Rule Breaker

Before John arrived I had a lot of “rules” that I thought were necessary.  Since he’s been here I’ve learned that a lot of these rules were either totally pointless or simply not practical.

Rule 1:  No pacifiers before 6 weeks.  Haha.  That lasted approximately 24 hours.  John was never a big pacifier guy, but we didn’t hesitate to shove one in his mouth the first few weeks when he wanted/needed to suck so badly.  They were especially helpful when someone besides me was holding him.  He has zero interest in them now.

Rule 2:  I would only use our own blankets in the hospital. I admit this is a totally shallow and stupid rule, but when pregnant I thought I’d only use our own blankets in the hospital so that his pictures wouldn’t have the same blankets that every other baby ever born had also.  Ha.  Nope.

I clearly hate my child, right?

Rule 3:  I would never let him wear a onesie without pants or shorts.  I have no idea why, but I thought it looked trashy when babies wore a onesie without some kind of bottoms on too.  It looked like a person wearing a t-shirt and underwear.  Well, John wears just a onesie all the damn time.  It’s basically what this Florida boy lives in.  He gets so hot in his carseat and so he’s almost always sans pants.

It'd be a crime to hide these legs.

Rule 4:  My livingroom would continue to look like a livingroom, not a Babies R’ Us inventory room.  We’ve done our best to keep baby clutter out of our common areas, but we quickly decided that if John will sit quietly in something we don’t care what our livingroom looks like.

Except the yellow one he's sitting in, these are all borrowed.  How awesome is that?

Rule 5:  I wouldn’t make a conscious effort to be extra quiet while John was sleeping.  I wanted John to be able to sleep through normal house noise and swore that we wouldn’t tip-toe around the sleeping prince.  Wellllllll, I don’t make the whole house shut down when John’s sleeping, but it’s safe to say that Uma, Juno, and Bud have all been snapped at to be quiet once or twice (or 10,000 times).  I feel like we are right on top of each other in this house.  I don’t know how people manage in a NYC apartment with a babe.

Rule 6:  I wouldn’t put a white noise machine in John’s room. This lasted about 3 days.  We got home from the hospital on Thursday and I think I sent Bud to the store on Saturday to buy one.  I read somewhere that it can damage hearing and create a sleep dependency.  I seriously doubt the sound will damage his hearing.  As for the sleep dependency, I’m glad the little machine is portable because it’ll probably be going everywhere with us for a long time and that’s ok with me.  He might end up like Jack Berger (SATC reference, anyone?), but I’ll let his future girlfriends deal with that.

Rule 7:  No baby-talk.  OK, it's not like I'm saying "Whoey ooey iz mah baywie awee?" but I definitely use a sing-songey mommy voice that I swore I'd never use.  He just loves it so much I can't help myself.  I draw the line at making up words though.