My sweet tender little bamboo shoot

I know I have been all lalala! Baby! Birthdays! Squarch bottles! Babybabybaby!

It's not fake. But it's not the whole picture.

But before I launch into it, I want to say that once again, you all have been so remarkably supportive and excited for us and lovely. I can't tell you how much I appreciate you reading and commenting.

I'm sorry I don't comment back, and I'm not reading your blogs regularly, but this is the state of my life at the moment.

At this point, when I blog, I'm choosing the pleasure of writing and reaching out over precious minutes of sleep. You all are my window to the outside world, to which I often feel I'm clinging by my fingernails.

Ah, the drama. I know.

So little J really is spectacular in so many ways. We wanted him so much and we love him like crazy.

But this is the fucking hardest thing I've ever done.

There is a lot of melting going on. I alternate between having my heart and soul melted into a big bowl of chocolate fondue sweetness, and being so upset and exhausted that my brain melts to the point where I cannot do much besides cry.

And oh, I've cried. A lot. A lot lot lot.

And Nick and I have fought, not a lot, but ugly. Uglier than any fight we've ever had. Much worse than the washer-dryer yelling stomping sobbing on the street corner.

I know that sleep deprivation is a method of torture, and although I don't know many torture methods or how levels of effectiveness compare, I believe it must be up there with being strapped to a cot over a fast-growing stalk of bamboo.

Honestly. Apparently it grows like an inch a day, right through you.

Basically we walk around like zombies with bamboo shoots growing through us.

I feel like a terrible person saying this, but there have been a couple points at which, if given the opportunity, I probably would've handed Jordan to a passer-by and said, "Here. Take him. Take my tender green little stalk of bamboo far, far away."

Good thing there are no strangers passing through our bedroom. Or really, our house, for that matter.

I feel like such an asshole for this, because for one, he's my baby! And, in the scheme of things, he's a really good baby.

But I am exhausted. And so tired of being one big lactating breast - and being scared that maybe I don't make enough milk and he won't grow fast enough (the pressure! he must gain an ounce a day!) which will ultimately lead to dropping out of high school and taking drugs and eventually joining the French Foreign Legion, never to be seen again - and pair of poo-diaper changing hands.

I called Nick the other day when I'd hit the thin, sharp, chartreuse edge of utter hysteria.

"I can't do this! I cannot do this! I cannot change on more fucking diaper in a row! And now! Now! Now he is finally asleep! After hours and hours and shit and pee and shit and more shit! And I just checked and his diaper is completely fucking soaking! And so I have to wake him up and we're going to start all fucking over again!"

I might not have it verbatim, but it was along those lines, and veryvery shrill. And I was crying hard and maybe hyperventilating.

Nick was home within the hour.

I know people all over the world get through this. And many of them have very good attitudes about it. And it's not that I don't love my boy, because I do, I really do. I love him more than I'd ever have imagined.

I'm just so very tired.