a week's worth

wow, thursday already! i can't keep up. you'll have to settle for reading once a week until i get better at juggling everything. i feel like this week we've suddenly hit a pile of milestones.

first, with the help of grandma of course, he started on solids. i know i tried this a month ago, but he'd close his lips so tightly you couldn't get a spoon through. i had to resort to sneaking cereal into his bottle. now, he'll cry if we're not scooping it up fast enough for him, and actually reach out to guide the spoon to his mouth. yes, my gobbles is a gobbler - definitely like his mother in that sense. he takes his food like its going out of style - as fast as he can! chew buddy, mommy won't start eating off your plate until you're on cookies and cake. (don't worry, if my child is fat i won't blame schools and commercials like the masses do. i'll admit, it's my fault)

Bad dog! Stay away from my food.

next, he started taking the first steps towards crawling. now, it'll probably be another month or so before he actually gets it down, but he's been dragging himself with his arms. not sure what to do with the legs yet, and definitely not able to coordinate the moves of hands and feet together. but he's determined to move. i can see it! took a few videos, but the still pictures just look like tummy time. so instead here's gobbles trying to get his crawl on from a seated position. yea, he just doesn't realize what the legs are supposed to do yet.

is it mean that i put his toy just out of reach so he'd move towards it?

we've also hit another milestone with the dogs. nope, cannoli has not given in and will still only approach the baby on cannoli's terms (like shown above). but the bear. my pretty spoonsie bear girl. she will now allow gobbles to lean on her - actually put weight on her while scrunching, pinching, pulling her fur. he even pulled her ear the other day. her only reaction? just to slowly walk away.

i love the good puppy

as i upload these pictures i realize when i come back and read these, years from now, part of me is going to think, wow, the house was always a MESS! yes there's crap all over the place in the background. there are marks from where dogs have scratched and bitten the coffee table, ugly blankets all over the couches. oh well such is life. we vacuum up the dog hair, don't leave food plates around, and keep everyone smelling fresh. that's enough, right? i mean, there's only so much time in the day, i'd rather spend it with my gobbles!

speaking of spending time - the last big thing that happened to us this week - we made a decision that will keep our family spending plenty of time together (47 years to be exact). after much discussion and debate, we bought into the disney vacation club. we have travelled at least once a year since we met a decade ago, with about 25% of the trips being disney-oriented. this timeshare will give us access to the best places to stay in disneyworld, as well as the ability to stay in locations all over the world owned by the dvc's partnering network, for the years in between. i'm so excited about this, we've always loved planning vacations (duh and going on them!), so i can't wait to see where this takes us.

we're planning our first trip to the World, fittingly of course, for december - either the week of our 5th anniversary or the next for gobbles' 1st birthday. disney, the place where we took our first (jersey shore doesn't count, ok?) vacation in 2001, where we got engaged in 2004. it will be the little man's first plane ride (outside of the womb). yes, there is a bit of insanity in taking a 12 month old to disney (uh hello, he won't remember it!! yea, so? we'll take him again when he's three then.), but i know it'll be great and it'll be completely worth it to see the look on his face with every new thing he'll see. and to have cinderella's castle as the backdrop to his 1 year photos? priceless.

If he's so intrigued by this thing, imagine what dumbo will do to him...

Friday Confessions

You did what now, Momma?

Ugh. what a week. well it started off great, and it will end great. but boy do i make things hard on myself.

i've mentally checked out of my job. do i have a new one lined up? no. i do have interviews with two different places that i'd LOVE to work for set up for 10 days from now. but there is no guaruntee. i'm kind lucky i suppose - still riding the "she's fresh off maternity leave so we really can't lay her off just yet" wave. my boss knows. i told him. well, not about the slacking, but about the interviews. one thing i've learned since becoming a mother is it's best to be up front with the people who you actually give a shit about. i couldn't care less about the NY people who run the show, who ship me off to godknowswhere whenever they can. but my philly boss is a cool guy, and he's scooped me up for one of his projects as soon as i got back so i'm safe from travel (mostly) for at least another month. he also loved the fact that i was on leave because he'd been working from home the whole time. i told him, hey don't stop your habit on account of me coming back. ergo, my lack of commute (except to daycare) for the last two weeks.

but, i've learned that working from home combined with no desire to perform well at my job is a deadly combination. for me at least, the queen of ADD. i was tasked with putting together a tool to analize various 50,000 line reports and spit out our audit information, using excel. when i was about 75% complete on that, last week, i was told to scrap it and make the tool out of this new program, something i'd never worked with before. and so it began.

the ADD. the dillydallying, finding anything and everything i could do besides learning this program. working from home you'd think i'd watch tv, but nope, that stayed off, even for wendy williams! i ate, i pumped, i ate, i researched things on the far end of the internet, i ate. i did a load or two of laundry, but the house is still a complete mess you'd never know i had all this "free" time. i even went as far as whipping up cookie dough to munch on. yes. disgusting, right? YES.

see, because of my lack of self control we do not keep sweets in the house to begin with. we do, however, have all the ingredients for chocolate chip cookies (sans the chips). i can now whip up a single serving bowl of cookie dough in about 3 minutes using a spoon to mash everything together. it's sad to think we may have to remove butter and sugar from the house as well because i cannot control myself. at least the dough i'm making is salmanella-free - milk instead of the egg, works like a charm if you have no intention to bake it. i even went as far as calculating the weight watchers points for one of my 'bowls of dough'. (around 8 if you need to know).

ok. there you go internet. i think you know my deepest darkest, most shameful secret. maybe now that i've confessed i'll learn from the humiliation and stop.

i have to stop - it's already starting to affect me and make me a horrible mother. yesterday i got an email from a coworker - gobblesmom do you have everything together to present your tool in the webcast tomorrow? um. no. i didn't think i was presenting too. way to listen on last week's conference call. after i chatted with him for a few minutes, i got down to work. then ran in for a cookie dough fix. then worked. then got a call about an interview for a job i'd applied to months ago. then researched the benefits of working at said company. then emailed my family to tell them how exciting it is that i got an interview. then worked a little. then let the dogs out. then work. then cookie dough. it went on like this until it was after 5, i had to run and get my gobbles from daycare.

thankfully my sister was stopping over for a bit to play with the baby, so i got back to it. work. have a beer. work. feed the baby. before i knew it, it was 9, husband was home from class and put the baby to bed, and was soon saying goodnight to me. no problem i'll be up in an hour or so. finally, WORK. i actually worked distraction free after that. why? probably because i had no choice, i HAD to focus. i finally fell into bed around 3am, only to be startled awake a few hours later, sweets, gobbles needs to eat, i need to leave soon if you want me to take him to daycare.

and so began the day. bringing me to the horrible mother part. in the rush to get the little man ready this morning, i noticed his daggers, er, fingernails, were in desperate need of a trim. so i did. got to the last one and poof, gave him a little nick on the thumb. it was still bleeding as i sent them out the door with a teeny tiny little band-aid on. i'm such an asshole. if i hadn't been so distracted all week and actually gotten my work done in the time i was supposed to this wouldn't have happened.

and if that's not enough, i'm abandoning the poor little man tonight and tomorrow night to socialize. guilt is setting in. oh well, i'd continue but i have a webcast in 7 minutes.

hopefully all this distraction is just temporary, and i will get one of the jobs i'm seeking. then i'll become a normal working supermom and live happily ever after.

dairy cow

i feel like a cow. yea. don't feel bad for me - it's not my body image (c'mon, 7 lbs from pre-preg weight, what's there to feel bad about!). it's that i really am just like a cow. since gobbles now spends most of his waking hours at daycare eating from bottles, i spend what seems like all my time being hooked up to a breastpump.

ok, it's not really all my time, but in order to keep my supply healthy (and prevent leakage), i'm pumping about 30 minutes every 3-4 hours. i've got about a weeks' worth of milk in the freezer, and almost a days' worth in the fridge. trying to do everyday normal activities, like be out of the house for more than 4 hours at a time, yields some interesting situations. this weekend i had two fun pumping stories.

i pumped while hubs drove us down 95 on the way to total wine - yes i see the irony here. see we were out helping some friends move - ok i have to sidenote for a minute. friends of ours, who are expecting their own bundle in a few short weeks (can't WAIT!), just bought the most adorable house with these built-ins in the dining room i could die for! i just want to rip them out and take them for my own china. between them, the little nooks / bookshelves in the living room, and the soso cute nursery, they definitely did good. i'm just so happy that so many good things happening right now. ok, where was i? oh yea, the milk!

so we were at the house for a few hours and i felt that all familiar tingling - yikes, gonna leak if we don't do something about this! meanwhile, hubs and i had plans (while gobbles was with his grandma and aunt) to make a total wine run while we were free. hence, the car ride pumping.

this past sunday was super soccer sunday. a 90 minute outdoor game, then playoffs, tournament style, for indoor, with about 45 minutes to spare (and 30 minutes to commute) in between. by the second half of the game, as i was trucking down the field (no subs + outta shape gobbles mom = trucking, not running), i could feel my boobs getting heavier. oh lordy, here we go. no sports bra in the world is a match for boobs that actually engorge as you're moving. i finished out the game running, er trucking, with one arm around my chest. oh what a site. somehow the goalie still commended me on shutting down their right wing. yea she prob didn't want to get splashed.

between games was my free time to get a little relief. i got in the car, moved it to the far end of the parking lot, and got to what i do best, my milkmaking. as the parking lot cleared out with the rest of the team heading to the indoor complex, i watch the clock and realized i wasn't going to make it. so i switched boobs, made sure my shirt was covering me, buckled my seatbelt, and off i went, holding the piece in place with one hand while driving with the other. i've done many things while driving in my life - text, email, gotten changed, ate, drank, filled out bank deposit forms. now i just have one more thing to add, and pray my insurance agent does not read this.

i understand no one really wants to read about my adventures with boobs. but i guess it's my little way of whining about how inconvenient it is breastfeeding. i know, wahhh wahh. but really, it's a lot harder than i had anticipated. probably one of the hardest things i've done - i'd say this commitment was harder than training for a triathlon. if i want to go somewhere, i need to time it out so i express right before and right after i go (sometimes in between); if i want a beer, i need to time that as well, then test my milk to make sure it's useable. i'll be working on something and all of the sudden realize - oh crap i gotta pump. and in order to keep the supply ample, i have to make sure i stick to the schedule.

breastfeeding has its great points too - the money we have saved from not buying formula, as well as the health benefits for the baby. i feel kind of selfish even cutting it short before my body says i'm ready. but, in order to not get a size 20 bridesmaid dress (yes, that is what my chest was measuring at when we tried some on) for the fall, i have to start weaning soon. i have exactly 7 weeks until gobbles is 6 months old. that is my goal, to make it another 7 weeks. then i'll have another 12 or so to dry up, shrink up, and smile for pictures that will be on someone's wall for an eternity.

in the meantime, this kid definitely does not look like he's going hungry. in fact, quite the opposite!

I've got my daddy's belly...

...and my momma's thighs!

chronicles of a working mom

time. there's never any time! i'm so excited. i'm soooo excited. i'm so. scared.

yea, that's how i feel. ok except for the part where i shove caffine pills down my throat and dance in a music video in an 80's leotard.

i just can't believe it's friday already. this week flew. sure i've been working hard all week, but man just blink and time is gone. i had all kinds of things on my to do list to get done before the weekend, and it's still sitting there unchecked. hubs and i had a few spats early in the week about scheduling, chores, etc. i think the adjustment of me returning to work is harder on him, because he doesn't really realize how much there is to do when there's a kid to account for. you can't just wake up in the morning and be out the door in a half hour any more, there are diapers to change, bottles to clean, boobs to suck on (for milk, perv!), cute outfits to find. and if i'm lucky i'll get a brush through my hair.

through the yelling one particularly hectic morning, i found myself saying "ugh, you're such a typical man." wtf does that even mean? even better was his response "well you're such... ok well you're not a typical wife but..." so i think even in his anger he was kind of admitting how awesome i am. even though we didn't talk the rest of the morning i felt a little smug having won that one. but really, is this what it's all about? am i out to win arguements we shouldn't even be having? things have calmed down and of course we're fine now (in our 10 years together i don't think we've gone more than about 12 hours angry at each other. i usually give in 'cause i'm a sucker). but wow i'm exhausted.

thankfully, i got a call from a friend just 6 weeks into her new mommyhood and she complained about the same stuff i'm going through, and poor girl isn't even back to work yet. so really, i think it's just all men. knowing there's someone else out there who gets it makes me feel a lot better.

i just don't want us to end up one of those couples who throws all their energy into the kids and puts no time into their marraige. we need a date. just the two of us. he keeps saying that we should go to disney for our 5 year anniversary (will be the week before gobbles' first birthday). i'm on the fence. i LOVE disney, the atmosphere, the food, the drinks. but what kind of a-hole goes to the happiest place on earth without their kid? and would i even want to go without him? we're already planning europe for next spring, how much time do i really want to be away from this kid? i miss him so much while he's at daycare - now we only get like 2-3 hours a day of happy wakeful baby time. he's only going to be a baby for so long.

ahh i could go on forever, but i've got a conference call in 5 mins, so the blogworld is spared.

in fun gobblestime news - we've had a breakthrough. spoons will now sit by while gobbles oohs and ahhs at her, and she'll even let him touch her. i love how he scrunches his hand in and out when he feels her fur, like he knows how to pet her! it'll usually last for a few minutes and then the poor dog will get a little freaked out and jump away, leaving the baby holding a clump of spoonsie bear hair. which he promptly tries to shove into his mouth. just building up immunities there little buddy ;)

and now i'm totally going to cheat on the picture part because i haven't taken any new ones this whole week! so here are some faves from his target photo shoot.

myself again

wow. i'm amazed. never would i have thought that i actually like being at work again. i mean, not the being away from home and not seeing my son for two days part. but the dropping him off at daycare, commuting (well...), and being in an office with other adults was actually kind of nice. the best part was being able to complete a task uninterrupted. sure, i had to run down two floors to a private room and make a few meals for gobbles, but the rest of the day i was able to just function.

sure, he was a little nervous the first day:

Does this chin make me look fat?

he seems pretty happy at daycare, and it's a small group so i know he's not getting lost in a crowd or anything. and the thing that makes it all worth it, is the HUGE grin he gets on his face when he hears my voice as i enter the room. he looks up at me and smiles so warmly, so happily, momma! i knew you'd come back! check me out, i'm having fun with the other babies. but, let's go home now. i want to stare and smile at those loud furry things again. i'm going to figure them out very soon!

that is the best part of my day. during the drive home i almost forget to pay attention to the road, because i spend too much time staring in his mirror while i talk to him, just so see the reaction. we're starting to have conversations about anything, everything! i just need a translator.

yes, the house is a mess. yes, dinner and relaxation time are limited to about 15 minutes at some point after 9 o'clock. yes, i needed two trips to daycare yesterday because hubs forgot the pacifier. yes, our dogs are a little smelly these days. but, who cares? gobbles is happy. we're happy.

see, look how excited he was to go this morning:

Look out ladies, it's Gobbles time!

that's all that really matters now isn't it. we'll have the whole weekend to hang out together.

ps: to my gobbles - happy 4 month birthday little boy. i cannot believe how quickly you are becoming a little man, rolling back and forth, screaming with delight when we talk, and just about sitting up by yourself. please don't grow too fast, mommy loves that she can pick you up and squeeze you in a big hug, kissing your fat little cheeks, and peeking out the side of her eye to see your toothless grin as your cheek is mashed up into your face from the force of my snuggle. in a few short years the day will come when you don't want those crazy momma kisses anymore. so i need to get them all in now, thanks for understanding. i love you so much little boy.

Never Have I Ever

in all my wildest fantasies about becoming a mom, my baby cooing in my arms, the sleepless nights of incessant crying, the rancid poopy diapers, the bubbly giggles as raspberries are blown on his tummy... NEVER did i imagine that i would be sitting in an airport pumping milk from my breasts.

thank god for private showers and first class lounge access.

and for texts from husbands who like to have a sharp dressed kid:

i will survive

i am sitting alone in a hotel room on the north side of houston, waiting for my dinner, and i'm not crying. it's ok. i thought i was going to lose it this morning when i sat on the plane watching the passengers file past. i kept scrolling through the pictures on my phone before i had to turn it off. i selected this here as my background picture (sorry cannoli and spoons, move doowwwn the line). blackberries are not known for their picture quality, but that doesn't bother me. i love how his entire face stretches across the screen.

and that was that. all day when i felt like i'd lose it i just picked up the phone and looked. now back in my hotel of course i've already gone through the 750 pictures on my computer a few times. yes - that was NOT a typo. 750 over less than 4 months. i really hope i am this dedicated to child number two. and god help 3 or 4. (since i know hubs doesn't read this, i can fantasize about having as many children as i want!)

it's a strange feeling being back on the road, it's like i never left. drove to the airport, got thru security, and was seated on the plane all in the span of about 45 minutes. still have it down to a science. (guess it helped having the first class security fastpass). but there were moments up in the air that i felt like i hadn't been flight free for 6 months. i almost forgot that the last time i was there it was a struggle to carry my suitcase. and it was a bit ironic that today my seatmate got my bag down for me without even asking, yet when i was obviously preggo no one would help me! i dazed out a few times and the only thing that brought me back to reality was the immense pressure and pain i felt saying "you have to pump ASAP!". i'll admit it, it was kind of nice to have my thoughts to myself for a few minutes. but, just a few minutes, i can already feel it coming, i'm just dying to give my gobbles a goodnight kiss on his chunky little cheeks.

the actual return to working was kind of anti-climactic, same old shit. no need to go there.

i'm cutting this short to enjoy the one good thing about being away by myself - an uninterrupted hot meal, a glass of wine, and trash reality tv. oh, and i totally get to try out my new dreamie. perfect for the ocd traveller. just wish i discovered it years ago!

'cause everything's gonna be ok

No cereal for you!

this is it. here we are little buddy, ready to take the next steps in our crazy lives. somehow you must know we won't be spending every minute together anymore. you rolled over for me front to back this week, when we thought it's take months to lift that bulbous head. i feel better now that you can roll both directions, so you wont ever be stuck where you don't want to be. you're also standing for almost a minute at a time (with our help to balance of course) before your little bow legs buckle. it's not going to be long before you start scooting around. time to vacuum up all that dog hair!

thankfully, you're still showing signs of being a little baby as well. you shake your rattles and slam your sophie, but don't chew on her to relieve your teething pain. (yes, i got a sophie. i gave into peer pressure from the moms in my yoga class. better to happen now with a $14.99 rubber giraffe than a $300 pair of shoes when you're older. or a starter jacket.) also, you've made it clear that you do not want solid cereal yet. sure mommy sneaks it into your bottle, but a spoon? hah! no way!

i'm feeling less anxious now in my return to work. when i spoke with my boss yesterday, he alluded to the fact that the projects i'll be working on will only involve trips lasting 1-2 days each. i can handle that. the bonus for that would be more time working from home for the downtime. he mentioned that because i was out, he hasn't been in since january! so sure, gobbles will still be off to daycare, but i could get a few odds and ends done around the house during lunch and stuff so i'll get more quality time with my little man when i'm not working. now, this could all change in a matter of weeks and i can be scooped up and sent to vegas full time (where the rest of the philly people are, and have been for over a year now), but i keep burying that thought away pretending the possibility doesn't exist.

that's it for now. keeping it short and sweet so i have the rest of the weekend to clean, pack, make cookies and pie for easter, and above all else, spend time with my handsome little porker.