Terrible, horrible doctor's visit...

...for me. Not for Matt. He was fine.

Toddler Matthew, formerly known as Baby Matthew, had his one-year checkup and immunizations today. I didn't anticipate it being too bad, since he's barely cried at getting his other shots, and I've also felt surprisingly not too bad through them.

The visit started out fine. Matt weighed in at a tiny 21.5 pounds. He was 17 pounds at 5 months! I guess it's the fact that he's pretty much running every minute of every day. I think he went from 75th percentile in weight to about 10th. His head size has evened out with his height and weight; before it was way bigger. He's pretty tall compared to other kids his age, I think still about 75th percentile for that. The doctor said he looks great. His development is excellent, still way ahead for his age. I always have to circle yes or no on a list of skills for what he can already do, and he can do everything on the 12- to 24-month sheet except for "speaking x number of words" (different questions start at 2 words, 3 words, etc, up to 6 words).

Then it was time for shots! Yay! First, the nurse had to draw blood from Matt's finger while I was holding him on my lap. I was explaining that I sometimes feel faint around needles, so she might need to get another nurse to hold him down for the actual shots. For those, he has to lay on the table instead of being held. So, anyway, the finger prick was fine. Matthew just watched the nurse stick him and looked at the blood with interest. I was watching his face, and he didn't seem affected at all other than looking curious at what was going on. I glanced at his finger, and it was bleeding kind of a lot. But not a big deal. I told the nurse I was feeling fine after all, but I'd still prefer if she got someone else to hold him down on the table. She left the room.

Matt looked around, looked at his bandaged finger, held his hand right up in my face and waved it around, smiling, and yanked off the two Band-Aids! Blood everywhere! Matthew giggled. And then waved his bleeding finger right in my face, with the super-bloody cotton-balled Band-Aid hanging half off of it. I instantly broke out in a cold sweat and started getting that blurry-on-the-edges vision that precedes passing out. I kept thinking, "Don't drop him. Don't drop him. Don't pass out. They'll be right back." I tried to put the Band-Aids back on, but Matthew kept ripping them back off. Such a fun game, right, Mom? At least he found it hilarious.

Finally, the nurses got back. One of them immediately took Matthew from me, and the other one helped me up and took me out of the room and started putting wet paper towels on me. And this was before I even said anything! My face is such a traitor. I tried to tell them I was fine, but they pretty much forced me to stay in this other room. I think I'd said about a hundred sentences in two minutes, and I'm pretty sure I wasn't making any sense.

Then Matt got his shots, and I went back in when I heard him crying. He cried about 15 seconds and even smiled at the nurses and made some happy babbling noises at them before we left. No hard feelings.

Who's the baby around here now?

One!

Happy birthday, little ball of energy (aka Matthew)! A year ago at this moment, I was wondering if this baby would ever be born! And then he was, 30 minutes from now. And suddenly we had a baby! Yay!

Usually on birthdays, I think people write sappy letters about how great the past year was or how much their lives have changed for the better or how things will never be the same, and the original birthday was the best day of their lives, blah blah blah... But I'm not feeling very reflective, and it's pretty obvious how we feel about Chatty Matty, and all those letters end up sounding the same anyway, so...

I'm going to write about some of the stuff that was so helpful to us getting through the first year. And by first year, I primarily mean the first couple of months.

Fisher-Price Rock 'n Play Sleeper: Matt slept in this next to our bed for about 3 months, maybe 4. He also lounged around in it a lot when we were eating supper or watching tv and he was napping or just looking around. It was great to be able to ferry him around the house in it when he was asleep. Also great that I could just lean out of bed to look at his little face in the middle of the night and make sure he was still breathing. Ha ha.

SO worth the $50, even though its useful life wasn't that long, timewise. We bought this from Kohl's with a gift card from all my coworkers at Origin Technologies. (Side note: This is a game I like to play, to feel thankful for things and people: "Oh, now I'm going to use the Chris Hightower tea kettle to heat some water. Then I'm going to use the Christa Slaton vacuum cleaner. Matthew's wearing the Stephenie Walker reindeer outfit now, but he'll need to change into the Debbie Schott sleepsack later.")

Boppy: Matthew and I used the Boppy every single day for 11.5 months for breastfeeding, except when we were on vacation. Talk about indispensable. When he was tiny, it wasn't so great because I'm all tall and stuff, but after the first two months or so, so convenient. He also took some naps in it and had fun crawling over it when he first started crawling. Thanks for this, Lisa!

Philips Avent Manual Breast Pump: Also a great help in the early days. I got to leave the house by myself sometimes! Very easy to use and clean. Great for easing my oversupply discomfort when Matthew started sleeping 7- to 9-hour stretches at 2.5 months old.

 

Receiving blankets: Great for swaddling, spit-up, warmth, fun... Still keep one in the diaper bag now to use for messes or as a towel, since Matt goes full speed ahead into any source of water he sees. We have 4 (from the Burn City Rollers!) but could have used about 10 in the early days.

Cloth diapers: I am pretty much lazy and hate shopping. Also, I dislike spending money. Voila! Cloth diapers! No need to leave the house for more diapers. No worries about getting low on them and needing to run to the store. Cheap! Contrary to many people's claims that the cost of washing more loads of laundry with cloth diapers outweighs or equals the cost of buying diapers, our utility bills have not increased at all in the past year. So, cheap and convenient. (Diaper sprayer is nice, too, but wouldn't be quite as hard to live without.)

I think that's about it for my most useful baby things list. Some other stuff we use a lot are a hand-me-down stroller, Infantino baby carrier, changing pad, and high chair, but I'd probably rank them on a secondary list. What's been your most used and most useful baby items?

Trash talk

Sometimes at practice we talk about trash talk––how to not let it bother us, the appropriate ways to say things back (not with profanity the refs can hear), that sort of thing.

I've always found trash talk ridiculous. Especially during games. Some girl is in my face telling me she's going to take me down? I usually giggle. Because she probably will take me down at some point, but I'm going to take her down more, and harder, and laugh while doing it, and get back up a lot quicker a lot more times.

Plus, I think I'm better than you.

It doesn't matter who you are. I almost definitely think I'm better than you. Not a better person––everyone is equal in importance at personhood––not a better athlete, necessarily, either, but just in general better. Maybe you're faster and stronger. But I'm going to be watching you for the time you don't look to the left and then I'll hit you so the jammer can fly by. Or I'm watching to see if you're the type to get flustered by trash talk. And then when you kind-of hit me, but not well, I'm going to laugh at you. And if you're the type who gets flustered by trash talk or someone laughing at hit you give, you're probably also the type who gets flustered by having someone bump you repeatedly. So I'll do that until you're so angry with me that you completely forget to watch the jammer at all.

I'm not sure where this attitude came from. Sometime in middle school, maybe, I decided to just be myself? Maybe ninth grade, when I was tired of being so painfully shy? And "myself" turned out to be someone confident in most situations and determined to take charge because there are always better ways of doing the same ol' things.

But trash talk. I just can't get on board. There's this one cross-country meet I remember so clearly. (High school girls' cross-country is a vicious, vicious sport. Much more vicious in my experience than either rugby or roller derby. But I won't get into the details of cleating, pushing in the trees, spitting...) We were down to the last half mile or so. I'm pretty sure I wasn't one of the first couple girls, but I was probably in the top five. A girl was right on my heels. Some friends of hers were standing along the course yelling something like, "You got that Prep girl! You got her! You can beat her!" She was breathing hard, I was breathing hard, we were both going all-out. The friends yelled, "You got it! You can beat her!" I still don't know why, except that it was just reflex, but I half-turned my head and said, "No, you can't." The girl immediately––dramatically––dropped back and finished way after me, possibly even got passed by someone else. I'll never forget it, and I felt terrible. I hadn't even intended to say anything. I was going to beat her anyway, but not with cheap tricks or cleats to the shin. Some may say it's best to take every advantage. But I wouldn't feel good about it. I like a level playing field.

So really, it just comes down to this: If you trash talk me, I will laugh at you. Because it makes you look ridiculous, and clearly I'm better than you. Mind games aren't going to work on me. And I'm watching you. Who knows where this cockiness came from, but it's pretty much great on the track (and in school, strangely. Thanks, MTPC program, for making me even more overconfident than I need to be).

Secret beauty regimen

I read a lot of blogs, and it seems like a popular topic is to discuss different face/hair/makeup tips and tricks. And I'm sure you're all dying to know how I manage to stay so beautiful and fresh-faced day after day. So I'll tell you here, recorded for posterity.

Okay, if you're done snickering now, keep reading.

1. Shampoo hair with whatever was last on sale. Currently, I think, Dove.
2. Condition hair with whatever was last on sale. Or use leftovers from hotel.
3. Pay special attention to skin. Must use something moisturizing, but light, but also aromatic. Or, just grab Kroger-brand body wash.
4. After shower, brush hair straight back and air dry. Once dry, put in ponytail.
5. If it's winter, put lotion on face. Just regular body lotion, nothing fancy.
6. Makeup: Nope. Skip it! This will save you like eleven billion steps later on when you don't have to wash it off.
7. At night, splash water on face and dry with hand towel. This step is optional.

That's it!

Such a complainer

Man, I was such a complainer in my old roller derby blog posts! Ha ha. A conversation amongst friends at church today, in which I tried to briefly outline the reasons there are two local teams who aren't going to play each other (this season, at least), reminded me of my former self in roller derby. Which, of course, made me want to reminisce about the "good ol' days" by reading old blog posts. Which made me want to laugh at their passive complainy-ness. Like this one. Or this one. Or this one. I'm so much happier now! But have so much less to blog about. It's always easier to write about conflicts than happiness, it seems.

End of an era

Today is Matthew's first ever day of not breastfeeding! Yay for me! And I don't think he's noticed at all.

It's been such a journey.

The plan when Matt was born was for me to breastfeed at least 3 months. Then the second goal was 6 months, and the ultimate goal was a year. I felt pretty sure I would not want to breastfeed past a year, though I was willing to concede another month or two depending on how well the weaning process was going. At 11.5 months, we pretty much made it.

I feel pretty proud of myself for this, especially since I haven't liked and still don't like breastfeeding, really. Sure, I feel strongly about it and that people should do it if they possibly can, but apart from feeling satisfied with achieving my convictions, it's kind of been a hassle. I like being just my own person. Well, it's complicated. It IS nice getting baby cuddles every single day no matter what. So, ambivalence.

Overall, weaning has gone spectacularly well. Matt really doesn't seem attached (hee hee), so dropping feedings has been no problem for him other than the first week, about 5 weeks ago, when he was slightly fussier. He seems to love drinking regular milk out of a cup, making cute slurping sounds (and dribbling milk all over everything).

But, weaning is also going spectacularly poorly for me in some moments. I was worried about getting some type of postpartum depression since depression runs in the family, but thankfully that didn't happen. But, man!, these hormone changes from weaning are killing me. It's ridiculous. I feel like a high schooler all over again, crying for no reason. Really. The other day I was writing an email and just started crying uncontrollably. It took me probably 10 minutes to get it together. And NOTHING triggered the crying jag. I wasn't even really thinking about anything, just typing about something boring and not baby related. So... hopefully things will even out quickly.

Also, I can't sleep. It has to be related. I'm tired, not caffeinated, not stressed, not hungry, haven't exercised too close to bedtime, then just lay there all awake and stuff. It's terrible, especially since Matt wakes up around 5 or 5:15 every day. And then I just feel like crying. Or sleeping all day. Or alternating between crying and sleeping. But instead we go about the usual routine, playing, laughing, strolling, going to the gym, romping around the yard. Ugh.

So that's not so great.

But yay! again. I can leave Matthew whenever I want (not that I have anywhere to go) and not have to worry about my boobs feeling like exploding! And now he's really like a kid instead of a baby! We made it!

Delusions of victory

When someone comments on my random bruises or gives me a second look at the gym because they recognize me from the roller derby recruitment poster I hung up there, I think, "Hmm, sure is nice to finally be on a winning team." And then I think, "Wait! We lost! We lost that game!" And then I think, "Well, kind of, I guess."

The bout on Saturday was great. It was the most fun I've ever had playing roller derby, though, apparently, we lost, 160 to 180. But there were so many great things!

1. The teams were pretty evenly matched. The other team definitely had us beat in sheer size and in experience playing together, but we were faster, more athletic, and more teamworky.
2. I got to play, like, the whole game. I think I sat out about five jams total. And one of those was because I got hit in the face and thought my lip was bleeding (it wasn't). This made me super happy because I've always wanted more playing time. Every game, probably, I've thought, "Man, I sure wish I could have played more. I'm not even tired." I know everyone says that they want to play more, but in the past, I've really felt that I got less playing time than people who were less-good players, who had much, much worse practice attendance, or who had racked up penalties and cost our team many points because of it.
3. Our team completely outplayed the other team. Usually outplaying the other team results in a win, which is probably why I keep thinking we won.
4. I did a lot more hitting than getting hit.
5. Our bench was calm. I've almost forgot what it's like to have an orderly, cordial, calm bench during a game. There was no fighting and no arguing. The coach told us what to do, the bench coach told us when to go in and sit out, and everyone just did it! So sportsmanlike. Yay.

And... Matthew says, "I'm awake, Mom! Come get me! No more blogging!"

But quickly, things that were awful about the bout:

1. Ten million official timeouts. Come on, officials. Get it together! (I'm a professed lover of refereeing, but this was ridiculous.)
2. Other team playing slow game. So, so boring. Also, all that start-line kneeling made my leg tired. But only one leg.
3. Bogus track-cut call at the end of the game that cost us the game.