Guinea Pig

Apparently the firstborn child receives the brunt of new parental flubs.  I feel that many a day I am saying, 'hmm I didn't know you had to do that'.  Now I am not referring to the basics of diapering and feeding, he is not starving and sitting in his own funk; more on the lines of I didn't know I needed to clean that.  Case and point, my husband was giving my son raspberries on his tummy and hence said, phew what is that awful smell?  Thinking that we missed a crevice in changing his diaper, I did a quick check and found no culprits.  He then noticed some fuzz sticking out of our son's belly button and he picked it out saying it smells like rotten cheese.  I cringe putting this in my blog as it makes me out like a horrible mother, but I had no idea that simple bathing was not enough to clean a belly button.  Hell, mine just gets a little leftover soap in it and is good to go, not so much when you are a little guy with a new crevice. You gotta get in there with a q-tip.  Another area of unknown cleaning, ears.  Going in for a sweet nuzzle of your baby's head leads to a gross stomach lurch of why does he smell like fish?!  Uh, yeah, you gotta scrub behind his ears DAILY.  I feel that this confession is going to have CPS knocking at my door but its true that kids do not come with manuals. I am finding it exhausting to keep up with his daily beauty routine, wherein mine is diminishing to a good shower if I am lucky.  The lack of shaving, hair washing, and eye makeup is a whole 'nother blog.  
Many veteran moms and evil books go on about how you soon learn what the different cries mean.  I must be a raging dummy as it seems that I am just getting a grasp on attending to him as he cries, and there are still times where I don't know what the hell he wants.  I suppose it all falls in a pattern of eat, hang out, and sleep.  But when that pattern falls out of whack, I am left there with a crying child that should be eating, but he just ate, so I have no idea what he is asking for.  I am sure that he is hating on me at times like, mom damn I am tired cant you tell?!  He doesn't give the usual signals that one thinks of, yawning (hell he does that all day), rubbing his eyes, (he may errantly hit them when he is flailing about), and turning his head away from activity (never seen that one).  Maybe I need to become a stoic observer of my son's every action to figure it out.  I have several pages of a notebook started with my notations of what time he ate, slept, and played,and with his temperament, but that gem of an idea often falls to the wayside as the laundry climbs out of the basket to chase me while he lays crying in his bed.  Goes to show that I am spending most of my time raising him and not watching him.