Originally published at diaper bag princess. You can comment here or there.
Dear Cary:This month feels like it's gone by in a flash. It seems like hardly any time ago that you were just my little four month old who didn't know how to sit on his own. Here we are, twice that age, and you can sit by yourself, and are very much enjoying standing. While sitting on my knee, if you are holding onto my hands you can pull yourself into standing position.
Crawling, on the other hand, seems to confound you and you just won't do it. True to new-mom form, I'm feeling a little anxious about this. Why won't you crawl? You're content to lay there in what we affectionately refer to as "baby skin rug" pose. You'll lay there for hours, crying if necessary, but you just won't make any effort to get up and crawl. You can hold yourself in crawl position: we try it daily. But to get you to actually go is a completely different matter.
Eating is going very well. You've graduated to two-or-three ingredient meals including ones with turkey or beef. I was the same way when I was little. When I was done with single ingredient meals I was DONE and I was ready for meat. You're a good eater and love your vegetables. Happily you accept three meals per day as well as nursing in between any of those, though, love, I will admit that it's a little hard on Mamas boobs. As in they are always bursting at the seams. This doesn't seem to bother you at all, and you take it in stride.
About two weeks ago we got family portraits done and you needed your first hair cut. I thought I'd cry about it, but you looked like such a little hobo that I was utterly desperate for you to get a hair cut. It was long and stringy, and with your penchant for screaming nonsensically accompanied by your lack of teeth, you truly resembled a hobo. To see you with prunes smeared from eyebrow-to-chin completed your vagrant look, and while you were adorable, it was a touch unsettling.
We have seen your first two teeth. You are one of those kids I said you were going to be. The kind that sit there and drool and pretend to get teeth for months and then end up with two in one sitting. Your two bottom teeth have appeared happily, and you mow your way through Cheerios, pickles and the tender flesh of my body. Not only bitten in the boob, but you've bitten my nose and chin on two separate occasions.
You have learned to "dance" in the cutest baby way I have ever seen. Watching the old Rudolph the Red-nosed Reindeer, you sat on the couch with a Baby Mum Mum cracker in one hand, and when the adorable, ancient characters burst into their tiny songs of delight and charm for Christmas day, you wiggled back and forth and bopped your head along with the songs. It's the sweetest thing I have ever seen.
We are in full swing of celebrating your first Christmas. I even wrote to Santa on your behalf, and am waiting for a reply to add into your baby book. You've been such a good boy, though, that I'm sure you will be spoiled rotten.
I love you so much, my sweet Cary Love.
Mama.
Originally published at diaper bag princess. You can comment here or there.
I moved the booklet away from my bed because it was keeping me awake with night. I have become rather skilled at writing in the dark and my handwriting, though a tad childlike, is still extremely legible despite the 1AM scrawls. I was getting upset, though. It was causing me to think, and re-think, and think some more about things. Not bad things, just things that I needn't be considering that much. It's been hard. I also am too lazy to actually get up, now, to get a piece of paper and write down these things, thus, I have been left with this lovely little conundrum.
I don't really have a point to this today. See, this is what happens when I don't have anything to say. I ramble on and on and on about nothingness and I'm sure it annoys the ever loving living daylights out of everyone.
I guess I can point out some of the new things I've got on the blog now...
I've changed the navigation because it was getting too long. And I had wanted to add more stuff, so I found this sweet CSS menu.
Under the "This Girl" section, formerly "About", you can still find information about yours truly, but now have access to a plethora of more information, such as Frequently Asked Questions. Who doesn't love FAQ's? This one is neat because you, yes YOU, get to drive that machine and send me your questions that I will answer/post some kind of response to. Unless it's about bags of toenails or pictures of me without any clothes on. Something I was piddling around with before I took my "vacation" was the Library. See what drivel I have been reading :) Also added a bit of a gallery because I am just far too cheap when it comes to buying a pro account on Flickr. I have the space here, why not use it?
The rest of the stuff you have access to was accessible previously, just re-categorized.
Something I know I've talked about 49583 times is opening an etsy store. Well, this time I actually have ideas, patterns, products and have been researching branding, fonts, information and such to actually open the shop. So, Diaper Bag Princess is now on etsy. I currently do NOT have any items listed, as I have recently become a bit more busy with life things, and while I don't have the same time to dedicate to this that I had before, I am still going to give it my all to get this little guy up and running by the end of January, 2010. I will definitely keep everyone posted about what's going on with that...I don't even know if anyone cares or not, but this is a huge thing for me. I'm always so afraid of failing at these things that I end up full of ideas and never take it any farther. I'll see how this goes, if there's any success whatsoever, and then I have plans for opening a second store for horse things. That, however, is completely dependent on how DBP goes. If it's really dead I won't bother going ahead with it, and if DBP is really busy (which I doubt, but you never know!) then I won't either, because I won't have time. It's also a secret right now as to what exactly is going on with it ;) But I do promise to keep those interested parties in the loop when there are things to know!
In whatever spare time (read: that time when I have no work to do and I can't sleep) I can find, I've been clacking away at a silly novel called Undying Love: a Zombie Romance It's fromage to the tenth degree, but it's funny too. Not Shaun of the Dead funny but...well, lame-funny I guess. It's still in its infancy and is only, like, three chapters long so far. I'll post some snippets of the cheese-factory when I'm more comfortable and in depth with the story. Maybe you'll like it, maybe you'll think it's the worst thing in the world. Either way, it's something that I've wanted to do since I've been about seventeen years old (write a full-length novel) and it's something that's on my life list to accomplish.
I've been feeling a lot better these past two days as well, after MAKING myself get up and MAKING myself get out of the house. It's so depressing to sit around and do nothing!
Originally published at diaper bag princess. You can comment here or there.
My depression has been incredible this past month. Like, gut wrenching, heart hammering, brain numbingly awful. Many days I spent in bed for a good long time, consuming cup after cup of caffeinated beverage in an attempt to jump start my life. Isn't this the exact opposite reason I had for going on this break? That I didn't want to feel like proverbial crapola, and take my life by the reins?
It got so bad again that I was thinking about what it'd be like to just go to sleep and not wake up. I just couldn't stop thinking how awesome that would be; I would no longer be in a loveless marriage to Zoloft and that I would finally feel like I wasn't falling behind the pack. It's terrible to think like that, and I am aware of this. I so desperately want to be normal again that I had to institute, and recently, a new set of life hacks for myself. I just love that term, life hack, don't you? It's like you can fix yourself a little bit at a time.
Exercise. I need it and I don't get it. This past month, with the horrendous snowfall has left me feeling shut in and emotionally crippled. I feel like I can't carry on a normal conversation about anything with anyone. My growth is stunted in my brain and I've often felt like a failure in life. Three - four weeks feeling that way is no way to live, and I don't encourage people with depression to try to fix it themselves. I'm at a point, though, where I don't have a choice. I can sit around and feel like shit for the rest of my life, or I can accept that my life is going to include a pill once a day, and that I am going to have to do a little more than hope that it works. I'm so over hoping that it makes me sick to taste the word in my mouth. I can't hope and I just need to DO. Even if it means braving the freezing cold with my son strapped to my back.
My baby has teeth. There's really no other way to segway into it than just to come out and say it. Teeth. Two bottom teeth, cute and unsuspecting until he bites on your finger. Coinciding with this blessed event is his inability to sleep more than 40 minutes in a given stretch - even at night. Night has become a series of naps with me getting up five-six-nine times during the night. He can't help it, poor little guy, and I truly feel bad for him. But I feel bad for me too. Last night was the first night he slept more than 40 minutes and I woke up with some seriously rock hard boobs because he hadn't nursed the daylights out of them the night before.
Baby is also loving food. He'll eat nearly anything. He's up to three big-boy meals a day and he nurses in between those times. He's enjoying feeding himself Cheerios, and has recently learned how to feed the dogs his food - except when it comes to toast. He's surprisingly strict when it comes to that.
Another lovely habit he has recently acquired is growling at me. He doesn't do it when he's mad or anything, so the only thing I can come up with is that he's learned it from the dogs, as they tend to growl at one another 9849503 times a day over everything.
I feel like my little "break" was wasted, but on the other hand it wasn't. I was able to actually get some gears in motion to accomplish one of my life list items. For real this time. I was able to sit and play with my son and be able to shut the computer off for a while and not have to think about it. My house didn't get cleaned, and it was apparent from the state of its disarray that it was clearly displaying the turmoil surging through my gut, but it doesn't matter. It got done today and for that I am proud.
Thank you.
Originally published at diaper bag princess. You can comment here or there.
Today I was in nursery in church. Wow...was that ever interesting. All the babies, even my usually sweet tempered boy, were practically hysterical. Each of the six children we had took their turns crying, being upset and needing to cuddle. Of course, mine was really pissed off that I was cuddling someone other than him. He's very attached to me for some reason ;) Eventually he got over it, but that was mostly due to the fact that he was completely and utterly exhausted.
I've been putting him to bed at nine for the past week - strictly. Before he'd play in bed until, sometimes, eleven thirty, and then he'd wake up a lot in the night. I thought maybe trying to give him a schedule now would help him out - and so far it's been going along swimmingly. He does occasionally wake in the night, and often it's good enough if I go in very quietly to comfort him - not even taking him out of the crib - and he's back to sleep. He's also been having much better routine sleeps during the day.
The only draw back is, now, though that he is sleeping so well (9P-9A), that if the schedule gets interrupted, he doesn't handle it quite as well as he used to. I'm sure we'll get over that eventually :)
Originally published at diaper bag princess. You can comment here or there.
- Feed Statistics: to avoid going to feedburner to get numbers of how many people are subscribed to my RSS feeds, I simply installed this handy, lightweight plugin to do the job for me.
- Now Reading: a great little plugin to give your blog a whole 'nother dimension: a library. While this isn't a necessity when it comes to blogging, it is a cute, fun, addition that is really easy to use.
- Wordpress sIFR: have you ever seen sIFR? It's great! It gives you the ability to have really unique titles, while still being search engine friendly. Download this plugin, go through the steps and you'll be sIFRing before you know it. Works with any font, by the way. It's a step up from the graphic titles, because with those you tend to lose searchability. Not so with sIFR. If your visitor doesn't have all the necessary permissions or flash components installed, it will still display a text-only version of the header so they aren't missing out on any content.
- I like this: give your visitors another way to interact with you that doesn't involve comments: by using "I like it! - a popular feature on sites like Flickr and Facebook. Also comes complete with a module you can show in your sidebar or any PHP-enabled wordpress page to show what your most popular "liked" posts are!
Originally published at diaper bag princess. You can comment here or there.
It's the time of year that I like to collect people's addresses to send out Christmas Holiday cards. So, if you did not send me your address last year, or have moved in the last 365 days, please send me your mailing address via email, and I will send you a lovely holiday card!
Please note that I do not sell addresses, nor give them out to anyone else. They are simply for sending holiday cheer.
Email: claudia.poirier@gmail.com
Originally published at diaper bag princess. You can comment here or there.
When I ever heard someone say "Human life is such a miracle!" I always thought it was such garbage. It, in my old opinion, was not a miracle; it was biology. It also happens to be biology that many people suffer from post partum depression, so biology failed me! Anyway.
Think about it for a second. You start out as two-one half cells. The egg is Part One and the sperm is Part Two. You can't have a baby without one or the other, and each is only half. And to think, from those two half-ready cells joining in holy matrimony comes a zygote. That's a real word. It's actually the word for the full cell made when the egg and sperm decide to join. After that, when it starts splitting, it's called cleavage and then there's all kinds of mitosis going on. It's actually very interesting.
Tonight I sat in the bath with my fat cheeked son and I watched him pick up a cup for water and a rubber duck. He came from two half cells. This little human with his sweet auburn hair, brown eyes, delicious squishy legs and a perfect gummy smile started out as an eensy weensie pair of cells from both of his parents.
I'm sure this all sounds very cliche, but I have a hard time wrapping my mind around it. Sure, technically I can absolutely see it. The cells join and then they split and keep splitting into a human. The emotional part of me, however, is really amazed by this happening. By the fact that somehow, despite everything that could have gone wrong, he came out perfect*.
*yes, he has his joined toe thing, but c'mon. So minor in the grand scheme of things.
Originally published at diaper bag princess. You can comment here or there.
This is probably going to seem like an odd choice of topic, but hear me out ;)In the past week, I've had four separate people call Cary a girl. Two were after they had heard his name, while we were waiting for our nurse to come and administer his six month (a month and a day late) shots. I think whey they heard his name they though "Carrie" and not "Cary" or even "Kerry".
He doesn't look like a girl, though.
Rebecca @ GGC wrote about this very topic, and I thought it was funny. I even wondered why mothers went so crazy when someone identified their children by the wrong gender.
Then it happened to me. Not so funny anymore. It truly is different when the stiletto is on the other foot.
I had first read of a couple keeping their child's gender a secret. they were from Sweden, so I thought it was maybe a cultural thing, but now I fully appreciate the validity of their experiment, except I pity the poor child if it is a boy, for they make "it" wear dresses. Anyway.
Maybe he does look like a girl and I'm just completely and utterly blind to it.
I just imagined, though, when he's dressed in "boy" clothes, like khaki overalls, blue jeans and sweaters sans flowers, bumblebees and Tinkerbell, that it would be a little more obvious.
How do you come back to people who say "she's so cute!" when it's a boy, or "Isn't that a darling little boy?" to your daughters? Have you ever been rude about it (I will admit, once I was extremely short with someone and said "HE" very emphatically...but that was like the third person that day to mistake my son as my daughter)? Do you have any good come backs for this? Is there any way, other than me crocheting him a hat that says "I HAVE A PENIS" that will let people know? Finally: how do you stop caring about it!?
Originally published at diaper bag princess. You can comment here or there.
I know that there are absolutely scads of people who are going to disagree with me about my choice of "ugly" actor, but just hear me out. Ed Westwick is a monkey.
I have a very strong affinity for men with well-cut lips. For example, Clive Owen has great lips. Paul Newman, in his younger days, has the epitome of perfectly chiseled lips. Ed Westwick has thin, weird, ape-like lips that do not look good for anything except smoking. Cigarettes, people. They also do not look all that much different from his face. I'm sure that with a little lip liner and some proper lipstick, his lips COULD look lush, full, and perfect. Though as of where I'm sitting, they so don't.
Another thing I find positively exquisite on men are cheekbones-matching-hanes. The hanes, on a man, are not his underwear, but that oh-so-delicious feature of their hip bones, the muscling and how it points to that perfect V shape. Click on the "hanes" link and the one I;m talking about is something else I dislike and find goofy looking (plus I have a strong suspicion this his muscles and hanes are PAINTED ON), Rob Pattinson. James Franco is probably my favourite guy with this because, ladies, he matches. his math is GOOD. anyway, that's not what we're here about. Ed Westwick has these utterly fabulous cheekbones that I would love to steal for myself. I have not seen him without a shirt, so I don't know if he has good math or not, but Lordy...I do love me some Ed Westwick cheekbones.
All in all, Ed Westwick is the kind of guy that I don't find attractive at all, even though he possesses many of the things that I like looking at in the opposite sex. the lips, the eyes, the manly looking brow...they're all present, and yet I find him mildly grotesque.
However, watching him as Chuck Bass on Gossip Girl is what makes me very happy to watch the show. Maybe it's his character, I don't know. I don't even know if he's a particularly good actor, but I am so wrapped up in that horrible little boy's life on that show I am embarrassed to let anyone know.
And that, my friends, is the Actor that I love even though I probably wouldn't give him a second glance on the street.
Just so you know, I looked up a lot of REALLY hot guys to write this article. Marky Mark, James Franco, Clive Owen. Mmm. I'm all OD'ed on hot boys. And then I have to wait for my husband to get home who is, to me, the most beautiful creature ALIVE. Know why? He's got the lips. For real. He's just so perfect, and kissable, and sweet.
I just want to say, you don't need to point out that I have got some REALLY weird taste in guys: I am very well aware of that. I mean, I went from David Beckham to Puff Daddy. the two could not be LESS alike one another, and yet, I find them both exquisite examples of the males of this species. While I know Richie is not David Beckham or Sean Combs, I think he's still so amazing and good looking and wonderful.
Doesn't matter if you don't agree ;) you don't have to be married to Rich. You can go marry Ed Westwick, the monkey that I find hot-but-not.
Yeah, I looked at too many hot guys already today.
Originally published at diaper bag princess. You can comment here or there.
ˈmɛlənˌkɒli/ Show Spelled Pronunciation [mel-uhn-kol-ee] Show IPA noun, plural -chol⋅ies, adjective–noun
1. a gloomy state of mind, esp. when habitual or prolonged; depression.
2. sober thoughtfulness; pensiveness.
3. Archaic.
a. the condition of having too much black bile, considered in ancient and medieval medicine to cause gloominess and depression.
b. black bile.
–adjective
4. affected with, characterized by, or showing melancholy; mournful; depressed: a melancholy mood.
5. causing melancholy or sadness; saddening: a melancholy occasion.
6. soberly thoughtful; pensive.
I'm sitting here, a book on one side, a pen on the other.
Another piece of paper folded into a pattern.
And I wonder.
Then I stop wondering. I make myself feel better.
The little monkey jumps in his jolly jumper, and I look forward to tomorrow. Because tomorrow is bright. It will be warm. And it will be a good day.
