Christmas has thrown up:

- in my house
- in my luggage
- in my kitchen
- in my car
- on my favorite jeans
- on my baby and her immune system
- ...and in my camera. I will post about it all soon. For now, enjoy some of its adorable puke:

Sometimes, old people are ANNOYING

Wednesday was a ROUGH day.

GJ has been clocking overtime at work, which means he's gone for close to 12 hours during the day. He's understandably exhausted by the time he comes home; I'm understandably sick of the baby by the time he comes home. It makes for an early night where two guilt-ridden and exhausted new parents switch baby duties back and forth until one of us passes out.

Well Wednesday, I had a ton of errands that needed running. It was mid-afternoon and Peanut had not slept for more than 30 consecutive minutes. She usually takes a four hour nap in the middle of the day, so this was really unusually. Like most babies, she loves being in motion, so I figured she'd quickly fall asleep in the car or the shopping cart at the grocery store.

I scrap the ice of the car (THE SNOW HERE PEOPLE - THE SNOW. At first it never came and now IT WON'T STOP), strap Peanut in her portable car seat and get ready to transfer her from the living room to the car. She is screaming. I attempt playing with her to calm her down - she wails louder. I put the pacifier in her mouth - she spits it out. I make her a bottle and feed her - she doesn't want it. I pick her up out of her carseat and see a giant pine needle from the Christmas tree poking her. THAT CHRISTMAS TREE IS A TRAITOR. No more babysitting for you, Christmas tree!

We finally get on the road, Baby P falls asleep and we head into the post office. She's still zonked when an old woman gets in line behind me...MOVES Peanut's carseat to face her...and TALKS to her loudly in baby talk WAKING HER UP. As Baby P makes the most pathetic sounding "I'm tired" cry, the old woman giggles, turns to me, replies "Well you have your hands full!" and WALKS AWAY. Just a mysterious retiree sent to raise hell.

It is at this point that I should note I don't think I will ever be one of those moms who hears her baby crying in public and thinks "Meh. Deal with it fellow store patrons." This puts me in panic mode and I MUST CALM HER DOWN for my sanity and the sanity of my fellow shoppers or I stress out. I'm not like this at home or around family - ha I'll actually sit her up and just stare at her when she's crying because I think her sad face is funny (I'm awesome).

After we finish up at the post office (20 minute line people), I drive to the grocery store and get Peanut asleep. This time, I take her blanket and drape it over the carset, so no one can actually see Baby P and she can sleep in peace. This lasts until the baking goods aisle, when an old woman blindsides me and REMOVES the blanket. That's right, completely takes it off Peanut! The bright light and someone getting in her face saying "Aren't you a tiny one!" understandably wakes Baby P up. This time, she's plain pissed. Poor girl hasn't had some decent shut-eye since bedtime. She's crying and I have to attempt to calm her down throughout the rest of the shopping trip, forgetting numerous items because her noise is making me freak.

We get in the car with just one last small errand to finish. At a craft store. My most hated genre of stores. It's like I have 1,000 babies screaming in there, but they're all covered in modge podge and glitter and applique jewels. Peanut is DONE. I grab the one thing I need and head to the cash register. Peanut's still crying, I'm trying to calm her down when an old woman employee yells from across the store "Oh, well SOMEONE'S not very happy!"

You know what old woman? SHOVE IT. SHOVE. IT. I was this close to sarcastically telling her "THANK YOU. That high-pitched wail was actually a plea for someone to make a cliche statement about a baby crying! You win!"

(...and now I feel bad for all the times I was childless and shopping, glaring at a mom with a screaming baby and thinking "DAMN WOMAN, get control of your kid!")

The rest of the evening basically followed that pattern, without the annoying elderly...and then Thursday she turned out to be a TOTAL angel, took copious naps, smiled frequently, cooed freely and was just happy staring at me (take THAT Christmas tree!).



P.S. This is no hate on old people. I do love the elderly. Just not the ones in this post. But HONESTLY - how would you have responded to any of these women? Most of their antics started happening before I even noticed - but what should I have done?
P.P.S. She's not naked in the above photo, just topless. I have to clarify for my mom, who is in a state of panic everytime she reads a post with pictures of Peanut. "WHERE ARE HER SOCKS IN THE PICTURE WITH SANTA?!?" "They always fall off her feet seconds after putting them on mom, it's pointless." "WHY ISN'T SHE WEARING ANY CLOTHES IN THIS ONE?" "She just spit up everywhere, I took off her clothes and she fell asleep, she's fine mom."

Did Santa not get the memo about RSV?

Peanut and I went with my sister-in-law and nieces to get pictures with Santa. I was kind of rooting for Peanut to cry, since crying-with-Santa pictures are HILARIOUS (please see this post on my friend Brittney's blog), but she generally didn't care that she was out of arms. She did care when I took the pacifier out of her mouth and I felt too bad to leave it out. The results...

Ready to freak out:




RELIEF:


Of course, I was paranoid mom and could not stop obsessing over Santa touching Peanut's hands over and over again. Now I think I'm generally un-paranoid with Peanut - I let anyone (minus strangers...and Santa) hold her, only make kids wash their hands before touching her and don't freak out too badly about germs. BUT SANTA. MALL SANTA. You touch germ-infested, sick, puking, peeing, pooping kids all day and now you're rubbing those germs all over my daughter's hands, a girl who frequently sucks her own hands. I mean have you heard of RSV?

I know I'm being totally anal and didn't even tell my sister-in-law this, knowing she'd make fun of me (laugh it up now Megan!), but if Peanut gets sick anytime soon, I'm totally blaming Santa.

Despite my germ scare, I'm apparently not above letting the Christmas tree babysit Peanut. Yesterday, I took a nice steamy shower, cleaned the kitchen and wrapped presents, all while Peanut sat in her bouncy seat in front of the Christmas tree, cooing and staring in amazement. It was awesome.

Awkward Saturday night moments

Ah, the obligatory Temple Square lights picture you'll find on every other Mormon persons blog this time of year! My brothers, GJ and I went downtown this weekend for a Christmas concert and dinner. Why yes, this picture does look totally awkward. I'm 5 foot 9 inches! Why do I look so short? Also embarrassing:

- It's always entertaining to watch girls marching around downtown mid-December in a knee-length skirt, stilettos and bare legs. Those super cute tights I'm wearing are actually super cute thigh-high socks from Target. I figured I was being smart (and fashion savvy) by sporting these with flats - warm legs and comfortable walking gear. One small problem: I also thought I was being smart by wearing thermal underwear. Except the thigh highs kept slowly pulling down the thermal underwear. I noticed this after parking and walking down the stairwell of the parking garage, where I commented to the boys "These thigh highs suck. The crotch on my thermals is hanging down to my knees!" I attempted to tug my thermals up...and then noticed a middle-aged man RIGHT behind me on the stairwell, totally confused and probably grossed out about what I was talking about. So I tried to play it cool and pretend I was casually explaining my dilemma to my brothers "Yeah, these thigh highs have elastics up top that are just pulling down my underwear and it's getting worse and worse as I walk blah blah crotch blah blah underwear blah blah." I just kept going on and on so this man would understand why I announced my earlier embarrassing comment. My little brother Ryan finally told me "Amelia, just stop talking."

- GJ fell asleep during a boring song in the concert. AND SNORED.

- The same brother who thought I was embarrassing in the stairwell? He wanted to attempt to always have "the last clap" in an auditorium of 21,000 people after every single song. Why? "It's my thing."

Random headlines

SEAGULLS AMUSE EASILY AMUSED WOMAN

We went to Sugarhouse Park yesterday, which has a small lake (big pond? small-sized body of water?) in the middle. Chunks of the lake-ish are frozen and seagulls were standing on the ice! I got the biggest kick out of this. Observe:


BABIES BEST FRIEND...

...is the dang Christmas tree. Peanut would prefer to live on the couch all day, just staring at the lights. We can't feed her in the living room anymore because she focuses all her energy into looking at the tree and won't eat. I kind of feel bad we'll have to take it down in a few weeks.

WEIGHT STABILIZES, DR. GIVES THE A-OK

Peanut has now gained enough weight that we don't need to bring her to the doctors to be weighed anymore. She's up to 8 pounds and 8 ounces now. We've still got to supplement with formula quite a bit because I'm still not making enough breastmilk (tips anyone on how to increase my supply?).

Despite, she still has little chicken legs. Because of this, the washable diapers I was so pumped to use STILL don't fit her. I have both the small and premie sizes in Fuzzi Bunz - she leaks out of the leg holes in the premies still. And we were unprepared for any sort of soiled disposable diaper storage. There is an ungodly dirty diaper tower in her room right now.

THE STRESS FREE CHRISTMAS RECIPE

Don't buy Christmas presents for your spouse! GJ and I decided to forego gifts for each other this year and can I tell you it's been AWESOME.

SOMETHING NOT TO TRY - OR YOUTUBE: PED EGG

Going barefoot and pregnant this summer really did a number on my feet. So I saw the normally $10 Ped Egg on sale for $4.99 and decided this was my time to tackle my feet. And I'm totally disgusted. First, it CAN cut your skin! Don't be fooled by the "It won't even pop a balloon!" commercials. Mind you, a balloon is a product that can travel through the human digestive tract unscathed . And I've seen people stick a needle through a balloon without popping it. Now I did do a little too much Ped Egging and didn't notice until afterwards that I cut live skin and it kind of hurt. But let's do a realistic test, Ped Egg - howabout a baby's bum rather than a balloon? Bet you wouldn't try that! Also learned:
- It captures most of your dead feet dust - GROSS! - but not all of it. NASTY clean up.
- The egg is hard to use if you're super ticklish
- There's an alarming amount of YouTube videos on the Ped Egg.

Cop-out post

I'm trying to finish up Peanut's birth announcements and our Christmas cards - I decided to shoot and design them myself and I now want to bang my head against the wall. So a cop out, cute baby picture post instead of actual writing.






(She looks sickly here...I swear this is after we started feeding her)

An ode to nap time (apparently my favorite time because half her pictures are of her sleeping):

I need an owner's manual

So remember how I flipped out on the Internet, demanding people do not make comments that my baby is underfed? Well, turns out she really was. HA HA! Actually, there was nothing really funny about it.

Last Tuesday, I took Peanut in for her two month check-up. The office staff forgot to call and let me know the doctor had already taken off for a Thanksgiving vacation, but the nurse was there and I asked her if she could weigh Baby P. Since birth, Peanut has been growing longer, but not heavier. We've been a little concerned about it.

Well, Peanut had only gained 6 ounces since birth. She weighed 6 pounds 9 ounces at birth...and 6 pounds 15 ounces at her two month mark. Babies are supposed to gain between 4-7 ounces every week in the first month and 1-2 pounds a month after that. I cried the whole way home.

It makes you feel like a pretty crappy parent to hear your baby is starving. I was basically exclusively breastfeeding and that puts her lack of weight gain on my shoulders. That weight doesn't even fall on the growth chart and, if it does, it's somewhere between "Britney Spears is probably the mom" and "Call DCS, STAT!" It also doesn't help when we got such comments as "I'm really worried about her, what did you do?" "You need to get her tested, she could be dying" and "Well don't give her formula, if you stop breastfeeding, she'll get asthma, hate you and be stupid" (in so many words or less).

We were advised to supplement Peanut with formula, and we REALLY monitored her feedings. Rather than breast-breastfeeding for an HOUR each time (I kid not - another post for another day), I pumped and measured the ounces, we gave her formula, continued feeding her on demand and wrote down what she ate, how she ate it and the amount she swallowed.

Thankfully, it worked. We took her back to the doctor's office on Monday and she was up to 8 pounds 2 ounces! That's over a pound in a week! The doctor was thrilled to see the progress - she's finally not on the "Oh #$*%" level on the growth chart for her weight, she comes in at 5 percent. Oh, we were so relieved.

Internet, this child raising thing is HARD. Hard and confusing. OMG Peanut was not getting enough food off nursing and OMG she was not making hunger signs because she was content with the pacifier and OMG the blood in her urine last week was not a UTI but a sign of dehydration and OMG Peanut has been starving and OMG I had no idea. Wow, two months into being a mom and I'm AWESOME!

P.S. I am trying not to end this post all doom-and-gloom - She's gaining! We're all good now! - so I'll share my near heart attack last night. All this formula supplementing means a lot of time spent at our kitchen sink, mixing formula, heating breastmilk and cleaning bottles. I was making a late night bottle and feeling particularly jumpy because GJ wasn't home. While waiting for the water to warm, I looked out the window above the sink and HOLY CRAP THE TRAVELOOCITY GNOME IS STARING AT ME FROM THE BACKYARD!!! I jumped and made the strangest "Ahhhh!" noise I have ever heard come out of my body, one that was a combination of fear and excitement because "I LOVE the Travelocity gnome and he's waiting for me in the backyard! Yes I WILL take a 5-night trip to Paris and no I WON'T forget my hat!" (I have expressed my sick love of cute product mascots before - minus the Charmin bears.) Turns out the "gnome" was actually a reflection of a Santa decoration we had set-up earlier in the living room.