Making Crafts in the Woods

Hell of a month

2012-01-31T15:22:00.003-05:00

It's the last day of January and already I've met the year's sadness quota. On December 28th we buried Aunt Julie, three years almost to the day after Grandma B died (December 29th). Lisa passed on January 19th. And then Great Aunt Sissy on January 28th. In many ways Sissy's death has been more difficult than Grandma's. My relationship with her was less complicated. She was full of pragmatism--not like Grandma at all in that way. And I am sad on Maureen's behalf because Sissy was getting to know my daughter through letters and photos. Sissy was less than a month away from her ninetieth birthday. How could I have expected her to be around for Maureen's life? I supposed I did not. But I'm having trouble imagining Mo's childhood without a Sissy in it. She was such a larger-than-life character in my own childhood, driving from Vermont to North Carolina on the spur of the moment. Her letters and visits such a treat. We are surrounded by reminders, artifacts of that love. The snowflakes that hang from my kitchen window. The blue pillow in Mo's bedroom. The little bluebird of happiness on the shelf. Stacks of cards and letters tied with ribbon, each decorated with a hand drawn cartoon of herself putting a letter into a mailbox.

The quilt she made us as a wedding gift. You should have seen how twisted and gnarled her hands were after a lifetime of use. First as an Army nurse in World War II, then as a nurse on the homefront working nights and raising seven children with Uncle Bob. Always crafting, cooking, knitting, quilting--and writing letters by hand. She was a prolific letter writer. Sissy corresponded regularly with dozens and dozens of relatives and friends. When she moved in with Margie and Ken several months ago, I wrote I was sure my letter would find its way to her as the USPS owed her for keeping them flush all these years. She was the glue that kept my dad's family together and informed about each others comings and goings. She was the memory keeper.

I dug through my wedding photos to find a picture of Sissy.*

I love these photos of her with Uncle Rich: Marjorie Amber Brigham Miller.

Here are Sissy and Aunt Julie.

And here is a great photo of my Grandma Brigham, although she was totally self conscious about the spot on her cheek and hated having her picture taken. I think she really looked beautiful that day.

[*How much has our photographic technology changed in the past 10 years that my wedding photos are a physical collection of photographs in a box rather than a couple file folders on my computer!]

Burning the midni... 9pm oil

2012-01-28T06:21:00.000-05:00

Dear Circo brand,
The head holes in the girls infant/toddler t-shirts are too dang small. Perhaps they are manufactured in a country full of pinheads. I don't know. But I wanted to thank you for providing me with shirts AND homework.
Grateful to have something to do,
Barb

Two shirts fixed, one still on the drawing board. While I had the sewing machine fired up, I decided to make some wool pants for Momo out of the sleeves of some felted sweaters I've had laying around forever. I used a pair of Garanimals sweatpants that fit her well as a model. This little project was so easy, I can't believe I hadn't thought of doing it before. Anyone got old stained, holey, out of style wool sweaters at the back of their closet they would like to donate to me???

The blue ones were done first, and the test-fit revealed that I had not created enough rise in the back. So the green pants were made with more booty space and turned out great. I just need to go back and fix the blue ones now.

Unseasonable

2012-01-24T14:10:00.000-05:00

It seems incongruous that it should be a beautiful day and the end of January and Lisa's funeral all at once. (I read and reread the obituary, but it definitely fails to mention that she was the "beloved wife of Shawn"--am I missing something?) The twins flew to Wisconsin last night. I can't speak for the weather there, but here it is like spring. Even the flowers are confused. All the bulbs are bolting skyward and tiny wildflowers in the lawn are blooming.

We went for a long slow mid-morning walk.

Putting the baby in the bear suit was probably overkill.

Everything shiny from yesterday's rain but smelling like a spring thaw. I collected a handful of moss for a spontaneous terrarium. And as I review these photos I realize that the light sensors on my old digital camera are wearing thin. They tell the little mechanical brain to BRIGHTEN!!!! when not brightening would do nicely. But the old point-and-click will have to serve until I splurge on myself and get a Lytro (which will not actually be happening). There are worse things in life than chronic brightening. In fact I could use the brightness today.

Place turkey. Screw down the lid. And there you have it: sunny day preserves for the long winter ahead.

Boob tube

2012-01-22T21:31:00.001-05:00

The new season of Being Human began on SyFy last week. It's on Monday nights. Robb, I'm going to need some new BH mixtapes for my birthday because they are curating their soundtrack as well this season as last. (This video for "Juliet" makes me get a little teary.) One question: when will On Demand release season 4 of the BBC series?

Oh and speaking of things that make you cry, did you catch the end of the Ravens-Pats game tonight when Billy missed a 32 yard field goal? Unbelievable.

Thousands of finches

2012-01-16T13:36:00.000-05:00

Each morning after Mo's been fed I wander into the kitchen in search of coffee. With the sounds of music and playing drifting down the hall I stand at the sink and sip. Just outside the window winter's cold blast surprised the hydrangea and made her drop her dress. Sheltered amid her naked elbows is a fat bird I have not had the presence of mind to photograph. He is two shades of grey: charcoal back and wings, lighter grey belly. Sometimes a mating pair of cardinals joins him in the sticks. I pointed him out to Robb and wondered what kind of bird it is.

"It's a finch."

No, I don't think so.

"Trust me, there are thousands of varieties of finches." That is probably a true statement if you add "in the world" to the end of it. This is another case of Mr. Science trying to bully me with his credentials when he's pulling something out of his ear. And if the topic wasn't birds he might have pulled it off. But he was trying to buffalo a girl whose favorite childhood book was the Peterson Field Guide to Eastern Birds. I'm pretty sure my bird friend is either a bunting or a junco.

I returned from walking the dog and told Robb to check out the finches I saw on the walk. He leaned in close to the camera to see.

"Those are some really big finches."

Facing fears

2012-01-06T10:19:00.000-05:00

When Maureen was born Robb's friends who live in Indiana sent us gift cards for Schwanns food delivery since they could not bring a meal to us themselves. It was thoughtful and generous of them, to be sure. Except for the fact that for the past 15 years I have lived in mortal fear that one day the Schwanns people will get their hands on my contact information. Some people are afraid of spiders; I am petrified of Schwanns.

Have you ever wondered what happens to all the mercenaries when wars end: Schwanns recruits them to be delivery drivers. Their sales reps are vicious stalkers. They sneak catalogs into your mailbox. They email you about special offers at 2am. They urge you to accept delicious samples. They will not take no for an answer. Ever.

It's ridiculous, really, to be fearful of a food delivery company. Right? Maureen was born in January, and it was sometime in October that I worked up the courage to look at the Schwanns website and contemplate placing an order. After several days of deliberation, I made some meal selections.

I nervously asked Robb what he thought about ordering, but he could not have been more cool about the situation. "Whatever you want to get..." Frankly it's exasperating when your partner calls you out on crazy behavior. Not that he called me out on it, but he was acting like dealing with Schwanns should be no big deal. Of course it's a big deal: once they have us in their clutches they will never let go! We have a responsibility to protect the baby from aggressive consumer shenanigans.

I was relieved to see that food could be shipped, so there was no need for a terrifying Schwanns rep to come to our home. Whew. I clicked the button to continue. If I had the food shipped I would have to pay by credit card. But I have gift cards! I scoured the site frantically Crap! There was no way to redeem gift cards online or over the phone. All purchases with gift cards had to be made in person with a delivery driver. I flippin' knew it! We would not be able to pull this off without incurring the Schwanns sales pitch.

I relayed this information to Robb, so he could share in my outrage. But he shrugged. Fine, I'll show him how scary Schwanns can be. I scheduled the delivery for a window of time when I would be at work, and Robb was home watching Maureen by himself. Then I told him what I had done, so he could be exasperated with me. But he said, "Okay."

Seriously? No reaction at all? That man really knows how to push my buttons.

I waited at work for Robb to call and give me play by play about the Schwanns delivery. And I waited and waited. Until I couldn't take it anymore. I was sure that Robb had been tricked into some kind of evil subscription program, and I would arrive home to find he and the baby buried under a mountain of individually vacuum packed frozen steaks. My imagination ran wild. I called home.

"So? What happened?"

"The guy came around 2."

"What? The window was supposed to be between 11 and 1. Did you ask why he was so late?"

"I didn't ask. The guy was nice."

Uh oh. "What all did you get?"

"Whatever you ordered."

"That's it?"

"Yeah."

"Was he really pushy?"

"No. He left a catalog and said he'd be back in our area in two weeks."

I was baffled by Robb's experience with the Schwanns man. It simply didn't fit with my recollection of crazy Schwanns sales people. I mean, the guy I remembered who delivered to some of my coworkers when I was in college, he was relentless. A giant rat terrier with a refrigerated truck. It didn't add up. Maybe I had been wrong all this time to be fearful of Schwanns.

And then several days later as I scrolled through the caller id I found this:

It was THEM!

Happy 1st Birthday!

2012-01-03T23:04:00.000-05:00

I can't wait to see what wonderful adventures 2012 has in store for you, little one.
Love,
Mama

Embroidered ornaments

2012-01-01T20:43:00.000-05:00

Now that Christmas has passed, it's finally safe to show you my top secret needlepoint project. I made counted cross stitch ornaments for Great Aunt Sissy, Theresa, Rick, and Mom.

The alphabet I used comes from Alicia Paulson's Embroidery Companion. It's part of the Meadowflower Tote project on page 80. I also like to look at her blog Posy Gets Cosy. She writes from the heart and has an adorable corgi.

As so often happens a project journal on The Purl Bee caught my eye: Cross-Stitch Ornaments. That was my starting point. So mine are the same...only different. For the front fabric I used a cotton dishcloth, and for the reverse fabric I used a beautiful cotton men's handkerchief with subtle striping. Oh, and inside I lined each tiny pillow with muslin.

I played around with the color combinations while I was working. Sissy's is blue and red (M is for Marjorie), Theresa's is purple and yellow, Mom's is green and orange (L is for Liz but I guess I could have done an E), and Rick's is red and pink. Rick's ornament looks the most Christmasy to me, and it was my favorite. Theresa asked how I found the time to get them done. Hey, it's Christmas magic! (And a really awesome husband who takes on baby duty for a full day while I count stitches.)

Dear Santa

2011-12-30T12:25:00.000-05:00

I must have been a VERY GOOD GIRL this year! Thank you thank you thank you....I'm boning up on the tutorials now. :)

Ahead of schedule

2011-12-23T10:51:00.000-05:00

I can't remember the last time I wasn't frantically finishing craft projects this close to Christmas. I must have set more reasonable goals this year. I did not handmake gifts for as many people as I would have liked. But yesterday we wrapped the last two gifts and started getting the house in order. The decorating is done. The rubbermaid tubs are back in their storage nook. The only thing unfinished is Maureen's heartwarmer sweater, and that's okay. She has plenty of gifts to open on Christmas day. So I'm just knitting along at a comfortable pace. Nice for a change.

Little Mo bought me a small poinsettia centerpiece when she and her dad were shopping yesterday. She thought I could use a little cheer. That baby is very thoughtful. I wasn't overtly feeling sad, though. At least I don't think so. Not to make the blog a chronicle of misery, but this year has served up some bitter soup: a hurricane and a fall down the stairs, Aunt Julie became ill and died, a former coworker died, two close friends of Mom's died suddenly, a loved one lost a pregnancy, and as we begin the holidays we have two family members in Hospice care--Lisa and Great Aunt Sissy. Mom and I and Mo will travel to Ocean City for Aunt Julie's burial next week. She donated her body to Johns Hopkins for research purposes, and her remains were returned several weeks ago. Maybe her illness will help someone in the future.

Back to the matter at hand. With all this free time, I dug the fleece out of my stash and whipped up a couple of quick projects for Momo. First the Christmas Critter, a finger puppet (maybe a bunny) wearing a kilt. An immediate hit!

And second (complete with bedhead) a plaid fleece jumper. I used another piece of clothing as a template, and thankfully fleece doesn't need hemming. It probably won't hold up to heavy use, but for this winter it will keep her warm like a sweater vest. And it's short enough to allow for crawling. Although walking is just around the corner.

Holiday house of horrors

2011-12-21T15:25:00.000-05:00

(before)

1. Overheard in the hardware store:
Daughter: Dad, we need to get these!
Dad: No, we have plenty of Christmas lights on the outside of the house.
Daughter: But that's the whole point of Christmas.
Dad: What? That's not the point of Christmas. Who was born on Christmas?
Daughter: Ashton Kutcher.

2. I did a lot of online shopping this year and discovered that the sound of packing tape being ripped off of packages really frightens Maureen. Then it should not have surprised me that the sound of packing tape being applied to outgoing holiday packages freaks her out as well. Had to do my mailings in the middle of the night.

(after)

3. Also, Santa Claus is scary.

If I had a million dollars

2011-12-15T21:55:00.000-05:00

I'd buy you a green dress, but not a real green dress--that's cruel.

Nah, if I had a million dollars I'd go on a shopping spree at Anthropologie. Instead I daydream about reverse engineering these sundresses. But I wonder why are sundresses featured so prominently in the middle of December? Hmm...could it be that they want us to wear leggings with them? If I have leggings in my wardrobe then you can rest assured, Anthropologie execs, that they are no longer happening. Nor is the word "happening."

Robb made me

2011-12-13T11:42:00.001-05:00

I'm not such a fan of staged formal photos, but I'm glad that Robb pushed for a family Christmas picture this year. I pushed for us to wear matching outfits--Robb was not a fan of that at all. We made an appointment at The Big-Box and used a coupon from their website: free sitting fees ($10 per person at most places) and $3.99 per sheet for prints. !!! The photographer did a nice job, and Momo was an angel. I screen-grabbed these thumbnails to show you. Merry merry!

Not much on the needles

2011-12-12T11:55:00.001-05:00

This December I'm barely knitting at all compared to past years when I've been frantically weaving in ends on Christmas morning. I am making a heartwarmer for Maureen for Christmas (raveled here) using City Tweed merino/alpaca blend. I'm working in the color snowshoe right now but considering a color change for the lace. Maybe to toad or jacquard...we'll see. For now the project lives in my purse, and whenever the baby falls asleep in the car I drag it out for a little parking lot knitting. It's coming along slowly. Also I have a late night top secret embroidery project I'm chipping away at that may or may not be ready in time for Christmas. And this cowl neck project is on my post-holiday-crafting-to-do list. I need to figure out what item of clothing will go under the knife to become the frankencowl.

I haven't fallen off the face of the earth

2011-11-30T23:18:00.000-05:00

The holiday crafting has begun, and so I have been MIA on the blog this month. But here's a baby photo to tide you over. Her favorite color is still shiny.

Now there is time

2011-11-14T17:20:00.000-05:00

"Now I Become Myself"
by May Sarton

Now I become myself. It's taken
Time, many years and places;
I have been dissolved and shaken,
Worn other people's faces,
Run madly, as if Time were there,
Terribly old, crying a warning,
"Hurry, you will be dead before--"
(What? Before you reach the morning?
Or the end of the poem is clear?
Or love safe in the walled city?)
Now to stand still, to be here,
Feel my own weight and density!
The black shadow on the paper
Is my hand; the shadow of a word
As thought shapes the shaper
Falls heavy on the page, is heard.
All fuses now, falls into place
From wish to action, word to silence,
My work, my love, my time, my face
Gathered into one intense
Gesture of growing like a plant.
As slowly as the ripening fruit
Fertile, detached, and always spent,
Falls but does not exhaust the root,
So all the poem is, can give,
Grows in me to become the song,
Made so and rooted by love.
Now there is time and Time is young.
O, in this single hour I live
All of myself and do not move.
I, the pursued, who madly ran,
Stand still, stand still, and stop the sun!

Writers block

2011-11-13T20:08:00.000-05:00

I need to apologize to anyone who emailed me before November 2nd. I am a terrible correspondent. If I do not respond to a message the moment I read it, you can assume it's been left for dead. And let's face it, with an increasingly active baby in the mix I consider myself lucky if I get a chance to read incoming mail at all. Every once in a while I will get caught up in a fit of email guilt and embark on a forced march through my old messages. But I would prefer to declare email bankruptcy some day. Start over with a new email address and a clean slate. Although I cannot promise that I would operate a new account with any accountability.

In this case an email that Mom forwarded to me on November 2nd created an emotional logjam, and I'm finding it impossible to wade any further backwards through my mail. The message is from my cousin Shawn's wife Lisa. Lisa is fighting what began as ovarian cancer for the sixth time in as many years. She is 40 years old. And after an experimental treatment failed to yield any positive results, she is dying. So she composed a letter to family and friends explaining what's going on and sending her love. And get this--it's the part that trips me up each time I read the letter--she says that many people have asked what they can do to help. Lisa writes:

Here are a few thoughts I had:
* Visit, call, or email – I hope to be able to see everyone before I get too sick to enjoy a visit. Feel free to contact me so we can set up some time to spend together!
* Food Pantry Donations - Interested in making food? How about making a small donation to the food pantry barrels at your local grocery store or food pantry instead?
* DVD/Wii Game Drive – The Medical Oncology Family Center at Waukesha Memorial Hospital just purchased a flat screen TV and Wii Gaming System with the intent to build a library of games/movies for families to access during their stay. New or gently used games/DVDs are welcome (kids grew out of them, etc).

This stops me because it's just so Lisa to tell her loved ones that they can help her by donating to a food pantry or oncology center.

Mom talked to Uncle Mike yesterday, and Lisa's health has deteriorated very quickly since the beginning of November. I'm going to write back to her now.

The iterminable bigness

2011-11-08T20:05:00.001-05:00

Last week Maureen turned 10 months old. She weighs 19 pounds and is 26.5" long. That's 11 pounds and 9" larger than birth. And especially after seeing baby Zofia this weekend (2 months old), I am astonished by how big our little Momo is. And the bigness, it kills me.

I had to work last Thursday night. At some point Momo woke up crying, and when Robb went to check on her, she was standing in the corner of the crib looking at him. She tries to pull up all the time now. The footstool for the rocking chair is a favorite mountain. So Friday Robb moved her crib to the lower setting. I sneaked a picture of her in her newly lowered crib, and look at her sleeping in a heap: she's a gangly toddler.

Maureen made a liar of me at group when I thought she wanted to play with her bottle. "She doesn't know to tip the end up...," I started to say, and then watched her lean her head back and drink.

The biting got better for a week and then much worse, so I only pump and bottle feed during the daylight hours. But we added solid food breakfast to Momo's daily routine, and it's going very well. That's two a day now. Here is a typical meal: cheddar cheese, avocado, sweet potato, and noodles. Our little scientist devised a test for determining the nature of orange foods: the squeeze test. If it squishes in her fist easily, it's a sweet potato or steamed carrot and should be discarded. If it resists squishing, it's a cheese and should be eaten promptly.

Last Wednesday was our final day at the breastfeeding support group.* We might go back for weight checks now and again, but Momo is too active. She was the oldest baby by about eight months. We were surrounded by tiny babies doing tummy time on the floor. And there was Maureen growling loudly (her favorite noise to make last week), baring her six teeth, and charging across the floor to try to pounce on them in delight. I had released Attila the Hun on a room full of newborns. Hilarious, right? But sad because I realized we were done. We're going to Storytime tomorrow instead. But we'll see several of Maureen's friends there: Hunter, Drew, and maybe Violet. We'll shake our eggs and hear some stories and practice clapping and be big, big stuff. The biggest.

(*Until I got a message from Kate that tomorrow is her first time going to group this week, so we're going to drop by for moral support.)

Robb and Kevin circa 1983

2011-11-04T12:13:00.001-04:00

Halloween costumes by Charlene. Awesome!

Baby's first Halloween

2011-11-03T23:01:00.000-04:00

On Sunday Maureen wore her scary costume: Ravens cheerleader. *shudder* Yes, I wanted to be a Redskinette when I was little, but that was completely different. Number one: it was the Redskins. Number two: there doesn't need to be a number two...it was the Redskins. Case closed.

Although I did not make Maureen's costumes this year, both costumes were recycled. We found the cheerleader suit at the Goodwill in Eldersburg with Charlene for $2. Robb noticed what we did not--it had LEAH printed across the back. I said, "This is such a great bargain, we will change her name. What do you think, Leah?" Leah smiled back at me. And that's the story of why we changed our daughter's name.

Er, I mean, and then I stitched a pair of white fleece wings onto the back to the dress to obscure the decal.

Of course there's the holiday bib shot.

Then on Halloween afternoon, we dressed ~~Leah~~ Maureen up in her turtle costume and hit the streets. She looks totally psyched about trick-or-treating in this picture. In reality she was not such a fan of having the hood up, but it was chilly outside.

The turtle costume was $2 at the Clarksville Picnic this summer, so we did baby's first Halloween for under $5.

We went to three houses. Each time we came to the door they said the same thing, "She's a frog!"

"No, she's a turtle," we said and turned around so they could see her shell.

"Ooooh."

It was more convincing when she crawled. And made growling noises at Peg and John's cat Shadow. In all fairness Shadow was probably asking for it.

I've been missing the best part

2011-10-30T08:26:00.000-04:00

More quick one-handed blogging. I hate tags on stuffed animals and cut them off of a lot of the baby's toys. Then I noticed that the tags are her favorite part of most toys. Who knew? To make up for my tag-ignorance, I whipped up this taggy blanket for Momo (over a month ago) in a single evening. It's cotton on one side, flannel on the other, little scrap of cotton batting in the middle, and an assortment of ribbon tags from my stash around the edge. All different textures, colors, sizes. After a dozen times though the laundry, I ripped off all of the pink tags. They turned out to be poor quality ribbon, and I didn't want her to swallow them.

She loves it! (Pictures from mid-September.) Especially the owl ribbon. There are so many things that I want to make for Maureen, and having a baby in the house is the biggest obstacle to making things for the baby....

Pumpkins

2011-10-28T09:50:00.000-04:00

Blogging with one hand. Baby thrashing in other. Momo decorated pumpkin with stickers at playdate on Tues. Mom helped. Frankenstein. Stickers for littles is brilliant.

I was inspired to come home and paint faces on the ones we got at Bowles Farm. Robb doesn't like happy jack-o-lanterns but admits these turned out cute. :)

Everybody loves Shark Week!

2011-10-24T20:47:00.000-04:00

Did you flip to the Discovery Channel to be sure and then think, What is she talking about? Shark Week was months ago. But at our house, you see, Maureen now has five teeth on board and at least one more on deck, so it's shark week at Fig Point all day every day. I love how nursing sites downplay the significance of teething. They are like, "Pff! Simply tell baby not to bite you, and she will understand." Okay, not that glib but almost. Perhaps it is an easy transition for most folks. Mo's two bottom teeth were really no big deal because her tongue is over them when she eats. But the top teeth have been a different story altogether.

First I must tell you that Momo has been busy writing a book about solid foods. It's called I'M JUST NOT THAT INTO YOU. What started as a happy baby bird opening her mouth for more sweet potatoes quickly became a tricky baby weasel clamping her mouth shut every time a spoon gets within six inches of her. She will smile and laugh until she sees you make your move with the mush. Then slap! Closed for business. This is what happens when a total smartass and the class clown get together: they produce a smart-clown. We were lucky, though: the punnet square said there was a 25% chance we'd have a class-ass instead.

We persevere in the face of adversity. Every afternoon we sit Madame Smart-Clown in the high chair for an hour and play at getting human food into her. Purees are the problem. She deftly dodges, gags, teases, rubs baby food into her hair, and occasionally vomits all the hard-won success onto her bib. But if you sprinkle Momo's tray with food she can grab and feed to herself, then it's fine. Extremely slow but fine. We still try to give her mush, but mainly she eats Gerber puffs, yogurt drops, Mum-Mums, rice, tiny bits of cooked veggies, shredded chicken, hard cooked egg yolk, and noodles. At least 60% of her endeavors go down the hatch.

The solid food hour of prayer and pleading aside, Maureen is getting nearly all of her nutrition from breast milk. She still nurses about seven times in 24 hours. Contrast this with cousin Jack who now only nurses early in the morning and before bedtime (and during the night maybe?) and gobbles down baby food and cereal all day long like it's going out of style. Also, Jack does not have any teeth yet. Color me jealous.

I had to tell you all that to set the stage for the sharky stuff because it falls under the topical umbrella of eating. But I've one more feeding-related *aside* for you. Several months ago I wrote a post full of tips to help get you through the first six months of breastfeeding. At some point you will feel like you and your baby are really getting the hang of things. You hit your stride and bf-ing couldn't be going better. Enjoy that while it lasts. Remember that part of Alice in Wonderland when Alice takes the baby from the Dutchess, only to look down and find she has been carrying around a pig in a bonnet? For us the change happened around six months. That's when we realized that Maureen had become a distracted drinker. Which would be a huge problem if she was also driving. Instead it is challenging to feed her when there is something more interesting in her vicinity, like a conversation or a television program or Sukey's tags jingling or Mommy breathing.

While I'm swinging wide... Did you know that nursing moms are more likely to be victims of sexual bias? But we are also more likely to very calmly kick someone's teeth in when bias rears its ugly head. Food for thought.

Which brings me back on point: teething. For the past month Mo's been getting up earlier, napping shorter, drooling, coughing, waking multiple times at night, and biting. Biting her toys, my shirt, burp cloths--whatever she can shove in her mouth. And, of course, me. She has been biting me going on three weeks. I have seen enough AFV to know that teething wasn't going to be fun.

Kid, I feel your pain.

My initial strategy to discourage biting came straight from dog training. When she nipped me I would say, "Ouch! No, you do not bite Mommy," and end the meal. That quickly taught Maureen how hilarious it is when I jump out of my skin. After a few days I noticed that she had a devilish gleam in her eyes and then was laughing when I scolded her.

This reached a crescendo last Thursday around lunch time. Mo bit me, and I shouted, "OUCH!" loud enough to maker her cry hysterically. I almost cried myself. She bit me so hard I had two tiny fang marks for most of the day. I was lucky she didn't break the skin. Clearly this wasn't working. The baby almost sheared off one of my nipples. And if I scared her too badly she might go on a nursing strike. That wouldn't be a big deal if she ate anything else, but she doesn't really. So on to plan B.

My current strategy requires that I show no potentially amusing reaction. I calmly remind Maureen that, "Mommy is for milk. Toys are for bites," and put a teething toy into her hand. For it to work I have to be hyper vigilant, watching her face like a hawk for any sign that she's about to chomp. A slight pause. Tension in her jaw. Her eyes glancing at mine so she doesn't miss the hilarious "ouch!" she is about to create. And then before she can strike, I burp her or offer a toy or switch sides. After several days, Mo seems to be catching on. Never a dull moment. *sigh*

Amish diamond mini quilt

2011-10-19T09:00:00.000-04:00

One of the blogs I follow is the Purl Bee. It's a store in NYC and online, but they publish fantastic free tutorials for knitting, crocheting, embroidering, sewing, quilting--almost any fiber craft you can think of. Each month this year they have come up with a new mini quilt project. Some of them feel a little above my skill level, others don't really speak to me. But along came October: the Amish diamond. It was challenging enough to be interesting (rather than daunting). And luckily I was almost two months late with Theresa's birthday present.

Now I know it's not perfect. It's not even square. But this little quilt is full of firsts for me: my first time making my own binding, my first time piecing so that corners line up, and my first time "stitching in the ditch." And for all the new ground I covered, I am satisfied with the results. Proud even.

And my corners came out good. Nice and cornery. Mitered. I was deliberating over the binding color, so I asked Robb, "Contrast? Or matchy-matchy?" Holding up some reddish and some greenish fabrics. "Contrast." He was right.

The different patterns and colors came together well, too. I was thinking of it as a flower garden. With birds fluttering around but not in a Hitchcock sort of way.

It was completed over the course of several evenings after Mo's bedtime. Hope Theresa likes it! Although I also sent her and Rick 2.5G of baby pictures and videos on a thumb drive--the MO DRIVE--so the mini quilt is kind of a footnote.

Want to see my booty?

2011-10-18T11:37:00.000-04:00

...from the Leprechaun Lilly's fall/winter consignment sale two weeks ago at the St. Mary's Fairgrounds. Pictured above are the following items: a purple hooded winter coat size 2T, a fleece pullover also size 2T, a pair of pink mary janes (that are too small, oops!), a 12M fleece sleep 'n play, two sets of 12M cotton jammies, a 12M cotton romper, several Melissa & Doug musical instruments in original packaging, a stacker toy, two trucks, and a work bench. Not pictured are a sit-and-spin, a toy in original packaging that will be a Christmas gift for a little friend, and a portable booster seat for Gramma Lizzie's house. I should have taken the whole Christmas list with me, as there was a huge Melissa & Doug section. Now you might expect that I dropped a sizable chunk of change on all of these goodies because after an hour in line this stuff was heavy. And I started getting nervous about how much I had picked up. But I walked away with all of this loot for the bargain price of $68. Not too bad.

Welcome to autumn

2011-10-16T21:52:00.000-04:00

We found three small crickets in the house in as many days. Robb says it means the weather has taken a real turn toward cold. After the hottest summer on record in the DC Metro area, cool days are welcome.

Robb's class reunion was a lot of fun. I finally met Dawn, my nemesis for the past ten years, pictured above second from the left. She was Robb's girlfriend in high school. (That trollop.) But meeting Dawn ruined everything. I mean, how can I keep holding a fake grudge against someone who looks and acts like she might be the nicest kindergarten teacher in the world? I'm just wasting energy there.

I completed and mailed a very VERY belated something that's been on the sewing table. More on this toward the end of the week when I'm quite sure the eagle has landed.

Of course we are still keeping Maureen around. We took her to Bowles Farm today to pick out a pumpkin, visit the petting zoo, and take a spin on the hayride. Most of all she enjoyed the people watching. Now 9 months old, Maureen is crawling. FAST. Her favorite color is shiny. She says "dada" and is starting to make the signs for "milk" and "dog." Mo cut her third tooth this week on the top front right; the first two were the front bottom ones. Her hair has started to curl into ringlets on the back of her neck. She can almost kind of clap but not really--I just want her to. And she loves loves loves music.

But in the past several weeks Momo decided she should start her days at 6am and then only take one 45 minute nap around lunchtime, which is why poor Mommy never updates the blog anymore. I keep telling myself, It's only a phase... Everything is only a phase.

Grown-up secrets

2011-09-23T12:14:00.000-04:00

It's been a poetry kind of week.

"Unveiling"
by Linda Pastan

In the cemetery
a mile away
from where we used to live,
my aunts and mother
my father and uncles lie
in two long rows,
almost the way
they used to sit around
the long planked table
at family dinners.
And walking beside
the graves today, down
one straight path
and up the next,
I don't feel sad, exactly,
just left out a bit,
as if they kept
from me the kind
of grown-up secret
they used to share
back then, something
I'm not quite ready yet
to learn.

Finlandia

2011-09-22T06:49:00.000-04:00

One of Julie's favorites, "This Is My Song" is the 1934 hymn written by Lloyd Stone using the Finlandia melody composed by Jean Sibelius. She played it on the piano at Dad's funeral.

This is my song, Oh God of all the nations,
A song of peace for lands afar and mine.
This is my home, the country where my heart is;
Here are my hopes, my dreams, my sacred shrine.
But other hearts in other lands are beating,
With hopes and dreams as true and high as mine.

My country’s skies are bluer than the ocean,
And sunlight beams on cloverleaf and pine.
But other lands have sunlight too and clover,
And skies are everywhere as blue as mine.
Oh hear my song, oh God of all the nations,
A song of peace for their land and for mine.

May truth and freedom come to every nation;
may peace abound where strife has raged so long;
that each may seek to love and build together,
a world united, righting every wrong;
a world united in its love for freedom,
proclaiming peace together in one song.

Joys and concerns

2011-09-21T07:31:00.004-04:00

"Magnificat" by Mary Ruefle

O Lord, I did walk upon the earth
and my footprints did keep pace with the rain
and I did note, I did note where orange birds
flew up from the puddles thou hast made
and where the toads leapt from your trenches,
but nowhere was there that I could go
for I could not rise from the firmament
upon which I was placed, and nowhere could I
so I kept until I could no more straight
then bent said I am down to make room for the more
and you half hearing did send me down
into the soul of another by mistakes
and I would like to thank you for it
from where I lie, risen in the eye of the other.

* * * * *

I am seizing a rare moment of Momo sleeping late to post. September has been down, down, up, down, up, and down again. More downs than ups. The most notable "up" is the birth of Shalom and Adam's beautiful little girl Zofia. I am so very happy that she is healthly--and that our girls were born in the same year!

Among the downs, I am sorry to report, is my Aunt Julie's death this past Monday. I keep returning in my mind to the fact that I won't talk with her again. It's unacceptable. We were starting to have these fantastic conversations about motherhood. When I thought I broke my foot Julie told me about how she broke her ankle when Paul was 2 years old and Ali was 3 months old. Uncle Rich was working full time, her only bathroom was upstairs, and her kitchen was downstairs. She had to crawl around her house with a newborn while chasing a toddler. "It was 6 weeks of hell!" she told me, even considering the cancer battle she was fighting as she told me. I certainly will miss her for her own sake, but with her passing I've lost another piece of Dad. Both Gran and Grandma gone, Dad and their infant eldest sister Frances, now Julie, leaving only Aunt Pat to keep all of their childhood memories alive. [Here is a link to her obituary in the Salisbury Daily Times.]

~~So I will be going back to Ocean City for another funeral on Saturday.~~ Over Labor Day weekend I went to Ed Hammond's funeral. He was a partner in my old law firm and only 69. ~~I need to make arrangements with my boss this morning. I am feeling like "that person" at work, always calling out, always some personal drama.~~ I won't be able to get off work Saturday. I need to call my cousins and uncle to say that I love them.

I hear Momo fussing. (And a car alarm?) Time's up.

An apple a day makes baby go bonkers

2011-09-16T08:02:00.000-04:00

This article about the link between pesticide exposure and ADHD in our children is more than a little disturbing. Yet another sign that chemical companies do not have our or our children's best interest at heart.

Computers are disposable or News from wastelandia

2011-09-14T08:18:00.000-04:00

Also during the hurricane the video card in our desktop computer went up. It is unfortunately an integrated system (meaning, built into the motherboard) rather than constructed Lego-style. We just replaced this tower a year-and-a-half ago around the time of the blizzard. Robb hauled it over to Best Buy to have the geeks take a look. The diagnostic alone costs $70 and takes several days. The geek he spoke to suggested it might be the power supply which would be another $40 to fix. If it is indeed the video card that is fried they could plug in a separate video card if they are able to track down that part. The geek didn't think they would find one, in which case they would have to replace the whole motherboard. Or $400. That's $100 more than we spent on the tower to begin with.

Robb asked him how is it possible that an 18 month old computer is already so obsolete that replacement parts are unavailable? Apparently the technology was "on it way out" when we purchased it. The geek wouldn't recommend plugging in a separate video card--if one could be found--anyway because in these integrated systems, once one part dies the others pieces tend to start dropping like flies in a terrible rapid cascade. "So what you're telling me is that computers are disposable now too?" "Exactly," replied the geek.

Now I know what you're thinking. "Who wants a desktop anyway?" Well, me. I do. I really hate laptops. I'm pecking away on Robb's laptop right now, and I'm not happy about it. This poor thing has such a puny processor that I can't plug my camera into it without causing an event not unlike Chernobyl. And it's only maybe four years old. If our desktop was "obsolete" this thing is practically prehistoric. Welcome to the land of waste where you have to replace your computers twice a year to keep up, and on the first of every month a new smarter phone is waiting for you.

There is something deeply wrong with our tech culture. I wasn't raised like that, and I don't want Maureen to develop a permanent case of the I-want-gimme-gimme's. We have a cabinet of VHS tapes and two large binders of DVDs. These dusty stacks represent hundreds of dollars invested in obsolete media. Video tapes were around for about 20 years and DVDs for maybe 10. How long do you really think the Blu-Ray fad will last? It is already a flash in the home theater pan. I urge to save your money and ignore Blu-Ray entirely. Anything you want to watch can be streaming to your tv or computer instantly.

Streaming media worries me. It's not so much that I miss having my large cassette collection prominently displayed in my home. It's 1984. It's the worry that without media artifacts--books, sheet music, handwritten letters--that our history can be edited, skewed, and deleted. Already music and books you have downloaded can magically disappear from your electronic library when the service provider has a dispute with a publisher. But an executive from Amazon will never walk into my home and physically remove a book from the shelf in my living room.

Anywho. We're not sure what we're going to do about the computer yet. We did not leave it for the $70 diagnostic. And Robb is going to have a friend move all the files to our backup drive this week. If it wasn't full of toxic metals and stuff, I would really like to bury the tower in the back yard. Have a little funeral for the old gal. Only the good die young, eh?

Juiced!

2011-09-01T12:56:00.000-04:00

And 112 hours later we have electricity at our house again. Robb will arrive there later this afternoon to assess the situation and deal with the horror that is our refrigerator. Bless him. Mo and I will join him in the morning. Once we've set thing in order and I've gone to work tomorrow and Saturday, we're off to OC for the week. Some vacay will do us good.

Portrait of the artist as a refugee

2011-08-30T22:41:00.000-04:00

This week was E. Vent. Ful.

First, you heard about the earthquake, right? A 5.8 in Virginia last Tuesday. I was standing in the kitchen shaking my fist at what I thought was a convoy of construction trucks driving by our house because they have an uncanny way of knowing exactly when Maureen is napping. But then the noise changed and sounded like a very strong gust of wind except when I looked outside it wasn't windy. The grandfather clock started chiming loudly, the way it does when you walk past it too heavily. And the lantern hanging over the sink began to swing back and forth. My stomach went all queasy, and I realized we were having an earthquake. Mo slept through it. Robb was sitting at his desk on the boat, but it sloshed the water in the creek and shook the floating dock enough to bounce him around in his chair.

Second, NOAA sent Robb out of town Thursday to help with the hurricane response in Norfolk. Making new surveys of ports after natural disasters is part of his job description. He simply had not been called upon to respond in an emergency until now. Whoosh, off he went. That same day there was an aftershock of 4.5.

Third, without my usual childcare provider--Robb--I was unable to go to work on Friday and Saturday.

Fourth, I panicked about being home alone with a baby and a dog in a hurricane. So I packed up my show and went on the road to Mom's house where I would be safe from the long soggy arm of the storm. They were calling for 8 inches of rain at my house. Walking the dog in that nonsense is bad enough because Sukey refuses to relieve herself in inclement weather but begs to go out constantly, but trying to do it with Maureen in tow in a monsoon... I don't even want to figure that out. Mom has a fenced yard. Problem solved.

Fifth, Mo and I had a nice visit with Aunt Julie on Friday morning. Coastal Hospice ordered all of its patients to evacuate the Ocean City area well in advance of the storm. She and Uncle Rich came to stay at Paul's house. She looks astonishingly like a Brigham. That is to say she has my great-grandfather's thinness and sharp features and nearly has the height. Since I was little Julie always had more meat on her bones, and she resembled the Bealls more. But now she looks like Sissy except very tired. She was glad to see Maureen. And I was glad to see her glad.

Sixth, I fell on the stairs a Mom's house on Saturday afternoon. Mo was in my arms, and I missed the last step. I've walked up and down those stairs about five billions times in my life, so why would I now miscalculate the number of steps to the bottom? That information is a muscle memory. It's like knowing when to kneel, sit, and stand in a Catholic worship service. It's practically hardwired into my DNA. In the split second before my foot turned under and was crushed under the combined 200 pounds of us, I thought, That wasn't the last step, and then we tumbled down onto the tile. I managed to tuck the baby in like a little football. She was startled by the impact but not hurt. Thank goodness. We went to the emergency room, I had x-rays, and the doctor told me I broke my foot. A nurse splinted it and sent me home with crutches. The baby was an angel for the three hours we spent at the hospital. We all went home in the pouring rain.

Seventh, the hurricane cometh. No damage at Mom's house. And around 10pm we heard a large tree go over, but it was in the woods and didn't hurt anything. We lost phone, internet, and tv in one of the surges. Robb's parents in Howard County lost power, as did George and Chere near Baltimore. At our house at Fig Point a rain gutter came loose. But other nearby neighborhoods in Southern Maryland did not fare so well. Lots of trees fell on houses. A swath of Maryland from St. Mary's, Calvert, Anne Arundel, and Baltimore Counties is still in the dark. Including our house where electricity is not expected to be restored until Friday. Robb is sailing home tomorrow to take stock of the situation at the house. Mo and I and Sukey will remain here until we have electric again.

Eighth, I had a freezer full of pumped breast milk. A three week supply. It was my insurance policy against illness, injury, and intoxication. Gone. Justlikethat. I need to stop thinking about it now because I might start blubbering on Mom's laptop.

Ninth, I went to see an ortho on Monday. The ER doctor mis-read my x-rays. My foot is not broken. Halelujah! I have a sprain and a walking boot and no crutches!

Tenth, this week Maureen sprouted two front bottom teeth. One day nothing, the next day teeth were poking out. Crazy! She is so close to crawling it's not even funny. She gets up on all fours and rocks and kind of tosses her torso forward. And she discovered loud. She says, "huhhhHAAAAGHTH!!!!!!" It sounds like she might be gagging to death, but she looks terribly pleased with herself and amused while she's doing it and afterward. I made the sound loudly back at her, and she started to cry. Apparently when she does it it's hilarious, but when I do it it's terrifying. So now I mimic back quietly. The queen approves of this modification. When Robb called tonight I told him how she loves the barnyard sound effects that Gramma Lizzy adds to one of her bedtime stories.

Oh, and that Maureen said her first two words. Robb feels like he's missed all kinds of Mo-isms this week, so he asked breathlessly, "What were they???"

"Go 'Skins."

He paused, and in his best stop-teasing-me-voice replied, "They were not!"

Cranky

2011-08-24T21:54:00.001-04:00

I've been a little off for the past, oh, six to eight weeks. My new prescription has my thyroid balanced beautifully. But my hair is falling out. And I am very short tempered and irritable. My doctor said, "Your labs look great, but I don't like the hair loss or mood thing." I told him, "Me neither." So we're changing things up in hopes I stop feeling like the Incredible Hulk with male pattern baldness. No change yet.

As an illustration right this moment I am cranked up angry and can't get myself settled down. I've been pissed off more or less since 1:30pm. Maureen had just fallen asleep in the car. I needed her to take a nap, but I also needed to run in to the natural food store in Prince Frederick to pick up some vitamins the doctor wants me to start taking.

I had my fingers crossed that it would be quiet in the store. I forgot about their obnoxious door chimes when you walk in. DING DONG DING DONG! Luckily Mo slept through them. But some jerk in a Yosemite Sam costume was having a really loud conversation with the clerk at the checkout counter. I quickly rolled Mo to the back of the store and skulked there like a shoplifter muttering, "Hurry up, hurry up, hurry up." The loudmouth showed no signs of leaving. "Shut up, shut up, shut up." I peeked at Mo, still miraculously asleep and tried to peruse vitamin labels. Yee-haw! "Jesus, Mary, and Joseph." (It's a Catholic thing, even for lapsed Catholics.)

I finally got the attention of one of the employees. I told her what I was looking for and added that my daughter was sleeping. She said she remembered those days and helped me look around. Meanwhile the guy finally left. I was the only customer in the shop. The clerk asked the owner about one of the supplements. I repeated to the owner that my baby was sleeping, but she ignored me and proceeded to help me at full volume. She found my vitamins, but wanted to know why I was taking them and who was my doctor and isn't he great. By this time another woman walked through the door. DING DONG DING DONG! The owner scurried off to talk to her about natural hair dyes.

And Maureen woke up.

The clerk looked up the price of a vitamin bottle that would not scan. It was $22.95. "Oh? How much is the other one?" $54.99. "Fifty-five dollars? There is NO WAY. I'm really sorry, and I appreciate your help, but that's more than I expected to pay."

I left the vitamins on the counter and pushed the stroller out to the car where I nearly started crying in frustration with myself because there was no reason for Mo's nap to be interrupted because I was never going to pay eighty dollars for vitamins. I buckled her into the car seat, "I'm sorry, baby. Mommy's sorry." I was drenched in sweat and called Robb to vent about the loud-talking jackwagons and overpriced vitamins.

Fast forward several hours. The baby is taking her nap and Robb is home from work, so I make a quick run to Walgreens. The first vitamin I was looking for is not something they stock, but the second one was on the shelf for $6.99 for 100 tablets. Are the ones at the nature store gold plated? Are they made by magical fairies? I get furious all over again about the price discrepancy.

Stopped at a red light on the drive home, I read over the label. Take once a day with a full meal. Caution: Do not take this product if you are pregnant or nursing a baby.

Un-flippin'-believable. I squeezed the plastic bottle in my hand and fantasized about crushing it in my fist. When I get home I am going to stand in the driveway and throw it over the house into the back yard. I will pitch that piece of garbage vitamin bottle into a tree. Maybe into the river. I will stomp every single pill into dust on the car port.

Stupid wasted seven dollars.

Doctor knows I'm nursing.

Charlatan store owner.

Loudmouth jerks.

Stinking.

...

I got home and found out that Robb has to travel to Norfolk tomorrow morning as part of the emergency response to Hurricane Irene and will be there for a week, which means I can't go to work this week. Add a jigger of bile and stir. End of illustration.

I have been having days like this for the past two months. I stew about silly things and work myself into a frenzy. Thus far I have resisted the urge to smash the portable phone and baby monitor into millions of pieces. But if I snap before my new new thyroid prescription kicks in, those two items are at the top of my list.

Rock out with your clock out

2011-08-22T14:39:00.001-04:00

Last night was the first time Robb and I have gone out without the baby since she was born. Charlene came to babysit. We were about a mile from the house, and Robb asked how I was doing.

"I'm freaking out."

I knew Charlene would be fine with Mo. I was just secretly hoping that the violent thunder storms would not completely miss us, and the concert would be tragically called off. I'm glad it wasn't canceled.

We saw Joan Jett & The Blackhearts and ZZ Top at the Calvert Marine Museum. Neither of them are bands we would have ordinarily sought out or paid to see. But YAY, free tickets! CMM has a nice setup for concerts. Last summer we saw Pat Benatar and REO Speedwagon. My favorite Joan Jett song is I Hate Myself for Loving You--it's one of the two JJ songs I know. She was good and all, but then...

...after Robb and I were momentarily confused--"Wait, I thought there were supposed to be four guys with beards???..."--I realized I am secretly a ZZ Top fan.

It was a secret I had been keeping from myself. They were AWE. SOME. When I was born ZZ Top had already been together for a decade. But these old guys know how to rock.

Check out that crazy drum kit. And I think their jackets were decorated with bedazzled pot leaves.

We tried not to check what time it was on the cell phone too often during the show but couldn't help it. We stayed until the end and got home at 10:45pm. Mo was fine.

Huge sigh of relief.

Here I come to save the day

2011-08-18T13:56:00.001-04:00

Yesterday this man said to Mo, "What a big boy!" She was wearing her Mighty Mo onesie outfit. But I guess that male superheros are partial to spandex, so I corrected him. Whatever, no big deal. I'm not uptight about people mistaking her gender.

"Oh, a girl." He smiled at her and then to me, "And you're the grandmother." Not in the form of a question.

Are you kidding me? Clearly this guy was smoking crack.

This reminds me of the childbirth class we took. It was an all day Saturday affair in a classroom in the basement of the hospital. As a warmup we had to get to know the couple next to us and then introduce them to the class. The kids next to us--and I say "kids" because they were 20 and 21--were very nice. The girl looked just like Luna Lovegood from the HP movies.

We chatted with them for a few minutes about the usual stuff. How far along are you? Boy or girl? Have you thought of names? But when Robb mentioned that this was our first child, you should have seen the shock on their doughy little faces. To them we looked like Old Mother Hubbard and Father Time. Definitely too old to be giving a dog a bone, if you know what I mean.

Biologically speaking yes, I could have grandchildren at 33, and Robb's grandchildren could have drivers licenses. But I don't, and Robb's grandchildren are still in elementary school. This is our baby. We took our sweet time. Tomorrow is the 10th anniversary of our first date. And maybe that means I get called granny once in a while.

But it was probably my fault for taking a shower and changing out of my spit up shirt. I lost my new-mama-street-cred.

Still more things I did not know 2 weeks ago

2011-08-09T08:45:00.000-04:00

Continuing from an earlier string of posts (here and here):

9. My taste buds are old and mostly dead. Foods that taste sweet and only mildly tart to me, are astonishingly sour to Maureen. Take mashed Granny Smith apples for example. I think, "Mmm, homemade apple sauce." And Mo thinks, "Holy crap, woman, stop feeding me lemons!" And then her left eye flutters against the loathesome flavor.

10. Try as I might, I'm just not as big a hippie as I want to be. Yes, we're still using cloth diapers, but the herbal wipe solution made baby's butt look like raw hamburger. Poor Mo! Major fail.

11. It is great that Maureen is active, alert, and curious. But nursing an active, alert, and curious seven month old is not so fun. Especially when she's grabby, pinchy, scratchy, slappy, kicky, twisty, squirmy, shovey, bitey, fussy, and constantly turning around to look at the dog. Kellymom, take me away.

12. Whew, yesterday was a doozy. As Mo was going down for her first nap of the day, Robb dropped by the house to pick something up he needed at work. Maureen heard his footsteps in the hallway and Sukey's collar jingling, and her eyes snapped open. Just like that the napportunity was gone. An hour-and-a-half later when we tried again, she refused to close her eyes. By that time she was so tired she fussed through her milk and kept on complaining (at this point Mommy set her down in her crib and took a "time out") until I got the bright idea to give her a bath. Somewhat relaxed Mo finally took her first nap of the day at 3pm. When Robb got home I told him that college made me want to drink, but parenthood makes me want a line of coke and a hooker. Never thought Charlie Sheen could be a role model for parenting, but it is clear to me now that his children drove him to it.

Repeat to self 1,000 times

2011-08-08T14:16:00.000-04:00

If she's screaming, she's breathing.
If she's screaming, she's breathing.
If she's screaming, she's breathing.
If she's screaming, she's breathing.
If she's screaming, she's breathing.
If she's screaming, she's breathing.
If she's screaming, she's breathing.
If she's screaming, she's breathing.
If she's screaming, she's breathing.
If she's screaming, she's breathing.
If she's screaming, she's breathing.
If she's screaming, she's breathing.

Gloomidity

2011-07-22T13:39:00.000-04:00

We're camped out here in perpetual twilight. There are beach towels and blankets slung over every window to combat solar gain. The lights are all off, and forget about running the clothes dryer or firing up the oven. As you can see I need to wash the dishes, but that would call for submerging my hands in warm water. Nope, not happening today.

If you haven't heard the East Coast is broiling these several days. Today is the worst of it. Temps are expected to top 100, and with the humidity factored in they will near 120. I'm off to work, though, where I expect we'll have busy night full of pets suffering the effects of the weather. Hopefully no tragedies. Wherever you are, stay cool. And bring your cats and dogs inside!

A bit of advice

2011-07-17T20:59:00.000-04:00

Robb took Mo to her 6 month checkup on Friday. I wrote out some questions for him to ask the doctor. And after listening to my list of questions, Dr. N said, "Tell you wife to stop reading books about babies. And the internet. That's bad, too."

Iron chef baby edition

2011-07-11T18:55:00.000-04:00

This week's secret ingredient is...sweet potato!

We're starting to try solid foods, although "solid" is a loose term. Maureen has some awesome notes on making your own baby food over at The Vegetarian Salmon.

About the Green Sprouts food mill. It's BPA and phthalate free and made with recycled materials. April gave me this as a shower gift. When I checked out the reviews online, there was lots of bellyaching about food juice leaking out of the bottom and mashed food "explosions." But I had a good experience with it so far grinding up sweet potato, squash, and apples. It functions as well as a potato ricer would, so don't expect it to chop up meats or really tough stuff. Perhaps I was not disappointed because I never expected squashing up food to be a tidy task. I put a plate under the mill before I used it, same as I would with the cheese grater. (If mashing up your own baby food is really that miserable, inconvenient, messy, and...er, explosive, use a food processor.)

April also gave me a Green Sprouts grinder bowl for when we're on the go. I haven't tried it yet because we don't go anywhere. Heh. And Tmomma gave me her old Fresh Baby freezer trays. So we are in the baby food business.

I was hoping for a cringe or a scowl at the first taste of sweet potato, but this crazy child just kept on smiling and smiling. As usual. She opened her mouth like a baby bird when she saw the spoon coming her way again.

She even wiped her mouth with her bib. Now we are waiting for the orange poop.

An exercise in patience and faith

2011-07-07T22:43:00.003-04:00

For months now I've been planning to write a post about breastfeeding. I have kept a running list in my head of tips for moms who are nursing or considering it. But we'll get to that in a hot minute. My friend Jag told me that all during her pregnancy she had this fantasy about breastfeeding her baby, how it would be this beautiful, tender, idyllic bonding experience full of sunshine and hugs and roses and tra-la-la-ing. She was surprised as hell--indignant even--when it proved challenging. I was the opposite. I knew that I should do it, but I remained on the fence about breastfeeding right up to the first time Mo latched on. And I tried not to think about it too much beforehand. My big pregnant fantasies were all about sleeping on my stomach. And jogging.

Jogging.

Seriously.

People used to ask if I planned to breastfeed, and I mumbled something about giving it a try. There was no good reason for my ambivalence. I guess nursing was a foreign concept to me, and I thought I wouldn't like it or it wouldn't work. Which is a strange attitude for the woman who didn't take a single Tylenol or sip of wine throughout her entire pregnancy. When I was that crazy serious about trying to make the best choices for my developing fetus, it should follow that I would continue down that path after the baby was born. Right?

Most people who go into breastfeeding as wishy-washy as I was probably don't stick with it. Not all moms are able or willing to breastfeed successfully. But I would venture that a much higher percentage of women could breastfeed their babies than those who actually do it. Check out these stats: 75% of new moms in the U.S. start off exclusively nursing when baby is first born; by 3 months 33% of moms are exclusively breastfeeding; and by 6 months 13% of us are still on board. Only 13%.

That's dismal, ladies.

Mo and I just made it to 6 months together. Yay, us! I did not expect to make it this far. And I never thought I would enjoy nursing my baby, but I really do. If you are considering nursing, planning on nursing, planning adoptive nursing, thinking about relactation, or in the process of nursing, here are my thoughts on how and why we were successful in spite of my initial doubts. I hope you find it helpful. Please feel free to add any tips you might have or ask me questions. Also, Genevieve at Mama Natural has a list of nursing tips that are really good. I'll try not to repeat too many of hers. Next stop, 1 year!

1. Get schooled. Robb groaned when he found out that I signed him up for boob class with me. But thank goodness I did. Taking the breastfeeding class offered by our hospital made us both more confident that breastfeeding was the right choice for us and our little one. I say "us" because it is very important to get your spouse/partner/mom/sister/bff (or whoever will be your primary support person) on board. You need a cheerleader. You need a second set of eyes when you're not sure if you're doing it right. And you really need somebody to bring you a sandwich. My cousin Amy asked, "What do you learn in a breastfeeding class?" We learned the anatomy of lactating boobies, how an infant's stomach grows and develops, the composition of breast milk, what a breastfeeding baby's poop should look like at different stages, various positions for nursing, what a good latch looks like, the health benefits of nursing for both baby and mommy, etc. Added bonus: the class was taught by a board certified lactation consultant who is on staff at my hospital. Betty is fully awesome. If your hospital does not offer classes, contact other hospitals in your area or your local La Leche League to see what is available.

2. Ask and ye shall receive. Take a tour of your hospital's birth center and ask them what kind of breastfeeding support to expect. There is a lot your hospital can do for you. For example, you should ask if there is there a lactation consultant on staff. Will she be available on weekends too? Will she stop by your room to make sure baby is latching on properly? Will she visit you more than once? Are the nurses knowledgeable about breastfeeding? Is there a nursing supply shop located at your hospital or nearby? Will you receive a discount on purchases (nursing bras, pumps, milk storage bags, etc.) because you are delivering there? Are there hospital grade pumps available to rent? When you are discharged from the hospital by your OB and baby's pediatrician, will the lactation consultant also conduct a breastfeeding discharge? Do they send you home with an info packet to make sure baby is getting adequate nutrition? Will they give you any free supplies (for example, my hospital sent me home with a full Ameda pump accessory kit)? Once you get home can you call the birth center nurses with questions? Can you schedule a private (paid) one on one session with the lactation consultant if you are struggling? Is there a (free) breastfeeding support group? (If you are delivering at CMH, the answer to all of these questions is YES!) While you are in the hospital, ask your nurse for several small tubes of lanolin for your sore nipples and start using it before you need it. Trust me on that one.

3. Set small goals.It is daunting to think of breastfeeding for the entire first year, especially in the early days when you are exhausted and your nips are burning. Instead focus on small stuff. I knew I could make it through the first few days, at least long enough for Mo to get colostrum. Once we got home I moved my goal to 3 weeks. And once accomplished, I focused on 6 weeks. I have done this with baby steps. (That makes me think of What About Bob.) Honestly, though, the first 6 weeks were the most difficult for me. Once I cleared that goalpost things became a lot easier. Nursing was finally less painful, and Mo started sleeping longer at night. If you are able to nurse through the first 2 months of your child's life, you can definitely join me in the 13% club. Just keep in mind that the winning contestants on Survivor only have to make it for 30 days.

Pussies.

That's right, this blog is edgy.

4. Remember economics class. When the stock market takes a dive, my emotional reaction is to immediately pull my money out to try to save what I still have. But investment professionals will tell you that is the wrong response. I should buy when the market is low and sell when it's high. Breastfeeding is the same. It is a system of supply and demand. When baby demands more milk, your emotional reaction is to mix up some formula to make up the deficit. But that is the wrong response. Breastfeeding begets breastfeeding. When Mo demands more milk, I nurse her more frequently, and my milk production rises to the occasion. You should expect your baby to go on a feeding frenzy during growth spurts at about 3 weeks, 6 weeks, 3 months, and 6 months. Some growth spurts are more pronounced than others, lasting anywhere from a day to several days. Remember the game Hungry Hungry Hippos? It's like that but on your boobs. Ride it out. This is how your body adjusts to baby's changing nutritional needs.

This is where breastfeeding becomes a metaphor for faith. If your newborn is nursing 10-12 times a day, if he has the requisite number of wet and poopy diapers each day, if she hasn't lost more than 7% of her birth weight in the first few days, then you are doing it right. Check his weight. Count her soiled diapers. Consult with his pediatrician. Take it one day at a time. Resist the urge to supplement her diet with formula. When you supplement you send your breasts a clear message that they are already making enough milk. (***See my note at the end of the post.)

Disclaimer: Obviously I am not a medical professional. And I would never advocate breastfeeding for the sake of breastfeeding to the detriment of your child's growth and development. But I would advocate trying to troubleshoot nursing problems with your pediatrician and/or lactation consultant before you throw in the towel. If you and your baby's doctor agree that nursing alone isn't doing the job, then it's probably time to supplement.

5. Become a joiner. This is Robb's tip for successful breastfeeding and remaining sane as a new mom. I go to a free breastfeeding support group every Wednesday at the hospital. It's hosted by a board certified lactation consultant. It's a great place to talk about nursing issues, commiserate, and laugh. And babies love to look at other babies. If there's nothing like this at your hospital, contact the nearest La Leche League chapter for a support group. Oh, and unrelated to nursing I found a terrific group of local moms on Meetup.com. They plan activities for little ones and families, mama's nights out, clothing swaps, playdates, and volunteer activities. If you are absolutely not a joiner, do yourself a favor and have at least one person you can talk to about breastfeeding, whether it's your partner or sister or friend. You are going to need a sounding board.

6. Go surfing. When you have questions in the middle of the night, the internet has answers. My favorite resource is Kellymom. If you are not sure how to use your breast pump or how to manually express breast milk or how to discretely feed your baby in public, search YouTube. There are how-to videos on just about everything you can imagine.

7. Weigh & feed. It's something we do at the support group. Here's how you do it. Strip down baby and put her in a clean diaper. Weigh her in just the diaper. Feed her. Weigh her again in just the diaper, but don't change her diaper until after you weigh her. Tada! You just figured out your baby's milk intake. If you are curious about how many ounces your baby is drinking in an average sitting, talk to your pediatrician's office about doing this periodically. If they are supportive of your decision to breastfeed your little one, they will probably help you out with this. Or try your general practitioner.

8. Strap on the feed bag. In the early days you will be so whacked out and sleepy that you will forget to eat and drink. Put your helpers to work keeping you in food and drink while you are pinned down under a hungry infant. You have a better chance of keeping your milk supply up if you keep yourself properly hydrated. A trick that helps is to drink a glass of water every time you feed the baby. Also, there's something about oatmeal that boosts supply. If you can't stomach hot cereal, get your helpers to bake oatmeal cookies, and then eat as many as you want. You have my permission.

9. OSHA approves this message. When you're furnishing the nursery, a rocking chair or fru-fru glider is nice if all you're doing is rocking your sweet baby to sleep. But. You will be feeding your newborn. And if he takes his time with eating (mine did), you could be sitting in that chair for 8 to 10 hours a day. Feeding your child in the beginning is a full time job. This is where patience comes in. The chair you select must be at least as comfortable and ergonomically correct as something you would want to work in all day at a desk job. Choose wisely, my friend. You would do well to position said chair near a small table or dresser or toy box, so you have a place to set your water, snacks, magazines, what-have-you. And I waited to purchase a nursing stool until after Mo was born. It's one of those things--you'll either love it or hate it. Give it a test drive at the hospital before investing.

10. Relax. Don't you hate when people tell you to relax? Nursing and pumping is way more psychological than I ever imagined. It's a total head trip. So you must learn how to relax. When you're frustrated with your husband or mourning the demise of your bikini body or worried about returning to work or stressed because your baby won't stop crying, you need to carve out a little breathing room in your head. Not only will it keep the milk flowing; it's good for mama to have her own slice of zen now and then.

(*** In the interest of full disclosure, let me tell you this. Mo was born on a Monday. By Friday she had lost 15% of her birth weight. Because of my c-section and my thyroid issues, my milk was slow to come in. Early on Friday morning I wept onto my soundly sleeping child while pleading with her to eat. "Baby, please eat. Please, please." Robb and I were worried and sleep-deprived, but we are fortunate to have a very calm pediatrician. When we met with him that day Dr. N examined Mo, answered our questions, and told us to go home. We held our course but bought a jug of formula just in case. And my milk came in that night. By her week 2 checkup Mo's weight had jumped back up, and by week 3 she had surpassed her birth weight. We never used the formula. And the rest is history.)

Has it been six months already?

2011-07-05T07:50:00.000-04:00

On Sunday Maureen was 6 months old. It seems like only yesterday we were bringing her home. Now she's eating rice cereal, jumping in her saucer, almost sitting on her own, grabbing toys, and inchworming around on the floor. Last Wednesday she weighed 16 pounds 14 ounces.

In honor of her half birthday, Mo went swimming with Daddy on the carport. She loved trying to smack the ducks and surprised herself with some big splashes.

By the way, we hope that Jamie, George, Chere, and Jennie all had very happy birthdays!

Just in time

2011-06-30T10:52:00.002-04:00

"Bach and My Father"
by Paul Zimmer

Six days a week my father sold shoes
To support our family through depression and war,
Nursed his wife through years of Parkinson's,
Loved nominal cigars, manhattans, long jokes,
Never kissed me, but always shook my hand.

Once he came to visit me when a Brandenburg
Was on the stereo. He listened with care—
Brisk melodies, symmetry, civility, and passion.
When it finished, he asked to hear it again,
Moving his right hand in time. He would have
Risen to dance if he had known how.

"Beautiful," he said when it was done,
My father, who'd never heard a Brandenburg.
Eighty years old, bent, and scuffed all over,
Just in time he said, "That's beautiful."

My Aunt Julie is dying. She is barely retired. Too young like my father her brother. We saw her in March and April, and she met her great-niece. We probably won't get a chance to see her again before the end, new parenthood and work schedules being what they are. Cancer is devouring her organs one by one, now cleaning its teeth with slivers of her bone and patting its greasy belly. She has called upon Hospice. I think of Julie every day now and try not to feel a bottomless sadness about her dying. I try to think about the fact that she has heard beauty every day of her life as a musician, piano and voice teacher, conductor, director, artist, mentor. I remember the sound of her laughter when she throws back her head in delight, eyes glimmering with mischief about a joke or trick or double entendre. And I know that these are the things I will remember later. Joy will be her legacy.

Father's Day

2011-06-19T06:00:00.000-04:00

Before Maureen was born, I gave Robb a strict set of marching instructions. Once the baby was out he was to stay with the baby. I said it like this: STAY WITH THE BABY. Under no circumstances was he to let the baby out of his sight. I would be fine. There would be medical professionals looking after me. So as the nurses whisked our newborn to the warming station to get her clean and dry, Robb followed and stood silently in awe watching the proceedings. The screen was still up in front of me, so I could not see the baby yet. But I could hear her crying. I pulled my oxygen mask aside and asked the anesthesiologist to tell Robb to talk to Maureen. She relayed the message for me.

"What should I say?"

"Tell her you love her," said Dr. Smith.

"Of course I love her!"

But from the moment Robb started speaking, Maureen stopped crying. She recognized her Dad's voice. He was the first person she recognized in this world.

Witnessing Robb becoming a father and watching him in action as a dad has really been a joy to me. This guy is completely smitten. Look at him. He is in deep smit with his little girl.

Happy First Father's Day, Robb!

Separating wheat from chaff

2011-06-17T08:07:00.000-04:00

I went a little crazy last week. Sorting the goodies from the baddies. Separating the wheat from the chaff. Except in my case I'm only interested in eating chaff. I read labels for wheat gluten and its many aliases. And checked expiration dates on packages. That led to some frightening discoveries. Mainly I need to clean out the pantry more often. Good rule of thumb: if you can't remember purchasing a particular food item, it's time to chuck it.

But it didn't stop with the pantry shakedown. I moved on to scrubbing the cabinet faces and the counters. And I while I was standing on a chair I noticed that the top of the curtains were dusty (moreso than I care to admit), so into the wash with them. Whoa, the windows look really huge with the curtains down. If we weren't renters I would have chucked those nasty old shades too. (They are all over the house, and our landlord is not interested in reimbursing us for miniblinds, so they will remain.) But check out our new canister set (Thanks, Aunt Bunny!). Red and white--that sends me to the moon! Also I would like to note that our drying rack that looks like a tiny lawn is ingenious and truly indispensable. It can hold a ridiculous amount of baby feeding gear and breast pump accessories. I highly recommend it.

Now it's all about modifying recipes like the burgers above. I crunched up Kix cereal to use as breadcrumbs, and it worked just fine. Yes, I could purchase gluten free breadcrumbs at the store, but that's kind of ridiculous. Printing the words "gluten free" on a package sets a tricky equation into motion:

"gluten free" + food = normal price x 2

There are enough foods available that do not contain wheat gluten and do not need to be labeled as such, mainly found around the periphery of the grocery store. You know, all that unprocessed stuff. Eggs, butter, milk, veggies, fruit, meat. So there will be a whole lot more cooking from scratch around here. Especially bread. I need to start experimenting with gf bread recipes and soon because this pseudo-Adkins thing I've been doing has got to go. This past week I even got Robb to try (and like) paella. It's a brave new world here at Fig Point!

Don't hate me because I'm crafty

2011-06-11T21:48:00.001-04:00

Remember when I was going to turn these fabrics into a twin sized quilt for the daybed in the guest room at Mom's house? Probably not. It was a long time ago. Here is a refresher in photos.

First I stitched together the quilt top. This was the easy part because I still had a lot of momentum and enthusiasm for a brand new project. It looks pretty cute draped over our camping cot.

Next I cleared all the furniture out of the dining room to make the quilt sandwich. Pinning it all together involved a lot of crawling around on the wood floors. Very hard on the knees, but my momentum was still cranking, so I powered through the pain. The back of the quilt is one gigantic piece of white muslin.

Then I laid down some guide lines in masking tape.

The guide lines were to help me tie the quilt, which I did with a huge needle, 100% wool yarn, and a running stitch. Then I snipped between the stitches, tied double knots, and trimmed all the tails to equal lengths. I may have rattled that off in two sentences, but I assure you it was an ordeal. Time consuming. Kneecap crushing. Blister making. Momentum killing. That was around Christmastime 2009.

And then the quilt sat dormant for a year and a half. Fast forward to May 2011 and Angie's visit to Maryland. Oops, well this is kind of out of order. Right after Angie left I made this quilt plate as a way of procrastinating on the binding a little more.

Here's a close up. I think it might be my favorite part of the whole project, this satisfying little bit of embroidery. Okay, back to work...

Angie got me jump started on binding the quilt. I was frightened of this step for whatever cockamamie reason. I even planned to use a roll of pre-cut binding, so it's not like I had to make my own or anything. Angie talked me through it. Once I adjusted how I was thinking about binding, sewing it wasn't very difficult. The hand sewing on the back was even meditative. But I had to work on it during Mo's naps, early in the morning, and very late at night. It took some doing, and Robb running major baby interference for me. Thanks, hon.

And once the binding was sewn on, I could wash the quilt to make the wool ties shrink up into cutie little tufts and make my whole quilt puffy and crinkly and yummy.

Even my helper likes it. Adorable.

Don't tell Mom, but it's her birthday present. Maureen and I will be hand delivering it to her in about a week. So the apple blossom quilt is finally complete, and I am very relieved. Now what can I start sewing next?

Like I was saying...

2011-06-09T16:44:00.001-04:00

...Angie spent her precious vacation this year at our house.

(What on earth was she thinking??! We're so boring. I'm constantly rattling on about boobs and poop, while Robb is 24-7 obsessed with building his model skipjack. And then there's the screaming baby.)

But she did it. She braved the airline with the flip-top planes and made her way to our wilderness outpost in Southern Maryland for two whole weeks. And we are so glad that she did!

Sukey told me that Angie sleeps altogether too late in the morning. She wanted wake Angie up to tell her herself, but I told her that was rude. Instead Sukey decided to sit outside Angie's door and cry. So I had to put a gate across the hallway and make her sit a respectful distance from our sleeping guest. Every. Single. Morning.

Mo loves her Auntie and had lots of fun playing with her. The baby, as usual, limited our outings somewhat. But we still managed to go to Mom's house for a weekend, go walking around Solomons and Annmarie Garden, visit the Calvert Marine Museum, and explore St. Mary's City. Poor Ange, she thought St. Mary's City was going to be an actual city, maybe a shopping district, and not the place I went to on my fourth grade field trip. The look of confusion on her face as we drove up to the historic site... And we made her eat mayonnaise. At least once a day.

Much of Angie's visit looked like this: frantic knitting. What do you expect when two artsy crafty type girls get together? Spontaneous knitalong! We both got all amped up after spending a day at the Maryland Sheep and Wool Festival with Mom and Aunt Bunny. (I forgot to take my camera to both the festival AND Colin's 1st birthday party--still kicking myself about this.) Neither of us got too crazy with purchases at the festival. I bought yarn in one of the sheep barns from a farmer. He and his wife raise border leicester sheep. At first it was very exciting to be surrounding by so many delicious options, but after a while it's a tad overwhelming. Complete sensory overload! And I know that after the first few barns Mom--not a knitter--had seen enough yarn to last her a lifetime. We all took a break from shopping, ate lunch, and watched the herding demonstrations. I love to see border collies shoot out around the sheep like furry missiles. Aunt Bunny bought me the Elizabeth Zimmerman book I've been lusting after. Sweet! That was on Mother's Day. Robb graciously offered babysit so we could take our time at the festival. What a nice Mother's Day present!

Angie and I each made shortie versions of Das Monster. Hers is green and orange; mine is purple and gold. By the way, Ange, remember when the farmer told me the purple yarn said it gets way softer when you wash it? I think he fibbed. I hand washed both pairs of shorts. Yours came out buttery soft, as did the yellowish-orange stripes on mine. But the purple parts still feel like a burlap sack. Should I wash them again and perhaps again after that? I'm not thrilled with the prospect of Mo's tushie being clad in steel wool.

Angie brought Mo a bonnet and a doll from Pennsylvania Dutch country. I embroidered a face on the doll (the Amish make them faceless to ward off vanity). Mo was much happier wearing the bonnet than she was with the crown. Although her general ambivalence toward headwear remains.

Queen Maureen does not approve. Off with your head!

Mainly Angie's visit provided us all with an opportunity to get to know one another better. (This is probably an issue familiar to anyone in a blended family. Or anyone with large age gaps between the children in their family. We've got blending and age gaps going on. Which means that I get along well with my siblings and have a lot in common with them, but I did not share my childhood with them. So I grew up as an only child in one family AND I am the oldest of four in a completely different family. Make sense?) It was an excellent visit. After she flew home I looked around the suddenly too-quiet house and said to Robb, "I miss Angie." -- "Me, too."

Also, she taught me how to crochet and how to bind a quilt. Awesome! I finished the quilt and will be posting photos soon.

Oh and why didn't you tell me that your toothbrush was in that box you asked me to mail home for you? I went to slip a little note in before mailing (weeks after your trip in my usual prompt style) and saw your toothbrush inside. Tell me you bought another toothbrush by now!

New month, new info, new diet

2011-06-01T09:34:00.000-04:00

In May I hit an all time low of 5 posts in 1 month. I will partially blame Angie because she was visiting for two weeks, and I tried to keep my loafing-around-on-the-computer time to a minimum while she was here. (I promise a post about her visit is upcoming.) And Maureen is also to blame because an infant who wants my attention is a definite posting obstacle. But I have discovered another scapegoat: Hashimoto's disease.

I was diagnosed yesterday. It's an autoimmune disease in which the immune system attacks and gradually destroys the thyroid gland. My doctor had me stop thyroid meds at the end of April, and May was sort of a blur of low energy and mood. So we'll see what the blood test says about my levels this time around.

Meanwhile, I am beginning the tricky process of going gluten free. Doctor's orders. Last night I attacked the pantry. Did you know that the food ingredients "natural flavors" and "caramel coloring" have gluten in them? Ug. Double ug. More on all of this as it is revealed.

You don't want to sit next to me at dinner...

2011-05-21T07:24:00.000-04:00

...because I only have two topics of conversation these days: poop and boobs. Just think, if I wasn't nursing the baby I'd only have half as much to talk about. My life has been so overtaken by both ends of Maureen's digestive tract that Monday night when Becca called and asked me what was going on, she then had to listen patiently to a three minute description of an unusually full diaper before I let her tell me that Ernest proposed to her. (!!!) She must have been thinking, "When the hell is she going to shut up about the poop?"

Probably never.

This post here is going to be about poop. (Apropos of nothing, pictured above is Robb's birthday cake. Poop is not the secret ingredient.)

Last night at work I answered the phone with my little spiel, "Thank you for calling the veterinary clinic. This is Barbara. How may I help you?" A very familiar voice replied:

"OH.

MY.

GOD."

I knew exactly what Saint Robert* was talking about. "I know, right?"

New this month Maureen's digestive tract has matured so that she only poops every three or four days. But with great maturity comes great volume. When she finally goes, it's a doozy. Total destruction. And Robb, poor Robb. He still gags when he scoops Sukey's poop, and he's been doing it for over four years now. Until last night he had only dealt with the aftershocks, not the main event. I don't think he entirely believed me.

"I used nine wipes," he said. "NINE WIPES!" If you weren't sure, that's a lot of baby wipes. You can tell from the CAPS and the exclamation point.

In other news we celebrated Robb's birthday, our wedding anniversary, and my first Mother's Day while Angie was visiting. (More on Angie's visit to come...) I saw this ridiculousness appear in the margin of my Facebook screen. Really? I should send him a message? How about I just have a conversation with him? Since, you know, he's my husband, and we live under the same roof. Stupid social media.

I kept Robb's anniversary present for weeks in a box marked TOP SECRET PROJECT hoping to make him twist in the agony of curiosity. It worked for maybe a day. And then he seemed to forget about it. But when he opened it--a family tree--he was very happy. There is a ring for each year we've been married and a branch for our little sprout.

[*Saint Robert will chronicle the total volume of baby poop he's cleaned up--and the many times it has caused him to dry heave over the changing table--in section IV, article 14, items A through D of his Application for Sainthood.]

The love affair begins

2011-05-16T21:24:00.000-04:00

We knew that Sukey loves licking the baby. Especially right after Maureen has had a bath. Like Sukey feels duty bound to re-stinkify the clean child.

But now Sukey wants to snuggle with Mo, and Mo doesn't seem to mind. They slept like this for maybe an hour.

And the next morning Sukey headbutted Mo's door open so she could nap next to her crib. The budding of a beautiful puppers-and-her-little-girl relationship.

Stick with beer

2011-05-08T06:30:00.021-04:00

On this my first Mother's Day, I share with you Tina Fey's "Prayer for a Daughter," which convinces me I need to check out Bossypants. When I was reading the prayer out loud to my sister and my husband (who fell asleep in the armchair about midway through) I interrupted my own reading several times to say, "Yes!" Thanks, Shalom, for sending me the link. Happy Mother's Day, everyone!

First, Lord: No tattoos. May neither Chinese symbol for truth nor Winnie-the-Pooh holding the FSU logo stain her tender haunches.

May she be Beautiful but not Damaged, for it’s the Damage that draws the creepy soccer coach’s eye, not the Beauty.

When the Crystal Meth is offered, May she remember the parents who cut her grapes in half And stick with Beer.

Guide her, protect her
When crossing the street, stepping onto boats, swimming in the ocean, swimming in pools, walking near pools, standing on the subway platform, crossing 86th Street, stepping off of boats, using mall restrooms, getting on and off escalators, driving on country roads while arguing, leaning on large windows, walking in parking lots, riding Ferris wheels, roller-coasters, log flumes, or anything called “Hell Drop,” “Tower of Torture,” or “The Death Spiral Rock ‘N Zero G Roll featuring Aerosmith,” and standing on any kind of balcony ever, anywhere, at any age.

Lead her away from Acting but not all the way to Finance. Something where she can make her own hours but still feel intellectually fulfilled and get outside sometimes And not have to wear high heels.

What would that be, Lord? Architecture? Midwifery? Golf course design? I’m asking You, because if I knew, I’d be doing it, Youdammit.

May she play the Drums to the fiery rhythm of her Own Heart with the sinewy strength of her Own Arms, so she need Not Lie With Drummers.

Grant her a Rough Patch from twelve to seventeen. Let her draw horses and be interested in Barbies for much too long, For childhood is short – a Tiger Flower blooming Magenta for one day – And adulthood is long and dry-humping in cars will wait.

O Lord, break the Internet forever, That she may be spared the misspelled invective of her peers And the online marketing campaign for Rape Hostel V: Girls Just Wanna Get Stabbed.

And when she one day turns on me and calls me a Bitch in front of Hollister, Give me the strength, Lord, to yank her directly into a cab in front of her friends, For I will not have that Shit. I will not have it.

And should she choose to be a Mother one day, be my eyes, Lord, that I may see her, lying on a blanket on the floor at 4:50 A.M., all-at-once exhausted, bored, and in love with the little creature whose poop is leaking up its back.

“My mother did this for me once,” she will realize as she cleans feces off her baby’s neck. “My mother did this for me.” And the delayed gratitude will wash over her as it does each generation and she will make a Mental Note to call me. And she will forget. But I’ll know, because I peeped it with Your God eyes.

Amen.

Milestones

2011-05-04T08:34:00.000-04:00

Yesterday was Colin's 1st birthday, and Maureen turned 4 months. Today is Robb's 3...erhem...th birthday. Happy Birthday to both of the boys! We are going to Colin's party on Saturday. Tonight we're having lasagna and devils food cake for Robb. And we have a special treat: Angie is arriving to stay for two weeks!!!

In praise of randomness

2011-05-03T18:14:00.000-04:00

"Why I'm Here"
by Jacqueline Berger

Because my mother was on a date
with a man in the band, and my father,
thinking she was alone, asked her to dance.
And because, years earlier, my father
dug a foxhole but his buddy
sick with the flu, asked him for it, so he dug
another for himself. In the night
the first hole was shelled.
I'm here because my mother was twenty-seven
and in the '50s that was old to still be single.
And because my father wouldn't work on weapons,
though he was an atomic engineer.
My mother, having gone to Berkeley, liked that.
My father liked that she didn't eat like a bird
when he took her to the best restaurant in L.A.
The rest of the reasons are long gone.
One decides to get dressed, go out, though she'd rather
stay home, but no, melancholy must be battled through,
so the skirt, the cinched belt, the shoes, and a life is changed.
I'm here because Jews were hated
so my grandparents left their villages,
came to America, married one who could cook,
one whose brother had a business,
married longing and disappointment
and secured in this way the future.

It's good to treasure the gift, but good
to see that it wasn't really meant for you.
The feeling that it couldn't have been otherwise
is just a feeling. My family
around the patio table in July.
I've taken over the barbequing
that used to be my father's job, ask him
how many coals, though I know how many.
We've been gathering here for years,
so I believe we will go on forever.
It's right to praise the random,
the tiny god of probability that brought us here,
to praise not meaning, but feeling, the still-warm
sky at dusk, the light that lingers and the night
that when it comes is gentle.

Strange mid-western spring

2011-04-29T08:05:00.000-04:00

"Mother"
from Delights and Shadows
by Ted Kooser

Mid April already, and the wild plums
bloom at the roadside, a lacy white
against the exuberant, jubilant green
of new grass an the dusty, fading black
of burned-out ditches. No leaves, not yet,
only the delicate, star-petaled
blossoms, sweet with their timeless perfume.

You have been gone a month today
and have missed three rains and one nightlong
watch for tornadoes. I sat in the cellar
from six to eight while fat spring clouds
went somersaulting, rumbling east. Then it poured,
a storm that walked on legs of lightning,
dragging its shaggy belly over the fields.

The meadowlarks are back, and the finches
are turning from green to gold. Those same
two geese have come to the pond again this year,
honking in over the trees and splashing down.
They never nest, but stay a week or two
then leave. The peonies are up, the red sprouts
burning in circles like birthday candles,

for this is the month of my birth, as you know,
the best month to be born in, thanks to you,
everything ready to burst with living.
There will be no more new flannel nightshirts
sewn on your old black Singer, no birthday card
addressed in a shaky but businesslike hand.
You asked me if I would be sad when it happened

and I am sad. But the iris I moved from your house
now hold in the dusty dry fists of their roots
green knives and forks as if waiting for dinner,
as if spring were a feast. I thank you for that.
Were it not for the way you taught me to look
at the world, to see the life at play in everything,
I would have to be lonely forever.

This poem was featured on The Writer's Almanac this morning, and I knew I would have to repost it immediately. Yesterday was heavy with tornado stress, and I've just gone off my thyroid medicine--a combination that left me feeling exhausted. I perched on the couch watching the early news alerts and then began amassing supplies in the central bathroom. The diaper bag, a bowl of water for the dog, a battery operated lantern, the cell phone, my sneakers, and the baby carrier. I imagined putting the baby in the carrier and the sneakers on my feet before picking our way out through the rubble and into the rain. I've seen Twister but still picture tornadoes as dusty events and not rain storms, but they must be that way usually. A dog leash, I forgot to grab Sukey's leash! I had a granola bar but no dog food or fresh water. And I should have filled my pockets with cash and jewelry (if we had a pocket's worth of either) for bartering. Robb would have been tragically swept up in the funnel cloud--sorry, my love, that's the peril of working on a boat in a disaster movie. In reality it would be very hot in the bathroom, the three of us jammed in there panting (the dog) and sweating (the baby and I) for an hour. And boring. Instead we played on the nursery floor across the hall and waited. And Mom called to check on us. I told her about my preparations.

"Make up some bottles and take them into the bathroom with you," she said.

"I don't need bottles. I make milk for her."

"Oh, yeah." She thought for a moment, and then said, "But you know, just in case you are crushed."

"If I am crushed, how is little Mo going to get a bottle open?"

"Maybe you could feed her with one arm. Or you might need bottles in case something fell and only crushed your boobs."

"Only my boobs?" What kind of selective rubble is this?

"You're right, never mind. Your boobs won't be crushed--they're too big."

Everyone's a comedian.

The poem also made me think of Dad and how I had forgotten to remember this the eighth anniversary of his death. Maureen was two weeks old, I was enthralled with her, and I missed it and didn't realize I had missed it until mid-February. I think he would agree, though, that it's only right for new life to trump death. It seems the proper order of things. Oh, but he would have loved her!

Light weight kicking bag

2011-04-27T12:00:00.111-04:00

Last night I packed away most of Maureen's 3-6 month clothing. Can you believe it? She'll be 4 months next week, and we're already heavy into the 6-9 month onesies. She's a big girl, and the cloth-diaper-sumo-butt-thing only enhances it. Among the articles I packed away were three fleece sleep sacks, which we had in constant rotation during the winter. As we are getting a preview of summer, I started wishing Mo had something lighter weight than a sleep-and-play that she could wear at night. I have seen knitting patterns for kicking bags made out of sock wool (for you non-knitters that's very thin yarn usually used to make socks), but I'm afraid that if I embark on a lengthy mindless knitting project right now it will never get finished. Instead I dove into my stash of ~~crap~~ craft materials and came up with a handful of cotton tank tops. (A while back the Jockey Outlet had a 6-for-$20 sale, and I had a $20 gift card. Score! Unfortunately I underestimated my personal girth.) You can make these for your little one, too. It was a quick project. Here's what I did:

Materials:
* One cotton tank top. I used a Jockey brand women's size L basic tank. They are very stretchy. And natural materials means it will breathe better on baby.
* Scissors.
* Straight pins.
* Thread.
* Sewing machine (optional).
* Pinking shears (optional).
* 3/4" elastic or the size that will fit through your tank's hem.
* Safety pin.

First, cut straight across the shirt right under the armholes. Next cut out a rounded shape from the back of the tank. Sort of a circle-ish, rectangle-ish shaped piece. Doesn't have to be exact. Here's what your tank top should look like when you finish cutting:

You can chuck this part. And yep, I realize that the fabric is suddenly a different color. I did not start taking photos until the project was well underway.

Turn the body of the tank top inside-out. Pin the "circle" to the raw edge so that the right sides are facing each other. Sew around the edge leaving a 1/2" margin. Then you can either trim the edges with pinking shears or zigzag stitch the edges. Actually you don't really need to do either if you're using jersey material because it won't ravel. It's just a little neater.

Turn the bag right side out. You're going to have to estimate how much elastic will fit around your baby's chest. I used a pair of Maureen's 9-12 month pants to guestimate the length of elastic I would need, hoping this would fit her through the next couple months. Cut a slit on the inside of the hem near the side seam, and feed your elastic through the hem channel. I hooked a big safety pin onto the end and used it to slide the elastic along. Then I overlapped the two ends of the elastic band, being careful not to twist it, and sewed back and forth and back and forth several times to anchor them together. And that's pretty much it. I tucked three of these bags into Mo's Easter basket--of course, everything else was from the bunny.

Insert baby, and snooze.

Baby's first Easter

2011-04-26T15:00:00.000-04:00

We began the day by oversleeping just enough that Daddy went to sunrise service alone while Maureen and Mommy got the day started at home. The Easter bunny stopped by our house and, from the looks of Mo's loot, expects teething to start soon. Our friendly neighborhood Easter fairy left a purple egg with a dollar inside in the flowerbed next to our mailbox. No one has fessed up yet. Maureen changed into her dandelion dress (the one she wore for her baptism reception) in time for Gramma's arrival. It fits her great now. But with temps climbing into the mid-80s and high humidity, she spent most of the day in only a onesie. For Easter dinner Daddy made crab imperial, baked potatoes, peas, and salad. For dessert Gramma made a coconut cake. After dinner we all went for a walk. Then as she loves to do when we have company staying over, Mo got set to party all night. By about midnight Daddy finally soothed her to sleep in the living room where they both stayed all night: Daddy on the couch and Mo in her bouncer.

Paint Snow Hill 2011

2011-04-22T09:46:00.000-04:00

Dear Paint Snow Hill,
I love you!!!
Fondly,
Barb

This was my fifth year participating in PSH. And it was the most challenging year of the five. My brain tells me that nothing has changed: I am me, and paint is paint. Then Maureen says, "Ah gooooo!" It's a little different plein air-ing with a nursing baby. I did not actually paint with the baby; Robb and Mo hung out at the old abandoned apartment. But it meant there were no twelve-hour days crunched over an easel or all night framing marathons. I am proud of myself that I went out to paint on Friday and Saturday mornings. I managed to complete 3 paintings and sold 1 to a nice young lady and her mother. They had questions about my work process, but I fear I was too wound up to answer clearly. So I would like to discuss how I made the painting they purchased called "Porter's Crossing" (above), in case they go home and google me. :)

Henbit was out of control this weekend, fields of blazing purple all over the place. The field that really caught my eye was at the corner of Rt. 113 and Porter's Crossing Road. (By Saturday morning the purple was almost completely gone!) I turned onto Porter's Crossing and parked in the farm entrance along the woods line. I waved to the farmer when he drove by on a spreader a little later.

Then I hit the sketchbook to make a quick outline. I used that thumbnail as a reference while I was painting. And, as you can see, I tested out a paint color on it too.

Here is the painting in progress. My paint is lumpy because I usually paint with knives instead of brushes. This technique evolved because I am very lazy about washing paintbrushes. You might also notice how much darker the colors are here than in the final painting. Yep, that's what happens when you squint into the morning sun for a few hours: dark, doom, and gloom. I was just painting along, feeling like I had captured all the vibrant spring colors until I took a break and realized that the light was playing tricks on me. After I corrected the colors, I added some outlining with a china marker, signed it, and sealed it all in with a healthy dose of glossy acrylic gel medium after it was dry back at the house. Speaking of drying, if you see me on the side of the road painting, you will probably see a painting or two drying on my dash board, using the sunlight like an Easy Bake Oven. All of my PSH 2011 photos are here.

Some highlights from the show... Carole Peirson won the Artists' Choice Award for her piece titled Amazing Marsh. Steve Doherty of Plein Air Magazine was in town, so some event photos might be in the next issue. And the magazine Coastal Style will have an article and photos in their May/June issue. All told 33 paintings sold, grossing $10,000 -- that's $2,500 for Arts on the River events (like First Fridays, Winter Blues Jam, and community art projects) and lot of very happy artists!

If you are thinking about trying your hand at plein air painting for the first time, check out my tutorial for beginners. I have also made some notes about choosing which paints to take into the field and learning to mix your paints. If you want to visit the ghost of Paint Snow Hill past -

* PSH 2010: part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4, part 5, and my photo album for that year.
* PSH 2009: part 1, part 2, and my photo album for 2007-2009.
* PSH 2008.
* PSH 2007 and some sketchbook shots.

Isn't that special?

2011-04-18T22:58:00.003-04:00

This morning I caught myself calling Maureen "Mommy's special girl." I'm sure I've said it to her before, but today it made me think about the word "special." My infant daughter has a very pleasant disposition, but it's not like she's walking at 14 weeks or sporting an extra appendage. As far as babies go Mo is an average gal. That she is a baby and I like her, that is what makes her special to me. I mean, of course, I love her; but I have been pleasantly surprised by how much I like her. I didn't expect it since I don't care so much for other people's babies. (Except if you're reading this: I like YOUR baby.)

The word "special" gets tossed around so much it loses meaning. I like to think it should describe something or someone that is truly unique, exceptional, distinctive, or extraordinary. (It's like granite counter tops. When everyone's home has them, they are no longer a luxurious upgrade. "Luxury" implies scarcity.) I was adopted as an infant. My parents never made a secret of this. But when I was very little and asked them what that meant, they told me it meant that I was special. Which is a nice explanation to give a child--and it happens to be the correct usage of the word.

And because they never made a secret about my origins, I didn't either in the way that only a child can announce potentially uncomfortable family information in public --

Nice old lady: You look just like your father.
Little me: That's hilarious because I was adopted!
What Dad heard little me say: I don't look anything like him because my parents were barren, and I am the product of someone else's youthful indiscretion.

Such honesty is refreshing, no?

For several years during elementary school I went to the Musgroves in the morning and afternoon. There were several of us kids about the same age that went there. One day after school Kristin said her parents told her she was special. Maybe she got 100% on a spelling test or learned to tie her own shoes or something. I don't remember the context clearly, only what I did next.

Special, you say? They said you were special? Hmm. Let's examine the evidence. Do you have any supernatural abilities? No. Are you unusually smart or clever? No. Are you stunningly attractive? No. Are you fantastically talented at music or sports? No. Do men want you and women want to be you? Nah. Were you adopted, too? Nope.

Yeah, that's right. I grilled her. And then I announced to her and all the other little kids that, upon review, Kristin was NOT SPECIAL. They protested that she was but failed to produce any compelling arguments in her favor. I would not relent. I explained that she simply didn't make the grade. So she started crying and ran up the driveway to tattle on me. Kristin was an exceptional crybaby. In that sense, she was special. Then I was made to apologize and tell her that yes, she was special, which I did through gritted teeth because I knew it wasn't true. I explained this all to Mom on the drive home.

So the life lesson I learned was sometimes you have to lie to the dummies and tell them they are special, too, or else they will get a complex and run crying to the babysitter. Oh, and the importance of precise word choice.

Homemade kind of day

2011-04-13T11:10:00.001-04:00

Yesterday was a very nice, low key kind of birthday. I made these cookies (minus the browned butter because I can only cram so many tasks in between baby feedings). And yum. My baking buddies hung out in the kitchen with me. Robb made me dinner, and then stuck 3 candles in an ice cream cake. I will be listening to my mix cds in the car today. Love them!

I also made a rice pillow for Aunt Julie. It's green. I forgot to take a picture. She's undergoing cancer treatment and has been complaining of a sore shoulder. I thought a warm hug might help. We'll see her over the weekend. Tonight we are driving to the beach because this weekend is Paint Snow Hill 2011.

If you are in the neighborhood, please come to the Wet Paint Show & Sale on Sunday, April 17, from 1-4 PM. It's at the Old Firehouse on Green Street and will be the only chance to see and purchase paintings created by 60 artists during the 8th Annual Paint Snow Hill. Participating artists come from 5 states. We will be painting throughout the Snow Hill area April 15-16. 25% of sales support Snow Hill's Arts & Entertainment Program. Hope to see you there!

(No, there won't be any cookies left by then.)

A list

2011-04-11T16:10:00.000-04:00

1. Luckily the government did not shut down Friday night, but we were only granted the briefest of reprieves. All that stress gets to repeat again this Friday. Fantastic.

2. Yesterday Maureen met two of her great grandparents, Phil and Dorothy, for the first time.

3. It's 85 degrees outside. Holy Hannah, that's toasty for April. This afternoon Sukey declined the longer walk option offered to her and turned toward home.

4. I'm turning 33 tomorrow, and I'm feeling awfully old. Several friends have/had children in high school by the time they were my age. That calls my time management skills into question, although I don't think I would have been a good mommy in my 20s.

5. I hear fussing.

The shutdown cometh

2011-04-08T08:30:00.000-04:00

I blame every single politician in Washington, DC, for this debacle. But I am really frustrated with the Republicans for allowing a small radical minority to hold them (and by extension all of us) hostage, and by that I mean the Tea Party. Apparently they are chanting, "Shut it down!" as if the federal budget is an enormous game of chicken.

Here's an oxymoron: federal worker.

The overwhelming majority of federal employees are not fat leaches who chuckle amongst themselves about how they are really screwing the American taxpayer. My great-grandfather worked for the Department of Agriculture. My grandfather worked for the Department of Labor. My father worked for the Department of Veterans Affairs. My husband works for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration which is part of the Department of Commerce. I have family and friends at the National Institute of Health, Department of Justice, Social Security, Census, Department of Defense, Army, Navy, defense contractors... Overpaid? Hardly. The lawyers and doctors and scientists and executives could all do much better if they went over to the private sector. Instead they choose to spend their careers dedicated to serving their country.

And when the government shuts down, they will all be furloughed. No work and no pay in the middle of an economic crisis. In Maryland alone that's 250,000 people. As the President stated last night:

"800,000 federal workers and their families impacted; millions of people who are reliant on government services not getting those services -- businesses, farmers, veterans; and finally, overall impact on the economy that could end up severely hampering our recovery and our ability to put people back to work."

Also government agency websites will be unavailable. The national parks, Smithsonian museums, and the National Zoo will shut their doors. Tax returns will not be processed. Pay to our servicemen and women will be delayed. The list goes on and on.

Robb and I are nervous about what's going to happen. We were told that his department will be made "essential personnel" for two weeks, but it hasn't gone through yet. If they remain non-essential, then they begin the cumbersome and expensive process of pulling all of their survey teams and equipment out of the field. Let's hope there's no shutdown.

Getting my land legs back

2011-04-05T18:37:00.000-04:00

I've been cooking. Last week we had meatloaf and cornbread, then soy-citrus marinated chicken over spinach with banana bread for dessert. Tonight it's fajitas, and we have some lemon bread left from last night. Again and again I turn to the BH&G Cook Book. I may be only a passable cook, but I'm a damned good baker. And Robb is a damned good father, deserving of warm baked goods.

It's good to cook again. I haven't cooked much since last May when I found out I was pregnant. Between the nausea, my wackadoo thyroid levels, and slight anemia, I didn't feel like doing much of anything. For a year. And the less I did the worse I felt. I was coming off of 2009 which might have been the most creative, most productive year of my entire life. I spent that whole year canning and sewing and painting and knitting and researching like a maniac. Then boom: a fetus ate my homework. I tried to explain this to Mom. "I just didn't feel like cooking last year. Know what I mean?"

"No."

Explaining hormone-induced ennui to my mother is like explaining the purpose of speed bumps to a jackrabbit: it's simply not in her nature to have periods of inactivity or to become disinterested in her surroundings. But that's a good trait to have inherited. Aside from pregnancy, I could count on one hand the number of times I've ever been bored. Life is immensely entertaining. Especially now.

Yesterday morning...

2011-03-28T08:38:00.000-04:00

...we woke up to two inches, and it was still snowing hard. This was our view out the front door. By the time I walked Sukey at 4pm, all the snow was gone. Hopefully that's the last of winter we'll be seeing for a while.

Out and about

2011-03-23T11:52:00.001-04:00

Us girls just got home from Storytime at our local library. They have a free program for the under 2 crowd called Cuddle Up & Read to Me. It's 20 minutes every Wednesday morning. Last week's theme was bugs, this week was animals by the pond, and next week is spring. The librarians read three stories that have to do with that week's theme, and then we sing songs. So far we've sung If You're Happy and You Know It, The Baby Hokey Pokey, and The Itsy Bitsy Spider. For some reason I start to get all teary eyed when I'm singing them to Mo. And then I pretend to yawn to cover up the waterworks.

Weird.

And we learned a new-to-me kids song (it's the first one in the medley above) called I Know a Chicken. The librarians pass out shaky eggs, and the older children shake them along with the music. I shake one on Mo's behalf. Good times.

A lady next to me asked how old is she and looked surprised/amazed/somethinged when I answered eleven weeks. I know that at this point Maureen isn't hanging on every word about the five little frogs sitting on the log, nor does she know how to clap yet. But she is looking very intently at the babies sitting nearest to us. And she is listening to the silly songs and the storyteller's voice. And she is being socialized and learning to observe and process chaos. Because there is a lot of chaos at Storytime. Or at least today there was.

Mo was the only baby-baby in attendance this week. The next youngest was sitting unsupported, and the rest were walking. While most of the grownups appear to be mommies, several were grandmothers. It seems like the grandmothers are more permissive about letting toddlers run around willy-nilly. ~~I'm not going to be all judgey.~~ No, scratch that. I AM going to be judgey. As difficult as it is to get a toddler to hold still for 20 minutes, practicing that skill is part of the point of Storytime. It's not like they are asked to hold perfectly still during a ninety minute economics lecture. No one segment is more than three minutes long, and between each book they get to dance and sing and shake eggs and whatnot.

I get that little ones are wiggly and easily distracted and have poor impulse control. But when the librarian was reading the third book today I couldn't hear the story. Maureen and I still don't know whether or not that duck got unstuck from the mud because the other children were running around and climbing the stage stairs and making grabs for the bag of shaky eggs and squealing and dragging their carpet squares behind them. And some of their grownups were trying to negotiate with them to be reasonable but in a halfassed sort of way, while the rest of their grownups just smiled stupidly after them, admiring the trail of auditory destruction in their wake.

(By writing that last bit I fear I have guaranteed that Mo and I will act out the exact same scene at Storytime next year.)

I tried to tune out the craziness and focus on Mo and the story. I think a skunk ultimately helped the duck--does that sound right? The grandmother on my right seemed like she wanted to chitchat, but I ignored her cues after our initial exchange. She plopped down on the floor next to me, exhausted before Storytime even began. Immediately the little boy made a beeline for the bag of eggs. Grandmother seated the girl on a carpet square and stuck a pacifier into the silent child's mouth saying, "Here, take this." (Don't get me started on my pacifier high horse.) So the little girl couldn't smile or squeal along with the music or anything. Then grandmother looked after her misbehaving grandson and told me how much she had been looking forward to him being this age, so she could do more fun things with him. "But then she came along," she gestured toward her granddaughter, "and it's just too much."

Classy.

Way to let your infant granddaughter know what a disappointing burden she is right from the beginning.

Baptisms

2011-03-21T20:59:00.000-04:00

I recognize that I am boring in that I am completely obsessed with my infant daughter and only posting on baby-related topics these days, but there's really no avoiding it.

Yesterday was Jack's baptism at Grace Church. Here are the three little cousins together at church all looking very serious: Larry, Mo, and Curly. Maureen was wearing a dress from my own babyhood. In fact, it is the dress I arrived in when I was adopted. The hem is embroidered Mommy Loves Me. Indeed.

And Maureen's baptism was three weeks ago. (Has it really been that long?!) Here she is with her godparents Vitad and Amy.

I love this picture of Maureen with her three grandmas.

We were very spoiled to have Rick and Theresa fly across the country to meet Maureen. It was so good that they could be here for her baptism. A girl can never have too many grandparents!

Dribs and drabs of diy

2011-03-17T21:30:00.000-04:00

This week I've been bitten by the spring cleaning bug, and I managed to unbury my sewing machine. Since we're doing cloth diapers with Maureen, using cloth baby wipes would be the next logical step. I like the ones with terry cloth on one side and flannel on the other, and they can go right in with the diaper laundry. Online I found them about $10 for a dozen wipes. But before I could click Add To Cart, I realized that I have a perfectly good sewing machine and a huge surplus of flannel receiving blankets and baby bath towels...hmm....

I made a dozen wipes. But then duty called, so I'll have to make more over the weekend. Then I can use my Amazon $10 off coupon on Kissaluvs Diaper Lotion Potion. One bottle of concentrate is supposed to last about a year.

My cousin and Maureen's godmother Amy cross stitched this beautiful image for Maureen's baptism. (Photos from the baptism to be posted soon.) I had no idea she her eyes were that good--that's a lot of teeny tiny stitches!

But the frame came with these puny hangers mounted on the cardboard backing. I intended to hang this over Maureen's crib and had no intention of it braining her in the middle of the night, so I beefed up the hardware.

I was thrilled with the results.

Baby girl not so much.

Haunting soundtrack

2011-03-16T22:27:00.000-04:00

Robb and I have been following the new SciFi (no, I will not spell it SyFy--that's just weird) series Being Human. It sounds like a bad joke: a vampire, a werewolf, and a ghost take on a lease together; but it's a horror series that wrestles with the fundamentals of the human experience. Conveniently season 1 and season 2 of the British series of the same name were available On Demand, so we lapped those up as well. Now it's fun to watch how the American plot is diverging from that of its progenitor. As an added bonus the soundtrack is fabulous. These songs are a taste.

Roll with it baby

2011-03-15T07:24:00.000-04:00

Maureen was so happy about turning 10 weeks old yesterday, she did a flip.

Actually, Mommy is greedy about milestones and made her do this trick about 20 times in a row. Heh...at least we know it's not a fluke.

The straight poop

2011-03-10T07:00:00.009-05:00

I do love to be proven wrong, so imagine my delight when we transitioned the baby from disposable to cloth diapers. Thank you, reality. So generous! I mentioned cloth diapers in this post and then went on to discuss them in detail in the comments. But I didn't have an actual baby on hand when I wrote all that. Considering I had never changed a diaper before January and didn't know yet that babies poop dijon mustard, are you surprised that my views have shifted? Let's revisit diapering since I have some actual experience under my belt now.

We are using Bambino Mio cloth diapers with Maureen. This system consists of an outer shell, a cloth tri-fold diaper insert, and a flushable (which we are not flushing into our old septic tank) paper towel-like liner that captures solid waste. It's a basic tri-fold diaper system (see demo above). I did not do ~~a lot of~~ any research beforehand. *shame* I chose this system because it was available through Target, and that's where Mo's baby registry was. And then it must have terrified all gift givers (except my SIL Chere who found it cheaper online somewhere else), so we used our Target gift cards to get it. I do not recommend this flying-by-the-seat-of-your-pants method of choosing a cloth diaper system for your little one.

As The Nappy Lady explains below, a basic tri-fold system like Bambino Mio has some shortfalls. (Her YouTube channel is chock full of useful info on cloth diapering. I especially like the British perspective as disposables are taboo over the pond, so by necessity she's done her homework.)

The Nappy Lady is right about poop getting in the elastic leg bands. Not every time but often enough to be noteworthy. (That said, we have had more problems with leakage onto clothing with disposable diapers, namely Huggies. What they mean by "leak lock" is not precisely what I imagine it to be.) The outer shells aren't good at holding the tri-fold securely against baby's bum. Which is surprising because one of the features that (on paper) appealed to me about Bambino Mio is the fit. The outer shells are sized like so:

XS (newborn) - up to 11 pounds
S - 11 to 16 pounds
M - 16 to 21 pounds
L - 21 to 27 pounds
XL - 27 to 34 pounds

And the tri-fold inserts are sized as well:

Size 1 - for use with XS and S shells
Size 2 - for use with M, L and XL shells

They are not as fitted on baby as I would expect with all that detailed sizing going on. It probably also depends on your baby's actual shape/size/proportions, too.

I also got two 2-packs of the bumGenius 4.0 pocket diapers to try out. The Nappy Lady has a nice presentation (above) on these too. We are not using the bumGenius diapers as directed because that requires the outer shells to go into the hamper after a single use. Instead of stuffing the pocket with the microfiber insert, we put a tri-fold insert in the shell (not the pocket) same as we would with the Bambino Mio shells. It works fine. Better, in fact, than the Bambino Mio because the bumGenius is nice and stretchy around the legs and across the back. And it's soft. It just seems like it would be more comfortable for the baby to wear.

There are several things I like about the bumGenius shell. The snaps on the front allow the diaper to adjust from 7 to 35 pounds. I had my doubts about how it would work on the smaller settings, but it performs well. The only thing is it's bulky on a younger baby. You will find yourself graduating out of the 0-3 month onesies quickly to gain extra torso length. (I am tempted to sing, "Maureen's got a big old butt!--oh, yeah!") I realize that mass produced baby clothing is not designed with cloth diapering in mind.

Let's get down to nuts and bolts. At this moment we are using three (3) Bambino Mio outer shells in size S, twenty-four (24) Bambino Mio tri-fold inserts in size 1, four (4) bumGenius outer shells, and four (4) bumGenius microfiber inserts. We put disposable diapers on Maureen at night because we value sleep--hers and ours. When she is wearing cloth diapers, I change her about once every hour to hour-and-a-half. We do three (3) loads of diaper laundry a week.

If you are considering cloth diapering I definitely recommend purchasing a sample pack of any cloth diapers you are considering to see how they work for you and your baby before investing in the entire system. All of the major brands offer some kind of sample kit or the option to purchase diapers singly. There are several different styles on the market. And don't be shy about asking your family and friends for samples of different brands as baby shower gifts. Or Visa gift cards to help with the purchase once you decide.

One variable you won't be able to assess until you try these with your child is diaper rash. I have heard anecdotal evidence on both sides--some babies get rashes in cloth, some in disposables. It's not something you can predict. Maureen's tush seems to do better in cloth, but I think that's a factor of her being changed more frequently when she's in cloth diapers. It would be a shame to invest a couple hundred dollars in a cloth diaper system and then not be able to use it.

I hope this is helpful if you were wondering how the cloth diapering is going. I wish I had done all this research beforehand, but what we ended up with works just fine for little Mo.

Word to the wise

2011-03-09T09:06:00.000-05:00

I have been collecting quotations about writing again and now have enough to share. Enjoy!

Katherine Mansfield: "I have a rapacious appetite for everything and principles as light as my purse."

William Safire: "Composition is a discipline; it forces us to think. If you want to 'get in touch with your feelings,' fine — talk to yourself; we all do. But, if you want to communicate with another thinking human being, get in touch with your thoughts. Put them in order; give them a purpose; use them to persuade, to instruct, to discover, to seduce. The secret way to do this is to write it down and then cut out the confusing parts."

Walker Evans: "Stare, pry, listen, eavesdrop. Die knowing something. You are not here long."

Aryn Kyle: "I can only loaf around for so long before I start to feel pent-up and anxious, before I feel a skittish energy begin to build inside of me, and then I know it's time to get back to work."

John Callahan: "I'm happiest when I'm offensive. I have a desire to tear people in half. I want to move people out of the suburbs of their mind. I want them to suffer, to feel something real. I have a lot of anger. I want to hurt people. At least a little."

Two months

2011-03-07T20:58:00.001-05:00

Last Thursday Maureen was two months old. That means I've survived two full seasons of Survivor Newborn. Better yet, so has she! She had a trip to the doctor's on Wednesday and got vaccinated (ouch!) and some new stats: little Mo weighed 10 pounds 7 ounces and measured 22 inches long.

[**EDITED 3/9/11 TO ADD** I had a feeling that the nurse made a mistake when she weighted baby Mo last Wednesday at her two month checkup. I was sure she was over 11 pounds. Today at the "weigh & feed" she clocked in at 11 pounds 14 ounces.]

"You and I"
by Jonathan Potter

You are a warm front
that moved in from the north,
a blind spot bearing beautiful gifts,
a garden in the air, a golden filament
inscribed with the name of God's hunting dog,
a magic heirloom mistaken for a feather duster,
a fountain in a cow pasture, an anachronistic anagram
annoyed by anonymity, a dollar in the pocket
of a winter coat in summer.

And I am the discoverer of you.

Checking in

2011-03-02T17:23:00.000-05:00

My absence from the blog seems to imply that I've been really sick since that was my last post. Not the case. The bug went from Robb to me to Mom and seemed to be a 24-48 hour thing. Maureen dodged the bullet.

The real reason I haven't been posting was that Robb was working in Silver Spring for 2 weeks. We spent that time staying at Mom's house. It gave me a chance to practice leaving the house with the baby. Running errands with the munchkin in tow is a whole new ballgame. I am relearning life skills by trial and error, like taking a shower, walking the dog, going to the mall, purchasing a sandwich, attending staff meetings at work, and going to the doctor. It's occupational therapy. Robb's taken Maureen to the grocery store several times. I'm still working up to that one.

Sick

2011-02-19T17:34:00.000-05:00

I've been burning the candle at both ends visiting and gallivanting and was roundly rewarded today with a fever and chills. Planning to hibernate with the baby until her baptism next weekend. Hopefully I'll be in better form by then and won't get her sick in the meantime.

Making the breast of it

2011-02-10T22:07:00.001-05:00

Did you hear about the breastfeeding incident at the Hirshhorn Museum last month? In short, a mother sat down to nurse and was told by a guard to take it into the restroom. The woman said there wasn't anywhere to sit in the ladies room, so the guard told her to feed her baby while sitting on the toilet. The woman and her family left the museum. The Hirshhorn has since apologized to the woman because a woman's right to breastfeed on federal property (the Hirshhorn is part of the Smithsonian Institute) is protected by a 1999 federal law stating that "...a woman may breastfeed her child at any location in a federal building or on federal property, if the woman and her child are otherwise authorized to be present at the location."

This put me in mind of a similar incident last summer at the Frederick Mall in Maryland (story here). In that case female security guards tried to force a nursing mother to relocate to a nursing lounge in the mall even though Maryland law permits a woman to breastfeed her baby in any public or private place. Check out your state's breastfeeding laws to see if your rights are protected.

Not quite six weeks into nursing, I'm not fully comfortable with nursing in public yet. Theresa made me a "nursing apron," and Jessie is constructing a "hooter hider." I might lash the two capes together to feel the security of full coverage. But I am grateful my right to feed my daughter is protected. When I posted the photo of Robb giving Maureen a bottle a couple weeks ago I had a pang of jealousy. It is all well and good to photograph her drinking breast milk from a bottle with her Dad (something she has done about 5 times so far). But it would be indecent to photograph her eating with me (something she has done more than 300 times in her short time on this earth). It has a stigma, no? Which is a major cultural disconnect. If breastfeeding is strongly recommended by the American Academy of Pediatrics, then why do I feel like nursing in public would mean subjecting my infant daughter to hatred and ridicule--like Frankenstein's monster being chased out of town by a mob of pitchfork-wielding villagers? It's enough to make a nursing mother not want to leave the house. Instead I joined the lactation support group at my local hospital. Here's to hoping I can make it through at least 6 months!

You might recall that several years ago I interviewed for a job in which the interviewer nursed her 2 year old and argued with her husband? (See Interview the Third.) I have been thinking about it, and I don't think I was being squeamish about breastfeeding when I turned down the job. Rather the casual, familiar attitude was what turned me off. The same as if the couple had ordered and consumed a pizza in front of me while they were asking about my work experience. Eating is eating, and closely watching a stranger eat is always a little gross. That's why you don't usually want to do it. Unless you're on a date, in which case you should totally watch and take notes so you know what you're in for. Because if you're not careful you could be watching that spectacle for years.

* * * * *

Calling mommas in the DC Metro area: if you would like to help raise public awareness about the rights of mothers to feed their children in public, you can join the "nurse-in" at the Hirshhorn on Saturday. More details are here.

Devil with a blue dress

2011-02-09T12:34:00.000-05:00

Maureen was 5 weeks old on Monday. She had a bath, and Robb let me comb her hair into a kewpie mohawk. She looked so much sweeter than she did last night when she demanded to eat at 9pm, 11pm, 2am, 4am, 6am, and 8am. She looked especially spiteful when she fell sound asleep after the 8am meal.

Back in the saddle again

2011-02-07T12:35:00.001-05:00

Decorating these hoodies is the first crafty thing I have done for Maureen. The knitting I did before she was born is all well and good. But now that I've met her, it's a different ball game.

Ultimate hands free device

2011-02-04T10:00:00.000-05:00

Little Mo is having a clingy sort of week, so we tried out the Baby Bjorn. I'm wearing her while I type this WITH BOTH HANDS on the keyboard--this is huge!

One month

2011-02-03T13:52:00.000-05:00

I can't believe Maureen is already a month old. I'm still digesting the magical concept of how she possibly exists. That she exists, though, is as concrete as the purple circles under my eyes. We have deep conversations in the dark shallow hours of the morning.

Mommy: Did you see that news report on Egypt?
Maureen: GAAH!
Mommy: Of course you would say that since you are a tiny dictator, too.
Maureen: NEEE!
Mommy: Well, if you heard what John Stewart had to say you might not feel that way.

She saw her pediatrician today and got some new stats. She weighs 9 pounds 4 ounces and is 20.5" long. This is excellent news. We are so glad she has finally surpassed her birth weight. And by "we" I mean "me" because I can stop with the breastfeeding death march schedule and switch to on-demand feeding.

(Crap, I mentioned my boobs again. Apparently I am powerless to avoid the topic.)

Oops, gotta run. The tiny dictator is hungry again. Boobs!

Baby's first business trip

2011-01-27T20:36:00.000-05:00

We've spent the week in Norfolk at a conference. Rather, Robb has been attending a conference while Maureen and I enjoy the bounties of the Marriott. No, Maureen, we do not get HBO at home.

I had been worried that this might become a "mommy blog" with me only posting about Maureen, but there is a far greater risk of me writing about my boobs every day. Suffice it to say that our initial pumping and bottle feeding experiments have gone well. So Robb got to feed his daughter for the first time.

While Dad was wrapping up the conference, Maureen took a meeting with Purple Rhino. They managed to reach an accord.

Around the house

2011-01-22T14:51:00.000-05:00

Robb and Maureen sitting in the recliner together with the History Channel on...

Me: What are you two watching?
Robb: The history of neo-nazism in America.
Me: Ah, teaching her the perils of extremism.
Robb: Exactly.

Happy quilts

2011-01-20T08:36:00.000-05:00

The best thing about having crafty family and friends is receiving gorgeous handmade blankets. The worst thing about having crafty family and friends is the pressure of receiving gorgeous handmade blankets. Look at all of them lined up, waiting to be put into the game. Maureen has several more blankets, handmade and store bought, beyond those pictured here. At that moment I took the photo one was wrapped around baby, one was in the laundry, one was acting as a seat cushion in the rocking chair, and one was draped over the end of the crib.

My friend Julie made this quilt for Maureen. My first impulse was to sew loops on the back so we could hang it on the wall. I mean, there's a lot of white fabric there, and that girl is very likely to pee, poop, vomit, and/or spill juice on it. But upon reflection that is exactly what is supposed to happen. I can't imagine a sadder fate for a handmade quilt than being designated as a strictly decorative item. This quilt was made with love--for use.

Have you ever seen such a happy quilt?

The solution was this. Robb installed a decorative curtain rod high on the wall above the crib. This way we can display a quilt temporarily and add a splash of color to an otherwise empty wall. But we can easily change the display quilt to give Maureen something different to look at and give the quilt a chance to see some action. Oh, wait...

...that's better. Sorry bumpers, it's back into the closet for you. We debated whether removing them was strictly necessary. Then during tummy time we watched our little angel roll herself onto her back. Twice. Clearly an accident, but enough to convince us that the bumpers need to go away until she can roll over for reals. Safety first, kids.

Then there were three

2011-01-17T09:14:00.000-05:00

Our nephew Jack Sullivan was born yesterday at 6:52am, weighing 8 pounds 8 ounces, and measuring 20 inches long.

Of the three of us mommas Kate had the worst of it. Laboring about 18 hours before the doctors decided to go c-section. I hope she's getting tons of rest this week at the hospital.

Three Mowery grandbabies in the space of one year! Things are never going to be the same.

More things I did not know 2 weeks ago

2011-01-16T09:04:00.000-05:00

5. Burping baby can give you a fat lip, if your baby, like ours, interprets burping as a cruel trick to cheat her out of more milk and insists upon doing pushups off of your chest during the burping while swinging her head straight at your face like a wrecking ball. I've taken to calling her The Fighting Forehead. (When was the last time you watched The Commitments?)

6. Our dog is the size of a Clydesdale. Comparatively speaking.

7. When Maureen was born we heard Dr. A say that the umbilical cord was wrapped loosely around her neck. So she had good reason to be--and stay--breech. What a smart baby!

8. For a while I was on the fence about breastfeeding, especially after I read that your boobs can get up to three times larger once your milk comes in. I was all, "Holy crap, if that happens I'll have to join the circus!" My friend Tina assured me that what I read was bologna, and that my boobs would be the same size they were at the time of delivery. What I did not know 2 weeks ago is that Tina is a liar.

Face time

2011-01-14T09:51:00.000-05:00

Yesterday we took some portraits of Maureen, age 10 days. Today she's got a whole new look. Well, at least a whole new diaper.

Things I did not know 2 weeks ago

2011-01-13T07:17:00.000-05:00

1. Having one's clothing changed is not unlike being attacked by an ax murderer, so naturally one's response to both should be the same: hysterical screaming, flailing of limbs, and scratching one's assailant in the face and neck. (I thought that Tmomma's little Bug was being melodramatic in honor of our visit. Not so.)

2. Bra cup sizes continue on through the alphabet past the letter D. I presume that Z-cup ladies have their nipples dragging in the road behind them. My own cups overfloweth and have reached an initial of which I was not previously aware. No, I won't divulge that letter's identity. Let's just say that it's shorthand for, "Oh, the humanity!"

3. Water-boarding's got nothing on newborns. At least my late preggo insomnia had me in training for this. Sleep deprivation has been really hard on Robb. He would confess to anything right about now.

4. The narcotic properties of breast milk on infants appear to be photosensitive. The same feeding that knocks the baby out for hours at 3 in the afternoon seems to energize and invigorate her at 3 in the morning. More research is pending.

That is all for now.

Bringing home baby

2011-01-11T12:11:00.000-05:00

It's been such a busy week, what with all the eating, sleeping, and pooping. But I finally found a moment to organize and post photos of our new little one. Enjoy!

It's a girl!

This picture was taken a week ago, and it's shocking to me how different Maureen looks already.

She still has this full head of strawberry-blondish hair, though. The grandmas assure us that Robb and I both had this hair color when we were small. Who knew?

Dear Jessie's parents,
Get ideas.
Love,
Barb

We found a responsible babysitter who will work for cookies. More baby photos are here.

Last night

2011-01-04T07:10:00.000-05:00

Maureen Elizabeth was born at 9:42pm, weighing 8 pounds 3 ounces, measuring 17.5 inches long. We are all healthy, sleepy, and ecstatically happy.

"i carry your heart with me"
by e.e. cummings

i carry your heart with me(i carry it in
my heart)i am never without it(anywhere
i go you go, my dear;and whatever is done
by only me is your doing,my darling)
i fear
no fate(for you are my fate,my sweet)i want
no world(for beautiful you are my world,my true)
and it's you are whatever a moon has always meant
and whatever a sun will always sing is you

here is the deepest secret nobody knows
(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud
and the sky of the sky of a tree called life;which grows
higher than soul can hope or mind can hide)
and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart

i carry your heart with me(i carry it in my heart)

Rewind

2011-01-03T12:00:00.000-05:00

As we took our Christmas tree down on Sunday, I realized I didn't post any pics of this year's holiday decorations.

We tried to keep it simple this year. Fresh greens, white lights, and red accents for the mantle and the top of the bookcase. While we're looking back at the holidays, here are a few of my favorite moments.

From left to right: Donna, Charlene (my MIL), Greg, and George (my BIL). Robb really dislikes it when I photograph or film anything in church, but I wanted to save a snippet of Oh Holy Night. Robb told me that using the camera in church is irreverent. But when Kathy Crout was digging through her purse to find a tissue for her son, Robb practically climbed over the pew anticipating that she was about to distribute candy. Nice to meet you, Pot--I'm Kettle.

I wish this picture turned out better, but I did manage to capture the identical expression facial expression on father and son while Jamie opened one of Colin's gifts.

This one I like. And I did happen to notice how much Robb was holding his nephew on Christmas Day.

Does anyone else's Mom wrap gifts in tarps?

This is Robb's your-mom-has-lost-her-mind look. Don't let him fool you--he was ecstatic with his present.

As was Mom with hers. 2010 was the year of the saw. Bet you didn't know that.

Nothing says "holiday cheer" quite like a pack of dogs taking over the furniture.

We dodged the blizzard bullet on the 26th, but the roads in Southern Maryland were pretty slick. We had several inches of really wet snow.

Here is the whole photo I cut down to make my winter blog banner, from a light snow in mid-December.

And before that a late-November morning of heavy frost.

Worst STD ever

2011-01-02T15:03:00.000-05:00

At last week's checkup Dr. A confirmed that our baby is still stubbornly breech. And before the internal exam she joked that if she felt a head we would see her eyes bug out of her head. Instead she said, "Oh...I think I feel a foot. Your baby is footling."

Excuse me?

She explained. Baby is still seated Indian style with rump pointed toward my left hip. You can play along at home, kids. Sit on the floor with your legs crossed like Buddha, and sort of lean over onto your right butt cheek. Your left foot should be positioned under or in front of your right knee. Got it? Okay, now imagine that there is a bathtub drain below the toes of your left foot, but it's sort of a stretchy drain that doesn't need to be dilated at all for your foot to slip right through. Are you getting this?--I don't need to be dilated at all, and baby's foot could slip right through. How does one respond to such news? With hysterical panicky giggling, of course.

Robb, I have some terrible news: I am carrying Chuck Norris, and he wants to deliver a roundhouse kick to my hoo-ha.

In which I opine some more

2011-01-01T07:00:00.220-05:00

I have been brewing up strong opinions again. Remember this post? As usual I'm taking a stand on topics with which I have very little real world experience. So let's begin the new year with a bang! Let me entertain you for a few minutes with my ranting. And then feel free to knock me off my high horse and set me straight in the comments because vigorous debate is my idea of a good time. Happy New Year!

1. Cloth diapers. We were surprised to meet a lot of resistance on this front. Even from crunchy granola folk who wear dreads and hemp clothing and rub crystals under their armpits because deodorant is made by "the man." They tell us that cloth diapering is a less ecologically responsible choice than disposable diapers because cloth requires us to use electricity running the washing machine and to use water flushing away solid waste. Holy carbon footprint, Batman! I would counter that choosing to procreate at all is ecologically irresponsible because a new human being will consume resources, create garbage, and generally wreak havoc on good old planet Earth. Hmmm. Sorry kids, I'm not buying it. In Barb-calculus the water treatment plant trumps non-biodegradable landfill bombs any day of the week. We plan to use cloth diapers, at least at home, and are all set to go with the Bambino Mio nappy system. (Thank you again, Chere!)

2. Weight gain. I done good on this one. I maxed out at 29 pounds but recently lost a few due to the pressure on my stomach that's causing a lot of heartburn. Regardless of what the scale reads, I have been asked on more than one occasion if I am absolutely sure I'm not carrying twins. At the other end of the spectrum I have been scolded for not looking pregnant enough. Both camps are pretty brave to comment on a preggo's weight--we are notoriously fierce on the defensive.

3. Surprise baby gender. Even with the extra sonogram last week, we still don't know. It is simultaneously cool and killing me not to know. We are glad that we decided to be surprised. And nope, we're not interested in receiving heaps of gender-specific clothing after the baby is born. Some day we might decide to have another child, and I want to reuse as much clothing from baby #1 as possible. And honestly, is a child's gender of any significance before puberty?

4. Maternity clothes. One of the benefits of a carrying breech--perhaps the only benefit--is that the baby's head is not in my pelvis. Therefore I'm not waddling yet, and I haven't had to buy any maternity pants. I am wearing a (large) pair of regular jeans as I type this. I mostly wear yoga pants and leggings. However, I have been wearing maternity tops scored off of clearance racks at Target and Kohl's. If I wasn't so lazy I would have visited consignment stores, too. Thus far not a single stranger has attempted to touch my belly. Knock wood. They must have noticed the barbed wire tattooed around my neck.

5. Stuff. Stuffed animals, that is. I hereby place a moratorium on stuffed animals entering our household in the year 2011. This ban shall include plush toys of every size, gender, and species, musical or non, new or used, intended for vigorous use or for strictly decorative purposes, stuffed items that hang from stroller handles, huggables, comfort toys, dolls, Disney characters, action figures, etc. intended for our baby. We bought a toy box for baby's room, and it is full--completely full--of stuffed animals. Wow, thank you so much for your generosity, but now we have plenty to keep the little rugrat entertained. Should you choose to ignore this warning, please kindly include a gift receipt as any and all stuffed critters we receive during the calendar year 2011* shall be returned. (*Exception: anything postmarked in 2010 we will keep as you were given insufficient notice). Stuffies arriving without receipts shall be immediately donated to a local thrift store. This ban is also directed at grandparents and immediate family.

I mean it.

Robb read this and asked my permission to excavate a childhood toy from his parents' basement. I am reviewing his request.

Yes, I am doing this because I am a selfish, hurtful person who wants my child to feel deprived. Wait, no. It's because there are better ways to show your enthusiasm for our offspring. Examples include phoning to ask us how we're doing, video chatting if you live far away, offering to babysit, making a freezable casserole, scheduling a play date for us with your child, cleaning my refrigerator...heh. (Thought I could slip that last one in without you noticing.)

6. Vaccines, an open letter:
Dear Jenny McCarthy,
There is no evidence that vaccines cause autism. I wish we knew what did. I'm sorry you are leading a personal crusade against medical science. Refusing to vaccinate your baby is like refusing to buckle them into a car seat or smoking crack while you're pregnant or leaving the kid tethered to a tree in the front yard in lieu of hiring a baby sitter. All tempting options but not so smart. I'm with Amanda Peet on this one. Yes, it's partly because I have never seen her vag in a magazine.
Sincerely,
Barb

7. Fruit. When people asked what pregnancy food cravings I had, I told them I wanted fresh fruit all the time. And many replied, "Oh, but you're not eating fruit all the time because that would be really bad for you. So much sugar!" Wha? The sugars that occur naturally in fresh fruit are not the same as the refined sugar in everything else we eat. This is what happens when people read a headline but fail to read the last sentence in a news article. I wanted to eat fruit, so I did eat fruit at nearly every meal since May. In fact I ate two clementines while I was typing this, and I might go back to the kitchen and get two more. Not diabetic yet, haters.

8. Pro-choice. I thought that the pregnancy journey might change how I feel about the legal status of abortion, but it didn't. In fact it really clarified my thoughts and made them firmer. No government should be able to force a woman to carry a pregnancy to term. No pharmacist should be allowed to refuse to supply a customer with contraceptives, routine or emergency. No woman should be made to prove that she was a victim of rape, incest, or life-threatening medical condition in order to make a personal family planning decision. Maternal mortality rates may be improving worldwide, but the health risks involved in pregnancy are no joke. Carrying a baby to term is a serious commitment, and it's only the beginning of a lifelong commitment to that child's welfare. I find it ironic that many people opposed to abortion are also remarkably stingy with social services, as though their responsibility to protect their fellow man ends at the end of the birth canal.

9. Current events. Each year the American Academy of Pediatrics refines their recommendations for baby care. Their advice is based on continuing research and is not meant to undermine the way our parents raised us. For example, babies used to sleep on their tummies. Somehow we lived to tell the tale. But pediatricians have been recommending that babies sleep on their backs since 1992. And for good reason--the Back to Sleep Campaign reduced the incidence of SIDS by 50%. (What does a safe sleep environment look like?) Notice how many more little ones seem to have food allergies nowadays? Well, the peds have come up with guidelines about introducing cow's milk and solid foods to try to bring down these risks. Old people, we understand that baby care recommendations are a moving target, and we're not judging you for doing things a little differently back in the day. We only ask that you respect the guidelines we've been given. We are happy to explain them and fully blame our pediatrician for any inconvenience they might cause.

10. OB bashing. Why do the natural childbirth folks scorn medical professionals? We love our OB and her staff. Dr. A has been practicing for about 30 years and has delivered thousands of babies--compared to me and Robb who have delivered zero babies between the two of us in that same time period. We trust her experience and education to help us make the safest choices for me and the baby. I also have room in my heart to respect the experience of midwives, doulas, and birth coaches. A few months ago I picked up two Bradley books and found them to be surprisingly adamant that medical doctors have no business being involved with labor and delivery. Recently when I turned to their info on breech babies, though, the Bradley camp lost me altogether. The authors wrote essentially that doctors only recommend c-sections for breech babies because they don't know any better. I actually know that Dr. A's training as an OB included delivering breech babies. And if this wasn't our first child she would have offered vaginal birth as an option, but she said my "pelvis is untested," so (unless baby turns) c-section is the safest route. For some reason I trust her more than someone trying to sell me books and classes.

11. Alcohol. Everyone wants me to drink this month. Merry Christmas--have a glass of wine! I know it's safe, blah blah blah. But I haven't had a single drink since I found out I was pregnant. Why would I suddenly need one with only a week left to go? I also have not had any unpasteurized cheese, runny eggs, raw seafood, cigarettes, green tea, Tylenol, or extremely acrobatic sex. God, I miss runny eggs! My one vice has been caffeine, but I've limited myself to two caffeinated beverages a day. Baby might pop out as a jittery bundle of nerves, but mama never would have survived summer without iced tea.

Okay, let me have it.

Absolution

2010-12-31T07:56:00.004-05:00

As we close out 2010, let us begin anew with promises to be worthier citizens of humanity this time around. Happy New Year. Note to self: do better, try harder.

"A Short Testament" by Anne Porter

Whatever harm I may have done
In all my life in all your wide creation
If I cannot repair it
I beg you to repair it,

And then there are all the wounded
The poor the deaf the lonely and the old
Whom I have roughly dismissed
As if I were not one of them.
Where I have wronged them by it
And cannot make amends
I ask you
To comfort them to overflowing,

And where there are lives I may have withered around me,
Or lives of strangers far or near
That I've destroyed in blind complicity,
And if I cannot find them
Or have no way to serve them,

Remember them. I beg you to remember them

When winter is over
And all your unimaginable promises
Burst into song on death's bare branches.

Apropos of nothing

2010-12-30T08:01:00.018-05:00

Do you remember Raffi? The Baby Beluga cd just arrived, and I'm so excited. Amy Cassidy had this record when we were little. I could sort of remember some of the words, and I tried to sing it for Robb. He thought I was nuts until we happened to be at the Shedd Aquarium in Chicago when they had a newborn beluga whale. The song was playing everywhere. Love it.

In praise of things handmade

2010-12-29T14:44:00.000-05:00

I must post about all the lovely homemade goodies we received and gave this holiday season. We did not make cookies this year. Thank goodness everyone else did. We got cookies from Mom, Sharon, and Chere, and blackberry preserves from Angie. Yum is right. Instead Robb baked pumpkin cranberry bread for our friends and neighbors. We took loaves of pumpkin bread with chocolate chips in it (we ran out of cranberries on the last batch) to our OB's office and to the main office at the marina, too.

My sister Angie made me a beautiful tweed stitch scarf (on Ravelry here). Her commentary on Ravelry is funny, though, because she thinks I am "a fall." I enjoy orange as much as the next person and brown perhaps more than most, but greens and blues are my staples. Check me out this morning looking super tired in my new scarf, favorite blue wool sweater, blue down vest, green mittens, and green eyes. Although I do wear the green eyes every day. Robb is in the background pumping gas.

While we're on knitting Christine made a pair of booties for our baby. She gave them to Mom for me several months ago, but I didn't get them until Christmas. Christine works at Dr. Fenlon's office, but I went to high school with her nephews, and we bonded more when she caught me knitting in the waiting room one day. So it's not as random as it might seem at first glance that my dental hygienist gave me a handmade baby gift.

I made a pair of mittens in this wool/alpaca blend for Mom but forgot to photograph the finished product. The alpaca should make them super warm. Of course she broke her thumb at work last week and can't really wear a mitten over her brace yet. All of my Christmas knitting got off track this year. I still need to make a pair of mittens for Aunt Genny and for Great Aunt Sissy and get them in the mail. I gave each of the veterinarians at the office an Eleventh Hour Scarf (Raveled here), and accidentally over-scarfed my mother-in-law Charlene by giving her the rose colored one she mentioned liking after she had already bought a green one from me at Beach Fest. I know Jen got her one, too. She's going to have the warmest neck in Maryland this winter.

Theresa made me an owl pincushion so cute that it's found a place among the pine branches on the mantle until we put away the Christmas decorations. I almost hugged it and impaled myself before realizing my name is spelled out in straight pins. We sent her and Rick a set of ceramic crabs (in which to bake crab imperial and other bounty of the sea) made by some local potter, but we were dismayed to learn that one broke fully in transit and two arrived chipped. We thought we had them properly insulated for shipping and are actively kicking ourselves now.

I hope that our gift to my brother Joey arrived in one piece. I matted and framed this sketch of dented old horns from a drawing class a few (9!!!) years ago. I've always liked how it turned out, so it seemed like a good gift for the family brass enthusiast. Jenny and Angie received raw materials. For Jenny we chose a sock kit from Knit Picks (not this one exactly but sort of close to it) that came with 4 skeins of yarn in woodsy colors and 12 patterns. And for Angie we picked this cardigan pattern and supplied her with enough blue and brown Shamrock Yarn to cast on immediately if she is so inclined.

We did not forget our favorite causes this holiday season. Rick and Theresa made donations to KIVA and to Dave Thomas Foundation for us. We made donations to Grace Church in honor of Aunt Sandy, Uncle Bill, and Aunt Linda, and we sent off a little check of our own to Dave Thomas Foundation for Mom.

I also want to show off the fleece blanket that Leigh made for our baby.

When we were unpacking Christmas decorations we stumbled across another bag of stuff from when I was a baby. Grandma Julie made this nursery rhyme quilt for me. It's far less complicated than the stamp quilt she made but darling nonetheless.

And there seems to be some debate over whether this bonnet was knit by Great Aunt Sissy or Barbara Streaker (my namesake). Either way it is a woolly tribute to Glenelg High School where both Robb and Mom attended. And baby it's cold outside, so our baby will be showing off his/her Glenelg spirit.

Other goodies worth mentioning... I finally bought Alicia Paulson's Walk in the Woods ornament kit, and Robb is totally in love with it. I am hoping to get my tree, cottage, and deer made by next Christmas. My SIL Kate gave me The Little Box of Knits for Baby, and we dug through the patterns on Christmas day. I think we agree that the yarn colors in the illustrations are hideous, but the finished products (imagined in less radioactive shades) will be pretty nice. I have my eye on hoodie and the cardigan. You know, to make in all my free time. Theresa sent me the Doodle Stitching motif collection by Aimee Ray which I've sort of had my eye on for a while. (If you recall I got Aimee's other embroidery book about two years ago.) The motif collection gives me all kinds of ideas for decorating the plain white baby onesies. And I also ordered Lotta Jansdotter's Simple Sewing for Baby--she has some super cute patterns.

Wow. I think I've covered everything here. I better get back to knitting if I want to finish these mittens before childbirth gets me really off track. Thank you to all of the knitters, sewers, bakers, donors, inspire-ers, and otherwise crafty folk who made this a very creative holiday season!

Snow day

2010-12-27T07:47:00.000-05:00

We headed home from holiday festivities a day early to beat the snowfall, which turned out to be the right decision considering how messy the roads were here on Sunday. Robb and I made a morning trek to the grocery store, and it was a slushy mess and still falling. Sukey and I were totally wiped out from all the Christmas excitement. We spent Sunday afternoon here on the couch, enjoying the fire, listening to football games.

I think Sukey already loves her little sister/brother. At least as a pillow.

Funny how stretchy pants never would have entered my wardrobe 9 months ago, and now I'm all about them. I have this feeble idea that they accentuate how non-fat my legs and ass are compared to the ginormous belly. Please don't shatter this illusion for me. Also, please note that I am lounging in the tweed stitch scarf that Angie made me for Christmas this year and the lava boots (that's what I call them) that Jenny made for me about a year and a half ago. Hooray for handmade goodness!

Because it's Christmas

2010-12-24T06:21:00.000-05:00

"But for now, let me say
Without hope or agenda
Just because it's Christmas
And at Christmas you tell the truth
To me, you are perfect
And my wasted heart will love you
Until you look like this."
[picture of a mummy]
"Merry Christmas.
Enough. Enough now."

You know what movie I haven't watched yet this year? Maybe it will be on tv. We're heading out later this morning to spend the weekend overeating with family. Merry Christmas!

Update

2010-12-21T10:04:00.000-05:00

I must begin with an open letter.

Dear whiny pregnant ladies on YouTube,
This morning I pinched my finger in the hair gel lid, and THAT was more painful than ECV. If you thought you were going to die to death when your doctor tried to turn your baby around, I wonder how you survived childbirth.
Seriously,
Barb

If you've been wondering how things went yesterday, well, no dice. This baby is wedged. But I'll get to that in a minute. We went to the radiology department at the hospital where I was liberally doused with sonogram gel. Probably half a tube. Our doctor was finishing up a morning surgery, so the sonogram tech got started taking measurements and readings and figuring out the baby's position. What I thought was baby's head is baby's head. But what I thought was baby's rump, is baby's shoulder. Thus endeth my fantasy of delivering a 6 pound baby. The little one is not transverse as we suspected--the baby is oblique breech (that means slanted or diagonal), which looks like this:

Baby's head is in the right side of my ribcage, while baby's butt is parked in my pelvis, legs crossed like Buddha, rear aimed at my left hip. When our doctor arrived, she squeezed out the other half a tube of sonogram gel on me and went to work. There was no local anesthesia or injections to relax the uterus. Just my doctor manually encouraging our baby to do a somersault. The procedure looks like kneading bread dough. Yes, a day at the beach would have been more fun. And I was glad that I didn't stop at Denny's for the Grand Slam Breakfast on the way to the hospital, but overall the procedure wasn't a big deal. I would 100% recommend trying external version to any woman carrying a breech baby. Oh, and buy stock in sonogram gel.

And yesterday was more definitive than any paternity test in proving that Robb is the baby's father because the stubborn little rascal refused to budge, just ducked its furry head further under my ribs to evade capture. The baby's butt wouldn't move at all. Our doctor checked the sonogram imaging out again to see if there had been progress, and this is what she saw.

Tomorrow at our weekly appointment we will schedule a planned c-section. As our doctor said, it is easier to reserve a spot in the surgery suite early and cancel later if we don't need it than it is to schedule something at the last minute. If baby turns on his/her own, great; but if not, we'll be prepared.

Enough about babies

2010-12-19T20:58:00.000-05:00

I have posted entirely too few adorable photos of the dog lately. Thus, let me present a year of Sukey.

Whose bright idea was it to tuck a toy under my collar?

Taking walks.

Protecting the house from evil rabbits.

Hanging with friends.

Napping under the bed.

Begging.

Getting treats.

Occasional animal cruelty.

Playing with Robb.

Then there's the lounging.

Still more lounging.

The post breakfast nap.

Ringing in the holidays.

And basking by the fire. Sukey hopes you have a very Merry Christmas!

Once more unto the breach

2010-12-17T11:28:00.002-05:00

So far I have been joking and whining and exaggerating about my pregnancy experience. Truly it has been easy and free of actual complications, aside from slight anemia and thyroid monitoring. The only real problem is that the baby is still nestled comfortably in my rib cage. This is what the baby should be doing right now:

Heading toward the exit and kicking me in the ribs. Instead the baby is transverse:

(Medical images heisted from the WebMD website.) Which is kind of ironic because back when the baby was the size of a peanut, I never imagined him/her as a fluffy ball of cells, but rather like this:

As a hieroglyphic style adult standing across my abdomen. And now that I think of it, this is the exact position that Sukey wants to sleep in on our bed.

Like the crossbar on an "H" between us with her head in my ribs and her rump in Robb's.

The problem is that all transverse babies must be delivered by c-section. So I did some investigating, and there are exercises that I can do at home to encourage the baby to turn itself around. I will not entertain you with photos of me doing them, although I assure you Robb is getting more than a few laughs out of this. But here is an "artist's rendering" of a few. In the top sketch I would be holding my pelvis 9-12 inches off the floor for 5 minutes at a time. In the bottom one that's supposed to be kind of a chair-amplified downward dog yoga position. And if I had access to an indoor pool, I could do lots of handstands. (I bet I'm wickedly buoyant right now!) You get the idea: trick the baby into thinking that up is down and down is up.

Old wives suggest putting a bag of frozen peas at the top of my belly or a heating pad near the bottom, cold being repellent to fetuses and warm being attractive. Also Robb could sing or speak near my pelvis and perhaps shine a flashlight in that vicinity like a signal flare. We are taking the old wives suggestions with a grain of salt.

What we have decided to try on Monday, though, is external cephalic version or ECV. In short my obstetrician will use a sonogram and fetal monitor to make sure the procedure is safe to undertake, and then she will gently turn the baby with her hands into the correct position. (Here's a video.) There's no guarantee that baby won't simply turn back around afterward, but there is about a 60% success rate. I also realize that people have c-sections every day, and it shouldn't be a big deal. BUT. If there is anything I can try in order to avoid surgery, I'm going for it. So please wish us luck on Monday. Meanwhile I keep humming Disco Inferno but changing the chorus to, "I heard somebody say turn, baby, turn..."

At least that got me to stop singing the milkshake song while rubbing my belly.

Cute outfit causes pregnant lady to freeze to death

2010-12-14T06:30:00.000-05:00

Yesterday I decided not to wear sweat pants for a change. You may have seen me wear this maternity dress (Kohl's) over the summer. Seems a shame for it to not get any more use, though, so I winterized it with a long sleeved shirt (Banana Republic), jersey tights, and my Xena the Warrior Princess belt. But baby it's cold outside, so I put on a sweater, too.

I made a couple of these Origami Wrap Sweaters for gifts last Christmas using designer Martha McQuade's free pattern, but I never got around to taking photos or blogging about them. I made one for myself while I was at it. Now that the mercury is dipping into the 20s, this sweater is about to go into heavy rotation. The fabric is Vera Wang 100% wool jersey that I ordered from Fabric Mart--doesn't look like they have it in stock anymore. Like t-shirt jersey it doesn't fray, so the edges could be left raw. You should have seen the look on my dry cleaner's face when I walked in with the equivalent of a king sized bedspread to be steam pressed. She kept petting the fabric and asked what I was making. Then she gave me a look like, "Are you sure you know what you're doing?" Priceless.

This lady made one, too. Like her, I had to make a paper model first to understand the construction. And I remember how nerve-wracking the cutting of the fabric was without a rotary cutter. Talk about sweating. I was terrified, and it took almost 2 hours for me to measure, measure again, measure yet again, and finally cut into the fabric for the sweaters. Scary stuff compared to the actual sewing which hardly took any time at all. Just three little seams on each.

While the outfit ultimately looked super cute, it was impractical for Christmas shopping with a 15 degree wind chill. Drafty! Next time it's back to sweats and sneakers.