since McPantses threw up water earlier this morning, I should just let her continue to sing one of her tuneless neverending made up songs that drive me completely insane instead of eventually shushing her like I usually end up doing.

Right?

**fingers in ears**

The kid, she can draw. But she just cain’t sing.

Oh God she’s standing right next to me caterwauling in my ear this very second.

Send help.

We survived shots and the missing Husband (who returned last night).

In return, we got blood and pukes.

I would love to know how I have greatly increased sucking time with this baby and still have the return of menses* at 17 weeks post partum. I made it 8 full months last time. I’m not happy about this at all and I’ve got a gore-stained skirt to prove it.

McPantses woke up this morning and said, “my tummy doesn’t feel good.” She was cool as a cucumber, however, and in a fine mood, so I brushed it off. Five minutes later, I was sitting at the table pumping and reading a book and she was barfing her guts up in the bathroom. Poor girl.

She’s had nothing but water this morning and threw that up, too.

Sooo, for those keeping track at home, I have missed 2 1/2 days of my first full week back at work. Yesterday was Third’s first full day of daycare and I cried on the way to work, cried on the way back to work after nursing him at lunch and sniffled a bit when I picked him up at 5:25. (It was 5:25 because I stopped at home long enough to get out of the gore-soaked skirt because I cannot stand to walk around squishy with blood.)

I cannot do full-time. I just can’t. My mother says, “Oh, you’ll be fine.” She also says that the boychild will be fine, but he had a rough day yesterday and I can’t stand that.

I may not make it to January doing full-time.

We’ll see.

On a funny note, here is McPantses’ list of what we’re good at:

She is the best ballerina and drawer.
I am the best knitter and clothes washer.
The Husband is the best pudding eater.
Third is the best AAAAH-er.

I guess it shows that I have been on a little clothes-washing kick since the new machine arrived.** I even bought liquid fabric softener for the first time and my entire house smells Downy fresh. Third loves to chatter back and forth and his noise of choice is a really loud AAAAH or AAAACK. I got him a new wormy toy last night that has flappity feet for chewing and makes crinkle noises and squeaks and has an alligator head and we named him AAAAH the Alligator.

The Gator is popular. There are pictures. I will upload and post soon.

* I thought “return of menses” sounded better than cursed blood-letting.

** Lowe’s didn’t charge me for the nicer washer.

The Husband is going out of town today and will return, I think, Wednesday evening.

We have stocked up on three of the four major food groups (beer, champagne, wine; missing a bottle of Maker’s Mark, tho, and bour-bon is the fourth major food group*). We also have plenty of cheese. Cheese is big.

Tomorrow is my first day back full-time, but I have to leave early to take Third to his four-month well baby check. Soooo, Husband gone, first full day and loading the boychild up with shots. Nice, don’t you think? Could I have planned better? Probably.

During the next few days, I also have to take McPantses to a birthday party and get 150 invitations done. The invites need to be out by tomorrow morning, so I have to print and cut today, with no help with the kids. It’s hard to man a papercutter and a baby at the same time.

I don’t even have time to mourn the full-time gig. I was pretty sniffly on Friday night, but today I’m just busy. I have promised to slog through full-time until January. We’ll re-evaluate then. Originally, I was going to go part-time in July or August of next year, but we shall see.

McPantses has woken up in the middle of the night the past two nights and required sleep company, which the Husband has kindly obliged. Not sure what’ll happen when he’s gone, because I don’t think Miss Wigglelegs and Third will peacefully coexist in the same bed. I don’t even fit into the equation in that one. I’ll be there, but sleeping would be out of the question. I guess I could sleep betwixt the two, but wugherty, I might as well get up and read a book (or use the papercutter) instead.

Happy Sunday.

* If you’re worried that I am going to drink all that or that I drink that much on a regular basis or that I would slog back hooch while the Husband is gone, you’re quite wrong, so fear not for my kidneys or my breastfed boychild, okay? I would really like a nice Maker’s Mark, though.

p.s., I almost forgot: teaching McPantses a new version of Laurie Berkner’s song that goes “There’s a song in my ________ that wants to come out” probably wasn’t a good idea. I changed the words to “There’s a song in my bottom that wants to come out and when it comes, I’m gonna toot it out.”

Not a good idea at all. The Husband glared at me and made her promise not to sing it at school.

But when she let fly with the gas in the car on the way to the grocery store this morning, we both screamed with laughter when I said, “Well, I guess there was a song in your bottom that wanted to come out.”

Heh.

The first person* who sends me an email** showing confirmation that you made a donation of $25 or more to Kate’s surgery will get a set of six (6) luggage tags, handmade by me, for free. I will post pictures of some examples when I can.

My bag tags are hot stuff, if I do say so, myself, and I sell them for $9 each, so that’s a (oh geeze, quick, multiply 6 x 9 uhhhh) $54 (checking on calculator as brain has turned to milk) value for $25. The tags are perfect to hang on everything from diaper bags and beach bags to picnic baskets and luggage. They’re sturdy, laminated tags with plastic strappy things and come with custom artwork (by me!) and whatever information you choose to give out about your family (name, phone number, addy, bra size, you name it).

I am a fairly generous sort, so I will also toss in some extra paper goodies, from me to you.

Help this girl. Please.

Also, link to her site on your blog, wouldja? Let’s get her lots of good traffic.

Thank you very much.

* If you’re incarcerated, don’t bother. I’m sure the man is getting you down and all, but I’m not sending you a package. Go ahead and still send money to Kate, anyway, okay?

** contact@francesmcpantses.com

1. McPantses is fond of the Frances books and she has, after all, just gotten a new sibling herself, so the linked one is very meaningful to her right now.

In the linked book, Frances decides to run away after getting fed up over all the attention the new baby receives. Frances comes home from school, packs her bag and runs away (after dinner, of course) to ‘neath the dining room table.

McPantses got aggravated over something this weekend and packed a bag full of junk (including her tea service and a container of tiny makeup brushes) and announced that she was running away to Yew Nork. I’m pretty sure that if it weren’t for the Frances book, she wouldn’t know what “running away” means, though.

The Husband and I quite enjoyed this display and McPantses did, too. I think the packing of the bag lasted far longer than the actual running away.

2. In other random news, Third likes his crib a little less every day. He screams like he’s being dipped in hot oil when I try to put him down–he will even wake from a sound sleep to scream. Last night, I just kept him with me all night long in the big bed and we both slept much better.

The constant night nursing means that my supply is up, which bodes well for returning to full-time next week. It doesn’t bode well for my bosoms in tee shirts, though. I have a bit of the stripper-rack going on, and that’s just not good for anyone.

3. Still more random news: my sister is visiting from Atlanta this week, which is great fun for all of us. When she married, her mother-in-law made a great cookbook out of recipes from family and friends and presented it to my sis and her betrothed at their rehearsal dinner.

One of the recipes in the dessert section was a xeroxed copy of a recipe written in little-kid handwriting for “Shit Cakes” that my sis’s husband wrote when he was a young boy. We still laugh about the recipe because, seriously, “Shit Cakes” is funny.

Imagine our (my sister’s and my) surprise when, yesterday, McPantses pipes up with “We’re making Shit Cakes!”

The Sister said, “I don’t think that’s a very nice thing to say” while I was gesticulating wildly across the room to just ignore it because if McP ever gets wind that she’s saying something we don’t want her to say, it will become a permanent part of her vocabulary.

McPantses is true to her nature. She promptly repeated it a few times and I was thinking, I know I have a foul mouth, but I am absolutely positive McPantses has never heard that phrase. Where did she get that?

Then she said, “Boat Burgers.”

Then we figured out what she was saying originally.

Ship Cakes.

Ship Cakes.

Weird kid.

But, she was begat from weird parents with weird siblings and weird parents, so this is no surprise.

this child, needs your help.

If you’re already a parent, you know that there is no price we can put on the value of a child’s life. The Kirks will probably lose one daughter to devastating illness. There may be help for their younger daughter, though.

Help save her with your money, your kind thoughts and your prayers. Remember her big sister in your kind thoughts and prayers, too. I cannot imagine the Kirk family’s pain. No parent should have to endure such grief.

Thank you.

But we probably already knew that.

So, there’s been a huge amount of breastfeeding controversy surrounding the anti-breastfeeding comments the insipid “ladies” of the insipid show, The View, make on a regular basis. I haven’t commented on it myself because it’s just ridiculous and not really worthy of my ire. I’m angered easily enough in real life. I can’t get it up for the assfaces on that television show.

Then ole Rosie has to one-up ‘em, it appears.

She had her lesbian partner cease nursing after a month* because she was jealous of the bonding and it made her very angry. How very charming.

Nurse or don’t. Do what you want. But don’t shove your problems in a nursing mom’s face, for heaven’s sake. What kind of parent is jealous of the bond her partner parent has with their new baby to the point of such action? Don’t you celebrate the bond with the parent? Good Lord, if the Husband had such an attitude, well, we wouldn’t be enjoying much of a Father’s Day around here.

Jealousy of bonding aside, what kind of parent would choose for her infant to miss out on the health benefits of breastfeeding if at all possible? Again, if you just don’t want to do it, then don’t. But let me tell you, sistahchile, when even the formula companies tell us breast is best, then you know we’re onto something.

And all of THAT aside, breastfeeding is a proven deterrent for breast cancer later in life for the nursing mom. Didn’t Rosie’s mother die of breast cancer? You’d think she could put aside her selfish ditchpig tendencies for a while and come to her senses over that one, at least.

I speak from experience when I say that the bonding the Husband shares with McPantses is in no way less than the deep love I share with her (hell, lately, with the screaming and all, the Husband’s bonding with McPantses might be greater at any given moment), despite the year of nursing. I suspect the same will occur with Third.

Now.

On a positive note. If you might want to breastfeed, I applaud you, not because I am so great and I think it must be done (but I do think it should be done). I applaud you and say that if a lazy slackass like me can do it, then you can do it, too. (Unless you’re a man, and then if you can do it, please come teach the Husband how. I promise daily oral pleasure in exchange for a lactating husband.)

Don’t give me any of that “I just don’t make enough milk” nonsense, either. You might not have good support and good education, but in most situations, the tools are there for making more milk. Study up. Get help. Take advantage of what’s available. Here’s a start for you.

My action plan with McPantses was to do it for six weeks, no matter what. Then, I invested in a pricey breastpump. The Medela Pump in Style Traveler has been a godsend and remains worth every penny I spent. I have the milksicles in the freezer to show for it and Third has fresh milk every day at “school” because of it (well, and through the courtesy of my good teats**).

I bought the pump after lots of reading. I promised then and there that I’d do it for six months. We got through the first stage of cracked and bloody nipples and I promised to stick it out for a year.

And I did.

And if anyone had treated me the way Rosie treated her partner, I would have been crushed.

I was lucky–even my not-so-crunchy, Dobson-lovin’ pediatricians fully supported nursing even when McP didn’t gain well. They didn’t so much as suggest that we supplement, either, which surprises me to this day.

* So, why did her partner stop, anyway? Would you stop if your partner demanded it? I don’t have to tell you what I would do or think, but first and foremost, I would be crushed to learn that I had somehow ended up with such a horrid person.

** You did watch The Flinstones, didn’t you?

Happy Father’s Day, Rosie! You officially suck as a parent!

I’m not sure how it happened, but McPantses and Third are incredibly lucky in the father department. The Husband is one of the calmest, brightest, funniest men I know.

When we were dating, we both thought it interesting that we came from families with a lot of long-term, stable marriages. The Husband said, right around our own wedding, that it was an important factor to him in choosing a wife. (That and the rack, I think, or the “bosoms” for the southan readers.) I guess we both think it’s a great example for kids.

The Husband has never blinked an eye at parenting duties of any form–honestly, it’s hard to believe that some men would, but apparently they do. He’s elbow deep in diapers* (that would be the boychild, Master Shartpants) and show tunes (that would be McPantses, who must be a young Mary Poppins) when even I want a slug of bourbon or a nap.

He was saying last night that this Father’s Day is particularly special to him because it’s his first with two children. His big requests for the day? He has asked that everyone be nice to him all day long** and to have a solo bookstore trip later today. He’s got one ceegar left, too, but I’m not sure if it’s for tonight or another night. I’m going to just try to keep my big mouth shut.

I think we can manage a nice day.

I want to say a lot of nice things about what it means to be a father and what examples fathers set for their children (how to have a marriage, I think, and how to treat a spouse and kids, a good work ethic, good morals and manners, I dunno), but instead I will tell you that it’s not something I’ve ever had to worry about in the Husband. It’s just there.

We couldn’t ask for more.

* I will confess that I try to handle the messier ones when possible because it’s easier for me.

** It’s hard for me to be nice to anyone all day long, but I’m gonna try. If he had told me this one in advance, I could have scored a handful of happy pills from my mother and guaranteed niceness, tho she did slip me a valium or a xanax on my wedding day and I was still meanashell. (Apparently I got up at 6 a.m. and she handed me a glass of orange juice and a pill and said, “Here. Take this.” and I swallowed without comment, but I have no recollection of this moment.)