Maternity leave ends tomorrow...sort of

As of July first there are no more excuses why I cannot exercise. My gym membership is reactivated and their babysitting takes children as young as three months. Guess who will be three months tomorrow? I won't lie, I'm scared to go back. It's been a while since I really worked out. I did hit the gym up until week 30 of my pregnancy, but I was no where near the feirce beast I had previously been. I confess when I formally would take the Power/Body Pump class (it's a weight lifting class where you do a body part i.e. lunges, squats, triceps to a song)I almost always would look around to check how I stacked up. 9 times out of 10, I had the most weight on the bar and I liked the fact I was that strong. This was especially true with squats. What can I say, I have a powerful set of thighs and ass? Fast forward to tomorrow, I'm imagining the 80 year old fighting off osteoporosis being able to squat more weight than me. I'm scared. I'm also scared because I just may leave Mo in the babysitting room with a STRANGER!

I cannot procrastinate any longer. My ass is fat enough and my thighs are jiggly like jello. Don't get me started on my deflated stomach! Tomorrow I begin the gym again. SIGH. I better make sure we have advil and I know where I put the heating pad.

New Toys!

Moira has been nosy since birth. Seriously all parents think their kid's gifted. While Bry and I realize she hasn't done too much to show us that she's hyper-intelligent, we do both agree that she is one strong little girl. From the time she was born, she has had really good neck control and never was that "helpless" little baby. See photo. Notice how she is already stretching her neck w/Bry. Anyway, she seems bored with the regular routine of playmat, swing, and being held so we attempted to find something to assist her. (Confession here: I'm not 100% sure if all the boredom was on her part. I personally was getting sick of the same 2 toys too!) After seeking guidance from my online friends on the nest, it was recommended we purchase the Rainforest jumperoo. I commend these nesties as it has been a hit in our household, grant it it is one ugly piece of equipment, however Mo LOVES it!
Now, I also must admit, Bry and I are doing some bad parenting here. The box suggests this item for "children 4 months and up", and Mo is turning 3 months on Tuesday. Bad Mommy! She becomes entraced with the lights and animal sounds. Yes, it plays music and makes annoying elephant, monkey, and bird noises. Luckily, there are two volumes, so I can still watch and hear my t.v. while she plays along.

In addition to the jumperoo, I was given some other good advice by another nestie. As those with infants know, attempting to eat a meal with your spouse at the table together is generally impossible, unless you wait until baby is asleep. In our home that would mean dinner would be after 10. I don't think my stomach could handle dinner that late. Since she's been born, we've taken "dinner shifts". I eat while he holds her, then he eats while I hold her. I was enlightened with the suggestion to use the high chair. Mo is no way ready for solids, however we strapped her in last night and lo and behold after initally protesting and screaming, she sat and played for 20 minutes or so. Thus, Bry and I were able to eat together! I think maybe the beer and the bread helped!

Before I end this note, shout out to Casey in Taiwan! Uncle Case- MoMo can't wait to meet you.

Oh yeah, if anyone does read this blog, feel free to write me a response. I enjoy all your sarcastic and sometimes witty comments, as well as reminders of the adorableness (is that a word?!?) of my kid!

Quick post- new favorite "mom" site

If you are a mom or know a mom or have a kid to shop for, I found out about this great site called: www.mamabargain.com. They have one "hot" item for sale at a significantly discounted price and sell this and only this until it's out. While I haven't purchased anything yet, (I'm not the baby sling type of person nor does Moira need red patent leather mary jane shoes yet), but I am addicted. Quite the site, plus who doesn't love a HUGE discount on top of the line stuff???

I still heart my other favs: the nest, facebook, myspace, and perez hilton.

She might be our kid after all!

I've been writing extensively over my desire for a full night sleep. I dream of sleeping through the night. I've attempted to make wagers with my daughter in exchange for her sleeping through the night, but to no avail. Apparently, you cannot get an 11 week old to compromise. Over the past week something has changed though. My little diva still likes to stay up late. She doesn't want to go to sleep for the night until 9:30, 10 or even 11, but she has started to do something great. She's sleeping until 10!!!! Do you know what that means? I get to sleep until 10. She still gets up to feed around 1-2 am and then again between 5-6 am, but then she goes back to sleep until 10ish! YIPPPEE! I have a spring in my step. I actually looked refreshed and feel decent. I no longer need to nap when she's napping. I can only imagine how great I'll feel when she actually does sleep continuously through the night.
In a nutshell, she's our kid because she likes to eat and she likes to sleep, just like her mommy and daddy. I think we'll keep her afterall.

Yes, My blog is now pink!

In honor of my daughter, I have decided to give in to the "girlie girl" and make the site pink. This is mainly because being an infant she is often mistaken for a boy and so now there's no denying she is a she! Also, she's chubbed up a bit, so it is a little harder to tell. I guess I don't help when I sometimes take her out wearing green or yellow. There are so many nice people out there who don't want to offend me and will say something like "your baby is so cute. what is your baby's name?" Notice how they don't use pronouns!Then there are those upfront people who will just downright ask, "Is it a boy or a girl?" Part of me wants to make them guess or say something like "You can't tell what Jamie (Pat or Cameron or some other gender neutral name) is?" and then fake cry. But, alas, I'm too nice. I always feel self conscious and make a mental note to dress her in pink or purple the next time we go out, as I say "SHE's a Girl." Don't get me started on trying to get strangers to say her name correctly.
My mom asked when she could take Moira to get her ears pierced. I laughed and said she was too young. My mom hestiantly laughed too and said she was joking. Honestly, I think she wants to make sure that Moira is not mistaken for a boy anymore. Bring out the bows and ruffled panties! (GAG!)

Attack of the clothes dryer!

I realize that I haven't written for a while, but I didn't realize it was this long! Things here have been going fine except for our duel with our dryer. Normally I write about Moira and motherhood. She's great, growing like a weed, and starting to sleep a little better. I still don't quite fit in anything and my belly looks like a deflated balloon. But what's been the biggest event this past week, besides father's day of course, was our experience with our dryer.

Let me start at the beginning. We rent, so if things don't work or are broke, we call our landlord and more or less he either fixes them or buys us something new. Since we've been here (two years) we've gotten a new fridge, new washer, new dryer, new central air unit, new master bath toilet and a few visits from various handymen and our do it yourself landlord to fix things like our front door lock (it still looks like someone could break in) and our air/heat unit. Reading all this, I just realized what a piece of crap this place really was when we moved in. So many upgrades in such a short amount of time, it's almost like the money pit. Anyway, so over the past month, I noticed that it was taking longer and longer to dry clothes. Of course, I thought nothing of it and ocntinued to wash-dry. Now anyone with an infant knows the importance of a functional washer and dryer. Can we say spit-up??? Can we say 2-3 shirts a day because of spit-up? So, our washer and dryer are in pretty constant use, that is until two Tuesdays ago when the dryer just did not dry. It took 4 cycles at high to dry a small load of Mo's clothes and burpcloths. Yes, 4 cycles which means 70 min times 4- 280 minutes! Translations Almost 5 hours to dry her teeny tiny clothes! Bry calls the landlord, who claims someone will be out the next day. Wednesday, guy comes to clean the vent. Yes, that's the problem?!? After 20 minutes on the roof, he leaves. I think it's fixed so I dump a load of towels into the wash and then attmept to dry them. Again, I say ATTEMPT. Guess what? The dryer still does not work! So now besides having a dryer that takes over 5 hours to dry one load of towels, I still have laundry piling up! Bry calls the landlord yet again, and then Bry calls me to ask questions. The conversation went something like this:

Bry: Jac, how would you say the dryer is broke?
Jac: Uhh, it doesn't dry the clothers!
Bry: Yeah, I realize that, but landlord wants to know what's broken?
Jac: How the hell am I suppose to know? Do I know anything about dryers?
Bry: Neither do I. What the f***! This is annoying! We don't know anything about dryers. Can't he just come and fix it! UGH!
Jac: Try running out of clothes because your kid spit up over everything!
Bry: Yeah, well I need underwear and undershirts! Damn landlord. I'll call him back and attempt to tell him our problem.
Jac: Yeah, good luck with that! ....Crap she just spit-up on me again! F*** We really need that dryer working!

Landlord calls to say another guy will be coming on Saturday morning. Saturday morning landlord calls to say guy will be coming on Monday. The guy fixes a "blown fuse" and says that the vent hasn't been cleaned well. Yeah, I thought that's what the first guy fixed? In the meantime, I dragged my kid, her stroller, infant carseat, baby bag, two laundry bags of clothes, detergent, dryer sheets and my sanity to Bryan's aunt's house to use her washer and dryer. Thank God she lives only a few miles away. I then drag those above and the now clean and DRY clothes back to our place.

We call the landlord to explain that vent still needs to be fix. (again, this is the following monday!) He calls to say the vent cleaning people will be back on Wed. between 9:15-10;15. Bry decides to stay home on Wed. morning to oversee this debacle. We wake and I bring Mo downstairs at 8:40 while Bry heads to the bathroom. At 8:45 there's a knock on the door, and I answer....in my pajamas holding my baby. the vent cleaners are here...a half hour early. I shut the door on the guy and get Bry to come out of the bathroom. The guy now goes back onto the roof, and then climbs into our attic crawlspace. 30 minutes later he leaves. I wearily attempt to do a load of laundry. I place the wet towels into the dryer and......IT WORKS! Yippee! Bryan goes out to get breakfast, we sit down to eat and the smoke alarm goes off! BEEP! BEEP! BEEP! WTF?

Bry and I hightail it upstairs and find that the metal exhaust pipe that is suppose to blow the air outside has come off the back of the dryer and so it is now blowing all that hot humid air into our house. Again, this F***ing dryer! Bry shimmies the dryer out of the little laundry alcove and does to high steps to position himself behind the dryer. It's quite a funny picture. This large man, behind the dryer stuck next to the washer trying to attach a pipe to the wall. He attaches it, no big deal. Highsteps back to the front of the dryer and starts to shimmy the dryer back to the wall. That is until we notice that he smashes the pipe into the wall and thereby tears it!

Let me just say the next few hours include the following items in various amounts: duct tape, a trip to Home Depot, a screaming child who's explosive poopy diapers have soiled the bouncy seat thereby leaving no place but my arms for her to be, a sweaty, pissed off husband, two screwdrivers and enough expletives to last a lifetime! At approximately 2, the dryer was finally fixed the best it's going to be. Thank God!

You'd think that was it, right? However that night we discovered that all the outlets on the left side of our living room and kitchen are not working. We checked the circuit breaker, rebooted the fuses, and nothing. Called our landlord and you can only guess what happens next....let's just say I'm typing from the right side of our living room!

Vaccines and Cribs!

Moira had her 2 month appointment yesterday and boy has she grown. She's in the 77% for both her length and weight. She's already 23 1/8 in long and weighs 11 lbs. 15oz. She is defintely our child, and I can safely say that breastfeeding is working. Unfortunately, doctor's visits that first year of life pretty much consistently are comprised of being weighed, measured, and then poked! Moira had 5 shots and one oral vaccine. She held it together fairly well. Here is a recap- oral vaccine first. She sucks that down like there's no tomorrow. Next, the nurse turns Mo so that her body is lying across the examination table w/her legs hanging off. She braces her legs with her body as I take her hand. Poke-scream-suck pacifier repeat 4 more times. After five shots and three band-aids on her leg, she crashed and fell asleep in my mom's arms. Yes, my mom was there. Bry had to work and there was no way I was going to handle it all myself. I held Mo, my mommmy held me!

After the exam and shots, we met with the doc in his office. After answering a few questions, he asked about her sleeping patterns. I personally was quite proud that she had been sleeping for 4-4 1/2 hour stretches. I thought that was good. I knew my answer was crap, when he asked where she slept. After I said, with my head hanging down, that she still slept in our room in the pack and play. He asked why? Should I be honest, or lie. The good mother lie: I cannot fathom sleeping so far away from my child. I love having her so close. I'm scared to think she'd be all alone in her room in her crib. (Not my reason!) My real reason: She's close! In the middle of the night when she wakes up to nurse I only have to walk 5 steps pick her up and nurse, instead of walking out and into the next room. Yes....I am Lazy.

After confessing this, the doc explained that Mo and my sleeping patterns were becoming synchronized. That's why I seem to wake up exactly at same time as she. I also might be picking her up too soon, when she is in a light sleeping stage, mistaking it for awake/hunger. On top of that, he also mentioned that everytime we turn around in bed or make noises (Bryan's SNORING for example) could interrupt her sleep. Basically, he said that if we put her in the crib, she'll most likely sleep longer. Again, he said it was obviously up to me. After telling Bry this, we decided to try the crib and you want to know what.....She slept .....for exactly the same amount of time that she does in the pack and play! Perhaps, tonight she'll sleep longer! Oh well!

New Job Title: Full Time Mommy

I gave my letter to Cranford on Thursday. This September 2, while all the teachers of Cranford will convene with the new superintendent, I will celebrate my 30th birthday at home....with Moira. I am now a Stay-at-Home Mom. This will be the first time since I was five that I will not be going back to school in September. It's so strange to think like that. My calendar will not be marked with Open House and Fall Conferences, but now it will be doctor's appointments and playdates and hopefully lots of lunches with friends. I won't lie, I'm a little nervous about this new venture. I've always been the type of person to be doing a lot of different things at once. Grad school, teaching, commuting, coaching...now it's only one job- mom. From what I have heard, it's the hardest job around though.

We went to visit School last week. Of course, everyone loved her! I mean seriously, how can you not? It was funny though, because as we got there the Kindergarten classes were being dismissed. A couple of the kids came over to look at Mo in the stroller. At least 4 of the them commented on her hemangioma. It was hysterical as one little girl said very frankly, "Hey! Do ya know she's got sumpthin on her head?" When I told her, "yes. It's a birthmark." She replied, "cool. My cousin's got a birthmark too. Is that a binky? My brother has a binky but we call it a binkydoo. Bye!" And she was off to talk to her friend. Gotta love 6 year old attention spans!

Moira is two months old and it's strange. It seems like forever ago that I was teaching and pregnant, but in the same breath I remember being in the hosptial like it was yesterday. Tomorrow, we go to the doctors for her 2 month appointment. My mom is coming with me since I don't think I could handle her getting her shots all alone. I know she's going to go into full on DIVA mode and SCREAM her head off. As you know I've got a set of lungs, so you can only imagine what my child sounds like. Wish me luck!