Urp--there it is!

I can't burp K. I mean, I can, sometimes, when she sits up and lets out a huge belch of her own, but when it's up to me to draw that little stinker out, it just won't happen. How can it be that hard? She's not that big. I can practically finger all her internal organs through her skin. I can hear the burp rattling around as though I'm thumping a ripe watermelon. I can feel it with my thumb, squeaking back and forth underneath her ribcage, but no, nothing comes out. Hitler, Stalin, and Attila the Hun could all be ready to break down my door unless that burp came out and I still wouldn't be able to pull through.

I thump. I shake gently, as though it's a cocktail that must be mixed before extracting. I lay her down, I sit her back up. I switch sides. I massage her back. I massage her stomach. I thump some more. I hang her upside down and swing until centrifugal force sends it flying (okay, I'm just kidding about that. But if it would work...).

It's just a burp, for heaven's sake, and I'm a grown woman. And yet, defeated.

The best intentions

I've come to the steadfast decision that I'm cutting off my hair (oh, I hear it now--she's so desperate for blog fodder that she's blogging her haircut. No, there's a point, besides the need for blog fodder, which is really unnecessary since everything is blog fodder. Okay, not everything. Even I have my limits, but back to the real issue...). I cut my hair right before M's birth and have been growing it ever since. At first I loved it, especially when it passed through the around-the-shoulder phase, which is my personal favorite. Then for a while I even liked it long. Now it just seems like an unbelievable hassle. Between the washing and drying and styling and frizzing and endless resulting ponytails, I just don't see what all the long hair fuss is about. What's more, K's very good at finding any little piece of hair to grab. And her fingers are usually sticky. Yeah, you get the picture. Finally, it's all falling out. Well, not all of it, at least I hope not, but it is in that postpartum shedding phase, and I find long red strands all over the house. We even found one in K's diaper. Yes, she managed to eat one of my hairs. This has just gone too far.

Why not just make the cut? Because I have been growing it out with the express purpose of donating it, only I've reached the end of my patience as my hair seems to be reaching its maximum reasonable growth. We've measured and over the past few months have made no sizable addition to its length. I have about a ten inch layered ponytail, provided I'm willing to go really short, which I am indeed willing to do. This is all for a good cause (my sanity; oh, and the cancer patients too). The program I really want to donate to is Pantene's Beautiful Lengths, which provides wigs through the American Cancer Society's wig banks to women who have lost their hair due to cancer treatments. I have a friend fighting a brain tumor right now, and after seeing what a difference a wig made for her, the program really struck me. And they only need eight inches. Great! Except... they only take eight inches. So the few layers that are shorter than eight inches aren't acceptable. And the nice representative on the phone couldn't tell me if that meant that they would use what they could and get rid of the rest, or if they would just throw the whole thing out. Call me particular, but I can't stand having grown it for 3 years only to have my donation in the trash.

So then there's Locks of Love, which gives wigs to children who have lost their hair for a variety of reasons. Since it's the most well-known hair donation recipient, I didn't really want to go that route, but they will take any ten inch ponytail, even if there are much shorter layers. Bingo! Except... they will sell off the shorter hair to regular wig manufacturers to offset the cost of wig production. Which means that, since most of my hair is not ten inches (just the very longest layer), most of it will not end up being used for the good cause I'd envisioned. And then I started thinking, if they're just going to sell my ponytail for money, I might as well just donate money to them and get a really great haircut of my own.

So this is my current dilemma. I have been focused on a cause for 3 years only to find that my dedication isn't exactly panning out. Do I force myself into donating even though it won't make the difference I hoped, just for the principle of donating, or do I accept that I tried my best and just give up? I could continue waiting--surely my hair will continue to grow, even by millimeters--but I don't want to. So really, it's not that I can't donate; it's that I'm not willing to wait until I can donate, which just makes me sound horribly selfish. And this whole thing was meant to be not horribly selfish. It was meant to be a good thing, a generous thing, a thing that might be someone else feel better, only all it seems to succeed in is making me feel worse.

I'll prep for the worst

As I wait for M to completely wake up, since it's still before 6am, I have heard the following little mutterings:

"Pee pee"
"Too wet"
"Two uh-ohs" (repeated several times)

This does not sound promising.

At least I won't be surprised

So one day about a year ago, M and B and I were eating lunch together when a total stranger walked over. She told us that she was very sorry for interrupting, but that M just wouldn't leave her alone. Since M had been sitting in his stroller eating lunch the whole time, I thought maybe she was crazy. Then she told us that he would talk late, but that he already had a lot to say because he was a Crystal Child. She gave us a website, told us to take special care of him because of his many gifts, and walked away. I would have just continued to think she was crazy, except that he does talk late. And she did seem so sane. Apologetic, but sane.

I did check out the Crystal Child website, but only to give it a cursory glance before dismissing it entirely. It's not that I didn't think it could have any merit; rather, it seemed like quite a lot of reading and work at the time.

Recently, though, the whole Crystal Child notion reared its ugly head in the most unpleasant way. We were driving home when M began chattering:

"Uh-oh, Mama. Mama crash. Mama out. Uh-oh, Mama."

Seeing as we had not crashed, then or any other time, I couldn't help but think: did he just see the future? Is he really a Crystal Child and I've been ignoring it all along, only to, ironically, learn the truth from the realization of his prediction, a truth learned just I die from a horrible car crash where I'm the sad victim of vehicle ejection? Or maybe he's just babbling, right, as every two year old babbles?

Door number two, please. I'm kind of liking the whole living thing I've got going on.

Disclaimer! Disclaimer!

Okay, I got started thinking about my post on the way to Costco, and I really am ashamed at how fluffily gushy I was. I raved about my child's smell. Her foot smell! Her prune breath! Her "yeasty" hands! What's next: the charming little knots where she's bonked her head into the floor? The darling way she entangles her sticky little fingers into my hair and pulls like her life depends on it? Think of the endless minutiae that I could turn into fuel for boring my (very few) readers into an early grave.

Oh, I'll grant I still smelled those little hands tonight. I'm a sucker for it. But it's hormonal, too. So be forewarned: hormonal mom ahead. Turns out that for all my non-maternal instincts, for thinking I'd never want kids, I've ended up a devoted, crack-pot mom all the same. Will wonders ever cease?

But only when she hasn't pooped

I've come to grips (somewhat) with the fact that K is indeed growing up, and faster than I ever thought possible. This revelation might have something to do with the fact that K's crawling has quickly progressed to pulling herself up and standing. As a result, I have begun cataloguing her baby-ness in my head, trying to hold on to every little bit, and one thing that stands out is the way a baby smells.

It's not just her head, which has that completely unidentifiable baby scent that I think is generated as a protection method--you know, I can scream all I want to because this particular scent is coded to make my mommy go soft around the middle. Her feet have this sweet-sour baby stink of innocent odor, as though they smell but are smiling while they do so, presuming that feet can smile, which I know they can't. Her hands smell of fresh bread, yeasty and moist. Her breath is of fresh milk, now tucked behind the tang of strained fruit. All of these scents are unique, pure, and wholly baby-esque.

I used to appreciate them for memory's sake, but now when I sit with her alone, nursing and cuddling and sniffing all these little spots, I think it's something more than that. For me, they smell of the place from whence she came, of creation and purity. Babies retain these smells for only a little while before they wear off like a new car will always, inevitably, smell like your old car all over again. She comes from somewhere so unattainable that now I breathe her in as a way to travel there myself, momentarily. It makes me excited to think that heaven might smell just like that, and sad that soon, my little baby girl will smell just like everyone else.

Honorable Mention

I almost forgot the sixth memorable of Christmas vacation. Well, obviously not super memorable, since it did slip my mind, but it gets an honorable mention in my book.

M on a sugar high!

I'd never actually seen M whacked out on sugar before. It's not like he doesn't have the occasional cookie or donut or the slightly more frequent chocolate (it's dark chocolate! it develops a taste for the bitter! it's got antioxidants! okay, okay, guilty as charged). It's just that I've never given him chocolate cake with three bowls of ice cream. He's been so deprived.

So Grandpa treated us to what we've all been missing: a very small blond boy bouncing around and babbling at the top of his high-pitched lungs. Followed by a very hard to get to bed boy. And then a boy who had to continue a slightly quieter version of babble for another hour before finally falling asleep. A boy who then wakes up at 2am, confused and sugar-crashed, and refuses to go back to sleep for hours. Yes, what a treat. Good thing Christmas only comes once a year.

Soapboxing, for a moment

So I read recently that Jennifer Garner is a now a spokeswoman for childhood vaccinations. Now, I'm all for vaccinations--K just had her flu booster today--and I actually like Jennifer Garner. But it just really made me wonder: why would anyone decide to vaccinate their children because the hot chick from "Alias" told them to? I mean, it was a show premised on the idea that a super spy could escape detection by putting on a different wig for each mission. Amazingly, in the days of facial recognition software, this chick could manage to stay secret courtesy of bright pink hair. So maybe that's what the vaccination people are banking on, that we all want a little of the magic that Jennifer Garner brought to our lives and we're willing to use our kids and a needle if necessary. What a wonderful idea! Now all we need is a baby wig company...

Christmas Vacation: The Summary

To spare you all the gory details and get you right back to fulfilling those New Year's Resolutions (hey, accomplish them in the first month and you have eleven to just chill), I will settle for the top five memorables of my Christmas holiday, in order.

5. Eating dark chocolate peppermint Chocolate Devotion from Cold Stone. Look, there's nothing better than dark chocolate, except when it comes with brownies, fudge, chocolate chips, and one B all to myself.
4. Napping, regularly and for extended periods of time. Sleep rocks.
3. Playing miniature golf with M for the first time. You'd think a 2.5 year old couldn't play mini golf, but no, he's really very good at getting his ball in the hole. With his hands. Or feet. And he'll take everyone else's ball too. No sense in wasting time with that silly club.
2. Watching K take her first crawl, a groping, clumsy crawl right over to the diapers, electrical cords, and M's train set. The world as I know it changed completely.

And finally...

1. Actually feeling rested, relaxed, and ready to go back to work. Tonight. That's really convenient, since it's not quite tomorrow.