Operation Pink Herring

A little backstory

Joel and I have been talking about moving west for years. We've been actively TRYING to move west for probably three years, and thinking seriously about it for more like five or six.

When we graduated from college we'd been dating about a year and were ready to move in together... but not quite ready to move AWAY together. So, we stayed in Baltimore. Because the market was good and we were sick of slumlord asshat landlords and because we are  a little bit crazy, we bought a house a few months later. We were 22. We decided to go with an adjustable rate mortgage that  would be fixed for the first seven years. Our reasoning? There was NO way we'd live in Baltimore for seven years. We'd be, like, 30. Ut uh. Not happening. 

Spoiler alert: we're 32 now. We just moved one month ago. Time flies, eh? (I feel the need to defend ARM loans, though. I hear people talking about them like they're synonymous with predatory lending. That loan ended up being fantastic for us, even though we stayed in the house past the fixed portion. We got a rate half a percentage lower than the going 30-year fixed rate in 2003, and then when it adjusted in 2010 and 2011 our mortgage payment actually went DOWN by several hundred dollars a month because rates were even lower. /irrational need to defend ARM loans.)

We took a vacation to Washington and Oregon about five years ago and it just felt like... home. The mountains looming in the distance, the wet smell of the air. The impossible, teeming green-ness of the landscape. The relaxed west coastness of it all. It was where we wanted to be.

Ideally, we hoped to move before we had kids. HA. Obviously, that didn't happen. When it looked like it might take a long time to get pregnant, we threw ourselves whole hog onto the babymaking train and then surprise! It didn't actually take long at all. Soon I was lumbering around in maternity clothes and Joel intensified his job search. Every night. Every weekend. He spent thousands of hours on this never-ending project. Every once in a while he'd get a call or have a phone interview, but it was largely a frustrating and fruitless process. Still, we hoped to move before the baby was born. In fact, I believe Joel told me during one of my panicked THIS BABY IS COMING AND WE HAVE NOWHERE TO PUT IT speeches that he "guaranteed that we wouldn't be living in this house by the time the baby was born."

Spoiler alert: we were still living in that house when Hannah was born.

So Hannah arrived and our already cramped house seemed to shrink overnight. We really didn't have much in the way of baby stuff -- we just COULDN'T, there was literally no place to put it. We had to move Hannah's travel-sized bassinet to get into our wardrobe. I carried her travel-sized swing up two flights of stairs at night when it was time for bed. She had that swing and a baby papasan chair, and that was it in the way of baby paraphernalia. We sold a couch, TV, and TV stand to make room for her crib and a changing table/dresser combo.

And then a funny thing happened. Months went by and as I started to make mom-friends, I started to feel connected to the community. I loved being able to walk to the park and spend the afternoon there in the spring and summer. We walked to playdates. We had Port Discovery a mile away and The Science Center just a half mile from that. We hit the story times at two different libraries every week. Instead of feeling bitter about the inconveniences of city life that had worn us down and become increasingly bad over the most recent years -- mostly parking, but also the major uptick in both petty and violent crime -- I started to kind of... love it there. I can't deny it, I loved our neighborhood. Aside from the parking, I'd always loved our neighborhood but I really, really loved it with a kid. It was a fantastic place to hang around with a baby. 

But there was still the problem of the house. Our house was fine when we were recent college grads who had no furniture and no money to buy furniture and didn't mind eating meals at the coffee table anyway. But nine years, man. It's a lot of time. I was sick of eating meals at the coffee table by the time I turned 30. I was tired of having bikes stored in the living room and three Ikea wardrobes in the bedroom because the entire house only had one tiny closet.  And then we added a baby -- an entire extra human being with her modest swing and papasan chair and crib and changing table -- and shit got downright claustrophobic pretty fast. We had to move. 

I thought about just moving to a house that was better laid out and slightly larger in the same area. I thought about it a lot. I knew people who did exactly that, moving two blocks away from their old house. I thought about it even more when Joel's job search continued to go nowhere and Hannah turned one and suddenly we were not only still living in the house we were supposed to have moved out of before she was born, but I was sort of starting to think about having another baby. Not yet. Maybe not even for another year. But I could see just how fast a year went by, and really. There is NO way we could have fit two babies in that house. Not with the paper-thin walls and the creaky 112-year-old floors and the fact that I really, REALLY did not want to have a toddler and a newborn sharing a room. 

And... the crime had been getting terrible. Like, friends of mine being held up at gunpoint outside their homes at 6pm. Cars stolen. People being mugged during daylight hours. We heard someone pound across our rooftop at 11pm one night and later learned there had been a rash of break-ins on our block where the guy came in through the balcony door (most rowhouses have either a rooftop deck or rear balcony; we had both). It wasn't exactly stuff we could ignore and pretend that it only happened to drug dealers and idiot wandering around in the ghetto at 2am with hundred dollar bills hanging out of their back pockets.

More importantly, we didn't want to live in Maryland forever. This sounds kind of silly and possibly crazy, but we just both dreamed of living somewhere awesome. I saw this picture on Flickr years ago and I have remembered it ever since: a fantastic shot of a mountain taken in the rearview mirror of a car on the highway. That's what I wanted. I wanted to drive down the highways and see mountains in my rearview mirror. (This photo, actually. I can't believe I was able to find that in less than a minute. The internet is awesome. )

So, we needed to move. Out of Baltimore. I did not want to move out to the county and live the rest of my life in the Maryland suburbs. So the job search continued every night and every weekend, and in the meantime Hannah and I waited. We spent as much time as possible out of the house, both because the damn place was so small and because there were so many wonderful things to do. I woke up every day telling myself that our days in the city were numbered -- both in the good and bad way. When I wanted to scream because there was just nowhere to PUT anything, I told myself we wouldn't live in the house forever. And when I watched Hannah shriek with glee at Port Discovery or spent an absolutely perfect afternoon reading in the park while she collected acorns and pointed at dogs, I tried to soak it in and press those memories into my brain forever.

And then one day Joel got a call. For a real, in-person interview. In... Salt Lake City. Utah was definitely on our B-list, with the places that we figured, hey can't hurt to apply... but we're not really sure we want to move there. He went on the interview and we were excited, but sedated. We'd been down this path of getting hopes up only to have nothing pan out before. Plus... Utah? Did we really want to move to Utah? Should we hold out for Oregon or Washington?

Spoiler alert: he got the job. And we decided you know what? Fuck it. This is our chance to live somewhere awesome. We're moving to Utah.

I miss the city with the heavy pain of distance and nostalgia. Moving day was a little harried and I didn't really get to say a proper goodbye to the place where Joel and I first lived together, where we got engaged, the place we came back to after our wedding and honeymoon. The house we brought our baby home to. It breaks my heart a little bit that Hannah won't have any memory of living there.

But now we live here. And it's pretty amazing.

 

Exodus

I used to think blogging was really hard when there was nothing much going on. Just the same old same old, nothing much to report.

Turns out it's even harder, at least for me, when there's lots of stuff to talk about.

So!

This lady turned one! There was cake.

And then she turned 13, 14, 15, and 16 months old. Lordy, I guess it's been a wee bit longer than I thought.

She walks, she runs, she dances. She puts shoes and diapers on her stuffed animals and buckles them into her carseat. I remember saying when she was nine months old that I just could not imagine a kid being any more fun. Guess what? It gets more fun. She kills me.

The one thing she doesn't do is talk. Not a single word, not ever. I'm not really worried because she signs, and signing babies are just the cutest. Especially when you ask them "more what?" hoping they'll elaborate on the ubiquitous demand for MORE MORE MORE and they stop, think for a second and then sign "more... PLEASE."

The second and third things she doesn't do is give up bottles or pacifiers. But I'm ignoring that for now because: 1) teeth. OMFG THE TEETH. They never stop with the being assholes! This child has never shown interest in a single toy designed for teething babies, but she will chew on keys, cigarette butts she finds on the sidewalk, and her personal favorite: styrofoam packing peanuts. So! When you see her with a pacifier in her maw in 75% of the pictures I post on Facebook, just realize that it is better than seeing a picture of her with four cigarette butts poking out of her mouth NOT THAT THAT HAS EVER HAPPENED. Except yes it has. 2) she is already sleeping like crap, which should be downright illegal after months of fantastic nights of 12+ hours of sleep and predictable naps, which lull parents into a false sense of security and causes them to lose all the powers of functioning in the world on very little sleep that they develop during the newborn months. I realize that complaining about her waking up 2-3 times during the night between the hours of 6:30pm and 6am sounds absolutely laughable to people still on the waking-up-every-ninety-minutes schedule. But the other day I was trying to veg on the couch during her (too-short) nap, and I went to the search function on Netflix and typed in "netflix". And was then surprised when no results were displayed. Goddamnit Netflix, FIGURE OUT WHAT I MEAN. I had absolutely no recollection of what show I was trying to find. That's what a few weeks of waking up several times a night and starting the day at 5:15am will do to me nowadays. So I'm not even THINKING about taking away bottles or pacifiers until we're all good and settled in our new house.

Oh, did I mention that we're moving? To Salt Lake City? Um, yes. That is happening. 

Joel drove away from our house in Baltimore on December 28th. Sad, surreal, strange. Thank goodness my brother was staying with us at the time, helping us paint and pack, when Joel left or I would have lost it. Instead I lost it when my brother drove away later in the day. And then I survived fifteen days of solo parenting with no car. In the middle of winter.

 

It wasn't pretty. Hannah learned to fend for herself while I dozed on the couch (STOP WAKING UP AT 5:15AM) or packed boxes. I learned not to care about messes, because OMG. The mess created by solo parenting + not enough sleep + too small house + no car + winter + can't go outside + boxes everywhere + has anyone seen the vacuum + OH, JUST HELP YOURSELF TO A SNACK SURE THING GREAT JOB NO NEED FOR A BOWL.

Hannah and I stayed behind in Baltimore for a few weeks to finish packing and getting the house ready for sale. Movers arrived last Monday, and when they finished loading the truck we all bundled into my mom's car and retired to our country home (aka my mom's house) in New Jersey. 

Goodbye, Baltimore. It was good knowing you.

 

 

Black Plague Friday

Hello. It's been a while, eh? What's been happening?

Over here, this lady is now walking. Using sign language. Driving.

 

Still not talking. Unless you count emphatically shaking her head "no" at anything she doesn't want to eat/do/have touching her as talking. Which is exactly what I'm going to do at her 15-month well child appointment in a few weeks when the pediatrician gets up my ass yet again about whether or not she's said any words.

I never intended to do those monthly newsletter-type baby posts because 1) I kind of figure no one but me and my family really gives a shit about whether my kid can roll over or sit up or shove her toothbrush in the cat's mouth (EVERY. GODDAMN. DAY.), and 2) I know myself. And I knew I would get behind on my self-imposed deadlines and then feel bad about watching two episodes of Big Love during her nap instead of blogging. And I don't want to feel guilty for loving Big Love. (WHY DID NO ONE TELL ME ABOUT BIG LOVE. And you people call yourselves my internet friends?)

Anyway, now I kind of wish I had done monthly posts, or recorded things in any sort of way because babies, man. They just change so fast. Not just in the big and obvious ways like walking and talking, but in the subtle little ways that no one but me would probably even notice.

But hey, we had a new milestone this past week: baby's first bout of plague!

Now, strictly speaking Hannah has been sick twice before. She woke up vomiting one time when she was three or four months old, and it was terrifying and awful and we debated taking her to the ER like a couple of n00bs. The next day we discovered that the formula we'd given her was one day past its expiration date. Surely that couldn't be it, we told ourselves, it's just a coincidence. And then we gave her that formula again a few weeks later. She again woke up vomiting that night. Soooo. She was certainly sick, but not really sick in germ sense, just in the "my parents are assholes" sense. (For the record, my lactation consultant ASSURED me that formula one day past its expiration date would not cause that reaction. You know what she failed to mention? That tubs of powdered formula need to be used within 30 days of opening them. The more you know!)

So basically, I just discounted those two little episodes when I mentally bragged about how Hannah had never been sick. Kind of like how I've never had a cavity, I fantasized that Hannah would go through life never, ever getting sick.

Until last Thursday. What we Americans call "Thanksgiving".

She started fussing at midnight, riiiight as I was about to fall asleep. As is always the case. ALWAYS. I let her fuss for a bit hoping she'd go back to sleep, and she did. Ten minutes later, same thing. And then again. Finally she escalated to full-scale, standing-up-in-the-crib crying and I went downstairs to see where she'd jammed her pacifier and put her back to sleep. The second I walked into the room I smelled it. At first I assumed Night Poop, because this wouldn't exactly have been our first encounter with the Diaper Rash Fairy. But then I saw that her face and hair were all wet and there was something on her pajamas and oh dear god, the crib. It was all over the crib. I picked her up to get her out of that festering vomit stinkhole and called for Joel to come and help me. Then I called again. And again. Because guess who was sleeping through this whole thing? Yeah.

I woke Joel from his log-like slumber and tasked him with changing the crib sheets while I got in the shower with Hannah. I'm not going to actually try to describe the way she smelled. I don't think there are words in the English language that could convey the absolute level of horror. There's probably something in ancient Latin or Hebrew or whatever language priests use to perform exorcisms.

We got Hannah re-diapered and into clean pajamas and put her back in bed. Immediately after the shower she'd been shaking and clinging to me, but after fifteen minutes of so she was clearly trying to go back to sleep and she didn't have a temperature, so... back in the crib. Look, my kid's been sleeping in her crib by herself for a long time now, and not gonna lie -- I'm not cut out for that staying up all night shit any more. It's kind of impressive how fast your body goes from feeling like four consecutive hours of sleep is a goddamn gift from the angels to needing five cups of coffee beacuse  your kid woke up once during the night.

I put Hannah back in the crib, she rolled over and went right to sleep. I went back to bed and juuuuuust as I was about to fall back asleep, satisfied it was a one-time puke fluke, I heard her tiny, pathetic coughing over the monitor. I hustled down to her room and was nearly knocked over by the demon stench as soon as I opened the door. At least this time she hadn't had time to roll in it, so we just changed the sheets again and changed her pajamas AGAIN and Joel helped me set up a ghetto floor bed in her nursery (two pillows on the floor, towel draped over the front of my body, baby on top of the towel, blanket over us both). For the next hour she dozed, waking up every 15 or 20 minutes to dry heave. Thankfully she didn't have anything left in her stomach, but have you ever watched a baby dry heave? I thought I'd seen some sad things in my life -- babies who have thrown their snack cup out of their carseat, babies who have can't figure out how to open a plastic bag full of Cheerios, etc -- but this was the saddest. The absolute most pathetic thing I've ever witnessed in my life. All I could do was hold a washcloth from my arsenal of clean towels under her chin and pat her back. My poor little goose.

Finally, she dozed for half an hour without incident and I dared to put her in her crib and sneak back up to bed.

The next day we were supposed to drive to New Jersey for a belated Thanksgiving with my family. Hannah woke up with diaper loaded with the remnants of Unholy Vomit and oh, dear lord. I don't mean to belabor this point or make you stop eating your lunch, but the smell. That same impossibly awful smell. It will haunt my dreams for years to come.

We'd been planning to leave around 10am, but decided to wait unitl noon to make sure Hannah didn't start puking again. Plus, Joel said he didn't feel too great. I called my mom's house to break the news that we'd probably be leaving later in the day. Possibly not until Saturday.

Guess where this is going. Guess. Yup. Joel started throwing up. A few hours after that, I joined him. And what followed was certainly the most miserable day of our decade together. Possibly the worst day of my entire life, and I am not exaggerating. Hannah was producing diapers from hell every two hours. Joel and I could hardly bring ourselves to roll over and see why she was crying, let alone do anything about it. At one point in the afternoon I realized that she might be hungry, having vomited up an entire day's stomach contents the night before and not having eaten all day. I crawled into the kitchen, put a slice of bread and a banana on the floor, and dragged myself back to the couch. Later I saw her meandering around with the half-eaten slice of bread in her hand, picking tiny crumbs off and alternating putting them in her mouth and dropping them on the carpet.

It was a stellar day of parenting, that's for sure. I'm pretty sure we met just about every criteria for bona fide child neglect, and I might have even felt bad about that if I hadn't actually believed I was going to die for several hours.

So! Plans for Christmas? What's everyone doing? Not getting whatever the hell this Plague of Doom was ever again EVER is pretty much my only wish for St. Nick.  

Stride

My best friend had the most adorable baby just a few weeks ago. Seeing the pictures of her little two-week old does this funny thing to me. I just want to hold that precious little baby. No, actually, I want to HAVE a precious little two-week old baby. Like, now. Which is strange, because I know for a fact that I hated the newborn stage with Hannah.

The  rose-colored amnesia goggles that come standard issue with a baby, my god they are powerful.  I vaguely  remember those first few weeks being pretty goddamn awful, but then I try to think about what exactly was so hard and I can't really come up with anything concrete. The lack of sleep, yes. The constant breastfeeding struggles, definitely. The five-hour daily crying jags, oh my god I forgot about those. Did they really happen? Surely they didn't last that long? And it definitely couldn't have been as bad as I made it out to be? 

The truth is, and trust me I feel awful for saying this, those first few weeks -- hell, those first few MONTHS -- were possibly the worst of my life. I know how insanely lucky I was: healthy baby, easy recovery (as far as recovering from childbirth is ever "easy"), an incredibly supportive husband and family, a roof over our heads and enough money to buy the things we needed. I could have asked for nothing more. But still, it was probably the darkest time for me emotionally. Fucking hormones, man. I don't know what else to blame it on. Hormones and lack of sleep and the crushing permanence of it all. I don't ever want to go back there.

Except we want more kids, so hopefully I will be going back there. 

Things now could not be more different. Life just feels... easy. It feels wrong to say that life with a 10-month-old could be easy. I mean, it's not easy all the time. Nothing is. Hannah's been cutting three top teeth for months -- not exaggerating, these little fuckers have been taunting us from just below the surface of her gums since before Joel left for China --  and she just stops playing, sticks her fingers in her mouth, and starts wailing sometimes. She is obsessed with Henry's litterbox and if she thinks I'm not paying attention for one minute she will try to climb in it. She takes things out of the cabinets faster than I can put her last mess away.

But who gives a crap about any of that? She is sleeping at night (another post for another day, perhaps, but let me just say THANK YOU DR FERBER) and taking excellent naps at predictable times. This is so liberating, I cannot even tell you. No more dreading 7pm because I know a bedtime battle is coming. No more wasting the entire day, not going anywhere because I'm positive she is about to fall asleep only to have her stay wide awake for five straight hours. No more staring at the monitor after I put her down, just waiting for the crying to start. Now she wakes up happy and babbles in her crib until I to get her. She is so big and doing so much awesome stuff, and I just want to pause her and stay at 10 months forever.

Back during those dark early months I had an utter life crisis. I never really had a career, I just had a series of fairly unrelated jobs. That was OK with me because what I really wanted to be for as long as I can remember -- prepare yourself, this is going to sound slightly pathetic and very anti-feminist -- is a stay at home mom. It's what I pictured myself doing when I was a kid. It's what Joel and I agreed on long before we were even married. Its what I fantasized about when I was stuck in a shitty job that I hated. And then it became a reality and... I didn't like it. I thought I'd made a terrible mistake. I seriously considered going back to work just to get a break from the crying and the getting pooped on and the endless feedings. I wish there was an It Gets Better campaign for new mothers. I wish I could go back in time and tell myself that it will all be OK. It'll be better than OK. It will be amazing.

So all you new moms out there: it gets better. Suddenly you'll realize that instead of wishing that you could just fast forward time, you're wishing you could pause it and stay here forever. Even if you're not having a terrible time, it STILL gets better. This is the most amazing thing about having a kid. No matter how awesome they are, they just keep getting awesomer.

I wish I could pause things right now. But I can't. So I'm just trying to enjoy each hour and each day and instead of wishing that time would slow down I'm trusting that the future will be even better.

***********

A few "firsts" from recent weeks...  

Baby's first time in an airport!

Baby's first time on an airplane! (Not mom's first time making a stupid face in an attempt to get baby to smile.)

Baby's first time being totally unimpressed with a pool!

Baby's first time opening a drawer!

And a cabinet!

Baby telling us it's time to babyproof!

Baby's first jeggings!

Baby looking.... less like a baby and more like a kid every day.

Impossible

This was three years ago. That doesn't seem so long ago, actually. The length of a year has blurred for me, as I try to mentally prepare for Hannah's birthday. Which is in six weeks. WEEKS. I can't comprehend.

Anyway, three years. It's a long time, but it feels like we've been married forever. Three years just doesn't sound like much.

However, if you'll recall, we got married on our seven year anniversary of dating. Which means that as of tonight, Joel and I have been dating for ten years. Ten years sounds like a lot. Ten years sounds impossible. 

(Happy anniversary, sweetie.)