Words, words, words

When I became a mom there were some words that suddenly disappeared entirely from my vocabulary. If you are a parent, then you can probably relate. If not, you can have a laugh over how much parents whine... ;)

Gaming Session
We are a group of friends who just bought the same multiplayer game, lets sit down and have an all night gaming session... Yeah not gonna happen! You may get to play an hour or two, but then you will either have to feed your baby or go to sleep yourself in order to survive the 5 am morning call.

Which leads us neatly to the next word:

Uninterrupted
Uninterrupted gaming, uninterrupted sleep, uninterrupted dinner or just an uninterrupted conversation. None of these exist anymore in my world so I might as well get rid of the word and just get on with life.

Just
I am just gonna pop to the shop for some milk. Hah! There is no "just" with a baby. Every time you leave the house you have to carry supplies for a small army and if you are going for a visit it feels like you are actually moving in with the person you are going to see. Diapers, towels, extra clothes, food, toys, muslin clothes, lift, carseat, pram etc. etc. etc. 

Quick
Related to just, but it is a word that has so prominently disappeared that it deserves its own mention. A quick dinner will end up as a 3 hour project as you juggle pots, pans, diapers and dummies trying to keep your baby happy and away from the hot stove, while not burning anything.

And saying "I will write a quick blogpost" becomes a  laughing matter when your little baby girl poops herself every third sentence and then decides to hunt for the speakers cables, sending you on a wild chase to baby proof.
Well I guess quick still exists in my vocabulary in some forms such as:
Quick eat your dinner before she wakes.
Quick lets give her a bath before she gets angry.
Quick take a photo while she is looking happy.
and of course the old sentimental oh she grows up way too quickly.


What words have you lost after becoming a parent?

Injury and absurdity

My right wrist hurts! My lower right arm is in pain and I have the start of a blister on my right thumb.
Normally symptoms like this would indicate that a new amazing game has been released.  But no! I haven't gotten some sort of early access to a D3 Reaper of Souls instead I have been pumping.

I had to  be away from my baby girl for two days and she is still exclusively breastfed. Naive as I was, I thought the main challenge would be to sort out enough milk for the two days I was gone. It was not.

While away I found myself in so many absurd situations that I bet many people will have a very hard time relating to. That is why I have decided to share this. If you feel uncomfortable reading about breastfeeding, you probably should click away now. (And then you might want to talk to a professional about why you are freaked out by one of the most natural things in the world.... ;))

One of the aforementioned situations occured when I strongly considered asking the nice couple sitting next to me, to get up so I could go  and sit 10000m above earth pumping milk in an airplane toilet. It would have made for a fantastic story if nothing else.

I didn't go, instead I entered a booth in the airport and sat for 20 minutes squeaking away. Y|es squeaking, because my pump chose that moment to start imitating the sound of two grown ups going at it in a very old bed.

Luckily for me, most people don't spend much time when going in public restrooms so I avoided the stares I would surely have had otherwise.
I wasn't so lucky on the way back... there was a huge queue when I emerged, slightly red in the face and massaging my wrist. (Pumping is hard work).
People were polite enough to only stare for a few seconds, but I am sure that there has been some interesting conversations after I left the room, especially by the two giggling teenage girls in the front of the queue who had had the most time to enjoy the audio performance. 

It was also an interesting experience to pass the scanners in the airport. I was traveling light with just my cabin baggage so of course the bag including the pump had to be run through the machine.
The guy checking the x-ray video looked quite confused for a second, then let it go through and I drew a sigh of relief. I am not embarressed about breastfeeding, but having to expose my pumping equipment to the entire airport and explain the use was not something I really felt like.

The nights were trouble as well. I had been looking forward to sleeping through the night as the only positive thing about being away from my little girl, but on cue I would wake up when she normally nurse and in order to avoid exploding I then spent 30 minutes pumping away. So much for catching up on sleep.

The most absurd moment occured on the way back. I didn't have much time between the airport before my train left  so instead I had to resort to using the toilet on the train. I don't know if you have ever peeked into a train toilet? Well they are disgusting. They usually look like people (men and women alike) decide  that their train toilet trip is the perfect time to practice standing up while peeing and they really aren't very good at it so it all goes to shit (pun intended).
Anyways, sitting down on the toilet cover is not an option, so I found myself standing like a sailor in a storm, trying to keep my balance, while pumping away. The whole time I could hear people get on and off the train and through the entire thing I was terrified that the train personel would come to check why the toilet had been occupied for so long. I had vivid pictures of them opening the door to find a kinda sweaty woman standing like she shat herself, hair slightly messed up, with one breast exposed into a hand pump.
In my imagination I could hear the horrified mumbles that would run through the row of passengers who did not have a seat and had to resort to standing in the hallway.

Of course nothing happened and I arrived back home without scarring anyone (except perhaps myself) for life.

This whole experience was horrible, I missed my daugther and I spent approximately a 6th of my day stuck in toilets with a pump on my boob. It got me thinking though.

I consider myself to be a fairly openminded person, but I must admit that I have judged others from time to time. Whether it was because they were shit at a game or because they wore tracksuits or pyjamas to the store.

I guess you can't ever know the entire situation so I think in the future I will attempt to at least come up with funny excuses for people when they are seemingly acting like idiots/slobs/sillypants. Who knows, maybe their boobs are secretly on the verge of exploding and that is only a plus if you are one of the fembots from Austin Powers.

Multiplayer

I have been a gamer since the age of 4, playing Donald Duck's Playground on my dads Commodore 64, but it wasn't until getting my hands on Warlords and playing it multiplayer with my cousin, that I turned into a real computer geek. Why? Because multiplayer makes gaming social and I love socializing!

This thursday I got to add multiplayer to the baby experience as I attended my first mothers group. My little daughter got to meet 4 other babies between the age of 5 and 6 months.

It was awesome hanging with people in the same situation as yourself and because my daughter is only 4 and a half months old it was really interesting seeing the slightly older babies and what they were able to do.

It felt like when you as a complete noob joins a guild full of highlevel players. You get a glimpse into the future and you get to benefit from their experience and advice.

My daughter seemed  to mainly enjoy the experience although she did have a slight meltdown towards the end of the gettogether. In the long run I think she will benefit hugely from watching the other babies in action and I know I thoroughly enjoy discussion strategies with the rest of the "players".

My friends wedding - the movie adaptation

Last weekend I attended the wedding of two good friends. My daughter who is now 3.5 month old was there as well as I still have not found a way to feel comfortable having her babysat for an extended period of time.

Me, my partner and my little daughter were lucky enough to get a lift by two of our other friends, who also attended the wedding.

It was a casual, yet beautiful ceremony and I got the opportunity to hang out with my really good friends for an entire day. But I felt a bit sad at the end of the day.

I was reminded of when I watched the Lord of the Rings movies the first time. I am one of those annoying people who have always read the book. LOTR in particularly I have read 15-20 times. It is my all time favourite novel and I know quotes and scenes from it by heart.
I was so excited when I heard that the books would be made into movies, but I was also terrified. What if Peter Jackson ruined everything?

I ended up quite enjoying the movies and I have watched them multiple times, even sat through the extended edition versions a couple of times, however I always feel that something is missing. That the experience is not quite what it could have been.

It is understandable that directors cut out certain parts of a book when trying to fit it to the movie format, but it has always saddened me that the entire Tom Bombadil adventure disappeared. For me it is such a big part of the Middle Earth universe and is part of showing how the entire world is changing. The beautiful melancholy of the books simply does not get to shine properly without the adventures in the Old Forest.

And this is kind of how I felt at the wedding as well. It was a great experience and I am so glad I was there able to witness my very good friends getting married, but I deeply felt that I was missing out on part of the experience because I was there with my baby.

Having to leave during all the speeches to avoid disturbing and sitting out on most of the dancing and the dinner conversation just took away a bit of the awe from attending this ceremony with all its old traditions and changed the experience of the wedding subtlely. Same as having Arwen be the white rider at the banks of Rivendale instead of Glorfindel changes the story of Lord of the Rings slightly and makes the universe smaller.

My friends and partner were great and tried helping out as much as possible and I love my little daughter to no end, but I can't wait till the day where I fell comfortable leaving her with my mom for an evening so I can go out and be 100% present at a party or gathering of friends.

Also, what the hell are they doing with the Hobbit movies... That is not subtle changes, that is equivalent to attending the wedding through a video call on Skype.... >.<

ROFL

It used to bug me to no end when gaming that some people would abuse the LOL, ROFL, ROFLMAO terms. 

I would be on Ventrillo with my guildies and there would be dead silence or someone would be explaining tactics, meanwhile ingame one of the guys would be goofing around on his character prompting at least a couple of ROFLs and a good deal of LOLs in the chat... 

Liars! I can hear you on vent (actually no I can't thats the point!). So unless you have push to talk on and forgot to press it you are not making a peep!

The whole notion of rolling on the floor laughing is quite ridicolous. Who does that? I have always thought that rolling on the floor from laughter was only something that happens in cartoons, well I was wrong!

Yesterday my daughter laughed for the first time. She has been flashing me cute little smiles for some time now and lately her smiles has grown so big that her entire face is transformed into a baby version of PacMan. There has, however, been no laughing sound even though it has been clear that she has been trying to produce laughter.

That was until yesterday. We were playing on the floor and she was in a really good mood making contend and happy noises. She was looking around the room, but not directly at me so I took a piece of fabric and held it up between us, hiding my face, then right in front of her I dropped the fabric and heard the sweetest sound in the world. My baby's belly laughter.

It didn't last long, as she then proceeded to practice her rolling over moves which still takes all her concentration, but it was amazing while it lasted and I can't wait to hear her laugh again and again.

So yeah, yesterday my baby was ROFL'ing on the floor and I was LOL'ing next to her.

Accomplishments

My previous posts have been a lot about frustrations, so this one will center on the positives. Why we raid, why we play challenging video games, why we have babies.

In the autumn of last year I bought the re-release of Baldurs Gate. Since then I have spent many hours reloading save games to do the same  fight over and over again. Why? Because BG is really, really hard. It is one of those unforgiving oldschool games from before the instant gratification generation of gamers. You know, one of those games where you actually feel like you accomplished something when you completed it. Where you celebrated winning the game and bragged to your fellow gamer friends about it, because it was an accomplishment and not a given that you got to the end of the game.

In short, we play these games because when we beat them, it feels amazing!

And it is all about the reverse of instant gratification with babies as well. You spend weeks, sometimes months changing them, soothing them, blabbering at them, cooing at them, smiling at them and get NOTHING in return. But you don't give up, you "reload" every morning and start over. Adjusting your tactics based on the previous experience and you try again. And then suddenly, after an uncountable amount of tries and "wipes" you get that flashing toothless smile one morning while changing your baby.

And that... that is why you have babies.

Showing off my Legendary

Created with wowitemcreator

I have recently completed a roundtrip to show off my baby girl to the whole family and I was reminded of when my guild got the Warglaive set back in TBC. After a huge celebration on Ventrillo, we all rushed to Shattrath where we stood around showing off what we as a guild had accomplished. Many people passed us and uuhh'ed and aaah'ed while admiring the legendary weapon set.

It was a similar experience to introduce my daughter to my friends and family. Rarely have I received so much attention without the attention being on me. Everyone wanted to see the baby in action. To test her out and to hold her.
There was the same sense of pride and the same feeling of unity (albeit of course on an even bigger scale).
In my WoW guild we told the story of how we finally got our Warglaives over and over again and the same was true for the story about the birth of my daughter.

I even sensed slight envy from other people (especially women) who are in the right age to be able to "equip" a baby. Just like you got when you were the one carrying a legendary item.

It has been awesome showing off my little Legendary, but unlike the Warglaives she would be amazing even without the admiration of others.

Writing this made me think. When a baby enters a family it is like looting a Legendary, but bringing her up is like integrating a newbie into the guild. Maybe I will write a post about that in the future.