Family

Random

April 1, 2010 by Vanessa Leave a Comment

Image by Chris, Fiona, James, Ben, Numpty & Bruce via Flickr

Ok, here are just some random things that I want to note that aren’t really long enough for separate posts:

1) Chuggington – This is a cartoon that comes on at 9:30 on Playhouse Disney. The Kraft household watches it every morning. Kraft himself would probably watch it without the Squeaker because he likes it so much. O really likes it, too. I stick her in the Exersaucer in front of the TV while I finish up cleaning the kitchen and do dishes after breakfast (although, the dishes I’m washing are probably from dinner the night before). She will happily sit and watch the whole half hour of it. And whenever she starts getting a little fussy, if we sing the theme song to her it will usually buy us some time before she melts down. Awesome. Don’t be surprised if you hear us around Austin singing that song.

2) Another theme song – Can You Teach My Alligator Manners? This song is super catchy. It’s been stuck in my head all week. I can’t wait til O is old enough to appreciate this one. It’s pretty cute.

3) There was a link to this blog – Feministe – in the Austin Statesmen right after SXSW. It was the story of this woman trying to travel home from Austin. Uh, absolute worst I’ve ever heard. Give it a read and you’ll never complain at the airport again. [I only read this for the story. I have no idea what the rest of the blog is actually about.]

4) I’ve recently started reading the Commonweal blog. I came across an interesting story they mentioned that I thought is worth quoting:

“During a frustrating argument with a Roman Catholic cardinal, Napoleon Bonaparte supposedly burst out: “Your Eminence, are you not aware that I have the power to destroy the Catholic Church?” The cardinal, the anecdote goes, responded ruefully: “Your majesty, we, the Catholic clergy, have done our best to destroy the church for the last 1,800 years. We have not succeeded, and neither will you.”

It’s good to remember, during the ongoing sex abuse scandal, that the Holy Spirit works toward reconciliation and healing in the wake of many horrible actions and crises the Church endures.

Small Triumphs

March 31, 2010 by Vanessa 1 Comment

Cover of "The No-Cry Sleep Solution: Gent...

Cover via Amazon

I don’t know why I thought parenthood would be much different from my past jobs in terms of progress. I know I’ve had a short run as far as the job world is concerned but all my jobs have been working with people that don’t change/improve quickly. Being a Catholic Worker, a case manager for Meals on Wheels, a high school teacher, and now a mother, I’ve learned to revel in small victories.

It’s such a weird thing that you have to teach babies how to sleep. As essential as water, sleep is such a biological necessity that you would think that babies would instinctively do it. Nope. Especially not the Squeaker. She has been a bad sleeper from day one.

From the day she was born, she would not sleep by herself or put herself to sleep. Those few nights in the hospital consisted of me and Kraft sleeping off and on an hour to hold her because every time we’d put her in the little bassinet, she would start wailing.

When we brought her home. Same thing. She would not stay asleep unless she was in someone’s arms. For the first three weeks of her life, we alternated between having her sleep on her diaper pad in our bed between me and Kraft and in our arms. I would take the 1-4am shift and Kraft would take the 4-7am shift. We realized quickly that we needed more sleep than this.

Then I figured out how to sleep on the couch sitting up propped up by pillows while holding her so that she wouldn’t roll off of me during the night. This lasted a couple more weeks.

Then I found that if I rocked her for a couple hours until she was soundly asleep I could lay her down on our couch and lay down next to her and she’d stay asleep for 30mins or so until I’d have to rock her to sleep again. This lasted about another month. (She was 3 months old at the end of this stage.)

Then I could rock her for a couple hours and lay her down (extremely carefully) in our bed and she would stay asleep maybe an hour at a time. Of course she would wake up at the slightest noise. A car alarm going off, people walking by the apartment and talking too loudly, a cat meowing, anything would wake her up. So there I would go again to the rocking chair for a few more hours until she was sound asleep. I got so sick of this rocking chair. Cracker Barrel sure can sell a sturdy, cheap rocking chair but man is it uncomfortable and hard on the back. There were some nights that I totally thought I was going to go crazy from rocking for hours then putting her down only to wake up 5 minutes later.

One night out of sheer desperation I swaddled her. She had fought this like a fiend before this point. She would scream as if we were killing her when we had tried the swaddle previously. But magically this time, she was fine. In fact, she slept like 4 hours straight. Hallelujah. Praise the Lord. Between 3.5 and 4.5 months she started sleeping super well. She was sleeping about 5 hours stretches at night in a swaddle.

Then she started learning how to break out of the swaddle and by 5 months we couldn’t do it anymore. Damn. After coming to hate rocking O to sleep, I figured out how to nurse her to sleep lying down in our bed and then sneaking away when she was asleep. This still took forever but at least I could lay down during it and rest while trying to get her asleep. Now, of course, she cannot fall asleep unless she is nursing. She won’t even fall asleep rocking anymore, which while I hated rocking before, now means that Kraft cannot help with putting her to sleep. Damn, again.

For the last month we’ve been following Elizabeth Pantley’s No-Cry Sleep Solution techniques to wean O from having to nurse to sleep. Pantley said it would be a gradual weaning and, man, it sure is. Here we are one month later and we have made very little progress in that department.

However, yesterday was a glorious day. It took two hours to get O to finally fall asleep around 9pm. She did not wake up until 3:30am, at all. I kept going in to make sure she was still breathing because it was so unbelievable. Of course tonight she woke up 5 times in 4 hours but that is neither here nor there. She slept six and a half hours yesterday without waking up.

I will take this one small victory and pray for more in the near future.

What’s in a name?

March 20, 2010 by Vanessa Leave a Comment

I’m pretty sure it’s going to take a long time for the Squeaker to learn her name because we hardly ever call her by her name. This is a list of the names that we call her on a regular basis:

Image by Kai photo via Flickr

O
Oli
Livy
Libby
Bear
Baby Bear
Little Bear
Hungry Bear
Milky Bear
Poopy Bear
Binky Bear
Bink
Binksy
Binkerton
Chubbs
Chubbers
Chubberton
Chubbington
Grumpy Mumkins
Grump
Pill
Poopy
Poophead
Punkface
Belly Muffin
Squeaker
Squeaksy
Squeaks
Squeakies
Squirt
Squirt-alert

Man, poor kid. She’s never going to learn her name.

First Tooth!

March 20, 2010 by Vanessa 1 Comment

Image by lantzilla via Flickr

The Squeaker finally got her first tooth!

I’m not sure when exactly it came in but today I was rubbing some teething medicine on her gums and I felt a tooth. Upon further investigation and a lot of coaxing for O to get her mouth open wide enough, I saw it. A little bit of tooth popping up from the gum. Yay! She has been fussy and grumpy and drooly for the last 3 months with nothing to show for it. Now she does.

Let’s pray for a good set of teeth and not teeth like her mommy and daddy.

My Mexican Family

March 19, 2010 by Vanessa Leave a Comment

Image by hackett via Flickr

I just returned from The Woods today with the Squeaker. It is Spring Break in El Paso so a lot of my family, including my grandma, caravan-ed out to Houston to stay with my parents for the week. 4 out of my dad’s 7 siblings were at my parents house along with their families. Now I love El Paso and going to El Paso to see everyone but I love it even more when they come to Houston to stay with the ‘rents. At one point there were 25 family members in the house.

We went to El Paso over New Year’s. Sometimes there are good visits with the fam and sometimes there are not so good visits. It’s just the way the cookie crumbles. This New Year trip to introduce la familia to Olivia was a not so good one. I just was not prepared for the onslaught of parenting advice that we got and by the end was totally burnt out.

This visit was not like that at all. It was great. I thoroughly enjoyed every moment of it. It was what a family should be and I wished that my family lived closer so that we could have these moments more often. It was just so nice to have everyone sitting wherever they could find space eating beans and rice and enchiladas. It reminded me of the times when we still lived in El Paso and at least once a week we would have dinners like this at my grandma’s. Like Thanksgiving or Christmas but without all the pressure and expectations.

I really want Olivia to experience this all the time. I know that we will only be able to go to El Paso a couple times a year. Maybe we could get our friends together for something like this. I don’t know. Maybe I just miss my family. They’re big, they’re loud, they’re pushy, they’re busybodies but, man, do I love ’em.

Grumpy Mumkins

March 7, 2010 by Vanessa 1 Comment

Image by Ben Scicluna via Flickr

This is one of a gazillion nicknames I have for the Squeaker. Since I’m with her just about every second of every day I come up with a new name for her pretty often. The list of them is for a later post. But I reserve Grumpy Mumkins for when she’s being a total grouch.

I have been following the facebook updates of several people that have had babies recently. They are so joyous and happy. All their posts talk about how happy they are and how every moment with their baby is a beautiful gift that takes their breath away. That life is perfect and they could never imagine the happiness they would feel all the time with a child.

Reading this filled me with complete and utter annoyance. These babies are only in their first months. These people should be sleep deprived and hormonal. Our first month with O was really hard. Ok, let’s be honest, it was kind of miserable. She wouldn’t let us put her down. Ever. She didn’t sleep unless she was in someone’s arms. Breastfeeding was super difficult. And because hormones were up and down trying to settle into their pre-pregnancy ways, I was a wreck. A total wreck. Those first months, the name of the game was survival. Every day I was totally in love with my daughter and was so happy to be a mom but that doesn’t mean it was kittens and rainbows all the time. These people posting these facebook messages, come on, [gag] give me a break.

I shared these sentiments with Kraft at dinner one night. My very wise husband knows that sometimes I need to say things that are in my head even if they’re dumb. He knows that he doesn’t particularly have to respond or tell me that I’m being dumb because I’ll figure it out. I need time to mull it over. So after I stated my case he just sat their and looked at me while munching on dinner. I stared at him for a few seconds, “Am I being a jerk?” “Eh, a little.” Munching continued.

I know. I was being a jerkface. After giving it some more thought, I realized that I was annoyed by these happy and joyous statements because they made me feel like a bad mom. I felt like I was a bad mom for not enjoying labor. A bad mom for sometimes getting so frustrated with O that I had to give her to Brandon because I wanted to drop her. A bad mom for not being happy every second that I held O. A bad mom because I wanted to scream if O woke up again during the night crying.

No. I am not a bad mom. My experience and the way I cope with things is just different. Can’t I just let these moms revel in the joy that is a new child without pooping on their parade? Yes, I can. I have these wonderful joy-filled moments with O everyday. Motherhood, along with being fun and great, is a life of sacrifice, of frustration, of pain, of loneliness, of confusion, of second-guessing, of total responsibility and accountability. But then in the middle of these moments, your little squeaker looks up at you and gives you a huge grin from ear to ear and your soul feels like it is soaring. And you just have to say, you little punk.

New moms – be cheesy, be ecstatic, be angry, be sleepy, be whatever you need to be. In the end we know you are completely in love with your baby even if you don’t feel it every moment of every day.

I’ll stop being a grumpy mumkins. Without the bitter the sweet ain’t as sweet, right?

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