Momming Around

Baby Songs

Posted on by Beth Hull

We’re beyond “routine” with the bedtime routine in this house. It’s become a superstition. So much so that when Z was a toddler, I had to read the same book, sing the same three songs (“O Holy Night,” “Scarborough Fair,” and “All the Pretty Little Horses”) in the same order, and give her the same stuffed friend for every single nap and bedtime. Followed by the ever popular, ever annoying Drink Of Water.

Whatever works, right?

While I usually end Maverick’s routine with the time-honored classic “All the Pretty Little Horses,” I’m trying to mix it up a little more. Mostly because he’s still taking two or three naps a day, plus bedtime, and I can only handle so much of the same three songs.

So here’s what I’ve got in my bedtime arsenal:

  • All the Pretty Little Horses
  • Loch Lomond
  • O Holy Night (a little too long for Maverick, & I gotta sing it loud when I sing it otherwise I can’t pretend I’m auditioning for church choir solos. I’ll save this one for later)
  • In Ancient Egypt (a made-up song – here’s the “sheet” music & lyrics)
  • Sleep, Baby, Sleep (I made up my own melody for this, but I think there are others)
  • Peace Like a River (don’t I wish)
  • Ring Around the Moon
  • Scarborough Fair
  • a mutant version of I Love the Mountains (either I wasn’t taught the right way, or I heard it incorrectly – I’m guessing the latter because that happens all the time)
  • You Are My Sunshine (Z doesn’t like this one, thinks it’s too sad because of the part where “I held my head and cried”)
  • Three Little Birds

Any suggestions? What did your parents sing to you? What do you sing to your kids or nieces or nephews or the little boogers in your life?

As My Houseplants Lay Dying

Posted on by Beth Hull

You know you’re getting old when you say things like, “Back when I was in college…” Usually with a nostalgic tone of voice, like when my friend KJoy was visiting and we reminisced about the amazing cream of cajun carrot soup we used to eat at this restaurant where we worked, Mulberry Street Pizzeria (in San Rafael. Smith Ranch Road. Go ye forth and try the soup).

KJoy: We used to eat so much of that soup!

Me: And the french bread! We’d have at least five pieces of it, which is like half a loaf, and just dip it in the soup…it’s amazing we didn’t gain fifty pounds.

KJoy: That’s because we were nineteen.

(To my nineteen-year-old self: ENJOY THAT METABOLISM WHILE IT LASTS, SISTA.)

But this post isn’t about metabolism. It’s about houseplants. And how, back when I was in college, I loved them and I could grow them and keep them and they were just lovely little points of green in my life. I even talked to them because I read somewhere that it helped them thrive. Of course, back when I was in college, I was in the Bay Area, and not in the Central Valley, which is basically a hair dryer and not conducive to growing much except cacti and tomatoes. When I moved back to the Hair Dryer, all my favorite plants died. I’ve replaced them with a few others, but now they’ve gotta compete with kids.

Apparently in my house it’s survival of the whiners, and guess what: houseplants don’t whine.

I no longer talk to my houseplants, but I think they are talking to me. Their message is loud and clear.

Migraines: So Much Fun

Posted on by Beth Hull

Now that I’ve had five or so, I guess I belong to the Migraine Club. For awhile there, I worried about how much I was missing out on migraines. Great excuse to lie around in bed all day with the blinds drawn, possibly weeping on a fainting couch and moaning, “Oh woe.”

Actually, I didn’t think about migraines. At all. If someone told me they had a migraine, I’d make sympathetic noises and promptly forget about him or her (ask Homes – I’ve never been a good sympathizer with the sick).

Shortly after I turned thirty, I had this fantastic visual disturbance. It looked like a ferris wheel – but only half the ferris wheel, going around at night, with little green and red and yellow lights. And I could only see it on the left, and only with my left eye.

Intrigued, I went onto my health insurance member’s page and followed the little symptom checker until I discovered I was probably having a stroke.

So then I called them to ask if I was really having a stroke, and the advice nurse asked me all kinds of inane questions, like, “Are you breathing right now?” “Do you know your name?” (Okay not really, but when I’ve called in about a minor rash for Z, they have asked, “Is she turning blue? Has her tongue swelled to fill up her mouth?” and really? I’d be calling 911, not the advice nurse. But I guess sometimes the answer must be, “Yes, my child is blue,” otherwise why would they ask and then my hope and faith in the world just plummets. I’m a little depressed as I write this, can you tell?)

After making sure I still had a pulse, the advice nurse asked if I had a headache. I thought about it for a minute. “Yeah, a little one.”

“Oh,” she said. “You could be experiencing an ocular migraine.”

Well, that sounded fancy. And it didn’t really hurt. Thus reinforcing my belief that migraine sufferers were a bunch of whiners, on par with Frodo:

I got my eyes checked and got some rockin’ reading glasses, while Homes made jokes about me getting old & gray & needing glasses (because I’d just turned thirty, see. No, I didn’t find it funny either).

Fast forward to my latest migraine. Probably my fifth or so, but I’m not exactly keeping tally with hash marks on my fainting couch. And I couldn’t keep tally because…

I WAS INCAPACITATED.

I’m sure I could purple-prose us all to tears with my vivid and melodramatic description of the pain I suffered, and my martyrdom that I still sat up to breastfeed Maverick, tears splashing down my face to land on his little fuzzy head. The valiant Homes, making our bedroom as dark as possible (it can get damn dark, and it wasn’t dark enough), and darling Z, whispering on the phone to her Gran,  “Mommy has a really bad headache.” And the doting Gran, distracting Z as long as possible so I could rest.

But the truth is, lots of people get migraines. And they’re horrible. And if I could go back in time and slap 29-year-old, pre-migraine me, I totally would. Actually, I wouldn’t slap her. I’d just wish a migraine on her.

Oh my gosh. That’s totally what happened.

I brought this on myself.

The Eye of Sauron

Posted on by Beth Hull

I feel like such a cheater, making Lord of the Rings references when I haven’t even read the books. But I’ve totally watched the movies – the extended versions, even! – multiple times. So that sort of counts, right? (Even though I fast-forward through the Frodo scenes?) (Sorry, but he’s such a whiner he makes Z look good.)

My pal Kristen…wait, my fabulous pal Kristen gave us her video baby monitor. The first night we used it I hated the thing, because Maverick kept spinning around and we’d have to go in there and flip him over, and I was trying to watch a movie, damnit. But now he doesn’t spin quite as much, because he’s in his funny sleep sack thing. Whoops, he’s on his tummy now….

I straightened that out.

Also, I investigated the advice online (stick them on their backs to start, then shrug your shoulders because if they’re going to turn, you can’t stop them…without Velcro or no-longer-recommended stay-put devices). I also Googled “life monitors for sleeping babies,” not sure if they actually exist. They do. They’re expensive. Besides which, I’d probably buy one, and then I’d be trusting it to work instead of doing my job as a parent and checking on my kid.

The Eye of Sauron looks like this. I’m not joking.

So one time I was watching him flail and fuss through the Eye of Sauron, and all of a sudden he levitated. “Whoa!” I said to my friend BDawg. “Maverick just levitated! Now he’s disappeared!”

I wish I could stop there, because it’s so X-Men, having a baby who levitates before vanishing. But what really happened was Homes went in and picked him up to comfort him. I, of course, had been content to watch him suffer, like the mean lazy independence-promoting mommy that I am. Besides, it makes me hurt to see him hurt, so our mutual hurting was, in some twisted way, acceptable to me.

Besides, I was talking on the phone with BDawg and we didn’t have much time because her three-month-old was busy creating the kind of diaper blowout that makes legends.

Not to get competitive or anything, but my kid was levitating. Ish.

Yeah, he totally looks like he’s flipping me off.

WWTBWD? What would the Baby Whisperer do?

Posted on by Beth Hull

The Baby Whisperer has earned my eternal gratitude. It was her middle-of-the-road approach (i.e. not making the baby cry it out, but also not letting the baby sleep in my lap) that got Z into her bed, and it’s been mostly successful with Maverick.

Mostly.

The little stinker is DETERMINED to flip onto his stomach. It’s like his Life Goal as soon as I put him in the crib. Head over, swing the swaddled legs over, onto the side, then onto stomach. And then what? He snuffles and complains because he has a face-full of organic mattress. Yay, fun! Let’s do it again as soon as Mama puts me on my back.

What would the Baby Whisperer do? I borrowed her big book from the library: The Baby Whisperer Solves All Your Problems, which is a pretty ambitious title until you read the parenthetical part: (By Teaching You How to Ask the Right Questions).

But I haven’t read it yet.

I do know she’s okay with putting babies on their sides to sleep.

Sorry, I’m far too paranoid, and too plagued by nightmares of SIDS, to try that. If Homes & I had our way, we’d be attaching Velcro to the sheets and to the back of Maverick’s swaddler. Duct tape has been another tempting solution.

What would the Baby Whisperer do? I don’t know, and I might never get around to reading this library book because I found 189 things I want to fix in my manuscript.

So I stand at the head of Maverick’s crib, patiently pushing him back into place. Sometimes I let him get all the way onto his stomach, because, I admit it, he looks kinda funny that way, like a lost slug or a baby mental patient in a straight jacket, and his snorts never cease to amuse me.

I don’t let him snort for long, though, before I flip him over again.

And again and again.

[Update: I wrote this on Sunday, then experimented with NOT swaddling him on Monday and Tuesday. Epicfail. He’d get so mad about losing his thumb/fist that he’d freak out even more. So, back to swaddling.]