So Far So Good

Tomorrow some "real" painters are going to start working on the house. They say it'll take two-to-three days to do everything. That's what I like to hear. If we had left things up to Wingus and Dingus, it's not an exaggeration to say that the painting would have gone on for another three weeks! At least! That would have pushed me into the murder-suicide mindset. Okay, not really.

We hired some cleaning wizards (no sarcasm here) to clean the plaster dust from the floors and other surfaces, and they did a fantastic job. I was beginning to think there was something about this house that brought out the worst in everyone, but these people did quality work. We had previously tried Merry Maids on two different occasions, but they sucked and were expensive. I was starting to get used to sucky expensive work.

I've been so annoyed by all the commotion in my house that I've kind of forgotten that it's a really nice place. It's a great house. I'm just sick to death of half-finished projects and endless mess and noise. And Simon doesn't like it either. He needs room to explore without Mommy ruining his fun by snatching him away from workers' tools and plaster.

Here he is, scrubbed free of plaster dust:

Driving

Yesterday afternoon at 5:30 I put Simon in my car and headed out to my parents' house. I carefully chose that time to coincide with Simon's afternoon nap, so he would sleep most of the way and spare me the crying and screaming. It didn't work so well, though. He screamed for 20 minutes before falling asleep. Bumper-to-bumper traffic and Simon screaming most of the way. He really lost it. After awhile I could tell he was trying to stop crying but couldn't. He was just hysterical. I'm sure my blood pressure spiked to a dangerous level. I was 10 minutes away from my parents' house when Simon finally conked out, leaving me with lots of time to kill driving around while he slept. On the bright side: if it hadn't been nap time, Simon would have screamed for the entire 30-minute drive. I guess I saved myself 10 minutes of screaming. Pretty sweet, eh?

I came back home today during his first nap (at noon), and I'll be going back to the parents' at around 5:30 again. Yes, I am subjecting myself to awful traffic and uncontrollable screaming. Why? Because it's preferable to spending the evening at my house. I still have stuff to do at home, so I'm planning on coming back again tomorrow morning. Yes, I found a new time to travel with Simon! Normally, he wakes up some time around 6 or 7 a.m. and then sleeps with me on the couch in his room for another hour or so. There is nowhere for us to snuggle and sleep together at my parents' house, so lately he's been denied his last hour or two of slumber. That hour or two is the key to my diabolical plan. I'll strap him in the car at 7 tomorrow morning and let him sleep as I drive back home. Isn't that just gorgeous?

Tomorrow we have a new painter coming to assess the damage and give us an estimate for finishing the job. We're stopping the gravy train for the current workers. They're out. Let's hope this new guy isn't a total bastard.

Baby Parade

Because the Kings Among Men who are patching and painting our house are still (yes, still) trudging bravely onward, Simon and I will again be going back to Nonna and Papa's. The poor little guy was crawling down the hallway last night, and halfway to his destination I realized that the floor is still lightly coated with plaster dust. I grabbed him up and saw his entire front dusted with white. There was a lot of screaming in our house last night. Because there was no clean spot for him to safely explore. I'm not a neat freak by any stretch of the imagination, but when my child starts looking like a mime, the game is over. Sandra Bernhard once said, "I have no time for mime." I agree. Also, how f***ing healthy is it to breathe this dust? Every day there's a new f***ing deposit of the stuff. I don't have time to mop down every inch of floor every few hours. Simon's in the pull-up-on-everything-and-possibly-fall-over stage right now.

Sidebar: Who do I think I'm fooling with this "f***" crap? Why don't I just follow convention and go with "f*ck"? I don't know. Okay, you talked me into it. "F*ck" it is.

So, Simon will be carted to my parents' house and back home for awhile. It's a 30-minute drive and Simon hates being locked in his carseat for that long. So, I try to drive only at nap times so he can sleep most of the way. Simon only naps twice a day, once around noon and again around 5 p.m. This limits my travel options. He also only naps for 35-to-55 minutes at a time, which limits travel to a 30-mile radius. Unless I want to hear constant screaming. I don't. I need to come home tomorrow for awhile, so I'm planning that for his first nap, around noon. Then I'll go back to my parents' house during his second nap. Heads will f*cking (see?) roll if Simon changes his napping habits. I guess only one head will actually roll, and it will be mine. What if Simon decides he only wants one nap tomorrow? I'll be trapped at home. This ever-dusty hellhole of a home.

Fun with Nonna and Papa

Riding Poomba

Hangin' out with Nonna and Papa and Poomba.

Dancing

More fun times.

Simon "Walking"

Simon and I stayed at Nonna and Papa's house over the weekend. Simon had a blast. Here's Papa helping Simon walk around:

Simon Passed All His Tests

Medical tests, that is. A couple of weeks ago I took Simon to a pediatric gastroenterologist. His doctor just wanted to make sure his low weight isn't being caused by a medical disorder, so she referred him to this specialist. This guy ordered a whole slew of tests, even though he assured me they would all most likely come back negative.

They took 4 vials of Simon's blood for something like 12 or 13 tests. One of the tests was for cystic fibrosis, a condition I've been afraid Simon might possibly have--you know, in the wee hours of the morning when you obsess about doomsday scenarios. So, I now have confirmation that Simon is CF-clear. Woo-hoo!

Then there was the stool sample. Anyone ever have to do this? They gave me a biohazard zip-lock bag with a specimen jar and two wooden tongue-depressor-like sticks. Nice! I was instructed to collect the sample, put ice cubes in the bag, and deliver it to the lab within two hours. No problem, right? Well, it took me 10 days to get that sample to the lab. The lab in pediatrics closes at 5 p.m., is closed from noon to 2 p.m., and is closed on weekends. The timing was always wrong. I was on diaper alert during the daytime, but Simon prefers to do certain things in the evenings, I guess. I eventually had to take it to the central hospital lab, which stays open until 11 p.m.

So, after all these damn tests I feel confident that Simon is just fine. He's healthy and strong and smart. I'm not going to constantly weigh him. I'm not going to freak out when I see chubby, large-headed babies. I'm not going to see any more specialists or run any more tests. We're done with that shit.

Endless Hell

I think there must be a curse on this house. There is always some home improvement activity going on. It never ends. They're patching and painting the walls--and it's been going on for weeks. How is this possible? I hate it here. We've had someone here working on the house at least once a week (with maybe a week off here and there) for over a year.

The morning I went into labor we had two f***ing morons installing a door in the master bathroom. At 9 a.m. I was pacing the hallway, doing my breathing exercises and listening to power tools whizzing at top volume. After 30 minutes of that we had to tell them to get the hell out. What made it extra annoying is that the genius who designed and started installing this sliding door had already been half-assedly (is that a word?) working on this project for a couple of weeks. Weeks! It was just a simple door that he had to get fancy with. This door was not finished until about a month after Simon was born. And you know what? It was horrible. It is horrible. It's the crappiest door in human history. It took months to finish. The genius tried to get us to pay him many thousands of dollars for it. We only asked for a regular, easy door. He got experimental with it and f***ed it up and had to restart from scratch, but he wanted us to pay him for all his time. Let me tell you: IT DOESN'T EVEN CLOSE ALL THE WAY! That's all a door has to do, right? This one gets stuck halfway and you have to coax it, and even then it doesn't fit flush against the other wall. Amazing!

We have these other geniuses now doing the walls and they get paint dust (from sanding) all over the place (even though they lay down tarps). I have a baby boy who loves to roam around and put things in his mouth. I don't want him eating paint dust. Also, there are so many paint splatters--on the wood floors, on wool rugs, on furniture. I want to kill these people. There is no end in sight. Some days they don't show up, and everything takes longer than you can imagine. They're working on the master bedroom today. I noticed that they have tracked white paint-dust footprints all through the house. WTF! They still have to do Simon's room. That'll probably take us into next year.

We keep thinking that they're almost done. That's why we haven't gotten someone else to do the work, but maybe we need to rethink this.

Before the walls, there was the Adventure of the Copper Pipes. Before that, the Mystery of the Uneven Floor, the epic Refinishing the Pool saga, the Fixing the Outdoor Tiles thriller, and many more tales of loud noises and disruption. Simon doesn't know a world without construction work. I get so tense sometimes when he's napping because I'm afraid a worker will wake Simon up. There were a few weeks when Simon slept while workers pounded on pipes under the house. I would tell them that my baby son was sleeping, but sometimes they were still loud.

Anyway, I absolutely hate it here right now. The place is a mess, and it's impossible to clean while the workers are mucking everything up. I keep thinking, "just one more day," but I know it's a lie...

Mr. Gummy Is Gone

Okay, there has been no sign of Mr. Gummy Bear. I think we're safe. I felt a little weird talking to the babysitter about this. She's wonderful, but she doesn't speak English very well. Our conversation yesterday kind of bogged down for a while after I asked, "Was there any candy in Simon's diaper this morning?" It took a while to get things straightened out.

Lesson of the day: Gummy bears dissolve quite nicely in the tummies of small babies.

Super Mom

I accidently let Simon have a gummy bear this afternoon. I believe it was cherry flavored. I thought I had taken them all out of the bag, but I guess one was sneaky and stuck to the bottom. And then Simon found it and put it in his mouth. It's much harder lately to take stuff out of his mouth, as he now has two bottom teeth and the beginnings of two top teeth and he's not afraid to use them. I tried to get the candy out of his mouth. I really did. But he locked his jaw tight and I couldn't get a finger inside. So I watched him closely, ever alert for the slightest sign of choking.

Also, these gummy bears weren't the freshest or softest. I was worried that he wouldn't be able to "gum" it down enough to swallow. I guess he didn't have much problem, because about 30 minutes after he popped it in his mouth, I managed to get a clear look and saw that it was gone. Did he swallow it whole? Will I change his diaper tomorrow and find a nearly intact gummy bear? Good going, mom. I hope he doesn't expect more corn syrup and red dye treats in the future.

On the plus side, though: my calculations show that that single gummy bear provided my son with 8 calories!

Oh, Baby

This is a look at what bedtimes can look like at our house. There's no winding down here.

First Word, I Think

I'm pretty sure this counts:



I just happened to be filming him at the right time yesterday.

Monstro, the Baby Monster

My sister coined that phrase, and it really applies to my son.



He loves to be a monster. My back has gone out again from trying to comply with his wishes. Wishes such as holding his hands while he walks up and down the stairs to Michael's office (the garage, really)--over and over and over. Wishes such as wanting to climb over Michael's drums to get to the ones he wants to bang on (Mommy eventually said no to this one and had to endure much screaming). Wishes such as wanting to climb up onto exercise equipment and then jump off onto the living room couch (this was made baby-safe by Mommy). What else does he want to do? Oh, yeah: walk up and down our driveway, which is a pretty steep hill.



He doesn't get tired of this. He also loves to walk up and down the steps in our front yard. Here is a picture of just the last section of steps:



He climbs them fast, too.

Anyway, my back is really bad. It's my lower back, the sacrum area. I can barely walk, let alone lift Simon. My parents are coming over at 5:30 to help after the babysitter goes home. Yes, I use a babysitter to help with Simon, even though I'm at home at the time. If I didn't have help, I wouldn't be able to do my work (I cyber-commute). If my back doesn't get better soon, my life is going to be a disaster. I can't lift Simon out of his crib to nurse at night. I can't move fast enough to keep up with him during the day. This makes for potentially unsafe situations.

Help!

Nursing Fun

Lately Simon has decided that my breasts are hilarious. He nurses for a while, then crawls or squirms away, then looks back at my breast and laughs out loud. He can't resist coming back for more. Usually he crawls back to me, pulls himself up, and bends over for boob access. He nurses like that for awhile, standing, a little bent over, with his butt in the air. Sometimes he does a little bouncy dance, too. It's really cute. When he's done, he moves away, then looks back and laughs again. He'll come back a few more times before he's fully done nursing.

Guardian Angel?

If my guardian angel is anything like me, she's probably still working on trying to get me a date with that guy Ruben I liked in 9th grade. Sure, she's probably got my back on the "big things," like making sure Simon doesn't fall out of my arms while we sleep/snuggle on the couch in his bedroom in the early hours of the morning, but I imagine she's bogged down with the little things. I imagine there's a lot of disorganization in her "in" pile.

'Cause there sure is in mine. Combine that with the time deficit I'm experiencing (aka "baby time") and you get a woman who has had her Dell laptop for 11 months and has yet to call tech support to fix a problem with the DVD region setting. For some impossible reason, my DVD region came set to Europe, so I can't play any of my American DVDs. I've been meaning to call Dell about this, but it's just not my top priority, and that means that it doesn't get done. In fact, I don't don't even know where my warranty info is. It's in some pre-Simon area of my office. I think the warranty is only for one year, so I had better get moving on this.

With Simon becoming more and more mobile, I barely have time to get dressed in the morning. In fact, I haven't bothered to do so for two days now. I just wake up and go. I look scary in these black sweats that have stains from multiple meals on them. Looking down, I can see several islands of gunky rice remains, a smear of yogurt, and many splotches of avocado and banana. I actually found time to do laundry yesterday, but I haven't found the time to replace my dirty clothes with the clean ones. I don't really have time to write this, but I'm forcing myself. Otherwise, I'll be stuck with an insurmountable backlog of thoughts to sort through, and I'll be just as bogged down as my angel.