look out

i know how to youtube. expect videos galore. especially since it's nfl kickoff and the steelers are playing. homeboy has his jersey on. stay tuned for pics.

all better

thank gawd we're out of the hospital. there really isn't much worse in the world than being cooped up in a small airless room with a sick baby for three days. it's a special kind of hell.
luckily, i think we have the most patient child in the world and he hardly complained - i, um, wasn't as good. i had to dig deep and find my warm safe place.
the very worst thing was the high pitched beeping noise the IV machine made when it was done. it'd fire off every two hours just as i drifted off to sleep not at all phasing the baby but sending a piercing jolt through my body and instantly spurring hot sweats. i have deep empathy for torture victims now.
the most fun thing about being married to tayloe is his sense of humor and it really peaks in front of an un-suspecting audience. nurses are just about the most un-suspecting audience there is, especially the pediatric kind, because i think they expect parents to be very serious and concerned and such.
tayloe had an especially good time with penny, who believed pretty much everything he said, including (1) he wasn't tay's dad, (2) he wasn't my husband (3) we weren't sure who tay's dad was, (4) i'd had 6 husbands, and (5) he was the secret sultry lover of the crocodile hunter who just died.
on the way out, a sweet, small asian lady helped us with our things.
tayloe: "whoa, honey. i sure hope we can get all of this on the motorcycle."
no reaction, so he tried again.
tayloe: "this is a lot to put on the MOTORcycle, but i think we'll manage. t2 will just have to sit on the handle bars."
asian lady: "you ride bike?"
tayloe (pleased): "oooh yes. i ride the big bikes. bmw right honey? and this is going to be a particular challenge but i think we can do it. right honey?"
asian lady: "you'll put all this on bike?"
tayloe: "yessss sireee. it'll be fine. we don't have far to go."
asian lady: "hmmm. you might have to come back for wife?"
tayloe: "now that's a good idea. kitty, you just hang out. you don't mind staying here another hour or so do you?"
asian lady (concerned): "you really ride bike? (to me) he ride bike?"
me: "no. no. we have a car with a car seat and everything. we're driving a car."
asian lady (confused now): "you have car and bike?"
me: "tayloe. explain to her that we have a car."
tayloe: "well we have a hummer."
asian lady: "ooohhh, a hummer."
me: "no, no. we don't have a hummer. we have a volkswagen".
tayloe: "no we have a hummer. remember? you gave me that hummer a few days ago..."
there was more, but those are the highlights.

the ickiest weekend

we've had the most unfun 48 hours possible. friday evening, t2 was acting funny. not funny ha-ha. funny sick. his head was hot and he wouldn't eat. he had a temperature.
here's something i didn't know: a temperature over 101 is a pretty serious thing in an infant. his was just above the danger mark. by 9 p.m. we were knee-deep in emergency room doctors going ape shit over our son. little guy was getting poked and pricked and prodded all over. because he can't sit up and say, "hey parents, i have a headache but otherwise feel ok so lets just go home," they have to assume the very worst. assuming the very worst means doing all kinds of tests for the very worst, which of course meant me assuming the very worst (recall janundice).
i spent friday night and a good part of saturday in a code red heightened state of worry intensified by a young resident who got me uber hyped up about infection and death. it took a good hour, some stupid tayloe jokes and one long phone call to our pediatrician for me to regain sanity.
in our relationship, i'm most often the mellow one. traffic jams, getting lost, long lines - i can pretty much take it and go with the flow. all these things make tayloe bonkers. however, when it comes to trouble with our son he transforms into the dalai lama. i'm not as helpful. i become an irritating mix of an overactive puppy and the worst girlfriend you've ever had.
it's one of my 'needs improvement' areas.
we're on the eve of night three in the hospital. he's still being pumped with antibiotics, but the last 18 hours little tay has been 100 percent better with nothing more than the sniffles. all his blood tests have come back negative. his spinal fluid is fine. he's alert and charming and cute as ever. hopefully he's forgotten all the madness he went through on friday night and just focusing on knocking out what seems to be nothing more than a cold.
other than the constant waking, the stale air, the other screaming kids and the processed food, the hospital isn't really too awful. i haven't so much minded having a nurse at our beck and call. the meals are unimaginative and bland, but at least someone else is making them and cleaning up the mess.
plus, the nurses adore him. they ga-ga over his hair and his lips and his sunny disposition. they coddle and snuggle him. i woke up at 4 saturday morning to find a nurse in the corner of our room rocking him. "he's just so sweet," she said.
so yeah, on a scale of 1 to 10, this weekend gets a 0 on the fun scale.
but because i like to make chicken salad out of chicken shit (it's how i balance being manic and over anxious in the midst of crisis) i see the silver lining.
it's this: we've gotten to know our son in the last six weeks. we knew enough to know he was sick and we know enough to see that he's better.
when i look at him., i think he knows now that we're aren't just two freaky people he got stuck with. i think he knows that we'll take care of him, that he can feel safe with us, that we love him.

bushy bushy blonde hairdo

i had a surfing lesson today and this is the picture tayloe took. isn't it lovely?
there's nothing like a very tight neoprene wet suit to really shine the light on the last of the baby weight.
i've been so excited about learning how to surf since we moved here and today was my day. and peter (the dude closely examining .... um, i'm not sure what he's examining exactly) was my instructor. from a distance you might think that peter was the best part of the lesson. i'll be honest - he wasn't ugly close up.
sadly, he had the personality of a clam.
anywho, i learned some moves on land and then peter and i headed out to the ocean as t1 and t2 watched from the shade of our beach umbrella. it was everything i hoped it would be. especially the wipe out. wiping out is a lot of fun and i had a lot of opportunities to try it.
peter, though, was a drill sergeant. i'd hop on the board, he'd push me into a wave, i'd try to get up, fall over and then wade my way back out to him, getting clobbered by waves along the way. the minute i got there, he'd tell me to hop back on and then he'd shove me back into another pile of whitewater.
after about an hour, i forgot my pride.
"look man, this is so fun, but i just had a baby. i'm pretty sure most of my muscles are atrophied. also, i've swallowed so much salt water my mouth feels like i've eaten a jumbo bag of potato chips only i'm not nearly as satisfied."
i managed to look alive on my way back to the beach. i smiled and said thanks and made small talk even though i wanted to drop down right there and take a nap in the sand like a desert island wash up. as soon as he was gone, i flopped down in a chair, drank a liter of water and moaned a lot.
i wondered outloud if maybe surfing is a little too ambitious a start to getting back in shape. super dad chimed in, reminding me how much fun it is, how good the water feels, how awesome it is to be outside in the sun, how blissful it is to be out there paddling around.
he's right. it beats the shit out of a gym. plus i get the added bonus of sandy beach hair.
so now we're on a mission to get stronger and healthier - the first time in our 5 year marriage we've pledged to do it together. this, i know, is a good thing.
but yowza. i'm pretty sure i'm going to have to sleep in the chair i'm sitting in right now because moving ignites burning fire inside my body. tayloe (his lesson was yesterday and he surfed after me today) is passed out on the couch nearby.
he just moved a little bit, groaned very loudly and said, "i think i died." the baby is sound asleep in his bed.
still, i'm proud of us for learning something new - something that someday our teenage son may not mind doing with us.
none of us can wait to go out and do it again. just maybe not tomorrow.

Happy Birthday Grand Jane!

peace

everyone in my house is asleep and it's so quiet and lovely. all i can hear is the sound of my fingers typing. it's delicious.
after several days of talking myself down off the ledge and not buying formula to supplement t2's meals, i let my worries and fears and mostly guilt go last night and bought a bottle of similac.
i did this for two reasons: first, i love breastfeeding, but it's a bit of a ball and chain. second, i couldn't get ahead on storing breastmilk cause chompers was pretty much taking all there was at every feeding. for the past two nights, tayloe has fed him a bottle of potion and i've been able to pump and get our overstock supply back in business. i like having stockpile of the good stuff. if i don't it means i'm responsible for every feeding everyday and that's just about the most unfun thing in the whole world.
still i mulled over the forumla bottle for a good 3 hours last night. shaking it. reading the ingredients. reading the directions. just staring at the bland white bottle with and the pathetic little teddy bear on the lable and wondering if the manufacturers really think that makes me feel like they care.
FORMULA. there's something about it - FORMULA. i mean, no one's even trying to disguise that it's a completely manufactured, unnatural product. that seems very unamerican to me.
i'm not a breast feeding nazi. i think parents should feed their kids whatever suits them. never let your kid see a boob or nurse until your he's 4. it's an intensly personal decision that only parents can make. i get that.
but when it came down to making the choice for my baby, i really struggled. i just kept thinking about how new and fresh his body is - not a nano-ounce of processed food in him - and what a wonder that is. part of me wanted to just keep it that way.
that was my heart talking.
my brain said this: don't be a dumbass. you're tired and you're starting to be a teenie tiny bit resentful. by the end of the day, you feel like a shrivled raisin. this is not a huge deal. this is for your sanity.
i thought about calling the doctor. i think i actually dialed the number. and then i realized i was just wanting someone's permission. isn't that stupid? our doctor, who's spent maybe 1 hour with us max, isn't at all suited to make a choice for my family. i'm pretty sure that's my job.
so i just let it go. it was a win-win. t2 chugged it and got some extra dad love. i got a shower and waxed my eyebrows.

perma press

i've had terrible luck with swings and rockers. the most recent swing malfunctioned a couple of days ago. at first it seemed it just needed new batteries, but after 3 rounds of fresh ones it still isn't working. that's a lie. it does, technically, work. it's just that the swing doesn't swing as much as it just limps along. and it makes this terrible weezing noise.
i put tay in it and he looks at me like ive just told him i'm going to drive him and his date to the movies. "mmmmooooommm, this is so lame." and then he starts crying.
anyway, i'm going to take it back and break down and buy the papassan cradle swing super macdaddy contraption that i should have gotten in the first place. however, getting out of the house and making a trek to target is kind of a hassle because it requires getting on the freeway.
until i get around to it, tayloe gets the dryer treatment.
you should know that this is something my mother recommended a good while back and i , erhmmm, scoffed at. it's a triple grand slam -- turn it on and it's warm, makes noise and vibrates. tay loves it. sometimes he naps, sometimes he just lays there and makes eyes at the breaker box on the wall. sleeping, cooing, plotting how he and his new best friend breaker box are going to take over world -- i don't really care as long as he's content.
i also like it because it gives him special alone time. he's comforable and cozy and happy and we aren't in the room and have very little to do with his peace. i think this is a good thing.
there are several other added bonuses, not the least of which is that i'm encouraged to actually do laundry so i'm not just running it empty. however, running it empty isn't above me. putting the same load through 4 or 5 cycles isn't above me, either. we have some really, really dry clothes.
little guy is on it right now, sleep, sleep sleeping away while i watch monday night football. (you're goin' down carson palmer).
i'm really glad our dryer isn't in the basement.

cat hat

do you like this hat? i put it on today when we went to the beach and t2 loved it. smiled and smiled and smiled at me. maybe he thinks his mom is a clown.
tayloe and lawrence, of course, made fun of me.
there's a little boy next door - he's maybe 7 years old - who rides his bike up and down our sidewalk. back and forth, back and forth, back and forth he's been going all summer long.
yesterday around 2, he cruised by our house as usual, except this time he had a big plastic monster truck tied behind him. only, the rope he used was a little too long and he just couldn't quite get his speed right so instead of it coasting along smoothly behind him like i imagine he hoped it would, he was dragging it.
hhhhrrrrsssshhhhhrrrr. hhhrrrrrsssshhhhrrr. he tried all afternoon to make it work and just couldn't seem to get there.
sometime around 4, he ditched the truck for (and this is sad) ... a paper airplane. he nearly wore a trail on the sidewalk trying to get that thing to fly. he'd peddle super fast, wringing his neck back behind him to see if the plane had lifted off, then losing his balance a little, wavering, crashing into the grass.
"see what you have to look forward to?" i told my little boy with as much enthusiasm i could muster. "someday you can spend 5 hours dragging things behind your bike just like that kid."
he smiled at me. and then he farted.

smiley face

this is how he looks at tayloe pretty much all the time. they adore each other.

we love those pittsburgh steelers

fast wilie tayloe john tate t2 jte tatertot jack parker super steeler.

what i've learned

1. burp cloths make themselves scarce when the puke comes
2. pacifiers come in sizes
3. babies don't read parenting books (actually, neither do i)
4. there isn't a diaper wipe on the market that smells normal
5. baby einstein is stupid
that's my top 5. there's more, but i won't bore you.
it's testosterone city here. three boys, wolly and me. the steelers play in t minus 45 and counting, so i expect the levels to rise significantly as the night progresses. i can't lie and say i'm not excited for football season, but i do feel a sudden urge to do something girly like wash my hair and paint my nails. i think i will.
here's what's new today: first, i'm boycotting pareting books (see number 3 above) because they create crazy people and i'm pretty sure are written by the kind of morons that offer unsolicited kid advice in the grocery store aisle. i don't much like those people so i don't much think i need to read their books. so bye bye 'what to expect the first year' - you're going to the bottom of the baby trunk. i'll call you if i need you.
also new today is that t2 slept from 9:45 until 4ish last night. bliss.
the little flirt also smiles pretty much whenever he's awake and makes these 'aw shucks' smirks and locks in on our eyes and says ggaaahhh a lot. we love him and i'm pretty sure he's starting to love us.
having said that, you should know it isn't uncommon for me to forget we have him. actually, not forget so much as just not remember immediately. this morning we all went to the beach for a walk and a smoothie. tayloe grabbed t2, lawrence grabbed the stroller and i grabbed my purse. outside, as i watched tayloe putting the baby in the car it registered that he is in fact ours and that maybe i should go back inside and get the diaper bag. and a blanket to keep him warm cause its breezy at the beach. and maybe a pacifer.
yo, blondie. you have a baby.

Lawrence is here!

Cousin Lawrence Altaffer is in the house. Currently T2 is resting in his arms peacefully. For how long we don't know. More after the burp.

super dad in overdrive

ok, i'm making up for lost time. but you gotta know that tayloe just came into the kitchen and said, "listen up baby, we're moving to brentwood." brentwood is a very nice, riche neighborhood in west LA.
tayloe thinks we're moving to brentwood because he was accepted to audition for a reality/quiz/tv show called 'show me what you got.'
i would have linked to something there, but i couldn't find any information on it.
"we're about to be $5 mil richer," he announced.
"oh we are?" i said, not looking up from my computer.
"yeah, baby, taste the money?" he said. he was actually licking his lips and making little taste noises, kinda like the ones t2 makes when he nurses.
he showed me a VIP pass for the audition printed out from his computer and an email from a casting assistant.
i'm not kidding. he was really proud.
"what do you have to do?" i asked. flash to american idol outtakes. flash to tayloe in our kitchen making taste noises. flash to william hung singing 'she bangs.' cut back to tayloe standing in front of me beaming and doing a little jig.
"i don't know. but $5 million dollars baby. i responded to their questionaire and told them how i wanted to use the 5 mill to help restore our historic family home, ensuring that my one month old son could live there someday."
five years of marriage has really taught him the art of getting me on board.
"ok, lets go," i said, "but what if you have to strip or something? or live with a bunch of lunatics in a windowless house for 5 months?"
he raised his eyebrows, faked a strip tease and pranced off, disappearing into his office.
i'm left with the sad job of telling prince luscious lips (above) that his dad is certifiable.

one full, wacky month

i'm running out of things to name my photos. i have about 1,000 versions of 'cutebaby.' 'cutebaby1,' 'cutebabya,' 'cutebabytayloe,' 'iamacutebaby,' 'i am so cute.'
i'm going to have to start thinking of something else, but honestly that's all i can come up with everytime i look at his photo. "oh, what a cute baby." maybe i'll get super organized and create different folders for each month. mmmm yeah, that probably isn't going to happen.
speaking of names, i'm having a hard time with tayloe's nickname. i call him tay sometimes and i really like that especially since it's what my husband and mother in law are both called, but i so closely associate that name with his father that it's hard for me to use it on anyone else. i look him in the eye and i call him tay and then i wait for tayloe to say "what."
it's very confusing.
also, we have a friends who have a daughter named tay and that always gets in my head, too.
it's like one day deciding to call a plate a bowl. only it's not 100 percent like that because i'm not so much changing his name - i wouldn't change john tayloe for the world - as trying to find one good nickname that fits for our purposes.
it should be known that outside of close friends and family he'll be called tayloe. unless of course we come up with a really rockin nickname and it just sticks and seems like what he should be called for eternity.
do you see how twisted i am on this? i definately should have put more time into thinking about names when i was pregnant. it's just that we kept hitting these same road blocks. i figured the answer would reveal itself the day he was born or very soon after. thank god he looked so much like tayloe - we might still be mulling over a formal name.
there's also this: he for sure has a lot, a whole lot, of tayloe in him, but slowly i'm seeing bits and pieces of me. for example, he eats like a bird just like me, prefering tasty little snacks over one large belly aching meal. if he had his father's love of noshing, he'd probably be in the 90th percentile for his weight right now. instead, he's in the 25th, tipping the scales at a lean, mean 8 lbs. 10 oz. and measuring 22 inches.
so i just keep trying things out. i ran through a few with a friend yesterday: jack, john, johnny, j.t., teetwo, tater, tatertot, tate, duo, deuce. t2 works for writing purposes and i don't mind calling him that sometimes, but it's not very personal. i mean, it's a letter and a number. is that all i've got?
his uncle geoff calls him deuce, which is a perfect name for an uncle to call a nephew. but a mother to a son? it almost seems cruel.
i think tayloe is a little conflicted on this too because his favorite name for him is little guy. not tops in the 'personal' catagory.
tate. TATE. ttttaaaatttteee. tate. tate. that one's on repeat in my brain. i'm gonna try it out for a few days.

Daddy Weighs IN

Thank heaven for little sisters. I was fortunate to enough to have a little sister named Mary born around the time I was 12. I must have learned something because its all coming back. The burping, the diaper changing, the back-handed pinkie finger drool slide up the face and back into open mouth move. I love that one. It's friday morning and Catherine's asleep and T-LO is hanging out with his paternal grandmother and loving life.

Life is good.

regularly scheduled programming

our boy is a little tease. the past two nights he's been back to the usual up every 3 1/2 to 4 hours. i can handle it - he is afterall just a baby - but the sweet taste of 7 straight sleeping hours still lingers.
i still love him. i even hold him and kiss him sometimes (see photo).
here's the deal: i love california. we have a blessed life here. however, it breaks my heart a little each day that we're far away from family. since my mom returned to north carolina, i've called her everyday with updates. sometimes i don't have an update cause it's just screaming and sleeping and pooing as usual, but i call anyway because i just want to talk. yesterday i called to ask her where the coffee filters are, not really expecting her to know.
i send her and my dad special photos. i update this blog as often as i can, partially because i know they're reading it. still, nothing can replace their loving arms. i want very badly for them to know their grandson. i hope i do a good job helping them.
tayloe's mom is set to arrive this afternoon and i know when she leaves i'll feel the exact same way.
awah holy crap & spank a midget. i'm getting all mushed out and my inner schedule nazi took the cue and went on a smoke break.
it's 1:38. time to make the doughnuts.

super snoozer

teetwo slept from 9:30 p.m. to 4:30 a..m. last night. seven full, uninterupted hours. i can honestly say this is the first time i've ever had prayers answered.
all day i've been trying to remember exactly what we did yesterday (did he get a hold of my vicodin?) and recreate those steps minute-by-minute. i'm non-detailed person who can't remember anything, so this has been challenging.
the only thing i know is that i fed him on time, so i'm back to being uber nazi uptight about keeping him on an eating schedule. i don't care if that means i have to feed him in a public bathroom in venice beach next to a gaggle of bums. homeboy isn't straying from the routine.
i told him this morning that he's opened a pretty knarly can of worms. in behaving beautifully, he's issued an enormous challenge that i'll no doubt have to rise to. now that i know he's capable of such a thing, i have to keep trying to make him do it over and over again. he needs only to have a brief convo with tayloe or wolly to understand how tedious his life is going to be from now on.
had he consulted his father, he would have learned never ever to do anything right for fear that you'll have to do it again. once tayloe put the bathmat back on the tub & closed the curtain after showering. i haven't let him forget it one single day of our married life.
our boy will be 45 and i'll say to him, "once, when you were three weeks old, you loved me so much you slept seven straight hours."
in the meantime everynight will be a cliffhanger for me. i'll drift off wondering if a scream will stir me in an hour, two, three ... seven? bedtime's a bitch.

there's no i in team

first, i just want to say that my time is so parceled out that i had to decide just now whether i should update this blog or pump breast milk. i don't have time for both. the bossman is going to want to saddle up to the 24-hour buffet soon and it's my job to have his meal waiting for him. it was a tough call - blog and use your brain a little; pump and spend another hour looking at your boob, which will log you in at approximately 6 hours today spent staring at your chest.
a couple of months back i said probably the stupidest thing i've ever said in my life. a girfriend of mine is still seeking a mate, but longs for a baby. eight months pregnant, i imparted this wisdom on her: raising a baby on your own wouldn't really be that hard.
WTF was i talking about? AND where do i get off? i am a rotten friend.
i'm sure it could be done. people do it and i admire them. it's just i'm really really really sure, more sure than i have ever been ever, that it's the toughest thing in the world. i'm also sure i could never do it.
if tayloe weren't around i'd be rocking silently in a corner somewhere in a room with padded walls.
this morning fussy mccrying pants was having a fit. tayloe took charge, plopped him in the baby sling thing and had him hushed in minutes. i did what i always do when tayloe takes on a task. i took pictures.
then, he was brave enough to take a phone call. so brave, right?
not me. no way. if it were me, as soon as i answered the phone, tay would belt out a scream which would scare the pees out of me. next i would drop the phone, which in turn would lead me to bend down and pick it up at which point tay would be dumped from the sling and onto his head on our hardwood floor. i'd have some explaining to do.
so i gotta say, t2, you're tops in my book -- make no mistake that i adore and love you. but your pops? he's the dude.

what he sees

yo, lady with the blonde hair & boobs? can you put down the camera for a sec and, erh, help me? there's a huge blue fish hanging from a bar in front of me and i think it has teeth. it definately has a gang of friends - something green and white and something else i can't quite make out. they're just hanging here in front of my face and i'm scared and we've been having a stare-off for like 2 hours and i'm pretty sure i'm going to lose.
while we're on the subject, i dig that you put flowers by my changing table cause i love looking at them (of course i know you're just trying to distract me), but the ones that are there now are, um, mean. i'm not kidding. yesterday the big purple one made fun of my ears. i prefer daisies because they're simple and kind and their vocabulary is limited.
thanks. i promise i'll eventually learn your name and quit smiling at you when i fart.
love, t2

mmmmmm BOP

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t2 had his first lunch with a celebrity in beverly hills today. sadly, he slept through the entire thing & contributed very little except some very cute cooos. maybe he was dreaming he was at lunch with a celebrity in beverly hills.
the picture above is no doubt one of the most shameless things i've ever done. if i look just a little bit retarded, it's because i was feeling just a little bit retarded. that's taylor hanson on my left, middle boy in the boy band hanson. here's the truth: i kinda had a thing for taylor hanson a while back. in a previous life i detailed my lust after i interviewed him for a web site i worked for. i had an autographed photo of the band above my desk for years. it says, "catherine: rock on! taylor hanson." i treasure it.
you gotta know, he has these gorgeous eyes and this very cute unassuming mild manner and this kinda cornfed truth about him. i am a sucker for all of these things.
so when tayloe told me he was having lunch with him today, i invited myself. and i brought my camera.
tayloe apparently finds my crushes amusing because he was quick to mention that taylor and i had met before (omg, blush infusion) and that i'd kept the autographed photo for quite some time (wink, wink) that mere weeks after meeting tayloR i met him, tayloE. get it? she loved tayloR and then she met tayloE and married him? yeah, i don't really get it either, but my husband thought it was funny.
and then later as we were leaving, el husbando asked if he could take some pictures of me and taylor and the baby. seriously, it was like being on a date with my dad tagging along.
of course, i'm overjoyed that all of this happened and that i have this photograph even if my hair looks funny and even if he's like, 45 lbs lighter than me.
if nothing else exciting happens in t2's life, he'll always have this picture. maybe someday i'll frame it for him. then, he can hang it over his desk at work.