Motherhood

Some thoughts since Jack's arrival:

1) Bouncer/swing after feeding = Spit Up Fest 2006 featuring Jack Maidy!
2) Always have extra burp cloths on hand
3) Burping is not optional
4) Diaper changes - baptism by pee
5) One free hand is enough to get 5 things done while feeing baby
6) Grandparents are wonderful!
7) ACCEPT help when it's offered (or you'll regret not taking it)
8) Burping is not optional
9) Nail clippers - friend or foe?
10) Date night? Yeah right!
11) Vanity - throw it out the window, you won't care
12) Coffee - heaven sent
13) Breast pumps - a very odd, odd contraption
14) Burping is not optional
15) Jack and I lose hair at the same rate
16) Yes...you CAN over bundle a baby
17) I HATE HATE HATE HATE HATE HATE HATE HATE the idea of day care
18) Moms are for comfort, Dads are for play (and poopy diapers)
19) Burping is not optional
20) Maternity leave is just long enough for you to feel like a mom....then go back to work! Argh!!!!
21) Motherhood is not a feeling...it is action driven by love
22) Did I mention burping is not optional?

Hiatus

I'm back!

Yes, it has been months, but I have a good excuse...a great excuse!
The Maidys have added a family member.

On 9-25-06, little Jackson Maidy arrived at 7:41am. Well, he's not so little. He was 8lbs. 10oz at birth. Jeesh! Born via C-section and for good reason too. There is no way I could have had him naturally. Yikes.

Jack is as cute as can be and makes me happy every day with hsi smiles and laughs and attempts to sit up even though he has not yet mastered holding up his head first. Hahahaha!

All the grandparents, and one great grandmother are totally in love with him, not to mention his aunts and uncles are in love with him as well.

Sorry I have not posted in a while

Being pregnant, all my attention has been put to the baby blog.

Another part of being pregnant is wondering from time to time what will happen (or not happen) to my body once Jack is born and my body is no longer hostage to his needs.

Will I be able to lose the baby weight? Will my stomach ever be the same again? Will I be able to get into a swimsuit after birth?

Besides the physical changes, I wonder about the mental and emotional changes. Up to this point, I've just been my old self. Other than a bit of teen and mid 20's angst, my identity (or at least my idea of who I am) has never been questioned or in doubt.

How about after birth? Being someone's mother is a HUGE identity change/adjustment right? I've heard mothers put this change to me in many ways...."oh you'll still be you, only better!" or "your life will be turned completely upside down as well as who you always thought you were!" and "your priorities change, therefore, you have to change." and "there is no such thing as a cool mom...by definition, moms are not cool."

Really? A cool mom doesn't exist at all? How could there be cool dads, but no cool moms?

Bare Minimum

I was stopped at a stop sign this morning to make a left onto another street.
There was a car in front of me. A gold Mercedes-Benz, 4 door, also trying to make a left.

At first I didn't pay attention to the funny shape in the driver's seat as I was too busy looking at the cross traffic.
The street we were looking to turn left on is a busy road (Golf), so we had to sit there a while before a break in traffic happned. It was this kind of 'sitting' time that bored my mind and allowed me to observe the shape of the driver's head in front of me.

Was it a woman? A man? What were those things sticking out of what looked like the driver's head? Hmmm....

When the car in front of me finally found a break in traffic and turned onto Golf, I finally saw what I was looking at.
The driver was a woman. And the funny shapes that made up the shape of her head were rollers. I couldn't believe it! From what I could tell, she was wearing a nice work blouse, make-up applied nicely too, but then what was with the rollers? Where and how was she going to take the rollers out and style her hair?!?! DId she have a salon in her Mercedes?

If I realized I was not going to have enough time to roll and style my hair before leaving the house, I would not begin to roll my hair at all.

I've seen women in their car putting on make-up via their rear view mirror on the highway and such and always kind of shook my head at them. It's dangerous, not only for other drivers, but for themselves as well (imagine poking your eye out with a mascara wand). I've heard of people going out to the mall or the grocery store in their pajamas on a regular basis and have shook my had at that too. If you're not going to make the effort to put on shirts and pants, then don't go out. It's a minimum requirement people....even McDonald's requires you have clothes AND shoes on to be served.

Relative Suffering - Compared to a goose

I have not posted here in a while. I have been sick. See the Peanut blog for details, but in one quick word - pregnancy.
The Peanut blog documents my many, many, many weeks of suffering under the spell of morning sickness due to baby.
Everything from smells, to traveling, to vomitting. I could not believe women all over the world purposely lent themselves to the condition of 1st trimester pregnancy over and over again. I think I was only 2 weeks into the morning sickness when I looked over at Alex and said, "I'm not very good at this. I don't like it. I don't know if I'll be doing it again." Yes, I am a whiner, the biggest, most annoying, most unrelenting whiner of them all (just ask Alex).

But the other day, I realized, I do not have it so bad.

Around our office property we have wild life - well, semi-wild life. We have geese. We have a male and female who mated. The female started building a nest. She could not gather enough twigs, nor any other decent nesting material so she decided to fill in the gaps between her few scraps of a twig nest with her feathers. She laid 7 eggs.

If you've been watching the news, or have stepped outside the last couple of days, you know that it's been quite windy around here. The mother goose sat on her nest deligently, protecting and incubating her eggs for as long as her hunger pangs would let her (the male goose was no where to be found....eh-hem). Eventually, she had to get up to feed. She could hold out no longer.

Wouldn't you know it, the nest of feathers blew away in the wind promptly as she got up. 3 of her eggs came spilling out of the now dismantled nest onto the ground of rocks. She had to eat. There was no way to recover feathers in the wind to rebuild or fix her broken nest. She went off to hunt.

She came back a while later, her eggs still sitting on rock, and sat back down on the 4 eggs that managed to stay together. She tried to stretch herself as wide as she could in an effort to cover the 3 that had rolled away a few inches from the bunch, but it was no use. The weather turned for the worst. The temperature dropped 15 degrees, the winds continued to howl, and then to make things worse....it began to rain on her.

When I returned to the office after the weekend, the mother was no where to be found. She had abandoned the eggs. She didn't come back once to even look at them again. At the end of the day, I saw the female goose walking around with the male again, making loud, loud noise - were they fighting over the destruction of the nest and whose fault it was? It was a 'domestic'...definitely, I could tell. It was not friendly 'quacking'.

The Human Burrito

1:48am, I'm in bed, I feel uncomfortable, something is wrong. Is it the cat sleeping on my foot? Or the other cat sleeping with his chin on my head? I feel a chill along my back. Why am I so cold? I feel around with my hand....NO SHEETS! I'm completely exposed.

I turn around, waking both cats, making them get up and off the bed onto another sleeping destination. I open my eyes. I can barely make out what I am seeing in the dark. It is a large mass, about 6'3" in length, and from it, a sounds escapes - the sound of a snow plow digging it's way through cement.

It takes a moment for it all to register. I am looking at Alex, wrapped in our sheet AND comforter like a burrito, snoring away as he peacefully, and uninterrupted, sleeps through my discomfort. I sigh and begin Operation Night Time Cover Recon.

I tip/push Alex to his right side with my left hand while quickly pulling out what is rightfully my end of the covers with my right. Then in the same motion, I continue to pull on my end of the covers over to my left side, therefore, rocking Alex onto his back.

He barely stirs. I place the cover evenly over him and evenly over me. But wait....the misery doesn't end....the covers are soaked! He's sweated through the sheets!

Alex sleeps on the side of the bed that faces our window which can get cold. We have an electric portable heater in our bedroom which Alex turns on 'high' before getting into bed.

I admit when I first get into bed, the sheets and mattress and pillows are cold, so therefore I feel cold. But after a few minutes, I'm as snug as a bug as things warm up to a comfortable zone.

We all have a guage in our body to let us know when we're hot, or cold....but I strongly believe Alex's guage is defective.

Alex complains that he is cold. What I don't understand is why I wake up in the middle of the night almost every night to find him wrapped in ALL the covers like a burrito, even though he's sweating like he'd just ran the marathon!

So when I get the covers back, it's not the snuggly, warm, comfortable cover I'm expecting. Instead it feels like an extra humid August day in Chicago after a rain. I'm forced to use whatever square inch of non-sweaty cover to place over myself and attempt to fall back to sleep.

Touching Base....

Estimated time of call: around 2:15pm
Date: 2/20/06
Participants: Ellie Belly Jelly (EBJ), E-moh (me)
Purpose: Unknown

Me: Hello?
EBJ: E-moh, hi
Me: How are you? Giggle, giggle, giggle
EBJ: Okay...giggle, giggle, giggle
me: What are you doing?
EBJ: Okay
Me: Are you watching TV?
EBJ: Yes
Me: What are you watching?
EJB: Mumble, mumble, me-meh
Me: Are you watching a movie?
EBJ: Yes
Me: Are you watching DVD?
EBJ: Yes
Me: Are you watching Little Mermaid? (cause Wany told me that's what EBJ was going to watch)
EBJ: Widdle me-meh
Me: Oh wow!
EBJ: Oh wow.
Me: Giggle, giggle, giggle
EBJ: Giggle, giggle, giggle
Me: Ellie, how old are you?
EBJ: How ol aw you?
Me: No, how old are YOU?
EBJ: I'm two.
Me: That's right! You're two! Good job!
EBJ: Okay. Widdle me-meh. Bye.

No One Told Me

I became overwhelmed by a need to eat salty popcorn at work today. Luckily, I had a 'Butter Lovers' popcorn in my desk drawer!

Two minutes later, I was eating popcorn. 7 minutes later, they were all gone. Man! I polished off an entire bag of popcorn by myself.

I sat there, in shock that I'd eaten an entire bag of popcorn by myself when something distracted me. Someone brought in pictures from our recent company bowling outting and was parading it around the office.

There were pictures of co-workers doing karaoke (at the bar in the bowling alley), there were pictures of people falling down on the bowling lane, drinking too much...etc. They were pretty hilarious. I in my usual fashion laughed my butt of at the expense of others in these photos and after about 20 minutes, when I'd had my fill of laughter, I returned to my desk to continue working.

I took a sip of water because the popcorn and all the laughing made me thirsty. As I swallow the water I notice something in my mouth....popcorn between my teeth, and not my back teeth either....but a kernel shell wedged between my 2nd and 3rd teeth in front....a spot well exposed to public view if one was to smile or laugh their butt off looking at goofy pictures of co-workers. Sigh.

I'm SURE someone saw this embarrassment. I'm SURE someone laughed THEIR butt off when they returned to their desk and shared the hilarity with their cube-mate. I'm SURE some folks exchanged a look with another thinking something along the lines of "get a load of this blockhead with an ear of corn between her teeth!"

But NO....no one told me....

Stupid Human Tricks

Our oldest cat, Nellie, has decided she'd like to be served breakfast at 2am. She struts into our room in the middle of the night and starts 'knocking' on various objects in the room.

We cover our bedroom window with plastic every winter to keep the draft at a minimum. Nellie uses it as an annoyance tool. The plastic is what she knocks/paws at with her paw. It makes such a unique and terrible noise that it even wakes up Alex, who snores like nobody's business.

Inevitably, Alex gets out of bed and feeds her because he's very tired and would like to get some sleep. Big mistake.

Nellie has trained Alex to do as she wishes, and it only took one night. The very next night, Nellie was served breakfast again promptly at 2am.

I have a New Year's resolution...to train Nellie and Alex out of their late night breakfast dance.