Late night runaround

Surprisingly often, we get asked by other parents and people in general if we sleep. Most assume that with a 9 month old who's got teeth coming out, has a will of her own and is likely going through separation anxiety, sleep is something we don't see much of. 

And then, of course, our response to this question is met with a mixture of shock, surprise, disappointment and just a sprinkling of "How'd you get so lucky?" 

Wren-Lee is still very much a creature of habit and politely lets us know around 7pm when she's tired and would like to be put into her cot. If it's early or later, we don't really mind and we take our cue from her. No point trying to force a kid to sleep if she's not ready or tired yet. 

But then that rare day comes along when she's totally disinterested in sleeping...like the other night for example. 

Two hours of playing, rolling, babbling, kicking, touching my face, playing with my hair and staring at her feet ensued before it took a chamomile tablet to get her to nod off. I was half asleep before she was and almost dosed off waiting for her to calm down. It was after 9pm before she was finally moved into her cot and I'm supposed to be in bed at 9:30pm. Fail. 

Now, not too many years ago, I would put on a revealing top, wear high heels and slap on the lipgloss before hitting the clubs. And we all know that 11pm is the best time to head out for a night on the town. 

Last night, I put on a billowy top, wore flip-flops and slapped on my spectacles before hitting a 24 hour pharmacy. I forgot to buy formula and didn't have enough for Wren's bottles. And we all know 11pm is the worst time to remember your kid needs milk for the next day. 

Oh...how times have changed. 

Guess my late nights are long gone. 

Who's the boss?

Yesterday was Boss's Day. Why bosses need a day is beyond me but, hey, it exists.

Our little boss got the day off from work. She went driving around with her Nan and had a good time showing off in the shops.

People are surprised that Wren-Lee goes to work with us most days of the week. Sure, we have the odd difficult day with her but we cope just fine usually. It's also given me valuable bonding time with her and she's grown quite comfortable in the work environment.

But she really is the little boss here.

Big Boss and Little Boss having a meeting

Let me check my calendar...oops, it's broken! 

Wren-Lee is the CEO - Child Entertainment Officer. While her GD (GrandDad) is the MD (Managing Director) and actually runs the business, she's in charge of providing happiness and smiles and maintaining the inventory of baby stuff in the office.

Our CEO has her own stamp comprised of her hand and her saliva.
Laptop working correctly? Stamp!
Desk making the right sound when tapped? Stamp!
Documents need checking? Stamp!
Phone ringing at the correct volume? Stamp!

She also regularly does roll tests on the board room table to make sure it is indeed level. Other tasks include welcoming visitors for meetings, laughing as often as possible so it doesn't get too quiet and rearranging everyone's desks on an hourly basis so you actually see all the work you might have pushed elsewhere.

The CEO is also the only staff member who does all her snacks and lunch like clockwork and she's allowed regular naps in her "cubicle"; a camper cot in her dad's office.

Honestly, I'm going to miss working with her. I'm starting a new job in less than two weeks and our time together is being drastically reduced. It's been a wonderful blessing to spend so much time with her till now and she's grown independent enough to be ok with not seeing much of me from now on.

And while my new office has crazy staff, two French bulldogs and a magnificent view, it takes quite a lot to replace my CEO.

Waiting and watching

I see I've been taking long gaps between blog posts. Life is a bit hectic right now and it's difficult to find space and time to write. For Wren-Lee though, life is just peachy. 

She's finally mastered rolling. Yippeee! But, like Derek Zoolander, she only turns to the left. Seriously. Model tendancies with this one. 

I like putting her on one end of our bed and watching (and filming) her roll all the way to the other side. Don't worry, I'm a mom who's all about safety so there are a lot of pillows to keep her safe. 

While rolling is fun and really cute, it's what's happening in her mouth that has everyone on tenterhooks. We can see her first tooth waiting just under that surface of her gum. Her eczema is flaring up, her tummy is wonky, she chews everything in sight and she's been sleeping quite a lot during the day. It's obvious her body is prepping for that tooth to erupt. 

We are still very fortunate that she's quite calm and hasn't been really sick. Everyone's hoping that her teething will be without much incident but only time will tell. At this stage, it looks like we may have a tooth within a week or two. 

I'm still trying to understand the whole "pancake" association with baby's first tooth. Although I have faith in Google's wisdom, I haven't found anything or anybody who can explain it to me or where it comes from. So, while we wait for this tooth, I'll see if I can dig up some history on the pancake thing and hopefully I'll have an answer soon. 

Roll, roll it girl, roll it girl.

Watching a small human learn how to become mobile is probably one of the most entertaining bits of parenting. This small creature not only has to discover it's own body, but then has to work out how to coordinate these newly acquired bits and pieces to achieve some sort of motion. It's quite a lot of work. 

Wren-Lee could roll from her tummy to her back at 3 months already. A necessary step for a child who seems to live by the motto "Work smarter, not harder". She refuses to hold her own bottle although she can, rolls off her tummy if she's feeling lazy and pretends to cry to get our attention if she's tossed her dummy somewhere that she can't reach. Yup, she's got this efficiency thing down. 

But when it came to rolling from her back to her tummy, it took a bit of effort from everyone. I spent hours teaching her to tuck her arm in so she could shift her weight. We rolled her back and forth as often as possible so she'd get used to the movement. Eventually, she seemed to understand what to do and began attempting it on her own. (And cue "Eye of the tiger") 

This resulted in a small baby contortionist act. Wren twisted her body into the most bizarre shapes as she tried to master this new skill. I've seen S shapes, Q shapes, a pretzel and a few yoga poses in the mix. She also got herself tangled in her playgym trying to roll over. 

Finally, she worked out her own little system and does manage to roll but it takes some effort. And after the hard work it took just to get this right, the kid has discovered a new challenge: Once she's on her tummy, how does she move forward? Oh well, guess we better prepare ourselves for learning to crawl soon. 

Who's upside down: you or me? 

Chubby cheeks

If you look back at photos of Wren-Lee, you'll notice that she's quite petite and not quite as fat and squishy as other babies. That's because we had no idea that she was a skinny kid. In fact, she was a full kilogram underweight for her height.

We took her to a dietician who specialises in paediatric nutrition. Yes, we also didn't know someone like that exists. Turns out she knows her stuff and gave us a simple solution to the problem: we add a supplement to Wren-Lee's formula which provides extra kilojoules. The canister of soft powder is probably every dieter and model's nightmare.

So, she's been on the supplement for about 6 weeks now and gained weight really well. We discovered that her digestive system didn't like rice cereal so her solids diet consists of yummy fruits and vegetables (which she LOVES!). We'll be introducing protein into the mix soon in the form of chicken and we get to try the cereal again but this time it'll be brown rice cereal which is an unrefined wholegrain and likely to not aggravate her reflux.

And now that the boring nutrition lesson is done, the proof is in the pudding (or so they say). In our case, it's our little pudding face. Here's a before and after pic so you can see that our little bird has chubby cheeks :-)

Before

After

Sickly Mommy = Sickly Monkey

It comes as no surprise that Wren-Lee is sick. Being around my germy germs isn't exactly good for a kid who no longer has the protection of Supermom's awesome antibodies. But what did come as a surprise was just how sick Wren-Lee is.

I was booked off work for two days with flu and told to be careful around kiddo. That meant little contact and having my hands drenched in sanitiser. We sent Wren-Lee off to my mom in law for the day so I could rest and recover. Unfortunately, she didn't have a good day and was miserable when she came home. She hadn't slept well, was struggling to drink her milk and burst into tears for anything and everything. Fortunately, we planned ahead and made a doctors appointment for the next morning just in case. And then came the puking. We all know how much I love the puking.

We did the best we could to try to help her but sleep just wasn't on the cards. I was up till sometime after 3am and spent that time singing "Incy Wincy Spider" and "Jesus loves me, this I know", rocking back and forth and I even turned the bathroom into a steam room to help with decongestion. By 5:30am she was unhappily awake. I looked and felt like the walking dead and Trev wasn't much better either.

We called the doctors office and had her appointment moved up by 2 hours because there was no way she could endure any more lack of sleep, coughing, sneezing and being unable to keep her food down. Doctor told us she has a really bad cold. Thankfully nothing to be concerned about. However, her symptoms were so bad because this was the first time her immune system had to fly solo. It was over-compensating slightly.

With meds in hand, I fed Wren, bathed her, got her comfy and she's been sleeping for over 2 hours now. I, on the other hand, aren't sleeping at all. I'm on cortisone and the medication keeps me awake. Not great for someone who's had like 2 hours of sleep. My brain literally doesn't know what to do with the mixed "Sleep" and "Awake" signals. So please don't be alarmed if my eyes start fading, my heads starts drooping, this keyboard starts to look awfully comfy and then vgsgrw4rfewr4efesw4erewvgftftr3wfew4rweftrwszdx...zzz...

Uh oh, Mommy's not feeling so good

Somebody really needs to write a book called "Stuff about being a new mom nobody bothers to tell you" 

For example, nobody tells you how stinky baby poo becomes as they get older. Nobody tells you when you should take your kid to the paediatrician or when a trip to the GP will suffice. Nobody tells you that sometimes you and your husband will fight over whether or not the baby's bottle is the right temperature. This  is important stuff. Why don't they tell you this?!

I think Chapter 3 of "Stuff about being a new mom nobody bothers to tell you" will be dedicated to what happens when mom gets sick. The internet and my baby books are filled to the brim with info on what to do when the baby is sick but there's nothing about mom taking ill. There's no paragraph on feeling guilty because you're sick. No subsection explains how to deal with relying on hubby to do the evening feeds, settling baby down to sleep for the night and then prepping the bottles for the next day. There isn't a little footer for hubby saying what he should and shouldn't pack in the baby's bag and he can't ask wifey because she's sleeping already. 

Come on man, why didn't anybody write about this before? 

I shall break the chapter down into "You're sick. Just rest and get better" and then for the dads there's "How to multitask like Mom" and a blank section called "Mom's emergency notes, use only in case of Mom illness" where I'd write down all the little details Trevor wouldn't know. 

I'm writing all this in a bid to make light of the situation. I genuinely feel awful and I'm headed off to the doctor as soon as I'm done typing. 

My heart is heavy because I'm torn between needing to care for myself and wanting to care for Wren-Lee. The time I spend with her in the evening is precious and I don't give it up easily. But it would be unfair of me to handle her when I'm not healthy and I risk getting her sick too. 

Trevor did some heavy persuading to get me to make an appointment to get checked out and he's assured me he can do Daddy Duty so I can take it easy. I suspect I'll be fielding many questions but rather that than eventually ending up in hospital with something that started off as just a sinus infection (at least that's what I think I have). 

I really do wish a book had told me that something as silly as a little cold could bring up so many conflicting emotions. This moment of vulnerability reminds me that even Supermom has kryptonite. Mine happens to be my sinus and an unwillingness to accept that sometimes in putting my needs first, I'm actually doing what's best for Wren. 

Chapter 4 of "Stuff about being a new mom nobody bothers to tell you" should be, "You're human. It's ok."