It's a Girl

So, I've never really been the "girly" type. I hate shopping (unless it's for books) and only very, very rarely do I carry a purse. I don't really do jewelry--I didn't have my ears pierced until I was in my 20's, at my husband's insistence. I could care less what I wear, or how my hair looks. I do wear a bit of makeup, but only enough to deal with my invisible eyelashes, which, as I've mentioned before, I hate.

But I'm not a total tomboy either--I'm athletically challenged, I'm very introverted, and although I do play a lot of video games, they're usually the "girly" ones, and if not, I play the girly characters. (Yes, Alliance sucks, but they're prettier, and at least I can be the best of the worst players, instead of the worst of the best.)

So when I found out I was having a girl, I had only one rule for my family members: "Do not buy her pink, or I will kill you slowly."

Of course, we ended up with pink, but I like to think it was much less pink than she would have gotten without the threat of death. I've actually come to like a few of the least-pink items (shhhhhhh!). Unfortunately, though, my insistence on non-traditional color came with a horrible realization: I'm already beginning to act like my parents.

Until I got out on my own and went to college, my dad had this idea that I was a miniature, female version of him. I remember, at the end of my senior year, getting in trouble for something or other, and him saying, "You don't think like me. And therefore, you think wrong. And until you learn to think like me, you're not going to college."

Of course, I still went to college. Whatever the problem was, it blew over in a couple weeks, after I reminded him that a) my hard-won scholarships and student loans were paying for it, not him, and b) that I was 18,  adult, and he had no legal right to keep me there.

But the other day, when Olivia and I were at the mall, I couldn't help but notice the obvious limb flailing excitement at the pink section, and the equally obvious lack of expression at green and yellow (the colors I'd like to dress her in). She may be less than 6 months old, and it may just be a coincidence; but I realized that in limiting her choices in attire this early on, I'm setting myself up to limit her in other ways, and I don't want to do that.

So I'll dress her in pink, until she gets tired of it. All I can do is pray that it will be sometime soon.

Feeding Time

So, feeding a baby is not as easy as it sounds.

Most people with kids would probably agree, yet for some reason there are a lot of people (mainly people on the internet, who I suspect don't actually have any experience with children, or human beings in general) who say stuff like, "Don't worry about it! Those maternal instincts will kick in and it will just come naturally!" or "Babies are born with the sucking reflex, they'll catch on pretty fast, don't worry about it!"

But if you talk to actual people--lactation consultants, occupational therapists, experienced moms--you'd hear that in some cases, probably more often than people realize, one or both of those things don't end up being the case. Some moms really have to work hard to figure things out, and some babies just don't get it right away. And that's okay, because today there are so many people out there who can help, so many resources for new parents to take advantage of if there is any kind of problem.

Unfortunately, sometimes even those people are unable to help, or are just plain wrong.

Thankfully, Olivia and I started out great. She's my first, but the nurses in the hospital said I looked like a pro, and Olivia picked up on things right away. But after a few weeks, it became apparent that something was wrong.

Most babies end up losing some weight to begin with--even up to a whole pound--before they start gaining, so at first we weren't too worried. But, though most full-term, healthy babies regain that weight within about two weeks, Olivia was just not gaining much. Our pediatrician seemed worried that I hadn't felt the milk come in, like most people do--that hard, sometimes painful feeling that usually comes within the first week. But I never did. I was producing, but not much. Not enough, obviously, because by the time she was about 7 weeks old, she was still barely over her birth weight. So the pediatrician recommended we supplement her breastfeeding with a bottle.

But her father and I are probably some of the most stubborn people in the world, and it was soon obvious that she'd inherited the trait. We tried everything--every nipple, every bottle, formula, pumped breast milk, different temperatures of milk/formula, different positions and different people, the whole works. Everything out there. But she wasn't going for it. We even tried a syringe of formula with a little tube taped to the nipple, so she'd get the formula/extra milk while she breastfed, but she was also smart--she figured it out after two tries, and wouldn't go for that, either.

The pediatrician kept saying "Keep trying, babies won't stave themselves--if they're hungry enough, they'll eat," and I've heard the same thing from lactation consultants and experienced moms as well.

But not Olivia. We tried the waiting game--we went six hours without feeding her, and she still refused the bottle. After months of trying, I finally gave up, because I wasn't willing to risk making her sick by waiting any longer than that, and it was obvious that it just wasn't working. And I did finally meet a few people who said they'd had the same experience. It's not that the mom is lazy for giving up--I think for some reason people are quick to assume that's the case. It's difficult, but I was willing to do anything in the world I had to to get her to eat. But some babies are just stubborn, and they never take a bottle. Some will go strait to a sippy cup when they're old enough, and I'm hoping that, soon, Olivia will do that.

But in the meantime, I still sometimes struggle with milk production, and Olivia has remained barely on the percentile charts.

She finally chubbed up a little when I was able to introduce baby food. At first, it seemed like she wasn't going to go for that either. I ended up dipping a finger in the food and letting her suck it off, because for some reason she's okay with sucking on a finger, and after a few days, when she'd adjusted to the food itself, I switched to a spoon, and she took to that pretty well. And, though for a few weeks she'd only eat banana-related flavors, she's gradually expanded to almost any fruit and a few vegetables.

But for awhile I was really getting mixed messages--people would say "Don't worry, there's nothing wrong with you or her, if you stress out about it it will only make things worse," and then the same people would say "It's your responsibility as her mother to make sure she gains weight, and if you don't, it's called "failure to thrive" and child services might come after you, and she could have developmental delays."

I feel like it would have saved me an extraordinary amount of stress and worry if someone had just told me the truth to begin with--that sometimes babies are just stubborn, and that's okay--because you're not alone, and you can do this.

Evil Eye

I have my mother’s eyes. 

The thought reached me in an epiphany one day as I stared into the mirror, wishing for what seemed like the millionth time that my lower eyelashes weren’t blonde.

                

It’s only the lower ones—my upper lashes have always been just short of brown, but dark enough at least to be noticeable. Both sets of lashes are thin, sparse and short, so much so that even with the best mascara, nothing short of fake lashes could ever make me a Cover Girl.

                

Even so, it wasn't until I made the connection between us that I realized my mother’s eyes were the reason I’d considered myself ugly for so long. It wasn't my skyscraper forehead. It wasn't my huge front teeth, big enough for billboard advertisement, and it wasn't the giant overbite for which I wore a headgear at night for years on end. 

It wasn't the dark circles under my eyes, or my translucent skin, pale and thin enough that my veins stretch like a blue highway map beneath the surface. It wasn't the stretch marks—the new angry red ones or the old silvery white (gifts of an out-of-control growth spurt in puberty when I was eleven). It wasn't the white scar beneath my lower lip, or the thin, half straight half wavy hair I've never been able to tame. 

It was the eyes, the eyes of a woman I’m proud to say I’m nothing like.

                

Yet, ironically perhaps, my eyes have always been my most complimented feature. 

“They’re so blue!” 

I hear it all the time. Not necessarily that they’re beautiful, though I've heard that often enough. No, what people find so striking about my eyes is, for some reason, their blueness. 

I’ve never been particularly impressed with the color myself. I knew a girl in high school whose eyes were an amazing turquoise blue, a shade riding the line just between blue and green, like a tropical lagoon. Those are pretty eyes. Mine are just a pale grey blue, darkening to grey around the edges. They hardly work—I haven’t been able to see more than six inches past my face since about the third grade. They've gotten so bad I have to wear contacts rather than glasses. Glasses thick enough to correct my vision are too expensive—they have to use a special material for the lens, because glass lenses would be too thick to fit in a frame. But it’s not their failure to perform correctly; it’s not the bland color I hate. It’s the blonde eyelashes.

My mom started doing drugs when she was about fourteen years old; she’s fifty-six now, and thirty-two years of smoking and drug abuse have not been kind to her body. Her skin hangs loosely from her bones, like a suit three sizes too big. But it isn’t soft, like my grandmother’s, which feels almost like silk; it’s tough, not thick but hard, covered in brown age spots so thick she looks tanned, though her skin used to be as fair as my own.

She’s lost so much weight she looks almost skeletal, her skull especially prominent beneath the thin, lined skin of her face, and when she speaks, she has a bit of a lisp because the last of her teeth, yellowed and rotten black at the root long ago, have finally all fallen out, and she cannot afford dentures. When she laughs, now, she covers her mouth with her hand, and when she speaks she draws in her lips to cover the naked rotten gums.

                

What’s left of her hair has become brittle and stiff, the once fiery orange-red faded to a light blonde, the color of dead grass in winter. She no longer has eyebrows, her drawn face in a constant expression of surprise, and her eyelashes, too, deserted their post long ago or turned as light and brittle as her hair.

                

My mom was in jail for a large portion of my childhood, so I never had a chance to develop any of her personality traits, and according to other members of my family, I get the majority of my looks from my grandfather (on her side) and my personality from my grandmother (on my father’s side).  

                

But when I look in the mirror, I can’t help but see my mother’s eyes.

                

It wasn’t until I began wearing mascara my sophomore year of high-school, sneaking it out of my step-mom’s bathroom in the morning to apply it on the bus, washing it off before my parents got home from work because I wasn’t supposed to wear it, that I began to feel beautiful. I know now, of course, that I have many fine traits; many girls would kill for my nails, which grow naturally strong, unbendable, and look like a French manicure without any help from me. I’ve always had some generous curves; and though my hair may be obnoxious, it’s soft and shiny as any Garnier model’s, without the expensive product. I’ve always thought there was something regal about my high, fine cheekbones, and my fair skin, though almost transparent, is almost as soft as a baby’s, and until I got pregnant, was nearly as flawless as any model’s after airbrushing.

                

But back then, boys never flirted with me—the ultimate, completely accurate judge of true beauty. So I assumed I was ugly, and I just knew my eyes were to blame. Those horrid yellow eyelashes, which have always seemed to emphasize the dark circles beneath my eyes, made me look tired and worn, adding more years to my age than I can claim. Without those lower lashes, my face seemed to me stern, empty, expressionless. But it wasn’t until recently that I realized there was something more, that the biggest reason for all those years of self-esteem issues stemmed from a dislike for my mother and what she represented; the childhood I’d lost, the loneliness and embarrassment I’d buried deep in my heart and forgotten in all but the unconscious portion of my mind.

                 

The other day I found myself looking into my daughter’s eyes and hoping that when they change from that deep, dark blue most babies are born with, they will lighten to a beautiful hazel like her father’s, with his long, thick dark lashes, so I’ll never have to see my mother in her.

                

And then I realized—I can’t do anything about that. I can’t change myself. I can’t affect what she looks like as she ages, I can't change any of her features. All I can do is ensure that she has no reason to dislike anything about herself because of something she sees reflected in me. 

Dreams

As you might have noticed, I tend to suffer from delusions of grandeur. Though most people probably consider me quiet and well-adjusted, it's only because they don't know me well. In the right crowd I am neither of those things.

So until recently, had you asked me where I see myself five to ten years from now (presumably, you're interviewing me for a job, because that's the only circumstance in which that question is normal) I would have an appropriately delusional answer for you:

In five to ten years, I plan to have become as rich and famous an author as J.K. Rowling, but awesomer.

Your next question would probably be whether my family had any history of mental health issues, but eventually you would probably ask what I would do with all of the money, and I have a disturbingly specific, highly detailed answer for that as well:

I would build a house.

No ordinary house, mind you--this house would probably cost all of the money I would ever make in my entire life as an awesomer J.K. Rowling.

Remember the house in that movie The Party? Yeah, it'd be kind of like that, but even better. The indoor stream thing, specifically, is a must.

There would definitely be a pirate-themed bedroom for the kids. And maybe a second one for myself, though the real master bedroom would be on the second floor. To get to it, you would climb a spiral staircase, which would wrap around a very real-looking fake tree, with the branches supporting the staircase. You'd emerge into a sitting area: can lights in the ceiling, a fireplace  surrounded by a sectional couch, which would face a huge flat screen. Everything is ultra modern yet natural--all wood, stone, and stainless steel. To one side would be the bed area, which would be a cave. Literally. A few columns of stone would separate the two areas, and you'd emerge into a dark, cool stone room. The huge bed would be against the back wall, with a fish tank set into the floor as if the bed were floating on the water. Shelves carved into the walls would hold my library of books and collection of unicorn figurines.

These would be in the backyard surrounding the natural-looking, waterfall-fed pool, something like this or this. Said pool would be in the middle of a Japanese garden--think this, this, and this.

And this is our driveway.

Believe it or not, there is more, but for the sake of your sanity and mine, I will stop there.

But after Olivia was born, I was forced to reconsider my home-improvement plans. Being a mom is hard work; in the 6 months she's been around, I haven't had much time for my writing, and I don't see that changing anytime soon.

Honestly, though, I don't really think that's a bad thing. I know people like to joke about how babies will eat your soul and crush your dreams, and while that is true in a sense, it's also true that it's totally worth it. I can go without the cave-room, and she will live without her own pirate ship. (Even though I hate swimming, that pool is still happening. There will also be an underwater cave).

I don't mind that I will most likely never have those things, because I'm a grown-up now, and I realize that (most of it) is unreasonable and wasteful. Now, I'd be really happy to have a nice, small house in a safe neighborhood. There would be less cleaning involved, for sure, but more than that, I would have my family. And now that I have it, I realize that that's all I really needed in the first place.

Cats

I have to say, one of the biggest reasons I wanted out of the dorms at school was because I could finally get a cat. So of course, one of the first things I did after my husband proposed was pick out a kitten.

Dora, short for "Adorable," (and also conveniently the name on an explorer, which is her favorite hobby) is a calico cat I adopted from a family down the street. They probably have around ten cats at a time, though since they're all indoor/outdoor cats it's hard to ever get a good count, and none of them are fixed so they have kittens ALL the time.

Anyway, when I heard they had a new batch we went to take a look. I'd like to say that it was the hardest decision I've ever made in my life, and I would say that had we actually had any choice in the matter, but we didn't pick Dora--she picked us.

Don't get me wrong--she was one of the two I was really interested in anyway (we ended up getting the other one later for my in-laws, and we discovered that Dora really was the superior choice). But she made the choice for us. We played with each of them a bit, including her, but when we put her down she wouldn't leave us alone. She followed us around the house, mewing in that tiny little high-pitched kitten voice, and if we didn't pay attention, she climbed the nearest piece of furniture, as high as she could go, and meowed in our faces. And, lacking a conveniently-placed piece of furniture, she climbed our legs.

Thankfully, I refuse to wear shorts, so it wasn't really painful, it was just cute. But the little attention-slut won us over pretty much immediately. And that's how she is all the time. She loves people, all people, everywhere. She loves to be held, petted, and played with at all times, and she's always very gentle. Basically, she is the perfect cat.

But the true test came when it was time to introduce her to Olivia.

I'd read online about all the cats that were really great until the baby came along, at which point they began peeing on everything, or sulking in a closet all day, and all the ways to break it to them gently that they weren't number one anymore--rubbing the baby's clothes/blankets/lotion on the cat so they smell the same, introducing them a few minutes at a time, all of it.

And, because I'm lazy, I decided I wasn't going to do that. Dora would like Olivia, or she wouldn't, and she'd get used to it. Thankfully, she proved that there was no reason to worry.

Dora spent the first four months after Olivia was born with my in-laws, while I finished school, graduated, moved, and all of that fun stuff. So the first time they met was only about a month ago, when I finally had time to take care of her. I was sitting in bed feeding Olivia, and Dora walked in and jumped up on the bed. She walked up, sniffed Olivia, and promptly set to purring and rubbing her face on every part of the baby she could reach.

Olivia's eyes got real wide, and she reached up and pet her like she'd been doing it forever. Somehow, she knew just what to do with a cat, and Dora loved her. They were immediate best friends, and Dora still handles entertainment while Olivia eats.

I usually like to be all (probably annoyingly) philosophical in my writing, because as I'm sure I've mentioned before, I don't usually like to talk if I don't have something important to say, and that includes writing. But I honestly don't have anything meaningful to say. It just made me happy to know that my both my babies are perfect.

Bubbly

It's crazy to see just how different kids can be from their parents. I've mentioned before that I am not what you might call an outgoing person. I know there are people out there who can have more than one good friend at a time, and maintain those relationships for years and years, and that's great. The same people are often also able to talk to random strangers without having an anxiety attack both before and after, to go to parties at which there will be people they don't know, to remain comfortable in a room containing more than five people.

I am not one of those people. 

Not to say I don't have friends; I probably have about six to eight friends at a time. But they're not all equals in the friend capacity, if that makes any sense. For example, I can do anything with my best friend one-on-one--talk, share secrets, watch a movie, go out to eat, sit in silence, cuddle, all the disgustingly girly things even I tend to do from time to time. 

But my other friends, though I love them and love doing things with them, are really more auxiliary friends; I wouldn't be comfortable doing anything with them one-on-one. It has nothing to do with them--I'm a selfish, egotistical person, and if I didn't think they were truly amazing people, I wouldn't hang out with them. But I tend to consider myself a very boring person, which tends to have a negative affect on my ability to interact socially. If we're all together, I can be very funny, but one-on-one, I always feel like people laugh just to be nice, like you do for retarded kids and senile geriatrics. 

My dad, on the other hand, never met a person he didn't know. There were times we'd stop by Wal-Mart to pick up one or two things, and since that shouldn't take more than 10 minutes, my sister and I would wait in the car while he went in to get whatever it was. An hour later, he'd come out laughing saying he met a guy who also likes boats and they're going sailing next weekend. Just like that, he bypasses my usual system of friend acquisition, which, now that I think about it, is eerily similar to the way nerdy guys go about getting a first date on bad sit-coms--talk casually a few times over the course of a year, and if that goes well plan a group outing with people so socially inept it will make you look good in comparison. 

The difference in personality between us caused us both quite a bit of frustration, and even anger sometimes. He never could understand why I didn't have more female friends (guys were always so much easier to talk to, but I wasn't allowed within 100 feet of a human male without another, female escort, and even that was iffy) and I never understood why he wanted me to have more friends. 

But I have to wonder what Olivia will be like when sh gets older. Her dad and I are both introverts, but I have no idea how much that matters. Right now, she absolutely loves new people. The other day, we were out to eat with my aforementioned friends, and Olivia was pissed off. She cried the entire time, and it wasn't the little "Hey, I'm bored over here, pay attention to me" whimpers, it was full-on "WE'RE ALL GOING TO DIIIEEEE" screaming. At least, it would be if a baby had any concept of death or danger. 

Yet every time a strange person walked up and had to talk to her, which was pretty much everyone, she immediately stopped crying to smile bashfully and suck on her fist. And as soon as they were gone, it was back to "The world is ending" crying, as if nothing had changed. 

Like I said, I know nothing about heritability of personality traits--my knowledge of "Science" stops at "There are things, and they are made up of smaller things." So I have no idea if this means she's outgoing, or if she's just being a baby, and her inherent cuteness and bubbly personality will abandon her when she needs them most, as was the case with most teenagers. 

All I do know is that every time she sees me, and her entire face smiles, a little ray of sunshine pierces my soul. Whether she grows up liking people or not, I hope she never loses that smile.  

Astigmatism

I got my first pair of glasses when I was ten. They were sturdy things; big, oval brushed nickel frames with what must have been plate glass lenses, which perched on the bridge of my nose like a clumsy industrial songbird.

I’d always had a little trouble seeing the chalkboard in school, but for a long time no one ever mentioned that this was unusual, and it wasn’t bad enough that I ever had to mention it. It wasn’t until the fourth grade, when we moved from my old private school in Hillsboro to the public Geggie Elementary in Eureka, that anyone noticed something was wrong.

Most schools these days do periodic screenings for things like vision, hearing, and scoliosis, and I remember having them done a few times, but I guess Good Shepherd didn’t do them, or if they did, they missed it. Whatever the reason, the first screening I had at Geggie revealed that I was, as my husband calls it, “Blind as a butt.” (Or, in layman’s terms, very nearsighted).

So my parents scheduled my first eye exam. I honestly don’t remember much about the exam itself; it was probably much the same as they are today. It’s very similar to the screenings, which most people have done, and if not, anyone who knows how to operate a television has probably seen it before.

What I remember was the sensation, a week later, when all of a sudden I could see. I mean, I could really see.

I could read the street signs we passed on the way home. I could see the wings of the birds overhead, the colored patterns of their feathers. I could see people picking their noses in the other cars, and every furry, bloodstained squirrel, skunk or opossum on the side of the road.

But the thing that fascinated me most was the leaves. I could see their individual shapes, their edges, as clear as if I were holding them in the palm of my hand. On every tree we passed, I could actually see the leaves fluttering in the breeze, delicate and sharp, like a thousand razor-winged butterflies.

When I think of that moment, the way such a small thing could so completely change my perspective, I really miss being a kid. To a kid, every discovery, every person, place, or thing they see, every experience, is new, and amazing, and exciting. Olivia flails her little arms and smiles every time someone walks into the room, every time she finds a new toy. I think if everyone could get that excited about the little things in life, we'd all be better off.

Anyway, I've never been a very vocal, communicative person; most of the time, I feel like there’s no point in talking unless I have something important to say; for example, “Your hair is on fire,” or “Your outfit makes you look like a hobo clown hooker.”

But I remember the day I got my glasses babbling to my parents about all the things I could see, because for so long, I’d lived my life in a featureless haze of color and motion. But on that day I broke through the fog, and the view was spectacular.