are things complicated yet?

I think it says something about me that I'm so hung up on a single photograph (says I'm crazy-obsessive about pictures, that's what)

The outfit I wore home from the hospital is a Baby Dior silk creation of ivory and pink that my grandmother bought in 1979 on her way to see me in California. I was the first grandchild and a girl and, well, if that wasn't enough all on its own (it is) I was and still am very special to my grandmother. She's also the kind of lady who thinks Baby Dior is perfectly appropriate for a person's first outing. (Don't you?) Nobody rolls their eyes when you mention the Baby Dior in my family. We just nod our heads like yes, of course, all little girl babies come home in wee designer gowns, don't they?

When we found out that Claire was a girl, the Baby Dior came up and I was asked if I would like to have it for MY baby girl's first outfit. Of course I did!  What kind of pregnant lady says no to Baby Dior?

My grandmother gave me the outfit and I hung it in the Claire's closet. Sadly, that's as far as my enthusiasm for the Baby Dior went. I never got around to washing it (seemed appropriate since it had been almost 30 years) and it wasn't important enough when we were packing things up the night before I was induced.  I know you are shocked, but "hand wash and hang dry the Baby Dior" did not make the list of last-minute things we did that evening. I didn't bring the vintage designer gown and bonnet to the hospital.

After she was born the Baby Dior was, quite literally, the furthest thing from my mind. I mean, I liked it and I wanted to dress her in it but it just seemed so trivial at that point. I didn't care if she came home in only a diaper, just as long as we all went home and they sent me with prescription pain relief. 

Obviously, this meant that the Baby Dior was one of the first things my mother brought up post-delivery. Not in a pointed, accusing way but in an "ohhhh! BABY DIOR TIME!" kind of way. (Newborns aren't good for many interactive activities, but playing dress-up with them is actually quite satisfying.) Over my protests of "oh, don't WORRY about it!" she insisted on delivering the Baby Dior to us before we were discharged. She hand washed and hung it to dry in my hospital room and all the while I kept thinking this was WAY too much work for an outfit that we could just dress her in later.  It might not be her first outfit, like it was mine, but that was a teensy detail that could be overlooked since I was high on vicodin and hormones. (One does not really think about preshus memories and sentimental traditions post-delivery. You just don't.)

Even after all of that effort, when it was time to go home it seemed silly to put the happy, 2-day-old baby in a new outfit (you do not mess with a happy baby) for the express purpose of simply exiting the building. But, I insisted, over the raised eyebrow of my husband. It turned out that the Baby Dior was far too big on my seven pound baby. She was swimming in silk. (Awkward, but not a bad way to start out in life.)  We also realized that it was going to be rather weird putting a baby in a gown in the carseat. Should we crumple the gown under the buckle? Then it would get all messed up and there'd be a foot of gown to cram somewhere underneath her. That didn't look like a good idea. The bonnet was particularly troublesome. It was enormous on her tiny head, slipped over her eyes, served no functional purpose whatsoever and the pink ribbons practically screamed STRANGULATION IMMINENT, ALERT ALERT ALERT.

Huh. We looked at each other in the hospital room, all alone for what seemed like the first time in days, and realized that neither of us had ever put a person in a carseat before, much less a person in a silk gown and bonnet, or a person this TINY and BREAKABLE. This was more complicated than we cared to mess with. Even though the picture I was after required her to be IN THE OUTFIT when we arrived home, we quickly snapped a few photos of Claire on the hospital bed (the blue blanket was not, ahem, the nicest of backgrounds), called it a completed task and then put her in a simple onesie for the drive home.

She never wore the outfit again, not even when she got a bit plumper and it might have fit better, because it's kind of a fussy and impractical getup, even though it's lovely.

It's such a small, silly thing to want to cram into an already busy first few weeks of life, but I'd really like to make sure I get a good picture of our second daughter in the Baby Dior. I don't even feel overly sentimental about it, but it seems like a Nice Thing To Do that I might look back on and smile at when I'm an old lady. Perhaps my girls will want to use it if they have girls of their own one day, making it a third generation outfit at that point. (Wait, that idea does make me a bit sentimental and weepy.)

Do you have any family tradition or heirloom things like this, that you wish you'd done (or, if you're more on the ball, DID) with your kids? Or, things that you know you want to do with children/babies, that are still ahead of you?

I would never throw my husband under the bus on Amazon.com

I know that this is a gross oversimplification of the topic, but keeping Claire a breast-fed baby has been a rather easy task for me.

All of you women who got riled up just reading that?  Humor me for a moment. 

Put aside all of the high level stuff that makes breastfeeding a hot topic in some circles and look at it simply as a part of Things You Have To Do Today.

There's nothing to purchase, prepare, heat up, serve, clean up or wash.  (As if I need ANOTHER damn thing to do anyway.)

And you know what?  I'm lazy.  Lazy as all hell.  I had just given birth and doing dishes sounded kind of like another circle of hell.  I was all, "You mean I can just sit here and watch TV and feed the baby?  And that will make her stop crying right away?  Sweet.  Sign me up."

Even if I wanted to skip one of those night feedings and just have Chris give her a bottle so I could snooze more than 4 hours at a time?  Our house isn't a mansion and if Claire is crying EVERYONE CAN HEAR IT.  She sleeps less than ten feet from our door.

I'd have to listen to her whimper and scream while a bottle was prepared at 2 am and I'd be awake the entire time, tortured by her pathetic wails, and probably end up washing that bottle in the morning and DAMMIT JUST LET ME FEED HER IT WILL ONLY TAKE TEN MINUTES AND THEN WE CAN ALL GO BACK TO BED.

Bottle feeding was, for us, something that always seemed waaaaaay more complicated than it needed to be.  And I know that it's not that way for everyone, for a variety of reasons and that is just fine.  JUST FINE!  I don't know why some people insist on making women feel guilty one way or the other but I am NOT one of those pot-banging ladies.  This recent article in Atlantic Monthly brings up some really great points about the dubious science behind why it's so awesome anyway.  (Go on, read it - it's such a refreshing look at the topic.)

But you know what?  We are not getting into a discourse on Formula Versus Breast today.  We are so not getting on that high and mighty horse.

We are talking about the vast and mysterious world of Solid Foods and how oh-so-different it is going to be for me from nursing a teeny tiny blob of a baby.  Only a handful of tries with rice cereal and it's clear that this is going to be messy and complicated.  If I thought a little spit up was reason to fret?  Oh man, I had NO IDEA.

Solid foods are a gigantic mess when someone who is still fine-tuning her motor skills wants to test out those skills on a spoon of sticky goop and then see what it feels like to put the goop on her forehead. And her leg.  And on her chair.  And then on YOUR face.  (The answer?  STICKY!  Amazing!  Now let's take a bath. )

She's rapidly approaching 6 months of age and I've been reading up.  There are no fewer than thirty ba-million ways to introduce your kid to solid foods and all have varying degrees of "If you don't give your kids peas by week 36 he'll be screwed up forever and require therapy," and "Whatevs.  It's cool if she only wants bananas and avocados.  Mushed together.  Every meal.  For a year."  (Ew.)

Firstly, it's clear we will be needing a high chair of some sort.  This is unfortunate as I pretty much view high chairs as abominations of furniture and I was hoping to avoid one altogether.  I have a Stokke Tripp-Trapp.  It is from the early 80's and I used it as a child.  In fact, there are THREE of these in my family that my brother and I both used throughout the 80's. 

(We were trendsetters.) 

(Actually, no we were not.  Our grandmother just liked modern furniture and felt that we needed them.)

(Her house looks like Mad Men.  The office, not Betty Draper's house.)

(I am not making this up.  In fact, am planning a post on the striking similarities of my grandmother's house and Don Draper's office.  Stay tuned.)

Unfortunately, the old-school Tripp-Trapp is made for a child 18 months and older.  Not a baby.  They make a Tripp-Trapp today for a baby, but it costs, uh, lots of money.  I'm not too keen on paying $300 for something that essentially only has a one year usefulness before the chair I ALREADY HAVE can be used.

Just....no.

To Amazon I went.

And oh lord.  The ugliness.  The bulk.  The plastic.  The colors.  The...prices.  MON DIEU - Do you know how much high chairs are?  The decent ones are like, a hundred bucks!  And, by "decent" I mean the ones that you can clean easily - which is like, the MAIN FUNCTION of a high chair. 

And the reviews, which are usually helpful at Amazon?  Dude.  These parents are tough. Nobody seems to like anything.  Even when they give it 5 stars. 

This person gave a chair 4 out of 5 stars,  But it sounds like she totally hates the chair!  She even calls the toy lame because her child is likely too young to reach it.  Which, um, won't he grow a bit and be able to play with the toy one day?  Is this really a problem with the chair?

This is the only high chair I've used, but I'm quite happy with it. I have two complaints about it. The first is the fabric piping on the vinyl seat. The vinyl seat can be wiped off, but the piping on the seat needs to be washed. My second complaint is the price. Fisher Price makes a similar model that costs $40 less.  The toy is pretty lame. My son can't even reach any of the spinny things on it. I would buy the cheaper model if I were to buy another one. (I think the cheaper one doesn't have the fabric piping.)

Or look at this one.  She's basically saying this chair isn't for fat babies.  Is my child chubby?  HOW TO TELL?  I thought every kid had delicious baby thighs.  Are my baby's thighs TOO delicious?  And don't most of the trays adjust OUT as well, making the whole point moot?

If your child quite skinny, no problem. But if normal or chubby, the tray will likely push against their ribs as they get up to 10+ months old. 

This guy just blamed the entire thing on his wife.  Nice job dude.  Also, everything on his con list is pretty much a con of the entire high chair category.  Did he not know what a high chair was before his wife bought one?  And why is HE writing the review and throwing his wife under the bus?  Does she know she's being trashed on Amazon for her pattern choice?

Pros:
Vinyl is easy to wipe down
Trays can be pulled off and wiped down easily too
Tray actually ensures child is secured in, with the addition of the straps gives you peace of mind
Chair can grow with your child
Can be folded - but I never do this!

Cons:
Stuff can get tucked away in crevices and tricky to get out and clean
Graphic design is awful! (blame my wife - she picked it!)
Wheels don't move well on carpet [Dude, why are you feeding your kid on carpet?]
Its big!

We ended up getting a Chicco Polly.  It's big.  It's overly bright.  It was more than $100.  It was everything I didn't want in a highchair.

But it folds up nice and skinny.  And with my tiny kitchen that was what sold me.  Claire seems to dig it.  Right now she's just playing with toys on the tray while we do things in the kitchen and she likes being up high and able to see what's going on. 

I think I'm ready for this messy adventure of pureed fruits and vegetables now.  The days of the neat and tidy ten minute feeding are so O-V-E-R. 

As if women who are pregnant need any more assvice - but here I go giving it out anyway

When I was pregnant I had seemingly limitless scraps of paper in my pockets and purses, posted on the fridge and lying on counter tops.  Each scrap had some sort of important Baby Thing! on it.  Whether it was something to be purchase, organize, fix, move, paint, store, put together or research - by God it was on a list so it would not be forgotten. 

One of the things that was on the master list was buying a thermometer.  Because, you know, babies get sick. (Especially babies in day care.  ARGH.) I didn't research this one much though - I just sort of figured "thermometer, yeah, whatever."  I picked up a $2.99 thermometer on the baby aisle at Wal-Mart and called it a day.

BIG MISTAKE.

Yesterday when I picked up Claire she seemed to be emanating heat.  I figured it was because she had just woken up and was wrapped in a blankie.  (Because babies can be cuddly and warm that way sometimes.) We left, went to Wal-Mart and came home.  At Wal-Mart she had this sort of dazed look on her face the entire time.  I thought she was tired and zoning out in the cart.

Oh ho, did I feel like a bad mommy when we got home and she was STILL hot.  Really hot.  I nursed her and put the $2.99 thermometer under her armpit.  It s-l-o-w-l-y clicked upwards.  It took forever.  (Gah!  Cheap-ass thermometer!)  While it was ticking upwards over ten minutes I considered how horrible this process would be if she was really wiggly and upset rather than laying quietly in my lap.  There would be no way in hell she would tolerate this poky thing in her armpit.

Meanwhile, the cheap-ass thermometer kept ticking north.

I resolved to buy a new one - one of the fancy ones that you stick in a kid's ear and does the job in a few seconds.

Claire was done eating.  Thermometer still hadn't beeped (WTF!?  Is it done?).  But it did read 101.1 degrees at that point.

I waffled.  Was cheap-ass thermometer lying to me?  Or was my baby really running a fever?  I put it in my own mouth.  It never beeped, but it never rose above 98.7 either.

I called her pediatrician (yes, the same one I am in the process of dumping) and spoke to the nurse.  Since she was still in a good mood, had no other symptoms and was still eating well she told me to just keep a close eye on her and give her some Tylenol.

Um, ok?

But still, I wondered if her fever was higher than 101.1?  Since the cheap-ass thermometer never beeped?  The Mommy-Worry kicked in.  I sent Chris back to Wal-Mart to buy a better thermometer.

(OH NO THE APOCALYPSE IS UPON US.  TWO TRIPS TO WAL-MART IN THE SAME DAY.  HORROR!)

He returned with a Braun product that does the job really quickly - with a very satisfying beep to boot!   (Excellent job, Chris.)  I appreciated it even more when she mumbled at midnight and I wanted to check her temperature again - I stuck it in her ear without even waking her up all the way.  

So, lesson learned.  Cheap-ass thermometer is in the trash. 

Ladies who are pregnant, heed this warning:  Do not buy a cheap-ass thermometer!  Spring the $40 for the digital ear one. 

Because when your baby gets sick for the first time it will be so pathetic and so sad you'll want to do everything you can to help her.  Going to Wal-Mart isn't something you'll be into doing at that point.

This is where I just accept my reality and move on to the pile of cookies in the kitchen

Earlier this week I missed Claire's 1 month appointment with the pediatrician.  I showed up on Tuesday and it was on Monday.

I gave myself a break.  I AM a new mom after all.  I am ALLOWED to be forgetful on some things like that.  It's even a bit cliché and funny isn't it? 

"Oh, ha ha!  I forgot what day our Doctor's appointment is!  Heee!  I'm a NEW MOM!  I'm all scatter brainy and stupid with love for my preshus bayyybeeeeee!  I can't remember even the simplest of details because I am preoccupied with feeding her every ten minutes!"

No big deal.  We rescheduled for today.  I took it all in stride. 

The appointment was at 1120.  I showed up at 130, got a stern look from the nurse, apologized profusely and rescheduled AGAIN for next Tuesday. 

On being a good Mom and overall organized human being today:  UTTER AND COMPLETE FAIL.

It wouldn't have been so bad if I was not the kind of person who is never late.  Let me stress that: NEVER.  I am known among my friends as somewhat inflexible on the topic.

I never miss an appointment.  N-E-V-E-R!  I give people the evil eye if they are minutes late and have not called to give me polite notice.  I start meetings on time even if people aren't there - to drive home the point that being late or a no show is not acceptable.  I call people who have not RSVP'd to my parties and chew them out for being unkind and insensitive to other people's schedules and plans. 

Being punctual is, to me, a character trait on par with such important things as loyalty, honesty and a good sense of morality. 

Now that I have been One Of Those People to my pediatrician I am so embarrassed.  I am upset.  I can't believe that I can't seem to follow the simplest of directives.

Some days I look in the mirror and I don't even recognize myself any more.