Mandajuice

But wait! There's more!

The best part of the dinner my parents hosted on Sunday night, at which my entire far-flung family was present (minus Dan's Chinese bride, Elita), was the following exchange that took place as we were walking out the door:

GRANDMA: Alex, say bye-bye to Genoa. [Tommy's friend Genoa]
ALEX:  Bye-bye Genoa. [long pause]  BUT!  I WANT MY GENOA!

So it turns out the boy loves his Baby Sister after all and was completely mortified that we were about to leave her behind!  And this caused my insides to instantly turn into melty, gooey mush. I keep bragging about him to everyone.  He loves his sister!  Life is grand!

Genoa happens to be doing exceptionally well herself (knock wood).  She hasn't screamed since last Friday, when (gasp!) I stopped drinking coffee, particularly the non-dairy creamer I'd been dumping into it.  Apparently "non-dairy" creamer means it's perfectly acceptable to contain "sodium caseinate" a "milk derivative" which turned out to be the nasty little culprit all along.  She's still a fussier baby than I'm used to, but she's also a FAR FAR cry from having colic.

For a few days, I actually stopped eating soy and chocolate and CAFFEINE.  And I swear it was like walking around in a fog, like I'd been drugged.  WHY WOULD ANYONE CHOOSE TO LIVE THAT WAY?  Those of you who don't partake of a good daily coffee buzz have no idea what you're missing.  Fortunately, after several days of careful testing, I've confirmed that soy and caffeine are acceptable to Genoa's delicate innards and so I'm back on the coffee wagon again.  After trying Rice Milk (even more watery than nonfat milk) and Almond Milk (which was delicious but a tad chunky, causing the milk to all settle to the bottom of my cup) I've actually conceded to all you hippies and I'm putting Vanilla Silk in my coffee.  Best of all is that it doesn't make me want to yack with any urgency, so I can still get my coffee buzz on.  (According to my delicate palate, coffee without milk is VILE.)

So now I promise to stop posting about the screaming.  I swear it's been ALL BABY ALL THE TIME over here, which, while fitting, may not be the most exciting read.  Tomorrow I promise to get back to the real blogging, you know, when I talk about my ass.   Or maybe just my boobs.  Stay tuned!

Weekend Update

This weekend was chock full o' firsts.  The first time Genoa found her own thumb.

First time she met her Aunt Audrey.

And her Great Auntie Lala.

And her Uncle Dan, all the way from CHINA.

 

And even her namesake, Genoa the First.

Alex had a ball tagging along, of course.  Dan brought him this awesome Chinese dragon kite.

And Audrey read him The Ant Boy.

But most importantly, someone (Tommy? Mom?) took The. Best. Photo. Ever. Taken. Of. Me. EVER.  Seriously, WHERE IS THE OTHER FIFTY POUNDS I'M CARRYING?!?!?  Who set it up so my leg appears to be so dainty?  There is no planet on which I am actually this thin.  After I downloaded this one from the camera, I had to go weigh myself just to be sure my ass hadn't magically disappeared behind my back (har har!).   But sadly, no.  I still weigh 195 pounds (up only .5 pounds over the past week, during which I've cut out EVERY SINGLE DELICIOUS FOOD KNOWN TO MANKIND.  If this isn't water retention then I'm going to have to wire my jaw shut to lose this stupid baby weight).  But seriously, expect to see this one on my next passport.

Shhhh.

(No screaming for almost 48 hours!  Knock some effing wood for me.)

Baby Sister is one month old.  And smiling!

The. Most. Beautiful.Children.Ever.

First beach day.

Motherhood

So it turns out I'm a judgmental bitch.  Mostly about things I've kept to myself over the years, but STILL, I judge people.  And by people I mean other mothers.  I have MY opinions and even though I'm fairly careful not say them out loud, I still can't manage to shut up the voices in my head that constantly attempt to confirm my superiority above all other breeders.  I mean, my way must be the right way because it's MY WAY, right? 

But this week,  this NIGHTMARISH week?  I've managed to somehow shatter TWO of my carefully held parenting beliefs.  Namely 1) that fussy parents have fussy babies and 2) that pacifiers are for losers. 

I think it's pretty safe to assume that I could only be this sleep-deprived, shaky-armed and overwhelmed because Genoa has colic.  And as much as I hate calling it that and feel the need to come up with some other more politically correct way of saying it (gastrointestinally challenged?), babies who cry this much are colicky babies.  There's just no way around it.  I've eliminated so many things from my diet at this point that I'm literally eating fruit.  (But not citrus! don't worry.)  And it hasn't helped.   Nothing has helped.  She still screams mercilessly  long into the wee hours.

The only thing saving my sanity is that after all the screaming, she sleeps for a five or six hour stretch, wakes up to nurse and then sleeps another three hours.  I just have a hard time remembering that at 2:30 in the morning.  So even though I'm not technically all that sleep deprived, I'm tired.  The endless crying seems to exaggerate my exhaustion. 

So this experience is educational, if nothing else.  I honestly used to think that fussy parents had fussy babies.  That hyper-sensitive people were hyper-sensitive about their babies.  But I'm no where NEAR fussy.  I'm probably the most relaxed, go-with-the-flow mom I know.  I don't freak out; I don't question myself; and I don't tend to worry about the minutia.  Based on this ridiculous misconception, I'd have pegged my own chances for having a colicky baby at less than five percent. 

So now that we're here in five percent chance land, I'm trying things I swore I'd NEVER do.  Like the pacifier.  For whatever reason, I have it in my head that pacifiers are tools of the devil - that they exist solely so lazy parents can shut up their kids.  I KNOW.  How dumb!  But this is my own stupidity confessional, so there you have it.  I find that after exhausting every possible way of holding Genoa and every possible way of soothing her, the pacifier at least keeps her from screaming and swallowing more air.  It also stops her from mistaking her stomach pain for hunger (she wants to nurse, but is so full the milk just spills out of her mouth.)  So yeah.  It turns out pacifiers are actually USEFUL.  Who knew?

The most shocking thing is that I keep reminding myself that I just have to do my time until she gets better.  And I've never been a "doing my time" kind of mother.  I usually enjoy this.  In fact, I shocked myself with how much I loved caring for Alex when he was a baby - I assumed I'd just put up with him until he was a kid.  And don't get me wrong, I love Genoa and I feel this overwhelming heartache for her.  As bad as it is watching her scream, it must be a million times worse being the one screaming.  I just used to think that motherhood was as difficult as you made it.  And that belief has been officially shattered.

Note to self

When the baby smells like cheese, it's time to reconsider the once-a-week bathing schedule.

Bread

Friday night the girlie was up from about ten o'clock until some time after three in the morning.  SCREAMING.  She was just. so. mad.  And even though I had been PERFECT on my non-dairy diet, I knew that had to be the culprit and started going over and over everything I'd eaten that day.  And then I remembered eating the crust off of Alex's PB&J that afternoon and so I got up to check whether or not his Mom's White Bread had milk in it, which it did, and then that then led me to triple-checking my OWN bread for milk ingredients and lo and behold, the knockoff Safeway brand stuff HAS milk in it, even though the same stuff made by Orowheat does not.  Apparently I hadn't checked it.  Like a moron. 

So four slices of wheat bread in which "whey" is something like the tenth ingredient plus three bites of white bread crust was PLENTY enough dairy to awaken the demon allergy of my poor little baby.  She woke up with the telltale green diarrhea and a throbbing red butt.  She still has diaper rash from that single poop.  I have never even heard of such a sensitive allergy.  I mean, it's not like SHE'S eating the milk-laden bread.  I'm ingesting it and then my body is breaking it down into breast milk.  I don't even want to think about what would happen if I ate a bowl of ice cream at this point.

Maybe I'm just being pessimistic, but this doesn't exactly sound like the kind of allergy that a baby will just someday outgrow.  So I'm looking down the barrel of at least TWO YEARS without dairy (since I plan to breastfeed at least that long again.)  Maybe I'll be able to whittle my ass down to a single digit size after all...

By the way, thanks for all the great food advice!  Who knew my readers were such hippies?  (I keed. I keed.)  Unfortunately, almost two decades of dieting has taught me that I'm not a substitutor.  If I can't have butter, I can't eat toast.  Substitution just pisses me off and makes me eat everything in sight.  That, and even though I've tried it,  I just can't stomach soy.  I tried one tiny lick of Trader Joe's soy yogurt this week and just about lost my (dairy free) lunch.  I feel the same way about soy milk and soy cheese and soy ice cream.  The only thing working out for me so far are the tasty little tofutti cuties.  And unfortunately, I can't make a cheeseburger out of those.

Gross

This post is gross, so consider yourself officially warned.  On Monday I woke up with a back ache.  But not the normal kind.  The source of my pain, this time, was my third eye: The Evil Cyst of Doom.  It was huge and swollen and PAINFUL.

So I called the dermatologist, something I should've done YEARS ago, and took their first available appointment.  Wednesday night, after waiting patiently for 90 minutes (even though I had an appointment!), the doctor told me that my cyst has absessed.  They had to numb it with a zillion tiny needle pricks and then squeeze the living hell out of it (as an aside, I TOTALLY should've been a dermatologist - all that zit popping would be AWESOME) and then give me a giant cortizone shot to make it shrink back down to its pre-golf ball size.  I go back in three weeks to have it officially removed.

The gross part?  When I was lying there and he was squeezing it?  I could smell it.  It was NOT a good smell.  Keep in mind, I was lying face down and this cyst is on my back.  And I could SMELL it.  I have never been so grossed out in my whole entire life. 

Have a nice weekend, Lovlies!

Fattylicious

I know - I DO, I SWEAR - that I just had a baby three weeks ago (today).  But I still feel like a total cow.  I can't help it.  I gained twice as much weight as I wanted to during this pregnancy (42 pounds!) and now I'm suffering for it.  Why couldn't I just stop stuffing my piehole BEFORE!?!?

So.  This morning I weighed 194.5 pounds.  And as horrific as it sounds - at least that number starts with a 1 and not a 2!  I have 20 pounds to lose to get back to my starting weight plus 15 more to get to a "healthy" weight of 160 pounds (I'm 5'7.5").  At this point, I'll just be happy if my old size 14s ever fit me again.  Unlike most people who torture themselves about returning to their pre-baby bodies, I'm at least realistic in my expectations.  I'll never be a single digit size and I'm totally okay with that.  I've not once believed the myth that size equals beauty.

But still!  I'm never going to lose these twenty pounds if I don't stop eating so goddamn much.  Guess what?  Graham crackers don't have any milk in them!  Which, according to my stupid ass brain means it's TOTALLY OKAY to sit down and eat an entire package of them (not the whole box, mind you, but a third of it!).  Go me! 

Thank you, beautiful people of the Internet

You people were TOTALLY RIGHT.  And I am a TOTAL ASS.  It was effing DAIRY all along.  And I stupidly assumed that since I ate a bowl of ice cream EVERY night before bed, even for the first two weeks when Genoa was fine, that it couldn't be DAIRY.  Which is stupid because I KNOW KNOW KNOW that in order to become allergic to something, you first have to be exposed to it. 

So there it is.  I stopped eating dairy on Saturday at about noon and she returned to her formerly angelic state of being.  I slipped and buttered my toast that night and she ended up with a little green poop and about a half hour of crying that night.  Since then, she's been perfect.  Her poop is yellow again and we are beginning to catch up on our sleep.

Problem solved!

Except for the whole not-eating-dairy thing.  Which? SUCKS.  I had NO IDEA how totally cow-addicted I am.  I'm a milk-a-holic.  Of course the first thing I did on Saturday was to run out and buy some non-dairy creamer, but then I tried to think about what I was ACTUALLY going to eat and uh, there's NOTHING left.  I make my morning oatmeal with milk.  I love cottage cheese, yogurt, burritos, cheeseburgers, SALADS (every type of creamy dressing I like has milk or whey in it), eggs, toast with butter, EVERYTHING.  And worst of all - no more ice cream.  I'm basically stuck eating ham sandwiches and sausage patties.  Oh.  And vegetables.  Bleh.

NOT THAT I'M COMPLAINING!  I would give up eating ALL TOGETHER if it meant my baby girl was happy.  It's really a small sacrifice.  It just means I have to be creative about what I eat.  It also (hopefully) means a nice kick-start to the post-partem fatass removal plan that I'd lamely been putting off.  I have another WHOLE post written (you know, in my mind) about how FAT FAT FAT I am.  In the meantime, I've Flickr'd a bunch of lovely photos of my TWO children:

Oh.

And it's pronounced Jen-o-wa.  Three even syllables.  If anywhere, the emphasis is on the Jen.  I assumed everyone had heard of the city in Italy.  GENOA?  It's pronounced JUST like the city.  And, appropriately, Baby Sister is one quarter Genovese.