The setup: Punky has three foam blocks: one is a 4'x4' square block with a circular hole through it. The other two are round blocks that can fit into this round hole, individually. Punky has put one round block into the hole, and is furiously, determinedly trying to cram the second round block in the hole.
Awesome Mom Quote:
"Punk, that second block doesn't go in there and it's not going to fit. Except once in college when you're really drunk, and then you never speak of it again."
After witnessing from afar as my good friend, superstar, and now LAW SCHOOL GRAD (*ahem* I should mention surviving the second half of 3L while concurrently enduring first and second trimester of pregnancy) Laynie suffered the initial loss (and subsequent, thankfully, recovery) of her son's "special moments" outfits from his infancy.... I'm sorry, I got lost talking about how awesome Laynie is, where was I?.... Oh. Anyway. Laynie thought she'd thrown away all of her son's clothes, including the ones from those huge moments in a baby's life, and I completely and totally felt her pain and mortification. Thankfully, as I said, she found them, but in the meantime I got all kinds of colors of paranoid and wound up rifling through all 8 gigantic tubs of Punky baby clothes to pull out her important first outfits.
It's strange, how fast 15 months seems to have flown until I look at her earliest outfits and her shoes (OMG the tiny newborn SHOES!!! Not that she ever wore them, but OMG) and I realize how much she's grown, and how far we've come. From the tiny little onesies that I dressed her so carefully in to the frilly dresses I thought were a great idea when I bought them before she was born and then realized...okay, back to onesies.... and holy shit, TINY BABBY!... *cuteness coma, please pause... coherence to follow shortly*
I think it's important to stop every so often as a parent to stop and reflect on the path you traveled. I can't believe she's 15 months now, walking, and talking, and abusing the dog willingly and willfully speaking her opinions. And sometimes it just seems like such mindnumbing routine and such a pain in the ass to tell her again, DO NOT STAND ON THAT SCOOTER CAR, YOU WILL FALL, SIT THE FUCK DOWN....when I look at her little nightgowns from 15 months ago and remember that tiny little blob.
The outfit selection was small in the end -- only maybe 4 or 5 dresses (and her Bears cheerleader outfit), mostly from portraits, including these:
4 month portraits 
The dress she wore to A.'s cousin's wedding, which will always be a favorite dress of mine.
The Bears cheerleader outfit
First Christmas, 2008
Added for KL... yeah, that's right.
Daddy's socks can also double as leggings.I didn't want to be a mother.
Ever.
It wasn't just youthful selfishness. I just never imagined myself as a mother. When other little girls were playing with baby dolls, I was reading and riding bikes and motorcycles and playing sports. When our second grade class was giving the assignment to describe our future career, a lot of girls wrote they wanted to be mommies. I wanted to be a professional skydiver. I asked for a tubal ligation for my high school graduation present. Some people just feel destined to be parents, ready from the minute they exit the womb to nurture and raise their own young.
Yeah. Wasn't me.
So needless to say, I felt the glass of my carefully-sculpted world crashing around me in June 2007, barely a month after I had wrapped on college and was working my way toward a successful career that I had worked my ass off for to that point, as I sat on the bathroom floor staring at six different pregnancy tests all telling me the same thing: FUCK YES, BITCH, YOU'RE KNOCKED UP! Some digitally read "Pregnant." Some had two pink lines. But they all said the same thing:
My life. Was. Over.
I took a shower and sobbed until the hot water ran out, then I sat on the bed and stared into space, wondering what to do. I resolved that I was going to have an abortion. I was 22 years old and in no way prepared or ready to have a kid. No fucking way. I was barely dependable owning a dog. I was working on moving in with my boyfriend, who don't get me wrong, was a good guy, but a father? Shit. Neither of us were there. Considering the night I conceived was the night of my 22nd birthday, and the grand event was the culmination of entirely too much alcohol and other recreational substances to figure out the mechanism of "pulling out", this was pulling the plug on a party that was far too loud and far too exciting to stop.
Then I told A. I was planning for the same, "FUCK. FUCK. FUCK" reaction that I had had. He didn't want to grow up either. We were two big kids who enjoyed our days in bed, our concerts, our dive bars and our hard liquor. We were not parents. And then he smiled. That son of a bitch was happy. Overjoyed. Ecstatic.
And when I said, "I'm not sure I'm ready for this. I'm thinking about...." I saw the horror in his eyes. The hurt. The shame. The sadness. And I knew what I had to do. And I knew what I couldn't do.
So I spent nine months preparing to be a mother, when my friends and peers from college were moving to LA and New York and Chicago to be journalists and PR reps and teachers in Spain, and on February 15 I gave birth to a beautiful, health baby girl.
I felt nothing when she was born.
I felt nothing for almost two months. I wasn't postpartum, I just still wasn't grasping this new life, my new life, her new life, our new life. In nine months I'd gone from a drunk college grad to a wife and mother. I resented a lot of it. I tried to be happy and express how wonderful it all was, but I didn't like this squirming baby and I didn't like her crying. I didn't like waking up all the time and never sleeping, and I didn't like changing diapers. I had to Google how to change diapers.
Then one night, around 3 am, when we were wide awake yet again, I was playing "Just What I Needed" by the Cars and singing quietly to her when I realized that I loved her. It just sort of hit hard and fast, and in that moment I realized that this little baby was the love of my life.
And now, fifteen months later, I can't imagine life without my Punky. She is my joy, my everything, my world. Everything I do in life is for her, without a second thought. She makes me smile and laugh, she makes me cry at how beautiful and wonderful and downright hilarious she is. The other day, I went to McDonald's and got an orange Hi-C, stuck it in the cupholder and was driving off to run our errands, when from the back seat I hear in the tiniest whisper... "Peez?" And there she was, holding out her little hands and scrunching them open and closed. I turned around and looked at her again. "Peez?"
When I was sick last week, I wanted to die. And yet this little girl, my little girl, came up to me, laying on the couch and praying for death, and would give me kisses, and nuzzle her head on my side.
Things like that. She is amazing. She is absolutely everything I never thought I wanted. She is my life. She makes me strive to be better for her and for myself; I fall in love with her as I watch her discover her world around her, point at the birds and laugh, or sit on the grass just because it feels funny. Things I never thought I'd realize or understand, things I never even cared about, I see it all in her and I fall in love so much that it hurts -- goddamnit it hurts -- and I realize and I know that this is where I am supposed to be. With her.
Happy Mother's Day to all you moms out there. And if you're not a mom, know your mom loves you this much too.
Taint.
A. and I are members of our local zoo -- dating back to the Pre-Punky days -- so we wind up at the zoo just about every other week during the summer. Every time we go with Punk, we take a picture of her on this bronze orangutan statue. Our first visit of the season was earlier this week and true to tradition, we got the Orangutan Picture. And holy crap. My baby, my little blob that I had to hold for the picture (and Photoshop my arm out of later), is a toddler, happily sitting on the orangutan herself. And so, the Orang-Montage....
I feel like more often than not, I'm writing excuses here apologizing for never writing shit, even though let's be honest, I'm really freaking boring and do boring things and ramble on about my kid. But honestly, I got in a good writing mood last week and it quickly died off once I was UNABLE TO CONTAIN ANYTHING IN MY STOMACH. I don't know if I had swine flu. Maybe I did. I don't know. Whatever it was, it sucked, it sucked hard, and I never want to do it again. I had e. Coli back when I worked for Petland (oh yes, yes I did, with the medical records to prove it), and this wasn't as bad. Very close. Equal suckage. But not as bad. So ever the optimist, I kept telling myself, it's not as bad as e. Coli.
Because it's about being sunny, ya know? Glass half full type shit.
I don't know what the hell my bowels are doing now, seeing as I haven't pooped in like, a week. It was like I went from peeing out my butt to *flick of a switch* nothing. I guess it's better to be constipated than incontinent, but still. The intestines and I really need to get on the same page before I keep sending things their way; which I'm doing more and more now that I can finally hold down solids. And liquids. Hell, anything.
Some highlights of my bought with Mystery Flu included laying in the bathtub with the water running on me until the hot water ran out, then continuing to lay there in the cold water because I lacked the energy to get up and turn off the water, so I yelled for A., equally weak, to come turn it off. When he didn't respond, I tried yelling for, in chronological order, Punky, Bodhi, Lassie, and Kidney Boy (our next door neighbor). Somewhere in that process, I also shit myself. Oh well. I figured the water would rinse it off.
(Note to anyone reading this who visits my house: I have since pretty much soaked the entire house, tub included, in bleach.)
After the first 24 hours passed, I decided I was absolutely STARVING. RAVENOUS. So I drove to Subway and ordered a sub, then inhaled it in the parking lot. Still hungry, I drove down the street to McDonald's and ordered a double cheeseburger meal, then gorged that on the drive back to the house. Then as soon as I got through the front door, I went and threw it all up. Basically, I paid about $10 to rent some fast food for a little bit.
Even our goddamn fish were sick. The goldfish, Redrum to be specific, have some weird disease that I can't figure out. We lost OJ Cadillac and Albert Fish, two of our four fish, to the Mystery Swine Fish Flu, and Redrum looks like he's barely clinging on depending on the day. Ironically enough, despite all of the fish drugs and adversities thrown into that tank, Anna Nicole Fish is still thriving. Sometimes life is funny and interesting.
Anyway. I'm alive. I think we're all finally rebounding. So I offer a hearty FUCK YOU to the Swine Flu (H1N1, whatever) and raise my hand victoriously. And also, I lost like 13 lbs. I fit into my skinny jeans today. Who wants a vile full of this stuff?
PS: Kayla Linzy tagged me in a survey thing. Don't think I am ignoring it; I'm just waiting til I'm feeling particularly witty to answer it, because my life and my responses are THAT BORING otherwise.
Shaken Mama had a really great post about life happening in a house, and it really got me thinking about our house, and how much living we've done here in such a short amount of time. Ferris Beuller said life moves pretty fast, and you never really realize how fast it moves until you stop and watch it for a minute.
This was A.'s house before I came into the picture. It was his bachelor pad. So much so that, when I came inside for the first time on our third date, he kept the lights off. We hooked up on his old couch, that was so decrepit that I got a nasty bruise up my spine from the boards that stuck up from the cushions. There was a big Hank Williams poster on the wall; that was the lone wall decoration. He had a picture of Jeff Goldblum staring at you in the bathroom. Everything was sticky. There was a pile of tires in the living room that somehow constituted a coffee table. The kitchen table was buried under mounds of clothing. He kept his laundry in the dryer and pulled things out as needed.
Not too terribly long after we started dating, the lease on my apartment was up. I started looking for a new apartment and A. suggested I move in with him. I thought he was joking. I signed a new lease for six months, which I had planned to coincide with my college graduation so I could be free to chase job opportunities without being pinned down by a lease.
Six months later, he asked me again to move in with him, and I agreed. After all, I'd been paying about $500 a month for an apartment that was basically a storage unit, since I was crashing at his place every night anyway. I started moving my stuff in, bit by bit, during the last month of my lease.
On June 14, two weeks before my lease was up, I sat in the tiny bathroom of his house and stared at a pregnancy test that was blinking "PREGNANT" at me. (Yeah. I needed the fool-proof digital read.) I took a shower in the tiny shower, which we've since remodeled, trying to wrap my head around what it all meant. I stood in the dining room when he came home and we stared at each other, trying to wrap our heads around what it all meant.
He proposed to me as I sat on the same couch we'd hooked up on the first time, the same old couch where I'd sat up late writing final papers and studying, where we'd drank beer and played video games. The same old couch that my water broke on.
The second bedroom was the "guest bedroom," with all of A.'s guitars on the walls and a bed, where our friends passed out after insane nights of drinking and rocking and belligerence. It was gutted and is now a pink and green rose garden-themed nursery. Our daughter's crib sits where his amps once were. The room we rarely went into is now home to our greatest joy.
The hardwood floors where I passed out so many times now reverberate the plat-plat-plat of little, still a little unsure, feet. The trash that was once filled with beer bottles and fast food bags now sits with diapers and boxes from whatever random brightly colored toy she's brought home from the grandparents this time. The old couch where we fucked, loved, studied, drank, and smoked eventually got sold to a college student for $50 (with a matching loveseat), who didn't ask about the weird stain on the middle cushion, and we bought a new couch, and the living room that I'd originally so carefully designed in marroon, sage and tan is now mostly "primary color" themed with toys everywhere.
About a year after the date where he reluctantly brought me into his house that was embarrassingly dirty, A. carried me over the threshhold of our front door when we came home from Las Vegas after getting married on Halloween 2007. Yes, he picked up and hauled my orca-whale-fat, 5.5 month pregnant ass over the threshhold. Now I catch our daughter standing at that storm door, giddily, furiously pounding on the glass and giggling at the sunshine outside.
The porch where we used to get drunk with friends and play guitar, much to the neighbors' chagrin, now has a primary-colored plastic swing on it, complete with flower boxes full of "pretties." The lawn that we used to mow only when we were being threatened with violations from the city now stays pristinely mowed, as Punky follows behind with her pink Little Tykes mower.
But she keeps a good amount of distance, because the sound of the mower scares her a little more than she'll openly admit.
It's been almost two years since I moved in, since we found out I was pregnant, and life began changing at rapid pace. And it'll continue to change and morph until we eventually move to a bigger house and start over, and someone else will move in here, most likely completely oblivious to the furious amount of life that's happened in this little house.
But in the meantime, I'll sit on this couch (the new one, where the only stains are from sippy cups, and there aren't any potential injuries waiting to happen) and smile at the changes that have come and continue to come.
