Tag: Good things

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Asher's Adventures Reflections

Pre-pregnancy jeans and newborn hats

Happy September! It’s been crickets around here lately, because Asher and I got to spend some time at a beach house down in Long Beach Island and I left my computer behind! Unfortunately Dave didn’t get to come with us, because he was home waving his fingers over his keyboard and making magic things happen. He tells me about his work all the time, and I still manage to have absolutely no idea what he does because it all just sounds like Swahili to me.

It was actually pretty cold while we were in LBI, hence the layers of fleece and wool in this photo:

“Mama, what exactly are we doing out here? It was warm inside, and there were snacks!”

And those layers are what I’d like to talk about today. First of all, you see that hat? There’s a story behind that hat. My wonderful and extremely talented friend April made it, in a class at The Blue Purl that she and I were supposed to take together…and which I, in my pregnancy-brain haze, COMPLETELY forgot about! She ended up texting me 15 minutes into the first class asking if I was coming, to which I was like, coming to what? So, because I was too spazzed out to even write down a multi-week class on my calendar, Asher got a hat–he’s lucky I have such good friends! It’s a gorgeous yarn (Madeline Tosh, I think!) that has lots of flecks of color in it, so it’s masculine without being just straight blue.

I knew it was going to be chilly when I was packing for our trip, so I decided to bring that hat along. It kept Asher’s little head warm throughout his first several months of life, when it was just so cold and damp all the time…he even wore it home from the hospital!

Stick a fork in me, I’m done.

And therein lies the problem. This gorgeous hat is newborn size. It was big on him for so long because he was born quite tiny, but I failed to account for how much his head has grown in the months since it got warm enough to ditch wearing a hat…and his head has grown a lot.

Yeah, we’re not getting another winter out of this one!

Sigh. I guess April will just have to make him a bigger one (wink wink)!

Speaking of things that are tighter than they once were…those are my pre-pregnancy jeans you see in that first photo. Now, I fit back into them by the time Asher was 3 weeks old, a meaningless feat that, at the time, felt like I had won an Olympic medal. However, they have since been put in Time Out for saying rude things about my body. I really don’t know how they managed to sneak into my bag, but in packing up the 7,364,129 things needed to take an 8-month old child away from home for more than 4 minutes, they got in when I wasn’t looking.

The jeans fit. They zip and button just fine, and I can even sit down in them…but they went in Time Out anyway, because they seem to feel that my body should still be shaped like it was before carrying and delivering a miracle, and insist on pinching and poking until they get their wish. If we can get up close and personal for a second here, I actually weigh less now than I did when I got pregnant…but the skin on my stomach is looser, my rib cage is wider, and I still have to get up almost every night no matter how much I dehydrate myself before bed.

Having a baby changed me, body and soul. Elizabeth Stone says that to have a child is to have your heart walk around outside your body, and she is spot-on–everything about me feels more vulnerable now, in part because I know there is so much I can’t protect Asher from, no matter how hard I try. But I also feel that my edges are softer than they used to be, that I am faster to empathize and to at least try to understand, because I’m practicing for the day that this tiny little person will need me to do both…probably in spades.

In many ways I’m still the person I was before Asher came rushing into the world; the basic shape remains the same. But the details are slightly different, and I see no point in trying to pretend otherwise, in trying to force myself into ways of being that don’t lay quite right anymore. So, my schedule looks different, my hair is longer so I can get it up and away from grabbing baby hands, my days are primarily spent pouring into my two guys instead of trying to save the world, and I don’t wear the pre-pregnancy jeans. In the future some, or even all, of these things will certainly change yet again, but this is where I am today…and honestly? I like the new jeans better anyway.

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Asher's Adventures

Asher’s Adventures: The Beach!

Asher went to the beach for the first time this week!

Asher supervising while T-Pop sets up his special umbrella tent–it was one of his first Christmas presents!

Let’s go ahead and acknowledge that it’s weird for me to call that place with all the sand and ocean “the beach” instead of “the shore”. I’ve lived in New Jersey for exactly 80% of my life, and apparently everyone else who’s actually from here calls it “the shore” (after all, there’s a reason that awful TV show got the name it did). I have no explanation for this, and I’m just as confused as all the people who have pointed this out to me over the years–and there have been several.

ANYway, Asher went to the beach! My Dad and I took him to Island Beach State Park (yep, the Chris Christie beach), which was really special because we’ve been going to that beach since I was a little girl…after the medical waste got cleared up, that is. My parents were real squares and didn’t want their kids playing with dirty needles and used bandages. Sigh, parents.

Still trying to decide how he felt about all of this!

So, we packed up all of the accoutrements needed to take a baby to the beach (which is a LOT), and we were off! We take a super-duper back road route to get to this beach, and I’ve ridden it so many times that I can literally close my eyes and envision the entire trip.  Once we got there the three of us trudged up “Agony Hill”, our affectionate name for the sandy hill you have to climb to get to the less crowded part of the lifeguard area. It’s not nearly as agonizing as it used to be, because back in the day it really was very steep, but carrying a 16 pound person while walking up it was still a bit of an effort.

Asher had a great time, and as a result, so did my Dad and I. Asher’s little feelings were rather hurt when he grabbed two handfuls of sand that immediately ran away from him, but T-Pop gave him a cold bottle of soda to hold and that made up for the insult.

We were able to stay on the beach for several hours thanks to the wonders of babywearing–that is to say, pigs would fly before Asher voluntarily took a nap without Wendy Whale, but he was powerless against the forces of a wrap and a nice walk by the waves. He was out cold in 5 minutes flat, and woke up ready to keep playing!

This is a Solly Baby wrap and I absolutely love it, in case you’re looking for one!

My Dad and I took turns holding Asher in the water when the waves weren’t rough, and he definitely has some swimming instinct because he kicked his little legs like a champ. iPhone v. Atlantic Ocean never ends in the phone’s favor, so I don’t have any pictures of that part, but you can take my word for it–it was adorable!

Speaking of taking on the ocean, at the very end of the day our little camp setup got swamped by a rogue wave. Talk about rude! Fortunately nothing was actually damaged, just soggy, but it was a bit of a chore to get everything packed up (full disclosure, my Dad did about 93% of the work). To that end, Asher got the “job” of monitoring the bags…

He was quite pleased with his contribution to the project!

Once we were finally packed up and ready to go, we headed back down Agony Hill and made our way home. Now, you know how a lot of babies conk out the minute they get in the car? Asher is NOT one of them. He must really enjoy watching the world pass by, because he will stay wide awake for an entire hour long car ride…even when it really would be best to sleep because it’s, you know, nap time or something. However, I didn’t think he would last long when I saw this face…

And I was right.

He slept the whole way home!

So, long story short, I got to revisit one of my favorite places from my childhood with my own child. I am so grateful to be able to do this sort of thing with him, and I can’t wait for all the adventures still to come!

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Motherhood

Wendy Whale for President

Just to be clear, this is not about politics. It’s about the fact that Wendy Whale is probably responsible for my sanity still being relatively intact, and as such I am her biggest fan. She was made by Gund, she’s soft and squishy, and there are little blue ribbons sown to her spout to look like water. She has a swirly button on her tale, and when it’s pushed she plays soothing, oceanic music and moves through a series of gently pulsating lights. She is very calming, and she was the breakthrough with Asher’s daytime sleeping.

This picture wasn’t posed, I went in to check on him and found them like this.

Asher has slept through the night since he was a little less than 3 months old. The fact that he was on formula by then could definitely be a contributing factor, but he also seems to just be a naturally good sleeper…at night. But during the day, he was like a different person…a person who didn’t like sleeping.

At bedtime, we go through Asher’s little routine, and barring an unusual circumstance like a tooth poking through to make him grouchy, he goes down in his crib awake and promptly falls asleep. He sleeps all night, then he wakes up in the morning and starts chatting with himself until someone goes in to retrieve him. I was convinced he would have a terrible sleep regression at 4 or 5 months, because it just seemed too good to be true, but he never did. So far, so good.

This is not how it was during the day. Getting that child to nap while the sun was out was like herding cats. Actually no, worse than that, I’m surprisingly good at herding cats (I think it’s because I understand their nervous energy, but that’s a topic for another day). Asher has fought going to sleep for an hour and a half, only to wake up 45 minutes later in a bad mood because he’s still tired. Sigh. It didn’t matter how exhausted and in need of a nap he was, he didn’t want to sleep so he wasn’t gonna sleep.

I was honestly at my wit’s end about his napping strike, and it was especially confusing because he was such an angelic sleeper at night. A number of other moms dismissed my woe out of hand, saying that it didn’t matter if he refused to nap because he was always getting a good night’s sleep. I know they were just trying to put a positive spin on it (or, let’s be honest, they were jealous), but to be harsh for a second, they were wrong. It did matter that he wasn’t napping, because he was exhausted and unhappy all. damn. day. And with an exhausted and unhappy baby, I’ll give you one guess at MY emotional state!

Then one day my Mom came over to visit, and she brought this cute little Gund whale with her. She knew I would like it because I’m a sucker for aquatic creatures, and it was soft and cuddly so Asher was totally into it. I honestly can’t remember now if it was her idea or mine, but the next day I tried putting Wendy Whale in Asher’s crib with him during naptime. This wasn’t an instantaneous miracle cure, and he didn’t become a good napper on the spot; but let me tell you, my child no longer tantrums for an hour and a half before going to sleep.

When it’s time for a nap, Asher drinks his bottle, cuddles with me for a few minutes, then I put him down in his crib and turn on Wendy Whale…and he falls asleep. Every so often Wendy Whale’s timer will end before he’s completely out, a situation I am promptly alerted to by his indignant hollering. And on more than one occasion I’ve gone in to check on him because he’s slept for so long, only to find him wide awake and playing with Wendy Whale, totally content.

Wendy Whale’s official headshot!

I don’t know if it’s the lights, the music, the shape, the color, the ribbon spout, but something about that little stuffed whale makes my nap-resistant son think, “huh, I bet falling asleep right now would be super pleasant and refreshing”. And I know it’s not just a coincidence, because I’ve tried putting him down without Wendy Whale, only to swiftly recant on my foolish decision and return her to her rightful place (indignant hollering is very effective on me!).

So, sometimes help comes from an unlikely source. After trying absolutely everything to get Asher to nap, the breakthrough was good old Wendy Whale. The two of them are happily snoozing away as I write this. I don’t know why it works, I’m just glad it does!

Have you ever gotten help where you weren’t even looking to find it? Was it as surprising as a singing whale?