New Comp!

Yesterday evening Smiley put together my new computer. It is fast and quiet and hasn't burst into flames - it is a success.

So, as you might know, Silas shares a bed with me and Smiley. Our bed, if you can call it that, is a mattress on the floor. I follow most of the guidelines for safe baby bed-sharing and it's been a great experience for me; I feel much more rested since I can take care of Silas without having to get up.

But I think it is time for us to put our bed back on a frame. The underbed storage that we gave up when we moved into our house just over two years ago is starting to catch up with me. There is a lot of stuff I'd like to just jam under there and forget about. Once we put our bed back up, I think that we'll have to start putting Silas in his crib.

I feel like sleeping with Silas next to me is one of the only ways that I get to spend time with him. I really hate working all day. I'd rather be taking care of Silas. But at the moment, I am doing what I need to do. But if we put up our bed and put Silas in his crib - well, the thought actually makes me feel an intense longing and that makes me curious as to why I feel that way.

I know part of it is that I don't think he'll sleep well in a crib; I spent the first few weeks of his life trying to nurse him to sleep and put him down in his bassinet, and it felt like he slept horribly in the bassinet. Bringing him to bed with us was such a change - he still woke up every 2-3 hours, but at least I barely had to move to accomadate that. Now he has been (occasionally) giving us four hour stretches once a night, and it will only get better with time. But I still worry that he'll go back to waking up more often, and that it will be tougher on me to get up to tend to him, even though he'll still be in the same room.

Starting in Janurary, I'm going back to school and will have more time to spend with Silas during the day. I think that this will help make the transition to crib easier for me. But our bed frame in in the house, in the living room, taking up space right now. I don't know if I want it to be in the living room for four weeks.

I feel like this should be a pointless debate; we should get our bed back and move Silas to his crib. But I feel like I shouldn't think about this while I'm extra tired; it seems much more intimating than it is.

And this is what my brain is like at nearly eleven pm. Good night y'all.

Sleeping Like A Baby

I was bracing myself for another long night, but Silas had other plans for me. Like, sleeping a lot plans. (Disclaimer: I did not bother to check my clock, but it felt like he only woke up two or three times).

The downside? When Smiley's snoring woke me up sometime in the middle of the night and Silas was still sleeping, I once again felt so awake that I had a very hard time falling back to sleep. My brain was awash in refreshed neurotransmitters and my body was like "eh, we'll take what we can get." And I was like, "I want to kind of scream!"

I mean, here I was, awake. But it's one thing to be awake because my baby started fussing for food or comfort and quite another thing to be awake because my husband can occasionally wake the dead with his snoring.

So I kind of batted at his arm until he stopped snoring and I announced that his snoring was loud beyond reason. So he shifted to sleeping on his side, and this is usually the part where I would fall back asleep before his snoring got too bad again.

See: brain awash in refreshed neurotransmitters. All of my neurons were firing to say, "hey, listen to his breathing. Doesn't it sound like he could start snoring soon? Oh boy, I think I heard a snore! I mean, when does heavy breathing become snoring anyway? Do they have like a chart or a graph or a professional scale? Oh - oh - whatever they use, that snore definitely was on it. Yup. He's snoring again!"

Thankfully, I did manage to fall back asleep and when Silas woke a little later, I still felt ok. I won't be still feeling ok if I don't go get ready for work though, so. Yeah.

Just a thought

One of the downsides to not having cable TV is that I don't get to listen to commercials on the TV anymore. Obviously I still get to listen to commercials on the radio and online, but those hardly count. No, it's not that I miss the groan-worthy scenarios and pitches - it's just that I miss the hilarity that ensues when I see or hear a funny commercial.

As a quick example before I hit the sack with my lovely 9pm bedtime that means nothing when Silas wakes up every two hours or so, I want to talk about Trojan Bareskin condoms. You see, when you're merely hearing the term "bareskin," it seems a lot like they're talking about "bearskin." And when you consider that lambskin condoms are a thing, it seems like maybe bearskin condoms could be a thing.

And that's when things just get silly. I mean, who the heck determined that making a condom out of bearskin was a good idea? Were they in the middle of making a bearskin rug and it was somehow a logical conclusion?

And then that's all I can hear when I hear that commercial. But now I don't hear that commercial and sometimes, just occasionally, my life is a little bit sadder.

Growth Spurt?

I've read that babies can have a growth spurt around 3 months old. Not that Silas needs one, but he will be three months in a few days here and he spent all of last night waking up every one and a half hours. It was like the newborn days all over again. I think I might be certifiably still sleeping as I write this.

The weirdest part of waking up like that is how time just sort of stops existing in the way that I normally experience it. It felt like I was up all night, despite the fact that I would check my phone thinking only a few minutes had passed, and an hour would have gone by. And then it would feel like hours while he was nursing, but it would rarely be longer than 10 minutes.

Actually, that's a welcome change from the newborn days - Silas used to nurse for up to forty-five minutes. He's much more efficient now!

Like I said. Gonna look forward with optimism and a positive attitude. Or fall asleep in the car on the way to work. You know, one or the other.

Back to School

Well, I had tossed around the idea of going back to school for a bit now, but never been able to really get my foot in the door. Today, I signed up for a full course load at the local community college and with any luck, by September I will be enrolled into the nursing program.

It's funny, because in the end, it was Silas that motivated me to do better. Before him, I could put off the idea of going to school because it would be a lot of work and a lot of change and not much of a tangible reward. But now, if I put in the work and the effort, the change will be that I get to spend a lot more time with my family and with my son and gain the skills to be employed as a nurse.

A friend commented that school and a baby seems daunting, but I think full time work and a baby is daunting. I already spend a lot of my evenings on the couch holding Silas and watching TV or reading. Now I will just transition that to reading textbooks and notes. It's been awhile since I've thought of the year in terms of semesters, but I'm so excited for the spring semester. I will get to be home with Silas Monday, Wednesday and Friday. And no, it's not going to be easy when I need to study and Silas starts crying or needs attention or whatever have you, but it's going to be better.

I'm pretty tired (yeah, it's 9pm, my new bedtime x_x) so I'll wrap this up before I ramble too much, but I am going to tackle this with as much optimism as possible. I'm so thankful to my husband for supporting me as I try to find a way to provide for our family with him and spent time with my baby! (And future babies!)

Hi December!

Yesterday I went to pick up my son from his great-grandma's place. Outside of the building, several older women were gathered, enjoying the late Florida afternoon. Normally I pick the entrance I use to avoid having to talk to too many people, but the alternative was walking out the other door and around the building and dang it, Silas is heavy in his car seat.

Of course one of the older ladies cooed "Look at the baby!" which I'm not going to pretend like I minded. I love showing off Silas, and I love the inevitable response to the inevitable question: "How old is he?"

"He's just 12 weeks, today," I said, smiling.

One of the other ladies looked shocked. "I thought he was at least eight months!"

Another chimed in with the "he's gonna be a linebacker some day!"

And a third, wearing a black tank top, asked me what I was feeding him. She said, I couldn't possibly be breastfeeding.

"Oh, well, actually, I am."

This lady looked at me, without missing a beat and said, "How? You don't have breasts. Show me what you feed him from."

Well, despite the slight, sudden urge to rip off my shirt and prove that I did, in fact, have breasts, I didn't do that. I knew better. I just smiled and said, "Yup, he's been breastfed from day one."

The other woman made a comment about formula being perfectly fine after breastfeeding for the first six weeks. It certainly wasn't my place to begin going on about the benefits of breastfeeding, so I agreed: "Yeah, generally I've found that feeding your baby is the best option. Babies, they seem to like that best."

The women laughed. The black tank top woman asked me if I ate food. I laughed and assured her I did. They told me motherhood has been kind to me. I thanked them and declined to offer to show them the stretch marks that covered my body.

As I wished them a good afternoon and walked away, I thought about how much I love the fact that this baby situation is working out for me. See, it's probably no secret, but I love being out of the ordinary. It is, in a lot of ways, how I define myself. So having a ginormous little baby, especially while I am tall and skinny, is a great contrast and I love it.

(It is also why I love driving the Sebring, but you already knew that).

Still haven't figured out mornings

I've figured out two things. One is that no matter what other times Silas wakes up during the night, he's pretty consistent about a 4am wake up. This tends to lead to him being fairly agreeable to eating right before I have to go to work, so I'm fairly agreeable to waking up at four and going back to sleep for two hours or so.

The second thing is, I keep thinking that, and then when I actually wake up around 6 to 6:30 (depending on whether my Silas alarm or my actual alarm clock wakes me up) and I want to punch everything. So I have to work on that.