Smells like a long post

It's nap time. I should, perhaps, also be napping, but I'm eating M&Ms, watching Part 1 of the Real Housewives of Beverly Hills reunion, and typing this. Let us prepare for copious word barf.

I'll start out with non-child-related stuff, for a change.

SPEAKING OF TERRIBLE REALITY TV

Ok so RHOBH is really bad, but I can't pull myself away. UGH these hos. Except Eileen, who is so great. Let's talk about what else is on.

- RHONY. You knew this was coming. This is the best one in the Real Housewives franchise, though. And Bethenny is back, and now Ramona's friend Diamond .... Diadora .... Dido? DORINDA. I googled it. Great name, and so far, excellent character. The chubby dry cleaner boyfriend is the best.

- Married At First Sight. What the holy hell. These people trust a few "experts" to match them with a spouse, who they meet at the altar. That one sentence alone is like WARNING WARNING RED ALERT DON'T DO IT. I'm so hooked.

- iZombie. From the makers of Rebecca Mars. So good. It's not your typical scary zombie show and the writing is very funny and clever.

- Last Man on Earth. YES

- The Jinx. This is done airing but so good if you can catch it on demand or something. I love true crime stuff but often hate the way it's done on primetime tv. This one was done really well.


LET'S CATCH UP ON BOOKS BECAUSE WE ARE SMART

Just a list of what I've been reading. What are you reading?? I need another good book. Right now I'm on Amy Poehler's "Yes Please," which is pretty good so far.

- "We Are Not Ourselves," by Matthew Thomas. Did not love it. Well written but SUPER depressing.

- "To Rise Again at a Decent Hour," by Joshua Ferris. This book contained three major elements I dislike hugely: 1) Dentistry. 2) Baseball 3) Religion. It was doomed from the start. No idea why I read it.

- "The Martian," by Andy Weir. Truth be told, I thought this was going to be sci-fi horror, but it turned out to be a rather scientific account of what would happen if an astronaut got stranded on Mars. I thought I'd hate it but I ended up liking it quite a bit! I recommend it.

- "The Paying Guests" by Sarah Waters. Well. It had some sexy lesbian stuff in it, but other than that I wasn't a huge fan. The writing was pretty good though.

- "Not That Kind of Girl," by Lena Dunham. So, Lena is basically too young for a memoir is what I think. And I happen to think she is a brilliant TV writer and actress and feminist, and I LOVE her in GIRLS, but I did not love this book.

- "The Year of Magical Thinking," by Joan Didion. One simply does not speak ill of Joan Didion so I plead the fifth here.


HOW ARE THINGS AT WEIGHT WATCHERS?!

Not great, but thanks for asking. I lost 14 pounds, but I've been gaining and losing three pounds for, like, two months now. Having a rather difficult time staying motivated. Dieting sucks. Being fat sucks. I'm trying to decide which is worse.


SO TODDLERHOOD IS FUN

This is the part where I get to talk about my kid, who consumes 95% of my conscious time. So here we go.

For the longest time after I had Graham, I couldn't eat anything with dairy in it because it made him vomit. So, yes. No cheese, no butter, no cake, NO CHOCOLATE. It was a dark time we shouldn't dwell on. Eventually, after like eight months I could eat small amounts of dairy without it bugging him too much. And then, of course, once he was weaned I went frigging hog wild.

Now, Graham himself seems to do OK with little bits of dairy here and there, but I recently discovered that he is, indeed still sensitive to dairy after I very wisely gave him cream of chicken soup and a whole slice of American cheese in the same day. All I can say is: ALL THE POOP. All of it. There was so much poop that everything started to smell like poop to me. Anything I wanted to eat: poop. My husband: Poop. My pillow: Poop.

So anyway. All that to say he's off dairy now and pooping significantly less, thankfully. And I am wondering if his slight eczema issue is due to dairy, too. We'll see once I've given it a couple more weeks to clear up.

Meanwhile, Graham's new favorite word is NO. Even when he means Yes. And he's learned to lie, which is hilarious. Example:

Me: Graham, did you make a poop?

Graham: NO. (shakes his head and runs as fast as he can in the other direction, leaving a green cloud of poo smell in his wake)


So, that's all for today. I've now ingested far too much sugar to enable me to nap, and I've moved on to Part 2 of the horrible, horrible RHOBH reunion. I leave you with this photo of a determined Graham, eating his namesake cracker.

The bi-annual update

My current take on motherhood, as I post my first blog in five months:

Becoming a parent initially either makes you, breaks you, or you remain mysteriously the same (this third group of people is sort of creepy. I don't get them).

Any guess which category I believe I fit into? Yeah, broken. Well, I think I was broken. It broke me, having a baby. In every way. Everything I thought I knew about myself and other people basically crumbled and I found myself alone (ish. Baby in tow, always) with some very dark thoughts. It's not until now that I am recognizing how much I struggled with becoming a parent.

It sucks, always living life with this "hindsight is 20/20" thing going on. I kind of thought that by my mid-30s I'd figured myself out, and knew what I needed and how to get that, but as it turns out I'm still able to surprise myself.

In any case, I'm feeling a lot more normal these days. Everything is not perfect and there is work still being done, but life feels much more doable now.

On my child

We shall never ever speak of one very important aspect of babies, because to speak of it is to curse it. I shall not even say what the status of this particular aspect is, because that also curses it. I may be cursing it right now simply by typing this. My mind, after all, knows of what I write. This is a risk I take. Only know that this aspect was one way, and now it is another way. This change is what enables me to write these words today (well now I've really done it. Curses ahoy!)

One thing I can speak of is weaning. Oh, glorious, glorious weaned toddler, who happily chugs his mixture of coconut and almond milk. Given his druthers, that child would still be nursing, but I'd be miserable. I never plugged into the bliss of breastfeeding. It seemed mainly painful and weird, particularly after Graham's teeth arrived. Sweet Jesus. I do feel sort of proud of doing it for as long as I did, only because it's supposed to be so healthy for him, but oh yes, I am beyond happy that is over.

He's obviously walking/running now (he's almost 16 months), and climbing all over stuff. He's got an arsenal of words (pronounced his own special way) -- mama, dada, cat, bush, ball, brush, boat, airplane, truck, there you go, car, Thomas, up, pizza, blueberries, strawberries, Cheerios, book, bear, grass, moon, bed, help ... the list goes on.

He loves swinging on the swings at the park and being tickled and the cats and Thomas the tank engine (whom he calls ASS, no matter how many times I say THOMas). He runs helter skelter around the neighborhood and loves taking baths and he eats like a horse (still long and skinny though). He does not like vaccines or most vegetables or being held upside down or bubbles or bushes at night.

He's an enormous cuddle bug and I find him to be the most precious creature who walks the Earth (naturally).

On weight (blergh)

Bodies are just different post-pregnancy, aren't they? It's become clear to me that while I might have looked sort of passable in a fat sort of way at my current weight before pregnancy, now I just look fricking yuck. The belly does not want to stay flat, does it? The chins want to proliferate. The arm jiggle is jelly galore even though I swear there are muscles of steel under there from carting my child around constantly.

So at the urging of a friend, I joined Weight Watchers. I've done this a couple times before and after the last time I swore it off, declaring to whoever would listen that tracking one's food is simply ridiculous and a waste of time and impossible to sustain and horrible and demeaning and I hated it. Oh fuck I still hate it, but you know what? It's the only thing that works. And it's terribly depressing not only to realize how little I actually need to eat, but to eat that little. And it's sad to know I will need to track for the rest of my life if I'm going to not be Jabba the Hut. I've lost 14 pounds since December and I still feel fat. I expect it will take me the rest of the year, at least, to lose the rest, given how slow and torturous this process is. Once I reach my goal I guess my daily diet will be something like: An egg, a piece of celery, and a puff of whipped cream for dessert.

On being valued

Someone is paying me to write things. Like, marketing sorts of things. It's been ages since a person paid me to write, and it feels sort of insanely nice in a couple ways. In one way it's nice to know I still have value beyond being a mom, and in another way it's just nice being paid to write again. It's a different field than what I'm used to, but I'm really enjoying it.


So that's the update. The post title is a joke. I do hope to update a lot more regularly now ... now that I have time because of .... reasons. I really hope to do Bachelor recaps again -- it's been killing me not to, but I just didn't have the time/energy. And I have no idea if blogs are all dead now or if people read blogs or care, but I'm not sure I care either way. I still enjoy doing it, so here we are.