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Today was the first day that Olivia told me “I love you”.  Unprompted.  She has said I love you before but in response to us telling her to say it.

But today, we were both sitting around on a bunch of pillows half watching Martha Speaks and half playing around and she stopped and looked at me and said “Ah luh u”.  She can’t pronounce her Ls so she says N instead.  But she can say the L in love.  Funny.

Ah luh u, too, mija.

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I’ve heard that people have different love languages.  Some people show their love through writing poems or notes to their loved ones.  Some keep a clean house and make good food.  Some pay the bills and mow the lawn on a regular basis.  Some are affectionate and lovey.  And some show their love through money.

I bet a lot of people fall under the last one.  I know my parents do.  Like crazy do.  They show their love through buying stuff.  Even when you tell them to stop buying stuff.  They can’t.  They don’t know how else to show their love.  They think they are being helpful and trying to make our lives better by buying us stuff and the girls stuff.  They’re just trying to make our lives easier.

Of course they are coming from a good place.  They don’t do it to show off or to make us feel bad.  They really just want to help.  But they don’t get it.  They’ve never understood that I am just not programmed to want more and more stuff.  I want a simple life with simple things.  Of course I’ll take nice gifts when they are practical, like the food processor I got for Mother’s Day.  Love it.  Wanted it.  Got it.  But I don’t need iWhatevers, I don’t need big TVs, I don’t need new cars, I don’t need really nice furniture.

Nor do I want it for my kids.  I don’t want them to grow  up expecting stuff all the time.  I want them to appreciate things when they get them because it is a special occasion, not just because grandma and grandpa are in town every other weekend.

I’ve had the conversation with them over and over.  I have explicitly told them not to buy things.  I’ve even mentioned some specific things.  And they don’t listen.  They still buy them.  Even the specific things.  It makes me so mad.  And frustrated.  And when I am overflowing with righteous indignation I can’t bring myself to tell them because it makes them so happy to give us stuff.  My mom always uses the line “Well, would you prefer us to be the other way.  Never care, never get you anything.”  She’s used this line my whole life.  No, of course not.  But neither extreme is good.

The time when this ongoing argument comes to a head most is when we are throwing parties.  I like to do everything.  I mean everything.  I like to cook the food, make the decorations, everything.  I show my love through making stuff for people.  It means more.  Sure I could buy a really cute, perfect puppy costume for Olivia for Halloween but I don’t want to.  I want to make it myself.  Why?  Because something handmade and homemade will mean more everytime.  Even if it’s not perfect, even if the ears keep falling and the arms are too tight.  It means more than $10 at Target.

My parents don’t understand this at all.  At all.  Whenever we are planning something they always swoop in and just want to buy everything.  Why would you make cookies?  Just buy some.  Why would you cook quiche?  Just buy it.  Why would you make bread?  Just buy it.  It’ll save time and be easier.  And then I just feel stupid and I don’t want to explain myself again and I just give in.  Disheartened.

Or like Olivia’s Elmo birthday party that is coming up.  I made the invitations.  I’m making her birthday banners, party hats, cupcake wrappers, cupcake toppers, cupcakes, and goodie bags.  And I told my parents this.  They go to Party World and call me.  Hey mija, there are some cupcake toppers here, how many should we buy?  None, I already made them.  They’re really cute; they have Elmo on them.  No, we don’t need any; I already made them.  Oh, so you don’t want us to buy any?  No.  Ok, so you don’t want us to buy any cupcake toppers?  No.  Are you sure?  Yes, I’m sure, I already made them.  Ok.

They know that we are always running around like crazy and don’t have enough time to do things that we want so they just want to make our lives a little easier.  But life should be hard.  I should have to work on invitations and decorations for weeks to get ready.  I want to do this.  I want my daughters to understand that putting your own work into something will make that more special then anything you could ever buy.  Ever.  Money cannot buy the pride you feel when you see your  little girl running around in a pretty crappily made puppy costume.  Money cannot buy the feeling you get when everything looks great and was made by your own hands.  Money can’t buy the feeling you get when everyone is sitting around a table eating something delicious that you made.

Money can’t buy love.  And it can’t prove it.  And it can’t show it.

 

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In a marriage it is so easy to get frustrated with your spouse and just go crazy nit-picking at every little thing that he does wrong.  I do it all the time.  Really I do.  Just ask him.  I’m such a hard-ass sometimes.  But my husband is wonderful.  And this is why.

Because he still faithfully checks this blog most days hoping that I have started writing on it again even though he knows I probably haven’t.  It has been almost a year exactly since I last wrote.  So he has been checking for a year now.  He pushes me so much to write because he knows I love it.  Even when I don’t feel like writing he is always so encouraging.  He loves that I love something that he can help me with.  I don’t know anything about techie stuff.  All I do is write and he figures out the rest, the website, the graphics, etc.

Another reason I love him, he lets me do the most ridiculous things and doesn’t bat an eye at it.  I just purchased 20lbs of tomatoes from the farm that we get veggies from.  20!  That is ridiculous.  Most husbands would have said, “Uh, honey, are you sure?  When are you going to find the time use up all those tomatoes?  We are helping lead a camp next week, we’re still working on our talks and stuff for the camp, not to mention we have 2 little ones.  What the hell are you thinking?”  He didn’t say any of that.  Just said, “Yeah, sounds good.  Maybe you could make homemade ketchup like Jamie Oliver.”

He’s wonderful and I love him dearly…most days

Anywho, I’m back.  I hope to make writing on here much more common.  It’s nice to have this space.

Now I am going to continue researching tomato recipes.  20lbs isn’t going to cook itself.

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Last night was not great, to say the least.  The Squeaker screamed off and on for 1 hour 43 minutes.  She just would not sit down or lie down until she was so extremely exhausted that she slumped down.  Here legs were out in front of her in a wide V and she was slumped forward as if she was stretching to touch her toes.  And this is how we found her dead asleep.  We didn’t want to move her because we know she needs to learn how to do this on her own.  So we made some noise so that she would wake up and hopefully just reposition her body and go right back to sleep.  Nope.  She woke up screaming and stood up in her crib again until she slumped down again.  Not laying down, sitting down hunched into a ball. 

What a stubborn ass.  I am certain she knows how to sit in her crib.  She goes from standing to sitting all the time.  She is just so freakin’ stubborn.  I know where she gets it from but, man, this makes life so hard right now.  She’s not learning how to soothe herself.  She is crying to the point of exhaustion and passing out.  This does not teach her to sleep.  In fact this is why all the other methods didn’t work because they caused the same problem. 

O, just go to sleep.  Just lay down and go to sleep.  Is it really that hard?

On the up side, she was so happy today.  Made me feel like we’re not scarring her for life.

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We have no other recourse. 

As much as I talked about how much I hate baby sleep books in the last post, we bought one more.  Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Baby by Marc Weissbluth.  I know whenever I get a sleep book I am confident and eager to see it work and this one is no different.  Except that if this doesn’t work there is seriously nothing more to do. 

This is complete and total cry-it-out.  Put her in the crib and don’t get her out til morning.  We did some practice runs last night and for naps today and the real problem is that the Squeaker doesn’t give up and lay down.  Tonight for example.  She cried hysterically for 10 mins and since then intermittenly every 5 mins.  Why?  Because she falls asleep standing up holding on to the crib rails and when she starts to fall she wakes up and cries hysterically again.  She just won’t sit down or lay down.  And she knows how to.  She pulls up and sits back down on her own all the time.  The last month we have been showing her how to sit down and lay on her side.  But she won’t do it.  Ack. 

This is what prompted this method of sleep training.  Everything that we have tried to teach her how to sleep has been completely ineffective.  She still relies on us totally to fall asleep.  She’s only going to learn if she does it on her own.  Eventually she’ll get so sleepy she’ll fall backward on her bum and hopefully lay down and go to sleep.  That or she’ll go crashing into a crib rail which I hope really won’t happen because then we’ll have to start the process all over again.

It’s a little ridiculous how much we have fought this.  We have literally tried every play in the playbook.  We’ve tried Sears, Pantley, West.  All different schools of thought, all different methods and all failures.  Ok, we haven’t tried Ferber but at this point we just need this done.  The whole gradual thing doesn’t work.  It’s been gradual for 9 months.

So here we are.  Me glued to the video monitor (which our friend graciously lent us) hoping that the next time O cries she will plunk down on her butt and go to sleep.  Kraft coming in and out of his office to look at the monitor.  And O so so sleepy fighting a battle she can’t win. 

Saint in charge of sleep problems, pray for us.

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It has been crazy around this house.  Lots to tell. 

I had posted about the first couple days of sleep training.  It got great really fast.  Amen.  Alleluia. 

Until Day 8 or 9. 

The Squeaker started teething.  Damn.  We couldn’t get back on the sleep train since then.  She teethed (toothed?) for a couple days.  Then I realized that O was not eating very much.  She wasn’t nursing as much and not eating as much solid food.  Then her diapers became lighter and she seemed to not be peeing as much. 

Is my milk supply decreasing?  Yup.  I tried to pump about 3 hours after last feeding her and could not even get an ounce out.  Damn again.  I’m guessing the night weaning we did was too drastic of a change for my milk supply and when O stopped eating at night my milk decided to stop, too.  That just shows how much milk she was drinking at night. 

Ok, we need to buy formula.  My friend sent me a link to Dr. Sears’ formula comparison chart.  After reading that I decide that buying a toddler formula that does not contain corn syrup was the best thing to buy.  For some reason I guess that Whole Foods would not carry a formula that contains corn syrup so we go there.  They only had two formulas.  One was for toddlers and one was a regular organic formula.  I try to buy O organic stuff and it had a DHA supplement which the other one did not contain, so we go with Earth’s Best Infant Formula. 

We get home and I make O 4oz of formula.  She guzzles it down no problem.  I tried for about 20mins to get her to burp with no luck so I stick her in the exersaucer.  Five minutes later she projectile vomits, not just the 4oz of formula she just ate, but everything in her stomach.  I didn’t even know a kid could hold that much liquid in their body.  Brandon picks her up and whisks her off the the bathtub.  I’m not sure what to do so I call a couple people.  While I’m on the phone with my mom and pouring water over O I see that see is covered in very red and raised hives.  O has eczema so her breaking out in a rash isn’t super alien to us but hives that are actual welts is totally different.  I hang up on my mom and run for the baking soda to put in the bath water that a nurse told us soothes skin reactions.  O is scratching furiously. 

Kraft calls the after hours nurse line and we answer a gazillion questions.  Short story, give her Benadryl and take her to the ER because if she has an anaphylatic reaction it will happen in the next hour. 

Off we go to Dell Children’s.  O is fine but starts falling asleep in the car which worries us so we’re both singing at the top of our lungs to keep her awake.  Probably just the Benadryl but we know you’re not supposed to let people who get concussions fall asleep, I thought that might be good advice to follow at the moment.  We get there.  All the staff is super calm and very nice. 

Again, short story, Dell Children’s is wonderful and O just had a super allergic reaction to that specific formula.  The doc knows she is not allergic to lactose because she has been breastfeeding this whole time but we have to give her Alimentum formula just in case since we don’t know what she is allergic to. 

O was fine and the hives were slowly going away.  After seeing her doc a few days later, we were told to see an allergist to find out exactly what she is allergic to.  Phew.  But overall, O is doing fine and guzzling down that formula.  She is also almost 100% weaned.  Only nurses when she wakes up and she is increasingly getting annoyed with it because she gets such little milk.  Will probably not even offer it tomorrow.  Her appetite is great now.  Eating a surprising amount of solid food.  Poor kid, she was hungry.

After all this you can guess her sleep is ridiculous.  We tried to get back on the Sleep Lady’s schedule which was working beautifully at the beginning but now is a total nightmare.  After all this commotion it started taking a solid hour of screaming/crying to get her to sleep for naps and nighttime. 

We continued in this horrendous pattern for a week until last night when I had a total meltdown.  I can’t spend 3 hours a day trying to get her to sleep and have her screaming at me the whole time consistently.  We tried to get her back on schedule for about a week with absolutely no progress and if anything her sleep was getting worse.  She was starting to wake up every couple hours at night instead of sleeping at least until 1am as usual. 

Last night I declared a big F you to the Sleep Lady and said obviously O and schedules do not get along.  I vowed to just watch her very carefully all day and only put her down when she was sleepy and not try to make her sleep hour-long naps.  My very wise mama friend today told me that she’s always done this.  She doesn’t go by the clock but by what her daughter needs and her daughter has been sleeping wonderfully for months. 

And today, O has slept great.  Sure her naps were only 20mins and 40mins long but then she went to sleep for the night in 8mins.  You can’t argue with facts.  I have half a mind to pitch all these sleep books out the window.  Them and their bossy, condescending advice that haunts you at night. 

Last night in our misery we looked up sleep training problem solvers and found some really great links that are hilarious: Train Wreck and this one we found very interesting about too much attachment parenting and whether crying-it-out is actually harmful like Sears says it is: Baby Sleep Training Re-examined.

Moral of story – don’t follow the advice of a “pert, blonde social worker” and just trust your gut and your baby.  You’ll both be much saner and much happier. 

I will at least give Kim West a thank you for getting us to put O in the crib consistently and for night weaning.  I am actually very happy to not be breastfeeding anymore, but that’s for another post.

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Since making the decision to stay home with the Squeaker I have had this really nagging worry.  I worry that I am not actually teaching her anything and that she would be better off at daycare or with a nanny because at least there she could be with other kids and learning from them.  Obviously I know that moms staying home with their kids is a good thing but I feel like maybe I’m not teaching her the right way or teaching her at all.  I don’t know, maybe she’s supposed to be walking and counting up to ten by now and I have failed to get her there.

In the last week she has been making amazing strides in development.  She started crawling (army crawling) at the beginning of last week.  I was getting to think this was never going to happen because she always wants to be standing and hates to be on her tummy.

For the last couple weeks I’ve been trying to teach her some baby signs.  Specifically I’ve been teaching her “more” and “all done” and “water”.  Yesterday she started doing “more”.  I don’t think she knows what it means yet but she is copying my hand motions when I do it, so it’s a start.

She has also been sleeping in her crib like a champ.  And like a champ I mean an hour at a time but this is basically as much as she was sleeping in our bed at a time so that fact that she is doing it in her crib is amazing.

While I’m sure O would have learned these things in daycare if we had her there, it just affirms that at least my mom aptitude is not stunting her learning and she is reaching the milestones that she needs to be reaching.  Thank God.

It’s just nice to feel like maybe I’m not so bad at this mom thing as I feel sometimes.

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I know it seems like a common sense statement but I am continually amazed how the more big life events I experience the more I can relate to others.  Getting engaged, getting married, being a teacher, having a baby, being a mom, etc.  As these  things happen, I feel like I understand more of life.  This also means that as I learn more, the more I cringe when I think about things I’ve done that were insensitive and un-understanding.

When I worked at a women’s homeless shelter where we lived with undocumented women and children we always had a few pregnant women staying with us.  When they would go into labor we would take them to the emergency room, make sure they got checked in, then leave them with food and our phone number to call us once they were going to be discharged from the hospital or if there were any problems.  We were always super busy and short staffed so we probably couldn’t have stayed with them even if we wanted to but I can’t help but think about how alone and confused these women must have felt.  It’d be like putting me in France, pregnant, alone, homeless, no money, no insurance, language I don’t understand at all and just having to trust the medical staff during one of the most physically trying acts a woman can sustain.  Those poor women.  One woman told us how she had her baby by herself on her bed because the nurses weren’t responding to her calls.  Another young girl who was 19 told us that when she was released they told her they had given her a sterilization shot that lasted 3 months.  She had not consented. 

After going through labor, I cannot imagine what it must have been like for those women.  I really don’t think that we could have stayed with them but at least I could have been more sympathetic to what they went through.  Had I known then what I know now I would have also encouraged breastfeeding more, too.

Another thing that I am realizing now is how much I took my mom for granted.  She always worked 50-60 hour weeks and me and my dad still expected her to get all our food for us and to do all the cleaning.  Which she gladly did.  My mom loves cleaning so she always did it.  The food thing was harder.  We usually ate fast food or take out but she would cook sometimes.  Still even if it meant picking it up, we always expected my mom to bring food.  I remember how angry I would get at her if she came home without food.  Mostly because I was hungry and totally helpless.  I didn’t know how to make anything other than Ritz crackers with cream cheese and jam.

After becoming a wife and mother, I realize how hard it is to be the one that is entirely in charge of every meal and cleaning.  Kraft and I are trying to figure out how share these responsibilities more but with his schedule pretty erratic it makes sense that most of it fall to me, not to mention I don’t have a job.  I now understand this responsibility that my mom had on top of working overtime.  And she never complained.  She never told us that we should get off our duffs and learn how to help with the food.  She never told us that she was tired and needed us to help her.  She just took our complaints and our ingratitude. 

Sometimes I don’t give my mom the credit I should for being such a good mom.  Thanks mom. 

The Squeaker is doing a good job of keeping us on our toes.  I want to do a better job chronicling this crazy ride that is parenthood so I decided to work on our family blog more.  This blog will still be my primary blog but the other one will be stuff about our family and pics.

So enjoy: La Casa de Kraft