Inspirations from cheese in a can. joey, kelly, danny, and charlie

This is going to be quick and dirty, y’all, because honestly I should really be cleaning, napping, or more fully parenting right now instead of blogging. But I feel I have a civic duty to fulfill, a little something I like to call “walking birth control.” I’ll try and make this a regular feature. We’ll see. I at least need to tell you about last week’s outing to the pizza place with three under three. Remind me: that story alone should provide a good two-three months worth of free, totally organic birth control.

As I’ve mentioned before, my strategy to make it through having a toddler and a newborn with all of our faces intact is to keep moving. To that end, I signed Danny up for a gymnastics class through the county. We had our first class this morning, and I have to say: what a deal. I’ve taken him to a similar class, privately run. Not Gymboree, but similar. Today’s class was much like that class, for about one fifth the cost. Awesome. Here’s where it becomes slightly less than awesome: when you are expected to corral your young gymnast, handicapped by a 15 pound lozenge of irritability taped to your front side. I didn’t think to take a picture of the top of Charlie’s head, but here’s Danny enjoying an interpretive dance:

Danny was extremely excited by all this class had to offer…he was surrounded by the glory of Cobb County’s gymnastic facility. He didn’t want to be confined to the “baby” stuff, oh no. Kid thinks he’s Mitch Gaylord. Also, he’s a very independent two (read: the teacher already knows his name, halfway through the first class). Sooooo, by the end of this class, I am red-faced and sweating more than he is, and twice he completely vanished in the gymnastic complex before I even knew he was missing. And before you think that this class will provide me with some aerobic health benefit, let me assure you I destroyed any possible benefit by going immediately to Dunkin’ Donuts to get an iced coffee, a bagel with cream cheese, and a few Munchkins just to round out the meal. But I digress….fortunately, his playgroup signed up for this class en masse, so I had plenty of help chasing his naughty little butt around. Otherwise, he would probably still be hanging from the rings that he was begging to use. Or perhaps he would still be in the foam pit (Miss “Wegan” didn’t get in there for her own health, I assure you.)

And it’s not like Miss “Wegan” didn’t have her own bundle of happy fun to be corraling….here’s Tinkerbelle herself in time out:

So, kids, in summary: try to avoid producing more children than you can control personally. Unless you just can’t help it because they’re so stinking cute that you want forty-leven in a row. Go ahead, procreate if you must. But don’t say I didn’t warn you, when you end up red-faced and sweating in the Dunkin’ Donuts drive-through.

Zoe says: GO FOR IT.

In about 10 minutes, I’m on my way to the gym. Yep, I joined the gym again. So later today, more tomorrow, and to an unbearable degree on Tuesday, I will be whining about how my entire body hurts. “OH MY LEGS.” “Wow, I wish my arms would fall off.” “And that tiny muscle directly above my left ear, yeah that too.” Stay tuned on Facebook and/or Twitter for that.

What had happened was, Joey and I agreed that I needed something regular and scheduled in order to get out of the house. Once you throw another kid in the mix, it doesn’t just happen on its own, I assure you. He plays the guitar in the church band; that’s his thing that gets him out of the house a couple times a week. I had no thing. I do have several extra pounds of fat and not as much muscle as I once did, though, so I thought I’d kill two birds with one stone. Danny is with his father, and I’m going to leave Charlie with a neighbor, and I’m going to the gym, where I have already paid them to hurt me. And all this seems like a great idea. See how kids will change you?

Happy birthday week, Princess Ivy Mae.

No adorable baby or toddler pictures here, though I’m working on that. This is a rant. It involves breasts and bathrooms. If you are extremely offended by either, you may continue reading or move along, your choice.

Now that I have a toddler and a newborn, I don’t have certain luxuries that I had the first time around, when I had just a newborn. Like sitting on the sofa all day because the baby wanted to be held, and that’s really the easiest way to do it. Or, when I did venture out, the ability to plan the entire day around the newborn’s “schedule.” This time, I have to balance the urge to stay at home on the sofa all day with the need to create an environment in which neither I nor the toddler tear each other’s face off by the end of the day. Generally, that includes leaving the house at some point. So, we go places. And when the baby is hungry (read: just short of always), I feed her. Charlie, like her brother before her, is exclusively breastfed. Therefore feeding her involves using my breasts, pretty much wherever we are.

This doesn’t sound like a rant, you might be thinking. And so far, it’s not. Just a lady talking about feeding her baby and trying to keep her and her toddler’s faces intact. Here’s the rub: apparently, reader, some people are deeply offended by the sight of an infant feeding. Shocking, right? I could hardly believe it myself. My jaw actually dropped when Joey related the following conversation to me: He’s at the mall with his friend, the father of a toddler himself. They’re walking through the foodcourt, and his friend says, “Oh, man, I’m glad you didn’t have to see that. That lady was breastfeeding her baby. That’s what bathrooms are for.”

Now….I’ll confess, mainly because I was afraid of people with a similar opinion, I have done more than my fair share of feedings in bathrooms. When it was just Danny, occasionally I would happen across a bathroom that didn’t completely suck for this purpose. The best of these was at the Dillard’s in Arbor Place Mall, which had a little room off to the side, with upholstered armchairs. And hey, that was nice….very rare, and not nice enough to let my toddler run around and lick every square inch while I’m otherwise occupied, but nice. But guess what? I never saw anyone else feeding a baby there, but I did notice a whole lot of people seemed to go there to poop. That and the rest of my 34 years of experience with bathrooms lead me to think that actually, feeding babies is absolutely not what bathrooms are for. That said, unnamed friend of Joey’s, who as far as I know doesn’t even read this blog: if you would like to take your Chick-Fil-A sandwich or your gyro into the bathroom to enjoy it when next you are at the mall, I fully support you. In fact, I’d love it if you did.

My nephew Desmond came to visit a few weeks ago. He is tres adorable and enormous. His baby fat is not melting away as quickly as it does for some, so he lumbers around like a big ole sumo wrestler. Actually, he’s quite nimble. But it makes me laugh to think of him as a sumo wrestler, so I do.

Completely unrelated: we have several LOST names in our family. My oldest nephew Emmett came up with this list: Benjamin, Desmond, and Charlie. Also, of course, Jack. (I just dug up that link faster by Googling “easycheese banana sandwiches” than I could have by looking in the easycheese archives. Fun.) A happy weekend to you.

UPDATE: I knew I was failing to think of an important one: Daniel, duh.

UPDATED AGAIN: And Amy. I have to think of them all before Leigh
Anne gets here.

IT’S 4:30 AM AND I’M STARTING TO FEEL A LITTLE CRAZY: Danielle (Rousseau), Michael, Vincent, Frank (Lapidus), and Jacob

Once, when I worked in the emergency room (as a registrar, nothing exciting or well-paid), one of the nurses would say when asked how he was doing: “I’m busier than a one-legged mule in an ass-kicking contest.” I think that pretty well sums up life around here with a lung-Olympian newborn and a wall-climbing toddler. But ain’t we cute?

Right along with the 73 thank you notes I have yet to write, Charlie’s unwritten birth story has been niggling at me (is that a racial slur? Oh, my stars, I hope not. Google SAYS (I hope you read that in your head with Richard Dawson’s voice a la Family Feud): not a racial slur.)). So, I wrote it. From the very first sign of labor. This account does not include anything I consider to be gory details, so if you’re a squeamish and/or male type, give it a whirl, if you want, and quit if you get grossed out. Oh, and p.s.: the fact that I got this written at all is pretty astounding to me, so I didn’t bother proofreading it. If you find a mistake, go get yourself a cookie. You earned it!

Saturday evening: As we walked around the square in Marietta, I noticed that walking sucked much more even than it had the day before, and that I had to pee every four minutes instead of every five. I visited the Krystal for just that purpose, and noted a symptom that can be an early, first sign of labor on the horizon. It’s gross, so I won’t mention exactly what. If you know you know, and if you don’t, you don’t want to. Suffice it to say it was enough to make me nervous that my hospital bag wasn’t packed. So, we went to Publix, went home, and put Danny to bed. I packed my hospital bag and passed out on the sofa, “watching” Dancing with the Stars on tv. When I woke up to stumble to bed, Joey told me that my favorite uncle, Jack, had passed away (expectedly, though still devastatingly, of cancer). I felt very sad, but tired won out over sad, and I went back to sleep.

Sunday morning: I began agonizing about whether or not we would go to the funeral, which I figured would be on Tuesday or so. I decided that if no developments happened with labor between then and the day of the funeral, we would go.

Sunday evening: I miserably attended book club. A friend there mentioned that when she had been threatened with an induction, she went and jogged for a mile. She went into labor that night.

Monday morning: I started a poll of friends and family to help me decide whether I was being ridiculous trying to go, or selfish if I didn’t. Survey said: ridiculous trying to go. Finally, when Joey mentioned (not in any way related to this decision), that I was 40 weeks pregnant, it hit me: I was being ridiculous trying to go. I decided not to go.

Monday afternoon: We took Danny to the soccer park. I jogged about 5 steps, but it sucked, so I stopped.

Tuesday morning, 4 a.m.: I woke up restless, nothing new there. I got up to write an email and try to clear my mind so I could go back to sleep. My water broke. That sounds dramatic. It wasn’t, really. It took quite a while to determine that such was the case, and I’ll spare you all those details, but my water had broken, in fact. Calls were made to those taking care of Danny (my friend Megan came right away, and Joey’s mom came a little later), mild contractions were noted, and Joey and I went to the hospital. We stopped at Chick-fil-a on the way so he could be human in case I needed him. The triage nurse concurred with my assessment that my water had broken, and I was admitted.

Tuesday, noon: Whole lotta nothin. I had been giving Cervidil soon after my admission to “ripen my cervix” and maybe, hopefully kick off labor. Not so much. I was given another one. The second one seemed to work a little better, and by four or five, I was mis-er-a-ble, begging for an epidural. Which they would not give me, because I was not sufficiently dilated. Instead, I was given Nubain, a narcotic which had the following effect: I was only lucid for the brutally painful contractions.

Tuesday evening: So I continued begging for the epidural, which I was finally given at around 7:45 p.m. Finally and blissfully pain-free, I dismissed Joey to go get some dinner, and I passed out. I was awakened a short time later and notified that I was going to have the baby right then. Her heart rate had dropped in a way the staff did not appreciate, and my body (according to them, and I took their word for it), was ready to push the baby out. Joey, as I mentioned, was not there. They called him and he took off running (with a full belly, he just had time to eat) from the Chick-fil-a across the street. They all stood around and waited for him, and as soon as he got there, they had me push. I pushed two (or three? can’t say, I was still half asleep) times, and out she came. They handed her to me, and she punched me in the eye with a bloody fist. My beautiful baby girl, Charlene Elizabeth Rutledge, born at 9:07 p.m., Tuesday, March 24, 2009, weighing 8 lbs, 5 oz, and 20 inches long.

My super-extra-psycho-hormonal phase has kicked in…. but it’s the good one that makes me feel like my heart and head might explode with love at any minute, every time I so much as look at either one of my children. And that makes this video too much, much too much to bear. So you’ll have to do it for me. I didn’t even know he knew this song. I’ll leave you to it…..I have to go cry for half an hour while watching Dancing with the Stars with a lap full of children and chocolate.

That’s my new favorite thing to say. Cracks me up every time. I’m easily amused. Anyway, sorry, Charlie, that it’s taken us this long to notify the world via blog that you exist. You do! We love you!

Charlene Elizabeth joined our family last Tuesday, March 24 at 9:07 p.m. More words and more pictures later, but the guilt was driving me nuts, so I had to put something up now….one-handed, with a sick toddler and a hiccuping baby in my lap.

(Eh-YO baby sister!)

And hello to you, internet. Excuses for blogging absences bore me, so I won’t subject you to any. In case you didn’t get the memo, read the posts, read it on Facebook or Twitter, or get a rare phone call: we are expecting another child. A girl one, and very soon. Sometime between now and 17 days from now, we will become a family of four. We have a name, but it’s top secret, hush-hush. That’s mainly because of the abundance of opinions where names are concerned, and the ease with which my feelings are hurt and/or my own opinion is influenced. Also, some element of surprise adds to the joy of a new person’s arrival, right?

So, before I pass from the realm of the enormously pregnant, I wanted to share with you all some photographs that my quite talented friend Martine took a few weeks ago. This was me at 35 weeks (I think? Who can keep up?), when I just thought I couldn’t be any more emotional, volatile, or miserable than I already was. Yeah. You might want to ask Joey about that. I have recently semi-quarantined myself from the outside world, so toxic is my aura. There is something of a history of mental issues in my family, that I have seen peek out here and there from my own person, over the years. I think the hormones and stress of pregnancy and the post-partum period bring out the worst in me. But, eh. Could be better, could be worse, I’m sure. In any case, thanks to you all who put up with me no matter how obnoxious I become. And here, again, mostly this means Joey. And the dogs. God bless the dogs. Someone needs to.

All that said, you wouldn’t suspect such a spiteful, malevolent woman to be lurking under the surface of these portraits of maternal bliss, would ya? Thanks, Martine, you are a magician! I can’t wait to see how you can make me look human with the newborn pictures….I’m not sure which will be the more Herculean task.

That’s about where her feet really live. Thankfully, she is much less brutal than her brother, who will one day be an incredible soccer player.

This is my favorite.

And finally, the legendary sofa corner….where much of the gestational magic happens.