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owa Dad Nathan Ripperger says weird things to his kids. I think most parents do. But the difference is that he makes them into super-cute posters and sells them on Etsy.
I love these.
Read more about Nathan at the Huffington Post.
Posey’s name isn’t really Posey. It’s Josephine.
Josephine Frankie, actually.
When we found out we were having a baby, the thought never really crossed our minds that we could be having a boy. It was always a girl. And her name was always Josephine– after the many Josephs in both of our families. Frankie was the name I wanted for my little brother when my mother was pregnant. Instead, they named him Joe. After their cat.
If it HAD been a boy, Beef liked Franklin Delano or Theodore Roosevelt, so the JFK monogram felt like a good compromise. Plus, she’ll feel right at home at the airport and stuff one day.
When I was a few months pregnant, my friend Meg lent me her baby-naming book. And I read this on page 88:
We’d planned on calling her Josie, but I liked the ring of “Posy” better. I didn’t know anyone with that name, but it had a flower connotation– which made it not quite whackadoodle, in my mind. It’s not like it was fake word.
We started calling my bump Posy. At least, I did. Beef wanted to wait until we had our 20-week ultrasound. But then, something amazing happened.
My mom retired.
Her colleaugues threw her a party in the very same room where she had thrown her now-gone parents an anniversary party many years ago. I could tell she missed her mom and dad a lot that night. After she opened the gift-wrapped box her co-workers presented her with (after the nicest, kindest, words anyone could ever want to hear about their mom), she leaned over to me and whispered, kinda embarassed, “What is this? Is it a glass? Or a vase?”
The short answer is– it was one of these. (CLICK FOR CRAZY GOOSEBUMPS!)
But I think there was a REAL answer. Another time, I will write all about the phenomenally gifted medium, Rebecca Rosen, and how much you can learn from her. But for now, I will say that the vase was no coincidence. To me, it was a clear and loving sign from my family members looking out for us on the other side that this baby was their gift to all of us– our gift-wrapped Posy. That I decided was missing a letter, so I added an “e.”
I recently read that more than half of parents regret their child’s name. I guess I’m not 100% still sold on the Frankie part, but there’s nothing I wish we’d named her instead. It fits. And she has a lot of nickname options when she gets older. But I think Beef and I will always, always call her “Pie.” Just because she’s sweet and crusty.
For advice on how to avoid the 7 Biggest Baby-Naming Mistakes, read here.
This blog has been a great landing pad for me lately. I’ve been able to express myself, experiment, entertain (hopefully) and leave a little something behind for Posey once she gets older. I would be lying, though, if I didn’t admit that there’s a lot of thought that goes into it. I’ve done my homework. I know stuff. I know that bullet points rule, that copy is most scannable in chunks, that people want quizzes, that people search for certain stuff and not for other stuff. That the Top 10 and the 5 Best Tips are what people google. And I’d be lying if I didn’t admit that that mattered. Because what’s the point of doing this if no one comes to read it? So thank you for letting me try stuff here. I appreciate that it’s ok that I tried to make this the kind of thing that feels like something someone would want to visit. But it can’t be that all of the time, can it?
I’m learning more and more that the mommy blogging club is a hard club to join. There are a lot of us. And that’s great– because I’ve learned in these few months that it means the world to have a place to go to reach the outside world. But it can also mean that there’s other stuff that goes into it that I might not be up for. But I might– who knows?
All I know is– tonight, I don’t have anything witty to say. This was a hard week. I was tired. The baby cried a lot. I was lonely some of the time. I had fun some of the time. She learned to laugh. I learned to let her sleep in her own room. I didn’t sleep much at all. I am almost all of the way healed from my illness, but I’m not 100%.
It’s been six moths since she came into my life– and I am not a different person. I used to hear Oprah say that money didn’t change people; it just made them more of who they were. I think I must trade in baby currency– because that’s exactly what’s happening. I am more of who I am thanks to her.
Coming soon– the story of her name and the night she was born. Not because anyone’s searching for it. Because I need to write it all down for her.
As we wrapped Posey up and put her to bed tonight, two little purple socks fell out of her swaddle-sack. “One day,” Beef said, “she won’t even remember that we used to put little purple socks on her.”
Dear Pie,
You have the Fastest Feet in the West. You wiggle and squiggle them all day long, every single day. Also, your feet stink, even though you don’t wear dirty old gym shoes yet. You have Little Purple Socks to keep them warm, and sometimes, the very best, most wonderful thing your daddy or I do in an entire day is put them on you, over and over again, no matter how many times you kick them off. We will always be there to put on your Little Purple Socks.
Sometimes I feel like my life is like some sort of late-1990’s Ashley Judd movie probably called “The Backtimer,” or better yet, just plain “Backtimer.”
I forgot to pack the Boogie Wipes?
Having a baby– and having to be somewhere at any specific time– means an in-reverse race against the backwards clock to be punctual.
Today, I have to be at a friend’s house in the suburbs at 5pm.
That means…
Wake the baby up at 8, so she is fed and ready for a nap at 10– get her up at 11 so we can go out and run errands with her, but be home and fed again so she can be down for the second nap at 2:30…. get in just enough sleep to rouse her oh-so-gently around 4. Get her dressed, fed, and we’re ready to leave the house at 4:45.
Late, but in the ballpark.
Coming this Spring: Backtimer II: Fear No Passover
Someone commented on the HuffPost that it was only 49 reasons because I couldn’t think of fifty. That couldn’t be further from the truth.
50. Leaving your baby for the first time to go away for the weekend. My stomach is in knots.
At least I have her Lammie to keep
me company. I’m sure my seat mates didn’t think this photo shoot was weird.
Before I had Posey, I heard the same thing over and over again from most of my friends 
with kids:
“I lost the weight, but now I’m just shaped…differently.”
I was prepared for an even-more jiggly tummy. It’s actually all I’ve ever known, so I never mourned the loss of a flat surface– like I’ve never been sad about not being able to jump in the horse and buggy to get some leeches stuck to me at the barber. No one ever told me the parts that might be shaped differently might actually be the ones that a baby was never inside.
WHAT?
I am going to Vegas this weekend. In preparation, I tried on some dresses in my closet to see what fits again. It turns out, my arms are not the same as they were before. And to add insult to insecurity, armpit chub was spilling out the side of my brand new fancy-pants-custom-fitted-by-a-highly-trained-booby-expert bra.
WHAT??
I returned to Nordstrom, sausage-armed with the knowledge that this is the result of a poor fit. The saleslady was skeptical. “Let me see it on you,” she said. It sounded like a dare. I’ll see you a faulty Wacoal minimizer and raise you a 34D-or-DD.
“It’s not the bra,” she said. “It fits just fine. No bra will fix that. It’s not the bra, it’s you.”
WHAT??!??!?
If Oprah Winfrey has taught our world one thing, it’s to live your best life. If she’s taught us two things, it’s that the right bra can fix everything. There is no such thing as “it’s you,” and to tell a topless woman toting a Snap-N-Go stroller in a poorly lit dressing room anything differently is criminal.
So I tried on six more. And none of them were any different. I teared up. I started to believe her. And then I found out that Spanx upped their sizes and came out with this. And Zappos.com sells it, which means I could get it the next day. Although the straps are not adjustable, which is just plain nonsensical, my armpit rolls are gone. Take that, mean saleslady.
Peace has been restored throughout the land.
When you have a baby, other people’s babies don’t look cute OR ugly.
They just look… wrong.
Familiar, and yet unfamiliar at the same time. It’s sort of like looking at Chris Klein in the American Reunion trailers after being used to looking at Cory Monteith on Glee.
Something’s just off.
Cory (In this example, "Your Baby")
Chris (In this example, NOT your baby)
Posey Pie Productions 
