All I'm Saying there's a joke in here somewhere

Damn. I've been waiting all weekend for Matt to return a phone call so that I could blog about it. When we first started dating (seven and a half years ago), he'd come out of a rather odd relationship months before. Through the course of our courtship, this woman would call him maybe twice a year or so and ask him if he was still seeing me. Usually his answer was something like, "Yeah, she's sitting here on the couch right now." I would snicker and she'd wind up the conversation shortly afterward.

Well, after many years of not hearing from her, she recently called his headquarters office and left a message for him to give her a call. In the desperate hope that she'd be all, "So...are you still seeing whatserface?" I was encouraging Matt to call her. "Dude! I have free weekend minutes! Call, already!"

So I finally got him talked into calling her tonight. And she was on her way out the door. Didn't even bother to ask after me. Dammit. I know it's ridiculous, but I still enjoy the feeling that I've got something someone else wants. On the other hand, she may have been calling for totally innocuous reasons. Still, I prefer to believe that she's desperately longing for my husband. My only worry is that she'd challenge me to some kind of American Gladiators-esque duel: she is a hockey player.

I went to the dentist last week, if you will recall. Overall, the appointment went just fine. No cavities, at least. I'm obsessive about brushing and flossing, but I do tend to go a couple of years between office visits.

The bad news was that I had to have a crown replaced. Back when I was 17 years old and a senior in high school, my friend Krista and I were in the gymnasium after P.E. She had a hairbrush, I wanted to use it. For whatever reason, we ended up in a tug of war battle for it, with me yanking on the brush and saying, "Let me have it!" Well, she let me have it. She let go, and the brush came back and popped me in the mouth, breaking a lower front tooth. Oh, did I mention this was the day before I was scheduled to have my senior pictures taken? An emergency trip to the dentist (60 miles away) managed to give me a normal looking mouth again, but I've been dealing with crowns ever since.

So yesterday I got the crown replaced, as it had cracked pretty badly. This was my first visit to this particular dentist, and he had TVs in each of the examining rooms. I thought that was pretty cool, and was flipping through the channels as he did his thing. But then I pushed the wrong button, and ended up stuck on Nickelodeon's TV Land channel watching some godawful western from the 60's that evidently made extensive use of the Everybody's Named Cooter Actor's Guild. Those were the folks that needed dental help, let me tell you.

I'm pretty much zonked out tonight. Freya kept me from getting real sleep for much of the night last night. She sleeps next to me in bed at night, and before you start in on me about how co-sleeping isn't safe, read this, and then read this and then if you still have comments, write them down on a piece of paper, fold it until it is all corners, and shove it where the sun doesn't shine.

So...last night. She's been sleeping next to us for about two months now, and has done beautifully. She wakes to nurse, then falls right back to sleep. It is not unusual for she and I to get about 10 hours of sleep on days when I don't have to get up to go to work. The thing is though, she's been swaddled all of those times, and she really likes it. But lately it has been pretty warm, and I wake up to find her pretty sweaty. Since overheating a baby is definitely a bad thing, I'm trying to get her to sleep without being swaddled.

Well, she is still sleeping just fine. But I had no idea how much wiggling she did at night because her little limbs were wrapped up in the blanket. Now I know, because she is once again using my ribs as a ladder to climb, this time from the outside.

We'll get the hang of this. Eventually. In the meantime, all I can say is, "Zzzzz..."

You know what drives me nuts? Say you're at a restaraunt, and someone is looking at a menu and asks the wait-staff, "Is the sea bass (or whatever) good?" What are they going to say? "No, it tastes a lot like sea ass." It's their JOB to say stuff there tastes wonderful, dumbshit.

Anyway, that leads me to mention a couple of searches that led recent readers to this site. The first was, "Fully effaced and head is engaged is it labor?" Hell yes, it's labor. I'm guessing the baby just fell right out there at the computer desk before you knew it, huh? The next was, "One centimeter dilated, will baby be born soon?" Well, do you consider sometime between tomorrow and two weeks from now "soon"? If so, the answer is yes.

Another one I find occasionally in my stats is when the hair you get from being pregnant will fall out. (Let's all take a moment to remember my hairy trucker belly, shall we?) The answer to this in general is, "It varies." The specific answer, were you me, is, "Apparantly never."

There you have it: more of life's big questions answered by me. And here's a bonus answer to a question you didn't even have to ask: Yes, I'm a little low on blogging material right now that doesn't have anything to do with my child.

I'm all over the map when it comes to how people percieve Freya's moods. For example, we have a neighbor who invariably sees Freya when she is upset and crying. Initially, this started because she'd come over and want to see the baby and I'd be feeding her. I shouldn't blame anyone but myself, since in the interest of being polite and letting the neighbor see the baby, I'd pop Freya off the boob and hand her over. It pretty much ensured she'd be seeing a cranky Freya. However, she's seen her cranky other times too, and now she when we see the neighbor she says, "Oh, there's that cranky baby!" It makes me want to punch her in the neck.

We were at another neighbor's birthday party tonight, and Freya was back and forth mood-wise. Once people started passing her around like a doobie though, things went off. Some folks take that as a challenge and want to be the one to get the fussy baby quiet. Well, guess who she quiets down for? Mommy of the Almighty Boobage. That's it.

And then there are the ones who say things like, "I just don't know how you do it! You must have the patience of a saint!" And in a way, I'm glad that they acknowledge that I have difficulties. But I also read judgement into that, as though I'm performing this super-human feat by being patient with my baby. Isn't that simply parenting?

So, I don't know. I guess you're damned either way if you choose to comment on the fact that Freya makes a lot of noise sometimes. It's just that I see how much better she is now than how she was at 3 weeks. She has these long periods of time where she is an absolute delight. People at my office keep remarking about what a good baby she is; perhaps the change of atmosphere at my office appeals to her, since she is seldom fussy and is easy to calm back down there. And maybe she's attuned enough to me to recognize when I am in a stressful situation, like when I feel someone is judging my baby or my parenting, and she reacts negatively to my own underlying hostility to the situation.

So far, the only thing that I actually appreciate hearing is, "She'll be fine. She's still adjusting to the world around her." Because that's what I think the truth is.

As you've all heard and quit caring about, that freaking wackadoo and his child bride to be had their baby. Most comments that I could make are going to be obvious and middle of the road, but I cannot pass up the opportunity to gag publicly over the nickname given to the baby by the media: Tomkitten. Talk about lame.

In non-national news, but possibly slightly more interesting, I am looking across the desk at my husband's new work computer. He's got a lovely MPC laptop and docking station sitting there, and I am itching to get my hands on it. It looks so...fast. And blue. But alas, it has some kinda fingerprint technology log-on, and I am so not authorized.

Finally, I am going to the dentist tomorrow for the first time in roughly two years. My infrequent dentist visits are usually not an issue, as I am absolutely obsessive about flossing and brushing, and am blessed with good genetics in that regard. Still, there is something nerve-wracking about the thought of going in and finding that my teeth have issues. I once read that dreaming of your teeth falling out means that you have financial worries. Probably because it would cost so much to replace them, huh?

Freya has her first cold. I brought it home, probably from the gym. Matt got it from me, and she got it from us. The poor little girl; I pulled a three inch long booger out of her nose earlier.

Still, she's being a trooper. I know she doesn't feel well, but she's still playing her little two-month old games. And tonight we reached a milestone! She reached out and grabbed the trunk of her stuffed elephant rattle toy and stuck it in her mouth! This isn't the first time she's reached for something, but absolutely the first time she grabbed something and put it in her mouth. There's a lot more of that to come, I'm sure!

A while back, I had posted about selling my fire boots. Since then, I have tried ads on Craigslist and in the local newspaper.

The first call on the boots was going to be a winner, I thought. A rancher with diminutive feet wanted to save some money and buy a cheaper pair of quality boots. He showed up at our place one afternoon while I was at the gym, leaving Matt (with Freya) to handle the salesmanship. The guy stayed for 40 minutes, hemmed and hawed, then offered $80. Matt, as per my instruction, told him that $85 was the bottom dollar, so the guy whipped out his checkbook. His checkbook. Matt said that I insisted on cash, and the guy got belligerent about how his check was good, yadda yadda. You've all heard the saying, "In God we trust; all others pay cash," right? So no way was I going to let this random dude walk off in my $200 boots and I am left with a worthless piece of paper. Anyway, he left and never came back.

Yesterday I got call #2 on the boots. This firefighter (with diminutive feet) was very interested, and wondered if I would consider a trade. I'm not much into that, but it piqued my curiosity and I asked him what he had to trade. He said he had a brand new snowboard. I explained I didn't snowboard and didn't plan to learn, but that I'd take $85 cash. He hasn't called back either.

I think a guaranteed way to a weirdo extravaganza is to take out a classified ad.

Freya finally grew into this Baby Gap hat, and today was the first day in a long while that was sunny enough to justify it.

Freya and I have had three reasonably successful days at work so far. The nursing room that my employers set up for me is just awesome--it's basically a cubicle with tall walls and a door, but there is plenty of room for her portacrib, a little gym activity thingy, a changing area, and the chair I sit in to nurse her. Additionally, my phone rings back there, so I can take calls and work on stuff (mainly reading manuals and whatnot) while I'm nursing. I don't even have to go off the clock!

Despite our successes, she's still definitely just a two month old in a new set of circumstances. While she's perfectly willing to smile at people all day long, she gets seriously pissed off when someone picks her up. She seems to want to be with me, which is flattering. Still, I want her to be the type of child who will go to most anyone. I know that's not necessarily a learned behavior--she just may not be wired that way. But going to work with me is the best shot we have at making sure she isn't going to be too shy around strangers as a toddler.

We were at a meeting today, and she was overall quite good as long as I had her in her sling and was in constant motion, bouncing her up and down and swaying back and forth. (It's no wonder I've lost most of the pregnancy weight--I can't stop moving or she gets upset.) But then there were ladies in the meeting who wanted to hold her. Trying to be polite and also work on her willingness to go to other people put me into a situation where I'd have her settled down, but then she'd figure out Mom didn't have a hold on her anymore and she'd go into major meltdown.

Sadly, I think after today, not that many people are going to want to hold her. She was actually documented in the meeting notes as "Freya 'Screaming' *lastname*." Sigh...

On a whim, and because I'm lacking blog content, I decided to look up my name in Urban Dictionary. The results were rather dull.

However, I looked over to the side and discovered other options. Do you know what caseybate means? No? Okay, how about what your caseys are?

Just another thing you can thank me for by way of broadening your collective horizons.

Congratulations to Jessica and her husband, Mark, on the birth of their daughter Sydney! I haven't had many details yet, but from what I do know, Jess had an emergency c-section. Despite that, it sounds like mom and baby are doing well and Sydney is an awfully cute little girl!

In other news, Dee posted last night that she was likely in labor, which would mean she has hopefully avoided an induction and c-section that she has been dreading. Good luck to her!

We all survived the trip to the pediatrician with a minimal amount of agony. I was very brave, let me tell you, and I didn't even take a lollipop on my way out the door.

Freya did really well, too. In all seriousness, I was very proud of what a little trooper she was. She ended up getting two shots in each chubby thigh, for a total of four pokes. Poor kid screamed bloody murder while she was getting them, but then she settled right down and cuddled very close to me afterwards. Little peach... I got weepy, but I didn't let her down and run out of the room.

She now weighs 10 lbs. 5 oz. (50th percentile), is 22.5 inches long (75th percentile), and her head is 15.5 inches around (75th percentile). According to the measurements, she's shaped roughly like a Q-tip. Long and skinny, may it continue through the rest of her life! Everything looks great, and she's on track developmentally and is a healthy little girl.

My little Freya-Bug, you're going to be two months old tomorrow!

I will just apologize right now for the trauma you are about to be put through: you're getting your first vaccinations at the pediatrician's office tomorrow. I told your father that I would hold you during this round of shots, but that he may have to be the one holding your for any subsequent shots. I have this picture of you getting the next round and being able to realize that Mommy or Daddy could do something to stop the pain of the needle sticking you, and yet we don't, and the look I imagine on your little face is killing me already. So that's why I'll take this early group of them.

Your grandpa was over this morning to visit you, as he does every week. He got some great smiles from you, and then handed you over to me when you started getting fussy. (It's his right, I suppose.) I put you in the sling and started bouncing back and forth to get you to fall asleep. He asked me if I then put you down after you fell asleep, and I said that no, we usually just went about our business because you wake up and start crying inconsolably until someone picks you up again. He asked if we'd tried letting you cry it out, and I said no. He said, "You'll regret that someday." Personally, I don't think you're going to get spoiled from this. Maybe I'm wrong, but I know what a spoiled kid looks like and I'm not going to let you get there. You're just very little right now and very unsure of your place in this gigantic world. Your daddy and I are easing you into it and letting you go at your own pace, not what society deems is right for you.

We took you to Barnes and Noble the other day, and you were admired by quite a few people there. At the checkout line, a woman who was probably 80 years old stopped to tell us how beautiful you are, and she offered up a very meaningful piece of advice, one I intend to carry with me for the rest of my life. She said, "So many parents these days are trying to turn their children into something they're not. Relax, enjoy being a parent, and enjoy learning who your daughter is. Let her show you who she wants to be."

You're teaching us every day, little love.
Yours always,
Mommy

As some of the other Boise bloggers might attest to, it has been pissing rain here for about the last week. For only the second time in my life, I heard a weatherman say the phrase, "Hundred percent chance of rain." It is putting a serious cramp in my afternoon walks, where I load Freya in her sling and go out for a couple of miles to get her to take an afternoon nap. I don't think the health club would let me walk on the treadmill with her, so I'm kind of in a bind.

I've been trying to really register the moments this week, as it is my last week of maternity leave. I want to acknowledge that it has been a really special time for me to bond with my baby, and yet I am quite excited to get back to work. Sick, aren't I?

Finally, and apropos of virtually nothing, I just bought a nine pound box of Quaker Oats at CostCo, and I can't help wondering just exactly how much wet oatmeal that would make. Nine pounds of dry has got to be a whole helluva lot of porridge, wouldn't you say?

Oh, one more thing: I'm hoping you'll all send good labor vibes along to Jess, who is bound to be going into labor before a whole lot longer. Additionally, send good thoughts for Dee, who is quite overdue at this point and is ready to burst (in many ways). As Tom Petty said, "The waiting is the hardest part." Hang in there, little tomatos!

Not to use my blog for personal gain or anything, but I have a pair of firefighting boots I'd really like to sell. They're Hathorn boots, and they've got very little wear on them. What with the pregnancy and the swelling and the subsequent infant, not only do the boots not fit anymore, but I won't be needing them professionally.

So. If you know anyone who needs a very solid pair of boots (Men's 7.5), let me know--I'll make them a sweet deal.

In the meantime, enjoy the mental image of me drop kicking the neighbor's crapping chihuahua while wearing these boots. Not like it ever has or will happen (the little bastard is too fast), but it's a lovely thought.

Why hasn't anyone started making socks that stay on babies' feet? I can't believe this hasn't been a huge problem ever since ever. We dropped one of Freya's tiny socks in the parking lot at Dillard's last Friday, but were able to retrieve it. (I can't help but get weepy thinking of a tiny wee pink sock out there all alone.)

Anyway, you know how when you were a kid you had mittens that had a long string attaching them, and the string ran along your arms, behind your back and you put your jacket over it? Genius! Why doesn't anyone do that with baby socks? The string could run through the pantlegs.

Remember: You saw it here at All I'm Saying first. When feetins become the biggest thing since sliced bread, I'm going to need this paper trail for my share of the proceeds.

Matt opened the newspaper this morning to find that one of the fathers with whom we attended our childbirth preparation class died recently. All the obituary said as to the cause of death was that he suffered from bipolar disorder.

I feel so badly for his family. His baby son was just a month old. I cannot imagine what kind of grief they are going through right now, but my heart goes out to them.

Believe it or not, Matt received a rosary in the mail the other day. It came from some charity (not Catholic Charities, to my surprise), and they were cruising for donations. He is now the proud owner of a special rosary with a little medallion of Pope Benedict on it, and it even has its own pleather carrying case, emblazoned with "My Rosary" in fine gold script.

Matt was raised Catholic, but we still can't figure out how he ended up on the mailing list. Maybe God is trying to communicate directly with him...

Anyway, the whole thing led to a boisterous (on my part) discussion of how the rosary works. I had no idea, being raised a Jehovah's Witness, which is about as far from Catholicism as you can get in a "Christian" religion. I'm always tickled at how little of the Bible Matt ever learned, despite having gone to church every Sunday plus all the holy days from birth to age eighteen. And for heaven's sake, he even attended Catholic school!

So toward the end of the discussion, which was abruptly terminated by him choking on a drink of water while trying to laugh and swallow at the same time, he pointed out that Saint Matthew was the best Gospel writer of all. He even referred to him as "flamboyant."

I said, "Yeah, that's why they call him Saint Matthew of the Jazz Hands."