I clearly need to get tough

Being a mom isn't for the faint of heart. And I clearly need to get tough. I absolutely cannot turn into jelly when she has a boo-boo (that I inflicted on her, no less). I think it just gets her upset since I think she's a sensitive child who picks up on vibes. Here's the sitcho: Peanut has long fingernails. And they grow ridiculously fast. I don't think this an uncommon thing with kids. Anyway, for the past few months (since we've allowed her to have her hands) I've cut her nails while she's asleep. This worked for awhile, but as she gets older - it's not as effective. So, I thought, hell, I'm the mommy, I need to just grab her little hand and cut the nails. I mean, it just wasn't getting done the old way and it needed to. Things went fine with the fingers. She looked a little perplexed, but that's it. Then came the thumb. I ended up nipping her skin and it started to bleed. And it just didn't seem to ever want to stop. At this point, I'm starting to feel a bit frantic. So she starts to cry. Which makes me more frantic. Which makes her scream. Which makes me even more frantic until we are both complete messes. Flashback to the hospital when we received bad advice from the baby nurse and cut her fingernails - and nicked her skin. We got written up so the pediatricians could take a look at what we did. Great, we're already bad parents. Fast forward back to today. We don't have any teeny bandages. Shit. Why don't we have first aid ready for our child? So I jam an adult-sized band-aid onto her thumb. Okay. Crap, she sucks on her hands all the time. What if she sucks the band-aid right off her thumb, swallows it and chokes? Band-aid off. At this point, the cut has clotted. Okay, cool. I go to change her diaper and throw her laundry in the wash. Next thing I notice is some dots of blood on her "Mommy's Little Monster" onesie. AACCK! The cut is bleeding again. Now what? Then I got the genius idea to run her hand under the bathroom tap. Why, I have no clue. It works for burns, I thought. We are both frantic again. I go get another band-aid to jam on her thumb. Since it's nap time, I again can't allow her to wear a band-aid unsupervised. Then a brainstorm. Why don't I swaddle her right arm so she can't get to that bandaged thumb. Yeah. Where are her swaddles? Crap, both of her bigger swaddles are in the laundry. I only have one small one. I cram the screaming child into it. I nurse her. She seems to relax. Hurrah for the magical boob. I'm only partially better. I'm worried that she'll wiggle that arm loose and proceed to then choke on the band-aid. Off it comes for the second time. I put her down to sleep. I go eat some chocolate.

Maybe I should go look. Make sure she isn't bleeding to death.

Damn! She caught me. I snuck in there to peek and she opened her eyes at that moment. I rushed out of there. Hmm... did she look unusually pale? I better go try to peek again.

Okay, she is back asleep. The thumb seems okay, too. I'm such a freaking rookie.

I know this post seems a little melodramatic. The point is that I need to get tough. I managed to turn a little teeny cut into a catastrophe. Or is it a fiasco? Either way, what am I going to do when her first boyfriend doesn't call her?

She Did It! Update

This is sort of funny, since Peanut rolled over last Monday, she has shown no signs of doing it again. I mean, zero interest. Not even close to thinking about possibly being interested in attempting this feat again. It cracks me up. It's like - Yup, I did it. Check me off, but I don't see how this adds to my current situation. It reminds me to chill out about developmental milestones. Just like with the swaddle thing. She will crawl. She will walk. She will talk. At her pace. So I'm not going to add to our stress by worrying about this stuff. She'll get there in her own time. Just like today. It's AM nap and not only is she not swaddled, but she even fell asleep by herself with no paci, either. So there.

Her doctor seems pretty low key about this sort of stuff, too. There has never been talk about percentiles. She asked about how breastfeeding is going, if Peanut rolled over yet and if she's developing teeth. That's pretty much it. I think the no pressure vibe. That works for me. Anyway, Peanut had her four-month check up yesterday. Things seem to be progressing. She's growing - and that's her number one job.

We had a nice time at the beach this weekend. We even mini golfed. I actually played better when I was wearing Peanut in the carrier. As soon as we put her in the stroller, I sucked. I'm going to adopt playing with one hand always.

Other than that, I'm just waiting for MY bailout to come.

She Did It!

She rolled over from front to back. I'm pretty sure she didn't mean to. Even though I knew she would do it any day now, we still both looked a little surprised at each other. I tried to encourage her to do it again, but no such luck. She couldn't figure it out. I'm happy that she's developing, but now I have to keep an even closer eye on her since she's now on the move.

She was just wonderful this weekend. We had a super social Saturday and she took it with pretty good humor. We kept waiting for her next day meltdown and it never happened. Well, it happened this afternoon. It didn't help that her rashy neck was especially raw. ??? I try to keep after it with varying degrees of success. I'm not sure what the deal is there. It must bother her quite a bit. At least it should clear up when she gets her neck. There's not much there yet. :) It's tough to get screamed at by someone you love for 30 minutes and I was dumbfounded when my usual remedy of nursing didn't seem to work. She was crying too much to stay latched on. After I calmed her down, she fell right to sleep. Totally emotionally spent, I went and ate some cake and felt much better.

PS I love cake. Cake cake cake!
PPS I find I waste too much time on Facebook. I'm going to have to limit it to once a week.

Back in Blog

Big news! Peanut slept last night with her arms completely free of the swaddle. Sure, her bottom half is still in the swaddle, but it really serves more as a blanket for her. And see, I was afraid her college roommate would have to swaddle her before bed. :) We followed a slow course of allowing her to have an arm each night - switching it up. For the past week, she's spent nap times with her arms free. And now, voila! All night. I'm so proud of her. She totally rocks. If fact, I've noticed a huge change in her this week. She just seems more okay with the world. More used to things. It's amazing to watch her develop. The best is hearing her laugh, though. She will play in her gym and just laugh at Monsieur Monkey and Ellie Elephant. It makes me laugh to watch her. She's not protesting things as much, either. I plunked her in the Ergo carrier and walked down to meet Bob at the trolley stop. Not a peep. The stroller, too. As long as she can sit straight up and see out. Another cool thing is that she recognizes Bob and gives him the biggest smile when he returns home from work - like she's so excited to see him. And now I think she'll be ready to roll over any day now (from front to back).

Okay, enough about the Mommy stuff. I need to get some other stuff off of my mind. This election is really starting to eat at me. Granted, I have a certain amount of cynicism toward politics in general. Six years "inside the Beltway" can do that to you. But this is starting to get ridiculous. No one is debating REAL ISSUES. It's all that stupid pointless personality crap. Can we please move past the Bridge to Nowhere? What are you going to do to fix healthcare? How are you going to stimulate the economy? It's almost like issues we face today have gotten too complex and no one is able to sit down and focus on it. It's all about the soundbite or talking point. Whether true or untrue. Grab and go. What pithy saying can you drill into the minds of voters so they forget what's really at stake? What I want to know is which came first: the political rhetoric of saying nothing or that the public doesn't want to listen? I know eight years of Bush has dumbed us all down. His "decisiveness" is just a ploy at not dealing with things in a deep and real way. Issues are not black and white. They are so many shades of gray here that get ignored.

Oh and this is scary... I heard yesterday that McCain has been consulting with Karl Rove. Ugh! ACCKKK! I thought I could live begrudgingly with a McCain presidency because basically anything is better than what we have now (and, again, Bush taught us all to aim low). But this is clearly more of the same. How can he tout himself as a "maverick" and a bringer of change to Washington if he's enlisting the help of Rove? That seems like politics as usual to me.

I have to admit that I am resigned to living through a McCain-Palin administration. I just get a bad feeling about the whole thing. This is the cynicism thing again, but a population who could re-elect Bush in 2004... well, I guess I just don't expect that much from. It makes me sad to feel this way about my fellow Americans. But there you have it. I mean, this is the country that also brought you the search for the next Pussycat Doll show.

PS I'm so sick of that "I Kissed a Girl" song.