Kitty

This cat. I think he's out of chances.

Kitty took a few swipes at Bo again recently, this time claws out. The boy was reaching blindly over the arm of the couch (from Frank's lap), just to see if he could do it. The cat pounced and swatted at Bo's hands and mercifully missed. He then jumped onto the couch where he tried to again scratch and claw at the baby. Frank locked him in the basement until Bo was safely in bed.

Something has to be done.

What can we do? None of our friends or family will adopt this cat. He's a psycho and they all know it. Even my sucker-for-anything-with-fur sister wants no part of this cat. I can't in good conscience offer him to strangers, knowing full well that he's unbalanced and will literally bite the hand that feeds him.

Bo is right on the cusp of crawling - we're talking days, if not hours - and while I can put covers in the electrical outlets and locks on my cabinets, I can't babyproof the cat. Or kitty-proof the baby. Anything on the floor to Kitty is fair game and I can't have him coming at Bo's face.

So what do we do? Be those people? Those people who abandon their pet when they have a baby? I'm not that girl. I'm the girl who gets all eye rolly and disdainful when I read the little descriptions on the cage at the shelter about why the animal was given up. Like, didn't you KNOW that was going to happen? Why didn't you PREPARE better? How can you just give your cat away? Why don't you try that book Or a clicker?

So now I direct all of these mean and judgey comments at myself. And I add new fun ones like, why am I so LAZY? How can I say I'm too TIRED to try the book now? Don't I LOVE my cat?

I'm horrified at the thought of taking this poor cat to a shelter. When he gets out of the house (he makes a break for it every time the door opens), he doesn't even leave the yard. We always find him waiting by the front or back door after 10 minutes of backyard adventure. I can't imagine how freaked out he'd be in a shelter somewhere, waiting for me to come back.

I don't know what to do. I mean, I know what has to be done, but I can't bring myself to do it.

It's Been a Long Time Coming

I don't really want to talk about it. I try my best not to think about it too much. There's no answer that doesn't suck and the whole thing makes my stomach hurt. So I avoid it as much as possible and just get on with my day. Until it rears up unexpectedly to slap me in the face and leave me holding back tears at my desk or behind the wheel or wherever I happen to be at that moment.

Most recently it was my dad. He was in my neighborhood and had some time between appointments. He called to see if I was home and could he stop by to see his grandson. When I told him I was at work and Bo was at his babysitter's, my dad's response was, "Oh, he has a babysitter now? I don't like that one bit. But you gotta do what you gotta do." To which I responded, "I don't like it either".

Thanks Dad. Because this is really a conversation I want to have out loud. Because I'm not already tortured every day that my baby boy is cared for by someone else as I sit at my stupid desk and order socks or remove salt from pretzel sticks. Because when I walk to the Fedex box and see babies crying and their nannies trying to console them I don't worry about my son and if he's crying and if his lady is consoling him. Because I don't want to scream with jealousy at the girls standing in the bakery discussing their latest playgroup gossip over their ridiculous strollers as I frantically fix myself a cup of coffee on my schlep to work. So thanks Dad, for bringing it to my attention in the middle of my awesome day.

My job has always sucked. My boss is a walking, talking cross between Michael Scott and Mr. Pitt. I do nothing remotely important or meaningful during my day and never have in the almost 5 years I've been here. The thing is, before Bo, I never cared. I was Jim Halpert to my boss's Michael Scott. Frank's own work schedule is always shifting so missing weekends was no big deal since he was usually at work too. The pay for putting up with the craziness made the 14 or 15 hour days (and 100+ hour weeks) totally worth it. There were also perks galore like shoes with red soles and a personal trainer. It was a good gig.

Now I'm working only part time. Fake. Part time by the standards of this job still means one 10+ hour day a week, really being firm about when I have to leave, and still leaving at least an hour later than planned. The upside is that it's not every day. The downside is no regular person would call the work schedule I'm keeping these days "part time". There aren't as many perks. There's a new girl keeping most of my old hours and now she gets all the extras.

I tell myself that I would go crazy staying home all day, every day with the boy - I tried to write as much in this space - but it wouldn't be true. The days I leave him with the sitter and go to work are so sad for me and I count the minutes until I can leave to get back to him. I'm having a terrible time trying to balance it all (like every other working mom out there I know). There are days where I feel pushed to the floor by the stress of trying to figure out a way to maintain everything.

We could most likely get by on Frank's salary but it would be hard. It would involve more sacrifice than we're willing to make. I don't want my husband working himself to death with overtime, missing his own time with our son so that I can stay home. And I like going to work. It feels good to put on nice clothes and leave the house. I like contributing to the family coffers. I also believe it's good for Bo to get the socialization of other people and other kids.

(I'm going in circles with this post. Can you tell I'm just trying to work my shit out by writing it down?)

It makes me angry and sad and bitter that I have to leave my son with someone else to do this. This nothing of a job. This glorified babysitting of a man old enough to be my son's grandfather; older than my own father by 7 years. This job that requires no specialized skills or abilities, only never ending patience and absolute devotion bordering on co-dependence.

I used to be a teacher. A really good teacher, I don't mind saying. I worked in a terrible school in an awful neighborhood on purpose. The conditions of the school were bad and the pay sucked. I made a difference every day just by showing up and I loved it.

So.

I had an interview a couple of weeks ago with my old school district. I'm going back in January.

It's a trade off to be sure. My work schedule will be five days a week instead of 3 or 4 (or 5, if I'm honest) but I'll be done every day by 4pm. Nobody will call me at home at 9pm because he can't figure out how to switch from cable to the dvd player (swear to God) or because he needs help in drafting a mean email to his ex-wife over how she mothers their children. My weekends will be my own. Bo will technically spend more time with the sitter but not really, since Frank's days off are during the week most of the time. It's going to be hard and thankless.

I can't wait.

Perspective

I'm not quite done beating myself up over allowing my son to fall on his head. In fact, the very next day walking down the front steps of our house with the boy in the carrier, I achieved the advanced move of stepping on the hem of my right pant leg with the heel of my left shoe. We have 12 front steps. Somehow I managed to not lose my grip on the carrier and sort of pitched myself sideways so I landed in the ivy, one ass cheek slamming hard onto the step but the baby landing right side up.

That was an awesome start to the day.

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A couple weeks ago my mom and I were talking about winter coats for Bo and I mentioned something about the one piece snowsuit deals and she said do NOT get one of those things because it's her experience that babies hate those things.

Her experience.

One day my mom decided to take us to the playground near my grandparents' house for the afternoon. She liked to take us for walks during the day, to get out of the house and do something. The playground was within walking distance but not close. It was probably a 10 minute walk for an adult alone. There were four of us at the time, ages 4,3,2, and 1 (roughly) so it was probably more like a 30 minute walk.

When we got to the playground my mom turned us loose to play while she wrestled my brother (the one year old) out of the stroller. He was pissed and thrashy because he hated his one piece snowsuit. In the time it took her to take her eyes off of us and wrangle him, my younger sister, Maria (the two year old) fell off her swing and broke her arm.

It was about 1981 or so. Mom was 25 years old. She didn't speak any English (neither did my older sister or myself). There were no cell phones. Still, she didn't panic or freak out. She got my brother back into the stroller, turned her scarf into a sling for Maria's arm, and walked all four of us back to my grandparents' house where she could call my dad at work and my grandfather could take her and Maria to the hospital.

I have no memory of the event at all. I vaguely remember Maria's arm being in a cast but barely.

I'm 32 years old. I have one kid. I speak the language. I have a cell phone and a driver's license and a car. Still, I think I would melt into a puddle of panic faced with that situation. I certainly don't think I would have the presence of mind to fashion a sling out of my scarf.

My lesson? Kids get hurt and it's not the end of the world.

No snowsuits for Bo.

And maybe one baby is enough for me.

FAIL

It's not my intention to let this blog languish for weeks at a time. I was talking to Lora the other day (it was more than 2 weeks ago but in the freaky fastforward wormhole that sucked me in the day Bo was born, that was like yesterday) about how this blog sucks. Her response was that it doesn't so much suck as it's just nonexistent. So true. It's not that I don't have anything to talk about or think about or work through. I just sort of suck at life these days.

Speaking of sucking at life...

You know that expression we like to use about how people should be required to obtain a license to have kids? I solemnly swear to never, ever say that again. Because if it were true and I passed the test in the first place (which is no guarantee. My stupid driving test took 3 tries. And I was 23 years old.), my license would have been revoked already, multiple times. Because I suck. I also promise to never again snark about the ridiculously unecessary warnings all over every baby item ever produced, as I am apparently their target audience. That audience being, of course, morons.

Last weekish, I was in the kitchen with the baby, trying to clean out the refrigerator. He was in the bumbo seat because he MUST! BE! UPRIGHT! at all times. In being upright though, he must be no more than 2 feet from my face. So I had him in the bumbo, in one of our kitchen chairs. The chairs are those high, bar stool style ones for sitting at a counter. Or a bar. They do have backs, they're not actual stools. Anyway, he was in one of those chairs and I had him pulled close to me, within (what I thought was)arm's reach. Except notsomuch.

In the minute it took to turn my head and shove something down the garbage disposal, that boy fidgeted and wriggled himself right off the edge of the chair, head first, onto the floor. Onto the ceramic tile kitchen floor. Head first.

Then I had to be the idiot mom at the pediatrician's office (at 8pm bless them) explaining that I had my baby rigged precariously and let him fall off of a chair. I could not believe I was actually uttering the words "I just turned around for a minute". GAH. I wanted to roll my eyes at myself.

He was fine. The doctor isn't sure he even hit his head at all.

It's becoming scarily clear though, that could be the first of many trips we'll be making to the doctor's office/emergency room with this boy. He spends most of his day launching himself head first at things he wants or at nothing in particular. When he's not trying to bash his skull, he's attempting to escape from whatever I've tried to use as confinement. He makes the exersaucer move across the floor with all his vigorous thrashing about, he's figured out how to use his foot as leverage to get out of the bumbo seat (that thing is so retired by the way), and more than once he's rolled clear out of our laps. I'm not saying it's ok to drop your baby, but I understand how it could happen.

Close Encounters of the Feline Kind

When I was little we had a crazy mutt of a dog. Some dog in the neighborhood had a litter (there were always litters of puppies and kittens in the neighborhood) and all it took to get my dad to agree to a dog was to put the tiny mewling thing on his chest as he sat in his recliner one night. Such a simple manipulation and the puppy was ours. My mom gave her the name Gypsy and it was a harbinger of the wild, incorrigible mutt she would turn out to be.

In hindsight, my parents probably had no business getting a dog at all. My mom was pregnant with baby number 6 or 7, I can't remember. Either way, it's pretty safe to assume that she and my dad were holding things together with both hands. The oldest of us was about 8 and the youngest was a toddler, Maybe about 14 months old.

Gypsy was a maniac. She ran all over the house, she chewed things, and she never stopped barking. I remember taking her for walks and she would drag me along behind her as she strained at the leash to go faster and farther. We could never let her off the leash because there was no guarantee she would ever come back. Now that I'm an adult (an adult who has seen many, many episodes of the Dog Whisperer), I realize that Gypsy needed way more exercise than she could get living in our little Southwest Philadelphia rowhouse. My mom didn't have the time or energy to devote to training Gypsy much past housebreaking and had to resort to simply letting her out in the backyard (we mercifully had a backyard) when the kids old enough to walk her were in school during the day.

And then one day, Gypsy was on a tear through the house and she ran right over the baby and scratched his face. He was fine (I'm pretty sure it was my brother) but I'm guessing that was when my mom reached her limit. One day I came home from school and it occurred to me that I hadn't seen Gypsy in a couple of days. I still remember my mom swallowing hard before telling me that she and my dad had sent Gypsy to live on a farm where she would have plenty of room to run and play.

Apparently people really give their kids that line, it's not just for television.


I should ask my mom what they really did with her.

********

We got Kitty a few months after we got married. He adopted us. Frank came home one night from work the bar and found him stretched out across the front step of our building. When Frank brought him upstairs, that cat immediately started purring and winding himself in and around my legs like he had known me for years. That was all he needed to do. He was our cat forever from that night, when he howled and scratched at the bedroom door until I let him in and he curled up on my pillow next to my head. We never could decide on a name for him and eventually he just started answering to Kitty.

We soon found out that this cat is um, psycho. He's incredibly needy, especially for a cat. He must always be in my face, on my lap, in my ear. He endlessly bashes his face into mine, which I know is a sign of deep affection but hi, so annoying. He licks the corners of my eyes and the tip of my nose when I'm sleeping. He does that kneading, pawing thing endlessly, especially when I'm sleeping. If he could find a way to crawl inside my face and live there, he would be the happiest cat ever.

Kitty also has aggression issues. He wants to be stroked and petted and scratched and then he doesn't. He makes his feelings clear by attacking the hand of whomever is showering him with love. He waits in corners and just on the other side of doorways to bat and scratch at the ankles of passersby. Our poor black lab outweighs Kitty by at least 50 lbs and even she avoids crossing the lunatic's path. We've gotten him toys for him to play with, thinking that the aggression is misplaced energy and boredom but no, just pure crazy. Even the vet - who is exclusively a cat vet - said he was the weirdest cat she'd ever met.

It's always been sort of a joke amongst our friends that our cat is the devil. Everyone knows to ignore him and they all try petting him at their own risk. We chalked every one of his quirks up to being lost on the streets for an unknown amount of time and gave him more love. He was just our misunderstood kitty that we loved no matter what.

Of course, we were quite worried how Kitty would react when the baby came. I didn't believe any of the old wives' tales/urban legends about the cat that smothered the baby, but Kitty's neediness comes with a side of extreme jealousy. I was worried about him climbing over the baby to get to my face. People say that cats instinctively stay away from babies and display gentleness with small children. While I'd never really seen Kitty interact with kids, I had no reason to think that he would suddenly find sanity upon the arrival of a smaller, weaker rival for my attention.

Clearly, I was right to be concerned



If he was allowed any closer to Bo's face, he would so be on it. Because that damn baby is in his spot.

Unfortunately, when we're not shooing Kitty away, we're ignoring him altogether. This has resulted in way more nighttime face diving since the baby is in bed and my arms/lap/face is free. As soon as Bo goes to bed for the night, Kitty climbs into my lap. As soon as I'm in bed for the night, Kitty is on my face or on my pillow, behind my head, both paws in my hair.

Things took a bad turn the other day when Bo - who is now all about grabbing at everything around him - took a few swipes at the cat. Kitty responded by batting Bo in the face. I was in the shower and I could hear the screaming through the closed bathroom door, shower running, radio on.

You may be surprised to learn that Kitty is still breathing.

There weren't any scratches. We don't think he used his claws. It was like a warning shot I guess.

So now what? We really don't know. It's unthinkable to me to take Kitty to the pound and essentially abandon him. There's a good chance he was abandoned once and that's how he ended up on our front step. On the other hand, I can't have a psycho cat attacking my baby.

************************

This all happened like 3 weeks ago, which is when I started this post. Apparently though I live in some kind of wormhole where time slips by without my knowledge.

Kitty is still with us, still desperate for attention and pushing the proximity envelope with Bo. Our solution for now is to not let Bo reach out for the cat and to do our best to keep the cat away from Bo. I'm sure we'll have to revisit once the boy is crawling.

Maybe I'll get the name of that farm from my mom.

And If You Got 10 Sticky Fingers...

Like most 4 month olds, Bo has discovered hands. He loves to watch my hands do things and he puts his hands on mine when I'm buckling him into his car seat or stroller, like he's helping. He doesn't really stare at his own hands so much as suck on them all day long. He tries to get both fists into his mouth at once sometimes. He'll also sit playing with his tongue and chewing on his fingers at the back of his mouth, where his molars will eventually be.

Anything else in the general vicinity of is face will end up in his mouth too. He's starting to figure out how to grab things and anything he manages to get into his hands goes straight to his mouth. He chews on my shoulder when we're walking around and he even got a handful of my hair in there today (because the hair is excellent for grabbing and holding onto, apparently. I really need a hair cut btw.). Bo will grab Frank's thumb and put it in his mouth and go to town. He'll even take a break, pulling Frank's thumb out and then putting it back in. He does it with the pacifier too.

Even though this is all normal developmental stuff, my baby is a genius. No baby has ever figured out how to put things in his mouth as efficiently and smartly as my boy. And the drool is just proof of his incredibly giant and brilliant brain. SHUT UP, he's a genius.

I'm a little concerned though, because he's sucking his thumb a lot. He's pretty much given up the pacifier in favor of the thumb. He'll actually spit the pacifier out so he can suck his thumb. Mostly I'm unconcerned. Except for a little bit. Because I don't want Bo to be a thumb sucker and he's already displaying some of the behaviors of one. He sucks for comfort when he's feeling upset or stressed, he sucks to get himself to sleep and to get back to sleep if he startles himself awake. I have visions of him being one of those 6 year olds you see at the mall, still in the stroller, sucking away. And well, ew.

I'm unconcerned because he's only 4 months old. This isn't a hard and fast habit he's developing here. Right? RIGHT? The other thing is, it's so damned cute. He gets that fat little thumb into his mouth and sucks like there's no tomorrow. Sometimes his enormous head falls forward into his lap because he's so intent on getting as much of the thumb into his mouth as possible, he can't expend the effort pick that melon up.

I'm trying to get some sort of schedule going with this boy (and oy, talk about sucking), part of which is getting him to sleep before 11pm, on his own, without nursing himself into unconsciousness. The trade off is the thumb. Am I setting myself up for a fight down the road? Is there going to be a pepper on the thumb showdown in our future? If I discourage the thumb in favor of the pacifier, isn't it really just the same thing?

No really, I'm asking you.




Because I'm a marshmallow when it comes to this boy.


Do you see those legs? Those legs are so FAT that they get stuck in the Bumbo. I pick the boy up and the seat comes with him.

17lbs.

SEVENTEEN POUNDS!


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two posts in two days. you have to be impressed. I'm just saying.

So Much To Haaaaate

Forgive me for the sputtering incoherence of this post.

Have you seen this train wreck?

Seriously.

I'm unfamiliar with the whole dating reality show genre. I've managed to avoid every season of The Bachelor and The Bachelorette purely out of disinterest. This show however, sucked me in by having the time slot directly following Hell's Kitchen. I love me some Gordon Ramsey.

This show annoyed me from the jump with all its damn commercials about "real women" looking for love. All the stats about the average size of the American woman versus the average size of the reality dating show contestant. I'm sorry, are the women on all of those other shows cartoon characters? Are they figments of our imagination? And come on, skinny women aren't really the biggest obstacles to reality on any of these shows.

Given the setup, I was fully expecting a whole, "big girls are beautiful, we're here and we're curvy sodealwithit" love fest. I was expecting a group of women confident in their own skin, having a great time, fighting for the affections of some dude. That would have been something.

Like I said, I'm unfamiliar with the genre. I wish I still were.

These women are so saaaad. And the show totally takes advantage of their self esteem issues and filters their entire life stories through the lens of being overweight. Rather than portray the contestants as confident in their bodies and comfortable with themselves, the show does everything to make it clear that "fat" and "pathetic" are basically synonymous. It almost seems as if the more they talk about their weight and body issues, the more screen time they get. It's even obvious during some of their narrative interviews that the producer sitting there is prompting them to circle everything back to weight. It became painfully clear after the first episode that these women hate themselves and every episode is going to pick at the open wound of their self-loathing. On top of that they've layered the promise of Mr. Wonderful and the happy ending of a marriage proposal. Because, you know, marriage totally makes everything easier and better. The wedding is the end of the story.

And they're so young. One woman is only 21 years old (!) and while she's the youngest, I would guess the average age is about 25 or 26. They're talking about how they've never experienced real love and that they've waited "their whole lives" for someone like Luke (Mr. Wonderful) to accept them for who they are and not what they weigh. Really? How is it possible that they think this show is going to be about anything other than their weight? When we first met these ladies, climbing out of their limos and walking up the red carpet to Mr. Wonderful, they were captioned with their name, age, height and weight. Who exactly is accepting them for the wonderful person they are on the inside?

Why are we even calling this a reality show? We all know there's nothing real going on here, right? Do these women know it? I'm just asking, since more than one of them claim to have never been on a date. Do they know that private jets to Vegas, horseback rides, gondolas with sparkly lights, dinners in rented out restaurants, and diamond effing promise rings are not standard dating procedure? Do they know that none of these excursions are Mr. Wonderful's idea? That he's a giant puppet (and I mean giant. Homeboy rings in at something like 6'5", 330lbs) being manipulated by the producers? They keep swooning over how no guy has ever been so romantic or imaginative and how thoughtful Luke is to come up with these wonderful experiences. While he seems like a nice enough guy, he's obviously not long out of the frat house. I'm guessing if left to his own devices, date night would be sucking down beers and wings at the local sports bar with all his buddies.

The last episode was all about Mr. Wonderful presenting them with dresses and taking them to the "prom". In the set up he talks about how he's sure most of these girls had negative experiences with their proms and probably didn't get to go and so he wants to make it up to them. And they're all so excited to go the prom because they never went to prom or their prom sucked or they went with a big group and without a date. And of course all of the bad prom experiences resulted directly from their weight issues but it's all better now because Luke's taking them to prom. Right. Because there's nothing creepy about waiting around to be told what you're going to be doing and then being told what to wear to that activity, when you find out what it is. And you're calling hanging out with some dude and 8 other women "a date".

There's so much that is wrong with this show. Reality television in general is a disaster but this is just awful. I wonder if these women knew what they were getting themselves into. I wonder if they're sitting at home watching this fuming that they're being portrayed as blubbering, needy messes. I sincerely hope that they're angry that every scene and episode shows them eating or making references to food. I mean, there are close up shots of them biting into some kind of beef on a stick and sometimes it's just a close up of the food. Like, let's see what the fat girl is eating. Alcohol doesn't seem as prevalent on this show as others but there seems to be food everywhere. This show is objectifying these women just as much as all the other shows do to thin women, despite the protestations to the contrary in the commercials.

I'm gonna keep watching though. I admit I'm hooked on the spectacular awfulness and even though I'm fully aware of how contrived and manipulated every situation is, even though I get that these women are being reduced to caricature, I'm interested to see what happens next.

I'm so weak.