Mommy Milestones (Because we're learning to crawl before we walk, too.)

Hello, babies. Now that you've got this new woman in life, you're probably wondering if she's developing on schedule. Remember, all mommies are different - some may be more advanced, and some may be late bloomers, so just be patient with your new mom as she explores this new world around her.

Showering:
1-2 weeks
Your new mommy may start showering again as early as a few days after your birth, but it's not uncommon for this process to take a week or two. Don't worry - she'll get there. If you're a colicky baby, this may take up to three weeks.

Passing you off quickly:
3-4 weeks
Your new mommy is terrified of dropping you, and since your neck is still unstable, this makes the football pass off to other people a necessary step. Try squirming a little bit, and follow it with crying for a few hours. This will make the new transition from mommy's arms to daddy's arms much smoother and quicker in the future.

Sleeping through the night:
4 months - ?
This is very much dependent on how much you work with her. Try sleep training her as early as 3 months. The sooner you're both passing out by 8pm, the happier your days will be. Don't worry if it takes a little longer. She's functioning on the rich nutrients of caffeine until this stage is over.

Leaving you in the care of others:
4 weeks - 1 year (or later)
This new mommy is very attached to you - sometimes physically, so don't be concerned if she isn't comfortable with grandma watching you on her own just yet. Remember, some mommies may be ready to say their goodbyes as early as a few weeks for a night out, while others are perfectly content to stay in for months at a time with their new angel (you) so enjoy it.

Drinking again:
1 day - several months
Some mommies are ready for that first glass of wine in the hospital - after, it's been a long nine months incubating you - but others are maintaining their new mom buzz all on their own. All new mommies drink something eventually. Yours may take longer, but don't be surprised if you taste a little wine in that first bits of breast milk (a little is perfectly harmless.)

Fixing her hair/wearing makeup
6 weeks - never again
Looking presentable may be something is forced upon your new mommy - like returning to work, or your baptism. But other mommies prioritize by showering and getting dressed in something other than pajamas before proceeding with their days with you. Either is perfectly acceptable. Your mommy is beautiful - no matter what she's wearing.

Stop taking endless amounts of pictures you:
Second baby - never
I'll be honest, some mommies never get over "mamarazzi syndrome." Every thing you do is amazing to her, so give her a smile and let it happen. If and when you get a sibling, the pictures may die down a bit, but be prepared for a new stage of matching outfits (for sisters, particularly) and weekly submissions of your videos to America's Funniest Home Videos.


Like I said before, all mommies are different. Yours is wonderful, and developing just as she should be. If you have any reason for concern - ask dad, or babble something to your doctor. An early red flag can lead to a lot of prevention.

Happy Wednesday!

Love,
Dominique

My Top 10 List of things I May Never Learn (And the tough love I need to give myself)

I've learned a lot over the past year. I've grown, (then shrunk) then grew again as I got pregnant, had a baby and am now always attempting to keep said baby happy and alive. But there are always going to be things in my life that I seem to never learn. Why is it so hard?

1) You're not going to want/eat that salad. Whenever you decide you'll get a salad for lunch because you need something fast and the thought of a burger makes you ill, you always end up ill anyway because of low blood sugar 3 hours later. Dominique, you don't want a salad. Just get the damn burger.

2) No amount of preparation is ever going to make your trips to Mobile the same 4 hours they have always been. You have a kid now. She gets hungry, and lonely and screams bloody murder in the backseat until you stop. Get used to a 5 hour timeline at least.

3) Despite your lack of best efforts, geography is always going to be your Achilles Heal. Learn how to point out the important places in the news on a map and let it go.

4) You will never know how to spell the word "necessary." Even as you type the rest of this sentence, the red squiggly line underneath it beckons you to do an auto correct with your right click.

5) You may never learn how to put on eyeliner. It's never been part of your makeup repertoire, and is seemingly one of the few girl-staples that you never bothered with. You've doomed yourself to a life of small, undefined eyes. That someone once told you were too close together.

6) You'll never teach high school English. It's time to let this dream go, as you've now realized that in order to teach others English, you have to be able to properly speak and write it yourself. You have poor grammar, bad spelling and you start a lot of sentences with prepositions. You have, however, learned to separate the two words "a lot." Kudos.

7) You hate running. Or exercise in general that you haven't been tricked into doing. Don't ever join a gym again unless they have a magical pool that somehow always has lounge chairs open and isn't filled with pool rat children and tatted fraternity guys hitting on the lifeguards.

8) You love TV. Accept it. TV and wine are your friends, and subsequently, your only hobbies. Stop telling people you are going to start working in the yard outside.

9) You're not going to make your own baby food, and in all truth, you are terrified of the day when your daughter isn't eating pureed jar foods anymore. She can't survive off of totino's pizzas and mac and cheese like you can, so you better come up with a solution quick.

10) Despite all of your faults, you're a good mom. Your baby is happy, healthy and cute as a button. You're doing fine. And you'll be able to handle whatever comes your way regarding her from here on out. Even if you think you can't.

So there you have it, the Truth Bomb of blogs.

Happy Wednesday everyone!

Love,
Dominique

Precautionary or Paranoid? The feeding fine lines that are giving me fine lines (and grey hair.)

I don't like to cook. My husband of almost two years can attest to this. The preparation, the time involved, I want none of it. I also have no confidence in my ability to cook anything I've never cooked before, and therefore, I rarely try. Lame, I know.

However, with V eating solids now, there's a whole world of good fruits, veggies and grains that she can have to widen her palette. But with her having no teeth yet, most everything has to be specially prepared and pureed to a fine paste that will inevitably have only about 85% of it end up in her mouth.

Or you can buy it in a jar, like I have. I'll hand it to Earth's Best, they make a good jar food. At least V seems to think so. But like any brand, their choices are limited, and after a month and a half of the 1 new food every 4 days rule, we are running out of new options.

Anxiety is now starting to take it's stronghold on my heart. Not only do I need to start giving her more variety, but I have *gasp* prepare it MYSELF. Why would I not just stick with jar foods? Because honestly, they offer more fruits than veggies, and I'm worried about her natural sugar intake. Yes, you read that right. I bought her prune oatmeal today, and decided to also pick up some more of her yogurt and apple banana cereal. As I looked at my cart, I thought "That's an awful lot of fruits for one day." And I felt the worry start to creep. I thought about going back to the baby aisle and grabbing some carrots instead, but I had already had an uncomfortable conversation with the small Russian woman stocking jars on the shelves about how (she thinks) I made a  mistake by feeding V fruits and veggies alternatively. "Some people say you should start with veggies first, or they will develop a sweet tooth." Really? I had never really heard of that but thanks for making me feel like I just screwed up the last month of my daughter's crucial development. Our pug who spends 15 minutes licking various parts of her gross anatomy and then gives my daughter open mouth kisses doesn't bother me, but I'm worried about if I'm giving her food in the wrong order. Sounds about right.

So, back to the cooking. I sometimes imagine how my mom star power would surge as I pull out an ounce or two of homemade green beans, and maybe an ounce of carrots and fresh blueberries and fix my daughter a well balanced dinner that would make her inevitably the President of the United States someday all because of my mom-awesomeness.

But I clam up every time I think about buying those things, cooking them (steam or bake? I don't know!) and then blending them to be poured into our now pristine (because I would have to clean and sterilize them like crazy) ice cube trays. Why? Why does that sound so hard? It can't be laziness. I do laundry, wash bottles, do bath time and clean my house a little bit every night, but I can't BAKE A POTATO?

So I gave her jar food because I convinced myself that Earth's Best does it better. And now she's eating three times a day, and I'm being backed into a corner having to prepare good food for her. And it's scary. I don't want to screw it up. I don't want her to get sick because I under cooked something, or I bought a bad batch out of season or something weird like that. My lack of knowledge about fresh ingredients would astound you. But I'm going to do it. Because if nothing else, I feel like I have to try for her. For my little President.

Wish me luck, and happy Wednesday! I'll post pictures of my homemade baby food adventure after this weekend.

Love,
Dominique

Good Morning! Is it bedtime yet?

Picture this:

It's 6am on the dot, and I groggily  stumble into my already awake daughter's room to give her her morning bottle. I turn on her lamp and am greeted by a completely sideways baby kicking her legs furiously (we call these her "thomps") and blinking to adjust to the light. Then the mischievous grin shows up. I pick her up and carry her to our chair, and she hungrily grasps at the bottle as if she hasn't eaten ever before.

During this morning time, my eyes are barely open, but her feet are still moving. Always moving. She rubs her little footie pajama'd foot up and down against the arm of her glider, and turns her head at every sound, including the pug, who has by now nosed her way through the door I thought I closed securely and is sitting on the floor licking her foot 100 times.

After she finishes her bottle, it's time to pull at stuff. Mommy's glasses, mommy's hair, mommy's shirt or pajama pants. Anything her little hands can get their tiny fingers around. I sit her down in her crib while I grab her changing pad, and she's already reaching for her crib camera while simultaneously about to topple over and hit her head on her bars. I catch her just in time and with one fluid motion lay the pad in her crib and place her on top of it. Now it's time to take our PJ's off. I unsnap the 20 snaps that go down the length of it (zippers, for the love, baby clothing makers - MORE ZIPPERS) and with the now slack that the fabric has, the top of it is heading for her mouth and she - still kicking - barely allows me to take her constantly moving feet out. Now it's time to take out her arms, but like the fighter she is - she has a stronghold grip on the sleeves that means I have to firmly - but gently, pry her fingers off of long enough to slide her arms out.

Whew. PJ's are off. Now it's diaper change time. I already see the blueberry apple dinner from the night before showing through the liner, so I know what's waiting for me. I open the wipes in preparation, and unlatch the diaper straps. I won't get into the gory details, but as I assess the task before me (2 wipe minimum? four?) her legs are still kicking. Only after she has managed to kick her dirty diaper that I was too slow to move out of the way in time, and the smudge of poop is already on her little foot, does she decide that now it's time for the foot-to-mouth game. I use one hand to pin her legs down to prevent this from happening, and the other to grab another wipe and quickly give her whole foot a wipe down.

Now we're clean. Naked as a jaybird, but clean. I go to grab a diaper, and miraculously she just watches me calmly. Legs still and outstretched...until I get back to her. The kicking resumes, and is now accompanied by the "what's over there?" turning of her entire body until I have flipped it back over at least three times. The diaper is under her booty, but every time I try to fasten it on, she unlatches the velcro. Did I mention she's smiling the whole time? I finally pin her arms with my left hand, pin her legs with my right and with a third arm that I didn't know I have, managed to secure the new diaper (which already has a blue "I'm wet" line on it, but Lord I am not doing that again) and pick her up to go to our room while we get ready for work.

Various things happen from here. She almost tips over her rock n play trying to reach my robe behind her. She makes dinosaur noises while chewing on Sophie and laughs her daddy tickling her. He leaves for work, and I am no faced with the task of changing her diaper again and getting her redressed for the day. Not to mention the epic battle that is now strapping her in her car seat, gathering her bottles for the day and getting out of the house by 7:15.

I'm exhausted. And then I go to work.

And people wonder why I go to bed by 9pm every night. Happy Thursday Moms! To all of you with newbies out there - your time is coming. Muhahahaha.

Love,
Dominique