For want of a picture, a thousand words

I can't feel any of the fingers on my left hand because the baby fell asleep in my arms and his little infant melon is pressing my wrist into the edge of the desk. I'm typing all of this with my right hand and really miss the iPhone features of capitalization and fixing typos. Mostly I miss two spaces magically becoming a period and one space.

But the boy has been a bit fussy today (most likely more growing as he is shedding skin like a snake) so I'm grateful for the relative peace of his quiet breaths in my arms. (Earlier he was snoring so much Rich thought I was pumping breast milk.)

Rich is feeling a bit under the weather (maybe he's having a growth spurt too) and it's cold, gray and rainy today. I'd like to have a Christmas tree but that will be for another day. Rich's father always used to say the tree needing to "rest" on the back porch for a day or two after being purchased before bringing it in and decorating it. It wasn't until Rich was much older that he realized it was actually his father who needed to rest before that production. So tomorrow we will acquire a tree and as tradition states we will let it rest on our porch for a day or two and then give it a home indoors.

I'm not so sad about the temporarily paralysis of my left hand since that's where the World's Worst Hangnail (TM) has taken up residency. It has swollen to the point of lifting up my fingernail even after at least a week of medical care. We have brought out the big guns of "drawing salve", though - a disgusting black tar that smells like wet fart but should help pull out the infection.

I would show you a picture of our adorable son in the glow of the monitor but for once I don't have an iPhone or portable camera in arm's reach and the dSLR weighs approximately 40 pounds and wound snap my arm in two. So just trust me that he's beautiful and worth the numbness in my left arm and the carpel tunnel in my right arm from typing and the soreness of my enlarging chest as he delays feeding just a little longer. And also be glad I can't include a photo of this hangnail.

Squeezing out a few words

The last week has brought on a veritable fountain of baby spit up. Ian is still getting plenty to eat, so we really have more of a laundry problem than any sort of pediatric problem. We're working out some techniques to make things a little more manageable but it just makes everything a little bit more complicated. All of this started as soon as I started pumping and my milk supply increased. I already have plenty of milk to go around (my milkshake brings all the babies to the playpen, it seems), but now it's like a fire hose of sustenance and poor little Ian has a hard time keeping up.

It's timely that all this came about at the end of NaBloPoMo. Many folks lamented the need to write something when they really didn't feel like it. I've found it to be similar to how breastfeeding is going. I have to feed Ian every three hours and even if I have pumped milk on hand for Rich to feed him, I still have to pump at that same time lest my chest explode.

The more I pump or nurse, the more milk I produce. So even if I don't really feel like pumping or if it's really inconvenient to feed him at that time, it doesn't matter. He needs milk and I'm his only source. I don't have the option to take a day off.

Stephen King talks about the art of writing, saying that you have to read a lot in order to write well and that you need to write every day. Just like working out and so many other habits, the key is to make a habit of it. I'm trying to treat my writing like my breastfeeding (or vice versa). The more I do it, the easier it will be and the more I'll produce.

Let's just hope it's going to improve the quality as well as the quantity.

Finish line

I have a list of blog post ideas but just don't have the focus right now to work on any of them. And trust me, some of them are gonna be great. But tonight I'm just full of other priorities. We gave Ian his first bath last night and it was a success. We didn't drown the baby and it may have gone a small way toward getting him to relax and sleep before midnight. Sleeping is going great except that he's not ready to go to bed when I am.

It's the end of the month and I'm actually pretty amazed that I managed to post every day of NaBloPoMo with a newborn (and no power for a few of those days). Ian has been pretty low maintenance, though. We'll see if I can still succeed with this monthly project in a few years.

When I was pregnant everyone would warn us that the last trimester was going to be the worst. Then when we were cruising through the last trimester, everyone warned us that it was easier when the baby was on the inside versus outside. Then when we had a pleasant easy going newborn, everyone said to enjoy it before he got mobile. I'm sure at that stage we'll be warned of the perils of teenagers.

All I know is we're having a great time so far and I'm in no hurry for any of these stages to be over.