Liam

I have zero concentration this week.  I have about a bazillion things buzzing around my head but I feel like I’ve been unable to concentrate on any one thing at any one time.  Even now, I’ve gone and laid Evie down up in her crib in her room (with the monitor within arms reach of me down here, of course) and Liam is distracted by “Jack’s Big Music Show” (LOVE) and a pile of plastic blocks.  But do you think I can concentrate long enough to gather my thoughts into a cohesive post?

NOPE!

I feel like I’ve been pulled into a million different directions lately.  A little piece of me is needed here, a little piece over there and another piece needs to be thinking about that over there too.  Nothing has my full attention and that is worrisome to me.  I’m scattered, is what it is.  I’d quite simply forgotten what it was like to feel this way.  Friggin’ thyroid.

Here’s just a little sampling of what is buzzing around in that empty cranial cavity at the moment:

• I’m trying to make an appointment with a new doctor.  Our new primary care physician on our new insurance has a web-based appointment maker thingie.  I filled it out yesterday but haven’t heard back yet.  I hope they haven’t tried to call because our landline is at the mercy of two very f’d up phones that can’t hold a charge for more than two minutes and the charging stations are nowhere NEAR where I sit and nurse Evie.  So if they’ve called, chances are I’ve missed it.
• You’d think, then, that I would check voicemail to see.  But I haven’t.  I should probably do that.
• Speaking of phones, I won one.  You know, nothing much. ;)  Those that follow me on Twitter probably saw me lose my freakin’ gourd over it last week.  The only thing is that since we’re already AT&T customers, I need to wait until the end of August to renew my contract in order to get the reduced cost.  I think.  I’m still rather confused by the whole thing, to be honest.  But very excited to get my hands on it.
• Evie is sleeping in her crib RIGHT NOW.  That freaks me out.  She didn’t sleep in there very long last night.  Only an hour or two and was in bed with us by the time we went to bed but STILL.  Baby steps.  I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but I’m not too excited to get this particular milestone achieved just yet.  She’s only 4 months old!  SHE MAH BAYBEE!!!
• I’ve discovered Rockstar in the last week or so and I really kinda like it.  MUST GET MORE.  May just be the only thing to punch through my Thyroid Fog right now.
• Still haven’t seen “Dark Knight”.  Am pretty sad about that.  Hoping to remedy this little problem at the drive-in this weekend.
• Am so glad that Noggin’s monthly theme will switch in a couple days.  Am rather tired of the “Are we there yet?” song.  Actually, I think I was tired of it after the first day, to be honest.
• Where was I?
• My anniversary is this month!  TEN YEARS, yo.  Do we have any plans made?  NOPE.  Not that I know of, at least.  Crap.  Should really start thinking about this.  Anyone want to take bets on if I can get a DSLR or laptop out of this?  (That hysterical laughter you’re hearing is my husband.  He thinks I’m SUCH a kidder!)
• Liam goes in for a speech therapy evaluation tomorrow.  I haven’t really mentioned much about that, have I?  I don’t know why we’re not doing Early Intervention or if Nevada even DOES Early Intervention.  So in lieu of that, we have to journey clear across town to see this therapist.  And pay a standard office visit copay to boot.  Oh well.  It’s for the Good of the Child, which you can’t ever really bargain away, can you?

I’m sure I’ve got more.  But my brain keeps slipping away and thinking of stupid things like, “Should I do diaper laundry before or after lunch? This evening?  How about a shower?  Should I try to take one today?  Oh!  Don’t forget to Evie’s prescriptions filled at the grocery store!  When should I go to the grocery store?  Tomorrow?  Yeah, right, as if I’d go by myself.  Dang, when’s lunch?”

So… yeah.  Sorry about that, folks.  I’ll try harder to whip my lazy brain into shape for tomorrow’s post.  In the meantime, feel free to read yesterday’s post which I have on good authority is a pretty good one.

It comes in bits and pieces.  There’s no way that anyone can come home from BlogHer and in one post, sum up the entire experience and then just drop the subject.  Not going to happen.  So, again, to those of you out there who missed the conference, I apologize.  But I’m not done yet.

What I need to do is post up links to the great business cards I got.  However, the greatest business card I got is MIA and I want to hunt it down and take a picture before I do that post.  So I’ve been putting it off.  (Of course, you must realize that it is only MIA becuase I refuse to unpack, like, ANYTHING.)

What I’m going to do today is post the paltry pictures I have from the conference, including one stolen picture (Forgive me, Cagey!).  I swear, if I do make it back next year, I VOW to take more pictures.  Then again, as I don’t plan to attend with a baby clinging to me, it’ll probably be easier to manage.  GAH.

Here we have the fabulous Rhi and Carly.  I had breakfast with them on Day 1 and they watched Evie for me while I went and retrieved myself a bagel.

I totally stole this picture that Cagey took and fuxed with it in Photoshop.  But anyhow, this is me during my Introversion session, and WHAT IS HAPPENING WITH MY HAIR, OMG.

In case you doubted it, Loralee does indeed love herself some diet Coke.  Dawn from Kaiser Alex likes diet Coke too, but not on the same level, obviously.

Christine yells at defenseless bank employees and looks hawt doing it.

See?  Loralee totally is picturing Christine naked right now.  (That’s who she’s looking at, btw)

Cagey’s little girl Anjali was absolutely ADORABLE and I even got to hold her a couple of times.  I could just eat her.  She was very tolerant of all the pictures being taken of her.

I love this woman.  Even when she’s unprepared to have her photo taken.  Maybe especially when she’s unprepared to have her photo taken.

This picture disturbs me on so many levels.  Not just that it makes Cagey look drunk, but that it makes me look like a HEIFER. Still, I love these girls and we didn’t get NEAR enough time together.

Evie starts to nut up when posing with the Michelin Man. Typical. Kile was psyched to enter the drawing for 4 free tires.  WTF?

I have to include this last one taken Saturday afternoon after we had returned to my parents’ house.  Liam is rocking swim trunks and goggles I picked up in the Swag Suite and obviously having the TIME OF HIS LIFE. I think he probably enjoyed BlogHer more than anyone else.

Seriously, you could probably write a book about how much stuff they never tell you before having kids.  Or about how they tried to tell all this stuff before you had kids, but you never listened.  Or you listened but you didn’t believe them because you were going to be different!  You’re SPECIAL, damnit.  Ahem.  Something like that.

Anyhow, my point here is that I was never told just how different a mom that I would be to each of my children.  Oh sure, I heard all the talk about how “each child is different”.  And I beleived it because I grew up in a family of five children.  But I guess I never stopped to realize that you are a different mom to each child.  Or is that just me?  Becuase I SWEAR, I never expected to feel so differently each and every time.

There are basics in place, of course.  I’m a pretty laid back mom (NO WAY, you’re KIDDING… ) and generally don’t get too worked up over things.  My kids, more often than not, might have a smear or two on their faces.  My house tends to look a little “rough around the edges” by the end of the day.  I encourage all of them to be able to play on their own without me, though at Liam’s age, I do join in from time to time.  I also don’t put up with much nonsense and demand respectful behavior and adherence to the rules and regulations (be they what they are) around the house.

But as for how I relate to each child?  It has literally amazed me at how differently I interact with each one.  With Harry, he was my first.  We had a very close relationship for the first six years of his life.  As a baby and toddler, though, I think I spent more time worrying about things and focusing on the little things that just aren’t really worth worrying about.  I don’t think I enjoyed the small moments with him as much as I could have.  I was too busy thinking about what I should be doing and what milestones he should be achieving.  I’m pretty sure all first time moms do this.

With Liam, he was our Golden Child.  The miracle baby at the end of a long line of infertility and loss.  I was older than when I’d had Harry.  And with Liam, I have been more patient, and perhaps more indulgent.  Those early days and months were almost literally spent staring into his eyes and just basking in the glow.  The milestones came and went and I noticed but didn’t really care, you know what I mean?  Liam is my monkey boy and as he grows and more of his personality shows, I’m just charmed by him.  To him, I’m a soft lap to cuddle in.  And can I help it if I find it adorable that he calls everyone “mama”?  Even Harry is “mama”.  Kile will try to prompt him to call him “papa” and Liam will actually argue, “No… mama!”

And it’s different with Evie too.  I honestly never thought I’d get to have a little girl.  I figured I would have all boys and that would be that.  So she’s a surprise to me, every day.  And with her, I have yet another special kind of relationship.  We’ll often escape the cacophony of the boys playing to go change a diaper and while I’m cleaning her up, we’ll smile at each other in a way that says, “I’m on your side, sister.”  She doesn’t like loud noises or being handled roughly.  She loves to be sung to and told she’s a multitude of wonderful things (such as being smart, being a big girl, being pretty, etc and so forth).  She loves to study pictures and faces and does so with a sober, serious look on her face.  She is very tactile and tends to “paw” a lot with her hands, generally at my chest or my hands or a blanket (whatever is handy).  I take a delicate hand with her that I never had to have with her brothers.  She is vastly more talkative at this age and I find myself responding to her coos with delight.  It remains to be seen if she’ll be interested in the boy’s toys and playing in the dirt, but for now she’s my girly girl.  And I will admit to treating her as such.

Leave it to these tiny terrors to put our world on it’s ear, huh?  Being a mom at home (or at work, for that matter) isn’t easy and it’s a lot of work to deal with this rigamarole day in and day out.  But stopping to notice the differences and embrace them?  Well that’s just awesome.

And when Harry gets home?  I’m totally going to cheer him on while he plays a rousing round or two of Mario Kart.  Because he is plain awesome at Mario Kart.

It’s days like this that make a person realize why stay at home parents aren’t paid for what they do.

“And why is that?” you ask.

And I answer: Because, there isn’t enough money IN THE WORLD to make up for all the shit we have to put up with.

It really hasn’t been a bad day in the classical sense of the term.  But, it’s been a DAY.  The sort that you rather hope ends with an alcoholic beverage and perhaps a neckrub sometime before your head hits the pillow and you are able to embrace blessed, blessed oblivion.

Liam had his 2 year old well-check appointment with the pediatrician this morning.  And, amazingly enough, I was able to get myself and the two wee ones out the door with little difficulty.  Huzzah!  Of course, I noticed a shimmy as I drove down the road (we have a slow leak on one of our tires and it needs to be aired up from time to time), plus the van needed gas.  I tend to see 1/4 of a tank as being empty and it was 1/4 of a tank.  But… no time to fill it.

Bah.

The appointment went well enough.  Liam is still our puny runt.  We got a sheet of paper with suggestions for feeding picky eaters.  The doctor approved our giving him pedia-sure and suggested that on the days we didn’t give him that, that he had some sort of multi-vitamin.  And to keep trying to get him to eat fruits and vegetables.  Especially vegetables.

The big thing was his speech.  No big surprise to us, he has a delay.  Harry did too, at the same age, and it hasn’t hurt him much.  Still, we don’t see any reason to turn down speech therapy because it couldn’t possibly hurt and could only help.  However, it would mean more driving around for me (figures we don’t have anyone around here that comes to the home, right?).  I’ll do what I have to do.

I don’t believe that this means he’ll be behind all his life or anything.  I really have no other reason to be concerned.  I know he’s a clever boy.  He just isn’t where his peers are verbally yet.  And hopefully, this will help him get there.  No pressure.  I’m not worried.

After the appointment, we were all starved for lunch.  We headed to the university to eat there, as is the custom.  Lunch was good and I had food that was decidedly unhealthy for me.  It was delicious.  But then it was time to go home.

So many things went wrong from there.  Liam fell asleep in the van, which as you mothers of toddlers know, that just completely fux’s with the whole nap schedule.  Evie screamed in the van at first, before settling down.  She commenced screaming again as soon as we got home.  I carried Liam in, still sleeping, and put him up in his crib.  Back downstairs, I let the dogs out and noticed that Beetoe (I could call her something really, really bad right here and not have a lick of guilt) had torn through a bag of garbage and strewn it everywhere.

I then fetched Evie out of her seat and set her on the changing table.  She had just had a monstrous poop and the clean up was about as much fun as you’d expect.  Meanwhile, I can hear Beetoe losing her shit out on the back step because, “OMG, I’m OUTSIDE.  And it’s above 70 degrees!!!  I’M DYING!!!”  Evie doesn’t settle down as I clean her up, and instead ramps up her displeasure.  My blood pressure starts to do scary things.

I set her in the bouncer seat so I can clean up the mess Beetoe made.  Of course, Evie is still going thermonuclear and Beetoe is now flinging herself uselessly at the sliding door.  Everything gets cleaned up, the dogs get let in and I pick up Evie.  Seems all is right with the world, right?

I settle her down and we go upstairs to lay down.  Which, you know, sorta works for a while.  But Evie starts to get restless and as we STILL have no monitor, I’m reluctant to leave her upstairs unmonitored so I bring her downstairs.  She falls asleep in her bouncer.  I had opened Liam’s bedroom door in the hopes that some of the cool air coming from the a/c unit in our bedroom would waft into his room which gets really hot in the afternoon.

This worked against me because he woke up.  I then made the collossal mistake of handing him his sippy cup.  This only made him mad because he recognized I was putting him off.  I came downstairs and sorted through the clean cloth diapers that came out of the dryer that morning, listening to Liam cry.  I start to think that the door being opened is making him upset.  So what do I do?  I go up and close it.  Which pissed him off again, but then he was already pissed.

Now, he has been crying and sleeping in 5 minute intervals.  It occurs to me that perhaps his leg is bothering him where they gave him his shot.  Perhaps I should have given him some Motrin before laying him down.  Which, you know, I WOULD HAVE, had he not fallen asleep in the van on the way home.

AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

So there you have it.  That’s my day so far.