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

I can't believe it's almost Fourth of July weekend. This is the second Fourth weekend (if that makes any sense at all) that I haven't worked--in the past, I have been out patrolling the Forest for illegal fireworks and cleaning outhouses. Really, I'm thrilled to be staying home.

I can't quite get my bearings when the holiday falls mid-week, as opposed to a Monday or a Friday. Since Matt will be out patrolling the Forest (sans the outhouse experience), I haven't got a thing planned.

What about you all? Long weekends?

...In Today's News:

(Mainly via The Drudge Report)

Star Jones got dumped off "The View." I can't imagine anyone was out there rooting for Star Jones at this point. She's such a human spectacle; I think the appeal had to be that of a train wreck.

Axl Rose bit a security guard. I don't even want to know how many shots you'd have to get in order to avoid some serious nastiness there.

Keith Richards is set to play Johnny Depp's character's father in the next Pirates of the Caribbean (#3). Mrs. Jack Sparrow the Elder musta been a real hottie to get past the paternal genes.

Finally, in a not amusing at all piece, Congress is trying to get a Constitutional amendment to ban flag burning. My opinion on the act is neither here nor there, but I would like to point out that the 10 Commandments expressly prohibit worshipping graven images (like flags), and it strikes me that there isn't a Constitutional amendment to ban burning the Bible. So isn't it somewhat hypocritical to ban the burning of a graven image, and yet still allow burning the Law? Not that I care if you burn that either, but I'm just saying...

I'm in another 'low period,' in that I just have no idea whatsoever as to what I am going to do about Freya going into care once she's 6 months old and my employer won't let me bring her to work with me any more.

If you're not aware, that's the current arrangement. It's terrifically progressive, and both Freya and I have been hugely content with it. My employer also considers it a success, and it is a nationalized benefit with them. However, it is only allowed until the baby turns 6 months old, which is in August.

I'm utterly turned to stone by the thought of not having her with me. She'll be well taken care of: my neighbor across the street is a stay at home mom, and will have Freya about 25-30 hours a week. The rest of the time she'll be with me as I work from home. So it isn't like she's going to some baby mill or anything, but the emotional aspect of leaving her for hours is pretty gut-wrenching right now.

The biggest terror though, is the fact that Freya refuses to eat from any receptacle besides a boob. Bottles don't work for her, I'm trying a sippy cup and she's not interested, and I'm totally running out of ideas. People have said, "Oh, she'll eat when she's hungry enough." Well, four hours with a sitter is our record, and she wouldn't eat then. (Her regular interval is around 3 hours now, so I'm pretty damned sure she was 'hungry enough' then.)

We tried the sippy cup again tonight, and she refuses it. I spent the next 20 minutes crying on my hamburger and refusing my own food. I'm so at a loss. Short of hiring a wet nurse, I don't know what to do.

I'll throw it out to you, Internet: any suggestions?

UPDATE: Hey, guess what my baby is doing right this minute?

She's sleeping in her crib FOR THE FIRST TIME EVER! She was exhausted most of the afternoon/evening and just couldn't stay asleep more than a few minutes. Finally as we were watching "Deadwood" tonight, she nursed to sleep. As I was up here online and she was asleep in my arms, I thought, "Hell, I might as well try it," and put her in the crib. Not only did she stay asleep, she's now been in there sleeping for approximately seven minutes.

It's all about small steps. I really needed a chance to regain my optimism, and here it is.

I saw a hitchhiker/beggar yesterday (looked pretty well groomed and tidy) with a sign that said, "Family was killed by ninjas. Can you spare a dollar for kung fu lessons?"

I really need to start carrying cash. I totally would have contributed.

As most of you are aware, Freya hit an extremely fussy period at about 3 weeks of age and ran with that until she was about two and a half months old (or so). A rep from the La Leche League suggested to me that we try carrying Freya in a sling during the day (as desired) so that whether she was fussing or not, we'd at least have our hands free and be able to carry her around. And it brought her some comfort.

Then Dee suggested I look into "The Fussy Baby Book," by Dr. William Sears. Since then, I've firmly identified with the Attachment Parenting camp, which advocates the notion that you can't spoil a baby with too much attention. In addition, they suggest incorporating breast-feeding, baby-wearing (the sling) and co-sleeping as parenting tools. But you also let the baby coach you as to what they think they need, in that you may have a child who is much happier not sharing the family bed and would rather sleep in a crib. So you go with that.

Another big part of Attachment Parenting is a nearly visceral aversion to the "let the baby cry it out" school of thought. I have been pretty much unable to just let Freya cry, unless I am at least holding her. I don't know what she needs sometimes, but if it is just attention and getting carried around by someone who loves her, I can provide that. However, we're getting nearer and nearer the time when she will be too old to come to work with me every day, and our neighbor across the street is going to be caring for her then. And I sorta doubt that she's going to want to be packing Freya around all day long.

So I'm trying to come to a compromise. As long as I know Freya is fed, dry in the drawers and not in pain, and as long as I know she is definitely just sleepy, I'm trying to let her fuss to sleep in her bouncy chair or her swing. IN fact, she has been hollering here next to me in the swing for the last five minutes or so. I know she's tired. But she just doesn't seem to understand that sleep is what she needs. I just read this post about babies and their varying types of sleep needs. I still can't decide quite where Freya stands. I know if I pick her up right now, she'll still cry. I'll just be holding her while she cries.

Gah. This is so frustrating, and I'm also afraid of over-thinking it. Going with my gut instinct has been working for us, but circumstances are about to change, and I need her to be as prepared for that as I can help her be.

Freya is hanging out in her crib watching her beloved mobile go around and around, so I have approximately 30 more seconds to post something interesting and intelligble to the blog.

Too bad I'm going to waste that time rambling, instead.

It's great to have the PC back up and running. I'm working the eMusic playlists over right now, as per Chris' recommendation. I just discovered they have quite a bit of solo work by Colin Hay, the former lead singer of Men at Work. When I was in 3rd grade, I was pretty sure that if things didn't work out between Michael Jackson and I, Colin Hay was definitely going to end up being my husband. Lazy eye and all, I loved him deeply. In fact, I sent a fan letter to the band, and I specifically remember writing, "I love you so much that if the U.S.A. and Australia went to war against each other, I'm not sure who I'd want to win." That's love, man.

Okay, crying baby. Enough.

This was actually taken last week, during the Great Computer Drought of Ought-Six. So while Freya officially turned 19 weeks old today, this shot was too good to not share with you all.

Finally, the Idaho legislature did something worthwhile.

My favorite part:

WHEREAS, tater tots figure prominently in this film thus promoting Idaho's most famous export;"

IT'S ALIVE!!!!

Matt took it to a guy this morning, who got the computer to start up and he did some damn thing that no one in my household understands, and the computer works again. Matt recognized the word "Bios" in the lingo the guy was slingin'. Good enough for me.

So the first thing I did was get in and load all Freya's baby photos to a disk. I know, I'm a Philistine in that I didn't put them on a thumb drive. Call me cheap. (Cheap.) And then I uninstalled Napster. That probably wasn't the culprit, but I am taking no chances. Besides, I'm sure all that lovely spyware is still with me.

The moral of the story, boys and girls, is to back up everything!

It's hard to get the computer fixed when the husband has done nothing about taking it to his friend who said he'd work on it for us. Dammit...I knew I should have just taken care of the problem. In the meantime, I am clearly ignoring his "no blogging on my work computer" rule. I am ever-defiant.

Freya is doing splendidly. Last Friday was her 4 month check-up and she's in the 75th percentile for both length and weight. Go baby! The pediatrician also remarked on the fact that she basically stands up--I provide some balance, but she's got her full weight on her feet and prefers that to sitting by a long ways.

We're still working on getting her to eat rice cereal. I know there are varying schools of thought on whether 4 months is too young for that, but I need her to be able to take sustenance of some sort if I am not available due to work obligations. Since she won't take a bottle, cereal is our next best hope.

Tomorrow is Father's Day, as I am sure most of you are aware. We're having my dad and his long-term fiancee' over for breakfast, and then Freya and I will take Matt out for a hike in the Boise foothills, I think. All you fathers have a happy one, y'hear?

I'll post again when I get a chance, or once the computer is back up and running.

I find it sadly ironic that I have a whole category of blog posts categorized as "Computer Woes." I'm not a prophet, but I did stay at a Holiday Inn Express last night.

We're hopefully going to get a start on repairing the home PC tomorrow. I talked to Melissa's husband this morning, and he was talking about pulling out our hard drive to try and get Freya's pictures off it before we really got into any major repair work. Eek. I was hoping someone would know of a magic button you could push that would get us as far as we needed to go so that Norton GoBack could take over.

Guess not. Anyway, if you don't hear from me for a few days, it's due to access issues. We both have work computers, but I try not to blog from those--don't want issues down the line, if you know what I mean.

The ongoing saga of my Woot MP3 player just gets worse. I finally got it up and working, but the sound files were practically inaudible, even with the volume turned all the way up. Someone suggested it might be bad MP3s, so I was in touch with Emusic and they didn't have a solution. They wanted to know if other MP3 files from other sources sounded the same, in which case it was a player issue.

I didn't have any others, but the player came with a free trial for Napster. So I downloaded the software and got the "need to restart the computer" message. Okay, fine. So it shut down. And now it won't come back up. Everything powers on fine, but all I get on the screen is an "Intel Inside" logo. No Windows XP, nothing. It just sits there.

I've tried rebooting a hundred times. My SIL suggested running the system restore disk, but that doesn't work either. It won't boot up in "safe" mode. I think the operating system is just gone, daddy, gone.

We have Norton Antivirus and Norton Go Back, which should restore everything, if only we could get it booted up. And the worst part of all the suckitude is...guess where all Freya's baby pictures are? Yeah. The one redeeming thing is that I made my dad a photo CD a few weeks ago, so we won't have lost the ones from her birth and first 10 weeks or so.

Any suggestions as to what to do?

Sweet Baby:

Tonight's letter to you on the monthly anniversary of your birth finds me in a confused state of mind. You've been growing so much lately, and you're making big leaps physically and mentally. Tonight you have me in a quandry: you don't seem to want to eat.

Usually, you're like a hog at a trough. You'd stay at the breast for hours, or until the muscles in your face, strained by the lengthy suction, finally gave in and you popped off. But you've started to go through these spurts where you'd a lot rather pop off on your own and look at me, look at the ceiling, the night light, the dogs, the TV...pretty much anything besides settling down to eat. You have so much going on in your head right now that you can't take the time for food. It has been about two hours since your last feeding, but that was only a half-job because you didn't want to finish up. Too much going on, Mom!

So. Me and my aching boobs are going to go sit in the tub and wait until bed-time, when you're (pray God) finally going to get into the serious business of eating, and then (pray God twice) falling off to sleep.

You're beautiful and mystifying, little love.
Yours,
Mommy

Jeez, I can't win for losing tonight. I bought an MP3 player off Woot, and I can't get the motherf*cking thing to load. Sorry for my language, but I am computer retarded to begin with, and when the instructions seem to be missing several steps and I don't exactly have time in my life to sit around on hold with customer service (Hello! New mother here!), I get a little hacked.

Then there are the trackback spammers. That's getting real old. They've found their way around my trackback closing that Mel installed, and are pinging newer entries. Since I've been crap for interesting content lately, I don't want to close trackbacks for entries newer than 5 days. However, I'm not getting a lot of pings to begin with. Maybe I should just get rid of trackback. If possible with Movable Type.

I should take a class or something...

It's getting warm enough any more that Freya is managing just fine in the afternoons with just a diaper on. However, her drooling has ratcheted up several notches, and the fact that all her little fat rolls are getting so well irrigated is causing me concern that she may start growing organisms of her own, if we aren't careful. So here she is, in a bib and a diaper.

She's so unusual...

You'd be nothing without the trillions of microbial minions toiling in your large intestine, performing crucial physiological functions that your highfalutin human cells wouldn't have a clue how to do.

That's getting my award for catchy tag-line of the day.