General

I used to get terribly carsick on rides with my family, but I thought I’d grown out of it. Nope. Apparently, the backseat is a really bad place for me to be in a car, and especially behind the driver. Carrie’s new carseat is behind the passenger seat, and since we had to drive for several hours I sat in the back with her. The first few hours were smooth sailing, but when we hit traffic and it was stop and go for two straight hours I really thought I was going to lose my lunch.

(And Denis wants to drive to Florida next summer when we go on our big family vacation. I think I may have to stock up on Dramamine or something…)

I’m pretty sure I just spent more time packing for our trip than we’ll actually be gone for…it seems like it’s taken all week! I guess it’s just because I can only do things in bits and pieces while Carrie is sleeping. I can no longer step out of the living room for just a minute while she’s playing, because she’s pulling up on everything and generally immediately heads for the closest dangerous object in the room. And this is the most baby-proofed room we have. But I’m finding that even the end tables are dangerous – she crawls under them and then bumps her head when she tries to sit. Short of removing all furniture and window treatments from the room, I don’t think there’s much I can do besides follow her everywhere.

Anyway, I have to go check if the laundry is done, and then I’m going to bed!

I don’t really know where the week went, but it feels like it took forever to get to the weekend! Carrie had her first fever yesterday (no other symptoms and gone today – maybe teething related?) so pretty much all of yesterday was spent cuddling my poor little girl, and today I cleaned house.

There’s so much to do over the weekend, but not nearly enough time to do it all. I’m sure our neighbors would appreciate us cleaning up our flower beds and putting flowers in them. The pool needs to be opened eventually. And we still haven’t baby-proofed.

And I only have eight rows left on Carrie’s poncho, so all I really want to do is finish that. Instead, I’m going to go to bed at a reasonable hour tonight. There’s no predicting what time my early-bird will decide to rise tomorrow and I’m sleepy!

We went to see the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy movie yesterday afternoon while my parents watched Carrie. I did enjoy the movie, although it deviated from the book quite a bit. (Plus my memory of the book is kind of fuzzy, so I had a hard time figuring out what was different and what I just didn’t remember.)

However, I’m not so sure the whole movie theater experience is worth it anymore. Aside from the fact that a matinee cost $6 per ticket (I remember when it was $3.25, $2.50 if you had a valid student ID) and the concession prices are outrageous, the actual pre-movie content was appalling. Instead of the slide-show type thing with trivia that they used to show – and that you could easily ignore – they had 20 minutes of advertising, mainly for television networks. It was loud, obnoxious, and made me want to run home and cancel my cable subscription. Quite frankly, I think they should have paid me to sit through that, rather than the other way around.

And I shouldn’t even start on the 15 minutes worth of movie previews. Is there not one single original idea left in all of Hollywood? Every single movie that’s coming up is a remake of something else – including one that is literally Jumanji repackaged as a space-themed game.

Don’t get me wrong, I like movies. But I don’t know if I’m going to bother seeing them in the theater anymore. I can just as easily wait for a few months for the DVD – in fact, it’s easier since I don’t have to worry about who’s going to watch Carrie. Of course, then I think about the new Harry Potter movie coming out in November and wonder if I can really wait to watch that one…

Being a mom is everything I didn’t expect. I expected to love my daughter. I didn’t expect how much I would love her. I didn’t expect how much I would worry. I didn’t expect how much it would make me cry for other mothers and babies in trouble, for the sorry state of the world we live in, for all the things I have no power to change that will somehow affect Carolyn’s life. I didn’t expect how it would change the way I look at my mom, and how guilty I would feel about things I said or did as a child that might have hurt her.

It’s strange: sometimes I think I’m only aware of Carolyn as the baby who lives in our house. I spend almost every minute of every day with her, and I’m constantly aware of her presence. But then there are times when I look at her – at this beautiful, funny, vibrant child – and realize that she is my daughter. My soul weeps with joy at that recognition. I am in awe of this perfect life we have created, with her soft cheeks, sparkling eyes and busy, chubby little hands.

And then I panic a little. I am in charge of making sure that Carolyn survives to adulthood, and that she won’t need to spend a fortune on therapy once she gets there. That’s no small responsibility.

I find myself wanting to somehow make the world a better place for her. I make an extra effort to recycle things I might not have before. I think more about my political decisions, and look at how the candidates might affect the future. I want to get in shape, eat better, volunteer more – in short, become a good role model for my daughter.

In some ways being a mom is the most natural thing I have ever done. In most ways it’s not, and I’m figuring things out just one step ahead (or sometimes not) of Carrie. I’m realizing how strong I can be when I need to be. I’m more aware than ever of the importance of not taking things for granted, and of all the dangers that lurk around every corner. I’m learning how to live in the moment, and how to put my faith in God when I feel the worries closing in around me.

I’m learning how to love my daughter. I’m learning how to be a mom. And it’s wonderful.

(Warning: this rant really has nothing to do with anyone who reads this blog, and it’s probably not even worth reading. Heck, it’s probably not even worth posting, but I wrote it and this is my journal. So there.)

There are times when I just need to take a step back, take a few breaths, look at my peacefully napping daughter and realize that, well, gosh, I must be doing everything wrong because she’s so healthy, happy, and perfect.

I suppose everyone has an opinion about everything, and if I go read someone’s treatise on the internet about how starting solids before a baby turns at least 6 months old guarantees that she’ll have lifelong allergies and wean early and it makes me feel guilty, it’s probably my own fault. If some stranger in the diaper pail aisle of Babies ‘R’ Us lectures me about using “plastic” diapers and single-handedly destroying the planet just for my own convenience and I let it get to me, I suppose that’s my own fault too. And if I allow well-meaning comments from someone about my baby’s inability to sleep through the night if I don’t put her to bed (because I’m nursing her and bottles just aren’t a substitute for that) to undermine my confidence that what I’m doing works well for us, that’s my fault as well.

It’s obviously all my fault that my baby is thriving.

Don’t get me wrong, I don’t expect people to keep their opinions to themselves. I certainly don’t. Unsolicited advice given in the form of “this is what I did when my kids were that age” is perfectly acceptable, because I can choose to ignore it. What annoys the living daylights out of me to constantly be bombarded with “you must do this” advice. Especially the kind that’s phrased in such a way as to imply that not doing whatever it is will have serious, far-reaching consequences.

The bottom line is, every choice I make will have consequences. And I’m sure there will be things I do that if I had known more I might have done differently. But I’m declaring here and now that I refuse to feel guilty about making any of those choices, because I am making them as best as I can. And if in 20 years Carrie’s in therapy because she wore “plastic” diapers instead of cloth, so be it.

I’m feeling rather quiet lately. I don’t have rehearsals to take up my evenings anymore so I have a lot more time – but I’ve been wasting it on the computer all week! I need to remember what to do with my life without a musical to rehearse. Especially now that Carrie’s usually asleep by 8, I really ought to be able to recover my lost knitting time and do something productive.

I think a huge part of my crafting blahs are because my craft room is a disaster. I may as well nail the door shut, because the thought of trying to recover the place is totally overwhelming. Even if I took all the things out of there that don’t belong, there would still be too much to fit since I had craft supplies in the living room which I moved out when we baby-proofed. And it’s not as though – even if I thought I had the energy – I could devote a whole day to cleaning it out. At most I could probably do a 30 minute chunk a day, with Carrie in her entertainer, but it would take me that long just to clear enough stuff from the doorway to get into the room. I need one of those shows that organizes your stuff to come and do it for me!

This morning I joined the local chapter of MOMS Club. I was really nervous about going to the meeting, because it feels like it’s been a long time since I last made new friends, and my life has completely changed since then anyway. I mean, I never really thought I defined myself by my career, but in answer to the question “what do you do?” I would say “I am a software engineer”. Now I say “I am a Mom”, and people (although not generally other moms) look at me as if to say “no, really, what do you do?”

But my worries were completely unnecessary, as everyone there was really nice. (Besides, they’re all generally stay-at-home-moms too, so the question of what anyone does never came up.) The best part was that there was a woman there with a little girl just a few weeks older than Carrie, and we were both thinking that the other looked really familiar – it turns out we went to high school together! How neat to think our daughters will be going to school together.

Carrie had a blast, too! She loved looking at the other babies and children, and smiled for everyone. Oh, and there was a little girl there, also named Sarah, who was enthralled by my curly hair and wanted to touch it. Very cute.

Anyway, I think it will be a good group to get into, even if Carrie’s a bit too young for the field trips and such. Besides, it doesn’t all have to be about her, right? After all, it is the MOMS club!

The weekend after Carolyn was born, Denis bought me Myst IV: Revelation. I haven’t started it yet – actually, I haven’t even opened it yet. But tonight I don’t feel like knitting or reading before bed, so I think I’ll go ahead and load it.

The question is, do I have enough self-control to just install the game and not actually start playing it? Or maybe start a game but not stay up too late playing? Hmm…

I don’t know if it’s just the weather or an actual cold (I don’t have time to be sick, therefore I’m not) but I have so much icky drainage I feel awful today. Plus it’s been a rainy, cold, gray day. Not very inspiring.

We had a great few days with Denis’ parents – Carolyn loves her Nana and Poppy – and yesterday we went to a first birthday party (which I didn’t finish the blanket in time for), and today…today I barely found the energy to get dressed, let alone do anything else that needed doing. I’m going into the week of the musical with no milk or bread, no clean clothes, and no energy. Oh joy.

It can only get better, right?