MommyBlog

Our house is a wreck.   In preparation for the BIG MOVE we have pulled everything out of the three attic crawl spaces, into the respective adjoining rooms and started the process of save/give away/throw away.   Between Casey’s old Kung Fu equipment (body pads, punching bags), my gazillion pairs of dance shoes, theater scripts and bins of maternity clothes/ in-shape clothes and in-between clothes, Kenny’s bins of outgrown clothes and toys, and filing boxes of every scrap of mail that’s entered Casey and my adult lives, you cannot walk through the house  without pole vaulting over something. Couple that with the in-laws visiting and just plain old everyday laundry, bill paying and cleaning, and we’ve got a domestic disaster area on our hands.

For a compulsive neat-freak, this is maddening.

Oh, and I can finally say where we are moving!   Casey has taken a job just outside of Atlanta, Georgia.   Quite a change for our Chesapeake Bay family!   And funny to think that Kenny and Cooper are going to grow up eating grits, instead of steamed blue crabs.   I wonder of they’re going to inherit southern accents??

Horribly belated, but no reflection on the sentiments…

Happy Third Birthday, Kenny!!

My sweet little guy turned THREE on Tuesday the 9th.   How time flies!   We had a big party for him on Sunday, with my parents and my sister’s family, as well as five other families that we are close to.   Kenny was in his element: Casey spent about $30 at the dollar store on various bubble sets, and Kenny and the rest of the kids spent most of the two hours here blowing bubbles.   There was also fishing and lots of running around, and a huge chocolate cake, decorated with Curious George.   Fun for Casey and I, too, as what’s more fun than having all of your friends over for a Sunday cookout??

Our present to Kenny for the big Three was a Radio Flyer scooter, complete with matching Spiderman helmet, knee pads and elbow pads.   He raced around the living room in his pjs, ecstatic and exuberant, until we ventured outside on the driveway for a test drive.   I think it’s safe to say we hit the jackpot.   He has played with it nonstop, albeit mostly in the living room.  

On his actual birthday, we “gave him” a plane ride and two nights in a hotel.   Yes.   I did write that.   We got on a plane and spent 48 hours traveling to look for a new house in a new city in a new state, in preparation for a new job and a whole bunch of new changes!   Kenny, though he has flown many, many times, actually enjoyed it and knew what was going on for the first time ever, so it was all brand new.   He was as good as gold, so excited in the airport and on the plane that it was infectious.   His barrage of comments and questions, delivered in a ten decibel stage whisper, were enjoyed by most of the passengers on the plane:

“Mama!   We’re on the plane, Mama!   How does it fly Mama?   Are we going yet, Mama?   The plane is moving!   Here we go, Mama!   Do you have your seatbelt on Mama?   I have   my seatbelt on!   I see the airport!   We’re moving, Mama!   Here we go!   Look, Mama!   We’re going!   Up in the sky!   Look!   Clouds!   We’re up in the air!   When can we watch Curious George?   Can we open the computer?   Where are my headphones?   When are we landing?   Can I have a snack?”

Actually, Casey, my patient, sweet, nurturing hubby, sat next to Kenny, so I could nurse Cooper and zone out a little.   Cooper was a champ, and didn’t cry once!   The rental car was another story (during a full day of house-looking), but he was a trooper, the little noodle.   Kenny was more than a trooper, patient and willing to go with the flow.   He even survived (with flying colors) dinner at Casey’s new boss’s house.    

We are still recovering from the trip, but now it’s really real:   we’re moving!   It’s not like we haven’t relocated before: we spent Kenny’s first two winters in Scottsdale, AZ, in two different rental houses.   But this time it isn’t temporary.   We are heading south.  

In a funny twist of circumstance, the house we are renting until we find a place to buy is on a lake!   So in spite of being landlocked, we will wake up to a water view, and still be able to fish and kayak for at least a few more months.

More details to come…

Today was a tough one.   But a little photo op did provide some redemption…

Somebody give me a glass of wine and I’ll recount the day.   Make that a martini.   Dad?  

I can hardly believe it, but I find myself planning Kenny’s THIRD birthday party.   He is no longer a baby.   He is no longer a toddler.   He is an honest to goodness KID.   Yikes!

I am somewhat consoled by the fact that there is still another little guy in the house who desperatly needs me every moment of the day…

But seriously, I am a little shell shocked at the reality that my baby is turning three.   I had several friends who sent their little ones off to kindergarten this week, and I realize that my turn is not too far off.   Kenny misses the “cut-off” with his September birthday, but only by a week, and he is already so smart about so much, I can’t imagine another three years before I send him off into the vast halls of elementary learning.   Still, I wonder if there is a way to preserve him exactly as he is for a little while longer.   Ok, exactly as he is, minus the 120 questions he asks about everything all day long.

An example (imagine, though, that this tiny example represents a mere 1/100th of the daily conversations in our house):

Me: Oops.

Kenny: Whaddyou say, Mama?

Me: Nothing, honey.   I dropped something.

K: Whaddyou drop, Mama?

Me: Nothing, just my phone.

K: Who-r-you calling, Mama?

Me: No one, baby.   I was plugging in my phone to charge it.

K: Why are you charging it, Mama?   Does it need batteries?   I’ll get you a battery!!   (And he runs off in the direction of the battery stash in the kitchen.)

Me: Kenny, come back!   I don’t need a battery, I just need to plug it in!

K: What, Mama?

Me: Come back up here!

K: I can’t hear you, Mama!   I’m getting batteries!   (pause.   crash.   wail.) MAMA!   (sound of 2,000 batteries rolling on the hardwood floor)   Mama?   (sound of chair scrapping on the floor) Mama!   I’m hungry!   Can I have a snack after you clean up the batteries?

Meanwhile, in Cooper-land… I took him in for his 2 month check up and he is doing great!   He’s 13 pounds – I knew he was getting heavy.   The doctor has also confirmed the reflux, and gave us a prescription for prevacid, which I have not yet given him.   I hate, hate, hate the idea of Cooper being on a daily medication.   The doc said that if he’s not in pain, to just let it go, that he would grow out of it by six months, but the truth is, when he doesn’t sleep through the night (which is about half the time), he has a terrible time with the reflux after his 3 am feeding.   There have been many nights I can’t lay him back down again.   So I think I may have to give in to the drugs for now.

Cooper is also really starting to show his social side.   His smile is much more frequent, and giggles are now ready apparent.   And the cooing!   Oh, so sweet.   It melts me.   I can even image that we are having conversations.   hm.   I wonder how much longer before he starts paying Kenny back with 120 questions… ha ha…

Our computer has another nasty virus-thing… I can’t look at the screen for more than thirty seconds before a “THREAT DETECTED!” popup flashes up… more posts to come, soon… I hope oh I hope…

Whoever coined that phrase either had never had a baby, or meant something entirely different by it.

At any rate, last night Cooper gave me EIGHT blissful hours of sweet slumber.   Kenny and I went to sleep about five minutes after Cooper did, charmingly wrapped in a hug, and we all woke up eight hours and ten minutes later to a gentle billy goat cry.   Heaven!

Today it is windy and chilly at the beach, but we still managed a few hours in the sand this morning, and will no doubt return post-nap time for some kite flying.   I have been deeded another “lunch break” and have found myself to the same internet cafe, hot coffee in hand and the remnant crumbs of a salad-plate-sized cookie by my side.  

Kenny is sleeping off his morning beach frolic and Cooper is hopefully snoozing with Casey while I am away.   Or at least contentedly hanging out.     He’s a funny little guy.   He seems to have four speeds: Sound Asleep (50% of the day), Barely Asleep and Gagging on Spitup (20%), Awake and Mellow (20%)  and Awake and Screaming Like a Banshee (10%).   But let me tell you, that Banshee time is gut-wrenching enough to make you swear it’s half the day.  

He has his two month check-up on Tuesday and I’m hoping that his pediatrician will prescribe something for reflux, which I am certain is what plagues him everytime  I try to lay him down after nursing.   Nurse him to sleep my foot!   I have to keep him upright for at least twenty minutes or he starts vomiting like a college freshman.   The problem with that is usually by that time he smells milk and thinks he’s ready to eat again.  

Ah.   I anyone had told me five years ago that I would one day be writing a blog about spitup, I would have clobbered them.   I love being a mommy.

Casey and the boys and I headed off to the Jersey Shore for the week, and I am sitting here in a coffee shop for one hour of free time… drinking a decadent something and shamelessly devouring a gigantic dessert.   It’s funny how ridiculously frivolous this feels, yet it brings to mind the fact that when I was a working girl, I had an entire delicious hour-long lunch break every day.   Sweet Pete, what did I do with myself in those days??

Anyway, though I still can’t divulge much, I can say that four weeks ago, Casey gave notice at his job and as of August 1st, he ended a very happy and successful career  with a wonderful (however unnamed)  company.   It was time to move on, and he left holding in his hand two distinct and entirely different offers from two companies that couldn’t be more unlike each other if one was in Tibet and one in Disneyworld.    He is  coming to a close on negotiations and decisions, and these are going to alter our lives quite a bit!   So there’s nothing awful going on (I think my last post read as if there were!) just lots of changes.   As if having a new baby wasn’t lot’s of changes enough!

I wish I had pictures to post of our week so far: Kenny is beach-boy-extraordinaire and Cooper has discovered the wonders of napping in our perfect SPF 50 beach cabana to the sound of the crashing waves.   The little bugger has actually been liking it too much, and has preferred it to sleeping at night in the pack and play for the last two nights. Ah well, small compromise!

Speaking of Cooper, he started smiling last week, but has now moved on to full out grins and giggles.   He is starting to engage  more and more and has even started flirting a little.   I’m in love!   Kenny is enjoying him more, too, I think, now that he is leaving the blob stage and entering the cute-baby months.   And thankfully, Kenny sleeps like a rock, because in spite of being in the same room with our snorting, spit-upping, wailing bambino, he is the only around here clocking a full night’s sleep.   Lucky kid.

We’re even doing well with eating out (which we’ve done every morning for breakfast and twice for dinner so far).   Kenny loves restaurants and Cooper loves to nurse, so even though I feel like way too much of New Jersey has seen me under the Hooter Hider, at least we’ve made it through with no major meltdowns or embarrassing paying the bill before the food comes because we’ve got to leave NOW.  

Ok, so besides leaving Cooper for half a day to go to a concert, besides insanely stretched travel, besides computer viruses that nearly wiped us out, there is a lot going on in our household.

A lot going on that I cannot write about, and it is killing me.   Hopefully I will be able to share more soon, because I need the outlet.   Suffice to say, if you were to look at the list of the top ten most stressful occasions of life, I think Casey and I are hitting at least seven of them.   And I am not talking about public speaking, or being naked in public.   Naked public speaking, at this point, might actually seem easier.  

Ok, not really.

Cooper is pretty cool about it all, though.   Thank goodness babies are portable.

Last night Casey and I went to our first post-baby concert: Kenny Rogers and the Oakridge Boys!!   It was so much fun.   Ok, ok, so we were like, the youngest there by 40 (or 60) years, but the old country legends still know how to rock a full house!  

The only pictures I took are on my cell phone, but Casey some how managed to find us second row center seats, and we felt like we were practically on stage with them.    

Most incredible of all, though, is the fact that I actually left my seven-week-old gem behind for SEVEN HOURS.   My parents came to spend the night (the concert venue was an hour away), and Cooper took three successive bottles of pumped milk and did so well that he made it just shy of sleeping through the night.   I didn’t leave Kenny for that long until he was like 10 months old, but it wasThe Oakridge Boys & Kenny Rogers…. Actually, I have to admit that I wasn’t looking forward to it before hand (dreading it might be more accurate), but I knew how much Casey wanted to go and how hard he worked to get the tickets, and so I forced a stiff upper lip and even found a way to enjoy myself.  

I did have to pump milk in the car on the way home from the concert, which was weird for me, but more than a little freaky for Casey.   My poor sweet hubby had ESPN radio up so loud the pump started vibrating.   Ah, the joys of marriage…

We have had a maddening  week and a half  of computer viruses ravaging both our home computer and my laptop.   And I return to MommyBlog, wondering if I have any readers left!!   I think this was my longest stretch of no posts.   Woe!   Please forgive, those faithful ones who are still checking in!

Over the past weekend we had a chance to not only have my mom’s side of the family to Maryland to visit, but we made our first big car trip with Cooper and drove to New York to visit his family as well!   A six-week-old and the New Jersey Turnpike are not a good combination, by the way.     Throw an almost three-year-old into the mix and a hormonal lactating woman, and we’re lucky we didn’t turn around before we hit the Island.   At least that would have saved us the torture of the Long Island Expressway.

Ah, but made it there and back we did!   And I don’t think there will be too much permanant scarring… ha ha…

First, Casey’s brothers, Dad, and the three grand-boys…

 

And my mom’s side of the family: her parents, brother and sister, and me, Kenny and Cooper:

I was fun, most especially for Kenny, who had endless playtime and attention.   Cooper did great, too (car ride aside) and is a very agreeable baby as far as being held by people he doesn’t really know goes.

This coming week we are venturing once again through New Jersey to hit the shore for one last summer fling.   If only I could find a way to nurse in the car…