Tag Archives: babies

Congratulations! It’s a human!

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It’s no surprise that we liken newborns to sacks of sugar and hotdogs and tacos. (No? Just me?) They are as inanimate as various foodstuffs and their toes and ears just as delicious. We hold them up and admire them, but they’re not really humans because they lack the characteristics inherent to adults and even toddlers.

Then they learn to roll, walk around, and bump into things. Their ability to move is experimental and aimless. Without hindsight and foresight, they seem to volley from room to room simply because their muscles don’t want to atrophy. They are kind of like a worm that gets cut in half but whose parts still move around independent of each other because its nerves – not its brain – are dictating its movement.

These taco worms, they are not of our kind. That’s what makes them so wonderful but also so mind-numbingly infuriating. They look like humans but their actions* basically prove that they’re not. Their human-ness is slow to appear, but with a bit of faith and the requisite patience, it will come. One day, you’ll push that baby from your figurative loins once again, and instead of announcing your child’s sex, the doctor will declare, “Congratulations! It’s a human!”

*Ie., when they throw their entire bodies to the ground when they are not allowed to lick the bottom of your shoe. Not like I’ve been there before or anything.

Wee Cee became a human over the weekend. An honest-to-God human.

In our bedroom, there is pretty much always a glass of water on my bedside table that I keep around but don’t drink because that would be logical and logic and I have a complicated relationship. C is obsessed with this water, and I’m usually able to snatch it out of her hands before she manages to splatter it all over the room and somehow make one and a half cups seem like Sea World. Saturday, though, she got the water, dumped it all out, and then had the wherewithal to retrieve my purse and deposit it on top of the wet spot so that we would not see it. That sneaky little bugger was covering her tracks. This is real human behavior, my friends. The whole right and wrong concept? She’s got it.

Then, a little later on, she was playing with B in her room when he called to me, “She just did pretty much the sweetest thing I have ever seen her do.” Truth. She had taken a rock that she had found outside, pulled out his hand, put it in his hand, and then made him curl up his fingers around it so that he would know that it was his.

I. Died.

Tears? Oh, there were tears. Lots.

My girl is becoming a human. Please welcome her to our complex world full of lies and love. And wish us good luck, too. I think things will only get exponentially harder from here on out because raising a human is slightly more complex than raising a hotdog.

c and bunny

I wrote some Stuph.

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Twindaddy graciously invited me to write a guest post on his formidable corner of the Intertron, and I, of course, was all over that.

Then – surprise, surprise – Wee Cee commandeered the keyboard while I was busy watching Arthur (because, let’s be honest, I am more of a fan than she is. She has yet to appreciate the tragic humor of beauty school dropout Binky Barnes.) What resulted was a meeting of the minds between her and Baby C, TD’s toddler.

I guess that makes the title of this post a lie, as I didn’t write some stuph. She did.

Pop on over and check it out.

Don’t make the babies cry.

wee ceebaby-c-trooper

Oooooh That Smell: Living with a Stinky Kid

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It will happen. You will think your baby is immune to it and that it’s an affliction that only claims children who log 30+ hours each week in the Pit of Filth otherwise known as McDonald’s Playplace, but you will be sorely wrong. You’ll wake up one morn lacking the ninja skills to effectively rid your child of their ubiquitous eye crusties. It’s happened.

You’ve got a grubby kid.

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Not even an iota of remorse

Grubbiness is more than just a blowout diaper or an entire cup of grape juice dumped down the front of your child’s white sundress. While massively catastrophic at the time, those can be cleaned with a dunk in the tub. Grubbiness, however, is more persistent and insidious. It comes in droves. It’s playground grit under their nails, oatmeal woven through their hair, a random rash likely caused by the duck poop they carried around the park for ten minutes before you noticed.

Wee Cee has been nursing a case of the nasts for nearly two solid weeks now, and I don’t see it abating until she’s off to the prom. I am incapable of staying two steps ahead of the film of babyhood that is constantly building up all over her. I will find a smudge of yogurt behind her ear and then recall that the last time she ate yogurt was two days prior. How could this happen? Is she stockpiling the stuff in the cavity of her Sleep Sheep and breaking it out when we think she’s napping?

I think it all started when she actually grew some hair. Up until recently, C has been sporting the natural pixie look. I birthed what was effectively a cueball and her hair was slow to come in. Then, the back overtook the front and now she’s got a Carol Brady flap-back thing happening. I lie. It’s a mullet. My child has hockey hair. Hockey hair that is constantly in that precarious cradle cap zone (“cradle cap” sounds so much cuter than “dandruff”, which is what it really is) and smells like wet dog even after it’s been shampooed.

Speaking of dogs.

You know how it’s kind of cute when your baby is teething for the first time? How those front teeth come in and you can just give them some frozen toy that assuages their pain? Yeah, it’s been my experience that teething molars is a completely different, disgusting ball game. The pain that is brought on when her molars come in induces so much drool that she looks like an inbred hound dog lacking a barrier lip to fight the influx of saliva. And that colorful teething ring? LOLOLOLOL. She gnaws on her hands and my keys and rocks and and and.

It’s gross.

The good thing about molars, though, is that she can now eat more. I say “good” because I’m ironic. C is all about helping herself to whatever we’re having and smearing it over her hands, face, elbows, and highchair, but when it comes time to clean up after her meal, she makes like Regan McNeil and thwarts all our attempts to clean her off. It burns. IT BURNS!

Often, an odor that’s not that bad but certainly not right will emanate from her pores. I’ll smell something off and realize that it is my girl who I got done scrubbing vigorously not twenty minutes before. All the soap in the world will not be able to cleanse her of her musk of burnt cumin. The most fun she’ll have all morning is when she toots or burps loudly and then grins as if the secrets to the universe made themselves known to her through the bubbles of her gas. She’s basically a yogi of stank.

And crusty crumbs.

And playground sand packed into the tiny lines of her palms.

And onesies dotted with a potpourri of orange and purple stains.

Grunge was a style of music popularized by bands like Pearl Jam, Nirvana, and Soundgarden when I was a preteen. Now it’s one of the recurring themes of my life. But that C? She doesn’t smell like teen spirit.

Diapering Memorandum

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Dear Ms. Baby,

We regret to inform you that when you opted in to the Eating and Drinking Program (EDP), you also opted in to the Diaper Changing Program (DCP). For each meal/snack you consume, you will have to report to the changing table roughly two times. As long as your parent/guardian continues to feed and clothe diaper you, these numbers are expected to rise. The anger you have been expressing recently on the changing table may worsen.   However, we understand your frustrations and are here to offer some constructive pointers on improving your situation.

Perhaps you would like to persuade your parents to start using disposable diapers more frequently so as to cut back on potential trips to the changing table. While your mother and father are ever so smug about the environmental and financial savings they incur when they wrap your lower torso in reusable garments, they are knowingly creating more work for themselves and for you. Each time they haul you off to the changing table to change your soiled prefold diapers, they are tearing you away from the pressing matter of removing every single item from every single drawer in the home. Please notify them that by switching to disposables, they will not have to change you nearly as often.

Frequent diaper rashes may be the source of your frustrations when your parents insist on laying you upon the slab. If this is the case, we suggest you procure yourself a tube of diaper cream and have your guardian apply it liberally to your underside. Note: we advise against you performing diaper cream maintenance on yourself. The urge to eat Desitin is just too great and poses many threats to your still-developing innards.

As you know, the time you spend on the changing table can be tedious. If the doldrums persist, consider bringing something to entertain yourself with while you’re lying on your back. Entertaining items include but are not limited to:

• Your mother’s filthy set of keys

• An abridged copy of War and Peace

• Plush bunny

• At least four (4) pacifiers

Should you find that having your diaper changed is too unbearable, you may be a prime candidate for transfer to our Early Toilet Training Program (ETTP). Using a potty is indeed a sign that you are a VBG (Very Big Girl). If your expansive vocabulary of da-da, bye-bye, ma-ma, and mooooooooo does not sufficiently convey to your parents your desire to transition to the toilet, we recommend that you simply drop trow in the middle of the living room and go for it. Your parents will likely get the hint.

Yours,

The Management

"Yeah, so, no. I'm not going to lie down."

“Yeah, no. I’m not going to lie down.”

Mothers Day is great and sad. Twosies.

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Even though Sunday was my second officially-sanctioned Mothers Day as a mom, it was effectively my first one. Last year, C was only about five weeks old on Mothers Day and I had no energy or desire to celebrate. No one was sleeping, no one was eating well, no one felt like a human. I was paying my dues in the New Baby Club and stocking up on the experiences that would make me truly relish the return of sleep. If this was motherhood, I’d take a pass on celebrating it.

I had something to toast to this year. I celebrated my survival by sipping my coffee and eating pancakes B prepared for me. I sneaked a Dove chocolate between them. It was melty and perfect. I celebrated while lounging on the sofa and watching C and B screen an episode of Mister Roger’s Neighborhood on YouTube. I celebrated by fighting the urge to call and apologize for my tardiness when I ran long at my solo date to the coffee shop. I celebrated by showing B how to make fish tacos for us all for dinner. He only cut his finger once when he sliced the avocados.

We put C in her crib at 6:45. She woke up around 9:15, crying from a bad dream. She rarely wakes in the middle of the night anymore so I jumped at the chance to see her and be there with her. B and I had been discussing only a couple days ago how nowadays, we simply put her away at 6:45. We go about our after-hours routines and have to remind ourselves that she is indeed in the other room sleeping and living. By the time we turn our own lights out at 11, we have almost forgotten we’re parents.

She cried out and I held her. She nestled into my chest and I smelled her head. She’s a lanky baby but she is still so slight in my arms. Mere months before, it would have taken hours to pull her together and meet her needs. On Sunday night, it took no more than ten minutes. By 9:25, she was back in her crib.

I felt sad. At some point, this all got kind of easy. It made me pine for the days where I was regularly put through the fire and earning my keep as the parent of an infant. It made me sad for my own parents that they know exactly what it’s like to be needed intensely and then, in the blink of an eye, just standing by in the other room waiting for me to cry out. All we want is to be needed longer.

Parenthood is heartbreaking.

Let’s drink mimosas.

I miss this.

I miss this.

My Office

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I am obsessed. I am obsessed with Anne Lamott’s wondrous book Bird By Bird. I am also obsessed with the word “wondrous” because I have used it no fewer than 65,936 times in the last week, and I have no intentions of retiring it from my vocabulary just yet. Lamott has given me the kick in the rear I have been needing to just write like a mofo and give myself away to words and things and the saying of the say. I’m in the middle of a spell of cognizant automatic writing right now. Since I’m a blogger, though, I guess you could call it Automattic writing.

*Crickets.*

Moving on.

The entire book is quotable. I have underlined nearly the whole thing, which totally defeats the purpose of underlining anything at all because there are maybe now two sentences left in the book that are virginal and unsullied by my markings.

One thing Lamott talks about is programming your mind to think and to write on command. She says that you have to train your brain to deliver that thought stream around the same time every day. Our stomachs consistently get hungry midday because we’ve organized our day around lunch, and in much the same way we have to carve out a specific, consistent time to write each day. It signals to our body and our mind that it’s time to get down to business.

That time, for me, is shower time.

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My office

Oh, shower time, how I have wrestled with you. The bathroom became my studio when I was pregnant. This post was very literally born there, making it the baby I birthed in the toilet. (I know, TMI. And gross.) I would get in the shower and just zone out and plan what I wanted to talk about. Then C came along. She accompanied me in the bathroom while I showered each morning, sitting in her little Rock ‘N Play. When she was tiny, the rushing of the water would zonk her out, but as her naps became more consolidated to two distinct periods of the day which did not coincide with my shower time, she would scream and yell while I lathered up. I would have to sing Baby Beluga for the entirety of my office hours, and I couldn’t let my mind brainstorm when there was a baby who was screaming at me.

Some people can slice up their attention like that and satiate dual demands. I am not one of them.

However, that magical one-year mark has remade my C into a child who plays amicably by herself during my showers. Much like the writer’s mind, she knows what to do when I deposit her in her playpen in my bedroom because she expects it every day. She knows it’s time for solitary play, and my brain starts firing on cue.

What is it about the shower that makes me get in that space of thought? It’s not the privacy, as C has made me wave the white flag of bodily discretion for the next several years. It is likely the monotony of my routine in there. Wash face, spit out mouthwash, wash hair, condition hair, wash body. I’ve been doing it this way for years and I don’t have to think about it. It’s cathartic and compulsory. I’m tempted to call it liturgical but that’s a bit too heavy-handed and showering me vetoes that word choice.

Office mates

Office mates

The walls of the shower are enclosed and the sounds of running water get me to that place where my mind can roam free. Since I can’t write down anything while I’m in there, the ideas that survive a thorough towel-drying are usually stronger. They are often the ones you see fleshed out here.

I am grateful for my bathroom. Have I jumped the shark by admitting it? Probably. Am I becoming insufferable by choosing to write about my shower? Most definitely. But it’s in the mundane that I am learning to take solace. It means something to me. I don’t live a particularly exciting life, but my mind can dream up fantastic things when I will it to.

The rubber duckies speak to me.

Innocent

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So, April. April, April, April.

Last April I was worried sick over my new baby. I didn’t talk much about it in real time because 1, I was exhausted from sheer lack of sleep and 2, because I was busy convincing myself that it was completely my fault that we were struggling like whoa with breastfeeding. It took C six days to gain back her birthweight. I was racked with guilt for supplementing her with formula. I detest admitting fault (even when it’s not my fault) so I swept the entire topic under the rug and pretended that I was completely in control. Hint: I wasn’t. Another hint: no one is (except on those rare occasions that they are.)

Fast forward one year. Today C had her one year checkup. In the waiting room I checked off all the boxes on the worksheet that proved that I have One Healthy Child. It was a wonderful feeling to know that my baby is perfect perfect perfect and that this set of papers was just the document to prove it. She’s walking. She’s babbling. She’s expressing love and care. She’s feeding herself.

They checked her heartbeat.

“Hmmmm. It seems like there is a little murmur. I wouldn’t worry. This is very normal and most of the time it’s an ‘innocent’ murmur.”

Innocent. Like it’s just hanging out in her heart, waiting for the bus. No, ma’am, I don’t mean to cause any trouble. Move along.

But just to be sure this murmur is minding its own business and is really only at the wrong place at the wrong time, being accused of something that it has no intent of doing, C is going in for an echo sonogram next week. I’m worrying over a probable nothing and this is likely days-old April breastfeeding all over again.

It got hot within the last 36 hours. I took C out in her stroller for a walk this afternoon and put on my Teva sandals which I haven’t worn in a year. The leather on them is worn and soft because I traipsed all over Seoul in them during the Korean rainy season. They know my feet but my feet are acting like they are foreign. I had a blister by the time our one-hour walk was over. My feet and my mind are the same. Whenever life introduces a hiccup much like all the other hiccups they’ve known before, I am completely discombobulated. I worry and stress (what’s new?) over small things that will likely be completely remedied by infant formula, meds, and a bit more walking.

This, I am learning, is parenthood. I will worry. Sometimes it will be over small things that are innocent, and sometimes it will be over big nasty beasts that I will remove my gloves and bloody noses for. But I will always do what is best for my girl and care for her every time a new blister boils up.

It’s learning time.

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Learning time

Learning time

C got this little kitchen set for her birthday from my MIL Sidney. It is a talking and singing toy, and unlike all her other talking toys that sound like a grocery store PA system that hasn’t been updated since 1973, you can actually understand what it’s saying, and therefore it doesn’t make me want to abdicate the Throne of Mother whenever she makes it sing the alphabet song thirty-two times in a row. It basically has Bose speakers inside it. Score one for Wee Cee and Bubby.

There is a switch on it where you can toggle between four settings: Learning, Spanish, Music, and Play. The joke’s on the kid though because she is going to learn no matter what setting it’s put on. Shapes, colors, manners, the function of a faucet. All these *critical* skills and concepts are imparted to her via the singing refrigerator even if she only sets it to Music. Muahaha.

When you set it to Learning, the first thing it announces is, “It’s learning time!” Oh good, now I will pay extra close attention. Let me just put my serious learning face on and take out my notepad. What’s that? The cow says “moooo?” Got it. Will that be on the exam?

I am slowly comprehending that Learning Time is all the time. Learning just happens, whether or not I put on some arbitrary “thinking cap.” I never much liked the idea of a thinking cap anyway. When I was a kid, I always felt like when adults told me to put it on, they were saying that I wasn’t trying hard enough to be smart when in fact my mind was going full tilt. I am still not a fan because the idea of a thinking cap implies that ideas and learning only come when you will them to, which isn’t true. My brain is always going whether I want it to or not. Despite my best efforts to read, write, and observe the world with sincere intention and to force inspiration, the learning I do is organic and largely passive. It is within and without me, like heat radiating from me and filling the space surrounding me. Since having C, I have become more attentive and aware of life in general and I am pretty sure I have become a better person. Learning is exhausting and tedious but it just naturally occurs if I open my eyes, relax, and humble myself.

I still force it, though. I click the button onto Learning and impatiently wait for it to just happen. I read read read and I write write write and I pore over the details of a walk down the street, all for the express purpose to get inspired and to be a better, more useful human. Sooner or later, though, I realize that by constantly looking closely at everything contained within this vast sphere and hunting for that one thing that will enlighten me, I have just overwhelmed myself. I get angry that I just made a bowl of cereal and nothing about the experience taught me something. Damn you, bowl of cereal! You were supposed to nourish me and inspire me! A strongly-worded letter to General Mills ensues, and all the eloquence I could have channeled into writing something more useful is then spent. Sometimes I feel like my good words are as limited as a carton of milk. They are quantifiable and I can run out of them, and making them come back is far more complicated than just walking down to the store to get more.

But then it occurs to me without me even forcing it that I cannot be inspired by ALL the things. You cannot focus on everything. My eyeballs and my brain are not equipped for that kind of work. I can barely maintain my Twitter account. And just like that, the bowl of cereal tricked me into learning, right when I laid off of it.

This is basically the story of my life: getting pwned by a bowl of cereal. Being tricked into understanding. It’s reassuring that I can rely somewhat consistently on these little serendipitous distractions to teach me something, all while I was focused on learning something more “substantial” from a book or a moment of massively concerted thought.

I am at play, toggling up and down the dial of a baby toy. Miraculously, I make sense of some of it.

I am that friend who doesn’t shop off your gift registry.

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So you’re having a baby shower. Cool. You made a registry? How cute. I made one too when I was pregnant. I registered for nothing I needed. Hear that? NOTHING. I thought I knew what I was in for when C was still on the inside. I insisted that my maternal intuition kicked in the moment implantation occurred and that I knew what I needed to be prepared for Wee Cee. I registered for gadgets and gizmos aplenty. My Target registry had whosits and whatsits galore. But those baby thingamabobs are now collecting dust after having been used maybe once, twice tops. So here’s what I’ll be bringing you to your baby shower. You can thank me later.

We finally had to retire this adorable outfit. RIP polka dot sailor dress.

We finally had to retire this adorable outfit. RIP polka dot sailor dress. Into the box it goes and ziiiiip with the tape.

1. A roll of clear packing tape 

Murphy’s Law is the prevailing rule of babydom. You’ll buy your child tons of sturdy board books, but she’ll become obsessed with the big-kid paper books. This is Truth. She’ll love them so much that she’ll want to destroy them. Hence the tape. I’m sure you’ll find other uses for it too, like packing up all the clothes she grows out of. *Sniff.*

2. Adult diapers

Not to scare you or anything, but after you give birth, things will be a little disastrous down there for awhile. Eventually, you will run out of the Tucks pads they give you at the hospital. That’s why when the baby shower is winding down, I am going to be discrete and pull you aside and gift you a pack of these things. You’ll look at me in horror and wonder what the frack is wrong with me that I have confused baby diapers for adult diapers. But when the baby has arrived, you’ll be glad you have them, and you’ll be even gladder you didn’t have to buy them yourself. You’ll be glad you have me: your adult diaper friend. Also, I will be able to put “Adult Diaper Friend” on my resume. We all win.

3. A bag of ground coffee

Coffee, because duh. Now, I could buy you a giftcard to Starbucks, but that assumes that you have the wherewithal to get up, get dressed, get the baby dressed, pack said baby into her carseat, hope that she doesn’t throw a tantrum when she tires of her car toy, and then recall the esoteric code for “double whip skinny caramel macchiato latte with an entire chocolate bar on top” that you’re forced to recite once you get to the coffee shop. So here’s some beans. Let’s cut out the middle man.

4. A vinyl tablecloth

I suppose you could use this tablecloth for nesting. However, putting a cloth over the table once the baby arrives is about as high on my priority list as ironing my husband’s socks. So yeah, ain’t gonna happen. Put it down as a tarp under the baby’s highchair. That way, when you do get around to having a fancy-schmancy candlelit meal with other grownups, you won’t have to get down on all fours and shampoo pureed squash and peas out of the carpet.

5. A CD I burned of all my our favorite kid songs

Parenthood is a series of concessions, but the music you and your kid listen to together does not need to be one of them. I am a good friend so I have suffered through the horrible, mind-numbing stuff for you. I thumbed-down all the junk on the kids stations on Pandora and got to the root of the good music for you. Here is the fruit of my labor presented to you in a jewel case. It may look shabby, but I guarantee that one listen and you won’t be pulling your hair out or waking in the middle of the night with all ninety-seven verses of “The Green Grass Grew All Around” stuck in your head.

6. An outfit sized 18 months

Clothes are the bread and butter of the baby shower, but it seems like all of them are for when the baby is an itty bitty. That’s why I’m giving you a brand-new outfit for when your kid is bigger. By the time she’s 18 months, you will have discovered the joys of the thrift store, hand-me-downs, and baby consignment. And while we love heavily-discounted used bargains, we like new things too, so here’s a cute outfit for when your baby is a little older.

7. A giant decorative box

You’ve already heard that babies like to play with simple toys, so yours will get a kick out of playing with this one if that’s how you chose to use it. However, this box is really for you. It’s for when you want to clean up but not really (read: all the time). Take all the random crap the baby has strewn around the house in the span of a day and dump it in the box to be put away later. Outta mind, outta sight.

8. A really trendy necklace

Babies love your stuff. You can try to give them a kid substitute, but they will thwart you. C was totally unimpressed when I got her a little plastic baby keyring to substitute for my own filthy set of keys, which she was obsessed with. That’s why I’m giving you a really trendy, cheesy piece of jewelry. By the time Tim Gunn says it’s impossible to make it work any more, you can hand it off to the kid, who, by this point, has developed a sizable fixation on it.

Guess which one she still wanted to play with.

Guess which one she still wanted to play with.

What is something you wish you had been given before you had kids?

Ruts

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I’m in a rut, but it’s the kind of rut that comes about not from mundane habit but from new stimuli. The last couple weeks have decimated any routine I was on with C and we’re starting to feel the brunt of it. Sometimes I forget what a finely-tuned clock a baby is until a grain of sand is introduced into her workings. B was on Spring Break last week so we went to Charlotte to visit Kendra and Chris at their house. We had a lot of fun and she was able to get all her naps (C, not Kendra. LOL) but all the driving and new surroundings kind of threw her for a loop. A couple days after we got back, my mom and Aunt Pam came to visit us because they were on their Spring Breaks. Again, a lot of fun and great face time. C was in the middle of her stranger danger phase the last time we saw them and now that it’s passed, she enjoyed her time with them. But she was tedious and grumpy a lot of the time too. I couldn’t relax when we all went for brunch on Sunday because I was nervous she’d lose her composure at any moment.

She’s been taking more and more steps lately as well as communicating her needs to us through signs and body language. All these new milestones are jarring for her as well as for me because once again I have to recalibrate the motions of our day. Plus, the added frustration when she can’t express what she wants tends to be intense.

Let me also go on the record as saying that Daylight Saving Time is the biggest load of crap. I really do not get it at all. C is handling the change pretty well but I cannot get used to putting her to bed at night when the sun is shining in her face. It kind of takes away the credence of “Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star.”

So ruts.

We will be spending another year in our town because B did not find a job elsewhere. We both did an incredible amount of work to apply to many, many jobs for him, but it was all for naught. I am not as upset as I was a few weeks ago when it was evident that he would not hear back from any of the jobs he applied to, but it still stinks. I will stay upbeat for C, though, because she doesn’t need to know that I’m upset about something as inconsequential as geography when she’s enduring growth milestones that really are frustrating. At least I can express myself and walk with ease.

I wrote last summer about starting the freelance journey but it’s no surprise (to me at least) that I am just now getting around to figuring out how to write for money. Hang around me long enough and you’ll notice that whenever I have a big ol’ plan it often takes me years to actually implement it. So yeah, I’ve been trying to figure out where to begin and I often get overwhelmed because there’s so much grunt work to do. B’s job hunt has temporarily soured me on putting a tremendous amount of work and time into a project that will likely reap no benefits in the foreseeable future. I’m just being honest here. I’d like to have one small sure thing just to break up the monotony. I know full well that the work I put in won’t actually be for nothing, because I’m also a firm believer that there are no mistakes in the trajectory of life. All those rejections and false leads make you who you are and can be a boon if you chose to learn from them.

I guess I’m just tired of learning right now.

I feel like my blog is suffering too. Last night I tried writing a post I had had brewing in my mind for awhile. The kind of post that is structured and has a point beyond catharsis. Unlike this one, for instance. But it just wasn’t coming. I don’t know who I was trying to channel when I wrote it because the words I wrote didn’t sound like me or anyone else for that matter. Hrumph. I also haven’t been reading as much which I apologize for if I’ve been neglecting your blog. Lately it just seems like a lot of work. Again, just honesty. And believe me, it’s really not you, it’s me.

So hang in there with me. This post seems to be over now because C is waking from her nap twenty minutes early.

Duty calls.

And likely, doodie too. Jokes.