May 2008

Another week, another fantastic weeks list (if I do say so myself). Actually, I can take no credit here, it is the fabulous ladies (and sometimes men, though, not this week) behind these blogs that make my list so fabulous week after week. Kudos to you all!

• Three, unrelated from All & Sundry.  What I love the best about this post is her view on the new “Indiana Jones” movie (is anyone else sick to death of the marketing for that thing??) and how scary parts from the old Indy movies as well as “Poltergeist” defined her childhood nightmares.  The scenes she mentioned are the same ones that affected me, though she did leave off the part in “Poltergeist” where the guy rips all his skin off.  That freaked my shiz out.
  
• Father’s Day gift ideas: round one from Milk and Cookies.  Another one from the fabulous Linda.  I don’t know about you all, but i could use all the gift ideas for Father’s Day that I can get my hands on.  And I heart her just a little bit more for suggesting “Firefly” as a good dvd boxed set. 
  
• Speed Racer: The Birth Story from Her Bad Mother.  OH. MY. HECK.  It’s like out of a movie, except it’s not and instead of being a comedy it would so be a drama.  Perhaps a thriller.  Just shy of a horror flick.  Thank GOD that everyone made it to the hospital ON TIME.  I may have to go on up to Canada myself and have a talk with her doctors for not being on top of all the early labor she was having.  That whole experience could probably have been totally avoided.  Gah.  Still, it has a happy ending so YAY. 
  
• Never say never, Part II. The beginning of the end from Absolutely Bananas.  Yay! Another convert to the DARK SIDE.  Besides her bumper stickers (which I totally adore), I loved the comparison of a road trip in a minivan you don’t own to eating just one Dorito.  It leaves you wanting MORE.  That’s exactly how we got sucked in.  Let’s bring the cool back to minivans, betches!
  
• Oops! I Did It Again! from Fluent Brittish.  I never, ever, in a million years thought I would ever get an Oops Baby.  Well, for a while I thought so but after trying so long I gave up.  So I definitely know where she’s coming from.  And it does make me appreciate the wonderful experience of finding out I was pregnant with Evie even more.  I hope she gets an Oops Baby some day.  They are such a blessing.
  
• Me and my two selves… please forgive me for them from Sarcastic Mom.  Every now and then I read a post about pregnancy lost that just GETS IT and this is one of them.   I hate the Carnival Ride too, and am just devastated at how many of us are forced to ride it.
  
• Puking with an abdomen wound is AWESOME from misszoot.com.  A big huge ol’ CONGRATS to the Zoot family on the new addition of AndyZ.  Sorry about the nausea though, Zoot.  The little guy?  He’s adorable.  I want to carry him around in my pocket. 
  
• Out Californee Way from amalah . com.  Amy has been putting out some awesome posts lately, and this one is no different.  Just read it for yourself to see what I’m talking about. 
  
• Vacation: All I ever wanted… from fussypants.  This was actually a guest post by Holly while Fussypants is out on “maternity leave” (congrats, btw!) and it is funny as all get out.  Mostly because this entire post typifies every car trip I ever went on as a child.  Minus sharing the backseat with a pesky little brother because I didn’t have one of those.  But this still resonated anyhow.  And made me laugh.  Really hard. 
  
• Jailed from moxygen.  Poor thing.  I cannot imagine being in a hospital, miles and hours away from the rest of my family for an unknown duration of time like this.  She has to be going just NUTS.  I’m sending her my best wishes, vibes and prayers because DANG.

What did I say?  GREAT posts, huh?  I just love this blogging community of ours.  We have some truly fantastic women and fabulous writers just pouring their hearts and souls into it, day in and day out.  I’m so proud to be one of them.

Now, I’m off to enjoy my (long) weekend.  Anyone have big plans?  We don’t, besides going to see “Indiana Jones” tonight at the drive-in.  It’s actually COLD around here this weekend (wasn’t it like 95 last weekend??) so no camping or barbecuing or anything fun like that.  Bummer.

I’m as guilty as anyone of writing sappy posts about my kids.  The mommy blogging world is full of such posts, in fact.  Sickly sweet posts, dripping with ooey gooey love and laced with fuzzy focused pictures detailing smiling faces, dozing babies and chubby cheeks galore.  At the same time, you have posts where date nights are detailed; delicious hours spent away from home while the kids are happily cared for by doting grandparents while the parents are able to eat out at decidedly non-child friendly restaurants and view entire movies (uninterrupted!) in movie theaters and spending exorbitant amounts of money on popcorn.  And then over here you have the mom who has gotten a fabulous writing gig at a fabulous website and soon will be making fabulous money.  Or something like that.  And what about that blogger over there who is either publishing a book or is included in a book or knows someone firsthand who has a new book out?  The fulfillment they must feel!  How about those ladies who blog about their girl’s nights out and seem to have so many beautiful, wonderful and fun friends to hang out with?  They sure have it all, don’t they?

No.  No, they don’t.

The thing is, I’m as guilty of feeling these things as anyone else.  It’s easy when you read a plethora of blogs to see these little glimpses into someone else’s life and feel jealousy.  To wish that you had a little piece of their life.  If you had what they had, after all, then maybe you’d be happy.  Or happier.  Life would be better.

The thing is, no one has it great.  In fact, I wonder if “great” even exists.  The blogger who waxes poetic about their cherubic infant is probably doing so in order to keep from tossing them out the window after they kept them up all night the night before.  The gal who scored the fabulous writing gig is probably feeling either a lot of pressure to write for her new bosses and bring in the traffic or is feeling burnt out with blogging altogether or worries that the money she’ll be making won’t be quite enough to cover all those bills that keep pouring in. The people who have ready and willing babysitters every time they turn around don’t always have the money to go out in the first place or have to deal with the inherent consequences of having relatives living nearby.  They probably wish, at times, that they had less parental influence in their lives.  And the women who seem to have a never-ending supply of buddies to hang out with?  Probably deal with their own issues and social politics and whatever else is required to keep those friendships running smoothly.  That or their spouses give them untold amounts of grief for wanting to spend time away from their families.

I guess my point is that we shouldn’t look at someone and think they have it all just because of what we read on their blog.  These blogs are merely snapshots of our lives.  A moment in time.  A still life portrait of what life is like.  When I talk about how adorable Evie is getting (boy howdy, is she ever getting adorable), I’m not mentioning the half dozen other issues that keep me up at night with worry and stress.  The blog is an outlet, after all.  I can write about whatever catches my fancy, diffuse frustration, find closure and distract myself from whatever is bugging me at the moment.  And believe me, there is just about ALWAYS something bugging me.  That’s just the way it is.

We’re all in the same boat here, aren’t we?  We’re all mothers who question our choices and our lives just about every single day.  We all love our children.  We all have hard days.  The great thing about these blogs is that through it all, we have each other to support us when we’re unsure, to cheer us on when we experience good fortune, commiserate when we’re frustrated and give us a boost when we’re feeling down.  And God Bless it too, I don’t know what I’d do without it all.

Once upon a time, I had a baby named Harry. Harry was born at a normal size (7lbs, 5oz at 40 weeks) and was exclusively breastfed. He grew to ginormous proportions. His fat rolls had fat rolls. He was corpulent. A basketball with smaller basketball shaped appendages. Adorable, yes. Rotund, yes. He didn’t start to slim down until after he was 6 to 8 months old. And even then he didn’t lose weight, it just turned to solid MUSCLE. Now, to this day, Harry isn’t a fat child. But he is the tallest kid in his class. And he is SOLID. He’s got his mama’s big bones. He was consistently riding the top of the charts when we would take him in for well-baby checkups. I guess I got to thinking that I simply made big babies. I don’t know why I decided that after ONE child, but there you have it.

Then Liam was born.

As you all are well aware, Liam earned the moniker “puny runt” around here for constantly running along the bottom of the growth charts. It was bizarre to me. And to most people, he looked like a normal sized baby. And he pretty much was. It was just that compared to HARRY, he was a shrimp. He still is. He’s got stubby little legs (that he got from Kile’s side of the family) and frequently looks adorable running around on them. This isn’t to say that his thighs aren’t a little chubby or whatever, but just that his build is a lot more slight than Harry’s ever was. And we got rather used to hearing that he was in the 30th percentile or less for his height and weight. Then there was that whole “not gaining anything” period he went through. That was FUN.

Except that it SO WASN’T.

Anyhow, moving on.

Now we have Evie. Which way was she going to go? Would she be more petite like Liam, or would she push the envelope like Harry? It appears that we have our answer! Evie went to her two month pediatrician appointment yesterday. It was dreaded, because of those awful shots they always insist on stabbing into our children’s juicy little thighs.

But Evie survived, and that’s the important thing. She cried. She may have broken a heart or two. She was STABBED three times, ya’ll. I probably would have cried too. I think I showed great restraint by not crying myself when it happened, actually. The poor dear. Anyhow. That’s not the point of this little ditty. The point is her weigh in. Which I’m getting to. Right now.

At her one month, she was pushing 8 1/2 pounds and 21 inches. This month? She is 11lbs, 9oz and 22 inches. Now, I’m pretty sure that 9 of those ounces was her diaper as she was wearing a cloth diaper that was wet at the time (why didn’t they take it off??) and those things can be heavy (for the record, it’s not the one in the picture. We put that one on her after the weigh in). STILL. Girl is GAINING. She’s 35th-40th percentile for height and 70th percentile for weight. If she truly does take after her biggest brother, she will be pushing 90th percentile at her four month appointment. Mark my words.

The only thing that remains somewhat small is her head. The measurements came in at 30th percentile which is REALLY strange. Because that was the only area that Liam EVER had high measurements in. He had (has) an enormous head, made even more enormous on top of his teeny body. But Evie’s head has the opposite effect. It’s just so… small. Smaller than I’m used to, at least.

I just have this picture of Evie out-growing Liam in a couple years and her and Harry towering over him. Of course, with Liam’s personality he could probably still easily take them both out. That kid has some cohones.

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