Frogs, Snails and Puppy-Dog Tails

Logan grabbed the mail pile off the table this morning and ripped off and swallowed a corner of an advertisement from Geico before anyone caught him at it. My sister-in-law gasped and started fishing around in his mouth for it but I wasn’t worried. I just saved a bunch of money on baby food by letting my son eat the advertisements from Geico. 

    I don’t cook. Never been interested in it, never particularly cared for it. I do, however, love to bake. I somehow managed to wake up before my son this morning and, confused about what to do with the spare time, decided to make my favorite apricot and ginger scones for breakfast! I’m very proud of my ability to bake and I know just how delicious these were going to be, but it still felt really good to hear my sister-in-law wake up just as they were coming out of the oven and say, “Mmmm, did heaven have babies in the kitchen?” She and my husband both don’t really care for sweets or breakfast, but they’ll eat these. They really kicked off a great Sunday. Seriously, what’s better than homemade scones and football? So I thought I’d share the recipe:

Tip: My grandmother taught me the secret for making scones and biscuits: Don’t manhandle them! Gently pat them and fold the dough or they’ll fall apart.

                                                  ~Apricot and Ginger Scones~

• 2 cups all purpose flower
• 1/3 cup sugar
• 1 tbsp baking powder
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1/2 cup (1 stick) cold butter cut into 1/2 inch square cubes
• 1 cup heavy whipping cream, divided
• 1 cup finely chopped dried apricots
• 2 tbsp finely chopped crystallized ginger. 

  Preheat oven to 450 degrees. Stir together first 4 ingredients in a large bowl. Cut butter into flour mixture with a pastry blender (you can use a fork, it just takes longer) until crumbly and mixture resembles small peas. Add 3/4 cup plus 2 tsp cream, mixing just until dry ingredients are moist (by the way, it always takes me the whole cup of cream to get this moist enough so make sure you have over 1 cup of cream when you start just in case). Add apricots and ginger with cream. Turn dough out onto wax paper or your counter with a small amount of flour sprinkled down. Gently press or pat dough into a 7 inch round and cut into 8 wedges. Place wedges 2 inches apart on a lightly greased baking sheet. Brush tops of wedges with 2 tbsp cream until just moistened. Bake at 450 for 13 to 15 minutes or until golden brown.

                                                              ~Vanilla Glaze~

Whisk together 1 cup powdered sugar, 1/2 tsp vanilla extract and 1 tbsp milk until smooth, adding up to 2 tbsp additional milk for desired consistency. Drizzle over top of scones.

                                       ~Bacon Cheddar and Chives Variation~

   This is my favorite savory variation of these scones and is almost exactly like the above recipe. All you have to do differently is:

• Omit sugar
• Stir in 3/4 cup (3 oz) shredded sharp cheddar cheese, 1/2 cup finely chopped cooked bacon, 2 tbsp chopped fresh chives and 1/2 tsp freshly ground black pepper with cream.

     Try these one Sunday and heaven can have babies in your kitchen, too!

    It’s true… and I finally realized why I do it. Logan wakes up at 7:30 am every morning and is on-the-go until his nap time around noon-ish. If I’m lucky, he’ll nap for an hour and thirty minutes. During this time, I take my only chance to grab a shower and some food, after which he wakes right up and it’s time to play again all the way to his bed time around 8pm. Now that he is nearly eight months old, the days of “quiet play” have all but vanished entirely. I can occasionally get him to entertain himself for ten to twenty minutes about two or three times throughout the day. This means that virtually all the “me” time  is reserved for after he falls asleep. I love my son with all my heart and I enjoy teaching him and interacting with him very much, but everybody needs a little personal time, especially stay-at-home parents. When you don’t get that time but once a day, it’s easy to get addicted to it and I will often find myself awake until nearly 2am reading, blogging, playing video games, sketching or listening to music that is not anything remotely resembling Baby Mozart. Of course I pay for it every morning at 7:30am sharp, but I don’t for-see it changing in the immediate future. Ah well, this is just a tiny part of the balancing act that is being both a young adult and a full time mom. 

Here is a list I complied of… shall we say, unusual behaviors that your baby will probably surprise you with at some point. 

• Food radar. It is much more normal than it should be for you to lose a few pounds around the three to five-month-old stage. This is because your baby will develop a radar that lets him know the moment you touch a snack or prepare a meal and alert him that it is now time to wake up from his nap and cry incessantly. While I appreciate my baby’s apparent opinion that I am Super Mom and can run all day on pure love, I wish he had the capacity to realize that everybody needs food. Even mommy. 
• Milestone flash-forwards. It is not at all uncommon for your baby to apparently display a milestone (such as laughing, first words and clapping) two or three months early, but only once, after which he will not do it again until one month after he’s supposed to have learned it no matter how much you practice with him or plead for him to show daddy. This always frustrated me during well-child check ups. Pediatrician: “Can he clap?” Me: “Er… well… yes and no, I mean… he did it once… so, yeah?” Thanks for making me look like an ass, son.
• Exclusive behavior. When your baby gets a little older, try to breathe through the frustration when you show up flustered and over-tired at your mom’s house because you need someone to vent to about not being able to calm the baby down; at which point she will take the baby from you, calm him down in .02 seconds and gloat on the inside while she assures you that she doesn’t know how she did it and that it must be the “magic” of grandmas. Bullshit.
• Your baby is a secret agent of the universe. Ever notice how the universe likes to fuck with you in small yet infuriating ways? Like not being able to find what you’re looking for even though you know you just had it, or being able to do something unbelievable in private but not in public no matter how good you’ve gotten at it? Well whoever runs that organization, they’ve employed your baby before implanting him in your womb. You’ll notice this when your baby does things that just plain don’t make sense. Such as nurse avidly for seven months and then suddenly take a bottle like he’s had it all along even when you remember struggling through every bottle session you’ve tried to introduce for various reasons throughout his life so far. Or (the one that happens to all of us) do something obscenely cute in the home and not only refuse to do it in public, but decide to act the extreme opposite of cute making you look like a terrible parent or otherwise total asshole. 
• Babies are secret keepers of their own intelligence. Although as a new parent you seem to think every little thing your infant does is indicative of him being a genius (you said “ba-ba”! You’re so smart!), you don’t truly know the half of it until you find that your innocent little babbler who is just learning to walk has been disassembling his crib slats, climbing out of the crib, placing his dirty diapers down the ventilation shaft that he has unscrewed with his tiny fingers and then returning to the crib and placing the slats back perfectly so you would never know for the past month and a half. (This one happened not to me, but to my sister-in-law. It is, never the less, true. Check all ventilation shafts in your home at least once every month.)
• The selective napper. Your baby may go through a phase lasting anywhere from a day or two to a month or more where he reserves all of his naps for the most inopportune moment. For example, you may be wanting to pick a few things up at the store but find it prudent to first wait for the baby to take his nap so that he won’t act like a crazy person throughout the entire trip. A noble goal, but at some point, your baby will refuse to nap all day long until you can’t wait any longer. You will let him fuss in his crib while you pack his diaper bag, locate his jacket and pull on some pants only to return to his room to find him passed out cold like a frat boy on an early Saturday afternoon. You will then experience the joy of the following internal conflict: “Do I wake him? We reeeeally need diapers and toilet paper and the store closes in an hour. But he needs his nap, he hasn’t had one all day. Maybe I could gently lift him into his car seat and the car ride will knock him back out?” The answer to that last one is most likely not, but you might as well chance it.

   These are only a few of the things I’ve noted about the eccentricities of raising an infant from my own experiences as well as those of family members and close friends. I’m sure there are several that are yet to be listed that I will learn as my son gets older, smarter and even more mischievous. Parents of older children or multiple children, I tip my proverbial hat to your awesomeness. 

   Here are a few tips for new mommies that may head-off some of the shock and frustration when any of the above happens to you: 

• Don’t even bother thinking, “He’s just five months old, still practically more furniture than human. How devious could he possibly be?” Your baby will be more than happy to show you just how devious he can be of his own accord without you inviting the universe to make it worse with asinine questions. Trust in your child’s inherant ability to wreak havoc on your life and just take it all in stride. 
• Have a camera near you at all times. Capturing your child’s evil genius on film will drastically decrease your stress levels once you have finished cleaning up the gallons of puke from your carpet and are sharing the recorded moment with a friend. 
• And lastly, if Rugrats has taught my generation anything at all, it is: NEVER EVER EVER EVER EVER give your one-year-old a plastic screwdriver toy. 

                                                                 ~Quick Re-cap~

    I’m a twenty-four-year-old new mother of a seven-and-a-half-month-old little boy. And, until recently, I was a proud breast-feeder. When I first considered breastfeeding as an option, I already had a rough date of when I would wean him, which was around the one year mark. I never really considered the possibility of having to wean early and I certainly didn’t plan to weanthis early. However, this was something that we were both, apparently, very ready for. Though it feels like it snuck up on me, I suppose there were several different things that contributed to our mutual decision to wean early. 

                                                                 ~How it began~

    It started with the biting. Well, that was what started it for me, anyway. My son was an early teether and had bit me before, but those were always just playful nips that ceased after a firm “No!” and maybe a gentle tap on the nose. The bite that sealed the proverbial deal for me happened about four days before I officially cut him off from the titty bar. We were nursing peacefully on the sofa; so peacefully, in fact, that he was half asleep. Out of absolutely nowhere near the end of our session, he chomps down onto my right nipple with such force, I couldn’t think to do anything but scream at the top of my lungs. As mentioned in previous posts (see “What my baby is afraid of”), he is frightened silly by loud noises. We both ended up as a conglomeration of tears and pain on the sofa and my husband rushed over to take the baby and soothe him. After everything calmed down a bit, I examined my nipple to find that the little monster left a baby-tooth-sized hole right near the tip of my nipple. Needless to say, nursing in the days to follow was a nightmare. I had a very low supply (which was another heavily contributing factor in our decision to wean) so I couldn’t feed him from just the left side. Thus, the hole got bigger, infected and more painful by the day. I was on day four of torment when I announced to the other adults in the house (my husband and his sister) that I was weaning. Tonight. Though the biting and the low supply were the two main deal breakers, I know now, deep down, that I was tired. I was tired of hauling my breasts out of my t-shirt every few hours for twenty minutes at a time. I was tired of being confined to the sofa, chair or bed while the other adults watched t.v, played video games, had engaging conversations or enjoyed a beer. Not to mention I was fed up with having to wrestle with my son during the whole nursing session thanks to his being of the age where curiosity and the need to get into everything run rampant. I also wanted my body back. I wanted to be able to enjoy an occasional cocktail or cigar (outside of the home, of course) without feeling immensely guilty. I couldn’t tell you why Logan was ready too, only that he thankfully was, which made this whole process a virtual cake walk.

                                                                  ~The Weaning~ 

    When it comes to this particular process, I was very very lucky. Weaning (either way you’re having to do it) is typically a convoluted and tedious process full of fussiness and tears of frustration (for most parents, but not all). And God forbid if you have to wean on the spur of the moment and can’t, for whatever reason, do it gradually (which is the method, I’ve read, that works best). For Logan and I, however, it was like he’d been bottle fed all along. Because of my low supply, I wasn’t able to pump enough for the days (once or twice a month or so) that I would get called in to my former job to help out for the day, which means that he’s had prior exposure to formula and bottles. I didn’t originally think that this counted for anything though since he had always hated bottles and disliked formula, preferring to take his milk straight from the tap. So despite his previous experience, it still came as a shock to me when I filled up a bottle less than an hour after I had made my weaning announcement and watched as he sucked it down like it was liquid candy. The veteran nurser in me wanted to be offended, but I just couldn’t. Even when he would take the bottle out of his mouth several times to smile at it like an old friend before putting it back in, I could only find it endearing. I even had a whole hour of mommy guilt between the time I decided to wean and the first bottle I gave him. After I saw him take it like that, my guilt just drained away and I was able to relax a little. I had begun to feel like this weaning idea was just a selfish plan to deprive my child of the nutrients he needs and the comfort he craves so that I could claim my body back and not have to go through hours of pain anymore. But once he devoured that bottle like it was crack-for-babies (and continued to all that night and ever since), I realized that not only is he perfectly happy, but I breastfed him for seven months and he is eating well and so he isn’t deprived of anything. I am so thankful for the ease with which we were able to conquer this hurdle and the fact that we were ready for this at the same time, which really did make all the difference. 

~Opinions and Advice. Note: I am NOT a professional, I am just a mother who reads allot and knows some things.~

    I don’t have much practical advice for mothers who want to wean but have babies who don’t, or who have babies who are trying to self-wean when the mother herself is not ready other than listen to your baby and respect his/her wishes. If he/she truly wishes to wean and isn’t just ill, distracted or teething, then it would be best if you slowly began to introduce the bottle with your own breast milk maybe, instead of formula. If you are the one who is ready, then hanging on to your routine for the sake of the baby is not nearly as productive as you’re hoping it will be. Baby can, and will, sense your frustration and impatience and may take it as a rejection of him or herself instead of rejection of nursing. I suggest to you also to introduce the bottle with breast milk, unless you’re just tired of making milk in general, in which case you should begin to slowly introduce the bottle at first and work up to a complete weaning. If you really need professional advice, I highly recommend picking up the book “What to Expect: The First Year”. I’ve followed this series of books since I was one week pregnant and I adore them. They are extremely helpful and you don’t have to feel like the annoying putz that calls her pediatrician every other day. 

       In conclusion… (though my breasts are a bit sore) my nipple is just about fully healed, my son is happy, well fed and just as energetic as always and my husband now shares the task of night time feedings! Good bye, breast-feeding. I fought for you, suffered through you, thoroughly enjoyed you and fully appreciated everything you’ve done for my baby. This is not goodbye forever. If I ever have more children, I’m sure we’ll meet again. :]

   Ever since Logan was a month old, I’ve tried to entertain him with classic nursery rhymes. I’ve even subjected him to my less-than-savory singing voice, poor kid. The problem is, my memory is horrible and I tend to blank out half way through what I’m reciting. Because of this, I end up… improvising… Here are some examples: 

                                    ~There was an old woman who lived in a shoe~

There was an old woman who lived in a shoe. She had so many children, she didn’t know what to do… -blank out- So she called up her baby daddies and said “Bitch, I’m living in a shoe! Send child support!” And when she collected her child support, the whole family moved out of the shoe and upgraded to a stiletto, which was great until the older kids got into the shoe polish and developed a drug addiction…

-at this point I stopped because the look on his face made me laugh so hard I almost peed-

                                                   ~To the tune of Daisy Daisy~

Logan, Logan, How are you going to grow? Dad is really good at math, but mom is kinda slow. But mom can dance and draw and bake, Your favorite flavored birthday cake. And you’ll look sweet, With chocolate icing, All over your first tooth.

                                     ~Monkey and the Weasle: The “street” version~

All around the bad neighborhood, the monkey chased the weasel. The monkey went and pulled out his gun, POP goes the weasel. 

                                 ~To the tune of: These are a few of my favorite things~

Lotion for Logan and then some pajamas, Then he will be a good baby for mamma, Then we will lay him down, turn out the light, And I will kiss my sweet baby goodnight. (This is his bedtime routine)

   Some are sweet and others… not so much. But the bad ones don’t get repeated now that he’s actually listening to people and emulating sounds. I may not be the mother of the year, but I know better than to swear around him. But it’s all in good fun :]                          

                                                              ~Here’s an older one~

      Logan was barely one week old on the day of his first doctor’s appointment. My mother, who has been as a receptionist in the pediatrics clinic where he is registered for almost ten years, had been talking up her brand new grandson to all her co-workers. When they call us back, we’re asked to strip him down and lay him on the scale naked to be weighed. As we’re doing this, a gaggle of mostly cute, young nurses swarms around him making goo-goo eyes and saying “Awww, lookit the baby!” (Like they don’t see over fifty of them every day). As we get his diaper off and stretch him out, he looks up at the nurses, yawns and happily pees all over the place. Randy and I can’t breathe for laughing so hard. His poor nurse says “Oh my…” and grabs a rag. All the other nurses just giggle and shuffle off while my mother is turning red. It was the first of many silly moments in our new family.