(not just a) MommyBlog (dot com)

Whoever coined that phrase either had never had a baby, or meant something entirely different by it.

At any rate, last night Cooper gave me EIGHT blissful hours of sweet slumber.   Kenny and I went to sleep about five minutes after Cooper did, charmingly wrapped in a hug, and we all woke up eight hours and ten minutes later to a gentle billy goat cry.   Heaven!

Today it is windy and chilly at the beach, but we still managed a few hours in the sand this morning, and will no doubt return post-nap time for some kite flying.   I have been deeded another “lunch break” and have found myself to the same internet cafe, hot coffee in hand and the remnant crumbs of a salad-plate-sized cookie by my side.  

Kenny is sleeping off his morning beach frolic and Cooper is hopefully snoozing with Casey while I am away.   Or at least contentedly hanging out.     He’s a funny little guy.   He seems to have four speeds: Sound Asleep (50% of the day), Barely Asleep and Gagging on Spitup (20%), Awake and Mellow (20%)  and Awake and Screaming Like a Banshee (10%).   But let me tell you, that Banshee time is gut-wrenching enough to make you swear it’s half the day.  

He has his two month check-up on Tuesday and I’m hoping that his pediatrician will prescribe something for reflux, which I am certain is what plagues him everytime  I try to lay him down after nursing.   Nurse him to sleep my foot!   I have to keep him upright for at least twenty minutes or he starts vomiting like a college freshman.   The problem with that is usually by that time he smells milk and thinks he’s ready to eat again.  

Ah.   I anyone had told me five years ago that I would one day be writing a blog about spitup, I would have clobbered them.   I love being a mommy.

Casey and the boys and I headed off to the Jersey Shore for the week, and I am sitting here in a coffee shop for one hour of free time… drinking a decadent something and shamelessly devouring a gigantic dessert.   It’s funny how ridiculously frivolous this feels, yet it brings to mind the fact that when I was a working girl, I had an entire delicious hour-long lunch break every day.   Sweet Pete, what did I do with myself in those days??

Anyway, though I still can’t divulge much, I can say that four weeks ago, Casey gave notice at his job and as of August 1st, he ended a very happy and successful career  with a wonderful (however unnamed)  company.   It was time to move on, and he left holding in his hand two distinct and entirely different offers from two companies that couldn’t be more unlike each other if one was in Tibet and one in Disneyworld.    He is  coming to a close on negotiations and decisions, and these are going to alter our lives quite a bit!   So there’s nothing awful going on (I think my last post read as if there were!) just lots of changes.   As if having a new baby wasn’t lot’s of changes enough!

I wish I had pictures to post of our week so far: Kenny is beach-boy-extraordinaire and Cooper has discovered the wonders of napping in our perfect SPF 50 beach cabana to the sound of the crashing waves.   The little bugger has actually been liking it too much, and has preferred it to sleeping at night in the pack and play for the last two nights. Ah well, small compromise!

Speaking of Cooper, he started smiling last week, but has now moved on to full out grins and giggles.   He is starting to engage  more and more and has even started flirting a little.   I’m in love!   Kenny is enjoying him more, too, I think, now that he is leaving the blob stage and entering the cute-baby months.   And thankfully, Kenny sleeps like a rock, because in spite of being in the same room with our snorting, spit-upping, wailing bambino, he is the only around here clocking a full night’s sleep.   Lucky kid.

We’re even doing well with eating out (which we’ve done every morning for breakfast and twice for dinner so far).   Kenny loves restaurants and Cooper loves to nurse, so even though I feel like way too much of New Jersey has seen me under the Hooter Hider, at least we’ve made it through with no major meltdowns or embarrassing paying the bill before the food comes because we’ve got to leave NOW.  

Ok, so besides leaving Cooper for half a day to go to a concert, besides insanely stretched travel, besides computer viruses that nearly wiped us out, there is a lot going on in our household.

A lot going on that I cannot write about, and it is killing me.   Hopefully I will be able to share more soon, because I need the outlet.   Suffice to say, if you were to look at the list of the top ten most stressful occasions of life, I think Casey and I are hitting at least seven of them.   And I am not talking about public speaking, or being naked in public.   Naked public speaking, at this point, might actually seem easier.  

Ok, not really.

Cooper is pretty cool about it all, though.   Thank goodness babies are portable.

Last night Casey and I went to our first post-baby concert: Kenny Rogers and the Oakridge Boys!!   It was so much fun.   Ok, ok, so we were like, the youngest there by 40 (or 60) years, but the old country legends still know how to rock a full house!  

The only pictures I took are on my cell phone, but Casey some how managed to find us second row center seats, and we felt like we were practically on stage with them.    

Most incredible of all, though, is the fact that I actually left my seven-week-old gem behind for SEVEN HOURS.   My parents came to spend the night (the concert venue was an hour away), and Cooper took three successive bottles of pumped milk and did so well that he made it just shy of sleeping through the night.   I didn’t leave Kenny for that long until he was like 10 months old, but it wasThe Oakridge Boys & Kenny Rogers…. Actually, I have to admit that I wasn’t looking forward to it before hand (dreading it might be more accurate), but I knew how much Casey wanted to go and how hard he worked to get the tickets, and so I forced a stiff upper lip and even found a way to enjoy myself.  

I did have to pump milk in the car on the way home from the concert, which was weird for me, but more than a little freaky for Casey.   My poor sweet hubby had ESPN radio up so loud the pump started vibrating.   Ah, the joys of marriage…

We have had a maddening  week and a half  of computer viruses ravaging both our home computer and my laptop.   And I return to MommyBlog, wondering if I have any readers left!!   I think this was my longest stretch of no posts.   Woe!   Please forgive, those faithful ones who are still checking in!

Over the past weekend we had a chance to not only have my mom’s side of the family to Maryland to visit, but we made our first big car trip with Cooper and drove to New York to visit his family as well!   A six-week-old and the New Jersey Turnpike are not a good combination, by the way.     Throw an almost three-year-old into the mix and a hormonal lactating woman, and we’re lucky we didn’t turn around before we hit the Island.   At least that would have saved us the torture of the Long Island Expressway.

Ah, but made it there and back we did!   And I don’t think there will be too much permanant scarring… ha ha…

First, Casey’s brothers, Dad, and the three grand-boys…

And my mom’s side of the family: her parents, brother and sister, and me, Kenny and Cooper:

I was fun, most especially for Kenny, who had endless playtime and attention.   Cooper did great, too (car ride aside) and is a very agreeable baby as far as being held by people he doesn’t really know goes.

This coming week we are venturing once again through New Jersey to hit the shore for one last summer fling.   If only I could find a way to nurse in the car…

… makes it rough to write, especially with a woodpecker on my shoulder!   Cooper is a nighttime feast-er.   He screams and nurses, and that’s about all I do from 6pm to 10.   I think of blogging everyday, but by the time I get Cooper down for the night, I fall into bed myself.   Woe to mommyblog.com!

We had an awesome party Saturday night to celebrate Casey’s 39th birthday.   Live music – Caribbean steal drums – and we even had it catered.   We’ve been wanting to have a big blow-out party for a long time, so what’s a better time than the present??   We had our guests bring “exotic” wines and beers, and it was a blast.   Casey was the birthday boy, but Kenny and Cooper were the celebrities.   Good friends (including one of Casey’s long-time friends who came in from Denver) were aplenty, the weather was perfect and we danced the night away.   We hired a babysitter each for Kenny and Cooper, so we could actually talk to friends and finish our sentences.   It was one of the most fun nights I’ve ever had!

Tomorrow is Casey’s actual birthday, and he keeps joking that it’s going to be tough to top Saturday night.   Goodness, between nursing and entertaining Kenny (or at the very least, keeping Kenny from coloring the walls and brushing Dudley’s teeth while I’m nursing), and with Cooper’s absolute aversion to cars and driving anywhere more than five minutes, it’s been tough to shop for gifts and plan more than the day ahead.   (How we pulled off a party is a wonder… the internet  and credit cards are  wonderful things…)   Anyway, my sweet, wonderful better half begins his last year of his thirties tomorrow.  

I love you Casey!

(Kenny took this shot… and fifteen others along with it…)

I mentioned in my last post that we found fleas on Dudley, and had to call an exterminator.   The sentence alone clearly does not capture exactly what transpired.   Before the exterminator could do his toxic dirty work, we had to “prep the house” – which is how Terminix puts it.   This means washing all the rugs, bed linens and blankets that may have come in contact with the infested (poor Dudley!) pet.   It also includes vacuuming the entire house, floors and furniture.   Yeah.   And I don’t have anything better to do with my spare time.  

Fortunately my parents came over for lunch  and graciously  stayed through dinner to  help out with baby wrangling and Kenny-entertaining.   I think they kind-of had fun, too…

(Grampy getting some Cooper-love!)

Between the sheets, duvets, duvet covers, mattress pads, pillow shams and throws, I did TWELVE loads of laundry.   This did not include any clothing or burp rags (which we go through at an alarming rate), towels or other miscellaneous items in the hamper.   Then each load had to be sealed and left in the “laundry room,” which for us is a closet the size of a shower.   Cry me a river.   THEN we had to vacate the house for four hours (minimum) after the service was completed.   And they started at 5 pm.  

Ok, returning home to a smelly and possibly toxic house at 9 pm with the beds completely stripped and a toddler and an infant did not sound fun.   So Casey and I improvised and packed our bags and took a 20 hour vacation downtown!

We made it a surprise for Kenny, and when we pulled into the Lowes hotel (fancy digs and they LOVE dogs) and told Kenny that we were going to sleep there, he whooped and hollered in unabandoned joy.   He kept saying, “Momma!   Dadda!   We’re SLEEPING AT A HOTEL!!!!!”   And it is a really nice hotel, so I was pretty jazzed myself.

Cooper didn’t do so hot on the sleeping end of things, but it was lots of fun to wake up and walk the town and eat breakfast down by the docks.   And it was a whole bunch of fun to not make the bed in the morning, take a steamy shower and leave the towels on the floor, and let Kenny jump on the bed to his heart’s content.      And a hoot to walk through a lobby full of convention-attending businessmen with Cooper in the front pack, Kenny in his stroller and Dudley trotting  along side.   I can’t believe I didn’t get a picture of Dudley in that fancy lobby…

So now we are home, the house seems flea-free and everyone under the drinking age is sleeping.   Not  a bad ending for a disastrous weekend.  

(Cooper getting some Grampy-love!)

Truly, it’s the first comment I get when people, friends and strangers alike, see him.   It’s most striking when he’s in the baby bjorn and all you see are the feet sticking out the bottom, and the hair sticking out the top.   It still has it’s crazy frosted tips, too.    Cooper is one good-lookin’ dude.

I also realized tonight that we have very few pictures of Cooper from the last two weeks.   Partly because the rash on his face really jumps out on film, but also partly because we are barely keeping up with housework and Kenny-work and who can ever find the camera??   Here are a few, though, for the Grands…

 Kisses!

 Cooper loves to help fold laundry…   Hey, the housework’s got to get done somehow…

Kenny actually took this one!   Click on it for a great shot of how long Cooper’s hair is…

Cooper likes to help Daddy work, too!

The little man is doing great!   He slept all night again last night… even through a ferocious hail storm that woke Casey and I.   Casey went in and brought Kenny into our bed, sure that he would wake up scared, but he slept right through it, too.   It was kind of fun waking up this morning with five in the bed.   (Dudley wasn’t about to be left out of that party!)

But, alas, it’s close to bedtime and that means that Cooper wants to drink, drink, drink!   Casey is doing is best at bouncing, singing and pacifying, but I think he’s reached his limits.   And with that, goodnight!

Cooper is an awesome sleeper.   If I let him nurse all he wants in the evening, he’ll snooze most of the night away.   Last night I got 7 and a half hours out of him!   I feel like a new woman after a sleep that good.

Ah, but get that kid in a car seat and all hell breaks loose.   He SCREAMS in the car.   Here, there, everywhere.   Morning, noon, night.   Music up, music down, he screams till Kenny and my face frowns.   I’m about ready to not leave the house until he can drive himself.

As for the dermatitis, between washing his face in Selsun Blue twice a week and then dabbing breast milk on a couple times a day, it’s almost cleared up!   Thanks for the suggestions from you all!!  

What else?   Kenny is hanging in there.. if anything, he’s gone from one of the sweetest boys in the world to The Sweetest Boy on Earth.   He is so loving to Cooper and so sweet and attentive to me.   Of course, he is still WILD as well – bouncing off the walls,  most specifically when I am nursing and can’t catch him.     He also waits until I start nursing Cooper to say, “Mommy I want to poop in the potty!”   For some reason, he can’t get his pull-up down himself, so it’s either drop everything (I don’t actually drop Cooper, I try to set him down somewhere safe!) or thwart his efforts by making him wait.  

Finally Dudley, who obviously is getting very little of his share of attention, decided to go and get fleas to bring home and infest our house.   Casey is out on the back deck right now spraying down couch pillows and chairs with hopefully-not-too-toxic flea killer, and the exterminator comes Monday.   Yee haw.

 Pictures to come soon, I promise!!