Introducing the newest love of my life

It's been a while since I've posted, but I have a good excuse. We have a little girl!! Meet my new little darling, Calista.

I had great intentions of announcing this sooner, but between staring at my little girl, and recovering from a c-section,

and my blood pressure randomly skyrocketing after she was born to the point that I was diagnosed with postpartum preeclampsia and almost had to be readmitted to the hospital, and trying to figure out how to balance caring for my newborn with giving my precious two-year-old son enough attention,

and nursing, and my OB suspecting that I might have a blood clot and sending me in for a CT scan (no blood clot - whew!), and staring at my little girl some more, and sleep deprivation, well... she's a month old now.

Can we please talk about how much I love these chubby cheeks and thighs? SO much!!
(I guess that was a pretty short conversation.)

Anyway, I have like five half-started posts that I might post someday, but here are some pictures that our friend Rebekah took of our new baby, our first baby, and my love and me.

(In case you want an adorable tutu like this, I bought it here.)

Ta da! My new and improved family!!

So... what's been going on in your life since I've been gone?

Letting My Little Bear Play

A year or two before I had Lucas, a polar bear at the local zoo had a baby. (A polar bear baby. Just so we're clear.) When we visited the zoo after the bear cub was old enough to be out in the main enclosure, everyone was crowding around the viewing window to see him playing with a giant ball in the pool. As the cub played, his mother just paced next to the water. Back and forth, back and forth, back and forth; never more than a few feet away from her baby, her eyes never leaving him. Occasionally she would let out a little warning growl - whether to her baby or as a reminder to the crowds to stay away, I'm not sure. While her little cub swam carefree in the water, she was the picture of unwavering maternal attention. At the time, I thought it was adorable. So sweet. So motherly. So full of adoration and maternal instinct.

Now, I identify way too much with that mamma polar bear. And I know that what I was witnessing was not cute. It was not sweet. It was a mom freaking the heck out about the millions of dangers that her little one was being exposed to. Where was the life guard? The life jacket? Why was there no sunscreen available? How deep was the pool, was it warm enough, and when was the last time it was cleaned? Did that kid just sneeze in the direction of her cub without covering his mouth??

My son is two, and almost every day (sometimes every hour) I have to fight the very real urge to be that mom. The mom who sprays a can of Lysol ahead of her as she walks through Walmart with her child. The mom who freaks out because her son waved a kind-of-sharp-looking piece of toast near his eye. The mom who puts a winter hat on her child 11 months out of the year. The mom who (this is true) was planning to have the backyard jungle gym that came with our house torn down because the slide was too steep.

Before I became a mom, I didn't even know that "mama bear" was in me, and now I spend much of my time trying to shush her. "It's good that he's learning to be more independent," I tell her in a soothing voice. "Even if he skins his knee, he's going to be fine. I promise, nobody ever died of hypothermia in 67 degree weather."

Yesterday I took Lucas to an art and music festival. A group called The Wanna Bees (great band for kids, by the way) was playing on stage, and they were encouraging the kids to dance and jump along with the music. At first, Lucas stayed on my lap.

Yes, he has a mustache. Instead of a regular face-painting booth, they had a free mustache booth.
Lucas kept calling it his "mustard."

Then he stood in front of me, watching the band and the other kids. And then he made his way out to the grassy area by the stage where a few of the kids were jumping and dancing along with the performers. Although he was in a safe, enclosed space, he was farther away from me than he has ever been in public before. And I had to quiet my inner polar bear mom more than once: at the sight of him so far away from me for the first time, when the little girl dancing with him accidentally knocked him over and fell on top of him, and then when he knocked them both over again. I suppressed my very strong urge to hover two feet away from him (maybe growling occasionally) and instead sat on the grass and watched him play. He would glance over at me every minute or so, smile and wave, and I would smile my biggest smile and wave back. And then my little boy - who sometimes won't go to people he's known his whole life without repeated urgings and me holding his hand - did something that surprised me. One of the performers asked if some of the kids wanted to come up on stage, and Lucas walked right up there.

As silly as it might sound, I felt so proud of him. And maybe a little teary (dang pregnancy hormones.) He stood up there calmly and clapped his hands at all the right times (ok, so he was supposed to be pretending to hammer, but he's two. It's close enough.)

It made me glad that I'd silenced my inner mama bear long enough to let my little cub be brave and have a fun new experience. It even made the temper tantrum that he threw when he had to come down worth it... almost. So in the future, I'm going to make a more concerted effort to back off ever so slightly while my son explores his world. I even agreed to keep the slide (see? I'm growing.)

But if you ever run into me at the zoo and you see me exchange a long look with one of the polar bears, don't be surprised. It's just that we have this kind of unspoken connection. She totally gets me.

We're potty training... apparently.

This post talks about poop. So, you know, read at your own risk.

First things first: Lucas is eighteen and (and a half) months old. If you're thinking, "Umm... it is way too early to potty train," I agree. So here's the story.

There was this completely fantastic, abnormally cheap used bookstore that opened in my town about two years ago. I shopped there pretty frequently and bought an obscene number of books, but apparently some people in my town weren't carrying their book-buying weight, so the bookstore closed two weeks ago. (Excuse me, I need a moment to mourn the loss.)

Anyway, they had a going-out-of-business sale where everything was 50% off, and of course I went... twice. I bought Lucas some Melissa & Doug toys for the next two Christmases (no, seriously. They were a really good price) and a ton of books. Since I didn't know when (if ever) I'd find books that cheap again, I planned way ahead, book-buying-wise. I got Lucas a book for Valentine's Day, some books I'll give him at Christmas, and a book about using the potty.

Please ignore the food on the floor. I have a toddler.

I had no plans to potty train anytime soon, of course, but I figured it would be good to have on hand. It's written for kids, but there are also tips for parents on each page. One of the tips suggested introducing your child to the potty at around 18 months by just having him sit on the potty fully clothed every now and again. Dan and I had already gotten Lucas a potty (because it was really cheap at Ikea. We like cheap.), so I figured it would be an interesting way to kill some time every once in a while. (Any mom with a toddler can tell you that 75% of the day is spent looking for ways to keep said toddler occupied. The other 25% is spent looking for lost sippy cups.)

On Thursday, I sat him on his potty with his clothes on a few times, he thought it was kind of amusing, and there were fifteen less minutes I had to fill. Friday after his nap, I decided that I might as well just sit him on his potty without his diaper on since I had to change it anyway, and he pooped in the potty. Obviously it was just lucky timing, but I made a big deal about it while he stared at me like maybe I'd gone insane. A few hours later, he was finishing his dinner in his high chair when he suddenly started asking to go to the potty. I put him on his potty, and he pooped! (On the downside, I took him off the potty a little too soon, and as I was rinsing it out he started frantically saying "More! More!" and then pooped on the floor. Oops.) I was amazed, but also SO not ready to potty train, because I seriously thought I had at least another year before I had to think about it. (Actually, I have no idea when it's normal to start potty training. I'm not ready to think about it. I actually googled "when should you start potty training" and found forums with a lot of parents "yelling" at each other. Way to not overreact, people.) But then yesterday after dinner, he asked to go to the potty again, and he pooped and peed in the potty. (I seriously started to type "went number one and number two," but then I realized that the "not saying poop" ship had already sailed.)

So... I'm potty training my 18 month old? Or more accurately, he's potty training himself. This motherhood thing is confusing. And weird... because I just typed an entire post about poop. Weigh in if you have any awesome advice for me, but please don't shout at each other. Because that's just stupid.

If you click this, something good will happen to you. 

I mean, it will probably be totally unrelated to you having clicked this button, 

but something good is bound to happen to you at some point, right?