Motherhood and other creative adventures
This haircut is completely natural. We get asked all the time if we shave his head this way, but nope. I keep expecting the rest of his hair to fill in, but nothing. He doesn’t rub it off, he doesn’t have bald spots, it’s just growing way faster in the mohawk region, and it’s been that way for months and months.
I always say that he just came out ready to stick it to the man.
Architecture in Helsinki – Like it or Not
Architecture in Helsinki – Like It Or Not from helsinkids on Vimeo.
Found on Best Week Ever.
Is this the coolest thing you’ve ever seen or what?
We just got back from another visit with the eye doctor, and Atti now has to get his eye patched for four hours every day. Which basically means I have to hold the eye patch over his eye for four hours every day. *whimper*
I think I need to watch the video again to cheer myself up.
I’ve described myself in the past as being about equal parts hippy dippy flower child and hard boiled cynic, and that really fits in most aspects of my life. I think I’d describe my taste as equal parts modern designer and Handmade antique. I can’t fully commit to the handmade aesthetic, and I can’t fully commit to the sterile modern design either. Luckily my wishy-washy-ness has been really helpful with how my particular journey into motherhood has transpired.
Oh I had goals. I had the loftiest of goals. Attachment parenting, cosleeping, cloth diapering, no plasticing, organic everything goals. And even though every single person around me thought I was out of my mind, including occasionally Bear, I stuck to my guns. California has a reputation as being full of the organic lovers, but it varies greatly by the region, and once you get south of LA it’s all a very conservative, frequently wealthy, “Ah, just buy it, it’s easier.” kind of mentality.
But I wouldn’t listen to the skepticism. I had my plans, including preparation for an unmedicated birth, and nothing was going to dissuade me from them.
Until Atti was actually born.
There went my unmedicated birth – it was far more important that we both make it out alive. There went my beautiful dreams of breastfeeding – no matter how many hours a day I attached myself to the pump my milk supply dried up before he even made it home. There went my ideas of attachment parenting – it’s a little hard to wear a baby and an oxygen tank. No cloth diapers – I spend hours every day doing physical therapy, I have to limit as many household chores as possible.
The one that really hurt my heart was giving up on the No Plastics rule. He still has the fancy bottles, so I suppose that’s what is most important, but I’ve scoured the internet and I’ve never found a toy made of wood or cloth that lights up and plays music when you hit it. And that’s what he needs to motivate him to do physical therapy.
I still try though. We coslept until he was too big to fit in the bed, I try to wear him as often as possible (he’s sitting on my lap as I type) and I make all his baby food from organic fruits and vegetables.
Really, I’ve been pretty surprised to discover just how ridiculously easy his baby food has been. It takes me maybe one afternoon every five months, and costs maybe $25. WAY cheaper than buying in a jar, and I know there’s no preservatives, no sugar, no salt, and all the vitamins haven’t been processed out.
And yet this was the parenting choice that people really went nuts about. This was what convinced people I was a total extremist. I don’t know exactly what people think is so complicated about making baby food, but just in case you’ve toyed around with the idea let me explain.
1. Chop food into chunks and either boil or steam. If it needs to be cooked at all. Most fruit doesn’t need it, avocados don’t need it.
2. Run the prepared food through a blender or food processor to make a nice puree. If it’s a little thick, thin it down with some of the cooking water.
3. Pour the puree into ice cube trays and freeze.
Done.
Early this week I sat down with a mess of apples, nectarines, squash, and carrots, and in about three hours from start to finish I have enough baby food to last him for months.
Pouring into the ice cube trays creates perfect 1oz serving sizes, so I just grab a couple of veggi cubes and defrost. Then I don’t have to worry about throwing out a ton of food if he isn’t cooperative. I also supplement in with fresh mashed bananas, fresh mashed avocado, a bunch of cereals, and yogurt.
The reason I wanted to adhere to all those parenting philosophies was because I was convinced they were better for a child. And I still am, but they weren’t better for *my* child. Or I should say, *this* child. If I get to have another one I’ll try all over again. But at least I can rest easy that I gave this baby what he needed, and that was the whole point.
I think I’m fairly overdue for an update on the progress of my miracle baby. Especially seeing as he somehow manages to turn one year old in less than a month. I have no idea how that happened.
The sad thing is that I’ve been so wrapped up in the day to day demands of meeting his needs as well as my own, that I’ve been horribly neglectful about documenting this kids life. Especially after the computer crash stole so many of his photos.
I had intended on privately writing monthly newsletters like Dooce does on her blog, but the best I’ve managed to do is a piece of notebook paper with an outline of his life scribbled down on it. I have to fix that. Maybe I’ll add “A Big Fat Scrapboook of Atti’s First year” onto my never ending crafty goal list.
This picture is already several weeks old, and it’s amazing to me how much he’s changed so quickly.
As of today he is 11 months old chronologically, which makes him eight months old adjusted age (based on when he *should* have been born), and his developmental age is all over the map. Speech and language he’s advanced. Hearing he’s nearly at adult levels. Eating he’s doing just great. Fine motor skills, he’s very weak. He can’t clap his toys together, he can’t hold his bottle, he won’t grasp small items. Gross motor skills he’s about three months behind even his adjusted age. He can’t sit up, he can’t crawl, he’s like an eighteen pound five month old.
When I just focus on the major milestones, it’s easy to let the news appear somewhat bleak. But I am surrounded by an amazing team of specialists who have trained me to notice all the many many many little milestones that come before the big ones. And those little milestones he’s slowly but surely checking off the list. He may not grasp toys and clap them together, but he’ll pick them up and bring them to his mouth, and when he wears his boots he’ll kick at the hardwood because he likes the sound it makes. He may not be able to sit quite yet, but he gets closer every day. He used to barely be able to hold up his head (in fairness, he does have a fairly gigantic melon), and now he can sit up with just a little support at his hips.
Every week he has visits from his Physical Therapist “Miss Jan,” the Occupational Therapist “Miss Alice,” and the Infant Stimulation Teacher “Miss Cathy,” and I can’t even begin to explain how I love these women. Because they love Atti. And they rejoice with me whenever he does a new trick. Whenever he gets infinitesimally closer to those big elusive goals we all celebrate because they understand how hard he has to work to get there and that the important thing is not how far he still has to go, but that he’s GOING.
So far we haven’t seen anything that we can nail down as being a sign of the dreaded CP. So far everything can be explained away by the fact of his prematurity, so we’re hopeful everything will stay OK.
He’s developed quite a bit of trouble with his eyes, which is really to be expected in a preemie of his age, so we’ve started having to patch his eye for two hours every day. It’s awful. He hates it and claws at his face whenever the patch is on, his sensitive little baby skin is all torn up from the sticky patches being ripped off of him every night. But we can already see improvement, so we swallow our instinct to grip him close and protect him from the awful thing and put on our drill sargeant personas.
We’ve made up elaborate backstories to try to make us feel better about the pain we’re subjecting our baby to for his own good. Bear calls him “Patches O’Hoolihan,” a barenuckle boxer from Boston circa 1890, blind in one eye from an unfair fight, but rumor has it it was really from an unsavory involvement with a local barmaid. Gosh we’re warped.
Ahhhhhhhhh.
I love the feeling of sacking out and doing nothing that comes after a busy time. I’ve only left my pajamas long enough to teach my lesson at church, dishes haven’t been done in days, I’ve even managed to watch a whole movie without working on something, and I didn’t even have a freak out! (mostly.)
I think a long weekend was just right for hibernation. Now the house is starting to stink, I’m starting to stink, and I’m ready to get back to some sense of order. Atti even managed to catch a cold* over the holiday, so I’m able to do chores while he sleeps the day away in a cough syrup haze.
*How perfect is that? All flu season long we are fanatical about keeping him inside since he’s in the super high risk group for RSV, and the one day *literally one day* we break him out of his quarantine he gets sick. Mommy Paranoia justified!
On Christmas Eve I cooked up a fancy dinner for Bear and me and then we all snuggled into the couch to watch cheesy Christmas movies.
When Atti went to sleep we had a present wrapping party. I wish I thought to take pictures because this years gift tags looked adorable with the packages all wrapped up. But not as adorable as this sweet little guy. Isn’t his face just perfect? *Sigh*
Christmas morning we woke up and exchanged presents, but there wasn’t much of a surprise since Bear already knew what his present was. I was so excited to finally pull off a big Christmas for him. Every year he blows the budget on something big for me, usually sacrificing his Christmas and birthday money to pay for it. He just can’t resist overdoing. This year he’s been so busy at work I knew he’d be too distracted to plan something like that, so it was finally my turn. I bought him a PS3 and put it on a credit card we hadn’t used in months so that he wouldn’t discover it, and then two days later he comes to me in a panic that our credit card was stolen because there is a huge random purchase on it all of a sudden.
I could have killed him! There was nothing I could possibly say to cover it. I just ended up yelling, “BEAR! It’s Christmas! You’re not supposed to scrutinize the accounts!” As soon as he realized it was me, he knew what his present was. There’s nothing else that crazy expensive he would have any interest in.
What do you guys do at Christmas to keep your presents secret? With both of us being involved in the finances and being pretty responsible about them, we both know where all the money goes which means that big surprises like this don’t stay surprises for very long. But at least I have the sense to ignore the credit card purchases in December and only look at the total. Sheesh Bear!
This ended up being the real surprise:
Bear’s turning into such a good baker, he had to have an apron. So I bought some lightweight suiting material and whipped him up one. I even had enough fabric to make a matching one for Atti. I made sure to make it super big so it would fit when he was actually old enough to help.
Bear felt so guilty after blowing my present for him, that he went out and overspent on me, so I ended up with speakers for my ipod so I don’t have to keep headphones balanced on my head as I’m digging through fabric stacks and looking for the right color paint, and then he bought me Guitar Hero World Tour, complete with drum set, guitar and microphone. It was a little bit like the time Homer bought Marge a bowling ball with his name on it, but I don’t mind. It’s been so much fun, we’ve already beaten the game on the easy level and now we’re trying to keep up with the Medium difficulty.
{{{{{picture unavailable. Too busy rocking out.}}}}}
We finished our present exchange super super early and raced up to the grandparents house for a little family time.
All the excitement just tuckered our little guy out. He gets stressed when it’s noisy or crowded, and with all the cousins around, he got stressed.
Since then we’ve been lazing around the house, playing Guitar Hero when Atti would let us, snuggling up against the chilly weather that cuts right through our house, watching movie after movie and eating a huge ham all by ourselves.
Atti’s calling me from his swing, I’m sure it’s time to wipe his sore little nose again. And then I have to dig my kitchen out from a nest of funky dishes. Sigh. I guess the fun can’t last forever. I hope your holidays were happy and that Santa brought you everything you wanted!
The ever looming deadline finally did me in. I just flat ran out of time to finish everything on my list. Next year, I think scrapbooks are off the list of handmade gifts. I ended up making three, and normally I really love making them, but the problem is that I always get the pictures late in the month because you have to have some recent pictures in there, and then I end up doing 18 hour long scrapbook marathon sessions.
Yesterday at about 11 at night, my back screaming in agony and papercuts on every finger, I finally said I wouldn’t do this anymore. And then I woke up this morning and scrapbooked for about ten more hours. It was a little late for Plan B.
On the plus side, one of those scrapbooks is one I’ve had in the works for a year and a half and kept putting it off until the next holiday. So hooray for me for finally finishing that one.
All in all I did pretty great. I think if my computer hadn’t crashed taking all our addresses and photos with it, I could have actually finished everything I wanted to do. Instead I had to cut back a little on the size of two of the scrapbooks and put off a present I wanted to make for Atti to make up for the days and days I spent reclaiming photos from around the internet and sending email after email to gather addresses again.
We didn’t get much baking done either. Aside from our Hot Fudge and Lemon Curd sessions, we made nary a cookie. And Bear really wanted to try his hand at a gingerbread house too. That’s probably for the best. Over the month Bear brought home four pounds of See’s chocolate, a five pound tin of Danish Butter Cookies, bags and bags of movie candy, Lindor chocolates, cookie plates, homemade fudge, vanilla chews, chocolate mint cookies and gift baskets full of more goodies. Junk food flows abundantly through a retirement community at Christmastime. We both teach teenagers at church and every week we’d bring bowls full of candy to pawn off on them and we still ate more than we needed or even wanted to.
We plan on waking up early tomorrow morning, taking some picture with Atti gumming on a present, and then heading up to the in-laws for a quick Christmas visit before heading back home for ham, scalloped potatoes, and lots of knitting with no deadline attached. I don’t think I’ll be moving from the couch for a few days, but I’ll still be popping in here amidst my gluttony.
While part of me is overjoyed at the thought of the day being upon us so I can finally slow down my scramble and just melt into the coziness around me, I’m also a little disappointed it’s already here. I’ve so enjoyed having you all visit me during my favorite time of year. I love this crafty blogging community, and I look forward to a 2009 full of great ideas and lots of inspiration from all of you.
Merry Christmas from Tresa, Jared, and baby Atticus.
It took me 9 months, but I finally got around to birth announcements for Atticus.I always imagined that I’d be right on top of that kind of thing, but in fairness, it did take him a while before he turned cute.
It didn’t seem right to me to send out announcements when things were still so scary. I needed to wait for the happy ending. And then the day to day work of achieving that happy ending made a project as big as 100 announcements seem absolutely out of the question. But I did it. Eventually.
Here’s the front of the card. I thought everyone in the world would recognize this quote, but apparently it only rings a bell to the 30 – 45 year old set. Here’s where it came from.
Then you open one end of the card and see the scary picture. Which is far less scary in black and white.
And the last page reveals the happy ending.
My dirty little secret is that all of my cards I make work out to be 4 1/4 x 5 1/2. Years ago I bought thousands of envelopes at that size for a business endeavor, and I’m still working my way through them. Since I wanted this card to trifold and still get to that size, I knew an average piece of paper would not cut it, so I went to neenah and ordered their free samples. This is a little insider trade secret I share with all of you. Just shop in their online store and you’ll discover that you can get up to 4 samples and only pay $12.95 shipping. If you buy any paper at all that price comes down. The samples vary in size, but you can find them as big as 12 1/2 x 19.
I looked all over town to find a printer who would work with my small quantities, and no one would give me the time of day, so I ended up at Kinko’s. Who printed it on the wrong printer, so all the toner kept rubbing off of the pictures. If anyone has any tips on finding a better printer to work with, I’d love some solutions. Kinko’s is convenient, but the quality is just not professional.
A lot of people wonder where we came up with the name Atticus. If they’re not familiar with To Kill A Mockingbird, they always think it’s the name of a gladiator. In fact, a lot of the nurses at the NICU called him Baby Spartacus. It only seemed appropriate considering what a tough little kid he is.
So when it was time to come up with his Halloween costume, the choice seemed obvious.
Here’s how I did it:
The first piece is a toga. I just cut a rectangle big enough to cover his back and his front, and then I sewed up the sides, leaving the top 3″ or so unsewn to make armholes. Then I cut a hole for his head. I didn’t bother hemming anything because I figured a gladiator was supposed to look ragged.
Then there’s the breastplate and shield. These two pieces are created in the same way. Cut two pieces of gold fabric to size. For the breastplate I cut a big rectangle that would cover his front and his back, and for the shield I traced a circle. I wanted the shield to strap to his arm, so I sewed a rectangle of fabric on to one of the circles before sewing them together, then I just laid them right sides together and sewed around, leaving a hole for turning. On the breastplate I wanted ties, so I put those between the layers before sewing, and I sewed all the way around and then cut a headhole to turn it right side out.
Once the pieces were right side out, I stuffed them with a layer of batting, and then sewed around the outside to close everything up. For the shield I added another layer of topstitching 1/4″ further in, and for the breastplate I topstitched little pecs and abs.
The spike on the shield was a little bit tricky. I basically just eyeballed it. I cut another circle the same size as the shield, and then I cut it into quarters. I took one of the quarters, lined up the straight edges and sewed it up. Then I stuffed it and used hot glue to fold the edges over and stick it to the shield. I followed it up with a few stitches in place just to make it look nice and make sure it wouldn’t go anywhere.
Then it’s just the laural wreath. I cut a piece of elastic to fit Atti’s head and sewed the edges together. I got some nice wool felt and cut a million and a half teardrop shapes out of them, and then hot glued them all on the elastic.
The whole costume took me maybe three hours, and since the gold fabric was all left over from another halloween costume, cost me maybe 3$. We’re planning on taking him trick or treating with his cousins this year. We really wanted to show him off, but felt like it would be a pretty blatant plea for candy if we took a baby around all by ourselves. With a couple other kids I think we can get away with it and still end up with enough candy to rot all our teeth.
I am so very very behind in what I have to share with you. I’ve been working on the house like crazy, I have all sorts of projects and cooking and what not, and it’s all just sitting in my little notebook on my desk. I’d love to tell you about how my Obama/Biden bumper magnet was stolen at the Priesthood session of conference and how it is one more example of how torn I am right now between what I feel is right and the community I belong to, that I feel so isolated and how exhausting it is to always be told how wrong you are, but do I have time to put those thoughts together in a way that appropriately reflects the nuance of the situation and the loyalty I feel towards both groups? Of course not. Here’s why:
Monday: Call the ophthamologist office at 8:00am to try to get an appointment. Call at 8:30, miss out because all the appointments are booked through the year, try again next week. Drive an hour away for an 11:15 flu shot and an RSV vaccine shot, then spend the whole rest of the day dealing with a kid who’s pissed off he just had to get two shots.
Tuesday: Frantically straighten up house. 10am Infant Stimulation Specialist comes over to play with Atticus and check up on his development. Cram some food in his face, but not yours, 2:30 the Physical Therapist comes to put him through his paces. Spend the rest of the day dealing with a kid who’s pissed off he had to have two workouts today.
Wednesday: My one day off all week. Work on Atticus’s halloween costume, put his costume on the ironing board giving him just enough time to launch himself off the desk and land on his belly on the floor three feet below, splitting his lip and bashing his chin. Spend the rest of the day dealing with a kid who’s pissed off his mom let him fall on his freaking face.
Thursday: Do all the normal kid routine, but be dressed, lunch packed and studied for a five hour night class (more on that later) in time to drop him off at Dad’s office at 4. Deal with a kid who’s pissed off his mom is ignoring him all day.
Friday: 12:30 appointment with the audiologist who is concerned enough about his hearing to want to do yet another appointment since he didn’t respond to all the auditory cues. Because he’s just a particularly willful kid and he never responds to what you tell him to respond to, not because he can’t hear. Race back home in time for a 1:45 appointment with his Occupational Therapist. Spend the rest of the day dealing with a kid who’s pissed off he’s had a crappy week being poked and prodded and bossed around.
But at least he gets a nap. Oh what I would give for a nap.
With all of the weird, “he’s seven months old, but they count him as if he’s four months old, but he’s behaving developmentally as if he’s three months old, or five months old, depending on who you talk to and the mood Atti was in when he was being evaluated” confusion, I’ve been a terribly neglectful mother in recording all his first’s.
And so many of his firsts were so gradual I didn’t realize he was doing them until he’d been doing them for awhile. Now he’ll grin at me, but for so long he’d just give me a little sideways smirk where I’d wonder if that counted as the real deal or not. I still don’t get a full on giggle out of him, more like a series of grunts. Does that count? Or does it have to be like you hear on TV?
Today he hit a milestone that is unmistakable.
Today he had his very first blowout, leaking down the legs, spread all over the two blankets he was on, don’t even try to clean up just strip him down and throw him in the tub, could you just hold still already so I don’t spread the poo around even more, diaper.
Why couldn’t he have been delayed on this one?