My baby has an attention span!

And slept 8.5 hours last night.  Then another 3!  As soon as he can give me pedicures and tell me I’m the prettiest I’ll be the happiest mom (of a gay child) in the world.

Hurray!

Day 40

So Walt’s been kicking around outside my uterus for 40 days now.  When he first showed up, he kind of felt like a houseguest with whom I had nothing in common with.  In fact, during the car ride home from the hospital, I told Ryan I felt I should be making awkward small talk with this baby in the backseat (he didn’t have a name yet).  I continued to feel this way.  A while ago, I acquired a mod-clear glass head that I felt added a presence to my then basement apartment.  As I walked by the head, I felt the need to acknowledge it.   I had this same feeling about Walt.  When we came home from hosptial that morning and put Walt in his car seat bucket on the dining room table I didn’t know what to do with him.  All hopped up on adrenalin, Ryan and I cleaned up the house from the labour the day before and began to make soup.  It was as though I should have offered Walt some coffee and asked about the weather back home.

It wasn’t until the weekend before last that I felt like Walt belonged.  It’s weird to love something, but also feel like it’s a bit on an intruder.  Again, he just felt like such an unassuming house guest – albeit one who screamed for his breakfast.  Now, however, he’s got his own thing going on.  He’s got his favourite hangout (the dining room table/changing table).  He’s got his hobbies (breastfeeding).  And, he’s much more popular than Ryan and I combined (at least least according to the baby gifts he’s received).

How We Spend Our Days

When not listening to the bathroom fan, Walt likes to dangle from my body, only to be interrupted to feed and, occassionally, scream for no reason.

Is it a Raisin or a Lifeline?

As I type this I’m holed up in our bedroom with Walt and the Newt while Ryan resorts to toxic chemicals in our kitchen sink.  This isn’t really as dreadful as it seems as I have Ryan’s laptop and a bowl of soup.  Also, a baby who is content with the constant feeding – so much feeding – that it works as long as I don’t mind typing one handed.

It’s also okay because we’ve been surprisingly mobile in the last few days, with the help of a baby wrap.  Three days ago we spend the afternoon in Kensington.  Yesterday, we traipsed around the neighbourhood looking for rental houses with apple trees in which to steal apples from.  Then we headed over to our corner/porn/key cutting/dry cleaning store, The Daily King, for some candy before heading over to the park for the evening.  And today we took Walt down to 17th Ave where we ate hotdogs and were advised by two old ladies to breastfeed and not let Walt be an only child.  So, perhaps, being forced to stay in the bedroom for the evening isn’t the worst thing.

Also, Walt’s umbilical cord came off yesterday.  I was pretty intimidated/grossed out by it so I’m quite relieved.  And, like the poor parents that we are, we actually lost it.  I immediately panicked and thought somehow Walt may have eaten it.  Ryan blamed Newton.  We were both proved wrong when it feel out of his sleeper after a diaper change.  It looked like a raisin so we put it in the compost bin.  Anyone who eats our homegrown vegetables in the future should be warned that they’re practically cannibalizing my child.

Day 8

Well, it’s day 8 of Walt’s life.  The first few days were a bit of a steep learning curve with the interrupted sleep and feeding – so much feeding.  But it seems we’ve almost got some sort of routine.  He’s begun to sleep for 4 hour stretches at night.  My mental health will be saved via a Moby Wrap as it’s important that I have the use of both of my hands for street fights.  No stroller for us.  Walt continues to act like a drunken sailor – at one moment angry and beligerent and at the next delightfully charming and always bobbing his head around.

Ryan and I are a little concerned that he really hasn’t cramped our style.  Somehow our pre-baby life style was so low-key we really haven’t had to change too much.  The only difference is that I can do things tipsy again.  But not co-sleep; I do my drinking in the afternoons.

Trauma

There’s been a new Cottonelle campaign that won’t go away.  It features a white Labrador puppy that’s some sort of scientist/life guru?  So, the first commercial that I found mildly disturbing was the one in which the puppy went to some type of spa and is soaking in a jacuzzi with purple flowers.  At this point in the commercial he declares himself “sexy.”  I’m all for comparisons that stretch beyond the obvious, but I’m not sure how a puppy acts as a bridge between sexual prowess and genital hygiene.

I’m thinking that’s bad enough.  And even though I don’t have cable, I still manage to see this commercial enough to have it grate on me.  Now, there’s a new version in which the same pervy little dog is at a laboratory commenting on women’s beauty.  At one point he uses some type of futuristic scanning ability to check out a woman’s ass to determine that she has no toilet paper residue.  Luckily he doesn’t declare anything “sexy” about this situation.  All the same, why the hyper-sexualized dog?  Who are they targeting?  What emotion is this supposed to evoke in me?

Needless to say, no baby yet.  I’m hoping that miracles and new life will at least provide enough of a distraction from this awful ad campaign.

Britney and Me

Well, if I leave the last post up for much longer I’ll really seem like a whine-y bitch.  However, just to contradict myself I’ll complain just a little bit more.  Earlier this week, when shopping for groceries, a woman asked me, “How many babies do [I] have in there?”

“Just one,” I answered.

“A big one,” she smiled.

Seriously, bitch.  I’m fairly tall, have a long torso, and a uterus that is growing on schedule.  I would have never assumed that this would bother me so much.  Maybe it’s just the notion that after 8 months I shouldn’t be out and therefore the only pregnant people you see on those 6 month women with a manageable abdomen.  Anyway, apparently I’m still pissy about this perceived judgement.  Or maybe I feel like these people are jinxing me for a long and painful labour.  However, I did learn that a big baby works with gravity so suck on it.

Okay, now moving on.  It’s full swing summer here and, while I fill my days, I still have no idea what to do with myself.  This is good because come 3pm all I want to do is sleep until early evening.  Somehow this leads me to feel perplexed as to how to fill my days/overwhelmed by all I have to do.  There’s nothing like panic intermingled with boredom.  I imagine this is how Britney Spears feels most days.

Complaining

Urgh, frustrating day.  After waking up at 7am this morning I found myself needing a 2 hour nap by 8am.  I had to buy a maternity swimsuit.  I’m doing what little I can to ward off pre-eclampsia in what was a normal and uncomplicated pregnancy.  I’m worried that I’m not asking for enough help or that I need to push myself more.  I’m tired of answering the question, “Do you feel alot of movement?”  When I have no frame of reference or baseline for “alot”.  I’m annoyed by people’s surprised expression that my due date isn’t tomorrow, but rather in 6 weeks.  I’m fantasizing about a life where I can pivot my hips again.  Generally, I’m just being a whiner.

Quick Update

I have very little to write except that I’m sleepy, we’re making our way through the first season of Six Feet Under with remarkable speed, and I have 3 more days left of work.  Also, there’s an ever-increasing chance that our downstairs neighbours are planning to steal our dog when they move out tomorrow.

Clair Huxtable Update

Well, that baby video staring Felicia Reshad really sucked ass.  Somehow it tried to cram the first 6 years of life into 32 minutes.  For a woman who’s fictional husband was an obstetrician this was a poor showing.

In other news, we went to Lilac Festival yesterday.  This is my 4th year attending and maybe my favourite so far.  The weather was nice.  I ate a hotdog and an ice cream.  And, we missed out on the crowds by arriving by 10am.  Needless to say, we did it pretty bad ass.

Sadly, the camera was left behind so in order to capture the memory I came home and took a picture of our lilac tree.  Notice our manicured backyard.