Quick update

So my posting frequency has been dropping off a bit, but it's for good reason: JC has been sleeping in his crib more often for naps!  Now it usually just takes a few minutes if rocking in the glider before he drifts off and I can put him in his crib.  This is a fantastic development, but what's funny is, I actually miss having him nap in my arms!  So right now I've decided to keep rocking him and enjoy this wonderful time I have with my little porcupine.

Over all life has been great.  JC rolled from front to back twice (once on nov 27 and once on nov 30), and he's holding his head up so high, using his arms, on tummy time.  This just came out of the blue about a week ago.  One day he's crying and has his head close to the ground, the next he's alert and happy looking around and rolling.  This kid is incredible!  I also swear he said "hi" after my husband said it to him.  It sure sounded that way anyway.  And s suddenly become interested in playing with toys.  He grabs them and puts them in his mouth as soon as I hand them to him.  Actually he's grabbing everything in sight these days.  It's so incredible to watch him develop.  I can't wait to see what comes next!

I'm back

So I can't believe a week's gone by already.  We've been busy everyday, although thinking back it's hard for me to remember what we were doing.  JC was introduced to Santa for the first time and he was so cute and well behaved.  We even managed a picture with a half smile.  He's also been napping in his crib a lot better, although I find that I still want to rock him and continue to cuddle with him while he sleeps.  Each time he falls asleep in my arms it's an inner battle over whether I should attempt the transfer.  The "no" side usually wins.  Heck, I figure he's only so small for so long; why pass up an opportunity to hold him for 45 min?

On the other side of things, though, I've found myself missing work over the past week or so.  I love hanging out with JC, but there are only so many cycles of eat, play, sleep, repeat that someone can do day after day before it starts to get tedious at times.  I feel that if I had a few days during the week where I did something else, I'd be more likely to appreciate how wonderful the JC time is.  But unfortunately with my mat leave payments I can't actually do any work without losing out on pay.  So basically I'd be working for free and somehow that doesn't sit well with me!  I'm also guessing that this minor boredom is also temporary.  JC is already starting to play with his toys more and once he can sit and play by himself in an exersaucer or something, life will get a lot easier and I'll probably be dreading going back to work!  So I'll stick it out now and focus on the present moment, not what I'm missing out on or what things will be like in the future. Right now I have a beautiful baby cuddled into the crook of my arm as he sleeps.  Truly, I can't think of much else that's better than that!

It's the most wonderful time of the year?

So it's the Christmas season again.  Bar none, this has always been my favorite time of year.  The baking, the family time, the decorating, the singing, the movies, the traditions that only your family has (e.g., at my parents place we always decorate the tree listening to the Beatles' white album).  All of it brings on a warm feeling in my heart just to think about it.  Unfortunately, for the past five years I've had conflicted feelings about Christmas because my husband is Jewish and I ended up converting to Judaism.  In so many ways Judaism fit me.  I loved the emphasis on learning and understanding scripture and traditions within the context of real life.  I also loved that I would share a religion with my husband (which wasn't the case for my parents), and that we would go to synagogue as a family.  I loved the idea of being Jewish for 11 months out of the year.  But when December would roll around, I would get a heaviness in my heart about things that used to be so uplifting for me.  Now that I was Jewish, I couldn't celebrate Christmas anymore.  Well, couldn't celebrate it in my home (we still went to my parents' place), because I had a Jewish home and Jewish homes don't have Christmas trees and manger scenes.  I tried so hard to rationalize that celebrating at my parents' house was enough, but year after year, the sadness and feelings of being left out grew.  Now my husband has been wonderful and we've made compromises throughout the years -- putting up blue and white lights outside (Israel's colours), decorating for the season with sparkly but not red/green decorations, etc., and in some ways that helped.  But in other ways it just reminded me that I'm not really allowed to celebrate the way I want to.  Probably not surprisingly, this year it's intensified to an even greater degree.  With JC's arrival, my old traditions have become so much more important to me.  And not only Christmas, but the religious traditions I was raised with as well.  With my wonderful husband's blessing, I started going to church again about a month ago, for the first time in 8 years, and I found I felt so much more at peace.  Not because I believed everything that was being said (I actually don't exactly know what I believe in), but because it was so familiar to me.  It felt like home.  So I've been going to church on a regular basis, and I've come to the realization that I still see myself as a Christian.  I love the Jewish traditions, and with time they're sure to become my traditions (some already feel that way to me), but I always felt like an outsider in terms of the cultural piece (even though every Jewish person I met acted as if I was an MOT (member of the tribe)).  In the church, I felt like I belonged and that's why I've made the difficult decision to return to being a Christian, making my marriage an interfaith one.  True to his nature, my husband has been very supportive of this transition for me, but he is understandably concerned about what it means for how we raise JC, as am I.  At this point I feel like I want JC to experience going to church, although I don't know how or if that's even possible and have him still connect with Judaism.  Because it's all up in the air at this point, and because these are very important emotional decisions, we're looking into finding some interfaith counseling.  We're certainly not the first interfaith couple, and there's no need to trail blaze without some guidance.  I’m hoping that others have figured out ways for both sides of the interfaith couple to be relatively happy.  No, it won’t be perfect, and I recognize there will need to be compromises on both sides, but we do have our mutual love and respect for each other going for us, and I think we’ll be able to sort it out.  Making the decision to return to calling myself Christian has at least alleviated the heavy feeling I had about Christmas (now it feels like I’m allowed to celebrate it again), although I still feel I want to tread carefully in terms of decorating, etc.  But this is just the first year of trying Christmas in our home, and I hope that with time it becomes the happy season for all of us that it was when I was growing up.  

Hey, I know you!

"You will get to know your baby and what he needs." I heard it many times throughout my pregnancy, but I don't think I really believed it.  How would I be able to discriminate between a hunger cry and a tired cry?  Maybe other mothers can do it but not me.  Well, turns out (again) that they were right.  I CAN indeed tell the difference between JC needing food and needing a nap, and I have to say that it's one of the best feelings when I'm bang on with my timing.

Take this morning, for example.  JC was up fully awake at 5 am.  After a few minutes of trying in vain to coax him back to sleep ("please don't make me get up before the sun does!  Don't you know I'm on mat leave?"), I gave up and started to play with him.  It was laughs and giggles for twenty minutes or so when I suddenly noticed that his laugh was just slightly flatter than it had been, his movements minisculey slower.  I never would have noticed these changes back in august, but now, 3.5 months in, I'm tuned in.  In a split second I had him into his sleep sack and nestled into the crook of my arm.  Within the minute, he was passed out and I eased him onto the mattress and the two of us took a beautiful 45 min nap together, with me feeling like mother of the year for reading him so well.  It doesn't happen like this every time, but it does happen more and more often as the weeks pass and we get to know each other better and better.  What a wonderful thing motherhood is!

Hungover

So I partied mom-style last night.  I went to a stitch-n-bitch party, where I learned to knit, drank water, and chatted with some other lovely moms.  And I was out till ... 10pm!  I mean I didn't even get home until 10:20 and after I pumped I got into bed at 10:30!  Nowadays this is the equivalent of being out at the club till the wee hours (in my former life).  Boy did JC make me pay for it though.  First he decides to wake up at 1am, and then he proceeds to wake up every two hours from there.  Totally unlike him and tough for me without having taken advantage of most of his first six hour stretch.  I'm definitely feeling it today. Still, the event was fun enough that I'll do it all again the next time ... I can take being (extra) tired for a day.  Hmm sounds like a familiar refrain from my early university days.  Of course then I wasn't partying with yarn!

By the way, I'm totally into knitting now!  I'm making a blanket and will post early pics as soon as JC gets up from his nap.  I'm hoping that my mom genes will fire strong enough that I'll actually complete the project.  Many a half-finished project was cruelly abandoned by me in my youth.  But I'm much more mature now.  Right?  Right.

To sleep, perchance to dream

So here's a question for the ages...why don't babies like to sleep?  Or if many babies do indeed enjoy slumberland, why doesn't my baby??  Now, I should say he's pretty good at night.  Tends for fall asleep pretty quickly after his last feed and stay asleep for 6-7 hours.  Then it's a feed, back to sleep for 2-3 hours and then a morning cuddle/feed/nap for 2-3 hours.  But as soon as that sun rises, he wants to be fully part of the day!  The problem with this is, he NEEDS his naps.  I know this as his mommy but as much as I try reasoning with him ("Sweetheart you're upset because you're tired.  That's why I'm asking you to nap."), it's a struggle.  As I've said, I've taken to rocking him to sleep, and he's been going down quicker and quicker (yesterday he had a record four naps!), but this morning he fought me.  Granted it was only about ten minutes before he was out, and I think he was just overtired (imagine being overtired at 8am!), but I just don't get why he fights me at all.  Sleeping is so wonderful.  Pretty much from teenagehood onwards we are searching for ways to sleep longer, and yet, infants and children, who apparently need their sleep the most, fight tooth and nail to avoid it!  Now, I guess I get it with children from about age 3 to 10, because their daytime lives are pretty darn good: all they need to really do all day is play with their toys so who would want to miss out on that?  But what is my little guy missing out on really?  Our play time is him listening to me (poorly) sing him repetitive songs and staring at me making silly faces at him.  Not things I'd find hard to pass up!  And yet each eat, play, sleep cycle, he often fights me on the third piece.  I guess it's really my own fault though...when I was a baby I never napped!  In fact, at daycare I actually had to sit in the coatroom during nap time because I would disturb the other kids.  Naps were for bozos I thought at the time.  So maybe I shouldn't be so hard on my little guy.  At least he does end up going down most of the time, and that's more than my mother could say for me (however, she did drink 7-8 cups of coffee a day while she was breastfeeding me so maybe that has something to do with it).  In any case, if anyone has any advice they can give or if they just want to commiserate, I'm all ears!

She's crafty

I don't know what it is about becoming a mom but I'm suddenly into all these "mom things.". On Wednesday I'm going to my first "stitch and bitch" party so I can learn how to knit.  And yesterday I got it into my head that I'm going to try making the curtains for JC's room!  I haven't sewn anything since I made a summer dress when I was in my teens, but I'm doing something really basic (using sew on hem tape and hopefully sewing the seams next time I'm at my parents' place and can use my mom's sewing machine).  I was inspired by a blog entry on www.younghouselove.com, and there's something about having a child that all of a sudden spurs on this confidence in my ability to be domestic!  When I was looking or fabrics yesterday, there turned out to be a small remaining remnant, and now I have it in my head that I'm going to make a matching pillow for the glider!  If you knew me, you'd know that this is totally out of character.  I was like a bull in a china shop at the fabric store and had to go back to the cutting area three or four times.  First I only bought enough fabric for the large window and forgot the small one!  Then I bought the wrong type of piping (which I'm using for the ties).  When I got home I realized that what I thought was a perfect colour match was just off enough that it looks a bit weird.  But I don't care about any of this because I am a mom now and I can do this!  I'm even thinking of asking for a sewing machine for Christmas, but I actually don't think I want to wait that long and may just pick one up myself.  What a change!

It's funny though.  I have all this newfound confidence in my ability to tackle these projects but I haven't really thought through WHEN this is actually going to happen?  It's not like JC is going to be fine with me sticking him in his swing for a few hours while I gussy up his room.  Hmm, I'll have to think on that.

But one thing's for sure.  I was truly happy as I was driving home with my new purchases (I also bought a bunch of christmas stuff as this is the first year we're putting up our own tree (more on that to come)) and my beautiful baby was sleeping in his carseat.  I could get used to this!