I know it is the shortest month, but, seriously, where did it go?!
Well, my goal is to blog the alphabet monthly this year, so here it is February 28th and I am writing the entire alphabet because I wrote nothing the last 27 days. Great. I've learned a lot in my few short months as a mom, so that is my theme this month.
A is for adore I have used the word before, and I'm sure I thought I knew what it meant. However, there is nothing that has taught me what it means more than becoming a parent. When I was in college and the first of my friends had a baby, I remember her saying, "We just sit here and stare at her all day." I laughed then because I thought it was a joke; I laugh now because I know it was true. There is just something about having a little piece of yourself take the form of another human that is indescribable.
B is for baths They aren't just for hygiene and relaxation. It turns out a well-timed bath can distract my starting-to-fuss-because-he-wants-to-sleep baby when it is just not quite late enough for him to go to bed (because I don't like waking up before the roosters, y'all.)
C is for colic but it's not as common as you think. This is the word your relatives will all think of first the moment your baby starts to whimper. Let me tell you something, folks: Babies cry. Newborns cry even more. It's just a fact of life. It is their first line of communication, so if your baby is hungry, tired, wet, overstimulated, restless, sleepy, groggy, full, sore, confused, surprised, cold, hot, or generally out of sorts, you can expect to hear about it in the form of a cry.
D is for diapers, diapers, diapers, diaper genie, and even more diapers I knew that babies went through a lot of diapers, and I knew that newborns were particularly skilled at diaper-disappearing acts. I had no idea that we would use 50-75 diapers a week. That is a lot of diapers, people. Thanks to Amazon Mom I now have a subscription to something I never expected to have delivered by UPS.
E is for extra clothes... for the baby and for you. Trust me. You want to have extra clothes on hand at all times. You just can't imagine how handy this can be unless you have a child.
F is for faces Babies have a wide range of facial expressions and with every passing day they are learning new ones. This is an endless source of amusement for you, your mom, your next door neighbor, and all of your Facebook friends. A few months later you'll look back and think, Maybe that one wasn't as amazing as I thought. But you won't care because you'll be so distracted by how tiny he was and how quickly the time seems to have passed.
G is for gas drops...I never knew how important this little bottle of baby-specific medicine would be to my sanity. It is a life saver.
H is for hands They are the first of a thousand things your baby will stick in his mouth as soon as he gets the chance.
I is for itty bitty Everything is cute when it's itty bitty. The cutest thing I've ever seen is my 6 foot 1 inch tall, 250 pound beast of a husband scrunching his face and lifting his shoulders as he giggled over the cuteness of our son's first loads of laundry.
J is for jump This is what you do when you realize your three-month-old darling has just somehow managed to flip himself over on the sofa in the time it took you to cross the room and he is now falling head-first toward the floor. (Don't worry; we caught him. Lesson learned.)
K is for kisses The first kiss I received from my son was a mouth-wide-open, slobbery scrub of his wet face against my cheek, and I've gotta tell the truth. . . I kinda loved it.
L is for layette That means the wardrobe of a newborn. And that is just the start of the strangeness that is baby clothing. I've always thought it odd that women's clothing have arbitrarily been assigned a nonsensical numbering system so unlike the practical measurement-driven men's sizing. But baby clothes! Baby clothes have the strangest sizing of all... they come in months. Now, tell me how that makes sense. Preemie, Newborn, 0-3 months, 3 months, 3-6 months, 6 months, 6-9 months, 9 months, 9-12 months, 12 months, 12-18 months, 18 months, 24 months... these are all sizes I have seen on the tags of baby clothes, and, of course, they differ from brand to brand. Who makes this stuff up?! Scenario: On the same day that my 9 lb 11 oz big boy is born, a gal down the hall is delivering her 5 pounds-soaking-wet palm full of joy. Now, today, my boy wriggles into a 3 months outfit and hers disappears inside of his Newborn threads. They're both about 47 minutes "old", and in a couple of months they'll both be 10 weeks old when Tiny Tim is still sporting his Newborn layette and my little big man is pushing his long legs into a pair of 6 months jeans. Does this make any sense to anyone? To be fair, most brands list out weight and length suggestions to accompany their "sizes", but why not just lead off with that? Wouldn't it be easier to go buy a 10 pound sleep-n-play from any retailer than to shuffle through tiny tags in tiny clothes on tiny hangers to determine how many months old Gymboree thinks your baby should be?
M is for manicure In four months I'm pretty sure I've clipped my baby boy's nails more times than I do my own in a year. Those claws get sharp in a hurry. I know for a fact I have filed his finger nails in four months more times than I have filed my own in 29 years. No lie.
N is for nasal aspirators Yuck, right? But when nothing else is available to help your baby breathe, you do what you've gotta do, and it just isn't as gross as you thought it would be.
O is for onesie This is a word that is trademarked and owned by Gerber. Any other similar item from a different brand will most likely be tagged a body suit. Actual Onesies will have a tag on the side to identify them.
P is for poop I never thought I would be one to discuss bowel movements on a regular basis, but that's just par for the course in this game. Though, I can proudly say, to this day I have not succumbed to the high-pitched cutesie discussions nor the sharing with people outside of the childcare inner circle.
Q is for quiet It has a whole new value once you've spent a few hours soothing a cranky little "bundle of joy".
R is for rooting This is what a breastfed baby (or any newborn for that matter) does when he is hungry. Do not doubt that he is going to make his intent clearly known whether you are ready or able to feed him or not. The word reminds me of an animal, but, then, so does my hungry baby at times.
S is for sleeping in 3-5 hour shifts Just when you think he's in a steady routine, you encounter a growth spurt, bout of congestion, or another stretch of teething and suddenly you're back to eye-twitching, zombie-like sleep patterns.
T is for thyme tea Though it isn't actually a tea so much as an herbal infusion, we recently learned that a little fresh thyme can go a long way toward clearing our baby's congestion. His reaction started out funny since he was tasting something bad for the first time in his short life, but he has gotten wise to our game and now fights the medicine dropper outright. Of course, that doesn't stop us from mixing a couple droppers full of thyme infusion into his bottle of milk. :)
U is for the unexpected This is the theme of parenthood... whatever you plan, you have to be prepared for it to go awry. Babies are unpredictable, but you can almost always predict that they are going to make a mess for you to clean up when you are running late.
V is for video monitoring My fantastically techie husband rigged a security camera he found on eBay to provide us with instant visual confirmation of our baby's wakefulness or lack there of. It connects to our WiFi, so we can check it from any computer or even our iPhones! It is so great to be able to check on Will's sounds without going into his room I hate to imagine night time parenting without it.
W is for water sounds Whether it's the bathtub running, the sound machine playing, rain falling, or the dishwasher washing, water sounds have an amazingly soothing effect on my little fella. I'm so thankful for a smart phone that can produce these noises anywhere we go.
X is for examinations Give me a break, I haven't slept through the night in weeks and X is a hard letter. When you have a baby, you're given a long schedule of what they call Well Baby Checkups. These are regularly-scheduled doctors appointments which subject your little one to measuring, shots, and assessment of all sorts so frequently you'll feel like you should be renting a space in your pediatrician's waiting room. What's particularly surprising is how eXcited one finds herself in the anticipation of learning how much weight her baby has gained over the previous month.
Y is for yesterday... the day I was planning to get everything done. Babies are crazy-big time consumers. Eventually, I'm sure, we'll figure out how to actually accomplish things in addition to parenting. In the mean time, his cuteness will distract guests from our unfinished chores and the fact that they are eating frozen pizza.
Z is for zippers Flip one upside down and sew it to a blanket and you have the most amazing invention ever to hit the shelves or Babies R Us... the Sleep Sack. Not only can my little dream kicker not knock it off in the night, but it has a sleeping bag effect of cozying him in for the night and allows instant access to a wet-at-3AM diaper.
