18 Months

Finner will be 18 months on Thursday. I can't believe how big he's getting. The little baby who I used to be able to hold on my arm between my hand and my elbow is HUGE. He gets stuff, like picking out his night night book and taking laundry to the couch to fold.

No significant talking yet. Please remember that I'm an over-achieving perfectionist so I won't feel secure about Finn talking until he says a complete sentence. He does say "bye bye" and a myriad of other partial words. He uses around 30 signs and some of them he uses together. It's awesome to be walking down the street and have him stop, point up and sign bird, then realize that he's seen some bird way far up on a building and he's telling us about it.

He has a great sense of humor. We call him the Toddler Comedian. He pretends to feed you then jerks the food into HIS mouth. He pretends to be tired and falls down. He is the most dramatic kid I've ever met. Then again, isn't drama a natural part of childhood?

He loves to cook. I mean LOVES to cook. His latest find is a medium sized pumpkin we got for free from a neighbor. He carries it around the house. He puts it in his pan. He "cooks" it in the waffle iron. He insists on watching me make bread. He knows that the stove and oven are HOT. I'm wondering how long until we can get this kid into cooking school and will we be buying him a set of knives for his 16th birthday?

He's getting more and more toddler-esque. He throws his little body onto the ground in the most dramatic way when he doesn't get what he wants. He shakes his head "no". He's particular and rigid. He has strong, strong opinions about what he will and won't do. Since he can't communicate clearly a typical exchange goes like this:

Mommy: Do you want this? (holding up a whisk)

Finn: shakes head no

Mommy: This? (holding up spatula)

Finn: shakes head no

Mommy: This? (holding up tongs)

Finn: starts to shake head no, pauses for a moment and stares at the tongs, then shakes head no

Mommy: I know, this? (holding up plastic whisk)

Finn: shakes head no

Mommy: This? (holding up wooden spoon, the last item in the drawer)

Finn: Ehhhhh! aka YES!

M. and I are working on being as present as we can during his more difficult times. We hold him while he cries and we've been implementing some basic Happiest Toddler on the Block techniques, which seem to work.

Overall, Finn is a smart, sweet, great kid, and our complete and utter joy. We have hard days but they pale in comparison to the good days and how blessed we feel to have this child in our lives. Happy 18 months my baby baby boy honey bunny funny chicken bo finner little buddy. We're so happy to be your mama and mommy.

Going Glass

They are finally starting show that maybe BPA isn't has harmless as the industry would like us to think. Although the FDA is stubbornly clinging to their assertions that BPA is safe, to me it seems like just a matter of time before they reverse that.

The latest article in the NYT (linked to above) pushed me to make the decision to take our household off plastic. I went to Crate and Barrel and bought 10 glass food storage containers that can hold about a serving of food. At $1.75 each it only cost us $20. I also bought a stoneware plate and bowl that I'll take to work to eat and heat my food in. I then threw out all of our plastic containers EXCEPT my beloved huge snapware and some other larger containers that will be used for food storage ONLY. No more heating up in plastic.

M. and I have also decided for #2 we're going to switch to glass bottles. The reality is that you don't know what they'll deem dangerous in the future. Glass is a no-brainer.

And M. is happy because all of this inspiration led to a frantic cleaning of our disasterous plastic storage container drawer.

Potty Learning

I've always been proud that I didn't turn into one of THOSE parents who discuss their children's poop (or stool as I might say and then M. would tell me that word is "gross".) After all, poop is something that's part of my daily work life and I find it 100% uninteresting. Poop is poop is poop.

But pee has become another story.

We've been "potty learning" with Finn since he was 11 months old. It's been very casual. Put him on the potty just to get him into the habit, no pressure, no big goals. For a while now I've been wondering just exactly WHAT are we doing. Finn's making no progress whatsoever when it comes to the potty.

Then something happened today.

I put Finner on the potty after his nap and he had a completely dry dipe - a DRY DIPE, so I knew he had some urine in his tiny boy bladder. He pee'd just a little then got up and tried to climb up to the sink. I then placed him back on the potty and he finished peeing - a lot.

HE'S STARTING TO HOLD HIS PEE!

I'm very much looking foward to no more diapers and now I feel like that might actually happen before he's 13. Yay!

I'm tired...

I apologize to anyone who reads this blog for the lack of posts. In all honesty, I'm tired. Babycakes has been an amazing experience for me and an outlet to work through TTC, being a new parent and now having a toddler. I've loved writing this and I love even more that even one person finds what I have to say useful and worthwhile.

I'm still tired. I work, I parent, I work more and somewhere in there I'm not sure about who I've become. I've had to pull back from several different places in order to refocus my energy and have had serious questions about where I belong. My entire life I've been an outsider, then every once in a while I manage to make it to the inner circle and it usually reminds me why I'm out there alone in the first place.

I've never wanted babycakes to be just a TTC blog or just a pregnacy blog or just a parenting blog. Droning on about how cute Finn is or bragging about his latest accomplishment is maybe something his grandparents might enjoy, but the rest of the world doesn't really care (just so everyone knows, he is the cutest, smartest most wonderful little boy and there isn't a millisecond of any day that I'm not grateful that he's our baby).

This leaves me with wondering what babycakes really is, or has become. I guess I'm wondering what YOU want it to be, because it's not defined by me, it's defined by being something useful and worthwhile to the people who actually read it.

So tell me. Do you want it to go on as is? Do you want more of my pain in the ass rantings about what I think should and shouldn't be in this world? Do you want more of life with Finn? I need some energy to keep writing because, as I said, I'm pretty low-energy these days.

All my love! S.

p.s. in the meantime, I do have something to say about our postponed TTC #2, which I'll put into another post.

Hair

Flyaway Toddler Hair, originally uploaded by Sacha Digi.

Hair is of great debate in our household. For the longest time the subject was when Finn was going to get any - at least that's what we heard from my parents all of the time. I always thought he had enough, it's just fine.

Now the discussion centers around The Haircut. M. and I are a bit ambivalent when it comes to cutting Finn's hair. Some days we think we'll do it, other days we're determined to let it grow to his shoulders, damn it! Our parents regularly ask exactly WHEN we're going to cut his hair.

So we've come up with a lot of arbitrary milestones. We'll cut it after we see if he has curls. No, we'll cut it when it's long enough to get a lock for his baby book. No, we'll cut it before he has his 18 month pictures taken. NO, we'll let it grow to his shoulders, damn it!

It's not like I think it really looks that good. I think we're just both annoyed that there's all this pressure to cut his hair because he's a boy...okay, and it's a bit scruffy looking...but if he were a girl he would just be in that so-ugly-it's-adorable growing out stage.

I figure we'll probably cut it when we just can't stand it anymore, or it will keep growing and we'll like his hair a little long and leave it that way. After all, we're his parents and until he can protest, it's our call. HA!

Being Left Out

My partner and I are starting to plan our family and I am totally paralyzed by fears of being left out.

I've been wanting to respond to this comment left a while ago.

This broke my heart.

Social mother, other mother, adoptive mother, non-bio mom...there are a lot of ways to talk about that person who devotes their life to a child that they have no biological connection and sometimes even no legal connection to. I would like to say that the concept of having a child and the reality are so different that there is no way that someone will get left out once that baby arrives. I'd like to say that the baby will be the bandaid for one's fears and those deep set inadequacies that scream out "HOW CAN A CHILD LOVE ME IF I AM NOT THE ONE WHO GESTATED IT AND FED IT???"

I think dual motherhood can be really hard. Many of us who share our lives with another woman, who parent with another woman, were raised with the expectation of Capital M Motherhood. We are the child bearers, the nurturers, the queen bee because after all What Mama Wants is what rules most households.

Except it's different in a two-uterus household. There are two mothers and I found through my pregnancy and now as a co-mother, that the Capital M Motherhood of the non-bio mom is often disrespected and ignored. No matter what M. does, no matter how well she cares for Finn, no matter how much of a mother she is, the world insists on seeing ME as The Mother over and over again.

So fears of being on the outside of this sweetly bonded mother/child nexus of nirvana aren't unfounded. I think leaving them unspoken and unaddressed can lead to bad bad things.

I've heard of, and known, more than one lesbian parenting couple where the birth mother was subconsciously sabotaged by the non-birth mother, especially around breast feeding. Maybe not overtly. Maybe not by intent. Formula equalizes everything and makes no one special, except that shiny silvery Emfamil can.

It can happen. It does happen. Which is why by being aware of the possibility, by confronting fears, we as partners, as wives, as future parents, can work through what it means to be a two mother household in a positive way. I guess I'm saying that it's okay to be afraid but don't let it stop you, because it may be a hard road to share Capital M Motherhood but it can also mean an equally shared parenting structure that is rarely found in relationships.

Talk about it! Devote yourselves to equality in parenting, and even if you don't live up to your exact ideal you'll at least be aware that the non-bio mom CAN be left out and you can work to prevent that.

It's Fair Time

The Fair is a big thing for M. and myself.  After all, M.'s first job ever was at the fair working at the Fischer Scone booth.  When we first met I told M. that K. Falls had a fair that lasted a weekend but the BIG fair was Tulelake which was one whole week.

She laughed at me.  

The Puyallup Fair is almost a whole month of kitschy collectibles, cutesy farm animals, fatty fair food, goofy gadgets and then-some.  It's a fair extravaganza.  

We're taking Finn this year.  I'm so excited because I know that seeing animals, any kind of animal, will elicit shakes of joy and screams of excitement.  Finn LOVES animals.  We won't be able to spend all day at the fair like usual, just a few hours, but it will be a whole new experience going with a toddler.   

It also makes me kind of sad because one day we'll give Finn his pass to go on all the rides, money for food and tell him to meet us back at the gold entrance at a certain time, then try not to worry.  I can't even imagine that I'll ever let him go like that but I know I need to.  Then I think about when he was very very wee and I saw kids who were 17 months old and couldn't imagine coping with having a toddler, but now we have one and it's not as bad as I imagined. 

In the meantime, we have LOTS of years to go to The Fair and have a great time as a family.