Happy Hanukkah

@zmyaro please add yours

Chanukah sameach from a mobile dev who never throws away an old device!

Bringing my menorah quilt to the party.

(me, my parents, my sister, and the baby are sitting at the kitchen table eating lunch)

baby, pointing at the light fixture over the table and signing "on": o.*

my sister: we actually can't turn that light on right now, because the lightbulb inside is burnt out! it needs a new one.

baby: ighbu.

sister: yes, lightbulb! granddaddy said after we eat he's going to climb up there on a ladder and change it, and then the light will come on!

baby: gadada! adda, uuu! ighbu o!

sister: exactly!

baby, signing "on" and pointing at the light and then my dad, with increasing urgency: GADADA ADDA UUUU. O.

my sister: we're going to finish eating first though, ok?

baby: nonono. O. gadada adda uuu.

[a split second goes by]

baby, pointing to himself: ba. adda uuu. ighbu.

me: you're going to climb the ladder and change the lightbulb yourself?

baby: dzyeah. *pointing to the buckle where he is buckled into the high chair* ububu.

me: unbuckle you? so you can change the lightbulb?

baby, highly businesslike: dzyeah.

*pronounced like "on" without the n

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Got 5 hours of uninterupted sleep!!!

Also we flew with him yesterday from Berlin to Israel and he was an absolute angel. Only stqrted screaming on the car on the way from the airport to my parents' house. He's not used to car rides, he's a city kid...

Annnnnnd make that 7 hours.

What the actual fuck. Is this what being a human being feels like?

We're sort of on a good day - bad day -good day - bad day streak. Today we're on a good day and I ain't complaining.

We're traveling to Israel to see my family and participate in a workshop (which I am SUPER nervous about because I have no idea how it will even work with the baby and I have no work to show and it's potentially going to be a huge professional humiliation and big mistake) in three weeks and this morning I mumbled something about us needing to get him a passport... so we looked and saw that the only options for an appointment were this morning on the other side of the city or the day we're flying. Whoops.

We managed to speedily get him to take his picture taken (which was kind of hilarious?), and then rush to get the passport done. Got it on the spot. He was perfect - he was wide awake and not crying right until after we took the picture so we didn't need to wake him up, and then he fell asleep. Then I had my circuit training mom group, and I had half an hour to feed him. I had to wake him up for that, but even though he should have been very hungry, he only ate for 10 minutes and then fell back to sleep. I was sure that meant I would need to feed him in the middle of training but nope - he slept right through and I got the whole class in! Then had a matcha tea latte and a veggie wrap at starbucks sorta of waiting for him to wake up to feed. Nope. Sleepity sleep. Left the cafe towards the bus back home when he finally made signs of waking up, and I was still kind of hungry, so I'm now sitting with him in another cafe (took chia seed pudding) where he is happily munching on the boob, very much awake and he even looked me right in the eye and gave me two huge smiles which is VERY rare for him (not his first smiles, but he is a bit of a snob and we haven't been getting a ton).

And all this following a decentish night by our standards!

So I'm pretty happy right now.

He even gave me enough time to go over the edits my advisor made to our paper that got major revisions with a tight deadline. Of course by the time I had sent it to her she informed me that she just finished a different final version last night.. but at least I read it!

This whole paper thing had been frustrating because we're co-writing this and with my lack of focus since the pregnancy started (no more ADHD medication...) and total inability to work since he was born a month early, I have been useless and it is all falling on her. This is especially frustrating since we did finish it and send it in before he was born, and I was planning on taking three months off the radar guilt-free as maternal leave... and it just wasn't possible because of the major revisions we got with a deadline (which got extended a bit due to the circumstances, but still). So I still was useless, but not at all guilt free. In addition to everything else this has been a major source of stress for me and feeling like a failure, which I know is a bit unfair to myself, but it was. Add to that, that another paper I wrote (single author) and had faith in and sent in about a week before I gave birth (which should have been 5 weeks before...) was desk-rejected. Kind of explains why I'm super anxious about this workshop in Jerusalem. But I'm going to go for it anyway.

In general I kind of just want a normal job rather than academic life right now. I'm happy I waited with having a baby until I was so far into the PhD that it would be a shame to quit now, and hope that I can still finish. But it might take longer than anticipated, and it is not at all fuelling any feeling of self worth or accomplishment at the moment.

Had a really good day with him today so far

Went to the mall with a friend. Even though it's bad for him re all the experts, we went back to putting the maxi cosi car seat as an attachment for the stroller. He is so incredibly much more content in it, it's impossible to compare. So far, there's the world of recommendations and safety guidelines, and there's reality for us, and they have nothing to do with each other.

I bought myself a jeans the size I am now because even though I'm not planning on staying this size for very long, I need something to wear in addition to tights and I need to feel good about myself. Then I sat with a friend at a cafe and had a salad with chicken. I breastfed him there, and he was perfectly content to sit back in the maxi cosi and look at the world until he fell asleep again. Got in some groceries, and it wasnt until we were turning the corner on our street that he woke up and started screaming again. He then ate again, we "played" a little bit, and then midway through the other side he threw up all over me... but was very happy about it?? My husband came home just that minute so I decided it was his bath time anyway. And even that went smoothly and without screaming! There was some protesting when we took him out of the water but some singing and dancing with him wrapped up in a towel seemed to solve it.

So we'll see how the night goes, but the day itself I brand a total success.

And a good night followed! He still woke up every two hours to feed, but the feeds went relatively quick (only half an hour, one of one hour) and he fell asleep immediately after and more importantly agreed to sleep in his crib and not only on me! Total success in our books.

We're going to go see a doctor

This is too much.

If there is any way we can help him, we will. I promised him that I'll do whatever I can to make this better. And I promised him that either way we will get through this phase together. But he seems to be in so much pain and it is absolutely heartbreaking. So we'll go to see a doctor.

So of course Leo screamed his heart out before we went in to the doctor, and after, but during the visit he was charming and polite. He barely put on the volume even when the doctor took his blood.

Doctor said he is perfectly healthy and that's just the way it is. He sent us to see an Ostheopath just for the sake of it but the bottom line was more or less to suck it up and wait it out.

I'm happy everything is good and that Leo is healthy but I wish there was something we could do to help.