7QT11: Always Look on the Bright Side of Life

Lately, I've been keeping up with Better Than Eden. And while I love the boost it gives me - the positivity, the beauty, the sheer whiteness (although I usually skip some of the descriptions of all that amazing homemaking so I'm not too discouraged), it just isn't how life goes in our household. In fact, if I were to keep a blog along those lines, it would have to be called Something Like Bejing on a Particularly Smoggy Day, or Comparable to the London Underground at Rush Hour.  Maybe it's because I'm British and raised on Monty Python, but somehow I only manage to look on the bright side of life when things are at their worst. Here are seven vignettes of our days...

1. Bath Time
A serene baby splashing in the tub? I think not. All our children hated their first few baths with a vengeance. During Alcuin's second bath, he screamed through being undressed by his sister while I tried to fill the bathtub, 'aided' by our cat, Odie, who has an abnormal obsession with water. Here he is below. The second picture is him still trying to get a drink even though the tub is occupied by a screaming baby. I would have shown you the baby, but the picture I got was Full Monty and I don't think he'd appreciate that being on the internet for eternity.

*His name is supposed to be Odysseus, but he turned out to be stupid rather than cunning, so we had to downgrade him to Odie.

2. Reflux
He doesn't have it as bad as his sister did, but it's pretty impressive. There is spit up on his clothes, my clothes, heck, everyone's clothes, the floor, the bed. Probably on the cats, too, but they have white fur anyway so it doesn't matter.

3. Night Time
I decide to nurse the baby back to sleep *quickly* at 2am. He decides instead to fill his nappy. We stagger to the changing station. He pees over everything. Then spits up. Then pees again. I change his clothes. He spits up on them. I change him again and get him back to the bed, where he promptly spits up over the sheets.

4. Memory Loss
I have trouble thinking of the right.. what do you call them?  Oh,words.

5. Pediatrician Visit
Somehow, in my postpartum haze, I agree to an 8.30 appointment. Of course the baby doesn't sleep the night before.  When the nurse calls us in, I try to hold my head high and walk past all those parents who look about fourteen and are staring at the couple who've brought their grandchild in. It's been so long since I've seen our pediatrician that she's gone blond. Later, my husband tries to cheer me up: "We might have been the oldest parents, but until that Asian woman came in, you had the smallest butt." Thanks, dear.

6. Lowered Expectations
My daily goal is to have breakfast and be dressed by 9. I do mean a.m. If the baby is half dressed by lunchtime, that's a bonus.

7. Gender and Species Confusion
I'm not used to having a boy. I call him girl. Or sometimes Odie, I'm not sure which is closer. Yesterday, I held him up to the mirror and proclaimed "There's Beatrice!". Oh well, gender fluidity is popular now, and maybe I'm just head of the curve on species fluidity.

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