March 24th, 2008

I absolutely have to start writing every day. Even if it's just a paragraph. Because I swear the longer I go, the more I feel completely overwhelmed by the amount I have to talk about.

Garrett is six months old.

Hilariously, I wrote the above sentences two and a half weeks ago! I find that funny. So, now Garrett is almost SEVEN months old! The last few weeks have been wild. I thought I had stopped all the crying and crazy emotions. I thought I had stopped checking on him constantly as he slept. WRONG!!

One night, about a week or so ago, Russ and I quietly crept into Garrett's room as he slept. Peeking into his crib, we felt the relief we always feel when we see that he's breathing and sleeping peacefully. As Russ reached into the crib to gently touch Garrett's back, Garrett's head flung up and he stared into the dark room. Of course, by the time he looked in our direction we were crouched down and running, already half-way out of the room. When we got to the living room we couldn't stop laughing. "I bet that's where the idea of the bogey man comes from", Russ said. "We probably looked like scary monsters racing out of the room just now."

Okay, I wanted to write so much more but G-Man is up from his nap and crying.
More to come.

March 7th, 2008

Oh my gosh! It's been a month since I've posted! I am completely paralyzed by how much I have to say about it all... Therefore I don't write.

Even now, I have no idea what to tell you.

I am fully, 100%, without a doubt in love with my son. Phew. Got that off my chest. I am also mostly clueless about what to do when and how to do what. There are all these THINGS you're just supposed to know! And, no surprise, I'm confused more than half of the time.

Now, I think I'm doing a lot right. He seems very happy and he's growing at a good pace. He's very alert and he seems to be hitting all the milestones. We got him through his first cold. He loves me and can't get enough of Russ. He's infatuated with Bogie and even seems interested in our cat, Misty. But there are many things that I feel stupid about. Let's use the word, "Naive" instead. "Naive" suits me.

I know several moms with kids the same age as Garrett, so I hear things that I might not know about otherwise. Like, if I hadn't asked someone when to start cutting out Garrett's middle-of-the-night feedings, I might have been waking up at midnight and three AM for the next several years. I'm also figuring out naps and solid foods and I even found a great carrier, thanks to a new dad I met at an audition. New parents (and probably old ones!) are more than willing to share any tidbit they have to help out a fellow parent. It's a pretty open and warm community, so far. I'm sure once school and PTA meetings are involved, I'll hate parents as much as I hate everyone else.

But back to my confusion. How am I supposed to know how much rice cereal and carrots to feed my kid? How do I know when to get a sitter and for how long I can leave? How do I know which car seat is the best or how to get him to suck on a teething ring? For that matter, how do I know if he's teething???

Of course I'm exaggerating. A lot of it is pretty obvious. But most of it isn't. I talk to the mothers of toddlers with great reverence, asking everything I can think of before they walk away. "How did you do this?" "How did you manage that?" "What do you do about this?" "How do you get that stain out?"

Anyway, blah blah blah. All I can tell you with absolute certainty is that I am loving this whole thing. Even though I feel like I can't get on top of the house work or put together a cute outfit, even though my errands are timed to fit in between feedings and naps, even though my back hurts from carrying around 18 pounds all day... I am enjoying my life more than I ever have.

I have so much more to say about how much fun it is to watch him eat peas or how much I love to make him laugh, or how he smiles so big when Russ gets home, it looks like he'll swallow his own head! I'd love to tell you about how I'm not over my first-time-mom nerves, and how I still make sure he's breathing when he sleeps. But it's too much and it's all swimming around in my head. So, I'll write again soon.

Now I've got to go marinate some pork loin. You heard me.