News...You Can USE!

Summer, funny you should mention my abundance of hair. I am on the verge of cropping it, since it is driving me insane. If anyone has any suggestions for where to find pictures of cute short hair, preferably that would look good on a round and round-faced lady with chunky glasses, and preferably available free of charge on The Internet, please to be sharing. I thank you.

And speaking of The Internet:

Ha HA! OH MY GOD THE INTERNET IS BACK ON!

*gasp gasp*

OH THANK GOD!

*embraces AirPort*

So! Good good times here at the Casa LP. As you saw in the (unforgivably gigantic and sideways) pictures in the previous post, we are in a house now! Without lead paint flaking off the kitchen cabinets! Also without persons smoking crack on the front porch (yes!)! Or people yelling threats at Sean when he walks the dog at night! In fact, the dog is allowed to go out on her own here, in the backyard, naked (well, sans harness).  It's a sweet life, largely courtesy of Sean's generous family. I will be making a lot of Christmas candy, this year.

You will be disappointed to hear, perhaps (because it's not funny, this way!), that we are getting a shockingly reasonable amount of sleep at night -- usually a couple of three-hour stretches, and it has been this way from the beginning, and probably everything will change at three months and you can look for me on IM at four in the morning, manic with tiredness. As it is I have only seen one late-night episode of Futurama*. For that we must thank good fortune, Sean's acceptance of his role as Changer of the Midnight Diapers, and the birth ball I sat on for months, now renamed Dr. Blueball. I imagine we may come to regret this at some point, which is why I called him that in the first place. Anyway, whenever the Smouse gets to fussing, Sean takes a ride on he's-the-one-they-call-Dr. Blueball (he's the one who makes you feel ALL RIGHT**) and before too long, Sophia is O-U-T. The swaddling helps, of course. God bless that Dr. Harvey Karp.***

Thanks to a wonderful lactation consultant, my nipples no longer feel as though I have been been nursing a wolverine (copyright my sister Bridget, 2005), and my ridiculous fire-hose-spray oversupply (hey, we all saw that coming) has dwindled to a mere garden-hose abundant. If you know of any baby goats weaned untimely from the teat and longing for the pleasures of milk, please send them my way. Also if you have run out of Cremora. Which reminds me that Remorseless Remora is what I call my daughter (one of the forgotten Sweet Pickles), which reminds me that you have NO IDEA what I mean when I say "the Smouse". Sophia has acquired the requisite ridiculous nonsensical nickname according to familial tradition. The poor child will never know she has a name until she digs up her birth certificate for college applications, at which point she will discover that my maiden name was misspelled courtesy of the whatever bureau of vital records is in charge of these things, though it maintains that This document was reproduced verbatim from the form provided, which is bullshit because why would I misspell my own name that nobody else but me ever spells right? Idiots. Now I have to blah blah notary blah blah Social Security whatever to get them to fix it. Feh.

Anyway, as far as any of us are concerned, her name is The Smouse (rhymes with/comes from Mouse, because she is somewhat squeaky). I think Sean came up with it. I like it; it suggests both tiny-ness and peskiness, somehow. The Smouse is no longer tiny, weighing in at ten pounds four ounces as of this afternoon (that's well over an ounce a day, which is why I will need the baby goats), and she seems to be going blond. I think her eyes will stay blue, too, and her skin has retained a sort of golden cast. She also has a ferocious case of baby acne, poor kid.

The birth story has been coalescing in my head, these past weeks, and now I can tell a fleshed-out version, including the premonitions of all attendees, the downstairs discussions during active labor, the back story. I like that. However, in the meantime, we have become Those People, You Know the Ones, With the Frozen Placenta They Don't Know What to Do With (since I certainly was not going to eat it, there in the hospital, and the midwife said it was looking kind of old anyway), and since yesterday was the equinox, and today the Smouse is a month old, and since we now have a backyard, we're gonna bury the thing and plant nasturtiums over it in the spring. Or something. I don't know. But it's thawing, in the fridge next to the yogurt and in a strikingly similar container, so the clock, you know, tick tock, tick tock. I better get to digging.

*Bender has a dating service.

**Is it bad to sing Motley Crue parodies to a newborn?

***who made us look like Total Expert Badasses there in the Babies R Us (confession: we were purchasing the Aquarium Whatsis swing, which while hideously gaudy is the most powerful of swings, and is responsible for my ability to eat this nutritious breakfast every morning), when Sophia started to cry and we rapidly swaddled, shushed, and swung her, quieting a fuss-fest within seconds, and eliciting looks both sympathetic and admiring from passers-by).

Comments

[Jen]

I'm glad to see other parents loving the Karp--I think he saved our godson's life. I give that book to everyone I know who's having a baby, in hopes that it will spare their parents several months of trauma.

Also, I thought you might like to know that I recently heard of a novel new use for breastmilk, which may have you shying away from just giving it to the goats: a friend of a friend apparently used her breastmilk to round out her homemade chocolate-chip cookie recipe. (Interestingly enough, at the same party where this was mentioned, there was also talk of frightening people who not only ate the placenta, but did so by putting it in a fruit smoothie. I think the backyard sounds like a much nicer idea.)

[Ollie]

WOOOOOOOOOOW, Sweet Pickles!! I didn't think anyone else ever knew those books (I had all of them). We call my oldest cat "Me Too, Iguana" because she always wants to be in on what everyone else is doing.

As for 'dos, this is a decent site for hairstyles:
http://www.hair-styles.org

It's where I found the style I got in this picture (and one I am considering doing again).
http://www.oliviadrab.com/images/mlmamelie.JPG

[Natalee]

I Heart Sweet Pickles almost as much as I Heart You. Hey Ollie, I had the whole set too!!

[sunny]

I remember LONGING for sweet pickles books when I was little. I'm not sure what seemed so elusive about them - were they mail-order or something? I forget.

Good to see y'all doing well!

[Jo]

Um, that was the cutest hair EVER. Now I can never post pictures of myself again, because they will be dwarfed by the cuteness.

I believe they were sold on TV, these fine works of literature. Remember the horrible song?

Smart moms know how kids' minds grow upON
SWEET PICKLES

(Thanks, Mom!)
SWEET PICKLES!

[Shelley]

As far as the sleeping thing goes--my daughter was like Sophia, incredibly reasonable about sleeping from the first day we had her home. I spent a lot of time anxiously waiting for the other shoe to drop (and lying awake freaked out that she hadn't gotten up yet), but that was just her and things only got better from there. I bet Sophia will follow a similar pattern. Wait 'til she sleeps through the night for the first time. Heh. A sure way to freak out her lovely parents...I remember rushing in, convinced she was dead, and waking her up.

Sleeping considerations aside, enjoy, congratulations, and welcome back!

[Kay]

cute short hair, preferably that would look good on a round and round-faced lady with chunky glasses,

Well - I don't have glasses, but I have the rest. I'll email you a pic of me if you want.

[Tracy]

if it helps, I wrote down my mother's birth date on the birth certificate with my firstborn. Only to see it was wrong when I got the birth certificate. In my defense, my mother's birth month is the same as mine, and I was tired, and it asked for MOTHER'S birth date, and so I guess I put down my mother's birth date... instead of remembering that *I* was the mother...

congratulations on successfully joining the internet again. Your Smouse is adorabelle.

Nice to hear that the Karp is working for you. I gave his book to somebody solely because somebody else recommended it for new parents, and I thought, why not? I didn't know about him when mine were wee ones.

[Adria]

I cut my hair short and then shorter and really love it. You can see the pics at http://tinyurl.com/9r396 and http://tinyurl.com/dkunx As for swaddling, the Miracle Blanket has been a life saver for me with the twins.

[mama-bean]

Yeah! Looking forward to the Birth Story!

[Rosie_Kate]

Glad to see you back on the net, and love the pics of your sweet baby! It sounds like you have fussy baby syndrome, though... it'll get better! It really will!

I think I got more sleep after my baby was born (all I had to do was pull him into bed and nurse/snooze) than I did before (when I couldn't get comfortable for anything!). Well there was a little stint around 3 weeks when we were all sick with colds, baby was up a lot at night, and I had recurring breast infections, but otherwise, nights were no problem. A baby who cried all day (indeed, until midnight)and would not nap, that was something else.

[Brooklyn Girl]

Missed you!

My hair is making me nuts too. I'm wondering if shaving it all off is too drastic a move.

[Lisa C.]

"Smouse" is cracking me up, mainly because it's so close to the nickname we came up with for my son when he was a newborn.

He was a screamer and was really tiny, so we started calling him "Fussy Mouse." Then, to keep myself from chucking him out the window, I would pace the floor with my screaming infant saying, "Nobody likes a Fussy Mouse."

As he got older and less fussy, we were just calling him mouse, or more often, the Moosh (which is Farsi for mouse). I still call him the Moosh to this day.

[anna]

You might want to wait before you cut since a lot of that hair will most definitely fall out in the next few months. Nobody told me that would happen after I delivered, but all that hair that you retain while pregnant (hence the thickness) finally goes in MASS QUANTITIES a few months after you deliver.

[Rayne of Terror]

My hair starting falling out in bunches around 6 weeks pp. Ugh, the horror.

Your Smouse is a doll, she is so beautiful. My hubs also bounced our baby to sleep on the big blue ball for the first few months. Now at 8 months he plays with it a lot.

Glad you have a good sleeper. We did until around 4 months then it all went to poop. The teeth, the teeth. In the last couple weeks we've gotten back on track. It took so long because we couldn't agree on a method to implement so I just went along as a zombie for 3 1/2 months. When you are still a reasonable human being (ha ha) you might want to decide on a plan in advance of any potential sleep problems. Review the literature, that sort of thing.

Good luck to you all. Glad you are posting again and living in a better place.

[jessica]

I can still remember learning about people saving their baby's placenta back in english class in 9th grade (nooo clue how we got on that subject) and my class spent the rest of the day cracking jokes about people eating the placenta

[elisabeth]

I had a placenta in my freezer literally for years, my daughter is old enough now that she remembers planting it with the lilac bush which she tells everyone, "its my placenta plant!"

Ime, you only joke about eating placenta until you are at home bleeding out and that is the one thing that makes it stop. Amazing what you will do when you have to. That said I'd never do it again....

Can't wait to read your birth stories!

[karyn]

Smouse is a great nickname! Definitely implies cute and little.

My daughter Clare answers to 'Bee' due to a toy we got her for her first Christmas called Peekaboo Bee, as opposed to Bea Arthur. Bee has been changed to Beatrix on several occasions, and when she is in trouble she can be summoned with a Clare Nicole Mortimer Ichabod (Last Name Here)!

Her little brother, Scott, we started calling Doom Doom Catepillar (from a song we made up), which has been shortened to Doom Doom and just Doom. He's 1 and a half answers to both of these, as well as his actual name. I actually think it might have affected his personality as he is, erm, Busy, shall we say?

So there you are: two kids with perfectly good names, answering to Bee and Doom. It stands to reason that Smouse will not answer to Sophia until well into her school years!

[Jo]

Still haven't buried the placenta.

I was sort of disappointed I didn't get to eat it (because I was SERIOUSLY all about the eating of the placenta), but in the post-birth craziness, it got put in a yogurt container and forgotten, and it sat in the windowsill of my hospital room for two days.

In the sun.

Fermenta placenta. I'm afraid to open the container, actually.

[Brandee]

Ew. I'm glad you didn't eat the placenta. Only have seen that done once and it's really not pretty. Just plant it.

[Menita]

Just saw the pictures - she is just BEAUTIFUL! Wowingly, sniffle inducingly beautiful.

[Brandee]

BTW~ The "Ew" was in reference to the fermenta placenta. I'm guessing that spoiled placenta is really icky -- because fresh placenta? Not so pretty. It will make great fertilizer -- spoiled or not. Re-reading my comment -- it just didn't come out the way it sounded in my head.

[jennifer and the beans]

Ahhh, we got so much use out of our blue ball, too. I sat on it comfortably all through the last trimester, did some of my early labor on it, and then it did indeed work wonders in the baby-calming department for months thereafter. Even now, 3 years later, it is still rolling around the house. The kids like to play with it.

[Jody]

The kids read Me Too, Iguana whenever they go to Grammas. Again and Again and Again.

I think I have vague memories of Sweet Pickles from my younger brother. Because there's something about that hideous green color that brings back faint memories....

Glad all is well. Your baby is so cute, it was worth turning sideways to see her.

[Cecily]

Welcome back, dear. We've missed you. Your daughter is glorious.

If you like, I have an absolutely brilliant hairdresser to recommend for short cuts.