, I'd figured I'd use the mirrors or something to handle that particular observation task. Oh well. No harm done, anyway.

I should probably get used to nursing in public, because my breast pump totally randomly broke while we were on this road trip, which makes the one coming up a tad more difficult. Instead of pumping to prefill bottles, I'll just get to do the old blanket trick wherever and whenever the kiddo gets hungry. Let's hope it's not too windy at our destination...

Anyway, we had an awesome first road trip. We saw some gorgeous scenery, BB and I had delicious food (except for the fast food lunch that first day, which wasn't terrible, I'm just not that into fast food) and Ellie handled the journey like a total champ. I was very proud of my little gypsy baby. She seemed to have fun too.

Priorities

So the other night, I was trying my hand at tempeh curry, this yummy-looking recipe I found over at http://www.101cookbooks.com/. I wanted to take it to the monthly potluck at our local pub, which we usually go to except I'd been super-antisocial during my pregnancy*. We took Ellie down when she was 8 days old so she could meet a bunch of our friends, but I'd felt no obligation to make anything since, y'know, that whole newborn-care thing is a little time-consuming. Plus, Ellie is very nibblesome, so people were calling dibs on eating her cheeks and fingers and toes and so forth.

Anyway, here it was a month later and I wanted to be super-mom and bring a badass dish to the potluck to accompany the adorable baby (presentation is everything). Now, many of our friends have the same laid-back approach to punctuality that I do, but it's still a good idea to get to the potluck by 6:30 (it technically starts at 6). But the afternoon had gotten away from me and I'd started on the dish late, so I was rushing around trying to get all the ingredients chopped and spices measured and blah blah blah, in a reasonable enough imitation of the recipe that the end result wouldn't suck, and fast enough that we'd get to the potluck before everyone was full.

Unfortunately, although Ellie had dozed off just before I started cooking, it turned out to be one of those just-kidding naps where she woke up after about ten minutes, her keen baby-sixth-sense having picked up that Mommy was trying to get something done. And in a serious error in logistics, she was strapped into her bouncy chair in the family room. Not only are the doorways in our old house too small to fit said bouncy chair through without turning it sideways (Mom Tip #1: Do not turn the bouncy chair sideways while it contains your child, even if she is strapped in by the legs), but at that point in the cooking process I already in way too deep to either have the mental acuity to, or take the time to, unstrap the child, carry the chair into the kitchen, fetch the child, and strap her back in. No, instead I was running through the house every two minutes to replace her pacifier, because that is far less time-consuming when you're running late with dinner.

It was at some point as I was adding ingredients to the curry, stirring it, and listening to my beloved daughter wail in the next room - she was totally not buying the "It's okay, sugar, Mommy will be right there," - either that or it was just an inadequate response in her opinion, and really, who can blame her? - that the title for this blog occurred to me. I'm not really that great of a cook, although I am a dedicated foodie, and I'm not really that bad of a mother, although pretty much the only times I've let the baby cry longer than a couple seconds without rushing over to her were when I was either cooking or eating. (So far - at some point, she'll be old enough to cry it out, but she's still so young and, frankly, she's got me so whipped that I try to tend to her every whim - or need - as fast as possible.)

Anyway, shortly after thinking of the blog title, it occurred to me that it really wasn't a big deal if we made it to the potluck, and all I was doing by killing myself trying to get food ready for it was making myself and my kid miserable. So, literally five minutes before the dish was done, I said, "Fuck it," and decided to skip the potluck. I turned the curry to simmer, went in and thoroughly comforted the baby, instead of the drive-by pacifier fling I'd been doing for the last hour or so.

Incidentally, the curry turned out awesome. The kid is, too. I'm just waiting for the day when I can slather barbeque sauce on her chunky little arm and nibble away like it's corn on the cob. We just have to figure out if she's right- or left-handed so I can eat the other arm. I wouldn't want to put her at a disadvantage or anything. Okay, okay, I'm kidding. Geez.

No, really, her toes look much tastier.

* It's really, really, REALLY hard to go through another pregnancy after a stillbirth. Very stressful. Basically you fear about 20 times a day that this child could die too, at any minute. Not so easy to make chatty small talk at a potluck when you're in that frame of mind. But oh, man, what an inexpressible relief when your baby is born healthy! As Luigi in 'Cars' says, "I want to a-scream it to the world, my excitement, from the top of someplace very high!" (Okay, that loses something when you can't hear the goofy accent, but just take my word for it, it's exciting.)