10th Circle of Hell

Having a sick baby is the 10th circle of hell. That's why I haven't posted in a couple of weeks. While parenting is already a 24/7 operation, a baby with a cold will KYTFO. You'll dream of being woken up every 2 hours, because you can only daydream - never sleep.
My poor booger has boogers in places they should never be. His normally rhythmic breathing is punctuated by chokes, gasps and tears. His .001 second patience is now .0001 seconds. Yes, one thousandth of a second. If he wants something he cannot have, he goes into a full on, terrible meltdown where he throws himself wildly around on the floor. He then wretches his head back and showers snot onto anything in a 10 foot radius. Oh, baby jellyfish.
Fortunately he has developed a love of saline nasal spray. When I pull it out he follows me around with his nose pointed upward, ready for a shot of the juice. My husband was quick to offer concern over the addiction - a few years ago we saw a television special on a woman who couldn't get off afrin, and he was concerned about him starting down a treacherous path, carrying a bottle around in his lunchbox before he's even in daycare. I assured him that this one is just for tots, and contains only salt water.
Yes, we've had some tribulations throughout this illness. I loved a good humidifier in my room as a child - it helps! I snuffed some of the bellows of mist myself to prove the point. So I put one in our son's room and cranked that baby up to the max, much to my darling spouse's chagrin. He slept! But when we opened the door in the morning, his room was like a tropical rainforest after monsoon season, and the paint was starting to peel off the walls. I submitted to his wisdom after that one - but evaded the damage I had done with the reasonable statement that we will have to paint his room again when he gets bigger, anyway. Through flared nostrils and a tempered voice, my dearest husband (see how I'm groveling, even now) agreed.
Nothing breaks a mother's heart more than her sick baby not eating. I was so distressed by his lack of appetite, I've been willing to let him munch on just about anything he is willing to consume. Would you like some cat fur with you baba, little man? It's good for you. No, not really cat fur, but just about anything else. I've offered him candy, donuts, french fries, pizza - none of it would enter his precious pout. Not wanting to be wasteful, I ate them instead, and have probably gained about 10 lbs compulsively eating his leftovers (read: entire meals) to stave off my anxiety. Until yesterday, when he gleefully consumed hotcakes from McDonald's that his father got him. How would I have known?
Now that he's getting better, we are now sick - and so enter the 11th circle of hell, being sick with a healthy baby.

Triceratops

My son is both amazing and absolutely, abjectly terrifying. He has no regard for his physical well being, or the precious brain encapsulated in his still forming skull. He enjoys sprinting or galloping full force toward anything at all, with his head poised as a battering ram. As with most babies and toddlers, he's gotten his share of bumps and bruises - all of them centrally located on his forehead.

It's a delicate balance between wanting to wrap him up in bubble wrap, then a blanket, then another layer of bubble wrap, and allowing him to run freely as the wild child he is. And no matter the level of baby-proofing you attempt to enshroud your home in, these flying-freewheeling wells of endless physical energy will inevitably smash into something - even if that something is the floor. Yes, baby jellyfish is a fan of dancing to the point where he can no longer stand, and then on all fours thrusts his head directly onto the ground. Lips peeling back off my face in a look of horror, I pick my screaming monster up and comfort him with the loving tendrils of a mama jellyfish. And wonder what the hell is wrong with him, that he would ever do something so insane.

It's a point that you have to accept - pure, unbridled insanity. While sometimes I can logically follow his train of thought (look, something over there that you don't want me to have or touch - I want it!), most of the time I am left wondering where his conclusions came from. Like the Sherlock Holmes of mothers, I dissect his imaginary thoughts and subsequent actions and to my husband, who gives me a candid look indicating I am being just as illogical by trying to ascribe logic at all. Usually followed by my rationalization that "something is going on in there". Indeed, something.

One of his first words beyond mama and dada was "hot". A testament, I think, to our commitment to safety. Unfortunately, it means relatively little to him, as he then reaches directly for the hot object, looking to burn or scald himself in some way. Still, we clap and praise him for the knowledge that he has, all the while my stomach churning in some combination of nausea and IBS.

Must. Resist. Bubblewrap.

Nerd Parenting

Just shy of one year old, I'm trying to get serious about my son's education. So I'm like,

This is a torus. It is both a mathematical shape and a model of the universe. What would you like to tackle first, boy? Volume, surface area, or physics?

Ok. Was I a little ambitious? Let's try something else...

GAME THEORY! It's all about conflict and cooperation. You'll deal with this a lot in your life. Just tell them your dad can beat up their dad. But don't bring anyone's dad home to test the validity of that statement. Are you listening?

I'll take that as a "no". 

Moving on...Moving on...

Hey! It looks like you could get into a little psychology! There's a lot of violence in the news, and on the PS4 while you are sleeping. Let's open'er up!

Yeah. That one kind of had the same effect on me, to be honest.

Luckily, I know a way to really get you excited!

BLANKET ATTACK! I guess the other stuff can wait for another day. Or maybe decade. I guess we'll stick to Mr.Brown Can Moo, Can you? for now. Silly Mama Jellyfish!

Mamamama Jellyfish

Mamamama Jellyfish.

I use to read Nietzsche. Dostoyevsky. Hemmingway. Now I’m Mamamama Jellyfish.

When my mom dropped my son off as I was returning from work, we discussed the fact that he had a legitimate poop. You know, not a soft pile of mush – a real shit! Fully formed! Yep. Oft, we sit around the table, discussing the size, number and quantity of my son’s feces.

 I’ve developed two semi permanently dislocated shoulders, leaving me with the reach and physical resemblance to an orangutan. Take that for evolution, Darwin, you magnificently bearded bastard. Which, speaking of evolution, will probably be the next hipster trend after the man bun loses steam. I can also thank my parental duties for giving me an hourglass figure—the caveat being that the hourglass shape is my spine. Fortunately I’m not the only one who has suffered disfigurement. My husband is rapidly losing his ability to walk upright, with a kyphosis-like gate I lovingly call “the hunch”.  But I look at him, sitting on the couch with his neck extended like a Canadian goose in flight from wearing our son on his head and I think, “damn, I love that man.”

And while I’ve always rocked a rather bohemian style, I never went full hippie with armpit hair down to my elbows until my son was born. Yes, the other day I looked at my pits in the shower, shaved and promptly apologized to my husband –who, despite being the most observant person I have ever met, wisely lied to me and said he “didn’t notice”. He’s a keeper.

But I’ve picked up a lot of skills in my first year as a parent. I now feel confident I could wrestle an alligator (maybe a stuffed alligator), I am unphased by scents that would make even the most stoic of sniffers gag, and I’ve honed my booger plucking aptitude to a .5 second grab. That’s like a millennium falcon doing the Kessel Run in 12 parsecs.  Which is also about how long it now takes me eat and do my makeup, combined.

Yes, it’s been a blur. But I sitting across the dinner table from baby boy, watching the devil-may-care smile creeping across his face as he ever so slowly as he takes his food and drops it over the edge of his highchair, I am filled with a love that I never could have imagined. Laughing when he laughs, discovering the world again anew, and watching him turn into a person has been a peak experience to say the least.

There has been a lot of stress. So much that the crushing weight has kept me from sleep, even when I’ve only had about two hours of it in two days. The lack of post-natal protection for mothers left me out of a job after FMLA was over because no accommodations could be made for me at work (my shift was until 7, and nearly all daycares close at 6-6:30 around here). About two weeks after that, my husband was laid off from his job and his take home pay was cut in half. My parents have helped us out a lot, and I don’t know where we would be without them. But we kept smiling, and kept laughing, and insulated our son from all the worries of adulthood with games of hide-and-seek, story time, and dancing. Lots of dancing. Baby jellyfish loves to dance with his whole body, shaking his head, hands and feet and galloping around on the ground to the tune of just about anything.

As we turn the page of a new year, I can’t wait to see what it will bring. New disfigurements, increased sprinting abilities, and impossible explanations that “daddy can use those words but you can’t”. Take a deep breath, Mama Jellyfish. You have a toddler on your hands, now.

Oh – and how did I get to be Mamamama Jellyfish? Pure exhaustion, laying on the floor with my son on my chest, sliding around on the ground saying Mamamama Jellyfish. Yep. That’s what I’ve become.

 Baby Jellyfish. & Mama Jellyfish.