Parenting Anecdote #226:  After baby, the amount of time you spend getting ready for an outing will be directly proportional to the amount of time spent ON said outing.

For example:  Today it took me 2 hours to prepare to go to the grocery store for 51 minutes.

I spend a lot of time during the day staring at my baby.

I’m pretty sure that’s normal, I mean, they’re small and they need constant supervision. But when I say I spend time staring at her, I mean I spend time STARING at her.

Part of my charming neuroses involves a daily inventory of her well-being, from the top of her head to the tip of her toes. Call it whenever you like (the popular choices have been crazy, obsessive, and paranoid), but I call it THOROUGH.

Anyhoodle, I’m pretty much an expert on this child. I know where her birthmarks are, I can use 10 adjectives for the color of her eyes, and I could probably sketch an exact replica of her hands and fingernails.

(Thorough.)

So you can imagine my surprise when I was gazing upon her only moments ago as I noticed something that I had NEVER SEEN BEFORE.

On the top of her head, underneath her soft (sparse for now but I’m optimistic) downy hair, I COULD SEE HER PULSE BEATING THROUGH HER SOFT SPOT.

And then I had a heart attack.

(Not really but it felt like it.)

Thankfully I happened to be on the phone with my mother who assured me it was completely normal, but I immediately hung up on her and dialed/texted three other people for a second/third/fourth opinion before I decided I didn’t need to call her doctor.

And also because they may or may not know me at her pediatricians office as “the one we occasionally need to talk down off the ledge.”

(Thorough.)

(And I didn’t see that FOR SURE in her file but I imagine it’s there.)

So yes, it’s normal. And apparently, it’s something that EVERYONE is surprised I didn’t already know.

And it just MAYBE goes to show that even the most hyper vigilant observant of us can still miss obvious things.

But to me all it proves is that I need to spend even MORE time staring at her. For her own well-being, of course.

Challenge: ACCEPTED.

Parenting Anecdote #111: If anything in your house ever breaks, including furniture or walls, you can use rice cereal as spackle to glue it back together.

If you didn’t know, I am an almost professional amateur diagnostician.

(Also, yes, that is a word. Although at first I thought I made it up.)

If you tell me your symptoms/what you had for lunch/your hopes and dreams/where it itches, I will evaluate and then diagnose you. It only takes about 3 minutes because I am very uninformed talented.

This stems from those shitty commercials they play late at night on Lifetime, you know, the ones that go “Do you feel depressed? Does your back hurt? Do you have feet? Does the sky look blue?” and we all watch and go “YES THAT’S ME!”

I’ve never met a vague survey I didn’t like. In fact, at my old salon we used to have one taped to the refrigerator that would tell you if you were an alcoholic after just 4 extremely general questions. “Do you enjoy alcoholic beverages?” Yes. “Do you occasionally drink too many?” Yes. “Does alcohol sometimes impair your judgement?” Yes. “Do you ever lie about how many drinks you’ve had?” No because I’m sleeping by then. According to this survey, I’m 75% alcoholic, 25% lightweight, and 100% a hairstylist who occasionally parties with the gays. DIAGNOSTICIAN.

Anyhoodle, recently I was at the OBGYN for lady biz time, and there was a survey on the back of the door, and since I was sitting there at my most vulnerable in my paper gown, I was all over it. This one was for post-partum depression, which never really applied to me before, but obviously could now.

Post-partum depression is a real thing and nothing to joke about. That’s why this is a problem for me.

(Joke to cope, yo.)

After GG was born, I had a major case of the baby blues: you know, crying for no reason, paranoia, stress, anxiety, the whole nine yards. It’s lessened over time but my hormones are still cruising around CrazyTown on the New Mama Express Train. So, I’m sitting there looking at this survey and thinking to myself… Uh oh.

“Does your baby’s crying excessively annoy you?” I can honestly say no. She’s such a good baby.

“Do you get excessively irritated about small things?” AND HOW. But… didn’t I always? (Yes I did.)

“Do you have bouts of anxiety and paranoia?” Yes. No. Who’s there? What?

“Do you cry frequently and for no apparent reason?” No. Yes. Shut up. You do.

“Do you have trouble sleeping even when your baby is sleeping?” No. Sleep is my friend.

“Did you have a hard labor and delivery?” No. Thank God.

“Do you have a history of depression?” Uhm. Maybe? Where’s the survey for THAT?

Then there was a phone number and dates for a support group meeting that you could attend if you felt like you were suffering from post-partum depression. Unfortunately, that does not apply to me.

Here’s why: No one wants me at their serious support group.

Here’s why: I’m inappropriate and I make jokes to cover up when I’m feeling uncomfortable.

I’ve learned over the years that my personality is not conducive to sharing your feelings publicly without throwing in some ridiculously misplaced attempt at humor in order to try and lighten the mood. And not everyone appreciates that, which I can totally understand.

I was able to attend the breastfeeding support group while I was trying to nurse GG because 1) I was too distracted by the small person latched to my boob to make jokes 2) it wasn’t really life or death and lots of mommies came just for the interaction with other adults. Plus I was still majorly baby-blued out and I usually cried while I was there. And made small-talky jokes with the lactation consultant.

(Old habits die hard.)

I’ve “jokingly” said over the past few years that I write this blog instead of going to therapy. It’s probably never been more true than it is now. Writing it down helps me get whatever it is out there, and then I’m not so afraid of it anymore.

Am I suffering from post-partum depression? I don’t think so, not in the real sense. I don’t think about hurting myself or anything, and I have only the holy-shit-I’m-tired reluctance about getting out of bed in the morning. Sure, my germaphobia and general paranoia might be at an all time high, but I’m (fairly) certain that goes with the new mommy territory.

Am I on an emotional roller coaster and could I probably benefit from some support? Absolutely. Am I completely confident about how to navigate the bridge between Sarcasm Girl and Benevolent Mommy? Absolutely not. Am I going to look into some one-on-one therapy with a counselor who hopefully has a sense of humor? Yes.

Here’s the bottom line: Post-partum depression is real and 100% legit and more common than you might think. So if a new mommy in your life isn’t bouncing back the way she should, maybe take a chance and ask her how she’s doing.

And if she makes a crappy joke about it, make sure you laugh. And then ask her again.

Parenting Anecdote #87: The ONE TIME you stay up until 2 am catching up on this season of The Vampire Diaries a highly educational program will be the same day that your usually-amazing-sleeper baby will decide to wake up at 5 am and not nap all day.

Just like fashion, hair goes through trends as well.

And since I am unbelievably lucky and fortunate, occasionally the good folks at Misikko send me their newest and hottest product to try and then regale all of you with my honest opinion.

(Yes. Disclaimer: the curling wand in this review was provided to me by Misikko, but all opinions and statements are my own.)

Sometimes you guys like to email me with hair questions or ask me via Twitter, and I always do my best to help out, because there is NOTHING IN LIFE worse than bad hair.

(Slight exaggeration. But close.)

I am a huge fan of using hot tools to style your hair, especially irons and wands, and in fact, I am somewhat of a flat-iron connoisseur, always looking for the best flat iron, with my very favorite probably being the tried and true CHI iron.

(You CANNOT go wrong with a CHI. I had my last one for 6 years before it finally died, and that was after using it 5 days a week on multiple people a day.)

Anyhoodle, with casual waves and curls still dominating the runways as of late, the Corioliss Clipless Wand Ceramic Curling Iron is any girl’s remedy to a boring hair day.

The idea behind the Corioliss is loose, natural looking curls with staying power. Since it’s a clipless wand, you have to use the special glove when you’re curling. It might seem a little complicated and awkward at first, especially if you’re used to a regular curling iron, so I HIGHLY suggest you watch THIS VIDEO from Corioliss demonstrating an easy technique.

So here’s what I like about the Corioliss Clipless Wand:

• It gets SUPER hot. I didn’t think it would work as well on girls with coarse hair, and boy was I wrong. Make sure you use the glove!!
• It heats up in 30 SECONDS. No joke. Perfect for my busy salon days!
• The swivel cord makes maneuvering way easier when you’re using both hands to curl.
• The curls are less uniformed and have a casual, easy look. Very pretty!

Here’s what I’m not quite sure about:

• It gets VERY hot. The included glove works well, though. Safety first, people.
• The hair definitely needs to have some length to it in order to wrap around the wand. Perfect for mid-to-long hair, not ideal for shorter hair or curling iron “sets.”

Overall, I think it’s a great wand, and once you get the hang of it, you’ll be rockin’ the beachy curls in no time. Even better, it’s on sale on Misikko’s site, so you can snag a discount.

Go forth, my friends, and curl!

In my quest to save a little money and stop excessively hemorrhaging cash like a bleeding sample-sale victim spend wisely, I’ve been looking for ways to be thrifty.

I’ve also been watching a lot of TV.

(What? It’s free entertainment.)

(Well, it’s sort of free. I mean, I already pay the cable bill, so it’s like… already INCLUDED entertainment. Just go with it.)

And inevitably, I happened upon a little dog and pony show called “Extreme Couponing.” You all know what I’m talking about. Sally Small-Town in the middle of God knows where feeds her entire city on coupons that take her approximately 45 hours a week to cut and organize? Yup. That’s the one.

So, like any optimistic new mommy/wannabe housewife/crazy person living in one of THE MOST expensive cities in the country, I decide I can do the exact same thing.

How hard can it be, right? Get some newspapers, cut out the coupons, go to the store, clear the shelves, and walk out with $800 worth of groceries for $1.42. No problemo.

Ha. Ha ha ha.

(I’m so cute when I’m delusional.)

Here’s how my couponing went:

1. Newspapers? Check. Cut out coupon inserts from 4 papers. Time spent: 2 hours and $6 for the papers.
2. Coupons? Check. Re-trim edges because am OCD. Time spent: 2 hours.
3. Couponing blogs? Check. Print out 40 bazillion internet coupons. Time spent: 4 hours and 1 $20 ink cartridge.
4. Coupon organizer? Check. Scour internet for perfect binder and plastic sleeves. Time spent: 3 hours and $15.
5. Organized coupons? Check. Re-trim edges AGAIN to fit in sleeves. Time spent: 4 hours.
6. Shopping spreadsheet? Check. Wrestle with formulas and columns to make the ultimate list. Time spent: 2 hours.
7. Shopping list? Check. Obsessively pour over inserts and compare deals with coupons. Time spent: 6 hours.
8. Store coupon policy? Check. 10 calls. Turns out nowhere in San Diego doubles all coupons or gives overages. Time spent: 1 hour.

Aaaaand 24 hours later, I’m ready to shop.

However, have any of you ever grocery shopped with a 4 month old? If you have, you know exactly what I’m about to say. WHERE DO YOU PUT THE BABY?

At 4 months, most babies are not sitting up on their own, so you can’t put them in the child seat of the cart. If you use your car seat in the top compartment, not only is that apparently now frowned upon, but you also won’t have anywhere to put your couponing binder. And if you put the car seat in the big compartment of the shopping cart, there’s no room for groceries. Not to mention any baby that I’ve ever met has a statute of limitations for being in the car seat unless they’re asleep.

LE MOTHER-EFFING SIGH.

So I think I have an ingenious idea, and I decide to use the Baby Bjorn. You know, that baby-sling type thing that attaches the baby to your chest so they look like they’re stuck on flypaper? Yeah, that one. PROBLEM SOLVED, right? Wrong. Sure, GG loves the Baby Bjorn because she’s nosy, but when your kid is just out there, exposed, without the safety of the car seat, PEOPLE TRY TO TOUCH THEM.

And since I am now crazier than a loon when it comes to germs/strangers/people/life in general, that’s unacceptable. So I armed myself with a pack of baby wipes, some spray disinfectant, and a bottle of hand sanitizer, just in case.

24 hours of couponing and 1 hour of baby preparation later, I AM READY TO SHOP.

Except, when I made my shopping list, I didn’t think to make it by row in the grocery store. And I didn’t pull out the coupons I thought I’d be using, so I had to flip through the entire binder to find each one. And I didn’t plan for all the last minute items Hubs added to my list. And I didn’t think all these specific brands would be so hard to find.

(And I probably bought things I didn’t need just because I had coupons for them. Oops.)

24 hours of couponing, 1 hour of baby preparation, and 2.5 hours of grocery shopping later, I saved $70 between coupons and my club card. I spent $100.

But, don’t forget, I need to subtract the $41 it cost me to coupon in the first place, so that leaves me with a savings of $29. And when you divide $29 by the 27.5 hours it took me to complete my shopping trip, you have a grand total of $1.05 per hour saved. $1 PER HOUR. I could’ve opened a lemonade stand and made more than that.

(Because I would’ve made it an adult-only stand and served lemonade vodka.)

Bottom line is this: Yes, I saved money. Yes, I know what to do differently for the next trip. But really, when it comes down to it, unless your store doubles coupons, gives overages, and has all of the obscure brands on the coupons, I’m not sure if it’s really worth it.

($1 PER HOUR.)

Lemonade, anyone?

Parenting Anecdote #29: Being a new mommy involves a daily lowering of the standards regarding what is acceptable to wear outside the home.

Until very recently, I didn’t worry much about my financial state of affairs.

When I say “much,” I guess I mean I worried the usual amount, you know, like “ah crap, I have credit card debt and I wish we lived in a mansion and had a dishwasher and a herd of mini horses.”

(Because that’s a normal thing to wish for.  Mini horses.  Standard even, really.)

Now and again, I’d lament about past monetary frivolities, but really, when you’re in your mid-to-late 20′s and you’ve managed to not be hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt, I’d say you’re doing okay, because I know a few poor suckers who are still in school and have enough debt to cover a NYC brownstone on the Upper East Side.

(Sure, they might at some point become doctors or lawyers.  But $100k+ is still a lot, no matter how many letters you tack on after your name.)

Anyhoodle.

Now I have a baby.  And since I have a baby, I worry about All The Things.

All The Things pretty much encompasses any hair-brained scenario you could imagine, varying from realistic problems like “Will we be able to buy a house someday?” to “What if she wants to become an astronaut and needs me to co-sign on a spaceship?”

(It could happen.  I predict that intergalactic travel will soon become the norm of her generation.)

So since I need my credit to be in good standing for any future spacecraft purchases that may arise, I’ve decided that Hubs and I need to be on a strict budget in order to get ahead.  This is approximately 42,000 times easier said than done, especially since I’ve been working less since GG arrived, and developed a penchant for online baby clothes shopping.

(It’s SO fun, you guys.  Seriously.)

All of this leads to the most pertinent question on my mind as of late:  How do people our age do it?  More importantly, how do people our age, in one of the most expensive cities in the country, in an economy that is less than wonderful, thrive?

I feel like I need a rewind button sometimes.  If I could pinpoint the minute where I subconsciously decided to live in the middle rather than fight to rise to the top, could I change it?  Would I want to?  Is there a sacrifice to getting ahead and staying there?

And, am I being melodramatic?  I have a cozy rental, a happy baby, an employed Hubs, food on the table, and enough cash flow to enjoy the finer things in life, like Starbucks and the occasional Target shopping spree.  I’m not complaining.  I’m just thinking about our future, and how I can make it better.

For now, I’m cutting corners, clipping coupons, and keeping my eye on the prize, which I THINK is long-term concrete financial stability but might actually be just maintaining a reasonable lifestyle.

(One without Loubous and Cartier, most likely.  This isn’t Gossip Girl, unforch.)

Now that I’m 1/2 stay-at-home-mommy and 1/2 stylist-shopaholic-financial-analyst, what is a girl to do?  Where is the intersection between frugal, formula, and fabulous, and how do I get there?

And does anyone know where I can get a discount on a spaceship?

I’ll be the first to admit, I have a lot of bad habits.

Staying up too late, eating junk before bedtime, revisiting my love of caffeinated/carbonated drinks and lunch meat, compulsively shopping online, procrastinating about anything non-baby related… you name it, I’m probably guilty of it.

I never really thought much about how my bad habits could affect those around me until GG was born. I mean, sure, I’ve rubbed off a bit on Hubs, cuz I’m fairly certain he never used to eat Fudgesicles in bed or leave dishes in the sink, but he’s a grown man and all so he can make his own choices.

(And he’s no saint, trust me. Just ask the pile of clothes on the bathroom floor.)

All of a sudden, we have this baby, and we have to start thinking about her life and her future and what we want for her. And what we DON’T want for her, for that matter. And then we start compulsively over-analyzing everything we do, because we don’t want to scar her for life before she cuts her first tooth. They’re like little sponges, right? Just soaking up their environment and developing their personalities based on what they see and hear.

So, we’re super aware of what we’re doing, and then we realize what we’re SAYING. OH ALL THE THINGS WE ARE SAYING. ALL OF THE BAD, BAD THINGS.

Somewhere along the way, I developed a vocabulary much akin to that poor foul-mouthed sailor that everyone is always talking about. I think I’m actually on par with Hubs, which is saying a lot because he’s a dude that works mainly with dudes, and their shipyard interactions are not for the faint of heart.

But I digress. The point is, our language needed to be SEVERELY modified before GG’s first word was more colorful than a crayon box. Of course, we don’t cuss AT her, but still, in every day conversations she hears it! It’s part of our vernacular as adults! What to do? How does one break a habit so ingrained that they don’t even REALIZE after every few words is some form of “fuck”?

And I know that sounds really bad, but have you listened to YOURSELF lately? If you don’t have kids, or maybe even if you do, you might be surprised if you think about it. It’s so socially acceptable that I don’t even hear it anymore. It’s just how people talk.

(At least, people I know. Maybe you hang out with better people.)

Hubs and I decided we would make a concerted effort to stop cussing, but we knew it wouldn’t happen overnight, nor would it happen easily or without slip-ups. We still needed some sort of outlet, a safe word, SOMETHING. One afternoon while we were watching TV, a trailer for the Smurfs movie came on, and a lightbulb went off.

The Smurfs were the pioneers of replacing their nouns and verbs, usually with the ever-inoffensive “smurf”. Hubs and I figured we could do the same with all of our favorite cuss words, and GG would never be the wiser! BRILLIANT PLAN, RIGHT?

Sure, if you remembered to do it all the time. If you didn’t, in fact, make up NEW cuss words based on the safe word, and if you could still understand what the other person was trying to say when half of their sentences were peppered with smurfy-smurfness.

I sort of felt like the use of “smurf” defeated the point a bit when it came to cleaning up my language. If the point was to STOP cussing, replacing it with a more kid-friendly word wasn’t really changing anything, it was just enabling me to be more verbose when trying to make my point. In fact, what usually happens is that we cuss, realize it, and say it again but replace it with “smurf.” Sigh. Baby steps. But at least it’s something.

(Actually, if you look up “verbose” in the dictionary, I think the definition is “A blogger.” HA. HA.)

As of this minute, our household is probably 40% Chris Rock and 60% Papa Smurf. Considering that we used to be 100% inappropriate, I think this is real progress. It isn’t happening overnight, obviously, but little by little, some day we might be considered G-rated.

(Like, when we’re 90, and GG’s kids are 30, and our great-grandkids are babies. We’ll be crotchety old people then, though, so it’ll be acceptable again.)

I just hope we can get it together before GG strings those goos and gahs into something Mommy and Daddy will be embarrassed about. We’ve got some time, right? When do babies start talking? Two years? Three?

::crickets::

10 months?

Smurf it. We’re screwed.