Super sweet schwinn

I got to ride my bike to school today! It was so fantastic. I have not been able to ride my bike since November, when my belly first started to get too big to peddle safely. It was such a great feeling. How I missed riding fast and feeling so fluid. The best part was whizzing past the mess of backed up cars. Oh how I missed my bike. It really is a shame that it is seemingly dangerous for me to put Oliver in the Bjorn and take him riding. It would be so fun. I can't wait until he is big enough for some type of bike carrier (preferably the Chariot side car). I wish that Champaign was more bike friendly...actually I just wish that we lived in Chicago, I do love riding my bike there! If only there was a way to move our house & the rent we pay...

One day, lad, all this will be yours

What, the curtains?

It hardly seems believable that Oliver is already 12 weeks old. It is so amazing how much he has already grown and developed. The way he observes his world is so fantastic, I love watching him look at things, how big his eyes get. Whenever I encounter mothers of older children all I ever hear are stories of what their babies were like at his age, how fast they grow, and how much they miss their babies. Yet when I am with my own mother, or around mothers with toddlers, all I ever hear is don’t rock him to sleep, just put him down and walk away, let him learn to calm himself, let him learn to fall asleep on his own. They offer advice, to not hold him too much, to not let him get into the habit of falling asleep in my arms, I’ll rue the day… I just hate it. I just hate the way so many people want their babies to not need them, to grow up faster then they should. Oliver is only going to be a baby for less than a year. That’s it. And that time will go by so fast. I know that in a blink of an eye he’ll be eighteen, and there will be no more rocking him to sleep at night. His bedtime is 30 minutes of total sweetness at the end of his day (that is if he is not having a total meltdown) that we both need. He is not alert and looking around, he doesn’t want to play, he is not fussing; he just wants a cuddle, and to be read to or sung to. Yet I get told, in an ominous warning fashion, that if I rock him to sleep, he’ll never be able to fall asleep on his own. I call bullshit on that. I’ll be able to rock him to sleep maybe until he is 3, and then he’ll be too big, too independent, and then, no more. I am oh so aware of the fact that my baby will only be a baby for a very small amount of time, and I want to relish in it. I want to be able to have a good cuddle with him for as long as I am able. I know that the day will come all too soon when my little baby will not want me to rock him, or sing to him. Why is that so many parents don’t seem to realize this? Why is it that so many parents feel that it is somehow wrong that their babies need them, that they need to be held and rocked? Is it cultural to be so unaffectionate? I can’t do that. I am totally going to overload the little man with cuddles and affection. I think those things are important, necessary. Life should be sweet for babies; we should rock them to sleep at night, every night. These are the best years of his life, and over all too soon. Someday he’ll have to get a job, an apartment, deal with dating, people, life, and parental cuddles won’t be socially acceptable anymore. How do I deal with all of this “advice” I keep getting that is just so antithetical to what I think having the good life be all about?

Drive-by egging

When I was in junior high, all of the girls had to take a home economics class which involved various sewing projects (i.e.: torture for me) and partake in the obligatory egg baby assignment. The egg baby assignment involved hallowing out an egg, which was marked with either a b or g on the bottom (for boy or girl), then decorating your egg baby however you choose, usually with yarn and markers. We were required to take care of our egg babies for a week, take them with us to classes (despite the many protests from the teachers of the more academic classes), and keep a journal of their day, when they ate, what they did. We were required to obtain and pay a babysitter if we needed to be away from our egg babies. The whole project was insulting and irritating to me. It was designed to be an anti-teen pregnancy lesson. I had never even kissed a boy, and certainly did not want to be accused of having sex (or being careless if I were) in this intrusive assumption. It was totally sexist, the boys never had to carry around egg babies, or take home economics (which teaches young boys that babies aren’t their problem, and that sewing is torture only for girls?). I thought it was a ridiculous way to spend my time, I’d rather be bouncing on my bed to “egg raid on mojo”, than carting around some hallowed out egg. And I for sure was not going to pay anyone to hang out with said hallowed out egg. My egg baby journal was a beautiful work of fiction, with stories of peek-a-boo games we would play, and I had my friends sign off on babysitting for the egg, attesting to being paid for their hard work. Long gone are the days of pre-teens ignoring their eggs. Now junior high girls get to tote around a Real Care baby , which actually cries, poops, and needs to be feed. These dolls are apparently so realistic that one girl crashed her car when her baby was crying in the backseat. Now I know I drive like a maniac when Oliver is crying in the backseat. It is distracting, and it actually is distressing because he is a real live baby who really needs to be fed, or changed, or calmed. I would have thrown the doll out the window before I crashed my car because of it. Poor girl, I doubt she will ever, ever have sex now.