When I gave birth to Hayley, the recovery period was so full of pain that I took my prescribed Empercet every four hours for two weeks before slowly tapering off. With Breanna I had pretty minimal pain; I took the empercet a few times during my two-day hospital stay but didn’t bother with a prescription. In fact, the pain was so non-intrusive that I didn’t even fill the prescription for the Ibuprofren. All I took was my iron pills (which actually caused more stomach pain than any post-birth-related pain).

Now I wish I had gotten the empercet because I know I would still have some and they’re good for a year. I don’t know what I did yesterday but I did something horrible to my lower back just above my tailbone. For awhile yesterday afternoon I could barely move. To get from one room to another I had to inch along while clinging to the walls. I took a ridiculously hot bath and put some Chinese oil (Qwan Loong Oil) on my back and between that and some decent sleep (plus regular old Tylenol) it’s a bit better today. I still get wicked spasms though and carrying Breanna is a TON OF FUN. I am in some pretty bad pain and I wish I could go (carefully) lie on the bed and cry all day but alas, mothers don’t get days off. Here’s hoping it gets better soon.

In other happier news, Breanna has started saying “mama”. Granted, she’s not attaching the word to me in any way, but it’s a start and it’s fun to pretend that as she’s sitting there saying “mamamamamamama” that what she’s doing is singing my praises (snort!). She’s also saying “buhbuhbuh” a lot, “mmmm-ma” which must mean something good because she flashes a huge smile if you say it back, and occasionally something that sounds like “Afflack”.

She also sits really well and is very proud. She’s been doing it for a few weeks but she’s getting less wobbly as she practices. Last night she fell asleep for half an hour at 7 pm and as a result was in no mood for bed by 8. Luckily for my back, she was happy to sit on the bed with me, laughing hysterically at herself while I watched television. After an hour, she finally settled down and went to sleep.

Speaking of watching television, the rest of this entry will contain spoilers for the season finale of both “CSI: Miami” and “Grey’s Anatomy” so don’t read on if you haven’t caught up yet.

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There are only three words I can say about the first half of the Grey’s Anatomy season finale without giving away what happens thus far:

Holy fucking hell.

I’m just thankful that the second part airs tomorrow so I don’t have to walk around for a full week muttering “ohmygodohmygodohmygod” over and over again.

Happy Mother’s Day to every mother out there.

To every mother of a biological child. To every mother of an adopted child. To every birth mother who has ever given a child up. To every mother who has ever taken in a foster child to try to help make one person live a happier life. To every mother-to-be who is counting down the days until birth. To every mother who has ever lost a child. To every mother who has ever lost the baby they never even held. To every mother who has taken a negative pregnancy test and tried again and again and again, forever hoping for two pink lines. To every surrogate mother who has selflessly carried a baby for another mother. To every mother who is somehow perfect and in full control of everything. To every mother who is floundering and living in chaos. To every mother who weeps tears of joy on her newborn’s head. To every mother who weeps tears of postpartum depression and wonders when it gets better. To every mother who screws up and dusts it all off and tries again tomorrow.

To every woman who is or wants to be a mother in any way, happy Mother’s Day.

Sometimes I overthink things. This happens frequently with children’s things, such as television shows. Like Max and Ruby – where the hell ARE their parents anyway and do they know Ruby leaves Max alone in the bath? How long will Max put up with Ruby’s snotty attitude before he says “kiss my ass, bitch” and sets her on fire? These are the Big Questions keeping me up at night.

But today it’s a song. Who IS this old man? And why is he playing knick knack on all my body parts and my stuff? What does it MEAN anyway, this playing knick knack? Is he doing something dirty? Should I call the authorities and get them to take him in to sober up? Being drunk would explain why he came rolling home.

I think I should call my cable company and get them to replace the children’s networkd with Discovery and National Geographic so that I can watch some nice documentaries on Egyptian mummification rituals and plants in the rainforest. It’s entirely possible that I’m losing my mind a little. Let me know if you see it.

The first part of today sucked in so many little ways but for some reason it ended up feeling like I was on some sort of sitcom where everything goes wrong and the laugh track has a good chuckle at my expense. Which beats having the sort of crappy day where you briefly consider throwing yourself in front of a bus.

Hayley had an eye appointment this morning at 10:30. The day went like this:

-Hayley woke up at 5:55 am. Yawn.

-Breanna woke up too early to stay up until we had to leave but too late to fall asleep soon enough to take a decent nap, so she slept for all of 15 minutes this morning before I had to wake her up to change her diaper and dress her.

-Hayley screamed and cried and wailed because as beautiful as her hair is, it’s a war zone of knots no matter how often I try to prevent it from tangling. If the wind blows two provinces over, Hayley’s hair gets knots in it. Detangler only works about 75% of the time and when she’s tired, forget it. Unfortunately, she couldn’t go out looking like the crazy chick from the B52s.

-Breanna screamed and cried and wailed because she was so tired but I had no choice because as much as I love to comfort her when she needs me, I was not going to the doctor in my spit-up soaked pajamas.

-It took me three times of failing to set the alarm before I realized that the patio doors were open and so DUH, of course the alarm wouldn’t arm itself.

-I had been feeling queasy since getting up and getting in the car didn’t help. I then scared George’s dad by mentioning that I should have rescheduled the appointment because I felt awful; there was a slight hint of panic as he asked if I might like a bit of air as he quickly lowered my window for me.

-I felt my absolute worst as soon as we got on the Decarie expressway which has absolutely nowhere to pull over in case of vomiting emergencies. Luckily the feeling passed when I closed my eyes and leaned my head towards the window.

-I fell asleep approximately one and a half blocks away from the hospital so I was groggy as hell, fumbling to open up the stroller at the door to the hospital because I had just woken up from a 45-second nap.

-While in the bathroom, Hayley loudly announced, “I like your bum, Mommy, it’s funny!” Which echoed. Loudly. Thanks for that. My bum is a riot.

-After getting settled with all eight gazillion things that we had toted along (coats, diaper bag, two toys, etc), we proceeded to sit around for an incredibly long time. I just started to get Breanna settled so I could feed her when we were, naturally, called in.

-Hayley is such a big girl now that she sits all by herself on the chair and does all the exam stuff, so I sat on a chair and nursed Breanna while watching. I was so busy looking at the chart that I didn’t notice Breanna was no longer latched on and I was dripping milk onto my sock and shoe. Then, when I picked her up, she barfed all down my leg. Much appreciated! Clearly I wasted my time putting the burp rag over my shoulder.

-They discussed Hayley’s glasses which were the wrong prescription. I mentioned I had brought them with me but they were in the diaper bag back in the waiting room with George’s dad. On my way out to get them, Breanna barfed over my shoulder, missing me completely but leaving a large deposit on the floor. Oops. Could you pass me a paper towel? Thanks!

-Hayley needed to have drops put in her eyes to dilate her pupils. She was so freaked out by the abrupt stinging of the first drop that she went into hysterics. I had left the stroller in the waiting room as well since the exam rooms aren’t all that big, so I put the burp rag/blanket on the floor, put Breanna on the blanket, begged her not to roll over and attempt crawling on a hard tiled floor, and then it took three of us – myself, the doctor, and the tech – to hold Hayley down enough to get two drops in each eye. No one came in the room but I’m pretty sure people were wondering who was being beaten behind the closed door.

-Hayley walked around looking like a bad drug addict with her massive pupils, and sounded like one as she described how bright and fuzzy everything looked.

-After waiting another 45 minutes we got called back in. I had a horrible internal struggle trying not to laugh because while we were trying to get Hayley to tell us what pictures she saw on the eye chart, Breanna farted and farted and farted like she had just chowed down on a can of baked beans. Luckily the doctor is a mother too and we both giggled together.

-When we FINALLY got out of there, two and a half hours after our arrival, both kids fell asleep thirty seconds into the drive. George’s dad had to make one stop on the way home and I struggled to stay awake the whole time he was gone because I don’t like falling asleep in a parked car, especially with kids in the back seat.

-When we were finally on our way home, I succumbed to the power of sleep. Which would have been fine if I had just slept. For some reason though, I kept jerking awake and realizing that my mouth was hanging wide open. Instead of having a nice quiet snooze, I was that moron that everyone laughs at in the other car, with the tonsils dangling in the wind, the head bobbing from one side to the other, and the flailing limbs as I startled to life. I should just be thankful that I didn’t drool.

It should be noted though that I am truly a geek. And not only a geek, but a geek with a blog. Because halfway through all the crazy crap, I couldn’t help but giggle a little and think, “well at least I can write this and share it with a bunch of people on the internet who will laugh at my expense”.

Thank god the day picked up once we got home. Even though lunch was at 2 pm and I felt like a chicken with its head cut off trying to catch up on the day, it was okay.

Anyway, Hayley’s eyes are so straight that the doctor declared it a total success. Her prescription is weaker now but with a difference in the astigmatism so we have our THIRD bloody prescription for her glasses and we go back in two months to see how things are going. Hayley is only going if there are “no more drops”.

And now that it’s 10:30 maybe I should head to bed. Although the day did definitely improve upon arriving home, it’s not over yet and I don’t want to tempt fate by staying awake to see what else can happen.

We have a friend, Heather, who used to sing in George’s band. One of the biggest tragedies to ever happen to Quebec’s music scene was when Heather moved back to Newfoundland. Anyway, she’s performing in a Karaoke Idol competition and she’s down to the final six. If you would be so kind as to help out a friend of mine I would be most appreciative if you could go to the competition website and cast your vote for Heather Davis (careful, there’s another Heather there too!). If you feel weird about voting for someone you’ve never even heard, you can hear her most recent song off their website too (mp3 format). I know a lot of people drop by here so I’m sure we can help he rout. She’s currently neck and neck for top place and she deserves to win!

Also, as anyone reading longer than five minutes knows, George is a musician and for several months he’s been working with his friend and music partner Perry (hi Perry!) on a production company. They’d both love it if you’d take a few minutes to peruse the Persued Productions website and let me know what you think of the music.

This public service announcement has been brought to you by the letter Q.

If you were to drop by my apartment tomorrow afternoon, completely unannounced, I would be annoyed. Mostly because I like some sort of notice that someone is dropping in, even if it’s all of 20 minutes’ worth of notice. I hate surprises. But hassle aside, I would also be a little embarrassed. Embarrassed by the clutter.

If Breanna is having a good day then the dishes will be washed but I never dry them and put them away immediately unless I have no choice because the rack is full. If Breanna is having one of those “hi, I’ve been teething for three god damn months and I’m a little bloody well ticked off about it” days, the dishes may be sitting on the counter. Regardless of how great or horrible the day is, there’s a 99% chance you will step on or trip over some form of toy in the living room because Hayley’s favorite way to play with her toys is to spread them out all over the floor; in fact you’ll be lucky to even make it to the living room since she may have also left her ridearound car directly in front of the main door. After you’ve fallen to the ground, a victim of a Little People school bus or perhaps the Sesame Street play set, some of the laundry from the bedroom may slink out and attack you while you’re down. I feel like my life is a constant cycle of dishes and laundry, and yet I can never conquer it because there’s always more.

I should mention I’m not dirty. You won’t come in and find moldy food rotting on a plate from two weeks ago, bugs crawling on the counter, and ten inches of filth. But I hate to dust and with two kids and a lack of organization, I feel like I’m always fighting a losing battle. It doesn’t help that there are two adults who have somewhat packrat tendencies, a child who claims every single toy and stuffed animal is her “favorite”, and a baby who doesn’t mess much up but is unfortunately too small to be of any help.

It can make me crazy sometimes because I remember that it was so different pre-children. It was never Martha Stewart perfection, it didn’t look like a real estate showing. But it was tidy and somewhat more organized and Toys R Us hadn’t exploded in the living room.

But then I think back on my own childhood.

My father worked and my mother stayed home. She wasn’t a super early riser but throughout the course of her day she would get the dishes washed (and dried and put away so right there she was one up on my track record), take care of laundry, vacuum, make meals for everyone, pack lunches for my dad, and try to tidy up as much as she could. Pretty much the way I do now. She was often fighting a losing battle herself. If she had notice that someone was coming, she would have the kitchen, living room, and bathroom presentable. If there was laundry that needed to be finished up, I bet it went into a laundry basket and shoved into the bedroom (that’s what I do and I’m sure it must be a genetic habit). The door to my room and my sister’s room would just be shut because they were forever nuclear warfare sites of papers and books and toys. I bet that if someone had just dropped by because they were in the neighborhood that she would have had the same reaction of mild panic and “casual” glances over her shoulder to see how bad it might be.

There were several reasons that our home was messy. My parents collected a lot of things (books, cookbooks, knick knacks, etc) and – surprise, surprise! – they were packrats on some level. But more than that, my mother was a mother first and a homemaker second. Sure, she could have spent all day trailing behind us and picking stuff up, obsessing about whether every stray piece of Barbie footwear had been put away in the proper spot, scrubbing floors on her hands and knees, and greeting my father with a newspaper and a June Cleaver smile at the end of the day. Why didn’t she? Because she was too busy.

She was busy feeding her two kids. She was busy playing with those Barbie shoes, helping us in our imagination games. She was busy taking us to the park to play or to the KMart across the street to buy us some little treat. She was busy taking us to play with all the other kids on our street. She was busy baking cookies and reading us books and watching Sesame Street with us and and and. There’s always something cheap there a kid can discover and cherish.

Our house was no museum of perfection. It was cluttered and messy. Never dirty and horrible, but cluttered and messy nonetheless. And as a parent myself, I now know how frustrating it must have been to finally get the living room picked up, go to transfer the wet clothes from the washer to the dryer, and then come back to find all my Hot Wheels all over the living room floor. Yet, she didn’t pull a Joan Crawford on me, throwing wire hangers at me while I scrubbed the tub with half a can of Comet. She sighed (maybe sometimes she got a little mad, I know I do now too), and let me play and perhaps she muttered under her breath about tossing the entire collection of bloody cars into the trash can, but at the end of the day, the cars got put away again and I would go to bed and her living room would be organized for the next ten or twelve hours once again. When I went to visit them on Sunday, the house was different because there are no kids to mess it up anymore and it was much more orderly so I know it wasn’t her; it was us.

My mother was too busy being a mother to make her home look like a Mr. Clean commercial. And when I look back, I don’t think “jeez, what a mess!” I look back and I remember making eight trillion different crafts with her, I remember decorating gingerbread cookies with her, I remember begging her to read “Green Eggs and Ham” just one more time even though I knew it by heart, I remember her giving me carrots and raisins for a snack because I saw it on Mr. Dressup, I remember playing. I remember good times and fun and love. If my childhood had been an unhappy one, I highly doubt that I would think back fondly and think, “gosh the hand towels were folded so perfectly and the tiles just gleamed.” I would probably think back and wonder why my Mommy didn’t play with me more often.

Some days I want to implode because of the apartment. Right now I’m in a heavy purge mode and I just want to toss everything in the garbage or dump it on the front steps of the Salvation Army. I want to go to the dollar store and buy plastic bins and baskets and containers to try to organize toys by type and then toss anything that doesn’t fit into any kind of set because I know very well that Hayley has far too many toys and despite her sentimentality, she doesn’t play with that many of them. I desperately want to organize and clean and shine.

More than that though, I want to be my mom. When I die some day I don’t want Hayley and Breanna to stand in the cemetery and say, “she sure cleaned well.” I want them to remember that Mom was crazy and silly and had an imagination that rivaled theirs and that she read to them and played with them and that although she had to wash the dishes every day she never once said she couldn’t play games because she had to dust the china cabinet.

I just want to play right now. Some day there will be time for dusting again.

Ever notice that sometimes there are little hints that you’re a parent? I mean sure, the explosion of toys in the living room might be a subtle clue, or perhaps the baby parked on your hip is a dead giveaway, but there are other things that don’t stand out so clearly but scream “I’m a parent!” just as loudly.

For instance, you may be a parent if:

-your ponytail is being held back by an elastic with a plastic Dora figure on it
-your glasses have very tiny fingerprints
-you cut yourself and apply a bandage covered in balloons and clowns because that’s all you have handy
-you have a stomach ache from eating too quickly so you take a bit of gripe water
-it’s after 9 pm and you catch yourself softly singing the fucking theme song to Rolie Polie Olie under your breath
-you wash your hair with Johnson’s baby shampoo
-you scribble notes and to-do list in crayon because they’re far more accessible than pens
-you notice that, as you’re standing and waiting for your tea to brew, you’re gently swaying from side to side, the same way you do when you’re soothing the baby

What are your little things?

Sometimes it’s overwhelming to see what can happen when someone asks for advice on the internet because everyone has an opinion and can easily turn to absolute chaos. However, despite my reservations, I am going to actually ask for advice now.

Breanna is pretty much outgrowing the the Miracle Blanket by leaps and bounds (Amy, I guess I’ll have to be sending it back to you soon, wah!). I no longer try to restrain her arms because she likes to have her hands free now and she doesn’t startle anymore. At this point I’m just keeping her legs inside the pouch, but she kicks free so easily that I have to try to gently keep her still while she’s falling asleep.

For those of you who swaddled your babies, how did you transition out of it? Breanna’s sleep is in shorter spurts these days and I think it’s because she kicks her legs and wakes herself up. I’ve been wondering if one of those sleep sacks would work or maybe the “nightgowns” that are little sakcs as well (I don’t even know if they make them big enough for her), or if I just have to patiently (hahaha!) wait for her to get used to sleeping freely and wait for her to start doing longer stretches again.

You would think this is something I wouldn’t need to ask about since this is my second baby and all, but I never had to transition from swaddling to non-swaddling because Hayley hated it from day one. Even when the nurses wrapped her up tightly she would free herself by flailing angrily until she was loose. People will say “all babies love to be swaddled!” but no one ever told Hayley that; it was like she came out and thought, “well thank GOD I’m out of that confined space now, HEY, get that blanket away from me, bitch!” so she just pretty much always slept freely. She wouldn’t even tolerate a blanket lightly covering her until she was almost two years old.

Okay. Suggest away, tell me how you handled it.

(Also known as the post in which I use several terms which will result in some strange Googlers feeling disappointed and vaguely ripped off.)

Breanna prefers nursing from the right side. Hayley did too when she was a baby. I can only assume the left has a crappy letdown in comparison or something of that sort, and that’s why the right is more popular. This is really annoying because I have to fight to get Breanna to latch on to the left side; the only way I can easily do it is if she’s just waking up and then in her sleepy daze she doesn’t complain.

If you’ve ever breastfed a baby you’ve probably found yourself, at least once, familiar with the side effect to a preference like that – since the neglected side doesn’t often get emptied completely, it also doesn’t always refill completely, and as a result you wind up with a telltale pain, kind of stabbing in nature. That would be me today. If I can’t get Breanna to nurse on that side soon, I’m going to have to toss her in the bouncy seat or the swing and break out the pump because although there are other remedies such as hot showers, hot compresses, and massages, the only thing that really works for me is to get the damn milk OUT.

Anyway, this whole thing led to a rather amusing misunderstanding.

Sherry: Ow. Oh, OW!
Hayley: What’s wrong Mommy?
Sherry: Oh, nothing really. I just have a clogged duct.
Hayley: (excited) You have a DUCK?! WHERE?!

She was a little deflated to learn that I do not, in actuality, have a duck, clogged or otherwise. Alas.