Three Things I Heard But Didn't Believe About Being a New Mom

It's funny how you can hear things sometimes, and know that they are probably true, and yet somewhere in the back of your head, you just think they won't apply to you. When I was pregnant, this happened a lot in regards to what my life would be like as a new mom. Now that my baby is here, I've realized just how true these things are:

1. You will be tired

You know, I knew that an essential element of being a new parent was surviving sleep deprivation. I knew that I wouldn't get much sleep and that I would feel pretty tired at first. But here's the thing - I've been tired before! I ran a summer camp for the past five summers, a really intense summer camp with challenging children and overworked staff in a brutal, wilderness environment. I routinely worked 18 hour days, and during staff training, often survived on just 4 hours of sleep. I got awoken in the middle of the night or early, early in the morning for various emergencies - I figured that I was perhaps more prepared for this sleep-deprived state than most

I was wrong.

I didn't know tired until I brought that baby home. Part of it I'm sure is that I started off the whole being a new mom thing by having to recover from a c-section after undergoing 50+ hours of labor and over two days with little more than a few hours sleep (that story to come soon). The first few nights in the hospital were rough because I had to wake Cy up every two hours to feed him, and by the third night my milk hadn't come in but he was hungry! By the time we got home, I didn't know what to do with myself, I was so tired. In fact, I think there should be a new word for the kind of exhausted that comes with being a new parent. Something like, close-to-death-don't-know-my-own-name-what-time-of-day-is-it-again-tired. Nothing could have possibly prepared me for that feeling.

2. They change fast

Well of course they change fast, I thought, they are little babies, they are growing and developing every all the time. Right. They change every day! And not in subtle ways, in big ways! What I didn't realize was that as soon as I thought I had a routine, or knew what worked for him, he changed it up on me! What worked in the morning didn't work in the evening. Oh, he's taking two three-hour naps a day this week? Don't worry, next week he won't sleep for more than 30 minutes at a time, and it will take you three hours just to get him to go to sleep! Perhaps what I didn't believe wasn't how fast he would change, but rather just how much his rapid change would affect me.

3. Don't expect to be in pre-pregnancy clothes for a while

This is the one that I haven't yet overcome. I just can't get over it. I mean, I knew it would be tough to shed the weight, but I didn't anticipate how much the shape of my body would change. Not only am I wearing a significantly larger size than I used to just so that I can stop wearing maternity pants, my clothes fit differently altogether. When I told Jason this, he laughed and said, "Oh, now you'll have to get Mom jeans." Except, the thing is, I've discovered that so-called mom jeans aren't a particular style of pant...it's just the way all pants look on a mom's body! No matter what style I buy, they look like "mom jeans"! I guess I figured that if I exercised and ate well I'd be able to slide back into my pre-pregancy clothes in a matter of months. Now, I'm just happy to be in anything non-maternity, no matter the size.

Were there things that threw you off about being a new parent? What are things that you heard but didn't believe?

Flashback Friday: My film debut

Welcome to the first installment of Flashback Friday! Several of my blogging friends implement this blogging idea, and I decided to try it out, especially since I can use all the inspiration I can get as I attempt to write 31 posts in 31 days!

About four years ago, my aunt and uncle generously included my mom, step-dad and I on their family's trip to Disney World. One of rides in Disney's Hollywood Studios is the Studio Backlot Tour that begins with a live demonstration of how water tanks and pyrotechnics create the effects of battles and storms. At some point as we were waiting in line for the tour to begin, someone came out and asked for four volunteers to help with the demonstration. Now, I don't remember exactly how it happened, but someone my family managed to convince me to do it, and I in turn convinced my Aunt Bev to join me.

They ushered us out to this little hut and had us dress in full coveralls and then proceeded to explain the setup. We were filming a Harbor Attack on board a battle ship. I don't remember the parts of the other two people, but my aunt and I were chosen to be deckhands, and our job was to provide comic relief. When the attack began, we were told, we should lose all composure, fall to our knees, pray, run around, etc.

Aunt Bev and I preparing for our big roles.

Now, as some of you may know, I was pretty involved in high school theater, and I consider myself to somewhat of a ham. And, my Aunt is quite the character, so I figured she would go right along with me and we would make fools of ourselves together. So, when the battle began, I played it up - I threw my towel in the air in a panic, fell to one knee and theatrically pleaded to God, and grabbed my aunt in a terrified embrace. I did all of this expecting that she would join me. Instead, she choked! She just doubled over in hysterical laughter, leaving me to be comedic releif all on my own!

Aunt Bev doubled over with laughter as I act the fool.

All through the scene, I continued to play my part, waiting for her to join me, but it never happened! As we exited, I asked her what the heck happened! Did I do it wrong? Did I look really stupid? Why was she laughing at me? Through tears of laughter, she told me that she was so impressed by my performance that she couldn't pull it together! Apparently, I was even funnier than I thought. For the rest of the day, my aunt periodically laughed out loud as she remembered our performance. She even bought me my own "Oscar" at the end of the tour - most likely the closest I'll ever come to receiving one!

Aunt Bev still chuckling as we make our exit.

Taking the Plunge

Looking at the sidebar of my blog the other day, I realized that I have only posted once a month for the past two months, and that there are several months without any posts. This is pathetic. I frequently want to blog but there are so many things that keep me from doing so. I could enumerate those for you, but then the other day, I read a post by my friend Kristen that pretty much summed up how I feel about blogging. Rather than risk plagerizing her thoughts, I'll let you read that post for yourself!

Kristen's solution to lack of blogging motivation is to participate in National Blog Post Month (also known as NaBloPoMo) for the month of October. She issued an invitation for others to join her, and I've decided that this is the perfect opportunity to hone my blogging skills and get in the habit of posting regularly.

All day today, I've contemplated whether or not to take on this challenge. As I went back and forth, I came up with several obstacles that I will have to overcome if I am to successfully write 31 posts in 31 days. I figure by laying those out ahead of time, perhaps I will have more luck getting past them. So, here they are, in no particular order:

1. As of right now, we are a one car family, and Jason needs the car to go to work. Therefore, I am homebound for most of the day, giving me limited outside material from which to draw inspiration for a post.

2. Many people are able to blog artfully about funny or interesting things that their children do, which might be a good option in leiu of getting out of the house; however, my child is not even three months old, and although I find him riveting, he just doesn't do very many interesting things that could be parlayed into an engaging blog post.

3. I am an insufferable perfectionist, and so I continually second guess my blogging ideas (part of why I blog so infrequently). Because of the two reasons listed above, I know that I will feel like I have nothing interesting to say.

4. I am going to be out of town for a week. There will be a computer where I am going, but I will still have to motivate to write while on "vacation". (I use this term loosely as I don't really get to take a break from what I do every day...)

5. Which brings me to my next obstacle: I have a two month old who is my boss. Though his schedule is becoming slightly more regular, he still decides when I have free time, and just how long that free time lasts. I may think I have a good 1.5 hours while he's napping, only to find that 10 minutes into writing a post he will wake up and demand that I feed him/change him/hold him/see to his every whim.

So, all of this notwithstanding, I am taking the plunge. I am committing to 31 posts in 31 days, starting today. Encouragement in the form of joining the challenge and/or leaving comments is much appreciated!

Becoming Domestic...sort of

If you had asked me five years ago if I would ever be a stay-at-home mom, I probably would have fallen on the floor laughing at the thought. I have never considered myself particularly good at home-based things and just never thought I would be interested in doing them.

Well, fast forward to now and I am in fact a stay-at-home mom and plan to be so indefinitely. I am slowly building up my domestic skills, though I have to stay that trying to hone them while learning how to be a parent is rather difficult. Fortunately, I have some help.

Last week, my good friend/second mother Lendie offered to teach me how to can. I jumped at this proposal as it seemed to fit in with my efforts to become domestic. Also, I am pretty terrible at food storage, and this seemed like a good jump start.

So, Lendie came and picked Cyrus and me up and took us out to her house where she had several pounds of peaches, a steam canner, and a few dozen canning jars. Although it takes some time to process all of the peaches, I was shocked at how easy it is. Admittedly, I spent most of my time entertaining Cy and seeing to his needs, and Lendie really did most of the work. However, I peeled a good few peaches and got the general idea. After peaches, we made several jars of blackberry jam, and that was REALLY easy.

Now I have all of the beautiful jars of food that cost much less and taste much better than if I had purchased them in the store. I feel so proud of my little food storage stash, and now I have peaches to feed my baby in a few months and extremely delicious jam for my toast!

Now, I'm about to expose the really dorky side of me. I got so excited about canning things, that that night I had a hard sleeping because all I think about were the canning possibilities: other fruits, spaghetti sauce, apple sauce, maybe even soups and stews??? Unfortunately, my current kitchen situation makes it impossible for me to can on my own, but if Lendie will let me use her kitchen again, I'm all about more canning!

Next on my list is figuring out how to clean my house in spurts of 30 minutes at a time. Maybe some day I'll attempt things like sewing and crafts...or maybe not.

Baby Down!

Last weekend, Jason, Cy and I drove up to Seattle so that all of our Washington-dwelling family could meet our newest addition. Jason's cousin John and his wife Sandy were kind enough to host us and a little gathering on Saturday. They have two boys, a 5 year old and 2 year old, and twin girls on the way. On two different occassions, John held Cy, and we all got a taste of how his youngest boy would react to new babies - jealous! As soon as John picked up Cy, his little boy began frantically insisting "Baby down, baby down!" until John handed Cy back over to one of us. I suppose the reaction is fairly common for little ones.

Well, last night we encountered the dog version of "Baby down". For the past several weeks, Jager and Cy have pretty much just been co-existing. Jager sometimes tries to lick his feet, and at times even seems a bit protective of him, but really hasn't shown much interest in general. Last night, we decided that maybe they should interact a little more. Afterall, both are part of our family, and we want Cy to be comfortable around dogs. So, put Cy on the floor, and had Jager come over and lie down next to him. That went all right, so we tried propping Cy up on Jager. That seemed ok for a few minutes, until Jager suddenly got up and walked away. Jason was holding Cy on the ground and I was sitting on the couch. Jason tried calling Jager over to lie on the floor next to him, and she promptly turned around, came over to me, and sat down. As Jason kept trying to get her to come over to him, she became more and more insistant on my attention. First she put her head on my lap and nudged my hand. Then put one paw in my lap. Finally, she put both paws in my lap and pulled herself to standing, practically getting in my lap. No matter what Jason said, she would not go to him, and she insisted that I pet her.

I guess this is her way of saying, Enough about the baby, pay attention to ME! She hasn't gotten hostile, for which I am grateful, but I am curious to see if this behavior will subside, or if she will keep insisting "Baby down". Has anyone else had luck getting their pets to interact with a new baby?

Cy's First Week Home

First, let me say that the birth story is coming...I just haven't had enough concentrated time to actually write it out.

In the meantime, Cy and I have been home from the hospital for a full week, and it has a been a busy one!

The three of us have been trying to figure each other out, and Jason and I are trying to figure out when we will ever sleep again...

Here are some highlights of Cyrus's first week home:

Meeting Jager for the first time. Cy is not sure what he thinks of Jager yet, but Jager is already very protective!

Several outings, including dinner at California Pizza Kitchen, lunch out with Aunt Angie, lunch with Great Grandma Hazel at Willamette view (pictured) and a shopping trip to Trader Joe's. Cy has done surprisingly well, and we've even figured out how to breast-feed while out and about!

Trying on some of the cute clothes we got as gifts.

Spending quality time with Mom and Dad.

We've been lucky this past week to have my mom staying with us, but she left us this morning...next week, Cy and I are on our own...I not going to lie, I'm more than a little nervous. We'll keep you updated on how we manage the chaos!

Cyrus "Cy" Thompson Wells

Here are a few photos of Cy. We will post a story of the birth a little later once Amber and Cy get home later this week.

Amber and Cy