Post-xmas ramble

Do you ever feel like, maybe...just maybe... you've had 5 or 6 too many lattes? That's about where I am on a daily basis lately...and then around 9 I just crash. Not really sure what the deal is with me. It's not like I'm ever drinking more than one latte in a day.

Xmas was an interesting experience around here. If it weren't for the inevitable crash/burn/die/reformat of the laptop, I'd have some ranting and raving to do about numerous presents...in picture form. :| Sadly, the death of the laptop took with it the photos of my kid loving up his xmas day. I'll give a brief explanation of the bests and worsts...with pics stolen from the internet. Someday I'll have all my software reinstalled on the beast and I'll be able to get the pics of MY kid loving and hating things up here... :)

The most annoying present ever was his evil little Cozy Coupe car by Little Tikes. That beast took me almost 2 hours to assemble. I'm fairly mechanically inclined...typically more than capable of assembling just about any piece of
furniture from a box...even with unintelligible Engrish instructions. This thing was just awful though. My kid sat and laughed at me as I fought with it. Literally. I had to put ALL of my weight on it to get the top pieces in correctly. Also, when putting the back yellow pieces on, the logos were upside down. There was only one way to put the pieces...and yet, the logos were wrong. There are also exposed screws. The door latch isn't exactly secure. The eyes were broken. There isn't a seatbelt... so I know that if I took the bottom out of the car, my kid would slide right out onto the ground. Fun, right? So... I'm not at all a fan of this car. The only thing that keeps me from dousing it in gasoline and dancing around it after lighting it on fire is the fact that my kid really loves it. He babbles at it. He got in and grabbed the wheel - as if he knew exactly what he was doing. It was unbelievably cute.

The next toy I have an issue with is also a Little Tykes toy... the blue convertible swing with yellow ropes. The ropes are WAY too short. A friend and I sawed through a couple chains to add a couple feet to the top in order to make this long enough. The ropes have these metal hooks on the end, making the contraption a one-piece deal.
It's supposed to be a convertible...meaning that it goes from infant to toddler swing - the bar and straps fold under... the problem with that, though, is the rope length. My kid would be dangling more than 4.5ft off the ground had we not hooked it on to chains. Also, the way that the bar and straps are configured, my son's stuck slouching. It pins him down awkwardly and it's difficult to get him into a better position. The last issue I have with it is the straps - they're not quick to get undone. It took me a couple minutes to figure them out and then another minute of awkwardly sticking my fingers into the little holes to hold down a little piece to unlatch them. I suppose that it would be particularly difficult for my kid to get out himself...but still... I'd like a more user-friendly swing. Again, this toy is not a melted pile of goo solely because my kid loves it. He loves it so much that he squeals with joy when he sees it and screams when I take him out of it.

Think that's bad? Nah... the ultimate xmas fail was the Fisher Price Go Baby Go Bat and Wobble Penguin. It was so cute! I was really upset that it only stayed in my house for 20 mins... I had very high expectations for it. Since the boy so loves to hit things, I figured he'd make quick friends with the penguin. He never actually saw the penguin. I got it, inflated it, and the tab refused to stay put in it so it deflated almost instantly. Not THAT bad... but then my mouth started burning. I'd noticed that the penguin smelled a little like chemicals, but figured it wasn't a really big deal. There was a fabric over most of the toy... and I think it was soaked in some kind of industrial poison. The burning in my mouth got worse and I ended up with a rash all around my lips. Have you ever tasted the inside of a glow stick? It was just like that. My mouth hardly came in contact with that fabric. The rash went away pretty quickly, but I wasn't going to risk that with my kid, y'know? Ugh. Such a big disappointment. :( I'm going to hunt down one of those entirely plastic boppy clown toys from the 80s with the bean bag bottom. Those have never given me a rash.

The xmas wins were:
Fisher Price Poppity Pop Train - this little gem held up xmas for quite a while... he refused to open new presents and screamed if it was taken away. He still likes it, though there's less desperation.
Vtech Baby's Learning Laptop - now that he has his own, he only occasionally bangs on mine.
Vtech Dial and Discover Phone - he's really happy about this toy... it hasn't stopped him from going after every other phone, though.
Baby Genius All-in-One Musical Band - LOVE this! I had to take out the toy with sharp parts, but otherwise it's awesome.
Playskool Explore 'n Grow Step Start Walk 'n Ride - he hasn't figured out how to use it, but he loves to sit by it and poke around at it.

And do you know what the absolute biggest win of the season has been?? A stuffed cat that I got for $3 at a museum sale. It was probably made by a little old lady. It had button eyes that I had to cut off... and Oliver looked for them for a while... but he loves that cat. It's the only thing he's ever drug around with him.

Anyway... I should be trying to get this computer back to what it should be :) And what that means is I'm gonna take my baby and go curl up with him in bed...

The New Year...

Oliver's first New Year's Eve was very uneventful. He was asleep before 8, and I was out by 10:30. We sure know how to party around here! :)

Anyway... I'm actually here to complain about the doctor's appointment we had the other day. It was Oliver's 9 month check-up, and should have been a fairly routine event. Go in, weigh baby, check height, make sure he's functioning as a baby should, etc. All that went fine. My kid is 28 inches tall and 20lbs. Not too bad... he looks chubbier than he is. The doctor said something that absolutely infuriated me, though. He said that babies need to be weened at 1. That is the most absurd thing any so-called medical professional has EVER said to me. My kid is breastfed and I have every intention of continuing to breastfeed him for as long as he wants...within reason of course...but I don't even plan to consider weening until he's 2. If he'd just said this to me, fine. I'd have made future appointments with a different doc and that'd be that. Unfortunately, he said this in front of he-who-must-not-be-named, who will probably try to use it against me in court. He's always been against breastfeeding and it seems that the courts are also against it here in the lovely state of Arizona. Needless to say, I'll be getting quite a few more opinions on the topic and refusing to stop breastfeeding. I fear that the courts will attempt to force me to stop by adjusting visits in a way that would make it difficult or even impossible to continue, and I sincerely hope that they don't... I wouldn't be a politically correct move, right? That's enough of that, though. Any time I think of him or courts I get angry and depressed. There is no consideration for the needs of children anymore... it's all a game of politics and children are divided like bank accounts and couches. I wanted so much more for my son than this.

Speaking of Arizona... gotta love these Arizona winters! The day before xmas eve we ran over to Sierra Vista to see the snow :) If it weren't for the climate (and my friends and family) I wouldn't know what the hell I'm doing in such a red state.

And another odd point here... I mentioned my son's size... that's the 40th percentile for both height and weight. That means he's small. He's 9 months old and wears 12 or 18 month clothes. I'm baffled by this. Were babies just much, much smaller in the past and they've never updated the sizes? People always ask if Oliver is 12 or 18 months old...but to me, he doesn't seem very big at all. Is my son small because the percentiles have changed to accommodate the societal norms? Morbid obesity is the American way...yet my son isn't a fattie...so therefore, he's small. Sometimes I really think the numbers they give me and the things they say about 'em are completely random. Oooh how I prefer the WIC check-ups: short and sweet.

I should probably keep this short, too... since it's not particularly sweet :)

So many hoops...

When I initially decided to do this blog, I didn't realize just how many hoops I'd have to jump through in order to gain recognition. It's really a lot more difficult than it was to be a plain old webmaster at a plain old domain. Sometimes I wonder why I ever gave that up...and then I remember the agony that was attempting to learn PHP. Talk about headaches...I feel a twinge of pain just typing those three little letters.

So, my semester has ended and I have mixed feelings. I absolutely despise my lack of commitment and contribution to the previous months...not because I genuinely loved the material, but because those few months cost me around $10,000... and that's before interest. I feel that I need a constant reminder as to why I found it so necessary to seek this master's degree in the first place. I guess it works out, to some extent, because I'm home with my boy and that's really the only place I want to be.

Speaking of which, I'd like to come up with a way to be home with my boy permanently. I'd like to work from home... to hell with the 9 to 5! :) I can have dreams, right. Maybe I'll be a writer... I checked out a couple books on children's book writing and illustrating from the library the other night. They seem a little old, which, considering the state of the local library, is not at all surprising. I hope they still have some decent information.

We sort of put up the Christmas tree the other day... so far we've managed to get one strand of lights onto it. Oliver seems completely indifferent. He also seems to have no real understanding of gifts. He crawls on the giant wrapped Little Tikes Cozy Coupe car, the numerous smaller packages of clothes, little toys, books, and the two sets of Mega Bloks. He has no idea. I've been told that the first Christmas is for me and that he'll understand a little better in a year or two, and from the looks of things, I've been told right. Then again, though we've lived in this house for more than 6 months now, we haven't unpacked yet. Maybe he's just so used to boxes that putting them under a lit-up tree makes no difference in his mind. I'll let you know how the presents go once they're out of the boxes. I'm pretty sure he'll be enjoying the boxes for a while :)

He got his cage already, and he's not a big fan of it. Six grayish plastic sides of baby-containing goodness...as far as I'm concerned. Not sure what I'm talking about? Go here: North States Superyard XT Gate Play Yard. There really was no other choice... this was a necessary product. Oliver is pretty mobile for his age. He spent all of 2 days crawling, and immediately decided that he was going to cruise around on furniture. Unfortunately, he is not nearly as coordinated as he is daring... he's managed two pretty bad injuries in just a couple weeks. The cage should prevent him from falling into the coffee table... and it would be really efficient if he'd stay in it without screaming. It's tall enough, strong enough, sturdy, and plenty big... but he's just not into being by himself in a cage :\

Anyway! The finale of So You Think You Can Dance is on...which I'm only going to see one hour of because there's a new Criminal Minds at 8. I'm not looking forward to CM because I have a feeling it's going to be very emotional... the last episode was the most depressing thing I've seen in a very long time.

I'm gonna go now... I'm typing faster than I'm thinking and that can lead to a lot of mess in here.

<3

Introductions all around!

Hello :) I'm Awyn. I'm a 28-year-old single mom to a handsome (crawling, climbing, screeching, bouncing, pounding...) 8-month-old little boy named Oliver. I'm a grad student working on a master's in library science with hopes of someday being a children's librarian. From what I can tell, the rumors about children's librarians are true: we're an odd bunch. I live a pretty conservative life, but I'm really VERY liberal. I like all art forms, with the exception of poetry, and work (for the moment) in wire.

Blogging is a good way to get all the excess out of my head.

So, what can you expect to see here? I like lists, so here's a list -

1. Mommy ramblings - attachment parenting, things I've done that have worked or have failed miserably, you know the drill. Oliver has his own blog, and I'm not sure how much overlap there'll be.
2. Product reviews for all things baby - this kid has everything, and I have opinions about all of his things.
3. Product reviews for whatever I've tried... if I ever get myself anything!
4. Reviews of everything I come in contact with - restaurants, books, magazines, movies, websites... etc.
5. Men. What single, straight woman isn't thinking about (and complaining about) men? If I ever have any adventures in dating, you'll get to read about them.
6. Offensive topics... religion, politics, discipline, parenting styles...etc. Unless you have a good sense of humor, I'll probably offend you. And I don't care.
7. Alternatives to every-day products...or different uses for every-day products... cleaning & medicine, mostly.
8. Geek things... software, kid and grown-up gadgets... though this won't be terribly extensive.
9. Other things. That's about as specific as can be...

Soooo that's what you can expect. If I ever figure out how to be one of those coupon moms like the ones on Oprah, you'll be reading about that, too.

<3