Whole Lotta Poop Talk- Baby Update (2 1/2 months old)

An e-mail to family and friends, written when Corinne was 2 1/2 months old. My favorite part is how I signed it.

Hi all,

Well, this would be the second time that I am writing this email. I am so frustrated. Last Wednesday Pete took the baby to the mall (to buy my birthday presents) and I had a glorious 2 1/2 hours to myself. I thought, what shall I do with this rare and wonderful opportunity? Why, I think I will email my beloved family and friends. It's been on my To Do list for weeks. So I sat down and spent a good hour typing it out, choosing to miss Little House on the Prairie, of which I am a closet fan of, and never get to watch when Pete is around because he makes fun of it the whole time. I hit send and the log-in window popped up for no particular reason. I logged in and blip! The email was gone. I prayed it went through anyway but no such luck. I had to add "Email family and friends" back onto my to do list. One step forward, one step back. So this email is probably not going to be as interesting, creative or insightful as the original, or at least I'll tell you that and you'll never know if you missed the world's best email or not.

Speaking of one step forward, one step back, Corinne is doing pretty well. That really does sum up new parenthood. You think you've got yourself a nice little routine, even "a schedule" and you think, I've got the hang of this parenting thing! I know what to expect on any given day! Look at me being a mom- I'm a pro at this. Then the baby slaps you back into reality. Babies don't want to be predictable. They think you may get bored with them so they decide to do funny things like stop pooping on a daily basis. Instead they poop every other day, and when they do, they go so much that it explodes out of their diaper up their back, down their legs, you name it. You thank God that you were at home and not in the car or at Babies R Us or worse- out on a walk with baby in that wraparound snuggly carrier thingie. Then you notice that baby poops at exactly 2:15 every other day, so you plan your day around that diaper change- clothes off ahead of time, fresh, non urine saturated diaper for maximum poopie absorbability, paper towels ready (baby wipes are not enough to clean up the 2 gallons of poopie that comes out). Then baby poops at 10:30 instead, in a new outfit that she's never worn before, and boy does baby poop stain if you don't get it rinsed immediately. So now diaper changing also involves laundry washing, and sometimes a bath, too. One time I managed to extricate the outfit without mishap, only to have her pee all over herself while her diaper was off, which has become Corinne's MO. At least bath time has become more bearable. Corinne hated bath time for the first 11 weeks. She acted like we were washing her in hydrochloric acid, followed by a brisk rub down with the barbed wire towel. She screamed much harder during bath time than she did for her first set of vaccinations, which consisted of four rapid-fire needle jabs, one in each limb. It really is the very definition of "screaming bloody murder". I'm always afraid the police are going to knock on the door to look into a report of child abuse. So one day we decided to video tape this spectacle so we can laugh about later, when she grows up to be a quiet, demure young lady (don't see that happening!). Always one step ahead of us, Corinne decided that now bath time is OK, even mildly amusing. Oh well. She may have won the battle, but I think we won the war on that one.

Corinne and Seven are developing an interesting relationship. Corinne finds the texture of Seven's fur to be quite overstimulating. If we lay her down on Seven she grabs her fur and goes crazy. She makes these funny yelling noises and starts flailing around. Seven's goal is to lick Corinne's tonsils at every available opportunity. She is smart enough to know that this is most easily done when the baby is crying, thereby adding fuel to the fire. Quid pro quo, Corinne also likes to lick Seven's fur. It's pretty gross all around. Seven is adjusting pretty well to this invasion to her little world, overall. She comes and gets me if Corinne is crying downstairs and I am upstairs (like every time I try to go to the bathroom), not that I can't hear her loud and clear on my own, mind you. We have noticed that Seven seems to be showing her age for the first time, though. She's becoming an old dog, I'm sad to say. She's starting to slow down a lot and gets tired faster. She also has old dog farts.

On the work-front, I officially put in my notice last week. Pete, Corinne, Seven and I went to Ogunquit Maine for a few days and my boss called three times while we were away. Turns out she's quitting, too, which made giving my notice much easier. A vet and one of the vet techs quit, too. Way to go H****- they're dropping like flies. Of course they don't see it as a problem within the department- they blame the "industry" companies for stealing people away. Couldn't possibly be a problem with their archaic operational structure of such a prestigious institution. Anyway, within a half hour my bosses boss called me to "bounce some ideas off of me about the possibility working part time". Hmm, does anyone recall how I asked about working part time about 6 months ago and was given a resounding "no way- can't be done" by this very same man? Now suddenly we're thinking of hiring a training manager (dangling carrot, anyone?) to oversee the new trainers that we'll be hiring and surely the coordination of said training could be done on a part time basis. I told him that I was not prepared to return to work right now, both because I don't have day care lined up and because I am simply not emotionally ready to put Corinne in day care right now. Frankly, she's way to high maintenance and demanding. She would need one staff member devoted just to her to cater to her every whim and need like I do. She is a demanding, unreasonable, ungrateful boss and I just don't think anyone could put up with it like her devoted parents do. Well, Big Boss said they'd wait until Spring, when I had mentioned to my boss that I would have to go back to work by due to our money running out. I left it pretty open ended and non-committal. It's not my first choice to return there, but it is nice to have something to fall back on if need be.

Pete's work is going pretty well. He's working on a paper that will be published in a trade magazine for our field. I am very proud of him. He'll be happy to be done with it, though. He's co-writing it with another supervisor who has not been overly helpful with it, and their deadline for this second round of edits is next week.

We're having a Halloween party next weekend, so we're looking forward to that. Halloween is our favorite. Pete wants to build a coffin for Corinne to sleep in during the party. He's a sick, sick man. OK, I think I repeated most of what was in my original email and anything I forgot must not have been that important anyway. I saved this one to drafts several times, which seems to have wreaked havoc with my spacing for some reason, so I apologize for that. #$%^&* computer! I'll write again when I have something to talk about.

Love A,

Corinne's personal servant and court jester

(True to his word, here's a photo of said coffin. And yeah, that's a tombstone she's next to. We made one for each family member, including Seven. Hey, I warned you that we love the inappropriate!)

Pregnancy Update (month 5)

I thought I'd start off with some e-mails I wrote to family and friends during my pregnancy. This one was written when I was around 5 months pregnant.


Hi everyone,
I'm pretty disgusted with my job right now. I was hoping to come back part-time after my maternity leave, and work 2 1/2 days a week so that the baby would only be in daycare 2 days. I spoke with my boss and she seemed to think it was do-able, but she needed to discuss it with her boss (she's still relatively new here). I didn't hear anything for three weeks so I figured it was a done deal. Well, last week, as I was walking out the door to go on vacation for a week my boss stopped me to tell me that the powers that be have decided that my position needs to be full time so part time was not an option, at least not permanently. I could probably come back part time for a month or two to ease back in but ultimately I'd need to work full time. She told me to think it over. Well, the more I think about it the more angry and hurt I feel. <<Ugh! There was a big long, egotistical, self-pitying tirade here that, frankly, I am too embarassed to post so I deleted it. If you saw it you'd probably never read this blog again because you'd be like, what a whiny bitch! This just proves my point that it's funny to go back and read your thoughts on something after the moment has passed.>> I'll spare you any more of my tirade. The bottom line, then, is that I will be a full time stay at home mom, at least for a little while. I am worried that I am going to go out of my mind. I know I won't be bored, but I won't be "intellectually and creatively challenged". But the prospect of trying to find a new job with a baby is equally scary. I just feel really strongly that I don't want to miss out on watching the baby's first few years, and I don't like the idea of her being raised by strangers in day care. I also don't know how women do it- staying up with a baby all night and then working full time. It's got to be exhausting.

On the pregnancy front, last week I started to feel her kick. At first I wasn't positive but now there's no mistaking it. She kicks a LOT! I can't help but think that if she wasn't in the womb she'd be throwing a fit and screaming every time I feel her. I also started to show pretty noticeably in the period of a week. It's like she doubled in size or something. Maybe it's just because I don't have any full length mirrors in my house, but my friend took a picture of me and I was like, Good Lord, what happened?!! It's hideous! I'm as big around as I am tall (of course, it also looks like I've got twin babies in my rear end, which doesn't help).

So I took all of last week off to work on "Project Baby Room Mural". We're doing an underwater theme. I found really cute bedding and matched the colors to it. The walls are a light sea greenish blue color and then we painted a whale with a baby watching over the crib, an octopus with a treasure chest, a shark (but he's cute, with a fish kissing him), some sting rays, a sea turtle, seahorses and a bunch of fish. I also painted "Ocean Family", which is me as a beautiful and well endowed mermaid holding a baby mermaid, Pete in snorkeling gear, and, the piece de resistance, Seven with a scuba mask. I am very pleased with the way it came out. The rest of the room is a work in progress, as I know I will continue to obsess over it until the day the baby is born (and probably after that. I can see myself rocking her to sleep and fixating over a spot where I painted outside of the lines). We still want to add more fish and coral and shells and all that.

My friend Diane came for the week and helped me paint. She's the one who we did the jungle mural for. Her baby is 6 months old now and really cute. She has flaming red hair and really big eyes and smiles a lot. Seven was fascinated with her. She wouldn't leave her side. She's going to be such a good big sister. I'm glad she's such a good dog. There was a story in the paper yesterday about a 6 day old baby that was mauled by the family dog. How horrible. She is in critical condition. I'm sure she will be scarred for life if she survives. I can't imagine how the parents must feel.

We're completely at a loss for a name. It is so hard. We have a list of about twenty names that we both thought were OK, maybe ten of which are serious contenders. The hard part is that at least one person has hated every one of them. Some were too trendy or too white-trashy or too pretentious or not babyish enough or not adultish enough. It's so hard! The one person who doesn't have a say is the person who has to live with it for the rest of her life. Ultimately it will be up to Pete and I, but it would be nice if we could find something that people like, otherwise every time I see a person I'll think "I know you hate my baby's name". Right now the strongest contender is Corinne. I like it because it's not too common or too trendy or unimaginative or bizarre. Neither of us know or dislike anyone named Corinne, which is also a plus. We're not crazy about the way it kind of rhymes with our last name, so we haven't settled on it 100% yet. Plus my mother doesn't like it, which is a definite strike against it (she says it's too guttural and too grown up sounding). I'm kind of hoping I'll hear the perfect name and be like "that's it!". We had Seven's name picked out before she was born. It was so easy. (We actually really like the name Devon, but because it rhymes with Seven it would be too confusing for both children and would probably give one or both of them a complex).
Well, that's about it here. I'll write again when there's something new to report.
Love A, P, 7 and ???

Here's part of the mural. I look just like the mermaid, only 50 pounds heavier, pregnant, and with smaller boobs. Oh, and I don't have a tail.