Good Cop, Bad Cop

I have read enough magazine articles, blogs, books, etc to know that in parenthood there will always be the good cop, bad cop.  I always fantasied that I would be the good guy.  Apparently I am filling the roll of bad cop.  Our nightly routine consists of Rhea sitting on the couch with Justin having a bottle and unwinding before we put her down.  Now that she is getting alittle older and exerting more independence she tends to get off the couch and push boundaries.  I came into the living room last night just as she was climbing off the couch.  She saw me, panicked and hauled her little ass back on the couch and pretended to be a sleep.  Now I know she wasn't scared of me but she never has that reaction when Justin enters the room.  To rub salt in my wounds Justin has now resorted to saying "Uh-oh, here comes Mommy" anytime she is being fresh and not listening.   Which makes her run like hell to Daddy and pretend she wasn't just doing something wrong.  She has him wrapped.

Today's Griswald moment brought to you by the Wnukowski Family

Justin & I had a night out on the town last nite.  Justin was in rough shape today so we were looking forward to a quiet night at home with Rhea and Duke.  At 7PM I picked Rhea up to give her a hug only to become covered in poop.  She has a massive blowout.  An hour goes by and she goes to bed.  She refuses a bottle but goes down without a fuss.  This should have been my first warning sign that something is not right.  At 9:30 I am laying in bed and no sooner do the words "I am going to sleep.  This was such a relaxing night"does all hell break loose.  Rhea starts crying.  Justin goes in to find that she had puked all over her crib.  I strip the bed and he brings her to the living room.  She proceeds to puke some more which caused my hungover husband to puke.  I tell him to leave the room and I left Rhea finish puking.  Justin comes and takes her and I begin cleaning only to find Duke eating the puke which made me pretty much puke.  Needless to say it is going to be a long night in Grafton!

Belated Grandparents Day

Grandparents are a funny breed of people.  One day they are just Mom and Dad and the next they are these crazy people obsessed with one thing and one thing only.  Your Baby.  My Dad took Rhea on Sunday to spend the day with him.  He also brought her to Toys R Us and let her go on a mini shopping spree letting her get "whatever she wanted"  When I tried to argue with him that I had sent toys for her to play with he insisted she needed new ones.  I mean she is 10 months old.  She would has the attention span of a fly.  She ended up playing in a cooler with her cousin Noah all afternoon.  Go figure.  The thing about my parents being grandparents now is that it makes me miss my grandparents.  I had amazing grandparents.  There isn't a day that goes by that I don't think about them in someway.  Grandparents offer unconditional love.  I am not saying your parents don't love you unconditionally but during periods of your life your parents have disliked you.  But not grandparents.  My Papa swore I hung the moon, anything I did was amazing.  And once you see your parents with your children, you can actually visualize the love they have for you.  It is pretty powerful stuff.  Justin's Dad is a great example of the "grandparent effect".  He is utterly nuts about Rhea.  And she in turn in nuts about him. It is heart warming watching him sit on the floor and be goofy with her because he usually is so reserved.  Rhea is lucky in the fact that she not only has two sets of loving grandparents, but two Great Grandmothers who think she is the best thing since sliced bread!  Conversations usually go like this when we are with them "She just smiled, can you believe it, she is AMAZING!" "She just stood up, that little bugger, how does she do that?  AMAZING" I had a re-occurring dream when I was pregnant that I was riding in a car with my Papa.  It was so real.  And I think it was his way of telling me he is watching us and is nuts about her too.  Either that or he was trying to warn me about what my parents were going to turn into and was trying to help me escape!

Much ado about a Pancake

Rhea transitioned over to a toddler room at daycare this week.  She did fine.  I knew she would.  I on the other hand didn't fare so well.  On Wednesday I was informed she ate a pancake for breakfast.  What?  A pancake?  What happened to yogurt and Cheerios?  Apparently there was a miss communication regarding what Rhea eats.  But she ate the pancake and seemed to enjoy it.  So why was I so upset about a pancake?  To be honest, I wasn't really upset about the pancake.  I had been trying for weeks to get Rhea to eat anything but pureed food which has been an epic fail.  What I found myself upset about was the loss of control.  You see, I want to control what she eats and what she doesn't eat.  I want to share those "first" food moments with her.  Ever since I went back to work a part of me feels like I am just here for the ride and that she no longer belongs to me at all.  I know that is silly and not true but it feels that way sometimes.  I had this fantasy while I was pregnant about being home and raising my family.  The reality is so far from those blissful daydreams.  My thoughts are with her all day but I feel her slipping away from me more and more each day.  It makes me upset just thinking about it.  My boss told me these feelings and emotions are normal.  It's called being a parent.  Parents get upset over things like pancakes.  I guess she is right.  But it still makes me wonder if I over reacted.  I mean I have heard of crying over spilled milk.  But pancakes?  

Sleepless in North Grafton

Let me preface this post by saying I am not complaining about the lack of sleep.  What is the point?  Most of you out there are not sleeping for one reason or another.  It is amazing how you just adjust to running on four or two hours of sleep.  From the beginning Justin and I were blessed with a wonderful newborn who slept through the night almost immediately from birth.  On the nights she didn't make it through the night, she would only wake once and fall back to sleep immediately with the either my boob (when I was breast feeding) or a bottle.  Fast forward 9 months and her sleep has become sporadic and tiresome.   I mean last weekend she slept through the night until 7:30 AM.  Justin and I were so well rested, we felt like a million bucks.  That is until Sunday night and the rest of the week when she was awake at midnight, at 2, and at 4.  We started sleep training at the end of July but she came down with coxsackie, then cut her first tooth, then got coxsackie again, and is now in the process of cutting another tooth.  Sleep training doesn't work when you are sick and cutting teeth because the only thing that makes those things OK are Mommy and Daddy (mostly Mommy).   I probably should have spent last month reading up on sleeping and infants instead of reading the Fifty Shades Trilogy .  At the time I was staying up reading those books so sleep was something I wasn't doing anyway.  Now I want to sleep and I cannot.  I guess I am a glutton for punishment.  If anyone has any suggestions, I will be happy to hear them.  We have tried letting her cry it out, we have let her sleep with us, we have tried feeding her, not feeding her, and teething tablets which work to an extent but nothing is the solution.  And I know there is no one "solution" but I am willing to try anything at this point!

Happy Fathers Day Justin!

This Father's Day is a bit different for me.  Instead of celebrating my wonderful Dad, I am also celebrating Rhea's wonderful Dad.  Justin and I entered "the 'hood" (parenthood) in November and we have been scared as hell since!  We are still trying to figure it all out.  There have been plenty of ups and downs.  And though at times I feel I have struggled with doing things my way (the right way!) and Justin's way, I am learning that his way may not be what I consider "right" but just another way of doing things.  An example of his way of parenting is rigging pillows under her bottles so she can feed herself while he continues on his i-Pad.

Or when he used his nose to hold the bottle because he really needed the extra sleep

Drinking beers while walking her around the neighborhood ( I feel like Nana "what will the neighbors think!!!!)

Yelling out "She looks like the mailman!!!" to a room filled with doctors in the delivery room

  

But all in all he has been wonderful.  Rhea has him wrapped around her little finger and he loves her with all his heart.  His way is the road less traveled as a parent and I wouldn't have it any other way!  I love you Justin.  Thank you for being a wonderful husband and wonderful father.  The past year has been a roller coaster for us both but there is no one else I would want to share this ride with.  I am so lucky you picked me to be your wife and so happy Rhea has you as her father.