it hurts me more than it hurts you

he killed me with cute earlier so i repaid him

by sucking his brains out.

the hardest part of mommying, by far, for me, is when i have to do something to john that i know is in his best interest, but that in his undeveloped worldview amounts to torturing him. it started when we went back into the hospital for his jaundice - getting his little heel pricked 2-3 times a day so they could check the bilirubin levels, while he screamed bloody murder ... we got a little used to it, eventually: fewer screams and more whimpers from him, fewer tears and more grimaces from me.

and he's never liked having his nose cleaned out. can't imagine why - surely every newly sentient being should look forward to having a strange plastic bulb jacked into his unsuspecting nostril, and suction being applied to pull snot forcibly from his sinuses. that sounds like my idea of a day at the park, for sure.

and it only gets worse. now that he has more control over his body, he bucks and kicks, he tosses his head and smacks at my hands while i try to clean his little nose out. tonight he had me in tears, his pitiful horrible screams echoing endlessly through my ears as i tried to console him and tell him, "truly my love, i'm only trying to make you more comfortable, i promise you'll like the results." (note to self: reason is not a six-month-old's strong suit.)

he's sleeping now. amazing what a little "night-night milks" will help that same screaming six-month-old forgive. i always heard parents say "it hurts me more than it hurts you" but i never really understood that 'til now.

forgive your mama, john. she loves you so!

Comments

on lullabies

i am not a singer. if you've sat behind me in church, you know this to be true. (and i'm sorry.) a musician, yes. a singer no. and yet i find myself singing to john almost nonstop. and the beauty is, he seems to actually like it! (there's no accounting for taste. he also thinks i'm the most beautiful woman in the world. i'm no ogre, but i'm certainly not winning any beauty contests outside of my son's brain!) and actually, i've written some lullabies for john that are pretty nice. and it made me think: did your parents sing to you? do you remember what they sang, and better yet, if you have kids, do you sing the same songs to them? reply in the comments!

i'm furberizing my baby

ok, let's get this straight right off the bat: i don't know if i am literally following dr. furber's methods of sleep training. there are so many versions out there. but saying we're furberizing john is WAY more fun than saying that i'm letting him cry his little lungs out in an attempt to teach him to sleep on his own. it's night two of our efforts. he went right to sleep last night, which was great. and he slept for 5.25 hours (!!!!) before waking up at 2:30 a.m. when he woke up crying, i let him cry for 5 minutes before going in to soothe him. (the soothing barely works at all, by the way, but it's what i'm supposed to do ...) then i let him cry for 10 more minutes before going in to soothe him again. next on the agenda was a 15 minute stretch of crying - but he fell asleep after 8 minutes. so a sum total of 22 minutes of crying. not too bad for night two. i've heard night three can be the worst ... so we'll hold on to our hats tonight. mean

home

annapolis rock 1988 thirty years ago, my family moved from denton, tx, to a tiny rural town in the mountains of maryland. i remember being sad as we sold our things (we were packing everything into two old cars to drive north) and actually crying over the sale of our washing machine. transition does strange things to kids' emotions. yet i remember arriving, excited, into this strange green mountainous place, and i remember even more anticipation as we found a home ("the old taylor place") and got ready for school to start at smithsburg elementary. third grade -- the same grade john starts this school year. i remember meeting my first friend on a dusty dirt road - the "alley" that ran behind the high school tennis courts and athletic fields from our home just at the town's outskirts to her home just outside downtown. (if you've never known a small town downtown, that's probably hard to envision). it was an amazing place to be a child. 199

john's mom works

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