So is this a warning?

Last night was not unlike any other...except it was the first night in about a week that Olivia has slept in her crib and not her playpen. After a week of Mitch working locally and spending the night at the Benveniste house almost every day. Then the weekend of traveling to LA for Erica and Eric's wedding. That's right Mitchell's cousin Erica married someone named Eric...pretty funny and cute. Olivia was finally back home at Nana's house and sleeping in her crib...not in a carseat, not a playpen and not in between Mitch and I. I made sure she had two solid naps yesterday knowing she was mentally and physically pretty worn out from the weekend celebration and all the hours spent in a carseat. She napped pretty well and after a dinner of baked fish, peas and applesauce she was in bed around 8 pm.

She didn't make a fuss just snuggled up to her Pluto pillow pet, looped her fingers into the tags of her Taggie blanket and after checking to make sure she had her stockpile of pacifiers and Stuffy was nearby...I shut the door and she quietly drifted off to sleep. I went to bed around 11:30. As I laid in bed, not really all that tired I listened to Olivia thrash around in her crib. She can be quite the wild sleeper when she is overstimulated. She wasn't awake, just restless in her bed.

A few hours later I am awoken by a weak whimper...followed by thrashing. I think she is probably just dreaming and will settle down. After some consistent thrashing she begins to cry. Then she starts crying my name....while just plain old regular crying can be kinda ignored when she crys out my name "Mommy, Mommy, Moooooooomeeeeee", that is the worst. Then she says it "No paci Mommy, No paci, Mommy, Mommy, Mommy, paci, paci, paci Mommy". At first I am not sure if that is what she is really saying but I get up in the dark and go to her. My fingers fumble around through the sea of blankets, stuffed animals and pillow pets and I can't find her pacifier. She grabs ahold of my arms in the darkness and more calmy whines "Mommy, paci...paci Mommy", sure enough I can't find one. Which seems completely crazy since every night I put her to bed with at least three in her crib, not to mention others she seems to hide in the crevices between the crib bumper and the rails. I finally find one on the floor and give it to her, through her pacifiered mouth she says "dank u Mommy".

And of course she wants to be held after such traumatic events of not being able to find a pacifier. And of course I try three times to lay her down after she has fallen back to sleep and of course everytime she wakes up and starts to cry more dramatically than I have ever heard her cry. Finally after some Motrin and a bottle she goes all limp and twitchy and I know this time she won't protest me laying her down alone in her crib.

I fall back to sleep.

Now here I am wondering if what I heard was really "paci"....oddly enough while she talks non-stop and will attempt usually successfully to say any word you ask she has never referred to her pacifier as anything. She usually just points at it when she wants it. And usually she has been given it during stressful moments without having to ask for it. Hmmmmmmm. So here is what I know.

I know she loves her Pacifier.
I know she rarely ever refuses it.
I know she is cutting teeth pretty aggressively and therefore wants it more.
I know toddlers can become addicted to pacifiers.
I know she has never fallen asleep without it...well that's not true. She used to fall asleep while nursing...but kept her mouth securely latched on. Hmmmm and about the time she stopped breastfeeding was when she gained such an affinity for pacifiers.

So while I have heard my mother's warning about weaning her off of pacifiers because she will become too attached I am still wondering if it is really a problem with my Olivia. I have also heard warnings that pacifiers can contribute to delayed speech...well that is definitely not a problem she never shuts up! Then of course the crooked teeth factor....whatever hers are barely crooked and I think they look cuter this way.

However last night's dramatics was the first time I ever really acknowledged that maybe she has become too reliant on the pacifier.

Selfishly I am not ready for her to be done with the paci. Dare I say I like that she still uses a pacifier? I think she looks like a baby and extra cute with it in her mouth. When I have to, every couple of days, do a pacifier roundup...gather all her pacifiers from their usual hidding spots, I feel a weird sense of happiness and calm to see so many pacifiers in one place. Green, pink, purple soothies all layed out to be washed otherwise they would be covered in hair, crumbs and dust. They look like a bouquet of flowers.

There has only been one occasion that I regretted pacifiers. It was at Mitch's brother's wedding. Olivia was sooooo tired and just over all the action that the only way to keep her quiet and calm was to give her the pacifier. So upon looking at pictures of her at the wedding and seeing just how many pictures contain the paci as well....I kinda cringed...."Urghhh I should have taken it away and the pictures would have been so much cuter". Actually I think I was in the presence of Mitchell's mom and felt some sort of moral obligation to express my feigned disgust for her pacifier dependancy, embarrassed to admit that I actually don't see a problem with pacifiers. You see I remembered when she was a newborn and Mitchell and I would try in vain to shove a pacifier in her mouth Sue would always exclaim "Oh get that damn pacifier out of her mouth". To my surprise when I mentioned that the pictures would be better without the paci, Sue just said "Oh it's not a big deal, it's cute actually".

So here we are...a week or so shy of 18 months and the pacifier problem is just becoming more intense...and I say....

Who Cares!!!!!!
C'est La Vie!

Well....

It has been a while. I can't think of anything to "blog" about. But I had noticed that it had been some time since I posted anything new. What's new.....nothing. My life as usual is in chaos and madness. I guess I could write about that.... What else? My hair is driving me insane but again that is nothing new. I don't know how much longer I can keep up this whole "growing it out" stuff. I am so bored of my hair....bored of the length, bored of the color....bored, bored, bored. Which isn't too surprising because usually when my life is about to make some dramatic turn that I feel like I have no control over I change my hair because it seems to be the only thing I can control. Kinda like how an anorexic person feels like their life is so out of control that at least they can control what they eat....you know that compulsion seems a little more productive lol.....awwwww so yeah I still can't seem to accept the fact that any weight loss I will have will be slow and actually require effort. Okay so really what's happening these days Emily...is what you are probably thinking...maybe I could give you a quick rundown.

Well first maybe a review then a rundown....

February 2008 moved to Santa Barbara to be with Mitch at UCSB
June 2008 Mitch graduated and I unexpectedly got pregnant...didn't tell anyone til Oct.
Novemeber 2008 quit my job and moved back to NorCal to live with Mitch's family. The plan was to live there while Mitch tried to find a job and hopefully be out before the baby.
March 2009 Olivia Marie Benveniste was born...best day ever...followed by the 2 day hospital stay which was probably the happiest 2 days of my life.

Things got stressful. We were still living with Mitch's parents and 2 sisters and 2 dogs in a small house and then a bunch of other stuff started to go down with his Dad's health and Grandmother's Health and Mitch lost his job...there was no moving out. The stress of having a new baby in a house full of people got to us and we fought ALOT....this added more stress to everyone else living there with all their other stresses. People were always getting involved in our fights...people took sides...usually mine and it was just a disaster...

Septemeber 2009 Olivia and I moved out and into my parents house. It wasn't my choice really but I didn't blame his parents for needing to eliminate "our problems" from their own mounting problems. I didn't want to go, I didn't want to stay either...didn't know what to do except cry ALOT usually in the shower where no one knew about it. Mitch got a job with his Dad's company but it was contract type thing so he would work and then get laid off...and so on and so on. Things got better. It was good for Olivia to be in a quieter home...less people to interrupt naps and what not. I felt like I could breathe...things got better with Mitchell and I. My parents gave us a deadline to move out in March 2010...that seemed like it could work.

End of January 2010 Mitchell's Grandmother passes away and he gets laid off indefinitely. March is getting closer and it looks like we won't be moving out. Everyone seems to quietly acknowledge it isn't going to happen.

March 2010. Squidey's birthday!!!!! She is one year old and the only thing that makes me happy in life...although she is good at driving me crazy too!

May 2010 Mitch gets a contract to work again for at least 6 months if not longer. Mom and dad give a new move out date of Sept 1 2010

June 2010 the jobs he was contracted to do get canceled. He does work for the state so no money no new computers installed in state facilities.

July 2010 Mitch starts working with his Uncle and is contracted for at least a year....yay we can move out.

August 2010 Mitch who has a congenitive heart defect since birth has pain in his chest and arm...thinks he might be having a heart attack....after a sleepless night decides that even though he has no health insurance he would rather be safe than dead and goes to urgent care to get a EKG....they call 911 and an ambulance rushes him to the ER. He didn't have a heart attack but found out they he has developed a common and fairly benign complication due to his heart condition. A "right bundle branch blockage"...something that he could live the rest of his life with that will occasionally cause weird sensations in his beating heart, but not likely kill him any sooner than usual...but he has a weaker heart anyway from a birth defect that led to open heart surgery at 5 months of age. Sooooooo MASSIVE HOSPITAL AND AMBULANCE BILL....

He takes the following week off of work...works a week and then finds out that there is no work the next week...so August will be a month of just 2 weeks of pay instead of 4. So with car payments, insurance, student loans...etc...there seems to be no money left over to move out with...and since we are both pretty good procrastinators of course we have waited until the absolute deadline of Sept 1 to plan on moving out....well now it looks like it's not happening.

But wait.....there is a solution....thanks to Mitchell of course.

"My parents say you can move back in over here for a couple of months or maybe since they want to move anyway we can find a bigger house and help pay the rent or mortgage and then we would have more space".....

...................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................

What??????

Okay now this isn't the first time Mitchell has suggested this and there was a time when one of his sisters was going to move out and there would be a spare room so Olivia would have her own room and me moving back in was suggested again. She didn't and I didn't want to move back in anyhow. Also the job Mitchell works requires that he travels so he is gone 5 days a week so I am all alone to take care of Olivia 24/5. That's 24 hours a day, 5 days a week. Now I love the Benvenistes just like they are my own family, well they are my family for all intents and purposes...but I really really don't want to live with someone's parents, be it mine or his....just been doing since I was 6 months pregnant and I am OVER IT.

But now it's like what choice do I have? It has been suggested that I get a job to help out with money and I would get a job and have applied for some but rarely do I get a call back. The ones I do hear from either want me to work overnight or full time. Since it's just me and Olivia because Mitch is out of town during the week it's just problematic with Olivia and childcare and I am not going to be away from her fulltime...so what she never sees her mother or father...yeah no way.

So here I am....on the cusp of reliving my life of a year ago at Mitchell's parents house. Only this time with a crazy deftly mobile investigative child instead of a stationary newborn.....have you been to that house? Not exactly baby-proof and definitely not as big as the one she is used to living in. And don't get me started on all the emotional aspects of this whole thing....

Well since you mentioned it....

It breaks my heart that Olivia got the boot from the only home she ever knew as a newborn...now she is getting the boot from the home she has really become to know as "her home". It breaks my heart that she will be confused. She will come visit "nana and Grandpa Larsen" and run to her room and all her stuff will be gone. She is a smart baby and she will not understand why all this is happening. I mean I was sad about it anyway even when I thought we would be moving into our own place as a family (me, mitch and Olive) but that is what is supposed to be happening. Now it's putting her through all this to just move back. It breaks my heart for her and for me as a first time mother that she never had a nursery and she has never had her own room...depressed, depressed, depressed.

I recently read a book in which a young girl grows up with a struggling single mother. The daughter once says something about always moving and never feeling like she had a home. The mother replies "I am your home". While the mother was a pretty selfish self-centered person and not likable at all in this book....that quote resonated with me, it touched me as a mother, as a daughter....it just felt so true and yet so simple. That as long as you have your mother, maybe that's all the home you need.....in mine and Olivia's case I hope that is true.

The Trouble with Olivia

My heart confirmed yesterday something I had been suspecting all along. Something having to do with my first born, my only born. It had been sneaking up on me like a stalking cat; quiet, slow, methodical.....deadly.


The trouble with my Olivia is that she is growing up....

The trouble with Olivia is that she should look like this...
But she looks like this....
The trouble with Olivia is that when she sleeps she doesn't curl her feet and legs up like this...
Which gives me the sneaking suspicion that somehow she is no longer a newborn baby. How this happened in the last 17 months I am not really sure. How her eyes became unswollen and her nose popped back up from being squashed during the whole being born process befuddles me. Despite all efforts to keep a pacifier in her mouth and feeding her a bottle of warmed milk every morning she seemed to have found the loop hole in my hard work of keeping her a baby.

I was living in a world of denial. So she's smiling now, so she's laughing now, so she's sitting up now, so she's crawling now, so she's pointing at things now, so she's got teeth, so she's walking now, so it's her first birthday, so she is running now, so she is drinking milk instead of formula, so what that she is talking up a storm and following directions now....I still wasn't completely convinced of her grown upness.

Then it happened...

Ashley, Megan, Olivia and I were at Target shopping for such benign things as facewash and body lotion when around the corner came a stroller. And this was no ordinary Graco or Chicco. This was one of the fancy smancy ones that really aren't all that practical but will induce awes from women and mothers everywhere. It's like a bassinet on wheels. Which why in the world you would want to take a baby out of the carseat to transfer baby to this bassinet stroller just to have to move the baby back to the carseat later. I mean it just seems like alot of work unless you were planning to spend the entire day at Target, which seems as good a place as any for a new mother to spend her day. The whole "travel system" seems alot more convenient, but definitely not as cute. They are very charming little devices...a baby bed on wheels

Inside this cute little mobile cocoon lay a little bitty swaddled bundle of newborn baby. Asleep and still....right then and there after Olivia pointed at the little thing and announced "baby", I realized that the little thing in my cart was more of a child than a baby. My heart sank to remember Olivia those many months ago when she too was a helpless caterpillar looking bundle. My only thought was "How could this happen".

What happened next needs some explaining and it didn't really "happen" as much as some little innate switch was flipped inside of me.

Have you heard of the term or phrase "baby hungry". I have heard this phrase uttered many times by family members. I mean the meaning is obvious enough but it always sounded so stupid to me. It sounds desperate and lame and although I have been desperate and lame many times in my life I would never openly admit to it.

But maybe it's something only someone who has already had a baby can truly experience. One look at that newborn and I just felt this pang in my heart....."I have to have another baby". There was no denying that I was feeling "baby hungry" and that is exactly how it felt. I took one look and all of a sudden just felt starved, completely emaciated. My body felt like it was lacking something and longing for something and that "something" was that baby!

Don't get me wrong...Olivia is the cats meow, the bees knees, the cherry on top....I just realized for probably the first time that I have to have another baby. Because I just might die if I don't. I mean that's what happens if you starve right?

And since I am just hungry and not quite starving yet it's safe to say it's not gonna be anytime soon...

Let's just hope there is more Benveniste/Larsen genetic projects on the horizen somewhere!