Why I'm Never Going to the Playground Again

Today I was feeling guilty because I rarely take my son to the playground. We go to the library, the community centre, shopping, and for long daily walks. As soon as he gets over this cold we will start swimming. Still, he loves the playground and I should take him more often. So I put him in our cheap umbrella stroller (because our good stroller is too difficult for me to lug up and down the stairs of our walk-up), and we set off.

Halfway through our journey, I remember why we don't make this trek more often. Though there are about 3 elementary schools less than a ten minute walk away from us, none of them have playgrounds. In my opinion, this is a travesty, but I'll save that for another post. There are no playgrounds anywhere around. We have to walk at least 25 minutes to get to one, which may not seem so long. But then there's the actual playing, and then the 25 minutes back, and. . .

Anyway. When we finally arrived, I came to the end of the path, and remember the second reason why we don't do this more often. There are hiking and biking trails all through our city (one great thing about this crappy town), but for some reason they stop short of any playround structure. So I had to push my flimsy stroller across a giant, wet football field (apparently it rained last night) to get to the equipment. By the time I arrived, my feet were soaked.

I pushed my kid in the swing for awhile, but his eye kept going back towards a red soccer ball that someone had left behind (along with two pairs of shoes and socks--WTH?). He kept pointing and saying "Ba, ba" and because I am just so proud of him for picking up this new word, I decided to put him out of his misery and play a little ball with him.

We chased the ball through the wet grass. I kicked it to him, and then he'd pick up up and throw it back to me. It was rather unfortunate that he hasn't grasped the concept of soccer, because his hands were all wet and covered in sand and grass in no time at all.

Pretty soon a man arrived with his dog. His giant dog. One that resembles a wolf. He was trying to pull his dog away from us, I was trying to keep my son away from him, but of course both the baby and the dog wanted to be friends and it was a little bit of a challenge ensuring that my kid didn't run over there and poke the poor man's dog in the eyes. Or that the poor man's wolf-dog didn't bite my kid's face off.

When that crises was averted, we went back to playing ball. I noted that the umbrella stroller was much easier to push through the grass when My Sweet Baboo wasn't in it, so I thought, 'we'll continue to play ball, and we'll kick/throw the ball in the direction of the path while I push the stroller, and then when we get to the path the game will be over and we'll head home.'

I swear Baboo figured out what I was thinking, because the minute I started to push the stroller over, he took off in the other direction. I repeatedly tried to kick the ball in the general direction of the path, and he repeatedly threw it the other way and ran off laughing. Eventually he spotted a juicebox in the storage compartment of the stroller and toddled over to take a look. I seized this opportunity to grab him and strap him in, and he was not happy. He started to holler, and he hollered all the way home. No amount of juice boxes or Cheese Ritz could appease him. 25 minutes with a screaming toddler, hollering at the injustice of not being able to live at the park, is enough to drive anyone loca.

And that's why I'm never going to the playground again.



A rare photo of my actual kid.

 Where will you never again go? Tell me I'm not the only one whose had a monstrous experience somewhere that should have been fun!

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My Baby, My Passion

I'm participating in Mama's Losin It's Writers Workshop this week. The subject is, "Describe what makes you want to live a life with passion?":
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When I found out I was pregnant, I did not experience the excitement and awe I’d always dreamed I would experience. I’d always wanted to be a mother, but at the time I was a miserable, unemployed student and living in my parents’ basement, which was placing a huge strain my marriage. It was just about the worst timing ever for the news. I took a couple of weeks to be depressed, wallow and will “it” away. Then I realized, this baby is coming and it doesn’t deserve such a mess for a mother. I had to get it together.

I got a crappy retail job, and on my days off I worked in the church nursery for a little extra cash. I wanted to work in my field, which was community services related, but in order to finish my degree I had to put 600 hours of field work—for free. So my days were dedicated to volunteering, and my nights were spent folding clothes and pretending to be nice to customers, while on weekends I chased around other peoples’ kids, hoping my own would be better behaved, and crammed for exams. In the meantime, my husband and I found free counselling from both an agency and the pastor who married us. We wanted to get as much help for our marriage as possible before it was transformed into a family. We didn’t want our baby caught in the cross-fire. He hadn’t asked for us to be his parents.

The nine months of pregnancy were a frenzy of 12 hour days, penny-pinching the likes of which you have never seen, and valiant attempts to reverse the damage that being poor and living with my family had inflicted on our relationship. During my lunch breaks I holed up in the storage closet with my previously-owned, pay-as-you-go cell phone and made frantic phone calls to different housing agencies, trying to find a place of our own. My parents were having their own relationship issues (read: yelling and screaming) and I was sick to my stomach at the thought of bringing a tiny, helpless baby into that environment. I trolled second-hand shops, craigslist and garage sales looking for the things my little one would need but I couldn’t afford.

Desperate love calls for desperate measures. I didn’t know it then, but this frenetic despair was actually passion in disguise. I was disheartened and hysterical, but devotion to my kid pushed me on and forced me to keep trying. I had to make money, I had to finish school, I just had to find a peaceful quiet place where we could be parents. And I did.

Sitting in the hospital in late July, I realized what it had all been for. I knew that all women didn’t necessarily bond with their babies at birth, but after everything I had been through during the course of my pregnancy, I was desperate to just feel something other than worry or sadness. My husband was an amazing birth coach, and after just under four hours of labour, the nine months of hell I’d endured were a blip on the radar compared with the tornado of love that ripped through me. They threw that baby on me and told me we had a boy, and I knew that I was incapable of living a life that resembled anything ordinary from that moment on.

I live to teach him that anything is possible--to show him the world and how to fully embrace it. I will tell him the story of his nine months in waiting so that he can see how love changes everything. I will live with passion so that he has a good example in me; so that he will do the same.

From the outside, my life is nothing spectacular. But from where we were just a year ago, when I got my Big Freaking Positive, it is absolutely charmed. I dance around covered in spit-up, and do it with gusto. We go for walks with him wrapped around my torso, and I am happy to stop so he can marvel at the leaves. I wake up at 3 am in our new apartment and can’t help but burst with joy as the most beautiful boy in the world grins up at me. It is just a 3 a.m. feeding, but it doesn’t get any better than this.

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Confessions of a Failed Minimalist Mommy

So.

I was under the impression that I would be a minimalist mom. A "less is more" mom. A "I don't feed my kid junk food or buy toys that light up and play music" mom. You should see my living room right now. This is clearly Baboo's house, and he's just allowing me and the Hubs to live here. In my living room alone I have those interlocking foam mats on the floor, a playmat,  a bouncy seat, a boppy (which I bought instead of a bumbo, because who can afford that) and yesterday we bought an exersaucer. I am hanging my head in shame right now.

Everything is plastic and polyester. Everything is BRIGHT blue and BRIGHT green. In my defense. . .

In my defense.

The bouncy seat was a gift. Okay, we did register for it, but hear me out. This is the bouncy seat:

We chose to register for this one, quite frankly, because the other ones were too expensive. We felt uncomfortable asking our family members to shell out $60 for something that they could just as easily get for $25. Even though it is so BRIGHT. I would have picked this one

but the bottom line is the bottom line.

We were told a bouncy seat is an absolute MUST--that its the only way that other moms get anything done around the house. So we registered for it. We were dismayed to find that it takes batteries in order to vibrate and play music, and that the batteries were NOT included. We didn't get the batteries. We figured he didn't need them, and would never know that his bouncy seat was supposed to vibrate and sing him to sleep.

My kid does not like his bouncy seat. He will sit in it for five minutes, tops. He will bat at the little turtle, then spend the rest of the time looking at me with his huge saucer eyes, waiting for me to pick him up. We thought if we bought the batteries that allowed it to vibrate and sing, then maybe I'd be able to put him in it during the day when I need to take a break. We we hauled ass to the store and picked up some batteries. With great anticipation we watched the thing vibrate and listened to the tinny "music" emanate from the little plastic box. We put our son in it, praying he would like it. He lasted 7 to 10 minutes, before he pleaded with us to rescue him from this strange, vibrating chair. We obliged.

I have another confession. We were told by our home visitor that exersaucers are harmful to baby's hips.  I never planned on getting an exersaucer in the first place. Not because they're bad for his hips, but because they're ugly. Plastic and ugly and unecessary in my opinion.

Its just that Baboo likes to stand. He LOVES to stand, in fact. He loves to stand on my lap when I'm trying to type, making it impossible for me to do so because of course to stand he needs to hold my hands. He loves to dig his freakishly large feet into my legs, and his toenails grow at such a rate that he's often digging those into me too. It's hard on the shoulders to hold him up like that. And he will fuss until he gets his way. He will fuss and fuss and fuss until he's allowed to stand. A couple mornings ago the Hubbs turned to me and said "Was Baboo fussing to stand last night?" (Last night being 4 am, after his feeding.)

"Yup," I replied. Nope, it wasn't just a bad dream. This kid even wants to stand when he shouldn't even be awake.

So we caved. We didn't want to, but the flier made us. I'm sure you know by now that I can't pass up a good bargain. Exersaucers were on sale! NOT the one that would have been my first choice (of course) with the real pictures of nature and a hand puppet for mom or dad to stick their hand in so that they can interact with their kid.

But it was an exersaucer nonetheless, and I really just needed a place where my kid could stand. So I bought it.

PsychoMama: Does it seem like he likes it?

The Hubbs: He doesn't seem upset by it. . .

He lasted about two minutes before he started to cry yesterday. And today he lasted about ten. He seemed to enjoy it more today. I even took a video of him playing in there and sent it to both my mom (who was with me when I bought it) and The Hubbs at school.

My next confession of a failed minimalist mommy, is that my only regret in regards to his playmat is that I live in Canada where the bigger one isn't available. That one lights up! That's right, folks.

As for Baboo's swing, we wouldn't have bought one because we were simply too poor when we were expecting him. A lovely mom from our local early years centre gave me her swing because she had two. I was thrilled thinking that it would be the magic fix for crying and overtiredness, but Baboo is not a huge fan of it. I admit that I may not have tried him in it enough (I can probably count on one hand the number of times he's been in that swing.) Part of the reason is that its in his nursery, which hasn't been completed and is being used as a partial storage room for the suitcases we STILL haven't unpacked (yes, we have THAT much stuff--how's that for minimalism?) The other reason is that the week we brought him home from the hospital, he was absolutely miserable at night between the hours of 7 and 9. I tried putting him in his swing when we were both crying inconsolably, and after a minute, it did the trick. Then The Hubbs said this to me:

"He looks really sad."

And that broke my heart. Yes, he was no longer crying, but I was his mother and I deposited him into a swing so that I could take a break. He really did look sad. His eyes looked large and weary, and his lip was in a full, turned down pout. So I have barely put him in his swing since then. Whenever I'm about to I remember the words "He looks really sad", and it turns me off. I'm glad we didn't pay for it. And while it is ugly and not something we'd ever pick out for ourselves, and least its not BRIGHT green or BRIGHT blue. It's that lovely dark blue plaid, circa all 1990s baby gear.

What's even sadder than all the brightly coloured plastic in my home is that fact that my son has barely any wooden toys. I know that isn't really fair, since its hard to find "gear" that's wooden and he's not at an age where he'll be playing with toys that aren't tethered to things yet. I know we'll be buying him wooden toys like train sets and building blocks and a wooden kitchen when he's older, but still.

You know there's a problem when your mom comes to visit and the first words out of her mouth are "When did you guys decide to buy a Toys R Us?"

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Bed, Bath and Beyond

My son is seven weeks old today, and we decided last night that its time to start a bedtime routine for him. He's been sleeping in our bed most of the time since we had him, since its the best way for all of us to actually get some sleep, but sad to say thus far his "bedtime routine" has consisted of falling asleep tucked in beside him mom while Hubby and I watch a DVD. Disgraceful, I know.

Anyway, in honour of trying to reclaim some semblance of normalcy, Hubby and I have been having Baboo start out in his own bassinet at the start of the night so we can still have some time to ourselves to cuddle, and then when he wakes up to eat for the first time he comes to sleep with me and I move to the foot of the bed. I know, it's weird, but safe bedsharing guidelines dictate that he not be anywhere near any furniture he could get wedged in between, and I'll be damned if I'm getting rid of my antique night tables. So baboo and I sleep at the foot of the bed for the rest of the night. It's actually the best of both worlds. I get my time in with my husband, and sweet snuggles from my son.

I never understood bedsharing until I actually had a baby of my own. I just thought the parents were weak and couldn't say no to their child, but now I understand that it's actually totally wonderful and natural to have your baby beside you at night. Seems natural to me, anyway. And that way I can feed him without either of us having to wake up fully. Plus, I'm neurotic, and instead of having to sit up in bed and strain to check on him all night to make sure he's okay, I just have to open my eyes to know that he's fine.

Anyway, this turned into a testimonial on bedsharing, which it wasn't meant to be. I was going to talk about our new bedtime routine.

First our Sweet Baboo and I take a bath (I wear a bathing suit, apparently I'm shy), then we put on the Beatles' lullaby CD and do infant massage, then I swaddle him and offer him some milk, which he will always take because he's always hungry. After he eats I rock him to sleep and recite Good Night Moon, then stick his pacifier in his mouth if he'll take it (he won't always) and then put him in his bassinet. He's sleeping peacefully as I type, which is kind of a surprise. Last night his pacifier kept falling out of his mouth and he kept waking up and fussing til I put it back in. I'm surprised his eyes didn't pop open as soon as I put him down. Must be the full moon.

It's such a romantic night out there, but unfortunately I still have not been cleared by my doctor for sex. I'd ask the hubby to sit on the balcony with me and have a glass of wine, but we just moved and our patio furniture is still in my parents' basement.

So instead I'll sweep the house, which is ripe with dust bunnies while my adorable but goofy husband laughs uproariously at a Seinfeld episode we borrowed from the library. Yep, the full moon had inspired some WILD behaviour in this household.

The pictures in tonight's blog post are of our bath, my sweetie sleeping adorably in his bassinet, and the full moon as I see it from our balcony. Enjoy.

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My love affair with a breast pump

Yesterday was my third wedding anniversary, our first with a child. The most action I got was from a breast pump.

We planned on going to dinner and a movie. Nothing spectacular, but more than we've done in awhile, since we have a six-week-old and are student working poor.

My mother was going to baby-sit. I was going to shower and put on make-up. My hubby was going to shave and change out of the spit-up covered jeans he'd been wearing for three days. It was to be a momentous occasion indeed. We'd miss the baby, but a movie about marginalized aliens on earth would take our mind off it and bring back that lovin' feeling.

Then my mother had a nervous break-down.
It was a couple of weeks ago. She and my father had just had the most stressful move in the history of the world. The money almost didn't come through for the down payment, he was working round the clock and not around to help her with any of the logistics, they almost lost the house twice and the one they were living in was promised to someone else. It was literally the day before they were about the be homeless that the money came through.

Then there was the matter of my husband and I, who'd been living in the basement apartment of their house since before our Sweet Baboo was born, finally moving out and getting an apartment of our own. It is great for us to be out of there. When we got married we lived across the country from my parents, and everything was at a nice comfortable distance. While I missed my mom, I was overjoyed to be nowhere near her husband (my father) and could take or leave my sister. But my husband and I had terrible luck, and after struggling for a couple years we decided to take my parents' offer of their basement and try to get back on track. That definitely didn't go as planned, but that's a story for another day. What I was getting at is that hubby and I taking our baby and moving two towns over (all the towns here pretty much sprawl together, so its not as bad as it sounds) took a toll on her too. I don't know that she missed hubby or I, but she definitely missed Baboo.

Then's the issue of her chronic illness, which keeps her from getting a decent sleep and has her in constant pain throughout the day. And her troubled joke of a relationship with my father, that probably should have been over before it began. (True story, also for another day.) All of these stressors plus her history of depression and she wound up in the hospital. In another post I'll tell you all about that scary night when she went into full-on diagnosed psychosis, but for now I will selfishly focus on how it affected our anniversary.

My mom is much better. She was in the hospital for four or five scary days, then made a dramatic recovery and was released. She is functioning normally now, chatting non-stop like her old self, driving herself to appointments and events, and showering her first grandbaby with love. But I am just not comfortable leaving him alone with her yet. What if there was a relapse and it happened again? I shudder to think about what might happen to my sweet, sweet son, and no movie and overpriced but oh-so-delicious steak from The Keg is worth the risk.

Sad to say, I don't know when we'll be comfortable leaving him alone with her again. It could happen any time. . .Of course, we can't tell her that's why. It would crush her, and I won't be responsible for breaking a grandma's heart. I did ask my sister if she would be there the next time my mom baby-sits. I told her it was because I didn't want to tire her out, I didn't want to play the nervous break-down card. She said she will. She's going to check her work schedule (she just got back from Europe and today's her first day back at work), and let me know when she can "help" my mom baby-sit so that hubby and I can take a rain check on the movie. I don't know when or why life became so complicated, but I'm glad my sister is there to help us, and I'm glad she was there to call and tell us what was going on the night my mom wound up in the hospital.

This is why I want my son to have a sibling. My hubby is so not on board--but that's a story for another day.

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