Dear World: Your Support Leaves Many Things To Be Desired

The world, it turns out (who knew, eh?) is not supportive of breastfeeding. The Pumpkin goes to a quite excellent daycare. However, last week they suggested he needs formula. HE WEIGHS 22 POUNDS!!!! He's fine. I'll send more soy yogurt for food backup (he will actually eat most things until he horks, so the sad-hungry-baby noises are not such a good indication, people).

Also, work is forcing me to take my vacation time when I run out of sick leave (which happened about three months ago). We are not amused. Some days, I don't know how much longer I want to be working. Some days, I do know, and it's a very small number. Most days, I just feel incredibly conflicted that I cannot be all things to all people.

Every time the kid gets sick, it's an enormous strain. We both have to take off work. I usually have to leave in the middle of the day on no notice, because only one car. I have to cancel all my meetings and calls with people across the country; I have to reschedule them. He wakes up at 3 AM. We want to die. We are tired and cranky, and then we have to work on the weekends to make up for taking care of sick infant. Then we are more tired and cranky. It would be easier, in a lot of ways, to stay home, but I think (in this particular situation) that I would go insane.

Aaaaaaagh.

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Baby's First

Plane ride! Now with extra teething and a cold!

Happy Thanksgiving to all. May this special time of the year not make you want to do violence to any of your nearest and dearest. Or people on planes with waily infants, for that matter.

(We actually get along great with MY family.)

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Why

is it that every time we discuss a trip to the in-laws, I end up sitting on the couch crying for a half hour?

I even like them.

Mostly.

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!

I had many romantic, unrealistic notions before I had a baby!

He'll sleep with us!!
For a month, until the thrashing and snorfling and kicking got to be too much. And into the crib with you!

It'll be so hard to go back to work!
Except he screamed for two weeks straight, right before. And I WANTED to pay someone else to take him.

I'll breastfeed him as long as he wants!
Getting old already. Plus I am really damn hungry all the time. Plus he wants my food now, so I never get enough dinner because he's eating it.

I'll wait to give him table food until he can feed himself finger food.
Hah. Try: he'll be so crabby that we will give him applesauce in desperation. Then he will be so ravenous that we will beg him to please, please, eat one more bite of avocado. Then we will worry he will make himself ill from eating so much avocado. Then we will be chicken-pushers. EAT! MORE!! CHICKENS!!!

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Dr. S is applying for an academic job at Posh Private U in my hometown. Wouldn't that be lovely?

The other day I called my friend A., who went to Posh Private U, to chat. "If you lived here I would steal your baby," she said.

"If I lived there I would let you," I said. I've known her for fifteen years. Her daughter calls me Auntie J.

It's hard for me, to live so far away from family, to be somewhere so temporary, to not have a house and a dog and a life. We chose it, but it's still hard.

If we lived in my hometown, we would see my parents and my sister and my old friends. We would drop in for dinner, and go to the park together. We would visit my preschool friend's mother in Scenic Small Town in the mountains. We would go down to the island for picnics. We would take the Pumpkin to the petting zoo and let him hide in the bamboo stand. We would finally be able to build the life we want to have together.

One day.

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Even Better Than

the time that an especially moronic crime show claimed a human body would freeze solid at 40 degrees F:

I got a credit card offer in the mail today. One of its selling points?

"Our cards are made with carbon."

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I Hate People

It's a good thing that the police dispatchers are so nice. Because I call them all the time.

This apartment is still better than the last one: I no longer go pound on the neighbors' door with a shoe every night. However, between the loud drunk Latino neighbors (salsa music at 1 AM: not my favorite) and the loud drunk white trash neighbors (loud poundy music at 2 AM: not my favorite) and that woman with her damn CAT, I want to set them all on fire.

Ironically, we have enough cash in various banks and investments to buy a small house IN CASH. Fucking postdocs. One day we will live somewhere for more than two years and will not have people living below us and NOBODY WILL WAKE ME AT MIDNIGHT WITH THEIR DRUNKEN INANE WHITE TRASH CONVERSATIONS.

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