frugan

As anyone who knows me knows, I like to eat. A lot. Really, a lot. The other day I ate 5 muffins in one day. Right now I am writing this but secretly wishing it was an hour later so that I could already be eating my beach barbecue dinner.

It’s no surprise then that many of the things I most look forward to about being a mom involve food. I can’t wait to bake cookies with my girl. To eat pizza while watching a movie. And while playing in the playground sounds great, it’s sharing a piece of cake in a cafe on the way home that really gets me going. 

Today we are one step closer to that piece of cake. Today was Sigrid’s food debut. One serving of potatoes a la baby. From the look of things, I’ve got a soul mate on my hands.

Life with Sigrid keeps me from writing as much as I’d like to. If I wrote every day, you’d get a sense of my every day. As it is now, my posts are sporadic and often more general in nature. The thing is, I’m pretty sure I’ll remember the big stuff, the general stuff. But all these days, these dragged out yet over in a second days, will be hard for me to imagine. What the hell did we do?

This post is for Sigrid and me, a little time capsule, if you will. Ready, Baby? Okay, this is what we did on a very average Tuesday, June 23, 2009, when you were exactly 19 weeks of age:

Sweets, this is a little embarrassing, but it all started with a fart. That’s how I knew, at 6am, that you were officially awake, despite my plying you with milk a half-hour earlier in an attempt to make it until 7. Once I heard your little rooster call, I nudged your father awake and pointed at your still-swaddled self in between us. That’s how I silently say, “my shift is over, dude”. Pappa lifted you up and took you to the changing table while I buried my head under the covers in order to maximize my break  (my day shift begins about 5 minutes after my night shift ends). 

By 7am, I was in the kitchen eating Cheerios and you were in your infant chair at my feet. I can usually manage one short newspaper article or one detailed reading of the day’s TV listings before I pick you up and hold you on my lap. After I ate, I plopped you on a blanket in the living room so that I could grab a tissue to wipe your nose. Not 5 seconds after I turned my back, you were crying, having hit your head on the floor when you rolled over (as of the last week you can not stop rolling onto your stomach). Pappa rescued you and held you close before he left for work a few minutes later.

Just so you know, your Pappa hates leaving for work. This is 5% because it’s work and he would rather be sleeping and 95% because it means spending 9 hours away from you. How he loves you!

At 7:40 (okay, I better speed up if we’re only at 7:40) I nursed you, and at 8am the two of us fell back asleep. The only way I can get you to sleep at home right now is either in my arms, in a carrier, or curled up next to me in bed. In the mornings I usually try the third option so I can get some rest as well. Despite your constant fidgeting, we slept until the lazy lazy hour of 9:40 am. After that it was a shower for me (with you in your infant seat in the bathroom) and then the first of many cumbersome trips to the laundry room. Laundry day sucks because the laundry room is far away in the basement and we always have a ton to wash and you are getting heavy…and just when you think it’s over there’s the folding.

So the morning was spent doing laundry (me), rolling over (you), eating (you), and oh! doing more laundry (me). At 1:30 we went out to meet Maria and Filippa for a walk and a fika. At this point you were pretty tired but you wouldn’t fall asleep. Not even in the carriage. Not even in the Baby Bjorn. Not even once we came home and sat on the couch. Nor when I wrapped you up against me. Today was a day of very little sleep. You were just too curious to close those heavy eyes. And yet, you managed to stay happy. At Espresso House I held you on my lap while I drank a latte and ate a chocolate muffin and both of us were content.

This evening wasn’t so fun for you. First, you were exhausted. Second, Pappa and I were too busy frantically cleaning to play with you properly. Tomorrow I’m hosting a fika for the moms and babies from the baby massage class we took a few months ago. So tonight, the dust bunnies got the bulk of our attention. Sorry. We toted you along while we wiped surfaces, vacuumed and folded laundry.

Because we had a lot to do and because they taste good, okay?, we ate a trashy dinner of fake chicken nuggets. You sat/slumped in your new high chair next to us and threw toy after toy on the floor. At 7pm when you were beyond exhausted, Pappa gave you a bottle (we do that a few times a week). We swaddled you and put you down in your crib and you were asleep at 7:15pm. 

When I say asleep, I mean “asleep”. Every night you awake, without fail, 40 minutes after you fade. I have learned that I can prevent an all-out meltdown by coming into the bedroom a little before 40 minutes are up. I sit on the bed next to you and read and as soon as I see your brow wrinkle and that cry start to form, I bend over your crib, rub your head, kiss your forehead, and you fall back asleep.

That’s why I’m in here right now. The 40-minute crisis has come and gone but I thought I’d sit in here until this entry was done. I like sitting next to you when you sleep.

After you fell asleep, Pappa went out to watch a Swedish football (soccer) game, so I’m on my own. That’s another reason I’m writing this. Were he here, we’d be sitting on the couch watching 30 rock or BBC news or basically anything that allows us to relax for a few minutes. But like I said, I’m alone tonight. Your day has ended but mine will keep going for another hour or so. I’ll watch some TV, check my email and generally be unproductive before sneaking back into the bedroom. Hopefully, I’ll catch an hour (or more?) of sleep before I hear your little voice (even through a white noise CD and earplugs, I can hear your tiniest whimper). Then, I’ll pick you up and feed you and, depending on the hour, bring you into bed beside me.

Tomorrow, sometime between 5:30 and 7:30am, we’ll begin again.

For now, goodnight, sweetest girl. xo.

Friday was a big day. Sigrid left Sweden for the first time, for a meeting at the American embassy in Copenhagen. She also celebrated her first Swedish Midsommar. But forget about those legitimately big deal things; on Friday Sigrid wore her girliest outfit to date. Now that is blogworthy, no?

Almost every day since Sigrid was born she has worn a onesie and pants. There has been a sweater or shirt on top of the onesies a few times. She has one pair of overalls. Up until Friday she had only worn a dress twice — and both were pretty casual ones. This wasn’t deliberate on my part. I didn’t set out to make a gender neutral wardrobe or anything. It’s just that when Siggy arrived, the idea of fussing her up in a dress or anything too frilly just seemed silly. Like a costume. Like a dog in a sweater. In this weird way, when she was an itty bitty thing, she seemed kind of genderless to me. Yes, she was a girl but she wasn’t yet a GIRL. Mostly she was just cute little Siggy, wearer of cozy pants and sneaker socks.

Things are changing, though. At almost 4 1/2 months, Sigrid’s presence is exploding. Her personality gets stronger every day, she is more and more aware of the world, and she’s not so delicate. Our swollen little newborn is now a rosy-cheeked, roly-poly baby. She now seems big enough to handle the occasional day of dressing up.

In anticipation of Friday, Sigrid and I went to Zara. I held two dresses up to her in the carriage. She gave no indication of preference, so the choice was all mine. I hemmed and hawed and eventually asked another shopper to choose for me. She was weirded out (am I wrong in thinking that someone in America would not have been as awkward about being asked?) but she was helpful. I left with one tiny black bag holding one tiny dress.

After our trip to the embassy, where Sigrid was mistaken for a boy, we came home and changed her into her party outfit. Then off we went to our first family Midsommar, our little baby all decked out like a little girl.

Some acquaintances of ours just had a baby. After Erik ran into the new father he came home and reported that the baby was sleeping through the night and that the new parents felt like things were pretty much the same as before.

Oh really?

Yesterday I sat on the couch with an overtired screaming baby, rubbing her forehead and singing to her while tears welled up in my own eyes. She started to calm down and I readied myself for an hour or so stuck right where I was. Problem? The TV was off and the remote was just out of reach. I grabbed a nearby stuffed bunny and used it to attempt to reach the remote. No luck. Eventually I contorted my legs to try and back kick the remote from the other end of the coffee table. That spastic move woke Sigrid and the crying began again.

Yeah, that didn’t really happen ‘before.’

Before, I wouldn’t have gone out today. Because the wind and rain are insane and they have issued weather warnings. I did go out, though, in an attempt to attend mama/baby yoga. I thought it would give me some peace of mind and give Sigrid a chance to fall asleep in the carriage, since she flat refuses to nap in her crib. I walked to yoga, got soaked and tried desperately to prevent the evil wind from waking a now sleeping Sigrid. When I got to the yoga studio a sign said class was cancelled. Of course it was. But I was not the only one who braved certain soakage in a bid for new-mom sanity. On the way home, I passed a mom friend of mine also on her way to yoga, her baby getting drenched in her carrier. 

Before I didn’t narrate my day out load, “I’m just doing the dishes! And next I’m going to go into the living room!” Nor did I do this inane mom thing of saying everything twice, “Should we change your diaper? Should we change your diaper?”

I didn’t go to bed at 9:15 because I had to wake up again in a few hours. I didn’t avoid all heavy subject matter in books, movies and TV because Jesus! I have enough on my plate.

And I didn’t walk so much. My God, the walking! I don’t just take the occasional stroll. Since Sigrid’s arrival I have walked and walked and walked. There has not been one day that I haven’t taken her out of the house. I have driven somewhere with a friend two or three times but mostly we walk. I’m like a manic mother version of Forrest “one day I just started running” Gump. Before? I mostly biked.

Before I didn’t have to stop in the middle of a blog entry to shake a toy in someone’s face. I think Erik would have found that mightily annoying. I also could have sat here, re-reading this post, editing it and making it tighter. Now it’s all about, “get it written, slap it up there.”

I’m not sure how a new parent could say things are as they were before. Are they lying or lucky? Or did they always pause in the middle of dinner to attend to a screaming human in the other room?

I’m not going to end this with a pat statement about how I wouldn’t change a thing. Listen, I would change a few things. I would make Sigrid nap in her crib if I could. I would have her sleeping through the night and give her the magic ability to entertain herself while I write an email. But this new way of life does have its perks (aside from the privilege of kissing fat baby thighs whenever I want). My sanity may at times be a little shaky, but all this walking should give me some calves of steel.