psychological damage

I have done my first real "bad mom" thing. I have introduced fear to my son.

I guess it's not surprising when I think about it, that I would be the one to open this emotion to him. I mean, I've introduced every other emotion to him...starting with comfort in the womb. I've introduced security, happiness, anger, silliness, frustration, discomfort...and now fear. 

Fear is, by far, the worst of the bad feelings. After all, it is the one that is most remembered. It's imprinted in the primal brain. It's hard to overcome (psychiatrists make TONS of money trying to have people unlearn their fears...fears of flying, phobias of all sorts).

So are you wondering what I've done?

It's not as bad as I make it sound. No permanent damage has been done. Parker will not grow up to be a sociopath.

I was doing that game where you toss the baby in the air. I help him down low, and then quickly brought him up above my head and tossed him up.

At first, he would get this frightened look on his face, but he always laughed right away. I *thought* he was having fun.

Until I tried to do it again today, and when I caught him he was shaking he was so scared.

OMG I am the world's worst mother. He even starts to shake if I just hold him up above my head. 8 months old, and he needs to see a therapist.

I can picture him 20 years from now, laying on some psychiatrist's couch. "I have this irrational fear of heights and flying. I'm terrified I'm just going to plunge to the ground, out of no where. Where do you think this fear is stemming from?"

Then the psychiatrist will hypnotize him, and somehow it will come out that I maliciously threw him 4 feet in the air, over and over, with him crying while I laughed at his horror.

Of course, this is absolutely not the case. Once I realized he was, in fact, terrified of the game I cuddled him and stopped doing it. I also feel very guilty for him learning fear from me. I'm the person who is supposed to protect him from it!

Ironically, we have a plane to catch tomorrow. Let the psychological damage begin!

age is in the eye of the cashier

When Tim got off work tonight, I asked him if he could swing by the grocery store to get a couple of things we needed (one of these things was a pregnancy test, but that's a different story). In addition to my list of things, he also grabbed beer for himself, since he can't go into a place that sells beer and not buy some. For the record, he is not an alcoholic. I never buy beer for him because it's too heavy for me when I'm shopping by myself with Parker...which is a one-arm job. That is why he always buys it when given the opportunity.

He gets all the groceries and goes up to the check out aisle.

Here is a funny bit of info about my husband: he ALWAYS has his ID out when he buys beer. It always makes me laugh to myself, because I can tell that no one has been planning on checking his ID since I've known him (this is the complete opposite of my situation...I get ID'd all the time. I actually got ID'd by the UPS guy when he had a delivery of wine. It's actually really very annoying and I don't really think it's flattering at all). Without fail, Tim always has it out for the cashier, and they usually look at it since he is waving it in their face, so they don't insult him.

This time was a little different.

How old do you think this man is (take off the baseball hat, and keep in mind that his hair is not grey at all and he does not have a receding hair line)?

The cashier goes, "Oh I don't need to see your ID. Let me guess your age...38?"

...?

OMG I'm seriously dying laughing!! 38!!

Tim replies, "No! I'm.....30."

The best part is that Tim is actually 28...but he told the cashier that he was 30 so it didn't seem like the age discrepancy was so huge. He didn't want to look 10 years older than he really was!

Amazing what job stress and a baby will do for your aging.

pompous posting: life update

I decided to lump two (possibly) boring topics together so readers don't have to suffer through 2 different posts. I mean, I think my son's milestones are riveting and I believe my career update is important...but probably only those that actually know me care. Don't worry, I won't try to explain what The Match for residency is. I've explained it to my own mother a zillion times, and she still doesn't get it ("So what happens if they offer you a job in an interview? You gonna take it?").

I bought a really beautiful, sweet baby book for Parker. I haven't even cracked it open. It's on my list of things I have to do, but I just haven't gotten around to it :( Maybe one day I will, but in the meantime, let me remind myself of tricks Parker is doing these days.

He is 8.5 months old now. He started crawling and pulling to a stand at 7 months. He is now able to stand unassisted for somewhere around 30 seconds until he sit-falls. Just before he turned 8 months he started to babble "dadada." He just made the cut off for pediatrician evaluation for lack of babbling, since I was going to take him in if there was still no babbling at 8 months. He now babbles "mama" and "baba" regularly, and occasionally makes other sounds. He has never had any socialization issues...except he sometimes is sensitive to too much noise, especially if he is tired.

Because no one can resist a baby laughing, here is your reward for putting up with this post:

As far as my career goes, I am in the process of finished registering for my "rank order list" for residency. This is pretty simple since I am only ranking 3 programs (unlike most people, who, on average, rank 15-20 programs). This was a harder decision than I anticipated it was going to be, but I am finally at peace with my decision, and now it's just going to be a waiting game for match day. This year it is on March 16.

I have a lot of anxiety jumping back into the medicine grind after a year away. I have anxiety mostly about leaving Parker for 80+ hours a week, but also about some insecurity about my knowledge-base dwindling. I need to stop reading books like The Hunger Games (or blogging my life away) and get some academic reading started. In equal proportion to the anxiety I am feeling very excited also. Here is the sucky part...I feel guilty about feeling excited. Oh well. Suppression of guilt is not something I am new to.

I would love to hear your thoughts on going back to work after having a baby!

vegetarian cereal

You may think that all cereal is animal free...but you would be wrong!

Yesterday Tim had a day off work, so I took advantage of the opportunity to have some extra help and we went grocery shopping. We had to go to Target first, so by the time we got to the real grocery store, Parker was becoming a little on the beastly side. We decided to divide and conquer, so we split up to get all the food we needed.

I HATE doing this. Tim loves it, because he has zero amounts of patience and he thinks it's more efficient. Well, it's only considered "efficient" if the work done is actually done properly...and it never is when we do this because we end up forgetting half the things we need. I get all flustered since I'm being rushed (and I always leave the list at home). Of course, this isn't Tim's problem, since he only goes shopping with us like once a month and the only thing on his list is beer.

So like a good wife, I agree to divide up, and one of the things I had to grab was cereal. This is not something I am proud of, but I don't eat grown-up cereal. I usually buy Fruit Loops. The most adult cereal I've ever bought has been Frosted Mini Wheats. I am walking down the cereal aisle and there is this little boy (probably 5 years old) with his dad trying to pick one out. The little boy says to his dad, "Oh look! This one has a frog on it!" (I immediately know he is talking about Smacks.) The dad replies, "Oh yes it does. But we don't buy cereal with animals on the box."
Son: "Why don't we buy cereal with animals?"
Dad: "Because that's bad nutrition."
Son: "Oh. EWWWW BAD NUTRITION!!"

Sir...you are a sneaky genius. Deep down, I feel that you are to be commended. You have clearly done a good job instilling healthy eating habits in your little boy. And your son is a total angel. And how the hell did your wife convince you to go do the grocery shopping AND bring your kid?? This is all well and good, however, now I feel like a total asshole. I mean, I am awkwardly standing near you, waiting for your son to move out of the way and, well, I can't very well shove your son aside and grab the box with Toucan Sam on the front.

I have a choice here. I can a) wait until they leave the aisle to get the cereal I really want, or b) I can grab a PETA-friendly box with good nutrition.

I chose the latter.

This is a man who should be giving nutrition speeches to his son's elementary school classes. Well played. Not only can he convince his son to eat well with a one-liner (with complete assent from his son)...he was capable of influencing my entire household's cereal choice. He also had the bonus of positively reinforcing his "bad nutrition" speech by having his son watch me choose a vegetarian cereal. Pure genius.

Are you wondering which nutritious cereal I chose? I went with Fiber One honey clusters (with 51% of your daily fiber requirement in one serving!). I ate it this morning and it was really good! I may convert.

flying with baby

We have an upcoming trip to see Tim's sister in Dallas, and we are all really excited for the mini vacation. The quickly approaching flight got me thinking about previous flights I've had with Parker (a total of 3...2 of these were by myself) since flying with him is a fairly large source of anxiety for me.

The last trip I took by myself was a few months ago. I was flying home from visiting my family in south Florida and I didn't have a direct flight. Parker was a DISASTER on the first leg of the flight. He didn't sleep at all and fussed a lot. Nothing made him happy...not the bottle, not the pacifier, not me. I knew it was a rough flight because on every other flight I have been on with him, people always came up to me after to tell me how good he was on the flight ("I didn't even know he was on board!"). No one spoke to me after the flight this time, no one even looked in my direction, because everyone was making a beeline to get the hell away from us.

While he was busy being a monster on the plane, I figured one major contributing factor was that he hadn't pooped, at all, in several days. I had some prune juice in the diaper bag with me, and since our layover was fairly long I decided to give him the juice during the layover. I figured I had more than enough time to produce a good bowel movement before boarding.

Mistake #1: having prune juice in the diaper bag
Mistake #2: attempting to "plan" my son's bowel movements
and Mistake #3: assuming the plane would depart on time

So I give Parker the juice and he drinks a couple ounces. I knew the juice would do the trick because, in the past, it only took 0.5 ounce to produce a sufficient poop.

I'm waiting and waiting.

Parker still doesn't sleep.

We have some issue with the terminal that the plane is supposed to board at. So we move to a different one. Flight is delayed, delayed, delayed.

Still waiting.

Not even a fart.

Fine. It didn't work.

We are finally boarding. Woo hoo! Let's get this shit over with.

The plane is 100% full.

We sit down and across the aisle is this very nice woman, about my age, who is baby talking to Parker. She tells me she has a daughter at home that is only a month older than Parker. Her and Parker are super busy being BFF when all of a sudden Parker stops happily bouncing in my lap, squats down, and turns purple. This woman looks up at me and goes "Oh my. That's the biggest poop face I've ever seen."

Somewhat similar to this, except this is a much milder, more G-rated version:

Parker's butt EXPLODES for a good minute. Please God let it stay in the diaper. Please please please.  Everyone around us is actually laughing out loud at the noise that Parker just produced and the smell was ungodly.

Okay so the prune juice worked. At a very inopportune time. The plane was done boarding but was taxiing. How much f-ing longer are we gonna taxi??

I page flight attendant. "Umm, I need to change my son's diaper (obviously). Do I have time to go to the bathroom to do it before we take off?"

"Let me go ask."

By the time she returns I could have changed 10 poop diapers.

She says yes, and escorts us back to the bathroom. When I stand up with Parker I look straight at the ground and awkwardly say "sorry about the smell." The lav had a pull down changing table (BONUS!!).

Moment of truth: will Parker remain clothed for the duration of the flight, or will he be donning only a diaper?

No blow out!! At this point I do a mental victory dance...which lasts all of a few seconds, at which point I realize I have no wipes.

FFFFFFFFFFFFFF!!!!

I wipe his butt with toilet paper, get it mostly in good shape, throw the diaper in the trash, and book it back to my seat.

The moment my ass hits the seat we get the "cleared for take off" announcement.

Now MY face turns purple. I was the a-hole holding up a plane full of people. To make matters worse, the entire plane smells like 5 days worth of Parker prune poop since it's just sitting in the trash.

The good news is Parker was happy as a clam the rest of the flight. I would be too if I were 3 pounds lighter.

I'll end this post on a point that I never realized prior to having a baby: What do moms (or dads) do when they are the ones who have to pee? I had to pee twice while flying with Parker. The first time this grandmotherly lady sitting next to me offered to hold him while I went. A very small part of me flashed back to that movie "Flightplan" with Jodie Foster, where the little girl disappears on the plane and then no one believes the mother ever had a child with her...but anyway, I quickly dismissed that thought. I had to go.

The other time I had to pee on the plane I ended up taking Parker with me. I don't recommend this...unless you are ambidextrous, have a very small baby, and are wearing sweatpants with no underwear.

Do you have any good flying with children stories?

follow up to food mix up

This might be why Parker is constantly eating cat food (forgive the poor quality of the picture):

 

One of these is a sweet potato flavored Gerber puff, and one is a piece of cat food. Can you tell which is which?  I actually pulled this particular piece of cat food out of Parker's mouth today. Not that I care if he actually ate it, but I figured it was a little too crunchy for him to be trying to eat.

food failure #1,021

I know several moms who make their own baby food. I hate them all (jk...really I'm just jealous at their successes in an area that I have so miserably failed in). I pretend like I don't care that I buy baby food and that I actually prefer Gerber to wholesome, home made food. This is not the truth though. That would be like saying that you preferred to use formula over breastmilk, or that you preferred to have a c-section (ok maybe some do...and that's alright). Sometimes preference isn't priority...and I'm guilty of 2 of these 3 things.

Sidenote: why are we constantly judged for "decisions" like these? You can't really help having a c-section. Sometimes nursing just doesn't work out. And some of us can barely prepare meals for ourselves, let alone for babies. I think people should just stick to judging their own self. Things like these do not determine if you are a good mom or not.

So one day I had a rare moment of motivation, and decided to make pureed carrots for Parker. He loved Gerber carrots (loved. He won't eat any type of vegetable anymore. You're judging me for indulging him in too many fruits. Stop it! We just talked about that.) so I figured he would love the real deal even more.

I was doomed from the start. All I had were baby cut carrots, so I boiled them whole (I probably should have cut them up). They were really soft when I took them out so they seemed to be done. I put them in a blender and pushed "puree." Even after adding some water I couldn't get the carrots anywhere near the consistency of Gerber. It was pureed enough not to be hazardous though, so I added some cinnamon and decided to try it out on Parker.

I was really excited when he woke up from his nap so I could feed him. He gagged on the carrots. I think it was just too much thicker than what he is used to. The only food he had a worse reaction to was smashed avocado...where he gagged and actually vomited it back up.

I think I'll stick with Gerber (fruits, of course).

Let's tally up my food failures:
1. Breastfed exclusively for 2 months and pumped until 5 months. Then went strictly to formula...6 months earlier than planned. I'm sorry for the IQ points I cheated Parker out of.
2. Introduced solids at 4 months. Parker was not even close to ready then.
3. When Parker was ready at 6 months, I was REALLY behind the game as far as a food schedule goes. See hunger games.
4. Managed to get Parker addicted to sweet foods. I am guilty of sprinkling sugar (not like a little bit...like a lot of sugar) on his rice cereal (God that feels good to get off my chest).