Soccer!!

So we had a pretty decent weekend. Friday night, Nico and I went with our friend Lauren to the FSU womens soccer game against University of South Alabama. Dave met us there after work. It was a sort of fun game to watch- lots of scoring by the Seminoles (8 goals), and nice passing... which you can do when you're playing a push-over team... Nico was a bit bored, overall. Dave and I both found a new favorite player for the Noles, a left-footed left back- who has a super sweet cross and is rock solid in the back...


Saturday we hung around the house and watched the Premier League... Liverpool won (barely) and my fantasy team had a good week. We took Nico to Publix for groceries on Saturday... he chilled out in the Baby Bjorn and slept through most of it. Although, I am not sure what is going to happen when he gets up to 20 pounds... I am not sure I can tote a 20 pounder around the store in a front pack. It might be time for him to start walking by then...

I submitted the project evaluation that has been hanging over my head for the last month. Its a great feeling knowing that I am done with that. If you will excuse me, I am going to take a couple of days to chill out with Nico, doing things like napping on the couch in the middle of an afternoon thunderstorm while watching movies on TV. I know, Jessi, what about your PAA submission? It will get done. Its been kind of fun to hang out with Lil Homey.

Tomorrow if we can get our act together a bit early, we are going to the breastfeeding support group here in town. I suspect that Nico isn't quite "getting" it still. This is probably my fault, since we had to bottle feed from early on. But still hopeful that they can get some of our issues straightened out- even if he is three weeks old... hopefully he is not too set in his ways yet.



The soccer season is about to start... we have our fall informational meeting tomorrow night- during which Nico will take his first of MANY trips down to Wakulla. I have said before every season- but I cant believe the season is here so fast. It seems like last week when we played our last game in Panama City. Of course, we start preseason this week- and I would be surprised if they were all in shape. Call me pessimistic, but I foresee a bunch of girls throwing up during the first preseason session. Good thing they have a coach who is prepared to point and laugh at them...

I am hoping this year will be fun- the culmination of three years of training and coaching... mine and Dave's hope is that our "freshmen" who have been playing together for three years will finally gel and start playing consistently at the level that they can play at. We lost five seniors last year, but are returning most of our starting line up. We're apparently getting a big-gun from TUFC, which might help. And our GK has started training like the player I know that she can be (she's officially joined the Jessi Bishop Bad a$$ club by taking a knee to the face during a game a couple of weeks ago... she made the save, but may need to have her braces put back on :).

So it should be a fun year.

Sleeping: ur doin it rite!

Not much new to report- had another good sleep night last night. Nico even went longer from when he went to sleep originally to when he woke up for his mid-night meal... which was awesome. Its rainy here, so it was really hard to get out of bed this morning... Nico was snuggled up next to me, had Drake snuggled up on the other side of me. One reasont hat not having a job rules!! I didnt get out of bed until 1030... of course, its hard to be productive when you dont wake up till that late.

We ended up with a Baby Bjorn (given to us by a couple whose kids are too big). Dave took Nico on a walk last night around the neighborhood. It might just be a boon for me- because Nico LOVED it. And by loved, that is to say, he went to sleep in it. So this is good news for me doing housework (like laundry and the dishes) and for me coaching, because it means that I can actually do stuff without having to keep an ear trained on the bassinet to make sure that he isnt screaming his face off...

Dave and I ventured to Borders last night. I wanted to get a book that I had seen at a Borders in Bethesda, called, "Bruce Springsteen and Philosophy: Darkness on the Edge of Truth." There is apparently a whole series of books on popular culture and philosophy- and on the day I saw it, it appeared on an endcap with "Pride and Prejuidice and Zombies". In any case, it looks promising, with chapters like, "Living in "My Hometown": Local Philosophies for Troubled Times" and "Who's the Boss? Springsteen on the Alienation and Salvation of Work and Labor". A brief perusal of the latter and I see mention of Marx and Weber, which is fair, I guess, since its hard to talk about alienation, work or labor without mention of Marx and Weber. Should be interesting.

I bought the book (along with Dan Buettner's "Blue Zones") with the idea that it might be a good read for the many hours I spend nursing Nico. I have been watching "Leverage" online (and just put season 2 into the Tivo Season Pass Manager), but I am likely to be caught up pretty quickly with the second season, meaning that I wont have anything to watch for a while. But even better? Thy SyFy channel shows old episodes of LOST at 1 in the morning. So its not entirely a beat down to have to wake up with Nico for that mid-night feeding. Now, if they would just show Season 5... that would be great.

SLEEP: WIN!!

We had a win last night!!

Part of the challenge with Nico has been trying to figure out the perfect combination of bed time rituals that would result in sleeping for 3 hours at a stretch. For those of you who have had babies, you understand how this is the utopia for little babies- because the time between feedings starts when you start a feeding... so if you start a feeding at 3am, and Nico eats for an hour, you can expect that he will be ready to eat again sometime between 5 am and 7 am.

So last night was a good night. We gave Nico a bath (which by the way, he HATES), and fed him by about 1145... and Dave put him down to sleep, while I went ahead and started sleeping. Nico woke up at about 345. I woke up and changed his diaper. Then I gave him a bottle, swaddled him, and rocked him until he was a sleep and put him back in his bassinet. Where he slept until about 7... when Dave woke up, he changed Nico's diaper and brought Nico to me. I fed Nico and we lounged in bed until about 1000- all together it was a fantastic day!!

The picture above is Drake keeping an eye on Nico last night. Turns out that Drake is going to be a great baby sitter!!

So not much new to report... that is all I have. Am currently trying to figure out what to do about a baby book for Nico. Both Dave's mom and my mom did baby books for us. And if this were five years ago, I would definitely be all about a baby scrapbook, where I keep locks of his hair, his bracelet from the hospital, etc. However, several considerations make me a little gunshy about starting a scrapbook for him:

1. The scrapbook store in Tallahassee went out of business. This isn't really that major of a problem, except for the fact that I liked taking my supplies and scrapbooking there... otherwise I have to always clear a flat space to do scrapbooking here at the house... one thing leads to another and its been years since I touched a scrapbook. Case in point: I have a scrapbook for the Wakulla girls. I started in after our first season coaching- and I haven't touched it since then.

2. I dont have the space to store and hang onto another thing that will only be looked at a couple of times a year. And that will likely end up covered in dust.

3. Would Nico really appreciate all the time and effort it takes to make a good scrapbook? The kind of baby book I am talking about is pretty high end- with the advanced techniques (like embellishing with brads, etc.) My guess is not... plus, with scrapbooks, you have to be very judicious with the pictures you use... you cant just include every picture you have- because, well, there isnt the space for it.

4. Part of the fun of baby books and scrapbooks and whatnot is showing them to other people. With Dave's family in South Florida, my family spread between South Florida, Texas and Australia, it seems like an electronic/digital scrapbook would be better- so anyone can see it any time. One could argue that this is what this blog SHOULD be about... but lets be real here, the minute I start doing something with my day aside from feeding Nico, changing him, and putting him to sleep, his blog is likely to get hijacked by my antics. The only reason that this hasnt happened yet is that I really havent been doing anything interesting these days... I dont think taking a shower counts as something blog-worthy.

5. I hardly print pictures anymore. Seriously- the only time I do, its for a project (like to frame and hang in the house somewhere). 99% of the pictures I take these days dont get printed, they get ripped off my camera and uploaded somewhere on cyberspace (facebook, etc.)

So I have kind of been thinking of starting an account on Flickr or something, where I can post pictures and put captions and stuff... so, sort like this blog, but more pictures. And that way, it will exist FOREVER in cyberspace- unlike what might befall a scrapbook in my possession, which is likely to never even get finished. Plus, there would be a lot more pictures- which I think would please the grandparents...

So what do you guys think? Any thoughts? Suggestions?

Weekend

It was a decent weekend. We got a new washer- because we broke our old one. The one we had broke... which is a problem when you're doing cloth diapers. I will confess, we ended up having to buy disposable diapers. Please dont revoke my hippie card. It was a one time thing- I promise.

Saturday was fun because we got to watch some of the Premiership. My team (Manchester City) won- in nice fashion. The washer repair guy came on Saturday and when he couldnt fix our old washer, Dave went out to buy the new one... and that was pretty much the most exciting thing that happened for the day.

Sunday was a little bit more upbeat- the Pop Center had a Fall-term kick off thing at Maclay Gardens. We took Nico and he was a big hit- which is fair, since he is so adorable. When we got home, the boys were pretty curious about Nico- who was zonked out:


Not much else to report. He's not sleeping terribly well at night. Both Dave and I were up a lot with him last night. He will sleep all night and all day when someone is holding him- but he tricks you... because then you set him down in the bassinet, ease yourself into bed, hoping to get some sleep, only to be awakened five minutes later. He also sleeps surprisingly well on his stomach. For example, this morning, I took him out to the living room to feed him... he ended up sleeping from about 7am to 9am laying on his stomach on my chest (I was kind of laying on the couch). Its easy to see why some parents still put their babies to sleep on their stomachs, despite the known risk of SIDS... Nico sleeps much better on his stomach than he does on his back. Oh well...

Oh, and if anyone was wondering if I have been cured of the "dead sleep" (which is to say, the way that I could sleep as if I am dead, and not hear anything), the answer is yes. I am now quite easily awakened by those first little sniffly whines that Nico lets out as he starts kicking his blanket off. DOH!!

Weight: WIN!

So we went to the doctor today- Nico weighed 9 lbs, 9 ounces, which is three ounces more than he weighed when he was born... meaning that he has regained all of his lost weight. This is 12 ounces heavier than he was last week... and well above the one ounce per day gain that is recommended for kids this age. This means that the s feeding plan is working . Unfortunately, this also means that I get to continue feeling like a dairy cow. So I got that going for me.

Beavis and Butthead

A blog that is entirely made up of me complaining about how much sleep I am not getting would likely get old after a while... especially since JSD and NBB are reading this like, "Yeah, it sucks, but it passes... MOVE ON ALREADY!!" So rather than continuing to complain about being tired, I am going to take today's blog post to report about the most surreal moment I had while in the hospital.

Picture it- Tuesday August 11- Nico's second day out. He's chillin, like a villain. That's what villains do- they chill. Dave and I are wondering what the hell we got ourselves into... between Nico crying at night and being awakened, literally, every hour on the hour for "vital checks" where they check my temperature, blood pressure and whatnot, we are what you would call "bleary eyed". This is a condition that results from not getting any sleep- and is largely characterized by the inability to focus one's eyes. Basically, you are so tired your eyes osscilate between crossing and rolling up into the back of your head when you focus on something. If you remember, we were up late on Sunday night doing the birth, and then Monday with the crying and the no sleeping... by Tuesday, were were pretty worse for the wear.

At this point, I am starting to feel like someone cut open my stomach and placed a bowling ball in there, in place of Nico. I felt a bit like a spectator of my life at this point. Which is why what happened next was disturbing, albeit kind of funny. So on Tuesday, I am am trying to finish up breakfast while breastfeeding Nico... I am definitely topless in the hospital room... anyone who walks by my door could catch a glimpse of the ginormitude... in all of its unglory... these two randoms poke their head into the room, see I am a bit unavailable and excuse themselves, promising to come back in a little while.

They reappear a little while later- but for here on out, these two randoms will be referred to as the Beavis and Butthead, because I felt like I was watching an episode of the Beavis and Butthead show being acted out in my hospital room.

So Beavis and Butthead come in, and without even introducing themselves to me (the mom) or Dave (the dad), they start arguing about who gets to hold Nico first. Turns out these two are the photographers from the hospital. Now, Mama Bishop probably knows where this is about to go... because, I can't lie, I take a DAMN GOOD picture. Really, I do. If I am really honest with myself, there are very few things in life that I do well... I am an okay soccer coach, a passable demographer, a fake sociologist, a terrible wife and a superficial hippie... but I am a DAMN GOOD PHOTOGRAPHER. Seriously- if I am really honest with myself, I probably should have just manned up and become a photographer and not gone the way of Academia. It is what it is... I started taking pictures with my mom's tricked out Canon with the telephoto lens when I was in middle school. Before I started caring about playing sports, I spent most of JJ's tournament weekends shooting pictures of him and his team. And this was back in the day when you did this with film in the camera. When I taught preschool, every parent got several beautiful pictures of their kids during the year... Action shots, portraits, you name it, I do it.

Now, there are very few people in this world that I would actively seek out to shoot the first photos of our child. Given my skillz with a camera, I think that this is justifiable... no where in this list is there Beavis and Butthead who are probably not even real photographers, but rather randoms hired by the hospital. So, as you can imagine, I am already a bit put off by this arrangement.

Add to this, that newborns are notoriously ugly when they are still in the hospital. Most babies that are born vaginally, have long pointy heads, because their heads get squished on the way out... most of the time, their eyes arent quite open yet... a lot are bald... and many have kind of a ruddy complexion, that seems to be a reaction to not being surrounded in water 24-7. While Nico wasn't exactly "ugly", he wasn't 100% adorable yet, because he was still pretty red. I would rather wait a bit before shooting pictures of him (at least till the red goes down). But I have Beavis and Butthead in my room- all up in Nico's grill, arguing about who gets to hold him first and who is going to shoot the picture, and a whole mess of nonsense that made my head hurt. Beavis asks me what color background I want... I say green, and a minute later, Butthead tells Beavis that green is a horrible color to have for a background. This goes on for like 15 minutes, them play arguing with each other, talking about how adorable Nico is, and how they just want to "eat him up", complaining to each other that one has held him longer than the other got to hold him for...

So they get done shooting 5 pictures of him. 5. 5 pictures. All of that nonsense, for 5 pictures.

But here is the best part... when they were done, and Nico was safely returned to his bassinet, out of the reach of crazy, all of a sudden one of them was all up in MY grill talking about package options... I was like, "What?" Yeah, apparently, this outfit sells the images in the form of prints, postcards, birth announcements, etc. And no, they are not a good value. At all. And that is when I figured it out- its a racket. They do the whole routine for new parents. The new parents end up placing an order... 2 weeks go by and then you get your ugly pictures of your kid... and you realize, you were duped.

In the end, we bought the picture CD... thinking that in the event that they were any good, that we'd at least have the digital versions for FB and whatnot... and so that I can edit the pictures to make them cute...

The two main problems with being new parents...

Not much new to report. Most of the free time I get these days is broken up into 5, 10, 15 minute chunks of time that aren't really long enough to accomplish anything important, but too short to take a nap. Turns out I can crank out a blog post in about 10 minutes, so I got that going for me.

We took Nico up to the Press Center today- all of Dave's coworkers ooooohed and aaaaaaahed over him- with good reason: the kid is adorable.


Seriously, I cant wait till this kid gets control over his facial muscles... because I think its only fitting that he learn the "Blue Steel" pose from Zoolander (the kid is ridiculously good looking):


So far the hardest thing has been the "alternative" sleep schedule (obviously). The second hardest thing has been the fact that I dont have four arms. Seriously, if I had two extra arms, this mother hood thing would be a snap... I could hold Nico AND fold laundry, or work on a PAA submission and feed Nico at the same time. This "two arm" limitation has been a bit annoying.

As for the alternative sleep schedule- I have been trying to brainstorm ways to keep Nico awake during the day, so he will sleep at night. When I used to be a preschool teacher and needed to get some things accomplished during naptime, I would make sure that all my little monsters were EXHAUSTED when we came in from playing outside. This result was usually attained by races and games and activities. We'd have a dance party just before lunch time and HOCUS-POCUS, 20 minutes after nap started, I would have a room full of kids who were SLEEPING.

Now when I try this, I prop Nico up in my lap so that we can listen to music and sing- he sleeps. When Dave or I read him a book, he sleeps. When we try to watch a Premier League game with him, he sleeps. Surprisingly, this happens to me all the time... When its dark and its time to go to sleep- all of a sudden little homey wants to be awake. I guess the apple didnt fall too far from the tree...

On the upside, he is starting to be able to look at things that are further away. When he was first born, he could only look at and focus on things that were 7-10 inches away from his face (usually mine or Dave's face). These days, I catch him looking over my shoulder, looking around the living room, looking at the dogs. So that is pretty cool. He has also outgrown most of the newborn onesies that we had- which I knew might happen... when you're born at almost 10 pounds, things like that tend to happen. We've taken to putting some of these little onesies on him but just not snapping them at the crotch. I think this makes him look just a little bit ghetto... like he ought to have some chew in his cheek and a pack of cigarettes rolled up in his shirt sleeve.

Hippie= Not Always Better

TMI Post about baby poop in 3...2...1...

The great thing about having a blog devoted to our kid, is that, since the kid isn't doing much more than dirtying diapers, eating and sleeping... you get a blog post about baby poop. Aren't the interwebs grand?

So... baby poop. Yeah, there is no shortage of it around here. I am going to spare my readers (loyal and random) from a thorough description here. I can say we're lucky in that it doesnt really smell bad yet...just wait till this kid starts eating Mexican and Indian food...

In any case, I think that Nico waits until we go to change him before he realizes he has to go... then all of a sudden, there is pee raining down from the sky and poop jetting out of his butt. Literally jetting out of his butt. Of course, now he appears to have a diaper rash. Isnt that fantastic? Brand-spanking new baby- still has the new baby smell, and he has diaper rash. Caregiving: FAIL!

This fail is largely my fault since I decided to take my hippietude to another level by getting the organic diaper rash stick... which we started using last week when we came home. I thought it was cool, because it works like a glue stick, and you dont have to put your fingers in gobs of Desitin. It could have failed for a variety of reasons: either we werent using enough or really doesnt work. Or maybe Nico is pooping so much that its just eating through the diaper stick stuff we were putting on his little butt. My mother was right- there is nothing worse than seeing your helpless little baby's butt bright red. WORST. MOTHER. EVER.

One Week

So its been a week. Right around this time last week, life was sucking hard core- strong contractions and no end in sight. Of course, one hardly remembers that when looking down at the most adorable kid you've ever seen. Seriously, the kid cant help it- he IS ridiculously good looking.

When they released us from the hospital on Wednesday, our pediatrician was a little concerned about his weight loss- he had dropped from 9 lbs, 6 ounces at birth to 8 lbs, 8 ounces (close to 10 % of his body weight). Of course, this induced a TOTAL MELTDOWN in his poor mom, who was worried that this was a sign of her being a bad mom. The lactation consultant suggested supplementing with formula until we both got the hang of breastfeeding and until he'd gained some of his weight back. I think this is pretty radical for a lactation consultant, who I had always thought were pretty militant about that sort of thing...

In any case, the plan she put us on was meant to help him regain some of that lost weight. The plan worked, because when we went to the pediatrician on Friday, he'd popped back up to 8lbs, 13 ounces. So that was good. I dont know if its like this everywhere, of if we happen to notice it, because Tallahassee is such a small town- but when we went to the doctor on Friday for the well-child check, we saw several other couples and newborns who were at the hospital with us. Aside from the moon-headed 7month old, all the other babies (5 including Nico) were about the same age (3-5 days old). However, all the other parents comented on how much older Nico looked than the other kids.

Dave and I have determined that the cause of the "older look" is the fact that he doesnt have newborn hair. His hair isn't buckwild all over the place- its pretty neat looking. Except for coming down over his ears, he looks like he has had a hair cut already. Isnt that funny?

Last night, we attended a baby shower thing for our friends DP and KH... their baby is due in one month. We went with DR's parents for dinner first and made our way to the shower. And Nico was surprisingly "good". I say "good" ebcause he essentially slept the entire time, so there wasnt much of an opportunity to be "bad" (whatever that means). But everyone loved him and thought he was adorable, which he is.

About parenthood- I love it. Granted, there are parts that suck- like when you cant even read the time on the tivo because your eyes are so blurry- but you think it might be 339 am. And I am definitely not a fan of poopy diapers. But so far, I absolutely adore the smell of this guy. Which isnt a newfound thing- but I always assumed that babies smell good because their parents put baby lotion on them and they dont eat Indian or Mexican food. Turns out, that babies just smell good. Period.

Another of my favorite things is the way that he curls up like a little frog whenever I (or anyone else) hold him. I know that this wont last- right now, its mostly a function of him being relatively small and relatively sleepy all the time. A-D-O-R-A-B-L-E.