Thoughts on Motherhood

This motherhood gig is tricky business, I tell you what. After almost seven months, I feel like I mostly have the hang of it...and then something happens to completely shake my confidence. Like this week, when Mr. Max has apparently started teething hardcore (well, we are assuming, anyway) and the routine we had finally, sort of settled into has quite effectively gone out the window. No more 9:00 bedtimes where we lay him in his crib, turn on some lullabies and call it good...lately we are lucky if he falls asleep by 10:30, and only if he is laying next to one or both of us after carrying on for a good hour and having a nice dose of Tylenol to make his little gums feel better. He also has a bit of a cold that has been hanging around for a few weeks, making eating slightly more difficult because he can't always breathe too well...and the only thing that helps him to breathe better (the glorious bulb syringe we got at the hospital) is perhaps his least favorite thing ever in the history of his short little life ever and I feel like I am basically torturing him every time I use it. Sigh.

I've discovered that it's hard not to compare myself to other mothers. There are a few blogs I read every now and then, both written by first-time moms (one stay-at-home, one work-from-home) who have babies that are not much older than mine. These women are always impeccably dressed in expensive clothes (and six-inch heels! On weekdays!) complete with stacks of bracelets, long necklaces and humongous earrings, hair looking like they've just come from the salon, faces full of makeup, always going on and on about their healthy eating habits and religious workout routines. Their babies are apparently wonder-children, on set routines and seemingly never fussy or hard to handle.

Truth be told, most days I am not dressed before noon or later unless I have somewhere to go...and pretty much at least once a week I stay in my pajamas or robe all day. I have decided that I may have to start foregoing jewelry completely, as my little man has ruined more than one of my necklaces because he finds them so fascinating and such fun things to chew on (earrings, too...I haven't even dared tempting him with bracelets so I just stay away from them altogether). Any shirt I have on is certain to be sopping wet with either my baby's drool or spit-up by the end of the day, so T-shirts seem to be the most practical option for me at the moment. Putting my hair in a ponytail is usually a good idea, since Max likes to yank and suck on my hair, too, which is always fun. I started working part-time from home about a month and a half ago, so in between trying to get four hours of work in every day and taking care of my baby, I barely have time to eat, take five minutes for myself and just breathe, let alone work out on a regular basis or most days even leave the house. 

I don't want to complain, because I am beyond grateful that I was able to find a job that is flexible enough to allow me to stay home with my baby while bringing in a little extra money for our family and helping me keep up with my skills...but honestly, it can all become pretty overwhelming. At the end of the day, the things that keep me going and restore my sanity are these simple facts:

My baby never goes hungry,
My baby gets the attention he needs,
My baby is clean,
My baby is well-dressed,
My baby is read to often,
My baby is snuggled,
My baby is developing just as he should,
My baby is happy and healthy,
My baby knows that his mama loves him,
And my baby loves his mama.

And that's really all that matters, right? 

March Recap {Or, as I like to call it, "The Month That Must Not Be Named"}

So. We made it almost the entire winter season without getting sick, besides a couple of mild colds (I was just on the verge of bragging about my apparent super milk and its immunity-providing capabilities)...and then March hit and it all went to crap.

Early in the month, Max caught a stomach bug and spent an entire sad day spewing whatever milk he had drunk right back up. Two days later, I caught the same bug--only like a million times worse because I am an adult and obviously did something wrong in a previous life requiring much suffering on my behalf in this existence--and spent two days flat on my back in bed, wanting to die. (Side note: Every once in a while I think about how much I loved being pregnant and how I miss it. Having that stomach bug reminded me of the horrors of morning sickness. Let's just say that Max will not be getting a sibling anytime soon.)

I had hoped that we were home free after that, but oh, how prideful I am. About two weeks ago, Max came down with a little cough, which turned into a cold. We ran the humidifier in his room for a few nights and then he was pretty much as good as new. And then, like clockwork, two days later I came down with a cold myself. A nasty, miserable cold that is still hanging around like a jerk. And on top of everything else, my body decided to revolt and give me mastitis over Easter weekend while we were up in Logan visiting John's family. Let me tell you, there's no funner way to spend a weekend at your in-laws than stuck in a downstairs bedroom all day, only seeing your baby to feed him while at the same time fighting a high fever and having the source of your baby's milk scream at you in pain. Thank heavens for antibiotics...and on-call doctors who will call in prescriptions to out-of-town pharmacies. 

However, we did manage to get an adorable family picture on Easter Sunday. Behold:

In the midst of everything, my darling little Max turned six months old on March 21st. SIX. MONTHS. OLD. HALF A YEAR. As in, my baby is growing way too fast and soon enough will be crawling, then walking, then hating me because he'll be a rebellious teenager and, like, Moms are just so not cool. YIKES. We had another fun well-child visit at the pediatrician (three cheers for another round of shots, which I again braved by myself! Go me!), where we learned that Max is perhaps the cutest baby on the planet and also that he is good and healthy and developmentally right on schedule (and in some ways, ahead of schedule...child prodigy alert! Ha.).

SIX MONTH STATS

Weight: 16.53 lbs. (30th percentile)

Height: 27.56 inches (84th percentile)

Head Circumference: 17.3 inches (55th percentile)

And here is a little bit about our bean at six months:

• We started him on solids about two weeks ago, and it's going...OK. He seems to like the oatmeal cereal he started out with, but didn't seem to be such a big fan of rice cereal until we fed it to him tonight and he devoured it. We gave him applesauce on Sunday and he LOVED it, but when I tried to feed it to him yesterday he wasn't very interested. Huh. I think it's just going to take a while to get him used to something other than breastmilk. Next on the agenda: sweet potatoes.
  
• He is getting closer and closer to crawling. He finally figured out that it's OK to roll from his tummy to his back (he's been rolling from back to stomach since he was about four months old), so he rolls all over the place now. We find him in all sorts of crazy places if we leave him alone for a few minutes.
  
•  He doesn't mind tummy time so much now and is starting to get up on all fours, and just this morning he was using his feet to push himself forward to get to a toy. I am about to be in trouble, y'all. 
• He is still a curious little thing. Every time we go someplace new, he spends the majority of the time just looking around at everything, trying to take it all in. 
• He does not love loud noises or really loud places. (I DON'T KNOW WHAT WE'RE YELLING ABOUT!!! Ha, bonus points for you if you know that movie reference...) We tried taking him to University of Utah basketball games twice earlier this year and oh, the trauma. We also went to John's cousin's wedding reception over the weekend and he was not having it until we gave him the binkie. Bless you, binkie, for your soothing ways. (I will not, however, be blessing the binkie when my child still wants it at age four. Ugh.)
• We are told on a regular basis that Max is one of the cutest babies ever to be born. I'm serious, we hear that all of the time, totally unsolicited. Therefore, I cannot be considered biased when I tell you that I have the cutest baby ever.
• His hair grows like crazy. We've already had to give him two haircuts to stop him from looking like he has an old-man comb-over.
• He babbles and babbles non-stop these days. He does this high-pitched scream thing and will do it back and forth with me and John for a long time.
• He is crazy ticklish. And I maybe tickle him more than I should because I love to hear that little giggle.
• His favorite toys at the moment are not so much toys as boring, everyday household items. He is mesmerized by water bottles and if we put him anywhere near our gross gray TV remote he goes insane trying to get to it. He also loves to suck on tags...he'll have the cutest, brightest toy to play with and all he'll want to do is get to the dang tag. Weirdo. (But a cute weirdo, remember?)
  
• He most certainly does not like to be rocked to sleep anymore (or rocked at all, or even to be held in the position wherein we could rock him), which makes me quite sad. Usually at night--bedtime is around 9:00--we read him a story, turn on a CD of lullabies and put him down in his crib and he eventually puts himself to sleep. Except for the part where he appears to be teething hardcore at the moment and as we speak it's almost 1b0 and he is currently kicking the laptop as I'm typing this. Silly rabbit. 
• Speaking of sleep, I kind of love taking naps with my boy. He takes much longer naps if we take them together, and it's one of the rare times he likes to snuggle with me. The funny thing is that the second I wake up, he wakes up--not sure how he knows I'm awake, but it happens almost every single time.
• He absolutely LOVES listening to John sing and play the piano or guitar. And when you put him in front of a keyboard or piano, he pounds away on the keys to his little heart's content. It's looking like he was born with at least a little bit of John's musical talent. 
• He loves to touch people's faces...and gouge their eyes out, grab their neck fat, yank on their lips, all sorts of fun things. If he does that to you, you're in.

That about sums it up. I will try not to let another two months pass without an update...and hey, maybe sometime I'll post something non-baby related! (Yeah, right. Let's face it, that's what most of you come here for. And I don't blame you. Just look at this face!)