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three months with alice

Posted on 09. Aug, 2010 by Princess Lasertron.

Dear Alice,

Today you are three months old.

I feel like I keep waiting for the “hard part” to start. There have been some tough days, but those always come at the times when I stay up all night working as you sleep, or when I am taking you all over town to meeting after meeting. (Or when your grandparents are babysitting you, or so I hear.) But you are just an easy baby. An easygoing baby. A very smart girl.

You like to play by yourself, and I usually leave you alone for some period each day to roll around and explore without the distraction of mom or dad. Sometimes I turn on your Wee See DVD and you lay entranced on your side, playing with your hands, and watching the shapes on the screen move. Sometimes you prefer to play with your crinkly frog, or chew on your kitty wrist rattle, or gather up your blanket in your hands and stuff it all in your mouth. You like feeling fabric in your hands or brushed over your arms and tummy. You also really like being naked.

This month you exploded with expression, personality, and love. Seriously–until this month, nothing could have made you unhappier than a) being hung upside down by your toenails, and b) being held or touched or looked at by your dad. But now you are starting to prefer him over me in certain ways–you like it better when he changes your diaper, when he carries you in the wrap, when he holds you facing out and lets you suck on his knuckles.

Here are some of your new skills…
…playing with your hands–clasping them together, sucking on them, and and grabbing anything near them
…rolling over, both ways. The first time you rolled over back-to-front, you were on top of my craft table over a cement floor–Luckily I was standing right there and caught you. From now on, you have to play on the floor, and you HATE it because you can’t see anything. You would rather see faces and people moving around or posters on the wall or the tv than your toys on the floor. If you liked sitting in the wrap, you could be up with all the grown-ups, but as I said before, only dad can do that right these days.
…watching tv. It really distracts you while I’m feeding you, and if I put you on the couch facing away from the tv, you wiggle and turn yourself around to be able to see it. So. That’s the beginning of a great habit.
…enjoying the baby swing.

Once you mastered rolling over, you pretty much stopped doing it. It’s almost as if you are thinking, “Well, I’m finished with that project, give me another one.” You seem to be tackling crawling next–you kick ALL THE TIME and scoot around the floor, off the couch, around in circles, all over the place. Once you go mobile, my productive work days will certainly be numbered. Oh and I can’t wait for you to choke on a button. Obsessively babyproofing.

You still have the same schedule–you go to sleep each night around 2am, wake up to eat around 9, and then fall back to sleep until around 1. You are a WONDERFUL night sleeper, but a complete non-napper during the day. You are wide awake and ready to be entertained from when you wake up until the wee hours of the morning. That is okay though, because I still like to work at night and having you up that late to be able to sleep in works for us both.

Our bedtime routine includes a bath (when you become a bubble monster), feeding you and singing to you while I make blog posts and edit photos, and then letting you suck on my finger after you’re full in my lap until you fall asleep. It really works every time.

I keep thinking to myself that you are more than a gift–every baby is a gift. But I feel like you were almost created exactly for me, to give me what I was missing, to make my life easier and happier–much easier and happier than I expected. The more I learn about you, the more astonished I am at how perfectly your nature fits in with mine, like puzzle pieces. I feel intuitively tuned into your needs and it’s as if you, in turn, are aware of what I need from you. What I’m saying is that you could be a much more difficult baby, and I already have so much stress from work. I am so grateful and amazed and blessed that you are not a source of stress for me, but happiness and calm.

You are calm and observant and social. You give me those morning smiles and they melt my heart, and you happily look out the window or doze during car rides around town, and you sit alert at meetings and events, looking around the room, smiling at all of your new friends. You eat when I feed you. You sleep when I rock with you. You babble at me when I lean over you and sweep my hair across your face, tickling your cheeks. Thank you for being what I need, and thank you for teaching me to slow down a little bit. I love learning about you every day.

We love you, pancake.

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making it work as a working mom

Posted on 29. Jul, 2010 by Princess Lasertron.

I received a thoughtful question in a past post.

“I am amazed that you can get work done with a newborn around. How do you still make progress with caring for Alice at the same time? I have a home business too, but it’s hard finding time for work AND the baby…does Dave watch Alice so you can work? Please send me an email with some tips if you have time…I’m getting frustrated and afraid I might have to close shop until baby is older!” -T. Bride

Planning and luck.
Tuning into baby.
Leaving my schedule for hers.

I wanted to be a stay-at-home mom since I was little. Maybe it’s only because that’s the example I was raised with. Throughout high school and college I never saw myself becoming anything other than a mother. That’s not to say that I rushed into motherhood or spent those years looking for a husband or didn’t cultivate my own interests and passions–I mean look at me now, I’ve been a workaholic for five years. Although the dream of being a mama never went away, I sort of subconsciously reframed my goals in the context of the reality of my life.

It is unrealistic to expect that anyone can go from a busy career–especially as a businessowner–to doing nothing but mothering. I know now that that’s not how I’m built. I like to juggle too many things at once. I don’t have any example to look to of a mother who doesn’t really stay at home, doesn’t really work at home, but is somewhere in the middle. So it’s easier to make it up as I go. If there were no commitments, no customers, no meetings, but just me and my daughter and my work which I love, how would I fit it all together? That is what I asked myself.

Growing up I saw my mother’s devotion to her family and love for homemaking and I interpreted that as who she was. She made lunches, she built forts, she brought us on all of the family errands, she watched my plays and read my stories and helped me hold an art show in my bedroom. Her life as I knew it revolved around us. But now that I have a child, I can better appreciate all of the dimensions to my mom, to any mother.

She is a volunteer in several organizations, she is a very talented writer and photographer, she is sort of a foodie and loves to travel. She didn’t abandon her passions when she became a mother, she made them work within her life as it changed and evolved.

So that is what I have done. I am continuing to live my own life and, at this point, Alice is along for the ride. I hope that she will look back and see that I was an encouraging, inspiring representation of A Woman Who Has Many Roles and that she can remember the point when she herself veered away from me onto her own path.

So.

I am lucky that she is an easy baby. Very predictable and easy to communicate with.
I am lucky that my parents and grandparents are nearby and supportive. I often work at their house where they help me by making me dinner and entertaining Alice.
I am lucky that I was able to move my studio out of my house and form the coworking space. It was perfect timing as I now have a place to bring her when I work at night.
I am lucky to have the flexibility to adapt to Alice’s schedule instead of forcing her to live within mine.
I am lucky to have an assistant who can lessen my workload.
I am lucky to have a husband who does the cooking and cleaning and laundry.

Generally I am just lucky. I can’t rationalize it.

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working mom

Posted on 24. Jul, 2010 by Princess Lasertron.

My good friend and neighbor at the Mastercraft building, Bill Sitzmann of minorwhite, dropped by CAMP on Friday and took some pictures of me while I was working with Alice.

They also did my picture for the cover of Omaha Magazine (when I was a billion months pregnant). Getting photographed by one of the gentlemen from the minorwhite collective is something I always get really excited for because they make everyone and everything in front of their lens look so beautiful.

Alice says “p.s….did you enter the felt flower kit giveaway yet?”
xo

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two months with alice.

Posted on 09. Jul, 2010 by Princess Lasertron.

Today, Alice, you are two months old…and….well, I can’t believe how well this is going. I can’t believe how much I love motherhood. I mean every mom loves their baby, but I love mothering. And that is because you make it easy for me. You’re a great sleeper and eater and very communicative–I tell myself this is my reward for 60 hours of natural labor. But in all seriousness, I think that your sweetness is a gift to me. Ever since I knew you were growing inside me, I have been sending you my thoughts and hopes and worries and joy. I tried to tune into what you were telling me in return. When you arrived two months ago, I felt that it was best to follow your lead and let you tell me what you needed and that intuition has kept both of us well-rested and happy.

Maybe it’s because of that that we were already in tune with each others needs. But I think your calmness and connection with me is a gift from you because you knew I needed some stability. Some routine. Some calm. Where I am frantic and manic and anxious, you are loving and quiet and observant and appreciative. Thank you for giving me that and reminding me every day of what is really important to me.

For the last two weeks, you have been very clear about the fact that you either want to be held by me, or be lavished with attention from all of your friends and family. Being alone in any way is very upsetting to you right now. From your first little feeding tummy-to-tummy with me in the morning to when I make dinner with you in your wrap (btw, you love the wrap now that you can hold your head up) to each night when you fall asleep in my lap, you are held and cuddled. This is fine with me–as you continue to notice the world around you and discover your fingers and toes, you are slowly gaining more independence and I know I will miss this snuggly time someday.

You have set your own bedtime routine which you adhere to strictly. Anything we do before bed is fine with you–sometimes it’s a bath, sometimes it’s tummy time, sometimes it’s just eating until you fall asleep. But after 1:30 am, it is impossible to keep you awake and you calmly drift off to sleep. You also fall asleep when anyone so much as mentions the word “car.” You always sleep in the car, and since you go everywhere with me and I am still working hard, we usually go on at least one car ride a day. I wonder if that is adversely affecting your natural sleep schedule but we have been doing this since you were born so I suppose you are probably used to it. This is your life!

The best advice I have gotten that I am trying to follow is simply not to take everyone’s advice. Not to even ask for advice (or unless it’s from my own mom, who has been amazingly helpful and supportive), because to be honest, as soon as I hear that someone else’s kid is sleeping at a different time or hitting a different milestone, I start to question my own methods. Your dad and I are trusting our intuition when it comes to raising you. We are trusting what you tell us.

…You are beginning to calm down at the sound of my voice (rather than just the sight of me).
…You love to talk–”hooooooo,” “aah,” “BEH!” and “hee!” are noises that you coo out all day long.
…You refuse to take a pacifier but you continue to accept bottles of pumped milk and, of course, our fingers.
…You haven’t grabbed a toy yet–you don’t even seem to notice them–but you play with my hair as you eat, grab our shirts, and clutch your own clothes.
…You are starting to consciously open and close your hands. You are sucking on your fists, but no fingers yet.
…You toot all morning, every morning. They are LOUD.
…You love being on the changing table–sometimes we sit up there naked for an hour and just kick and chat.
…If all else fails, baths always do the trick–you have never cried in the tub. Our doctor actually showed me that trick when you were crying in his office and he put your hand under warm running water. The sensation fascinated and surprised you immediately and you drifted into calm. Since then, I have always used that trick to relax you.
…Your birth announcement ran in the paper this week!