little bear’s been saying, “mummmm” when he’s upset for a while now, but i figured it’s random. and he says, “da” sometimes in the morning when sohei’s getting ready for work. i didn’t really think it was directed at him, because he tends to make a lot of sounds when he first wakes up. but today, i’m pretty darn sure he meant it. sohei was turned over in bed, watching tv, and little bear rolled over on his side and reached out to him, and went, “da-da.” and i was like, “omg, [sohei], turn over and acknowledge him! he was talking to you!” he also tried to climb me this morning, which isn’t all that unusual. what was different today was, sohei said he was pulling himself to standing. (using the straps on my nursing tank top as grips, of course. ) he tries to do that a lot, but he actually succeeded today, apparently. (he was climbing my back, so i couldn’t see it.) i can’t believe how fast he’s growing. what a neat baby!

why can’t i stop worrying about the shape of my son’s head? that there are too many bumps and dents and the way it looks? probably because half the women on the baby board i read are getting shaping helmets for their babies. (i don’t want him to wear a helmet, but i also don’t want him to hate me when he’s a teenager because his head looks weird.) (also, i doubt i would have noticed that his head doesn’t look “normal” if it wasn’t for the internet.) (i still think he’s beautiful and i’m just going to quit worrying about his head because he looks just fine dammit.)

i’ve been doing some “sleep training” with little bear this week and it’s not going well. i put him in his crib every day for his afternoon nap, and sit down on the floor next to him and pat him and sing to him and stuff. i’ve tried just leaving him in there by himself and he screams. i’ve tried sitting in the recliner in the corner, and he cries until i pick him up. so this week i’m trying it this way. crying it out doesn’t work for this kid, even if i wanted to do it, and i don’t. my stomach issues haven’t been as bad as they were pre-baby, but i still have flare-ups which require me to leave him in his crib sometimes. he fusses the second i put him down. i turn on his mobile and pat him and leave. then he starts crying, but i’m sick, so i can’t go pick him up. the crying turns to screaming and it does. not. stop. he just screams until i can come back for him, and then it takes a while to console him.

so leaving him to cry it out just isn’t an option. besides, it just feels wrong. when i come in, he raises his little tear-stained face to look at me, as if to say, “mama, why did you not come for me?” honestly, though, i don’t know what to do. he cries even when i’m sitting right there. the whole point of me sitting next to him was so he could relax and sleep. we do this for an hour every day and not once has he even come close to sleeping. he just cries. i don’t pick him up or anything, i just pat him and sing and stuff, but it doesn’t help. he just gets louder. i guess we’re kind of doing cry it out, but i’m there so he doesn’t feel abandoned. i’m not sure if this is a good idea, though, because a) it’s not doing any good and b) i’m afraid he’s going to start hating me.

i would be fine with letting him continue to co-sleep except that as he gets more mobile, it’s getting more dangerous. he burrows under the covers now and likes to pull them up over his face. when i’m awake, i just pull them off, but when i’m asleep it about gives me a heart attack to wake up to him like that. he also likes to bury his face in our pillows. i sleep really lightly when he’s there, because i can’t relax and i’m always keeping watch. (one time, sohei almost accidentally put his arm over little bear, and – in my sleep – i caught his arm and pushed it away.) when sohei takes him downstairs with him some weekend mornings, i sleep completely differently. so deeply, in fact, that when i wake up, i panic because i worry that i might have rolled on little bear or something.

so, yeah, i’m at a loss with this sleep training thing. i’m going to keep doing it because everything i read says that if you give up, it’ll just confuse him. i think it’s just going to take a long time…

also, he’s always very interested in what people around him do, and wants to emulate them. so we’ve been working on cup training. he watches me drink and reaches out for the cup. i hand it to him and he takes it and puts it to his mouth. but then he doesn’t know what to do with it. usually, he gets frustrated and tips it over, spilling the water down his front. (it’s only a small amount, at least.) it’s so cute watching him try, though.

well, he’s fussing, so i’d better sign off. i swear he has a.d.d.

in a move i’m sure i’ll regret, i entered little bear into a photo contest. in five categories, actually. (if you want to see how he’s faring, the results are here:

http://www.pollsb.com/polls/p2153990-best_friends_3#results
http://www.pollsb.com/polls/p2154018-daddy#results
http://www.pollsb.com/polls/p2154046-best_hair#results
http://www.pollsb.com/polls/p2154088-best_newborn_picture#results
http://www.pollsb.com/polls/p2154162-best_smile#results

round one will be over on monday.)

i was afraid that no one would vote for him and i’d feel awful, but he has at least one vote in each category, so i feel a lot better now. even if he doesn’t win, at least he got votes. and no, none of them are mine. we’re not allowed to vote for our own babies. i did this on a whim, and i don’t think i’ll be doing it again, no matter the results… but… go little bear!

sohei keeps talking about having another baby. i’m pretty sure i just want the one. the thing is, i don’t really know why. i loved being pregnant. even though i could hardly walk toward the end, and anything to do with the hospital was awful, i really enjoyed it. maybe it was the worrying. every stupid doctor i went to gave me a new thing to worry about, and i was so relieved when little bear was born safe and sound. there wasn’t a thing wrong with him. or me.

it isn’t so much pregnancy making me not want to do it again. and it isn’t that i dislike being a mum, because i’m loving that, too. i know there are a million things wrong with this sentiment, but i’ve honestly never felt so fulfilled before. my last job came close before it all went to hell, but i don’t think anything will ever beat this. i get to spend my days with this great little person that i love most in the world, and i always feel proud that he’s mine. i made him. (and yes, i know that for most people, it doesn’t take a lot of effort or anything special to make them, but i don’t think i’ve ever, personally, made something this great. ever.)

so, i loved being pregnant, and i love being little bear’s mum. what is stopping me from wanting to do this again? honestly? i don’t know. i can’t put my finger on it. in fact, i feel bad about it sometimes. i have been so lucky. it was so easy for me to get pregnant. the pregnancy itself was a breeze. and while his colicky period was awful, and he’s a very needy/clingy baby, if i had another just like him, i’d consider myself incredibly fortunate. he’s a great baby. so what’s my problem?

i think part of it is that i don’t want him to have to “compete” with a sibling. in my family, as in most, there were limited resources that my sister and i had to share. i don’t want little bear to have to go without something because of his sibling. my sister is such a good friend to me now that i feel guilty about depriving him of a little brother or sister. but who’s to say they’ll get along anyway? juchan and i did not get along very much when i lived at home, which is kind of expected i think, but if we still didn’t get along, it would suck. there’s no guarantee that little bear will like his sibling, so why risk bringing that into his life? also, what if he ends up having autism or something? if he’s special needs, i don’t think i’ll be able to handle another kid.

i know i’m probably setting him up to be spoiled. he’ll probably be upset that he doesn’t have a sibling, because the grass is always greener. (if he did have a sibling, he’d probably be mad about that, too.) and there’s no guarantee that i won’t have another baby someday. (i’m packing away the things he outgrows, rather than giving them away, for now.) and, really, it would be crazy to get pregnant again now. 1) i have to wait a year to conceive, thanks to the c-section, 2) we’re about to have two houses foreclosed on as well as filing for bankruptcy, 3) i have crap health insurance that doesn’t cover stuff like pregnancy. so i definitely won’t be getting pregnant again within the next year, unless it’s an accident. it just feels kind of weird that i don’t want to, ever, all things considered.

little bear has been making his toys interact recently, which i find really fascinating for some reason. right now, he’s in his fun jungle exersaucer, and he’s making the dragonfly “dive bomb” the iguana, causing the iguana to start lighting up and singing. the iguana interests him anyway, as i’ve seen him smack it like he wanted it to shut up, and kiss it when it wouldn’t come on. but i’ve never seen him use another toy to activate it, and i just think that’s neat.

i really, really love being a mum. even though we were trying for a baby – on purpose and everything – i was still a little scared i wouldn’t be able to handle it. but i’m so happy to have little bear. i love him so much. he can be trouble sometimes, like when he refuses to sleep or let me put him down so i can get work done. but on the whole, he’s a sweet, pleasant little fellow.

this past month, his main accomplishment was being able to sit for a while on his own. he can’t sit up by himself, but when pulled to sitting, he can pretty much stay there. sometimes he pulls himself forward onto his hands and knees, but no real crawling yet. and sometimes, he still falls to the side or his back. he’ll be six months old on 3/5, and i’m kind of hoping to see some real babbling by then. (ga-ga-ga, etc.) he still makes noises with his tongue, does long strings of vowels sounds, and does “mmm” and “bbb” sorts of sounds. but no strings of vowel-consonant sounds yet.

he’s also excellent at reaching. he’ll grab for anything in reach – and move forward to get at things that aren’t – and put it in his mouth. he fusses when we take toys away, too. (and fussing is putting it politely.) some of his favorite objects to grab are remote controls and video game controllers. he is his father’s son…

i’m not in a hurry to see him grow up, and i feel like he’s pretty much on track. he does everything on the doctor’s checklist, anyway. he’s still hit-or-miss when responding to his name, but he’s getting better, i think, so no worries.

crying babies used to irritate me. now they break my heart. (and not just when it’s my baby crying.) i think there’s something wrong with me.

(also, there’s no benjury at the moment, thankfully. that’s just what i say to him when he cries. i’m a mean mama. )

okay, i give up on the damn wrestling post. my thoughts on tna vs. wwe are getting outdated. in a nutshell: despite the presence of the wolfpack/nwo/whatever, tna is far more fun to watch than wwe. the booking isn’t always the best, and i hate bischoff, but the wrestling itself is actually entertaining. wwe’s wrestling (when it actually happens) isn’t as good, and bringing bret hart out once, then shelving him for a month, was lame. i was psyched to see him again, but don’t know what the hell he was thinking going back to that company. he should’ve joined the other old guys over at tna.

moving on…

i’ve been thinking a lot about stupidity lately. i watched idiocracy with juchan over the holidays, and today i watched a documentary about stupidity. on sunday, sohei and i were discussing whether we were smarter than our parents and whether little bear will be smarter than us.

first off, we were saying that stupidity and intelligence are kind of hard to define. the documentary agreed with me there. i think it’s kind of like porn, in that you know it when you see it. also, we decided that we are probably smarter than our parents, or at least smart in a different way. sohei says his dad is smart in a practical way, like street smarts. and his mum is fairly intelligent, but is also intellectually incurious. she knows a lot about what she needs to know, but doesn’t learn for the sake of learning.

i don’t even know what to say about mine. my mum wasn’t stupid by any means. she didn’t have as much in the way of formal education as any of our parents, in that she didn’t finish college. but she was, mostly, pretty intellectually curious. she was well read, and, though religious, not a fundy. (neither of sohei’s parents are religious.) as a christian, she thought outside the box. on the other hand, there were some facets of her life where i don’t think she thought enough for herself. using politics as an example, her beliefs often didn’t seem to jibe with her otherwise compassionate nature. when she and sohei used to debate, she’d argue her point, but listen to his as well, then seemed to actually think about it. sometimes i think she wasn’t entirely sure what she believed, either. she was very good at both english and math. (way better than me at math, in fact.) maybe it was her lack of worldliness that made me wonder whether i was smarter. or maybe kids always think they’re smarter. who knows?

as for my dad, he just baffles me. he double majored in biology and chemistry, got a masters in public health, and a doctor of veterinary medicine degree. yet he thinks the world is going to end soon, that the good people are going to float into the sky, and that gay people should go to hell. (i have never bothered to inform him that i’m bi, though sometimes it is really tempting, because i think he’d short circuit like a confused robot.) i just don’t know how you can be a scientist and a fundy at the same time. he’s not stupid about science, either. he’s very good at his job. i’ve read his textbooks, and none of them include jesus riding a dinosaur or anything. but whereas my mum saw the bible as allegory, my dad seems to think it’s fact. so, my dad is way better at chemistry than i am, but i think i’m a bit smarter. more open-minded, anyway. phew.

then there’s the ignorance is bliss debate. in idiocracy, the world was both stupid and angry. oh, and mean. if stupid people were in a state of bliss, wouldn’t the world be a utopia? at the end of the documentary, an author speculates that cows are happy now and wouldn’t be if they were smart. if they were smart, they’d know they were going to be milked, then eventually slaughtered. and if humans were smarter, they’d realize their existence was meaningless. smart people do seem to be a lot more depressed than your average person. is this because we realize how futile life is, or is it a chemical thing? smart people can be angry and belligerent, too, but stupid people are more often portrayed that way, because they can’t “use their words.”

i know i’m not brilliant or anything. i really do wish i was, even if it meant being unhappier than i am now. because i don’t think stupidity or ignorance leads to happiness, either. you just get upset about different things.

i have a theory about human evolution and the autism boom as well, but that will have to wait for another time, as little bear is up from his nap and needing attention.

i’m having a really frickin’ awful day. it started the way most of my awful days start, with sohei bitching at me because i didn’t wash his shirts. he insists he told me to do it before, but if he did, it must have been some morning last week when i was half asleep. it sure as hell wasn’t when i was washing clothes this weekend. i did two loads of little bear’s clothes, and one load with a shirt for each of us to wear to the superbowl party, a sweater for sohei, and a bunch of his socks for work this week. at no point did he mention his shirts. this happens a couple times a month and i’m getting sick of it. he’s about to be responsible for his own shirts.

and i noticed a few days ago that one of little bear’s eyes has some extra skin between the nose and eye, which is, as it turns out, an epicanthal fold. i’d been trying to research it online, but i couldn’t think what to call it, so i wasn’t finding anything. then, this morning, i had one of my just-upon-waking epiphanies, and remembered that it’s a symptom of fetal alcohol syndrome. so i looked up fas and found the term, then googled it. i was pretty sure that the cause wasn’t fas, because after my christmas eve drink fest (which was day one of week five, or three weeks post-conception), i didn’t drink. and everyone, doctors included, insisted that was too early to have done any damage. the other main cause is down syndrome, which he also doesn’t have. and it probably isn’t a genetic disorder. so it’s either a) normal in some babies his age, and he’ll outgrow it when the bridge of his nose grows, b) secondary to abnormal skull growth (though i’ve asked his doctor about that ridge on the side of his head at every appointment, and he hasn’t been concerned), or c) maybe he does have very minor fas, and hopefully that’s the only symptom, aside from his small head size. his low head circumference measurements do make the fas seem slightly more likely, but i really think that would be kind of weird. the measurements could also mean there’s something up with his skull, but the doctor keeps insisting there’s nothing wrong with it. hopefully, it’s reason a, but i’ll be asking the doctor about it at our next appointment if there’s no change. so i’m kind of worried about that.

also, i left neko at no-chan’s house yesterday. i’ve been struggling with this decision for a while, but finally decided that she’d be happier over there. i just don’t have enough time for her, between the baby and the dog, and everything. also, she’s hissed at little bear and started peeing on his stuff. she pretty much destroyed his stroller. there’s no way i could give her to a shelter or anything, but no-chan spoils her cats, and can give her so much more attention and affection than i can right now. and i can visit her whenever i want. we’ll see if it works out, because she already has two cats, and if they get too upset, neko might be coming back. but, even though she’s always hiding now and i almost never see her, i feel like something’s missing. i miss my cat.

as far as minor annoyances go, little bear had a major blowout diaper this morning, and made such a mess i had to give him a bath. of course, it got all over his onesie and changing table, too. and after i got him mostly cleaned up with wipes, i had to leave him in his crib to go run the bath, and i came back to find pee all over his mattress, crib slats, and the floor. that kid can pee… also, i’m sick to my stomach today and just generally feel like shit. i was supposed to go to the store today, but there’s no way i’m leaving the house.

hey spammers, a quick tip: if you have a hope in hell of somehow tricking me to approve your spam comment, don’t insult me in it. idiots.

(also, when time permits, i’ll be making my first post re: pro wrestling in forever. i know you’ll stay tuned for that. )