Forgive These Words

Morning with Deuce

2012-01-10T07:51:00.000-08:00

The small moments I will forget, if I don't record them.

Scene: the boys' bedroom, in the morning, while Peanut is in school. Spring is entertaining herself by alternately pulling up on the window blinds and pulling books off the shelves. Mom is tidying up: making beds, tossing a few scattered Legos and matchbox cars into the toy basket. Deuce drops his toy plane anxiously.

Deuce: "My cars! No, mama. My cars."

Mom: "It's OK. I'm just picking up the ones you aren't playing with. You can get them from the basket."

Deuce: (retrieves a few) "Where's Doc? Where's Mater?"

Mom: (locates them in Deuce's bed, under the blankets, where they apparently spent the night.) "Here they are."

Deuce: "Mama, play Doc. Talk, Mama."

Mom: (sighs, looks hopefully forward to playing dolls with Spring) "Ok."

(Part of Doc played by Mom. Mater and generic Monster Truck played by Deuce.)

Doc: "Hi, Monster Truck."

MT: "No, I tractor."

Doc: "You're a monster truck."

MT: "NO. I TRACTOR."
.
Doc: "Ok, whatever you say."

(Monster Truck, nevertheless displaying his true identity, attempts to drive over Doc and Mater.)

Doc: "Hey! Ow! Don't drive over me!"

MT: (giggles)

Doc: "Hey Mater. So...tipped any tractors lately?"

Mater: "vrooom. vroooooooooooooooom."

Doc: "Hey, everybody. Let's go to Flo's and have something to drink."

MT and Mater: "Yeah. Wess getsome appuh juice. Tum on! Over here!"

(cars congregate at specific area on carpet and slurp noisily. The juice apparently goes to the heads of MT and Mater, who chatter high-pitched gibberish. Doc suspends animation while Mom thinks about which laundry hamper to work on today.)

Deuce: "Mama! Talk!"

Doc: "I know. Let's read a book."

Monster Truck: "Wess wead dagon book!"

Doc: "Ok. The dragon book. Let's get in the story box."

(The story box is a large cardboard box turned on its side and lined with pillows. Deuce sits inside it, and Mom manages to get her head and upper torso in. The cars insist on sitting on Mom's stomach where they can see the pictures. We get through three pages of Ignis before being interrupted.)

Mater: "Hey Doc! Wook at dat!" (Deuce points to pic of dragons dancing around a bonfire.)

Doc: "Wow. Isn't that something?"

Deuce (role indeterminate): "Wess wead Widdle Engine dat Could!"

Mom: "Ok, you get it."

(Deuce goes to bookshelf, comes back with a Thomas book instead.)

Deuce: "Here! Wess wead DIS one!"

(The cars drive all over the cover.)

Mom: "Let's open it up. Then they can ride on the track."

(The book, a pop-up, is falling apart at every seam. The cars insist on driving on the page in the worst condition of all, where Harold the helicopter once stood upright and now lies listlessly to one side, propeller askew. Deuce tries numerous times to stand him back up.)

Deuce: "He's bwoken."

Mom: "Yep. Here, let's drive the cars on the track."

(Spring enters the box now, attracted by the book, and tears a piece off the propeller, blessedly unnoticed by Deuce. Re-direction success! She then crawls bodily over the book to get to Mom's head.)

Deuce: "(Spriiiiiiiing)! No! Mama, WOOK AT (SPRING)!!!!"

(Mom removes Spring from book, lays book on floor, where cars attack it determinedly. With Deuce thus distracted, Mom escapes to laundry room, and gets almost two loads of towels folded before the shrieks begin. Deuce enters room, noisily distraught.)

Mom: "You know what? Let's watch a movie!"

(Richard Scarry saves the next 30 minutes. Mom refuses to feel guilty, finishes folding laundry, puts Spring to bed, and updates neglected blog.)

Deuce: (climbs into Mom's lap when video ends) "Want some Mommy nuk."

Mom: "What do you say?"

Deuce: "Want some Mommy nuk, pease."

(Fade out.)

(Fin.)

Preschool Peanut

2011-09-11T20:32:00.000-07:00

Peanut is a preschooler!

Our state offers free preschool through public schools and various private schools who meet the requirements. We are still deciding what to do about "real" school next year, whether homeschooling or charter or what, but meanwhile it seemed wise to have him prepared for the possibility of traditional schooling in a classroom setting. And, I won't lie, there was some appeal to the idea of having him out of my hair for three hours a day. The house begins to feel very small with two boys tearing through it all day long.

After a first week in which it was clear he was having to adjust to the novelty and schedule, Peanut has blossomed in ways I would not have believed. It's a montessori program, with a director who, from what I've seen, has high expectations and a no-nonsense policy. Though there is plenty of playtime, there is also actual "work" taking place, and the effects are showing up at home.

Peanut has always behaved as though he is allergic to paper and crayons. I had long since given up trying to get him to draw or color alongside me as it invariably turned into a battle of wills. His sunday school pages were mere scrawls, usually in one color only, and without any indication that he understood that the color was meant to be applied to the figures on the page instead of just at random. "Drawing" was nonexistent. The more I encouraged him to try making a mark - any mark - the more recalcitrant he grew, with a steadfastness that continues to mystify me. He seems to rebel against anything I am eager for him to experience, and the more excited about it I am, the less he is.

For an artist parent, it could not be more discouraging.

The first Saturday after school began, Peanut picked up some sidewalk chalk on the back porch, and began drawing bugs all over the concrete floor. He called me over and proudly showed me a series of large circles, filled with smaller circular spots, and bearing many legs. "Ladybugs," he explained. "And spiders."

I called MRB over and we both enthused effusively. Peanut beamed.

Since then he has spent many minutes drawing in the playroom, using markers and crayons on construction paper. More bugs, sunflowers, sunshine - and, with my assistance, butterflies, cars, robots and birds.

It is both encouraging and frustrating to see how well he is doing. That the abilities are there, waiting to be coaxed out, and that they come out so quickly under a teacher's guidance - this thrills me. And yet - why was I not able to coax them out myself? Why does he fight me, refuse my help, push back my suggestions? There are so many things about homeschooling that are appealing - but if he will not learn from me, whatever the reason, it's impossible. And it makes my heart ache, but I realize I may have to let go of my dreams of learning alongside him, of being the guide as he explores the wonders of the world. My job is to give him what he needs, and if what he needs is an authority other than myself to govern his education - so be it.

But meanwhile, we have this year. And I have a little boy who, at last, will draw with me.

For now, that's enough.

"Robot and Chick" by Peanut, age 4.

The Daygown

2011-08-02T08:26:00.000-07:00

Having three children under five has made it difficult to blog much.

Who could have seen that coming?

In fact, it has been difficult to do much of anything not directly related to kids, housework, or (more commonly) both at the same time. But I try to stay productive, and have some project near-to-hand for those odd moments of leisure that crop up, a few minutes at a time. We've joined the YMCA, and I utilize their childcare to steal a few hours a week. I daresay I am the only member that wraps up a workout with an hour by the pool, handsewing.

Also, Spring is a thumbsucker, which makes her an amazing sleeper. If I'd known how effective it was, I'd have put chocolate syrup, or something, on the boys' thumbs in their infancy. Anyway - this gives me at least an hour or so every evening after all the littles are in bed.

Having fallen in love with the daygown mentioned in the previous post, I wanted to try my hand at making another, in hopes to carry on an heirloom tradition. So I decided to try out the pattern and lessons at Jeannie Beumeister's blog The Old-Fashioned Baby, which I've followed for a while. Spring's room and much of her clothing fall into the "shabby chic" style, and Jeannie's blog gives me great ideas for further froo-froo of that nature. Plus her photos and Southern Lady charm make me long exquisitely for my native Baton Rouge.

Here is Spring, in her newly finished handsewn daygown:

She has found effective ways of avoiding the paparazzi:

I absolutely adored doing this. Having a bit of a love/hate relationship with my sewing machine, I was both anxious and eager about handsewing, but it turned out to be easier than I expected, and a very relaxing, soothing, almost zen-like activity. Any slow process seems to slow thought, and my frenetically-paced days suddenly slipped into a meditative stream when I picked this up.

Of course, this also meant it took a long time to finish, even disregarding my lack of experience. Each of the seven lessons were only supposed to take an hour; I probably took more like three or four with some of them.

The whole project was nearly derailed when Deuce (now an eager and exploratory two-year-old) found my work foolishly left out somewhere in his reach, and decided to experiment with Mommy's scissors. The damage he did was mostly in an area that would become seam allowance. I had to fudge it, and make a larger allowance than was called for. I am still upset about this, as it renders imperfect a garment that otherwise was working up flawlessly, and it was too late in the game to start over (I was on lesson six at that point.) MRB says it gives the dress character and a "story". A man's answer! However, the alteration is minor enough that nobody will ever notice but me...I'm not entering this into any contests.

There was embroidery involved:

Note: working on embroidery at the YMCA is a fantastic conversation starter with women, particularly with grandmotherly types, many of whom, it turns out, used to do it.

The entire thing took me almost four months. Spring is now wearing 6-9 month sizes, and I was terribly afraid that she would not fit into this by the time I finished it. I'm afraid my final work was rather rushed, and the stitches at the hem pucker a little. But overall, I am pleased, and I hope to do more things like this.

Maybe I'll learn smocking next! Then I can finish the next project by the time she's four!

And yes, I am enjoying having a girl. Need you even ask?

Spring has come.

2011-04-10T10:10:00.000-07:00

Spring in the south may not hold quite the symbolic renewal it does in the North. There's no heraldic return of the first bird, no breathless waiting for snow to melt. Many of our trees melt from green to green as new growth pushes out the old. Our winters aren't harsh or long enough to make us truly miss the hot weather and wish for its return.

But the season does have its own glories here. Azaleas, riotous colors in February. Crape Myrtles, lifting their tiers of flowers like girls in ridiculously frilled skirts, lining every road. Honeysuckle and roses, magnolias and camellias. And Easter. I suppose it's not quite the same for those below the equator, but I do find it appropriate that for us, at least, the Resurrection is celebrated at a time of rebirth and renewal.

Speaking of birth...

She arrived on April 4, a successful induction and a peaceful, healing birth. Her name, loosely translated, means "spark unto a new day", a symbolic name for an April baby whose birthday will always fall close to Easter. We hadn't considered this when we were choosing it, but I am pleased to take it as confirmation that we chose well.

At 10 lbs 5 oz, she will have little need for the newborn clothes everyone gave me against my advice, but I am pleased to show that she fits perfectly into the family heirloom daygown my mother passed on to me during her visit. This handmade gown was gifted to my grandmother upon my mom's birth, probably worn by most of her siblings, and then wrapped me and my sister. It is now on its third generation.

I want a dozen more. Gowns, not babies. Although the newborn smell is an addictive drug, this is my last fix. I'm trying to make the most of it.

In accordance with my policy of No Real Names on this blog, she will be hereafter be known here as Spring.

Which may become my favorite season.

Strangely Familiar

2011-03-31T20:40:00.000-07:00

They say the definition of insanity is when you do the same thing over and over and expect to get a different result.

So what do they call it when you do the polar opposite and still get the same result?

Whatever they call it, I'm it. Finding a new pregnancy care provider was evidently a waste of my time and energy. My doctor is turning out to be as induction-shy as my midwives ever thought of being, although probably for completely different motives. The result is the same. I am still pregnant.

The irony is breathtaking. Disillusioned with the natural birth philosophy, whose ancient wisdom my body steadfastly flouts, I decided to save myself the misery and anxiety of a post-term pregnancy by defecting to "the enemy" - the dreaded obstetrician, wielding his pitocin and his scalpel. Lo and behold, I wound up with apparently the only OB in existence who does not believe in inducing without a "medical" reason. A history of complicated labors and overly large babies doesn't seem to be enough. Nor does a scan showing a rapidly-calcifying placenta. I'm not sure, at this point, what WOULD be a good enough reason that wasn't, on its own, serious enough to warrant an immediate c-section.

He pontificates, hems and haws. I'm not dilating. The baby is too high. She's posterior. I know all these things. I also know they are not likely to change, which means the only thing gained by waiting another week is another pound, by the baby.

Today my scheduled appointment, which I had hoped would show enough progress to admit me, was canceled due to massive thunderstorms that knocked out power to the office complex. So even God didn't want me to be induced today. I get it.

Tomorrow morning I go back in. My guess is the dr. will refuse it again, on the grounds that he is not on-call this weekend.

I might as well have stayed with the midwives.

Goodbye, March. I had such high hopes for you.

Because I can't sleep

2011-01-28T01:54:00.000-08:00

I am up at 4 a.m., thanks to a lingering cold complete with aching throat, clogged ears, and nagging cough that rears its head every time I lie down. Since sleep eludes, I may as well do what the kids don't give me time for during their waking hours - write a little.

Doesn't help that their waking hours have been so angst-filled lately. The viral nuisance plaguing me at present hit them first, beginning with Peanut two weeks ago, and though symptoms were quick to dissolve, their energy levels are still low. Peanut has been voluntarily napping every day, something he hasn't done for months and often without any warning - I simply realize suddenly that I haven't seen him for a while, and a quick search reveals a shock of curly hair or underoo-clad rear end peeking out from underneath a pile of pillows on my bed. On Saturday MRB had a panicked hunt while I was running errands, and found that he had squeezed himself into a nest formed by stuffing a sleeping bag into the top of the Little Tykes playset in the playroom, out cold. Oh, for the days when sleep was so easily achieved!

Deuce's convalescence has been much less pleasant. His happy moments have become short and far between - an hour or two, perhaps, of perkiness, sandwiched between long episodes of being my constant, miserably vocal shadow. He steadfastly resists distraction, and wants only to be held and to nurse - both of which are difficult for me at this point in pregnancy and preclude any possibility of doing anything useful. I could possibly have more sympathy for him were he still exhibiting symptoms of illness, but my general tendency to give my kids the benefit of the doubt when they cry is wearing thin when I have so few reserves myself. Fortunately he is sleeping well tonight, for the first time in the last 72 hours. UNfortunately how well he sleeps seems to have no correlation to his mood upon waking, so I cannot necessarily hope for an easy morning. I want my happy baby back.

Pregnancy is swinging along, par for the course in my usual fashion - measuring large, and fielding strangers' inquiries about whether I'm due "any day now" with somewhat less humor than I've had in the past. My OB is beginning to be squirrely about induction, chirping cheerily that he has no problem doing it at forty weeks "if my cervix is favorable". Since a favorable 40-week cervix would not be in any universe consistent with my history, this does not please me, although I suppose it should, indicating as it does a doctor with a more-or-less hands-off approach, which would have thrilled me in previous pregnancies. When I press him for a hard-and-fast deadline he says only that he "doesn't like" going past 41 weeks, but "as long as my fluid levels are good..." None of which is reassuring. He keeps telling me, with irritating smug confidence, that he has tricks to get things going on time; he is clearly unacquainted with my uterus. I think I can safely predict an April birthdate at this point, though nobody would be happier than I to be proven wrong.

Well, being upright for a while has allowed my head to drain; I suppose it is time for another Vick's-reeking, toss-and-turn session on the couch - my current abode, as it allows me to prop myself up at a better angle than in bed. Also because MRB's defining symptom of the viral beast is to snore all night long.

Jackpot!

2011-01-03T13:24:00.000-08:00

Regarding my previous comments on the prevalence of pink in girl clothing...

I realized a few days later that it isn't pink I object to (although the particular shade of bubblegum that makes up the vast majority of baby girl stuff is still obnoxious to me), but the styles of clothing available.

I'm not sure why I expected differently; it isn't as though the girl section in any store isn't prominently on display, showing off its wares in a way that felt stingingly in-your-face back when I had no girl to dress. I guess I just never imagined trying to dress my own daughter, to spare myself that sense of loss, so I never realized that when the day came when I was free to do so, what I imagined and what was actually available would be many worlds apart.

My overall impression is that baby clothes fall into two categories. The practical: lots of knit - the modern baby basics of onesies and sleepers. In style they are gender neutral, thus the overwhelming pinkness to differentiate the girl items from the boys. Then there's the fashionable, which seems to be miniature versions of what teenage girls are wearing - flared-leg jeans, spaghetti-strapped tops, embellished T's, all in various vivid colors, with hot pink predominating.

I want my little girl to LOOK like a little girl. Not like a miniature thirteen-year-old. And herein lay my dilemma; apparently my version of what looks "little girly" is a few decades behind the times.

I'm not sure on what to blame that, but I'm not apologizing for it.

We were in Georgia for the holidays. My sister-in-law lives just outside a very tiny town in the middle of nowheresville, very picturesque and full of antique malls, several of which we visited. I stocked up on a few baby items that were more to my taste, but remained subconsciously frustrated over the lack of what I REALLY wanted.

Until our last day. When we visited a wee shop squeezed claustrophobically into an ancient row of buildings on the main drag through the village, whose sign - Dolls and Stuff - had caught my eye a few times in the previous days. We had tried going the day after Christmas; it was closed. In hindsight, this was terribly unfortunate, because if I had seen it before visiting all the other places, I would never have needed to go anywhere else.

I was in love the second we stepped in the shop, just over the dolls. I adore dolls. Never have collected, simply because I know it's a hobby I can't afford, but I could drool over them all day long. This tiny place was stacked, wall to wall, with collector-quality vinyl dolls of every size and type imaginable; I'd estimate there were at least five hundred. Many of them were life-sized, from newborns up to those about the size of six-year-olds. Limited editions, masterpieces. Dolls that made the American Girl brand look like cheap knock-offs. It took me half an hour just to leave the front room, figuring there couldn't really be that much more than what I'd already seen.

But it was one of these very old buildings that keep going and going, rounding corners and surprising you with little nooks and corners until you wonder where it ends. The second room had racks of clothing; ostensibly for the dolls, but the clothes were real clothes and O JOY CHRISTMAS CAME A SECOND TIME. Row upon row of crisp cotton batiste, smocked yokes, eyelet lace, sprigged florals floated before my eyes. I danced around the store as MRB laughed at me and kept the boys from wreaking havoc. I swept armfuls of pink and blue and yellow into piles and sorted through them, reluctantly putting back the higher-priced items and relentlessly weeding out until I narrowed myself down to five, because I was afraid, after all I'd gotten the previous week, of overdoing it.

Each of the final cut was less than $10.

I have been gloating over them like Gollum over the Ring for the last week, but realized upon getting home that I didn't actually buy as much as I thought I had, and regretted putting back the last two or three that didn't make the finalists. We're going back in July for a family reunion, and I will be stocking up on a few more then - particularly in larger sizes, as these seem to be all in the 6-9 month range or so. (Hard to tell; most of them are not marked.)

Finally, I feel excited about dressing my little girl. And if she turns out to be a tomboy and refuses to wear such things as she gets older, I'll at least have enjoyed her first year.

We Live

2010-12-15T12:17:00.000-08:00

Yes. It's true. We are all still here.

I have lost so much time, to go back and attempt to recap would be merciless. I can't blame it on any grave catastrophe taking up my attention; no enormous life changes that have stolen my time; no great change in philosophy that would cause me to push blogging to the back burner. I've actually composed some marvelous entries - in my head. Somehow getting them to the screen ceased to become as important.

The boys are growing.

They loved Vermont, as we always do. Peanut in particular was finally old enough to understand the vast difference in place and culture. Two weeks, however, was enough for me to realize how blessed we are to live somewhere where they can be outside for most of the year. I am not sure how mothers of small children in cold climates survive with any grace. Mine wore thin. But this was partially due to the fact that our "home" up there does not have much in the way of child-friendly activities. And the fact that my eldest, energetic son does not "do" indoor things with much enthusiasm. I can be happy as a cricket all winter between drawing, writing, knitting, sewing, etc. My kids, not so much.

We are now gearing up for Christmas.

And this is hilarious, apparently.

We're celebrating Advent this year, not something we've done before and it's rather haphazard since we're "winging it", so to speak, not having any specific church-officiated rituals surrounding it. But as a way of injecting some more meaningful traditions into our family celebration, I'm enjoying it. We made the conscious decision to limit gifts for the kids, and will have a small, early Christmas at home before heading up to my in-laws'.

Pregnancy is proceeding according to my usual pattern.

Baby # 3 is a girl.

(No, this pic doesn't show that, but come on.)

There was a time this would have warranted a rosy, ecstatic blog posting, and there has indeed been plenty of rosy ecstasy, but once the announcement was facebooked further commentary seemed superfluous. (I kind of hate facebook for this reason.) We had the scan done last month and I had to immediately run out and buy something pink. Since then I've received so many pink hand-me-downs that I'm actually a little sick of the color, and have begun hunting madly for baby girl clothes in other hues. This has proved more of a challenge than I thought it would be. Since one of the fun aspects of dressing girls is that they can wear ANYthing, unlike the narrow range of acceptability to which boys are restricted, I am rather disgusted when I walk through the girl clothing sections now. They are starting to look like explosions from a Pepto-Bismol factory. It does, however, give me an excuse to make a lot of her clothes myself, to which I am looking forward.

On that note, I finally learned to knit by hand. It's something I had picked up and laid down many times over the last several years, but something finally clicked, and I've now cranked out three new diaper covers in preparation. The first came out huge, and fits Deuce. I actually frogged his old crocheted one to finish this, because I LOVE that yarn.

The other two are newborn. I will post pics after I charge the camera battery. Or maybe once baby girl is modeling them, given my updating frequency.

Anyway - I will not pretend that every stitch is perfect, but I have learned ribbing, stockinette, garter stitch, how to make an eyelet row, and various types of increase/decrease. Another cover or two and maybe I will feel bold enough to graduate to things with sleeves. Or to do something in the round.

In prep for having a nursery to decorate again, Deuce has been moved to Peanut's room as of last weekend. We decided at the last minute to experiment with transitioning him to the toddler bed rather than moving the crib, and although I was anxious, remembering the battle we had with Peanut, it has turned out extremely well. Although he still gets up once or twice a night, he does not fight being put back to bed, and I'm not averse to hearing little feet pitter-pattering to my room instead of angry squawks over the monitor. It makes me strangely sad to see his little round form snuggled in a real bed, complete with pillow and blankets - he is still so much the baby, and is shortly going to lose that position to his sister, going to become the "middle child" with all its associated challenges. I had an sudden, fiercely protective sensation toward him when we found out we were having a girl - partially driven by the enthusiastic congratulations of friends and family. Folks had not, to my memory, been as excited about a second boy, and I know many took their cues from me and was overwhelmed with guilt. I look at him now and think how wonderful it is that prayers are not always answered as we hope; for had we had a girl after Peanut, we would have been "done", and my sweet second son would not exist.

Imagine this, not existing. What a tragic thought.

So. This is life currently. I herd, I launder, I teach, I wash, I create, I comfort, I guide, I discipline, I cook. Not always terribly well, and not all at once. But not alone. I am blessed, and I am happy.

Peace and Joy to all in this season.

A bit of silliness...

2010-09-04T19:00:00.000-07:00

My latest project, finished two days ago, this one on commission. That's right, people, I get paid for this.

Next up on my to-do list: the Johnny Depp Keds for mountain mama, who just made Peanut this darling outfit in trade. (Got it in the mail today, in all its creamy-soft, autumn-colored glory - thank you!)

Letting Go

2010-08-26T18:30:00.000-07:00

Hold everything in your hands lightly, otherwise it hurts when God pries your fingers open.-Corrie Ten Boom

He shakes my hand perfunctorily, wears a wry, somewhat exasperated smile as he ruffles through my paperwork.

"I can see you're one of those hands-off, 'don't-do-anything', all-natural ones," he begins, leaving out the eyeroll I can tell he is performing internally. "Forty-two weeks, forty-one...ten pounds, my God."

Two years ago I would have bristled at the implied disapproval. Now I laugh. "Well, that's why I'm here this time." I explain my history; the midwives, the birth centers, the inductions, the complications, the unplanned hospital deliveries. His reaction is pretty much what I expected; the "guess you learned your lesson" eyebrow lift. I shrug it off. "Natural birth is a great philosophy and I support it," I insist. "But for me...I can't put myself through the disappointment again. I don't know why my body doesn't seem to know how to start labor, but it's clearly not an issue of the baby not being ready. If round about February, you want to start talking about a scheduled 40-week induction, you'll find me more than willing to listen."

His shoulders relax, and he makes the notation on my chart. Seeing it there, in writing, I am able to let it go. The guilt. The bitterness. The anger. The criticism. The need to be right and show up all my naysayers.The antagonistic bias against the medical establishment. The judgmental attitude towards women who chose differently than I did the first two times. Trade the shoes, and walk a mile...

Also, the assumption that by doing everything "right" somehow this one would magically be the transforming, spiritual birth experience I so craved. It doesn't matter anymore. I will not jeopardize the well-being of another baby by clinging to an ideology. It was worth the try the first time, even the second time. But my body has spoken and I will listen.

March 26th. No wondering, no worrying. I know the risks. I've accepted them. I am at peace.

Changing hearts...

2010-08-09T17:01:00.000-07:00

Sometimes it is dramatic. In my family we call them "million-dollar testimonies". The recovered alcoholic who stopped medicating and found healing in the form of a Person. The delivered occultist who learned the Name that would scatter the creatures of her waking nightmares. The transformed Islamic terrorist visited by a vision of a risen Savior.

The kind of stories ordinary Jack and Jill Christian wish we could tell of ourselves...only not really. Because who wants to go through those ordeals? But the transformative power of grace is so evident in them, so spectacular and miraculous and epic in their scope, that it can make a bred-and-born churchgoer feel somehow inadequate. Ironic.

My story has no special effects or pyrotechnics. I am still learning to find the grace in the seeming insignificant details of my life. But one thing I do know.

He is the healer of broken dreams, disappointment, and heartache. The restorer of hope. And he often refuses me what I want, in order to give me what I need.

I wanted to fall in love with a musician. He gave me an artist.

I wanted to be an animator. He gave me patience, perseverance, and finally, an awakening.

I wanted a daughter. He gave me sons.

Fourteen months ago, I wanted never to endure another pregnancy. Three months ago, He gave me peace.

We're due in March.

Trial by Fire

2010-06-27T19:34:00.000-07:00

He tools across the floor, pushing a toy car along, making happy "bbbbbb" noises. Around the corner of the couch he looks up, catches my eye and grins; with my attention secured he holds the car up to his face, knocking it against his forehead, and then tosses it back over his shoulder, laughing as though this is the most hilarious thing since Jim Carrey.

Were it not for the three-inch strip of grubby surgical tape clinging to his belly, I could believe that the last five days have been no more than a nightmare, fading away into morning reality.

It begins on a black-and-white moment Tuesday evening when he turns, out of nowhere, from a happy 13-month-old into a screaming tangle of writhing limbs, squirming until I can't hold him and then crawling blindly on the ground, vainly trying to escape his own pain, sweat beading on his nose and pasting his hair to his temples. Wailing to be picked up and then pushing me away when I prove useless at relieving him. Vomiting uncontrollably and passing out into a drugged-like fitful stupor, to sleep for ten minutes and then repeat the process again and again, hour after hour.

In a freezing ER room I hold my retching infant over an emesis basin more times than I can count, hold him down for x-rays and sonograms, immobilize him while the nurses search for a suitable vein in his dehydrated little body and clasp his hands during a CT scan. Praying for an answer that doesn't come.

His room, at 3 a.m. From his window, I can look across the complex and see the huge picture window of the room where he was born. I try not to wonder if he will draw his last breath, here in this building a hundred feet away from where he'd taken his first. The crib in the room looks like an animal's cage; if these are his last hours, he isn't going to spend them there. I hold him all night. Untangling him from IV tubes and heart monitors when he wraps them around himself in his writhing. Wiping the bile from his face when he vomits for the fifteenth time. Rocking him, crooning, while my tears replace the ones he is too exhausted to cry. Wishing desperately to see him relax and smile one more time.

No rest for the weary. At 10:00 a.m. Wednesday morning, after a sleepless night with no improvement, I go home when his Daddy arrives. A call at two wakes me from a fitful doze. They are taking him to surgery. Right now.

Panic. None of the previous night's tests had shown anything warranting surgery. When did they make this decision?

The surgeon is in the room, takes the phone. His voice is calm, reassuring, quietly jovial, as though discussing the latest World Cup scores. They had seen measurable changes in the x-rays from last night to this morning. He isn't sure exactly what they will find when they open him up, but the need to do so is clear and immediate. His bowel is obstructed somehow, and time is of the essence. The procedure will take less than an hour; it will be over by the time I arrive.

I hang up the phone, numb and upset, but somehow no longer frightened. At last, there is a plan, an action. We will have an answer. Knowledge is power.

The next hour is methodical. I make phone calls. Pack bags. Arrange childcare for Peanut. Leave a note for the contractor scheduled to come out this afternoon. Drop off the mail. Concentrate on the things I can control. Control, that comforting illusion.

MRB is sleeping in the operating waiting room when I get there. He startles at my touch, and gets teary-eyed as he tells me the surgeon's report. Our baby will be fine. The diagnosis: Meckel's diverticulum, a congenital defect of the bowels affecting about 2% of the population. Out of those, only 2% are symptomatic - usually boys under 2. His had twisted around and cut off circulation to 2 feet of his intestine, blocking his digestion and causing his bowel to swell and inflame. They removed the diverticulum, saving his intestines. Four hours later, the surgeon had said, and the compromised intestine would have been beyond repair, possibly rupturing. They took his appendix out while they were at it, so we'd never have to worry about it.

We are there when he comes out of anesthesia, groggy, confused, miserable, with a tube in his nose, IV in his foot, monitors attached to what seems like every available skin surface. He voices his displeasure as loudly as his strength permits, his throat hoarse from the tube to his stomach. I take his hand as they wheel him back to his room, and hold him while they transfer all his machines and monitors.

The evening passes in a haze of morphine. Six hours after surgery, he wakes up enough to really look at me, calm for the first time since the beginning of the ordeal. He bats at the NG tube in his nose, twitches his head experimentally and murmurs a few babbling syllables. When I imitate them, he smiles.

He smiles. Faintly. Weakly. For the first time in 31 hours.

I hear angels sing.

It is a brief respite, but I cling to it through a difficult night and morning. He sleeps in a feverish stupor, waking in panic when his pain grows too intense, his heart rate skyrocketing. I pace with him, whispering hymns into his ear, until it stabilizes. He falls asleep with his hand on my face, to make sure I haven't left. Every time he doses, within a few minutes we are invaded by another nurse needing to check a vital, flush a line, administer a dose of antibiotics. Twelve hours after surgery, his diaper is still dry, and they catheterize him. I stand outside his room, my face against the cold wall, and his tears are mine.

Twenty-four hours, and his temperature continues to blaze. I am stressed, anxious, sure it means he's getting infected. He hasn't wet a diaper since the catheter, and they are talking about doing it again. Several teams of doctors convene at once in the room, just as the nurse is spreading out all the paraphernalia for more blood work. They debate, and I stand small at the edge, waiting.

His surgeon comes in, a big man, white-haired, with an aura of cheerful authority, the same I had heard on the phone the day before. He looks my baby over, pronounces him beautiful. "Look at his color. Look how strong he is. He's doing great. Psshhh, take out that NG tube; it's doing more harm than good." I want to kiss the man, hug him like he's Santa Claus. He makes me believe everything he says.

The nurse packs away her wicked needles, and they elect to give him a bolus of fluid instead of another catheter. Two of our pastors visit while he sleeps, and one of them reads Psalm 46. "There is a river whose streams make glad the city of God..." A few minutes later, my little boy finally pees on his own, and I want to giggle hysterically that this is the river whose stream makes my heart glad at the moment.

They remove his NG tube, and amazingly, it does help his overall demeanor. Within a few hours he is awake, playing with a drinking straw and getting angry that I will not let him nurse or grab at my dinner. He sleeps well that night, with no more heart rate spikes, and I sleep deeply for the first time in three days.

The next day he gets toradol instead of morphine, and spends more time awake. He's sitting up, playing with toys brought in from the playroom. They put him on clear fluids, and he downs four ounces of apple juice without taking a breath. It must be overkill, because when I offer him another cup, he glares at me from under his long lashes, and grabs at my shirt. That evening, they give me the go-ahead to nurse him, and he spends the night in bed with me, attached.

It is Saturday, now, not quite a full three days since the surgery. His fever breaks; he eats cheerios for breakfast and gets a pass to the playroom, where he crawls clumsily, hampered by his long hospital gown. I gaze around at the other children there: a six-year-old diabetic, just diagnosed; an eight-year-old boy whose wispy hair speaks of chemo treatments; a frail, thin child propped on pillows in a wagon, his IV pole trailing behind. Parents hover, doting and patient. I muse on the irony that with all the miracles modern medicine provides, it has to hurt so much in order to heal.

That afternoon, 72 hours after the surgery that saved his life, we walk out of the hospital, with my heart intact.

My gratitude is inexpressible.

God is our refuge and strength
An ever-present help in trouble.
Therefore we will not fear, though the earth give way
And the mountains fall into the heart of the sea,
Though its waters roar and foam
And the mountains quake with their surging...
...The Lord Almighty is with us
The God of Jacob is our fortress.

A Year of Brightness

2010-06-05T19:58:00.000-07:00

I asked the obstetrician not to close the curtains. The wall of the delivery room was one giant picture window, several floors up. Privacy was no concern, unless someone in the parking garage a block away had a telescope trained on the room. Given that unlikelihood, I wanted the curtains open. It had been a hell of a night, and I wanted the sky, openness, air. Light.

There was a thunderstorm later; driving rain that soothed exhausted nerves and drained away my tension as it silked down the other side of another picture window, in my recovery room. I cradled my sleeping newborn to my chest, breathing the earthy, strangely acrid birth-scent from the soft wisps of his hair, and watched rivulets of brightness break shivering cracks across vague masses of cloud.

A year later, I remember the search, the frustrating dig for a name for this, our second son, the one we were so naively sure would be a girl we hadn't even thought about boy's names until the ultrasound broke the news. I found his verse before I found his name.

And those who are wise shall shine like the brightness of the sky above; and those who turn many to righteousness, like the stars forever and ever. Daniel 12:3

I fell in love. Brightness. We found a name that meant "bright", and I wanted to pair it with "Sky", but it was voted down as sounding too feminine, despite such historic masculine precedents as characters played by Marlon Brando. We compromised. Combined it with a family name, prefaced it with the name of a well-known author and apologist, one who, even posthumously, still leads many to righteousness. It is a noble and complex title, and will look aristocratic on his engraved stationery, if he ever has any.

But the original name, the "bright" name, is what we call him. Despite well-meaning grandparents who stubbornly use his first name so that "he'll know what it is by the time he gets to school", despite the clunky awkwardness of having to explain to people who ask his name. Because it is what he is.

Brightness shines from his crystal blue eyes, radiates from his face when he smiles. It sings in his burbly baby laughter, a thread of joy underlying every squeal and inquisitive babble.

His focus is like a laser, trained in intensity on the business at hand. I see it in his concentration as he eschews a toy hammer to methodically push pegs through his pegboard with a delicate, precise forefinger. I see it in his complete absorption in pushing a toy car along the floor, tuning out all external stimuli. I see it when I turn from putting groceries away and find him doing this in the middle of the kitchen floor:

Two days before his birthday, he began giving kisses - untrained, unsolicited, unrehearsed; I returned from an errand and he leaned from the babysitter's arms into mine and placed his little puckered rosebud mouth on my lips for an instant, smacking his at just the right moment. Since then his kisses are abundant yet never enough; tiny sparks of delicious sweetness and surprise, they never appear on demand but are awarded entirely on his own terms...perhaps because I am too liable, upon receiving one, to take him captive and smother him with return affection. It is irresistible. From the silky honey-strands of hair just beginning to spiral around his ears, the velvetine curve of his belly, to the smooth unscarred bottoms of his feet, he is delicious.

I know that baby sweetness doesn't last forever. There will be days when the smell of sweaty boy in my house will send me over the edge, when open chip bags on the counters and swigs of milk straight from the jug will prompt the "born in a barn" sarcasm, when noogies and wedgies and all the other odd workings-out of brotherly affection look too much like hostility to me. When I will think his name is much too big for him and we should have tempered our lofty visions. Then, most of all, I will need to remember this first year. This year when, with a child's faith, he reaches for rainbows. And even seems to catch them.

A year of brightness. The first, God willing, of many.

Let there be light.

The starry sky image is used with the permission of my friend Jared, who, besides being one of the coolest and most interesting young men in existence, is also one of the most talented photographers I know. Check out his blogs here and here to see more of his work.

What I wish I had known then...

2010-04-21T13:30:00.000-07:00

He stoops over endless green rows, my suburban son, fingers parting frilled leaves where I direct, and exclaims at the unveiling of glowing red satin beneath.

"Strawberries!"

And it's magic, seeing knowledge dawn, seeing one immersed in things made by man connect to a Thing made by God. His little bird-voice chirps excited. "Look, mama! Strawberries! They're on the plants, look, look!"

I show him how to cradle a fragrant ruby berry between two fingers and tug it away. His usual exuberance results in bruises, juice running red down his hand. I remember, remember, the summer-warm sweetness of a strawberry seconds from its veins, and wonder if it will be anything like the same for him.

He takes a bite, looks thoughtful. "Mmmmmm." I beam.

Minutes later, he is making matchbox car tracks through the dust at the end of the rows, and I am left wondering, amused, where I went wrong.

But memories remind me. From eleven to fifteen I lived on an acre in the Mississippi Delta, land so rich a dead stick, planted, just might sprout. We had a garden, huge, in earth pulled from a thousand miles of ancient riverbank and settled there, virile beside our house. We grew turnips the size of cantaloupes, bushels of corn, tomatoes like clusters of miniature suns, barrels of cucumbers, okra and spinach and radishes and lettuce and onions and purple-hulled peas that filled two freezers and fed us health all year long.

And I hated it.

Hated the dry-cracked rasp of dirt on hands and under fingernails, the scratching blades of cornstalk, the pollen-fuzz seeping under collar and down the sweat-soaked back, the scorching sun on cracked earth and the strength spent wrestling with a mile of hose to bring the life-water, the hours waiting for the water to reach the end of a row so that the hose might move on to the next. I hated the green-sweet smell, the strained neck and stained fingers after hours of shelling peas in the evenings after dinner. Hated trudging behind a tractor, arms jerking with the effort of steadying a plow as it sliced through the packed earth. Hated the disgusting smush of worm-eaten corn under my fingers when I came upon a bad ear while shucking. Hated the work.

Why is it we never appreciate the right things?

Do children who grow up on farms, who never know any other life but the plowing and tilling and harvest, who sense that their family's livelihood breathes with the planet's own life - do they long to live where the only outdoor work is a weekly lawn-mowing (easily hired out), and preparing food, if you aren't picky, requires little more effort than it takes to get from store to freezer to microwave?

Here I am, now, years from fifteen, miles from fertile earth - and I find in myself a yearning to return to that place. To realize, with the benefit of hindsight, that to bring forth food by the sweat of one's brow is a blessing more than a curse. To know this kind of work is good, it is honest, it is Real.

So I dig up my backyard, stubborn. I scrape away the sand and clay and I pay for dirt to be trucked in. I recover kitchen waste thrown into the garbage by forgetful husband and add it to the compost pile and I dream of turnips the size of canteloupes, tomatoes like clusters of suns.

I don't even like tomatoes.

I poke holes for my son to drop the wrinkled pregnant seeds and rejoice when baby greens push through the soil in Spring. I weep and curse the sub-tropic air when they wither and die in midsummer blight. I plant again in Fall, and I learn, trial by trial.

I call him from his matchbox cars and insist that he pick more berries. He whines complaint, put off by the itchy fuzz of the underside of the leaves. But I make him fill a quart-basket, because I want my children to know work. I want to surround them with Real. So that, just maybe, it will not take them thirty years to appreciate it.

We Interrupt this Blog

2010-04-19T13:01:00.000-07:00

As I told my mother recently, by resolving to post only that which takes the best of my efforts, I have now set myself a rather intimidating challenge. What is "worthy" to appear, and what is not? For all my great intentions, I wonder how far I will actually get in the new endeavor.

Meanwhile, on another train of thought, I'm expanding my blogging world. I've had enough requests now during my face painting ventures on whether I have a website, I decided the easiest solution was to make use of blogger, as I'm a firm believer in utilizing free services (thanks, blogger). For those who are interested, here is where I will be chronicling my adventures in face painting as I make the climb from hobbyist to professional.

And now, back to your regularly scheduled blog.

Worlds of Words

2010-04-16T20:28:00.000-07:00

"I laughed, Piebald, because you were wondering, as I was, about this law which Maleldil has made for one world and not for another. And you had nothing to say about it and yet made the nothing up into words."
~The Green Lady, Perelandra, C.S. Lewis

I've been reading, of late, a blog by a woman who really knows how to write. *

How to distill worlds of thought into a few kernels, blowing away the chaff, crossing the boundary where word becomes food.

And it occurred to me that I use many words to say a great deal of nothing.

Twitter-like bullet points detailing the surface of my life, flippancy masquerading as wit, words that often aspire neither to literary greatness nor depth of thought.

It's possible that I am capable of neither to any great extent.

But the me I am on this blog is not who I wanted to be when I began it, and I am stirred to seek challenge. Not to mimic what inspires me in the work of others (thought that is my tendency, one I have had to swat down several times even in this short entry), but to let that inspiration dig deep and unearth something truly mine. A voice unique, weaving words that become more than the sum of their parts. That really mean something.

Fear not, family. There will be still be updates on the children, and plenty of pictures, ones I hope will tell their thousand-word stories while I maintain silence. This is still my place to vent, to boast, to share the small things.

It's just...my life often feels like a neverending game of connect-the-dots, and too often this journal becomes a screenshot of the numbers and scrawls.

When what I want it to be is a search for the final portrait.

This is the first stroke.

*Yes, Louise, I found her via your bloglist, or rather, my husband did. Thank you.

Changes

2010-04-11T20:04:00.001-07:00

I am in the middle of rethinking my blog, the reasons for its existence, and where to have it go from here.

Not to worry; they will be GOOD changes, I hope, as I have been inspired to more than I have heretofore been accomplishing with it. So bear with me as I wrestle with some angels, and come out blessed.

What I've been up to...

2010-04-06T13:02:00.000-07:00

Among other things, utter nonsense:

On the dole...

2010-03-23T10:52:00.000-07:00

Last week, in an attempt to begin the long process of teaching better financial responsibility to our children than we have kept ourselves, I explained to Peanut that he would begin earning money for each sticker he gets on his chore chart. I labeled a glass jar with his name, and carefully dropped in twenty-two pennies - one for every star on the chart up to that point. His interest was, shall we say, mild, until I explained that with one of these pennies he could buy a lollipop at the ice cream parlor we occasionally visit. Then he wanted to go right then, carrying the full jar.

Still, I wasn't sure how much of it he really understood, and decided he would figure it out as we went along. Certainly it did not affect his enthusiasm for doing his chores, although he doesn't resist them - he just doesn't remember, and must be walked through each task every day. Then half the time he forgets that he's owed a sticker and penny. It just doesn't seem to enter his mind. Maybe I should be happy he's not mercenary, rather than baffled by his lack of motivation.

However, perhaps I underestimated him. A few days later I glanced at his money jar on his dresser, and behold: it held many more pennies than those I had put in, along with a generous smattering of nickels, dimes, and a crumpled dollar bill. I picked it up and showed it to him. "Where did all this money come from?"

He looked at it blankly - not in a deceptive maneuver, but because this is the type of question he does not comprehend or lacks the communication skill to answer. Realizing this, I tried again. "Did you put all these coins in here?"

"Uh-huh," he answered mildly, oblivious to any wrongdoing on his part. The jar was for money, wasn't it? Money goes in the jar. So any money lying around, in his mind, should go in the jar. I have no idea where he even found it, although given his propensity to watch the clothes in the washing machine, probably from my laundry room stash. (We have a jar in there, where I put any coins and bills found on the bottom of the washer or dryer - at the end of the year we use it for our Operation Christmas Child boxes; fun to see how much accumulates.)

I removed the dollar and the silver, after a reminder about what the jar was for, and that he may not take money for which he did no work.

Come to think of it...but no, I won't make snarky political jokes.

Random Funny

2010-03-22T08:49:00.000-07:00

Last night we were playing Catchphrase with a group of friends on someone's iphone. This is the game where it selects words or phrases at complete random, could be anything, which you have to get your team to guess, without saying the word or any word in the phrase, and then quickly pass on the phone to the next player before the buzzer goes off.

So MRB finishes his turn and throws the phone at me. I look at the screen.

My word is "Dallben".

Of all the chances in the universe. The irony is, I was the only person in the room who knew who that was, save MRB, who was not on my team. Which is exactly what I blurted out.

Prydain, Prydain, it haunts me.

Also,
Peanut-isms:

While driving:
Peanut: I smell something.
Me: What do you smell?
Peanut: I don't know.
Me: Well, what does it smell like?
Peanut: Smells like Colorado.

??

Later:
Peanut: Mama, where we going?
Me: We're going home. It's late.
Peanut: (upset)NO. We not going home.
Me: Well, where would you like to go?
Peanut: (thinks for a second) Sesame Street

Me too.

Results:

2010-03-18T07:20:00.000-07:00

So, Peanut passed all but one portion of the early intervention screening: when asked "Who do you like to play with?" he thought for a second and responded "toys" - confusing what/who appropriateness, a communication issue. This was enough for them to say he needs to be brought in for a full evaluation, for which there were no open slots until September. (!!) I put our names on the short list, to be called in case of cancellations.

He also flunked a hearing test on his right ear, although whether he truly has hearing damage or simply wasn't responding correctly to the test is up in the air. We've got an appointment with an audiologist in April.

My sister-in-law thinks I still need to take him to an occupational therapist to have him evaluated for sensory integration disorder. Having read up on it, I do think he exhibits some of the signs of hyposensitivity - high pain tolerance, high tolerance of hot/cold extremes, a tendency to throw himself on the floor and crash into objects and people, a preference for rough play. Then again, he's a three-year-old boy. So hard to know whether it's just normal rough-and-tumble behavior or not, and I keep thinking that a hundred years ago they just put kids like him to work out on the farm, made good use of their energy, and wore them out so they had no juice left for troublemaking.

Anyhoo - he is my joy and delight, my wild joyful little free spirit, and I am not troubled by any of these findings, but eager to help him if he needs it.

Meanwhile yesterday, it came rather sluggishly into my head that Deuce is nearly always carrying around a marker or pen-type object. (He gets very attached to whatever he is holding - once he clutched a small wooden dowel for six solid hours, through a trip to the doctor and a two-hour nap.) So, noticing he was holding a crayola, I sat him in my lap, put a pad of paper in front of him, and took the cap off. He proceeded to spend five minutes poking the paper, making various scrawls and dots, babbling happily.

I was impressed by the level of focus he had for a ten-month-old, told MRB about it when he came home and he scoffed, but later when I came into Deuce's room after putting Peanut to bed, MRB related that the baby had just spent ten minutes scribbling with a pencil on a picture of a baby on a diaper box. (His awe at this was palpable.) Maybe Deuce got the artistic gene, although whether we have spawned the next Akiane remains to be seen. It would be nice to have at least one child who shares our obsessions, though.

Face-painting was slow this week, but netted $12. Good tippers. I'm trying to come up with designs inspired by Alice in Wonderland, but so far MRB has not allowed me to make him up like the Mad Hatter. He has been inspired in other ways though, and is now trying to come up with a reason to have an Alice-themed mad tea party. I say who needs a reason?

Scraps...

2010-03-13T04:07:00.000-08:00

*Deuce cut a third tooth, and continues to work on four more on top. The less said about all this, the better. However, two nights this week he slept a seven-hour stretch, and seems to be transitioning to a once-a-night waking. He also learned to clap his hands, and is so pleased with himself over this that he does it nonstop. It is adorable.

*MRB and I began our first class in Dave Ramsey's Financial Peace University, and enjoyed it very much. While we are fairly decent with money, budgeting has never been one of our habits, and this program actually motivates me to do so. I recommend it highly.

*Monday's face painting netted $9; a slower night. Next week I will move my table inside the building; I think parents are reluctant to send their kids out the door, even though I am sitting in front of the picture window in plain view. I got a new, smaller table, so will be able to sit inside without taking up too much room and inconveniencing the restaurant staff. Some weird grown man made gross passes at me ("Can I paint you?"), resulting in MRB's decision always to accompany me on this venture from now on. I need him just to learn to do it himself so I never have to hire an assistant.

*Last night we went to see the new Alice in Wonderland, and I loved it, in spite of the myriad faults outlined by its critics. The "magical alternate reality" theme rarely fails to speak to me in some way, and this film was like stepping into one of my better, more interesting dreams.

*My sister-in-law, who works in evaluation and therapy with children with special needs, noticed some of Peanut's quirks during her visit last weekend that prompted her to hook me up with our county school's early intervention program. I will be taking him in for a screening next Wednesday. And that's all I'll say about that, so as not to prematurely put a label on him for behaviors that may or may not be problematic, depending on his individual development.

The week in a nutshell...

Scraps...

2010-03-05T11:33:00.000-08:00

*The Virus From Hell has finally waved the white flag, with only the occasional dry cough to mark its passing, and we are spending the weekend at GEEC, to celebrate my mother-in-law's 75th birthday.

*I did a volunteer face-painting (tips only) run at the local mom-and-pop pizza joint on their family night, resulting in about $12, two very good contacts, and five or six cards given out to parents interested in birthday parties. Painting is so fun I would do it for free all the time, but cost of supplies make it an expensive hobby and I look forward to booking more lucrative gigs. The manager of the pizzeria fed me free dinner, though, and I was bombarded with requests to make it an ongoing thing, which I am happy to do. I need both the practice and the exposure.

*The new fence we put up last week is causing us headaches with the city zoning division, as it apparently encroaches by two inches onto our neighbor's property. The issue: it was originally HIS fence, rightfully should have been replaced by him but obviously was not going to be (as his solution to our respective dogs breaking into each other's yards was to simply nail new boards back on the rotten supports). So, being originally his fence, of course it is on his property. Apparently this means we have to ask HIM to pull a permit on it and get the city's approval, at which point the fence we just spent $1300 will legally become his. Government at its finest.

*Spent several hours discussing the pros and cons of foster-to-adopt programs with a friend who has twin daughters as a result of her fostering. Am trying not to run blazing into the sunset with my excitement over the prospect in consideration of MRB's caution, but having trouble with the thought that he might never get on board. I am not yet in a place where I could accept that gracefully.

The week in a nutshell.

The Neverending Virus

2010-02-26T04:15:00.000-08:00

I hate when my kids are sick.

I know, that's kind of a redundant statement; no parent loves it. But my hypochondrial tendencies kick into high gear when my children are concerned and I can't stop torturing myself with thoughts of all the horrible things that might be wrong with them.

Peanut is on his 12th day of what we think is some kind of upper respiratory virus. Fever, nasal congestion, throat irritation causing dry cough, the usual drill. Except...twelve days? These things usually run their course in a week at most. He's on his fifth day of a round of antibiotics, which has cleared up the bacterial infection that had been developing but not touching the original illness - of course, since it's a virus.

He's (for him) lethargic and cranky, and has no appetite. Do you know how hard it is to keep a normally active three-year-old happy under these conditions? It does not, however, keep me too busy to google his symptoms and wonder, in panic, if he's got pneumonia or leukemia.

Fellow parents: what do you do in these scenarios? Do you keep pestering the doctor? (He just saw him on Monday and last Thursday). Do you set a time frame and then pester the doctor? Fortunately ours is a family friend who I can actually call at home if I'm that worried. But I'm always second-guessing myself as a paranoid parent.

Quick Update

2010-02-24T06:45:00.000-08:00

Just to mention that I am still alive...

Highlights of last two weeks:

*New fence to replace the rotten series of dog-battered boards on the west side of the yard
*House painted
*Kids both sick with sinus and ear infections
*Sleepless nights, see above
*Mild depression over lack of daughter somewhat alleviated. Discussion of adoption should we decide to have third child. Also considered: bizarre at-home methods of gender-influence, involving ph balances, microscopes, incubators, and centrifuges made from egg beaters. No verdict yet, beyond a decision that I am mildly crazy.
*MRB diagnosed with macular degeneration. We wait to see whether it is progressive.
*Deuce cutting five teeth at once and THRILLED about that, no really. Ongoing.
*Peanut moved to new bedroom, Deuce to Peanut's old room, and a master bedroom free of baby gear once more. Bittersweet.

Girls

2010-02-12T13:04:00.000-08:00

They come in like birds

Fluttering, singing in chirps and whistles

Long tufts of feathery hair swirling

Swooping; their arms

Outstretched; fingers combing the air

They play like deer

Leaping graceful through small spaces

Slim stockinged legs coiling

Pushing; their feet

Pointed; toes tracing dances in space

They look like their mothers

Embryonic women green and promising

Unspoiled, open beauty glowing; voices

Calling to each other

In rose and gold and ringing bells

I watch their mothers

Watching them

I know the language too

But have no one to speak it with.

-composed while watching girls play this morning. Feeling melancholy.

We Should Have Named Him Carl...

2010-01-29T11:33:00.000-08:00

Peanut is obsessed with bugs.

I guess most boys go through this phase? I don't know. I'm just sort of confounded at the depth of his interest.

I mean, he catches them. Constantly. I don't even know how he does it, because his untuned fine motor skills don't seem like they should make it possible. I can't catch flies with my bare hands, but he just reaches out to the tiny buzzing thing on the window screen and nabs it by its wings. Then he brings it to me.

"Look, mama," he announces, with jubilant importance. "A fly!" He holds it out, expectant. "Here."

"Um..." I hesitate, trying not to burst his bubble with my disgust. Would a daughter have brought me flowers instead? The tiny legs twitch in midair. "Wow, sweetie, what a neat fly. Why don't you let him go outside so he'll be happy?"

"Ok," he chirps, trotting out the back door. He releases the fly but then seems upset that it flies away, perhaps expecting it to hover around him gratefully. "Where fly go? Where he go?"

"He must have gone home to his family," I assure him, in my best let's-instill-empathy-for-other-creatures mode. "Flies are happy when they can fly around. They don't like being caught."

"Where fly go?" he repeats, ignoring me. I give up the compassion lesson. "Why don't you look for an ant instead?"

One of his favorite books is a sort of smorgasbord of all things small, winged, and multi-legged, a picture-hunt of different ecosystems where each image contains hundreds of various bugs, like some Indiana Jones nightmare. In the margins, smaller individual pictures of the bugs you are supposed to find are accompanied by their names and a factoid or two. He likes the exotic ones, pointing them out and shouting out their tongue-twisting names: "Giraffe-necked weevil! Hercules beetle! Processionary moth caterpillar!"

This from the kid who still can't get his colors right consistently. It's too bad we aren't teaching him the Latin names - we could make a youtube video of him rattling them off and be famous.

I try to be all Montessori about it - you know, follow the child. So we read books about bugs, and watch videos, and I feign excitement about them and have given up warning him that if he catches wasps and bees they will sting him. He's found that out the hard way, and is undeterred.

"Wasp will STING me," he informs me gravely. And picks it up.

"Ants will BITE me." Jabbing at the ant pile.

Maybe an ant farm is in order. Then again, maybe not.

Pride Goeth Before...

2010-01-26T20:02:00.001-08:00

...a cold.

Yeah. Just when I was all LOOK AT ME and I'M SO FIT, humble pie came in the form of runny noses, sore throats, and cravings for comfort food. Like Ramen. It's soup, right? Soup is sick food. It is. It is surely better than the can of Pillsbury Grand biscuits that I SO SO WANTED to bake and consume in its entirety today and did not. Small victories. (I may, however, do this on my "eat whatever you want" day.)

I will get back to cooking once Deuce allows me more than three hours of sleep in a night. Which would not be the case last night.

Deuce, it must be said, stopped being a great sleeper about the time he started eating solid food. This distresses me greatly, and I know not what to do about it.

At the moment, however, what I need to be doing is going to bed.

Brand New Day

2010-01-25T06:47:00.000-08:00

Today I put on a pair of jeans I haven't worn since before I was pregnant. The first time.

We've been working on it. I'm not sure what prompted my motivation to finally stop pretending that "not fat" = "fit", but two weeks of Christmas at my in-laws' was the final straw. Returning home with a good eight pounds more of Me was not unexpected, given the way food is handled there, but still not thrilling. I determined, with the usual New Year fervor, to quit piddling around and drop the rest of the baby weight, along with the previous fifteen pounds or so that had snuck up on me before I ever got pregnant, if possible.

Well aware that this meant a lifestyle change, not just a hazy intention to eat better, I've been signing up for fitness newsletters, reading motivational blogs. We tried South Beach when we got home after the holidays; I lasted two days. Overnight revolutions do not work on a body still crammed with breastfeeding hormones. So I've been making gradual changes instead.

All our sugary goodies disappeared; I replaced them with fruit. Grains are heavily rationed. The only bread in the house is multigrain pita; I get one slice a day. Cereal for breakfast is a once-a-week treat instead of the default option. I replaced the crackers in my hummus and peanut butter snacks with fruits and veggies. No processed food. No juice (except the fresh-squeezed orange juice from my recently-picked orange stash, although eating the whole orange is better). Throw in some almonds and walnuts if I feel snacky. Lean meat and dairy, in small portions. Several small meals a day instead of three large.

You know, all the stuff "they" keep telling us to do, that somehow seem really, really hard to actually do.

At least they would, if I had done them all at once. But I introduced them gradually, and found to my surprise that it wasn't so difficult after all. As long as I can have fruit, I don't miss bread so much. Although I'm not a raw veggie fan for the most part, I can do surprising things to them with a blender - things that go under the radar of my picky three-year-old along with my old, set-in-their-ways taste buds.

Of course, as we all know, this is only half the equation. For some time now I've been using the fact that I'm not actually OVERweight to justify my activity level, which is pretty much nill. I mean, I don't mind working up a sweat doing lawn work, rearranging furniture, or dancing around the living room, but the thought of slogging away for forty minutes on a treadmill makes me want to shoot myself.

So again, I started gradually. No sixty-minute workouts - just a few stolen moments while the kids were occupied. Twenty lunges on each side (the first time, I could only do fifteen on my left - ouch!) Twenty squats. Thirty seconds in a plank hold. And that was it. But I did them. Every other day. After a week I could hold the plank for forty seconds, and add an extra set to the squats. Lunges still kill me.

Meanwhile, my internet search continued. Anything to stay motivated. Last week I stumbled on an ad for an e-book called The Truth About Abs. It made the usual overhyped claims, but a few things stuck out in the pitch because they were things I was already doing and knew they worked. Things like: Forget the FDA-approved grain-based food pyramid. (Talk about scam. The American food industry is like one big socialized program designed to give us all diabetes. Seriously.)

I googled "truth about abs scam", "truth about abs criticism" - my usual method of researching internet snake oil. I couldn't find any negative reviews. Nothing but glowing testimonials and what looked like honest, unbiased assessments that called it a wealth of good, sound information. So I caved, bought the book, and downloaded it.

Consider this a plug. It is good information. It's mostly stuff I've heard before, here and there. The nutritional stuff is right on the money: whole foods, healthy fats, small portions, limited grains. Avoid high fructose corn syrup and trans fats like the plague they are. (By the by, who knew high fructose corn syrup is in RITZ CRACKERS? Damn you, Ritz! That's what I get for reading labels.) Whole, raw dairy, which I've been curious about for some time and just found a supplier a few miles away. Lean grass-fed beef and free-range eggs - I just found a local co-op that carries these, along with local organic produce at incredibly good prices.

The fitness portion also tickled my ear with good news: no endless hours of treadmill required. The author advocates high-intensity interval training (another thing I'd heard a lot about lately) along with resistance training (weight lifting, essentially). I did my first workout based on his guidelines yesterday - about twenty minutes that kicked my butt with nothing more than a yoga ball and a couple of 8-pound dumbbells. I am a total wimp. But it was something.

The best selling point of the whole program: for one day a week, I get to eat whatever I want, as much as I want. While still avoiding high fructose corn syrup, that is. But hey - a day when I can consume french bread and fettucine in giant portions is a good day, even without the corn syrup, no?

My scale has zigged and zagged in a discouraging fashion, not trending down fast enough to suit me. So this morning I got off of it feeling a little bit snippy.

A feeling that lasted until I put on my jeans. The jeans that, a week after Christmas, would barely button and allow me to breathe at the same time.

They fell off.

I traded them for the next size down.

It IS a brand new day.

Gratitude

2010-01-14T07:16:00.000-08:00

I was recently convicted that I complain a lot.

My blog is ample evidence. I could justify it by saying this is my place to vent, but the truth is I vent other places, too, so it's not like I save it up for a big release here. The ugly fact is that I'm a whiner by nature. And it kind of makes me sick when I realize how much whining I do about my pampered, overindulged, middle-class American life when there is so much pain and suffering in the world. (Yes, this train of thought was partially put on-track by the Haiti earthquake, although it had been sitting in the station for a while before that.)

So today, in an attempt to put off the old, I am adopting a better attitude. To begin with, I am no longer going to gripe about living in this state. It is my husband's job that keeps us here, and while it is never gracious to complain about any situation involving gainful employment, it seems particularly ungrateful right now. We live and work in a place most people have to save for years just to visit, there seems to be no imminent danger of his losing his job, and I should be...I AM...thankful that we are, for now, secure.

True, we have no appreciable seasons (although the recent cold snap had the natives wondering, and don't think I didn't enjoy every frostbitten minute of that). But this climate has its benefits. I just hitched Deuce on my back, walked a quarter-mile down the street, paid a sweet old man three dollars at his front door, and picked twenty pounds of oranges in his orchard. I ate four as soon as I got home. Holy mother of citrus, they are good. I have enough fresh oranges sitting in my fridge to cure a ship crew's worth of scurvy, and they are pesticide-free, undyed, ripened-on-the-tree-not-by-exposure-to-ethylene.

Not bad for something that a hundred years ago was such a delicacy in most of this country that getting one in your stocking at Christmas was such a big deal that you ate the whole thing, savoring skin and all.

So thanks, God, for oranges. For 57 degree days in January. For a job that pays the bills and that my husband enjoys. For healthy kids who are going to get all the vitamin C they can handle, ha. For warm beds and a comfortable home and the love of family and the abundance we share. I am grateful.

My First Knitting Project

2010-01-13T07:02:00.000-08:00

Look! My post has a title! Thanks again, Louise.

One of my Christmas presents was the Ultimate Sweater Machine, a fancy gizmo that knits a bazillion stitches a minute, or something like that. I had been nervous due to lots of negative reviews online, but a couple days ago pulled it out to give it a try.

After a few hours spent figuring out how it worked, yesterday I made this in about two hours:

Given it would have taken me about two YEARS hand-knitting and then been useless, I'd say this was a success.

Looking forward to mastering more than a stockinette stitch shortly...will continue to post results.

2010-01-08T13:03:00.000-08:00

Okay, I'm annoyed.

I'm playing with blogger layouts. And that's fine and dandy. (Except I can't figure out how to get rid of all those twitter/digg/whateverthehelltheyare gadgets at the end of my posts, but that is a rant for another day.)

My annoyance stems from something much more basic. It's the fact that when I'm posting, blogger DOES NOT GIVE ME A PLACE TO PUT A TITLE for my post.

Has anyone noticed that my posts do not have titles? Because it's not because I ignore that part. It's just NOT THERE.

I get around it by typing my first line in bold. But that's kind of lame. And nobody else I know on blogger seems to have this problem, because when I complain about it, nobody knows what I am talking about. I'm not a techie, but not totally computer-illiterate. If it were there, I would have seen it. WHY DO I NOT HAVE A PLACE FOR A TITLE? When I go into my "customize" area, and edit the elements in "posts", it shows a spot for a title. But when I actually click on "new post" and the page comes up, that bar is gone.

Can somebody send me a screencap of their "new post" page that shows a spot for a title bar? So I can believe it when you say it exists and somehow feel better about myself?

RAWR.

2010-01-04T18:51:00.001-08:00

The world according to Deuce...

He can totally crawl. He just doesn't know it.

Put him down on the floor amidst a procession of Interesting Objects, and he will move happily from one to the next like a bird following a breadcrumb trail until he has traversed the entire length of a room. A true crawl, too, straight to hands-and-knees with none of that elbow-thing most babies do after creeping.

But put him in a situation where he needs to crawl without distraction, and suddenly he is as helpless as a paraplegic.

Sunrise: (sets Deuce down and sits about four feet away) "Come on, sweetie. Come see mama."

Deuce: "AAAAIIIIIIIIIIIEEEEEEEEEOOOOOOOOOOOUUUUUUUUUUU!!!!HOW DARE YOU PUT ME DOWN! WHAT KIND OF UNFEELING SELFISH MOTHER ARE YOU?"

Sunrise: (inches a little closer) "Look, honey, I'm right here. Come crawl to me."

Deuce: "A CAVERNOUS DISTANCE SEPARATES US. I CANNOT BE EXPECTED TO TRAVERSE THE GRAND CANYON IN PURSUIT OF YOU."

Sunrise: (by way of encouragement, holds out arms so that hands are centimeters from his face) "Take mama's hands. I'll pull you over."

Deuce: "HOW CAN YOU LOOK AT THIS PATHETIC FACE AND REMAIN SO UNMOVED, YOU HEARTLESS WOMAN?"

Sunrise: "Come on, honey, you can do it."

Deuce: "WHY WILL NO ONE PICK UP THE BABY? DOES NO ONE CARE? HAS NO ONE ANY COMPASSION? CAN'T ANYONE SEE HOW IMMOBILIZED I AM?"

Sunrise: (assists Deuce from sitting to crawling position) "Here, baby boy, like this. Come on, come to mama."

Deuce: (belly flops on floor) "DID ANYBODY SEE THAT? SHE KNOCKED ME OVER! IF I COULD GET TO A PHONE, I'D CALL CHILD SERVICES! WHAT DOES A PERSON HAVE TO DO TO BE PROPERLY CARED FOR?"

Sunrise: (sighs, picks him up and sits him on lap).

Deuce: "..AAAAAAAAIIIIIIIIIEEEEEEE--oh. Hi, mom! Man, I'm so happy, I'm gonna eat your nose!"

2010-01-03T04:42:00.000-08:00

Dude. I have King's Quest I through VII sitting on my computer, waiting to be played, in all their primitive-graphic, synthy-sound-effect 1980s glory.

Because my husband is awesome.

Probably one of my best Christmas gifts EVAR (Excuse the netslang; the whole thing has me feeling rather juvenile and giggly) even though Sierra did not see fit to do some kind of commemorative booklet when they released this set, which is a crime. Just two little innocuous-looking CD-roms.

And here's how naive the nostalgia made me: I actually thought, for a minute: "Wow, how did they fit seven games on just two CDs?"

Yeah. Because it took me a minute to remember that playing these games on today's operating systems is like tying your toy airplane to a jet engine.

My computer barely notices these things are running. I think it is secretly laughing at me. "Okay, sweetie. You sit here and play your "game". I'll be over here doing Something Important, like a virus scan and system update. Oops, did I just start the screensaver? Sorry, I forgot you were in the middle of something."

But I don't care. Because I am too busy reliving my childhood.

If anyone wants me, I'll be in Daventry.

2009-12-21T18:54:00.000-08:00

In spite of all having head/chest colds, we are contriving to make merry around here. Since it's unlikely I'll post again until after the New Year:

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays to all friends, family, lurkers, and drop-ins! Make the most of this, because it's the closest thing to a Christmas card I've done this year.

May your days be merry and bright.

This should help:

Blessings and Peace for the New Year.

~Sunrise

2009-12-16T16:03:00.000-08:00

I am so loving this video and everything it stands for.

.

2009-12-15T08:14:00.000-08:00

Planning on making and decorating Christmas cookies today, and was reminded once more how I haven't seen those little silver ball sprinkles in stores in a long, long time. I don't even know why or when it first occurred to me to look for them, but over the last couple of years a cursory peek through the cake-decorating sections of local craft stores has been unfruitful. So today I looked 'em up.

Whattaya know. They have a name. Silver dragees - it's french; there should be a little accent mark over the "e", but whatever.

And what else do you know. The reason I can't find them is because some (surprise!) environmental lawyer in (surprise!) California sued the companies making and selling them, citing the toxicity of silver. He made a bundle, of course, since the companies gave up and settled rather than deal with the hassle and court fees. This in spite of the fact that we consume minute amounts of silver in our diet daily, people have been eating these sprinkles (and silver leaf, as well) in fancy desserts for like a century without ill effect, and you would have to consume probably all the dragees in France to risk poisoning yourself with it.

They're actually banned in California. Poor, poor California. You can supposedly still buy them in the rest of the 49, but the FDA has ordered that manufacturers label them as "not a food item - remove before consuming" or some such nonsense that nobody follows. Still, they are all but impossible to find.

So thank you, Napa attorney Mark Pollock, you greedy, joy-snatching, fearmongering Scrooge. Thank you for making sure the poor idiotic Americans don't poison themselves on a product that nobody was poisoning themselves on to begin with. I'm sure it makes you sleep better.

Friggin' grinch.

2009-12-08T07:30:00.000-08:00

Our town does a neat little event in which Santa in his sleigh is pulled on a giant trailer through the neighborhoods, with a police escort giving ample warning of his approach, sirens ablaze. Last night was our neighborhood's turn, of which I was unfortunately unaware until I heard the sirens. Peanut was back in his bedroom with MRB, reading bedtime stories, and what with my having to run back to the room (since MRB couldn't hear me shouting) to get them, by the time we got to the front door all Peanut saw were the sides and back of the brightly lit sleigh as it went by. Impressive to him, particularly with the sirens going and all, but still, he kind of missed Santa.

I figured it was good enough, and he seemed to think no more of it, but twenty minutes later as we were having our bedtime ritual, he interrupted my lullaby with a heartbroken sob.

"Mama," he gasped, "I can't...I can't..." (sob) "Mama, I can't say hi to Santa."

After I gathered myself up from the melted puddle of maternal compassion to which this reduced me, I cuddled him and told him we'd go visit Santa soon so he could say "hi" up close.

Which is why today I am searching online for the nearest Santa meet-and-greet, and feeling suddenly like a real...parent. I know, I've been one for three years now, but it's somehow strange to start doing things I can remember doing with my own mother. Up to this point, it's been new territory, and now, suddenly, it has this nostalgic familiarity that makes me feel very young and very old at the same time. Funny.

2009-12-01T11:28:00.000-08:00

Creeping has begun.

Deuce moves rather like the minute hand on a clock - watching him carefully reveals no appreciable motion, but take your eyes away for a minute and when you look again, he's covered ground. He's most motivated by pursuit of the small and filthy, which is in plentiful supply on my floors these days; if I get down on the ground to coax him along he gets excited and throws his limbs uselessly into the air, rocking and bouncing on the pink cushion of his belly like a little beached whale.

He is extremely interested in solid food but not in any traditional "baby foods" - makes hideous faces at cereal and gags on strained prunes but will suck down chunks of avocado, sweet potato, or banana from his mesh teether with great gusto. Yesterday he nibbled eagerly at a Ritz cracker I was eating, dribbling the sodden crumbs into my lap and lifting up his voice in angry protest when it was gone. I appear to have a Lover of Food on my hands.

We spent Thanksgiving with MRB's family, I enjoying having willing relatives take over the care and entertainment of Peanut, except for Black Friday when they went shopping. As I would rather eat my own eyeballs than shop on Black Friday, the kids and I had a nice quiet day at the house.

We returned with a new (to us) van - a gift from my in-laws, one which I am really sort of ashamed of accepting, but if MRB will not gainsay them I certainly cannot. At any rate it should last us many years - along with the orange tree purchased as a birthday present for me, that I hope to get into the ground in the back yard tonight.

My autumn decor is packed away, and Christmas fills the house.

Life is good.

2009-11-16T11:06:00.000-08:00

Today is Deuce's six-month birthday.

He celebrated the occasion by having his first decidedly non-breastmilk-only poop, reminiscent of last night's experimentation with a chunk of avocado in his mesh feeder. I guess the babymoon is over. *sigh*

He continues to be completely charming in nearly every way. He wakes up with a smile, a big "gee, I'm awake! How nice to see you, mom!" expression that splits his whole face in half. Sit him up and he will bounce and wave his arms in a frenzy of delight.

He laughs at everything. Sneezes. Goofy faces. Tickles. Pictures of other babies. His brother saying the word, "Five." He laughed while eating his avocado, presumably just because he enjoyed it so much. Sometimes he laughs at nothing at all - just sits by himself and chuckles into empty air. Maybe it's not empty. His guardian angel might be a real comedian.

When he's not laughing, he's generally contemplating some found object with a Serious and Thoughtful expression. Although most items find their ways into his mouth eventually, it is not his first impulse - he likes to examine and explore things, usually talking his way through them in a quiet series of monosyllables.

He cries, of course, at all the usual things. Tiredness, hunger, pain, teething - in fact he makes far more fuss about cutting teeth than Peanut did. But his demeanor, over all, is sunny - making me even happier that we incorporated a name meaning "bright" into his mouthful of a title. It's very likely that portion of his name is what we will eventually call him, once (if ever) we drop the nickname in use.

He is a precious gift, a treasured addition to our family, a perfect complement to his loud and impulsive brother. I cannot imagine life without him.

I love you, little man.

2009-11-09T11:54:00.001-08:00

Halloween Scrapbook pages

No other words necessary, really.

Digital scrapping materials from scrapthatidea.com. Names altered for security. :)

2009-11-02T17:54:00.000-08:00

The other day, Peanut was playing in a playground and somehow bumped his tailbone going down a slide. He clapped a hand to his bottom, exclaiming "Ooo!", his mouth a little round "o", and ran to MRB.

"Daddy," he explained plaintively, "I hurt myself."

When MRB expressed sympathetic concern, Peanut turned and bent over, poking out his little backside. "Kiss my booty, Daddy."

~ true story, recorded at the express request of MRB. :)

2009-10-22T20:00:00.000-07:00

Wow.

Touch a nerve with a controversial topic, and suddenly you get comments out the wazoo.

Well, okay, not really. But I hardly ever get commentary from anonymous readers, and I am strangely amused when strangers on the internet throw in their two cents. (I'm not talking about you, adaon45, obviously.)

Let me add a little (okay, a long) disclaimer to the previous post.

I have no moral qualms about extended breastfeeding. I know I mentioned that family members were starting to mutter, but let me state for the record that several of my parenting decisions (co-sleeping, no cry-it-out, etc) meet with disapproval from said members, and I could not care less what they or anyone else think about it. It is my and my husband's business and we make what decisions we feel are best for our family.

To the anonymous commenter: I get what you are saying. I know there are many people uncomfortable with the idea that anyone, particularly a man, will remember nursing. In my experience, however, those who are most vocal about how long a child should breastfeed are the ones who have never actually breastfed a child, and make their decision completely arbitrarily. My sister-in-law, for example, has stated unequivocally that a child who can verbally ask to be nursed is "too old" to nurse.

Why?

No reason. Just because. That's what she's comfortable with.

And if she ever has babies, and that remains her comfort level, that's fine. But for now it's a decision based on a random, culturally-driven opinion, and frankly, I'm going to trust my judgment, based on mothering instinct and experience, over that. (Let's not even get into the fact that children all learn to speak at drastically different rates, so you couldn't even apply a rule like hers universally if you wanted to.)

I would disagree with the idea that men are naturally obsessed with breasts. There are still a few primitive cultures on earth in which it is normal for women to go topless, and I don't hear anything about the men in those cultures being constantly overcome with raving lust at the sight. The obsession with breast-as-sex-toy is an entirely societal one, one of many unhealthy misconceptions fostered by a consumer-engine that knows sex sells, sells, sells so better get people wired from an early age to crave, crave, crave it. Make no mistake - marketing decides what is sexy. If Madison Avenue decided feet were taboo and women everywhere must cover them up or risk indecent exposure, men in this country would start fantasizing about feet and manufacturers would start making leather-strapped gem-studded torture devices to wrap them in and cover them up and make them even more alluring. *

I don't want to play that game. It's inevitable that my children will be exposed to it, of course, because this is the world we live in. But I firmly believe that my son will be better off for knowing exactly what breasts are biologically designed for. A definition that does not include "men's playthings." At the very least, they will not be some mysterious objects whose forbidden nature makes them all the more titillating. ("Titillating" - ha ha, is that where we get the word...never mind.) Nothing attracts a child - my child, anyway - like something that is off-limits, and in this case there is no real reason, except arbitrary societal standard, to make my breasts off-limits to him. In a practical sense, I can't do it anyway - even were Peanut weaned, he would still see them all the time as I nurse his infant brother.

Does he have a nutritional need for it? No, of course not, although it's certainly not bad for him and has come in handy several times when he's been sick and not wanted to eat or drink anything else. Obviously, his need at this point is purely psychological, and it might be accurate to call it a habit rather than a need. Is this enough reason to wean him? I don't need ice cream nutritionally, but take it away and watch what I do.

So much for my stance on breastfeeding a three-year-old. My ambivalence to it comes from the fact that I am tired. When I read up on tandem nursing during my pregnancy, I saw a lot of this from experienced moms - that they began to feel "touched out" by the demands of two children, and even began to resent the older child for taking attention away from the infant. I've gotten to the point with Peanut where I actually feel a little used - he cannot sit in my lap or lie next to me without expecting to nurse, and it reminds me of women who complain that their husbands are only affectionate when they want some action. I want to be able to cuddle and comfort my son without attaching him to my breast. But the two things are so intricately intertwined in his mind since infancy that to refuse him the one is to refuse the other.

So there it is. Sigh.

Not that there aren't humorous moments in compensation. Two days ago Peanut, after a fall that bruised his knee, nursed just long enough to get a good let-down going and when he popped off, milk sprayed in five or six high-velocity jets across the room. My reaction - panicked, but laughing - probably didn't help to curb how disturbed he was at this phenomenon, and for the next day or so whenever he nursed he would pull off to check, anxiously observing every time, "It's not spraying?" He really still has not made the connection that "mommy milk" is the milk that comes out of mommy - I think it's more his phrase for the activity than the substance.

Now...it's quarter to midnight, and I have once again violated my intention to get to bed at a decent hour knowing my kids will wake me up before seven. Woe.

*Oh, wait. Those are called shoes.

2009-10-18T19:14:00.000-07:00

Flotsam...

Deuce going to sleep reminds me of myself in labor. He flips his head from one side to the other fitfully while uttering a long, drawn-out moan that ends in a whimper. (It's usually kind of vibratto-ed by my thumping him on the back all the while.) Then he lies still for a few seconds, and starts over again. Unlike labor, it only takes about five minutes to accomplish the goal in this case.

It has been in the - ah, joy! - 50s since yesterday, and I finally pulled out one of the long-sleeved nightgowns I dyed before Deuce's birth. And because my joy makes me giddy, I also threw a pair of colorful Babylegs into the mix.

Groovy. Man, I can't wait to blackmail him with this photo.

Peanut's birthday was on Friday, and I should have posted about such a momentous occasion on the actual day, but was too busy trying to prepare for his party on Saturday. As the party was only a small affair, what I really mean was I was cleaning house like a madwoman. Meanwhile he snuck into the garage and discovered his present, so we didn't exactly pull off the surprise reveal we'd been hoping for. But he loved the train set, and has been playing with it nonstop since Saturday afternoon.

Here he is at his party.

I made this cake, and am happy to note that while it is no masterpiece, it would not have been a candidate for Cake Wrecks. This is about the best I can hope for, cake-wise.

Here he is after the sugar high took effect:

Yes, I have a three-year-old. It is an exciting, agonizing, pull-out-your-hair, laugh-until-you-cry, collapse into bed every night in exhaustion while thanking God you've made it through another day kind of thing. It is a roller-coaster ride, over hills and landmarks at breakneck speed. Every day I make a note of some quirk, some habit that needs to be recorded, knowing that he'll stop doing it within a week or two, on to the next thing, and I will forget the details that seem so amazing, funny, or exasperating today.

We've started signing again, so that I can brush up my skills for communicating with Deuce. Peanut now actually enjoys it instead of just putting up with my enthusiasm, but he has no idea that there is an actual language with real vocabulary involved, so he just makes up signs off the cuff for whatever he's doing. This morning we were eating donuts, so he informed me that he was making the sign for "donut", and bobbed his cupped hand upside down. Yesterday it was "chips" and "poop". I'm sure there are real signs for all these things, but I never have time to look them up when he's interested.

We were watching "It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown" (one of my favorites) the other night, and in the opening scene Linus is traumatized by watching Lucy carve a pumpkin, moaning that "you didn't tell me you were gonna kill it!" and bursting into tears. Peanut pointed to the screen and observed, "He's so sad."

"Yes," I agreed, "Linus is sad."

He looked at me confidently and explained, "He wants some mommy milk."

Because, of course, mommy milk is the panacea for all sorrows and injuries in his world, so it must extend to everyone else too. My laughter was a tad rueful. I was a cautious supporter of extended breastfeeding and child-led weaning before I knew I'd still be nursing a three-year-old. Many in my family are beginning to emanate disapproval over it, and I can't say I'm thrilled with such clinginess, mainly because it makes me wonder if he's somehow not well-adjusted emotionally still to be so attached. Or maybe "addicted" is the better word.

But it isn't a battle I've cared to fight yet. At one point during our vacation, he had bumped his head pretty badly while roughhousing with some friends' kids, and refused to be comforted in any manner except a short nursing session. Later on we heard his little voice piping up from the back seat in the car, explaining soberly, "I get a boo-boo. I want some mommy milk. I get better."

With that kind of logic, how am I supposed to discourage him?

It is eleven p.m, time to wake him up for one last potty trip for the night. Two nights now with no accidents, hoping third is a charm.

2009-10-14T09:05:00.001-07:00

Today I cleaned out my closet and am throwing out my maternity and fat clothes. I am celebratory. But that's not what this post is about.

I went through Mr. RB's side of the closet in addition to mine. This is a much bigger job. Because unlike most straight men, MRB has a real thing for clothing.

It's one of the downfalls of being married to a costume designer. Fashion-consciousness just should not be one of the genes on the Y chromosome. It creates all kinds of headaches.

Because MRB can't just have utilitarian clothing. No. His clothes must be interesting. His shirts are embellished with embroidery, trimmed with piping, textured with burnt-out velveteen, and printed with wild tropical patterns, chinese dragons, or paisleys like some nightmare out of the 60's. He wears stuff that would get a schoolboy beaten up on the playground. (He's plenty safe at GEEC, though,except from guys that probably want to steal his shirts.) And when he sees something he likes, he HAS to buy it, deaf to my nagging queries about whether he actually needs another shirt.

Consequently, he has more clothing than I do. A situation that threatens to upset the balance of the universe.

I don't really mind that aspect of it. He has an office job and I do not, and a stay-at-home mom has no need for an extensive wardrobe for every season. I like nice clothes as much as the next woman, but am not a compulsive shopper and have no problem wearing the same things, year in and year out, until they fall apart. What I do mind is closet clutter.

If it were just the stuff he bought for himself, that would be enough to deal with. But his parents contribute as well. They are convinced he dresses too casually at work, failing to understand after 20 years of his employment at GEEC that its conservative dress codes do not apply to their artists. 'Cause you can't cramp the artists' style, yo? They can come to work in jeans and flip-flops if they want, so they can think they are being treated well and not ask questions about why there's no budget for real brass buttons on a character's coat while shut up, we're about to buy Marvel.

So every Christmas and birthday, and every time they happen to hit a sale at an outlet mall, MRB's parents load him up with more clothes, of the type they consider professional and attractive. Stiff-collared polo shirts. Dress slacks. Pinstripes. They have, thank God, given up on ties, an archaic item which I have seen MRB wear all of once in my life. These classy duds are hung in the closet, usually worn once out of filial obligation, and then collect dust. I have tried to explain to them the wastefulness of their time and money in the endeavor to turn their son into a preppy businessman, but it is clear from whence his stubbornness came.

So every six months or so, I do a major closet cleanout. If I haven't seen MRB wear something in the intervening period, it goes. And since he tends to stick with his favorite flavor of the month, often spending several weeks wearing the same nine or ten shirts over and over, I usually collect a fairly sizable pile. I have been known to dispose of them without his knowledge, and he has never missed a thing I've thrown away. However, I don't like being devious, so I usually let him go through the pile for a final say, in case he has an emotional attachment to anything in particular.

The problem now is, I've done this so many times that we really are down to mostly things that he really, really likes, even though he doesn't wear them much. So what do I sacrifice?

The tropical tiki shirt with the 50s cheesecake babes?

The samurai shirt with the giant koi? (Hideous. Even more so in person.)

Or how about this little satin number, which I like to call the Chinese Matrix?

There are actual Chinese characters on there. They probably translate as, "You dumb American, all your economy now belong to us."

Or how about this one?

Because does a guy really need a shirt the color of cat vomit?

But see, he really likes all these shirts. He just never wears them. (Actually, that's a lie. He wears the matrix one quite a bit. I just wanted to post the picture.)

And that doesn't even scratch the surface of all his long-sleeve button-downs. He has four black dress shirts. FOUR. Oh, but they're each a little different. One is ultrasuede. One has intricate embroidery around the collar and cuffs. One has burnt-out velvet texture. And one is a plain cotton shirt in case he's going to a rehearsal and wants to avoid pick-up lines from the male dancers. So you see, they are all indispensable.

If I weren't so Right-Brained myself, we'd have some serious issues.

2009-10-10T20:09:00.000-07:00

WOW.

All these babies have something in common:

They are dolls.

Look up "reborn dolls" online, and add another item to my "creative things to do" list.

2009-10-05T08:59:00.000-07:00

A Peanut sat on a Railroad Track...

Peanut has finally begun to sing. He cannot carry a tune yet, and he cannot remember more than a line or two of any song, but as he has never before displayed the slightest bit of interest in singing despite my doing it all the time since his birth, I am thrilled at this small development. Currently his favorite ditty is "Following the Leader" from Disney's Peter Pan, particularly the chorus, which goes, "Tee-dum. Tee-dee. A-teedeley-do-tee-day...etc"

So, many times a day, when he's feeling happy, he spontaneously breaks into this. Only he can't say it. It comes out: "Tee-dum. Tee-wee. A dee-dee-dee-dee-dum," but this is cuter than the original, and I laugh out loud every time I hear it, particularly the "tee-wee" part.

Occasionally while singing (or speaking) he comes upon a line whose difficulty daunts him, and after a couple of tries he shakes his head in annoyance and declares, "I can't say dat." Usually I can figure out what he's aiming for and walk him through it a word at a time, but not always.

He is very into trains, and particularly Thomas the Tank Engine, to my slowly dying dismay. (I don't mind trains, but Thomas annoyed me and I had not planned ever to expose him. A well-meaning grandparent let him watch an episode, however, and he was hooked. I have grown less irritated by it since then, having found the original books rather charming, and we watch the program rarely enough to keep it in my good graces.) So for his birthday we found a gently used Brio train table on craigslist, which Mr. Right Brain went to pick up, failed to follow the driving directions, and wound up driving about three hours longer than he should have. Then last weekend we learned a friend at church just sold an entire Thomas table and set that had they known we were looking, would have given it to us. FAIL.

However, the Brio set gets brownie points, in my book, for NOT having trains with goofy faces on their engines.

He is learning his alphabet, slowly, but baffles me with his continued ignorance of color. In an artsy household, you can bet we talk about colors all the time, yet at near three he still cannot identify them correctly or even consistently pick them out in a multiple-choice-type situation. He resists sorting items by color and still has no interest in coloring with crayons, markers, etc, all of which has begun to make me wonder if he is completely colorblind. I know how rare that is, but parental paranoia is a mighty persistent bug once it bites. I wonder how they test for such a condition.

I've been told it's too early to expect such things of him, but on the other hand I'm always hearing about how they have photographic memories at this age and soak up learning like a sponge as long as you keep it fun. Which I do. So which is it? Sigh.

2009-09-29T11:05:00.000-07:00

If you can't get him to the mountain...

Autumn is my absolute favorite season. The eye-feast of warm colors contrasting the crispness in the air; the elusive dry smell of dying greenery and burning leaves; the associations of harvest and homecoming.

Which is, naturally, why I live in a state that is utterly bereft of all of these things. God doesn't want to overload me with more ecstasy than I can handle, apparently.

If we are lucky, we will get a cold front or two that drops the temperatures into the 70s or high 60s over the next couple of months. Our deciduous trees lose their leaves, without any preamble or fanfare, about mid-December. We have something of a winter - January typically sees some cold snaps in the 40s that might last a few days - but there's no real transitional period in or out.

So if I want Autumn, I have to go find it elsewhere - hence our traditional October excursion to the family home in Vermont, as often as we are able. This year, after maxing out our vacation budget on the Colorado voyage, another cross-country trip is not an option. So for the last week I've been bringing the mountain to Mohammed.

My dining room. It exhausted my stash of autumnal decoration, which gives me an excuse to go get more for the rest of the house.

Scrapbooking also gives me a good fix. I spent the summer working on last year's beach pictures, but September's arrival called for a change of scene.

Why it took me seven years of fiddling around with paper and scissors and pictures that were always the wrong size to realize I could be doing my scrapping on the computer, I don't know. But at least my graphics degree is finally being put to some use.

It's not Fall. But it's as close as I'm going to get, this year.

2009-09-21T13:03:00.000-07:00

Joy of the Boy

Deuce was four months old last week - I will have to ask parents of large families whether the time seems to shorten exponentially with each successive child, because that is my experience so far.

If second babies know that their development and personality are assessed almost entirely in the context of comparison with their siblings, no wonder they are prone to rivalry.

I don't mean to do it. Because, of course, each of my boys is as Unique and Wonderful as Peter Pan himself, and who hit what milestone at an earlier age, or who is the better sleeper of the two, is irrelevant to their inherent worth. But they are such a study in contrasts that I can't help noting their differences.

Peanut smiled at six weeks, cooed at us only intermittently, and often worried me over his avoidance of eye contact. He demanded to be held but once in my arms frequently seemed to ignore my existence. He laughed, finally, at seven months. He took 40 minute naps, defied being put into a schedule, and often refused to sleep at all without me next to him. He slept through the night for the first time when he was 2.5.

Deuce smiled at six weeks and is rarely silent. He coos, shrieks happily, gurgles, and in all ways seeks out interaction with us. While he does prefer to be held, he is happy almost anywhere as long as there are people in the vicinity who will talk to him. He has been laughing since he was two months old and now guffaws delightedly at his brother's antics.

He naps right on cue, sometimes for four-hour siestas during the day, and sleeps in seven-hour stretches in his own bed at night. It is rather well, for me, that he is my second baby, because if their birth order had been reversed I would have been lulled into a false sense of the easiness of parenting and been totally unprepared for Peanut's high needs.

Peanut is pretty much the spitting image of me as a toddler, right down to the golden-brown curls (which I finally cut short last weekend - sob - but actually his hair, unlike mine, is apparently going to stay curly, and the resultant unruly mop is very cute) and orange-based, easily-tanning skin.

Deuce has his dad's eyes and his fair pink and white skin, probably prone to freckling. His hair, in spite of my early protestations to the contrary, has quite a bit of red in it. (I thought it was wishful thinking on my part.) He is losing most of the newborn stuff, however, and it is too early to call the color of the fuzz growing in behind it, though it seems lighter. He looks so much like Mr. RB's baby pictures I think it's safe to say we have pretty good representations of each of us.

He rolls over, sits unsupported for a few seconds, chews ferociously on his hands, and produces enough drool to irrigate an acre of farmland. (How babies seem to emit fluids in amounts vastly greater than that which they take in, without becoming dehydrated, is one of the mysteries of the universe, but I'm convinced there is a solution to ending world hunger somewhere in here.) He is deliciously chubby and roly-poly, with thighs so fat it takes two people to pry him out of his bumbo seat. He is sixteen pounds and wearing 6-9 month sizes, and will probably be in 12 by Christmas.

He is a joy and delight, and I am so grateful for him. For both of them.

And in spite of their myriad differences, there are certain things that are eerily similar:

2009-09-04T10:01:00.001-07:00

Golden Hours

Ahhh, both children sleeping...I could fold laundry, or organize dresser drawers, or work on my snack for game night tonight, or...um...uh...

.....zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz...............................

*Snort* Wha-? Whuzzat? Phbth...oh. Yes. I forgot; my angel baby decided one a.m. would be a neat bedtime last night. He made up for it by sleeping until ten, but I have yet to make up the difference, given that Peanut was up at the usual break of day.

Lessee, Friday recap. We've recuperated from our jet lag and returned to a normal (more or less) schedule. I have survived a week without an oven or range, as the keypad on my unit suddenly refused to turn off the oven, necessitating a throwing of the breaker. Those readers who've been around a few years might remember that this is our second oven/range - the one that came with the house went out in similar fashion after some digital thingamadoo went bad and wouldn't turn off one of the burners. Cripes, how I long to hurl the digital age back into oblivion and return to the use of reliable hardware. Fortunately, we bought an extended warranty on this unit, so the part is on order and either it or the entire appliance will be replaced at no cost.

I've actually survived pretty well without it; my crock-pot, microwave, and griddle have all pitched in and probably using them has saved us some power...always an item on my mind after July's $375 bill. Sacrificial cutbacks on a/c use in August has brought it down to $309, which is still enough to make me feel ill. Granted, we have two extra adults staying in the house right now (some old friends, who've moved into the area and are living with us until they find a place), but holy kilowatts, Batman. And why were we all asleep when the state legislature pushed through a 30% increase in rates for the power company lobbyists?

Speaking of crock-pots and cooking, our grocery bill has fallen $125 since last month, just from my implementing weekly meal planning. Having quickly decided that grocery shopping with an infant and toddler is not a task I take on eagerly, I've been making out a menu and shopping on Saturday while Mr. RB does child duty. As the weeks go by I'm beginning to get a better idea of how much I actually need, so I hope to see that bill drop even more.

We've been listening to Dave Ramsey a lot. Can you tell?

Yesterday I had an MRI/MRA done on my head. I am seeing Mr. RB's doctor now, so that he can have me tested for the same condition Mr. RB has (something to do with an inability to metabolize folic acid - he thinks this is what caused the stroke, and it is genetic, so we're trying to assess the probability of the boys' having it), and when he heard my family history he immediately prescribed a scan for me. Losing my father and his brother to ruptured brain aneurysm has always made me nervous about my own chances of a similar fate, but no doctor has ever suggested a preemptive diagnostic scan, and I'm very impressed with this guy's proactive-ness. I'm hoping, of course, that there was nothing to see, but we'll find out in a few days.

Creative Things I've Squeezed In:

Sock puppets with Peanut

He promptly christened his puppet "Hugga Wugga", after the catchphrase of a monster muppet in one of his favorite muppet show sketches. The large puppet I made is called "Hugga Wugga Daddy". Not terribly creative, maybe, but cute, and Peanut has an uncanny knack for matching the puppet's mouth movements with his words. I know it seems obvious, but I've seen amateurs do puppetry and they often have no idea how to make the vocalizations match the movement. Peanut seems to have an innate sense of syllables, although his timing is off.

Figure drawing with cute model

Born of my resolution to get back to physical drawing, from life; I'm determined to draw one of my kids at least three times a week. Of course, kids only make good models when sleeping, so I guess I'll be doing a lot of sleep drawings. Come to think of it, maybe that's what I should be doing right now!

I think I will...

2009-09-03T16:04:00.001-07:00

Chronicles of Colorado, Part Four: Day Eleven:

Saturday morning. We, including T and K, take all our boys to a nearby park where there's a little mini-railroad ride. This might just qualify as Peanut's favorite point of the whole trip.
There's a disproportionately large number of women with babies in slings at the park, and I finally figure out there's some kind of Parenting magazine expo going on. Unfortunately, we've gotten there too late; the La Leche League booth is already closing up, too late for me to run over and hand out business cards for my nursing necklaces. I do have several people ask me covetously where I got my celtic dragon Mei Tai, who are crestfallen when I reveal it was at a Renaissance Faire in Tampa. A bit far to travel for a baby wrap.

Bosom friend E. joins us for lunch and then she and I go shopping while Mr. RB takes the kids back for a nap. We hit our favorite Tibetan imports store, find a new one where I spend too much money on cool bohemian clothing, and shake our heads when overhearing a young fresh-faced college co-ed tell the proprietor that she'd like to buy a "deity" but doesn't know much about them; could he suggest an appropriate one? "I respect people's convictions," E. whispers to me aside, as the girl is led off to a display of Hindu idols, "but if you can't even be bothered to do some research before you pick out your god..." Indeed. Feeling we should say something, but having no idea what, we let the moment go.

T and K have invited all members of our old crowd still in the area over to their place for pizza that evening. By the time all are assembled there seem to be a hundred kids running around. It's actually only eight, but they are loud and rambunctious enough to discourage me from the idea of doing real birthday parties for Peanut for another few years. It's fun to see everyone again, and feel the old dynamic still resonating underneath all the changes over the years. These people are precious to me, and my only sadness is the absence of those who could not make it. We sit outside in the grass to eat, giving up the table and chairs to the kids while we all enjoy a couple of hours of feeling like college students again.

Sometime in the middle of the night, I am awakened by the sound of Peanut crying from several rooms away, which is odd, since he is supposed to be sleeping on the floor at the foot of my bed. I creep out, calling him, and find him standing on the first landing of the staircase. "I fall down the drain," he tells me anxiously when I ask him gently why he is there. "Alligators get me." He repeats this several times as I lead him back to the room, and put him in bed with me to prevent further wandering. It takes him a long time to settle down and go to sleep, and I am mystified, finally deciding he was having a nightmare and sleepwalking.

Day Twelve:
Sunday; we get in the car and discover that somehow in the night the windshield has cracked; a jagged line runs from the bottom edge up through the middle, curving like a fishhook. I find myself doubting my previous confidence that our car insurance covers rentals, but it can't be helped now.

Mr. RB and I take the kids to my old church, where I am recognized and remembered by many, including the pastor, who interrupts his own sermon to exclaim over my presence. I love seeing them, but am shocked by how...old they look, these folks who were in their prime when I was in school, whose children I played with are now in college. It happens, I know, but I don't want to think about it.

We leave T and K, bid goodbye to Ft. Collins, and drive down to Denver.

Day Thirteen:

Friends K and W have opened their home to us, so we sleep in a little and then jump in the car, headed for Estes Park, where we enjoy a little core family time. The Obamamobile makes it all the way to the top of Rocky Mountain National Park - over 12,000 feet - despite Mr. RB's doubts, growling its way up the grade doggedly. We muscle through a tame herd of elk spilled across the road, and stop a few times to admire the grandeur of creation. I've been to this spot many times, but it never stops taking my breath away with its sheer scope.

Mr. RB comments, like his mother before him, on the lack of guard rails on the edges of a road overlooking a drop of thousands of feet. It occurs to me that guard rails create a false sense of security that could lure people into driving faster than is safe. Seems as good a theory as any. Meanwhile, who needs something blocking that view?

We both feel oddly sleepy on the return drive - the descent down a treacherous road being a terrible time to fight drowsiness, I wonder if the altitude is to blame. We open the windows and pinch each other, sing and talk about whatever we can think of. The strange lethargy dissipates as we get back into Estes.

I cook dinner for K and W that evening, and we pack up for an early morning flight.

Day Fourteen:
We board the plane, reluctant. As with every Colorado trip, we muse on schemes that would free us from GEEC so we could live where we like. Ultimately they come to nothing, particularly in a poor economy, but it's nice to dream.

When the plane door opens after landing, the air is like a hot damp washcloth clapped over our faces. Welcome home.

2009-08-31T13:15:00.000-07:00

Chronicles of Colorado, part three:

Day Eight:
Our last full day with my parents. It opens well for Peanut, as he joins Grandpa in the tractor building a haystack, learning neat new words like "forklift" which will be repeated ad nauseum for the next two weeks.We drive to Beaver Creek Reservoir for a picnic lunch, the sky being a perfect shade of cerulean blue and the air fresh and mild. My father-in-law attempts to fish with a branch, a bunch of tangled fishing line and hooks found on the ground, and a piece of hot dog as bait. It is unsuccessful, but he has a lot of fun trying. Peanut spends an hour throwing rocks into the lake. I join him a few times in this endeavor. Why is throwing rocks into water so much fun?

That evening we have everyone over to the house for supper. The hummingbirds are now swarming on the feeder like starving bees. I love hummingbirds because their personalities are so inversely proportional to their size. It gives me the sense that they are always just on the verge of bursting at their feathery seams with their own self-importance, which would be more than enough for creatures a hundred times their size. An elephant with the ego of a hummingbird would be an insufferable thing.

I fill the feeder again and experiment by holding it in my hands rather than hanging it up. The boldest hesitate only seconds before throwing caution to the winds, settling on my thumbs to drink, the wind of their wings fanning my exposed skin until my fingers tingle with cold. They buzz cheekily around my head, some of them staring me down inches from my nose until I'm sure I'm about to get a rapier-like stab in the eye. Several of them squabble for supremacy over certain holes in the feeder, knocking one another out of the way with indignant squealing chirps, while a few, above such gratuitous displays, sip quietly, their threadlike tongues occasionally slithering into view between the needle points of their beaks.

Naturally, the spectacle attracts attention, and everyone gets a turn playing with the hummingbirds:
There is still no sign of the travel rewards coupon, and I am seriously ticked.

Day Nine:
A call to the rewards company from my parents' house leaves my customer service rep just as confused as I am, but we do find out that the coupon was supposed to have been FedExed rather than mailed. My mother calls Fed Ex, who say it was delivered on Tuesday and left in the front door. Given the kind of wind in this area, something left in the front door could be anywhere in three counties. I give up in despair and weep tears of frustration while Mr. RB returns to the guest lodge to inform his parents of the situation, and it is my father-in-law who thinks of checking the never-used front door of the lodge.

Bingo. There it sits, mocking us, between the screen and the door, a joke of fate and a new Fed Ex guy not yet familiar with which house on the property is the primary residence.

Coupon in hand, we pack up, bid farewell to my in-laws, and pile into the Expedition with my mother and brother. My sister and stepdad have already left early in the morning in her loaded-down car, college bound.

The drive is one I have made many times, but never stops being breathtaking. We stop in Salida for lunch, and mom takes the time to run us into the Bungled Jungle, a quirky art gallery that makes me think of an oddball mixture of Henson, Froud, and Dr. Suess. In other words, right up my alley. I drool over the unique creations, scowl at the price tags, and take lots of pictures for inspiration.

Mom drops us off at the Denver airport car rental, where we get our free Prius, promptly christened the Obamamobile by my brother. It takes Mr. RB five minutes just to figure out how to turn it on. Finally we are off, and it drives well, and of course gets great mileage. But the display screen showing energy consumption quickly becomes tiresome and distracting, and I am haunted by the vulnerability of my children in this tiny car, trying to stave off imagining how a collision with a larger vehicle will leave us smashed like a little green bug on the highway.

We make it to Ft. Collins, bid goodbye to my family at my sister's dorm, and head to the home of two of my college buddies. T & K were married during my senior year, and their two boys are just-four and almost-two - perfect ages for Peanut to play with. Actually, it turns out he's more interested in playing with their toys, but at this age, it's pretty much the same thing. We have a good time catching up and relaxing with them.

Day Ten:
A morning jaunt to a local playground puts me in brief reunion with two old colorguard chums, with whom I've only recently become re-connected through their blogs. MountainMama and Tinkerfrog have both done well for themselves in the intervening years, and we have a good time reminiscing about the past, admiring each other's kids, and playing with flags, which C. was geek enough to bring. Mr. RB attempts to video this last activity and is frustrated with our lack of coordinated performance; he seems to believe we should still remember our routines of over ten years ago. We do submit to posing for still shots, carefully arranging flag silk to cover the ravages of childbearing, so that nobody has to sigh too loudly over the difference between our nineteen-year-old bodies and the thirty-something versions.T, were you doing first position arms on purpose, or was that pure reflex?

Note the cloudless sky. An hour of sitting in this thin-atmosphered sun and I am roasted with sunburn. The park is great, though, complete with splashpad, and Peanut has a blast. Deuce sleeps beautifully the whole time.

After lunch at Big City Burrito we meet up with my sister and tour her through Old Town, the quaint artsy district in downtown Ft. Collins. I discover the Children's Mercantile Co. to be the most amazing toy store I have ever visited, and we spend over an hour there while Peanut plays in their toddler section with a train set. I wish, not for the first time, to be independently wealthy, particularly when I lay eyes on the Zutano line of baby clothing. Somebody stop me!

The price tags do.

We return to T & K's that evening to grill hot dogs and burgers, after making a pit stop at the cleanest, most gorgeous Wal-Mart I've ever seen. Wal-Mart. Seriously? I am becoming progressively dissatisfied with my home state. Can't we move here?

2009-08-28T08:40:00.000-07:00

Chronicles of Colorado, part two:
Day Three:
"Me go see kitty cats?" are the first words out of Peanut's mouth. He submits reluctantly to his breakfast obligations and then we bundle up - it is grey, rainy, and about 40 degrees - and head to the other house. Once again, the cats provide ample amusement, and we also get to pet the horses.

A quick trip to the grocery store in town arms me with the essentials, including enough sugar to fill the hummingbird feeder. There's a hummer on it within 45 seconds of hanging it up, which thrills me more than it should, probably, but SQUEEilovehummingbirds!! I check it throughout the day and take it as a personal affront that they are not frequenting it more.

By the afternoon, the sun is out and the wind is a gale. I attempt to hang our wet laundry on the line outside and am nearly blown into the next county when the towels catch the air. The stuff on the line dries faster than the stuff in the dryer. After leaving 90 percent humidity, this makes me shake my head in disbelief.

We make plans for the week, reluctantly giving up my wish to make an overnight camping trip to Ouray; there just isn't time to make it worthwhile. My stepdad spots a herd of elk on a nearby ridge with his spotting scope and we all take a look, making appropriate noises of awe at the size of some of the bulls. Their living room's wall space is already maxed out as far as trophy animals are concerned, though.

Since the rental car coupon is still MIA, I get on the travel rewards website to find out what the deal is. I can find no record of the transaction, and my credit card has not been charged for the two-day shipping. Cursing the incompetence of corporate entities, I write down the customer service number, which I can't call until Monday.

Day Four:
We expect my in-laws around noon, as they had flown into Albuquerque the day before and it is only a four hour drive. We plan to take them to the sand dunes that afternoon, but when one o'clock rolls in and they have not appeared, my mother calls them. They are driving through Santa Fe, still over three and a half hours away. Four hours later, they call from the only Wal-Mart within a hundred miles, where they are buying enough groceries to last nine people for three weeks. I exasperatedly tell Mr. RB that his parents are the only people I know who can make a four hour trip turn into "all day", and he shrugs. He knows.

They finally arrive, and "ooh" and "ah" over the scenery to everyone's satisfaction. My parents dig out my brother's old cowboy duds and dress Peanut up to welcome them. They are a little big, but he is thrilled.

Some friends of my parents are also there, with a little girl around Peanut's age and a little boy around Deuce's. We grill burgers for dinner, and the evening culminates with Peanut attempting to hug said little girl, knocking her over, and landing on top of her. So many things with toddlers end in tears.

Day Five:
Church in the morning, where I see a great deal of people who know me, and whose names I have forgotten. During the sermon, Deuce contracts a loud case of hiccups. It is less disruptive than the hysterical giggling it inspires in my mother and sister, so I take him out and sit in a nearby classroom until they stop.

After lunch we make our trip to the Great Sand Dunes National Park and get our fill of geological phenomena. Nobody wants to actually walk the half-mile across blowing sand to get to the dunes, but we get a few good pictures. They look small in the pics, but the tallest dune behind us is 750 feet. The few hikers challenging its summit look like specks of pepper in the distance.
It is bizarre, like suddenly being transferred to the Sahara, without the heat; the result of thousands of years of erosion and wind deposit (or, if you want the X-Files version, the "anthill" marking a vast underground civilization of lizardlike aliens). I remember that the time I was here before, we hiked to the top of a dune, where I discovered that the sand was wet only an inch or so below the surface.

Mr. RB, on the recommendation of my sister, brother, and mother, begins reading Twilight. I resist, due to my natural inclination to despise pop cultural phenomena, particularly that which causes fourteen-year-old girls to swoon and write bad fanfiction.

Day Six:
My father-in-law has everyone over to the guest house for breakfast, for which I have no appetite; something in yesterday's lunch has disagreed with me violently. We cancel the planned road trip to Gunnison and I spend the day close to bathrooms while everyone else sightsees in the general vicinity. With nothing else to do, I pick up Twilight, and finish it by evening, much to Mr. RB's disgust, as he is still somewhere in the first third of the book.

Bella's co-dependency annoys me, as do the sort of quasi Mary-Sue characteristics of the vampires, but the story is interesting enough for me to want to read the rest. I pick up New Moon before going to bed.

I call the travel rewards company and arrange for the coupon to be overnighted to us at my parents' address. Only after I get off the phone with the rep do I find the confirmation email from the original transaction (you know, the one that apparently never happened) sitting in my inbox.

At least it seems squared away for now.

Day Seven:
My in-laws and sister accompany us on a day's journey to Creede, an old mining-turned-tourist town about 45 minutes away. The views are spectacular and the town is quaint, artsy, and interesting. We tour the mining museum, I very quickly as Peanut's only interest is heading outside to chase the tame chipmunks. I wish I dared brave the hairpin turns and steep gravel grades of Bachelor's Loop, as I know Mr. RB would be enthralled by the old ghost mines and shells of buildings, but my mountain driving is rusty and I don't trust my nerve, even in the family 4wd.

We eat lunch at the old hotel, and have ice cream in an old saloon. My mother-in-law embarrasses Mr RB and myself during our visit to the Stephen Quiller gallery by declaring, loudly, that the two of us could do better. The woman at the counter smiles tightly at us while we usher her out, explaining that she just doesn't understand the skill involved in this type of art. A discussion of the merits of impressionism vs. realism ensues, ending with the usual argument over whether Thomas Kinkade is an idealist or simply a dealer in schmaltz.

I will let the reader guess who was on whose side.

Leaving Creede, we drive on, heading up a winding dirt road towards Clear Creek. My father-in-law makes several jocular comments, underscored with anxiety, about having brought them out there to kill them, as we traverse a few knuckle-biting areas where the edge of the road ends in a sheer drop of hundreds of feet. His wife expresses disbelief that there is no guard rail - funny how everyone thinks that a couple inches of steel would stop a several-ton SUV from going over the edge of a road once gravity takes over.

Clear Creek Falls is worth the climb, however:
Standing on the edge overlooking the canyon gives me a touch of vertigo. My sister leaves the trail to climb out on some boulders overhanging the chasm; it's exactly what I would have done at her age, and now I know why everyone nervously demanded that I return to safer ground. From the bystander's perspective, it's a terrifying view.

We return home to find that the hummingbirds have discovered the feeder in earnest. There are at least a dozen squabbling over it, and the sugar-water is gone. I practically have to wave them away to take it down and refill it, and want to jump with the joy of it.

There is no sign of the rewards coupon. I finish New Moon. Mr. RB, still only halfway through Twilight, threatens to disown me.

2009-08-27T09:00:00.000-07:00

Chronicles of Colorado, Part One.

Day One:
We wake up at 5 a.m. after a night of tossing and turning, wondering if I have everything packed. Peanut is confused about being woken up before the sun, but bounds out of bed when reminded that today we are going for a ride on an airplane. He climbs happily into his car seat, clutching Thomas the tank engine in one hand and Light in the Queen (his pronunciation of Lighting McQueen) in the other. Deuce sleeps angelically as we load him into the van. We are off.

Mr RB, in the last-day rush of getting loose ends tied up at work, has forgotten to get cash for the trip, but I figure we can pick some up at the airport ATM. I have not forgotten that our banks recently changed out everyone's debit cards, and that we have not memorized the new PIN, so I have grabbed two different paper PIN slips from the VISA file. One of them has to work, right? Also, our coupon for our travel rewards free car rental has not shown up, even though I paid for two day shipping. I instruct our housesitter to watch for it and overnight it to my parents' address, and resolve not to worry about it.

The airport is quiet at six a.m, and we are excited and happy to be going. Until Mr. RB attempts to get cash. Neither of the PINs work with our card. We have no other. And the repeated attempts to withdraw with the wrong codes trips the credit alert and our card is blocked, as we discover while attempting to buy some breakfast. I break down in frustrated tears, and someone at the Nature's Table takes pity on us and gives us a juice and a muffin. It doesn't go far among three people, but it's a nice gesture.

A call to the credit card company to explain the situation garners sympathy but not much practical help. It's too early to call the bank to have the block removed; we'll have to do that when we get to Denver. Nobody has access to our PIN; all they can do is send a new one. Well, c'est la vie. It's not impossible to travel without cash, just inconvenient. I make up my mind to enjoy the trip.

Peanut is excited and a little frightened by the jet takeoff. He clutches Daddy's thumb as we ascend, and within minutes, the adrenaline crash, white noise, and vibration combine to put him out like a snuffed candle.
The flight is uneventful. There is no snack service, and they charged us for our only checked bag. I know this is becoming pretty standard on airlines, but can't help thinking: cheapskates. Next time we go Southwest, or JetBlue. Peanut clutches my hand during landing, anxiously repeating, "What's gonna happen? What's gonna happen?"

It is 10:15 when we arrive in Denver, the front range visible through the haze. It is 90 degrees, but low humidity, comfortable compared to what we left. While Mr. RB gets our luggage, I plug in my dying cell at an outlet near the baggage counter to call our bank. It takes about half an hour to get everything sorted out. Meanwhile, Peanut is running around the bag claim area, banging into people, and climbing all over the loading ramps like a monkey on speed. Don't ask me where his father was at this point - I'm sure doing something useful, but I can't remember. The baggage counter lady is watching us murderously.

The plan was to take a shuttle to the greyhound bus station downtown and bus to Alamosa. When I locate the public bus counter, I discover that although I can pay with a credit card, the next bus leaves too late to get us to the station in time. More tears and panic, which have more to do with the crumbling of my carefully-laid plans and resultant stress than anything else. We shuttle to a hotel, the kids nap, I take Peanut swimming, and call my bosom friend E. who lives close the the airport. We take a walk around the hotel strip, chasing dozens of rabbits into the sunflower fields across the street, and E. and her brother-in-law rescue us to go out to dinner, the first decent meal we have had all day. I am reminded, yet again, of how much I love E.

Day Two:

We arrive early at the downtown greyhound station, a place I knew well in my college days when, carless, I had to take the bus every holiday to get home or return therefrom. It is as filthy as I remembered, but it's interesting to note how much friendlier one's fellow passengers are than they are on planes. I listen to a woman who looks like she's in her nineties tell everyone about the years she lived in India with her husband. She gives her packed lunch to another middle-aged woman who says she's been on the bus for a day already; she's been staying with one of her children in Wyoming and is heading home to Alamosa, where she'll live in a shelter until she finds work.

There are only about a dozen people on our bus. We have four seats to ourselves, and Peanut gleefully climbs over and under them and in the aisle; he stands on the seat and looks out the window at views never available to him before, exclaiming over every semi truck, train track, and bit of machinery. India-lady is sitting a few seats ahead of us, randomly passing out origami animals to her neighbors. She helps a college-age girl in the next seat write a love letter to her boyfriend in phonetic Japanese. Her accent reminds me of my grandmother and I wonder if she is from New Orleans, but am too timid to ask.

The scenery flies past, arid, rocky, awe-inspiring. The sky is endless. I reflect on how relaxing it is not to have to worry about driving. It's too bad Greyhound stations are so dirty, because it would be a very nice way to travel otherwise. The seats recline more than plane seats, and there is lots of leg room.

It takes five hours to get to Alamosa. My mother meets us at the greyhound office there, seeing Deuce for the first time, and we drive to the ranch, settle in, and relax. At dinner, Peanut entertains everyone with his rendition of "Ding-dong, the Witch is Dead," from The Wizard of Oz, which goes:

Ding-dong, witch is dead, witch is dead. Ding-dong, witch is DEEEEAAAAAAAD!!!!!
(last word sung at the top of his lungs, head thrown back joyfully)

The attention he garners over this centers my family as his Current Favorite People, although they apparently come in second to their four cats, which carry the honor of Most Fascinating Things on the Planet. They are remarkably tolerant, bearing up under his tail-pulling, rough handling, and attempts to pick them up without ever delivering a well-deserved scratch.They are also cute little buggers.

Next up: In-laws, Twilight, and nonexistent travel rewards coupons, oh my...

2009-08-11T13:09:00.000-07:00

Last day before big trip to see grandparents in the mountains...I feel the need to sit down and explain why I won't be blogging for two weeks.

My parents live in the San Luis Valley, a big dry alpine bowl in south central Colorado. It's beautifully scenic, rustic, western, and a little bit po-dunk. (Sorry, Mom.)

It's also creepy.

If I don't come back, either my plane has crashed or I've been abducted by aliens. Or both.

We are looking forward to visiting the family, creepiness aside. (For the record, my only personal paranormal experience while living there was hearing a noise similar to the Taos hum outside our house one summer night. Unlike others who have experienced this, I did NOT go outside to investigate. What lunacy. There was also a brief rash of cow/calf mutilations when I was in high school, some of them quite close to us, although none of our own stock fell victim.) This will be my family's first glimpse of Deuce, and it comes at a good time - early enough to enjoy his royal fat baby-ness, advanced enough to experience his gooey smiles and gurgling laughs. Mr. RB's parents will be meeting us there, and I look forward to showing them around the area attractions, assuming the altitude or the aliens don't get to them first. It appears we'll be arriving just in time for a perfect view of the Perseid meteor shower, so in the event of a clear night tomorrow maybe we'll camp out on the trampoline and enjoy some heavenly splendor.

We'll also be making the trip north to see my sister safely ensconced in her new abode at my alma mater, Colorado State University. A trip there never ceases to make me feel about nineteen years old, so I plan to enjoy this even with two kids in tow. All my old pals and bosom friends still in the area are planning a get-together, and I hope to meet up with a friend or two with whom I have only recently gotten back in touch. I hear Big City Burrito and Walrus Ice Cream calling my name...

"...come...come and regain that five pounds you've just lost this month..."

Ahem. So, what with packing and organizing and final preparations, there has been little creativity this week. Since I never got around posting my project of two weeks ago, I shall do so now.

The chunky monkey in his onesie-T. My fellow crafty mom Audrey turned me on to the idea of cutting down onesies to make T-shirts, as onesies don't fit well over cloth diapers and who wants to cover up a cute diaper cover anyway? I stole a leaf from her book and appliqued a motif to match the cover, which is one I had made for the Peanut when he was about fourteen months old. The fact that it now fits my three-month-old has implications I do not want to consider.

Speaking of Peanut, he has just come in and informed me gleefully that he is making a mess, and I can see from the various stains of my makeup on his naked little body that he does not lie, so I must be off, perhaps to do some screeching. See you all on the other side..

2009-07-31T09:57:00.000-07:00

This Friday posting is becoming a routine. Well, I could do worse.

Not quite so productive this week, as I've been using my free minutes pleasure-reading, getting through L.M.Montgomery's Emily trilogy for the millionth time. It's been a while since I've read it, my set having been on loan for a year or two.

I like the Emily series better than Anne, and I'm rather curious why they are less well-known. Emily is saltier; her adventures are usually brought on by deliberate cussedness rather than Anne's sweet well-meaning ineptitude, and the "second sight" element appeals to my sense of fantasy. Reading them over this time after a long hiatus brought several things to my attention.

1. Montgomery quotes herself shamelessly. She has a line of description early on in book 2 which Emily uses verbatim later (and then wishes for a Jimmy-book to write it down in). I also recognized several phrases from L.M.'s own diary, hardly surprising as it's clear Emily is, at least in character, partly autobiographical. But it sort of made me chuckle to see her recycling elements - practical, I guess.

2. Emily's description in book 3 is positively Mary-Sueish, although I never would have realized it before becoming versed in fanfiction jargon and critique. Observe:

A slender, virginal young thing. Hair like black silk. Purplish-grey eyes, with violet shadows under them...scarlet lips with a Murray-like crease at the corners; ears with Puckish, slightly pointed tips...An exquisite line of chin and neck; a smile with a trick in it; such a slow-blossoming thing wiht a sudden radiance of fulfilment. And ankles that scandalous old Aunt Nancy Priest of Priest Pond commended.

...no one who looked upon her face ever forgot it...Many people liked her, many disliked her. No one was ever wholly indifferent to her.

Good lord. Pointed ears. Purple eyes. And she's got "speshul powerz". And all three male leads in the books are madly in love with her. If I found this on ff.net the sporks would be sharpening, my fingers itching madly to eviscerate it in some fan community.

Oh, dear, dear Maudie, I can't really want to spork you, can I? Tell me it isn't so! No, no, I will cheerfully add Emily to my list of canon Sues...they do exist, after all. Sara Crewe is another favorite.

3. Besides, Emily's bucketload of flaws save her from being a true Mary-Sue. I will be perverse now and complain that her greatest flaw really does almost ruin the whole series. It never bothered me before - well, not much - that her pride keeps her and Teddy apart until the very end, but now, in my thirties and conscious of how quickly time slips by, I read it and realized that there are literally years encompassed in the final chapters of book 3 - wasted years in which they both bury themselves in their respective passions to try to forget one another. Really. Did it have to be years? Wouldn't a couple of months after Ilse's jilting have sufficed?

4. And how DO you pronounce "Ilse" anyway?

5. I'm trying desperately to figure out the timeline, because I am obsessive like that. Emily is clearly not a contemporary of Anne; in book 2 her diary entries show the year as 19--, and she is thirteen at the time. Mid-book in book 3 Aunt Elizabeth reminds her that she is almost 24. Then come the years of waiting for Teddy. But they've only got fourteen years of 19-- until the Great War, which is never mentioned. Hence I am assuming she turns fourteen in 1900 and then is 27 or 28 when Teddy comes back. And then the war begins. Probably right after their wedding. Joy.

6. In this modern, pedophilia-conscious world, Dean Priest's obsession with Emily gives me the creeps. In book 3 as adults, it's all right. But it's clear in book 1 from their first meeting that he's got his sights on her. She's. Twelve. And he's in his thirties.

That being said, it's too bad Dean is so much more interesting than Teddy, at least by the end. Even Perry is more interesting than Teddy. Montgomery's love interests, who make such jolly, lovable boys, always get a little flat when they grow up. Even the sacrosanct Gilbert. Still, Teddy's the one. But I like their scenes together in book 2 - the church graveyard, the old John house - more than anything in book 3.

Despite all my above criticisms, I still love these books. Having visited P.E.I. now (and being surprised by how much it didn't look like I expected it to - not through any fault of Montgomery's descriptions but because I had created something in my own mind that was nothing like them) it's fun to be able to clearly visualize the settings. I feel a strong need now to illustrate something from the books...something true to description. It pains me when I see visual interpretations of literature that don't match the author's descriptions. I've seen snatches of scenes from the "Emily of New Moon" series put out on Canadian television, and Ilse's long hair and Emily's pudginess both turn me off, even more than the pointless changes they made to the plot.

Piddling around online last night led me to the discovery that there has been an anime series made of it : Kaze no Shoujo Emily, which I wish I could get my hands on. Not being into anime I have no idea how one goes about acquiring lesser-known titles. (I'd also love a copy of the Little Princess one that was done in the 80s, but that one doesn't even have any English subtitle versions - why, why, why? *grump*)

Ah, well. Back to life and my kiddoes. I did do some sewing this week...I'll post pics next time.

2009-07-24T17:41:00.000-07:00

So, this is how it's going so far...

My post of last Saturday led to some serious work toward the goals this week.

Here we have the finished diaper cover, modeled by Deuce:

It wound up being a roomy fit in the waistband but a wee bit too short in the rise. I think it'll fit fine over a fitted diaper but an unaltered prefold is a little too bulky. It came out gorgeous though...I love this wool. Audrey, it only took two balls. If you want to do one for Than I can give you my third.

While I was on diapers I decided he needed a few new ones, as he is outgrowing the current supply. I found a deal on some prefolds at diaperswappers, but also made him one out of an old shirt, my dream of again fitting into a medium babydoll tee finally dying in the face of ~~reality~~ practicality. Not after breastfeeding for four years, or whatever it is going to be by the time they are both weaned.

Turns out Deuce is a Ram fan, or else just likes the fashion of across-the-butt slogans. Now I just need a little t-shirt with the logo.

Next, the window:

Gallery Glass. Find it at any Michael's. A tip: don't try to be cheap and "mix your own" colors. They don't mix. I mean, they do, but they don't combine. When you swirl, say, red and yellow, you don't get orange, you get swirled red and yellow. Which is fine, and actually there are a lot of deliberate effects you can do, but if you were hoping to save money by only buying primary colors, don't bother.

A good week. So good that I celebrated today with home-baked bread, which my picky eater took one bite of and then trotted to his high chair and seated himself without being asked.

And that, by itself, made the whole week worthwhile.

2009-07-18T19:12:00.000-07:00

What a Week...
I am getting ~~irritated~~ challenged by all the old friends whose blogs I've come into contact with who are spending their days being unceasingly creative. Perhaps they are the kick in the butt I need, but I do find it difficult to juggle all the different projects I have going while keeping the house somewhere above the level of "pigsty", making sure my kids are fed and clothed (which would be easier if the Peanut didn't find it necessary to completely disrobe at every visit to the potty), and retaining some leftover energy for when Mr. RB gets home and would like to relate with something resembling the woman he married.

The only way to keep it all afloat and make time for creative outlets appears to be to schedule said outlets into the daily to-do list. I am not disciplined enough to do a post every day on my efforts (I wouldn't have something postable every day anyway) but maybe I can crank out something at least once a week.

Two projects this week:
Finish one of Deuce's crocheted wool diaper covers before the little porker outgrows it.
Faux-stain the ornamental window by the front door.

I penciled them into my list on Monday. Now, Saturday evening, after a week in which Peanut ran a fluctuating fever for three days, Deuce had his first round of vaccinations, and we hosted company on two different evenings, the projects are not finished, but they are, at least, much further along than when I started:

The diaper cover, using gorgeous variegated wool from this site. I'm totally making up the pattern, so we'll see how far my skill really goes here, but it's hard to really screw up crocheting. It's more symmetrical than it looks here; the edge is rolling up on that lower right section. I started this a month ago and deliberately made it about two sizes larger than Deuce was at that time; I tried it on him yesterday and it fits him with an inch or two of stretch. Which means he'll be able to wear it for all of a month, probably, but maybe somebody on diaperswappers will pay me for it after that.

Our front door window is this long narrow thing, apparently designed to help you see who is knocking (because peepholes give a homeowner unfair advantage, I guess) but we don't need it for that, as our dining room window is directly adjacent to it and affords all the warning we need when the Witnesses show up.

I've been meaning to do something fun with this useless pane of glass for some time, having already given a couple glass-front cabinets in my kitchen the treatment:

Hides Mr. RBs tiki mugs fairly well.

I found a bunch of great free patterns here. Yes, I could have designed my own, but the point here is actually to finish a project, not make it infinitely more complicated.

Our house decor, what there is of it, is eclectic. Mr RB likes Arts and Crafts. I like Art Nouveau. Since I am the one doing the window, I win this time.

Using the Gallery Glass leading strips and a little of the liquid leading, I managed to get the leading up while the kids took a joint nap:

It was the last time that particular phenomenon occurred this week, so this was as far as I got. Next week I get to pick colors and finish. If I don't have a post showing a finished window, I expect some heckling. Please.

I also sold three nursing necklaces, two of which I already had in stock. They are so much fun; I am going to be immensely sad when I have to stop next February. But at least I am getting through my bead supply.

In non-creative-project news, Deuce began verbalizing in earnest; he is the chattiest two-month-old I have seen since helping raise my sister, who could pretty much hold a baby talk conversation at this age and spoke like an encylopedia by her first birthday. He's not quite at her level but is much more communicative than Peanut, and even his cries (all but the worst of them) sound like there are syllables in them. Naturally we have not been able to catch his fluency on film yet, because he follows the Baby Rule that any cute behavior must cease the instant the camera appears.

Peanut's memorable moment of the week (besides worrying me to death with his random, symptomless fever) was arranging all his cars and trucks thusly:

When asked if they had all crashed....

"No," he said, "They're sleeping."

I think he's watched Cars one too many times.

2009-07-11T12:06:00.000-07:00

Moments that make it all worthwhile...

Conversation at the park today:

Peanut: (to Mr RB) Want some tea.
Mr RB: We're at the park. I don't have any tea.
Peanut: (to nearby Coke machine) Want some tea.
Coke machine: ..................
Peanut: (yelling into chute of Coke machine) HELLO! WANT SOME TEA!!
Mr RB: (wiping away tears) It's a Coke machine. It doesn't give tea.
Peanut: Oh. (thinks for a moment) Want some Coke!

Personally I think it was all a ploy to get a coke from the beginning...

2009-07-10T06:25:00.000-07:00

There is hope...

For those mothers, current and future, of two-year-olds who read this blog and empathized with my last post, I want to share a technique that is working well for at least some of the behavior I was ranting about last time. (And by the way, thank you, everyone who commented. It was so good to hear that this is all normal.)

Now, when I give Peanut an instruction, I count. Not the old, "you have until three to obey me or else" threat that discipline experts decry so much; I'm talking about fair warning.

I hit on this technique while beginning his weaning, by letting him nurse while I count to twenty on each side. He pops off without any fuss. I guess knowing what is coming helps him adjust to the idea, so a few days ago when he did his usual "no" and belly flop when I told him to go to the table, it occurred to me to try the same thing. Instead of automatically assuming depraved rebellion, I backtracked. "Okay, I'm going to count to twenty, and then it's time to go to the table." He watched me curiously as I began to count, and a smile spread over his face. By ten he was off the floor. By fifteen he was trotting into the kitchen, and at twenty he was climbing into his booster seat.

Ka-chow!

It has worked with several other things since then - bathtime, bedtime, getting dressed, leaving the fascinating spectacle of the washing machine agitating, all without a meltdown. I haven't figured out how to incorporate it into things like picking up toys yet, but we're working on it. It's similar to the technique of warning a kid they have five minutes, or two, or one, or whatever, until bedtime - but in toddler format, since a two-year-old has no concept of how long a minute is.

In other news, Peanut has discovered dinosaurs, and the kid who still cannot correctly say his own name is now calling himself "tyrannosaurus rex" and stomping and roaring all over the house. Time for a trip to the library for some dino books and videos, although youtube has supplied them nicely so far. (For you dino-nuts out there, check out the "Walking with Dinosaurs: Live" clips for some really neat stuff - Mr RB got to see this show when it was here thanks to GEEC; I found out after the fact, thank you very much.)

Deuce is now smiling and cooing at me, to make up for the fact that he is breaking my back. He has his two-month checkup on Monday and I predict he will weigh in at about four hundred pounds. Fortunately he does not require the constant holding Peanut did at this age, and although I'm an avid supporter of babywearing, I do not hesitate to leave Deuce in his bassinet/swing/bed as long as he is happy there. Perhaps as a result, he takes a four-hour nap during the day and sleeps almost all night in his own bed, waking up once for a top-up around three a.m. and then beginning the grunt/squirm/fart routine at about 5:30. If the good sleep pattern can hold out until he outgrows his gassiness I think he could sleep quietly until seven or so - fingers crossed. After dealing with Peanut's refusal to sleep through the night until he was two (and still not consistently), Deuce's relative easiness makes me wonder when the other shoe is going to drop. I will enjoy it while I can.

2009-06-30T16:01:00.000-07:00

Have some cheese with that...

Whine. Whine. Whine whine whine. I do not have a two-year-old son. I have a walking, dirt-covered whine.

I think I wrote a post a few months back that was rosy and self-congratulatory on how well we were weathering the "so-called" terrible twos. Forgive me, experienced mothers. I now realize that Peanut, true to form, was merely late to the party.

I've no doubt much of it is due to Deuce's arrival, as it seems to have begun shortly thereafter. Then again, maybe it was already beginning, and I just didn't notice until my patience and endurance were suddenly stretched thin by the needs of a newborn.

Peanut has never been naturally compliant. But where requests and instructions used to be met with calm indifference, now they are met with open defiance. The nature of the instructions - whether they refer to something he likes or dislikes - is irrelevant. Requests to pick up his toys (a task he despises) or to come take a bath (which he loves) are both answered with a decided "no". Firmer instructions result in a boneless collapse onto the floor accompanied by noises as shrill as rusty creaking hinges. This is also the noise he makes when frustrated by any inability, whether it's pulling off his own socks or trying to push his bike over a bump in the sidewalk. It is a noise specifically calculated to stretch my nerves to their absolute limit. It is a noise that makes a fabulous argument against evolutionary theory, because there cannot possibly be an evolutionary benefit to a behavior so conducive to a parent wanting to throttle its offspring.

When faced with the inevitability of forced obedience, his final reaction is to slap his hand to his forehead and moan, "oh, pete's sake". It was cute the first time, about twelve hundred times ago.

The ubiquitous "they" all say that children at this age are motivated by wanting to please their parents. "They" have never met my child, because not only does he not care less about whether his actions please me, it often seems that he blatantly goes out of his way to displease. Today, after I told him twice (just in case he was having trouble comprehending) that the computer was turned off and he was not allowed to turn it on, he stood next to the desk, staring at me and touching the computer cabinet in various places. Testing the limits. Come on, Mom. Make me stop. What if I touch it here? How about here? This isn't the computer, it's just the desk. This is the door handle; can I touch it? How about if I just touch the button but don't press it? The result was a minute alone in his room, howling to the heavens over the unfairness of it all, while I stood outside the door, breathing deeply and counting.

Someone reassure me. Please tell me this is normal two-year-old behavior, because I have had moments of wondering if we are raising a sociopath. When Mr. RB came home I passed him off instantly and spent twenty minutes in the shower reminding myself how much I love our firstborn.

So keep in mind, over the tone of this post, that it is all being written the same day on which the previous anecdote is only one of many I could tell.

That one day, I will laugh about.

Right?

2009-06-18T17:30:00.000-07:00

Time for a blog update while Peanut and Deuce are under Daddy's care...

It's been a fun and interesting week. Last Wednesday we got a message from an old friend of Mr. RB who would be in town for a day with her two girls...okay, to be quite frank, she was an old girlfriend, but so much water has gone under that bridge I felt comfortable with the acquaintance, and was amenable to his suggestion that we ask her to stay with us, as she had no hotel booked and was coming on short notice. She and I wound up hitting it off wonderfully and I accompanied her and her daughters to GEEC the next morning, where Peanut surprised me by suddenly being excited by the visit. He'd never cared before, but this time was recognizing characters and exclaiming over them.

I couldn't stay long - it was about 94 degrees and felt like death on toast, and I was concerned about having Deuce out in such heat. But I determined we should return soon, as clearly the magic has begun for our oldest son. So Sunday afternoon after the kids had napped and we had nothing to do, I suggested to Mr RB that we go down and watch the fireworks. It was late afternoon and a good rainstorm had cooled things off, so he agreed.

Having worked there too long, and spent so much time there, I regard GEEC with a mixture of cynicism and grudging amusement, and a trip there is not something we regularly take on. I think now that Peanut has reached the target age, we are going to become incredibly thankful, once again, for our employee perks. Taking him there was a hoot. He loved it - loudly exclaiming "oh my GOODness" at every surprise special effect, totally believing all the illusions. Watching his reactions was better than experiencing it ourselves. Perhaps living vicariously through your children is not always a terrible thing.

Deuce slept through most of it, which is what I expected and hoped for. He is now over ten pounds and quite the little butterball. Of course we got many comments about our "beautiful baby", usually in conjunction with questions about his age. I know the askers were secretly thinking we were insane to bring such a young baby to the place. But I have learned through experience that it is easier to do this stuff with a one-month-old than, say, a one-year-old. A newborn's needs are simple and he does not expect to be entertained, nor does he climb out of his stroller and disappear into crowds or pull expensive merchandise off shelves. He sleeps as well surrounded by people and noise as in silent darkness. He's no more likely to pick up germs there than say, in church, since nobody but me or his father is holding him (in which case he's actually more likely to pick up germs in church). All in all, newborns are great travelers. And I'd be willing to bet more than one has made the trip to GEEC for no other reason than the family's reservations were made more than nine months in advance.

Moving on. It's been toad-hatching weather for the last week or so, and every time I step outside my peripheral vision is filled with tiny dark spots, like black skittles, darting hither and thither away from my feet. Peanut has had a marvelous time chasing them around the yard, persistently calling, "C'mere, little fwoggies!" They are quick little buggers and he does not have a prayer of catching one, but I've captured a few for him to examine up close. He tries to kiss them. I have no idea where this comes from - he's not been exposed to the frog prince fairy tale yet.

Cute, aren't they?

I have harvested about two dinners' worth of summer squash, two butternut squash, five tomatoes (four of which went bad before we used them due to some cracking from the wet weather), and one bell pepper. The butternut and pepper plants are still growing. The tomatoes have succumbed to heat and blight and the summer squash to fungus.I don't know that I would call this a grand success. But at least what we used tasted good. I'll try again in the Fall with some greenery and strawberries.

2009-06-06T15:49:00.000-07:00

Did I say something last week about second babies being easier?

Eh heh. Heh.

I should edit that to say all babies are easy until the week your husband goes back to work and your in-laws go home and you are suddenly on your own.

Then the quiet, peacefully sleepy soft bundle you brought home gets swapped for a fractious changeling who spends all afternoon sleeping fitfully between episodes of writhing and screaming. And farting. Confirming my suspicion that the male preoccupation with flatulence begins shortly after birth. Unless girl babies do this, too. Do they?

Sigh.

I had moderate success with easing Peanut's colic by eliminating dairy from my diet, so am giving that a try...particularly seeing as how my eating a supper consisting of macaroni and cheese and a root beer float (yeah, really healthy, I know) predicated Deuce's worst gas attack ever. It is a difficult sacrifice for me, particularly as there is whey protein in nearly every food on the market, barring foods in their natural state, which yes, is what we're supposed to be eating anyway, I know, shut up. I can deal with rice milk on my cereal and soy ice cream, but they have yet to come up with a decent cheese substitute; even the soy cheeses have whey in them. Guess it's time to check out my favorite vegan recipe website: http://www.all-creatures.org/recipes.html

2009-05-29T10:30:00.000-07:00

New Mom (again) Observations of the last two weeks:

~Men will never know the pain of childbirth. But neither will they ever know the ecstasy of dropping 25 pounds in two weeks.*

~Second babies really are easier. I'm told it's because you're not as nervous.

~Deuce has dents in each earlobe that make it look like his ears are pierced. He also has a tiny hole, like a large pore, on the top rim of each ear, with little tufts of fine hair growing out. Weird.

~He has a blocked tear duct that makes his right eye always watery. Yesterday it started weeping yellow goo. I shot milk into it with every feeding and today it is clear again. Yay for magic breastmilk.

~Because I was unhappy with some of the policies at our pediatrician's, we switched to a family practitioner who is a friend of our family and a member of our parent church. It is awesome when your child's doctor prays for him during his checkup.

~Peanut has, predictably, regressed in potty training - partially due to stress of my being gone/baby coming home, and partially due to his grandparents' having put him in pull-ups constantly while I was gone. He has, however, finally consented to poop in the potty, so...two forward, one back.

~Given the frustration potty training has been, I am attempting EC** with Deuce. This morning I caught two poops and four pees. I've saved on washing at least six diapers. Success is addictive.

~What a strange thing it is to have a baby who prefers to sleep in his own space instead of on my chest. It makes me a little sad, especially as he does not like being in the sling. We're going to work on that, because I can't stand hauling strollers around.

~I love my babies.

*This is only halfway to my pre-pregnancy weight, but it's nice to fit in regular maternity clothes again.
**Elimination Communication - a philosophy/style that seeks to care for baby's potty needs with minimal or no use of diapering. Don't laugh - it's used in most of the world. It's only we "civilized", too-busy-for-this societies that allow babies to poop and pee on themselves and then have to train them out of it two or three years later.

2009-05-26T11:14:00.000-07:00

G.E.E.C. decided to send Mr. RB to California for our seventh anniversary. Wasn't that nice of them?

It was yesterday, but, you know, newborn and all. So I take the time today to post a bit, with pictures.

We had a fantasy/medieval wedding. More fantasy than medieval, really, as our attire was anything but period-authentic. Re: my open-backed bodice. It was the only thing I insisted on, and let Mr. RB come up with the rest. He didn't actually see the finished product until the wedding day, in keeping with tradition. It would perhaps have been better had he been there during my consultations with his seamstress - the front laces should have gone lower than they did, but I didn't know this. The result was a less slim silhouette in front..not that I should be complaining about this now, when I'd kill to fit in this dress at all. I have discovered I actually have no pictures of the front of it unobscured by flowers or long flowy sleeves. Boo. :(

We did almost everything for the ceremony. All costumes were made by one of Mr RBs favorite seamstresses from GEEC - who drove us nuts with her delays, although he knew her well enough to expect it. Four days before the wedding my dress was still a muslin mockup; I went in for a fitting and she was done with the whole thing the next day.

Mr. RB made the candelabra stand in the background from plywood, foam, and a bunch of cheap tin cups from Old Time Pottery. He covered the modern doors of the church with fake wood paneling detailed with faux iron-wrought hinges. A friend of ours in TN made a bunch of banners to cover anything that looked modern and to decorate the reception hall. The pastor good-naturedly agreed to wear a robe but not to shave his head monk-fashion. We had a recording of some very Catholic-sounding chants during the lighting of the candles, which must have raised some eyebrows in the very Baptist church.

Mr. RB made the base of the cake out of styrofoam and odds and ends. Our cakemakers frosted and decorated it and I made the toppers - both the couple and the bagpipe-playing dragon on the drawbridge. (He has a history.) There was one piece of real cake in it that we cut for the ceremony. Everybody else got sheet cake from a back room. This was the one thing I'd do over, as what the heck do you do with a huge frosted hunk of styrofoam? We should have made it a real cake and dismantled it. It's still sitting in my in-laws' house on display, and looking a little green around the edges these days.

The chest held chocolate coins embossed with our names and our wedding logo. (yes, there was a logo).
When in doubt on party favors, chocolate always wins.

Baby is crying...must save the rest for later.

2009-05-21T06:24:00.000-07:00

I find myself strangely in sympathy with the Octomom these days.

Because if it weren't such a pain in the behind to get them here, and such a challenge to raise them afterwards, I'd totally have a dozen of these.

It could really become an addiction.

2009-05-18T14:27:00.000-07:00

Deuce's Birth Story

Wow, what a ride! My new little tadpole is napping on Daddy's chest, so I will take few minutes to process the last few days.

Warning to certain readers (*cough* sherlock *cough*) : details of labor/birth to follow which you and any other adolescent male readers will probably want to skip.

Friday afternoon I was scheduled for a biophysical profile, standard procedure when baby goes overdue, and Deuce was 41 weeks exactly at that point. I went in with a rather laissez-faire attitude, having been through the same thing with Peanut without much fanfare. I fully expected to keep being pregnant through the weekend, although I wasn't happy about it.

Deuce was uncooperatively sleepy during the scan, refusing to move even when prodded and jiggled, and I knew this was at least one mark against us, but everything else seemed fine. Of course, the technician doesn't tell you anything potentially upsetting, but she said that my fluid levels were good and the placenta looked good and I didn't really know what else they looked for. So I drove away assuming all was status quo, but halfway home got a call from a midwife at the center, saying she had discussed the results with the backup OB and he wanted me to come into the hospital for further monitoring. Apparently Deuce had only scored a 4 out of 8 of the test's requirements, so there was more going on than his just being sleepy.

They wanted me to head straight there, but being no idiot, I decided to get all the way home and get my birth stuff, realizing that once I hit the hospital the odds I would leave without a baby were pretty slim. I'll admit to some mournful tears over the prospect that once again I was going to be denied my peaceful, natural, birth center birth, and some moaning and griping about how this whole thing seemed to work correctly for everyone I know except me. But my mind was mostly occupied with preparations, so I kept my emotions under control, kissed Peanut goodbye at the house, and headed out with Mr. RB, whose parents were here holding down the fort.

We got to the hospital - a new state-of-the-art women's facility downtown with all the amenities of a fancy hotel - and were streamlined into triage and L&D, where I was hooked up to the fetal monitor and made comfortable. My room was huge, and the bed faced an enormous picture window that stretched floor-to-ceiling and all the way across the wall, giving me a nice view of the darkening sky and the rooftops of the medical plaza. We spent some time watching the monitor trace Deuce's heartbeat, which was steady and even. Apparently this was the problem - it was what the labor nurse called "nonreactive", meaning that it was not, like a normal heart rate, having variables coinciding with environmental factors. Or something. They flipped me from side to side, tried a little oxygen, and discovered that Deuce was happiest when I lay on my right - which, interestingly, had been my most comfortable sleeping position for some time. He brightened up under the O2 influence too. An internal check showed I was still only 1 cm and about 70% effaced.

The OB showed up in about two hours, a youngish tan blonde guy wearing plaid golf shorts and a polo and looking like he just came up from drinking a martini on a dock somewhere, wherefore I will subsequently refer to him as Dr. Bahama. He was laid back and soft-spoken, and laid out my options in the manner I expected: I could go home and wait for labor, but given all factors he did not recommend it; he could do a c-section right now, but didn't feel the situation was that dire; or we could break my water and see what happened.

I was tired of waiting, frightened that labor would never begin on its own, and disgusted with my body for failing me yet again in spite of all my efforts. Disheartened and anxious, I opted for door number three, hoping that at least it would be as effective as the procedure had been with Peanut, and that I'd be holding a baby in less than 12 hours, although Dr. Bahama said I had 48 hours max.

The amniotomy was awful. Felt like the doctor was trying to reach my thorax. But it was done, and I was told to lie still for about twenty minutes to see how Deuce reacted. If all went well, I'd be free to be mobile, use the tub/shower, or whatever else I wanted during labor.

Deuce decided he only liked the right side, with oxygen please, and don't stick your fingers by my head kthanksbye. His heartrate shot up and then it was on with the IV fluids to calm him down. Within about twenty minutes I had five different tethers to as many different machines, and lay there wanting to pick up something expensive and hurl it through that fancy picture window. I wept in fear for my baby, in anger at the unfairness of the whole thing, in mourning for the gentle birth I had dreamed of and planned for and now would never have. Mr. RB spoke truths about the importance of Deuce's and my safety and how soon it would all be over, and I thanked him and told him to stop acting like a guy wanting to fix everything and just let me vent.

Unlike my experience with Peanut, labor was slow to start after the amniotomy. I started having contractions after about two hours, but they were short and far between, even as they grew more intense. By about two a.m. I was definitely in labor, but nothing that could be called active.

My good friend Audrey arrived and, experienced from years of therapy, took over my emotional health. For the next few hours we let Mr RB enjoy the television in the room while she helped me work through my tumultous, hormone-ridden outbursts. She soothed, encouraged, listened, and vindicated. She watched me breathe and blow through a contraction and then told me how amazing it was that once it was over I could just open my eyes and start talking again like nothing had happened. I hadn't really thought about it. They say to just take them one at a time and then let them go. I was already pondering over my options other than lie-there-and-tough-it-out. The way things were going, I had a feeling I was headed for a pitocin boost, with no access to the comfort measures I had counted on, like mobility. It was a dim prospect and fear of my inability to cope was clouding my mind.

Audrey left around 2 a.m. and I settled in for the rest of the long night, trying to rest between contractions. They were so far apart that this was relatively feasible, except that I was incredibly uncomfortable in the position I was in. My hips and back ached; I wanted more pillows, big pillows like I had at home. Every time I got up to pee I had to unhook myself from five machines and walk to the bathroom trailing cords and IV stands. I made use of each opportunity to stay upright for a few minutes, trying to work out the kinks in my hips. When a contraction hit I held onto Mr RB and swayed. They were so much easier to handle that way, but inevitably Deuce's heartrate became nonreactive and I had to crawl back into bed.

By 9:45 a.m. I was only at 4 cm, Deuce being determined, as long as he was going to break statistical molds, to break the one about second babies coming faster than firsts. Since I'd had ruptured membranes for twelve hours, they started me on antibiotics. Contractions were very intense now, but still between 8-10 minutes apart. I was beginning to anticipate a 30-hour labor, and was exhausted and starving. I decided I'd actually prefer the pitocin boost Dr. Bahama was starting to mumble about. However, I saw no reason to endure such an intervention just for the sake of holding to my ideals. I was already having the furthest thing possible from a natural labor, and if I couldn't have the birth I had dreamed of and wanted, then I would make the one I was having as easy as possible.

So that afternoon, still at only 5 cm with contractions excruciating but refusing to come closer or organize, I asked for an epidural before they began the pit. Accordingly, anesthesia came in and got set up. Fortunately for me, there was enough time between contractions for the thing to be done, although the tech had to stick me twice to get it in the right spot. Within a few minutes a blissful warmth spread through my abdomen and legs, melting the pain away. I lay back in bed with a sigh and tried to sleep.

Within an hour and a half I felt an ominous twinge. No. No, no, this could NOT be happening, not again. During Peanut's birth, the epi I'd gotten at 9 cm had worn off after only one hour, leaving me with no relief during stage 2 of labor. This had actually been beneficial in that instance, as he was so large that I don't think I could have pushed effectively had I not been able to feel contractions. But this time around I was still only 6 cm, and had all of transition to look forward to still. I frantically paged the anesthesiologist. They threw in another bolus of painkiller. Nothing. Contractions. Hurt. Another bolus. No, I'm telling you, I still feel them. My legs were numb, and my upper abdomen. All the pain was concentrated in an eight inch circle on the left side of my belly. It gradually spread into a ring around my waist. They tossed in a dose of the strongest painkiller they had. No response, except that my legs were now like dead tree trunks. And I was in too much pain to be angry.

They decided my epi catheter must have migrated out of the proper place, and sat me up to redo it. I was now at 7 cm, feeling the full brunt of every contraction, and they were hitting every 60 to 90 seconds. Contrary to general notions of the mental state of labor, I was perfectly aware I was going into transition, noting my shaking hands and nausea. The knowledge wasn't pleasant; all I could think was that it was my freaking luck that the epidural would screw up right before I got to this point, and now here I was, hunched over my own belly, trying to hold still through nonstop, earthquake-like contractions, howling into the nurse's ear as they tried once, twice, three more times to place the epidural catheter. Finally they called in their head anesthesiologist, who got the needle in on the first try, right in the middle of a contraction that almost knocked me over. I don't know why I actually felt the needle stick on that one, whereas the others had been ignorable. The moment will live in my mind as possibly the most excruciating of my life. The memory still brings tears to my eyes.

At that point they might as well not have bothered. When they lay me back down and checked I was nearly complete, having gone from 7 to 10 in about thirty minutes. I waited out the next few contractions, each one less severe until they melted away into blissful nothingness, while the room flurried into activity. Dr. Bahama had called; he was five minutes away. A little meconium had shown in the last check, so a neonatal resuscitation team materialized in the room as a precaution. I asked if I could have a mirror to watch the birth and somebody rushed off for one.

Dr. Bahama arrived in his scrubs. The bed was broken down and I demanded to be sat up straighter; no way was I pushing on my back. They had me do a practice push and all crowed at how easy this was going to be. I could feel nothing, and was skeptical - Peanut's birth had taken 45 minutes of puffing and pushing like a freight train and I was mentally prepared for a repetition. Imagine my shock when, as the nurse fiddled with the mirror, I caught a glance and saw that the baby's head was crowning OMG I'm going to miss the whole thing angle the mirror up! Too far, back down! There, right there! One more push and the head was out, turning...one more and he slithered into the world and screamed.

Three pushes? I just had a baby in three pushes? I was astonished; I could not wrap my mind around it at all. After all that long first stage, it felt almost anticlimactic, particularly as, in brisk hospital fashion, they whisked him away to be toweled and tested and weighed and prodded. Mr. RB had cut the cord and followed him over to snap some photos while Dr. Bahama stitched a small tear. Audrey arrived, having gone home for lunch and a rest after being with me that morning. She was bummed to have missed the actual birth, but got lots of good pictures while we waited.

Finally Deuce was brought to me to be cuddled and admired. He was perfect, but they told me to wait half an hour before nursing to make sure his lungs were clear. We spent the time cooing at him and he looked around as though astonished at what had happened. When given the go-ahead, he latched instantly and nursed like a champ. From that moment he has not left my side for more than twenty minutes, and has spent his time sleeping and eating and pooping, making funny faces and providing me with a continuous source of nom-nom-nom delicious baby skin, breath, and hair.

The hospital had lovely recovery rooms, again with the huge picture windows, and my eighth-floor view of downtown was enhanced by a thunderstorm last night and a hazy gray rain today - just the sort of peaceful, subdued setting I would have wished for.

We are home now, enjoying Peanut's reactions to his baby brother; he tickles his toes and kisses his head and then runs off to play with something else; asks to nurse when he sees Deuce do so but does not seem upset at being told to wait his turn, and in general appears suddenly huge and gangly and rambunctious and such a boy.

I am sure, as the hormones swirl over the next days, that I will continue to have pity-parties with myself over being thwarted in my dream birth again, but realize that in life we must play the cards we are dealt. I did the best I could with what I had, and I am determined to be content. How, indeed, could anyone not be content with this?

2009-05-18T13:18:00.000-07:00

He's finally here!

Deuce was born Saturday May 16th, a healthy 8 lbs 14 oz, 21.5 inches long.

I will update with full story and pictures shortly.

2009-05-14T09:11:00.000-07:00

Congrats to my cousin, whose baby was born yesterday; for the second time she has beaten me to a birth when my due date was actually before hers. The acupuncture induction that failed to work for me was successful for her and I am jealous.

Quick update from the midwife appt. today for interested parties: 1 cm, 50% effacement. I go in for a biophysical profile scan tomorrow to check fluid levels and placental health, etc. She did a good thorough cervical sweep and if nothing happens over the weekend will do another on Monday after my non-stress test. I am desperate enough to follow that one up with a hit of castor oil in a last-ditch attempt to avoid a hospital induction at 42 weeks. This birth center apparently does not do amniotomy like my last one did and does not allow for postdates, so I'd be headed to the hospital anyway for any sort of no-turning-back induction. The hospital they use has a 46% cesarean rate, not thrilling, but she assures me their backup OB is very hands-off. I hope I do not have to find out.

2009-05-14T03:56:00.000-07:00

I haven't posted lately because the only thing to post about is Lack of Baby, and I don't want to bore everyone with my whining. My mother went home yesterday and I have cried my tears over that; there is nothing else to do now but wait, as I have tried every natural induction method known to man without success. (Except castor oil. I have been warned off that one too many times).

So instead I will comment on going to see a local high school production of Beauty and the Beast last night, tickets courtesy of my mom (thanks, mom); a final night out for myself and Mr. RB before our evenings are taken up with pacing a newborn around the house.

I saw Beauty and the Beast in its off-Broadway tour when it came to Denver, so any comparison with a high school production is unfair, but I have to say I was very impressed with the show. I'd give a tooth to have had the drama budget and talent this school had back when I was in school. Their sets were fantastic, and their costumes were professional rentals. The kids did very well, and the girl playing Belle definitely has a future. Watching the show made me muse on a few things about theater.

First of all, I think every stage actor should be required to take dance, whether they ever plan to be in a dancing role or not (although in a musical it is pretty much a given that everyone will be dancing at some point). Stage acting requires big, theatrical movement, and the best stage actors choreograph every move down to the fingertips, but this does not come naturally to everyone and in fact feels ridiculous until you get used to it. Most young actors move too much; they flail and fidget and fiddle around where they should be deliberate and measured. I saw a lot of fiddling last night from everyone but the castle objects, whose restrictive costumes were actually a boon in that they prevented the actors from making any but the largest, most animated moves. Lumiere in particular had it down.

Secondly, my gosh, it must suck to be part of a drama department in which the teacher's son is in high school, because it is a given that said son will be drafted for every lead role, regardless of whether it fits him or not. And lest you think you might get a chance once the son graduates, think again, because Dad will bring him back as an "alumnus performer" for a role as yummy as Beast. The director made vague references to being "disciplined" in his notes; I wonder if it was because of the way he keeps casting his own kids as leads, even after they are supposed to be ineligible.

Beast was okay. Just okay. The kid was a decent actor and a good singer and he had the right voice. But...he was little. You just can't be menacing when you are a head shorter than every object in the castle. He was only slightly taller than Belle and he was dwarf-like next to Gaston, which made their fight scene look absolutely ridiculous. Not only was he short, he was slim. They could have counteracted this with some massive costuming, but, for whatever reason, didn't. Although he emoted well vocally, he had no concept of the physical, feral nature of the Beast's performance; there was never a sensation of a man trapped in the body of an animal. He never took on the hulking, "I'm-more-comfortable-on-all-fours" poses of the original; in fact he stood up so straight the whole time Mr. RB guessed it was probably because of his self-consciousness about his height. Anyway, the upshot was that he was possibly the weakest element in the whole production, which is not something you want in a title character. Let's hope the school cracks down on the rules about only allowing actual students in the plays rather than letting the director pimp his own kids to kingdom come.

Still, one of my favorite musicals, done well, and a nice evening out. Maybe it was the break I needed.

2009-05-10T04:51:00.000-07:00

Did you know elephants have gestation periods of 22 months?

That's almost two years.

I think maybe I am part elephant.

2009-05-07T11:58:00.001-07:00

Tomorrow is d-day; today's appt. showed 1 cm dialation, NO effacement, baby lower but still merrily bobbing around like the stubborn little cork he is.

I am discouraged.

My mom is in town until next Wednesday; it will break both our hearts if she has to go home without seeing her new grandson.

I am ticked off.

That is all.

2009-05-05T07:44:00.000-07:00

This morning Peanut and I were outside; I sitting on the porch while he puttered around the backyard, gradually shedding articles of clothing.

My phone rang and I went into the house and had a brief conversation with Mr. RB. As I hung up the phone I heard Peanut calling me. "Mommy! I climbing tree!"

D'oh. I walked out to see him, stark naked, about six feet up our crape myrtle. If I hadn't been so anxious to get him to safety, I'd have taken a picture. As it is I didn't know whether to swell with maternal pride (being an avid tree-climber myself) or collapse of heart failure.

I instructed him that he needed to climb trees only when Mommy was there to watch. And preferably that he do it at least partially clothed.

2009-04-30T06:45:00.001-07:00

For the other marching band geeks out there:

Girl Beats Assailants with Marching Baton

I always said it should qualify as a P.E. credit.

2009-04-29T04:56:00.000-07:00

A few weeks ago while cleaning up the morning dishes I happened to glance up at our kitchen light, which is one of those ugly industrial-looking florescent inserts. It frequently captures specimens of the insect world that crawl in from the attic, and once I saw the silhouette of a dead lizard there. But on that particular morning I was startled to see the outline of a small tree frog against the glow, and even more startled when it moved.

Not one to stand idly by while a cute little critter roasts under a bulb, I removed the light cover and lowered it to the ground. The frog was huddled into a tight mass, mired in cobwebs and dust, and looked like it was at death's door - his thin skin stretched tight and papery over its delicate bones, membranes sunken and eyes dull and half-closed. He made no resistance as I scooped him up.

I gently pulled off the spiderwebs, moistened his dry skin with a little warm water, and wondered how to proceed. We were having an unusual cold snap, probably what drove the little guy into the attic and light in the first place, and I didn't want to simply toss him outside in the state he was in. Nor did I know what kind of frog he was; whether he needed to be in water or just have it accessible, but he didn't look capable of swimming at the moment, anyway. Finally I took him to our bathroom and set up a little incubator of sorts - a damp rag inside a plastic bin, with a heating pad underneath set on low, and a tray of water.

I checked on him periodically throughout the day and he perked up considerably, finding enough energy to hide in a fold of the rag, peering out with brighter eyes, little membranes pulsing with his breathing. It occurred to me I should probably cover the bin with something, but I never got around to it, and that evening when Mr RB got home I went to check on froggie and found he had flown the coop. A search of the bathroom proving fruitless, I decided that if he'd had enough energy to climb out of the bin and explore, he could fend for himself, and I would hope for the best.

The next morning Mr. RB called me into the bathroom to let me know my frog was sitting in the toilet. Sure enough, there he was, on the edge of the waterline, blinking up at us with his beady eyes. Laughing, I pointed him out to Peanut, which was a mistake - because, of course, he reacted with all the enthusiasm of a two-year-old, leaning over the bowl and squealing with delight. The startled frog took one leap and disappeared down the toilet.

I left it alone and unflushed all that day, hoping he would reappear so I could get him out, but finally, that evening, decided we could not have an unusable bathroom indefinitely, and hoped he would find his way out the "back way", so to speak.

This was at least three weeks and many flushes ago. Last night as I was getting ready for bed a movement caught my eye and I glanced over and nearly jumped out of my skin. A pair of beady black eyes was staring at me from the rim of the toilet bowl.

God only knows in what niche in the plumbing he managed to hide and on what he has been living all this time, but yes, it was my frog. I caught him with a plastic cup and escorted him into the great outdoors, where he will have a great story to tell to his fellow amphibians.

2009-04-28T07:36:00.000-07:00

This morning Peanut climbed on to the potty and went pee by himself, without being prompted or encouraged in any way.

In other news, a finger of frost crept up a sulfuric wall in hell.

2009-04-27T06:34:00.000-07:00

Peanut's to-do list, April 27, 2009

8:30 a.m. Dump contents of Mom's "dryer UFO" cup down lint trap. Listen delightedly as assorted coins, pins, hearing aid batteries, and other detritus rattle their way down the depths of dryer.

8:45: Stand innocently by while Mom attempts to run dryer load, dryer makes horrible noise and dies.

8:55: Run back and forth squealing underneath clothesline while Mom hangs laundry, until getting tangled in a towel, pulling it off into a fresh pile of dog poo on the ground.

9:00 Disappear into Mom's bathroom while she is on phone with Sears appliance repair, and experiment with her makeup. Make a note to practice mascara technique.

9:15: Categorically refuse, for five full minutes, to poop on potty.

9:20: Poop in pants.

9:25: Spend ten minutes standing on chair over washing machine, opening and shutting lid to watch the spin cycle turn on and off. Bliss.

...to be continued...

2009-04-24T05:35:00.000-07:00

Deuce continues to make this pregnancy more "exciting" than my last. I hope this is not indicative of his personality, or I am going to be spending the rest of my life checking my bed for strange critters or peeking around corners to make sure no one is about to leap out at me.

My appointment yesterday was a little later than usual and the wait time a little longer; it was pushing into lunchtime, and I had eaten breakfast early and had no midmorning snack. So by the time I went in for the routine stuff I was feeling jittery. The doppler revealed that Deuce's heartbeat was erratic...little hiccups and double-beats interrupting the steady kathunk kathunk kathunk. My chatter with the midwife ceased as we listened...she turned me on my side and the sounds continued without change. Calmly she suggested that I go home, eat lunch, and come in later that afternoon for 20 minutes or so of continuous monitoring.

So, fast forward to about 3:00 pm. I was settled onto a couch while the tech pulled out the various elastic straps and big hockey-puck sensors of the EFM machine. Then I chuckled to myself while for a full ten minutes she tried to get a signal on Deuce's heartrate with the lower sensor. Every time she found it, he moved. Violently. Stubbornly. Energetically. The tech watched in amazement as the upper part of my belly heaved into myriad geologically-active landscapes. Finally in exasperation she found a spot that picked him up faintly, and left me to sit for my 20 minute wait, with instructions to press a button whenever he moved and the machine lost the signal.

Within five minutes - during which the irregularities of that morning were nowhere to be heard - my midwife came in, shaking her head. "I'm sending you home," she said. "I can hear all his antics clear in the next room. No baby that active is in any distress." I reminded her that this was the baby who at 16 weeks hid so effectively I had to have an ultrasound to make sure he was alive, and that at every subsequent checkup it had taken a lot of coaxing to get him to sit still long enough to get a good rate count. His success at evading the doppler has become legendary at the center, and I can just imagine how bats he would drive an anal-retentive hospital staff trying to keep a bead on him with continuous electronic fetal monitoring. Yet another reason to avoid the hospital.

I remembered later that I'd also had a cup of tea that, upon examination, turned out to be highly caffeinated, way more than an average cup of coffee. No more of that! Anyway, all's well that ends well and all that.

2009-04-17T18:44:00.000-07:00

37 weeks, and officially full-term tomorrow. I made it!

Not that I had much fear of going preterm, given my previous experience. One other pregnancy may not be much to establish a standard, but it's all I have.

So the countdown begins. I actually feel pretty good, given all factors. My weight gain is roughly equivalent to what it was last time, and the belly is just as enormous. Deuce is a little bit engaged, but so long that his rear end is still up in my ribcage, making me breathless. It's gotten to the point where pretty much every move on his part hits some painful nerve. My lower back mumbles and mutters periodically about all this extra, oddly-distributed weight. But I don't have the sciatica problems I had last time, and that is making a huge difference in how well I sleep and move. God bless my chiropractor.

I have found myself craving things like broccoli and grapefruit and strangely indifferent to sweets, which would have been nice a little earlier in the pregnancy when it would have done me more good. But I'll take what I can get.

Moving on...tonight Peanut and his daddy were roughhousing and somehow Peanut got conked on the nose - not enough to bleed, but enough to hurt. Is it wrong to feel exultant when your wee child comes running to you for comfort? Not that I like seeing him hurt - far from it; watching little tears drop quivering from his lashes wrings my heart - but the sensation of being able to give him what he needs in that moment is one I cherish. His dependency is a blessing, not a burden.

Plus he's just so darn cute. Long practice of my saying "I'm sorry," whenever I have accidentally bumped into him, etc, has resulted in his believing this is the proper response to being hurt. So his sobs were punctuated with pitiful little declarations of remorse, even while Mr. Right Brain and I reassured him that he didn't need to be sorry; Daddy was sorry. Then as we were rocking before bed, he was still uncomfortable enough to whisper plaintively, "Need medicine nose," while pointing to the injured spot. I hated having to tell him there was no nose medicine available, but he took it calmly, apparently finding his "mommy milk" comfort enough.

(Yes, we are still nursing. I expect I will be tandem-ing in another few weeks. At about 7 months into pregnancy my milk changed to colostrum, which caused him some confusion; he would pull away and inform me "yucky milk", but found tolerating it preferable to forgoing it altogether.)

His leg continues to improve, although I begin to suspect the spots on it really ARE ringworm and am treating it accordingly. His walking and running are nearly back to normal, and today we had only two potty-accidents, although it is still my vigilance rather than his motivation driving the process.

I sense that I am rambling. Most of this stuff is only of interest to doting grandparents, but then, at least one of those is much on my mind, as I will be seeing her in less than a month. Yay!

2009-04-15T20:07:00.000-07:00

Today, I:

-ordered two cross-stitch kits, one for my kitchen and one for my dining room.

-bought fabric lining to finish the living room curtain I started over a year ago.

-made and hung a curtain for the bottom of my sewing table, to hide all the cords and boxes of fabric scraps that live there.

-organized my sewing table and sorted through fabric scraps, actually *gasp* throwing some away.

-cleaned my kitchen from top to bottom, including rearranging knick-knacks, hanging pictures, and wiping down walls, cabinets, and baseboards. Made mental note to repaint baseboards and dingy sections of wall tomorrow.

I do believe I am nesting.

2009-04-10T08:15:00.000-07:00

Peanut's cast came off yesterday afternoon. Er, that is, it was taken off.

Having been warned, I was prepared to see his leg look a bit pale and spindly. I was NOT prepared to see it covered in dime-sized angry-looking red-ringed yellow splotches with gray dead skin flaking off. I fought hysteria. The technician removing the cast maintained a silence I thought was ominous. What was she hiding for my benefit? Was she going to send the doctor in to do the dirty work of telling me my son's leg was in early stages of gangrene that would have to be cut out? Visions of child services swooping down and abducting him for our failure to maintain proper cast hygiene went flashing before my eyes. I tortured myself empathizing with the agonizing itching he must have endured (he had complained of it a few times, but never to an extent I would have imagined given the state of things.)

Finally I asked the tech point-blank how bad this was. She glanced up at me calmly. "Oh, I've seen worse."

Worse? I thought...like what, full-blown flesh-eating bacterial infection worse? "These are just surface lesions and they're not weeping or bleeding. And his cast doesn't stink," she pointed out. "Some of them the smell would just knock you over. It's caused by moisture in the cast, and it can happen even when you're really careful, just from them sweating in it."

I blessed the day I bought a cast cooler for him online, and shudder to think how bad his leg would have looked without it, as he did, in fact, manage to soak the thing several times - twice when we unsuccessfully attempted to protect it with plastic bags while we showered him, and twice when he escaped into the backyard where unbeknown to me there was standing water in several spots from a recent rainstorm - which, naturally, he stomped in.

His x-rays showed full healing of the tibia, so the doctor gave me some tips on caring for the skin abrasions and sent us on our way. After a bath, moisturizer, and a couple hours in the air it looked much better - sort of a bad case of ringworm instead of leprosy. They said it would take about a week to heal completely.

Meanwhile he still walks with his foot turned out, limping a little, and will until the muscle strengthens again, but he is already improving in that area as well. Thank God for the resilience of toddlers.

And no, I am not going to post a picture of his leg. Trust me, you do not want to see that.

2009-04-07T11:53:00.000-07:00

I have PUPPPs again. (Don't ask me to spell out the acronym here. Google it if you weren't around for Peanut's gestation.)

Most women who develop this beast only get it for their first pregnancy. But I am rebellious like that.

Fortunately, this time I am armed with information, and was able to begin an immediate counterattack with dandelion root. It isn't eradicating the rash entirely, but it is keeping it from raging out of control, and it doesn't itch as much as I know all-too-well it could be doing. Still, it sort of prepares me for the idea that I am probably going to have another humongous baby (that being one of the hallmarks of puppps), not that I needed more confirmation of that than the gargantuan lump I am carrying under my shirt. Some random old man at a restaurant recently asked me what day last month I was due. Yeah. Thanks. Shut up.

Peanut and I are on the second day of honest-to-goodness, no-turning-back potty training. Up to now, all my efforts to interest him have been met with cool indifference, his attitude toward the toilet being roughly like mine towards, oh, advanced algebra - all right for some people, but thank God, unnecessary for my daily use. So I finally broke down and have resorted to the M&M bribery method, and it is working like a charm - just now had the first experience, prior to his nap, of his telling me he had to go before he actually wet himself. Eureka! I'll overlook the fact that it was mainly a delay tactic to get out of napping. Now if he would only get it through his head that poop also belongs in the potty...the tantalizing enticement of FOUR M&Ms being, so far, not enough motivation.

I'm probably a little insane for doing this a month before Deuce shows up (pleaseGodletitbeonlyamonth) when everything I read warns that a toddler will regress in most areas when his world is intruded upon by a new baby, but I'm hoping that if we can at least get things mostly in hand now, whatever re-training we have to do will be that much easier. Besides, my energy being what it is (not) right now, I just can't take the diaper thing anymore. He's been in disposables for the past month because I just couldn't keep up with the laundry. I can deal with a few wet pairs of underwear a day, but the neverending diaper mess...ugh. I'm actually sort of weirdly looking forward to washing all those blissfully non-stinking newborn diapers, and I swear I'm going to delay Deuce's solids for as long as humanly possible.

2009-03-26T15:33:00.000-07:00

34 weeks, and other updated stuff...

Prenatal checkup this morning confirmed my suspicion that Deuce is already low-riding, which explains why most of my maternity pants became horrendously uncomfortable about a week ago - the seam between the pants fabric and the stretchy bit is cutting right across the spot where his head is sitting. I remember this with Peanut... it basically reduces me to wearing all-knit bottoms and tent-like skirts for the remainder of the pregnancy. Le sigh. I guess I should be thankful my babies drop early - less chance of any last-minute rearranging in order to stick a foot or shoulder where their heads belong. Whether he is still posterior I do not know; prodding at him only sends my uterus into outraged Braxton-Hicks contractions, so I just try to have the correct posture and let him sort it out.

I'm beginning to get the open-mouthed stares upon informing curious questioners that I still have over a month to go, assuring them that no, I am not carrying twins and no, I don't expect he'll come early, if my history is anything to go by. I am a huge, lumbering cow and can at least be ironically thankful that Peanut's long gestation gave me such an ample network of stretch marks that my body has not needed, so far, to add to the collection this time around.

Peanut seems to be recovering well from his mishap. His cast is as filthy as only a two-year-old boy can make it; it has gotten damp on numerous occasions and he does all but pour dirt inside it. We keep it covered with one of Dad's socks most of the time, and he has begun to bear weight on that side again, even to take a few tentative steps, although he finds the lack of traction between cast and bare flooring discouraging in that respect. I very much look forward to his return to normalcy in less than two weeks; although he gets around surprisingly well by crawling and climbing, his activity level has suffered and I have let him watch entirely too many dvds just to keep him quiet, a habit I am sure to regret fostering.

My crop of potato plants that had popped up in my compost bin had to be transplanted, along with the compost, to my garden plot, but seems to be surviving the move. In the process I harvested six tiny new potatoes the size of shooter marbles, roasted them with asparagus and chicken, and enjoyed them with smug delight that something actually survived and produced. Hopefully the coming months will see more of the same. Currently the taters are all I am growing, although I need to get a few more things in the ground before the month is out if I am to have any hope of harvesting before the hot weather starts. I also started an avocado seed indoors - the trees will grow here quite well, I'm told, and if one is going to muck around with fruit trees one might as well go for something as nutritionally-dense as possible, though I'd love to see about getting some citrus in our yard as well. Somebody beat us to the orange tree in the woody lot behind our house this year, and I didn't realize until then how much I'd come to enjoy fresh orange juice.

So...time ticks away...even during a "slow" month. We are tightening the budget, spending on nothing but food and gas for this month while we pull our finances under control after several careless weeks of too much eating out and frivolous expenditures. March is the mildest time of year here, usually requiring us to run neither a/c nor heat, so I expect to at least get the credit card paid off before Peanut's medical bills start showing up.

2009-03-16T14:33:00.000-07:00

Back from the orthopedics...their behavior earlier having been prompted by someone thinking my pediatrician's scheduler had threatened to call their administration if Peanut was not seen today. As I was on another line, I heard the doctor demand what she meant by it (when she had said nothing of the kind, as I knew since I'd also been on the phone with her the whole time they were paging him) and then fumingly ask why the child had not been splinted (um, because we just found out about the fracture two hours ago), then, when he found out I was on the line, told me if I could get there within the hour he would see us, as they were getting ready to wrap things up by 4:00 pm. As the place was across town, I told him I would do my best, and left immediately, waking Peanut up from his belated nap.

I arrived at four on the dot, filled out the obligatory mountain of paperwork, and had to tell the story of how the injury had occurred and what had been done since then about five times. I would have loved to shout it over the intercom that we took our son to an after-hours clinic on Saturday where the doctor looked him over, said he had a soft tissue injury and sent us home without x-rays. As it was I got to listen to two nurses whispering outside our open door about the nerve of any ped's office delivering an ultimatum (apparently the "threat" rumor had spread throughout the entire clinic by this time) about when a patient needed to be seen. Oh, but (whisper whisper) THIS injury had happened on FRIDAY (whisper, whisper) so there was some urgency because this child had gone so long without treatment. WELL, (whisper) it's not as though this is the only orthopedics place in town...even the ER could treat a fracture.

I sat there staring at the table, red in the face, feeling forever branded as the Mother Who Allowed Her Baby to Go Three Days With An Untreated Broken Leg, wanting to glare at both of them with a vehemence that would show I had heard everything they said. Instead, like the non-confrontational pushover I am, I thanked everything that moved for staying late for our sake and continually apologized for the inconvenience.

Peanut submitted quite amicably to treatment - fortunately the fracture was a clean one that required no setting, so it was just a matter of putting on a cast, which he gleefully calls his 'big boot'. I'm sure once the novelty wears off he won't be so thrilled, but for now I'll take what I can get. Fortunately the doctor said children his age heal quickly, and if all goes well he'll have the cast off in three weeks rather than the usual six.

I am coming off the adrenaline that's been keeping me going all day and now feel emotional and exhausted and completely ticked off - at the rude orthopedics people, at the doctor we saw Sat. who didn't think x-rays were necessary, and at myself for not trusting my gut and taking him in to the ER friday night when it happened. And it wasn't until today, retelling the story, I realized it had been friday the 13th. Of course.

*sigh*

I will now try to put a positive spin on all this...

I am thankful to finally have answers and the proper treatment.

I am thankful that there was no further injury to his leg in the three days gone by since the accident, which there well could have been.

I am thankful the break required no setting.

I am thankful for the body's fantastic, incredible, God-designed capacity to heal itself.

I am thankful this didn't happen three weeks before my due date.

I am thankful for all the prayers and well-wishes of friends and family.

And not least I am thankful for a happy, healthy little boy, without whom I would not know this kind of stress but neither would I know the unfathomable joy he brings me every day.

2009-03-16T11:48:00.000-07:00

News from the pediatrician:

Peanut has a leg fracture. Not in the ankle, which is good - seems to be further up the tibia from what I am hearing.

More details as I learn them. Am currently on hold with the orthopedic surgeon.

:(

2009-03-13T18:57:00.000-07:00

Peanut's Cute Thing of the Moment, whenever he is refused something he wants, is to heave a dramatic sigh, drop his forehead into his hand, and moan softly, "So sad..."

If his intent is to manipulate through sympathy, it is ineffective, because we wind up giggling instead of empathizing.

Tonight, however, it is my turn to be so sad. During a jaunt at the local playground, Mr. Right Brain was taking Peanut down one of the slides and somehow during the descent their legs got tangled up, resulting in the too-fast-to-determine-the-specifics twisting of Peanut's ankle. His screams brought me flying like a winged Hermes, where a moment before I was sitting on a swing feeling like it would take a bulldozer to get me to the car.

There is no swelling and not even any tenderness that I can tell, and he has full range of motion and no apparent pain when sitting or lying down. But he won't walk on it, though in lieu of being immobile he stubbornly crawls in a hands-and-feet position, with some whimpering. We'll take him to a doctor tomorrow morning if it has not improved; although to my knowledge there is not much to be done for a simple sprain, we can at least rule out something more serious.

There is no feeling so terrible as watching your baby suffer and being powerless to stop it. My heart breaks for parents of children with serious chronic illness. How they even get by day to day is amazing to me.

2009-03-12T09:33:00.000-07:00

32 weeks today:

Deuce is now standing nicely on his head for me, which I have been suspecting since early Sunday morning. Today's m/w was dismissive about the need for doing inversions this early, anyway, and said she never even would have told me to do them until 34 weeks and not to freak out if he flips again. Still, I'd rather he stays put, and if he weren't currently posterior I'd be out doing squats and tailor-sitting 24 hours a day to get him engaged. Anyway...no more standing on my head, although I think I'll continue the chiropractic stuff. No doubt they have tricks for turning a posterior as well as flipping breeches.

We had a chat about some of my expectations/concerns over the impending birth, mainly things that I wished had been done differently during Peanut's delivery, mostly that I felt like my second stage of labor had been very aggressively "managed", unlike what I had been expecting from the hands of my m/w at the time. (I mean, this is one of the reasons I chose a midwife, yo?). Current m/w, having worked with former m/w, pointed out that former m/w was a CNM, more medically-oriented than most (although still light-years away from the average OB), and was known for that kind of labor management. She assured me that, assuming no mitigating circumstances, the coached valsalva pushing and related shouting/panting/purple face were not at all in her protocols. She also said that, given my preferences, I was a likely candidate for a waterbirth, which - squee - is my dream. I came away feeling very good about it and hoping I get this particular m/w on call when the time comes (I like all three at the center, but this lady just gels with me...not least because she has this awesome soft English accent).

Took Peanut for a celebratory lunch at Arby's, which yeah, I know, not great prenatal nutrition but ZOMG DELICIOUS GLOMP. As rarely as we eat fast food, I figure the occasional dose of processed fat and sodium is not going to kill any of us, given how many Americans who live on daily rations of it are still walking around.

2009-03-10T09:19:00.000-07:00

The (not so) Big Bad Wolf:

2009-03-05T08:04:00.000-08:00

So Mr. Right Brain made the mistake of mentioning our likely name for Deuce to his sister...one of the aforementioned folks who feel free to give opinions on the matter. While her reaction was positive, she then shared it with several co-workers and then shared their responses with us, the first one being, "That sounds like a hippie name. Your sister-in-law must be a hippie."

Given that most of Deuce's diaper stash looks like this...
...that statement is possibly not the deterrent she expected it to be.

It's difficult to tie-dye prefolds due to the awkwardness of all that extra bulk in the middle. Some of these will get a second run of dye in the areas that didn't take, as currently there are a few that, when applied to Deuce's little bum, will create the illusion that he is bleeding.

I used a couple sherpa Happy Heinies to sop up the remaining dye in the vats, and they soaked it up like magic. I wish I had a dozen more of these:Now I just need to dye a few covers. I hear wool takes kool-aid and Easter Egg dye well, so I may give that a shot, having a couple of wool covers.

In other crafty news, I decided Deuce needed at least one hand-made blankie of his own. Peanut has something like four, and second children get the short shrift with all the hand-me-downs. So I tried my hand at quilting. Note that I have never quilted, and went into this trusting in my idiot's luck. After all, it's just sewing a bunch of blocks together. How hard can that be? (go ahead, experienced ones, I give you permission to laugh)

I learned several things:
1. I used to have a rotary cutter. This appears to no longer be the case.
2. An exacto knife is not a good substitute for a rotary cutter.
3. It is almost impossible to cut exact squares without a rotary cutter.
4. "Fat quarter" apparently does not mean the same thing to every piece of fabric, even before they all take it into their heads to shrink twelve different ways.

My usual approach to sewing, which is to be rather "creative" about cutting accuracy and seam allowance, does not serve well with quilting. However, I picked a simple pattern, and even though my square blocks did not turn out...um...square, I was able to make it work just by adjusting the pattern as I went. The result won't win me any awards, but it is colorful and bright and cheery and I am satisfied. Of course I have yet to do the actual quilting and binding, and will probably cheat by using bias tape. But Deuce won't mind.

In other non-crafty news, my compost pile appears to be growing a very healthy potato crop.
It figures that although I cannot deliberately grow healthy vegetables in this region to save my life, no matter how much work, time, and trouble I put into my garden, I can throw a bag of rotten potatoes away in a shady muck pile and they propogate in three days. Not that I am complaining, mind you. When the economy melts down and we're all starving to death, at least my family can make like the Irish and survive for a while on potatoes. (Assuming these guys do their job underground.)

2009-03-02T09:40:00.000-08:00

Things about my child that crack me up:

1. The fact that he thinks every body of water has alligators in it. It began with a day at the Highlands fair, at a park next to a large retention pond, on the far banks of which seven or eight large gators were sunning themselves and ogling the children frolicking on the near side. Ever since then if I point out a pond or lake from the car window, or we go walking by the lake at the park we frequent, Peanut lectures me about "alloo-GAT-uz." (The GAT, in his dialect, rhymes with "cat".) "Alloo-GAT-uz," he exclaims, "Roooarrgh! Eatchoo up!" And I, amidst giggles, agree that yes, alligators will eatchoo up. Anything to keep him away from the water's edge.

2. His weird associations. Last time we visited my in-laws, Peanut got stung by a fire ant in the back yard of their house. He didn't make much fuss about it, but was fascinated by the blister it produced, coming to me frequently over the next couple of days to point it out, apparently under the impression that because the injury occurred at Grandaddy's house, the ants must be under his jurisdiction. "Grandaddy's ants," he informs me, jabbing at the bump on his hand, "bitechoo. Give bo-bos." (Note that this is "bo-bo", not "boo-boo", a leftover from my own childhood. I have learned this is an eccentricity of Lousianians, because we just all have to be so unique...it should probably be spelled "beau-beaux".)

3. His obsession with the Three Pigs. He thinks he is the Big Bad Wolf, and walks around all day threatening to, "Bo house down." The fact that he has never succeeded in doing so with our house or any other does not discourage him. Periodically he attempts to sing the Disney song "Who's Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf?" but can only manage: "Big Bad Wolf. Big Bad Wolf. La la la laaaaaa..." in a tuneless sort of way.

4. The way he leans forward and presses his cheek to mine, and whispers in my ear: "Watch drums?" When I say no he smiles mysteriously and switches to the other ear, repeating the request with no discernible hint of frustration or anxiety, just a mild, self-assured perseverence. This will go on until I either give in (bad) or redirect him to something he can do (good).

5. His pronoun confusion. When he wants to play tag he will approach, all alight with excitement, and query, "Mommy, chase you?" Teasing him, I point to myself. "You want to chase me?" He quivers with anticipation, and pounds his chest emphatically. "Chase ME!" And runs away squealing.

More problematic is his anguished declaration that "You suck!" when what he means is "I'm stuck!" Since we are almost always in public when he says this (being strapped into high chairs or grocery cart seats) it garners some disapproving looks from passersby.

I love the twos. This is not terrible at all.

2009-02-27T08:56:00.000-08:00

For the love of all things sane...

Can we stop, yahoo, with the daily updates of the Obama family's impending dog adoption, preference for Coke over Pepsi, and whatever other banal, unimportant details you think America is clamoring for? He's the President. Stick with his policies. Even if I agreed with them, I still wouldn't care what color toothbrush the man uses or how many goldfish his daughters own. This celebrity-worship status makes his office a laughingstock. Just stop.

2009-02-26T09:57:00.000-08:00

30 week update:

I passed my glucose tolerance test. Wahoo! And during it suffered none of the ill effects so many women seem to complain of - which possibly says bad things about my eating habits, if I can tolerate 100g of glucose at one swipe without getting dizzy, nauseous, light-headed, etc. I did get very sleepy in the midst of hour 2 and recognized it as the inevitable post-sugar crash, but other than that sailed right through and had a nice chatty phlebotomist who did her work well.

Not so good news is that Deuce is hanging out with his head up. At 30 weeks this is perhaps not terribly worrisome, so I will try to relax and not sweat it while engaging in the various humbling postures and exercises designed to convince him to turn the other way, which all involve keeping my hips higher than my head for extended periods. My midwives have delivered breeches that turned unexpectedly during labor, but they will not voluntarily do them and there's not an OB in this state who will even try.

Also: we think we've settled on a name, and I think we will once again make it a surprise. Not only does this make it easier to change if when he is born it simply doesn't fit, it also precludes the efforts of those who think they are entitled to give their opinions beforehand, of which we have already fielded a few over a couple of now-discarded options.

2009-02-16T08:11:00.000-08:00

I flunked my glucose screen.

Now I have to do the major test, where after a three-day carb-load and ten hour fast you get four blood draws in a three hour space, along with a double dose of that nasty drink. Joy.

I am cranky today.

Apparently my mother was diagnosed with GD when pregnant with me, a fact I never knew until last week, but it does add to my risk factors. And my last non-pregnant fasting blood draw tested on the higher end of normal, so I was a little anxious and half-expecting a poor result on this one. I wonder often if Peanut's large size was a result of an undiagnosed case of GD last time; although I passed the screen, the other center used a different method of carb-loading that I am not totally positive I did correctly.

But my biggest source of upset is that if I do test positive for GD I will most likely risk out of the birth center and be back in the hospital for Deuce's birth.

Which makes me want to cry like a petulant little girl.

I shouldn't be borrowing trouble before I even take the second test. Somebody talk some sense into me. After all, anything that forces me to take better care of my diet should be a good thing, as irritable as it might make me in the meantime.

2009-02-14T13:01:00.000-08:00

To distract myself from an upper respiratory monster that is making me feel as human as a dirty sock shoved under a bed, I shall recap a scene from yesterday:

Peanut and Sunrise are in the backyard, blowing bubbles (the current favorite activity).

Sunrise: (blows bubbles)
Peanut: Hug bubble. (attempts to do so, oblivious to the impossibility) Awww.
Sunrise: We can't hug bubbles. They pop.
Peanut: Kiss bubble? (another attempt, resulting in bubble solution on lips. Makes face.) Yucky.
Sunrise: (has coughing fit)
Peanut: (pats Sunrise on back)
Sunrise: (giggles)
Peanut: (reaching for bubble wand)Hoe-dit. Hoe-dit.
Sunrise: You want to hold it? Your turn. (hands him the wand) Now, blow.
Peanut: (blows messily and laughs) Ah puff. Ah puff. Ah booow house down. (attempts to blow the house down by blowing on the door frame)

The little joys that get you through the day. What did I do before I had a child?

2009-02-12T12:10:00.000-08:00

We used some Christmas money to purchase a snazzy new CPU, about twelve times faster as our old model and with enough memory to keep my artwork happy for the next several years, I hope. Huzza!

It took a savvy friend's finagling to get our scanner to communicate with the new system properly, but now that it is, I can upload some new projects...drawings that kept me busy in the interim of having no computer at all (amazing how my productivity soars during such periods).

Having been inspired yet again while flipping through our Mucha book, I wanted to continue my art nouveau seasons but couldn't seem to pin down anything I was happy with, so moved on to some elementals instead. Shouldn't start a new series before finishing the old, but oh well.

I will be happy with these until approximately thirty seconds after picking up Mucha again. At which point I will despairingly ponder my utter worthlessness as an artist and wonder why I even bother.

Of course that just means I won't pick it up for a while. Meanwhile it'll take me a couple months, probably, to get these colored. The Peanut will not allow me to work on the computer for extended periods (just as well, given how I'd be neglecting him otherwise), and I am still not wild enough about my watercolor skills to risk ruining drawings that took me so long. I've gotten far too dependent on digital, I guess, but man, I wish I'd known how to really use this technology back in college. My hours spent in the graphics computer lab are ones I'd like to get back and actually do something useful with, especially one or two little all-nighters of which my brain still retains foggy, hallucinagenic images involving error messages about scratch discs and spooling failure.

Now I'm staring at a couple details in these I need to go back and fix.

Anyway. Water and Air to come eventually, possibly Light as well, and then maybe a "Weather" series - Lightning, Thunder, Wind, Rain, etc. And or course I still need to do Winter and Spring, and probably rework Summer, whose reviews have been lackluster. A challenging list, but doable over the next couple years if I keep my butt off the computer. So tell me to get off already!

2009-02-11T06:45:00.001-08:00

For those of you concerned, like me, about the ramifications of the subject discussed in my last post:

It looks like there have been a few changes to the bill that should make it easier on at least some fronts. There have been exemptions made for items made from natural materials - wood, cotton, wool, etc. - that are known not to contain dangerous substances (although I don't see anything about what happens if you *gasp* paint or dye said items.) There is also apparently an exemption for textiles.

See more information here: http://www.hslda.org/docs/news/200902100.asp

Looks like those of you making doll clothes and sweaters are safe. I, on the other hand, still have to worry about my beads and buttons.

2009-02-10T13:45:00.000-08:00

Well, that didn't last long.

My nursing necklaces will not be turning into a tidy little home-based business after all, thanks to the new CPSIA law that went into effect today.

I don't expect anybody who doesn't dabble in handmade materials for children to know about this, so let me give an extremely brief explanation: CPSIA was pushed through congress about nine months ago in response to all the toy recalls over lead content. Which, fine, of course there needs to be greater accountability with toy manufacturers if they insist on having everything made in China. Essentially the new law requires that every item intended for children be tested by its manufacturer for compliance with the accepted levels of lead and pthalates.* Sounds great. Except testing costs are prohibitive, and must be done with every sku sold. Not just individual components of an item.

In other words, it is not enough for me to order my beads from suppliers who guarantee them to be lead and pthalate-free. I would have to have each of my necklaces (since each is different) individually tested for these substances - which would cost more than the value of the necklace, and, by the way, would destroy the necklace. To do otherwise would put me in violation of the law.

This applies to any and everything intended for children. Clothing, toys, bottles, baby gear, books. Yes, books. I have seen blog comments today from a lady saying her local thrift store was throwing boxes of children's books printed before 1985 into the garbage because they are no longer deemed "safe" under this law. This also applies, incidentally, to libraries, who presumably will have to destroy enormous volumes of their juvenile sections. Because you know how kids like to eat books. (Ingestion being the primary method of lead poisoning, and the fear being that there could be lead in the inks used in printing books.)

And all those small manufacturers of organic, handmade toys crafted proudly in America? The ones parents felt confident turning to when giants Hasbro and Mattel created this fiasco in the first place? Gone. Most will not have the financial ability to pay for the testing. The large manufacturers will be fine, although we can expect to see the prices of all their offerings go up.

Children's clothing manufacturer's are expecting to get back over $5 million in unsellable clothing - clothing that is perfectly safe, but hasn't been officially tested so cannot legally be sold. Let's ponder what that's going to mean, in this economy, with the current unemployment rate. Thrift and consignment stores, although not required to test what they sell, can still be held liable for any item sold, so many will simply stop carrying children's items altogether. Let's think about what that means for families already struggling financially. No more stocking up on toddler t-shirts at Goodwill. You'll have to go to a regular store and buy at full price - which will also go up to cover testing costs, of course.

The small business voice has not been loud enough to get through to a blind and ignorant Congress what the full effects of this wildly-overreaching bill are going to be. Of course they are currently very busy pouring trillions of our dollars into their self-created sinkhole, so I guess we can't blame them for ignoring the little guy so many of them claim to care about.

Government. It can't do a thing without screwing it up.

*Except for key items like medical supplies used in NICU wards. Plastic medical supplies are loaded with pthalates, yet we use them to keep premature infants alive. But God help the stay at home mom selling her homemade cloth diapers - they might have lead in them!

2009-02-06T09:42:00.000-08:00

Peanut Gallery

To Mr. Right Brain's and my continued resignation, the Peanut has yet to show any sign of an artistic bent. We always said it would be a typical bit of divine hilarity for us to have a child who'd be better at math than at drawing, into playing baseball instead of costumes, and who would want to read books about astronauts instead of dragons. While it is too early to tell where his talents and interests lie, Peanut certainly seems to be fulfilling certain aspects of this doomsday prophecy.

He has zero interest in drawing or scribbling; crayons, long an item of fascination for their possible edible-ness, are now only used as missiles. Markers are met with slightly more eagerness, but seem to wind up marking household objects more often than paper. He can name neither color nor shape despite countless attempts to teach them, although his recognition of shape is good enough to complete puzzles and fit the proper blocks through their corresponding holes. (My instinct says this is a spatial relationing skill, a left-brain strength, no?)

So I was ecstatic recently to discover at least ONE artistic activity he actually got into.

It probably has more to do with the inherent messiness of paint, which probably feels deliciously forbidden to him. But it did keep him busy for almost an hour.

Now I can move from pretending to be one of the elite artistic snobs who "get" abstract art to the ranks of the unwashed masses who stare at a critically-acclaimed nondescript mass of colors hanging on a museum wall and dubiously snort, "My two-year-old could do that."

Peanut also has a penchant for technological gadgetry. Perhaps this is more or less true of all modern children, particularly boys; I've not had enough experience yet to know. I only know he is drawn, like moth to flame, to anything that looks digital and expensive, despite many admonitions that such items are not for touching. Thanks to an entertainment center that raises things out of his reach, we have not yet experienced the infamous PB&J inserted into the VCR, but he has wreaked havoc on my nerves by shutting the computer down while I'm in the middle of something, repeatedly dialed friends and strangers on the cell phone, and taken apart various medical instruments in his pediatrician's exam room. His favorite high-tech item, however, has always been the camera...ah, the camera, with its siren call of gleaming silver, glittering buttons, flashing lights. It has had two lenses replaced in the last two years, for free thanks to Best Buy's don't-ask, don't-tell policy on warranty-covered repairs, and I still sometimes forget and leave it somewhere within his reach, as evidenced by the next time I pick it up and find half-a-dozen shots like this:

Can't tell if that look is intense concentration or just dazedness in the face of repeated flashes.

Speaking of looks...his favorite new game is making faces at himself in the mirror, an activity we enjoy after every bath. It keeps him busy while I dry his hair and cracks both of us up to boot.

I had someone comment recently that to look at my photo albums anyone would think my kid spends nearly all his time naked or semi-so. To which I must admit this is more or less the case. Our climate makes it possible; his propensity for playing in dirt makes it convenient. He seems to prefer it, usually approaching me within minutes of heading outside with the request, "shoes off?" followed systematically by pants, shirt, socks, and diaper. Once completely au natural he capers about like a little pagan nature spirit in so free a manner it makes me slightly envious. I do, of course, appreciate the privacy a fenced backyard and no rear neighbors afford, or we wouldn't do this. He does usually have a diaper on indoors, unless it's the half-hour or so following his bath. I refuse to feel neglectful over this. What other time in life are we allowed such freedom and innocence?

Besides, the Naked Drummer would be a really great name for a band.

2009-01-22T06:38:00.001-08:00

*sigh*

Celtic Thunder. It would have been so easy for me to love you.

In spite of the fact that I know you were primarily an attempt to capitalize on the wild success of Celtic Woman.

In spite of Ryan's ridiculous posturing, which makes Gerard Butler's portrayal of the Phantom look positively understated.

In spite of Keith's making me think constantly (and irritatingly) of Zac Efron in High School Musical.

Because I will forgive so much for the sake of men (and boys) who can sing.

But what I can't forgive is that a program that calls itself Celtic Thunder has so few numbers that are actually...you know...Celtic.

Just because an Irish guy sings a song does not automatically make that song Celtic in origin or style. I'm staring at the back of the album right now, and I see perhaps five out of seventeen pieces that qualify. Out of the others, maybe someone tried to make the case that they were written by Irishmen, or were part of a genre that had its roots in Celtic folk (though it's a long road from the Banks of Loch Lomond to Desperado, folks). But come on. "I Want to Know What Love Is?" "Nights in White Satin?" "Puppy Love?" Honestly. Damian is a doll and I want to pinch his cheeks, but what I really want is to hear him sing The Water is Wide.

It's not like you didn't have a wealth of options to choose from, or that the old folk tunes couldn't be jazzed up to appeal to modern audiences.

I will thank my public library that I didn't actually pay money for the few tracks worth keeping from this disc. Caledonia and Heartland are its biggest redeeming features; couldn't you have had a whole show full of that?

2009-01-16T17:07:00.000-08:00

One of the perks of living in our climate...

Blowing bubbles in January!

Last weekend was mild and sunny, and I took Peanut outside to enjoy it while Mr. Right Brain took down the Christmas lights. Peanut just recently discovered how to blow bubbles and begs to do it every day - he makes short work of a bottle, invariably spilling the solution after a few minutes, but the stuff is pretty cheap.

Is it just me, or has bubble solution gone way down in quality? I used to be able to get like fifty with one blow (hee, I sound like the brave little tailor) and now I'm lucky if I get three. I know you're supposed to be able to make your own with a little detergent and water - and glycerin, if you're adventurous - but I've never been able to get the solution right, and a good old bottle of Mr. Bubble has always beat it out, until the last year or two, it seems. I used to be able to blow giant bubbles, catch them on the wand, and with a quick breath and wrist flip blow two or three smaller bubbles inside the larger one. No longer. What's the deal?

Peanut managed to do as well as I did most of the time. Every time he was successful he would point and exclaim, "Good one!" before dancing after it to pop it. What is it that gives kids that instinct that bubbles Must Be Popped? I always preferred to watch them float away in the sun, sparkling like captured rainbows.

There's something just indescribably lovely about sitting barefoot in cool grass, sunlight sifting through the leaves overhead, watching your diaper-clad toddler chase bubbles. One of those small moments of which life is made.

The kind you remember.