Some mornings really make you appreciate your time machine. And if you don’t have a time machine, well, then, it’s just a crappy morning that you’re stuck having to live with.

Allie was up before 5:30 a.m. playing with the tassels of the diaper sack that her grandma (on her dad’s side) made, which sack is hanging off Allie’s crib railing. I’m gonna have to take that sack off now that she can reach it. The crib mattress has already been lowered, and she can still reach that stuff laying on her back. I would’ve done it already, except that we were super-late this morning. After her playing, she finally fell asleep again after 6am so I didn’t have the heart to wake her at the usual 6:15. Mr. W decided he needed to fuel up before leaving for work, so while he did that, I went to wake Allie alone. She whimpered. 🙁 It also takes twice as long to change her diaper and clothes now, since she likes to roll over while you’re trying to do everything, and then she un-velcros her diaper tabs, one tab in each hand, as you’re working on putting her clothes back on. When you’re trying to put the unlatched diaper back on, she twists turns and makes that harder, so that you have to hold on to her legs or turn her over, and while your hands are occupied doing that, she unlatches her diaper tabs again. Or eats her shirt. So yes, we started off late, and ended the nursing session later. She also poopied three times yesterday (into her cloth diapers, so I had to wash the inner linings of two of them in the toilet with my bare hands, which, believe me, is still preferable to her NOT pooping, especially now that she’s on solids), and the last time, there were traces of blood on the wipes, so I’m not sure if it’s the food (only rice cereal mixed with breast milk, and steamed pureed zucchini so far), her straining to get that third poopie in a row out (the poopie’s now way less runny than exclusively breast milk poopies), or it could’ve been from Mr. W’s last wiping of her butt after the 3rd poopie. We’ve been using Desitin after each change since, and that’s yet another thing I have to do that Allie doesn’t cooperate for.
Since we were running late, by the time I brought her downstairs and handed her off, I decided I didn’t have time to drink soy milk so I took it from the counter back into the refrigerator, putting in the door, where I’d retrieved the carton almost an hour prior. The carton got stuck at an awkward angle between other things in the door and the top of the compartment, and soy milk started chugging out. I tried to push it in, and it didn’t go; I tried to pull it out and it wouldn’t go, either. Milk just kept coming. Mr. W came behind me when I was struggling and said, “WHAT are you DOING?” I exclaimed I’m not DOING anything on purpose, it’s STUCK! He finally yanked it out and now there was a huge cleanup of the fridge and the floor necessary. That made us even later. And then we hit every red getting to the freeway, and by then, freeway traffic was horrid and we were completely stopped more than we were moving for the last part of our drive. So the drive took longer than usual, but not to worry, we spent the time well fighting in the car.

Last night, after I put Allie in her crib, she twisted and moved herself off the bear. She was also in the rare state of being completely wide awake after I’d nursed her to sleep, so I decided to pick her up and move her onto the bear. She started BAWLING. I knew I had to leave because the more I stayed, the more she was going to scream instead of put herself to sleep. Outside her closed door, I felt awful, as I always do when she’s crying instead of sleeping. I looked over the railing down the stairs and my partner, who was supposed to be in the thick of it with me, was obliviously playing his newest computer game addiction, Diablo 3. I’ve seen/heard many women complaining about this game stealing their significant others lately, but I haven’t said anything about the game or whatever because I’d been so busy with Allie care that I would just go to bed early while Mr. W was playing, or I’d eat, or do some cleaning chore I needed to get to. However, this last Memorial Day weekend he spent playing the game more often, we had most of our meals separately while he played, yesterday he had friends over so we weren’t together as he entertained and I cared for Allie and they did their own thing that I wasn’t a part of, and he had dinner out with one friend while I stayed back with Allie to nap her. None of it’s a big deal, but it was just a lot of being on my own in one weekend even tho he was physically around. He plays the game with headphones on so as not to be loud, which I appreciate, but that means he’s got his back to the goings on in the house, I can’t talk to him, he can’t hear us. That means that last night, when I looked down for support while Allie was screaming, I felt completely, utterly alone. I retreated to our bedroom next to Allie’s and watched on the camera as she calmed down and dropped to sleep. It didn’t take long, less than a minute of screaming and crying, less than half an hour before she was knocked out after soothing herself to sleep, but it was nerve-wracking. Then, I went downstairs and for dinner ate leftovers alone while Mr. W played his game, never turning around.

Aside from the peak of it last night, it hasn’t been too bad because I’ve been spending way too much of my alone time reading an e-book version of “Fifty Shades of Grey” on Mr. W’s first-generation iPad (the loyal iPad that’s been replaced by Mr. W’s newer, younger, hotter model, the iPad3). I didn’t know anything about the novel, except that it was on the NY Times’ Bestseller List and that people raved about it, so I wanted to see what all the hype’s about, and I wanted “pleasure reading” that was not a infant development book (which is all I’d read for the past year). My first impression was that the writing is awful. Second impression was that the author was an unskilled amateur who stole all her predictable characters, settings, and material from the “Twilight” novels and the movie “9 1/2 Weeks.” (“9 1/2 Weeks,” btw, had impressed me with its psycho-social depictions of the dysfunctional relationship between Kim Basinger’s and Mickey Rourke’s characters, and you can take the soft porn aspect of it out and I wouldn’t miss it at all, I’d still be able to write an analytical essay about the characters. But when I brought this up to Mr. W, all he could remember about the movie was some food sex scene. I guess the mark of a good movie is that there’s something for everyone. =P) Now, I’m on my 3rd impression, which has stayed. Yes, the writing is still crap and the editor should’ve been fired for sleeping on the job, but the characters! Anastasia now reminds me of me, and Christian reminds me of a man or two I’ve known, and the whole thing…well…sexual quirks aside, I’ve been there. Their email exchanges slay me, because it had been me. And I’ve been with a Christian (maybe spread out among multiple people) before. I get why she’s hooked, I get why she’s confused, and I get her internal struggles, and when the character was chided for “over-analyzing,” I didn’t see it because that was what I’d done, too (and been told the same). I hated the same people she hates, for the same reasons, rational or not. She even writes emails the way I wrote them. A part of me delights in the relatable development of the book, and in the back of my head, memories made me simultaneously uncomfortable as things hit close to home, again and again. For me, my Christian(s) did not end well, but I was glad to be out, even if it meant losing the witty funny playful word interactions, the open-hearted communication, the highs I’d get with someone’s possessiveness even while knowing that it’s a double-edged sword. It means they care; it means they care too much. It means they may want retaliation. What I learned from those relationships is that as exciting, charming and earnest early words and promises are, they all don’t mean a thing if the person’s actions don’t borne them out. Mr. W isn’t as verbose, communicative or florid, I can write my heart out in an email to him and I likely wouldn’t get a response, but he’s rock-solid in his actions, both in what he does, and what he chooses not to do.

*shaking self out of that train*

Allie has her 6-month vaccinations today at 5pm. I’d originally just hoped to be home early enough to get her to her appointment on time. Then before the weekend, Mr. W suggested that we take the whole afternoon off and spend time like we used to by ourselves and go out, engage in some activities we hadn’t indulged in for the better part of a year. Allie was going to be with Jayne anyway, and we’ll still get back early enough to nurse her and get her to her appointment in time. But then after this weekend, after feeling ignored and alone and unimportant, after the fiasco with the soy milk and being chided by Mr. W in the car about how I put the carton in wrong (I didn’t even know the carton had been opened before I came downstairs with Allie; I’d thought it was still sealed), blah blah, when Mr. W asked in the car whether I wanted to book a massage this afternoon, I just spat, “No!” And then the fight started and lasted, and traffic held us back and made him even more late and more frustrated. The carpool lane didn’t do much to alleviate anything, we may as well have not even carpooled today and then at least we both would’ve gotten to work on time (since his work starts before mine, I could afford to be later, but he couldn’t). Something to keep in mind for the future. Long story longer, we didn’t make any plans for this afternoon, he’s already said he’s not going to take the afternoon off, then, and my only priority all along has been getting my child on time, anyway, not beaches, massages, romantic early dinners, movies, or anything hedonistic.

Please, Allie, don’t have an inconsolable crying fit after the vaccinations like you did for over an hour last time. And now I forgot to pump. *running off, late for yet another thing*

** Addendum hours later: The bad morning continues with a weak pumping thanks to a torn pump valve. Some mornings are just not worth the 4am I crawl out of bed.