1) Have baby. Rejoice. Then get overtaken by postpartum hormones (commonly called the “baby blues”) and spend the next two weeks sobbing at the newspaper comic strips.

2) Take care of Norwegian paperwork. Get Norwegian birth certificate.

3) Go to US embassy. Submit metric fuckton of paperwork to prove child’s claim to citizenship, along with application for passport. Feel proud that you managed to get a useable passport photo of an infant (and especially, in my case, a 10-day old).

4) Wait.

5) Receive passport and Consular Report of Birth Abroad – which is basically a birth certificate, but with really badass holograms (seriously, I CAN SEE INTO FOREVER).

6) Grab your sister and go to America. Promptly decide you owe your sister your life, because she’s a trooper.

7) Apply for Medicaid for your child.

8) Get paranoid that the Medicaid-people will mistakenly think you’re the one applying. You don’t qualify as a non-citizen, and therefore applying for Medicaid could have consequences for your sponsor (read: spouse).

9) Wait.

10) Be very relieved when your child gets approved, and your own non-citizen name is nowhere to be found on the paperwork.

11) Research pediatricians online. Be annoyed when your town has exactly two. Select a pediatrician. Submit paperwork.

12) Hurry and make pediatrician’s appointment to get your child’s vaccination routine started (because as a measles survivor, you really, deeply and strongly believe in the necessity of vaccines).

13) Go to appointment. Get vaccines started. Cry harder than your child because YOUR BABY IS CRYING OMG! Calm down, then feel silly.

14) Receive Medicaid card in the mail, only to discover they put down the wrong pediatrician’s name on it.

15) Call the Medicaid people and have them switch the pediatrician to the correct one.

16) Receive bill in the mail from pediatrician due to aforementioned Medicaid issues (and also, your coverage didn’t start until the end of the month you were seen, so woops – sorry!), and HOLY FUCKBALLS vaccines + a well check is expensive!

17) Pay bill. Grumble about it.

18) Receive new Medicaid card, finally with the correct pediatrician on it, and feel relieved, safe and secure in the knowledge that you’re finally covered, and for the correct pediatrician.

19) Receive letter in the mail from pediatrician: “SORRY LOL MOVING TO CALIFORNIA IN TWO MONTHS, FIND NEW PEDIATRICIAN PLEASE.”

20) AKDSFGHLAGVGDSJFVSFDARGH!

If we ever have another child, I will make sure we’re millionaires billionaires eh, why not, GAZILLIONAIRES. Then I’ll hire our own pediatrician medical staff to be on 24/7 call. And then we’ll NEVER deal with this, EVER again.

And the worst part of it all? This little punk is totally worth it.

Weird how that happens.

It’ll come, I swear. And won’t that be terribly interesting!

Yes, I’m being sarcastic. I’m just amusing myself. Don’t mind me.

Recently, however, I discovered that Ben had grown into these amazing overalls that I received as a gift from my aunt this past summer, and when I woke up this morning, for some absurd reason (maybe I’m growing a brain tumor? I’m not sure, it might be the only explanation for this uncharacteristic behavior), I thought to myself, “I should dress Ben real nice today! I should coordinate and match his outfit!”

So, yeah. The overalls I mentioned are these Lilleba overalls, and they are SO RIDICULOUSLY SOFT OMG! I cannot even begin to describe how amazingly, deliciously soft these overalls are! I paired them with a plain, white collared onesie, which I feel worked out very well!

(Lilleba also makes some amazing bamboo nursing pads, by the way.)

The ensemble is complete with this super cute hat from H&M, which we picked up this past weekend. I don’t normally shop clothes or accessories for Benjamin unless he needs it, but… goddamn, look at that hat?! I put it on him in the store, and not even five minutes later someone stopped and asked us where we got it. :) And with that, boychild’s outfit is complete.

If you’d told me two years ago that I’d be making a blog entry about baby fashion – ever – I would have laughed myself silly, walked away, then laughed some more. I apologize, hypothetical two-years-ago you. You were right.

(PS. I realize some parts of this post sound ad-like, but it’s not. Promise. Nobody paid me, coerced me, forced me, bribed me, or otherwise convinced me to write about any of this. I just felt like it. Truth.)

(PPS. Ben’s not really sitting up yet, either. The first photo above was taken in the two seconds between me letting him go, and him faceplanting solidly onto the stroller bag he’s sitting on, there.)

(Not really, because obviously I didn’t post this. But now I am.)

1. We arrived safe and sound back in America, after spending the holidays with my family in Norway.

2. KLM is infinitely more awesome than Delta, and I wish I could always fly with KLM. ALWAYS. (Though sometimes I can’t, since they partner with Delta in their Skyteam Alliance, so occasionally my flights are operated by Delta. Poop.)

3. The above was my view from the seat with KLM, and how Ben traveled. He had a nice, big basket. I had plenty of legroom. Hell, even Chris and his 6’3″ had great leg room. I love KLM so freakin’ much.

4. My mother in law got me a crock pot for Christmas. I am super excited to try it out! The first thing I made was chicken and dumplings (a huge hit!), but there’s so much more I want to try! Pulled pork! Sloppy joes! My google-finger is running hot from looking up crock pot recipes.

5. Ben started solids.

6. Despite the funny faces he makes while eating, which make it look like we’re force feeding him cyanide, I assure you – he loves his solids. He whines between bites and gapes, reaches and moves towards the spoon.

7. I made mac and cheese from scratch. My mother in law gave me the recipe. And it was glorious!

8. Ben’s finally big enough to fit into the wonderful bearsuit I got for him (bought it at H&M in Norway). I nearly crapped myself and then made noises only dogs could hear.

9. And oh, yeah. This happened:

I very much like the idea of letting Ben sleep in his stroller outside. Sadly, while the majority of comments on all these articles seem positive to the idea, they only seem positive to the idea in Scandinavia. I have no doubts that any attempt at doing this in the US would quickly result in someone calling CPS on me. I am not at all above admitting this makes me a sad panda.

Raising Ben in a Scandinavian way matters a lot to me, not only because I want him to have some of my own Norwegian upbringing, but because quite frankly – some American child rearing practices seem too cautious to me.

A lot of Scandinavian parenting practices have been, or will be, very easy to import.

Some people have expressed shock that I’ll take Ben for walks in cold weather (even in the subzero, freezing temperatures and annoyingly biting winds of western PA). I’m more shocked that kids would be kept indoors in bad weather, to be honest. I can’t even imagine not going outside on rainy, snowy or windy days when I was a child. And you bet your ass I will kick Ben’s little tush outdoors to play in the same weather conditions, as well. And all I have to do to keep him nice and toasty on our walks, is dress him well.

We have a saying in Norway; “There’s no bad weather, just bad clothes.” And it’s true. While I haven’t found as many clothes in the US that meet my criteria for keeping Ben snug and warm even on the coldest or rainiest days, I make sure to stock up when I go home. Norway has a lot of excellent wool clothes, and just over our visit so far this Christmas I made sure to pick up a ski mask (finlandshette) for Ben, as well as a Voksipose (stroller bag – and hello, mommyboner, by the way! GTFO BundleMe!) and a sheep skin.

The sheep skin is for another Scandinavian way of life that is easy for me to import to America.

Have you ever seen those ads, “This is what safe sleep looks like?” With the overhead photo of a sleeping baby?

The baby is wearing pajamas, lying on its back, and is in a crib with absolutely nothing in it except a crib sheet. The importance of back sleeping and keeping things out of the crib is drilled into parents’ heads over and over. No loose blankets, no stuffed animals, nothing that could cover the baby’s face; sleep sacks are okay if they zip up or otherwise close so the baby can’t get tangled up in them.

Yeah, Ben and I didn’t get that memo. Or rather, we got it, but we chose to ignore it.

In addition to sleeping on the soft sheep skin, the baby comforter (dyne) is common in all Scandinavian countries, and a lot of people also have a separate sheep skin and dyne for their stroller (good luck finding a travel system stroller in Norway – it’s all about the pram style, baby!). Ben certainly loves it.

Some Norwegian parenting practices will be difficult or impossible to implement, however. I realize that the crime rate in even more rural areas of America is higher than in Norway. I realize that if I were to leave the stroller outside the window of a coffee shop in America, I’d probably get arrested and/or get a visit from CPS. And baby kidnappings, as awful as they are, happen in this country.

I realize I’ll probably have to search extra long and hard to find a daycare/kindergarden/preschool that will make the kids go outside and play in all sorts of weather. I realize it’ll be a pain in the ass to find a school that doesn’t serve what I perceive to be dinner foods for lunch (pasta, potato dishes, etc).

When it’s time for us to buy a house, we’ll be picky with the neighborhood, not just for safety. I can’t even imagine living somewhere where Ben couldn’t ride his bike or walk a few blocks over to a friends’ house, or to school. I can’t imagine living somewhere where children would be confined to indoor play once the sun sets.

Of course, things could change. We could get to that point where we own a house, and Ben is ten years old, and I realize that it just isn’t safe for him to walk to a friends’ house by himself after dark. If that time comes, we’ll reconsider things seriously. But in the meantime, I’ll be trying my hardest to raise Ben in the most Norwegian way possible.

Except, of course, leaving my stroller outside somewhere.

I don’t actually want a visit from CPS, after all.

I’ve been sick since Christmas Eve. It’s been days of vomiting, fever, itchy throat, coughing, phlegm (oh God, so much phlegm), mucus and sneezing. And three days ago I completely lost my voice. It’s only now returning. I missed Christmas Day dinner (Pinnekjøtt), several family gatherings, and at one point didn’t change a diaper for over 24 hours simply because I couldn’t even get out of bed.

…don’t worry, Chris and my other family members changed Ben. He didn’t sit in a dirty diaper for over 24 hours.

Anyway. Whatever I had, Chris also got. And then we proceeded to give it to almost my entire family.

Yay?

At least I got Christmas ribs (Juleribbe) on Christmas Eve. I would have broken down and cried hysterically if I’d missed that.

So we decided to go to Norway for Christmas. Well, I decided, and it was just sort of assumed from there that Chris and Ben would go along. It wasn’t quite a whim, but it was a fairly short notice, as far as such big decisions go. We arrived Wednesday just past noon local time, and I’ve mostly been sleeping since then. XD

Now, I consider myself a fairly well traveled person. At least when it comes to the Pittsburgh-Oslo stretch. I’ve traveled it plenty, with several different airlines and stopovers. This was also not the first time I’ve traveled it with Ben. I figured, “How hard can it be?”

There’s a self-jinx if there ever was one.

I already have a mental checklist over things that make a trans-Atlantic flight easier for me (I’ve even blogged about it in the past), but I feel after making the trip with a 4-month old baby, I can safely add two points to it, just for my own sanity’s sake:

1) Check the damn stroller. Check the damn stroller. CHECK THE DAMN STROLLER!

Ben still uses the bassinet of his Uppababy Vista stroller (which, by the way, I have a MASSIVE mommyboner for, but that’s a post for another day), and I foolishly decided gate checking it would be swell. IT IS NOT SWELL. With the bassinet is collapses in two parts. Which means a big-ass stroller bag. Which meant that in the last 48 hours I’ve assembled and disassembled that damn stroller, and lugged that massive, heavy, lame stroller bag around, far too much for my own good.

I’m not sure what I enjoyed least; the hassle it brought, or the smugness on Chris’s face when he told me, “I told you so!” since he’d been insisting it would be a pain in the ass from the start.

On the way home, we’re checking it as special luggage for sure, and if we ever need to bring a stroller ever again, it will be when Ben’s old enough that we can plunk his ass down in a $20 WalMart umbrella stroller.

2) NEVER AGAIN CHARLES DE GAULLE AIRPORT!

In addition to my regular airports of departure/arrival (Pittsburgh and Oslo), I’ve stopped over at a multitude of airports over the years (Amsterdam, Detroit and Newark being the most frequent ones). This trip, we stopped at Cincinnati (pictured above) and Charles de Gaulle. Charles de Gaulle is by far THE most disorganized piece of CRAP airport I’ve ever been to. I’m sure its size is a contributing factor to the overall chaos, but Schiphol manage it just fine! If you go to Schiphol, you’re basically herded like cattle to the right gate. Sounds lame, but it’s really, really not – it’s AWESOME! No getting lost, no confusion. Clear, marked signs everywhere. No wrong turns.

There were no cattle-like herding at Charles de Gaulle. Just confusion. Several wrong turns. And annoyance. Lots and lots of annoyance. In fact, I can safely say that the two hour stopover we had at Charles de Gaulle, was more stressful than the rest of the trip combined.

Thankfully, on the way home we’re stopping at Amsterdam (and seriously, oh, how I love Schiphol) and Atlanta. But even if we weren’t – if our return trip had taken us through Charles de Gaulle – I think I’d actually rather pay the change fee on our tickets to find an alternate route, than ever go through there again.

So yeah. There’s my two big life lessons that I took from this trip. Check the damn stroller, and NEVER AGAIN CHARLES DE GAULLE!

On Black Friday, we ordered a high chair ($20 with free shipping, regular price $89 – a steal, in my humble opinion).

Apparently, this – much like kids themselves – also did not have an instruction manual. But Chris was undeterred and went at it with vigor.

Well, he tried to. Seriously. What the fuck?

SERIOUSLY, WHAT THE FUUUUCK?

Finally, we (read: Chris) managed to put it all together. Then it turns out, it actually did come with an instruction manual, taped to the underside of the tray table.

Yeah, um. Way to HIDE IT, Safety1st. :(

Regardless, after we found it, we double checked that everything was put together correctly, and it was. We win!

What do you think, Ben?

…yeah, tis okay.

After I became one, I wasn’t quite sure how being a mom was supposed to feel like, but I was fairly certain I didn’t feel it. In fact, I, as a person, didn’t feel that much different at all (besides this crippling need to tell everyone every mundane detail about my boychild – “SERIOUSLY GUYS, HE ROLLED OVER! OKAY IT WAS ONLY ONCE, BUT IT WAS AWESOME! ISN’T THAT AWESOME?!”). And okay, there are differences besides that, like my sudden concern over this brand new mini-person. The concern is pretty major.

I worry about everything. Is he too hot? Too cold? Is he hungry? Is he happy? Will he be emotionally damaged and grow up to be a real life Dexter-style serial killer from lack of affection, if I leave him in his bouncer on the bathroom floor and don’t pay attention to him for ten minutes so I can shower? But the concern still didn’t make me feel like what I thought being a mom should feel like. It just made me feel… well, paranoid.

At this point, months have gone by. Hard to believe at times, but it’s truth. My giggly, awesome boychild is now almost four months old, and up until today I still had no clue what being a mom was supposed to feel like. I never call the plumber. I don’t tell him to finish his vegetables, and I’ve yet to come upon a situation where I’ve had to tell him to do something, he argued back with “Why?” and I could tell him, “Because I said so!” In fact, the only thing I seem do regularly on my list of “Things A Mom Does,” is hug him for no reason at all.

Well, the reason is that I just plain want to, but you know. Same difference.

But then, this morning everything changed!

This morning was stressful for me. I had to rush to the post office to mail some Very Important Stuff. I had to make a call to Amazon because Chris’s Kindle broke (awesome customer service, by the way). I had to get Ben ready, feed Ben, dress Ben, dress myself, and try to eat breakfast in the middle of it all. Oh, and I guess I was sort of attempting to dress myself, too. However, I hadn’t gotten further than pants and a bra. I was juggling Ben on one arm, my phone on the other. I was looking for his socks while going back and forth to make my breakfast oatmeal.

Just as the nice man from Amazon was explaining to me how to return Chris’s broken Kindle to them, my oatmeal was done, and my multitasking came to a peak – Ben decided to spit up into my hair and down my entire back.

Standing in my kitchen, on the phone, with breakfast, a giggling baby (because spitting up is like, the funniest thing in the WHOLE GODDAMN WORLD), and spit-up down my bra, back and in my hair, I suddenly got double whammied by the most intense feeling. It’s pretty indescribable, but if I were to give it a try, I’d say it was the overwhelming feeling of living in total and complete, utter chaos, and being the happiest person alive because of it.

I’m a Mom.

Holy fucking shit.

This kid is doomed.

To be quite honest though, most of the time when I have something I want to share with the world, it’s about Ben.

Lord help me, I’ve turned into one of those obnoxious chicks who can’t get off the damn subject of her kid. Sorry, world. I think this means that the only people who will ever be even remotely interested in this blog, are other mom-chicks who suffer from the same quirk. The mommy brain, if you will.

Wait–does this officially make me a mommy blogger? D: