Let's switch gears a bit, shall we?

Rather than another mundane and/or whiny post about recent happenings with my offspring, let's marvel at the fine felinification of my original babies, my four cats. For some background information on these circus animals, I offer you an old post that provides personality profiles of these creatures, if you care to peruse it.

Anyhow, one of the things I've been dicking around with lately in all my luxurious free time (surely, I jest) is trying to organize the 4.5 years of old digital photos that my husband completely mismanaged (i.e., did not manage) while I was busy bringing homes loads of squandered bacon. This is a nightmare of the highest order. But one benefit is that I have happened upon some (um, in excess of 500) cat photos. I am going to share some swell ones with you now. You don't even have to thank me.

Let's start with an old shot of Lucy (a.k.a. Gatette and many other weird names) dressed as Smurfette. My former employer held a costume contest for pets as an event one Halloween. While they surely had dog owners in mind (as to my knowledge the CEO expressed a problem with "cat people"), I took the opportunity to cut up some yarn and children's clothing and dress my cat up like Smurfette. I dressed my other cats as Brainy and Hefty Smurf, but this one was the best. And it just occurred to me as I'm typing this that I threw the tights that one of the cats wore during this photo shoot into Phookie's dresser, and my child has worn them several times this winter. God I am weird. Anyhow, I give you Smurfette:


This is a picture of Big Chuck which I've always loved a great deal. I refer to it as "Saucy Chuck" and before I had a kid to copiously photograph, this was usually my desktop background. This photo captures the animal's personality so beautifully. He is one saucy butler.


Then we have Snoot (a.k.a. the much-loved Uncle Growler). I have expressed before that this cat is an idiot. Idiot. Everyone loves an idiot though, right? Anyhow, here he is, looking glassy-eyed and not smart as he practices nice manners by sitting so fluffily in the chair.

Idiot's aren't very good at respecting others' personal space, and Snoot is no exception. Here he snuggles with a lethargic and unresponsive Gatette:


Here we have Joey, the cat I speak of rarely. She is one surly SOB and has a tendency to, well, hiss and act like a nightmare when people dare touch her. She'll even howl as she rubs up to a hand to pet her. But secretly she is a lovemonger...she just had a bad childhood. She and I do not have interpersonal difficulties...it's just the rest of the world that misunderstands her. Anyhow, she has no sense of her own size, and is quite fond of roosting in/on/around things that are smaller than her. This is the source of much amusement, to be sure. (Can I just say that I love odd cat behaviors? Cats are just so fucking weird. That's why I love them.)


Here we have Snoot, inverted, roosting in the sun with Chuckalope's paws nearby. This is a vintage Snoot shot. You know how I can tell? He only has one spot on his nose. This cropped up shortly after we found him, and I was worried he had cat skin cancer. Turns out he has lentigo simplex, which is code for freckles, which are common in orange cats, not unlike freckles on red-headed people. Now, his entire nose and gums are spotted. Only an idiot would sprout spots, but whatever. He is such a leisurely bastard. (And since my husband will surely post in the comments to smite me if I don't tell the whole story, I'm just gonna go ahead and say that I was totally freaking out when the spot appeared and he accurately predicted it was a freckle. Just like I was totally freaking out when I discovered a lump in Snoot's mid-belly and he accurately predicted it was an outie belly button. But whatever.)

Now here is a classic shot...capturing all four beasts (well, five) in bed together is rare, due to the intercat relationships which can be dicey at times, particularly where Joey is concerned. (What really gets me about this photo though is the way I'm languishing in bed so carelessly, clearly not aware of the preciousness of this kind of lazy moment.)

Just as the "Saucy Chuck" photo captures Big Chuck's personality, this photo captures El Jobo's personality. She is seriously turning you into a statue with her eyes. Seriously. You'd better look away now.

More photographic evidence of idiocy. Woodbiting. Gotta love it. (Secret joke to Auntie Hode: "It feels good on my face!")


And here we have Gatette's personality captured in photo. (Apparently, I am one helluva photographer, capturing all these personalities and shit.) She looks attractive, superior, vaguely irritated, and trying to appear as if she doesn't want you to pet her when she surely does. At least that's what I see in these gato tea leaves. She is my original baby. My dad and Auntie Hode found her in the woods in kittenhood..starving, huge-eared, and abandoned. We also found out she has a heart condition (hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, which is fatal, but she has defied the odds and lived almost 6 years on medication so far...). She hit the stray jackpot, to be sure. She never lost that starving "mew, mew, mew" sound effect either, which combined with my fear that every meal could be her last has resulted in a lot of extra chow over the years.

And let's have one more look at idiocy incarnate, Uncle Growler. Here we have him sleepingbagged inside a cat wigwam that he personally deconstructed in mere seconds. (What, you think it's ridiculous that they had a cat wigwam? They already had a cat hammock, two standard cat beds, and a be-roofed cat hut. What was left?)

All right, there. So I have descended into complete insanity by telling a whole bunch of people who don't want to know a whole bunch of crap about my cats. They are some charming beasts though...admit it.

P.S. You know what's hilarious about using spellcheck when you're me? It catches all the words you invented and serves as a highlighter on your weirdness. Just thought I'd mention that.

P.P.S. Did you notice that Joey is sitting on some Diet Vanilla Coke? I think that it was discontinued in favor of Diet Black Cherry Vanilla Coke. That blows. I fucking loved Diet Vanilla Coke.

Baby Available - No Reasonable Offer Will Be Refused

We are pleased to announce that we have a six-month-and-one-day-old female human of mutt-like European origins available to interested parties. Baby offers the following features:

Freshly vaccinated!
Slow-growing (a mere 1 lb. 5 oz. and 1 inch in two whole months)! - Keep those tiny baby clothes forever!
Runny nose!
Wheezy chest sounds!
Perpetually extended lower lip (now with new and improved crying)!
Possible tooth eruption in the near future!
Capacity to take 3 crawling "steps" with belly fully elevated before crashing to floor, panting, and grunting in frustration!
Extreme difficulty sleeping between the hours of 4:30-7:00 a.m.!
Total inability to utter annoying sounds like "mamamama" and "dadadada"!
Short naps are her specialty!
Loves her veggies!*

Included with baby is the following additional equipment:

Two-week supply of frozen breastmilk preserved in adorable overpriced freezer bags with child-like script reading, "My Mommy's Milk"!
Four cats that have taken up vomiting and food dragging as favorite pastimes!
Live-in brother-in-law who kindly asks you to do his stinky laundry and feigns surprise when you fold it too!
Humidifier, nasal saline drops, and bulb syringe for handling that pesky virus!
A box full of completely useless, recently discovered, never-worn clothing that no longer fits!
One Graco travel system with approximately 2,347,912 miles on it!

Baby can be yours in exchange for any of the following:

A multi-week all-inclusive vacation to any tropical destination
A live-in masseuse
A lumbar spine that isn't possessed by Satan and his minions
A decent episode of Grey's Anatomy
Phil Stacey (of American Idol "fame") hanged, drawn, and quartered
1/6 the amount of sedatives found in Anna Nicole Smith's dead body
One 8-hour night of sleep

Please call 1-800-SHO-OTME if you would like to make an offer.

*And will even occasionally poop them out if dosed with appropriate quantities of prune juice and water stew.

Phook would like to share some information

Yo Phookfanatics,

Phook here. Since my mother (whose mental status can be a bit touch and go if I do say so myself) just keeps ranting and raving and pouring her heart out and sharing the minutiae of my eating, sleeping, and bowel habits with the internets, I'm taking it upon myself to bring some joy to this world and share some of the more positive aspects of my daily comings and goings with you all. Of course, I like to think that pictures are worth a crapload of words, so I'm going to be throwing some pictures at you all as is my habit.

Let's start by taking a look-see at my new favorite hobby, which is blowing bubbles like an absolute maniac. I tell ya, there is nothing like fart sounds at 4:50 a.m. Seriously. It's the cat's ass. My mom keeps saying, "Say it, don't spray it, Phook" but I'm like, "Yo, shut up mom...I'm learning to use my mouth and it's really rather enjoyable." Of course, being the boss of her, she relents, chortles, and snaps photo after photo.


Now let's take a look at me and my other new skill. It's funny how every time I do this, my parents pretty much scream. It's like they fear the combination of my mischievous nature, insatiable curiosity, and unfettered mobility. Losers. I'm like, "Let's get this crawling party started!" I only have about 28 pages to go in Crawling for Dummies, so pencil in my mastery of this skillset for sometime real soon.


All right, so you probably all know that my mom has this raging penchant for matching track suits. She is such an unbelievable dork. Since I weigh about as much as her left forearm at this point, I can't quite physically overpower her at this juncture, so I too am resigned to a fate of matching casualwear, at least until I can kick her ass. I find myself eerily reminiscent of LL Cool J circa Mama Said Knock You Out in this shot.


Every now and then though, I get to pull off a fashion statement that I feel good about. Exhibit A:


I also just want to go on record here registering my complaint about how I am seriously getting screwed re: birth order. I only agreed to my own conception based on a contractual commitment made between my parents and I stating that I would be a firstborn child, which of course means spoiling, attention-hogging, and absolutely no sharing. So then I show up on the scene, and what happens? These clown cars throw a cat with opposable thumbs into the mix, and I've got to share my new favorite chewtoy. Seriously. Uncool.


And while we're on the subject of fur-bearing varmints, check out this shit...this chubster of a feline up and commandeered my rubber ducky. She thinks it's her kitten or some such noise. The nerve.


Now, I'm gonna have to go ahead and throw it out there that despite my sarcastic nature, I have to admit that I LOVED the weather this weekend. My good friend G.W. (that's Global Warming to you) brought us 70+ degree weather in Wisconsin in March. This resulted in my mom affixing a contraption to her clothesline and chucking me in it. When she snapped this shot, she swallowed her tongue and writhed on the ground for 15 minutes because I looked so much like my dad, she was forced to seize. (BTW, I did enjoy the swing.)


Now, here is a shot of me and my big, profane Momma hangin' in the grass. Crazylady lets me gnaw on pine cones and stuff when we're outside, so she's not all bad, despite this Baby Whisperer shit she's been pulling lately.


I also just want to record my prediction that in 2010, she's going to be blogging about how she can't get me to stop sucking my fingers. But for now it presents cute photo-ops, so here ya go:


And finally, let's all appreciate the cutest photo ever taken. I gots to admit that I like the stroller. And thank God for that, because crazylady drives me around in it (she calls it my "Bub Car") like 20 hours per week. Don't worry though, when I get sick of it I'm going to launch a clothes-drenching poo-nami when we're 3 miles away from home without a diaper bag. That's my ace in the hole, peoples.


That about wraps it up from Phookietown. Have a good week, fools.

XO,
Phook

P.S. Tuesday is my 6-month birthday. Send gifts and cake.

"Oh, you're Boose's Mom!"

I can't remember if I have previously mentioned the fact that my sister's students (she is a social studies teacher) refer to my child as "Boose" or "the Boose." It's kind of a long story, but basically there was a picture taken of her at around 2 months of age in which she looked quite pudgy and weird, and a student decided she was a Boose, which is a cross between a beaver and a moose. Although her Booseness itself seems to have passed, the name of course has sticking power, because it's so amusing. I mean, it's fun to refer to a baby as a Boose, to be sure. So anyhow, there are 81 students in northeast Wisconsin who are up on Boose news, Boose photos, and other Boose-related information, via Auntie Hode. You know how kids can get obsessed with their teacher's personal lives? Yeah, well, that's why 81 kids are fascinated by all things Boose.

So anyhow, Auntie Hode was home this weekend, but yesterday she had to return to a midpoint between The Woods and her current homeland to meet the high school girls' softball team, of which she is assistant coach, to have practice at this massive indoor sports complex. One thing led to another in terms of her cajoling me, and before I knew it I was being chauffeured to softball practice with my old gloveroo in tow. So we show up at this place and walk in, and all these girls are playing catch, and my sister says, "This is my sister, Big W." There is stunned silence, wheels turning in their little goat brains, and then about 7 girls said, in almost perfect unison, "Oh, you're Boose's Mom!" My exterior affirmed that I was indeed Boose's Mom, and they all stared at me some more. My interior, however, experienced one of those gut-dropping moments that will not be forgotten anytime soon. It was, for me, the first time I was 100% identified by virtue of being someone's mother rather than by my own personhood. And I felt it very acutely.

Oh it was no big deal and of course the girls meant no harm whatsoever, and I had been warned by other moms about this sort of shift occurring. And of course, with nearly 6 months of motherhood under my belt, I am already quite familiar with people rushing to the child and talking to the child and asking about the child and fawning over the child without actually addressing me. But never before have I been identified solely as Phookie's Mom. I'm not sitting around mourning this or stressing about it, but some tectonic plate deep down in the Ol' Big W shifted and jostled and landed in a new place when those words were uttered. And it's not going back.

Just one of those things. And it happened so very fast.

If this is teething, I wonder what hell has to offer

Just as I snarkily predicted in my last post, I think my kid is teething. Or dying from a prune juice/water concoction I fed her earlier this week. Or starving to death. Or having an allergic reaction to peaches. Or has an ear infection. Or is just realizing the new sleeping arrangement is permanent, and making it known that she's not down with it. Good Christ, I don't know, but I think it's teething, I really do.

Let's break down these variables and see what we think, shall we? Item A is the prune juice/water concoction. Basically, the child has trended towards constipation for a long time...going as much as 5 days sans poop even before we introduced solids. She would then poop a hard turd, which I would joshingly call a "cork," followed several hours or a day later by a dook of reasonable baby poop consistency. Well, last week, she just strained and strained, pooping tiny cork after tiny cork, with no real poo to follow. I took to the internets and some sites recommended a mix of prune juice and water to free up the colonic demons. And then I did this, without seeking further advice from medical professionals or grandmothers. Call me crazy. On Monday, after her lunch, I offered her a bottle of 2 oz. prune juice and 2 oz. water, which she chugged like a fiend. Later in the day, more cork. So after dinner, I offered her the same concoction, and she happily gulped it. The next morning, more cork. I was growing concerned that I would have to take her to the doctor for some butt-freeing treatment, and after lunch offered her the concoction again, and she drank about half of it. So a total of about 5 oz. of prune juice and 5 oz. of water over the course of two days, when she'd never had either in her life. Looking back, I feel kinda like a dumbass, but at the time, Big K and I felt it was sound decision-making. I mean, the internets told me to do it. That afternoon (Tuesday), a giant stool of appropriate consistency escaped the murky depths of Phook and I was so excited, I did a poop dance. A couple hours later, its evil twin showed up, and I was markedly less excited. Then, I was feeding her dinner in her Bumbo seat, and she reached down and grabbed her feet for leverage, and blew out a poo with quite the sound effects. Now, let's really shine the spotlight on my degree of idiocy by noting that I was mixing another bottle of InstaPoo as this occurred. We were reasoning that since this was working, we should keep her on a regimen of the magic elixir to keep the shit moving. And then I picked up the child to feed her this bottle, and realized the error of my ways. The poo ran out of her diaper, down her legs, into a puddle in the Bumbo seat, onto the kitchen floor and my socks (I was wearing a pair of Big K's, which I never do, and I found that pleasing), up her back, up her front, etc. Big K screamed, "What do you want me to do, I don't know what to do in these situations!!!" and I just held the poo-leaking child and looked for things that could serve as mops. Well, we got that handled with relative good humor and got her to bed without much of an incident. And then I called my parents to tell them my funny baby poop, aren't-I-an-idiot story. At which point my mom started talking about electrolyte imbalances, her own experience with low potassium levels and ambulance rides, and the unsound judgement that was exercised in my giving a baby prune juice. Ooof. By the time I got off the phone, I was no longer laughing at the Oxyclean bucket o' doom, but was rather imagining scenarios in which my baby lay confined in the ICU with a body chemistry so out of whack that she couldn't be saved, all because I got a little crazy with nature's laxative. I was close to panic attack levels, so I had Big K call my Dad on my behalf and get him to talk sense, and then I talked to him and he talked some sense into me. I still spent the entire night sniffing Phook's butt because I was sure that she was going to be blowing organs out her anus by morning. Well, she didn't poop anymore, but she did sleep like hell. Up a lot, not easy to calm. But she was not indicating belly pain in any way, having weird Dumb and Dumber gut rumblings, or anything like that. The next day, she pooped a couple times of acceptable consistency, yesterday two more of the same, and this morning, she's back to rabbit turds, so she got prunes in her cereal as per usual. So I think it's fair to say the poisons have left the building and that isn't causing the mayhem? Right?

My next concern is that she's starving because of the reduced number of breastfeeding sessions and what I believe to be my relatively low milk supply. She attacks her solids like a maniac. We are talking about 1-1.5 jars of total food per meal. I don't know, I've never had a 5 1/2 month old before, but that seems like a lot. She used to eat half a jar per meal, but lately has been howling if I stop feeding her, so I just offer food until she doesn't want it anymore. Peas...pears...green beans...sweet potatoes...applesauce...carrots...squash...bring it on, the kid is gulping it down. When she does nurse, which is after she wakes up from naps, in the morning, and before bed, 4-5 times per day, she does not eat hungrily, except in the morning. She gets so distracted with any peep she hears, it is hard to even keep her nursing at this point. I do know that she eats solids like a crazy fool by the time her dinner time rolls around. So what the hell is going on here? Is she really taking all she needs from the boob and I should not worry? Is she having a growth spurt and just wants the solids at this point because she likes them better? Is she in a way kind of weaning from the boob and I need to pump for her and bottle feed her to make sure she's getting enough? Do I need to supplement with formula? Is it normal for a kid who likes solids to strongly start to prefer them over nursing? What the hell, I don't know. If you know, please tell me.

Now, on to the allergic reaction possibility, to which I give very little credence, but I'm gonna throw it out there. The newest food I've introduced, starting last Friday, was peaches. She wasn't a fan, really, making a weird face. (What is up with a kid who prefers vegetables? I have tried every kind of baby food she has, and I am telling you the peaches are the best, but whatever Phook, it's your palate.) But I gave her a few bites at all her meals anyhow over the course of the weekend. She ate them but never got excited about them. So when she started acting fussy (more on that later), I wondered if she might have some food sensitivity going on, and peaches was the only recent addition to her diet and therefore the likeliest culprit. Again, I took to the internets, and found that the signs of a food allergy are essentially the same as the signs that you have a baby. "Crying. Nightwaking. Pooping. Breathing." Well, not exactly, but anything amiss with a kid could be a sign of some food issue, so I found that info nonhelpful. She was obviously not having an acute allergic attack, that was for sure. But who knows. She did have rather red cheeks this weekend, and that can be a sign of an allergy, or a sign of teething, or a sign that Wisconsin is going to win the NCAA men's basketball championship, or whatever. I'm still not giving her more peaches for a couple weeks, and then we'll experiment with them carefully, just to be on the safe side I guess.

The next possibility is ear infection. Again, this hypothesis is proving itself to be invalid, but I'm gonna throw it out there. The reason I thought of it was that in her difficulty getting to sleep, she takes her right hand and rubs (claws) it across the right side of her head. She doesn't tug at the ear itself, but she is consistently doing this on her right side. She has no symptoms of a cold and no fever, which the internets say rules out ear infection. Grandma J disagrees with that assertion, having had two very ear-infection prone children, and instructed me to gently tug on her ear to see if it angered the beast. It did not. The ears themselves do not seem to be bothering her. Ear infection seems highly unlikely.

Then we have the sleeping arrangements. She has consistently been in her crib for every nap and night for 9 days now. She can calm herself down like a champ, generally by sucking her fingers and drifting off that way. But after my glory-filled post of earlier this week, things started going south. Weirdly. It's not like she screams when being put in the crib and it's not like she can't calm herself down. She practically dives for the crib when she's tired at this point and can soothe herself in a short period of time. She acts like she doesn't even want our help anymore...yells upon being picked up and quiets upon hitting the mattress, instead of the familiar inverse. But here's the kicker...just as she's getting all the way to sleep, she wakes up with a cry as if uncomfortable. Like something is bugging her and she can't let go and get all the way to sleep. This is where the head/ear scratching thing comes into play and she gets very angry. Then we calm her down a bit and she calms herself back to that same state of complete relaxation and early sleep, and wakes up again with a cry a few minutes later. Entire nap sessions of this behavior. And 2 hour stretches of the early morning hours, which is extra special. She also thrashes around fitfully like she can't get comfortable. And acts like a dick most of the day. Which brought me to the idea that I should look in her mouth...

...Man, I don't know. Where her two front teeth on both top and bottom are, there are puffy tooth-shaped bulges on the front of the gums. They are not raised up through the gumline if you run you finger along it, but they are visible to the naked eye. And then we have the bottom eye-teeth (I think that's what they're called). For these, her gum actually looks white-ish where the teeth should be, and there's a bit of a bump there. So the leading candidate in the "Why Does My Baby Have a Bad Attitude?" contest is teeth. The reason I'm not 100% sure though is that she is not drooling copiously. She is drooling, but no more than usual. If anyone out there is reading this and is aware of the possibility of teething without lots of drool, throw me a bone and comment.

All I know is that my pleasant little nugget has really been on hiatus this week, and it's been less than fun. I have walked 20 miles in 4 days because the stroller brings about happiness and relaxation for all parties. I am leaving stroller tracks all over The Woods. I think I actually beat a mailman through his whole route yesterday. There is a dusting of snow today, so I'm probably going to have to put the snow tires on the Graco before we head out. Man, my kid has yelled at me a lot this week and I'm really tired. And to be honest, I am really mourning the loss of the Phook in our family nest. I miss all that snuggle time. I know, I'm pathetic. Auntie Hode has also had a bad week and will be home this weekend. Plans are forming for some adult beverage consumption at some point.

My nipples would like to make an announcement

Ok, sorry, couldn't resist that post title. I thought that after all my soul-searching and soul-baring nonsense of late, I'd try to mix it up a bit. (FYI, the alternate title for this post, or shall we call it a subtitle, is "I'd French kiss that Hogg if she weren't dead." You'll see why soon enough.)

What the hell am I talking about? I'm talking about my Phook and her eating and sleeping patterns. Her absolutely nightmarish eating and sleeping patterns. And recent progress in these arenas.

Let's review, shall we? Wee little newborn Phook was something of a cluster feeder. In the evenings, especially, she'd get fussy and would do all those little baby hunger cues the nurses tell you to watch for, so I fed the child. Endlessly. 6 hours at a time, etc. We offered pacifier with no success. We tried to calm her down without the boob. But she just kept acting hungry. So she nursed. As you can imagine, she grew quite fond of nestling into her momma. She liked to wake up at night and nurse, nurse, nurse like a little piglet, so I was really excited when we mastered the art of nursing while lying down. She'd nurse in the middle of the night, and we'd both drift back off to sleep. She started going longer and longer stretches until, lo and behold, she slept through the night on Thanksgiving, just shy of two months old. She napped in her swing during the day for hours at a time. People, I thought I had this sleep shit sealed up. Can you hear me laughing like a crazy person? Can you? I did not have this sleep shit sealed up. No, not at all.

The next several months progressed, or shall I say, regressed. One night last fall, it was really cold in our room, and little Phook's hands felt like icicles in her bassinet, so we brought her back into our bed to toast her up. And she never really left after that. We became full-time co-sleepers. And I loved it. I just gotta throw that out there. I loved sniffing my Phook all night long, staring at her, cuddling with her, watching her smile in her sleep, all that stuff. Loved it. But here's the thing, instead of occasional nightwaking, which I was and am cool with, she got worse and worse until a couple weeks ago when she started to wake up pretty much at the end of every single sleep cycle (40-ish minutes) all night long. And, having learned that she must nurse in order to sleep, would need a little nip to go back to sleep. Also, the nap situation exploded. The swing no longer did the trick, and she was used to sleeping by me, so she basically would not nap unless we followed the same protocol as during the night, which is to say, me lying by her with a boob at the ready. Now, I'm not averse to napping. Quite the contrary...I've seen many a nap mirage during the last several years, because that was all I wanted. But no matter how much of a zombie I was from all the wakings at night, I cannot possibly lie down during the day for the amount of time a 5-month old needs to sleep with any degree of practicality. No. But I tried.

So, I got to thinking I needed to work on this. My first goal was to break her of the suck-sleep association, and I was hoping we could keep co-sleeping, since Phook-sniffing is my favorite hobby. To this end, I purchased the book "The No Cry Sleep Solution" by Elizabeth Pantley, and promptly devoured it. This was a nice little book that made me feel good about the nurturing things I'd done for my child, including the co-sleeping, comfort nursing, all that hippie dippie crap that makes a lot of people want to chuff. She basically suggested that when you were nursing the child, you remove the nipple from their mouth before they fall asleep. If they root and fuss for it, you give it back (no crying...), and eventually the child should learn to fall asleep on their own without something in their mouth. She noted that on your first try, it may take 15 times for the child to fall asleep, but that should decrease each day. She also had some suggestions for transition to the crib that were no-cry things that involved steps like moving mattresses 4 millimeters closer to the crib each day for 7 years and stuff like that. (I exaggerate, of course, but you get the idea.) Anyhow, I tried the nipple removal thing for all of January and all of February (I am one patient clown when it comes to this kid, I tell ya...). Sadly, I probably spent a minimum of 75 hours over the past two months removing and replacing the boob, trying to teach Phook to fall asleep without it. Sometimes, it worked. But there was no positive trajectory. I felt defeated, resigned to no sleep, and was spending a lot of my day nesting with Phook so she could get the shut-eye she needed, and all without much success. To be honest, I probably would have continued martyring myself until she went to kindergarten, but I started noticing something that really bothered me. She was so used to using nursing as a sleeping and comfort tool that it was almost like she had forgotten how to vigorously suck as needed for actual eating. She'd just twitter about on the boob and even after she got milk, she'd get lazy and go back to fluttering about, thereby not really eating. This, for me, was the point at which my nurturing, "people in other countries do it all the time," rationale ceased to be valid. She needs to be able to nurse for food much more than she needs me to harbor her as a parasite just because I like to snuggle with her.

Which brought me to a hard place. I am, and (I think) forever will be, opposed to crying it out, in this household. (Note: I am, however, a big believer in doing what works for you personally, so please don't take this as an indictment against all who have tried the CIO techniques.) So, I've got a boob-addicted, suck-to-sleep, every-40-minute-waking, never slept in a crib, perpetually overtired, poor-eating baby who I want to break of every single one of those traits without letting her cry it out. Hmm. Enter, The Hogg. I am speaking of the late Tracy Hogg, Baby Whisperer, recommended to me by a friend. I acquired "The Baby Whisperer Solves All Your Problems" and immediately skipped to the sleep parts. She calls her approach "middle of the road," which is to say she offers a solution somewhere between attachment parenting and cry-it-out. I think it's code for "The Hardest Possible Way to Do Anything," or maybe the "Sleep Deprivation that Makes You Dream While Still Awake" approach or even the "Who Punched You in the Face or Are Those Just Bags Under Your Eyes?" methodology. What she advocates, for a child in the 3-6 month range (techniques differ for older or younger babies), is this thing called pick up/put down, which is a tool to teach your child to soothe herself. First off, she recommends you put your kid on a 4-hour "structured routine" of eating, activity, sleeping (she calls this EASY, with the Y being the oh-so-appealing "Time for You"), so you are separating eating from sleeping and teaching the kid to know what to expect. Then, you go to the old crib at the appointed nap time, and chuck the little sucker in there. Now, here's the fun part. The child, who is used to nipping at the old titter to sleep, is going to be PISSED. PISSED. PISSED. And what you do is pick them up and soothe them by shooshing in their ear and patting their back, and the second they are calm, back in the crib they go. At which point the screaming starts again, and you repeat. Or they get smart and start howling before they even hit the mattress, but down they go anyhow, and then right back up again if they don't settle. You cannot nurse, rock, swing, or do any of the other crap you have been doing to sneak your kid into a sleep state for his/her entire life. You can continue to pat and shoosh while they are in the crib, going so far as to put yourself practically in the crib with them to shoosh in their ear if you so choose. Even though they are crying, you never, ever "abandon" them to "cry it out." (For the record, she is okay w/ a pacifier as long as the kid doesn't wake up screaming when it pops out...in which case it would qualify as another "prop" like the boob, the rocking, etc. Phook, who did start accepting a pacifier at the tender age of 4 months, was a spitter outer/screamer. So no pacifier for her in the context of sleep.) Anyhow, Old Hogg says they will eventually learn how to soothe themselves because you are there so they don't get scared, just angry, and they will figure it out if you are persistent. So you do this for the length of an entire 2-hour nap if necessary (it was), and then when it is time to eat again you just take them out of the room and feed them and keep them on the routine (it's not a clock-watching thing, but rather just an order in which you predictably do shit every day). At the next nap time, you do the same thing. If you get them to sleep and they wake up, you do the pick up/put down until the nap time is over. (You can also use this technique if you have a little schmo who likes to take short naps or who is a habitual nightwaker (for reasons other than hunger) too.) Eventually, she says, they will learn to soothe without all this nonsense. At night, you pu/pd until they are asleep, and then do it again each time they wake until morning.

So, how did this play out in the K Home? Well, last Wednesday I decided to bite the bullet. (And here you all thought I was housewifing it up, eating bonbons and watching soaps and shit and couldn't be bothered to blog. You were incorrect.) She basically had 2 "naps" of complete pu/pd, with maybe half an hour of sleep in each. By night, she was so exhausted, she did go right down and slept for about 3.5 hours, which was her longest stretch of sleep in at least a month. She then woke up and it took me almost 2 hours to get her to fall asleep again. But I was persistent, just like Hoggie told me to be. She woke up a few more times during the night, and each time it was quicker to get her back to sleep. At one point, I just patted her butt and she went back down. By morning, I was pretty sure that I was a centaur in need of an aubesian, which is to say I was so exhausted I was hallucinating badly from sleep deprivation. But I was so damned optimistic I could hardly sit still. Over the course of one night, the child had improved, and I knew it. Thursday, I kept at it. To give you an idea of the progress, she got 11:25 hours of total sleep on Wednesday, and 14:45 hours of total sleep on Thursday. And my husband, oh that wonderful man, took off work on Friday so I would not die, and he took over the sleep-related tasks on Friday and Saturday. She started sleeping longer and longer stretches, going down easier, being able to go back to sleep with a mere pat and shoosh rather than the pu/pd stuff. The K Home was absolutely reeking with optimism by yesterday. So fast forward to today. Last night, she put in a 7 hour uninterrupted stretch of sleep, and then went back to sleep from her other wakings with the wee-est of pats and shooshes...nary a pick up or a put down. As of this moment, she has been napping for 1.5 hours uninterrupted in her crib. I have heard her wake twice with a little cry over the baby monitor, and both times she has calmed herself back to sleep by the time I got upstairs. Holy balls, Hogg. Now, I'm not pompous or stupid enough to think I have this thing licked, and we certainly have a ways to go I think until she sleeps completely through the night or goes down without any fuss. But a week ago today I'm sure I was lying here with a Phook on the boobage praying that she'd stay asleep for 15 minutes and hoping I could turn the page of my US Weekly over her sleeping head without waking her up with the crinkling. You have to be a nutbag, probably, to go this route, because it will almost kill you if you have a Boobaholics Anonymous poster child like myself, but dude, we are happy. In the grand scheme of things, a few days of off-the-hook sleep deprivation was worth not having to bite a whiskey-soaked rag and pretend I wasn't having my leg cut off while she screamed until she puked all alone in her crib. So, anyhow, I recommend the Hogg if you have a) a kid with pretty much any sleep problem b) some vacation time from work so you don't die and c) a strong desire not to do balls-to-the-wall crying stuff. I will add the caveat that the Old Hogg is pretty positive she's the smartest person ever, and there is a not-so-subliminal message in her book that you are a freaking moron for doing all the stuff you've done with your kid so far, unless of course you were one of those people who was able to put your 2-day-old firstborn in the huge crib in the room down the hall and never once snuggle her during a nap...and I kind of doubt you exist.

The other and possibly even more amazing thing is the announcement my nipples have stated that they'd like to make. The child is nursing 4 times per day, for approximately 10 minutes per feeding. (Don't worry, I'm not starving the nugget...she eats 3 meals of solids per day too.) I am no longer a host organism for a parasite. I am no longer a marsupial with a wee 'roo constantly in my pouch. I am a fully mobile, independent human-unit. I have enjoyed more hours of quiet time with my husband in the past 5 days than in the previous 5 months, even if I was queasy from sleep deprivation for a couple of them. And my nipples are now available for dinner parties, barn raisings, ice cream socials, and other engagements except for a few minutes around the hours of 7 am, 11 am, 3 pm, and 7 pm. So, definitely, things are on the upswing in the sleeping/eating department here in the House of K.

Now, I'd like to also throw in here some information about my unbelievable timing for making this transition. I believe I have previously referenced the fact that Phook has long been capable of rolling over, but it wasn't necessarily easy for her or her favorite thing to do. Until about last Wednesday. I had changed her dipe on a changing thing on the floor and went to wash my hands, and when I came back and she was on her belly. Since then, it's been all belly all the time. Why be on your back when you could be on your belly, right? This of course includes sleeping time. So we'd start this whole going to bed thing on her back every time, and fight her to try to keep her on her back. Yeah, right. Obviously a mobile human being cannot be contained. So she won and is belly sleeping. Sigh. But she isn't stopping there, no. She's practicing crawling and spinning around in her sleep. Pushes all the way up with arms, then with legs to get the butt in the air. Then claws and tugs herself forward. Last night, I put her down on her back with her head facing North in the upper half of her crib. When I next happened upon her, she was on her belly with her head completely jammed in the Southwest corner of the crib. Which means she flipped over, spun completely around, and somehow scooched, pulled, and otherwise maneuvered herself down the entire length of the crib. One of the Hogg's big warnings is that it's harder to do this kind of stuff when babies are learning new skills. I would say that complete mobility qualifies. Oh, and then there was the funny haha realization that some loser decided to throw a time change up in my grill when I had been underground and least expecting it. My parents mentioned it to me on Saturday and I almost wept. Despite waking up rather late on Sunday and being kinda whacked all day, I think we somehow weathered that one. Let's just say I wouldn't be surprised if the kid started popping teeth any day now. So anyhow, there are some degree of difficulty points involved in this fun exercise as well.

All right, so perhaps now that I have honored the Hogg so wildly, you are asking yourself if I've learned my lesson, if I would do all the crazy things I did with Phook with any subsequent Phookers. Perhaps I am asking myself that question. And I'm kinda sure the answer is no, I did not learn my lesson. You see, about 6 days after Phook was born, I ventured outside to pull some flowers out of my garden box and do some other fall yard cleanup. Big K was still home from work, and I asked him to watch Phook while I was outside. At one point, I looked in the window, and I saw her, be-hatted and swaddled, napping peacefully in the bassinet of her Pack 'n Play. And I started crying and ran in the house and chastised Big K for letting our little nugget sleep all by herself in this big, cold, non-uterine world. My baby doesn't sleep in the middle of a giant contraption. My baby sleeps all snugly, getting kissed on the head every 3 minutes or as needed. Subsequent Phook-types will probably be regarded in the same way, until of course there comes a point where they show me that they need their independence more than I need their dependence. I'll probably try harder to avoid the whole sleep/suck thing I guess, but other than that, those people who say, "Geez, you're always holding her," with a knowing look in their eyes can shove it in their ears as far as I'm concerned. The amount of time you can spend holding, snuggling, and kissing your child without any protest is shorter than the blink of an eye. When Phookie is 14, that is gonna be my secret reserve of strength right there, people. I've just been filling up the tank. Oh, I'm a crackpot, I know. But that's okay.

Out, buds.

SAHM I Am

SAHM, of course, being the acronym for stay-at-home-mom. Holy balls. If I can get through this post without a) vomiting b) sobbing or c) developing a nervous tic, it will be a miracle. You see, friends, this has been brewing for awhile, but I didn't want to put up a big ol' post about it until it was officially official. And now it is. Friday, buddies, was my last day of work. Well, that's a hilarious turn of phrase, because Lord knows I have been working and will continue to work my bum off. So let's say it was my last day of corporate employment.

Now, let's back up a bit, shall we? Big W's pre-Phook plan involved quitting my job as corporate proposal writer after my maternity leave, and engaging in a fun and exciting semester of student teaching this here spring semester, since I spent all of 2005 enrolled in a teacher certification program that would allow me to teach English to the kiddies in grades 6-12. And then hopefully getting a teaching job. Upon laying eyes on the Phookie in question, however, I decided that I could not do something so time-consuming and demanding with a wee little 4 month old at home. I mean, I suppose if I wanted to, I could phone it in, but I'm not the kind of cat who phones it in. If I do student teach, I plan to bust my balls in the endeavor and that generally involves a lot of time outside of class doing things like lesson planning, grading stuff, and participating to whatever extent possible in the extracurriculars of the students. I called my advisor in the progam and learned I actually have 5 years to finish that up before they kick me out, so I officially shelved the teacher certification for the time being. Of course, in real life, this decision came equipped with a lot of slobbering, crying, sleeplessness, negative self-talk, and the unfulfilled desire to drink a bottle of Jim Beam. But we'll skip an exploration of those items at this juncture.

Now, the next thing that occurred was that I saw an ad in our local paper advertising for a librarian for our local library, 32 hours per week. In a town with our small population, you only need a certain number of college credits and the willingness to take 4 library classes over a period of a couple years to obtain the necessary certification. So I applied for this gig, thinking that I could manage 32 hours per week. I didn't get the job...some girl who had worked at a neighboring Woods library did. I took that in stride and experienced no negative emotions.

At this point, after a few more tear-stained conversations with Big K, I decided to go back to work for my (now ex) employer, as they offer new parents the option of working part time for 3 months after your FMLA leave expires. So December-Friday, that's what I was doing. I went in one day per week, leaving Phook with either Big K or a grandparent who kindly took a vacation day to watch her, and worked about 15 hours per week from home. It went ok. I always felt distracted though when I was working from home and watching Phook. She'd be in her jazzerciser or something and I'd be online doing work and just look up every couple minutes and say something weird to her to keep her from flipping her lid, and neither Phook, my employer, or me really benefited from that setup.

Ok, so as the clock was ticking on my 3 month deal, and as my guts churned out record quantities of acid while I worried about it, I knew that I really only wanted to do one thing. Stay at home with Phook. Ever since I was old enough to have such thoughts, I always imagined myself having some kids and staying home making messes with them. But there was a hitch in my giddy-up. I married a social worker. That fact, in itself, is not problematic. I mean, Big K is one helluva social worker. Any troubled kid who lands on the K caseload has gotten rather lucky. But, friends, as with many other noble professions, our society has decided to reward social workers with a wage that is, well, shall we say, uncool? Yeah, let's just say uncool and move on. I knew, I knew, that staying at home would not be a possibility for the Ks. Now Big K, having been raised in extreme poverty, claimed we could afford it if we tried real hard. I, being smart, refused to even do the math because the idea was so ridiculous. But as the bile churned in my innards at the thought of leaving my Phook in the hands of a 9-toothed meth cooker daycare worker*, I decided to just do the math for shits and giggles. What I discovered, much to my surprise, was that if we paid off our remaining car loan with some savings, we might have a couple hundred bucks left over each month once the bills were paid to acquire the minimum necessary foodstuffs and diapers. Mommy's little sweater habit? Yeah, I'd better learn how to darn. Daddy's little computer habit? Yeah, get used to archaic technology. College funds for the kids? Yeah, let's go run some wind sprints because Phookie needs a scholarship. Retirement savings? Fix social security right fucking now, please. But still, technically enough to pay the bills and buy a cart or two of groceries each month. Suddenly, somehow, this seemed like a workable idea. A choir of angels sang their song and light shone upon me and I knew, suddenly, somehow, that for me, for Phook, for us, this is what had to be done.

So it became the plan, and we put it into effect. I resigned my job awhile back. And Friday was my last day. Now, we were warned about the dangers of blogging about our employer at many a staff meeting, so I'm not going to go into too much detail here about my workplace. But I will share an anecdote or three just to get my point across. Anecdote a) My workload, at times, was such that I have worked on more than one major holiday in order to meet deadlines. Anecdote b) The CEO was a loon. I once heard her, around 10 p.m. one night, creep out of her office and instruct the cleaning staff on how to more effectively vacuum the carpets. The basic philosophy that this anecdote reveals might indicate the style with which she managed her company of several thousand employees. Anecdote c) Being salaried employees, everyone was of course free to work as many billions of hours as needed to accomplish their tasks, without the benefit of overtime pay. However, the CEO in question receives a daily report showing which employees logged less than 8 work hours in any given day, because Lord knows that if you knock off at 4:00 one random Tuesday afternoon you're a slacker. Okay, so this was a demanding job in a nutzone. However, I made some of my best friends ever while working at this joint. I started working there right out of college, and ran into some real cool cats. The work environment, within my particular pod of co-peeps, was most excellent. It was not unusual for someone to blow a beverage out of their nose because laughter would occasionally escalate to that level. Good stuff. 5 years, 8 months of good stuff.

So Friday, then, was hard. Real hard. I'm not some nutter Duggar, puppies and kitties and family schedules on chalkboards kind of loonbag who cannot comprehend the realities of staying home with a child or children. I am scared shitless, I am sad, and I am mourning something awfully big. I know that in my circumstances, for my child(ren), this is the right thing to do.** But I feel like I just jumped off a pier into an abyss of babytalk, poopie pants, and not even enough cash to medicate myself with shopping on occasion. Not to mention the fact that I am walking away from a salary several standard deviations from the norm for a chode with an English degree.*** So on Friday, I kind of feel like I lined myself up at the firing squad and performed my own execution. Of course I am being melodramatic, but something, the professional, balls-to-the-wall, get 'er done, deadline-o-matic superchick, well, she is out of commission for the foreseeable future. And that part of me, although it gave me high blood pressure and made me a real pain in the ass sometimes, was a pretty prominent part of my identity. And any time you are going through an identity amputation, well, it ain't easy, even if you are escaping the grip of a megalomaniac CEO.

So, my peeps had a goodbye potluck for me, and I hugged them all goodbye. And then I left. My last hug was with a very longtime co-worker, and it broke a part of my heart to do it. And as I walked out of the buildings, I sobbed giant, massive, huge, body-wracking tears. The gamers who shared my elevator ride really got a TGIF treat. If there hadn't been a snowstorm urging me to get my butt in gear, I probably would have sat down on the floor and composed myself before getting in the car. I really needed to compose myself at least. It was just a very sad moment in my life, and I don't think I'll ever forget it. (I'm crying now, for the record.) And then I got in the car and left the parking garage, and I saw a lost dog running down the road. He didn't know where he was going, but he was going balls out. I thought that was a pretty perfect metaphor for the moment.

So, here I am. A Sunday night, with nothing to do tomorrow that is going to earn me a dime. Just me and Phook, Phook and me. Oh, I know, this is what I wanted. This is, for me, a dream come true. My husband is the most supportive cat on the planet and he's working his butt off doing extra computer work for people so we can survive, and I know we will. Please don't hate me for whining about something I wanted, blog people. Don't turn on me now, cause I'm really gonna need ya. Just bear with me while I vent all this crazy, crazy ohmigod I can't believe I pulled the trigger stuff.

So yeah, tomorrow it's just me and Phook, Phook and me. And I guess that's the end of my story. Or the beginning.






*Just so I don't get myself in trouble on that daycare worker comment. Where I live, there are not nice, high quality daycare centers where you can take your kid and feel pretty confident that they are going to come out the other side being good at sharing, secure away from their mommies, and more ready to start kindergarten. There are a couple frightening-looking places, but nothing I feel all that great about. I live in the only county in Wisconsin without a hospital, okay? The economy is virtually nonexistent other than the taverns. There is not exactly a lot of demand for Montessori schools and shit. I do not mean to disparage daycares as a concept or their employees as a people.

**I would like to take this opportunity to, in all seriousness, salute all moms. Any mom with a soul has or will go through something heart wrenching when it comes to making decisions about working and child rearing and finding the right balance, all while operating within the constraints of their economic and other realities. And I think that for every one of us, something is compromised. So you, working mom, student mom, stay at home mom, part time working mom, you, congratulations on doing your best with what you have.

***Why, then, didn't Big K become a stay at home dad? 160 miles, people. That was my daily roundtrip commute. I literally would have been gone for the entirety of Phook's waking hours. And permanent tele-commuting was not a corporate-sanctioned option.

100th post, 100 things

To celebrate my 100^th blog post, I’m going to do this “100 things” thing I’ve seen on lots of other blogs. It is sure to be a self-indulgent, oversharing festival of nonsense. And it will be too long.

1. I am 6’ tall and if you asked me to name the Top 5 things I liked about myself, this would be one of them. I like to help ladies get stuff off the high shelves in stores.
2. You know how if you measure your wingspan, it is supposed to be the same as your height? Well, mine is 4 inches longer...I am 76 inches from left fingertip to right fingertip. There are no shirts made for females that reach my wrists appropriately.
3. Cats are my favorite animal and I have 4 of them. When I was in labor with Phookie, the only visualization technique I used to get through the pain was to use my left hand to pretend to pet my cat Snoot (a.k.a. Uncle Growler). It worked.
4. I really like dogs too and we often talk about getting one, but I don’t know if it will ever happen. If we do, I want it to be a relatively small mutt from the Humane Society and scruffy. Big overly friendly dogs like Labs overwhelm me and make me nervous when they jump on me. Not sure why.
5. There are pictures of my sister and I as children playing in a giant cardboard box with windows and a door cut out of it and our address written on it with a black marker. That captures the essence of my childhood and I hope to be able to create a magical world of free fun for Phookie just like I had.
6. In high school, I was the valedictorian, the homecoming queen, and a 3-sport all conference athlete. (Granted, there were only a couple hundred people in my high school, so this isn't all that swell, really.) Still, I occasionally worry that my life peaked at age 17. And then I feel really pathetic.
7. I bear some level of shame because I moved back to my hometown a few years after college. I feel like people think I’m a loser for doing this, even though I have no hard evidence to support this theory. Ultimately, I am 99% happy I moved home, and 1% embarrassed.
8. I dated a guy on and off from age 14 to age 19. I was insanely, madly in love with him the entire time and it was totally insane from the moment we first broke up about a year into the whole fiasco. But that whole “The First Cut is the Deepest" shit? Applicable.
9. If Phookie’s heart gets broken at age 15, I will know how real that can be. I will not chalk it up to puppy love or consider it in any way insignificant.
10. When I got my heart broken at age 15, my Dad and I were sitting on the front porch and he told me a story about a girl he was madly in love with before he met my mother. He said he was just crazy about this girl, they didn’t date for long, and she broke his heart. When I asked him what her name was, he said he honestly could not remember, and he never even thinks of her anymore. But he said that if she walked into a room he was in, he would still love her. That taught me a lot about how love works.
11. I have never been outside the U.S. except for Canada and the Bahamas. I always wanted to study abroad in college but it never happened for various reasons. My sister did a couple of study abroad things and I envy her that. I feel very unworldly because I do not have international travel as a life experience.
12. I have traveled all over the U.S. and have had some of the best experiences of my life in a car packed with idiots headed to a cheap destination.
13. Some day, I want to go on a trip on the Trans-Canadian railroad.
14. Some day, I want to go on a cruise through the Panama Canal.
15. Some day, I want to go to Alaska.
16. Some day, I want to go to Australia.
17. Some day, I want to go to Greece.
18. I attend a very conservative Christian church and believe in the majority of its fundamental teachings. However, I have liberal views in regards to the major social issues of our day. This results in me getting angry in church every now and then and I sometimes consider not going anymore and just practicing the personal religion that exists only in my head. But the formality of churchgoing keeps me on track in lots of ways, so I go. That’s probably messed up.
19. My daughter will attend the school adjoining the aforementioned church, just as I did. I want her to learn the Bible and have a Christian education. If she chooses a different religious path once she is older, I won’t be disappointed.
20. But to be honest, if she became an atheist, it would kill me.
21. I love gardening. Flowers, yes, but my real passion is the vegetable garden.
22. I have a relatively small yard and the only reason this bugs me is that I want to grow things that take up lots of space, like squash and watermelons.
23. Oh, I guess there’s another reason this bugs me. If I could have one luxury item, it would be a nice swimming pool. No room for that.
24. I love roller coasters. Cedar Point and Great America are my idea of a good time. Also, the rides on top of the Stratosphere tower in Las Vegas are pretty tits.
25. I do not get sick on rides, except things that spin like a merry-go-round.
26. I love preserving foodstuffs, generally in the form of canning. I have canned many jams and jellies, many pickled vegetables, my own taco sauce and barbecue sauce, tomato juice, applesauce, and lots of other shit. My specialty, however, is salsa. I am the Queen of All Salsa.
27. In my dream life, I sell my homemade canned goods under the brand name “Hosedog Canning Co.” Lots of people buy it.
28. In my dream life, I live on a small farm where I grow the raw materials for the canned goods.
29. In my dream life, I also have a goat, a brown cow, brown chickens, alpacas, a horse, a few dogs, and scores of cats. They are all my pets and would be treated as such, although I suppose I wouldn’t mind some brown eggs out of those chickens. (I prefer brown eggs for no good reason.)
30. In my dream life, I also have six daughters who wear bonnets and help me farm my stuff. Phookie, the oldest, is my First Mate and is in charge of wrangling her sisters.
31. I do want to have a son, but mainly for Big K. I have no idea what I’d do with a boy. But something tells me I’m gonna have to figure it out some day.
32. When I was pregnant with Phookie and her gender was a mystery, I was pretty terrified at the prospect of having a boy. When she exited my person, I knew instantly she was a girl and it was the happiest moment of my life.
33. I sometimes wonder if I would have felt the same level of insane happiness if she had been a boy. And I feel terrible about that.
34. I’m not a girlie girl, I like dirt, and I have some man-hobbies, so I don’t know why I am so freaked out by the idea of having a son.
35. When I was six years old, I stole a pack of grape Bubbalicious bubble gum from the grocery store checkout. I put my hand in the pocket of my pink spring coat and snatched the gum into the pocket. I then put it under my pillow and chewed a piece 5 nights in a row. When we were reviewing Thou Shalt Not Steal in 2^nd grade, my teacher had us put our heads on our desk and raise our hands if we’d ever stolen anything. I did not raise my hand.
36. I think about the aforementioned experience at least once a month. It is one of the most vivid and enduring memories of my young life.
37. The pictures my father took of me as a child are beautiful. I can tell how much he loved me by those pictures.
38. I am making albums for Phookie of all of her pictures and I am writing little notes to go with each picture in the margins to form something of a narrative. Sub-scrapbooking, but I want to preserve these pictures for her in a format she can touch, instead of just on some CD or hard drive somewhere. I hope that when she looks at them when she is 27 years old, she will be able to tell how much I loved her by those pictures.
39. I attended the smallest college and the biggest college in the state of Wisconsin. Or at least close to the smallest. Ultimately, neither was a good fit for me and I ended up pretty much just doing my time rather than having a great college experience.
40. I worked an average of about 40 hours per week and at least 2 jobs during my entire college experience.
41. I still have student loans.
42. I made the Dean’s List every semester of college. By a wide margin.
43. I think that I almost had a nervous breakdown several times during college.
44. I did not sleep very much during college.
45. All the sheets I used in college are full of stains. Highlighter stains. Because I always fell asleep with a book and an uncapped highlighter, and woke up with everything streaked in hot pink or bright orange. Big K always thought this was hilarious.
46. I have 1 enduring friend that I made from college. Sometimes I feel bad about that.
47. My best friend has been my best friend since the 3^rd grade. One night recently, I was lying in bed and I realized that the beginning of the school year this Fall will mark the 20^th Anniversary of our Best Friendship. Having a 20-year best friend at age 27 is, well, awesome.
48. Whenever I am really stressed out, I have intense cravings for elbow macaroni doused in butter, salt, and Parmesan cheese from the green can. And a side of Dr. Pepper. No wonder I’m so roomy.
49. My older man crush is Ed Harris.
50. Bon Jovi has always and will forever be my favorite band. You can laugh. I don’t care.
51. When I see ice sculptures, I have an overwhelming urge to lick them.
52. I once did lick an ice sculpture in the shape of a wizard or something at an event hosted by my employer.
53. 18 days into this millennium, when I was 19 years old, I was driving my little red car when I was smacked by a large telephone service van.
54. I was driven into the car in front of me, my airbag deployed, and my car was totaled.
55. I thought I was okay.
56. Until about half an hour later, when my neck and back got stiff.
57. Two years later, they found the blown discs in my back that had been causing incredible back pain and numbness in my legs since a few days after the accident.
58. I saw at least 10 doctors before someone ordered an MRI to find those discs that had been roosting on my spinal nerves. The first 9 thought the pain was all in my head, and a couple of them told me so.
59. I pretty much hate the entire medical community. Well, that’s an overstatement. But I have been bent over by the health care system and it is fair to say I’m scarred by it.
60. I had the offending disc material and some chunks of vertebrae surgically removed from my back in the Fall of 2002.
61. My back still hurts every day. I know I will never be the same. Boy does that suck.
62. I generally feel bad for obese people driving their mart carts at the store, because I give them the benefit of the doubt and think there is a decent chance that the medical community has done them a disservice. Or they are suffering from something really painful I can't understand and their fatness is merely a symptom.
    
63. I worry that if my back gets much worse than it is, I could be in a mart cart some day. That scares the shit out of me.
64. I sing pretty much constantly and make up my own words to familiar tunes. They always used to be about the cats, but now I sing a lot about and to Phookie. She seems to like it.
65. I like to tell stories. Whenever we leave the house overnight, I tell Big K elaborate stories about the parties the cats threw while we were gone. They are always themed (luau, beach party, ice-skating party, etc.). Always lots of beer drinking and scrambling at the last minute to get the place cleaned up.
66. I think storytelling might actually be my true calling in life. I can tell you a hilarious story about a stump.
67. I love redheaded boys.
68. Once, I was in a store, and I saw two redheaded parents, and they had three redheaded little kids in their cart. It was like 7 years ago, and I still remember them because they warmed my little heart.
69. Montages make me cry. Great moments in sport set to music? I cry. All the entertainment people who died in the past year shown in little clips during the Oscars? Get me a Kleenex.
70. I would some day really like to have a vehicle with a sunroof.
71. I like to dance.
72. I get really, really pissed sometimes. And throw things.
73. When Big K and I first moved in together, I threw things at him every now and then. It was real rocky at times. I stomped out of our apartment. I threatened to end it. Yeah, it was rocky.
74. My marriage to Big K is the best thing I have. Those old rocky rocks are memories now and we have something I trust will last forever.
75. As much as I feel the tendency to laser-focus on Phookie, I know I can’t, because after a couple decades of intense child rearing, it’s just gonna be me and Big K again. And I don’t want to be one of those couples you see eating at a restaurant that does not speak to each other during their entire meal.
76. Big K is the butt of 80% of my jokes, but really, I’m just a barnacle on that guy’s boat.
77. I cried (inconsolably) several times during my pregnancy because I was worried about too many ingredients in the love soup I have made with Big K.
78. Of course we just needed a dash of Phook to perfect the dish.
79. It took 15 months of trying for Phook to land in my uterus.
80. Unsuccessfully trying to conceive was the scariest and most emotionally difficult experience of my life.
81. Only about 3 people other than Big K knew we were trying to get pregnant. The rest of the world (or so it seemed) was just interested in bugging me about when we were going to have kids.
82. I wish I would have blogged during my pregnancy.
    
83. If I am ever in a position to make a public service announcement, it is going to be something like this: DON’T EVER EVER EVER ASK ANYONE ABOUT THEIR PLANS FOR A FAMILY. EVER. IDIOT. YOUR WORDS MAY WELL BE A JAGGED SHARD OF GLASS STABBED OVER AND OVER INTO THE HEART OF YOUR VICTIM. IDIOT.
84. I would rather have an unplanned triplet pregnancy than go through one more month of hoping for a pregnancy in my life.
85. When I was pregnant with Phookie, I called her the K***Fetus, always with a chuckle. Reflecting on it though, I realize I made up a sub-human name for her because I was scared the pregnancy wouldn’t last. I could not utter the word “baby,” because it would have been a lot easier to lose a fetus, if that horrible experience had actually occurred, and I wanted a baby so incredibly deeply I couldn’t imagine losing one once I had a taste of it. Now that I know who was in there, I will have a hard time depersonalizing any subsequent pregnancies I may be lucky enough to experience. I feel bad that I ever did that.
86. My grandfathers both passed away, at age 45 and 57, before I was born. My parents did a great job of bringing them alive for me, but it makes me profoundly sad to never have met them.
87. Both of my grandfathers are buried in the same cemetery, which happens to be visible down the road from the house where I grew up. I liked that, because even though I couldn’t see them, they were really just down the street the whole time. At least that’s how I like to think of it.
88. I love my family more than words can describe. If I could live in a triplex with my parents in one pod, my sister in another, and the K’s in a third, I’d call it good. I don’t think I can O.D. on them. In fact, I’d rather spend time with them than pretty much anyone else on earth. And I put that into practice whenever possible.
89. I really want a kayak. Something fierce. Got a used one for sale? Please post in the comments.
90. Even if I can’t get a kayak, I plan to spend the majority of the next several summers in or near water with Phook. I already bought her this floatation device thing for babies.
91. I could write 20,000 pages and not be able to describe my feelings for my daughter. All that crap about not being able to imagine the love you have for your child until you actually have one? True.
92. I could write 20,000 pages and not be able to describe how difficult motherhood is. There’s the sleep deprivation and the constant meeting of someone else’s needs while ignoring your own. But it’s not that. It is the deep, emotional crazy shit that is indescribable.
93. When I was pregnant, I thought my child’s infancy would be something I would endure on the way to the fun and exciting times of toddlerhood. Wrong. I have loved Phook’s infancy. If I could bottle the euphoria of those first couple weeks of falling in love with her and sell it, I’d be a zillionaire.
94. If you ask me what movie I want to watch, I will always say Ocean’s 11.
95. I look pretty good in hats. I wish I remembered to wear one more.
96. I feel like I was dealt a good hand in life.
97. I truly believe the key to happiness is wanting what you have rather than having what you want.
98. Sometimes I forget the above.
99. But then I get a sniff of Phook, and I remember.
100. My name is Whitni.

So there.

Snow, etc.

Since I am wildly preoccupied with an upcoming major life change (more on that later), I have no recourse but to post some pictures of this past weekend's snowy festivities. We got a crapload of snow here in The Woods, and we sure enjoyed dunking Phook in it.

Here she is jammed in a snow bank (and loving it):

Here is the Phook angel we made:

Here we have evidence of snow taller than Phook:

Here we have Phook enjoying some outdoor snowsnuggle with Auntie Hode:

And the robust K Family:

For giggles, let us also enjoy this picture of Phookie in rough seas in an unseaworthy craft:

And a be-toweled Phook post-bath with Hode:


And finally, Phook sucking on her Dad's hat. (Everything is fair game for jamming into the Phook mouth these days.)

That is it for now. More later, buddies.

Oh, wait, one more thing. Phook can now make backwards progress in a reverse-crawl sort of weird maneuver. Yesterday, she traversed approximately 3 feet by pushing herself backwards. If you have a used babygate (or 10) you'd like to sell me, please post in the comments, as I believe we may have some serious mobility on our hands before we know it. Can you smell my fear?