Nicknames

Erich is a champion nicknamer. And by "champion" I mean he comes up with really weird nicknames that stick for whatever reason. We're odd.

For example, the many nicknames of Lily:

Lilz
Lilith
Liliana
Leusel Teusel
Kiddo Kid
Little Tiny
Lili-tiny
Lee-lee

And the latest... Lilosine. (Rhymes with "limosine.")

Odd, I tell you.

A Teensy Bit About Politics

There seems to be a certain mindset among a lot of people of all sorts of persuasions that those who don't agree with them must be ignorant, or worse, insane.

For example, I hold certain views and values that, depending on who you ask, could get me labeled racist, homophobic, crazy religious, xenophobic, hippy, self-righteous, negligent, and the list could go on and on. For every single issue I have an opinion about, there is someone on the opposite end of the spectrum who would think I must be deranged. 

Actually, I'm not crazy. And I don't believe I suffer from Obama Underappreciation Syndrome. And I can believe certain things are wrong without actually being afraid of them.

Sometimes I do feel pretty alone in my peer groups for being politically conservative. I have a lot of friends whose opinions differ greatly from mine. I try my best to assume that their beliefs come from true informed conviction (even though I know how much easier it would be to drift with the tides of popular culture), as I hope they do the same for me.

What saddens me the most is how much political discourse actually happens on the Internet and on Facebook and NOT in real life. It feels safer to just put something out there (much like I'm doing here with this blog post) than to actually learn something from someone and have a real discussion. 

Alas, maybe there is just a little bit too much fear for that ever to happen. We have this great freedom of expression and all kinds of pressure to waive it lest we step on toes or, heaven forbid, hurt someone's feelings. It all kind of strips the joy from having that freedom in the first place.  

This is my promise to everyone who reads this: If you ever want to take me to task on something I have said or that you think I believe, please do. We can still be friends and/or family members. I would relish the challenge of defending my views as well as the opportunity to learn something from you. I would just prefer to have such discussions one-on-one rather than in a public forum setting where so much can be misconstrued and so much offense could be given to random scrollers-by.

That concludes my thoughts on politics for the year.*

*Not a guarantee. ;)

I Mean, We Love Sleep!

Two epiphanies today:

1. Erich was on a work call when Lily and I got up. She was being noisy and wiggly, so rather than try to wrestle her, I plopped her in the high chair and gave her some apple while I had my breakfast. She loved it! The girl is ready for more solids. It's time to sit her down and give her food at meal times. (Lately we've been doing that only at dinnertime and only when convenient.) Gotta sow the seeds for future routines!

2. Sleep regressions are good for hitting the reset button on my expectations. Not expecting any naps today (hey, aim low), I was so delighted when she actually went to sleep that I got BUSY and got some things accomplished around the house. Two hours later, I am only just now hearing little wakey sounds.

Hooray.

We H8 Sleep

This post is dedicated to Google and the Internet in general, which help me know that I'm not alone.

Lily is nine months old. But, like, she's nine months old. She's growing and changing by leaps and bounds every day; sometimes it seems like every hour. And for some reason with all these amazing physical and cognitive changes comes a real strain in her relationship with sleep.

Something similar happened at four months. She went from being happy when held or lying on the floor, just smiling and interacting with whoever was holding her, going to sleep when she was tired... to having her whole world open up. Even though it was a while yet before she started actually moving around, she started really noticing things across the room. She was starting the long process of teething. It seemed like lots of little changes and new things (laughing! grasping toys! etc!) all came together and combined to create a perfect storm of sleep-preventing nerve firings. She went from sleeping through the night to waking up 3-4 times or more. Naps were unpredictable at best. We were exhausted.

Everything settled down within a few weeks and the routine was pretty well set for several months.

Now it's all back. If before Lily's world opened up to the size of an average 12x12 room, it is now much larger still--like maybe the size of our whole sharp furniture-filled basement. She went from either sitting still or rolling to crawling and cruising within a week or so. She went from having fun being startled to actually playing peekaboo. (Granted, she doesn't usually successfully cover her eyes, but you can tell by the glint that she's "hiding".) Her body and mind are having trouble keeping up with all these leaps. I can almost see her mind whirring with new discoveries as she fights every last nap and bedtime. It's not her fault--and my knowing this saves her life sometimes, I think--it's just that her nervous system won't let her relax.

Realizing what she's actually going through does help in many ways, but the net result is the same: we're exhausted, mentally, physically, and emotionally.

Will she ever go back to taking two naps totaling three hours? (I really liked that. I miss that.) Will she ever settle down and be nursed to sleep within 15 minutes again instead of 1.5 hours?

I know she won't be like this when she's 12 or even when she's 3 or 18 months. But...will it get better? Will THIS baby's, this particular, individual, unique baby's routine improve?

If so, for the love of all that's good, please tell me: WHEN???

"But--I'm too cute to be chucked out the window!"

Nine Months!

This is my 200th post! And it's long overdue. I meant to scribble something when Lily turned eight months, but then it never happened. Now she's been NINE months old for three days!

Major milestones lately! That would bear part of the blame for how little sleep we've gotten lately, but alas, our house has been struck with viruses galore.

Lily has her first full-blown cold. She's had the snifflies and the stuffies before and even had an ear infection at 2 months, but that was so long ago it feels like another life. She's been very congested, making it hard for her to eat and she's been quite fussy and not sleeping well AT ALL, to the extent that I feel like the mother of a newborn again. I did not sign up for this. Luckily, she seems to have turned a corner today and is getting back to her normal perky self. There are other culprits for the fuss, though...

Teeth! Tooth #1 finally emerged on Monday, September 27. Tooth #2 followed six days later. The fussiness ramped up a few days before each tooth, but general teething continues as the top ones make their way down and Lily chews on her molars. Honestly, I don't even know when molars show up, but I'm sure it's not soon. She's just THAT kind of teether.

Crawling! I was starting to wonder if she'd just skip it altogether since she was pretty good at rolling and loves standing and walking (supported). But no, in the past week, she's gone from getting to her hands and knees and swimming around to actually crawling across the floor. At the same time, she's developing some pretty good cruising skills, which means...

Bumps, bruises, and tears, oh my! My life is truly forever changed now. Because she can, she WILL crawl under the dining room table, pull her head up, lose her balance, and hit her head against a chair. She can and has gone from sitting on the changing table to (MOTHER OF THE YEAR ALERT) flipping onto the floor. She has bitten her lip with those shiny new teeth.

Lily's personality continues to emerge to the delight of all who meet her. In the matter of a few days, we watched her go from being surprised by "peekaboo"-type games to playing them herself. Separation anxiety is apparent, but I observe it only when Erich leaves the room. I don't think she cares as much when I leave. She's slightly reserved around strangers at first, but warms up quickly and interacts well unless she's particularly tired or hungry.

In the past couple of weeks, she's started pointing at everything, which is a stage I particularly love in babies. She loves to look at her board books, especially Dr. Seuss's ABC book. She points to the pictures, especially round things like donuts and the orange owl's eyes and then hooks her pointing finger to turn the page. She can entertain herself for a long time by sitting next to her basket full of small toys and emptying it little by little. Otherwise, small toys don't hold much interest and she'd rather have anything that's NOT a toy. We're now lucky if we can convince her to play with a battery-less remote when she's aware of the real one.

She says ma-ma-ma and da-da-da fairly reliably in reference to me and Erich, respectively, but she will almost never say them on command. She babbles up a storm, especially in the morning and when she gets up from a nap: "Ba ba BAH. Weh wwwehhhh. Mo muh mah mm muh." She loves listening to her voice in an echo-y room.

I gave Lily her first haircut last week. It was hard to contemplate at first, but I found myself increasingly annoyed at the tuft on the crown of her head. It had turned into a hugely long mess of wispiness while the rest of her hair grew normally, so I snipped it to match the length with no regrets.

She's in mostly 18 month clothing sizes, with some 12s she won't be able to wear much longer. She's definitely becoming longer and thinner, so the 18s may fit for a while. But I'm a bad size forecaster, so we'll just have to wait and see. As the weather gets colder and she gets closer to walking, I need to get comfortable with a relatively new idea: SHOES. Radical!

I could probably go on, but I shall, Sheherezade-like, leave some things unsaid in the hopes that I may return to this blog and complete the thought.

Wait, what was I talking about?

Mother of the Year: Sticker

I won't be surprised if this becomes a series. All the reasons I totally deserve the "Mother of the Year" award... NOT.

This past Thursday, Lily enjoyed some avocado. I mean, she really enjoyed it, eating up to a quarter of it, feeding herself with a spoon and all. Yay!

On Friday, Lily and I went to Kohl's to use a coupon. I got a few tops for myself and then went to the baby department to get some new sleepers. Our little porker is busting through her 12-month size sleepers already! I also thought it would be good to stock up on socks before the weather turns cold. I selected a package and handed it to my curious little baby in the stroller. No harm, right?

Five or ten minutes later, she starts coughing. It sounded like she just swallowed her drool wrong. But she gasped a few times, so I checked her mouth. Nothing. I picked her up so she could recover and she quickly returned to normal. The situation was slightly alarming for about 15 seconds, but I didn't think a whole lot of it after it passed.

Sunday night, she had a poop that made me determined that we need a diaper sprayer. Evidence of avocado is all I will say.

Monday, Erich left town for one night. Lily caught up on sleep from a weird weekend, which was great, but she was in worse and worse moods when she was awake. I started wracking my brains trying to figure out what I ate that was so offensive because it really seemed like she had the "dairy crazies." Sure, I had a little bit here and there, but I thought it was acceptable levels. She was way too crazy for acceptable levels of dairy.

Yesterday, I gave her some sweet potato, but she wasn't at all interested in eating. It was our first real miss in the solid foods department. I thought it was weird, but she wasn't sleeping well at all and so that could have been the culprit. Erich came home and validated me: the baby was crazy, and gassy.

This morning, another poop. Horror. I wiped with another diaper and took them to the toilet to swish, whereupon I discovered something unmistakably inorganic. I unfurled the little circle and could just make out some words:

cushion

foot

.

..

...

Oh dear. Shame. Head is hanging. Mother of the Year. Those socks, five days ago, had a sticker on them. A removable, eatable sticker. That's what she gagged on. That's what gave her the "dairy crazies." And I was the one who handed it to her.

In conclusion, I'm going to buy a diaper sprayer today.

Oh, and there was a mouse in our kitchen. But that's another story!

Lesson Learned, or Capsaicin is Evil

I really should have known. But I really did not expect the horror!

Rewind: we have a vegetable garden. Erich has really done a fantastic job with it. He grows several types of peppers, including jalapenos. Erich's dad, a chile aficionado, and his brother were visiting last night en route to moving bro into the dorm for his second year of college.

Erich was making homemade pizza for dinner. He also had a hankering for fresh salsa, so I volunteered to chop and assemble said salsa. I particularly enjoy dicing onions. I started with those, then moved on to the six fresh jalapenos the recipe called for. Erich offered me gloves, but I declined as I thought I would just get it done quickly, wash my hands, and that would be that. I halved them, seeded them and chopped them up. I used the same knife and cutting board and chopped up tomatoes and other ingredients and mixed it all together.

I started to feel a tingle under my ring. I felt a little burning here and there on my knuckles. I used soap and water to wash off the chile juices. Rinse and repeat.... "Wow, my hands are like, on fire," I said, extremely wittily and eloquently. The men of the house all agreed that was weird. Erich asked FIL what he does to get the capsaicin off his hands. Soap and water was the prescribed remedy. "Okay, I'll try that...for the fifth time!" I started to whimper.

And I could no longer use warm water. The burning started to get pretty intense, spreading to all ten fingers, especially concentrated on my knuckles and nail beds. This was pain. Then I couldn't carry anything moderately heavy because the pressure intensified the burning. It truly felt like I had started up a gas burner on the stove and lightly seared my fingers.

Well, I was really feeling bad for myself. I hadn't held Lily in well over an hour and I knew she was going to need to eat eventually, but I was afraid to touch anything. So I did what any Millenial would do in this situation: I asked Dr. Google for help. I was not alone among internet users who had carelessly burned their fingers slicing hot peppers without gloves. What to do, though?

I found a remedy: make a solution, one part bleach, five parts water. Occasionally dip fingers in the solution, which will neutralize the non-water-soluble capsaicin into a salt, which is water-soluble. It didn't seem to help at first, so I poured a bowl of milk to soak my hands. That felt good, I think mainly due to the cool temperature. After a while, I think the bleach solution did work because I could start to function without terrible pain as long as I wasn't gripping anything too tightly.

After testing my still-burning hands on Erich's skin (and determining that my burning was not contagious), I collected my baby, who was ready for bed. I was relieved that my hands weren't going to burn her skin. The worst part of this ordeal was being barred from even holding her until we knew I wouldn't hurt her. (And I won't even get into the issue of an unexpected poop, more solid than it used to be, the pain and yuck-factor in swishing it in the toilet and I'm definitely going to get one of those diaper sprayers... oh, looks like I got into it, sorry.)

The rest of the evening, I was distracted from my pain. As long as my fingers still smelled like the lobby of a hotel with a pool, I could function. They were STILL throbbing when I went to sleep as the bleach faded. I woke up and they seemed okay, except when any significant pressure was placed on them. After my warm shower today, it was as though they were freshly burned for at least half an hour. Even now, about 30 hours later, a slight tingle remains.

I will never, ever, ever even think about handling any combination of knife and hot pepper without gloves on ever again. EVER.

Hungry

When Lily's hungry, she's a little bit like Mr. Peepers in "Attack Mode."