Baby G: Motivation for good citizenry!

Back before Baby G was even born I started getting an "itch" to make some changes in our lives. Every time I threw something away that I knew was easily recyclable, I began feeling a twinge of guilt and shame for contributing to the undeniable problem of waste management on our planet. I knew it was time to make a commitment to do the right thing.

Let me back up a bit...

When I went to college (ROCK CHALK JAYHAWK!) it was a cultural norm for those living in the Scholarship Halls to recycle. We had a really nice facility set up for ourselves in one of the storage areas and part of living in the halls naturally meant being conscious of how we managed our garbage. As one of the dinner cooks, it was simply part of cooking the meal to rinse out the gigantic #10 cans and put them in the recycling bin. Did you print out a paper and then discover a terrible spelling/grammar error? Put the old version in the recycling bin or re-use it for scratch paper. Done with a shampoo bottle? Rinse it out and march on down to the recycling bins.

Even after college when I got a job up on campus, we still utilized the campus recycling services for used paper, pop bottles, cans, cardboard, etc. All of this is to say, being a good citizen by recycling was not a foreign concept to me AT ALL. Yet, when it came to being a good citizen at home and continuing these principles I was failing big time. Finally, the guilt and shame goaded me into action. I set up a "recycling station" in our garage with big plastic tubs for each of the types of recycling. I began making an effort (and encouraging my hubby to make the effort, too) to start setting aside and sorting all of the things that could be recycled so we could take them to Walmart (clear across town... this fact will resurface later in the story).

We jumped into the recycling game full-force and quickly began realizing how much less trash we were putting by the curb. It was seriously amazing to go from a "several bags per week" household with only two people in it at the time to a "one mostly full bag" household in a matter of no time. I had dual feelings of pride and sadness at this realization. I was proud that we'd made the commitment to quit contributing as much to the problem, but I was sad that it had taken us this long to do so when the results were so instantly obvious. Another added bonus came when I realized the smaller number of trash bags we were using meant I didn't have to buy them as often and those things are pricey! Sweet!

The downside to our new-found adoration of recycling came when it was actually time to move it all out of our garage and take it to Walmart. Ugh. No fun. As it turns out, we usually got a bit lax in our sorting of the recyclables the longer they sat in the garage, and, the higher the piles got. Eventually, before succumbing to taking the whole mess out to Walmart, the piles sort of melded into each other and re-created the trash heap from Fraggle Rock, which roamed our garage at night.

The Trash Heap was still pretty hip, considering.

It never failed that I would have to re-sort the entire batch of recycling before driving CLEAR THE FREAK ACROSS TOWN. The other problem with recycling at Walmart? Sometimes I would show up and they were closed for some unknown reason or the bins were full. Then, I would have to trudge back home ALL THE WAY THE HELL ACROSS TOWN with some or all of my recycling still in my possession. Grr....

Then, we found out we were having our Baby G. Finding out we were going to have a baby resulted in two diametrically opposed (or so it seemed) philosophies on recycling. The first philosophy was, "Damn, we really have to get this recycling thing right because we're going to have a baby and it's important for her to learn early how to recycle so that it is something that is normal for her. It's important to show her how to help take care of the planet so she'll be a good citizen!" The second philosophy was, "How in the hell am I going to do all of the stuff I can barely get done NOW when I have a baby hanging off of me? Screw recycling. Let the trash people deal with all of this mess."

Eventually, I found a happy medium between good citizenry and laziness. I subscribed to curbside recycling with Deffenbaugh! Now, not only do we just throw nearly all of our recycling in one big bin (yay for not sorting!), we also just wheel that bin out to the curb on Wednesdays and my recycling disappears with barely any effort on my part (we will admit to forgetting to wheel the bin out from time to time, though).

We still have to trudge across town to Walmart for glass and plastic bag recycling, but I'm discovering that will probably happen about once every 9 months or so, which is FAR more acceptable to me. I am very pleased we found a work around that took into consideration our need to help teach our child important life lessons and how these important things don't have to be back-breaking and time-consuming to help the planet.

Our next goal as a family is one we've actually been working on for a while but seem to fail miserably when it comes time to implement it. We really really really want to quit using plastic bags when we do our shopping. We have a ton of reusable bags that either get forgotten in the car when we run in to do our shopping, or, we leave them in the garage at home because the last time we used them we didn't put them back in the car. We need to work this out because using reusable materials is another "good citizen" lesson I want to teach Baby G (which is TOTALLY why most of her clothes come from Goodwill and not because we're poor... Yep, not at all).

One thing I love about motherhood is how much better I become by trying to be a good example to my kiddo. I'm not saying I would be some total schmuck without her, but having her around reminds me that doing the right thing is ALWAYS more important than doing the easy thing because those little eyes are watching our every move.

OMG, cutest little eyes EVAR!

Milestones: Keeping up with the Baby Joneses

One of the greatest and most stressful things about being a new mom: your little one's milestones.

I have thoroughly enjoyed watching Baby G maneuver her way through her first year of life by hitting her really important milestones (I'm not going to lie, whenever she does something new I liken it to "leveling" her character in the real life version of her own MMORPG. I'm a nerd, remember? I secretly hope she spends her skill points very wisely because it's really hard to reallocate those once they've been spent, am I right guys??? Yeah...) It really is amazing how most tiny humans hit these milestones around the same time considering the millions of different ways they are parented. Humans are pretty darned amazing!

Milestones can be insanely frightening to a new mom who desperately wants her baby to be anywhere on the milestone scale from "perfectly normal" to "ZOMG super-mega baby genius." There have been plenty of times during this first year I have wondered if Baby G is "making the grade" when other babies we know start doing things she hasn't shown interest in trying yet. There have also been times where Baby G has knocked it out of the park by doing AMAZING things that even baffled her doctors. Basically, my baby is all over the milestone scale and it has taken the better part of this year for me to realize, "You know what... it's okay. I can live with this."

I knew Baby G was going to be a scrappy little prizefighter around 5 months of pregnancy. This kid could KICK. HARD. I would look at those cute little feet during her ultrasounds and wonder how such tiny little footsies could send me running to the bathroom with one solid roundhouse to my bladder. It doesn't matter how it happened, though. It happened. I also swear I could feel her reaching out and grabbing anything she could get her hands on, but figured I was just loopy from preggo-exhaustion. Immediately after she was born, I began to think I wasn't quite as insane as I had thought.

Baby G was born via Cesarean Section, which I assume was a rather rude awakening for her. As soon as they pulled her out and put her slimy, naked, purple butt on the table she started lifting her head up off of the surface of the table and grabbed for whatever wires she could get her tiny little hands around. Yep, my Baby G hit her first milestone (lifting her head) right in the delivery room. YESSSSSS!

One point for Gryffindor!

I figured this quick burst out of the gate meant that my baby was destined for Mensa and a black belt in AWESOME! My smug feelings were reinforced when, on her second month birthday, she spent several minutes ooo-ing and ahh-ing at me when I ooo-ed and ahh-ed at her. Our first real conversation!!! She nailed it!

Pardon my perfect storm of self-satisfaction.

I was riding high on my child's first accomplishments (livin' the dream!), but as time went by I noticed she wasn't quite rolling over as well as I thought she should. Hmmm... Should I call the doctor? Is this a problem? Is she developmentally behind now? Was it something I did? I totally worried about her lack of interest in doing this thing she was supposed to be doing. Of course, I worried for nothing. Eventually she was rolling this way and that way, back and forth, here and there. I had nothing to worry about. She just "decided" one day that being mobile via rolling was what all the cool kids were doing and she did it. Just like that.

Then, on the 4th of July (when Baby G was nearly 6 months old) we were over at my mom's house for a BBQ. I was holding Baby G in the living room and my mom walked into the room and said, "Hi" to Baby G. Baby G turned, looked at my mom, and said, "Hi" right back to her. Seriously. This was confirmed by a room full of adults who all fell silent with equally shocked looks on their faces. YESSSSSS!!!!

Uh.. yeah... it's a Mitchell and Webb Look thing. Funny show. Very British.

So, I got to put in the baby book that my Baby G spoke her first word at the svelte age of 6 months. Clearly, we rock as parents!

I waited until about this time to start giving her solid foods because I had read that babies who are formula-fed have a higher risk of obesity if they begin solids before the age of 6 months. Well, my husband and I are not what you would call "thin" so I already knew Baby G had an uphill battle. Several "other moms" had questioned why she wasn't eating solids yet, which got me to wondering if I was making a huge mistake. I spoke to Baby G's doctor who told me it was totally up to me and I wasn't harming my kiddo by holding off on the rice gruel. All of this is to say, her solid foods milestone wasn't hit until 6 months, but it wasn't due to any hesitancy on her part. Once we started solids, she was in it to win it. She's been a great eater with relatively few instances of straight up rejection when it comes to trying new foods. We'll call that milestone a draw (started late, but stuck the landing on the first try).

Crawling, on the other hand, was not something Baby G thought she needed to do. Several of her other baby friends were already crawling (some up to a month younger than Baby G) and she showed roughly "negative one billion percent" interest in joining them. We would put her up on her hands and knees, she would plop back down and roll away. We would actually activate her arms and legs for her (dad on arms, mom on legs, Baby G in her starring roll as our marionette), she would get cranky, plop back down and roll away. I was completely sure our kid was going to skip crawling and move straight to walking (just like her mom did oh-so-many years ago). Then, the other baby at her day care started crawling. SUCCESS! Peer pressure did as it has done for thousands of years... it pushed one tiny human to do the very same thing as all the other tiny humans around her. For the first of relatively few times in her short childhood, peer pressure was actually welcomed. Baby G now crawls like a NASCAR race car.

I wanna go fast! (FYI: not Baby G. She wouldn't be caught dead in that get-up. Not enough glitter.)

I, of course, worried constantly about her disinterest in crawling up until she actually did it. I had heard babies who don't crawl have poor hand-eye coordination (which I was willing to believe as I have terrible hand-eye coordination and I skipped crawling). In the end, it was a non-issue. I worried for nothing... again. She nailed it straight out of the gate... again. She went from not crawling AT ALL to crawling like she'd done it for months in roughly 3 days. Baby G was quickly becoming like my own little Buddha, teaching me patience.

Now, we rejoin the present time where my biggest concern is her lack of interest in holding her own bottle. She flat-out doesn't want to do it. I know she can because I've seen her do it for short periods of time before she drops it, looks at me like, "Uh... laying down on the job, are we?" and refuses to drink it, opting to play with it instead. At this point (at nearly 11 months of age) I'm sort of not going to worry about it too much. She already holds a sippy cut fairly well (and has done so for over a month now) and, frankly, I've sort of learned over this past year that my kid is really great at deciding when she's ready to do things. She's not behind at all, developmentally. It will seem like she isn't ready to do something one day, then the next day she just does it like it isn't any big thing. Plus, I really love that there are certain times of the day where my super-wiggle baby lets me just sit and hold her while I feed her a bottle. Some days that is the only snuggle-time I get.

She's been pulling herself up to standing for a couple of weeks now. Last night she got a little more bold. She pulled herself up to standing with both hands on the Exersaucer, let go with one hand, then let go with the other hand. Instead of immediately plopping down on her butt, she stayed standing for nearly 10 seconds. Nailed it! YESSSSS!!!

Also not Baby G, but shares Baby G's spirit of "completely owning at everything you do."

I know I was tempted for the majority of this year to gauge Baby G's successes on the successes of those in her age group but I think it's time to realize that my pig-headed Baby G is just going to do her thing at her own time and not stress out about it too much. She's done things way before and way after her peers and that's okay. We will continue to give her the tools, resources, and support to get her to where she needs to be but, ultimately, it is up to her to figure these things out for herself. As her mom, there's no better feeling than seeing the light-bulb go off in her cute little noggin' as she realizes she is capable of something new and exciting. I love it when she looks at me with a huge smile after she's done something new and claps her little hands as if to say, "Oh my gosh!! Did you just see that???"

Hell yeah I did, Baby G. You're made of pure awesome!

Back-story: How your parents met, dated, fell in love, got married, and had you!

Hmmm... how do I fit several years of information into one blog post?

I guess I should start by saying I think it's really important that Baby G knows who her parents are (are? were?) outside of being parents. I remember growing up thinking the adults around me were all-knowing demi-gods who never made mistakes and always had the right answer for any question instantly. I can't really remember the exact moment I realized that adults were just older versions of myself (with the same decision-making struggles who also had to bear the brunt of the consequences of their actions), but over time I realized that the adults in my life were once working towards the very same things I was working toward and made many of the same mistakes in the process. I want Baby G to respect us as parents, but I also feel like it would be good for her to know our faults and who we were before we became her awesome parents.

My husband and I will likely post separate entries about our own personal back-stories (before meeting each other) but I wanted to take a minute to post some of the basics about how we met, dated, fell in love, got married, and had our beautiful Baby G.

I first met my husband back in the early 2000s. I can't really remember exactly when it happened, but I can guess it was probably sometime during 2003 (the year I graduated from KU). My best friend (Uncle J) and I decided suddenly we wanted to invest our time and energy into playing Magic: The Gathering...

*pause for effect* Yes. Your mom is a nerd and so is Uncle J. Don't worry, though... your dad is a huge nerd, too. This is actually how we met the first time.

Mom and Uncle J: Being totally annoying nerds together since 1998.

At the time, the best place in town to play M:tG was Mass Street Comics. Uncle J and I would stroll down there from time to time to pick up booster packs of cards to build our decks. (It's actually sort of painful to type this out) I kept noticing the handsome shop-keeper when we would go in but always sort of felt like he thought Uncle J and I were total weirdos.

*pause for effect* Yeah, he was right. Anyway...

We went in several times over the year or so we focused on playing M:tG (before moving on to something else just as pointless and time consuming/expensive, probably) and I was always a little excited to go hoping I would see this handsome shop-keeper. Eventually, we stopped going in and even more eventually, the shop closed down.

I actually saw that handsome shop-keep one more time after the store closed before we met for the second time. He was pumping gas at a gas station on the corner of 23rd and Harper. I tried to catch his eye to wave at him nonchalantly (like I was cool, or something) to see if he looked like he recognized me. He didn't look my direction and I decided not to embarrass myself.

Fast forward past a couple of failed dates/online chats with loser guys/general disdain for the whole "dating" process, etc. In the fall of 2005 I was HUGE into Myspace...

*pause for effect* Yeah, Myspace was this thing that people used to use before Facebook, which is probably ALSO antiquated by the time Baby G is reading this. Or, maybe Zuckerberg has taken over the world and Baby G knows him only as "Lord Zuckerberg" or something. Who knows?

Anyway. I had a profile on Myspace and one day in the fall of 2005, I got a random message from some guy who didn't even have a proper profile picture and went by the name "Doc Ock" which meant absolutely nothing to me despite being a nerd. I wasn't in the habit of responding to people I didn't know, so I thought about ignoring it. Instead, I checked out his profile. Hey... this dude was pretty funny. Ok, fine. Let's do this. I responded. One response after another became a whirlwind online romance full of disgustingly adorable flirting. I couldn't really get him to show me a picture of himself (I was wondering if he had a hunchback or something) until I finally pestered him enough that he, likely, sent me a picture to shut me up. My thought processes went something like this, "Hey... that guy looks like... no... it can't be? Isn't that the shop-keep guy from Mass Street Comics? It sure looks like him... hmmmm..." I, of course, played it cool and didn't let on that I knew him and the flirting continued. Eventually, I let on that I knew who he was and told him, sheepishly, who I was thinking he wouldn't remember me. But, he did remember me! He thought I was cute! (WIN!) He didn't approach me at the time because he was in a relationship and figured Uncle J and I were, too as we always came in together.

We finally met up in person (again) and our first date was actually at a wedding reception (loaded first date, no?) We moved very quickly (as in "he moved in with me pretty much immediately because I lived with Uncle J at the time, but Uncle J was in Iraq because he was a Marine and I was super lonely and bored and head over heals for this new guy I had just re-met"). Uh... anyway... so he moved in and when Uncle J came back he got a job in Leavenworth and moved out, leaving us two lovebirds to build our first nest together.

*pause for effect* D'AWWWW!!! *kissy faces*

Mom and Dad: datin' and lookin' super cute!

Fast forward to the fall of 2006 (November 25th, 2006): We spent a lovely evening on the Plaza complete with delicious dinner (OMG chocolate lava cake NOM!), an "interesting" carriage ride (with a driver who regaled us with super inappropriate and un-romantic stories the entire time despite having dropped big bucks for a romantic ride), and a sweet proposal of marriage by a fountain (instead of the carriage ride like he had planned) via a comic book! I, of course, said YES!

One year later (November 10, 2007) we were married at Danforth Chapel on the campus of the University of Kansas in front of all of our friends and family! We had our wedding, then we had our reception (at the Knights of Columbus), then we had a kickass after-wedding jamboree at The Jackpot Saloon where we partied until the wee hours of the morning!

Secret identity: Total Rockstars!

Fast forward to the summer of 2010 (around late May, to be exact). I had just spent the last year and a half losing a TON of weight (over 100 lbs) and I was feeling pretty proud of myself. I had kicked a lot of bad habits and instilled new and healthy habits into my life. That's why I couldn't understand why, all of a sudden for the last several days, I had an extreme craving for high-sugar coffee drinks (I haven't really ever been a coffee drinker). On day 3 of feeling like I would shank a dude for a caramel macchiato, I began to put two and two together. I did the math ("Oh crap, has it really been that long since my last cycle??"). I freaked out for the next several hours at work until I could go home and take the pregnancy test I had sitting in the downstairs bathroom (there were several other times I thought I might be pregnant, but wasn't and I had an extra one laying around). I rushed home, way more excited about the prospect of peeing on a stick than I had ever been, and took the test. I had barely put the cap back on the stick and sat it down on the counter when I saw the double lines. Preggo, for reals.

*pause for effect* OMGOMGOMGOMGOMGOMGOMG........

I ran over to my mom's house to share the exciting news (there were tears, some were even mine!) then ran out to Walgreens to buy two more tests to be TRIPLE sure I was really pregnant. After two more positive tests I knew it was time to tell the hubby... who happened to be out playing kickball with about 50 other people... across town. I booked it over to the field, found him in the crowd, pulled him aside, took a deep breath and said, "Um... I'm pregnant!"

*pause for effect* I really wish I could describe his face. It was priceless!

The rest of the kickball game was spent spreading the news to the other 50 or so people present. Joel got high-fives from the dudes, I got giddy squealing from the ladies. It was a blast! I am going to devote another entire post to my pregnancy and all the fun and not-so-fun things associated with it, but...

Fast forward to February 11, 2011: Welcome to our family, Baby G! Now that Baby G is caught up and remembers everything from this date forward (right?) I will save the rest of the memories for other posts.

Dude, I have a baby. Also, I'm exhausted!

Our lives were fun and full of adventure before Baby G, but the addition of Baby G has added a completely different level of adventure we didn't think possible. I guess I should thank Magic: the Gathering for bringing my hubby and I together and, ultimately, leading to Baby G's birth, but I just can't bring myself to do it. It's far too nerdy!