arboretum

On Tuesday we went with Playgroup (a group of women and their kids at church who get together every week to let the kids play together - sometimes at a park, sometimes at a museum, and sometimes just in the nursery room at church) to the Arboretum in northeast DC.  Neither Jed nor I had never been to the Arboretum - although I have driven past it several times, I never knew what it was.  We drove with Katie Curtis and her 3 children - the youngest of which was born 3 days after Jed in the same hospital with the same midwives.

First we stopped at the Koi pond, which all the kids loved:





We also saw lots of beautiful flowers and trees:

Jedidiah and I definitely plan on going back!

yesterday

Yesterday wasn't the best day ever.  It wasn't the worst either - but it certainly had its challenges.



It started pleasant enough.  Jed slept through the night and didn't wake up until 7:30. Scott changed him and played with him before he headed off to school. I nursed him and played with him too, and he played on his tummy for a little bit (as long as he could stand) and made funny faces.





Around 9:00 he went down for a short nap.  When he woke up we got ready to run our errands for the day.  But when I opened the door, the following sight greeted me:

There are roofers working on our apartment complex, and they had been throwing old shingles and such off the roof into our yard.  The garbage was piling up in front of our door.  As I looked outside the rain of debris continued right in front of my face, and I didn't want to step outside for fear of getting a concussion.  So I adjusted my plans and decided that the errands would get run another time (I hoped that by late afternoon/early evening things would be better and we would be able to venture outside).  I left the door open & opened the blinds for the sunshine, and went back to taking care of Jed.  I fed him shortly after 10, and around 10:30 he was starting to look tired again.  So I started the naptime routine and attempted to put him down.

You'd have thought that Hiroshima was happening all over again.  He screamed.  For the better part of 4 hours he screamed.  Or cried.  Or stared at me with puffy red eyes that seemed to ask what he had done to deserve such torture.  Whatever he did all afternoon, what he didn't do was sleep.  I tried everything - pacifier, blanket, bear (both with supervision).  I nursed him on the couch.  I nursed him in the rocking chair.  I nursed him lying down on the bed.  I read him Goodnight Moon.  I walked him, bounced him, swung him, sang to him.  I nursed him while I did all those things.  I talked to him.  I laid him down on my bed and laid next to him.  I put him on the floor to play with his toys for a few minutes and then tried the nap thing again.  I gave him a bottle in the rocking chair.  I gave him a bottle in the crib.  I thought about taking him for a drive but looked outside and saw that the debris was still raining from the roof and piling up in the yard.  I let him "cry it out" for 10 minutes at a time.  I let him suck on my finger because he wouldn't take the pacifier.  I helped him find his own thumb.  I turned on the vacuum - twice - which made him stop crying for about 5 minutes but didn't put him to sleep (though it had worked like a miracle the day before - after crying for almost an hour, he fell asleep in Scott's arms the instant I turned it on).  I played the piano one-handed while I held him on my lap (that was the happiest he was all afternoon).  After 4 hours of this, I finally gave up.  I put him in what Scott calls his "lawn chair" with a toy and faced him toward the kitchen so he could watch me while I did the dishes (I had to do something productive!).

After a few minutes, I looked over at him to see this very tired face starting at me:

 

"Mama, I'm so tired!
Why are you making me stay awake?"

 












I laughed out loud, walked over and gave him a kiss on the cheek, and went back to the dishes.  After a while he started to fuss, so I went to check if the coast was clear outside.  I hoped that a drive in the car would finally put him to sleep.  Plus, it was just about time to go pick up Scott from school.  It looked like as good a time as any to make a dash for it, so I picked him up and decided to change his diaper before we left - and it was a good thing I did.  He had just barely started to leak poop out of it onto his onesie.  "Okay," I thought, "I'll change his outfit first.  It's covered in spit-up anyway."  After cleaning up the poopy diaper, I went to wash my hands before I put on a clean one - dangerous, I knew - but I needed to get the poop off my fingers before I did anything else.  Unsurprisingly, when I came back he had peed all over himself and was rather pleased (take note of the glistening droplets on his face):

I was going to change his outfit anyway, so this was no big deal.  I wiped the pee off his face with the dry, unpoopy part of the onesie and went to get a new one (after putting a clean diaper on of course).  20 minutes after I had originally started toward the door, we were finally ready to go.  After putting Jed in his carseat, I put on my shoes and picked up my purse.  I turned back around to find a baby who, after 6 hours of naplessness, finally couldn't take it anymore.

Ahhh, sleep.  Now if only Mama had been able to follow suit!

m-day

I'm nearly a week late on this post, but that's just how being a mother goes, isn't it?  If something isn't an emergency, or at least very urgent, it often doesn't get done right away.  There is a list a mile high of things that I "want" to do or "mean" to do.  But when there is a spare moment that I'm not taking care of the baby, most often I do the things that I "have" to do.

But today Scott has taken Jed to the Father/Son campout for the morning, so I have a few hours to do whatever I want.  I've already spent 3 hours doing various household chores: I organized some of Jed's clothes, took out the trash, put away the dishes, swept the kitchen floor, fought off some sugar ants (they are everywhere these days! Our mild winter didn't kill enough of them), cleaned out my church bag (this went along with fighting off the ants - I left a Starburst in there and they found it), vacuumed - including around a lot of the baseboards, fought off some carpet beetles (also everywhere), took a shower (not a household chore, per se, but needed to be done!), picked up clutter, got stuff ready to take to the thrift store, and cleaned the cat litter.  Not the relaxing morning that I had envisioned, but once I started cleaning I just couldn't stop.  I thought that once Jed was born the nesting instincts would go away, but they haven't.  I have a constant desire for the house to be clean and organized (though it is usually not).

And so far, I haven't written a single word about the intended topic of this post.  I'm very easily distracted - no wonder nothing ever actually gets done around here. :)

Mother's Day (or is it Mothers' Day?).  A day, much like Valentine's Day, that is both loved and hated around the world.  Loved by those who have something to celebrate, and hated by those who WANT to have something to celebrate but don't.  I used to be in the latter category of people.  I wanted a baby for so long.  Every year when M-Day rolled around, I wanted to pull the covers up over my face, stay home from church, and sleep until it was over.  A little dramatic, yes - but hearing about how wonderful motherhood only served as a painful reminder of what I longed for and didn't have.  I knew I was being petty but it was so hard that I didn't care.

Scott made sure my first M-Day as a mother was wonderful.   He got up to make me breakfast while I slept a few more minutes with the baby (who had woken up to nurse and fallen back asleep, so we left him in the bed since we were about to get up anyway).



Scott made me pancakes with fruit and whipped cream, sausages, and juice for breakfast while I took a shower.  We ate together, woke up the baby and got him ready for church, and went.  I didn't make mention of the holiday at church - except for wish a few mothers a happy day - in an effort to be sensitive to anyone who might be feeling the same way I had felt.

After church we came home and ate lunch, then went to a nearby park to enjoy the beautiful weather:

Hanging out with Daddy

My favourite baby in the world

 Jed begged and begged me to take him down the slide, and since I'm a pushover I gave in and took him.

I'm not quite sure what he thought of it!

After the park we went home to watch Megamind, which Jed had bought me, and eat my Lindt truffles, which came from Scott.  After that Scott treated me to a steak dinner (you'd think he knows me or something) and a relaxing evening watching Netflix and eating ice cream. 

And because I got to spend it with my husband and child, it was a perfect day.

grand-visit

Here are the pictures from when Scott's parents came to visit a couple of weeks ago.  I know they're a little late...recovering from Macbeth and getting my life back in order has taken a little while.

Don had meetings in DC, and Carol came along for the ride.  They were gracious enough to come out a couple days early, so that they could take care of Jed while Scott was gone at his conference and I was in performances for Macbeth.  We loved having them come, and Jed had fun playing with his grandparents!  Despite the lack of smiles in the following 2 pictures, Jed was much more interactive than the last time they saw him (3 weeks old) and he had lots of smiles, kicks, and wiggles for them.

On Monday, before Don's meetings started, the 5 of us trekked up to Baltimore and visited the Aquarium.  There was lots to see, and Jed appreciated it more than he had the zoo just a few weeks earlier.

The dolphin show was probably my favourite part of the day.

Jed watched the dolphin show with fascination, albeit sideways.