Category Archives: Jack

>Memory

>
No, don’t worry, I am not going to sully this blog with some boring American Idol commentary about how bad the dread lock guy’s rendition of Memory was this week, and how he said, “A cat sings this song? I had no idea.” (More bad use of quotes since that is just what I vaguely remember him saying, and not what he actually said.)

No, I want to write about memories of real people that I actually know, like my children. I was putting Jack to bed last night and he fell asleep in my arms. He really snuggles into the crook of my arm, with one arm around my waist and the other grabbing the neck of my sweater with his fist. He has quite a grip, and today I started calling him Pinchy. His cheeks were rosy, eyes were closed, and he smelled sweet. I noticed all of this out of the corner of my eye because, while I was holding him with one arm, I was holding my book with another. I tend to read a lot. When I turned 16, I sat in the driver’s seat of my parents minivan and looked out the window for the first time. I didn’t know how to get around town, but I had gotten a lot of reading done over the years.

I can remember painting a sign with my grandma that she hung on the door for my mom to see when she came home from the hospital with my baby sister. I was three and my job was to paint little evenly spaced lines of green across the bottom to represent grass. My lines got bigger, longer, spaced further apart and, in general, messier as they crossed the page. My grandma said, “Oh no! Paint the grass like this.” I looked at her grass and my grass and thought, “It looks easier than it is.” The point of this story is that I have a great memory. I am the official expert on everything that ever happened. I am so good at remembering things that some people think I just make stuff up.

So you’d think that I would not need to worry about whether or not I am going to have vivid memories of everyday life with my baby. But my worrying skills rival my memory, I’m that multi-talented. Currently, when I try to ingrain a tender moment into my brain, I also think of memories of Luke. I probably have 3 or 5 or maybe only 1o vivid memories of nursing Luke. So I worry that I am doing too much reading and not enough memorizing of every moment with Jack. Pictures help, but this morning when I tried to capture the look on Jack’s face when I went in to get him in the morning instead of capturing 1000 words I got maybe 5. Those 5 words were “Oh. there’s the camera again.” What I was trying to capture was that his eyes are still blue, with a glint of joy, a little devil, that he was happy to see me, but also that he had been content to look at the mobile before I got there, and maybe wants to glance back at the mobile right this second; a shade of worry passes over his brow, but then it’s gone as he breaks out into a big smile, which is also fleeting, and then he’s overcome with the joy that one can attain only by seeing how much blanket can be crammed into ones mouth, and then I snap the picture. OK, words aren’t going to do it either. But the process of trying to come up with the words or the picture may be what helps me with the memory.

And I guess if I have 10 vivid memories of Luke five years later, that’s pretty good. And I did a lot of reading when he was a baby too.

>Lies and Fabrications

>
Jack is not napping well at daycare. Or at home. But at home, if I want to get a lot of work done, I sometimes let Jack nap in my lap. That allows him to sleep for over an hour and forces me to work instead of foraging for snacks. However, for some reason, Dave told the daycare about my bad parenting and I got lectured. Then I had to avoid three consecutive drop off/pick ups because I don’t like to get in trouble.

Short story long, yesterday Jack took one OK nap in the crib, one relatively good nap in the crib, and one fabulous nap on my lap. As I was falling asleep last night I was strategizing to myself. “Just tell her he slept fine. No, tell her you made him cry it out with mixed results. No, tell the nap stories accurately as to length and location, but say you were forced to let him nap on your lap because before you got a chance to put him down you ended up on a two hour conference call and you don’t have a cordless phone. Yes! That’s it!”

Stress much?

Why can’t I just take this fabulous advice I got from a good friend:

“The daycare just needs to pick a consistent routine for him there. He’s smart enough to follow a routine with them and then be treated like a king at home.”

(The picture is from yesterday morning. He slept from 8 until 6:30. Then had breakfast in bed and passed out, milk drunk.)

>Pencil Me In

>
Jack is five months old tomorrow, and I am happy, so happy, ecstatic really, to announce that we are finally on a schedule.

As anyone with a new baby knows, getting on a schedule is like summiting Mount Everest. There is planning, training, Sherpas, oxygen tanks, permits, trips to Tibet, guides, altitude sickness, a high risk of death. Ok, it’s not really like summiting Mount Everest at all, it’s much more challenging.

And the worst part is that the schedule is so fragile. Just the slightest imbalance can send the whole thing into a tailspin and it may take weeks to recover. Like taking a nap too late in the day, falling asleep in the car, or something like baby’s first camping trip.

See this is our schedule: On Wednesdays we do laundry and on Fridays we shop for groceries. There, I said it. Other new moms, try not to be jealous of our awesome schedule. But we are leaving for a camping trip on Thursday so I guess I need to shop tomorrow for the groceries for the camping trip? But do I plan menus all the way through to the following Friday? Or just shop again when we get back? And then again next Friday? Do you see what I mean here? Don’t even get me started on the laundry situation.

Oh, did you think I was referring to a nap and night time sleeping schedule? Oh, no. No no no no no no no. Have you ever heard of K2? It’s like Mount Everest except it’s a little shorter and the weather is worse, and fewer people have summited and more people have died on it. So I guess it’s sort of like getting a baby to sleep through the night. Except not really. Although, attempts on Mount Everest and K2 are made in the spring, so maybe we’ll be summiting our own little mountain soon.

>Toe Worship

>
Jack: Mom, I realize I am required to pose for the camera whenever I see it, but if it’s all the same to you, I’d really like to get back to chewing on my foot. Thanks.
Mom: Jack, seriously, I am trying to get a candid shot here. Chew away. Please stop looking right at the camera.
Jack: I’m afraid that’s impossible. Now if you would just move along, I could get back to my toes.
Mom: So sorry, carry on.

>What to Expect Without What to Expect

>I saved almost everything we had from Luke’s babyhood, confident it would soon get used again. Five years later, everything is back in use except the three things we donated to charity:

1.) The Baby Swing
2.) What to Expect When You Are Expecting
3.) What to Expect In The First Year

The swing was a hand me down and we didn’t have a box for it, and it’s sort of a hard thing to store without a box. We figured, hey, we may never need this thing and if we do, people are practically giving them away all the time, so we’ll just get another one. Well, I did buy another one that I found on Craigslist and it is the cleanest, fanciest, nicest swing I have ever seen, but it doesn’t work so we are forced to pretend we are a pioneer family and swing it by hand.

What to Expect When You are Expecting was easier to live without because I think the sole purpose of that book is to make sure you are worried about something during every moment of your pregnancy, and I can handle that all on my own, thanks.

That leads us to What To Expect in the First Year. With Luke, I dutifully read the chapter about Month 1 right after Luke was born and then I probably read Month 2 right away, just to plan ahead. I was very aware of every milestone and when it was supposed to happen. I remember some mildly stressful months when he insisted on not learning how to stack blocks. But he did “focus on a raisin” waaaaaay ahead of schedule.

But it is nice that the week-long vigil of Waiting for Jack to Roll Over started with us noticing that it looked like he might roll over soon and ended with him rolling over, with no book involved at all. Luke said, “If I am not the first person to see Jack roll over I am going to be SO MAD!” So I was excited for him when he ran to get me, yelling, “Jack rolled over!” I ran in* and sat down on the floor with Luke and Jack while Luke told me all about it. I saw Jack roll over the second time out of the corner of my eye while I was reaching for my camera. I caught the third event on film, which is good because he hasn’t done it since. And now the moment you have all been waiting for: (apologies again for the poor video quality. I’ll figure this out, I hope.)

http://video.google.com/googleplayer.swf?docId=8612996707942795171&hl=en

It’s just so nice not to be obsessed with milestones this time. Well, maybe just a little:

(* Dave was with Luke and Jack when Jack rolled over. As I read this I imagined myself in the other room eating bonbons and reading gossip magazines while my infant son almost rolled down a flight of stairs. What I was actually doing was getting ready to go on a date with Dave for the first time in 6 months. But the children were supervised.)


>Jack Not Rolling Over

>Well, I am not having a lot of luck with Google Video. My video of Jack Not Rolling Over keeps uploading in a pretty low quality. But as you can see, he is clearly not rolling over. Or fuzzily not rolling over.

My video of Jack Not Rolling Over is listed in a genre that contains other videos such as Jackson not rolling over, Kyra not rolling over, Tate not rolling over, and if you can believe it, another Jack not rolling over.

Of course I had to check them all out and see whose baby was closest to rolling over and if they looked older or younger than Jack. Not competitive at all here. Spoiler alert: the Tate not rolling over video has a sequel called Tate Walking, where we learn that he does in fact learn to move and also grows into his big head.

And now for the show:

http://video.google.com/googleplayer.swf?docId=-8743853427362881883&hl=en

>Appeasing Everyone

>
After dinner, Dave was paged and had to work. Luke went to the bathroom, I put Bean out, and put Jack on the jiminy and started the dinner dishes. I heard a thud and then a yell so I ran to the bathroom with a tiny ice pack in one hand. Luke had hit his head on the bathroom sink and he was crying. I gave him the ice pack and a kiss and a hug, but he seemed determined to see how loud his cries could echo off the bathroom walls. Since I thought he was being overly dramatic, I told him to lie down in my bed for a minute and I would be back to check on him because now Jack was also crying. I picked Jack up and went to check on Luke, who was laying in my bed, still crying and holding the ice pack to his head. He said,

“I think I have a bump.”

So I immediately went into panic mode and ran, with Jack over my shoulder, to get a better ice pack. I came back with a bag of frozen peas. An open bag of frozen peas. I handed it to Luke, who looked skeptical. I said,

“Just try it and see how it feels. I’ll be back with something better, because now Bean is barking to be let in.”

So I ran, with Jack over my shoulder, to get a better ice pack and to let Bean in. On the way back to check on Luke I heard,

“Mommy?”

And I said,

“The peas.”

Bean was a big help with cleanup, but I am still finding peas after 2 days.

To prevent future injuries we came up with the following solution: