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Sap

How much of a cheeseball does this make me?

When my co-worker asked me if we had started planning Roo’s birthday part (for a birthday still 6 weeks away), I competely choked up.

Oh, that beautiful boy. He kills me.

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Bits and pieces

It’s been one of those weeks when I can’t believe what my kid is doing with himself.

Saturday afternoon I put him down for a nap. He roamed around in his bed for a while, as usual, and then was quiet. I went in to check on him, thinking he was asleep, and there he was, like this:

In the 10 minutes or so that I had been out of the room, he taught himself to stand up. He could not have been any more proud of himself.  I took about a hundred pictures. He was so freakin’ cute.

Do all babies do this? When he masters a new skill, he can’t stop doing it. He does it every waking moment and many sleeping moments too. He did the same thing when he learned to roll - it was constant. Now he wakes up in the middle of a nap crying because he’s found himself on his feet and doesn’t know what to do. And getting him to nap these past few days has been futile (as in, “good thing you’re so freakin’ cute because I want to scream” kind of futile), because all he wants to do is roll over and stand up. Today I caught him half hanging out of bed, pulling on the cat’s ear. Lovely little being that she is, she was purring (though that may not say much for her intelligence).

He also says “cat” - it figures that cat would be his first word. And his new trick is saying “hi!” very cheerfully when we walk into the room, like he’s been saying it all his life. He’s signing a little, and recognizing a whole bunch of signs, which is really fun.

***

Every time Roo does something new I think: I have to call Miranda. We talked to her last weekend for the first time in about a month.  We never talk for long, and we mostly talk about Roo, but it’s always a relief to talk to her. I’m always amazed that in some ways we know so little about each other, but that we say “I love you” - and mean it - at the end of every call.

We’re making plans to go down to Crazy State in July to see my family, and we’re hoping we’ll get to finally meet Miranda and Michael in person. I want so badly for them to see Roo, too, so they can see - in person, not just in pictures - our (meaning all of our) beautiful son.

***

Here’s a short question that deserves (and will eventually get) a much longer post: Can someone please give us some guidance about how to navigate Mother’s Day? We want to do something for Miranda but we have no idea what would be appropriate and loving and respectful. I’ll take any advice.

***

We have a fun new plan.. In the fall, NSG is leaving her job becoming her own boss. We’re opening a family day care in our house - three kids plus Roo, with room to grow.

The lovely Clementine has been incredibly helpful and has shared a ton of information to get us off the ground. Things are falling into place.

After months of struggling to figure out how NSG can put all of her various passions  - teaching, American Sign Language, Deaf children - together into something that both occupies her brain and earns a living, AND where she can have Roo with her (since we both feel good having him with her and have no childcare budget to speak of), we finally fell into this. She’s going to take in Deaf and hearing kids, and use ASL with all of them.

We hit a day care liquidation sale this weekend, she’s got a pregnant mom ready to write her a deposit check, and we have a website ready to go. The proof is in the pudding, and the pudding won’t be ready until after Labor Day, but right now we’re both feeling like we hit on the answer we’ve been looking for all year.

***

I didn’t think I had much to say, but apparently I did.

And hey, what’s with the freakin’ weather in New England these days? The daffodils are up but I can’t stop wearing my damned winter coat. Hrumph.

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Still here

I’m still here.

Work: kicking my arse beyond all reason.

Physical therapy (for that damned babywearing injury): taking up lots of “free” time.

Adoption finalization: still waiting for those stupid agencies to get their paperwork together. Roo will be 12 at this rate.

Marriage: awesome, and a whole hell of a lot of work.

Baby: has a tooth and a half. Crawling like a maniac. Sleeping through the night about half the time (hallelujah!). Really freakin’ cute.

Parenting: my bright spot. And also: exhausting and overwhelming.

Back soon.

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Grump

I am so overwhelmed and so whiny about it right now that if I wrote about it you’d want to stab your eyeballs with a fork.

Yuck. Feh.

More to come when I’m a little more interesting.

Wiped off the floor (*updated)

It’s been a rough couple of weeks - hence the absence of any posts of substance, or even much in the way of posts at all.

Last week the sleeping situation was so bad that we both felt like we were hanging on by our fingernails. I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to say it was one of the hardest parenting weeks we’ve had so far (ptuh ptuh - may they all be this easy, right?). That seems to be improving, though s-l-o-w-l-y.

Work is kicking my tail. I’ve been running a program I’m supposed to be just overseeing since I fired the fool on Halloween. So far I’ve offered the job to THREE people, who have all turned me down. And this is busy season. The to-do list gets longer, and I’m reluctant to work late (and too freakin’ tired to go in too early) because I refuse to give up time with my Roo.

Sigh. Bitch. Moan.

This is all normal and mundane stuff, but it’s occupying a lot of my brain space these days. The balance of my work and the rest of my life is getting harder to find instead of easier. I feel like I’m dropping balls all over the place.

Does it get easier ever?

In the meantime, I am thankful every day for Roo’s stinkin’ cuteness. It’s saving me, including those nights when he’s up every 20 minutes. He’s combat crawling and starting to push up onto his knees. He’s going to be crawling for real in the space of 2 weeks, I’m guessing, and then we’re in for it. At his checkup the other day he turned up in the 90th percentile for length and the 20th percentile for weight; my child is a string bean. These are clearly not our genes.

I love how proud he looks when he gets up on his knees, and his little gasp of delight when he spots the cat.

I’m totally manic these days. Maybe the long weekend I have coming up - in Florida! - will do the trick. It’s hard to sustain all this kvetching when my to-do list includes digging out my bathing suit from the bin in the basement.

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ETA: Oh, and did I mention that I was diagnosed with “baby-wearing knee?” You think I’m kidding. My knee has been hurting for 6 months, and my doc finally figured out that it has to do with the way I’m bending when I have Roo in the carrier. So now I’m in physical therapy three times a week for a month (at least). Good grief. Can someone please help me come up with a credible story that involves a snowboard or something?