going with the flow

Being a mom, I am discovering is about going with the flow. What I mean by that is that the whole journey is this constantly changing series of stages. As soon as you get used to something, it changes. Seriously, the moment you develop this ingenius way of occupying the baby in the cosleeper with toys so you can do your make-up without holding her, she learns to stand up, nearly vaulting herself out of the cosleeper. Yeah. The cosleeper is now my clothing rack for stuff I tried on but didn't actually wear but didn't have time to hang up. You have that clothing rack, too, right? Perhaps yours is shaped more like an exercise bike?

Being a mom is also about hurrying. I feel like I am always ALWAYS hurrying. Until that little bundle of cuteness hits the sack for the night, which she is now THANK YOU LORD JESUS doing fairly predictably and with little fanfare, I feel like I am in a race in which everyone is passing me up, and during which, I regularly lose a shoe, trip over one of those plastic stacking rings or have to pee. Speaking of peeing, I hurry when I pee now. That seems kind of ridiculous, I know, but when you have a very fast 9-month old headed straight for a big fat orange cat who, while tolerant to the point of sainthood, is about one ear tug away from retailiation...you pee fast.

Being a mom is about saying no. Not just to Princess Wiggle Bottom who enjoys such refined past times as pulling mom's hair and calling Finland by poking at my cell phone. But to adults. Adults who ask me to do fun stuff. Unfortunately sometimes that fun stuff is just too plain expensive. We're than couple, now, who doesn't stay in the hotel after the wedding, but rather flips a coin to see who has to stay sober enough to drive home. But even the less expensive activities like happy hours and bachelorette parties and afternoon lunches...well, my time is simply incredibly limited. I have to pick aand choose. And sometimes it kills me. But when I've asked my husband to do solo-daddy duty 3 friday nights in a row, it's time to regretfully decline. The next 8-10 weeks are particularly crazy. We have my birthday, my graduation, Mothers Day, my mom's birthday, my dad's birthday, Memorial Day, Fathers Day, my final grad school presentation, 2 major work events, a fundraiser event I am intmately involved with, 2 weddings, my husband's birthday and of course, Little Miss Mischief's very first birthday. I might die. Obviously, none of those things are really "optional." And some of them are pretty significant. Fortunately Grammie and Pappy are up for a lot of babysitting gigs. How I'm going to afford all of these things is yet to be seen.

Do people give you cash for your master's degree graduation? Yeah, didn't think so. How is it that high school kids hit the jackpot? You can pass high school rocking out to your Ipod while you text your friends and make out with your pimply faced boyfriend and yet, there are tent rentals and catering and lots of envelopes with generous checks to celebrate this accomplishment. For your bachelors degree, you're lucky if someone has a cookout for you and pays for the diploma. As for your master's degree? You're lucky if you parents show up at the auditorium. And if you want a party you'd better throw it yourself. Meanwhile 85% of Americans have a high school diploma and only about 7% have a master's degree. And yet, we celebrate and throw money at the people when they complete the bare minimum which cost them no money, and say "congrats" on Facebook to people when they complete a master's program that they now owe $25,000 for. This puzzles me. But it kind of goes the same way with weddings. Your friends who get married right out of college - everyone puts the most effort and time into those - you are thrilled to sit around and make bows out of ribbon. I recall spending an entire freezing cold afternoon driving all over Southeast Ohio in search of the perfect little white chapel for a friend who was getting married and searching on the Internet for weeks, attempting to locate a band that played a particularly obscure type of music for another friend's wedding. I once created an Excel spreadsheet for everyone helping with another friend's wedding, held a meeting with an agenda and considered renting walkie talkies for the day's events. There were entire days of spa treatments, entire months of weekends blocked out for dress hunting. But these days, when we're 32 and have a demanding job and a child, a husband and 160 hours of internship to complete...we think we deserve a medal for remembering to buy our bridesmaid dress and finding the time to shower before the wedding and leave our Blackberry in our purse during the ceremony. Also? If you ask me to sit still for 2 hours and shell out $75 for some blonde moron to figure out how to coax my unruly curls into an acceptable "updo" you are out of your bridezilla mind.

But doesn't that suck?!?! Much like those of us who have trudged through dozens of academic books, impractical theories and churned out more papers than you'd need to paper mache the Statue of Liberty, the hold-outs among us who waited to get married until they were old enough to know that doing a Jager-Bomb at an office function is just a terrible idea...don't they deserve the same kind of fireworks and standing ovations we were willing to offer up back when we were doing those Jager-Bombs?

Today, we upgraded.

We became a real family. As evidenced by the SUV that is currently being washed, waxed and detailed at a dealership a few miles from here and the loan applicaiton that is being processed with our names on it.

There was a time when I thought owning an SUV of any kind was not just a bad idea, but actually wrong. Morally wrong. I no longer feel that way. The gas mileage on the one we picked out is pretty good. It's very safe. It's not obnoxiously huge. It has plenty of room and a latch system for the car seat. Basically it meets our needs and was in our price range. But I still feel a tiny bit like I sold out.

There are a lot of things I find myself doing that, at one time, I never thought I would. For exmaple, I can remember driving back to college after a break with a friend and stopping several times along the way, taking our sweet time, kind of an eye roll gesture at my dad's silly notion that you should complete road trips "before dark". These days, if I am driving, even across town, while I am certainly in no way afraid of driving at night, it just seems kind of sensible to be home "before dark."

I also never thought I would stay home on a Saturday night if I had a choice in the matter and I never dreamed I would bother with using coupons.

However, I am proud to report I have still never left the house in a velour sweat suit.

Springtime with a 9 month old

Cassidy is going through so many changes. She learns more every day. She says quite a few words, usually repeating them after we say them. She says "dada and mama" fairly frequently...dada, much more often than mama since she learned it first. She is also saying the following words or at least something that sounds like them: yay, uh-oh, dog, Ted (one of our cats) and baby.

She is crawling like crazy, pulling herself up into a standing position on everything she can grab and taking a lot of assisted steps. She can't wait to walk. Me, I can definitely wait. She'll be walking by 11 months, I predict.

Additionally, we are not sleeping in the chair with her anymore. If she cries at night, we go in and soothe her for a minute but we don't pick her up. She has slept through the night several time in the past week and last night she woke up and got very fussy. I went in twice and comforted her but basically just let her cry after the second time. It took 11 minutes but she went back to sleep on her own until 7:30am. This is really amazing that we are all sleeping well. I thought ht elight at the end of that tunnel would never come.

Tantrums

Well, my nearly 9 month old is now throwing tantrums. Fortunately she is too little to do much damage and they are few and far between. But 3-4 times now, within a few days, she has just decided she is NOT into whatever is happening...getting her dipe changed, finishing her bottle. And she just starts to use every ounce of power she has to wiggle away. Pushing, crying, kicking her legs. It's unsettling. I have known since the moment she was born that she was strong willed but I wasn't expecting this quite yet. With grad school and work and everything that goes on the last couple of months, I haven't been reading up much on what is appropriate in terms of development at this stage. Need to read up - hoping I'm not the only one!

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Sick little one

Having a sick baby is just the worst. Every mother has been there. When they are teenagers and act like jerks, moms always think (if not say) the whole "Who do you think held you all night when you were sick?" When you are the teenager in question, it goes in one ear and out the other, because, well, you've never actually Stayed. Up. All. Night. to take care of someone who is misery personified. You've never listened to someone you grew inside your body cry themsleves hoarse and felt totally helpless and useless and sad. You've never sacrificed your sleep and sanity and ability to function to just be there with someone so they aren't alone, knowing you can't fix it, but choosing to dwell in the restless night along with them.

But to a mother. One phrase "sick baby" and you've got that collective knowing, empathy. Thanks to all the moms out there who have done this before. (Dads, too.) Especially mine.

Memories

I feel really bad about not having some kind of scrapbook for Cassidy. I am soooo not the scrapbooking type. Although I must confess that this is what happens when someone brings up the topic of scrapbooking:

Them: "So, I've been getting more into scrapbooking."

Me: (externally) "Oh, really?" (internally) "Hahahaha - that is ridiculous and kind of embarassing. Shh, someone will hear you!"

Them: "You want to see the one I"m working?"

Me: (externally) "Sure." (internally) "ughghghghgh. Nooooo. No no no!! No."

Then they show it to me and I feel bad for mocking it. Not just because I'm mean and stuff. But also because I am kind of jealous. Sweet little baby pictures framed in awesome plaids and funky polka dots with cool textured borders. Holy hip-tastic crafting, Batman. I mean, what's not to like? Scrapbooking, these days, doesn't have to be your mother's scrapbook with those quilted covers and lace and crap. No offense to those who scrapbook in the realm of the Victorian era and gorge themselves on copious amounts of pink and frilly fabric, but, seriously, there is some exciting and very up to date stuff out there. If they make stickers that say "That's What She Said" I'm selling everything I own and heading to Pat Catan's.

And....I feel bad that all of Cassidy's memorabilia is electronic. I am secretly afraid that 1. someone will set off an EMP bomb and destroy all technology as we know it and we'll have to live like the settlers, which, in many ways would be extremely awesome (imagine never havin gto sit through someone's long outgoign voicemail message again, reminding you, in case you've never heard one before to leave your name, number and reason for calling.) Yes, life Amish-style might sort of rock, but as far as electronic posterity goes, not so much. and 2. that my child will get older and think I am lame for not making more of an effort to capture the awesomeness of her life as a baby.

I personally love seeing stuff from when I was a babe. My mom hardly has anything now - in her defense 1. there are a lot of videos in some cabinet someplace and 2. we DID survive a house explosion in the late 80s so who knows what used to exist. She wasn't ever really the collecting type, though. There is an album or two around, which is enough, but it would be cool to see a little more of "My first _______" with some rockin' disco-era clip art next to it. Not that they had clip art back then, but you get the point.

Capturing and preserving, in one way or another, the experience of raising a child is important. How we do it is up to us. If you're thinking about scrap booking, this looks like a fun place to start: http://www.etsy.com/category/paper_goods/scrapbooking

Zoom zoom

She is growing so fast. Today was a big day - she was rocking back and forth seemingly about to crawl. It really could be any day now. She also, get this, said MAMA!!! I heard it and I said "What?!" And she said it again. So I grabbed the Flip video camera and tried to get her to say it and she did. Amazing. I mean, it's not really amazing, considering it's a very age appropriate milestone. But it feels amazing to me.

Her two little bottom teeth are about halfway in and she's learning to use them on organic cheerios and mangos.

She is developing more facial expressions, like sometimes she'll see something and then look at me and raise her eyebrows like "Pretty cool huh?"

We are going to NYC this weekend for a photo shoot - for me and for her. I am going to be blogging on a new e-commerce site (been saving up my funny stuff for the new blog - sorry if this one has been boring) and Cassidy is going to be modeling along with some other kids, which I feel slightly weird about. We should get some nice photos out of it, though.