I mentioned I was wound a little tight by the weekend.

It all started on Thursday.  It was a cold, rainy, ugly day.  I got out of bed and started the long process of getting everyone ready to leave the house.  I got Tessa bathed and dressed and changed and fed.  I changed, dressed, and fed Sabrina.  I settled Tessa into her crib and Sabrina in the bathroom with me so that I could take a quick shower and get dressed.  I had bottles and sippy cups and snacks and extra diapers.  I was ready to head out for my almost hour drive.  I looked at the bulletin board to verify the time of Tessa’s pediatrician appointment.  I was correct – 11am.   However, it was for 11am Monday 3/16.  Oh eff.

You ever have one of those days where it feels like every dirty diaper you change and every spot of puke you clean off yourself sucks out a little piece of your soul?  I was having one of those.

Later that afternoon, I needed to pick up a prescription.  (Remember the cold, rainy, ugly part from above.)  I went through the Walgreens drive thru (bless these people for not making me cart 2 small kiddos inside).  Sabrina assumes any drive thru, including the bank and pharmacy, means french fries.  (I swear we might get fast food 8 times a year.  But it is like crack to a 2 year old – they are always looking for their next hit.)  So she starts with a cute “Please fries” from the back seat.  It stops being cute quickly because it is on a continuous loop with ever increasing volume.  I tell her I don’t have any fries and she begins screeching, sure that I am bogarting the fries.  I show her the bag to assure her that I’m not holding out on her.  The volume lowers but the pathetic pleas for fries do not stop.

Since we are out, I think we might as well stop at the grocery store.  We recently ditched Tessa’s infant car seat and installed a full sized seat.  This was my first trip to the store with both kiddos and no carrier.  In the cold, windy rain, I run with both kiddos to the store to search for an elusive double cart.  I find one but see that unlike Target’s double carts, these do not have 5 point harness belts.  I nervously put Tessa in the cart with just the lapbelt.  She is fine for awhile but then starts gyrating around and bouncing her head off the plastic seat at regular intervals and sobbing each time.  I try to carry her and steer with one hand but those double carts are impossible with steer w/2 hands let alone just one.  So, I fly through the last 3 aisles and check out.  I refuse help out to the car (why, why, why? enough with the pride!).  I sprint with the unweildy cart to the car.  Both kids are cyring because it is cold and raining.  I get Tessa strapped in and then Sabrina strapped in.  I have rain dripping off my nose at this point.  I throw the groceries in the back.  I take the cart to the cart return.  I hurry to get into the car and smack my head into the door frame hard enough to see stars.   I sit hunched over my steering wheel weeping for 5 minutes before I can muster the will to drive home.

The next day, I plan to go meet Steve for lunch.  I get the girls and myself ready with all of the assorted items that entails.  We manage to only be 10 minutes late due to Tessa pooping with enough force to require a wardrobe change in addition to a diaper change just as we are leaving the house.  We pick Steve up and head to a Japanese place.  I’ve been anticipating a bento box lunch all week.  We arrived well before noon but still found the restaurant quite crowded.  We get seated with our booster seat and our high chair.  Tessa is initially quite happy to be free of her carrier and look around.  That lasts 3.5 minutes.  Then she starts fussing.  I’m trying to hold a squirming infant and eat with chopsticks and Steve is trying to convince Sabrina that eating the miso soup that came with her veggie fried rice isn’t something “Nina can do for self”.  Sabrina is on the edge due to the soup and Tessa is on the edge for who knows what reason.  We managed to get through lunch with having An Incident but just barely.

I then declared that it has officially become more trouble than it is worth to leave the house with the kids.  No need to tell me to buck up and that it will get better – I don’t tend to tell these kinds of stories until I find them funny.  Yesterday we had to do the pediatrician and went to Trader Joe’s after with no problems what so ever.

Grandma departed yesterday.  Sabrina is quite sad but seems sort of satisfied by the explanation that Grandma had to go see Pap-pap.

We put off moving Tessa into her own room until after my mother in law’s visit.  Last night was the night.  I bought a dark curtain for her window and that sealed the deal.  Tessa has officially moved into her own room.

I was mostly ready for the transition.  But the swiftness with which my husband removed all evidence of Tessa from our room was rather dizzying.  Tessa wasn’t even asleep yet when he had her pack n play broken down, into its storage bag, and stowed in a corner of the garage.  He wasn’t giving me any chance to turn back once I agreed.

It went pretty well.  We had to go in and comfort her twice early in the night and then she slept through until morning.  Most of her naps have been of the cat variety today but I can’t really blame that on the crib – she just doesn’t always nap well.

The American Medical Association is throwing a big old hissy fit about the movie He’s Just Not That Into You showing an identifiable brand of cigarettes on screen.  No one smokes a cigarette in the movie.  The character who is a smoker experiences negative consequences directly related to smoking.  But the AMA insists that seeing the pack of cigarettes will influence teens to smoke.  I’ve even heard rumblings that some would like to see smoking in a movie mean an automatic R rating.

This isn’t a Disney movie.  If this was a Hannah Montana movie I would better understand the upset.  It isn’t a movie targeted at the tween crowd.  Tell me what you think.  Do we need Hollywood and Washington to make everything vanilla and pretty so that kids don’t see these things at all or do we need to take responsibility for parenting our children and making decisions about what they watch and then discussing what they see?  Obviously, I am not unbiased here – I can’t even ask my question in a fair and balanced way.  But I am interested in what others think.  Give me your perspective.

I just wanted to share a few things that keep the wee ones happy these days.  Not solicited reviews, just things that the kiddos enjoy.  I’ve ranted several times about how all toys have to light up and make noise these days – some of these do that.  But these are a few toys the kids love and I don’t hate. (Click the photo see the items for sale on Amazon.  Beware…I found many cheaper elsewhere but Amazon was the 1 place I could find everything and I’m a lazy linker.)

First, Tessa.  She received this Mozart Music Cube for Christmas and is fascinated by it.  Sabrina loves it too but that might just be because it doesn’t belong to her.  I think it is kind of fun to play with too.

My only criticism is that it is a bit louder than it needs to be – but aren’t all kids toys?  But if I have to have music and flashing lights?  I’ll take Mozart.

Sabrina LOVES her “radio”.  It is actually a Blue Hat Kids MP3 she received for Christmas.  It came pre-loaded with 20 (annoying but not horribly so) songs BUT you can download whatever music you want to it.  We are going to put some bubble-gummy 50’s songs that she thinks are fun so that she can enjoy the music and mommy doesn’t have to hide her radio.  And we can change the music as she grows.  It is pretty cool.

*Beware.  Shop around for this one.  When I initially looked on Amazon it listed the price as $150.  Looking at some of the stores that sell it through Amazon I found it under $40.

Okay, onto quieter things.

I love the Fisher Price Flip Flop Egg Drop.  It entertains me at length.  Oh and Sabrina likes it too.  It is often her favorite toy of the day.  I love that it doesn’t require batteries.  And it teaches hand eye coordination.

Don’t buy this from Amazon.  I paid $8 for it at Toys R Us (might have been on sale).  Google and find it for less elsewhere – it shouldn’t cost more than $10.

And finally, 3 favorite books.  The book list could be much longer but I’ll just give you 3.

The Monster At The End of This Book was one of my favorites and I am so glad that Sabrina loves it to.

Not A Box was a gift this Christmas and Sabrina loves it.  It is very simple but fun.

And finally, I used to read How Do Dinosaurs Say Goodnight to some of the young kids I worked with back in the day. I bought it for the girls for Christmas this year.  Sabrina loves it and for the past 2 months wants to do dinosaur roars, dinosaur hugs, dinosaur kisses, etc.  Briefly it also helped her stop putting up a fight at bedtime when Steve would ask “Do dinosaurs cry when they go to sleep?”  She would say “no” and get quiet.  That only lasted a few weeks though so don’t hold your breath on it being a long term solution.  But it is fun.

So there you go, a small gift guide for the kiddos.

Thank you all for the support on my attachment post.  I just want to clarify.  I don’t think I’m a bad mom.  And I don’t think that the things I did (letting her play in exersaucer or highchair while I got some things done) were wrong or inappropriate.  They just weren’t working for Tessa.  It might be her personality – she tends to be slightly higher maintenance than Sabrina.  It might be that things changed too swiftly and make her feel insecure.  Whatever the reason, it wasn’t working.  It damaged her attachment to me.  And yes, I’ve been known to overreact all the damn time now and then.  But I trust both my clinical experience and my mommy radar – something is amiss.

Tessa has been physically attached to me for much of the past 48 hours.  I am already seeing some improvement in eye contact and less pulling away when I pick her up.  I will continue Attachment 101 until things feel right again.  And then I will find ways that work for Tessa to put her down a little more so that I can return to eating, exercising, and showering.

I also just want to assure all of you that while I don’t think I am a bad mom, I have no desire to be Super Mom or Uber Mom or Helicopter Mom.  I will never cheat during a pre-school game so that my child can win (someone Twittered about seeing another mom do this in her daughter’s class).  I will likely drop my kids off at pre-school wearing sweatpants and a baseball cap on many days (I can see some of my Southern readers nervously fingering their pearls over that declaration).  I will help my children pick out boxed Valentine’s at Target (they will be cute I swear but I’m not cutting up doilies to make the damned things).  I will encourage my children to try new activities but I will not sign them up for every class and lesson available (all that chauffeuring would likely cut into my internet time).  So yes, I worry about doing the right things and giving them the best foundation possible but I really have no aspirations to be perfect.  A little better than good enough?

Something about Tessa’s behavior has been ringing a little alarm in the back of my head for a week or so.  I couldn’t quite put my finger on it.  She seemed to be going out of her way to avoid eye contact some of the time.  While eating, she would rather stare at the ceiling than look at me.  When I picked her up, she no longer swung her arm over my shoulder and snuggled in.  She was twisting away instead.  Her behavior hadn’t changed otherwise.  If it wasn’t for my hyper awareness of attachment with Sabrina, I would have probably chalked it up to a bit of individuation (that’s right – I threw a little really mis-used Jung at you…I still owe about $1,538 worth grad school tuition for every one of the few facts that reside in the depths of my mommy brain so I should get some mileage out of them – by the time it is paid for I will have forgotten all of them).  But today it slammed into my brain – my baby isn’t so attached right now.

She used to be attached to the point of appendage.  But a variety of things have happened recently – the biggest being that she gave up nursing entirely after we had to start supplimenting with formula.  Within a couple of weeks, my supply was gone despite pumping.  That has had a snowball effect in many areas.  We no longer snuggle in bed in the morning because I’m not trying to catch a cat nap after nursing her at 5:30.  We don’t spend nearly as much time focused on each other because she eats more at each feeding and therefore has fewer feedings.  This new found freedom for me and growing independence for her has led to her spending time in her exersaucer or high chair while I do laundry or work out or do dishes or shower when I used to do these things mostly while she slept.  She is more mobile and therefore a little harder to hold onto while I do things with my free hand.  I haven’t been wearing her much because she gets pissed off – the Mei Tei forces her to have her face in my chest and she doesn’t like the sling/pouch.  And out of guilt for the attention that I’ve diverted from Sabrina, I’ve been working harder at spending time with Sabrina.  All of this has apparently added up to breaking down our bond.

I was heart broken and a little panicky when I realized this today.  I felt like such a failure.  Being a mom is my job right now, how could I have not realized what was happening?

Knowing that fixing it was all that mattered, I immediately reverted to Attachment Parenting 101.  Of course, I can’t return to breastfeeding but I’m working on other things.  I wore her this afternoon in the Bjorn which I hate but she liked much better than the Mei Tei (which she loved up until very recently) and the sling.  Instead of working out, showering, and eating lunch which is my normal routine these days while Sabrina naps, I played and cuddled on the bed with Tessa.

I am desperate to restore our bond – and quickly.  Funny, I never dreamed this would be an issue with my biological child.  And I probably wouldn’t have recognized it if not for Sabrina.

Today is all about Tessa.  Why? Because I have some cute photos of her to show off and because she had a doctor appointment yesterday.  And the doctor had a med student (or resident? or intern? I don’t know – they left him alone with us so he had achieved some level of trust) shadowing him – that’s often good for a chuckle.

The med student wasn’t horrible…he just needed to work on his social skills.  Really work. His grasp of the English language was better than many native speakers but his accent was a little rough.  The nurses hate him.  Our regular nurse rolled her eyes at me behind his back no fewer than 4 times.  We painfully plodded through the well check questions.

Med Student: Do you give her fluoride regularly?

Me: Ummm…no.

MS: So you give her bottled water?

Me: Huh?

*Awkward Silence as I try to puzzle out what he is talking about.*

Me: Oh you mean do we use tap water with fluoride when we make formula bottles?  Yes.

Med Student: Do you have a nickname for her?

Me: Tessa or Tess is about it. (I wasn’t about to go into the odd and silly things we call her at home.)

MS: I like to call my patients Sweet Pea or Honey Pie.

*Awkward pause while I try to formulate a response to such a weird declaration.*

Me: Have at it.  She is only 6 months old so she’ll answer to anything.

Med Student: It says here that your other child (pointing at Sabrina) is adopted.  Does he/she have any communicable diseases?

*Dumbfounded silence.  Does he not see my child sitting right there? She is 2 and very aware.*

Me: No.

Med Student: Are all of Tessa’s shots current?

Me: I assume so.  This office is in charge of that though – perhaps you want to check the file?

MS: Oh. Yes.

Med Student during his nervous examination of Tessa’s soft spot on her head (I think he was afraid of her – or maybe me): Hmmm…very flat.

Med Student scribbles something in his notes but says nothing more.

Me with some anxiety: Is that a bad thing?

MS: Huh? Oh. No. Flat is good.  Bumpy is bad.

He continues his examine making all sorts of worrisome sounding noises.  If I was an nervous mother, I would have been climbing the walls by the time the real doctor came in the room.  Med Student also looked like he wanted to floor to open up and swallow him when asking about breast feeding.  Thankfully, our regular doc joined us.

New was that Tessa has gained over a pound in the past month but has fallen %tile wise.  She was in the 9th and 8th %tiles for weight and height last month.  Now she is in the 5th for both.  He reassured me that since she has remained proportional he thinks she is just going to be a “late bloomer”.  He wants us to keep shoving food into her as often as she’ll eat but otherwise he said to not be too worried.  We are going back in 6 weeks for another weight check to keep an eye on things.  Hopefully Med Student will be back in school by then.

Tessa is 4 1/2 months old.  She sleeps in a bassinet next to my side of the bed.  This arrangement began because it made it easier for me to get up with her to nurse in the wee hours and it also allows easy access for me to reassure myself that she is still breathing.  The middle of the night nursing has lessened but not stopped.  Ditto for the breathing checks.

Steve is starting to make noises about moving her into her crib in her bedroom.  He makes a compelling case.  She is starting to get too big for the bassinet.  She still fits since she is a tiny thing but she wants more room to move about.  She is also a noisy roommate – she often wakes us during the night just making noises in her sleep.  And frankly, Steve is looking forward to life settling into something approximating normal which includes us being the only full time occupants of our bedroom.

The thought of her being in her own room sends me into a minor panic.  My problem is simply that her room is so far away.  Our bedroom is on the first floor but the girls’ rooms are upstairs.  This poses 2 problems.  First, I am lazy and I don’t really want to drag my chickenbus upstairs at 2am to feed and/or comfort her.  Second, how can I telepathically will her to keep breathing from so far away?  I am a bit more psychotic neurotic with Tessa than with Sabrina.  Sabrina was 7 months old and seemed less fragile when I got her.  I also think it stems from the fact that I never believed that my pregnancy would result in us having a baby so I am still waiting for the other shoe to drop. I am convinced something horrible is going to happen to take her away from me because I was never meant to have her to begin with.  I feel like by having her I snuck one by the universe and the universe is just waiting to swat me down in return.  (I am sure the universe has bigger fish to fry than me but hey, I admitted to being neurotic about it.)  And because I know I am a wee bit irrational about it, I’ve told Steve he is going to have to push me on some things.  He isn’t pushing yet but I’m definitely feeling some nudges.

He is letting me take baby steps.  We’ve discussed putting her in the pack n play to give her a little more room and putting it on his side of the bed to start putting some distance between her and I at night.  I’m trying to remember when I stopped checking to see if Sabrina was breathing at night but I can’t remember (and truth be told I still feel an urge to check every now and then).  She started sleeping in her own room about a month after we came home from Guatemala but it was right next door to our room in the apartment.  Any tips on making the move without making myself and Steve crazy?  Or has the crazy ship sailed?

The scenario:

2 kids

1 very tired momma

1 kiddo is sick and 1 is in it for the goldfish crackers

1 very small exam room at the pediatrician’s office to contain the above for an undetermined length of time

Wanna place bets on who will cry first?

We are spending the weekend in the Smokies.  Specifically here:

I thought it might present some good photo opportunities for our Christmas card photo of the girls.  As I was patting myself on the back for thinking ahead, I loaded the kids into the car to head to the mall.  I thought maybe some coordinating PJs would be cute in the cabin setting for the photo.  I found a parking spot and in the time it took me to struggle the stroller out of the back of the car and get it open, another woman pulled in, parked, got out and was inside the mall. I didn’t even have a child out of the car yet.  That is okay – my life is full of laughter and baby smiles even if it takes me 10 minutes to get the stroller out and set up.

I get the kids into the stroller and head inside.  Once we enter, Sabrina begins demanding crackers and Tessa starts to cry.  Not to be deterred, I gave Sabrina some goldfish and hoped Tessa would fall asleep quickly.  I only intended to be in the mall for less than an hour.  I had parked well away from the stores I wanted to check out (I’m not a fan of the mall and have no idea where things are located inside).  We finally get to the first store and Tessa takes it up a notch.  She is now sobbing.  I think I can get in and out of the store quickly having forgotten that this childrens’ store isn’t designed for people with kids – there is no room between the racks for strollers.  Tessa is so upset that I leave the store.  I get her out to comfort her.  Sabrina has finished her crackers at this point and begins demanding more.  I put Tessa back in the stroller and she begins screaming again.  I try to run into 1 more store only to exit immediately because I can’t look at anything with Tessa screaming.  So I start the long trek back to the exit.

For some reason, everyone feels the need to comment on my screaming infant and whining toddler.  People smirked or smiled or ahhh’ed.  One woman commented “Someone isn’t having fun at the mall today.”  You think?  Because I am having a ball.  And one of the guys at the kiosk that sells the clothes that soak up a 2 liter of Coke steps in front of me and says “Excuse me ma’am, could I…”  I looked at him and said “You’ve got to be kidding me” and blew past him.

So a big FAIL on the attempt to pick up outfits for the photo.  The question is, am I brave enough to try again tomorrow?