Today was a day of crappy napping. Does this mean more crabbiness? Yes, yes it does. Alas. Perhaps that is our destiny, Gavin and I. Things actually started out okay. And his first nap was good. But the second one was not. And the third one was non-existent. A lot of crying. An hour's worth of crying. And once you've cried for an hour, that's it. No nap. I tried. I really did. But no amount of swaying to Bebel Gilberto could help us today. Alas. Fucking alas.
Crying can really get on a girl's nerves. More specifically, Gavin had me pretty frayed at some points today. Not that anyone needs to call child protective services or anything. Did I tell him to "shut the fuck up?" Yes, yes I did. But not to his face. And not loud enough so he could hear me. He was busy screaming in his room, refusing to nap. Refusing to do what is good for him. Willful, that's what he is. A willful little dude. And that's probably the most frustrating/annoying/maddening thing about being a parent thus far: no mind/body control powers. You can't just touch the side of your nose like Samantha in Bewitched and have a peacefully slumbering baby. But then, this is probably for the best. Too many would use such powers for evil. Not that parents need magic powers to be evil. I just read about a woman who forced her son to kill his hamster with a hammer because he got a bad grade in school. What the fuck? What the fucking fuck? I am nowhere near that point.
Though I do recognize that I need to stop saying "fuck" so much. It's kind of astounding how often I use that word in a day. I would like Gavin's first words not to be, "Get the fuck out of here," something I have said more than once to the cat whilst getting Gavin ready for a nap. Parenting awards? Sign me up.
Today was not all sadness and swearing, however. Gavin and I took a successful trip to CVS where we refilled Henri's prescription for his mental meds ("chicken pills" is what we call them around here
since each dose is meted out inside of a very pungent chicken flavored treat). And we bought toilet paper and Kleenex, two things I feel should always be purchased on sale, which means a small stockpile in the basement. This, admittedly, drives Stacy crazy since she claims our house is too small to store stuff, but if buying Kleenex on sale is wrong then I don't want to be right. And we go through a lot of Kleenex here. I have terrible allergies year round. And now we have a baby who frequently needs his nose and/or mouth wiped. Not to mention the cat, who has a chronic sinus problem that results in cat snot on our furniture. It's a glamourous life, the least I can do is be armed with tissue to deal with it.
Anyway, enough about Kleenex ("Kleenex is all you like" my youngest sister Amanda said to me one year when I was a teenager after I exclaimed with glee over getting pocket packs of tissue in my Christmas stocking). CVS was a win, I think. I put Gavin in the Baby Bjorn and threw our coats in a cart. He looked around, though the Baby Bjorn has him facing toward me, which limits his visibility. So sometimes he'd turn his little doughy face upward and gaze at me while I shopped and I would kiss his nose or make faces at him.
Oh, and Gavin also befriended a homeless dwarf at CVS. Okay, a slight exaggeration. But when we arrived there was a woman near the entrance of the store sitting on the floor reading tabloids. She was kind of hunched down. I don't think the people at the counter could even see her. We passed her a couple of times. She was wearing a camouflage jacket and a snow hat. I think she had a back pack. In any case, she looked like she'd been there a long time. While Gavin and I waited for our prescription I decided to check out the baby aisle and see what they had along the lines of "pee all night" diapers since Gavin is sleeping for longer periods of time and often wakes up with a diaper that has reached its maximum pee capacity or with wet clothes. So I'm crouched down looking at the piss poor selection and Gavin is, by default, also crouched down since he's in the Baby Bjorn hanging off of me. I sense someone coming toward us and when I look up my field of vision is filled with the face of a woman who has crouched down next to us. She's closer than I'd like someone I don't know to be and so I stand up only to realize that she is also standing and that I am much taller than her. Now, I am not a tall person. 5'3" most days, maybe 5'4" if I'm standing up especially straight. She's cooing at Gavin and calls him a cutie or something and then says, "What's his name?" At this point I have come to realize two things: 1. This is the woman in the camouflage jacket we'd passed by the entrance and 2. This woman is not "all there," to use American Psychological Association lingo, something I'd assumed the moment I saw her in bunker mode pouring over The National Enquirer. Now, the whole "don't talk to strangers" thing was instilled in me as a youngster and I know that today's safety savvy parents don't do things like publish birth announcements in the local newspaper (they're practically party invitations for kidnappers) or let their kids eat random berries they find on wild bushes (okay, not related to this story, but this is, in fact, something my parents warned me about as a kid, perhaps thinking the lush vegetation of the Metro Detroit suburb I grew up in would prove too tempting). But none of this really occurred to me until seconds after I said to the woman, "His name is Gavin." I might as well have added, "I'm sure he'd fit in your back pack." Actually I had and have no fears that Gavin was in any danger of ending up in the back of this woman's van and not just because I doubt she is tall enough to drive. But I just felt kind of silly afterwards like, "Was that a bad idea? Did I just violate some kid safety 101 rule?" Maybe. But then, what was I supposed to do? Lie? That would have made me feel worse, I think. And besides, this was a stranger, yes, and a strange stranger, but this was also someone who was all moon-faced over my baby. And what parent doesn't puff his or her chest out a bit when this happens? "His name is Gavin and yes, he is a cutie and he is mine! Can you believe it?" Because sometimes I can hardly believe it myself.
And then we got home and he had his no-nap meltdown. But still, not a total loss! We got out of the house. I even put on a pair of jeans and a bra. It was practically prom.
In other news it looks like we're getting a high chair from a friend of mine. This is very exciting. Have you ever tried to feed a small child oatmeal while both of you were sitting on the floor at cat/dog level? If not, you don't need to. I have done it and it results in swearing at the cat. And then the dog. And then begging your son to stop looking at the cat and dog and open his mouth for Mama, that's it... No, over here. Look over here. Open your mouth. No, you can't grab the bowl. Seriously dude, look at me and open your mouth... You know what? Fuck this. No oatmeal today.
Actually oatmeal feeding went rather well today. It was yesterday that was an oatmeal fail.
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