the marvelous adventures of jules & john

Currently Beez is…

Eating: not greens. She loves CHEESE, steak, chicken, blueberries, oranges, applesauce packs, and whatever we’re eating at that moment. Everything else is flung from her tray. It’s hilarious. It’s also very sticky.

Wearing: 0-3 month clothes. No joke. She can fit into 6 month clothes as well, but is EASILY fitting into her 0-3 month stuff. While we’re on the topic of clothes, can we take a moment to discuss how precious little summer rompers are? And how precious her little roll-covered thighs are? Kills me. 

Wanting: her mom. All of the time. She loves me and I don’t mean kind of.

Listening to: the Train song Drive By. Train isn’t really my style, but we always listen to Sirius Radio’s Coffee House station in the evenings and whenever that song comes on she perks right up… and then we have a 5 minute dance party. It is definitely her favorite.

Watching: her grandma via Skype. 

Currently I am…

Cooking: Everything green in hopes that I can get some veggies in my girl. 

Wearing: Wedges! John ridicules me every time I wear my new salmon-colored wedge sandals, but I don’t care. They make me tall, they don’t hurt my feet, and even my klutzy body can walk in them. I’ve also traded in my dresses for skirts because nursing in a dress is awkward. 

Wanting: to wash my hair… one hour of free time a week… a little credit where credit is due…  and to learn to play guitar… or the uke… 

It’s been a rough couple of weeks. 

Listening to: My Bon Iver Pandora station.

Watching: Mad Men on Netflix. Betty is pretty much the most lovely girl I’ve ever seen. Also, I want to be a dress-wearing housewife. Maybe in my next life *sighs*

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This morning Beatrice woke up at 6am. As usual, I brought her into our bed, nursed her back to sleep, and promptly fell asleep myself. We slept like that for an hour – a little girl safe and sound between the two people who love her most. Then she woke up, crawled directly on top of me and fell back to sleep. Another hour later it was 8am and I was terribly late for work, but when you’re running that late, what are another few minutes? Bebe was giddy at the sight of BOTH of her parents and proceeded to climb all over us, stopping only for quick snuggles here and there.

She is the best little girl. So funny, so spunky, and oh so very sweet.

It was a long time coming, but our little wildcat is finally starting to appreciate a good snuggle.

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It seems like whenever Beatrice goes through one of her crazy stages there is this buildup where she becomes more and more out of control while exhaustion slowly consumes me. Then just as I think I might possibly lose it and go on a blog rant about the crazies, it’s over.

Two nights ago Beatrice stayed up a little later than usual, but I didn’t have too much trouble putting her to bed. Before John and I slept, we marveled at the cuteness of our little girl, who was using her bear as a pillow at that point. We quietly asked her to please be good to us that night, and fell asleep.

We woke up at 8am. Beatrice had slept 10 hours straight. Miracles do happen. She was amazing at church, took a little nap, and then was a gem at lunch.

We crossed our fingers that it wasn’t a fluke… and last night we got another full night of sleep.

I don’t know what her deal was – maybe it was teeth. Maybe it was a wonder week. Either way, it was just a phase. So until the next one, I will cherish the fact that even though my nearly 11 month old daughter still rarely sleeps through the night, at least she’s only getting up once and not once an hour. 

There is a book out there called The Wonder Weeks. I have not read this book but the general premise is that kids go through “wonder weeks” where they take significant leaps forward mentally and developmentally, which throws them for a loop and creates some serious clingyness since their world suddenly looks totally different. I take books like this with a grain of salt, but Bebe’s craziness caused me to google week 46 to see if it was a wonder week and bam - suddenly I am a believer, because they hit the nail square on the head:

Wonder Week 46:
The World of Sequences

Babies are natural mess-makers. During the last leap in your baby’s mental development, this talent probably seemed at its peak. You may have marveled at your baby’s knack for destruction as he disassembled, tossed around, and squished everything in his path. If you are alert for newly developing skills in your baby, at around 46 weeks you may suddenly notice him doing things that are quite the opposite. He will begin, for the first time, to try to put things together.

Your baby is now ready to discover the world of sequences. From this age on, he can begin to realize that to reach many of his goals, he has to do things in a certain order to be successful. You may now see your baby looking first to see which things go together and how they go together before trying to put them in each other, pile them on top of each other, or piece them together. For instance, he may concentrate on aiming as well as he can before trying to pile one block on top of another. He may push a peg through a hole in a peg board only after he has compared the shape of the peg to the hole.

Bebe is totally putting things together these days! She loves to put the lids on containers and spent the evening putting her toys into her toy box! Do you know what this means? It means she’s going through a phase and will soon stop acting like the world is ending if I move out of arms reach! 

Beatrice has been nothing short of crazy this week. Her emotions are all over the place, she flips if I’m out of arms reach, and her energy level is RIDICULOUS. And by ridiculous I mean high. Very very high. Probably ADHD high. Girl is a hot mess. 

Anyway, the crazies hates the sleeps, which makes things even more fun. 

Thursday night things peaked when Beatrice woke up at 11pm ready for action. I tried to feed her and she said, “A BOTTLE mom? Is this a joke? You have the GOODS.” Problem was, I didn’t have the goods because the goods aren’t used to happening at 11pm. So Bebe chewed on my boob for a bit, stuck her finger in my nose, and then launched herself upright and off my lap, ready to play. 

I hunkered down with her in the guest bed which is usually sleep magic, but Bebe pulled out her inner mountain goat and climbed all over me, picked the fuzz off the blanket and ate it, buzzed spit all over the place, poked my eyes, nose, mouth, etc… you get the picture. 

Girl is hilarious, really, but I have to work in the A.M.’s.

Finally I let out a growl, John came to the rescue, I declared that I don’t need pillows (don’t ask), and he proceeded to hang out with her until TWO-THIRTY IN THE MORNING. 

That is insane. Go to bed kid. 

Since Beatrice has the energy level of a 6 year old on red bull, she was up bright and early the next morning. Maybe John cried real tears at this point… maybe I sprinted from the house half dressed and put my makeup on in the car… maybe that happened every day this week…

moving on

The kid slept MAYBE two hours the whole day. Two. She set a record for the longest period of awake time in a row. She wasn’t even fazed. And then she went to sleep at midnight. Holy jkfdskdlahknvker.

So this means she’s going to sleep through the night and wake up late right?

ha. ha. ha.

At some point in the night she woke up and I put her in bed with us. I thought it was 5am. It definitely was not. Bebe proceeded to sleep ON TOP OF ME for the rest of the night, waking up periodically to rearrange her position. She thought it was fun. She is crazy.

And then she woke up for good at 6am. This time I cried real tears. Go to sleep kid! Just go to sleep!

Bebe is very particular about what she likes and doesn’t like. She also has a wicked side arm that flings whatever displeases her out of the way. This makes for some very messy mealtimes - food is EVERYWHERE. Tonight she was her usual comic self, making hilarious faces, shoving food into her mouth without chewing, and flinging anything that wasn’t cheese out of the way. 

Is she not the cutest thing you’ve ever seen?

Bebe’s diaper changes are OUT OF CONTROL.

Notice I said diaper changes, not the actual diapers. Actually, maybe her diapers are bad too, but we’re too exhausted after changing them, that we don’t even notice.

This is how it goes:

Bebe needs a new diaper. If we’re alone, we cry internally and do some stretches to prepare for the wrestling match. If John and I are together, we look at each other and nod in silent agreement. One of us picks her up. The other acts as a decoy - singing songs, dancing, waving random objects around. We nonchalantly move toward her bedroom - “nothing to see here kid, we’re just dancing and singing and having a fun time”. We put her supplies on top of the changing table without her noticing. Diaper, check. Pile of wipes, check. 

Depending on how we feel about the pending diaper change, we strip her down to her skivvies. 

And then things get crazy. 

We lay her down. Bam. She flips sideways, and starts screaming, “I’m going to contort my body into a C shape to show you how Cruel you are to Children!” She gets her little hands around the railing on the changing table and uses it as leverage to flip over and show us just how dirty her tiny, naked little buns are. And then she continues to scream, “you jerks! I’m going to run away from home and find someone who appreciates me!”, while trying to launch herself from the changing table. 

One of us tries to constrain her while the other wipes her down. There is poop on our hands. Poop on her feet. The dirty diaper is on the floor with wipes strewn around it. Sanitary? I think not. 

She’s clearly dying by this point, so we hurry up and finish so we can rush her to the emergency room.

but PSYCH

as soon as we pick her up, the crying turns off like a light. Guess she wasn’t dying after all. 

I won’t deny that most of her wet diapers are now changed while she’s sitting or standing. Even that can can be a ruckus though - the other night she was sitting on the floor and I started to take off her diaper and she took off like a banshee, laughing hysterically at her own escape and leaving that diaper in the dust. Another time this week, I was trying to change her while she was sitting and playing, and as soon as that diaper came off, she was bouncing across the floor on her naked buns, but still playing like nothing was happening. 

Potty training cannot come soon enough. How much longer do I have to wait?

What’s that you say? ANOTHER YEAR?!?! MAYBE MORE?!?!?!

Help.

I’m not one to just jump into something head first – I am cautious, responsible, and sometimes a bit crazy with the hippie ideals. I like to know not only what I’m doing, but WHY I’m doing it.  

With Beatrice certain decisions were easy for me – breastfeeding, cloth diapering at home but not in public, and a nanny instead of daycare. Other things, like vaccinations, required a bit more research.

Vaccines are a hot topic, and a relatively NEW topic at that. Our parents and grandparents didn’t think twice about vaccinating us because they watched children die from measles and polio. They had friends who survived these diseases, but were left with a lifetime of health problems and a mouth full of rotten teeth thanks to the harsh medicines they had to take to get better. They saw vaccines as a good thing and welcomed their arrival.

Then our generation started seeing an influx of autism and was quick to associate it to vaccines. Whether there really is a correlation or not, no one knows for sure. Either way, there is now a plethora of information on the topic - most of it one-sided.  

I have read everything related to this issue. Ask me a question and can give you two answers – one supporting each side of the argument. I ended up making the decision to vaccinat Beatrice after speaking with my pediatrician. I still wasn’t sure that this was the obvious-tried-and-true-end-all choice, but I felt like it was the BEST choice.

And then the Super Bowl came to town.

And it was discovered that there was someone who had measles walking around in the midst of all of those people, which turned into an outbreak.

And suddenly I felt much better with my decision to vaccinate.

But oh boy, I was mad. I’m still mad when I think about it. My baby was 7 months old at that point, which meant that while she was in the process of being vaccinated, she hadn’t finished her series yet. I wasn’t being irresponsible by bringing my child out in public, yet she could have caught MEASLES by me doing so. MEASLES?! That is ridiculous. We’re not living in Haiti here - there is no reason why I should fear something like measles killing my daughter.

I used to have a to-each-their-own attitude about this issue, but my feelings have changed. When you choose not to vaccinate your children, you’re putting the children that they come in contact with in danger. I don’t care if you give your kid formula or flip their carseat around at age 1 instead of 2. Those things don’t affect me in the least. I don’t even care if you don’t vaccinate but then homeschool your kids and keep them away from society, much like the Amish. But choosing not to vaccinate and then putting them in public school and taking them out in crowds is a whole different story.  

Even if Beatrice makes a rapid regression after her 3 year shots and is labeled autistic, I will still vaccinate my other children – because in my mind, autism is better than burying my child. I don’t know if autism is a result of vaccines, but it’s a chance I am willing to take to keep my children safe. 

Before deciding to have a baby, people run through a little checklist: are they financially stable, do they have time for a baby, are they willing to commit the next 18 years to taking care of said baby…

But those things are trivial. You’ll make time. You’ll adapt your lifestyle to you financial situation. You’ll figure it out. 

What you don’t think about and what you can’t prepare for, is the emotional side of things. There is a piece of me crawling around in a tiny, frail, little body. I could lose her in an instant because of a piece of food that is too big, a forgotten baby gate by the stairs, or a misplaced ant trap that could end up in her mouth. You could really make yourself crazy thinking about it. And yet, despite knowing all of the terrible things that could happen that would rip that child from you in a second, you still can’t help but love that little person freely, completely, without fear or inhibitions. 

I don’t know how parents who lose their children do it. 

On my very first Mother’s Day, I feel blessed to be one of the lucky ones. I have my parents, their parents, and the most delicious daughter. She is healthy. She is bright, happy, and beautiful. She came to me easily, without troubles of infertility or complications during pregnancy or birth. She has changed me from a girl who was guarded with her relationships, to a woman who loves fiercely.

I am blessed.  

Time Magazine - May 2012

Have you seen this yet? The issue doesn’t come out until May 21st but wow, you better believe I will be picking up a copy.

I had no idea what attachment parenting was before Beatrice was born and the principles came instinctively to me. We co-slept and still would be if my husband would let me. I have worn my baby constantly since day one. She rarely cries without receiving an immediate response from us. And at 10.5 months old, there is no end to our breastfeeding days in sight. 

Maybe I’ll still be breastfeeding her at age 3. I have nothing against it, and could totally see myself taking that route naturally. The health benefits are great and I like doing it. But if I am still breastfeeding Beatrice at age 3, you better believe I’m not going to PUT A PICTURE OF IT ON THE COVER OF TIME MAGAZINE! 

Ugh. Lady. What are you thinking? This picture is going to come back to haunt your son. It’s going to show up at school and he is going to be ridiculed for being breastfed until age whatever. Kudos to you for breastfeeding for so long and not caring what other people think of you, but I just can’t help but think that maybe you took part in this article as some sort of personal gratification - while sacrificing your son in the process. 

Attachment parenting is about building a bond with your child. Your child trusts you and has confidence that you will always be there to tend to their needs. I can’t see this child feeling very trusting of his mother once he is old enough to realize that his mom exploited him on the cover of a hugely popular magazine. Poor kid is going to need a lot of therapy…

when I walked into Bebe’s room and saw her standing in her crib.