The Complete Babies Don’t Keep

The wonderful nursery rhymes book I mentioned in a recent post was given to Normy by a near and dear family friend, Nancy. She continued her kindness today by emailing me the Babies Don’t Keep poem in its entirety. Thank you so much, Nancy! It is too wonderful to keep to myself…


"Babies Don't Keep"

Mother, oh Mother, come shake out your cloth
empty the dustpan, poison the moth,
hang out the washing and butter the bread,
sew on a button and make up a bed.

Where is the mother whose house is so shocking?
She's up in the nursery, blissfully rocking.

Oh, I've grown shiftless as Little Boy Blue
(lullaby, rockabye, lullaby loo).
Dishes are waiting and bills are past due
(pat-a-cake, darling, and peek, peekaboo).

The shopping's not done and there's nothing for stew
and out in the yard there's a hullabaloo
but I'm playing Kanga and this is my Roo.
Look! Aren't his eyes the most wonderful hue?
(lullaby, rockaby, lullaby loo).

The cleaning and scrubbing will wait till tomorrow,
for children grow up, as I've learned to my sorrow.
So quiet down, cobwebs. Dust go to sleep.
I'm rocking my baby and babies don't keep.

-- Author Unknown


In other news, Normy suffered his four month check up and shots two weeks early today. He received four shots in all: two in one leg, on in the other leg, and one in his arm. The poor guy was pretty sore this evening. He got his first dose of grape flavored baby Tylenol which he loved. As evidenced by his huge gummy grin and lip smacking happiness. Following the drugs I promptly plopped him in the tub where he soaked for over twenty minutes. I think it did the trick because he went down for the night fairly easily and right on time.

Thanks for your curiosity, Betsy. I’ll fill you in on my latest ambition and plan tomorrow. I’m still working on the post! XOXOXOXOX!!!!

Sitting Up!

He’s sitting up!

Can’t you tell he’s thrilled about it?

I can’t blog right now. I want to, I really do. But I am completely distracted by my latest scheme. I am one of those slightly obsessive types who get all wrapped up in something and have to exert all their energy into it for, oh about three days before getting hooked on the next big thing. Except THIS time I am determined to make it stick. I don’t want to let the cat out of the bag just yet though… so until then let me present you with Normy… the cutest baby in the world!

Besides you come here for the pictures anyway, don’t you? ;-)

Babies Don't Keep

This is my precious baby boy right now. Shhh! He’s sleeping. Actually you can make as much noise as you’d like. He sleeps just like his father… like a rock. Hence, I was able to snap this photo mere moments ago without making him stir.

I have to go peek in on him every few minutes. Not because I am checking to see if he’s breathing. But, rather to check and make sure he is still small. It seems every time I blink he gets bigger, and I don’t want to miss a thing. Queue Areosmith.

I’ve been thinking about him growing up a lot lately. The other day we took our first shopping trip with him FORWARD facing in the Baby Bjorn. He had a great time. As I walked through the grocery store he was a flurry of madly kicking legs and happily dancing arms. With Normy’s face to the world several people were drawn in by his tractor beam of cuteness and stopped to chat the two of us up. Everyone had the same story…

“Ahhh! He’s so cute!” (I know.) “It seems like yesterday mine kids were that tiny and now they are grown and gone. Enjoy every second. It sure goes fast!”

NOOOO!

The thought sends shivers down my spine. I know I have written about this before, but I think about it often. I do not EVER want Normy to grow up and move away. And then I start thinking about my own parents. We are separated by the ENTIRE country; I live as far west of them as I possibly could and still be in the continental USA. And that’s just what happens. Kids grow up, the go off to college, they get jobs, the wind blows, and we all scatter like seeds. I have aunts and uncles in California, Wyoming, Virginia, New York, Pennsylvania, Florida, and North Carolina and they all started off in the same one stop light town.

It certainly puts into perspective the way I moved out. I was 19. My mom and I had gone to see a movie that afternoon. When we got back I received a phone call from my long-term boyfriend who was in the Navy and stationed in Pensacola. Okay, he wasn’t my boyfriend; he was my husband. We had eloped about a month earlier. I was a parent’s worst nightmare. Anyway, he said he finally had enough money for me to come live with him. He said, “Leave tomorrow.” I did. I packed up my car kissed my mother good bye and left. My Dad was camping with my brother and my sister was also out of town. I didn’t even wait around to say good bye to them. I just left.

It makes me sick to my stomach to think about it now. I look back and want to take the 19 year old me by the hair and drag her back home. I wish I could have shaken some sense into myself. It is eight years later and of course my family and I have recovered from my reckless youth. But Lord, please help me if Normy is as stubborn and delinquent as I was. My heart will burst in a million pieces if he moves out in the same fashion I did. Now I know my mom’s heart did, and I would do anything to take it back.

But one way or another the day will come that my son will be a man. I will dance with him at his wedding and will have to share him Christmases with his in-laws. He too may move across the country from Smoochy and I. And just like my parents do, I will deal with it. But, I also might bitch about it a lot on our weekly telephone chat. Do you think he might be a big enough mama’s boy to call me every day?

One of Normy’s and my favorite books to read together is a Nursery Rhymes book with lovely textured pages. It was a baby shower gift, but shamefully I cannot remember which kind soul gave it to him. (If it was YOU please speak up and take the well deserved credit!) On the front cover of this book, the gift giver pasted a poem written by an unknown poet. This poem perfectly expresses how I TRY to live my days. Every time I read this book to Norm I also read this poem, and 2 out of 3 times it makes me cry.

Babies Don’t Keep!
Cleaning and cooking can wait ‘til tomorrow
For babies grow up, as we have learned to our sorrow.
So quiet down the cobwebs, dust go to sleep!
I’m rocking my baby, and babies don’t keep!

There, I’ve gone and done it again. I am crying.

New Plans

My dear blog friends, I’ve missed you. And I know you have missed pictures of Normy! You might have noticed that I haven’t been posting much. Okay, I haven’t been posting at all. Many of you might have thought I was busy exploring Seoul, enjoying house-keeping and room-service, or maybe recovering from jet-lag. Sadly, that’s not it. The Smoochy family is still in California. And it seems that is where we will remain. No Korean adventure for us. We were shafted.

As my last post (over a week ago) indicated we had made the journey to Kansas to leave our poor puppies with my in-laws. Smoochy, Normy, and I were thoroughly enjoying out family in KS when Smooch received a phone call from his boss. Sorry pal, your plan for Korea has been scraped. That’s a no go.

How do you say WTF in Korean?

Words cannot express how disappointed I was (am). Nor can I clearly articulate how infinitely annoyed I was (am). Here we were: dogs and car in Kansas with flights booked back to CA in only a few days and NOW you tell us we aren’t going?!?!? WTF! We were left with two options. Either Smoochy could turn around and drive back to CA with the dogs. Or the dogs and our one and only car could stay in KS and we could fly back as planned and have the company rent us a car until ours could be shipped to us.

It wasn’t that tough a decision really. Smoochy was in no mood to make that drive again. Imagine driving over 24 hours in two days with only a couple of dogs for companions, twice in one week. No thank you. So now we are driving around in a big white Dodge mini-van. It’s OK, but not exactly my dream car. However, it does have this awesome button on the clicker that opens the big sliding door automatically. A practical feature for the soccer mom in us all.

The one good thing about the whole debacle was the week we spent in Kansas without using any of Smoochy’s vacation days. Not a bad deal. Normy got to visit with all of his paternal grandparents, great-grandparents, aunts, and uncles. And Smoochy and I were able to go out sans baby for our anniversary! Thank the lord for breast pumps and doting Aunt Betsy.

Visiting with the family was refreshing and a much needed break from our isolated little life on the West Coast. We returned to California with thoughts of moving closer to family on the forethought of our minds. It’s funny how we can jump from daydreaming about life in Asia to desiring to be closer to home. In the same breath I could honestly tell you that all I want is to see the world and put down some roots. I’m not sure there is a way to find a middle path between those two extremes.

One of my favorite couples in the world is in there late twenties and at this point they have decided they don’t want children. Though I cannot imagine life without Normy, I can also understand their choice. These two have the time and money to do and see it all. I love living vicariously through my friend and hearing about all the places she’s seen and all the trips she’s planning. Another crummy thing about this whole Korean fiasco is that I missed the opportunity to see her when she made her yearly pilgrimage to San Francisco to visit her childhood best friend. Horrible timing, I am so sad I missed your visit, Lisa-Lou.

All said, I HAVE chosen to have children, and I don’t regret it for a minute. Loving my child has made me redefine what love is. I believe I love everyone in my life more because loving my baby has taught me to love deeper, to take it to a new level. And to me that is worth more than ski trips to Tahoe, back-packing through Germany, and lazing in a Turkish Hamam. And seriously, if you’ve ever been to a Hamam you know what a big deal this is.

Maybe there is a middle ground between planting roots and seeing the world. If we live near our families and see them on a regular basis we will not spend all of our vacations going home. That would leave us the ability to TRAVEL for our vacations! My parents moved our family from New York to Florida when I was four years old and I don’t think they have EVER taken a trip that wasn’t to visit with family. And who can blame them? When you live that far from the ones you love OF COURSE you’re going to spend all you frequent flier miles going to see them. That is if you have frequent flier miles. We’ll probably end up like the Griswold’s, careening down the highway with a picnic basket full of sandwiches the dog has pissed on going to Wally World.

Reporting Live from the Heartland

Life is good in the great state of Kansas. We have been visiting with Smoochy's Dad's family for the first half of our trip. The picture you see here is four generations of W. men. Of course Normy wouldn't cooperate for the shot but it is still wonderful that we have the moment captured. Tracy (Smooch's step mom) has a great picture of this where Normy's screaming looks like a giant grin.

I tell you, life is good with the Grandparents. (Don't worry Nanny Jannie and Grampy N., I'll make sure your ducky bathroom gets use after the first of the year!) Chuck and Tracy have really gone out of their way to make their house baby-friendly. They have borrowed all of the necessities from relatives (crib, monitor, baby seat...the WORKS!) so that Normy has wanted for nothing. It has made this visit so easy!!! I was all set to bare-bones it; as that's what we'll be doing in Korea at first. Normy doesn't really need that much. As long as he has the boob and a spot between Mom and Dad to sleep he's OK. But having all the baby extras to use is so nice.

Last night Tracy and Chuck hosted a family gathering to introduce Normy to all of his Great Grandparents and Great Aunts and Uncles. It was quite the experience. Normy, unfortunately, was pretty crabby, but everyone still enjoyed pinching his chubby cheeks and squeezing his chunky thighs. I must admit, I was full of pride at my heavy-weight baby. He is 19 pounds of crabby joy. I had so much fun comparing family features and trying to place what Normy got from where. Grampa W. pointed out the following comparison...

Maybe we should start calling him Alfred.

The next leg of our trip starts Friday when we head off to Topeka to visit with the other half of Smoochy's clan. Normy's looking forward to seeing everyone, but he's especially excited to see his Aunt Betsy; it's all he talks about.

In less then a week our Korean adventure will be underway. Rest assured our hotel studio will have an Internet connection and I will continue to post about our comings and goings in Seoul. Actually, I will probably have plenty of time for such persuites and I plan on thoroughly enjoying housekeeping and room service for three months! (However, we will have a furnished kitchen so I WILL be cooking, as desired!!!) AHHHHH! Korea, here we come!!!

Update

Things are moving at lightning speed for my little family. The days are flying by, and I am happy to report that we are living life to the fullest and savoring ever second. Smoochy and I are not the type of people to let an opportunity for fun pass us by. And last night our nearest and dearest friends Matt and Jen gave us the opportunity to see the Dave Mathews Band at the Shoreline Amphitheater.

The concert was a dream-come-true for me. I have desperately wanted to see Dave Matthews and crew live since I was sixteen, and have never until now had the opportunity. Previously tickets have either been too expensive or more often too sold out for me to get the chance to go; but last night the stars aligned and I saw Dave!


Not only did I see Dave, but so did Smoochy and Normy. Yup, we took the kiddo. And actually it went great. He slept most of the show wrapped in his Daddy’s arms protected from the noise and commotion. The concert was better than I could have ever imagined. Dave Matthews and Band performs with such fervor and heart. The music was divine. And nothing can compare to sharing an experience like that with such good friends. Thank you, Matt and Jen, for one heck of a night to remember.



Today Smoochy and I have been recovering form the show and busting our humps to get things ready for our upcoming trip to Kansas and then Korea. Tomorrow my little family departs for Kansas to drop our doggies off with Grandpa and Grandma W. who will be looking after them for a while. Normy and I will be flying and Smoochy will be driving with Jack and Scooter. We are all in for quite an adventure on our trek into the heartland. I am not looking forward to flying alone with Normy; but I would WAY prefer the flight to Smoochy’s two and a half day drive with the dogs. Everyone pray for my hubby that he makes it to KS safe and sound.

We plan on staying in Kansas until Tuesday when we all fly home. The only crummy part about that is that Smoochy flies into Oakland and Normy and I fly into San Francisco. Sheesh. Thank Heaven for BART! Anyway, we will have Wednesday to recoup and the Thursday we are off to Seoul! We are really cooking with gas! So there you have it folks. You guys will only have a few more days to call us on our current cell phones; but we will have new numbers for you once we get to Korea. You all are still going to call us, right? ;-)

Smoochy's Home!

Good morning family and internet friends! I am going to take another crack at writing the post I started to write last night, but just could not find the right words for.

It felt like Christmas Eve last night, so I was far too distracted to focus on anything for more than a few minuets. I found it far more productive to flit around the house picking up the chaos and visiting the odd website on the history and culture of Korea.

Korea?

Yes my darlings, Korea. In approximately two hours my beloved Smoochy will return from two weeks in the beautiful metropolis of Seoul. I am DYING to see him. I would have loved to write about missing him these past two weeks but Smoochy and I decided that it would be safer if we didn’t mention that Normy and I were home alone.

Not only am I thrilled to see my hubby, but I am even more excited for him to see Normy. Smoochy is going to be amazed by how much our baby has grown in changed in just two weeks.

Since Smooch has been gone Normy has found his fists and decided that they are the most delicious objects on the face of the planet. He has almost completely forsaken his once treasured binky, and now constantly maws his first knuckle. At first I was the binky-nazi. I wanted the kid to only suck on something with orthodontic approval and something we could eventually throw away when it was time for him to give up a good comfort suck. However, I was fighting a losing battle once he realized his hands belonged to him. Our first clash of wills left me clearly defeated. Besides, he looks so cute with his fist in his mouth.

Normy’s second and far more exciting accomplishment is that he can now turn over from his stomach to his back. This was discovered when I placed him belly-down on his play mat and he got pissed off because he could not see his friend the mechanical bird. When he realized that Mommy wasn’t going to come to his aid because his mandatory “tummy-time” wasn’t over ;-) He shouted, “This aggression will not stand, Man!” He then accused me of being a fascist, took matters in to his own hands, and flipped himself over.

Go Normy!

Anyway, back to Korea…literally. This isn’t finalized yet, but it looks as though two weeks after Smoochy returns from Korea he has to go back. For three months. However, the EXCITING part is that Smoochy will not go alone. Normy and I are going with him!

It’s going to be awesome. Imagine: Smoochies. Wild on Seoul!


I would love to scan in Normy’s passport to show you how cute it is, but that’s probably not legal…or smart. Anyway, it is so cool my nearly three month old has a pass port.

****

That’s as far as I got yesterday before Smoochy got home. It turned out that he was much closer than two hours away. Anyway, it is wonderful to have him home. Normy and I were really starting to drive each other crazy. After going in to work today, Smoochy told me we are really off to Seoul. We should be there by the end of September. My hubby is a little less excited about it than I am; the trip is going to mean a lot more work for him. Koreans work on Saturdays!

This last time he was in Korea the hotel he stayed at was a monstrous commute via taxi to work every day. He called me a couple times to report 3 plus hour cab rides. EWWW. Other times the ride would only be 45 minutes; it was dependent on traffic. The hotel where we will be staying is even further from his office. I feel bad for him, but it was the only hotel that has apartment sized accommodations. At least, the location will be ideal for me because it is in a part of Seoul with plenty to do and see, according to Smooch.

I am afraid you probably will be seeing a little less of me out and about in Blog Land. I have been devoting most of Normy’s nap time to learning Korean with a program called Rosetta Stone. I love the program; I would highly recommend it to anyone who is motivated to learn another language. I have used the Turkish Rosetta Stone with good results (of course the results would have been better if I had kept up with it longer than three months!). As it turns out, Korean and Turkish are actually related languages; both are from the Altaic family, just in case you were curious. I really haven’t noticed a similarity, but I’m doing alright with Korean. Everything is much easier now that I know that the Korean language uses an ALPHABET! Go figure. At first I thought I was looking at characters.

So that’s life for us right now. Crazy, huh?

Pictures for the Grandparents

These are before and after shots; Normy has learned how to roll over one way!

Yes, his shorts really say "crabby"! Is that perfect or what?

Rethinking Seven Kids

Maybe I Only Want Two…

As many of you know, I had a wonderful, easy, glowing pregnancy. I loved every minuet of it. After I got passed the initial surge of hormones and the acne went away I looked truly radiant for the first time in my life. I never suffered morning sickness; my ankles didn’t swell into canckles; and for the most part I slept fine. But to top it off I could sit down to a HUGE plate of pasta, manage seconds, three pieces of garlic bread, and a salad and still fit comfortably in my elastic pants. It was heavenly.

Before you hate me too much, I did endure 44 hours of unmediated labor. Not to mention about ten stitches. That part pretty much sucked. But, really the pains of childbirth fade quickly from the mind, the stitches dissolve, and all you’re left with is your beautiful if somewhat smooshy newborn babe. And after 44 hours of being crushed through my birth canal and then repeatedly slammed against my only partially dilated cervix, my baby was particularly smooshy.

The day after Normy was born I held my little miracle and thought to myself, “I want to do this again! I want like seven kids!" At that point Normy was sleeping about 20 hours a day and it was easy to imagine a houseful of perfectly behaved precious children. I envisioned joyful Christmases with a mantel loaded with stockings and walls of our home decorated with countless pictures of my smiling cherubs. They’d line up youngest to oldest dressed in matching outfits and sing a cute little song at bed time, like they do in The Sound of Music.

However, the reality of life with Normy has made me reevaluate my take on large families. Now I’m thinking more like two kids. Don’t get me wrong. I am enjoying motherhood, I like caring for my son. But, WOW, it is hard work. And as a logical woman, I can only assume that the workload is compounded with the addition of subsequent children. Perhaps even exponentially.

Here is my biggest issue right now: amusing my 2 month old. I am simply daunted. I can handle soothing the fussiness, I can handle the extra laundry, and the lack of ME time. But how do I entertain this little being day in and day out every day? We read books; we take walks; I sing to him; I dance around the living room with him; I put him on his play mat; I put him in his swig; we dance around the living room some more; I start pulling my hair out, he always laughs at that. My kid CONSTANTLY needs stimulus, or he starts crying. If he’s laying on the play gym and the mechanical bird stops moving for too long he’ll start fussing.

I Don't want this post to come across as whiney, because most days I have FUN with Normy. But, today I was at a loss. We had gone through the above mentioned list of baby amusements twice, and he just wasn’t doing repeats. He did not want to read the Ten Little Ladybugs again, he was SICK of the play mat, sick of dancing (and my legs were getting tired), and sick of countless repetitions of his favorite song (horsey, horsey on my way, we’ve been together for a many a day…) I was sick of it all too. Finally I did the one thing I swore I would not do.

I put Bambi in the DVD player and plopped him in front of it in his swing.

Antique Mommy wrote a hilarious post about this very issue not to long ago, and I couldn’t help but think about it while I enjoyed my forty five minutes of respite as my kid morphed into a TV zombie. Antique Mommy wrote, "With my child tucked safely inside my womb, I was still free to waddle up to my soapbox and spout off all the idealistic things I would never do that those other horrible, less diligent parents allow their children to do."

Now, I have never looked down on any mom for using the occasional Disney movie or Baby Einstein video to occasionally entertain their kid. I figured it was a fairly harmless way for a mom to get a well deserved break.

I just was NOT going to do it.

I wasn’t going to need the break. I was going to constantly stimulate my child via games and other interaction that exercised him physically and mentally.

Forget that. I was ALMOST to the point where I would have put a nip of whiskey in his bottle if I could have gotten out of just one hour of “what does Normy want to do now?” Of course I don’t give him bottles, so to get whiskey in his milk I’d have to do the shot myself. Tempting…

Suggestions? Anyone? How do you entertain a baby? All. Day. Long. Hour after hour? Any toy or game ideas for little babies? He's not in to peek-a-boo yet, I tried. However, I guess that is a good reason to have at least a second child; then they can entertain each other.



"Mom, Can we watch The Little Mermaid, Tomorrow? Ariel's a babe!"

Hi! Normy Here!

Mom's too busy eating bon-bons and watching soaps to blog right now. Check back later.