Sit, Rocky, Sit...F*@#in' SIT!!!!

Babies control and bring up their families as much as they are controlled by them; in fact ... the family brings up baby by being brought up by him.-- Erik H. Erikson

So I'm standing in the front yard, Corbin on one hip. "Come"..no response..."Come here"...no response..."Come here, NOW"..small step forward..."Do you want a treat?"...I've never seen that fat dog run so freakin' fast. My fake alpha male voice doesn't even work a bit...just makes me sound like an amateur imitation of Darth Vader..I mean come on..its a dog. Aren't dogs man's best friend? Would your best friend make you look like an ass in front of all your neighbors? Hmm, that's questionable, but seriously..I think I've ruined the dog. He listened GREAT when Rich and I started dating. Now he's ruined. I'm hoping this isn't foreshadowing my future as a crappy mother. We always tell friends we HATE it when people claim they have dogs as practice for kids. Do you wipe your dog's butt? Do you hand feed your dog? Do you rock your dog to sleep at 2am? Yeah, my point exactly...but do you think that it's discipline training? Is Corbin going to be hell on wheels because I've ruined the dog proving that I can't discipline ANYTHING?? I swear..I'm a good mother.

Our life has gotten a little tougher lately. Corbin has come to the end of the fruits and veggies train and is now seriously eating us out of house and home. I'm assuming that thin nasty formula and veggies just aren't cutting it and you should see his poor lil' face when his little friends get to eat cheesecake while I offer him mushy sweet potatoes. In an effort to make all our lives a little easier, I called the GI and asked for an allergist recommendation. Along with a specific doc's name from a woman on CM, I found Dr. Gray Norris. I set up an appointment with my future savior for a consultation and a skin test. You would think that if most women dread vaccinations, having your child's back pricked over 2 dozen times would strike a small amount of anxiety in you, but at this point, I would take a day of hell over what we have been through in the past 10 months, so let's just get it over with. So we go. Lil' Corby was in heaven. A new place with a big shiny box (aka..the TV) and steps to climb on. That waiting room was his next Gymboree. So we wait..and wait..and wait. Finally after they haul someone off in an ambulance (very encouraging might I add), they call us back. The doc comes in and asks Corbin's history..so I start my list of reactions...milk, soy, rice, and his six month shots. He decides that a skin test would help us out, so he leaves, we strip Corbs, pop in Baby Einstein into the lap top, and we're good to go. They do the test, with just a few tears from our lil' trooper, and the results are in. HE ISN'T ALLERGIC TO ANYTHING! "You are freakin' kidding me?!?!?!?" Those were my exact words. "Yes, 9 times out of 10, the GIs are right, but this happens to be the one time they are wrong." His exact words!!! He tells us that our son has no allergies and does not have acid reflux. Might I remind everyone that a certain someone got a part-time job to pay for formula that this man is telling us we didn't need. (This is where I pick my jaw up off the floor) Deep breath....so the next part of the tale....


Apparently, you can have another type of allergy called Eosinophilic Esophagitis (EE). It's a good thing I'm typing because I can't pronounce it. It's where white blood cells get trapped in your belly, throat, and small intestine and attack certain foods when you eat them..causing the blood and severe pain. Does anyone else think its a good thing that kids don't remember anything before the age of 3? Yeah, me too. Too bad I have to remember it....Anyway, So we have to do a blood test to see if this is what is wrong with Corbin. If it is, then he just takes a med and he's good to go on even REGULAR formula. "I'm sending our GI a bill." My exact words. Next trauma of the day...holding our child down, so they can take blood out of his arm like a big boy. As you can imagine..red face, gagging, hyperventilating...and Corbin didn't do much better..jk! So he screamed, cried, turned red, gagged, and by the end, Richard and I needed a serious cocktail..or possibly 3. So the wait was on...he promised we'd know by Monday, but one week later, we got the results yesterday. NEGATIVE...urgh! The nurse says to just expand his diet slowly..thanks for calling. I went through the roof! Yup, the doc called us personally.....turns out that the blood test just lowers the chance, but isn't absolute. We are currently challenging him with foods he has shown a reaction to..if he has another reaction, they will have to biopsy tissue from his belly to see if the white blood cells are in there. He made it sound simple, but it just sounds scary.


So I gave Corbin oatmeal this morning. I'm not usually an emotional person, but I cried through the entire thing. He, of course, laughed and gobbled it up because he loves anything that he "can" eat. This just made it worse because in the back of my mind I was imagining him screaming 24 hours later. I guess that's not for me to know right now. I guess it's just one more thing you can't control in someone else's life. It's funny how connected you are to your child. I know there is something wrong and no one would listen to me. I just want my baby to have a birthday cake. Isn't that sad. Somehow smashing your face into a milk-free, soy-free, gluten-free "cake" just doesn't have the same effect..shit..even icing has butter in it. It's like my "he's ok" moment...if he gets his cake. I don't care about the money we've spent or the time and effort worrying, getting frustrated about something I don't understand. Just let it be over..just give him his cake. I don't think you should be judged on the demeanor of your child..whether he sits nicely in a restaurant or whether he learned to walk before he got teeth. How about to watch tv or not watch tv? To cry it out or not cry it out? Who cares??? Who gives a shit if he sleeps through the night because guess what..there will always be something that keeps you up. I want my baby to make the same mistakes I made in life, to have the same fun I have in life. I don't want to read labels anymore, I don't want to be sad when he watches me eat pizza then run through the list in my head of all the things in it that would hurt him. Just give him his cake. So as Rocky manipulates me in the front yard...I don't feel like someday I will be a failure as a parent because he is so resistant until I give him what he wants. I've already succeeded. I bitched at my ped and GI for 10 months that something was wrong..that it was more than a milk allergy. I researched anything from milk allergies to being allergic to DHA (for cryin' out loud) to what order I should test food and guess what, my mommy intuition was right...within 30 minutes of seeing Dr. Norris we got more answers than 10 months worth of questions and unnecessary meds from two other people. No one can "train" to know all the right answers, to do all the right things, to be a good parent...it just comes with the territory. So you just wait...Corbin will have that cake AND eat it too!!

Like a bra...support the girls :)

I love to see a young girl go out and grab the world by the lapels. Life's a bitch. You've got to go out and kick ass. ~Maya Angelou

Its no secret that women are not nice to other women. It's crazy...we are supposed to unite, band together, be one with each other, blah, blah, blah dee freakin' blah! It doesn't work that way...it must be in our nature to be manipulative, nasty, and down right mean at times. Guys just kick the sh*t out of each other and then shake hands. I'm not sure which one is more bizarre. This fact never really registered with me...it rubbed me the wrong way from time to time, but never really registered until I became a stay-at-home mom. I guess I had more to focus on when I was working and life was all about me, but I'm not gonna lie...it's lonely down here. I had this naive vision of play dates and Gymboree....lovely story time at the local library...before Mr. Corbin took over my world and social life..but reality, schedules, and interfering nap times set in REAL fast once he showed up. So here I sit..typing away..just waiting for a little peep coming from the room next door...

I can remember two weeks after Corbin was born..yes, in the middle of January...taking him for a walk around the block. My neighbor actually stopped her car and asked what the hell I was doing..I HAD TO GET OUT OF THE HOUSE..AHHHHHH! My obvious response..because two weeks doesn't sound that long until you are stuck in the house with a screaming baby, barely able to walk up or down the stairs, and have seen enough Dr. Phil to start charging by the hour anytime the phone rang. Yes, that short-lived walk was just the beginning. Not long after my "bad mother" walk of shame back home....I spotted another mother in our neighborhood as I drove home from the grocery store. It was like a dog salivating at his food dish after being denied sustenance for 3 days. I pretended to check the mail at least 3 times hoping she would walk down our street...no go! It sounds so pathetic, but I'm a pretty social person and it was killing me. When Corbin was about 3 months old, I started meeting other mothers through http://www.charlottemommies.com/ and eventually we organized a "Hump Day" play date. Every Wednesday morning, my new 4 friends came over and we would discuss every new milestone, new challenge, and the next thing our husbands had done to piss us off :) 4 boys and a girl all around the same age. It was exactly what I needed and we still meet weekly now. It's so nice to know that someone else is on the same page as I am...going through the same ups and downs as I am. Someone who understands the depth of love you can have for your child and still have those days where you wonder where the hell you went wrong in life ;) Those women have made a WORLD of difference in my experience as a mother and of course, my sanity. We have become so close and have the occasional mommy's night out...going out for drinks or even to a funny show (thanks to Jenn)! I can't stress this enough..you can't be a mother without the support of other mothers.

This leads us to my new discovery! Once you are married, have kids, and are in the swing of this new life....getting picked up brings on a whole new meaning. SO....I was in Lowes foods one morning with my mom participating in their triples (surprise, surprise)! We were in the baked goods aisle as I instructed my mother on how many of Martha White's muffin mixes and Warm Delights to buy, when this woman was coming down the aisle and asked my mom, politely, to let her through. As she came up, she stopped next to us to let her daughter and Corbin "talk" to each other. We struck up a conversation and it turned out that Lila Kate and Corbin had something in common...they were both allergic to milk! As we continued through the grocery store, we kept running into Mille and Lila Kate...we discussed how they had just moved here from New Orleans, our pediatricians, and immunizations....in the end, I gave Mille my email address (I didn't want to seem to easy by giving her my number)...and we went our separate ways, promising to talk again soon. I was totally picked up in the grocery store..it was great!! This meeting new mommies thing had become a breeze..I had it down pat! Watch out or you might be next....I told my Hump Day mommies about it and they, of course, made jokes and all was right in the world. Well, it's been a week and a half and no email! I've been rejected by my first pick up at the grocery store by another mommy..WTF. Oh well, maybe she was intimidated by this rocking mommy ;)

It's hilarious how this exclusive mommy club changes your life. How the one thing I figured would remain constant in my life has been the first to go. I know its not easy for my childless friends to get all excited about how he crinkles his nose when he's super excited or how I finally figured out how to get him on a good, 2 nap, schedule. I get that. I also get that you probably don't think that Pinky Dinky Doo is as funny as I do...hello, Mr. Guinea Pig was rockin' out to an electric guitar..that's funny ;) And to be completely honest, its unfair for me to expect for you to understand. It's almost as if you give up your good friends for a short time until they have kids because it just seems impossible to stay the same. Nothing stays the same. I recently met that mommy I was pretty much stalking way back when. It turns out that her son is 2 weeks older than Corbin and they played together in the front yard. It was too sweet. Hopefully someday, I can just open the door as Corbin runs out to go play at Cameron's house...or "Mom, Can Cameron stay for dinner?" :) You have to surround yourself with women who understand you. Whether that is at work, at school, or in your local grocery store. You can have differences in opinion, you can disagree on life choices, but the truth is no man will ever get what its like to be us...so come on...support the girls!