Baby Talk

I won’t be surprised if my daughter’s first word is “seriously.” 

As in, “Seriously, Nina?  Did you JUST start screaming bloody murder for the first time in ages, now that you see the first bite of a fresh, hot meal traveling up to my lips?”

As in, “Seriously?  Did you really just puke all over your outfit before I even got it on all the way?”

As in, “Seriously?  Did you really just poo up your back/up your front/down your leg and manage to almost entirely miss the diaper?”

As in, “Seriously, Nina?  Now that you’re safely ensconced in your carseat, in the back seat, facing backward, you’re going to start crying?  Now that I can’t reach you or your nuk?”  This one goes hand in hand with, “Seriously?  You’re going to start crying now that we’re at a red light?  Something I can do nothing about?”

I guess it could be worse.  I don’t think she’ll get kicked out of preschool for repeating this one.

Never Judge a Book by Its Bling

So I’m shopping at the grocery store with the baby girl in her carrier in my cart, and I turn the corner into an aisle to find two thug-looking kids blocking it, loudly perusing the soda section.  Their saggy pants were in dire need of belts, their fake chains were blinding, and their sideways hats sported shiny silver Cadillac logos. 

As I cleared my throat and authoritatively said, “Excuse me,” they looked at me with disdain for having the nerve to interrupt their pop shopping.  Still, they grudgingly moved out of the way.  As I rolled my cart past, one loudly whispers to the other, “Dude!  Dude, come here!”  I couldn’t wait to hear what was so urgent, thinking it could have been the perma-puke stains on my shoulder that caught his eye.  “Come see how cute this baby is!” 

Did I mention how much I love thug-looking kids with saggy jeans, giant chains and sideways hats?

Baby Steps

Like many women who have just given birth, I have dreams of seeing my waist again someday, or at least some semblance of The Waist That Was.  I hadn’t been working out, and I’d use the excuse, “Well, it hasn’t been six weeks yet,” but now that it’s been ten, I’m out of excuses.  To this point, my exercise had consisted of sleeping (I wake up sweating, so I must be exerting myself, right?  Darn hormones.) and eating, with short dog walks thrown in.

Or so I thought that’s what my exercise routine was.  One day I woke up with sore abs.  Like, “I just did 100 crunches in a row” sore.  I knew I hadn’t been working out, so I couldn’t figure out why they hurt.  I found out why that night. 

My baby girl sleeps in a bassinet next to my bed.  Throughout the night, she practices her impressions.  That’s all fine and dandy if she’s going to be a comedian when she gets older, but for now, she’s going to be the death of me.  Her favorite impression to do is that of someone choking.  She makes this sound about fifty times a night.  And after each one, I jolt upright in bed to check on her.  One night, mid-jolt, I noticed my abs hurt.  Aha!  There are fifty crunches right there!  The other fifty come into play when she loses her binky and screams as if she lost a finger, thus necessitating my instant attention. 

So there’s my ab work, when I’m barely awake!  And I even get oblique work in when I twist to look in the bassinet.  Who needs the latest ab shaper on QVC when you have an infant?  But that’s not the only workout I get because of a little eight-pound weight.

I didn’t know having kids altered one’s hearing.  Ever since she was born, I hear babies crying everywhere, whether they are or not.  I can be in the basement folding laundry and think I hear the baby crying.  I sprint up the stairs, only to get to the top and find her sleeping peacefully.  That happens throughout the day, so I guess you could say I’m getting my share of cardio.  And if I take the stairs two at a time, I’m getting an even better workout.

Then when the baby’s finally down after a particularly fussy episode, I sometimes find myself tiptoeing around the house, so as not to be subjected to another sixteen hour crying jag.  Calf raises!

No wonder I’m exhausted!

Whose Toys Are These, Anyway?

I’ve heard how expensive kids can be.  Medical care, clothing, diapers, toys…they all add up.  But no one ever mentions how dogs can make babies even more expensive.

Since I brought my baby girl home, my dogs haven’t been all that interested in her.  Her toys and gear, however?  Different story.  My dog Peyton heads up the Bureau of Burgled Binkies and Seamus manages the Society of Stolen Soft Toys.  Together, they make quite the team.   

Baby Nina can’t drop a binky out of her mouth without Peyton swooping in to grab it before it hits the ground.  Before I know it, I’m chasing him under the dining room table, where he looks up at me, binky ring dangling out of his mouth, like, “Whaaaaaat?  Can’t a guy get a little peace around here?” By the time I can wrestle the binky back from him, it’s destroyed.  My house is where binkies come to die.

Then there are the nipple shields.  They’re little silicone nipple covers that help with nursing.  They look like little sombreros, and apparently, they taste like prime aged filet mignon, because Peyton can’t get enough of them.  At $7 a pop, he’d better learn to.  I know it’s him, too, because days later they’ll show up…if you know what I mean.

And Shea pretends he doesn’t know the difference between his favorite bedraggled, disemboweled, eyeless toy dog carcass and a fluffy, soft, squeezable stuffed lamb.  The minute Nina gets a new stuffed animal, Shea sneaks over, ever so casually mouths his prey and slinks off, hoping with each step that he won’t be stopped in his tracks.  A couple of times he’s even thrown his 70-pound golden girth over his conquest in hopes that he won’t be found out.  His “Who? Me?” face is a dead giveaway.

So even though the boys pretend not to care about the new addition to the family, secretly they’re doing doggie cartwheels at all the new and exciting things at their disposal.  Now if I could just get them to play with their own toys…

Time Flies

Here I sit, 35 1/2 weeks pregnant (but who’s counting?), and I’m thinking about nearly 24 weeks ago, when I was near death.  Ok, fine, maybe I wasn’t near death, but I sure felt like it.  I had morning sickness that kept me feeling nauseous non-stop for about six weeks.  And you thought misery was Kathy Bates taking a mallet to your feet.  No.  Misery is morning sickness that had zero business being called “morning sickness,” as it went on way past morning.  And afternoon.  And evening.  I wrote a little something back then, when time stood still.  When I lived hour to hour, wondering if I’d ever feel better.  Now six months and 16 more inches of stomach girth later, I don’t know where the time went.

I am so annoyed.  I’m annoyed at every single mom out there who is keeping secrets.  The same moms who go out of their way to recount every labor pain, every rip, every post-delivery stitch, and every single terrifying moment of the birthing experience left out a few things. 

I am 12 weeks along.  These 12 weeks have been rotten.  Okokok…the last six weeks have been rotten.  No, that’s not right either.  What comes after “rotten?”  That’s what they’ve been.   The first few weeks I felt great.  Then exactly at week six, Hell came for an extended visit.  Up to that point, I’d been able to control my eating, and continued to work out regularly.  Then all of a sudden, it was like Satan took up residence in my gut and his first order of business was to move my stomach to somewhere around where my Adam’s apple would be if I were a man.  (And at this point, that would be a very welcome change indeed.)

I woke up one day feeling sick.  I felt like the only way to make myself feel better was to eat.  So I tested that theory.  It worked.  I ate, and felt better.  For a half hour.  At which point I’d have to eat again.  See the problem with this? I became an eating machine.  And I wasn’t exactly eating salads and fruit.  Those things didn’t appeal to me.  I had to eat junk.  And lots of it.  I had to eat things readily available, and things that didn’t make me sick just thinking about them.  At any other time in my life, eating an entire box of Little Schoolboy cookies within one hour after purchasing them would have meant a) I had lost my mind and b) I would be looking for it on the treadmill later that day.  Now, it seemed perfectly normal, since I was on a mission to keep myself from feeling sick. 

So eat I did.  For weeks on end.  And I noticed something horrible. I became a saliva factory.  I found myself swallowing every 1.2 seconds.   And the problem with that was, my saliva had somehow begun tasting like molten rust.  Or at least what I would imagine molten rust to taste like.  Talk about disgusting.  So now I’m stuck.  I’m producing liters of this caustic fluid in my mouth and it has to go somewhere.  But when I swallow it, I’m nauseous all over again.  So what do I do?  Eat!  That’s the answer for everything, it seems. 

Well, I thought I was going nuts with that little discovery.  It had to have been all in my head.  Come on, I had never heard of pregnant women having a foul taste in their mouths 24/7.  So I happened to google “bad taste in mouth during pregnancy” expecting the google guy to just respond with derisive laughter.  Instead I got pages and pages of results.  Feeling encouraged, I clicked on the first result.  It was a pregnancy message board on which women could ask questions or just vent about their experiences.  The question someone had asked about this horrid taste had FORTY FIVE pages of comments.  FORTY FIVE pages!  Clearly this problem is not uncommon.  And clearly someone forgot to tell me about this one. 

But at least I did pick up a couple of tips from these women.  First, rinse your mouth with salt water regularly.  I’m sure when they say “rinse your mouth with salt water” they don’t mean “pour a pile of salt on your tongue and add an ant-sized amount of water and rinse.”  But that’s what I did.  I was desperate to taste anything besides the inside of a carburetor from a 1972 Monte Carlo.  And it worked!  Needless to say, next to my soap on my bathroom vanity you’ll find a large canister of salt. 

Another one was to make intimate pals with sour candy.  Which I did.  Starburst and I now have a solid thing going. Thank you God. And google.

And what’s up with THIS one?  I have always had a problem sleeping.  Not sure why, but I usually don’t sleep more than three or four hours in a row.  One night I woke up feeling like I was being suffocated.  Turns out, my nostrils decided enough was enough, and put themselves on lockdown.  They decided they would no longer be allowing fresh air to travel through them.  My nasal passages had become as swollen as Marcia Brady’s nose after it got in the way of a wayward football.  Back to google I went.

I discovered that this, too, is a symptom of pregnancy.  What???  I learned that your body goes into overdrive producing “fluids” (hence the influx of burning saliva) and one of the areas that suffers is your nose.  You feel constantly congested as these very wonderful, welcome fluids settle in your nasal cavity and make it impossible to breathe.  What next?  Your fingers automatically shrink until they’re tiny nubs?  Your ears fall off?  Your knees no longer bend?  Here I thought the due date was the day to fear.  Oh, no.  I fear the jarring discovery of the next symptom. 

This is only week 12.  I’m not even showing yet.  Well, I’m not showing BABY yet.  I’m certainly showing Starburst.  I haven’t even gotten to the swollen feet and hemorrhoids.  God help me.

Doggie Dichotomy

As much as I absolutely adore my dogs, they make no sense.  No sense at all. 

Exhibit A:

No!! You'll never take me alive!

This is Seamus.  He’s four.  And though you might think he’s been told he’ll be going to the electric chair, the truth is, I’ve just broken the news that he will be receiving a bath in the immediate future.  Each time before the blessed event, I have to track him down on his favorite bed, where he lies perfectly still in hopes that he’ll somehow blend into the fleece bed cover and therefore, I won’t notice him.  (Kind of like not making eye contact with the teacher so you won’t get called on.  Which doesn’t ever work.) Then I have to walk with him to the bathroom.  When we got to the stairs, he quickly veered left. (For once in my life, my camera was at hand (and charged!) when he made a break for it.) As if I would continue on alone, only to get to the bathroom and notice he wasn’t with me.

He acts like water on his skin is hot molten lava with rivers of razor blades rushing through it.

But recently he proved to me that that couldn’t be further from the truth.  We went to his favorite park after a rain, and I watched in disbelief as he ran across the field to the hill in the distance, achieved liftoff and landed belly first in a puddle of stagnant, putrid, filthy, slimy, disease-riddled water. (Ok, so maybe I can’t prove the disease part.)  Out he came, pleased with himself, and covered with aforesaid muck.  Did he not realize that the filth, slime and diseases swaddling him were suspended in…water??  The very same thing that came out of the hose when he got baths?  Did the vile sludge feel better on his golden fur than clean, fragrant shampoo that will leave him fluffy and touchable?  I say “feel” because there’s no way it could possibly smell better.  Watching a dog fly off a hill at top speed is a spectacle to behold.  Witnessing the same dog land in a puddle of sludge is not.

Exhibit B:   

Ahhhh!

This was taken right after Seamus decided that the water spewing forth from the garden hose would make a great playmate.  Then to top it off, he rolled around in the mud that resulted from said water hitting the ground.  While absolutely hilarious to watch, the same cannot be said for clean up.  Not for a minute.

If Seamus could only make the connection that playing in slop now equals getting a bath later, he’d probably stop his foul antics.

How is it that this dog hates baths, but loves playing in water?  I told you.  Makes no sense.

Brother, Can You Spare a Syllable?

With everyone trying to save syllables these days, why do people still insist on adding them where they don’t belong?  I mean, they can’t be bothered by adding the “su” to “burbs” but they’ll happily add an “uh” to “Realtor.”  As in “Real-uh-tor.”  What exactly is a Real-uh-tor?  The word is “Realtor” (and yes, it is capitalized, as it’s trademarked that way).  Real.  Tor.  Say it with me.  Real. Tor.  Realtor.  Seriously.  It’s not that hard.  And think of all the extra time and syllables you’ll have saved up for future use. Especially since one of our favorite sounds is “uh.”  As in, “Did you do your homework?” “…uh…”  “Did you pick up the dry cleaning?” “…uh…”  It’s a multi-purpose (albeit overused) sound that has its place in the world.  And its place is not smack in the middle of the word “Realtor.” It’s ironic that so many people would mispronounce this word when we’re all about speed, and shortening words.  Is it really that much harder to say the word “suburbs?”  Why do people have to say “burbs” when they’re referring to exactly the same thing?  I can imagine the exhaustion that must set in when that additional energy has to be expended in forming that extra sound.

Don’t think Realtor is the only word that gets massacred.  There’s also “disoriented” and “regardless.”  I know, both are up for debate, but I have a sneaking suspicion that they’re debated by people who are used to mispronouncing them.  “Disoriented” is five syllables.  Not six.  It’s not “disorientated.”  Sure, you might find that in a dictionary, but again, I’m convinced it’s there because so many people mispronounce it that it ended up being semi-accepted out of sympathy for them.  Same with “irregardless.” “Regardless” means “without regard.”  “Irregardless” means “without without regard,” which really means “with regard.”  So what exactly are people trying to say when they tucker themselves out with all those extra syllables? I could go on forever about mispronounced words (“excape,” anyone?), but there are way too many to cover in one day.   And saying all those extra syllables is backbreaking work.

Diapers are Underrated

Before I go any further, I’d like to say that, yes, parenting is the hardest job in the world.  You don’t even have to be one to know that.  And single parenting?  Seems next to impossible.  Props to you all.  I can’t possibly give you enough credit.  So, as the “mom” of dogs, I don’ t mean to imply that in any stretch of the imagination, my job is even remotely as difficult as the jobs of parents everywhere.  So humor me.  This is all I got to work with.

Yes, you have middle-of-the-night feedings.  Yes, you’re on call 24 hours a day.  Yes, you have to watch what you say every minute.  But you also have something that makes your life infinitely easier.  I got two words for you:  disposable diapers.   If I could put these on my dogs without fear that they’d eat them off and block their digestive tracts with super-absorbent polymers, I’d seriously consider it.

Let me explain.  When I got Seamus (SHAYmus) from a rescue organization last year, I was told he was a perfect dog.  Which is absolutely true.  (In fact, what comes after perfect?)  He is gorgeous, sweet and beyond intelligent.  The onnnnnnnly thing is his bowels don’t always keep things to themselves when they should.  I discovered this the hard way.

One night, shortly after adopting him, he woke me up by panting and pacing on the bed (and my kidneys).  I figured, hey, new environment, maybe he’s just nervous.  So I calmed him, only to be awoken again by a 70-pound golden retriever doing the Hitler walk all over my mattress.  Before I could get up, he catapulted off the bed and darted for the bedroom door.  I ran after him, and by the time I got to the hallway, I heard what sounded like someone had turned the shower on.  I am not kidding.  Little did I know at the time, the source of the shower was Seamus’s butt.  I looked down, and there, assaulting my eyeballs (and soon my nostrils) was a tarry stream of nastiness down my carpeted stairs.  And at the bottom of the stairs was Shea, cowering, as if he was about to get in trouble.  (Which he didn’t.  Perhaps his last home had specific rules posted regarding gastrointestinal issues, but his new one did not.)  My poor baby. 

But wait.  How was this on every single stair?  Was he careful to leave a deposit so no one step felt left out?  Did he have to go back to some stairs that didn’t get enough “attention?”  He’s nothing if not thorough, that dog.

It appeared that he was trying to make it to the back door, but miscalculated by a few feet.  And this miscalculation would keep me up for a good part of the night.

It’d be one thing if your dog couldn’t scale the stairs sixty-five times to your one.  And if he didn’t run up and down them, spraying foulness in his wake, before you could catch him.  I know your kids are all geniuses, but how many of them can perform that little trick? (You do not want them to.  Trust me on this.)

All I can say is, thank the Lord and all the angels and saints that I decided to buy a carpet cleaner shortly before this happened.  Let me tell you, this thing was put to the test.  And at 2am, no less.  The good news is, my carpet looks like it was never attacked by explosive diarrhea.  Though my stairs recovered, my nose will never be the same.

Momisms, Irish style

Many of us have heart-warming memories of being yelled at as kids.  After a simple question like, “But why can’t I have a Komodo dragon?” our mothers might have said, “Because I said so.”  Or if someone was crying at the injustice of humanity (because the television was turned off after blaring for six mind-numbing hours in a row, and right before Three’s Company, no less), she might have said, “Stop crying or I’ll give you something to cry about.”  Ahhhh…memories. 

If you had an Irish mom, you might have gotten a few extra-special terms thrown in for good measure.  Terms that make absolutely no sense, no matter how you look at them.  Terms which sometimes made you want to burst out laughing at the most inopportune time.  Terms such as “making a balls of it.”  (What does that even mean?  Seriously.)  As funny as it sounds, we knew better than to laugh when that phrase was hurtling at us at breakneck speed.  Well, to clear up that mystery of the universe, “making a balls of it” means that you’re making a mess of something.  Say you’re just minding your own business, painting a hopscotch game on the basement floor with nail polish or something.  You’ve officially made a balls of it.  And don’t think you’re going to live it down anytime soon. (One more benefit of growing up in a large Irish family.)  This term is most effective when a) delivered at 200 decibels or thereabouts and b) preceded by “Ah Jaysus!”

Another term that left us more confused than worried was, “I’ll letter yeer backside.”  For the longest time, we all expected some sort of branding mechanism to be taken to us.  (Would I get a “C” imprinted on my butt?) Turns out, she meant leather our backsides.  With a belt or some facsimilie thereof.  Which she never did.  (Hard to enforce when you have nine butts to “letter.”)  But she talked a good game. 

She’d always say she was chancing her arm at something.   If she was making a new recipe, she might add ingredients the recipe didn’t call for (since we usually didn’t have what the recipe called for), but which she had in the cabinet.  (Not many recipes feature eye-riddled potatoes and Tang.)  She’d say, “I’m chancing my arm,” which basically meant she was taking a risk and hoping for the best. Or at least hoping we wouldn’t notice the orange tint on the spud and salt casserole.