Dateline 7/10 Nikiland

Bebegirlieness is still crankass. But we got an additional saga yesterday when she stuck her finger in the pencil sharpener (not automatic, thank goodness, just your traditional turn-the-pencil sharpener). The cut was deep and she would NOT stop using her hand and messing with it. By the time Fran called me (I was making dinner)there were bloody babyprints on his shirt, on his face, on her shirt, on her face, and there was blood all down her arm. It was NOT pretty. In fact it was mommy-heart-attack-inducing, especially since I hadn't seen the incident or the beginnings of the bleeding, and just walked in to Daddy-upset, Baby BLEEDING.

Put on a bandaid? No, we will WAIL and SCREAM and make evident our weird little psychosis about things stuck to our hands and feet. Miserable.

Hold gauze to it? Same issue.

DAMNIT.

I finally settled for nursing her so that her hand was out of her sight behind my back and hoping that if all the more fiddling she could do was wiggling her fingers, it would stop bleeding.

It took about 10 minutes and my back was swabbed in baby blood, and I'll probably never get the stains out of my bra, but it did stop.

An hour later she picked up a piece of steak and started screaming (salt in her cut I'm sure). We washed her hand and I couldn't find the cut.

WTF.

Earlier that Same Day:

The same baby spent an hour in IKEA pushing around a baby-sized cart and acting every bit like the sweetie-pie that makes everyone with the least bit of hormone circulation want a child. She is just so fucking unpredictable. We go from absolute cuteness in IKEA to full-on crankass earlier or later in the day. We could go to IKEA and get her a kiddie cart today and she'd probably pull a screaming lay-on-the-floor fit. Her teeth had better fucking just come in already. And stay that way. Damnit.

In Other News:

Becca was swinging on her swing yesterday and said to me "mama, after I had my talk with daddy about not going to first grade, I feel lots better now. I like doing all the stuff he said way more than I like school."

OMG did he find the magic words or WHAT!!!

Also Schooling Related:

We went to Staples yesterday and the kids picked up enough money from the ground outside to pay for our purchases. They were having a penny sale. We spent $.35 and got 12 folders, 3 boxes of pencils, 3 pencil sharpeners (one of which provided the baby-cutting news item), and 4 packs of filler paper. We promptly went home, cleared off the table, and made alphabet folders (each page is for a different letter). The kids are so cute, so excited about pencils and paper and folders :). Becca wanted hers in cursive and the tough thing about that is...I forget the 'proper' way to form some of the upper case letters. Oh well, shortcuts work for the rest of us. She's actually quite good at forming the cursive letters. Yeehaw for her.

I will now stop the mindless drivel. Have a nice day.

Teething Sucks

It fucking SUCKS. Not only does it fucking SUCK but her teeth refuse to just come out and be over with it. Her lower right canine keeps erupting and then GOING BACK UNDER. OMG. And every tooth is a freaking nurse-me-pity-me-my-life-is-over fest for bebegirlieness.

The other two simply did not teethe. Their teeth just kind of came in and I didn't know about it until I saw new teeth.

Oh no, she is not only DOING the whole "teething thing" but she is also making up for them.

I have HAD IT. She is laying on the couch watching *gasp* a movie and wallowing in self-pity. She has been chewing on her fingers so much that they bleed. My nipples are raw. I am so, so tired of nursing her constantly (and I do mean constantly...5 minute breaks here and there unless I can actively distract her or get her daddy to take her). It's to the point where I just fucking want her off me for a solid 10 minutes.

We are going out in a bit and FUCKIT, I am buying that whatever-it-is numbing gel shit that I've always thought was a bullshit pseudosolution. Holy hell, I understand now why parents keep tubes of it in the baby bags.

I will then slather her poor little inflamed gums with it and whirl around the room with my baby-free arms outstretched.

Or so I fervently hope.

Because otherwise I might just finally, totally CRACK.

Egg Update

On Friday I carried 5 dozen eggs from store shelf to cart to checkout to cart to cooler to home to fridge without breaking them.

I even made eggs overeasy and didn't break yolks.

The curse has lifted.

The Origin of Boy

And this is the entry in which I profile the boyness. I think I'll just do each kid. But this one is all-about-the-boy.

When I had my first I tried my hardest to be all gender-neutral and crap. I believed that classic hyperbole: they're only different because of social influence. Well, if my firstborn's love of ponytails, butterflies, and princess crowns wasn't enough to burst that particular bubble (and I tell you, it wasn't, because she also LOVED RC cars and airplanes...), Boyness broke it once and for all.

Now, it isn't like boyness came out throwing sticks and whacking balls and vrooming cars around the room. Next best thing though. He came out posterior and one pound heavier than his sister, 7 minutes after we entered the hospital. He came out and...OMG, this is NOT LIKE my first. He is...Fran. I'm not sure that one is mine. Are you sure he didn't get switched in the 2 seconds between coming out and getting handed to me? Sure? Errr, did you clone Fran and not tell me? If that resemblence was obvious then, it is blaring frigging clear now.

Within 15 minutes Fran had dubbed him "glow worm".

At his one week checkup he had gained 2 pounds on nothing but breastmilk. It wasn't that he was so demanding, in fact, he was worlds and worlds easier than his sister. In fact, it was probably because he was so easy. He'd guzzle down a full load of mama-has-oversupply breastmilk, and then just sit there happly milk-drunk for an hour.

By two months (this picture was taken a week short of the two month mark) he weighed 22 lbs. This is the exact weight of my 18 month old daughter. Monster boy. We never had to worry about cosleeping with multiple children. He was only about 4lbs lighter than his big sister (who was 2 years older than him!). The two pictures were, yes, taken at 1 week and at almost-2-months, but for perspective, DD was an average-ish sized kid and DS was/is huge...in the second photo with DH...my DH is not a small man. This is where boyness' size comes from.

Anywho, I cannot detail the rest of his development like that...life progressed with decent predictability. He walked early and talked late, toilet trained early and weaned late, just like his sister. He took the coming of another sibling with relative ease, just like his sister. He grew and grew off the charts still, but at a very healthy weight/height ratio. Always a big kid.

Behavior problems started to crop up around when he turned 4. OK, so they started months before that, but they began to really come to a head around then. Just when I was at the point of "what am I going to do, this kid is driving me to a serious, drive-to-the-hospital breakdown!?" L, like the good friend she is, had a lightbulb moment and suggested dairy allergy. That is a saga all on its own but to understand boyness now, you need to understand that to see violence in him, just feed him a dairy product and wait 24 hours. I guarantee more running, disobedience, screaming, and sibling-and-friend head-bashing than you ever wanted to see. If you want a sweet, talkative, slightly-shy boy, for fucksake, make sure he doesn't have any dairy.

Hmmm, what else can I say about boyness?

In a conversation containing 1000 words, 449 of those will be "Star Wars".

Random thoughts expressed last week included "Santa's Cool" "Can we have Episode 5!?" and "*sigh* I like to play computer games."

He needs more attention than I give him. He's been acting attention-starved lately. Must remedy that. I forget often that he is only 4. He looks at least 6 and can often pull off a fairly convincing rendition of "6yo boy", and I sometimes forget that he's a 4yo that WANTS me to pick him up and cuddle him and kiss him on the cheek.