The thing that makes me feel like a bad parent

I can't figure out naps. Not my own - I've had those down for years - but Cyrus's. I want to be careful how loudly I complain about this because so far nighttime sleep has been managable and I don't want some cosmic force out there to show me just how bad it could be by taking away my blissfully easy evenings.

That being said, I spend the better part of my day trying to a) figure out if Cyrus is tired, b) find that "magic time" when he supposedly will go down without crying, and then when I miss it (which I do almost all the time), c) try to get him to go to sleep.

Some people may argue that if he's not sleeping during the day then he must not be tired. But the thing is, when he gets enough sleep, he is a nearly perfect baby. He rarely cries, he smiles happily, he is a joy to be around. However, when he doesn't get enough sleep he spends most of his day fussing and has very little happy time.

Cyrus at about 4 weeks...back when naps were easy!

The worst part is that everything keeps changing! Again, I don't want to complain too loudly, because I do realize just how much worse this could be, but he has had stretches of two weeks or so at a time where naps are almost seemless. That's how I know what he can be like. But a little switch goes off every two weeks or so and I find myself in a day like today. He refused to nap for more than 45 minutes at a time, and all but once woke up screaming. When I nursed and rocked him into an almost sleep state and then put him in his crib, he began screaming again, as if he knew what was coming and just wasn't having any of it. But because I know he needs sleep, and he won't sleep in my arms anymore, I have to leave him in his crib to cry. (This is the part where I feel like a terrible parent). He eventually falls asleep after fussing, crying and cooing off and on for 20 minutes or so, only to wake up 40 minutes later, whereby I watch the clock and him, trying again to pinpoint that supposed magic time, and then start the whole process all over again!

Part of my problem is that I am just so darned concerned about doing it right. And although I logically know that it is unlikely, I keep fearing that I will mess him up forever. Now if the cycle repeats itself, he should be back to napping well again in a week or so...but what if that doesn't happen? I realize that I am exposing my naivety as a parent, but I keep worrying that this current state will last forever and that I'll go bonkers.

And yet what I keep coming back to is why will he go to sleep so easily at night (universe, please don't shoot me down for this), but refuse to take naps? And, why will he take naps for a while and then stop? Does anyone have any answers for this? I welcome any and all suggestions!

Five Reasons why I Don't Miss the Bronx

In the months leading up to our move out of the big apple, Jason and I spent quite a bit of time discussing all of the things we were looking forward to about moving to Portland. Now that we've been out of New York City for a full seven months it's sometimes too easy to forget just how much better life is out here in the Northwest. So, just to remind myself, here are five reasons why I'm glad we don't live there anymore!

1. Parking. I have my own parking spot, and it's all mine! I no longer have to weigh how much I want to go on a particular outing (grocery shopping, the gym, etc) with how willing (or unwilling) I am to give up my current parking spot. I no longer have to worry that if I return home later than about 6pm, I may have to circle the block for anywhere from 5 minutes to an hour and a half. (I wish this was an exageration, but it really isn't - on more than one ocassion we clocked an extra five miles just looking for a parking spot within a five bock radius). And, in order to get a gauranteed parking spot, I don't have to pay $250 a month!

2. Street Cleaning. Related to point #1, but most definitely deserving of it's own point, is that we no longer have to move our car a minimum of three times a week for street cleaning. Yes, that's right, once we found a spot, even if it was right outside of our building and we didn't have anywhere to go for several days, the longest it could possibly stay where it was was four days, and only if it fell over a weekend. Too many times we would find a perfectly good spot after circling for 20 or 30 minutes, only to have to get up at 6:30 or 7 the next morning to find a spot on the opposite side of the street, which could again result in another 20 or 30 minutes of circling. (Wow, I'm feeling all kinds of stressed out just remembering the parking hoopla!)

3. Laundry. I can do laundry any old time of the day I want to, and I can do it in my pajamas! In my first apartment in New York, there was no laundry facility, so I had to take my clothes to a laundromat. In those days, I did not have a car, so I had to haul my stuff around the block. I couldn't very well leave my laundry there, so I had to sit and wait for it to wash and then dry. In our second apartment, we had laundry facilities in our building, but it was almost as if we didn't. See, for some reason, the building managers locked the laundry room at 7pm. Now this might not seem terribly late in the grand scheme of things, but the thing is, we rarely, and in fact, most people in New York rarely, got home before 6 at the very earliest, and an hour is just not enough time to wash and dry your laundry. So, we had to do it on the weekends with every other person in the building who also worked too late to utilize it during the week. Which means, we had to fight for washers and dryers, which wouldn't have been so bad if all six of each worked all of the time - but they almost never did! In fact, the building managers seemed to have a policy that four of one machine had to be broken before someone could come in and fix them. Jason and I seriously considered breaking a fourth machine when we were down to three just so that they would all get fixed (we never did, but we came close). Again, the stress is building at the mere thought!

4. The Subway. Actually, more specifically, the walk to the subway. We lived about 10 minutes from our subway stop, which isn't such a bad walk when the weather is nice...However, the weather is often not nice, and bad weather is just made worse when you have to walk through it! Though it doesn't rain in NYC nearly as often as it does here in Portland, when it rains in NY it rains hard! And, remember, we then had to walk to work in it! There's only so much waterproofing you can do while dressed in work appropriate attire. Then sometimes, it was bitterly, bitterly cold. So cold, in fact, that more than once I actually wimpered while walking to the train! Then there was trying to dress for the weather outside while taking into account the temperature on the subway. For some reason, even though nearly everyone walks through the elements to get to a train, the trains were never set to a temperature that took into account what we had to wear on the walk. So if it was bitterly cold outside and we were bundled up in layers, the subway car would be set to a living-room-appropriate temperature of 75 degrees! Ugh. Yuck.

5. Having control over the temperature of my living quarters. In our Bronx apartment we had radiator heat. Now, with most radiators, you can adjust them with a little nob on the radiator. However, in our building, the super had decided that those nobs were too easy to break, so he just removed them. This wouldn't be so bad, except that the heat was routinely set to about 85 degrees during the winter! So warm, in fact, that having the windows open did nothing. Yeah, those windows that let in that same bitterly cold air, did nothing to the temperature of our apartment! We finally had to simply shut off our radiators all together - it was all or nothing.

Wow. I have a renewed gratefulness for having left New York! There were good things about living there, and there are actually things that I miss, but I'll save those for another post.

Lazy Sunday and a Little Perspective

It is rare that I get to spend a day relaxing at home with my husband, with no errands to run or tasks to complete. Although I have some time to relax during the week when Cy is sleeping, I am at his total beck and call during the work day. Saturdays are usually spent either running errands or trying to get in some fun family time away from the house. And on Sundays, Cy and I spend the afternoon at church. But today was General Conference (a special broadcast church service that happens twice a year), so I didn't have to go anywhere today. And, since Jason was home, I had a partner in meeting Cy's demands. The greatest part about this was that I got to sleep in until 10:30am (after a 6:30am feeding) for the first time since Cy was born! Now, I don't need to sleep in often, and I usually tried to get up at a decent hour even before he was born, but on occasion, sleeping in just feels luxurious. Once awake, I then got to spend a good portion of the day in my pajamas, just lounging around.

Another bonus about today: it put a little perspective on things for me, in kind of an odd sort of way. Although I love being with Cy, sometimes it feels a bit overwhelming to be the one person who can meet his needs, especially when I am with him all day by myself. On some days, I find myself just counting down the minutes until he goes down for a nap so that I can do something for myself: take a shower, eat some lunch, check my e-mail. When Jason is home, however, he loves spending time with Cy so much that, unless he needs to eat, Cy is pretty much with Jason most of the time. So, today, for example, I had so much time to do things for myself that I actually found myself almost missing him. I found that I cherished the few moments cuddling with him after a feeding before I handed him over to Jason, partly because I knew that I didn't have to hold him. I hope this makes sense, and that I don't sound like a terrible mother. I do love my child, but it was just kind of nice to have a day when being with him was completely a choice, and still one that I wanted to make.

Now, if only I can keep this perspective as we go into the work week...

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.