She's here!

I'm officially a mommy now, although I doubt I'll have much time to play bass anytime soon. We are resting at home, and doing well. Both sets of grandparents have been taking shifts visiting, and they are taking good care of us.

By the way, the previous post is totally inaccurate. Sleep deprivation is really no fun. But my husband's preference to stay up late should help out a lot now that I'm just starting to expressing milk for him to do a early AM feeding.

Sleep is over-rated

People are always warning us about the lack of sleep we're sure to endure after the arrival of our first baby. Well this won't be anything new for my husband. He habitually avoids sleeping much, and he's gone to new extremes this week. On Saturday night, yes that's 48 hrs ago, my husband realized that something was breaking down at work and he hasn't slept except for a couple short naps since. I tried to remind him it's a 40-hr work week, not a 40-hr work day. But he insists on staying up to check on one more thing at 1:30 AM.

He's surprisingly in good spirits, however. Is there such thing as a sleep deprivation buzz, or even addiction? I remember a hyper feeling during late-night studying/socialization in college. Then of course you crash and come down hard. Sounds like a drug, doesn't it?

Well maybe it is. Pyschologists have noticed that sleep deprivation can have an anti-depressant effect. According to one theory, the mood-elevating brain chemical serotonin is used up in our brain as we sleep. Just like antidepressant drugs such as Prozac work by inhibiting the use of serotonin in the brain, lack of sleep also keeps more of this "feel-good" chemical in your brain. They've also seen an increase in serotonin release during sleep deprivation in rats

So yes, maybe my husband is high right now, on lack of sleep.

Well guess who's going to get 2 AM diaper duty next month?

Carnival of the Mundane XIX

Come one, come all, there's plenty of room for everyone under the big tent here at the Carnival of the Mundane XIX. So there's no need to give up your seat to Muse. She enjoys that privilege on the bus and doesn't want you to know that she can still play ball.

Before we get started, I have a public service announcement. In case of emergency, Karen wants 10 large people to jump her and blindfold her like the Crocodile Hunter .

OK, a few of you might be wondering what happened to the most important part of any carnival, the food. After Amused and Bemused introduced us to Weight Loss Gadgets for the Lazy and Unmotivated, we know there's no need to cut back on eating sugary treats.

No, Miriam , we're not missing out on the elephant ears because the carnies are off celebrating some obscure holiday. Excuse her, she hasn't recovered from her "Labor Day! Bah humbug" when she discovered everyone takes off Labor Day in the boonies.

Actually, our lack of concessions is due to a kitchen disaster, as OmegaMom is sure to understand.

Hey, Lady Jane Scarlett , we can always stop by DQ after the show. I love the way this woman relishes her visit to Dairy Queen.

Another question you might be asking, if you've never visited "Mommy Plays Bass" until the carnival parked here, is "Where's your kid?"

No, she's not watching cartoons. Although after Rennratt shared her Confessions , I will never ban my kids from watching cartoons, as it could lead to a life long-addiction to the Cartoon Network.

My baby hasn't even been weaned her off the umbilical cord yet, although she's probably already conspiring to have Adventures in Meatloaf with Kailani and her Baby.

Time passes quickly enough, and soon she'll be all grown up and have a job we can't understand or explain, as Mad Kane is experiencing now, but she has a Parental Proposal to solve this problem.

Hey YOU! Yes YOU! STOP! I see you sneaking under the back flap of the tent! Trying to get in without a ticket?

Oh, the carnival tickets are free. And it's just Eteraz trying to sneak out early. After all those supermodel sightings, I guess we mundane bloggers are a little boring.

Wait a minute, this carnival doesn't charge admission? Thanks a lot folks! How will I pay for all those diapers?

Well, I'll be sure to not pinch my pennies by buying cheap shoes. Thanks, Everyday Goddess for sharing your saga of painful feet. I have an excuse to increase my budget for shoes.

I'll guess I'll be putting off those plans for a trip to the spa indefinitely. Fortunately, a Day of Luxury with a pre-schooler can be fun and inexpensive, according to Jennifer.

And then there's new career options to consider:

Option #1: I could become a guinea pig for science, which is not a bad gig according to Dr. Kavokin .

Option #2: A life of crime. With all the savvy CPA's out there like Tracy , I doubt I'd have much more luck than that Jeweler Charged with Money Laundering .

Options #3: Perhaps I could be a better real-estate agent than those guys and gals on HGTV, however, now that I know What realtors should never say thanks to Sarakastic

Option #4: I can go back to teaching. It's tempting to give it up after Ellen explains the Peaceful Easy Feeling she gets in the fall as a former teacher who no longer has to go back to school.

But alas, Mark, as I read questions like "I've just spilled really hot coffee in my lap -— is this what they mean by 'global warming' ”?" I feel I have a moral obligation to go back to teach Environmental Science in the spring term!

Ok, now it's up to you to enjoy the show. I hope you will take the time to visit with all the carnie bloggers. (Thanks to everyone for your entertaining contributions!) And remember to check out the official Carnival of the Mundane Website to find out where we're pitching our tents next time. See you then!

X-mas in July

Yesterday I sat down to the keyboard and played a few Christmas tunes for the baby. Why holiday tunes in September? They're just so much fun to play! And by the time December rolls around, they no longer seem fun. By that point I've heard way too many carols on the radio. Personally, I think the best time to play Christmas carols is mid-summer.

One of my mom's friends sends out her holiday cards every summer. As an educator, this makes perfect sense to me. In the summer, you would actually have time to sit poolside and reflect on friends and family. And you might be bored enough to address a few dozen envelopes. Seems like a good tradition for me to start this coming year. Another benefit is that I wouldn't be so stressed-out and cranky from all that last-minute grading as the semester winds down in December. I'd probably be more in the Christmas spirit in July.

In fact, December is probably a lousy time to celebrate the holidays for just about every American. The malls are swarming, the postal workers are bogged down, and our bellies have not recovered from Thanksgiving. And for those of you in the snowbelt, December has to be the worst possible month for long trips to visit family.

I propose "X-mas in July"!

I'm really not being sacrilegious here. Notice I used the term "X-mas." We'd perform all the non-religious rituals that have nothing to do with Christ, like decorating cookies and shopping. My grandfather fumes, "X-mas takes the Christ out of Christmas". Well, he might understand the case for celebrating X-mas in July. If people got all their over-spending and partying out of the way in the summer, then maybe people would actually celebrate Christmas on December 25th.

I'm starting a family now (our baby is due in just the next few weeks!), so this is a perfect time to start our own family traditions! It might not be as creative as festivus, but certainly more practical.

Coming Soon...

The Carnival of the Mundane is pitching its tent here this Friday! And we want *you* to join us!

Have you written a recent post about ordinary life that you'd like to share? Please e-mail me your contributions, as a link to a specific post on your blog. You can click on my profile to get my e-mail address.

The official site: http://carnivalofthemundane.blogspot.com/ There you can find links to old carnivals and find out more.

Mommy nightmare

Well Freud may be full of poopy diapers when it comes to many things, but last night I do think I was working out my subconscious fears about my impending motherhood in my dreams.

In my dream, I woke up realizing that I had slept through the night and skipped our usual nightly feeding. I was convinced that our newborn baby was starving to death, and rushed down the hall to find her.

Like most dreams, many parts of this scenario did not make sense:
1) The cradle was not in the bedroom, but in the "music room" in the spot where I keep my upright bass.
2) How would I sleep through the cries of a starving infant, even if she was down the hall?
3) Our baby had black hair. (My husband is a red-head, and as a child I was very light blonde, so this is very unlikely from a genetic standpoint.)

But if you analyze it as a dream, it makes sense:
1) I'm afraid that mommyhood will absorb all my time and replace my hobbies, like music.
2) I'm afraid I'll somehow mess up as a parent, and I'm especially nervous about trying to breastfeed.
3) I'm afraid of an re-enactment of "Desiree's baby" by Kate Chopin?

Well that last point doesn't really make a lot of sense, but the theme may come from an article I just read about a white couple who ended up bringing home an obviously mixed-race twins from the hospital. After some DNA testing, they discovered that their fertility clinic mixed up the samples so that the baby was created from the mother's egg, but fertilized with another client's sperm. Oops. How do you explain that one to the grandparents? And all the gossips who saw you go through your pregnancy? I hope they got their money back.

I also wonder how many mistakes went unnoticed. I'm sure there's probably people out their raising other people's kids as their own, and there wasn't a noticable marker to tip them off to the mistake.

As a result of the high-profile blunders, one clinic is starting to use microchips to label embryos. Why don't we just tatoo a UPC code on our infants foreheads, too? It could deter kidnappers.