Hello!
It's been a minute (gee, how's that for an old blog starter?), but there is a good reason for that.
First, you see, a week and a halfish ago, L was born. He took his time, rather forcing us to hang out in the hospital for the better part of... Thirteen hours? J had to go twenty-six hours without eating because of it, having messed up some scheduling for the timing of his induction, and then confusing things a little later, and then L taking his sweet time to leave her poor uterus.
J's recovering well enough, for someone who was having her nutrition robbed of her and almost no sleep. She's also determined that the breastfeeding (already) has to stop because she suffers a desire to beat the small one on occasion due to the pain he causes her when he eats, and while she knows that this is not his fault, she has no desire to tolerate this anymore. I don't blame her. I'm about to go get my tubes tied because of this getting-to-witness childbirth business and the breastfeeding and the pregnancy and... Yeah, no. Never. If I ever get to where I'd be comfortable having a child, I'm sure that adoption would be an option.
Because J's vagina exploded. I'm barely kidding. Oh my god. The fluids, the shifting, the mess, the baby, the doctors, the blood, oh my gods. Oh gods. Never ever ever having kids. Like. Ew. And hers was a fairly normal, simple birth. Just spit the baby out with an alternative mouth, and then the gushing and the blood...
We read that chapter in her EMT book, today. If you bleed more than half a liter, then you worry. Half a liter of blood is fine, though.
We've been taking childcare in shifts. Mj has been over once since then, and seems to be alright with the baby, and K is downright delighted to have a baby brother (this will undoubtedly change), and the household seems to be adjusting to his presence pretty well.
The only hiccup we have, is that while M and I try to be around with J, K, and L, we have each gotten a new job, and the hours have tiny conflicts. We deliberately took different shifts with where we got the jobs, so that one of us would be home at basically all times, at least one at night or early morning or something-- except that M has worked there before, and they've already offered him his old position back. He'll be making ridiculously good money relatively soon. Things are still tight, but we've got a bit of wiggle room, at least enough to breathe, which is more than I can say about some previous situations.
Speaking of, this is my first full-time job. Yay. I put together parts for the assembly line factory I work with. Which is fine, really, I have no complaints, except that I know that I'm a bloody genius (despite misspelling that word three times) and I can do better, but the skills I have are useless because of the time and location of my happenstance. Oh well, I can screw bits on and attempt to murder myself with airpressure gun wrenches. (I did totally try to wound myself with one, but it was my own fault, and now I know to drop the damn tool.)
I am getting to end my time at my previous job with a chance for rehire, too. Yippee. If I should ever need it. I hope it doesn't come back to that.
M and I have been talking about our little dysfunction as our relationship, and we have no ideas whatsoever what to do about them. We don't know what they're founded upon at all. I do have rather strange issues with sex, being that I don't know how to approach the subject when I want to have it, and having a semi-low sex drive of my own accord anyway....
We've also been talking about approaches to parenting. Mostly 'cos I completely disagree with a good portion of the things he does in his attempt to parent, but in the end, that's a completely different thing to think about, because that one is one of those questions without a right answer that no one could really tell you.
At new work when we were getting training, one of the girls in our little group asked me with surprise if M was my boyfriend, and when I asked why the surprise, she dodged the question, and then I asked if she thought I was gay, and she said yeah. Haha.
I have mentioned, rather in passing, that I have both, to one person. I met him at lunch, and we chatted for a bit, and for a moment, it was about the Twilight movies.
Because J went to see them with friends of M and J's and people I'm working on getting to know, and M didn't go. And complained about people giving him shit about it. At which point, I agreed with M, and declared that I would much rather take shit for not going to go see Twilight with my girlfriend than go see Twilight with my girlfriend.
But the way I said it was "my boyfriend" and "our girlfriend". I didn't want to look like I was checking his reaction, but the second I did, he looked very much like a speechless fish. I do not know what speechless fish look like, but I'm going to take a stab at a guess and go with the face that the man was making.
I'm feeding the baby as I type, so if there are typos, bite me.
The poor man at work later was telling me how to do foot massages, and he said to tell my boyfriend-- or girlfriend-- or whatever it is that I've got (he didn't ask, I didn't tell, but I would have if he had), how to do whatever it was he told me. (Drive thumb up into arch of foot. It's not my arch that hurts, it's actually the balls of my feet, just below my toes, but yeah. Standing for twelve hours sucks like that.)
I've got night duty, tonight, in case it wasn't obvious. I have no idea what I'm doing to my sleepclock, or even what I want to do with my sleepclock. I hope it works, whatever it is.
So, the kids, right? Mj and K, yeah? They've been doing normal two and three year old stuff, right?
Like taking the mixture of zinc cream and lotion that M concocted for a weird bump on Mj, and smearing it on the TV in their room, on the floor and walls all along the hallway, in the bathroom, and in the pack-n-play we are using for a crib until we're comfortable leaving L on his own for a night, when he sleeps the whole night long.
He's been kind of going weird on his feeding. He doesn't eat in increments of two. One ounce, three ounces, he'll cry once an hour and eat an ounce and eat the other ounce the next hour, he'll eat three ounces and be hungry again in two hours, he'll eat two ounces and cry again after four hours....
I'm wondering about whether he's doing growth spurts on that short notice. I know how kids do with the eating-- they're not like grown-ups. They need the food, they eat the food, they don't need the food, they don't eat the food. They'll eat food they normally wouldn't, they'll refuse food they normally wouldn't, etc.. They get fat, they sprout three inches. As they get older, the time it takes between spurts grows, but generally, they're pretty good at demanding when they need, up until they get trained to clean their plate or eat when they're bored, etc..
He's finally started burping when he's supposed to. He was holding out and just getting hiccups.
K is also experimenting with 'no'. I think he's testing reactions. I did discuss briefly with J, today, about how she's going to handle his lying-- because she was convinced that the only reason he would ever start would be because Mj does. Like Mj was taught to lie-- and that's not how lying works. In fact, you're regarded as smarter, the earlier you start lying. It's a survival mechanism. You use it as needed. You do it to avoid getting in trouble, to stay away from negative consequences.
I've said it before, a long time ago, but the way kids are depends almost entirely on who they were from t he beginning. How they react to what they react to. There is nothing that is PURELY nurture. Nor nature, as much as I'd like to think so.
I haven't told him this, but the way he treats his child is a good part of why I wouldn't even want to have M's children. I don't approve of his parenting. I mean, you know, to each their own, and while I don't like the way he treats his kid, that's up to him. It's not mine, I don't get a say. Same with J and K. L, I'm still trying to sense out where I land with that one. It feels a lot like it did with my baby brother. Basically my only concern is that I don't want to become a favorite. I don't want to take that away from the biologicals. I will happily be the cool god-mom/auntie/step-momish figure, but I do not want to be Mom to Jen's Momma. I wouldn't mind being a mother, I don't think, but not now, and not with someone I'm still trying to feel out my place with.
Though, M and J have done nothing to make me feel distant. Quite the contrary, they've been trying to include me in every aspect, and we very certainly have a very real relationship going-- I'm uneasy. I'm not even used to having family laundry anymore. It's been twelve years since I've mixed my laundry in with anyone else's on purpose. (Mostly 'cos if I ever got my laundry in with someone else's, that was the last time I ever saw that item of clothing. My mother and sister had this nasty case of black holes, being randomly disappearing items that simply vanished because some scattering dust particles that came from the pair landed on the item that disappeared. It was like the Fae followed my family around and waited for them to touch stuff. Sorry. Rambling. It's two AM, at this point.)
The kids, even, have gotten used to me being rather a fixture. I'm even sure they might be sad if they discovered me missing, one day.
I think I might have finally run myself dry on rambling. I was going to talk more about the kids trouble, but really, it's just normal kid stuff. Like, K's attempt to break the Blu-ray player, this morning. He put in two discs at once, and tried to close it, and one was upside down, and I rescued everything, but, you know. Mj lies a lot, K bounces on the couch too close to the baby/person holding baby, etc.. It's normal stuff.
Eh. Now I'm tired. I'm gonna have to get back up and start doing stuff, 'cos the kid's gonna be hungry again in an hour...
Alright. Rest well, non-parents. Lovely babbling at you.
