And baby makes three!

So my sister-in-law is about to POP with her first baby, literally any day now, so before that baby arrives, I wanted to finally post the “She’s here!” post I’ve been working on since Claire was born. Um, 2 months ago. (Talk about lazy, my goodness! What, did you, like, buy a house, move twice, have Matt start a new job, AND give birth to a huge baby? Oh. You did. OK. That’s fine then.)

I’m writing to you today, sitting on a glider footstool, bouncing my infant into naptime (it’s a bouncy seat, I’m not dribbling her like a basketball), ignoring the pile of clean laundry that’s been sitting on the floor amidst the pile of dirty laundry that has yet to make it into the washer. My hair is a hot mess, my dogs are all “WTF, mate?”*, and I may or may not have baby puke all down my right arm.

(Ok, maybe I cleaned up the baby puke. But it was there 0.4 seconds ago. And when the tradeoff is: waste a baby nap showering, or blogging, I’ll let you make the call. Spoiler alert: I chose blogging.)

I’m a mom, y’all!

First this happened.

That’s a midwife. And my big ol’ pregnant belly. And my “grrrr labor contractions” face. At 5AM, approximately 8 hours in. The weird looking mechanical device is a fetal heart monitor, to listen to baby’s heart and make sure she’s rockin’ it out.

She did. Rock it out, that is. For 31 straight hours, with no pain meds (note: birthing a child HURTS.), until finally, at 4:21 am on the 5th of July, this happened.

As we were rounding the clock on the second night of contractions, lying on the bed at the birth center in the dark, we heard pops and bangs outside the window. Matt, confused, thought the birth center was located in a ridiculously noisy part of town. Then we realized: I had labored straight through the 4th of July. I spent most of it like this:

That’s a bucket. For the hurling.

Anyways, enough yuck, because after all the birthing, came this!

Shameless plug: did you like the professional photography of my darling little kumquat? Then go hire Sarah Burns at Butterfly Chaser Photography. She’s amazingly gifted with petites, and a doll to work with.

Yeah, being a mom is pretty much all professionally-photographed snuggles, and pink shiny rainbows, with purple lacy headbands and porcelain-skinned babies who sleep 12 hours a night.

…

 

Just kidding. It’s more like this:

Imma let you finish, but first I’m going to scream for an hour and take a huge deuce on the bed.

1. Claire is going to hate me for that caption one day.

2. I’m going to have to explain the pop culture reference to Claire one day. Le sigh.

But anyways, back to my story, so then this happened.

Aren’t great-grand-daddy hands the best?

The first week was full of new family members meeting old ones, endless hours of newborn crying, and trying to remember lullabies you haven’t sung in years at 3AM. For a couple weeks, I could only remember 3 verses to “Hush little baby” (for good reason – the last verses are weird! Who wants to buy a baby a billygoat?!) so our nighttime crying sessions were accompanied by a cappella versions of dubstep songs I had heard on Pandora while pregnant. (Your life is not complete until you’ve sung the Zeds Dead remix of Eyes on Fire to a newborn, edited for “niceness”).

And then these happened.

And I swooned.

And then this happened.

Yes, that’s my naked baby.

And I swooned again. But, no time to rest on our laurels! This happened:

Bought a house. NBD.**

And then this:

That’s burning fire. Inside the wall in my new pied à terre.

So this had to happen:

Remodeling a house with a 2 month old is fun!***

But meanwhile this was happening:

“Never, never, never give up.”

And then she turned one month.

This girl makes me think of Calvin and Hobbes’ school pictures.

Anyways, lots of stress and chaos happened, and then she turned two months.

Say what now?

If you don’t feed me soon I might eat this teddy bear.

And she got her first shot. 😦

This injury has not gone unnoticed, Mom. We are not amused.

So, yeah. I’m a mom now. Which means my life has become totally absorbed in watching this little person grow. I watch her learn to find her hands, and stick them in her mouth (or sometimes, her eye). I’m there when she wakes up in the morning, cheerful and ready to play with the ceiling fan (they’re in love – she can talk to him for hours). I’m there at night, when she’s so tired she doesn’t know how to go to sleep, and demands to be cuddled and walked endlessly around the house. And I’m there during the day, watching as she grows from a fussy newborn with erratic sleep patterns, to a sweet little infant with clear “waking” and “sleeping” periods (warning: these will change in like, 2 days, so don’t get too comfortable, Mom).

I’m going to try to focus more of my energy on blogging these days, to keep my hand in, and to communicate with adulty-types who don’t need to sing-song every conversation. But don’t judge me if I’m late, or if my clothes are stained, or if there’s an odor about my person that you can’t quite identify. It’s probably best, all in all, that our relationship stay virtual. For the next few months, at least.

And with that, my darling babe is gurgling in her seat, and starting the sniffly whimper that warns me: dirty diaper incoming! So I’ll leave you with a picture of Bubbles McGee. 🙂

*WTF stands for “What the fudge?” This is a mommyblog now. Right? Ahem.

**Actually it is a BD. A huge, enormous frickin’ BD.

***No, it’s not.