I snapped this morning. Just snapped.

Chronic sleep deprivation is a strange bird, a horrid strange bird. The lights are so blindingly bright, the television so unbearably loud (was it always this loud?) and painful, your movements are jerky and uncoordinated so that you frequently hurt yourself unintentionally doing extremely mundane things. Like walking. Driving is too scary because you simply feel drunk and everything just moves too fast for your brain to comprehend, so you stay stuck at home where things are somewhat (slightly) safer. Eventually, you try going to the store to pick up a few things without a list, and you will likely end up buying a new SUV because you are so confused as to what it is that you are actually trying to buy, and the SUV was something that your brain recognized as having wanted at some point. Then you get home and your husband tells you that what you had actually gone to pick up was Tylenol for your aching back. Oopsies. But now you can’t really tell where the pain is coming from anymore because it seems to be coming from everywhere and nowhere at the same time.

Occasionally you see your friends, who are now totally confused by you, mainly because you are so tired that you find it hard to properly respond to what they’re saying. You just stare blankly at them, while trying not to say the wrong thing, wanting desperately to say the right thing, which would be easier if you could remember what the hell they were talking about. Your normally quick-thinking brain has slowed to a snail’s pace, so it’s all that you can to do try to make the appropriate noises and faces without letting them know that you are too stupid for them now. But this is your one salvation: the people that knew you before your brain stem fried, and you love them dearly. When they leave, you mentally rehearse what you said and hope like hell that it was not offensive, because now the prospect of seeing these people is all that is keeping you sane.

You’d love a nap, but when you lay down with the baby, he wakes up some 20 minutes later just as you were falling asleep. Which you remember had been used as some kind of torture technique for POW’s (along with playing some Christina Aguilara, who you listen to by choice, but you imagine that listening to Averil Lavigne would elicit the same response in you.), and suddenly the hallway tilts to the side and you feel dizzy and slightly tipsy, and you hope like hell that you can make it down the stairs without dropping the baby. So before making your decent, you consider the positions that would likely keep the baby safest should you fall, which sounds excessive until you remember falling though the screen door, cutting the hell out of your finger stupidly reaching into the diaper bag, and nearly fainting twice at the mall. Which was what happened just over the weekend. Besides, the baby has his whole life ahead of him and you, well, you’re feeling older and older by the day, besides if you hurt yourself badly enough, you’d get to go to the hospital and get some pain meds and finally get to rest, which is all that you really want anyway. When you finally make it down the stairs while clutching the baby for dear life, your husband wonders why you suddenly sprouted devil horns and a tail when he mentions that he’s “tired” and “wants to take a nap,” because to you, all it feels like is being spit at in the face considering that he’s hasn’t gotten up over night to really tend to the baby in many months, so he is fortunate enough to get 6-8 hours of uninterrupted sleep most nights.

Unlike you, who hasn’t slept more than 4 hours in a row in over six months, and that’s on a damn good night. Hell, you consider it a good day when you get to brush your hair AND put in your contacts.

But all logic and rationallity (you can be tired AND someone else can be tired at the same time, without negating each other!) have left the building with Elvis many, many moons ago, so all that comes out of your mouth is some vague sheep-like noises and then the tears of frustration begin, because you can’t even form an understandable sentence any longer, and you suddenly know how horrifying it must be to have dementia.

Daily, you check yourself to make sure that you are not succumbing to The Crazy that runs rampant in your family. You check and recheck your emotions, turning them over in your mind like a cube to ensure that you are properly reacting to things on an emotional level. Try as you might, you eventually discover that you are not in spite of your best intentions.

You have these vague fantasies about leaving the baby somewhere safe over night and walking to a hotel down the road and sleeping for the next twelve hours without telling anyone where you are because they’d come looking and wanting SOMETHING ELSE from you, but you know that your overwhelming guilt would never allow it. Your anxiety has reached the point where you must take sleeping pills to even get yourself to sleep, because if you did not, you would be up anxiously waiting for that sound, the one that has interrupted your sleep for months.

Crying it out doesn’t work, although you firmly agree with it, because it just makes the baby increasingly anxious and frantic because NO ONE IS COMING FOR HIM, so it increases your workload tenfold when you do finally breakdown and pick him up because now you must spend the next twelve hours not leaving his line of sight, lest a tantrum errupt. Besides, it makes you feel badly. He IS just a baby, afterall.

So what do you do when you don’t have the foggiest idea what to do any longer? You yell at a completely harmless baby, you scream and you cry out of frustration for what feels like years of having to cater to his each and every whim. You curse everyone around you for not being able or not even trying to help you more when you are just trying like hell to keep your head above water and someone else wants something else from you NOWNOWNOW! But you have nothing left to give ANYONE anymore. Not one damn thing. You’re drinking gasoline just to stay warm, but where are my socks, Mom, where is my bag, Becky, what’s for dinner tonight?

Then you drink yet another cup of coffee, burn your hands in the process, take a deep breath or thirteen, and promise yourself in vain that tomorrow will be a better day. Because someday, it will be. It just has to be.

I happen to be one of those people who, when faced with periods of high stress, lack of sleep, or illness that tends to let themselves go with routine maintence. My children will always be well groomed, dressed in clean clothes, and well fed, but I find myself continually looking like I may actually be half dead. I’m so discouraged about my pregnancy weight gain that I find myself apologizing to complete strangers for it. Like they actually care one way or another (although I’m sure that my many nay-sayers are probably chuckling to themselves about it).

Today I realized that it had been ages since I have either plucked the ole’ caterpillers (which I am usually fastidious about, otherwise I look like Bert or Ernie), given myself a pedicure (I cannot handle small rude Asian women touching my feet and then complaining that I have not tipped them enough WHEN THEY WERE COMPLETELY RUDE TO ME. Ahem.), or taken a freaking shower. Gross. Most of this routineness can be attributed to a lack of sleep, a nasty sinus infection, the bloody heat, and a baby who has been in a terrible mood.

I took care of all of this today and I feel loads better about life in general, which reminds me that I need to be more vigilant about doing so on a more regular basis. I don’t have the time to consistantly make it to the gym (and am frequently thwarted by events outside of my own control), and a lengthy soak in the tub is sadly a thing of the past, oh and the tanning bed? That’s going to have to wait until I stop nursing, what with the burning of the nipples and all.

These are all things that I will get back in the habit of doing regularly when circumstances allow it. But with The Internet as my witness, I will start taking better care of myself with the things that I am able to do with my crazy schedule in the future.

(and I have chosen what I will do when I reach my prepregnancy weight. It involves a haircut and dye, because I am still under the misguided impression that my hair acts as somewhat of a weight-hiding mumu.)

OHMYGOD: on a totally unrelated note, the baby woke up from a nap as I was writing this, and I realized that I could hear water running. While trying to ascertain WHERE said water was coming from while going upstairs to get the baby, I found the culprit: the bathtub from which I had just showered AND ON MY HONOR TURNED OFF. It appears as though we have a ghost.

This morning, after having practiced on such objects as his chubby starfish hands, his feet, my shoulder, Alex finally did it. The first of many (if he takes after his father) words has finally come out of his mouth.

Alex: “dadadadadadada.”

Me: “Yeah, yeah, yeah, kiddo. I’ll let you try to get your ‘dadadada’ out of bed every 3 hours every night. Why don’t you see how effective THAT is!”

I’ve been quiet here, partially because I’m feeling hormonal as hell (and yet no sign of my period, which Dave has pointed out, I’ve been saying “was coming any minute now” for the past two months) and partially because I think my brain may actually be melting. Seriously, take an MRI of my brain, and I can almost assure you that I may be missing a cortex or twenty-seven. I’m like a gigantic brain stem, just walking around having to be told what to do. Thankfully the sinus infection seems to be abating somewhat, but now this pervasive heat seems to be actually driving me past the brink of madness.

I seem to have made a grave tactical error several weeks ago when I proclaimed “Well, the A/C dying couldn’t have happened at a better time,” because yeah, it’s now about 10,000 degrees Celcius (and yes, I am aware that that is an impossibility) in my home. With a 60% humidity. It’s so humid here that I actually think I heard the carpet squish under my feet when I got up this morning. I’m not even exaggerating slightly. I actually made poor Dave go buy a window A/C unit for our bedroom on Saturday, as it was cheaper than going to live at a hotel for a couple of days.

But Becky, you say, your parents live across the river and they have 4 extra bedrooms that they are NOT USING plus glorious, oh glorious! central air conditioning! Why not just go there?

Oh, dear reader, I would just as soon take up Interpretive Dancing as a career choice (which creeps me the hell out) than ever, EVER do that again! When we were selling the condo before we got the keys to our new house, we moved in with them for about a month. Possibly the longest and most nerve wracking month of my life. Let’s just say that with the shear amount of empty rooms, whichever one we were currently occupying was suddenly the room that my father JUST HAD TO BE IN RIGHTNOWRIGHTNOWRIGHTNOW (including the bedroom that we were sleeping in), like he was a jealous four-year-old or something. It actually got so bad that we were strongly considering the fiscally irresponsible (but mentally healthful) possiblity renting a hotel room for the remainder of our stay, while the huge possibility of two morgages was looming on the horizon. It was AT THAT MOMENT that we vowed never, ever, to stay with my parents again. Ever.

So here I sit in the oppresively pervasive heat, losing possibly another cortex (one that was not previously damaged by the complete and utter lack of sleep that marks my days and nights. Man, I’m melodramtic today!), trying to look on the bright side of things.

At least Dave was able to fix the screen door that I fell through this weekend.

(I think it may be high time to Becky-proof the whole house before some ER doctor thinks that my husband beats me, which, if you know Dave, is a totally hilarious thought. If anything, I’d be the one who’d do the whuppin’. But how do you explain that to a resident?)

One side effect of feeding The Chubbs yogurt is that he’s not nearly as hungry as he once was. I am not even being remotely exaggeratory (that’s totally not a word, and if it is, I misspelled it) when I say that up until last week Alex nursed AT LEAST once every hour of the day. No jokes here.

Sunday (or maybe Saturday, it’s been a loooooonnnggg six months), I noticed that I was getting a red raised bumpy thing (yes, I’m technical) on my left breasticle. Figuring that it was absolutely nothing, I just let it be. Then, yesterday I noticed some serous fluid had collected underneath the skin and the realization smacked me in the face! I was probably experiencing a blocked duct, and OH WAIT I was sick too, and if there is one phrase I can remember about mastits, it’s this “if you’re breastfeeding and you feel like you have the flu, you have mastitis” (see Mom, my medical education WAS for something!).

Begrudgingly, I placed a call to my doctor’s office and left a message for the nurse. Now, I have a previous longstanding grudge against the nurses that work in the office, because, well, most of them are complete pinheads. When I was first pregnant with Alex, barfing my brains out, and on a leave of absence from work from aforementioned uncontrollable barfing, I called them at the request of my HR department to see if the MD would sign for a medical leave. The nurse told me that they “didn’t do that sort of thing” and that I should “eat an apple” to help with my nausea.

Riiiiiiiiggggggggghhhhhhhhhtttt. I’ll get right on that apple eatin’, lady.

(as a complete aside, one of the things that I hate to do most is to ask for help, especially from a medical professional. When I do, it’s under total duress and I am all weird and squirmy inside while doing so. So to be told to “eat an apple” was a huge slap in the face to me. Almost as bad as when I had delivered Ben, sustained a 4th degree and was given Tylenol 3 to take home. Obviously, at 3 am, if I am paging the on-call doctor for something to actually take the pain away, “taking a bath” isn’t going to cut it. So fuck you.)

ahem.

I fully expected a return call like,

Me: “I have a problem with my breast.”

RN: “I like potatoes.”

Me: “That’s nice. But I have a problem with my left breast and I am currently breastfeeding.”

RN: “Poooottttaaaatttttoooeeess are good. I love them.”

Me: “Okay, yeah, so about my breast. It might be mastitis, but I guess it could be a pimple.”

RN: “Baked potatoes are good for you.”

Me: “Okay, I gotta go.”

Instead, I got a call back from a competent nurse, who was alarmed by my symptoms, far more so than I was. She insisted that I come in the following morning (today), called in a script for some hardcore antibiotics and put me on an NSAID’s regime.

All to have the PA tell me that I have a spider bite. And a sinus infection.

(holy crap, I just posted actual pictures here. If you knew how long it took me to do this, you’d overlook the fact that these pictures are way too big for the page. I am so not computer savvy and Dave isn’t home to help me, i.e. do this for me. Either way, I am very, very proud of myself.)

I have never pretended to be much of a baby person, but I’ve known a whole ton of people who were. When I rotated through the maternity ward, I spent most of my time wishing that I was in Labor/Delivery where the action was, whereas many of my starry-eyed compatriots expressed how cuuuuutttteeee the babies were and how much they couldn’t waaaaiiiitttt to work with them. Sure, I like babies, I probably think that they’re cute (especially once they’re past the whole garden-gnome stage), and when you have yours, I’ll be there at the hospital to oogle them and tell you how awesome you look, and of COURSE you’ve shed all of that pregnancy weight with delivery. Because I’m your friend.

When Alex was born and the people began to swing by to meet him, I was amazed at how many people said that he was cute. It’s not that I don’t love him to pieces, of course I do, but I thought that he looked rather like Chicken Little. The next words out of their mouths were invariably “Holy crap, he looks JUST like Dave!” because he did.

(as an aside here, I happen to make mention of which parent the child looks like ALL THE TIME when I see new babies. Mainly because most of my friends know that I think babies are pretty strange looking at first, and because when I feel uncomfortable or tell a lie, my mouth opens up and stuff pours out whether I want it to or not. Mentioning that the baby looks like Mom or Dad is a way that I don’t keep going on and on about how cute your baby is (or isn’t) because eventually you won’t believe me.)

At first, this didn’t bother me, as even when he was unceremoniously dumped onto my lap immediately post birth, my inital reaction was something like “If there had been any question of parentage, we now know who is father is.” The resemblance was that uncanny.

Alex:

Ben:

Me Without The Daver (who I couldn’t find a proper picture of):

The Only Picture I Have Of Dave on My Computer Currently (but you cannot see the resemblance there):

Eventually, though, I started to get tired of people commenting on this fact. It was bad enough to have to hear it from our family and friends, but then strangers would comment on it, too. What made me more upset about this than anything else is that Ben would be right there while people would go on and on about the baby, and you know what? At five (and six) he not only understands what you are saying, but he can respond to you in full coherant sentences as well.

I suppose the silver lining in this is that once the stranger realizes that Ben is responding to him (Ben looks about three, the ickle peanut), if they are not a complete jerk, they will eventually comment on how much Ben looks like me. He doesn’t, not really, I mean, we share coloring with the dark hair and darker skin, but honestly, he looks like his father. If, however, you do not happen to see him next to his father, you just see Dave and I together, you would absolutely think that Ben takes after me.

(Dave + Alex = pasty newsprint complexion. Turns beet red if in sunlight for >2.4 seconds.

Becky + Ben = dark and mysterious skin color. Possibly even sexxy.)

The other day during dinner, Ben spent a good deal of time searching Dave’s face to see where his resemblence to him was, after I had made mention earlier in the day that Ben, Alex and I shared eyes (which is a VERYGOODTHING, not so much for now, but for a later date, when Ben might care). He eventually decided on, I believe, ears being the same.

I just didn’t have the heart to explain to Ben, who adores and idolizes Dave more than he ever will his father, about biology and genetics. So ears, Ben and Dave share ears.

(now if I have another one, is it too much to ask that he or she look at least a little bit like me?)

Because I’m feeling spunky, here’s a picture of my wedding cake, the coolest part of my wedding:

Hooray!

It’s October now, and we’re coming up on my favorite part of the year: autumn. Summer has so few holidays that I adore, with the possible exception of my birthday, which I’m still petitioning for national holiday status. Not too sure why the holiday makers are ignoring me so thoroughly, but anyway.

Now, on the not too distant horizon all of my favorite holidays are looming. We’re going to an actual pick-your-own-pumpkin patch this weekend which is about a million times better than the overcrowded, carnival-like one that we used to go to. Like anything else in the world, our old pumpkin patch was super-awesome until the rest of the world discovered it, and then the owners brought in a petting zoo, rides, a clown, a circus, a corn maze, a donkey show, llamas, an apple orchard and rocket rides. I’m only exaggerating slightly.

Afterward, if we’re all still alive, we’re going to carve pumpkins and decorate cupcakes. I’m completely excited by this because not only does this mean I might get to eat a cupcake, which, after weeks on a diet sounds totally delicious, but also, seeing the holidays through the eyes of your children is half of the reason for HAVING kids in the first place. Right?

(the other half is, of course, tax deductions. OBVIOUSLY)

In a orange and black induced haze, I had forgotten what ELSE October brings to our house: fundraiser time. We live in a kid-infested neighborhood, the kind that you literally cannot walk through without tripping over someone’s bike, or someone’s toddler which is great. Mostly I like kids, especially if I don’t have to watch them and they’re not destroying my stuff.

I was a Brownie for a year until I dropped out when I realized what a waste of time and energy it was. Time I could have better spent sitting on my ass and watching grass grow. I dutifully sold cookies door to door as mandated by sadistic leaders everywhere and possibly one of the most traumatic experiences of my eight year old life.

I had doors slammed in my face. People scream at me. I got stiffed and ripped off. I got blisters and ruined a perfectly good pair of Keds. And for all of my trouble? I got some stupid sad-eyed puppy charm for the zipper on my hoodie.

I didn’t even sell enough to get a stupid patch.

In a month or two I will be literally be swimming in the very same stuff that I cannot eat (hel-lo diet!) my personal tithing to the Fundraising Gods. I am entirely sympathetic to these poor little tykes coming around, so much so that I try to buy something from the younger ones. PLUS, I am also trying to work up our Fundraising Karma for our children, so that by the time that I have to take them (shudder, shudder) door-to-door, mayhap people will not spit at them.

Every time the doorbell rings, I grab my check book and say a silent prayer of thanks that my own door-to-door days are now over, and later as I’m swimming in a sea of butt-ugly wrapping paper or popcorn, I’ll try and remember that maybe, just maybe, I was the house that got that kid the patch that I never got.

Or maybe I just have SUCKER written on my forehead.

I have a strange feeling that menstruation is returning to my life after being notably absent since last July (somewhere Kotex is rejoycing), which is making me feel quite hormonal. I’m terribly crabby and feeling extremely put upon, so in that vein I will make a list of my current pet peeves, which is of course due to my now extremely hormonal state, ever changing.

*People who when faced with a long line to check out, get all up in my personal space as though the space in I occupy is somehow holding up the whole line. I admitidly have a fairly wide personal space bubble and not prone to want to snuggle up to complete strangers, but come on. The two feet that I occupy is not what is holding up the line. Just relax and try to enjoy the time that you actually able to zone out. I do.

*Getting my ickle Alexander vaccinated just plain sucks. There is something so hard about inflicting (albeit necessary) pain on someone so small and innocent, especially since you cannot assuage your guilt by promising an ice cream or a trip to McDonalds afterwards. Plus, the day afterwards is ruined by an incredibly bad mood (on his part, I just feel drained).

*I have been so, so tired all last week, so much so that I have not gotten much done around the house at all. Since my own sense of personal satisfaction is strongly linked to the amount of things I can accomplish, this makes me feel worse. I have been so tired that I actually took a pregnancy test, which for some reason I totally hate to do. But it served to remind me that I need to take one at least once a month while I am amennorheic to ensure that I am not actually pregnant. Because, God forbid, I have a miscarriage that I mistake for a period, I run a high risk of developing Hydrops fetalis with subsequent pregnancies.

*I flipping hate Dustin Diamond. Sure, I watched Saved By The Bell back in the day and I thought that he was a bit of an idiot back then in an annoying little brother sort of way but now I find him completely repulsive. And no, I have NOT seen the porno that he was in because I absolutely know that I would never, ever be able to have sexual intercourse again. If he were to fall off the planet, I would be totally happy. Ew.

Can you tell I’m feeling hormonal today? Help me out here, what is pissing YOU off today?

Because I am a certified Bad Mother (nifty framed certificate and all!), I started my Alexander on solids as soon as I possibly could in desperate hope that this would resolve the My Child NEVER Sleeps Problem. It didn’t actually do the slightest bit of good in the Sleeping Department, but at least it gave my poor nipples a rest for a time or two.

To say that he has taken to solids well would be a drastic understatement, he LOVES his solids, which thrills me in ways I’d never imagined.

Let me back up for a moment, so I can let you in on where this comes from: Ben, my darling Ben is not what we in this family call An Eater (but he is, however A Sleeper). Sure, now he’ll wolf down McDonalds like it’s going out of style, but what you never saw is the coaxing, pleading, begging and threatening we did in order to even get him to TRY THAT in first place. WHY would I make him eat this horrible, overprocessed, fatty gross food, might you ask? I was sick and tired of him only eating Saltines and Oatmeal three times per day and I assumed that this would be some sort of safer segueway into eating Real Food That Doesn’t Taste Like Cardboard. It worked. Eventually.

But not before some nearly irreparable damage was done to my ego. You see, when your kid does ANYTHING outside the norm, and as I can see, FoodStuff appear to garner a special place here, people are so very interested in discussing this with you. Discussing is totally the wrong word. More like judging you loudly about it.

Before we knew about the Spectrum Stuff, I was given SO MUCH FLACK about what my child ate that I eventually developed a hugemongous complex about my parenting in general. It wasn’t so much that I hadn’t TRIED to get my son to eat food, it’s just that he flipped the hell out every time I did so, and I wasn’t about to engage in a battle of the wills with a toddler. Period. Why give the poor kid a complex at such a young age? (BTW: we used the same method to potty train him and it worked beautifully).

So, chip on my shoulder large and intact, I used to laugh bitterly every time that I would head down the baby aisle, where the diapers are so convienently located across from the large display of prepackaged baby foods, because as far as I was concerned, it was all a sham: no one’s kids ate that crap (to be fair, if you saw “Turkey Dinner” all pureed in a jar, the color of vomit AND UNREFRIDGERATED you’d call it crap, too). I picked up some fruits and veggies in July, just to have on hand in the unlikely event that my child would ever allow such stuff to grace his ickle palate. Wouldn’t you know it, my supply of this mushed up food is now nearly depleated.

This has redeemed me in ways that I had never thought possible, because maybe, just maybe the problems with Ben had nothing to do with me in the first place. That might sound like a “Well, duh, Becky” statement, but it isn’t, not really. Parents, especially with their first child, are likely to blame themselves as well have to fend off blame from other people for whatever abnormalities (or as I prefer: personallity) that their children may have.

But since seeing Alexander literally wriggle his ickle body with joy when confronted with yogurt (so much so that I actually checked to ensure that he was not having a seizure. Yes, I’m serious.), I’ve decided that maybe, baby, it had nothing to do with me.

So thank you, Alexander, and thank you Gerber baby foods (which I still contend look awful) for redeeming me in ways I’d never imagined.