I’m crying again. I made it until 6pm today, so that’s better. I felt fantastic all day, a whole new person, until I got an email from the person who used to be my friend but isn’t anymore because of two primary offenses… one getting pregnant and two subsequently having the baby. It’s a long story, or maybe a short one, either way not suited for livejournal. Anyway, that’s not the point. The point is I’m probably reading too much into the email because tone over email is hard to convey. Especially when you don’t like someone enough to bother to try and convey a friendly tone. Maybe it was cheerful and I just misread it. Maybe the lack of salutation was all that did it. But I know this person pretty well and it sounded pissy to me. Part of me is upset because I miss the friend, but mostly I think I’m just tired of being treated like a naughty little child. And I’m tired of crying every day. Not over this – jeesh I’m not that obsessed – this was just today’s thing. But like I said I made it til 6 so that’s good.

This concludes today’s pity party. Please don’t worry, it’s not as bad as it sounds. Tune in tomorrow when I am super determined to feel better. Because right now I’m pissing myself off way too much.

I’ve been overly weepy for the last few days (verses my normal, “just the right amount” weepy). I finally figured out at least part of the problem… I surely do miss Georgia. When we moved there I felt at home right away but here, I don’t. In Georgia we would drive around and find little towns and things that I could imagine living in. Here we drive around and the little towns consist of a gas station, a restaurant called “RESTAURANT”, a laundromat, a Taco Bell, and another gas station. Some of them also feature a fireworks stand, but still, none of them feel like home.

I miss my house. It was so pretty and warm and happy. I miss having a place that we can paint wild colors and put bamboo floors in and just make our own unique environment where we love to be.

On Saturday we did find one awesome subdivision way out in BFE. It’s on lake Palestine and it’s called “Lollipop Landing”. Wait, it get’s better. The streets are seriously named Lime, Cherry, Raspberry, and so forth. Get it? Like lollipops! Hahahaa. Anyway, all the best houses are on cherry street, because they are all on the lake. They’re all really different and not at all pretentious. Just nifty little unusual houses with trees and water. And jiggy-ass street names. Now, none of these houses are for sale, per say, but that’s a minor technicality I’m sure we can work through.

I’m on a message board with all these awesome other moms. We all have babies the same age so we can ask each other questions like “What does it mean when your baby’s poop looked like yellow toothpaste yesterday but today it’s dark green and firm like little round play-doh pellets?”

Normally whenever you ask that question in polite conversation, you expect to be cast out from whatever social group you have managed to assemble for yourself. But there on the message board this questions like that are met with a great deal of real concern and supportive advice. And if they don’t have any advice, they will at least give you a “hang in there sweetie – his poop will be back to normal in no time…” along with a surprisingly comforting cartoon hug.
Milestones are a big deal on the board. People post every time their baby rolls over, scoots forward, says Ah-goo, cuts a tooth, performs long division, and so forth. But the problem is that as soon as someone posts something saying “My baby can blahdeeblah!”, another mom will post something saying “Oh no, what’s wrong with my baby? He can’t blahdeeblah yet!” And then someone else says don’t worry, the national average age for babies to blahdeeblah isn’t until 7 months, so calm down. And really, the truth is that within a certain range, milestones don’t matter at all… the age your baby starts to blahdeeblah doesn’t affect anything else down the road including walking, talking, or getting a job at Starbucks.

Which is why I hesitate to post this over there. Nicolaus is somewhat ahead as far as the national averages and he has always been freakishly strong… which is cool and all, but I don’t want to be all braggy to these friends of mine who might start comparing their baby to mine or might think I’m saying my baby is better than their baby. Even though he is! I mean good lord, have youseen other people’s babies?! But I would never say that. To them.

Ahem. Anyway, I don’t want to be obnoxious to all my fellow mom friends, but it turns out that taking stupid pride in milestones is something a mother just can’t help. And since you don’t have a baby (no that egg they gave you in jr.high to take care of doesn’t count. In fact, you really should throw that thing away.), you can indulge me in a moment of wild, abandoned, new-momma bragging:
Nicolaus can sit up all by himself for several minutes at a time!

Oh I know what your thinking:So dang what? I can do that! Well, if you were a 4-month-old baby there’d be a pretty good chance that you couldn’t. And my baby would be better than you.

Heeheeheee I know something you don’t know! Unless you’re so-and-so and then you know and you’re so happy and I’m so happy too for you because I’m a big dork and YayyyyyyyYYYYYYyyY!!!

I thought it was going to be like my house and my kids and stuff would live in it. But it was going to be mine, more or less. Sure, when Nicolaus is 2 or 3 he might make some choices about the decor of him room but until then, Kevin doesn’t care a thing about interior design, so it’s my show.

So before he was born, I came up with this theme… space puppies! It’s outer space stuff like this awesome rug from pottery barn with moons and stars all over it:

And the bedding has stars in blue, mint green, and purple. All sort of pastel colors, nothing too intense. Plus there would be puppies everywhere, on the walls, thusly:

When a dear friend gave me a mobile with primary colors and crazy shapes all over it, I graciously accepted. But oooh then my mom gave me one with puppies flying and I fell in love with it. The one with the shapes and colors is scientifically designed to stimulate babies’ brains and entertain them for hours. It plays Beethoven and Bach and I think has been proven to help them learn differential equations later in life. But oh my goodness those puppies were freaking cute. Before you judge me too harshly, look for yourself:

See?! Do you see why I had to do what I did?

That’s right, I put away the brain-activating one and hung the puppies over his crib. And Nicolaus showed up, we put him in the crib, and yeah, he like those puppies just fine. He talked to them and kicked his legs to make them move. See? I said, He likes it just as much as he would’ve liked the other one.

But then one day, in the middle of the move, I was walking by with the weird colorful mobile in my hand, and he saw it.

And he went nuts for it.

So just for the heck of it we put it over his bed… and ohhhh my lord, Nicolaus layed there and kicked and laughed and squealed and talked to that dang thing for a solid hour.

If you don’t have a lot of babies you might not realize that an hour of time when the baby is completely entertained and you’re not the one doing the entertaining, is a magical, wondrous thing. So now his room theme is Space Puppies, Plus Weird Shapes and Bright Colors. Oh and there’s also this under-the-ocean thing that helps him go to sleep at night. And a submarine lamp that he thinks is the coolest thing ever.

And our little Christopher Lowell is even re-arranging the rest of the house. A lot of my new living room furniture features plastic, fluorescent stripes and jungle animals. Our new coffee table is a horrendously colorful exer-saucer (WTF is an exer-saucer? Click here to see for yourself), and our area rug looks an awful lot like a blanket with LSD-inspired toys sewn to it.

So like is there a law that this stuff can’t be educational and tasteful?