This is what I thought I'd do when I moved out.

I remember discussing this topic with my sister over McDonald's on Fridays. I won't speak for her, although I'm fairly certain this all began because of her saying it, at least, that's how I remember it, but I was going to eat McDonald's all the time when I moved out and got my own place. We would discuss this on Foolish Friday, when our family would eat fast food for dinner; she and I usually splitting a glass bottle of Coke, which was part of all the foolishness going on.

So did I do this? No. I hardly ate McDonald's after a certain point in my life and haven't had it for years. And do I drink Coke all the time because now I can have it flowing like the big baller that I am? No. I don't like Coke.

I also thought I would never get married, never have kids, and live with cats and read all the time.

I can sill hear myself saying, "I'm going to eat McDonald's all the time!!" My sister, of course, agreeing with this brilliant plan.

Shoulda, woulda, coulda...or, what I'll do different next time.

Now that Mateo is almost 7 months old, more independent and happy, healthy and a big goof, I often think back on my pregnancy and his first few months of life and how I would have done things differently. Here is my list (need to memorialize it in case we do have another baby and I forgot how wise I was at one time):

1. I would have eaten way healthier during my pregnancy. I'm now suffering the task of trying to lose all the weight I gained and, well, I'm just not succeeding. Not being able to go to the condo gym when I'm feeling up to it certainly doesn't help because the mood to exercise hits me at weird times and that's usually when I'm taking care of Mateo. Hmmm...maybe that's just my excuse.
2. I would have slept when Mateo was sleeping. I was so wound up and tired and stressed out about having a new little life to take care of that I couldn't just breath and....relax! I've never been known for my relaxation abilities, but I'll tell you, when you have a bit of piece of mind, sleeping is much easier to do. A nap here and there throughout the day would have been the key to keeping my sanity until I figured out....number 3.
3. BABIES NEED TO SLEEP IN THE CRIB! I spent probably the first month of his life with him attached to me like glue at night. This is not good. Not good at all for anyone involved. So he's crying. Big deal. Babies cry. Not that I would have left him to cry and cry and cry that young, but if I had just started the crib sleeping a little more early....
4. Babies spit up, babies have green poo, babies fuss, babies have a witching hour where they turn into red-headed crying bundles of nerves. These are the things you don't have to worry about so much.
5. It's okay to give them formula when times are tough. There is no need to feel guilty. Just give them formula. How many times did my husband say, "let's just give him a bottle....you're tired....," and how many times did I say, "NO!!!" That's just silly. Silly!
6. Give them a routine! Not only is it good for them, but it's good for the parents. This is something we still haven't done. I'm not starting to realize how confused Mateo must be.
7. Teach them how to soothe themselves to sleep. I just realized last night how we haven't done Mateo any favors by constantly holding him and picking him up and soothing him when he wakes and cries. I finally just let him cry last night, even though he was having a rough time of it. Usually when he cries as much as he was last night, one of us would hold him until he went to sleep. I figured this is the best week to let him cry as long as it takes since I have the week off. It took about an hour, but he finally fell asleep. The biggest problem I see with not teaching your baby to self-soothe is that if you wait until Mateo's age, then he/she can move. And move a lot. So not only was Mateo crying and crying and crying, he was traveling around the crib, bumping into the side rails and making himself cry even more. Oh, and he woke up and still loved me. Go figure.
8. Don't be afraid to take them out into the world after a certain point. So what if they start crying. Have you noticed a newborn's cry while shopping? Next time you go out, listen. It's hardly recognizable.
9. Advice is just that - advice. Take what you need, throw the rest away. Sometimes it's easier to learn things the hard way.
10. You don't need to hold them 24 hours a day. We're still trying to figure this one out. Especially now that Mateo's more mobile and active, but it's a lot easier to lug him around instead of just letting him sit there and possibly get upset. Or falling over and conking his head on our super fake hardwood floors. I'd say I'm a bit better at this than his dad, but we're getting there. I certainly don't want a 5-year-old who needs his mommy and daddy every waking moment of the day.
11. Babies need socialization. I learned this by taking Mateo to daycare. He loves it. He loves the other babies, the interaction, the fun. I now feel bad when I'm home with him all day because he's just with me. But then, I'm selfish, and I want all his attention and love, so it's okay.
12. During the first few months of your baby's life, don't feel like you have to do all the things your normally did before. Like cooking and cleaning and shopping and all that fun stuff. If you can't get it done, don't do it. Life will not end. I look back on the first couple of weeks when I was home alone with Mateo, and how I thought I could still clean and cook and be relatively normal, and when I couldn't, how frustrated I got...if I could do that over again, I would have considered it a vacation and just sat on the couch, loving up my boy. While watching Lost, of course, the show I didn't discover until about April or May.

So that's pretty much it. I'm sure I'll have more as Mateo gets older, but right now that will suffice.

Stranger anxiety.

The first signs of stranger anxiety are starting to show with Mateo. He's normally a very "cheesy" dude and likes to smile at the ladies as much as he can. Today while at Target some lady found Mateo particularly charming (who wouldn't?), and when she started talking to him, he immediately turned to look for me and my husband. Mateo was very tired, so he didn't even crack a smile, and I had to do the talking for him by telling the lady he would usually smile at her, but he was a bit tired today.

I do feel myself blessed that I'm one of the two people in his life that he will always be comfortable with (well, until he's a teenager and I force him to kiss and hug me in public), will always love (again, in the teenage years I suspect the level of love may go up and down) and will always feel safe with (until he realizes I have a bit of road rage).

Being a parent is pretty darn neat.

My husband is really a blond and baby proofing is no fun.

I brought up that we should put latches on Mateo's dresser drawers and our dresser drawers (so yes, that does make about 20 or so latches to install), and my husband agreed. I also mentioned that I was kinda hesitant on putting latches in our dresser drawers because they're nice and the first "real" furniture we ever bought and well, I didn't really want them to get wrecked.

My husband said we can use the things we bought for door knobs and then the furniture won't get wrecked.

"You mean the one that looks like this," and I made a figure eight in the air.

"Yeah, that," he said.

For demonstration purposes, I'll include a picture:



"Um, that's not going to work," I said.

He looked confused.

"They're drawers. If we put those on the knobs, then Mateo can just use the lock thing to pull open the drawers."

"Oh yeah," my husband said and laughed. His black hair with tons of salt began to change to a platinum blond color.

So far, we have two bathrooms done and a utility closet door done. Yes, we're taking this slow. Mostly cause I got annoyed that I started it and it was tedious and no fun and I wanted my husband to finish it up. So he did the other bathroom and that was that.

We also bought some pretty useless stuff, including the item pictured above since we have no cabinet drawers with knobs, but we do have two swinging open closet doors, but the knobs are too far away from each other to make the lock useful. We also bought these top lock things that slide on the top of said swinging open closet doors that don't work at all. We bought outlet things, but then I realized that we have to screw them onto the faceplate of the outlets that don't get used too often, which are basically none, so that's going back to the store too.

All in all, baby proofing stinks, and yes, we should have started this a long time ago considering we've only installed latches on 7 doors so far and have a bazillion more to do. Not to mention the power strip covers for the million power strips we seem to have. And the litter box we still haven't decided what to do with since Mateo is now taking his baths in the big bathroom and having a big litter box in there plus him and me and an inflatable bathtub is just not an option.

I think it's time to pack up and move to Oregon or Washington, like we plan to do within the next 5 years. More room sounds just about a slice of heaven right now.

I can think of 50 others thing I'd rather be doing....

Baby proofing is not one of them. It took me about a half an hour to install three latches on three doors. Only 20 more doors to go...or so it seems.

Colossel AND giant.

Who knew soccer could be so...big?

Sweety

P1010165, originally uploaded by jzarate12.

How do they grow so fast?

Laughing is so not a good thing.

Riding BART and laughing apparently don't mix.

My husband and I have taken BART together about 4 times or so since I went back to work, and during those times, we both enjoyed watching The Flight of the Conchords on his lovely and very colorful video iPod. Unfortunately, this show is really funny, well, to us, at least, and so while we watch it, we both tend to laugh. It's much easier to laugh outloud with you're laughing outloud with someone else who is laughing outloud. It's also easier to laugh outloud by yourself when you're sitting next to someone you know than when you're alone, although I've been known to laugh outloud when I am by myself, and you'd think that would be annoying because there you are, all alone, and laughing, and no one's sure why and you don't have someone to turn to and say, "hey, this is sooooo funny, read this part!" but really, people tend to deal with solo laughter better than coupled laughter for some reason. I guess it's just easier to ignore. Sorta like when a crazy lady is attacking someone on BART or when someone is obviously about to blow chunks all over the BART train floor. People will slyly look up with one eye, but quickly look away because there is no way they're going to get involved, hell no, no way.

So the other day we were watching the show during the morning commute, which I fully admit is the worst time to do any sort of fun and frolicking because people are tired and grumpy and just want to sleep, but since I hardly take BART with my husband and he's the one with the video iPod and not me (mine is old and tired and a bit possessed at this point from being corrupted so many times not to mention it's in color), I was going to watch it and that's that.

I was really tired that morning, so while I found many parts of the show funny, I never really laughed. My husband was, however. And at some point, something did happen that was really funny, so we both started laughing. That's when the lady sitting in front of my husband decided to turn her head to the side and give us a dirty look and then she sighed heavily before returning to her book.

The thing that really gets me about her doing this is that there was a man and a woman standing in the aisle right next to her, having a normal-volume conversation. Why is that not annoying and why didn't they get a dirty look? Or maybe they did, since we were behind her, I wouldn't really know. But if two people are having a fun time and laughing, then this creates all kinds of annoyances for people. Are they feeling self-conscious? That we're laughing about them? Really, how often does that happen outside of situations where you know the person you're laughing at?

There was another time when we were going home, and during the home commute almost anything is okay to do because while people are tired, they're also wound up from the day, and I let out a huge laugh because of the show, and I scared the crap out of some men near us.

And because embedding is so fun, watch this!

When the internet makes you lose your anonymity.

I've signed up to a million of those "find your old friends" sites, like classmates.com, reunion.com, myspace.com, some others I can't remember; more to spy on what high school friends are up to now and to see if I could find a few people that have dropped out of my life that I would like to talk to again. With all the new fun technology and an open wallet, one now can easily figure out who is searching for them or looking at his/her profile on theses sites (not all of them, mind you, but a good chunk).

So when I got an email from reunion.com saying so and so recently signed up as an alumni for my high school class, I immediately went to this person's page and took a look. Note -- I never went and searched for this person; it was reunion.com that told me about this person. And I'm sorry, curiosity killed the cat, and I always have to look if you're going to email me.

I went and looked, and the person didn't really have anything up that was interesting and then I disappeared back into the depths of cyber land, hoping never to be seen again. A few hours later, that person mysteriously added me as a contact. Upon further investigation, if you pay a few bucks a month, you too could know who is searching for you and looking at your profile page. And if you add up all the dollars you could spend on these sites just to find out who is looking at your profile, you'd be forking out about 10 bucks a month or more. And for what? This I'm still not sure about.

So now that I'm this person's contact, I get emailed all the time about how so and so has put up new pictures (which, yes, I promptly go and look at), and that so and so has written a new blog entry (you have to pay to read it, which I still say is crossing the line -- that whole paying thing).

The kicker to all this is that I don't remember even saying two words to this person while in high school, although I know I did talk to his now wife every so often, and I'm pretty certain it is his wife who is updating his profile and not actually him, and even more so, I'd be surprised if this guy could put a few words together to make one cohesive sentence, but since I would have to pay to read his blog entry, I'll never know.

So now I'm my high school's football hunk's newest contact. And when I looked at his pictures, the shiver shakes hit me hard because he's looking more and more like a psycho killer Al Bundy than a high school hunk. And then I think how we've never really talked, and that here I am, 15 years later, looking at his personal pictures and wondering who is the sadder of the two?

Montel

I got to spend the afternoon with Montel today because Mateo's cold made it impossible for me to work at home while he was at home, coughing and sneezing and smiling and playing and sleeping and crying and wanting love, love, love. The topic? Whether or not to spank your child.

The first guests were a couple where the man, who I shall loosely call a dad, thought it was perfectly okay to slap his 7-week old baby's hand and to try to teach him a lesson when it came to crying and eating. Nice way to teach your kid that by using his only method of communication, namely, crying, is the the wrong way to tell his parents he's hungry. As the "dad" said, his son needs to learn that he is the parent and the baby is the, well, baby.

Luckily, Montel did not cry. I, on the other hand, wanted to.

I generally don't believe in hitting your child as a form of punishment, especially when your child has no clue as to what's going on, and so it was interesting to get different perspectives from parents and doctors about the matter. What it seems to boil down to on the medical side of it is that spanking should be used as a form of punishment until at least age 5 or older. And if parents do decide to spank, it should be with love. While that sounds like an oxymoronic statement, it does make sense. Basically, don't go hitting your kid just because you've had a bad day and your kid is being a kid and getting on your nerves. And don't hit your kid when you're angry. (Thanks, mom, for not killing me when I made you soooo mad when I was in Jr. High. You know, for that thing that made you sooooo mad that you had to leave. You know, that thing you can't remember now and even if you did, I don't really want to know about it because who needs a reminder of their evilness?)

So now my husband and I are on the cusp of repeated "nos" and head shaking at Mateo because he's now more grabby than ever. And even though I've laid down the punishment law, which is no hitting....at any age....unless Mateo is on the verge of darting across the street or about to stick his hand on the burner, I'm sure there will be a point where my husband and I will have to reevaluate things.

My friend kept asking me today, when I was giving her Montel updates via IM, that if Mateo was acting like a jerk and doing all kinds of things that were making me mad, then I would hit him, wouldn't I? and I kept saying no, I don't think so. Because I have to take some responsibility as to why Mateo was acting like a jerk when he should know better (and I'm sorry, right now, he doesn't know any better at all and won't for quite some time) and that if for some reason Mateo starts heading down a wrong path in life, then maybe I need to reevaluate how we are as parents and how much time we are spending with him. And that maybe it's a bit our fault and not completely his. But that's waaaaay later on in life.

And yes, I was spanked as a child, and no, I never once felt it was child abuse or my parents hated me. I just look at Mateo and I can't see myself spanking him or "tapping" him or trying to teach him a lesson. I'm pretty sure that at 6 months he knows I'm the parent and he's the baby, but I also suspect he knows he's got me wrapped around his chubby hand. But mom's no dummy, and she's been known to "break" babies.

Sleep

I've had some stupid sleep issues for years now, but since Mateo's arrival and my lack of consistent sleep throughout the night, I haven't had too many issues lately. Generally, I wake up and either start freaking out or start talking about nothing to no one. Sometimes I've been known to get up and wonder around, but not very far. Luckily I've never actually left. But I'm sure some day I will. I just hope I don't try to take Mateo with me.

I've had a slight cold off and on for a couple of weeks now, and last night I took one sleepy Tylenol (that's what I call it) and a half dose of NyQuil. At about 9pm I was having the hardest time keeping my eyes open, so I decided it was time to pass out. And so I did.

My husband had gone to the gym late that evening, so he was awake much later than I was. At some point before he came to bed, I guess I opened my eyes and started staring at the wall / ceiling. This apparently freaked out my husband and he asked me what I was looking at. While I don't remember that, I do remember at some point realizing he was talking to me, and me ignoring him because I was so freaked out at what I was looking at. Which was a big, giant, ugly tarantula. Yes. A tarantula. On our ceiling. And since I can't see worth a darn without my glasses or contacts, I was trying to squint really hard so I could focus on the tarantula and where it was crawling.

Then I realized my husband was asking me what I was looking at and then he was telling me to lay back down and nothing was there.

I closed my eyes, and when I opened them again, he was right nothing was there.

Cue the spooky horror music. I love my brain.