I shouldn't be writing this.

Dear World,

I shouldn't be writing this blog entry. I should be sleeping. But I can't sleep right now, even though the baby is sleeping. I have a dozen things to do to take advantage of this time. Like:

1. Toss the laundry into the washer.
2. Pump so the kid has his next meal.
3. Remove and fold the laundry in the dryer from yesterday.
4. Wash bottles so the kid has something from which to eat his next meal.
5. Make his next pediatric appointment.
6. Eat.
7. Refill the water pitcher with filtered water.
8. Run the dishwasher (it's all set to go - I didn't want to compete with shower water).

About half way through that list he'll wake up again and I'll go through this cycle:

1. Feed the kid (if I got as far as #4).
2. Burp the kid.
3. Rock the kid to sleep.
4. Since he won't go to sleep, try the swing.
5. Since he's fussing after 10 minutes in the swing, pay attention to him.
6. Feed the kid.
7. Rinse repeat.

The above cycle takes about two hours. The first list (chores) takes about an hour and a half, not including pumping, which takes about 45-60 minutes. So you can see that squeezing in time for everything is just damn near impossible - and sleep is out of the question.

I feel like I spend inordinate amounts of time trying to get the little tyke to sleep so I can, too... but all that happens is the chores pile up and my own needs (bathroom, shower, OMG I haven't brushed my teeth today!) slowly slip down the priority chain.

I've conquered glaciers at 14,000 feet; saved million dollar corporate projects from ruin; rescued Girl Scouts from hypothermic backpacking disasters; coached come-from-behind youth hockey and soccer teams to championships; I consider myself a very self-sacrificing person in all I give back to the world. I've done any number of things to be proud of that very few human beings can equal... yet I think of my own mother (and step-mother) as super-moms who made everything look easy, who made all the right choices and somehow managed to keep themselves together. I reflect on this as I feel like I'm falling apart, having lost any semblance of control over my life or even just my day.

People keep telling me it gets better, or at least hard in a different way. Personally I can't see any end to those two lists up there. Even if he sleeps through the night, I'd still have to get up and pump; I'd still not get a full night's sleep. Ah well. He's lucky as hell I'm totally in love with him or he'd be on someone else's door step by now.

Weekend of the Moon(s)

This weekend was full (of) moon(s) --- sorry I'm trying to make a funny here. Anyway, my dad, step-mom, and siblings were all here this weekend to visit us and Finny. It was a nice, mellow weekend of watching Olympics, movies, and so on. We took a walk to Baja Fresh and Fin was as cool as can be. Here are some photos...


This is Grandpa Moon (my dad). His whiskers were apparently too much for Fin, who is not yet familiar with Santa Claus.



Auntie Laura is a natural with the babies.


Here's the nuclear family. Please note we are not a "nucular" family.


And this is Grandma CynDee, Laura, and Uncle Ethan (who was bored to tears).

The pic of Sarah was blurry so -- sorry Auntie Sarah! :)

In other news, Fintan is really starting to react to things in his environment a little more. He likes his Aquarium Cradle Swing and the colorful fishies mobile that it has. He also paid attention for the first time to the mobile over his bassinet. He actually watched it for about a half an hour, tracking the bears and fish as they circled by, and then moving his head back to the next (approaching) one. It's good practice for reading - left to right, then back to left...

By the way, from the last post: I slept, and Sweden won. Yay!

Sleep or Olympic Hockey?

So I'm up pumping (ouch!) and in about 15 minutes the gold medal hockey game between Sweden (yay) and Finland (mostly yay) is about to start.

Do I watch or do I sleep!?

I'm sure all my female relatives would tell me to sleep, well, except possibly Aunt Esther, who is herself a hockey nut. And I'm tired and would really like to sleep, but I need to watch this game. Unless Mark is recording it. The last time I got up super early to watch Olympic hockey was when the U.S. Women's team won the gold medal. (I cried. It was a beautiful moment.)

Because Fintan "Foppa" Harwood was born to two geeky hockey players, we can only hope he'll want to play as well. I believe it's in his destiny. Here's the logic:

• One of my all-time favorite players is Peter Forsberg (a Swede).
• Peter is one of the best hockey players in the world (when not injured).
• Peter wears #21.
• Thus, I wear #21.
• Fintan was born on the 21st.
• Peter made his NHL debut on January 21, 1995.
• Fintan was born on January 21, 2006.
• Fintan has a little Swedish in him.
• Everyone thinks I'm Swedish because of my name (though I'm very little Swedish, far as I know... I'm mostly Danish/German).
• Sweden beat the U.S. Women's team this year.
• Sweden is about to beat the crap out of Finland.

Well anyway, if the numerology part isn't enough to convince you, nothing will.

My Heroes: Sundin & Forsberg.

A fun adventure

Fintan had his first over-nighter somewhere other than home since he came home from the hospital. Because my aunt (Kathy's mom Rose) is visiting, we went to Kathy's in Newport Beach and spent the night. It was fun, but traveling with an infant is a royal pain. There is so much to juggle, especially when you know you have to keep to your feeding and pumping schedule, when Omi is trying to feed the kid more than you think he needs (although if he wants it, who am I to deny it?), when he is likely to pee himself more often than you have clothes to spare, when you don't know how many empty bottles you'll need, etc. But it's all just a great big adventure and we had lots of fun. He took it like a trooper (I'm not sure he even noticed where he was) but I'm sure it had a lot to do with being juggled from one bosom to another and never having reason to fuss.

Of course, no sooner did I get home with him, and Omi and Rose gone, than he started up. Got a little too accustomed to being held and coddled, I think... I couldn't get him to settle down long enough to do a load of laundry. I tried the other carrier I have, a Snugli, which is a little easier to maneuver than the Baby Bjorn and has a softer seat so his little legs aren't splayed out at 90-degree angles to his body. However, the second time I put him in it we couldn't get it to fit right and sure enough it was a disaster like the Bjorn. Oh well.

Meanwhile I've been fighting (for the whole week) a scratchy throat and a very, very slight cough, which I attributed to the air quality and dryness, but this evening it seems to be getting more intense and the dry cough more frequent, and I'm worried I'm really getting a cold and that I might give it to munchkin. I really don't want to have to deal with him being sick, much less when I'm sick, too. And to top it off, Mark came home from work early because he is sick - but his is a stomach thing so hopefully it's more due to something he ate and not a contageous thing we'll all get. Poor guy came home, barely said a word, crashed in bed, and has pretty much been out since.

In other news, my friend Debbie had her baby naturally on 2-21. Yay!

Fintan is on the other side of the sofa.

Apologies to my fans...

My apologies to those who live and die by my blog's up-to-dated-ness. :) I've been a little busy with the Fintan-admirers.

I was really grumpy yesterday. I threw things in the kitchen at my 6:00 am pumping time because I have been really, really tired and had it up to here with my sleep-deprived clumsy self. Not to mention how every pet peeve I've ever had is magnified 1000 times. Needless to say, I asked my mom to spend the night and she is dealing with kid all night and I am just up to pump. So far I've gotten two three-hour sleep stints since 6pm yesterday and I feel much better. I still feel resentful at having no sleep and having to get up now to pump but it's not at a tipping point.

That child is still the most adorable little person ever. I'm sick with love for him. As well I should be.

There was a lot more I wanted to say but I can't remember. Just ... thank gawd for mommies of mommies. I really need this break!

What to write...

I'm bored and I can't get my brain into gear to write. Not to write this blog, not to write a very brief news item for a "The Movies" web site news section, not to write stories, not to write anything. Boredom is a killer of creativity - and there are many explanations of it. My former journalism teacher said "Boredom is an internal disease." I think that once meant something to me, but today it doesn't. Thus, I don't know what to write.

I "got out" today. Getting out is kind of like an exercise in chaos management. Feed the kid so he's sleepy. Get the stuff together - you know, whatever the "stuff" is that goes in a diaper bag, etc. Check weather.com for temperatures, so you know how much to bundle him up. Make sure you have your own things - keys, wallet, cell phone. Get in the car, go. Hope he sleeps in the car because you're in the front and he's in the back in a rear-facing car seat and you can't see if he's suffocating on the extra clothing you stuffed him into, or if one beam of sunlight is right in his eye. Get where you're going and get the stroller untangled and open, get the diaper bag into it, get the kid out. Wheel yourselves to wherever you're going. Traverse potholes in the parking lot; bump into a wall or two. Pray someone holds the door open. Pray he stays asleep the whole time.

In this case I met with Gina and her mom, and we had lunch at California Chicken Cafe in Encino. It was nice to see Gina, and we talked about lots of things other than the kid, which is also nice. I looked at all her pictures of her trip to the Philippines and her family and stuff. We were there for two and a half hours. At the end, Crankypants started to wake up, so I took him out to show him off, and of course everyone in the restaurant who passed by our table had to comment on how adorable he is/was. He was also sweating, poor thing, in all his bundling. So I took him out of some of it.

Then we went home, had another feeding, pumped, you know, the usual "I'm at home being bored" drill. Poor mamma. Fortunately Mark came home from the ranch shortly after I got the kid his bath. We spent the rest of the afternoon... gawd I don't even remember. Eventually we started catching up on the third season of Battlestar Galactica, which we have been remiss in watching. Two more to go, including last night's episode...

Tomorrow Omi and Aunt Rose come to visit. Not sure if Kathy is going to join them. Mark and I should be able to sneak off for a "romantic" dinner or something peaceful, or I'll just sleep. Sleep is nice. I like sleep. Sleep kills boredom and kills time and kills insanity. Just need someone to be awake enough to put his bippie back in when he spits it out every ten minutes, else it's not really sleep, is it???

Waking (cats) up is hard to do...

If I didn't have to pump, this torture would be over in half an hour, and I would get a full three-hour chunk of sleep. But as things become routine, I suppose a two-hour chunk is good. I've set things up in front of my regular computer, and I'm going to play a campaign from Star Wars: Empire at War (the demo) and capture some footage of ground battle on Tatooine. (GEEK ALERT!!)

Ikey is so sad. He wants to sit in front of my monitor and watch the cursor and the flashing, moving things and bat at them. But I have so many papers and things piled there (on purpose) so he is over at the other end of the desk being sleepy-sad.

Tribble is crashed on teh floor. Literally. When they sleep in weird positions we call it a "crash landing." I actually stepped over him to get to my desk - a rarity! I think he must be completely exhausted from his midnight game of "tag" with Peeps, whom I can't even find. See, even the cats have trouble waking up at this hour!

They are adjusting pretty well, all things considered. Tribble and Ike love the Pack-n-Play, fortunately only when the kid isn't in it. Nirmal feels very neglected. He sits in front of the fridge begging for freeze-dried chicken treats and/or wet food and/or the chicken from Whole Foods Mark bought me so I can eat during the day. He's no dummy. However, sometimes when I'm holding the kid and I can tell he wants on my lap, he has this look on his face like he's just biding his time. Sinister. He's the intelligent one so you have to wonder (and worry).

Peeper doesn't really care about the kid - she just wants her lovin'. She is very assertive about getting her lovin' while I'm feeding or burping the kid on the chair. She's even stepped on him while insisting on lovin' while we are both in the bed. She's also slept between us, around us, etc. It's all very innocent and cute but the fluffy children are needy too.