Bottle feeding

Getting K to take a bottle was a priority because I had to get back to work at 12 weeks. When he was just a few weeks old, we'd make sure to give him a pumped bottle every day. He never had a problem with it.

With X, I had such unpleasant memories of pumping that for a while I hoped I could just be there for every single feeding, or give him formula on the rare occasion that I couldn't, and then wean him at 6 months when I went back to work. I guess we could still do that, but I've become more reluctant to give him formula -- the one time we did, I was up half the night with him helping him work out some digestive issues. So I'm back to pumping.

We tried giving him a bottle every day starting when he was about six weeks old. No problem. So we'd let a few days slip here and there, when I didn't feel like pumping. But then days turned into weeks, and eventually we realized he hadn't had a bottle in over a month. It turns out four-month olds are not quite as adaptable as six-week olds, so we battled over that for a few days.

A few days ago, JW proposed taking over a night feeding so I could get some sleep. I've resisted that suggestion before because I feel like his sleep is more important, since he's working. Besides, I was worried that I would become so engorged that I'd need to wake up and pump anyway. But my milk supply is more stable now and I was dead tired, so I agreed. I pumped a bottle and, after a fight, he got the baby to take it. And you know what? After that bottle at 12:30, X slept until 6:15 the next morning! The next night I took JW up on his offer again. This time, X cooperated with the bottle at midnight, and didn't wake up until 5 a.m. (Of course, K woke up both nights around 2 or 3 a.m. Our children are conspiring against us.)

I knew better than to assume X's long sleeps would be a pattern, but it definitely seemed like a good thing. I decided to keep giving him a nighttime bottle, thinking that I could control the amount he ate to make sure he'd get enough to sleep for a long while, and that not getting the breast might discourage him from waking up so much at night. So last night, I gave him a 5 ounce bottle at 1 in the morning and happily went to bed, hoping to not wake up until the next morning. (I had reminded, reassured, and threatened K before bed to discourage him from wandering into our room at 3 a.m. again.) But X woke up at 3:30 crying, and then at 4:30 screaming, and then at 5 I had to feed him. JW had given him 4-ounce bottles, so I thought 5 would be plenty. But maybe it wasn't enough, or maybe it was the fact that I, the food source, was the one attending to him at night again.

Tonight I'll try again with a bigger bottle. No rest for the weary.

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Daycare for X

X has been on the waiting list at K's daycare. I haven't really looked around for other options, assuming we'd get in because they give priority to families who already have kids there. Today they called and said they have a spot open... in mid-October. About five weeks after I'm scheduled to start work.

It's possible that something will open up earlier, and they said they'd call me if that happened. But we need to think about how to cover those five weeks.

We could do temporary care at the Bright Horizons near work, if they have capacity in September. I'd have to commute with X, but the nice part is that he'd be right downstairs.

We could try to get a short-term nanny, or see if the family next door with a nanny would be willing to let us drop off X at their house.

My mom might be able to come. She stayed with us and took care of K when he was a baby, and I know that she was looking forward to doing the same with X. (I know this because shortly before X was born, my sister-in-law called and said, "If you don't want your mom to live with you all summer, you might want to give her a heads up.") She's still working, but she is sometimes able to take long leaves. On one hand, it would be kind of tough having her here -- we have a good relationship, but it's always hard having long-term guests. On the other hand, it could be kind of awesome. My whole first month back at work, I wouldn't have to worry about drop-offs and pick-ups and getting the kids ready in the morning.

These things are always so complicated.

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Business trip, New York trip, and home again

Wednesday morning was my first board meeting for the community foundation. I'm excited to get involved, even though it's already turning out to be more of a commitment that I anticipated. Every day I get at least a few emails requiring my attention, and next week there's a committee meeting to discuss a complicated legal issue.

JW left for OmaHAAAA on Wednesday afternoon and returned Friday night. Wednesday night we went to the neighbors' house for dinner, Thursday I had friends over for dinner (and abandoned them for about forty minutes while putting the kids to bed), and Friday we recovered. X became uncharacteristically fussy while JW was gone -- do you think he's old enough to actually miss his Daddy? I think he's old enough that he's starting to prefer his parents to other people, or maybe he's just more used to us.

Saturday we attended an outdoor birthday party for one of K's classmates, immediately followed by an outdoor town party sponsored by the foundation, immediately followed by us loading the kids into the car and driving to New York. JW's grandmother is in the hospital and the family converged on the Bronx to visit her. We spent most of Sunday and Monday at her house, taking turns going to the hospital (the kids were too little to come). Which reminds me, I need to learn about assisted living facilities and other end of life and elder care issues, partly because I want to be able to help or at least understand what's going on, and partly because I know I'll have to face this one day with our own parents. Anybody know of any good resources?

All day Sunday I felt even more like a zombie than usual, after driving half the night on Saturday and then staying up the other half of the night with X in my brother's Manhattan apartment with glaring lights, sirens, and horns going all night. Sunday night we stayed at my parents' place on Long Island and I got to sleep in until 9 a.m. Then I took an hour and a half nap with X in the afternoon while JW was at the hospital. I had another Flowers for Algernon moment -- for the rest of the day, I actually felt human again. I even drove back home without my eyelids drooping once. But then we went to bed around 11 after arriving late, and I woke up at 11:30 to feed X, 1:15 because K's radio alarm had gone off for some reason and a sports radio guy was shouting at him about Albert Pujols, 3:30 to feed X again, briefly at 5:30 to give JW a shove and ask him to check on the baby, and then up for the morning at 7. At least I didn't have to get up for good at 5:30 like I did when JW was gone. But that awake feeling went away so quickly. This morning JW told me to put cream on the rash on X's left cheek, and I just stood there staring at the baby trying to figure out which side of his face was the left. X is around 15 weeks old. Most women are back at work already after taking their maternity leave. How do they do it? Hardly any babies sleep through the night at this age. I haven't recovered my short-term memory and my brain is functioning at maybe 80%.

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Games K likes to play

Car Superheroes (with his toy cars from the "Cars" movie, which he only saw the first two minutes of before deeming it "too scary"). The red car is Lightning the Queen, with lightning power; blue is Ice Car, with the power to encase other cars in ice; yellow is Color-Changing Car, with the power to change the color of other cars, making them confused; and green is Pear Car, with the power to shoot pears for people to eat. Pear Car originally shot fireballs, but I asked K to make it something less violent. Pear Car can team up with Ice Car to make pear popsicles.

Superhero Family. K's powers vary, although he is always fond of the power to shoot blocks of ice. Daddy is No Pants Man, with the power to make people wear shorts. Mommy is Dessert Girl. X is Super Baby, with the power to nap. I am always tasked with thinking up scenarios requiring the entire Super Family. For instance, someone was bringing cake and ice cream to a party, but he fell and the cake and ice cream smashed all over his pants. No Pants Man can give him some clean shorts, while Dessert Girl and Ice Man work together to recreate the cake and ice cream. Super Baby cooperates by napping through all of this. Or a simpler scenario: someone's pants are on fire and he's really hungry.

The "I'll Eat My Hat" Game. We take turns saying something ridiculous, and the other one says, "If [something ridiculous], I'll eat my hat." For instance, "I'm going to take X back to the baby store and trade him for a monkey." "If you trade X for a monkey, I'll eat my hat."

Rock Band (not the video game -- he likes that too, but our drum set has been broken for a while). When someone points at you, you have to be the singer.

Pirates. Follow the pretend map and dig up the hidden treasure. The map must require you to walk on a tightrope at some point, and to jump in a hole or into a pipe.

Scary Goats. I chase him around making goat noises. (This game originated when K ran away from me and jumped on to the couch with Daddy, yelling, "A scary ghost is chasing me!" Daddy replied, "What's so scary about goats?")

And finally, not exactly a game, but he loves telling knock knock jokes, some standards and some he makes up himself. One day, a long time ago, he came home with one from school: "Knock knock." "Who's there?" "Mr. Yama." "Mr. Yama who?" "Mr. YamaHAAAAA!" We had no idea why this was a joke, but the delivery was hilarious and it became a standard in our house, along with variations ("ObamaHAAA!"). It turned out the guy who plays music at their school on Fridays has a Yamaha amp and he tells this "joke" when it's time to pull out the amp. Today when JW left for his business trip, K asked where he was going. "Omaha," I replied. Then K and I looked at each other and simultaneously said, "Knock knock."

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The Intelligent Entrepreneur

I just finished The Intelligent Entrepreneur by Bill Murphy, Jr., which tells the stories of three Harvard Business School grads who started successful businesses. The book breaks down the stories into ten rules of entrepreneurship, including "manage risk" and "learn to sell". The stories were engaging, even though the rules sounded like the standard advice for entrepreneurs.

One thing I found interesting was that two of the profiled founders identified coming risks well before they happened and took drastic measures to mitigate those risks. In one case, the founder noticed some volatility in the sales data in her stores and predicted that this would increase in the next year because of a bad economy. She immediately curtailed her expansion strategy, angering her investors and having to cancel existing contracts in the process. In the other case, the founder of a subscription-based business noticed that the number of declined credit card payments had tripled, even though it was still in the single digits. He had been in the middle of hiring and the company was making record profits, but he instituted deep cuts and a major round of layoffs. Both turned out to be good decisions, even though they were extremely unpopular and came at a time when the companies appeared to be doing very well. And both came about because the founders were carefully monitoring and analyzing all sorts of information about their companies and their markets.

Another interesting point was a quote from Marc Cenedella, CEO and founder of TheLadders.com, who said that he considered himself a volunteer because he chose to stay with his company instead of cashing out. He said that if most his employees left the company, they would get a job somewhere else, but if he left he could spend his life lying on a beach somewhere. He stayed with the company purely because of his passionate commitment.

I've been reading a lot of articles and books lately that suggest that everyone should aspire to be an entrepreneur. Manage your own schedule, create your own environment, pursue your passion, choose to be committed every day.  But I just don't think I have that drive and that passionate commitment, and I'm not sure that most people do. I enjoy advising startups on legal matters because even though I don't see myself as the visionary type, I love being in a position to help the person with the passion and the vision. The idea of working for myself is appealing in theory, though. Maybe one day I'll find the right cause. Meanwhile, I'm happier on someone else's bandwagon.

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Remembering what I used to know

I am not a pack rat. I'm generally in favor of getting rid of anything that we don't anticipate wanting in the next few years, or that can be easily reacquired. But I do keep my old notebooks from high school and college. Once in a while I pull them out and marvel at all the things I used to know. Is that really my handwriting on all those pages of calculus equations and that exam on computational theory? Was that really me who took the train to Boston to read Charles Darwin's original letters for my fifty-page paper on women's science education in the nineteenth century? Did I seriously read all that Shakespeare when I was sixteen, and write pages upon pages analyzing it? And how come I can't remember any of that stuff now?

I volunteered to informally mentor some student entrepreneurs from my alma mater. This week I had my first phone call with the team that won this year's pitch competition. They said they wanted to talk about an initial investment and what their term sheet should look like. The night before, I did a little reading to refresh my memory. At first I couldn't believe how much I had forgotten in only three months, but after a while it started coming back to me. On the call, I was relieved that my experience kicked back in and I was able to flag and explain a bunch of issues they hadn't thought of. Which is as it should be, since I've worked with dozens of companies in the past few years and they're undergrads thinking about their first venture. Still, I feel like I have some catching up to do before returning to work.

This morning I had to do some more quick reading. The nonprofit board I joined had some questions about a large gift they had received, and after ten minutes of skimming through some emails and trust documents, I found myself on the phone with another longtime board member and attorney debating about variance powers. Thank goodness I spent those long nights last summer getting a local private foundation up and running, so I actually knew, more or less, what I was talking about.

It was good to use my brain again and to remember what I've been learning for the past few years. But remind me not to take on any other obligations over the next few months. I had to decline two farm outings with friends because I had conflicting meetings. Isn't that sort of missing the point of maternity leave?

In other news:

Twice this week, X only woke up once during the night. Hooray! And most of the other nights he woke up twice around 1 and 4. He has been pushing up and twisting. Any day now he's going to turn over. X has learned to bat the hanging objects in his play gym and has become acquainted with Iggy the Baby-Nibbling Iguana. He continues to be easy-going and happy, and a good eater and napper, making my maternity leave very pleasant.

K has a band-aid on his knee and has been telling everyone the sad story of how he fell. K can now read simple sentences on his own. He is back to counting snails every day, now that they're out of hibernation, and distinguishes between regular snails and "snail friends" (the ones at our house). This week he has been obsessed with the song "That's What Friends Are For". After watching the video on YouTube over and over, he first pretended he was Elton John (because Elton John is "super fancy") and now he likes to pretend he is Stevie Wonder.

JW is heading out of town for a few days on business this week, leaving me alone with the two kids for three nights in a row. I'm sure it will be fine. I envy him a little for being able to take off like that.

This week I went to the gym for the first time in a year. Today was my third day straight of working out. It may not sound like much, but I tend to get into ruts of not exercising and eating poorly, and then I have to snap out of them and resolve to get into good habits again. So three days is a good start. I don't know why it's so hard to maintain an exercise habit. I always feel good when I exercise regularly -- I have more energy, I feel happier and more optimistic, I feel proud of myself, I feel stronger and more flexible, I fit into my clothes better and feel better about my appearance. So why do I have to struggle to get myself to exercise, and why do I get out of the habit so easily? And why is it so hard to resist eating sugary foods, which make me feel crappy in just the opposite way that exercise makes me feel good? I never had a problem with retail therapy or being attracted to the wrong people, but this is my personal brand of self-destructiveness. I'm always hoping that one of these days I can make the good habits stick. At least I always keep trying again.

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Sunday

Morning: Made popovers, played on the porch with K, took a nap with X.

Afternoon: K's first lesson did not go swimmingly. He spent most of the time sitting by the side of the pool.

The highlight of my day was going out to pick up the pizzas we ordered. BY MYSELF! I realized it was the first time I'd been out of the house without the kids in a week. I could go out by myself after the boys are in bed at night, but by then I'm tired and it's the only time I get to talk to JW. I met someone in the neighborhood who is between jobs and said she was interested in babysitting. Maybe I'll call and see if she can come once in a while during the day so I can get out on my own.

My other weekend activity was organizing my clothes. Pregnancy turned my usually organized closet into a mess, since my size kept changing. Now that I'm nursing and in the process of losing the baby weight while the weather is getting warmer, my closet is even more of a jumble. So I took everything out, along with the boxes in the attic, and sorted it all into piles. I ended up with a huge pile of clothes that are old and pilly and I never liked much anyway, and about eight pieces that I really liked and was glad to see again. Once I get back to my normal size, I need to go shopping more often to buy clothes that I actually feel good about wearing, instead of buying whatever fits and is work-appropriate. No more navy blue cardigans.

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Neighborly weekend

Yesterday lunch with the next-door neighbor didn't happen. Her kids were sick and she asked to postpone until next week. Instead, when I went out with X to bring in the trash can, I ran into another neighbor out with her kids and we stayed outside chatting for a while. Then a third neighbor who was on her way home pulled up in her car to exclaim over the babies and remind us both that she had offered to babysit. She also made my favorite X comment to date: "He's quite a buster!" I love our neighborhood. I'm so glad we moved.

This morning every kid on our street was out to investigate the loud trucks that appeared at the end of the street, so we had a few more encounters. After spending most of the morning playing on the porch or wandering around the block with the kids, I headed out to the bus stop with both boys in tow. Boston recently had a controversy over whether the MBTA should require strollers to be folded up on the bus, and many self-righteous people complained about moms blocking the aisle. To those people I say: suck it. If I'm blocking the aisle, it's because nobody will let me through and there's nowhere else I can put my kid. It's definitely not because I think it's fun to keep a death grip on the stroller, trying to stop it from sliding when the bus lurches, while I simultaneously try to soothe my crying baby, wrangle my 4-year old, and not fall down.

Oops, little sidetrack there. Anyway. We went to the Cambridge River Festival, where we somehow stayed for four hours and did very little. It took a while to get there because K got distracted by rocks. Since he was old enough to throw rocks into the river, it has been his favorite activity. Once at the festival, we listened to jazz for a while and I nursed and changed X. Then we ran into some friends I hadn't seen since they had their 8-week old baby. We swapped birth stories while K whined about wanting a snack. (Her, with horrified look on her face: "It was excruciating!" First kid.) Then we sat there for about forty minutes while K tackled a Hawaiian shave ice larger than his head. And finally, we took the bus home, which as you can tell was the best part of the day. I guess the whole thing was more fun than stressful, but it was close.

Tomorrow: family togetherness and K's first swimming lesson!

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Memorial Day week

Friday night we were supposed to leave, but we got a call from Grandma saying her power was out. We delayed until the following morning, and I was glad because I hadn't quite finished laundry and packing and the baking I had promised to do.

Saturday morning was our first long car trip with X. We had to stop a few times, but it wasn't too bad. K was amazingly patient -- even when X was screaming, he just looked sympathetic instead of getting upset. He loves visiting Grandma and Grandpa, and he's been so good with X lately. He stared out the window for a while, slept a while, and we played games to get us through the final stretch.

Saturday afternoon the family arrived for the traditional birthday dinner (JW and two other family members all have birthdays around then). My contributions were the apricot almond tart from Joanne Chang's Flour bakery cookbook, which I've been baking my way through for a while now, and this strawberry cake. I was surprised that the cake was not that great, but discovered after the fact that I messed up by putting the berries on the bottom and batter on top instead of the other way around. The tart, which I made without the top crust or the slivered almonds that are supposed to be sprinkled on top, was a huge hit and I promised to make it again for the 4th of July. Even though everyone protested any changes, next time I'd use more frangipane, less jam, and I'll add the almonds and the top crust.

Sunday, JW and I drove down to a barbecue with some of his high school friends. We brought X, who obliged by either napping or grinning at everyone, delighting the wives. (This party consisted of lots of orthopedic surgeons, their wives, and the three of us. I asked one guy, "Aren't there any female orthopedic surgeons?" He shrugged and said it had always been a male-dominated field.) K stayed behind and had a great time splashing in the lake with JW's cousins and their four kids. It was lovely being relatively kid-free adults for a day, hanging out on a friend's deck, drinking a beer and laughing. The wives, who were all young and cute and wearing little sundresses, were reassuring the one pregnant one among them that even though everyone says that your life is over when you have kids, that's ridiculous. And then they all looked at me and frowned, because I wasn't joining in. "Having kids is rewarding, but you do give up a lot of freedom," I said, since they were all expecting me to say something and I couldn't bring myself to be even more of a downer to a new mom-to-be. "But you can still get out, right? I mean, you're here." I refrained from telling them how rare it is that we have a day like that and how much coordination it takes since we live nowhere near our family. Instead I said, "Your kids get more independent over time, so it doesn't last forever." They still didn't like it, but we moved on.
 
Monday we took a trip into town, where K acquired a magic wand (actually a Girl's Cheer Baton from Rite-Aid, but he hasn't noticed the label yet) and I bought a mirror and a casserole dish from the Red Barn, a country store and antique shop. I know I'm getting older because I was very excited to find just the right casserole dish. JW's grandmother came for dinner.

Tuesday I unpacked some and got the guest room ready for my brother, who arrived that night for a conference in Boston.

Wednesday I went to the conference to see my brother do his presentation. He's always speaking at these things, and since I was on leave, I was excited to get the chance to see him in action. I had a little bit of a meltdown that morning, because I was exhausted after a rough night and after our trip, but JW encouraged me to go and volunteered to drop off K at school so I could make it on time. Once X and I were out the door, it felt so good to be out of the house in the morning, dressed and going somewhere, like a normal person. We took the bus to Boston, caught the presentation (which I thought was very impressive even though I didn't understand all the words he used), and had breakfast with my brother. He said he'd be free for lunch, so I stuck around for a while. I rarely go to the Prudential Center, and it turns out it's a great place to spend a day with a baby. We spent some time in the courtyard, took a walk with a friend who works at a law firm attached to the mall, and I read about a third of Tina Fey's "Bossypants" at a bookstore while X napped. Then we met up with my brother again and went to Mike and Patty's, a sandwich place that's been on my to-try list for a long time, and headed back on the T. I grabbed K from daycare and we arrived at home just as the rain started up again. I had been in a rut at home, and this turned out to be a successful day out.

Thursday flew by. I decided not to worry about getting anything done and just do whatever I felt like. After dropping K off, I took a long walk to the local Carter's outlet and bought K's entire summer wardrobe. I napped during X's afternoon nap, and picked up K early from school and played superheroes with him. I ended up accomplishing about as much as I do on a to-do list day, so my plan is to continue resisting my impulse to have a list of chores for each day.

Today I'm supposed to have lunch with my next-door neighbor, who I've been hoping to become friends with for a while now and who just had a baby herself. She has a three-year old girl and I thought she and K could be playmates, but they've barely met for some reason. Hopefully there will be playdates in our future. It's also crossed my mind that we could do a nanny share when I go back to work, if they're willing -- in fact, their nanny just told me unprompted that she's used to taking care of three or four kids at a time, and just two seemed like a light load for her. Anyway, we finally exchanged phone numbers this week, so progress has been made.

And over the weekend, JW will be away at a meeting and it'll be me and the boys. K asked to stay home today and I said no -- I don't think I can deal with a three-day weekend with both kids. I don't know how real stay-at-home moms do it.

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Re-education

K adores his preschool teacher. He sincerely believes everything she says, including that she is a hundred years old. So it's especially hard to correct any misinformation she passes on. Last night we were drilling him on the following questions:

1. How many states are there? (50, not 52!)

2. Can a boy marry a boy? (Yes, any grown-up can marry any grown-up. We live in Massachusetts.)

3. Who is allowed to like pink and purple? (Anybody! Colors are for everyone.)

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