It's the strangest thing...

I've been having these funny feelings about Anna. It's just that she is the most beautiful child who ever existed, and all other babies fade in comparison.

I saw a little girl at the grocery store yesterday, must have been just about Anna's age because both of her parents were carefully comparing diaper packages and ultimately chose a pack in Anna's size, and well, come on. Only new parents read diaper labels, or shop for diapers together. Mike and I have been down this road. It turns out that what works for us is that I am in charge of buying diapers and Mike refuses to have an opinion about them.

Sabrina: "I put a stack of the new diapers next to the old ones. Which ones do you like better?"
Mike: "Who cares?"
Sabrina: "But this one has the softer outside and stretchy tabs, but the new ones have a bigger poop catcher in the back of the diaper and a thicker layer in the front where she pees."
Mike: "And?"
Sabrina: "And these ones have Winnie-the-Pooh on them and these are Sesame Street!"
Mike: "And?"
Sabrina: "Well, do you have a preference?"
Mike: "No."
Sabrina: "Well, good, because I like these ones, so when you change her, you use these yucky ones."
Mike: "Whatever."

And I've already read the entire label of every diaper imaginable, so when I go to buy diapers, I can choose what I want like a seasoned pro.

Back to these strange feelings. Their little girl had a perfect little smooth face, and perfect little puckered lips and bright cherubic cheeks, and I looked down at my little angel with her dry, scaly head and booger-filled nose, and she just blew me away with her stunning gorgeousness. And I knew that I was in love.

Free to good home

I am fed up.

One cat is a runaway. He hasn't come home, and perhaps he never will. Late last week I reached the anger stage of the grieving process, as I walked through the neighborhood thinking "Damned cat. Stupid f*@king cat." Now I'm in the apathy stage, if there is such a thing.

The two remaining cats are making me absolutely insane. Is it just that I don't love them because I have a child so much more worthy of my love? Is it that they've become monsters overnight? Or is it a little bit of both? They have become monsters, for sure, but perhaps that's because they get less love and attention. Perhaps they miss Jameson. But I'm going to kill them.

Cole won't get out from under my feet. He is going to trip me and send me barreling down the stairs with Anna in my arms and kill us both.

The other morning, Anna and I had to run Daddy to work, and then I had to run back home and eat breakfast in the 5 minutes before Jessie and Carl were coming to pick me up. But Anna threw up all over herself on the way to Daddy's work. So I had to clean and change her when I got back, so I was really in a hurry... but what's waiting for me on the basement steps? Cat puke. And some in the upstairs hallway. And some in the fringe of the rug in the nursery.

And then there's the pacifiers. Sigh. Every morning since we introduced the pacifiers, I've found them in random spots on the floor downstairs. So one day I boiled all of them to sterilize, and I put them all on the dining room table. And the next morning, they were all on the floor. So that night, I put them on the table again. And the next morning, the floor again. The stupid cats are climbing my dining room table (gah!) and batting them all over the house! They are SO not allowed on the table. And they know this. They have never knocked things off the table to play with before. (As an aside, for someone with cats who doesn't plan on having children, pacifiers are apparently an excellent cat toy! I think they sell 2-packs at the dollar store.) So perhaps pacifiers are just irresistible toys, or perhaps they actually understand that the pacifiers belong to the baby, and so they are acting out. But it pisses me off.

But I was even much, much more pissed when I saw what they are doing to the pacifiers. See for yourself.

It's hard to capture in a photo, but every single one of them has a dozen or so holes in the nipple. They are biting them and ruining them!! Not only are the nipples all now filthy, but you can't use a ripped pacifier as it poses a real choking hazard.

For some strange reason, they haven't bitten the latex pacifier, only the silicone ones. Maybe they just haven't found the latex one, or maybe they don't like latex. But we have exactly one pacifier left to keep her happy.

The cats also play with her little gym toy, which irritates me because they're making it dirty and germy, but who can blame them?? Look how much fun it is! She absolutely loves this thing, and she watches the light-up star on top of it very intently. And really, I can't blame the cats because things that jingle and squeak hang from bars, and, well, honestly, PetSmart should just start carrying these things! Why didn't I think of this years ago?

But that's enough of this feel-good isn't-my-daughter-the-most-beautiful-creature-ever crap. It's official. I hate my cats.

Happy Easter from the whole family!

Smiles: a timeline

It took a while, maybe 10 days or so, but Anna has figured out how to smile in response to something she likes. (Or else it took us 10 days to figure out how to entertain her.) I like seeing pictures we took of her trying to smile, and I think you can see a very nice progression as time goes on. Here it is. (Please realize that the first few days in which she'd occasionally accidentally smirk at us, we couldn't capture it with the camera. By the third or fourth day, though, she would smile repeatedly and we had time to run for the camera.)

On 4/12/06:
I like this one because you can see her really trying.









On 4/14/06:
I like this one because she looks so dorky. It reminds me of a poop smile, but it's a real smile.






On 4/15/06:
This is her playing with her daddy, which she apparently loves. It is so nice to have him with us on Saturday and Sunday each week... but this past weekend he had to work half of Saturday, and this weekend he will work Saturday and Sunday from about 8AM until midnight (and yes, he's also working those hours today, Thursday, and Friday, and then I think next week he'll go back to his regular 8 to 5 schedule, but we'll see!) So we are very, very sad that he won't be around. Anna and her mommy will miss him very much.


On 4/16/06:
And there you have it: a happy, smiley baby.


















Also on 4/16/06:
And just for fun, here is a pooping baby. How funny is this picture?! We were trying for a nice shot of her in her Easter dress with her Easter basket (made at the insistence of her grandfather, which I think is a crock because that's Aunt Lish's basket!!), and she promptly blew up her diaper. You have to give her credit for all the effort she puts into it, though.

Is that a pacifier in your mouth, or are you just happy to see me?!

Anna has more or less figured out the pacifier.















She also smiles.















Coincidence? I think not.

The escape artist is at it again!

My parents were here on Saturday, and they're not really used to city living, or to having to keep pets inside. So at some point during the day, Jameson escaped. As you may or may not recall, he has a history of escaping. Twice he has been missing for more than a week, and both times he was recovered. Once he really did seem to have been stuck in a thorn bush for a week, given his condition when he returned one night, sopping wet, in the middle of a terrible summer storm. The second time, he fell off our roof on which he was allowed to play (long story), and he apparently had a blast being a free cat, because when we found him rolling around in the middle of the street at 2 AM (thanks to an anonymous phone tip elicited by 'missing cat' posters plastered all over our neighborhood), he wanted no parts of being caught or coming home. He must just find people to feed him. He certainly would rather be out in the big world than stuck in our house.

So right now, Jameson is out wandering the streets while his mommy tries not to worry. He'll come back, or else a neighbor will bring him back to me. I hope.

1-month check-up

Anna had her 1-month doctor appointment today. It went perfectly fine, and she's apparently in good health. This was a pretty boring appointment, but next time for her 2-month appointment, she'll get shots. I can't wait to see how she reacts. I just can't see her crying over it, but I could be very, very wrong.

For those keeping score, she's 21 1/2 inches long, 10 lbs. 5 oz. (she really did plateau on weight gain, thank goodness), and her head is big. I forget the measurement, but I don't know what's normal anyhow, so who cares? But, her weight and head circumference are both in the 90th percentile. Sweet.

Bad mothering

So this is my trivial issue for the week: poopy diapers. They say in all the books to change a poopy diaper immediately. And, well, duh. Right? So if it's in the middle of the night, and the diaper is a little wet, it's okay to let the child continue sleeping. But if it's poopy, it's got to be changed.

But, the thing is, Anna's diaper is always poopy. Really. I mean, she poops like every 3 minutes. At least it seems like it. Changing her diaper is like shoveling your sidewalk in the middle of a blizzard. It comes in tiny little amounts sometimes, and pooping could take her like an hour. And sometimes when she's in the middle of a poop-a-thon, you think she's done, but she's not. So there you are, on the changing table, and she poops. Sometimes it's on the table, which I secretly prefer, and sometimes it's all over the brand new diaper you just slipped under her bottom. And I just hate it when she dirties a fresh diaper. I don't know why. I mean, it's there to be pooped on, right? Whether she poops on it now or an hour from now, who cares? But I just can't stand wasting things. I like to reuse everything, from cloth napkins to pickle jars. Hell, I wash and reuse disposable plates. I don't like to contribute unnecessarily to landfills. (So why am I using disposable diapers, you might ask?? We are planning on using half and half--cloth at home and disposable when out and about. I haven't started using the cloth ones yet because I only have 6 and as of right now, Anna could dirty those 6 diapers in 2 or 3 hours. I'm waiting for this magical change at 1-2 months old when she will suddenly only poop about once a day.) Back to the point: it's hard to keep a clean diaper on her. And when you are changing her, and she poops on the new diaper before you even get it on her, and you throw it away and put another clean one on, 9 times out of 10 she poops in the newest one within 5 minutes.

So this leads to my bad mothering. True confession: sometimes when she poops on the new diaper before I have even opened up the little tabs, I put it on her anyways. If it's just a little bit of poop, and I can wipe most of the solid(ish) stuff up, I slap it right on. I can't see throwing it away when it's just going to get much, much poopier in a very short time.

And this makes me feel like a terrible, sick, demented mother. Who purposely puts an already poopy diaper on her baby?! But the guilt I feel about doing this to her is obviously less motivating than the agony of throwing away more diapers than necessary.

And as long as I'm confessing these things, I might as well share this. Often when I first hear her poop, I know (or at least assume) that more is coming. So I wait, and continue what I'm doing, or continue feeding her, and then I remember like 2 hours later that she was poopy. And then she gets a clean diaper. Ew. I really am a terrible mommy when it comes to poop. But I think I'm a good mommy in many other ways, so I'm not going to feel too badly about it, I guess.

Back to life, back to (un)reality

Time flies. We had Mike's sister staying here the weekend before last, and then Mike's mom stayed with me all last week (Mike is back to work!), and Mike's dad joined us for the weekend.

So, as of Monday, I was really on my own. And life was supposed to go back to "normal," except that I realized very suddenly that I have no "normal." This is a whole new life, and nothing, and I mean NOTHING, is the same.

That being said, though, people told me that Mike and I would never cook together again, and he'd do all the dishes all the time, and I wouldn't sleep, and on and on. And so far, I like our life! Mike and I do cook together, with Anna lying in her bouncy seat, and I think I'm doing more dishes, because it's nice to have a few minutes when I don't have to worry about what the baby's doing, and Mike gets Daddy time after work. I hate it that he misses her all day, and I hate that he'll probably miss most of her firsts, like her first smile, and her first laugh, and her first time to roll over. By the time I go back to work, I think she'll be grasping some objects, and rolling. Then, once I'm back at work, I'll still have a couple days a week with her that Mike won't have, and I'll be the one watching her learn to scoot around, and learning to eat solid foods, and all kinds of exciting things! But Mike has been a very, very, very good sport about it. He's a wonderful, patient, and understanding dad.

And just for kicks, here she is with Grandma L.:













And with Aunt Missy:














And with her other "Aunt" Missy:














And finally with me, Grandma D., and her 3rd cousin Lauren:














More pictures later, I promise!