Across the World by neenertronics

I’m in love with him seven years later.

Because he’s stopping the dog from choking herself in the computer power cord right now.

And because he gave me Penelope. And this song.

Lullaby by neenertronics

First song coming tomorrow…

Yesterday Matt got home from work early, so we took the girls to the park for a walk. After getting some exercise, we found a shady spot and pulled Penny out of her stroller to lounge in the grass for a while. I don’t know who loved it more, Penny, or Berlin who couldn’t stop licking and snuggling up to the newest member of our family.

My mind has made the shift to Fall even if it hasn’t actually hit the calendar yet, mainly because of the arrival of butternut squash in our CSA box. In the past, butternut squash in the grocery store always triggers Fall in my mind, so I guess it’s happening a little early this year. Because of it, I am spending significant portions of the day dreaming of cooler weather, long hikes outside, trips to local farms to pick apples and pumpkins, Trick or Treaters, and Thanksgiving feasts.

With Autumn on the brain, I decided to welcome it in a bit early by putting Penny in her very first hoodie.

From Daily Daguerreotype

Never look back, kiddo. You will know your mama by the hoodies she wears.

Penny’s also really starting to love bath time. I’d imagine every mom’s favorite part of bath time is when they get out of the water and need to be snuggled dry in a big fluffy baby towel.

From Daily Daguerreotype

I can’t wait for the weather to cool off so I can take her out of the bath, snuggle her into her towel, and sit in front of the fire to read her bedtime story and sing her bedtime songs.

When Matt and I were dating, I made a CD for him called “The Autumnal Mix” filled with songs that made me think of this, the greatest season. I think I’ll put it on today because it’s about that time in my daughter’s life when she should be introduced to Elvis Costello.

Maybe after bath time.

And maybe I’ll even risk it and let her go without a diaper for a whole fifteen minutes – the best way to enjoy Elvis Costello’s music, methinks.

In the past year we gutted our kitchen, updated the outdated electrical, knocked down a wall and put up a header, drywalled, installed new cabinets, new countertops, new appliances, ripped out the old floor, sanded down the wood floors and painted them, installed a tile backsplash, installed crown moulding, built out new door trim to match the original trim in the house. In the laundry room, we tore down old wallpaper, put up beadboard on the walls and ceiling, installed chair rail and crown, ran electrical and plumbing to make it a functioning laundry room, installed new washer and dryer, installed a new flooring, put up wallpaper.

I painted Penny’s bedroom three times. We breathed new life into the original rope & pulley windows.

In our bedroom we built a headboard and I made new curtains.

Matt installed a new gas fireplace.

We had the tiles in our bathroom reglazed, installed a new light fixture, and had the rotted floor joists and subfloor replaced, updated all of the plumbing, and installed a new tile floor.

Our upstairs was drywalled and carpet was installed.

And we painted. Everywhere. With lots of painting yet to do.

We have a lot of finishing touches to do on the inside of the house which will occupy us until next spring. When we’ve completed all of these projects we hope to move on to the exterior of the house – repaving our driveway, putting up a basketball hoop in the backyard, doing a ton of landscaping… a TON. Tearing down the unsightly awning above the front door and perhaps building out a new doorway. Eventually our roof will need to be replaced.

Yesterday, I will admit, I was pretty down. The HVAC guy came by to look at our broken air conditioner and told us that we need to replace the entire system including the furnace. We can do it anytime between now and next spring, but it will mean dropping another five grand. I’m not gonna lie, it’s been an expensive year. We’ve spent a lot on the renovations we’ve already done, although considerably less than if we had hired them all out. We bought a new car. We had a baby and paid for my week-long hospital stay. We’ve done some very necessary traveling. Matt has bought a lot of new tools. It all has added up.

I’ve really been hankering to take a little family vacation, just a week away to a dog-friendly beach condo where the four of us can just hang out in the sun and sand and do some playing. When we have free weekends, they are typically spent tackling one of the many remaining projects, not getting out and doing some playing. I’m itching for the latter.

But when our HVAC friend dropped the bomb yesterday, I realized that little family vacation just ain’t happening this year. And maybe not next year either with all of the remaining projects we have yet to do. Instead we’ll keep spending our weekends painting and nailing and fixing things up. And I suppose I’ll just revel in our AC, do laundry in my new laundry room, and gaze up at the crown moulding.

Yeah, we could have bought a newer house with paint already on the walls and kitchen cabinets just ready to fill. But heck if I don’t love our house like another member of our family. The more sweat we put into it, the more we love it, and the more we can’t imagine living anywhere else. It’s the only debt we’ve got, and one day we’ll pay off this daggone mortgage and go on one heck of a vacation.

So far, Penny has been hooked on “Soothie” pacifiers which don’t have a clip on the end. I’ve been wanting to switch her over to regular pacifiers for a while now, but it wasn’t until I dropped her final Soothie on the floor in her nursery and was unable to find it that I pulled out this amazing elephant paci clip with a delicious bpa-free pacifier on the end of it. I was doubtful that she’d make the switch easily, but as soon as I stuck it in her mouth she was sold. As for me, I’m sold on clipping it to her outfit and never losing the pacifier again!

From Daily Daguerreotype

Doesn’t that elephant just make you swoon!? WHY DO I LOVE SAFARI ANIMALS SO MUCH?!?!? Thanks, Auntie Lynne!

I have the world’s worst memory.

But I will never, ever forget these days.

From Daily Daguerreotype

I found it strange walking back through the halls to my midwife’s office, this time not pregnant, not sore. Lauren, of course, was checking in to see if there were any signs of PPD, but found quite the opposite. I’ve been in Lala Land since Penny’s birth – a strange euphoria that just doesn’t seem to wear off. I feel sort of silly, actually, because I don’t have that perpetually stressed and tired look that I see so many new moms wearing. I don’t find myself rolling my eyes when she cries in the middle of the night, or when I’m starving but have to feed her first. I don’t worry about her constantly, that she’ll get sick or abducted. I’m just… really… happy.

Only during the happiness that I’ve found in being a mother have I been able to accurately look back at pregnancy. As much as I tried desperately to keep my complaining to a minimum, to be thankful for each day I had with a healthy baby inside of me, knowing how difficult it is for some women to conceive, and the loss that others have experienced, I just could not get into pregnancy. To be perfectly frank, I hated it. There were very few moments that excited and thrilled me about pregnancy. I didn’t like being slowed down, being tired and sore. I wanted to just drink another cup of coffee and push through it, but found that I just couldn’t. For me, pregnancy sucked.

I told Matt last night that I would rather go through labor and delivery every single day for nine months instead of being pregnant. As difficult as labor was, at least it was going somewhere. At least there was an end in sight. I wasn’t just waiting and waiting and waiting for months on end slowly getting bigger and sore-er.

Crazy, that.

But this, the here and now, holding her and talking to her and watching her smile and talk back. THIS is amazing. THIS happiness is what I heard in other women’s voices when they spoke of feeling their baby kick inside of them, which did nothing but startle and annoy me. I understand it now. I just feel that euphoria with Penny on the outside instead of the inside.

Just a minute ago, before I put her down for her nap, I held her swaddled in my arms and looked down at her face, her eyes drooping. She is the most beautiful human being alive. She is. She is absolutely beautiful. Jaw-droppingly beautiful. And when she smiles, the whole world stops and turns and looks at her.

In the morning, from 6am – 8 am, she comes into bed with me and we lay on our sides facing each other. She tucks her head up into my neck, and I roll so that my body is nearly on top of her. She cuddles up under me and sleeps sounder than any other time of day or night. She doesn’t make a sound. And part of me wants an 18-wheeler to come crashing through the window about to land on top of us on the bed because I’m absolutely certain that I could push it away to protect her.

And perhaps that’s part of it. I’m a wholly and completely different woman than I was nearly seven weeks ago. I can hardly recognize myself. Half of it is the euphoria, and the other half is that I feel like a better, stronger, wiser person than I was before. I feel like Penny makes the best Me come out. That each day she challenges me to be a better person than I was the day before. And I want to be all of that for her.

Because she’s just so stunningly beautiful.

This was, of course, the first visit with a heap-load of vaccinations. Matt and I had discussed vaccinations and his philosophy was that she needed all of the suggested vaccinations but that I could choose the schedule. So I looked around for a pediatrician who would let me do a delayed vax schedule, and that was my plan.

But I had a change of heart while I was in there today.

I realize that vaccinations are a really heated debate, and I don’t dismiss either side of the issue because I really think parents disagree on this mainly because they want to do what’s right for their kids. So I can understand the philosophy behind both sides.

However… yeah, you knew there was a “however” coming around the bend… Y’all know Matt’s occupation, and you probably know his stance on vaccinations as well. He is a firm believer that there is no link to Autism with vaccinations and that by vaccinating we can prevent a whole host of horrible diseases. And I agreed with him. But there was this tiny little part of me that, as a mother, thought “what if all this research winds up being wrong? What if years down the line they DO find a link? And I’m the mother who gave my kid the XYZ vaccine?” So I wanted Penny to have the delayed schedule so I could watch like a hawk to see if she had any bad symptoms.

One thing Matt had to keep reminding me of while I was pregnant was that the medical decisions I made needed to be based on scientific evidence, not my emotions. He was fine with whatever I decided – a midwife, a natural birth, limited interventions – because I could prove that my midwives had a lower infant mortality rate than the national average, that a natural birth had lower chances of PPD than a section, and that using a doula would decrease my chances of having interventions that could have a wide range of negative side effects. But he never let me get away with statements like “no epidural because maternity anesthesiologists are in with the drug companies and want to kill me!” (Dr. Shane quickly took away all those fears!)

So while I was in the pediatrician’s office debating what to do about the vaccinations, I decided to put Penny on the regular vaccination schedule based on the scientific evidence that no link has been found between vaccinations and Autism. But I also chose to do that as a vote of confidence in my husband, in what he does, and how wonderful I believe he is at it. (Over dinner the other night he said, and I quote, “I actually prefer working with really, really low-functioning kids as opposed to those who are just barely on the Spectrum.” He’s an awesome guy. What can I say?)

I chose to put Penny on the regular vax schedule to not give credence to the Jenny McCarthy’s of the world who are basing their theories on anecdotal evidence. I chose to do it because I live with enough irrational guilt from a miscarriage, and would rather live with the irrational guilt that Penny’s possible future developmental disability came from an unsubstantiated link to vaccinations than to see her in the ICU dying of whooping cough.

I chose to do it because I don’t think my pediatrician has it in with the drug companies. And I think she wants to see Penny healthy. And I don’t think she’s evil. And… gulp… I don’t think doctors are evil.

You know how hard that is for me to say. But when I really, truly think about it… LOGICALLY… that is how I feel.

Ok, it’s out there. All my anti-vax friends, feel free to tear me a new one in the comments section.

I came home from the pediatrician’s office and changed Penny’s clothes. I changed her into this outfit – a little number that Matt picked out at the Carter’s outlet when we found out we were having a girl. Because orange is his favorite color – the color of giraffes. And one thing’s for sure… this little giraffe ain’t gonna get whooping cough!

From Daily Daguerreotype

• Today Penelope is six weeks old, which pretty much blows my mind. She saw both sets of her grandparents this past weekend who hadn’t seen her since birth, and they all remarked that she was chubbing up a bit. It’s hard to see it when you’re with her all day, but my arms certainly can tell that she’s gaining weight. She’s got a pediatrician appointment on Friday, so I’ll find out how much she weighs now.
• Just when you feel like you’re starting to get into the groove of things – her schedule and feeding patterns were becoming more predictable – your parenting gets totally thrown because they hit another growth spurt. Right now we’re in the throes of it as she is eating all the time – sometimes once an hour. It’s wearing her out, though, so she’s sleeping a lot and being cute while doing so.
• This past weekend Penny took her first flights – from Nashville to DC to NH, then NH to Newark to Nashville. I loved that DC was the first place outside of Tennessee that she visited, since I have a special love for it after living there one summer in college. Our flight attendant on the first leg of the journey gave us a signed certificate from the pilot and co-pilot with her name and seat number on it. Matt especially found that adorable.
• Yesterday we took our first trip to the grocery store alone – just the girls. She cried the whole time, but her tiny newborn squeal was barely noticeable in such a large building.
• Six weeks is also a huge step in healing from my C-section, and I’m so happy to finally be here. I definitely feel almost back to normal, I’d say about 90%. Frankly, I’m thrilled that I’m finally at this point so I can start exercising regularly to lose the baby weight. I have some extra weight that I want to lose on top of the baby weight as I put on some pounds from some serious emotional eating after my miscarriage. I have a goal to lose it all before our family cruise in February, with my reward being a hot mom bathing suit and… um… ALL THAT CRUISE FOOD.
• She looks absolutely gorgeous in baby blue.
• We’re starting to make habits, and her personality is starting to shine through. She is a major snuggler. She wants to be held and snuggled all the time and sleeps best when she’s snuggled in bed with me. We get that time every day during her afternoon nap and first thing in the morning while Matt’s getting ready for work.
• She fights going to sleep at night, so we’re starting to just act like nothing big is about to happen, then we let her fall asleep in whatever room we’re in and transfer her to her crib. I think we are programming a terrible habit, but The Behaviorist is not concerned and thinks we’ll be able to break her of the snuggle-to-sleep when she’s old enough to cry it out.
• Yes, we’ll probably do the cry-it-out thing. I’ve already determined that Penny is definitely the type of kid that gets worn out by crying instead of escalating. I think when she’s about 3 months we’ll start sleep training her. Which is crazy since we’re halfway there!
• She has been introduced to Ben Harper, David Gray, Led Zeppelin, The Eagles, Tom Waits, Journey, Elton John, Billy Joel, and John Scofield. The only one she hates is Billy Joel, although it’s hard to determine whether she really hates him or just hates it when I sing his songs.
• She is smiling and cooing now, and it’s more than I can handle.
• She looks a lot like her daddy.

From Daily Daguerreotype

I can’t believe there are two people in the world I love this much.