Life on the Run

10/15/2009

"Subject: Just a glimpse...

Into my day/night as a mother today (and this is with babysitter, how could I complain?) sorry have not returned your email but...

6 am, rise and shine, Violet wakes up. Have a stomach ache, major naush (not pregnant how dare you even think! lol) Suck it up. Try to hold violet off in her crib till she eats at 6:30 am. Feed Vi, play with Vi, Vi takes a nap 7:45 am. Drink coffee, eat breakfast (oatmeal fyi), fold her laundry. Violet wakes up at 9am. Change her. Yay, babysitter walks through the door! Hand violet over so I can go exercise. RUN to the gym to RUN (huh?!). RUN home. Shower, kiss violet and RUN uptown for eyebrow wax at Barney's ( I would run to the moon for Robert Sweet William and his amazing arch). RUN downtown to BuyBuy Baby to return a winter bundle thing for Violet's stroller. Can't decide (AGAIN) which one to get. The kind (but slightly annoyed?) employee at BuyBuy tells me I am "over thinking it and just buy something, they are all good". Leave with no Bundle me, unsuccessful trip number 3 in 4 days. Go to Whole foods- see long lines and only have 1 more hour with babysitter so I just grab some things, anything really, to make some lunch/dinner for myself. RUN home, 1:30 - Violet is still sleeping, babysitter leaves. Thankful my daughter loves her naps! Sit down to eat and look at the many unresponded emails. Eat fast... fast! Violet wakes up. I missed her even the 3 hours I was away... feel overwhelmed with love. Feed Violet. RUN to a play date at 3 PM. Play...ish. RUN Home by 4 just in time for a nap - for her not me. Violet goes to nap at 4:19 pm. Shopping on line time! For her, not me. I order things from diapers.com and a fleece for her from old navy.com. Look at the clock- 4:55 pm - have to wake her up so she can go back to bed and eventually so can I. She is so amazingly cute when she wakes up from sleeping. I love her something crazy! Dance party in her room to music from Glee for 30 minutes straight (like a RUN but just going in circles). 5:30 pm, bath!! Lew pops in before school to say hi. Complain to him about stomach. Lew leaves. Bye, bye Lewy. Violet starts her dolphin shriek noises - not so much music to my ears. Put on Baby Einstein DVD for her. Unload dishwasher, prepare bottles. Sit down for 10 minutes and stare into space. 6:10 pm show is over. Keep violet distracted till 6:20pm when i feed her (always the 10 longest minutes of the day). 6:45 pm bed time books. 6:55pm put her in her crib for bedtime. Hoooray, relaxation time for us both! Really feeling a stomach ache now, bad enough that i forego my glass (or 2) of evening wine and just make some plain pasta (didn't need to go to whole foods after all, argh). Turn on monitor sit down to eat... Hear violet fussing more than usual, she's usually the best and goes right to bed! Go in, she spit up a nice amount. Have to take her out of crib and change the sheets (crib sheets VERY hard to change fyi!!). Change sheets, change her pjs, kiss goodnight put her back in crib. Go back to eat. Start eating and hear grunting from the monitor-- know what this means. Go in to change her poop diaper. Been wondering when that was gonna get here all day :) Take her out of crib change her again. Put her back in crib, kiss goodnight. Violet sleeps, that's my girl! Go back to finish my dinner (warm pasta now resembles more of a pasta salad in temp). Start to eat. Realize I forgot to wash hands. Fuck it. Too tired to get up. Eat. Clean up a bit, write you and email, attempt to watch Gossip Girl but realize for the 5th time this season that I am just getting too old for it. Turn off lights and go to bed to wake up tomorrow and do it all again. I feel accomplished. I would be lying if I didn't admit I love this. I do, I really, truly do. Best job on the planet. Even on a rainy day with no babysitter (i.e. tomorrow - lots of DVR Rachel Zoe for Violet and I).

Signing off for the night. Will talk to you girls when shes in college. mwa
xoxo
Ariel"

I haven't had this much fun since my Epidural!

8/10 - Week 10

I've been trying to figure out why sometimes I get into a bit of a funk on Saturday's. I mean please don't get me wrong, I get so excited when the weekend rolls around because we get to spend time as a family and Lew is around to help me out and be the great dad that he is. But i guess for right now, my weekend is not that much different than my weekday... making them basically interchangeable. So sometimes, in the middle of a NYC summer, I wonder "where the hell did my Saturday go?" But it goes without saying that i would not trade any day with Violet and Lew for anything in the whole entire world.

Welllll, maybe I would trade just one Saturday night at home for a much needed night out on the town! At 3 pm this past Saturday my good friend Jessica knocked on our door. Just dropping by to say hi? Just in the neighborhood and needed to pee? nope- she was there to "give me a night out". So, question- does it make me a bad mother (but a good wife) that my first instinct was to hand her Violet and high tail it to the bedroom to get dressed for a hot date night with Lew?

Well, it wasnt quite that. But it was a night out with the girls! Within minutes my bag was packed and Jessica and I were off like a dirty Onsie and on our way to Exhale Spa for a massage! Lew organized a whole "mommies night out" with 3 of my closest friends which included a massage and a shvitz, several bottles of wine, some chicken, 4 drunk girls being way too loud and ending up laughing all over the Highline. Yes, my husband is THAT good and my girlfriends are the best and the only thing "Funky" about this Saturday was the table of rude people sitting next to us at dinner.

But every wild and crazy evening must come to an end... except if your daughter is not sleeping through the night! Then it just goes on and on and on. But truth be told, even though I so enjoyed letting loose with my amazing friends, Lewy and I still text throughout the night like Newlyweds, and I definitely thought about Violet in between every other sip of wine I had (and thats A LOT in case you were wondering).

WHAT THE HELL WOULD I DO WITHOUT... Barbutto restaurant! Get the chicken and enjoy the outside seating. http://www.barbutonyc.com/

I can not be held responsible for things mumbled at 4 am

8/2 - Week 9

I will never get used to the hours between 1-4 am. Will you?? It's like I have middle of the night Turetz. At the first whimper from Violet's room I start spewing out profanities like Andrew Dice Clay (i am dating myself with that analogy, i know). Of course i reserve this language for my wonderful sleeping husband lying next to me with a pillow over his head (love Lew). I regain composure before I go into Violet's room where I try to enter all "mother-earth-here- to-save-the-day" like . But man is it rough, and the four letter word has taken on a whole new meaning for me in the middle of the night!

I guess its my fault because i haaadddd to get the supererst highest techy baby monitor ever created. The minute Vi so much as winks the freaking thing lights up, vibrates AND blasts in my ear. Defnitely created by someone who's baby follows that "12 weeks to 12 hours sleep" book that Violet threw up on the other day. My very close mommy friend Jill suggested that i try not having the monitor on and that i just get up when i hear... wait for it... Violet actually cry. I gave this about 3 solid minutes of consideration in which i created 6 different scenarios where this would be extremely dangerous and that was the end of that suggestion.

So, last night (like clockwork) i heard Vi sucking her thumb from 1 am- 1:42, cooing from 1:42-2:15, fart and burp at 2:23, and the finally cry out for her night time feeding at 2:55 which took her 15 minutes to eat and another 48 minutes of lights, vibration, action from my bedside table before she fell asleep. I am tired. F**K.

WHAT THE HELL WOULD I DO WITHOUT... Although we have an activity mat for Violet, we played with this one at a friends house the other day and it took everything in me not to pay her double so we could take it with us! We walked to Babies R Us (in the rain) the next day to buy one for ourselves. http://www.toysrus.com/product/index.jsp?productId=2266983

Bye Bye Baby Nurse

6/19 - Week 3

Well, I call this, "I almost totally lost it in this post partum tornado - but then I woke up in one piece and so did Violet - mission accomplished (at least for one night)." I hope you find the humor in my partial insanity.

So the nurse left last night and my performance upon her departure was worthy of an oscar/tony/ even Grammy if you consider the wailing cries on a musical level. I started weeping about 3 hrs before I knew she was getting ready to leave so the anticipation was building. Actually that's a lie- I started weeping about 7 days before Juliana was about to leave. OK another lie- I started weeping the day she started working knowing it would soon come to this moment. At 6:45 pm, When she emerged from the bathroom dressed in regular clothes (a jeans and a purple sweater which i swear she planned out), her nurses uniforms neatly packed away in her suitcase (in hand :(. That's when the tears really started to flow. As she held me (or I held her for dear life) she repeated these last words "ill see you Tuesday Ariel, ill see you Tuesday!!" We had a group hug, then Lew has to basically surgically remove my grip from her arms. When the door closed I peered through the peep hole till she was no longer in site. Then I lost it- tears did flow. Lew had to hold me up, walk me away from the door to keep me from running after her. :) He brought me sobbing into the kitchen where dinner was almost ready (bleh food at a time like this?!?). It took about 1 minute of restraint till I let it all out, collapsing hysterical crying on the kitchen floor repeating "come back, come back I miss her I miss her" as Lew tried to console me through his uncontrollable laughter. I blame hormones for this all and promise to regain my sanity in another 3 weeks (6 weeks tops of baby blues till you are considered "clinical" which I refuse to be unless there as a great painkiller for that) Anyway, it took 2 hours, a bowl of pasta, Tasti-D-Light and a glass of wine to regain a little control (so much for my appetite loss).

I hope you are laughing at me as I am while writing this. I don't think I am as much worried about going it alone as it was just such a milestone her leaving-- now I am completely responsible for little Miss Violet- slightly scary especially with postpartum anxiety, but I'm ready none the less and did an OK job last night! Also, it was the first time since I was pregnant that Lew and I had been alone! It was like the closing ceremony to this huge marathon that I had finished and starting the next one an hour later. I can't adequately describe it but anyway... Here we go!

So last night- we totally made it. I am exhausted and she was up for about 4 hours on and off from 1030 till 7 am. But lying in bed this am the 3 of us - it just makes my life complete. I think I can get used to this.

WHAT THE HELL WOULD I DO WITHOUT... These black and white Wee Flash Cards have provide minutes (not hours, we are not up to that yet) of entertainment for Little miss Vi. One of my mommy friends recommended it and we love!
http://www.giggle.com/p/13620/c/565/cl/612/Wee-Flash-Cards---Original-Collection.aspx