The Mom I Want To Be

Photo taken just this morning. Awww. Two days ago, a friend of mine shared an article on Facebook about the importance of paternity leave , written by the husband of Serena Williams (Alexis Ohanian). It's a great read and I commented on the Facebook post with how crucial my husband's paternity leave was (and still is for one more week) after the birth of my son. My friend appreciated my comment, but her own friend commented below me saying how paternity leave is only useful if the husband actually helps and doesn't use the free time off work as a sabbatical to further his career and increase the wage gap. Now I'm absolutely a feminist in favor of equal pay for women, and I feel awful if this woman experienced an unhelpful husband situation in her past or knows other women who have. But in 2019, it's time to stop painting dads--and men in general--as bumbling caretakers, uninvolved workaholics, or babysitters to their own children. Admit it, we share those soc...

One way that I happen to bond with Baby is, of course, through photography. Even before cell phone selfies were a thing, I always had a camera in my purse to capture life's memories and remained a loyal member of Photo Club all through high school (president the final year). Pictures, as Hubby knows all too well , are kind of my thing. I also happen to be a big geek with him, and so admiring comic book outfits and even dressing up in cosplay at conventions is an activity we both enjoy. Enter: Baby Cosplay. Because what fun is having kids if you can't share your fandom with them, and take adorable photos that they'll either get a kick out of or completely hate you for when they're older? I've been posting several outfits to my Facebook page, prompting one of my friends to recommend an Instagram account because I could get a lot of followers that way. I do have Instagram, but often forget to use it. Should I get Baby his own? While I ponder this idea, I figur...

The week before my last week of maternity leave has actually been a week of exciting firsts! And many of them all took place on the same day! Some first experiences will help us prepare for going back to work. Others were fun surprises or planned events to help us all get the most out of our remaining leave time at home with our little one. August 15 First afternoon away from Mom and Dad: Though neither Hubby nor I want to leave our son at all, it's important to have our sitters (a.k.a. Baby's many wonderful grandparents) get a chance to practice caring for him in advance. They can begin to learn his patterns, discover any issues we have to deal with before we're less accessible at work, and find out how much milk Baby will need while we're away. We can also find out how much separation anxiety Baby might experience, and hopefully get him used to being apart from his parents for a little while. Spoiler alert: he barely noticed we were gone....Which brings us to: ...

...watching you wake from a nap, your arms stretchy stretching, twitching, back arching, fists clenched as you rub your eyes squeezed shut. Sometimes you yawn. How can a person so little already act exactly as all the big people do when they wake up? ...listening to you talk. They may be one-sided conversations, but I try to answer, even if I don't know your language yet. The faces you make, with eyebrows raised and lowered as you coo and cry softly tell me you are doing your best to communicate--I'm the one who's not advanced enough to understand. But I'll feed you and change you, and hope that that helps. ...holding you in my arms as we dance through the house. Sometimes it's just up the stairs to grab more baby wipes. Sometimes it's to try to calm you when you scream. Sometimes you squirt loudly into your diaper as we step, and I feel the warmth against my arm where your diapered seat rests. I don't mind, because you are a baby and nothing you do i...

So, as mentioned in my last post , we have started Baby on a bedtime routine. Sort of. Baby started getting sleepy between 7pm and 9pm and then sleeping his longest sleep (about four hours) for quite a few days in a row. All the articles recommend using this time to get Baby used to the same pattern, to help him wind down, help him distinguish day from night, and get him drowsy so he can eventually learn to fall asleep on his own. Not to mention that as a librarian I'd been wanting to read more books to him (a big part of the routine), but was discovering how hard it was to find the time between feeding and naps. Now we had a perfect solution to set in motion. But here's the thing about plans: you make them and God laughs . So we've had to become a little flexible with our "plan." For example, Baby started a cranky cry around 6:30 instead of close to 7pm. So we had to decide, do we try to feed him his last little bit to get him to drift off, or do we try to...

Not every day with a baby is going to go perfectly. Just two nights ago our baby started getting sleepy-fussy (i.e. cranky) at around 7pm, but kept waking himself up or waking up when we tried to move him to his new Snoo bassinet for the evening. It took a full two hours to get him to sleep that night, then after a three-hour sleep he woke up for his past-midnight feeding and it took another two hours to get him back to sleep. I wondered if I had eaten something that disagreed with him--I didn't drink any coffee earlier, promise! It couldn't have been overstimulation either as we hadn't had any outings or visitors at all. It was just an off, not quite perfect, challenging day. And then the day after that was the total opposite! Baby had a great morning nap (despite the caffeinated matcha green tea smoothie I drank right before). We were able to put him in his swing without him waking up and actually get a few things done around the house. I ate breakfast at a slow p...