1m2aSandbox

I may not have mentioned before (I say sarcastically) that my family’s big on music.  My husband and I both sing, he plays guitar and piano and writes, I dance, it’s a family business.  So Maddie’s been surrounded by rhythm and music and movement since before she was born.  In fact, Brian took her pre-natal music education very seriously, introducing all the classics – Beatles, U2 – with a brief history of the band or artist and commentary on songs played.  Now that she’s here, she’s an avid music and dance aficionado:  being sung to is a favorite pastime of hers, and my dance concerts in the kitchen are always a big crowd (Maddie and Kitty) pleaser.
 
In an earlier blog I described her forays into instrument playing – the imperious hands of Madeleine have tamed both piano and guitar.  Instruments were her first segue from audience member to artist, and she quickly expanded her instrumental repertoire to include the bongos (great for releasing energy) and the Kazoo.  Ok, maybe it’s not a real Kazoo.  She’s discovered that putting the plastic hollow cover for her baby tweezers in her mouth (no choking danger, I promise!) and talking makes a really cool sound, and I haven’t the heart to tell her the Kazoo already existed.
 
So we’ve got arts appreciator, musician, and now . . .
 
She’s becoming a true song-and-dance girl.  Maddie has started both singing and dancing.

I may not have mentioned before (I say sarcastically) that my family’s big on music. My husband and I both sing, he plays guitar and piano and writes, I dance, it’s a family business. So Maddie’s been surrounded by rhythm and music and movement since before she was born. In fact, Brian took her pre-natal music education very seriously, introducing all the classics – Beatles, U2 – with a brief history of the band or artist and commentary on songs played. Now that she’s here, she’s an avid music and dance aficionado: being sung to is a favorite pastime of hers, and my dance concerts in the kitchen are always a big crowd (Maddie and Kitty) pleaser.

In an earlier blog I described her forays into instrument playing – the imperious hands of Madeleine have tamed both piano and guitar. Instruments were her first segue from audience member to artist, and she quickly expanded her instrumental repertoire to include the bongos (great for releasing energy) and the Kazoo. Ok, maybe it’s not a real Kazoo. She’s discovered that putting the plastic hollow cover for her baby tweezers in her mouth (no choking danger, I promise!) and talking makes a really cool sound, and I haven’t the heart to tell her the Kazoo already existed.

So we’ve got arts appreciator, musician, and now . . .

She’s becoming a true song-and-dance girl. Maddie has started both singing and dancing.

At last count, our coffee table had seven remote controls piled upon it.  We’ve got a remote for the TIVO, for the DVD player, the stereo, the satellite, the television, even the VCR (though it’s gathering dust in this TIVO age).  We even have what is laughingly called a Universal Remote, created to take the place of all the other remotes.  It hasn’t; it’s simply taken its place beside the other remotes. 
 
As annoyed as I am by our mound-o-remotes, I’d gladly add another one if I could use it on my daughter.  I only need one button- the pause button.

Since doing my series of entries on the whole baby registry thing (if you missed it, see part 1, part 2, and part 3) I’ve been having a few conversation with friends and family, and realized I left out one aspect – the people on the other side of the (changing) table.  I started thinking about some of the favorite gifts I received that weren’t on my registry, and wanted to pass them on.

Let me say first off that I’m not a big fan in general of shopping outside of a gift registry; items on that list aren’t picked whimsically (or easily, in my family’s argumentative case), and the car seat and bottle scrubber are on there because they’re really needed.  Sexy and fun it ain’t, but trust me, new parents will wax ecstatic over a Diaper Genie.

My daughter seems to be on some sort of daytime sleep strike, and has been since she was about three months old.
 
Somehow, we went from the round-the-clock sleep-and-eat thing to the sleep-at-night, stay-up-all-day thing.  I managed to coax a few naps into her schedule, but they rarely last longer than half an hour.  There was one day I remember like it was yesterday; she was almost five months and somehow magically fell into a three-hour nap (see previous blog!); the next day she was ninety minutes into another good nap when I had to leave the house, so I woke her up figuring it was no big deal.
 
I haven’t seen a three-hour nap since.

I’m a firm believer in breast-feeding; at 8 ½ months Maddie’s still going strong and we have no plans to wean for at least several more months.  Breast-feeding in public, though, is a bit harder for me to get into. 
 
Before you get up in arms and send me chastising email, understand that it’s not about breastfeeding itself.  I think nursing is beautiful and natural and I’m not at all ashamed that I feed my baby.  My issue is, if I didn’t show you my naked breast before I had a baby, I see no reason to give you a free show now.  So I’m one of the women who cover up with ponchos or blankets.  The only problem is, the blankets never stay put and are heavy and suffocating, while I have to stick my head down the neck of my poncho to check on things and it looks as if I’m either going into a “Don’t make me come down there!” moment or looking for a lipstick I dropped.
 
So when I found this product, I was totally psyched and got it for my girlfriend Abby to take out for a test drive.  With a three-year-old to keep busy, I knew she’d be nursing in public much more than she did with just one child.
 
Click below to read what she thinks about it.

In church on Sunday my pastor confessed to being a habitual blog reader.  Apparently there are dozens to hundreds of blogs out there by fellow church leaders, ruminating on various points of theology.  There’s even one called (appropriately enough) “desperate preacher” that goes into whatever scripture is on the church calendar that week, and Milind admitted to heading there, sometimes mere hours before he had to deliver a sermon, in the hopes of finding some new angle, some fresh way of dissecting the day’s verses.
 
Rather than making me worry about the quality of shepherding I receive, the news that he surfs for help comforted me.  As I continue to slog ahead in my Mommy job, I often scour the Internet looking for words of wisdom on a particular topic, be it teething fixes or separation anxiety.  And as much as I go to my trusted reference sites (see Top 5s Page), I just as frequently head to fellow mommy bloggers.  Though they don’t always have the answers, it’s somehow deeply comforting to see other women wrestling with the same issues I do.  If I’m going through a rough patch with Maddie and read a blog entry of a day gone well, I feel encouragement and hope that the tide will turn for me.  And if I read a posting describing a hair-pulling, at-wit’s-end type of day, I shamefully confess that it makes me feel good.  Not that I want others to suffer; I’m just happy to know I’m not the only one trying to figure out how to steer this Mommyhood ship.