General

I turned 29 today. This will be my last year to be 20-something. Next year I will be 30. That used to sound so old to me, but it certainly doesn’t feel old. Heck, most days I don’t feel old enough to be a mom…

In honor of the occasion, Carolyn wore her teeny-tiny Mary Jane’s to church today. These shoes are so unbelievably cute – it should be illegal. I bought them to be part of her Christmas outfit, but I figure she ought to wear them more than once, right? I love this little pink velour dress, too.

Carrie bought me wool for my birthday, and Denis got me a drop spindle to replace the one that Murphy destroyed. I got all kinds of goodies from everyone today, and had a lovely day. Of course, my house isn’t clean yet, and the tree isn’t up yet, and I don’t even have all the gifts yet (that’s a long, sordid story for another day) let alone have them wrapped…but that’s ok. It will all get done eventually. We did manage to get the Christmas card photos taken. Let’s just say, Carrie was a lot more cooperative than the dogs were! One of these days I’ll have to post some of the out-takes…

Yesterday I realized that my life has become a game of the Sims. When Carolyn is sleeping, I have to evaluate which of the following is my highest priority: going to the bathroom, eating, showering, sleeping or cleaning the kitchen. Socializing doesn’t even enter into the picture, and fun – well, I suppose catching odd moments at my laptop could be considered fun. (I’m doing that now instead of eating breakfast…hmm…)

Seriously, instead of showing those really silly videos* to kids in health class, they could scare them off of having sex for decades just by making them play a new baby version of the Sims. Instead of going to work, you have random crying baby alerts where you have to drop everything (including breakfast) to make the baby happy. I think there’s a part of the game where that happens already, but it’s only for three (Sims) days – this would have to go on for months instead.

(No, I’m not really complaining, because it’s all very much worth it. Plus, for the third night in a row, I got 6 continuous hours of sleep.)

*Yeah, those silly health class videos? I spent pretty much all of 5th and 6th grade thinking that dancing was foreplay and was the surest way to get pregnant based on one of those videos. (Yes, I was very naïve and too embarrassed to ask someone who might have corrected my misconception.) Imagine my horror when we moved up to Jr. High and had 7th grade dances!

Since I’ve started going out and about with Carolyn – mainly shopping – I’ve noticed a lot of things. Like the fact that most people are really nice and helpful. I’ve had more people run ahead to open doors for me in the past three weeks than in my entire life. Today, at the food court at the mall, a gentleman asked if he could carry my tray to a table so I could push the stroller more easily. I’ve even had people wave me ahead of them in line.

People, this is holiday shoppers we’re talking about – these people are the reason I generally stay as far away from the mall after November 1st as I can. But you know what? They’re actually nice, deep down inside. Oh, wait, maybe they’re just being nice because my baby is the cutest baby ever? I suppose that’s fine, I still get the fringe benefits!

(Oh, and one more shopping trip ought to finish off the holiday gifts. All except Denis, that is – I have no idea what I’m getting him yet…)

Among many other things, one of the apparently permanent changes pregnancy has left me with is bigger feet. Not wider feet, mind you, but longer feet. How this happened, I have no idea. All I know is, none of my old footwear fits anymore, including the brand new pair of boots I bought last winter. Ask me how I found this out. Go ahead, ask.

Yeah, see, it snowed today. Real snow, that stuck to the ground. And I thought, well, boots are always a bit big, right? So they should still fit, they just won’t be as big. Nuh-uh. The walk to and from the mailbox at the end of my driveway was rather painful. But my choices are those or the Birkenstock clogs I bought while I was pregnant and desperate for footwear – unfortunately, those won’t work for the snow.

So guess who’s going boot shopping this week? I hate shoe shopping almost as much as I hate bra shopping. Both leave me thinking mean and evil thoughts about the people who design these things – obviously not women – and feeling quite awful about myself, because I can never find anything that fits.

…to look a little bit like Christmas around here!

Remember my list of things to do? I’ve made my gift list and checked it twice, and today I put in a gigantic order through Amazon for about 75% of the gifts. (I love the internet!) I think I can get the rest of the shopping done this week. (I think I can, I think I can…) If I can just have everything wrapped up and under the decorated tree in my nice clean house before my birthday next Sunday, I’ll feel like things are under control. (Note that this requires cleaning the house, too…)

We’re going to go look at some artificial trees tonight. I’m not sure I want one, but it might be the best option at this point. If we don’t find a reasonably priced nice one, though, we’ll just have to get a real tree tomorrow. And I’m going to get out the candles for the windows and the train set for the mantel tonight. The neighbors are going to think we’re Grinches if we don’t start decorating soon!

Is it December already?!? That means in the next 24 days I need to:

• Find time to remember who on earth I’m supposed to get presents for.
• Find time to figure out what to get them.
• Find time to buy gifts – preferably online.
• Find time to buy a tree.
• Find time to find a free corner of my house to put up the tree. (The pack & play lives where the tree used to go.)
• Find time to find the decorations to put on the tree.
• Find time to decorate the tree.
• Find time to wrap gifts. (Is it the 24th yet?)

See the trend? It’s all about time, which seems to be in short supply lately. Can I hire someone to do all that? Because really, all I want is a clean, decorated home with all the presents already wrapped and under the tree so I have the time to do what I really want to do: really enjoy Carolyn’s first holidays. I want to take her to see Santa, let her stare at all the pretty decorations, and bake cookies so the house smells like Christmas should. I know she won’t remember it, but I will.

I’m almost afraid to blog about this – I might jinx things – but for two nights in a row now, Carolyn has slept from 10:30 to 5:30. Seven whole hours! I’m sure it’s not permanent, but I’m grateful for it – I almost feel human after having that much sleep.

Good thing I got that much sleep, too. It enabled me to keep a level head when I brought the dogs in from running around the backyard and Murphy had ripped one of his nails off. Have I ever mentioned how squeamish I am? Blood is not my friend. And I had none of the bleeding stopper stuff you’re supposed to have when you have dogs. Fortunately, my parents did, so Murphy’s in his crate right now where I can keep an eye on him, but it looks like the bleeding stopped. Being a stay-at-home mom is tough work!

Thought I’d fallen off the face of the earth? Nope, I’ve just been busy with thank you notes (the last ones go out today!), announcements, baby stuff… But I didn’t want to let a whole month go by without blogging about Carolyn. I needed to upgrade my movable type installation to do some of the things I wanted to – I managed to find 20 consecutive minutes for that last week – and there are more template/category/format changes I still need to do, but I decided to go ahead and publish all of my back posts anyway.

They start here if you’re interested.

Oh, and there are lots of pictures in those posts – the poor kid has had almost 250 pictures taken of her just in the past month. It’s just because she’s so darn cute, and every minute she’s cuter than a minute before…

OK, the announcements are supposed to go out today, although I realized there are a few people who were missing from the list, so I have to remember to send them one of these days. Amazing mail seemed like a good idea at the time, but now I’m slightly worried because I just sent dozens of announcements and I have no idea if I did them right, and what if everyone gets them and I misspelled Carolyn’s name or wrote the wrong date or something?!? I had Denis proof-read the message a dozen times, but he’s as sleep-deprived as I am, so that might not have been the best idea.

I wonder if there’s any chance they’ll get to people before Thanksgiving? Probably not, but one can always hope…

Thanks everyone for all the wonderful comments and compliments! I’m really far behind answering email and phone calls, and I think I will be for a long time. It’s weird – there’s all this down time while the baby is sleeping, but picking up the computer involves putting the adorable sleeping baby down, and, well, it’s obvious which activity I’ve chosen lately.

Here are more pictures from her first week. (Please ignore the fact that I look like the walking dead in the hospital. It took every ounce of willpower not to delete those pictures!)

We went to her two-week checkup today, and she’s already 7 lbs. 11 oz. – obviously mama’s milk is working. She’s also grown a whole inch, and is no longer lost in her newborn sized clothes. At this rate she’ll need a whole new wardrobe before Christmas! I could tell just by looking at her that she was already bigger, and I already miss the teeny tiny baby we brought home just last week…which is silly, I know, because she’s going to get bigger every day, and that’s a good thing.

Oh, and she smiles and giggles already – mostly in her sleep, but it’s the cutest thing ever. Now can you see why I hate to put her down, even when she’s sleeping?