Friday, July 15, 2011

Bad days exist even in paradise, apparently.

Today I have:
~ Accidentally kneed Havoc in the face, leaving a bloody cut that has since swollen into a that-poor-child-his-parents-must-beat-him fat lip.
~ Dumped a very nearly full cup of delicious iced coffee into the dirt.
~ Slammed my fingers in the screen door while trying to avoid doing the same to Havoc.
~ Hit my head, twice, on the corner of the closet next to the bed.
~ Discovered an incredibly itchy bug bite directly on too of an incredibly sensitive bruise on the back of my leg.
And it's only 1pm! There's still so much day left, so much potential for my day to get worse!

Yesterday wasn't much better. Among other, less irksome bullet points of the day, a girl downgraded my favorite rock climbs (and one my hardest sends) to a V0 (it's at least V3, damnit), I was finally hungry but only made enough (delicious) dinner for my usual barely-there appetite, and my left wrist blew out again on the first day I've had time+inclination to climb in weeks.

I'm guessing it's the same old unidentified injury; numbness, followed by deep aching pain from my fingertips all the way up to my elbow, and an inability to close my hand or really even wiggle my fingers. Today it's much better, only a little achy, and I have very nearly full use of my hand again.

Havoc is in the worst mood I've ever seen him in. Oh, lord, is it 5:00 yet? Mama needs a drink.

Tuesday, July 12, 2011

Leave No Trace ethics, or a lack thereof.

Well, monsoon season is upon us here in fair Flagstaff, so we have moved down from A1 Meadow to the Priest Draw. It rains considerably less here, therefor our solar set up is effective, therefor we are all much much happier. Since apparently we've already put the hottest part of the summer here behind us, (suck on that, Texas!) Havoc and I are spending most of our days walking around, exploring the forest around our campsite, and have come across the point of this entry.

Trash.

Lots and lots of trash.

I'm actually, literally, significantly horrified by the amount of trash I'm finding here. Broken bottles, beer cans, food wrappers, cigarette butts, hundreds of shotgun shells, even an entire tent tossed into a low spot! Oh, and let's not forget the television that someone used for target practice. There are soda bottles chucked down prarie dog holes, and toilet paper wads everywhere.

It boils my blood and confuses the hell out of me that apparently, to many, enjoying nature means destroying it. Well I'll be damned if my son grows up to be one of those people! He's being raised on Leave No Trace ethics, and in that interest he and I are cleaning house up here. We have collected three full trash bags so far (seriously), and have only scratched the surface (seriously). And that's just this campsite! We only have a few more weeks here, we don't have the time (or the manpower) to get it all, but by god we're going to get what we can.

Pack out what you pack in, people, and if you come across the evidence that someone else wasn't a good enough person to do so, do the world (and our children's generation) a favor, and pack that out, too. If you didn't leave it better than you found it, you did it wrong.

Friday, June 17, 2011

Admit it, your kid sucks too.

Since I finally accepted that PunkYuppie had become a mommy blog, I gave in and started reading other mommy blogs. It's been interesting and often wildly entertaining to read about other new moms learning about parenting under the gun.

However.

I'm troubled by a glaring lack of one particular topic. We write openly and cheerfully about poop, sex after baby, lack of sleep delirium, blah blah blah, but we all seem to avoid one key detail of parenting, one huge part of the day to day life of a mom.

Not liking your kid.

Let's be honest, we've all disliked our offspring at some point, when they won't sleep, when they discover biting, when they won't stop crying for no apparent reason, whatever. I personally am pissed at Havoc several times a day. I'm currently ticked off because, while he doles out hugs to Zoe and Tim like they're going out of style, he will fight my hugs so hard that he literally jumps out of my arms with complete disregard to his own safety. I also can't stand him when he dumps out the crumbs from his Dad's empty Cheezits box (thanks for leaving that within his reach, babe) all over the floor and grinds them to powder. I hate that he still won't say Mommy, but says Zeezee (his name for our dog, Zoe) about five hundred times an hour.

Now, don't get me wrong, I love my kid fiercely and will fight to the death anyone with the balls to say otherwise (I'm small, but scrappy, and I fight dirty). He's awesome and I wouldn't trade him for anything. I am just honest about the fact that loving my kid doesn't have to mean being happy with him every second. Sometimes he's a pain in the ass, and when he is I count the minutes until it's late enough to have a good stiff drink. Sometimes I just want to toss him to his Dad and disappear for a few hours.

Sometimes being Mommy SUCKS. And that's okay! Sometimes being Heather sucks, too, but no one thinks any less (or at least not much less) of me for feeling that way, so why should I be ashamed of being sick of being on call 24/7 to an infant or toddler? This is a hard job! The boss is a demanding jerk sometimes! It sucks a lot of the time, for every single one of us. Hell, we should just be proud of ourselves for showing up every day, for grinning and bearing it, for just doing it.

And if we can't be proud of it, at least there's always liquor.

Naptime wars

My child hates me.

No, really, he does. And all thanks to naptime.

Havoc has reached a really, um, let's say independent, stage. He doesn't want to be fed, he wants to hold the spoon himself. He doesn't want to use bottles, he wants cups. (Both of those things end in catastrophic messes, in case you were wondering.) He doesn't want to be carried, he wants to walk.
And he absolutely, positively, DOES NOT WANT TO NAP.
Kid is so damned tired that he's lying down on the ground and closing his eyes, yawning, rubbing his eyes raw, but if I dare be so cruel as to put him to bed, I am invariably treated to the screaming fit that I am listening to right this second. He sometimes even falls asleep while he's putting on his display of defiance, but then he wakes back up a moment later and resumes, as if jolted awake by the recollection that "I don't want to nap, no matter how tired I might be, and YOU CAN'T MAKE MEEEEEEEEE!!!"

Ugh.

Oh, right now he's doing the lie down and scream bit, because he's actually too tired to keep standing. Here in a moment, he'll catch a second wind and stand back up, but all I can think is, "Well, at least it's quieter when he's lying down..."

I don't get it! When I'm tired, all I can think about is how good a nap would be! Why must he fight it so?! And, to make matters worse, even if I go get him right this second, he's going to be mad at me all day long for being so evil as to want him to sleep a little when he's exhausted.

He totally hates me.

Thursday, June 9, 2011

Clothesline in the meadow.

While preparing for this trip, I spent hours online trying to find resources or advice for extended traveling with a cloth diapered baby. There is some info, but not nearly as much as I had expected, other than that I would want to find unmanned laundromats to avoid trouble when washing said cloth diapers. Makes sense; I'm not sure how stoked I'd be (assuming I didn't know any better, of course) to know I was washing my delicates in the same washer that just washed some kids pee cloths.

Well, so far his butt has still been cheerfully clothed. I just hang the wet diapers out to dry on a clothes line between two trees, and after they're nice and dry, they go into a five gallon bucket with a tight fitting lid.



It looks as though I've got enough diapers to last him about two weeks (which is good because that's all I can cram into a five gallon bucket), and my five covers seems to be plenty. Also, Havoc absolutely LOVES dragging that bucket around with him for some reason. It's currently his favorite outside toy. Kids are weird, man.
I'm still on the hunt for an unmanned laundromat, though. Jamie is super awesome and let me wash at her place, but I'm not into imposing. I prefer to not mix business and pleasure.


Luckily he's still doing fairly well with the potty training, so his three or four diaper a day badassery is maintained. I have yet to find many things in life as satisfying as discovering that the diaper you put on your one year old two hours ago is dry, other than putting said one year old on the potty and hearing that tinkle as he grins proudly at you from the seat. We've never chided him for a wet or dirty diaper, but praise him like crazy for dry ones, and we practically throw him a party for using the potty like a big boy! I'm still blown away by how well it works, not to mention how easy it is, not to mention how awesome it is when Havoc marches himself to the bathroom door and looks at me expectantly, ALL ON HIS OWN! That's right. He tells me when he needs to go. I don't even have to ask anymore! It's incredible.

Friday, June 3, 2011

Smoke in the meadow

We got smoked out of our camp site yesterday. Apparently a crew of some kind that is qualified to use explosives wasn't exactly well qualified to use explosives, and they started a fire in the forest a few miles south west of us. We really weren't more than idly concerned, since IH40 was between us and the fire, and besides that, forest fires are old hat around here. We had just bought our solar set up (more on that later), and mostly ignored the smoke in the distance.

But then the wind picked up, and that distant plume of smoke got less distant, and much much lower. Like, in the meadow. In the trailer, where Havoc was napping. I did some quick internetting, and learned that the powers that be were considering closing 49. As in, our only way out.
We decided to err on the side of caution and packed up and bolted. As Tim said, it's not usually the fire that kills you, it's the smoke. And we prefer that Havoc not breathe smoke, as a general rule.

So now we're camped out with Allen, smoke free and clear across town from the (still raging) fire.

Sunday, May 29, 2011

Terror at the Preist Draw.

When Tim and I were first considering this trip, our biggest reservation was Havoc. He loves his routines, his yard, his room, his things. We were really concerned that he'd be miserable and feel uprooted. Instead he's absolutely thriving! He loves being outdoors, loves the tall Ponderosa pines, the rocks, everything but the wind. It's super windy today, so he and I stayed home while Tim went out with Cody and Sam.

No, the uprooted one is Zoe. She's still pouting. She seems to enjoy chasing the ravens around the meadow, and seems to like the walking to and from the climbing, and the napping when we get there, but she's still very sullen.

I'm feeling strong. Up until yesterday, I had sent everything I got on, putting to bed a few easy projects from years past. Tim's shoulder seems to have benefitted hugely from the time off, and he's back to crushing.
But yesterday. Oh, man, yesterday.

I got on this super fun and easy little climb on the right side of the Anorexic/Carnivore boulder. It's a little high for my comfort zone, but not unreasonably so. I got to the top and pulled in this little crimp, and it flexed. I yelled down to Tim (in what was an apparently high pitched and panicked voice), "Shit, it's total choss!" I've never been so scared in the six years I've been climbing.
See, I had gone up top and scouted that hold, because I hate mantling top outs. I found the crimp (small hold that only your fingertips fit on, for you non climbers), and went for the send. It never even occurred to me to knock on it, or pull on it, to make sure it was solid. So dumb! I just spotted it and blindly trusted it. In retrospect, I realized that I have never had to find my own holds before, because Tim always helps me. False security. So I stupidly pulled on this hold that was incredibly not safe while I was 15ish feet off the deck and had to downclimb so I could drop to the pads.
Ugh. I was shaking for an hour. I still feel sick, thinking about it. Unforgivably dumb. So scary.

But all's well that ends well, and today Havoc and I ran errands while Tim is climbing, and now Havoc is napping and I'm going to eat some lunch.

Tuesday, May 24, 2011

We made it!

We're finally here! The trailer is parked, set up, everything is in it's place, and all is well. And not a moment too soon: the driving was wearing on Tim and I so badly that I was mere moments away from screaming "Screw this, take me HOME!"

Tim is in his "office" (the truck), and I'm feeding Havoc his breakfast of bananas and granola. Zoe is lying in his bed, glaring at me and clearly thinking, "Okay, Mom, joke's over, can we go home now?"

Our home for the summer is gorgeous. It's all huge pine trees, grassy clearings, and sunshine. This morning is about 50 degrees, and the high today is 62. It's a little cool yet for my tastes, but it'll warm up as summer moves on.

Havoc still hasn't truly adjusted, he isn't sleeping well so I've been sleeping with him. Hopefully that'll resolve itself soon. I don't mind it, but I'd rather sleep with that husband of mine. He's much warmer and the nights are effing COLD!

Sunday, May 22, 2011

Lubbock Texas is a shithole.

Yesterday was HECTIC.

Initially, we expected our tenant on Sunday (today) morning. So we kinda dilly dallied on the packing thing a little. She called Friday, saying she'd be there around 6 pm on Saturday. Okay, no biggie, we got to work. Saturday around 10 am she called, saying that she was about four hours away.
Begin scramble.
In the aftermath, I have no idea where our toothbrushes are, among other daily use items, but damnit, we're on the road, and that's all that matters!

There have been some "bumps", (stuck at a train crossing for 30 minutes, a few missed turns, and Havoc deciding that it was playtime when we made our first attempt to stop for the night), but overall it's been surprisingly painless. Havoc is riding like a champ, thank god. He mostly has been either sleeping or staring out his window, watching all the nothing roll by. I wonder what he thinks is happening, you know? "I don't know where we're going, but there had damn well better be balloons there."

We made it to Sweetwater, Texas last night, and hope to camp near Albuquerque tonight, and roll into Flagstaff AZ tomorrow!

Sunday, May 15, 2011

Bull Creek on a Sunday

Yes, this is a photo of a fire hydrant that is in the middle of a creek. No, I don't know what it's doing there.



We took Havoc to Bull Creek today to let him splash around in the water a little bit.



The kid loves him some water! He fell down some, but brushed himself off and kept on playing.
Here, look at some pictures of cuteness.







Does anyone know what kind of fish these are? They had these cool little "clearings" in the algae, I assume some sort of neat fishy dating thing.

Saturday, May 14, 2011

Kids do the darndest things.


We cloth diaper Havoc. To the uninitiated, here's what that means.

Step One: Get cloth diaper (standard prefolds, for us).

Step Two: Get diaper cover (Thirsties Duo Wraps for us).

Step Three: Put diaper into cover.

Step Four: Put the diaper/cover combo onto babies butt.

Step Five: Repeat when baby pees or poos.

Havoc, obviously, has figured out how to remove the diaper while his shorts are still on. In the brilliant words of Caitlin, "It's like that scene from Flashdance where she takes her bra off under her shirt... except this is WAY funnier."

Kids. *shakes head*

Wednesday, May 11, 2011

Booooooored.

We have a new tenant, I think. If this one screws us over, expect to start addressing me by the number given to me by whichever State Correctional Facility I get remanded to. She should be arriving here at some point on the 21st, we should be departing on the 22nd, and hopefully will be setting up house someplace not so suffocatingly hot by the 25th or 26th.

Tim has out the super glue. Oh, lord. I'm pretty sure that super glue wasn't made with repairing crumbling weather stripping in mind.
(Haha, he just walked by me muttering, "Ok, before I glue myself to myself, I should throw this away..." It's the little things.)

So here we are, cooling our heels for another ten days, and we're both going a little stir crazy. Thus the fixing of the weather stripping. It's funny, when your house is suddenly very empty, but you're still living in it, you really really start seeing all those little things that you meant to fix last year but got really busy and forgot about.
There are lots of those things in our house. Like, lots. Lots and lots and lots.
They're all smallish things, like the weather stripping coming unstuck on the back door because I am not qualified to install things like weather stripping. Like the chipped paint on the bathroom window sill from where I set an apparently wet rubber ducky that then sealed itself to the sill and pulled up paint when I removed it two months later. Like the rust stains in the bottom of one of the crisper drawers in the fridge (you store your fruit and veggies there, I store my beer. Don't judge me.) Like the screen on the window over the kitchen sink that I removed (broke) trying to get back into the house when I locked myself out one day when I was like 6 months pregnant and Tim was at work and my phone was locked in the house.

Anyway, in theory we're going to try to get some of that stuff taken care of. In reality though, I love those little "defects", because they're all the marks we've left on this house while we were making it our home. I don't know for sure that I'll exactly treasure the little discolored spot on Havoc's bedroom floor from the first time he copped a squat during Naked Baby Booty time, but I might. I want to come home to all of those flaws this fall. I want those little things to remind me that it's still home, even if I've been away. So I have to figure out ways to distract Tim from going apeshit and fixing everything.

Want a beer, honey?

Sunday, May 8, 2011

Happy Mother's Day!

Every time I say "I love you" to my mom, she says "I love you more". My whole life, we've had that exchange. I usually reply with something smart assed, or at least just the standard "No, I love you more!"
Shortly after Havoc was born, I was on the phone with my mom, probably oohing and aahing over my precious little son, and when we said our goodbyes, we had the usual exchange, only this time, after she said "I love you more", she added, "and I bet you believe me this time." For the first time in my life, I did. I really really did.

It's funny, before that moment, it hadn't occurred to me to think about just how much my parents really loved me. It was just one of those things, you know, like that the sun rises every day. But after I hung up the phone, I just sat and stared at my newborn son, and thought about how much I loved him, and tried to really grasp that my mom loved me the same way, maybe even more. It was, I think, one of the more significant moments of my life.

Happy mother's day! Not just to my mom Kelley, but to my awesome mother in law Esty, my grandmothers Kay and Jeanette (who are pretty much the coolest grandmothers ever, by the way), my sister Cedar (who has a little girl of her own, who turns a year this summer), and all of my friends who are mothers or mothers to be. I've been lucky to have so many great women (Mom, Mom T, Sandy, Melissa, Cindy, Carolyn, Jacquie, you guys especially!) in my life without whom this first year of motherhood would've been a very different and much harder thing! Thank you for all the support, advice, and hand me downs! I love every one of you dearly.

Have a very happy mother's day!

Saturday, May 7, 2011

Since it's almost Mother's Day...


I realize that this is a crappy cell phone picture, and that it's blurry, and that it's flat out just not that great. But I really love it. I took it the other day at Zilker Botanical Gardens. To me, it really captures what being a parent feels like. It's blurry and fast, speeding by you too quickly to really focus on.

I also feel like it captures being a kid, though, even more so. Also blurry and fast, but joyful and bright and colorful.

It just makes me happy, and I felt like sharing it.

Friday, May 6, 2011

ongoing

You know what the real kicker to me is about the whole tenant bs is? First, she's moving in, only a day late. Then, "Oh, oops, not moving in!" Then the next morning, "Oh, well, I guess I'll move in after all". Then a few hours later, "Yeah, sorry, not moving in." So, we have moved out, then back in, then out, and then back in again, all in two days time. You can't explain that kind of upheaval to a one year old. He doesn't understand. He just knows his world is getting shaken up something fierce, and he doesn't like it, and he's going to make sure we know it. Poor kid.
He's actually handling it very well, because he's the best damn baby ever, but I hate the fact that what should have been a moderately stressful event (for him) has turned into something much much worse.

The other possible tenant turned out to have warrants out for check fraud, doesn't actually work for who he said he worked for, and apparently moves around every few months to avoid getting found by his creditors. Yay for background checks! Seriously, did he not think we'd check? What a dipshit.

So, now I'm back to trying to find a tenant. Hopefully something will work out soon, and in the meantime we're going to take advantage of the very empty house to get some serious deep cleaning in, and maybe even do a few little improvement projects we've been thinking about for a while.

Wish us luck, kids.

Thursday, May 5, 2011

Oh, well that just sucks.

I very nearly made this post last night, but I realized how unwise that was when the first sentence was basically just me saying "fuck" a dozen or so times.

Yesterday was spent in a frenzy of packing and cleaning. I will eternally be impressed with myself for how much I got done with a bitching one year old pulling on my legs the whole time. I got the job about 90% or so done, and Tim ran to get me some boxes so I could wrap it up, because we were hitting the road the next day (which of course now, is today).

Tim got home and said, "The good news is, boxes are really cheap at Home Depot. The bad news is, our tenant just backed out on us."

Here's where all those "fuck"s came in, more or less.

So the trailer was packed, the house was more or less cleaned up, and we had no tenant. Which meant we couldn't go. Which meant we had just spent a large amount of money on a trailer for no real reason. Which meant I sold my beloved car for no reason.
We handled it by getting drunk.

Today things look better, we hopefully already have a new tenant lined up and we'll be able to leave this weekend. Still though, we are in limbo. Everything is on hold for the time being. Neither Tim or I are known for our ability to wait quietly, so the tension level in the house if pretty high right now.

Wish us luck. I need mountains, or I might literally lose my mind this summer.

Monday, May 2, 2011

The packrat lifestyle

We've lived in this house for three years now, and as can be expected, have accumulated a lot of stuff. Especially after that baby thing happened. We have so much baby stuff, holy hell. He only plays with like twenty five things, yet he has seven hundred toys. I only wear three pairs of shoes but own I think twenty. (In all fairness, though, most of those currently unused shoes were worn a lot when I worked in a law office and had to be all presentable and stuff all the time. Not a lot of use for six inch heels in the stay at home mommy business, it seems.)

It's insane the crap I keep around. Why the hell do I need two blow dryers, three curling irons, hot rollers, foam rollers, a straightening iron, and a huge box of products when the only hairstyle I ever rock is a ponytail?! Why do I need an entire drawer of baking tins, cookie sheets, and pizza pans when Erin (god bless her) does all of my baking for me? How many nearly empty bottles of Dayquil does one family need (answer: 4)? It's stupid.

So now I'm going through the toys, shoes, clothes, kitchen utensils, blah blah blah, and purging stuff like a madwoman. I think I've donated enough to Goodwill at this point to outfit an entire small single person apartment. I've thrown out enough to clog up our trash can so badly that when the trash truck came and picked it up, stuff was wedged into the bottom and it stayed for an extra week (Tim had to go out and ask the garbage men to shake it extra hard, and wouldn't let them leave until he saw it empty). That sucked.

We are now just a few shorts days away from our great departure! The trailer is mostly packed, and the house is mostly cleaned out. It's going to be weird, knowing that someone else is living in my house for the summer, but I'm pretty sure the perfect temps and awesome climbing will help alleviate that some.

I guess I should take some pictures of the trailer or something, at some point...

Thursday, April 28, 2011

Soo...

Wow, okay, so there has been so much going on! First Havoc had his first birthday, which was awesome and fun and a little devastating. There were two parties that weekend, both of which were awesome, and one of which was also celebrating the visit of Chris (my mom's former bass player, who has been a part of the family since I was like 12), which was awesome. Then there have been two beautiful weddings (Congratulations, Phil and Rachel, and Chris and Amy!). Then there have been two or three birthdays a freaking day all month... we've been busy.

But man. The biggest of the big news.


We are spending the entire summer on the road.

The whole summer.

Four months.

On the road.

We bought a super nice trailer. We're almost done packing it up. We're spending most of May in Bishop, June and July in Flagstaff, and August... who knows?

CLIMBING!!!!!

Friday, April 8, 2011

My friends are awesome

"me: oh
i had the weirdest dream about you the other day
A: oh yeah??
i love it when i dream travel!
me: that you showed up here freaking out because you were pregnant but hadn't had sex in like three months
and you thought you were the modern day mother mary
A: hahaha, ok
me: you were freaking out
it equal parts hilarious and bizarre
you were like, "shit, dude, i don't think i'm qualified to be the mother of another jesus!"
A: hahaha
i am so qualified
with the advice on punkyuppie
i could totally rear the messiah"

I love my friends.

Wednesday, April 6, 2011

Injury report

Everyone knows that I am quite frequently broken. I have bad wrists (when I attempt a mantle top out, my hands tend to go numb, and sometimes stay that way for hours or even days). I have a bad knee (blew it out hiking the Grand Canyon on our honeymoon four years ago, and it still gives me trouble on a daily basis). I'm constantly tweaking tendons, rolling my ankles, straining my back, and lots of other usually undignified and embarrassing manners of injuring oneself. Like the time my foot slipped off the traverse at McKinney Falls, and I dead legged the landing after falling the six or so inches, and ended up limping for a week and a half.

Every now and then, Tim also gets broken, but his brokenness generally comes from some badass something or another. Like the time he broke his finger throwing for the lip on Evil Eyes, or hurt his knee Archemedes Lever (which I'm almost certain I just misspelled). He's always at least doing something cool.

Well, now he's broken pretty badly, and unfortunately this time there's no cool story to go with it. The official diagnoses is a ruptured tendon sheath in his left bicep. It's a repetitive stress type of injury, which according to his chiropractor most people would never even know that they have. Apparently (and who didn't see this coming), Tim's tendency to just work through the pain all the goddamn time isn't really the best way to handle mild injuries. In fact, it turns them into not so mild injuries. Who knew?! Not Tim, obviously. So, after finally getting someone with a medical degree to back me up, he's been taking some time off from climbing and shoulder-y workouts.

Which unfortunately means so have I, partly out of solidarity but mostly because I'm too lazy to carry two crash pads around all by myself. That, and it's already topping out in the 80's and on a few days the 90's around here, which of course is too hot to do much of anything.

The good news is, man oh man are we getting a lot of projects done around the house.

Sunday, March 20, 2011

Today I didn't even have to use my A.K.

I am currently that special kind of tired that only comes from really good days. Havoc and I basically slept until 10 (he was up for about an hour somewhere in there, but played in bed with me while I dozed). Then my friend Ann gave me my very first pilates lesson, which I apparently did not completely suck at. Then we had some friends (including Ann and some friends of hers who were in from out of town) over to grill, which never fails to be a good time. Then McKinney Falls, which was a surprisingly good time even though I usually hate it.

There is absolutely no point to this post except to prove that I don't only bitch. Sometimes I'm pretty stoked on life, too.

Friday, March 18, 2011

Parenthood, please forgive the language.

So Tim and I were just having this drunken conversation about life and children, and I was comparing life to Stephen King's Pet Semetary, and Havoc was screaming bloody murder in the background, and the SyFy version of Being Human was on TV (the "I want you back (from the dead) episode, oh man), and FUUUUCCCCKKKKK. We just lost a dear friend, (which will get it's own post as soon as I'm ready to write it), and we just sold my beloved Darla (my very first ever car, and yes, I cried when the new owner drove her away), and man oh man, it's been an emotional week...

*sigh*

The point.

If you had come to me two years ago, and shown me the absolute best day I would have in the first year of parenthood, and the absolute worst day I would have in the first year of parenthood... I know no parent is supposed to say this, but... goddamn, I would have gotten a hysterectomy. Being a mom is fucking HARD. It's a lot of stress, and worry, and freaking out over nothing, and finally getting him to sleep through the night but not being able to sleep through the night myself because oh-my-god-he-hasn't-woken-up-in-hours-he-surely-must-be-dead-oh-my-god-oh-my-god-oh-my-god-oh-my-god-oh-my-god...

Oh, my god. It's so hard.

Havoc is amazing. He's potty training, and he's walking, and he's so sweet and loving affectionate, and oh, god I love this kid SO MUCH... but there are hands down moments when I would trade his crying for a solid night of sleep. He's the happiest kid I know, but I still want to sleep till noon! I still want to have, ahem, "alone time", with my husband without interruption! I still want to have nice things! I still want my goddamn jeans to fit (although I shouldn't bitch because the jeans are too big instead of too small but whatever, the sentiment is the same). I still want to be myself instead of being just Mommy. But you know, fuck, man, that isn't an option I have anymore.

I guess being a parent, though, isn't about being willing to trade a screaming baby for anything... it's about not being willing to trade a smiling baby for ANYTHING. Because those smiles, and those laughs, and those hugs, oh man the hugs... the hugs are worth more than anything in the whole world.

Everything in it's place... I wouldn't trade this life for all the good nights of sleep in the world. My kid, as much as he sucks sometimes, is the best thing that ever happened to my little world, and I'm lucky to have him.

It just takes some thinking about sometimes.

Monday, March 7, 2011

Sleep adventures

When Havoc was born, he slept like a champ. Most nights, he slept for at least five or six hours at a stretch, and he was super easy to put back to sleep once he did wake up.

Well. Somewhere around six months old, he decided that I'd had enough sleep, and he flat out refused to sleep. He was waking up screaming bloody murder every single hour, every single night, and putting him back to sleep was awful. He would cry and cry, and the only way to calm him down was to nurse him, but at that point he'd gotten a few teeth, and he would bite me. Hard. A lot. I was sleep deprived, frustrated, dehydrated, and sore-nippled. Poor Tim bore the brunt of my exhaustion, I yelled at him all the time despite the fact that he was doing everything he could to help. I was completely irrational. I bought books, I read hundreds of internet articles, I called or emailed every mother I know for advice, I cried buckets, and I drank gallons of vodka.

One day, I reached rock bottom. I was moments away from a complete nervous breakdown, and I just couldn't do it anymore. I sat down with Tim and told him that I wanted to try the one thing we both swore we'd never do... cry it out. I felt like a terrible mother for even being willing to consider it, it seemed like such a mean thing to do to my poor baby, but I was losing my mind. Tim agreed, and we settled in for a long miserable night.

When I put Havoc to bed, he cried. And cried. And cried. For an hour, he screamed. Then he just... went to sleep. And he stayed asleep for four hours. He woke up, and he screamed. For twenty minutes. Then he slept for a few more hours. He woke up and cried for less than five minutes.

The next night, he cried for less than twenty minutes.

Now, he cried for less than five minutes at bedtime, then he sleeps through the night. Like, through the night. Not the technical definition of sleeping through the night, which is only five hours at a stretch, but through the night! He sleeps between eleven and thirteen hours at a stretch.

I'm human again. It's glorious. I have no idea if this is going to keep happening, but I'm going to enjoy it as long as I possibly can.

Now, I'm not saying that this method would work for everyone. I'm certain that it doesn't work for everyone. But, man oh man, did it work for us.

Wednesday, February 23, 2011

Back in the saddle... or something...

I finally went climbing the other day. The weather was beautiful, and Tim offered to wrangle the kid for me so that it would actually be a climbing day instead of the usual "I brought my shoes and chalk but I'm just going to follow Havoc around while he gets into shit because Tim is climbing everything in sight at such a rapid pace that I can't touch any stone except for what I pull out of Havoc's mouth" days.

It was basically a mistake.

To begin with, I was still sick. My cold had turned into a raging sinus infection and it felt like there was a ton of concrete in my nasal cavities. Then there was the fact that we went to McKinney Falls, which by all accounts but Tim's is the hardest climbing in Central Texas, with brutal mantle top outs. (In case you've forgotten, I can't mantle anymore, because it makes my wrists and hands go completely numb for sometimes days.) I also hadn't had my nap, which I realize makes me sound like a three year old but, man, I really need my naps. (Hey, I'm up all night long with a crying baby, all right, I need naps in order to survive.)

I climbed for maybe thirty minutes, and I'm probably being really generous with that. I bitched the whole time, pretty much, and failed quite a bit. I did finally top out two problems, the easiest ones there (one of which I actually topped out when I was like seven months pregnant, just to show you how NOT proud that actually is), and threw in the towel.

The whole day was not lost, however. We put Havoc in his new Havoc Hauler and walked some of the trails out there, which are beautiful. I'd been climbing there for three years before I'd discovered the trails (Tim and his one track mind), so I love the chance to explore the park more. All you climbers that I like to pretend are reading this (even though I know you're not), if you haven't wandered the trails, do it. Take the dog for a walk as a reward for staying off the crash pads or something. It's really pretty out there.

Sunday, February 20, 2011

I just feel like complaining for a sec

Man, oh man, are Havoc and I sick. He is a champ, thankfully, he pretty much is the same as always just with more snot on his face and every now and then a little bitching. I, however, am a mess. I just want to cry all day long. I suck at being sick. I get guy colds.

What sucks about that is that it is finally freaking gorgeous around here, and all I want to do is be outside, but my nose is all stuffed up and I'm coughing up big chunks of dried up green gunk and my voice is all croaky and weird and if I bend over at all I get dizzy and feel like I'm going to pass out. It's my version of prime climbing weather (everyone else likes it cold, but I like it mid 70's and sunny), and I'm stuck inside. Grrr. If I don't get out of this house soon, I am going to go entirely batshit crazy.

Also I want to lose a few pounds, but it's Girl Scout Cookie season, and all the Valentine's Day candies are on sale, then it'll be Easter, and that makes losing weight difficult.

Blecht.

Friday, February 18, 2011

New Punkyuppie

So. We let the old Punkyuppie.com lapse because, well, we couldn't get the webmaster to change any goddamn thing and the layout, tagline, blah blah blah no longer applied (and hadn't since we got home from our honeymoon roughly four years ago). So, yeah. New site. Free site. I can make the changes needed to this one as needed. Forgive the crappiness. Or ignore the crappiness, whatever it takes to make you happy, I really don't care so much. I'm aware that really only our parents/family/close friends who feel obligated still ever look at this silly bog anyway, so whatever.

But yeah. New blog. Save it. Remove the old one. Go.