Help me, Dr. Ferber...you're my only hope

Call me cruel, call me unfeeling, call me a bad bad mummy. We are Ferberizing this kid, and the process starts PRONTO.

I used to brag that I had the best little baby in the world, because up until a month ago, Jade usually went to bed around 9pm, got up once at 3am and then slept until 8am. "What a good baby!" people would exclaim when I proudly told them she only got up once. Yes, she was my good, smart, perfect child. Until she turned 5 months old, that is, and began to display a penchant for partying in the wee hours.

I don't mind getting up once a night to feed and change her, but 3 and 4 times gets to be a little much. I become Zombie Mummy, Jade becomes Miss Crankypants, and together we don't win any congeniality contests. Ferberization began to sound pretty good.

Ferberizing, for those of you not up to date on your kiddie psychobabble, is a method of sleep training where you let your baby cry in small increments, while reassuring her that you are still there, you still love her and it's okay for her to GO TO SLEEP. The trick is that you don't crack and pick her up. That's what she wants you to do. That's what she knows YOU want to do. So you have to fight every instinct in your body that is commanding you to go and seize your screaming child in your arms. Instead, you have to fight nature and let her "cry it out," as they say in Ferber parlance.

Several of my friends have used this method with great success. Several others, proponents of attachment parenting, think I am sick and cruel. My step-mom, who is a nurse, applauds Ferber, but I have a feeling that my mother-in-law is in the second camp, although - to her credit - she rarely offers advice. But you can tell a lot from the tone of a MIL's "Oh?" in response to your declaration that you plan to let her beloved granddaughter cry herself to sleep.

Our first attempt at the whole Ferber thing occurred last night. Jady Lady sleeps in a crib in our room (Daddy's idea) which makes the whole process even trickier. D is a big softie and I was hoping he'd sleep in the Blue room so as not to disturb my resolve, but he stayed put and admirably held fast to the rules. I fed Jade at 10:30, then again at 2:30, but when the fussing began at 4:45am, I said a silent prayer to Dr. Ferber and let her cry for the recommended 3 minutes before going over to give her a comforting pat. I went back to bed. The crying turned to screams of rage. D and I clung to each other; neither of us needed to say a word, but we were both thinking, "LET GO OF ME! I MUST GO AND PICK UP MY BABY! MY BABY NEEDS ME! LET GO OF ME!!!" We tightened our grip on each other.

At the 5 minute mark, I went and talked to Jade again. The screams turned to shrieks so loud my eardrums reverberated. Same thing at the 9 minute mark, and the 12 minute mark. But at the 15 minute mark, her shrieks subsided into angry hiccuping sobs, punctuated by the familiar "squish squish" sound of Jade sucking the heck out of her favourite two fingers (think Maggie Simpson's soother sound, but wetter). She was still ticked off, but had figured out that screaming wasn't going to help. And she slept through until 7am. Whoo hoo! Best of all, when I asked her this morning if she still liked Mummy, she gave me her signature gummy grin and squealed. Phew.

Tonight is Return to Ferber Mountain; let's hope it goes smoothly. If we crack now, baby Jade will know she rules the roost and that won't do us any favours now...or in 16 years!

Worst. Haircut. Ever.

I don't consider myself an especially vain person, but c'mon - everyone has something about themselves that they just don't dig. I bet even Aishwarya Rai (purportedly the most beautiful woman in the world) wakes up some mornings and says, "Ugh, look at my perfect eyes. They are just too perfect."

For me, it's my hair. I can count on one hand the number of times I've been satisfied with the cut, style and/or colour. It's baby-fine. It's naturally mouse-coloured. It's limp. To combat these shortcomings, my signature style is two pigtails, which is cute and all, but probably not the best look for someone approaching the big four-oh.

Add the hormonally induced baldness, and I've got myself one annoying hairdo. So I did what any woman does when faced with the ego-slashing horror of bad hair: I made an appointment to get it cut.

My beloved stylist - the only guy who can make me like my hair for at least 24 hours - is in Waterloo. Waterloo may as well be 1000km away these days. Which caused me to act rather rashly, book an appointment with a stylist in the Kink that I didn't know - the first stylist available - and go without any clear idea of what I wanted her to do. Dumb, dumb and dumber.

When she asked the question that all stylists ask ("So what are we doing today?"), I shrugged, explained my issues and said those five fatal words: "Just do whatever you think." I should have known I was doomed when she chirped, "Oh, you're going to be a great client. I love how you don't care what I do with your hair!"

In all fairness, she was very sweet, and did hunt through a magazine for some ideas. She stopped at a photo of someone named Mandy Moore, who had a cute, scruffy little cut that looked easy to work with. Sure, I said. Go for it.

Half an hour later, I looked up from my gossip rag to see that I had been transmogrified from a sort of cute, kinda hip, still youngish pig-tail mum to a 1980's, no-nonsense Wal-mart mop-head Mom. With a capital M. Holy. Crap.

"What do you think?" asked perky stylist. I nodded and manufactured a smile that hurt my face. I told her it was very....nice. Inside, I was screaming "AUGH! AUGH! AUUGHHHHH!" (Which is Dunstan for HOLY CRAP HOLY CRAP MY HUSBAND WILL NEVER KISS ME AGAIN!!)

All of this is my own fault. I do not blame Miss Perky Stylist. I was desperate, I acted desperately and now I have to live with the desperate consequences: Worst Haircut Ever. Thankfully, said haircut will grow out eventually. Unless I snap and shave the rest of it off with D's beard trimmer.

And no, you can't see a picture of it!

Dunstan Dunce

My loving sister from Oz sent us a DVD when I was pregnant. It's called "Dunstan Baby Language," and promised to reveal the secrets of baby talk. I thought the idea was sweet; D snorted and rolled his eyes. Then we kind of forgot about it and at one point it became a coaster for Tanzi's beer during her summer visit. My sister from Oz kept asking me whether I'd watched the DVD and I would hem and haw and say, "Ooohhh, not yet, but next week for sure!"

Then came the business of giving birth and recuperating and learning to breastfeed and no sleep, and needless to say, Ms. Dunstan was completely forgotten. Until the screaming began, about the fourth week after Jady lady's arrival.

I was slumped on the couch, bleary-eyed, watching my gorgeous daughter turn purple with unexplained rage. She wasn't colicky, and she really didn't scream that much. But when she did - man, oh man, that kid could really holler. For a long time. Her screams made both me and D want to run and hide, which was not a helpful reaction.

It was then that I remembered the promises of the lovely, raven-haired Ms. Priscilla Dunstan of Australia. I lunged for the coffee table, shuffled through the stacks of assorted crap and fished out the magical DVD.

"Your baby speaks Dunstan," it said on the back. "Your baby is talking to you. Now you can understand." Tucking Jade under one arm, I peeled off the cellophane and popped the disc into the DVD player. "You will feel less stress as your baby becomes happier. You will feel like a successful parent," the insert promised. Eight years of research, remarkable story of an Aussie woman, universal language of babies, blah blah blah. I turned up the volume. My husband would likely laugh at me, and my brother-in-law would make that "you're crazy" hand motion when I told him, but I would do it. I would learn the whole freaking Dunstan lexicon if it would only stop the insanity.

As luck would have it, the lesson (and DVD) was short: Dunstan-ese only consisted of 5 words. Yeah. What are these groundbreaking words, you ask? NEH, HEH, EH, EAIRH, and of course OWH. Meaning hungry, uncomfortable, gassy, really gassy and tired. And ALL babies say these words. Yep, all of them, regardless of race, language, background etc. At least, that's what Missus Dunstan says.

Now, call me nutty, but I really did begin to hear Jade say "NEH" (which I came to interpret as HUNGRY RIGHT NOW MUMMY) and "EH" (which means OW OW OW THE GAS! I AM A WINDY BABY!) and this was extremely helpful, as I no longer tried to shove a boob in her mouth when she said "Eh" or put her to sleep when she said "Neh." As for the rest...well, perhaps I wasn't listening closely enough. I don't think I ever heard her say anything else on the DVD.

It's a neat idea, very nicely packaged, and Ms. Dunstan is mighty attractive. The thing that burns me about the whole Dunstan thing though, is that they don't tell you about the million other words babies say. Such as "WAAAAAHHHHH!", which I personally think has to be the most universal of all baby words. Or what about "AAAAIIIIEEEEEEEEEEEEE?" Or even "ARRRGHGHGHGHGHGHGHGHHHH!" (Oh wait, that's what I say after a Jady screamfest.)

Anyways, I'm glad there wasn't an exam for Dunstanese, because I surely would have failed. I've taken the handy chart off my fridge, because I got tired of trying to explain and defend it, and frankly, Jady Lady and I are starting to come to vague understandings based on facial expressions. We'll figure each other out eventually, DVD or no DVD.

Now if they'd just make one on the universal language of husbands, I'd be set.

The White Poppy

So what are your thoughts on this: instead of wearing a red poppy, I'm toying with the idea of wearing a white one.

I thought it was a rather new-fangled idea, but apparently the white poppy has been around for quite awhile. Since 1933, according to the 'net; a women's guild in England started wearing them to symbolize their committment to peace. I like that.

I don't typically wear poppies of any colour for Remembrance Day. It just isn't my thing; I never wore an AIDS ribbon, or a Breast Cancer ribbon, or those little angels you sometimes see. I deeply appreciate the sacrifices made by so many not that long ago; heck, Grandpa Feick was a doctor in WWII. I just don't feel I need to wear a poppy to prove it. I don't usually care to attract attention to myself, but there's a wee little bit of the shit disturber in me (pardon my language) that likes the idea of wearing something that might invite conversation.

By wearing a white poppy, I'd run the risk of offending someone, somewhere. Which is not something I'm eager to do. But I am a fan of people talking about things, even in the grocery store line. I'm a fan of making conscious decisions instead of simply sticking a red poppy on my coat because that's what you're supposed to do this time of year. I don't want to disrespect those who "SUPPORT OUR TROOPS," anyone with family in the military or anyone who has lost someone to war; I just like the idea of wearing my peacenik proclivities on my sleeve, so to speak, and being willing to talk to anyone who asks me about it.

Thoughts?

Anti TVite

Don't hate me for what I'm about to reveal: we have a TV, and it's a dandy one, but....we don't have cable. Or satellite. Or even two fuzzy channels from bunny eared antennae. Nope, ever since we moved to Someday, our TV has been used as a dust collecting DVD viewer only.

When we moved in, we decided not to get TV for the summer; we didn't miss it, and so here we are, over a year later and still decidedly TV-less. I think that we're an anomaly in this day and age of media saturation; I only have one other set of friends who don't watch TV. And my husband and I aren't even super smug granolas. I facebook, we both email and my husband needs to be surgically removed from his blackberry. But when it comes to TV, it boils down to this: 1) we're kinda cheap (we can't get cable here and satellite is over $75 a month!), and 2) we try hard to find better things to do than melt into the couch for hours on end in front of the squawk box.

There are a million and one things that need doing when you live in an old house on a rural property. Lawn mowing alone takes over 3 hours a week in the summer, and don't get me started on snow shovelling in the winter. There are gardens to tend, dogs to walk, leaves to rake, garages to paint and mutant dust bunnies to chase. Add a baby to the mix and who the heck has time for TV anyway?

I will admit that I miss shows like Dancing with the Stars and House, and before Jady came along, I'd sneak down to my brother-in-law's to watch them. But I can catch shows like Glee online, and when D and I really do have a few hours to chill, we rent a DVD and enjoy every minute of it. I like that we have to make a conscious decision to make the time to watch something, instead of just having the TV on endlessly in the background.

All this being said, I think our TV-less state has finally started to wear on my husband's nerves. He missed one hockey season last year, and I think he's getting sick of my dad calling on Saturday nights to mock us for not being able to watch the game.

My dad, by the way, has a gargantuan big-screen TV and every sattelite channel imaginable. When he comes to visit us, he's lost, because he's forced to (gasp) talk and listen to music. He was here last week and he walked into the living room, stared at our black, dusty TV and shook his head forlornly. "Geez, you kids," was all he said.

I know that when I lived in the city, I used to have the TV on quite a bit, sometimes just as background noise, not because I was actually watching anything. I suppose TV kind of becomes a habit. For example, I recently went away for a weekend with a couple of friends; we had a lovely hotel room with a beautiful view and a fireplace, but the first thing my one friend did was walk over and switch on the TV. Having been TV-less for awhile, I found the noise jarring and unwelcome. But to her, it was the natural thing to do.

At this point, I've told D he can go ahead and get sattelite if that's what he really wants. I do feel bad that he's missing out on hockey, cause he loves it and I think watching a few games a week is pretty harmless. But I honestly think he just wants to get some channels so we seem more "normal." I think he's tired of explaining to friends and relatives who stare at our blank screen in puzzlement why we don't "have TV."

So we'll see...by this time next month, I could be a converted TV queen instead of an anti-TVite.

In praise of...my new car!

I tend to be pretty set in my opinions (see my blog entry about my need to always be right), but strangely, since marrying D, I've come to change quite a few of them. He takes great pleasure in teasing me about all these changes of heart, too.

For example, I vehemently opposed all-inclusive vacations, declaring them "boring" and "prissy." Then D took me to Mexico for a week, and as I sighed with bliss on the beach with a frozen drink in my hand, he asked me how I liked all-inclusives. If I remember correctly, I stuck my tongue out at him and went back to sunbathing.

I also used to bemoan the noise and stink of snowmobiles. My dad and I always grumbled about them as they blared up and and down the road in front of his cabin, and I made the mistake of complaining to D about the wretched things one winter. "They really disturb the peace," I muttered. "So loud and stupid." So he stuffed me into a snowmobile suit and put me on the back of his loud, stupid machine. We were on it less than an hour before I was begging him to please let me drive.

So it goes that I used to violently oppose owning any vehicle larger than a 4 door sedan. Definitely NOT an SUV. Oh no, I'd never own one of those. SUVs were for right-wing eco-haters who got their jollies frittering away our precious fossil fuels. When D strong-armed me into test-driving a Toyota RAV-4, I was secretly relieved that I didn't enjoy it. Same with the Honda CR-V. But then I made the mistake of letting my Dad talk me into trying a Subaru Forester when he and I were in Owen Sound one day. I don't hang out with my Dad very much, so I did it to humour him. D gets a kick out of quoting what I said when I came home: "Oh, that car was sah-WEET!"

Nope, I didn't end up with the "sah-weet" Subaru in my driveway. But I do now have a Nissan Rogue. Which is kind of like a baby SUV. Sure, it's full of phthalates and it guzzles slightly more gas than the Kia did, but I...and it hurts me a little to say this...I love it. That's right. I LOVE MY NEW CAR. Me, the one who hasn't actually ever owned a brand new car. So to further my "In praise of" series, here are a few reasons why I love it.

1) It starts. It stops. The Kia didn't do either very reliably. 'Nuff said.

2) It's like the last bowl of porridge in the Three Bears' house: not too big, not too small. It's not scary like a Hummer, or obnoxious like a Lexus SUV, but it's no hurridly built piece of crap either. The Rogue is shiny, spacious, and pleasant-looking without being all "Hey! I'm a brand new SUV! Lookit me, you lousy 1985 hatchback! Yeah, I'm talkin' to you!" No, the Rogue is all about Polite Modest Luxury. And that's just fine with me.

3) It's one heck of a smooth ride. The Kia would hit 90km/h and start to shudder like a bowl of Jell-O; the Rogue hits 110 before I even realize we're in an 80 zone. (Don't worry, I'm working on my lead foot.)

4) Stuff fits in it. Car seat, stroller, overnight bag, coffee mugs, oversized purse, shoes, beach chairs, beach umbrella, diaper bag, groceries, bags of dog food...oh, I could go on. I have no idea what its capacity for "stuff" is, but I plan to find out.

5) No dog hair. Yep, the Rogue is a no-Neko zone, as decreed by my husband. Secretly I am not at all sorry about this, although I put up a weak protest just for appearance's sake. But it is so nice not to sip coffee with dog hair floating in it, or drop an apple and have it come off the floor looking like a hedgehog.

6) My husband calls it my "truck." Or my "vehicle." Cuz it has 4 wheel drive. I've never owned a car that didn't automatically spin doughnuts in the snow before. Or one that warrants being called a truck or vehicle. That makes me feel like a big girl.

RIP Kia...long live the Rogue!

Grief sneaks up

An acquaintance of mine who recently lost a baby posted a very poignant sentence on Facebook a few weeks ago: "When will this ball of hurt go away?" If I were to post a reply, it would be this: "It doesn't."

It's weird. You'd think that having a healthy new baby in my arms every day would be the perfect antidote to losing our dear, wee other babes. But while my love for Jade is a balm that helps the old wounds heal, I have come to realize the hurt may not ever entirely disappear. And that's okay.

We lost our first babe two years ago in September, so that explains why I've spent a heck of a lot of time rocking Jade and sniffling lately. It's so bizarre though, how grief sneaks up and attacks when you least expect it. I can feel perfectly mellow, at peace with the world, enjoying a great day; then I'll happen to glance at a picture of my mother, or wander into the Blue Room (which was going to be Rose's nursery), or look under the old chestnut tree where I spent a lot of time sitting wishing I had a baby. And then it's all over for about half an hour: hello grief, goodbye mellow afternoon.

The good thing is that after I embrace my sadness a little, it melts away, leaving me no worse off than before. I could blame it on these pesky hormones but instead I tell myself that it's healthy and normal. I don't wish it away, no matter how intense the hurt gets. I think it's important to keep feeling, keep remembering and to keep acknowledging my grief. If it stays tucked away all the time, it's sure to come raging out in some wacko manifestation. So I'll continue to sit in the rocking chair with Jady on my shoulder and weather these little storms and take care of these little balls of hurt.