carl in casimirland.

I wonder if it's only the desperate housemoms who love Desperate Housewives, despite it's spastic title. I'm going to miss it all summer long. Anyway, totally getting ass kicked by motherhood and pregnancy lately. I did what any normal person would do and scheduled a prenatal massage.

And I'm really enjoying this book, Mother shock: Loving Every (Other) Minute of It, which I began a long time ago but am reading at the pace of a snail on crutches. It's weird when you read something and feel like you share so many of the experiences and feelings in it, right down to the inherent fear of double strollers and having two kids to put in them. Only you get to read about what you're (also) going through after it's all bound and nicely written, with added bonus insights. And I thought I was so original. I highly recommend it. And I shouldn't have linked to it, because now I want to read all the books that customers who bought that also bought. Reading lists multiply exponentially like that.

I haven't been blogging and doing lots of things because, despite feeling well, I seem to have the energy of a dead person these days. If only I had just 1/10 of the pep of the Wiggles dancers, I'd be totally set and books would be read, chores done, children watched, and work completed, all with a sense of wacky energy, before winding down with my prenatal yoga dvd.

And I'm realizing I'm going to have to do some major adjusting to get used to a young infant again. Unless you remember it all right away and it's like riding a bike? I know I've done it before, but I feel like I sort of don't remember how. I'm used to whatever stage Casimir is at. I was trying to 'help' by feeding my 8 month-old neice, but I couldn't even wipe her face up afterwards. Her head kept bobbing around, I nearly poked her in the eye, and while you can gently say, "Sit still lovebug!" all you want, you know she's not exactly going to listen. Tantrums aside, it gets easier in so many ways when kids can walk and talk and verbally reject the peas without spitting them out in a mess. And I can get dressed and brush my teeth these days, too. I seem to remember that being really hard about 24 months ago. And Casimir even went from being the Most Challenging Sleeping Baby in the World to the Best Sleeping Toddler in this Neighborhood At Least. What if I have to go through another bad sleeping period? Or god forbid, some other issue like COLIC, that I didn't have to deal with before? And this is all assuming that I get to bring a healthy baby home. The worries! And then there's this whole unpredictability thing again, because I've heard that each kid is totally different, instead of just an updated 2.0 version.

I also have really good memories of Caz's first months, deapite the sleep deprivation and 24-hour care. It's all surrounded by pink clouds and rainbows in the memory part of my brain, and I get sentimental just driving by our old, moderately dilapidated apartment building where we were still living at the time. But I'm sure there must be some tough times and feelings from that early postpartum period that hindsight has neatly tossed out. If I think really hard I can vaguely remember an explosion or two following a couple phone calls wanting to know, did we get the gift? Because it's been four whole days and they didn't hear, and just wanted to be sure! Or something. I seem to recall hollering something to Paul about giving everything to the baby and having zero, Zero! patience for anyone not in a diaper. I think there was a time or two where, unshowered and disgusting, I thought I was going to die of Overwhelmed disease. But it's a little foggy. Maybe that didn't really happen. And so it won't this time?

What I don't like: You would think I never took my kid anywhere. We'll head home from somewhere in the car, and he'll beg, scream, and plead "No home!! No home!!" Not back to that dreadful place again! Unless we're still home and about to leave. Then you'd think I dragged him to way too many places, the way he'll beg, scream, and plead "No go! No go! Home! NOooooOoo" Transitions are so hard sometimes.

What I like: surveying the toys after a nice long period of independent play. You find the pig in the ambulance, the cars cooking in the play oven, the cows on the bus, and the bus driver balancing on the ox. Right where it's all supposed to be! A place for everything, and everything in it's place.

Lastly: Word.

Sometimes I'll look down while reading in bed and see the little penguins on my pajama pants popping up like popcorn, dancing around like they're trying to get off my yellow pajama pants. I told Paul I thought the baby was trying to get out the wrong way and a little early, and mentioned how fun it was to feel all this movement in there. He tried to tell me that I had earlier said I "wished this kid would stop moving already." Or something. Obviously he's making it up or imagining it, because surely I never would have said that. Unless I was in a bad mood. Then maybe.

And I know that bragging about how adorable your kid is walks the dangerous line between normal behavior and really, really annoying, but sometimes it's just so fun to live vicariously through his adorableness. It's not like people are walking around calling me beautiful all the time, even if they saw me poop. (Wait, would I really want that?) The woman who works at the gym daycare accidentally got a handful of poop when she checked on his diaper, but still said, "Can I be your grandma!?" to Casimir as we suited up to go. Then as I was changing him in the bathroom, Casimir gave one of his dazzling smiles and a big cheery "HI" to a young woman innocently washing her hands. She took one look at his smiling face and his poopy bottom and said, "He's so adorable!" The daycare woman said to me that she hoped I didn't mind that she always complimented him on his cuteness. Yes! Comment on his inner beauty! This is so troublesome to him, being so cute. You have no idea.

In a vain attempt to save some cash I went online to downgrade our cable service. Unfortantely the basic cable option doesn't exist, and the only downgrade was five dollars cheaper, which I did anyway and don't ask me why. I thought we would just lose a few stupid channels, but imagine my horror when I tried to click on VH1 classics and was told by the screen I would have to contact my cable service to view my 80s videos. I don't know what's wrong with me that this is so necessary, but it is. Something about Simple Minds singing on a cliff top in a cheesy trench coat shouldn't be soothing, but it is.