April Showers bring Neighborhood Cleanups

Still crazy here. Marko is wearing Laurel's underwear (he couldn't find any of his, despite the fact that at least 50% of our clothes are clean and it is highly unlikely that he doesn't have any in his drawer). This morning I caught him handing a pencil to Max (eeek! But at least it wasn't sharpened...).

Max continues to have difficulty feeding during the day and nurses a lot overnight. However, if he eats a lot overnight then he pees a lot overnight and with his weird rashiness, he really can't sit in a wet diaper for very long. I am too tired to google solutions and just try to keep my focus on the year 2021 when Max will turn 5 and theoretically everyone in the house will be sleeping in their own beds and all night long.

This weekend we organized the neighborhood clean up. Frankly I'm a little burned out on community organizing at the moment, but I have to admit that it was kind of fun. I got up early on Saturday morning and baked banana bread. We had a bunch of garbage bags and shovels and work gloves leftover from last year's clean up (which nobody attended) and set up a table outside. The kids made a sign. Abut 15 people actually did show up this year (probably because I put a facebook post advertising the fresh-from-the-oven banana bread), and it was really nice to stand around in our yard, eating little slices of banana bread balanced on paper towels and making small talk with people we haven't seen all winter.

When I manage to organize something like this, I feel like myself, or some part of myself outside of the motherhood part of my existence. Many days, I can only see myself as mother, all the way to the horizon in every direction. I have heard lots of people talk about getting "lost" in this phase of life. I always assumed that it would feel bad if you made it to that level, but it doesn't really. There's a lot of joy and gratitude and satisfaction and it often feels very right to be doing it. You just stop and wonder every now and again what happened to that other person you were before you had all these little people swirling around you all day and night.

Things That Happened This Week (So Far)

Max learned to laugh this week. Laurel was dancing in front of him and he went from his usual coo/grunt/heavy breathing to an actual giggle. A baby's laughter is a magical sound. It should be recorded and piped in to stressful situations.

I had to take him to the doctor for his eczema last week. He has it pretty bad. While I was there, they weighed him and he is 13 lbs 12 oz. He has great head control and can hold himself up pretty well when he's sitting in someone's lap. We got lots of new creams and a prescription antihistamine to try. He looked and seemed to feel a lot better over the weekend but had a big flare up last night, so now it's on to try an elimination diet for me, since he's still breastfeeding. This does not make me excited, but to be honest, I could do a better job of eating well, so maybe it's a good thing for both of us. I have a suspicion that it's eggs, so I'm going to start with eggs and dairy.

Laurel and I had a Daisy troop meeting. It's wild, this group of kindergarteners at 7 o'clock on a school night. Last night I was really dragging and didn't particularly want to be there. But M was home with two crying boys, so I guess at least it was a break from that. I really do like the Girl Scouts program, though, and we are very excited to do our first day at Girl Scout Camp in May. And when they sing their friendship circle song at the end, it is the cutest thing ever.

I went to two different social events, by myself, to hang out with other moms. This required a Herculean effort on my part to get out of the house because I'm beat-ass tired from getting up with Max all night and chasing Marko around all day. But I love talking with other women about stuff they're doing. Travel, volunteer stuff, work, politics, etc. I'm burnt out on talking about parenting/mothering at the moment....so I want to talk about other stuff, but for some reason, I really only want to talk to other moms about non-mom stuff. How much sense does that make?