Complain-o Peeps

A couple of things...

2009-02-10T15:10:00.001-08:00

1. I've basically cut off all my hair and I'm growing out the gray. So, if you haven't seen me in awhile and we run into each other, you've been warned.

2. School pictures!

It's been so long since I posted last that those school pics are actually a couple of months old now. Here's a more recent and accurate one of LB:

I know it's blurry, but come on! Here's one in better focus:

She's is a playground menace. And she's got mad slide skillz!

3. Having 2 kid is a lot. I'm serious. It's a LOT! I don't know how parents of 3 or 4 or whatever do it. This 14-18 month age is rough. I remember feeling on the brink when Linus was this age. Luna is teething her first molars and just got over a barfing virus. I haven't had a sound night's sleep in months, possibly even 1.5 years. Linus kinda half woke up the other night crying about how he wanted to draw a lion. That morphed into 20 minutes of "I WANT A LIIIIIIIIOOOOOONNNNNN!!" at 3 in the morning before I could wake him up enough to get him back to sleep. I'm obsessed with finding easy and tasty 30-minute dinner recipes BECAUSE THAT'S ALL THE TIME WE HAVE TO GET DINNER READY. I feel like I'm hanging on by my fingernails.

4. Linus is into drawing sharks. Sharks and swords.

I've got one just like it in my office. I'm going to frame it because it's fucking awesome!

Luna Bee is 1 year old tomorrow!

2008-11-07T11:42:00.000-08:00

Time flies! My baby's growing up! I can't believe it's been a year! And all those other cliches that are cliches BECAUSE THEY'RE TRUE!

Getting out the Pre-K vote

2008-10-31T19:26:00.000-07:00

Conversation with Linus (age 4) this evening:

Linus: Mommy, I voted for Obama.
Me: Really? You did? Where?
Linus: Mmmm, somewhere.

I think he's being pretty cagey. Maybe this is some of that historic Democratic voter fraud we've been hearing so much about.

2008-10-27T14:59:00.000-07:00

OK, go check out this post over at Yes We Can (hold babies). Be sure to read the caption. Go on, I'll wait.

....

Back? Now, if that didn't cause you to at least choke up a little, if not actually weep, well...I just don't know what to say.

Thinking about another baby

2008-08-21T15:46:00.000-07:00

Linus is, not me. I mean, I think about it sometimes, but I think I've come to the conclusion that we just can't fucking afford it. But last night Linus asked me, "Where are the babies before they're in the mommies' tummies? Like, when you're zero?" I did a bunch of hand waving about how mommies have little tiny eggs in them, like little seeds, and under the "right conditions" *wink*..blah de blah, etc. Then this morning as he watched me changing Luna he announced that he wants another baby and he wants to name her Butterfly.

Me: That's a nice name, honey. But, what if we had a boy?
Linus: No, I want a girl.
Me: But you can't always control that and you could get a brother. What then?
Linus: (thinks about it...) Then we could name him Luna!
Me: Luna? Wouldn't that be a little weird having both a sister and brother named, "Luna"?"
Linus: No, not really.

Random interlude

2008-08-13T16:43:00.000-07:00

Look, I know that last post was a bit of a hot mess. Motherhood, childbirth, breastfeeding, weight, food, fitness, physical activity, and body image (among other things) are all jumbled up for me. It's hard to sort out. I'll endeavor to do better next time.

Meanwhile, I had the following conversation with Linus yesterday on the drive home from work/school:

Linus: Do you know what "bejermen" means?
Me: Bejermen?
Linus: Yes.
Me: Uh, no. What does it mean?
Linus: It means something that is soft AND bumpy.
Me: Soft and bumpy, huh? Bejermen. Really?
Linus: Yes.
(long pause)
No one told me that. I just know.

Getting My Shit Together

2008-08-06T15:18:00.000-07:00

The process of becoming the kind of parent I want to be is really the process of Getting My Shit Together. I've quoted him on this blog before, but as my friend Jordan said, "Parenting isn't about controlling your kids, it's more about controlling yourself." Truer words were never spoken. There's this period when your kids are little where you don't really have to have your shit together. Babies need arms, diaper, booby (or the equivalents) and that's about it. It really makes no difference to a baby if you have your shit together, as long as it's together enough to change a diaper, hold them, give them the booby. But, at some point you are no longer just facilitating their development as organisms, but also as people. You begin to help shape their emotional and intellectual as well as physical development. That's when it really starts to become important that you have your shit more or less together, as far I see it.

So, this is number two in a series of posts about Getting My Shit Together. Last one, sex. This one, body image. Here's the thing: I talk the talk about having a positive body image, but it is a struggle. I think with a boy child, that would be sufficient. Not perfect, but sufficient. I think my role-modeling duties regarding body image could be met with him such that he could grow up with a healthy attitude toward his, and others, bodies no matter their size or physical abilities. But, I'm afraid that now that I have a girl child too, I need to get my shit together about it. I don't want to subtly telegraph to her that in fact it's not ok to be anything less than within a narrow range of physical dimensions, because I have completely internalized the negative messages myself. The distinctions I'm drawing between my roles in raising a boy and raising a girl may be bullshit, but nevertheless, I now recognize I need to get my shit together.

This has come to the fore for me lately because I'm again struggling with being ok with my post-pregnancy/breastfeeding body. This is how it goes for me: I gain some amount of weight while pregnant, I have a baby and I lose all the baby/uterine/water/extra-blood-volume weight, but not any more. My weight stays completely flat for about 7-9 months, until the baby starts eating some solids in addition to breastfeeding, then my weight starts to slowly go up. It goes up for some time until it again flattens out. Once the baby weans completely, only then do I slowly start to drop weight again. All of this seems to happen regardless of what/when/how much I eat or exercise. I think what's happening in the breastfeeding period is that once the baby starts on solids, the amount of calories they're taking from me drops, but my body is still getting the hormonal signal that I'm a breastfeeding mom. This means that I'm hungry as hell all the time, so even if I wanted to restrict calories (which I don't) I can't without being miserable. Also, my body isn't going to let go of any fat stores if it can help it. There are plenty of good evolutionary reasons for this. Obviously, it's better for the baby if the mom has the fat stores to feed them no matter what food shortages may strike.

This is what happened to me with Linus. It wasn't until he was completely weaned that I finally began to lose the weight I'd gained during pregnancy. I'd go online to various pregnancy/early parenting sites and chats to find other women having the same experience, and I have to say I found very little commonality with other moms. Many, many women posted about how the weight just fell off while they were breastfeeding. In fact, this was tauted as one of breastfeeding's benefits - You'll have an easier time losing your baby weight :-) ! It was common to hear about moms not losing the last 5-10 lbs. until they'd stopped nursing, but I almost never heard about other moms gaining weight while nursing. I don't know if women just weren't willing to admit it, or maybe my experience really isn't that common. Maybe it's because I'm "older". Who knows?

To be sure, there's plenty of advice out there on how to lose baby weight. Diets, exercise regimes, endless articles on "reclaiming your pre-pregnancy body". That's not what I was looking for. At all. I was looking more for reassurance of normality, I guess. I have no interest in dieting. I know for a full-fucking-fact that it doesn't work. Does. Not. Work. Sure, if you want to lose weight in the short term, one way to do it is through calorie restriction. But, you will gain it back. I just wanted to know if anyone else had had a similar nursing experience.

Now, I'm experiencing the exact same pattern again with Luna Bee. Even though I now know that this is how it happens for me, I struggle with being ok with it. In general, I try to not be all American-girl weirded out about food. I try and eat good food that I enjoy. As a family we try to eat as locally, organically, and in-season as possible. We try to limit mega-corporate fastfood, or buying super-processed food because it was successfully marketed to our kids (or us), though I'd be lying if I said I never eat the occasional Big Mac. We try to eat for nourishment and pleasure, and not treat food as medicine or as a badge of our moral purity in some form or other. I recognize that even being able to talk about food like this is a signifier of privilege.

I also try to be active. I know that I feel and sleep better if I am active in some way every day. But, I'm not interesting in punishing myself with physical activity. It took me awhile in early adulthood to get past the whole, "no pain, no gain" bullshit. I want my kids to be active in whatever way they enjoy because they enjoy it. Not because they feel like they have to to be good people. Hmmmm, it seems I have a lot more to say about this. Maybe in another dedicated post.

Anyway, in part because I'm unwilling to "use" food or exercise to try and control how my body looks, I need to be happy with how it just is. I know that my weight alone isn't a sign of how healthy I am, and shouldn't be a determiner of how happy I am. A particular challenge, I think, when my body has gone through as much change as it has (up, down, around the corner and back again) in the last 5 years or so. Sometimes I am care free about it, sometimes I'm not. Truely, I need to get my shit together about it.

The birds and the bees

2008-07-22T16:04:00.000-07:00

My children are going to reach sexual maturity some day, and that's all right with me.

There, I said it. *Phew*, that wasn't easy. I mean, beyond just hoping that they grow up healthy and all that, they're going to hit puberty. And I'm ok with it.

You may be thinking, "Um, what?" but hear me out. This being ok thing wasn't always true. Like all things parenting, until I had kids I hadn't really thought much about how to parent sexual beings. I mean, I've always considered myself to be pro-sex, or sex-positive, or whatever moniker, but when I started to think about having kids, and once I had them, I would have moments of paralyzing fear about them reaching sexual maturity.

Turns out I'd completely internalized all of the fear-mongering regarding teen sexuality in American culture and media. All of the hysteria about supposed "rainbow parties", "hook-up culture", pregnancy pacts, girls-gone-wild, and teen pregnancy generally, for example. It's one thing to want to raise kids with healthy attitudes towards sex and sexuality, but another thing altogether to raise wanton sex-fiends (as all teenagers are, natch) who have sex with virtual strangers anywhere, any time with no regard for self-respect, intimacy, or responsible use of birth control. The volume on this fear was cranked up to 11 when I found out I was having a girl, as you'll notice the gender disparity in the cultural caricature: boys just think about sex all the time, and really all you have to do is teach them how to use a condom effectively, but depending on your parenting failures girls are either amoral sluts or potential victims of sexual predation of one form or another.

This all came into focus for me because of 3 things:

1. About a year ago, I started reading 3rd wave feminist blogs regularly. In fact, I haven't updated my blogroll in forever to reflect my recent habits. I'll do it once I finish this post. Blogs like Feministing, The Curvature, and Feministe, among others. First up, I gotta say that once you dip your toe into this pool you will not believe how many cool people are writing sometimes amazing, sometimes work-a-day but always interesting, stuff around feminist issues. I love the ladies (and occasional gentleman) who post on those blogs! There are regular posts about the double standard young women vs. young men are held to regarding sex. Slut shaming, purity balls, etc., and it got me thinking about why I was freaked out about having teenagers. About how much of it was reflective of what I really felt and how much of it was a panic response to all the fear-mongering in society at large.

2. I was reading about George Bush's failed Abstinence-Only education agenda one day and I ran across a quote. I can't find it now, but essentially it was along the lines of, well, we can disagree about the effectiveness of abstinence-only education, but as parents we can all agree at least that of course, in the best of all worlds our kids wouldn't be having sex until marriage. It was stated as a given, like we may disagree about methods, or how realistic a goal it is, but obviously we don't want our kids having premarital sex. This brought me up short. I thought...huh...well, no, actually. I don't think anybody should be getting married to someone they haven't had sex with. I suppose there can be exceptions, but in general I think it's foolish. I want my children to marry someone (if they choose to get married) that they are harmoniously intimate with, for lack of a better phrase. I explicitly want my children to have premarital sex. If that construct is even appropriate as they grow up. I would say, in fact, that premarital sex is a core family value in our household. Well, once I articulated that so explicitly, I had to think about exactly what I think are appropriate boundaries regarding sex and sexuality. Don't get me wrong, I don't want either of them having sex when they're 12. Exactly what do I think is right and wrong, and what do I want my kids to believe? I had to try and think about it with a clear head.

3. I read a study called "Must we fear adolescent sexuality?" by Dr. Amy Schalet, where she compares attitudes toward teenage sexuality in America and the Netherlands. The 2 countries are similar in terms of wealth, and education, and similar measures, but the U.S. has the highest, and the Netherlands the lowest, teen pregnancy rate in the western world. What she found is that parental attitudes toward teenage sexuality were also starkly different. When asked whether they would let their teenage child spend the night in their room with their boyfriend or girlfriend , something like 9 out of 10 American parents answered an emphatic, "No", or probably something more like, "Over my dead body!", while 9 out of 10 Dutch parents said yes, they would consider it once their child was at least 16 or 17 years old. Well, at first, when considering the question of would I let my teenager spend the night with their boyfriend/girlfriend in my house, I must admit my initial response for about 3 seconds was, "Hells no!" But when I thought about it longer, I realized that I was responding again out of fear, not out of what I really believe about sex, or teenagers, or morals, etc. So, it got me thinking. Now, I'm not saying that I'm on board with the idea of a teenage sleep-over in my house yet, but I might be in another decade. I'm just saying that I'm not reacting in a knee-jerk fashion anymore. I'm thinking about it is all.

It's a really interesting paper, a must-read for parents, I think. Another tidbit I found interesting: a majority of American parents don't believe that teenagers can actually fall in love (as opposed to infatuation, I suppose), that they don't really know what love is, while Dutch parents do. Interesting...

So, there you go. Blame it on the feminist blogs, George Bush, and a sociology thesis.

2 different but closely related topics...

2008-07-11T00:06:00.000-07:00

All of the discussion around Obama's comments on abortion has brought up some still raw feelings about my own experience. I think he was talking out of his ass a bit, as many do who haven't been through it, and I'm disappointed. Others have expressed themselves more articulately than I ever would, so I won't go on at length. I'm just disappointed is all.

I'm a lame blogger, we all know that. I vacillate between wanting to write openly and honestly (and as often as possible, humorously) about every experience, feeling grossed out by my narcissism, and feeling shy and wanting to keep my life entirely private. And these feelings have nothing to do with the actual time I have available to write. I feel guilty when I haven't posted in more than a day or two, and I've thought often about just quitting this blog and taking it down. But, in the end I really only have 2 kinds of readers; friends who know me well and read the blog to keep in touch (and a couple of friends of friends who have that as a connection), and people who search for "multiple omphalocele" or "hydrocephaly" or "2 chamber heart" and "routine 17 week sonogram" in google in some combination and end up here somehow. It happens every couple of months - I'll check the visitor paths and there's the trail. That's really why I leave this blog up even when I haven't posted in weeks. When we found there was something wrong in that first pregnancy, first I searched for specific information about the medical conditions (diagnoses, prognoses, probabilities, etc.), then I searched for any personal accounts from people who'd faced similar circumstances. I was desperate for not just the cold facts, but how people, women, expectant couples had dealt with the situation. I wanted to know if they faced it bravely or if it crushed them. I wanted to know if they told everyone they knew or kept it a secret for years. I needed to know if they'd ever been able to face pregnancy again. I wanted to know the small things about how they talked with their doctors, how they felt about every step of the process, how they felt about themselves through it all. My account of my experience doesn't have all that, but I do hope it offers some perspective. A small consolation for having gone through it.

My heart goes out to those who find their way here that way. Though we've never met, I feel protective of them. I'd like to be able to call them up and offer my support directly. I wish I could help them navigate the road of suck they're on.

You already know I'm awesome

2008-07-08T19:41:00.000-07:00

Orion's out of town this week, leaving me with Linus and Luna Bee on my own. I've said the following just today alone:

"Linus, get that bin off your head and stop kicking stuff!"

"Please don't rub that popsicle on your sister's face."

"No, you can not poke her with that stick!"

and my favorite:

"Do NOT pee on your sister!"

a Luna list

2008-07-01T14:58:00.000-07:00

I know, I don't write nearly as much about Luna as I do about Linus (or even just random other stuff). It's not because I care for her any less, or find her less interesting, it's just that she's a baby. Linus talks about shooting rhinoceroses, and runs around in Spiderman underpants, and what not. Basically, he's blog fodder. While I find Luna fascinating, I recognize that this is mostly because I'm her parent. Now that we're on the second one I can see with more clarity that every little thing she does is not magic to anyone but me, her father, and maybe her grandmother. That First Baby Veil has lifted from my eyes. However, I feel I'm juking her in the word count. I don't want her to find this blog 15 years from now and feel slighted and get all huffy and morose (any more so than she'll already be because she's a teenager anyway). I could list 100 things I find completely charming and interesting and amazing about her, but I'll just list 10:

1. She crosses her legs at her ankles whenever she nurses. Has since the day she came out. It's like she's kicking it at the booby, chillin'. It's really eff-ing cute!

2. She's in the 95th percentile for weight and completely off the charts for length! Our girl's going to be a tall one.

3. She is very noisy. If you put her down for even a minute on the floor or couch or whatever, she makes this noise, a sort of a growl that sounds like a chain-smoking baby dinosaur. Rowr, rowr, rowr, rowr, rowr. It's really annoying and therefor effective. Sometimes, she just hollers. Not cry, mind you, hollers.

4. She does not like to be put down (see #3). Sometimes she likes to sit and play with stuff, but mostly she knows you're just trying to do something without her and that's BULLSHIT! She is on to you!

5. She has a hilarious don't-put-me-down strategy of NOT BENDING AT THE WAIST! She will NOT BEND AT THE WAIST no matter what if you try and put her down when she's not ready. The Human Plank. This usually results in having to lay her down on her back WHICH SHE HATES EVEN MORE THAN SITTING DOWN, DAMMIT!!

6. She has no interest in crawling, but she will scale you like Mt. Everest. If I'm sitting next to her on the couch or floor, she'll flop over and scale up the side of me until she's smiling right in my face with a big, one-tooth smile. She's going to be one of those babies that walks before she crawls.

7. She loves the singing. Though she hates the car seat, she'll sit happily as long as I'm singing The Wheels On The Bus. Over, and over, and over again. Her very favorite song is The Itsy-Bitsy Spider. She sings to herself all the time a kind of tuneless chant that includes vigorous arm flapping and bouncing.

8. She sleeps in the crook of my arm all night, which I love, but that means I can't really have much in the way of covers over me because she doesn't do covers. She kicks, kicks, kicks with her super chubby power legs until all covers are off. Even in her sleep she'll kick off the covers. Kick, kick, splay! Only in the deepest of deep sleeps can I sneak a little blanket up over her. Again, cute, but annoying.

9. She pokes her tongue out all the time. Like in the picture above. I don't really get it. There was a period of about 3 weeks a month or so ago when the tongue disappeared, but now it's back. I think it may have something to do with teething, maybe she likes the feel of it on her gums. It's a mystery. It compliments the chain-smoking baby dinosaur noise nicely, however.

10. She loves her brother. Loves him. She lights up with a huge smile whenever he comes to talk or play with her. She finds his shenanigans hilarious! Spin and fall? Funny. Spin and fall again? Funnier. Call her a doh-doh-head? Funny. Get an inch from her face and sing a song. Funny. Pretend to pee on her? Hilarious! You can tell she wants to follow him so bad. She gets furious that he can walk away and she can't follow. Once she starts walking, he's in trouble. He won't be able to shake her.

Anyone still reading at this point, thank you for indulging me.

2 things about TV

2008-06-26T14:47:00.000-07:00

1. I do NOT approve of the The Price Is Right Million Dollar Spectacular Prime Time Special. You do not win a million dollars on The Price Is Right. You win a daybed, a collection of gardening equipment, a fondue set, and a supply of Hot Pockets. If you're lucky, you win a car and lose your shit on daytime, national TV. You do not win a million dollars.

The Price Is Right has been on literally for as long as I can remember. I've watched it on occasion since I was a little kid. I started watching it regularly when I was home after Luna was born. What the hell else is on weekdays that's not a soap? In fact, I still Tivo it. It's something we can watch on a rainy day with Linus. It's amazing how little there is on TV that's even remotely appealing to adults, but is also safe for a 3-year old to watch. Now I can tell you the exact retail price of a number of grocery items: Hot Pockets? $2.49. V-8 Juice? $3.15. Gold Bond Powder? $7.99; not to be confused with Gold Bond Lotion which goes for $12.99 (that mistake cost me a dining room set in the It's In The Bag game).

The furniture they give away is horrible - really, all this dark, heavy wood and a lot of tropical motifs, clearly a demographic issue though I don't think it would kill them to embrace a modern design aesthetic on occasion - but I give them props for giving away musical instruments all the time like that's exactly what people want. What other game show gives away a set of 4 electric guitars as a prize (even if they are "designed for girls", which is just a euphemism for pink, but still...)? My favorite part is when they bring out some crazy prize and ask people to price it as part of the game as if they should totally know. Like, a calliope! Are you fucking kidding me?! Who knows how much a calliope costs?? Or, a player piano, or a popcorn cart (like you might find at a fair)? Your average person might have a general idea what a refrigerator costs, or a lawn mower, but a tennis ball machine?? Hahahahaha!

2. If you aren't watching Randy Jackson Presents: America's Best Dance Crew on MTV you need to start watching it right now. They replay episodes 6 times a day, everyday, and I'm not kidding, so it's easy to get caught up. If you are at all a fan of urban street dance styles, or if you grew up in the 80s and maybe saw Breakin' II Electric Boogaloo in the theater you will love it! I'm telling you, kids these days and their crazy dance moves!

I don't know about you, but when somebody says, "Master Mix", I prick up my ears. I've been meaning to plug this show since we first stumbled across Season 1 back in February but never got around to it. Season 2 just started last week, so it's not too late to hook in. Most of the crews have real talent, and any show that takes poppin' and lockin' seriously is fine by me. I wish I could post a clip from last week of the Boogie Bots doing a lateral slide lift to Zapp & Roger's "More Bounce To The Ounce", but I can't find one, dammit! Just trust me and watch.

How ridiculous am I?

2008-06-19T09:55:00.000-07:00

Linus and I had the following conversation yesterday on our drive home from work/daycare:

Linus: Mommy? I have something to tell you.
Me: Ok.
Linus: If you shoot a rhinoceros it won't die because it's so tough.
Me: Really? Who told you that?
Linus: Isaac.
Me: I don't think that's true, honey.
Linus: IT IS TRUE!
Me: It might be true in certain situations, but I think in general, if you shoot a rhinoceros, it will die.
Linus: NO IT WON'T!! ISAAC SAID!!
Me: Well, honey, I don't think Isaac knows that much about rhinoceroses.
Linus: HE DOES! ISAAC DOES KNOW!
Me: I don't think so, honey. I think I might know better than Isaac in this case.
Linus: NO! ISAAC KNOWS BETTER!
Me: How old is Isaac? 3?
Linus: Yes.
Me: Well, don't you think I might know more about rhinoceroses than he does?
Linus: NO! ISAAC KNOWS MORE ABOUT RHINOCEROSES!
Me: Really?
Linus: YES!
Me: Well, I have a Ph.D. in biology, what does Isaac have?
Linus: Nothin'!
Me: So, maybe I DO know more about rhinoceroses than Isaac.
Linus: NO! ISAAC KNOWS EVERYTHING!!
Me: I don't think he knows everything, honey.
Linus: HE DOES!! HE KNOWS EVERYTHING! ISAAC KNOWS EVERYTHING!!

So, yes, I actually tried to play the I've-got-a-Ph.D. card in an argument with a 3 year old. That's how ridiculous I am. And, how awesome of a parent.

'Who's this Isaac guy?' you might ask. 'He seems to know a lot, and he's held in high esteem by his peers. I'd like to meet him.' Well, this is the same jam-smeared kid that ran up to Linus this morning and yelled, "Hi, Poo-Poo-Ga-Ga-Go-Go Head!" Linus, of course, thought this was HIlarious.

I've got two words for you...

2008-06-17T14:34:00.000-07:00

Doughnut muffins!

Why yes, I do have another child.

2008-06-10T11:29:00.001-07:00

Here's picture proof:

I took this picture with my cell phone, so it's not the highest quality, but you get the idea. Sweet potatoes!! Luna started in daycare this morning. Half days to start. She's right next door, so I can go over and nurse every couple of hours, so in some ways it's better than having her at home with her dad. So far, so good, but now our monthly daycare bill is officially larger than our mortgage payment. I wish I was kidding. That's one of those things that until you have kids, you just don't get. Whenever you hear parents talking about how, along with health care and the war in Iraq, one of their top concerns is the lack of affordable, high-quality daycare. You're like, "Huh, wha? Bzzz, bzzz, bzzz, I like Survivor too. Hmmm, what's that?" Then you have kids and suddenly, "What the fuck?! Why is daycare so expensive?! Why is there only one good daycare in town, and it's got a 2 year waitlist?! Am I now dependent on the unlicensed daycare down the street run by what I'm pretty sure is a meth-head?!" I'm only exaggerating a little. A very little.

Fortunately for us, once we got Linus in, Luna Bee's considered a legacy, so she got bumped to the top of the waitlist. I think she's been a little starved for other baby company, so this will be good for her social development. It's one of those things where it's hard as a parent to let go of all aspects of her interactions with other people, but then she gets to have experiences beyond what we provide for her. I know she gets bored at home at times sitting in the same spots on the floor, or the couch, with the same old toys. She was completely fixated on the other babies crawling around this morning. I'm sure she'll be crawling in a week.

Music Appreciation

2008-06-04T21:50:00.001-07:00

Linus came home from preschool today and showed me this:

"I wrote this song for you! It goes like this...", and he proceeded to sing it for me. I just about died, it was so awesome! I asked him to sing it for me again so I could record it. Ladies and Gentlemen, Linus' vlog debut:

How great is that?! I especially like how he's actually reading it. Here is the drawing on the other side of the song; it's me and Linus under a rainbow, apparently:

Linus likes to draw his rainbows in a sort of cross-sectional view.

I was driving Linus to preschool a couple of days ago. His preschool is next door to where I work. The last few minutes of the ride he was quiet, obviously lost in thought. Once we'd arrived, as we were getting out of the car we had this conversation:

Me: What were you thinking about, Honey? The zoo? Or lunch?
Linus: I was thinking about flyer shoes.
Me: Fire shoes?
Linus: No, FLYING shoes. Like shoes that would fly, that would be like whoosh! and I would fly me up, up, up into the sky.

So, I'm not really concerned about him lacking imagination or creative drive.

In case you thought I was kidding about Linus' hat+undies bedtime wardrobe, I have picture proof:

He's half-heartedly perusing his shirt drawer because I asked him to consider wearing more. In the end he opted to go with just the pictured ensemble.

Things I've been thinking about lately (parenting and otherwise)

2008-05-23T11:10:00.000-07:00

I have found absolutely NO time to post at all lately, so I'm taking a break at work to write down a couple of things that have been floating around my head lately:

1. I turned 40 a couple of weeks ago and I feel completely ambivalent about it. One the one hand, I'm not psyched about getting older. If I'm honest, it turns out that quite a bit of my self image is wrapped up in being (or at least appearing) youngish and hip-ish. I'm straddling a line between not wanting to pigeon-hole myself into some vision of what an older woman/mom/scientist/person is like that may be based on some cliched bullshit, while not wanting to look ridiculously out of touch with my actual age. I've been more aware of needing, for example, an "age-appropriate" wardrobe at least for work. On the other hand, fuck you ageist American culture!

2. How should I parent my 4-year old? Linus has been a challenge lately, especially at bed time. He doesn't want to go to bed, no matter how tired he actually is, and so he has a whole bag full of tricks he tries using to postpone the inevitable; just flat-out refusing to go, refusing to get into the bath, refusing to get out, taking 20 minutes to pick out pjs, wanting one more story, wanting to talk about ____, wanting one more hug, wanting a hug from Daddy, or Mommy, whichever one isn't there at the moment, wanting water, wanting to sleep wherever he isn't at the moment, etc. This bedtime thing is really a microcosm of the whole parenting dilemma for me generally. If I choose an authoritative model (e.g. "Go to bed! Because I said so!"), how to enforce it? Because it does require enforcement, and the inevitable, eventual conclusion is to beat your kids. Seriously. If you say, "Do this!" and your kid says, "NO!", then you say, "Then I'll take away X!" and your kid basically says, "I don't care!", you have no where to go but physical punishment when your authority is challenged like that. We don't go that far, but we do get to yelling, and marshaling him around physically, which always ends up with crying, and general upset-edness on both our parts. Plus, it's ineffectual. Yelling and marshaling and punishing does nothing except set him up to be oppositional, ruins the evening, and doesn't stop it from happening again the next night. And, I don't want to raise a bully who deals with conflict by yelling and getting angry. Unfortunately, it tends to be a default response for me because it's what I was raised with.

Alternatively, all of the "gentle discipline" approaches we've tried have also been less than effective. We have a very regular bed time, with a regular routine. We've tried being very rigid and then also very lax. We let him make choices and go with the flow. We've talked at length with him about the whys and hows and what we need to do to have a peaceful, happy, healthy family. All that is great up to the point where he still doesn't want to go to bed.

I just picked up a new book, actually, that I have a lot of hope for. It's called The Kazdin Method for Parenting the Defiant Child. What appeals to me about it is that it is based on some 30 years of research by this guy Kazdin, who's some developmental psych guy at Yale or Princeton or some other Fancy-Pantsery. He's been researching effective discipline for a long time, so everything he says is backed up by data. This is huge for me because, let's face it, there are shitloads of parenting advice out there, and most of it is based on nothing. Anecdotes, personal opinion, "because that's how I was raised and I turned out ok...", etc. And you guys know I'm all about the data. Yeah, your opinion's great and all, but has it been peer-reviewed? What are the confidence intervals on that prediction? I'm half-kidding, but only half. I know that research shows over and over again that punishment doesn't work. It just doesn't, not if you want to actually change behavior and raise moral and ethical kids. It might get you compliance in the very short-term, might, but that's about it. But, it turns out that all of that gentle-discipline-talky-talk also does very little to change behavior. It might be very important in communicating values to your kids, but in terms of actually changing behavior...nada.

I want to raise kids who think for themselves, do the right thing, have empathy and sympathy, but don't flinch when I walk into the room, will turn to me when they have a problem, but who also GO TO FUCKING BED WHEN IT'S BEDTIME, you know? So, Kazdin's data show that essentially you have to reward the behavior you want, and ignore the behavior you don't. If you do this, you will be able to change how your child behaves. He recommends that if there is a specific behavior that you want to change you can set up a reward chart for a short while and effect the change you want. I have to say that I've always been suspicious of reward charts and the like. We haven't gone that far yet, but I will say that in our day-to-day life I have been consciously ignoring behaviors I don't like, and vociferously rewarding ones I do, and it's true that he pretty quickly stops doing what I'm ignoring. It's not like I haven't regularly praised him for good behavior in the past, but I haven't completely ignored bad behavior, and I'm looking for any chance to praise the behavior I do want. I'm thinking a reward chart for the bedtime process may be in our future.

More quick facts...

2008-04-27T14:33:00.000-07:00

I once waited on Jesse Jackson. Now there's a big guy. You can totally tell he used to play football in his youth. Ate a big ol' plate of bacon and eggs. He had a bit of an entourage with him - lot's of people who would sit for a couple of minutes, then scurry off, then come back for another couple of minutes. Also, very polite.

I've also waited on Buddy Guy, Gene Rayburn (R.I.P.), and (then ambassador) Walter Mondale. So, essentially, all my brushes with the famous involve me serving food and/or beverages to them.

Quick fact...

2008-04-27T14:27:00.000-07:00

I once sold a cup of coffee to Pat Buchanan. He's not a tall guy. I tend to think people who are as tall as I am are actually shorter than me, so he's probably as tall as I am, but I think he's shorter. And he has beady little eyes. He was polite, though he didn't smile once. He didn't try to kidney punch me or anything, so there's that.

No more boff, please.

2008-04-17T17:20:00.000-07:00

I am tired of barf (or, "boff" as Linus pronounces it). Really, really tired. Linus got some sort of stomach bug, then Orion got it. Luna Bee and I have avoided it thus far, so that's something. A boffing 3-year old is a pathetic thing. Orion can make his way to the bathroom and do his boffing out of sight, but not so much Linus. We are not a queasy people in this house, generally. Linus has had one other bug in his life that caused him to throw up, so we don't deal with it that often. But, boy, when we do...gross.

It's just really sad to hear your son cough, then start to cry in his room after he's been asleep for awhile. You go in and find him on all fours on his bed boffing into his pillow. Like, a lot. He's got barf all on the side of his head because he obviously was asleep when all this started. Once he's done boffing, he sits back on his heels, cries, and starts flapping his hands, he's so upset, thus flinging boff around the room. You pick him up and carry him to the bathroom where you strip both of you down and get into the tub to wash your hair. Yeah. Repeat that every couple of hours and you know what life's been like for me for the last 48 hours or so. Actually, the last couple of times, he's made it into the bowl beside his bed. Small victories, people. We moved him out of his bed onto his gym mats on the floor. After stripping his bed once or twice, I learned to just lay out a bunch of towels on the gym mats and let him sleep there. Easy clean up. Plus, he thinks it's cool.

And Luna...Luna! Though she hasn't been sick, she does spit up all the time. We never had to deal with spitting up with Linus. Oh, sure, when he was teething he drooled like a rabid bat, but never spit up. Luna Bee, on the other hand, is a regular spitter-upper. Doesn't bother her. She'll spit up, smiling the whole time. Nothing like holding your baby when she spits up a big, warm gob onto your neck, which slides down your chest and into your cleavage, like a warm, gooey slug. Not that that happened to me just last night or anything. Gross. Gross!!

So, I'm tired of boff. I would like to call a moratorium on any boffing in our house for awhile, ok?

More clichés about parenting

2008-03-21T10:45:00.000-07:00

So, it's a truism that growing up is all about becoming independent from your parents. I expected to have moments in my parenting life where this would be apparent. You know, the classic images of a teary mom putting her kid on the school bus for the first time. Or, packing up your kid's stuff and sending them off to college. Maybe walking them down the aisle in their wedding. All of that may well be true, but it's not just those big moments, is it? No, your kids are essentially moving away from you from the moment they are born. It's a continual, daily process of becoming independent from you.

First, they're literally dependent on you for absolutely everything, then they're born. True, newborns are helpless, but they don't need you for the basic functions anymore. Soon they're able to sit up on their own, grab at what they want, roll over. Before long they're skootching around the floor like turtles, then crawling (maybe only backwards at first, but still), then walking, running, climbing to the top of the ladder.

Every time I take a moment to notice, Linus is a little more independent than before. A little bit more his own person, a little less in need of assistance (it's true of Luna too, but it's more about physical needs for her right now, rather than emotional and intellectual). It's such a bittersweet thing. One the one hand, you want your kids to be independent, self-reliant people, but on the other hand I miss each step that's gone by. I miss him sleeping on my chest, nursing, holding my hand to stay upright, hiding behind my leg during any new social situation, but I want him to have strong legs, not noodle legs. I guess I wasn't expecting a daily process of letting go.

2008-03-20T09:45:00.000-07:00

I'm home with the same cold that Luna's had, and Orion has. Linus, who was clearly the vector for it, has manage to not get it. There is no justice! It's definitely one of the challenges of having a 3-year old in daycare. He brings home every bug. You can only have him wash his hands so often before it becomes child abuse. But, I've been wanting to post, so this gives me the opportunity.

We're settling into our new family life. I had so much anxiety before Luna was born about just how much she was going to mess with our good family dynamic. I knew it was inevitable that she would take some of our attention away from Linus. I wondered if this would foster resentment in him, that he would feel slighted. Would he hate her for it? Would a resentment continue to grow as they grew? I didn't have a very good relationship with my own sister, so I've always been ambivalent about sibling relationships. We pretty much hated each other for most of our sub-adult lives. It's taken us years to develop an even passably friendly relationship. We are in no way close. I felt like I was living with an enemy for most of my childhood. I didn't want to introduce a source of aggro like that into Linus' life. Also, I didn't know if I wanted to turn my attention. I loved the cozy little threesome we had established. Even though he was going to be 3 when LB was born, he was still my baby. In my heart of hearts, I just knew I could never love another kid as much as I love him. Oh sure, I'd love another baby, but, shhhhhhh, don't tell anybody, I'd always love him best.

Ok, this is weird. I was just saw over at Tina's site that she wrote about this very subject. She pretty much sums up exactly how I was feeling before having Luna.

Well, to my infinite relief, so far, it's all good. Linus LOVES Luna. He doesn't seem to harbor even a hint of resentment towards her. The first couple of times I had to say, "I can't (whatever) with you right now, Linus, I have to take care of the baby" I cringed a little inside and waited for the Luna backlash. Some sort of wailing, "You ALWAYS have to take care of the baby!" kind of response. But, honestly, I've seen not a trace of that from him. He seems to totally get that LB is a baby, and babies need attention nearly all the time. We have done a fair amount of telling Linus about how when he was a baby, we'd done the same stuff for him. He totally gets it. And he's way into being a Big Brother. If you tell him he's a big boy he'll correct you and say, "I'm not a big boy, I'm a big brother!"

He'll get right up in Luna's face, like right up, faces touching, don't-put-your-nose-in-your-sister's-mouth, kind of close all the time. He'll say, "Hi. Hiiiiiiiiii. Hi-hi-hi-hi-hi-hi-hi, Baby!" over and over again. He's a close-talker with her. It kinda makes me a little crazy, ironically, how much in her face he gets. It would drive me nuts to have him up in my face like that, but Luna seems to dig it. In fact, she LOOOOOVES Linus. She totally lights up when he talks to her. Seems completely happy to have no personal space whatsoever. Is perfectly willing to suck on his nose. When she starts walking, he's going to have a new shadow, I can see it.

I can't tell you what a relief this is. Of course, I don't expect them to be harmonious friends all the time, but it's a great start. When I was pregnant with LB I would have periods of real sadness for Linus and what I feared he was going to lose. But it seems he hasn't lost anything. I've come to see that any attention Linus loses to Luna is actually ok. More than that, it's a good thing. I see that it's a good thing to not be under the spotlight of our full attention all the time. It gives him space to be on his own, to have to figure some things out for himself. I don't know how much of this is just luck of timing for us. Maybe we just had Luna at the right time, just when Linus was 3 and becoming more independent anyway. I don't know, but it's worked out just right.

I still call him "Baby", though. I can't seem to help it. It gets confusing at times. I'll ask Orion if "the baby's had a snack", or whatever, referring to Linus while holding an actual baby in my arms. I'll be calling him "Baby" when he's 30, I can tell. Both of them. Sorry.

Slight gender confusion

2008-03-16T09:15:00.000-07:00

This is a conversation I just had with Linus (We've set up his gym mats so he can jump off of them onto his beanbag. He's only wearing underpants.)

Me: Wow! You sure can jump far.
Linus: Yeah. If you take everything off your body you can jump far.
Me: So, if you're naked you can jump far?
Linus: Yeah! If you only have your undies you can jump far!
Me: Ok!
Linus: I'm like Spiderman!
Me: Yeah!
Linus: Naked Spiderman!
Me: Naked Spiderman!
Linus: Naked Woman Spiderman!
Me: Naked Woman Spiderman?
Linus: Hahahahaha!
a few minutes later...
Linus: You can't jump as far as me.
Me: Maybe not.
Linus: When you were a little boy, and I was a big boy, you couldn't jump this far. jumps Waaaaaaa!

Smiles for everyone!

2008-03-14T10:08:00.000-07:00

Toothless and proud of it.

Sad baby

2008-03-11T15:49:00.000-07:00

I'm home with a sick Luna Bee today. She's got a bad cold and is most pathetic. She seems to want to nurse about every hour so I didn't want to leave it to Orion to deal with her by himself. It's for the best as I am sick as well and she got me up hourly last night. I thought I'd post something and since Tina put this meme out there, I'm biting:

1. Pick up the nearest book.
2. Open it at page 123.
3. Find the fifth sentence/ phrase.
4. Blog the next four sentences/ phrases together with these instructions.
5. Don't you dare dig your shelves for that very special or intellectual book.
6. Pass it forward to six friends

The book is "What's going on in there? How the brain and mind develop in the first five years of life." Page 123 is the beginning of Chapter 5: The Importance of Touch:

That's because the sense of touch is one of a baby's most advanced abilities at birth. Little Phoebe, who just tuned one week old today, can't see very well - the whole room's a big blur - but she loves to be held. She can feel her mother's arm, cradling her comfortably under her head, her hand holding her bottom, and that wonderfully warm breast next to her cheek. The sense of touch is by no means fully developed at birth. Babies have a long way to go until they can discriminate all different types of tactile sensations and accurately pinpoint the location of a touch on their body.

Yeah, not that illuminating. The later sections on toddler brain development are more interesting.

The only friend I have that blogs is Tina, so anyone else is welcome to take it up (just let me know). Anyway, here's a picture from a healthier, happier day:

The Oscars are a mystery

2008-02-24T23:55:00.000-08:00

This is what watching the Oscars with Linus is like:

Linus: What's this?
Me: The Oscars, honey.
Linus: The what?
Me: The Oscars. The Academy Awards. It's an award show for movies.
Linus: For scary movies?!
Me: For all movies.
Linus: Who's that guy?
Me: That's John Stewart, he's the host.
Linus: The what?
Me: The host. Ummm. He's in charge of the show.
Linus: What's that?
Me: That's a clip from a movie. Uh, they're showing part of one of the movies.
Linus: A clip?
Me: Yeah.
Linus: What's that?
Me: That's a clip from another movie.
Linus: What's that?
Me: That's a cl - Honey, they're going to be showing clips from a lot of movies, so you don't need to ask every time, ok?
Linus: Is that a clip?
Me: Yes.
Linus: Who's that?
Me: That's the host.
Linus: Who's that?
Me: That's one of the people presenting an award.
Linus: Who's that?
Me: That's Javier Bardem, he just won an award.
Linus: Why are the people clapping?
Me: They're clapping for the guy who just won.
Linus: Who? Who just won?
Me: That guy, Javier Bardem.
Linus: Did he win a prize?
Me: Yes. An Oscar.
Linus: An Oscar?! Is that a good prize? Is it like a treat?
Me: Yes, I think he's happy he won this prize.
Linus: Who's that?
Me: Another presenter.
Linus: What's he talking about?
Me: About who might win the next prize.
Linus: What's that?
Me: More movie clips.
Linus: Is it a scary movie? Does it have bad parts I can't watch?
Me: No, not these clips. They're short.
Linus: Who's that?
Me: That's the host, honey, remember?
(I bleep bloop through some boring crap)
Linus: Why are you skipping?
Me: Because it's not interesting. Just a bunch more clips.
Linus: Is it bad stuff for me not to see??
Me: No, just not very interesting.
Linus: What are they doing?
Me: They're singing one of the songs that might get an award.
Linus: (Lifts up his hands mimicking the people on stage) Why are they doing that?
Me: I don't know. It's part of the performance.
Linus: Who's that?
Me: That's another presenter.
Linus: Is that another clip?
Me: Yep.
Linus: Is that another clip?
Me: Yes, please don't ask every time, ok?
Linus: Who's that guy?
Me: I think it's time for your bath.

Here's the thing: baby edition

2008-02-14T23:15:00.000-08:00

The baby is on a nap strike. I don't know what the deal is, but it's making Orion and I a little nutty. She fights, and fights, and fights sleep, and when she does finally conk out for a nap, she sleeps for half an hour at the most. That is NOT enough nap time for a little baby. What this means is that there is about a 15 minute sweet spot in the evening when she's willing to go out, but not so tired that she's sleepy-crazy yet. We have to pay close attention and make our sleep-inducing moves right then. You know; nursing, rocking, bouncing, whatever it takes. Because, of course, babies don't just roll over and fall asleep when they're tired. Oh no, they need to be coaxed. If we're too early we're just wasting our time. She'll close her eyes for a minute, fake you out, and then *pop*! Eyes open, big grin, like, "Sucker!" But if we miss that window of opportunity then we're fucked. She gets sleepy-crazy and cries and hoots and fusses and moans. All with her eyes closed. This goes on for a good 45 minutes to an hour before she either passes out, or escalates to hollering. I'll be glad when this stage passes.

Her brain must be growing like crazy at the moment and she doesn't want to miss anything, so she refuses to sleep, even though she's so obviously tired and looks punch drunk. I also think she's doing some teething. There's nothing poking up yet, but they can feel it long before any teeth show. She's all drooly, and she chews on her fingers like they're Chick-O-Stix. She's been a noisy, slurpy, fist-sucker from the beginning, but finger chewing is a recent addition.

Fortunately, we hit the window tonight. She's passed out on Daddy's shoulder and will be out for the night (except for one or two feedings). I'm keeping my fingers crossed that she'll get 3 nice long naps tomorrow. Is it really so much to ask?

Here's the thing; political edition

2008-02-14T13:11:00.000-08:00

I support Barack Obama. Not because he's a rock star and not because I've succumbed to the "cult of personality". I'm both an intellectual and emotional person. I tend to champion intellect first, while Tina does the same for emotion. We are diametrically balanced in that way: I think there's maybe too much emotion and not enough intellect in the process at large, while Tina thinks the opposite.* We're both right.

I support Barack Obama because he inspires me. He's seems to inspire a lot of people to give in to the better aspects of their political natures. That is a powerful thing. He is intellectual and emotional, and a little hip and cool. I expect policy wonky-ness from my senators and representatives. I have scrutinized proposed legislation, and written emails, and asked where my congress-folk stand and intend to vote, and demanded changes in language, etc. But I want my president to lead, and I like the direction Obama seems intent on taking us. I want a president who can inspire (I know, again) the country to move in a new direction. That's what I want.

*any gross mischaracterizations of Tina's positions are wholly my own.

Hat only!

2008-02-06T21:33:00.000-08:00

I just put Linus to bed wearing nothing but a hat. It's a sort of of a knit cap, dark blue. He's been going through a thing where first he didn't want to wear his pj top, then he didn't want to wear his pj bottoms, only underpants. That lasted about a week. Now he doesn't want to wear anything. I think it's because he has a fleece blanket and he likes the way it feels on his skin, but I'm only guessing. He kicks the sheet and comforter down to the foot of the bed and burritos himself in the blanket. Can't blame him, really.

The hat is new tonight. When I last checked, he had it pulled down over his eyes. I think it may be some sort of monster protection. He's very concerned with monsters lately. What monsters are around, where they are, their emotional state (happy, sad, etc.). He's full of the most mysterious stuff of late. I don't understand half of what he's saying most days. I mean, I understand the words, just not the meaning. If he chooses to explain at length, I can generally come around to some understanding, but sometimes not. For example:

Linus: "I need a card pick."
Me: "What's a 'card pick'"?
Linus: "It's a sort of a small fish, or like a stone, for my mouth."
Me: "..."

You tell me.

But then again, how can I resist?

2008-02-02T22:46:00.000-08:00

I'm not that kind of girl.

2008-02-02T21:19:00.000-08:00

I forgot about how babies will try and make out with you. Have you ever experienced this? You're holding a baby and you move in to plant a kiss on one of those fat, irresistible cheeks when at the last moment, just as you're about to make contact, the baby turns their head, mouth open, and you end up in a weird make-out session with a 3-month old. This happens to me at least twice a day with Luna. Big, drooly, open-mouthers when all I want is a cheek smooch.

A new tack

2008-02-02T12:19:00.000-08:00

I know I've been home for 13 weeks with Luna now and yet I haven't managed to post more than once. What gives? I don't have a good answer except that writing takes more time for me than the snippets I get at the moment, I guess. I'd had this grand plan to post almost daily with these long posts all about labor, birth, new baby, parenting, etc. Well, so much for my plans. How about if I just post a little about small things with more regularity and save the big posts for another time? Ok? Good.

So, quick Luna Bee update: She talks all the time! She's the chattiest baby I've ever met. She looks at you intently, waits until she has your full attention, and then starts to talk, "Hoo. Hool. Hoowool. Hoom. Hoowow. Waloo hool. Mwah!" She really tries to imitate the way we move our mouths when we talk to her. She's got something to say and no way to really say it yet. Linus babbled like other babies at some point, sure, but it's like Luna's trying so hard to make Big People words right out of the box. I'll see if I can get some video of it up at some point.

Luna Bee...

2007-11-16T22:24:00.000-08:00

...is one week old!

We are both healthy and well. I will post soon about her birth and more, but right now I'm just coming out of that first week fog of nursing and sleeping, sleeping and nursing.

Pink is the new Spider-Man

2007-10-08T11:34:00.000-07:00

Linus' favorite color is pink. It was orange, but some time a couple of months ago, pink moved up. He's pink crazy. Anything pink and he's all over it. He's 3, so he's completely free of any bullshit associations having to do with gender and color, unlike my mother. When I was pregnant with Linus, she and I would go baby clothes shopping and she would be horrified when I would want to buy a little floral shirt or something. I hated that even for tiny babies "boy" clothes were covered with sports imagery, or trains, or bears. All in shades of blue or maybe plaid, of course.

So, for my sister's wedding a couple of weeks ago, Linus decided he wanted to wear a pink shirt. Fine with me. However, we gender-stereotype toddlers in this culture way harder than even grown men and women. I could go into the men's clothing section of any department store and buy my husband a pink button down, or maybe a polo shirt, no problem. But you can not buy a pink shirt for a 3-year old boy. Period. Turn around and face the girl's section and you see nothing but pink. A friggin' sea of pink. But at least little girls can go into the boy's section if they want and buy a plaid shirt or whatever without raising too many eyebrows. Not the other way around, however. The clothes in the girl's section aren't just pink. They also have all kinds of other signifiers of girly-ness; bows, puffy sleeves, lace, "girl"-specific imagery, etc. It's really insane. This doesn't come from the kids, people. This is all grown up baggage and it's gross, frankly. Sure, there are innate differences between little boys and girls, but this clothing crap is all cultural.

I looked in 4 different stores for a dressy pink shirt. The closest I could find was a white button down. Pathetic. And, I knew that wouldn't be sufficient for Linus. I finally got sick of finding nothing, so I went into the girls section and picked out 4 pink shirts of various styles. He was psyched to see them, but one was the clear favorite: a pink thermal with slightly puffy shoulders and a big, sparkly crown printed on the front. He calls it his "princess shirt". Awesome. I'll see if I can get a picture of him in it up later.

My son is pregnant

2007-08-01T20:50:00.000-07:00

Linus informed me that he too has a baby in his belly that kicks him. It also tells him to be quiet because it's trying to sleep. So now when we feel my belly for kicks, we feel his belly too. Even Steven.

I sitting here on our back patio watching the chickens stroll back and forth, patrolling the grass for bugs. They must have decimated bug populations in our backyard by now with their thorough, daily searches. They still seem to find plenty to snack on, however. Whenever I get up to go inside for something, they all run over to see if I'm preparing to pass out treats ("treats" in this case meaning stale bread or table scraps). After a couple of seconds, when it becomes obvious I got nothin', they look at me with chicken reproach and resume their promenade. It's quite relaxing, really, watching them. That is until one of them hops up into one of my garden beds, then it's Chicken Hosing Time! They've scratched up my basil more than once this summer and it pisses me off! They also like to eat the kale, when they get the chance. Good thing for them we actually get something in return, or it would be Pot Pie Time!

It's almost dusk now, so they're slowing making their way back to the hen house. We've been getting 4 eggs a day for about a month now; 2 large, pale brown ones and 2 small, dark brown ones. We give about a dozen a week to the neighbors, in case the occasional early morning chicken dust-up disturbs them. They claim not to be bothered, but it sure as hell bothers me! It's was worse when we first introduced the 2 new ones in with the 2 older Barred Rocks a couple of months back, but now they've settled down. The new ones got their asses kicked, or pecked, really, all over the place, but I guess the pecking order has been established.

My belly is huge and I still have +-14 weeks to go. I feel impatient already, like I'm in the last month. I feel fine, no real complaints beyond bigness, and impatience. I have a fairly grueling travel schedule ahead of me this month, and I'm hoping I don't fall asleep during any meetings and snore or drool in front of my colleagues. I leave for a week long meeting in San Jose on Sunday, then I'm back for a week, then to Kansas City for a week to teach in a workshop (the boys are coming with me on that one to visit everyone in Lawrence), then I leave from KC and fly to a week-long brainstorming meeting in Pune, India. I know!

Once I get through all this travel, September is multiple trips to Seattle for my sister's wedding and wedding-related activities, as well as my Gram's 90th birthday. If I can make it through September, October should be fairly low key. Then, a baby! I think it's a sign you're doing too much when you look forward to the arrival of a new baby for a little down time.

More catching up...

2007-07-16T16:26:00.000-07:00

I know! I've barely posted anything in the last bunch of months. Tina asked for an update so here it is:

Ok, first of all, we've changed Skeletor's fetal name to Cindy Pilates. Yes, apparently we're having a girl. What?! A girl?! That's what I said. It was a bad angle on the ultrasound, and the tech didn't sound too confident, so I won't be too surprised if Cindy comes out an Igor, but for now we're embracing the girl thing. Well, at least I'm trying to embrace it. I think I made myself pretty clear that I was hoping for a boy - it just seems so much more straight forward to just throw another boy into the mix - so I was a bit...what? Upset? Disappointed? No, not exactly. Just sort of thrown for a loop. I have a hard time adjusting when I've spent a lot of time imaging just how I think things will be. That's why I never really had a clear picture in my head of how I thought labor would go last time. I knew I'd never be able to picture it, so I didn't want to be all invested in one image and not be able to go with whatever the flow turned out to be. Does that make sense? Anyway, I'm slowly coming around. I'm still completely freaked out by the idea of a tween- or teenage girl, but I'm starting to like the idea of a whole different vibe with this one. Not that another boy would've been boring or routine or something, but you get my meaning. So, a girl.

The name Cindy Pilates comes from my friend Jas, who insisted I was having a girl before we ever knew. Not because he thinks he has any special insight or anything, but he and his wife are expecting a girl next month and he wanted me in the same boat. So, not so much a prediction as a magic spell he cast over and over. The "Pilates" part is because he's convinced that both his wife and I got pregnant shortly after taking up pilates because we'd just taken up pilates Pilates as the magic fertility rite. Of course, I was trying to get pregnant, but they were not. In fact, according to him they were taking multiple prophylatic measures, but pilates triumphed in the end. Don't doubt the power of pilates!

A girl! Whaaaat? I know!

Linus wants to name her Batopat. Or, alternatively, Patobat. Maybe it's spelled Bat o' Pat, I'm not sure. I'll have to check with him.

p.s. Big Bad John, what's your email address?

Miscellaneous catching up

2007-06-20T13:29:00.001-07:00

I know, right?

We went camping last weekend. This was our second time out. Most of my best memories from childhood were of family camping trips, so I've been psyched for a long time to take Linus out. We never got our shit together last summer, but this time I knew the window of time in which I'd be able to sleep on the ground was small, so we had to get a move on right quick. I figure that if we work the kinks out early, later when I'm too big with baby to be comfortable the boys can go out for weekend trips and leave me home to nap in peace. Orion and I used to do all kinds of hiking and camping back in the day, but we hadn't been out in years. I don't think we even took our equipment out of storage the entire time we lived in Kansas. No point - you have to drive 8 hours just to get anywhere remotely hike-able. But now we live an hour from 2 mountain ranges. Of course, the kind of camping we're doing now is a bit different - car camping vs. back-country camping. We had to get a bigger tent and a cooler and what not. And, if I'm not carrying it in on my back, I want a dang seat and a big fat sleep pad!

This is all up Linus' alley, what with all the sticks and rocks out in nature. He could spend 3 hours throwing rocks into the river. We roasted wienies on sticks over the camp fire, then marshmallows, of course. He's happy to sleep on the ground and rain doesn't bother him at all, which is good because we got lots of it last weekend. I apparently chose the perfect elevational band for rainfall. A little higher up the mountain, dry, a little lower down the mountain, dry(er). Ah well, we had fun anyway. I think if we go in the next couple of weeks I may have one more trip in me, but after that it's bed only for me.

I'm jealous

2007-05-06T18:14:00.000-07:00

At this moment I'm watching Linus sit on the back patio eating a blueberry muffin. He's wearing a Batman shirt, complete with cape and utility belt, khaki shorts, and blue and red monster rain boots. He's quietly singing Twinkle Twinkly Little Star to himself. I think. Awesome!

Hi, Skeletor!

2007-05-03T11:12:00.000-07:00

Sorry the scan sucks. You know what the best thing about that image is? The nice, clear, midline down the middle of the skull! That's what I like to see in a developing fetus, a well-defined midline.

1.8 mm

2007-05-03T10:26:00.001-07:00

The ultrasound tech took about 4 different measurements of nuchal translucency last evening and they ranged from 1.4-1.8 mm, with a crown-to-rump length of 59 mm. So, unless my blood work comes back really anomolous, my guess is that the probability of any of the most common aneuploidies (or congenital heart defects) will actually be lower than even that based on demographic data (you know, advanced maternal age and all). In other words, YAY!

Even better, everything else looked great too. All kinds of brains, strong heartbeat, 5 fingers on each hand, everything where you'd expect it. Huge relief! The difference between how anxious I was going in vs. coming out of that ultrasound was bigger than even I thought it would be. I didn't fully realize just how wound up I was about it until I started relaxing as we looked around in there. Phew.

Turns out I didn't need to get all chippy about whether the ultrasound tech was going to be forthcoming with information. He was a really nice guy and he took us on a guided tour. Full disclosure, just how I like it. We even got a pretty cool picture of what looks like Skeletor waving at us from inside my uterus. That'll go in the scrapbook. Maybe I'll scan it and post it later.

I unleashed the circus last night by calling all of my family and infoming them. My mother already knew because last weekend was her monthly visit and she full-on asked me directly if I was pregnant. Wtf?! She caught me off guard and I wasn't prepared to lie straight to her face so I copped. She's wiley that one. She was only good for maybe one more day of discretion anyway, so we had to spill the beans.

Every single person we've told so far has said they're hoping for a girl. Friends too. Even Orion. In fact, even Linus! I asked him yesterday if he'd rather have a baby brother or sister and he said, "baby sister" (though then he said he didn't want to be a big brother he just wanted to be "a Linus", so take that how you will). Apparently I'm the only person I know who'd like me to be carrying a boy. Defer to my wishes!! We didn't find out the sex yesterday. It was a little early anyway and Skeletor wasn't cooperating.

I refuse

2007-05-02T14:57:00.000-07:00

I'm letting you all know that I refuse to call a seminar broadcast on the internet (or intranet, as the case may be) a "webinar". I just won't do it.

Just so's you know.

Back! (and pregnant)

2007-05-02T13:24:00.000-07:00

I just ate a turkey burger in, like, 20 seconds. I'm not kidding. I fucking INHALED it. Why? Because I'm pregnant, that's why, and I've reached that stage where I'm no longer in the driver's seat w/r/t food intake. This phase should last about another 6 months, then I'll be in charge again.

That's right, I said "pregnant". I'm in my 13th week, which means that horrible 1st trimester sleepiness should abate soon (at least until it comes back in the 3rd). We finally decided last November to try again, after many months of:

"Should we?"
"I don't know, what do you think?"
"Well, I guess I kinda feel like we're not done yet, what do you think?"
"Yeah, me too, but are we ready for it?"
"I don't know, what do you think?"
"I'm sleepy."
"Me too."

Repeat.

We started trying to get pregnant that December, until I realized that would mean no drinking over the Christmas holiday with family coming to visit. I put the kibosh on that right quick. Tried in January. Nothing. This caused me to immediately assume we'd waited too long and we'd never get pregnant as I was clearly no longer ovulating. I proceeded to pull a bunch of papers about pregnancy and insemination rates and what not. I know. It's what I do, ok?

Did you know that even in healthy couples trying to get pregnant (that is having daily sex at the right time) there's only a 37% probability of conceiving, and a 25% probability of having a live birth. That means that even if absolutely everything goes right, you have a 1 in 4 chance of getting viably pregnant on any given month. (I'm getting this from Wilcox, et al. 1995, "The timing of sexual intercourse in relation to ovulation" N Engl J Med 1995;333:1517-21) Most of the difference between conception rates and live birth rates happens before you even know you're pregnant. Essentially they had 221 healthy women who were trying to get pregnant pee into a cup every morning and record every time they had sex. This way they knew exactly when they ovulated, conceived, miscarried, etc.

This kind of blew my mind at first. Only 37% of women conceive even when the stars are aligned, and only 2/3 of those conceptions end in live births? Doesn't that figure seem low to you? And this was in healthy women trying to get pregnant, not any ol' women. Now I get why you have to be trying unsuccessfully for at least 6 months before the medical community will even begin to think you may have a fertility problem. Even though it is a low probability in any given month, another way to look at it is, even given that low conception rate, the probability of you not conceiving a viable pregnancy after 6 months of trying if you and your partner are healthy is only 18%. So, once I read all this I calmed down a little bit. February, we got pregnant.

Ok, enough statistics (for now). I'm due November 12th. Like my pregnancy with Linus, I feel good about this one. But given our history, I'm not going to relax or fully embrace it until I see that everything's ok. I did get to hear a heartbeat last week, and that was good, but I'm really waiting for today. Today we go in for a nuchal translucency ultrasound. This is a non-invasive, 1st/early 2nd trimester screening proceedure that they've recently started doing in this country (they've been doing it in the UK for quite awhile now). They take some blood and then measure the fetal nuchal translucency (fluid at the nape of the neck) via ultrasound. Really, anything above 2mm or so for the nt measure is associated with higher rates of some chromosomal anomalies (including trisomy 21 - Down's Syndrome) and/or some congenital heart defects depending on gestational and maternal age, and some blood chemistry markers. Blah, blah, blah, I want a nt <2mm. AND I want to see everything else looking good and that nice butterfly shaped higher brain development. That's what I'm looking for.

I'm not really worried about chromosomal anomolies, even given my "advanced maternal age" (all of 38) (mofos!), but fears about a repeat of pregnancy #1 lurk, especially given that we never found out what went wrong exactly.

And I'm not leaving that examination room without knowing the crown-to-rump length and nuchal translucency. I hope the ultrasound tech doesn't try to get all cagey about it. I get that he can't diagnose, but he can give me the friggin' numbers. There will be trouble if he tries to deny me.

Those dastardly Mooninites!

2007-02-01T12:33:00.000-08:00

We are big Aqua Teen Hunger Force fans in the McNyset household. I laughed so hard this morning while listening to the report about how the Boston terrorism scare turned out to be a gorilla marketing campaign featuring replicas of the Mooninites that I almost drove off the road, but not as hard as I laughed when I asked Orion, "How could anyone think it was terrorists?" To which he replied;

"'Oh my god! Al Qaeda is giving us the finger before they blow us up with Lite Brites!'"

I may be stupid...

2006-11-21T15:36:00.000-08:00

I just gotta say - it's open enrollment time for health benefits and all that crap, I'm sure many of you are dealing with this yourselves at the moment. You guys, I have 3 degrees from institutions of higher learning and I CANNOT figure this shit out! I have seriously spent many hours (OVER LUNCH, in case my boss finds this journal) trying to figure out which health plan is going to give me and my family the best coverage for what we need for the best price. I JUST DON'T KNOW! Fortunately, all the information is online these days - if I had to do all of this on paper I would've hung myself already, for sure - and as I type this I have 4 browser windows, 2 PDFs, and 2 spreadsheets open trying to make a final decision. Still, I have no confidence that I'm making the right choice. And while Orion is plenty smart and all, you know I can't leave this kind of thing to anyone else. Besides, he would have descended into a deep depression days ago had he been in charge of figuring this stuff out.

I look at the 12 plan brochures, each with 2-3 different plan options, all with different premiums, and co-pays, and deductibles, and PPO networks and I think of my 86-year old Grandmother who had to sign up for the Medicare prescription drug coverage not too long ago. DON'T get me started...

I don't know why I'm telling you all this, other than I need to rant, and I want anyone else out there who's feeling too stupid to function in this healthcare system at the moment to know: I feel you. Better than not having any health coverage, for sure, but still....can we not work this shit out as a people? I know that Americans are supposed to be all about having choices and "control", but I just feel like they're confusing me with their jazz-hands and fireworks and I'm going to end up losing my house when I have to pay my share of the bills when Linus breaks his arm after climbing up on the mantel and playing Supa Fwy!

Google me now, mofos!

2006-11-20T14:31:00.000-08:00

I find it amusing that I get more hits on this blog from people googling, "belly button rubbing" than I have regular readers. Of course, there are only 4 people who check regularly, so it's not that fantastic, but still...

What the fuck?! What is it that people need to learn from the internet about belly button rubbing? Looking for How-Tos?! Or is this some sort of fetish and people are looking for like minds? Are there belly button rubbing naughty pictures out there? To each his own, but...ew.

He still does it, by the way, Linus and the belly button comfort rubbing. It's still his only security "blanket" (though it may be getting competition lately from his Supa Man hoodie). He's pretty much weaned himself over the last couple of months, so there's no nursing-for-comfort now, just belly button checks. On occasion, not all the time. It's great for me because you can never misplace your belly button and then demand that I find it before you'll leave the house. Nobody cries because they can't find their belly button. At least, I'm assuming.

Wha?

2006-11-16T08:05:00.000-08:00

(While looking through an alphabet book)

Me: What's this? (pointing to the letter "M")
Linus: M!
Me: Yes! What's this? (pointing to the letter "K")
Linus: B!
Me: Close! It kinda looks like a "B", but it's a "K".
Linus: K!
Me: Yes! What's this? (pointing to the letter "J")
Linus: Wonda Woman!
Me: What? What is this?
Linus: Wonda Woman!
Me: Huh.

60 Minutes Australia can fuck off!

2006-11-06T15:12:00.000-08:00

I'm not kidding, they really can. I told them as much in an email. I may have used the phrase "yellow journalism" as well. Fuckers.

I'm pissed because they featured a story on their October 22nd broadcast called, "Being there". No, I don't watch 60 Minutes Australia. Someone on the parenting listserv back in Lawrence that I still belong to posted about it. It's supposed to be a story about Attachment Parenting, but it ends up making AP parents looks like radical, permissive kooks. Attachment Parenting, in case you don't know, is a parenting philosophy that advocates building a strong bond with your baby through things like breastfeeding, co-sleeping, and "baby-wearing" (using a carrier as much as is practical so the baby gets the benefit of lots of physical contact), along with "gentle" or "positive" discipline (which in practice means a lot of things, but primarily non-violent). The idea is that if you establish this strong attachment, your kids will develop into secure, emotionally-healthy, peaceful people.

Before I even knew I had a parenting "philosophy", I knew that these things made sense to me and described the kind of approach I intened to take to parenting an infant, at least. This parenting group back in Lawrence (I've written a bit about them before and how much I miss their support) is an Attachment Parenting group. We're not affiliated with the international organization - mostly we're a bunch like-minded parents. I got in touch with the group initially because I didn't know anyone, apart from far-flung family, that had small kids and I felt like I needed to make friends with other parents. Critical! It was only later that I realized I'd happened into the right group for me, and felt lucky to be surrounded by people who fully supported, and could give informed advice about, the choices I was making as a parent. Hell, I don't even like to refer to a "parenting philosophy" - sounds a little like I'm in est, or a scientologist or something. We don't have a secret handshake or anything. I think some parents tend to gravitate together because what we're doing is not particularly well-represented in the mainstream media or popular culture.

Ok, back to the 60 Minutes story - so, they misrepresent AP parents from the begining. They chose to profile parents who go waaaaay beyond any AP parent I've ever met. They open with an image of a woman with big ol' boobies tandem nursing her daughters. They totally play on people's squicky response to breastfeeding in general, and especially breastfeeding toddlers and young children (apparently there are many cultural similarities between Australia and the United States on this subject). Also, they misrepresent AP as taking a "no discipline" approach and they lump a bunch of other random shit under the AP rubric which doesn't belong there at all. Notice that I've said nothing thus far about home-schooling, home-birth, and Elimination Communication ("EC" - not using diapers, essentially) among other things. Now, it's true that some AP parents are also home-schoolers, or had home births, or only wear Birkenstocks, or drive fucking Volvos, or only name their children after natural features of the landscape, but that doesn't mean that those are AP principles simply by association!

AAAAAAAAaaaaaaaaaagh!

They even go as far as showing the tandem-nurser mom expressing some breast milk and applying it to some sort of rash on one of her kids. Wtf?! What can that POSSIBLY have to do with AP?! It may be a perfectly fine idea, I don't know, that's not the point. The point was, I can guess, to show how far-out and nutty that family is. In fact, that women's breasts get more airplay than anything else in this story. They also have a midwife on who practices AP with her kids, and she actually does a fairly good job of talking about her parenting philosophy in the face of what I would characterize as derision from the "journalist", but every time she talks about her approach to discipline, they cut to a shot of her 3 year old crying, or screaming, or generally melting down. Please! I don't care what parenting approach you take, if you have a toddler, you're going to have to deal with crying and screaming. But they were doing it in a way that made it look like her kid was completely out of control.

Then to top it all off, they have on a child psychologist (Dr. John Irvine) who makes the claim that AP parents are actually subjecting their children to "emotional abuse". I'm not kidding, that's a direct quote. Now, I don't know anything about this guy, I've never heard of him before, but he's totally off his nut if he really believes that. Now, I suspect that what he's really refering to are those parents who don't set any limits with their kids. I suppose that would be "no discipline", and I'm sure that does lead to insecure, entitled assholes. You'll get no argument from me about that. If that's the case then, he needs to get his fucking story straight about what he's actually talking about, rather than talking out of his ass. There are many child development experts and pediatricians who endorse an AP approach, by the way (Drs. Sears and Jay Gordon are two of the most well-known), NONE of whom were interviewed in this piece. AND, they don't even mention that there's an international organization, let alone interview a representative. No! That would potentially put AP in a positive light. Asswipes!

Why am I so upset about this? I don't know exactly - part of it's because it's such a crappy, distorted, bullshit piece of "journalism", and part of it's because I feel personally slighted. It's just so frustrating. I know a lot of parents who could be characterized as AP, and most of them are smart, sane, nice folks. None of them are strident about it. They represent a broad spectrum of choices: some breastfed for 2 months, some for 4+ years. Some co-sleep, some don't. Most all of them have used a sling or other baby carrier for some period of time, but they also use strollers. Many of them have caught grief from family or friends (or even complete strangers!) for some of the choices they've made. Like most parents, they're just trying to do right by their kids without completely screwing them up.

That's my goal, anyway.

Now, any parent can choose whatever approach works for them, I don't care. Oh, I'll probably judge you IN MY MIND, but that's because I'm that way. I'd never actually SAY anything to you unsolicited. Actually, I'm quite sympathetic to the plight of most parents. All it takes is your first toddler meltdown in a public place to knock the smug right out of you. I'm also happy to explain at length why I've made the choices I have, because you know they're well-informed at least. If you know me at all you know I've approached parenting the same way I approach just about anything - research, research, RESEARCH. Why didn't you call ME, 60 MINUTES?!? Too boring?! Not willing to wag my boobies on TV?! Oh HO! Little do you know.

Phew! I feel better now. Thanks for letting me get that hot lump of screed out.

Mini Me, er...Him

2006-11-02T15:22:00.000-08:00

Ok, that right there could be a picture of Orion. Hands on hips, walking around, surveying the situation, furrowed brow. Of course, Orion doesn't have a pair of monster boots like that, and if he did, I doubt he'd insist on wearing them everywhere, every day. Sometimes, Linus even tries to get me to let him wear them to bed, but you gotta draw the line somewhere. I'm always taken by surprise whenever Linus busts out with some look or gesture that's exactly like Orion. I mean, I'm a biologist and all, so I know how it works, but still...

I figured I'd give a bit of a Linus update:

Well, he rocks, of course. That kind of goes without saying. He's talking all the time now and it's cute as hell. He's past that stage where we can say stuff in front of him without him understanding. Now if we want to talk about, say, chocolate (or "chocus", according to Linus) we have to spell it out, otherwise it can get ugly. He pretty much keeps up a running monologue, unless he's pooping or getting into something he knows he shouldn't, like mining my bag for gum. Handy, that. Kind of a warning system.

He's completely fascinated with Superman ("Supa!") and how he can fly. I really don't know how he found out about Superman. I suspect another kid at daycare must have spilled the beans. He loves to "fwy" like Supa - he puts his arms out and either wants us to carry him, or he dives onto the beanbag ("FWY!") (I know - killing you with the adorable. Believe me, I know!). The other day we were at the grocery store, when suddenly he yelled out, "Supa!" I'm looking around not seeing anything, but the baby keeps insisting, "Supa!" Finally, I follow his pointing to a jar of Napoleon brand roasted red peppers. I'm totally not getting it, then it dawns on me that Linus thinks the little picture of Napoleon is Superman. Well, he did have dark hair and we was wearing a red and blue outfit, so...ok.

Napoleon, Superman. Potato, Potahto, right?

Roasted red peppers are one of his favorite foods, by the way, completely independent of the whole Supoleon confusion. Peppers and "tatoes" (tomatoes). And, of course, chocus.

Can't forget about the chocus.

We go to Nathan Hale High School, we get things done!

2006-10-31T13:07:00.000-08:00

I went to my 20th high school reunion last month. Oh, yeah. I didn't think I'd make the effort at first, but then Tina was all for it, so I thought, "Why not?" Then as the time got closer I got increasingly nervous and excited, much to my own internal embarrassment. High school was a hard time for me, as I imagine it is for many if not most people. My family was a mess on top of all the precarious negotiations of the high school social scene. I wasn't in a hurry to revisit all that. Before the reunion, Tina and I met up with an old high school friend, Sandy. It was lovely to see her again! Seriously, I don't know why we lost touch. We fortified ourselves with libations before heading over to the "billiard hall" where it was being held. Nervous, nervous, nervous!

Turns out, there was absolutely no reason to be nervous. The whole thing was a bit boring, actually. About a hundred repeats of this conversation (from my side):

"Hi! Oh my god, how ARE you?! Great! What have you been up to? Good, good. Oh, everything's going well for me. Yeah. Well, we just moved back to the west coast. Yeah! I just started a postdoc with ____. Yeah! I know! Yeah. I do! A little boy - Linus. Oh, thanks, we like it too. Here's a picture. I KNOW! Isn't he?! Just 2. Yeah, he is big for his age. I know! And you? *Gasp*! Ohmygod! So cute! Really? Yeah. Well that's great. .... Yeah. .... Ok! You too!"

All of this done in a much higher voice and sing-song tone than I EVER use in daily life. Jesus. Embarrassing.

There were a few people there I was happy to see, and I few people I was hoping to see that weren't there, but mostly, a bunch of people I feel entirely indifferent about. Apparently many people remember me as someone who just did what she wanted and didn't give a shit what anyone thought. Which... is a perfectly fine way to be remembered, I guess. I remember feeling awkward much of the time, but...

There was one moment that made the whole trip worth it though. I got to witness first hand a drunken, bitter rant by Tim L.! Now, I had a crush on Tim when we were in junior high. A big crush. And even though I was well over it by high school, he always had this, "Yoooooouu had a crush on meeeee-eee!" kinda attitude all through high school. Gah! Back in junior high, when he found out I liked him, he told me that he could never like me back because I had too many freckles.

I know!

When I asked him what I was supposed to do about that, he said, "Well, a little acid should take care of it." And then he burped in my face.

I'm pretty sure that was about the time I stopped liking him.

Anyway, at the reunion, Tina and I made our way over to the bar to refresh our drinks, and found ourselves standing at one of those high, round, bar tables with Tim. He was clearly well into the scotch by this point. We exchanged a couple of pleasantries along the lines of what I quoted above, and then the most awesome thing happened! He goes:

"Ya know. I'm sick of people acting like their lives have all turned out soooo great! [in a falsetto] "How are you? Oh my life is so great! Everything's just great!" [fixes me with a drunken stare] Well. My life's been a roller coaster! [rolling head around to illustrate] I went to college, then I dropped out, then I tried again, and then I dropped out. [gestures with scotch in hand, sloshing drink] Then I found out I have ADD, which is probably why I couldn't ever finish. I got married, then it turns out she was a BITCH, so I got divorced. Now I drive a bus for Metro. So, no! My life hasn't been that great!

[moment of drunken silence]

Ya know. Just keepin' it real."

Oh. my. god. It was AWESOME!!!

Total fucking schadenfreude and it. was. DELICIOUS!

Tina, to her credit, was very gracious and started talking about how really, things haven't always been so great for her over the years, and what not, while I just stood there taking it all in with a big, stupid grin on my face. I mean, sure, everybody's gone through ups and downs over the last twenty years, and nobody's life is perfect, but in general, my life's pretty good. And really, I can't say that I'm too torn up about Tim L.'s life not turning out so great (see above anecdote).

Yes, I am a small, petty woman.

Later, I saw Tim across the room, arm around a women who also professed a bit of a hard luck life story. Also, quite drunk. In fact, Tim was buying her a drink while we chatted. I'm pretty sure they left together. Nothing like a drunken hook-up between bitter trainwrecks at the 20th high school reunion.

Aaaaaah, the majesty.

I know I suck at this!

2006-10-30T12:23:00.000-08:00

Yeah, that's right. I know one of the things that makes a blog readable is, you know, actual words. Plain Jane had a post today where she made comments to some of the journals she reads. I doubt that any of them were to me specifically (I know she's read me before, but I don't think she checks back (though if so, Hi Jane!)), but all the ones that said, "UPDATE!" could have been. I know! Blogs that aren't updated regularly annoy me! Yes, I annoy myself. All the time, actually.

In my defense, I didn't really know what to post following Tori's death. I started a couple of posts, but it all seemed so lame and inappropriate. Now that there's been some time, I feel like I can write about trivial stuff again. Either that or I've come to embrace the fact that I'm lame and inappropriate.

You pick.

Also, I've been working on a paper at work, so I've been a bit sick of writing. And, writing for scientific journals and writing for a personal blog do not mesh. In fact, all of my training as a writer (such as it is) has been geared toward technical writing, which I think is really at odds with good journal writing. In scientific publications you have to dispassionately describe results as succinctly, yet completely, as possible, all without the use of personal pronouns, or even acknowledging that actual people conducted the research. The effects of my immersion in that kind of writing permeate this blog, I think, and not in a good way. I think that my writing here tends to be too brief, not enough detail or development. Not to seem to be sucking up, but one of the things I like about Jane's journal is that she can go on for paragraphs about one topic, really delving in and describing her feelings in detail. That's one of the reasons I like her writing. I always catch myself trying to sum up everything in one sentence. Skimpy. My writing here is skimpy. Just so you know that I know.

I've contemplated just deleting this blog and keeping my junk to myself, but then...something comes up and I want to write about it. I figure no one's making you check in and read, so I'm just gonna keep going. I could make some empty promises about updating more regularly, but I won't insult your intelligence. I will say that this latest gap was due to unusual circumstances and hopefully won't happen again.

We went to Tori's memorial service a couple of weekends ago. It was in Reno so we all flew down. It was awful. Not the memorial service, which was lovely, and hard, and very emotional (obviously). No, Reno was awful. My family lived in Sparks (next to Reno) when I was a kid, but I hadn't been back there in about 20 years. Now I know why. If anyone reading this is from Reno and has deep affection for it - sorry, but that place sucks ass. Both Orion and I had headaches from the moment we arrived, and mine finally developed into a my first ever, full-on migraine. I think it was the combination of the high altitude, bone-dry air, cigarette smoke, flashing neon lights, loud, loud, LOUD noise, crying over Tori, and the pack of crazy fuckers known as My Family that did it. But I've cried and been around my family before without getting a migraine, so I'm really blaming it on Reno. By Sunday evening I was huddled in a ball in the rental car, which was blissfully quiet and smoke-free. Fortunately for me, Missy gets migraines, so she slipped me one of her pills and an hour later I could walk again.

I hope I never see a buffet or the inside of a casino again. Seriously, gross. I've never considered myself particularly sensitive to cigarette smoke, but Oh My God, I have limits! I'm pretty sure I've developed a spot on my lung just from walking through the casinos to get to whatever buffet to eat with my entire clan. I guess I've become wimpy since my waitressing days. All that living in places where smoking is banned in all public buildings (otherwise known as "Civilization") will do that to a person, I guess.

Ok, lunch time is over. That's another reason I don't update often - finding time to write. Blah, blah, blah. I'm living up to the Complain-o-peeps moniker today, eh? I have lots of little saved stories from over the last month and a half. I promise to update frequently, for awhile anyway.

Inadequate words

2006-09-02T21:29:00.000-07:00

Tori died yesterday.

Her body just couldn't do it anymore. When it became obvious that there was no hope, they cut back on her sedation in the hopes that she would regain some consciousness. Apparently, she did wake up enough for Missy to tell her what she could.

I don't know what to say now. It feels like I should say something about how she faced the last 8 months with incredible strength, which she did, and how sorry I am for Missy's loss. It all sounds so inadequate.

Here's something: The Children's Hospital has a Courage Bead program. Essentially, every time a kid going through cancer treatment has a procedure, or experiences a milestone of some sort, they get a bead to add to their string. Different color and types of beads signify different things. So, for example, every time she got poked she got a black bead to add to her string. When she lost her hair she got a brown bead. When she got her bone marrow transplant she got to pick out a special, big, glass bead (she chose one with a tree on it). She got glow-in-the-dark beads for her each of her radiation treatments. You get the picture. When I was there for her birthday, her strand of beads was over 19 feet long.

Her favorite bands were Green Day and My Chemical Romance. She had a huge crush on Johnny Depp. She wanted to get a tattoo of a heart on the inside of both of her wrists. One facing out and one facing in - for the love she'd received and the love she'd given. I'm so sad she never got to do it.

My concern is for Missy now. I can only begin to understand the depth of her grief. We asked her to come and stay with us for as long as she'd like. I hope she does.

2006-09-01T09:23:00.000-07:00

Tori's crashing. She's crashing and we're all lost. They had to put her on a respirator, so they induced a coma so she wouldn't fight it. They also put her on dialysis because her kidneys just can't handle all the toxic by-products of the cellular breakdown she's experiencing. She's unable to regulate her own blood pressure, so they've got her on three different meds to keep it up. She can't handle being off those meds for even a minute (like changing the IV) without her blood pressure plummeting. She also has a fungal mass in one of her lungs, despite being on two powerful anti-fungals. If she makes it past this crisis, they're going to have to do surgery to remove half her lung. Christ.

I don't think she's coming back from this one. This time it seems like too much. Too much. The poor kid's body has had so much to deal with over the last eight months. She has fought back from the brink before, however. There is some hopeful news in all this - she's developed the rash that says the transplant cells have taken root. She's making white cells again and actually has a white count.

I worry. I worry. I cry. I hope.

Bittersweet 16

2006-08-31T17:03:00.000-07:00

I finally got down to Oakland Children's Hospital to see Missy and Tori last week. Finally! It was Tori's 16th birthday last Wednesday so all the women in the family went to celebrate with her. Her Bittersweet 16th. She can have a Sweet 16th later if she wants. I'm glad I finally got to lay eyes on them. I'd made plans to fly down there 3 other times, but each time either I was sick or the baby was sick, and Tori essentially has no immune system so I couldn't risk exposing her to something I might be carrying.

I was unprepared for just how bad Tori looked. I get daily updates and I've seen pictures, but seriously, she looked like 8 kinds of hell. It was shocking. The poor kid. She's had her bone marrow transplant, but she's dealing now with the effects of the radiation she had to have before she could get the transplant. She's still bald, but now her kidneys aren't working right, so she's all swollen with excess fluids. She has, essentially, radiation burns on the tips of her fingers and toes and a couple of other places, and she bruises at the slightest touch. She's losing the lining of her mouth, nose, throat, intestines, etc., so she can't eat. I never heard her complain, but she's obviously in a lot of pain, and other discomfort, despite all the pain meds she's on.

For all that Tori's going through, my heart was really with Missy. I just can't imagine what she's experiencing. It's really the horror of watching her child die, because that's what she's doing. Even if the doctors can cure her, Tori's dying right now. It's all part of the treatment - taking you as close to death as possible, so that they can bring you back cancer-free. It really seems to me like the doctors have thrown Tori off a cliff. She's falling, and maybe they can catch her at the bottom and she'll survive the fall. And Missy has to watch all of this, and can't do anything about it except be there, fall with her, and tell her over and over that if she has anything to say about it she'll be fine.

I was there 3 days, we never left the hospital, and I came home exhausted. They've been there 8 months, less one week furlough home when she was doing better back in March. Eight months. I don't know how they do it. Or, I guess I do know. They do it because what choice is there? Missy's in that hospital room 23 hours a day because that's where her daughter is.

Go hug whomever you love right now. I'm serious, y'all, go do it. Hug 'em and look them in the eye and SEE them. I'm sure you hug your loved ones all the time, but give them an extra one for me, ok?

Awkward chicken transition

2006-08-02T12:10:00.000-07:00

Whatever I write about next is going to seem trivial, so I'm just gonna dive in. It's an uncomfortable segue from cancer to poultry, but here goes:

We got chickens. Real, live, peeping, baby chickens. 4 of them.

They look just like this:

Tina, do not freak out! You'll never have to see them - you weren't really ever going to come down for a visit anyway, were you?

I decided to start a little, backyard laying flock. Even though this is something that never EVEN entered my mind prior to about 6 months ago, apparently it's not that uncommon for people to have urban, backyard flocks. You might think there's some local ordinance against it in your town or city, but probably not. Not for a few hens anyway. Roosters are another story - lots of towns ban them because they drive the neighbors crazy with the crowing - but a few hens is pretty low-impact, from a neighbor perspective.

I started thinking about it because when we lived in Kansas our friends, Dick and Cathy, kept chickens. They're a retired couple who live on about 25 acres outside of Lawrence, and they keep a pretty big flock, for amateurs anyway, of about 20 birds I'd guess, including a couple of roosters. Cathy's into heirloom breeds, so they have lots of different kinds of chickens. One of the perqs of being their friends is that they would give us eggs all the time; a dozen eggs a week for years. Those were some good eggs. I'm not kidding. If you've never had really fresh eggs from healthy, happy chickens, do yourself a favor and find some.

I've told Dick and Cathy a couple of times that if Linus turns out to be a genius we owe it to them. They kept me in high quality protein throughout my entire pregnancy and through Linus' first year AND eggs are a good source of choline, which is key in brain development. The whole time I was pregnant an omelet sounded tasty, while many other foods were Off The List, so I ate a lot of eggs. There was a front page article in the New York Times last Sunday all about how we're living longer and healthier lives than our ancestors, in part because we have better pre-natal and early childhood nutrition. So, Linus will also have to thank Dick and Cathy if he lives a long time.

Anyway, I've been missing those good eggs and I started looking into what it would take to raise laying hens. Turns out, not much. I may have mentioned this before, but I am a total geek. I'm all about data, so when I approach something new like this my first response is to gather as much information as possible. I spent weeks reading every website and book about raising chickens I could get my hands on. I now know pretty much everything you can know about raising chickens from reading a book. I could write a thesis. Of course, I'd end up plagiarizing all over the place because I have no ACTUAL experience, but none-the-less, I'd get an "A".

Once we decided to give it a try, I had to figure out where to get the chicks. Turns out, you can get them mailed to you. Seriously. No big deal. A peeping box with holes in it will be delivered to your front door by your regular mail carrier. Who knew? There are a number of hatcheries around that have just about any breed of chicken you might want. I decided on Barred Plymouth Rocks. They're supposed to be good layers and calm, not flighty, important because I don't want any chickens flapping around my head, and pretty nice looking.

You know...for a chicken.

The problem with ordering through the mail is that the hatchery will decide how many chicks are needed to keep each other warm and even if you just want four pullets (girl chicks), they'll pack in as many extra cockerels (boy chicks) as they deem necessary. Of course, they have way more boys than they need because chicken sex-ratios are just like ours, 50/50, so using them as packing peanuts is no loss to them. So, it's possible that I'd have 15 chicks show up on my doorstep. I wanted to avoid this if possible, so I found a hatchery not too far from here where I could go pick them up. I'll write all about how I'm never patronizing that hatchery again in another post, but for now I'll just say that I went up there yesterday and picked up my chicks. They're living in an old fishtank for the next month or so until they're big enough to move outside. Orion's building the outside accommodations for them. If they all make it through puberty, in about 5 months we should be getting a dozen or so eggs a week from them.

The irony is, I don't like birds. I'm with Tina on this one, though maybe not quite as borderline-phobic. I've never kept birds of any kind. I'm not much of a bird watcher. I have a bird feeder in my yard, and I'll occasionally look up a visiting bird in an old, hand-me-down bird guide, but mostly I'll watch the robins working the yard through the blinds with slitty eyes. I don't trust those robins. You can totally see their dinosaur ancestry in the way they move. Creepy. I don't feed the ducks or geese at the local pond, uh uh, no way. I never saw the penguin documentary. Never will. Penguins freak me out. But somehow this seems do-able. They are pretty cute when they're small, so maybe watching them grow up will make them more familiar; not so alien and disturbing.

I don't know, we'll see. If it doesn't work out I'm sure they'll make a fine stew, so either way...

Callouses

2006-06-23T20:37:00.000-07:00

I have been trying to write about this for a month, but I keep laming out.

My cousin Missy's daughter, Tori, has leukemia. I haven't written about it before because I didn't really know what to say. She was diagnosed on this past Christmas Day. A couple of days before Christmas she developed a fever and general illness. She got dehydrated enough that she had to go into the hospital and that's when they found out. It's Acute Mylogenous Leukemia (AML), which is quite serious. She's been in the hospital ever since, except for one week-long furlough home. She's been going through rounds of chemo interspersed with recovery and treatment for a variety of secondary infections. She keeps developing a mystery meningitis that's been difficult to treat, among other things. She was told by her doctors when she went into treatment that even though this form of leukemia only has a 20-30% long-term survival rate, they thought she'd get through it ok.

I just have to say that the chemo she's been going through is fucking medieval. In a hundred years from now we'll look back on these treatments like we currently look back on bleedings to treat "ill humours". They essentially have to nearly kill her over and over in order to get her to the point that they can try and fix her. She's on a ton of pain meds, and antibiotics, and miscellaneous what-have-you. And, of course, she's lost all of her hair. It all friggin' sucks. She's 15, by the way.

They've been trying to find a bone marrow donor for her for months. They finally found a match, though she's been through another round of chemo and then radiation before that can happen, hopefully next week. She and Missy have been hanging in there through all of it. Missy pretty much lives in Tori's hospital room. They have special, long-term accommodations across the street from the hospital, but she doesn't use them. She just sleeps in T's room. I think that's pretty much what I'd do if I found myself in the same situation.

Missy's always been a bit of a black sheep in our family. She was the first of all of us (me, my sister, and my other cousins) to have a baby. She was young, around 20, and unmarried. Oh! the clucking and tsk-ing that went on in the Complain-o family when that happened. I gather she's always been a big disappointment to many in our family. She has a hard time keeping a job for very long, and she's hit up a number of us for money more than once. When we were growing up, I was closer to her than any of my other cousins, though we only see each other every couple of years at family gatherings in the last couple of decades.

I tell you all this to put this next part into context. I was talking to another member of my family, whom I'll refer to as "B". I was talking to B about Tori's health and how hard it's been on her and Missy. How they've both persevered and hung on all through all the crap one goes through with cancer treatment. I know that Missy and Tori had been having tough times dealing with each other before T was diagnosed. Typical mother/teenage-daughter conflicts, I think.

One of the things that's become clear to me during all this is how religious/spiritual many of my family members consider themselves to be. Missy posts regular updates to a website maintained by a charity for families with kids in the hospital for long-term treatments. It's a good way for all of us to keep in the loop without having to bug them by calling them on the phone daily. There's also a guestbook feature where friends and family can post notes. Almost all of Missy's posts and posts in the guestbook include calls for prayer and talk about counting your blessings. There's also a lot of talk about how God doesn't give us more than we can handle and Tori has been so brave and strong in this regard, and God works in mysterious ways, and other such platitudes. My conversation with B meandered in this direction when B said something that just stopped me cold. B said that really, Tori getting cancer was a blessing in disguise because she was going down the wrong road and would probably have been pregnant within a year, or a drug dealer. Now, this experience has drawn her closer to Missy, and Missy's had to step up and act more responsibly and in the end they'll both be better for it.

What?! I couldn't even begin to respond. I just let B ramble on. Normally, I like B. B's always seemed sensible and down-to-earth to me in the past but, what the fuck?! I've said before that my family is a bunch of crazy fuckers, which it is, and I think this causes those of us who are relatively sane to develop callouses in weird psychic places in order to survive. That's what I think has happened to B. That's the story I'm going with anyhow. I mean, seriously, cancer is a blessing because it might keep her from making some mistakes? The hell that kid (and her mom) has gone through. Do we hate teen mothers that much, or drug dealers even? And the truth is, I'm afraid Tori is going to die. Not afraid in an abstract, cancer-is-scary, kind of way, but in a concrete, it-very-well-may-happen kind of way. What then? How does B fit that into the cancer-as-a-blessing philosophy?

I know that hope is important, and maybe B is only expressing this in terms where actual dying isn't a possibility. That whole, "Tori is strong enough to fight her way through anything and will be better for it" kind of thing. I get that. Still. ..

If only!

2006-06-21T15:11:00.000-07:00

We just got back last night from our latest trip up to Seattle. We were there to attend my sister's commencement. She graduated from Bastyr University with a B.S. in Herbal Science. Which, good for her! I had been planning on going up by myself, that way I could just drive up, attend, drive back, but my mother laid the guilt voodoo on me about how my sister would only graduate from college once, so "the whole family" should be there, celebrate, blah, blah. I caved. I should have trusted my instincts and stuck to my original plan because, first of all, who has commencement at 1pm on a Monday afternoon?! And also, guess what? A 3-hour commencement ceremony is pretty much the last place you should take a 2-year old. What?! Really?! Yeah. It was nice and all, but not enough singing and clapping and talking trains to keep Linus' attention. Seriously, it just. wouldn't. end.

There was a moment early on where I got all excited about it. My mother was reading the program before everything started when she exclaimed, "Oh, look! The keynote speaker is Patch Adams!" "Really?!" I replied. "Cool!" Because, see, I thought she was talking about J.P. Patches. Seriously. For those of you who don't know, J.P. Patches is a Seattle icon. He's a clown who had a local children's show from the about the late 1950s, until the early 80s. Sort of a Captain Kangaroo (only better!) for Seattle kids. Ask anyone of my generation who grew up in the Seattle area and they will invariably LOVE J.P. Patches. I only caught the tail-end of the J.P. Patches era when my family moved to Seattle, so I don't even have the depth of love that many of my peers do, but still, I was stoked!

So, imagine my disappointment when I figured out a couple of minutes later that I wasn't going to be listening to J.P. Patches at all, but instead to Hunter "Patch" Adams, M.D. Talk about a let down. My mother couldn't understand my disappointment. Hmmm. Let's see. Beloved iconic clown of my youth vs. "clown" doctor made famous in (what I imagine to be, as I will NEVER watch it) a suck movie staring Robin Williams (exactly the kind of movie, by the way, that my mother LOVES, which is how I know I should avoid it at all costs. My mother's two favorite movies ever, and I'm not kidding? Jumping Jack Flash and Sister Act. I rest my case.). His speech was everything I thought it would be - self-righteous and long-winded. He started off with a whole anti-capitalist thing, which I can totally get behind, and went on to talk about how schools don't teach people to love and that's the most important thing for healers, and really everybody, and on and on. Fine. He even goaded everyone into standing up and hugging the people on either side of them. Anyone who knows me knows this is the part where I really started to look unamused. That kind of shit makes me crazy. I'm not against hugging. I hug people all the time. But I'm not going to hug complete strangers in some bullshit attempt to make a point about how if we all just loved each other we'd all be happy and healthy, or some such crap. Fortunately, I was out in the lobby, with all the other parents and toddlers, watching it all on closed-circuit TV. Gah!

Then, he talked about how he's never accepted any money for any work he's ever done as a doctor. He talked about this more than once, in fact, about how he doesn't accept money, or have any savings, or insurance, or a 401k, and all said in a way to make you feel creepy about getting paid for what you do. What. ever. I'm sorry, but my sister is a single mother with student loans to pay off. She damn well better charge for her services, 'cause I can't afford to support her, and she's been leaching off my parents long enough.

Bah! Enough about it.

When we got home last night, Linus had a melt-down. Like, the second he got out of the car in our driveway. A full-on, sobbing, meltdown. I think he'd just been holding it together through all of the travel, and events, and new places, and new people, and more travel of the previous 3 days, that when he saw familiar territory, he just let it all out. He wanted me to carry him around while he sobbed and pointed at different things. When I'd take him over to those things, he'd scream, "NO!" and point at something else, blubbering all the while. Poor kid. It really was a lot. I felt like melting down and I had the benefit of experience and alcohol to get me through it all. It seems like we've been traveling, or people have been visiting us, every weekend for about a month and a half now. We were supposed to go up to my cousin's again next weekend, but not any more. Orion's going to go up and build them a deck, but the baby and I are going to stay. home.

Oh, that sounds good! We'll lay around in our pjs all weekend eating waffles. I'll show him clips from the J.P. Patches Show and we'll talk about the commencement speech that could've been.

Oh, sheet.

2006-06-11T07:47:00.000-07:00

This time the gap in posting is not my fault. I tried to log onto Blogger several times a day, every day last week and couldn't get in. Don't ask me.

I think Linus has reached that 72 word threshold. Apparently, toddlers slowly acquire one word at a time until they reach a 72 words (or maybe 83, or 67. I'm making these numbers up, alright?! It's something in that neighborhood.), which is some kind of magic threshold, and then they start acquiring dozens of words every minute! Or, something vaguely similar to that. Anyway, his vocabulary is suddenly expanding rapidly. He only has to hear a word once and it's his. Which, is awesome, but also means that I gotta watch my mouth. He knocked over his water the other day and I said,

"Oh, shit."

To which he responded,

"Oh, sheet."

Now he says it all the time. He gets the context right. If something unexpected happens he exclaims,

"Oh, sheet!"

But, he will also just wander around muttering to himself,

"Oh, sheet. Oh, sheet. Oh, sheet."

like he's got a lot on his To Do list and not enough time.

On a totally different subject - my body is trying to trick me into getting pregnant! I find myself lately getting this surge in my sex drive just as I'm ovulating. I'll be at my office winding things down at the end of the day and I'll find myself thinking, Man! I hope the baby's napping and Orion's ready when I get home because I could really get on the train to Minneapolis*! -looks at calendar- Wait a minute! I'm ovulating!

Now that's fine. It's not that I won't have sex if I'm ovulating or something, but it's more insidious than that. We'll be in bed or some place and I'll be thinking, Hmmm, sex! But then I'll realize that we're, say, out of condoms. Rats! Weeeeell, maybe we could do without just this one time. -glances at calendar- Wait a minute! I'm ovulating! DAMN YOU EVOLUTION!!

Oh, sheet indeed!

(*don't ask me, talk to Orion about that euphemism for sex. I can't remember all the details now, but it was something like, many years ago we were making out but then I decided I didn't want to go any further, much to Orion's disappointment, and he says, "Don't get on the train if you don't want to go to Minneapolis!" Hah! We've been using it ever since.)

Movies and TV

2006-05-30T13:20:00.000-07:00

Sometimes your greatest sources of support can be your greatest sources of insecurity, you know? Many people feel that way about their parents. I may be that for Linus one day, who knows? But in this case, I'm talking about me and an online parent's support group I belong to. Well, it's online now, but it was in actual person when we lived in Lawrence (as well as being online). What? Ok, there's a group of parents in Lawrence who maintain a loose affiliation with the Attachment Parenting International Authority On How-Not-To-Parent-Like-Your-Parents, or whatever. There's a listserv, and regular playgroups, and coffees, and stuff like that. Mostly, it's a group of parents talking each other down from the freak-outs. Very Important to have that, especially for a first-time parent. You don't know what's normal, or common, or freak-worthy unless you have someone to ask. This group was my someone.

We saw a couple of the families when we were back visiting - we really miss them! I still check on the listserv regularly, just to keep in touch, especially since we haven't found a similar group here yet. There was a recent discussion on the listserv that has me questioning some of the choices we've made with regards to Linus and watching TV and movies. Now, I didn't realize I had a parenting philosophy before I had Linus, but it turns out I do. It's all mixed together with my personal philosophy of life, such as it is. I don't have a manifesto or anything, just a series of things I tell myself, when I need a reminder. Stuff like:

Don't be an asshole.

As regards parenting, this generally means that when I'm tired, or hungry, or generally pissed off at something having nothing to do with home, don't take it out on my kid. This one can be a little bit of a challenge for me because when I am tired, or hungry, or stressed, I tend to get angry easily, so the codicil to this axiom is:

Cool your jets.

Hey! I never said my philosophy wouldn't be a series of cliches, or worn-out catch-phrases! The one that's germane to this post is:

Moderation in all things (including moderation).

So, we let Linus watch TV and movies. Orion and I both like TV. And movies. Especially movies. I'm choosy about what he watches I don't just plunk him down in front of anything and walk away. Especially no commercials! He likes Blue's Clues ("Buh buh boo!") and Thomas the Tank Engine ("Tsoo-tsoo!"), and we have a bunch of movies on DVD. He loves all the one's you'd expect - Nemo, Monster's Inc., Shrek, etc. I also bought The Incredibles, but once I saw it, I realized I didn't want him watching it. Too much shooting. I'm not completely laissez faire about it. I want to do what's best for him, but I also don't want to be a freak about it, you know? Apparently I've already ruined him by letting him see any electronic media before the age of 2. There's a family in the Lawrence group who stuck to that recommendation and didn't let their little boy even see Sesame Street before he turned 2. Hell, we took Linus to his first movie when he was 18 months old. Wallace and Gromit! Awesome! And he loved it. Sat on my lap and didn't take his eyes off the screen until about the last 10 minutes when things get really crazy. Then he was ready to walk to the back of the theatre, though he didn't want to actually leave until the movie was over.

When Over The Hedge came out a couple of weeks ago, we thought, "Great! Another movie we can take him to." (Even though he's still not 2 yet! *gasp*!) I made plans, but then a discussion about it cropped up on the listserv. Some of the parents were against taking their kids because there's some cartoon-ish violence and "mean-ness". Until I read that it didn't even occur to me to not take him on account of that kind of thing. We took him anyway, even after the discussion. It was no Wallace and Gromit mind you, but he liked it ok. I don't know, maybe that makes me a bad mom. Not like criminally bad, but not stellar. The parents that had an issue with it have kids who are a little older, like 5. Maybe if Linus was that age, I'd think harder about it. I just don't think it's a big deal at this point. And, while I don't want him to turn into a violent little bully, I also don't want him to be...I don't know...somehow stunted or something because I wouldn't let him experience stuff. Especially stuff I loved as a child, and still love now. Rationalizing? Maybe. I'm not gonna lie - part of why I want to take him to movies is because I want to go to movies.

Gah. Being a parent is confusing!

a long month

2006-05-26T09:59:00.000-07:00

It's been a month of no entries and if you're one of the 3 people who seem to check this site with any regularity, I'm sorry. A week turns into a month before you know it. This gap in posting is partially due to a sudden influx of travel, illness, and long hours, but also because I've psyched myself out with regards to what I should post. I'd started to feel like I needed a funny story or some kind of complete allegory to write about. It was weighing me down, which is stupid, but I was thinking of just deleting the blog entirely. Instead, I've decided to try easing up on the self-imposed rules a little bit, and just write more as a journal. I know the blogs I enjoy reading the most are more like that - regular chats about what's going on. Eh, we'll see how it goes. Could be boring as hell. I can always delete it later if need be.

So, we just came back from a week in Kansas. We went back for my doctoral hooding. Even though I actually finished last summer, KU only does one doctoral hooding a year in May. I really just saw it as an excuse to go back and see all of the friends we left behind, which was great, but I'm actually glad I went through the hooding. It was nice to have a little pomp and circumstance at the end. All this crazy medieval symbolism everywhere - get my clerical robes, walk across the stage past the University Mace, shake hands with the Chancellor wearing the Chains of Learning, or some shit like that. Seriously nutty. But also a little awesome.

My advisor and I passed the time waiting through all the other hoodings seeing who could find the most Byzantine dissertation title in the program. Unfortunately, I don't have the program with me, but I'll post the winner later. The best part was when my advisor leaned over to me while we were watching someone get hooded for a Doctor of Education and whispered, "Just remember, their degree isn't as high as yours." Hahahaha! Like they'd have to give up the better parking spot whenever we might meet. Like people will whisper when they pass, "Yeah, but he only has a Doctor of Education, not a Doctor of Philosophy in Education." I don't know, maybe it does make a difference in some circles. In fact it probably does. Who am I kidding? It totally does. I still think it was a hilariously random thing to say.

It was great being back in Lawrence and seeing friends. In some ways it was actually harder saying goodbye to people this time, because I knew that I probably won't be seeing many of them again. Some of our very close friends may actually come out to visit us at some point, but I'm not holding my breath. Others, especially the families, won't. It's just not practical. So, we'll keep in touch for awhile and then eventually slip out of contact. I hope not, but that just seems to be the way. Okay, this is making me feel maudlin, so next topic...

While in Lawrence I bought myself some art. Three painting, actually. A present for myself for the hooding. One by Paul Hotvedt and two by Paul Flinders. I knew before we went out that I wanted to see if Hotvedt had anything that I liked. My friend Brad has two little paintings by him that I've always coveted. He does these beautiful little landscapes of the region around Lawrence, and I wanted something to remind me of it. Here's the piece we got ("September 4, 2004"):

He had these great tryptichs, and if I could have afforded it, I would have bought one. But I'm not complaining - I love this piece!

I'd told myself that if I saw something I liked while we were there, I'd buy it. Lawrence has better art around than where we live now. There's some good stuff around town here, but I think we live too close to Portland and everyone just goes there. But I think Lawrence is pretty much it if you're an artist in Kansas. Every restaurant and coffee house in town has some local artist's work on display. I don't know if it's so great for the artists - I gather that supply is greater than demand, but that means, frankly, that we could afford it. We saw a bunch of Paul Flinders' work up at one of the coffee houses in Lawrence and I loved about four pieces instantly. Here's one of the ones we bought ("The Big Promotion"):

I don't have a picture of the other one - it's this awesome little oil of some spindly-legged birds. Both Pauls were very nice people as well, as far as I could tell.

An all-around lovely trip. Got hooded, hung out with friends, came home with some art.

The long weekend

2006-04-25T14:22:00.000-07:00

Well, we're back from a loooooooong weekend in Seattle, which is strange because we were only there for about a day and a half. It sure felt longer. We took the train up Friday morning, arriving in the late afternoon, and trained it back Sunday afternoon. The primary purpose of our visit was to see Tina and Dave's new baby, Finn. We high-tailed it over to the hospital as soon as we arrived. He is of course beautiful, wonderful, and small. Tiny. Not by newborn standards - he weighed in at just under 8 lbs. - but by Linus standards. I find it really hard to believe that less than 2 years ago Linus was about that size. But he was, I have pictures. It seems impossible that the 30 lb. juggernaut careening around the living room was ever that compact and demure.

After breakfast with my father on Saturday morning, we went back to the hospital for another Finn fix. We hung around Tina's room for a bit chatting and passing the baby around, then Orion left with Linus to change him and get him to nap. Then this thing happened that I feel very bad about. Finn started making the "I'm ready to eat" signs, so Tina got ready to try and nurse him. They hadn't had many opportunities to nurse yet, so they were still very new at it. As many of you know, figuring out the nursing thing can be hard at first. Considering that we've survived as a species, you wouldn't think it would be that hard, but it sure as hell can be. Especially given that most of us have never actually seen a woman nurse a baby, other than maybe a passing glance at a receiving-blanket-draped Mystery Activity by some woman trying to be unnoticed in an airport or some place similar. So, Tina and Finn were having a little trouble getting a latch going. I'm still nursing Linus now. I remember the challenges of the new nursing relationship, and I could see about 8 things going on that may have been contributing to the difficulty, but I didn't want Tina to think I was criticizing her, or come across as a know-it-all, so I didn't say anything.

For about one minute.

They continued to have trouble and Finn was starting to get frustrated and cry a little.

Now, in my defense, the sound of a newborn baby crying makes me crazy. Or maybe "crazed" is a better word. Since becoming a mom, I can't sit still in the presence of a crying newborn. I can't. Once, last year, I had to leave the dressing room at a department store because there was a baby in one of the stalls, fussing it up. The mom kept trying on clothes and saying things like, "You're ok. It's ok." while the baby continued to cry. I couldn't take it, I had to leave. I'm not saying that she was a bad mother or anything, or that I was angry and stalked out, I just couldn't stay. And it's not like I'm a "sensitive" person who feels things especially deeply or whatever. It's just - you know how they've done studies of brainwave patterns in different people in response to various stimuli, and new mothers show radical changes in their brainwaves when they hear a baby cry? I've got that, in spades.

So, Finn's starting to cry a little, and really at this point, I had 3 choices. I could have left - it was really time for me to go anyway. I could have just kept my mouth shut and let them struggle through it. Maybe they would've figured it out, or maybe not and would just have to try another time. Or, I could have taken the bull by the horns, so to speak, and gently but decisively told her what I thought the problems were and offer to show her alternatives.

Instead, I approached her bed and in a really half-assed way, kinda, sorta tried to "help". I did this by lamely pointing out a couple of things and maybe, sort of, suggested a few things. I think I was going for "gentle", but it was really just half-assed. Now mind you, Tina never asked for my help. And really, I pretty much just made things worse. Finn got more and more frustrated, and Tina and I got more and more tense in response, and Tina got more and more frustrated, and soon we were on the bad-nursing-experience spiral. I don't know what Dave and his mom were doing behind me - probably developing a deep dislike for me. Finally, Dave called in the hospital lactation consultant, and I skulked out.

So, to recap - things weren't going well, I stepped in and made them worse, then I left.

My only solace is that maybe after I left, they could blame me for the trouble and then settle down and get things working right. Maybe all the half-assed left the room with me. In case Tina reads this post before I have a chance to talk to her:

Lady, I'm sorry!

I left the hospital feeling so bad for Tina, and also so tense from the brainwave alterations. I tried to get Linus to nurse a little once I got back to my in-laws so that I could get a dose of those brainwave restoring nursing hormones, but for the first time in the History of Linus he wasn't interested. Of course.

So, there was that, but that's not why the weekend felt so long. There's just too much family to try to jam into a day and a half anymore. Of course, it's all about the baby and not about us. Now we're obliged to give everyone an adequate viewing of Poopenstein. My mother thinks that the bulk of our time should go to her and Orion's mother thinks the bulk of our time should go to them, and we still have to fit in my father and sister and round and round. We end up driving across town at least 6 times while we're there, and that's a serious deal in the gridlock of Seattle.

AND, to top it all off, I was reminded on more than one occasion that my family is a BUNCH OF CRAZY FUCKERS.

I'm not kidding. Orion's family is a little odd in mostly charming ways, and all families have that nutty uncle or the cousin that no one talks about. But every member of my family is a life-long resident of Crazyfuckerland. My first reminder came on the way to breakfast with my father. I have only one sister, and she is a single mom and has one son. My nephew decided to ride with Orion, Linus and I over to the restaurant, while my father and sister followed on. Once we were all in the car and on the way I said, "So, how's it going?" He says gravely, "You were mean to my mother as a kid and I will NEVER forgive you for it!" My nephew is 6.

It is true that I was mean to my sister when we were kids, and she has never gotten over it, BUT WE WERE KIDS. I was mean to her, she was mean to me, and the circle of sibling life was complete. I'm four years older, so I always had a bit of a height/weight/wits advantage (still do, in fact), but that's one of the perks of being the elder sibling. Yeah, I would push her around and generally act like an asshole, but then, she STABBED ME IN THE KNEE once. That is the nature of contentious sibling relationships. I have apologized many times for any and all things I may or may not have done to her when we were growing up, and I would again if I thought she'd shut up about it, but she won't. By the way, I'm 37 and my sister is 33. We haven't even lived in the same house for almost 20 years.

Honestly, when my nephew said that, I wasn't exactly happy about it, but it didn't really phase me either. It pretty much seemed par for the course, but it really upset Orion. Anyone who knows Orion knows that it's unusual for him to get upset. He's pretty much the poster boy for Mellow, but he kept saying that he just couldn't believe that she was setting my nephew up against me. He fumed about it for the rest of the day. I briefly considered bringing it up to my sister, but you don't need to go looking for drama in my family. Pretty much any conversation with her can end up in... what word am I looking for? Histrionics? Yep, I just looked it up and "deliberate display of emotion for effect" is exactly right.

So, that is one tiny example of crazy fuckerness. Here's another - at lunch with my Mom later that same day, she drops the news that my father had sexually harassed an employee at one of their businesses and they just settled the suit for $75,000, putting their company in danger of failing. Oh, and this all happened 2 years ago. What the fuck!? I'm just finding out about it?! And it's not like it was being kept a big secret or anything - my aunt, uncle, and sister (and probably all my cousins as well, knowing my aunt) knew all about it from the beginning. Also, this is apparently the reason my mother finally decided to divorce my father. Their divorce was final last fall, but I'd just assumed that my mother had finally gotten sick of what a huge asshole my father is. He really is. Big, big asshole. She should've left him 30 years ago, frankly. I've always thought so.

And here's a rich detail - just at breakfast that morning my father asked me if I'd been surprised that he and my mom, "had split the sheets" (wtf?!). I choked on my pancakes and tried not to let coffee come out my nose while I thought about whether I wanted to answer, "Are you fucking kidding me?!" That wasn't the first time he'd asked me that question either, but I'd just chalked it up to his impending Alzheimers. In retrospect, I think he was fishing to see if anyone had told me about the lawsuit. He should've rested easy in the knowledge that of course no one had. My mom probably would've never told me if I hadn't mentioned that my father said he thought it was, "better this way", like it was some kind of mutual decision.

Crazy, crazy fuckers.

Aaah, to be the favorite

2006-04-17T15:08:00.000-07:00

So those memories about thinking Linus didn't like me when he was new have been on my mind lately because I am currently the Favored Parent. It's a pretty sweet gig, I tell you. Any parent out there will know all about how sometimes you're the cat's pajamas, and other times you're completely repugnant to your toddler. I think moms generally have a bit of a leg up, especially nursing moms, but we all end up doing time on the Losers List. There doesn't seem to be any sort of pattern in when or why positions shift, they just do.

I mentioned before that Linus sleeps with us. He also goes to bed whenever we do. I think we ended up with this arrangement because, as I've mentioned before, I'm lazy and this is easy. We all get ready for bed, climb in, lights out, everybody falls asleep. Some parents like to put their kids to bed early, but that usually means that the kids wake up at some ungodly hour and that would annoy the hell out of me. I'd much rather have a couple of quiet, kid-free hours in the morning than in the evening. Linus usually sleeps until 9:30 or 10. Weekdays I get up around 6:30 and head off to work before even Orion is up. I work a 4, 10-hour day schedule, so I get my extra hours in before Linus is even aware that I'm not there, and since he stays up late with us in the evening I get lots of time with him. On the weekends, I'm usually up by 7:30-8 and that gives me plenty of time for a jam-hands-free cup of coffee and a newspaper, or whatever. I'm not so perky in the morning. It takes me awhile to become fully interactive.

Linus is a funny little guy. Sometimes he'll wake up in the morning and just walk out into the living room, but usually he wakes up, sits up in bed and yells, "Ma?!" I'll get up and go into the bedroom to get him, but usually not before a couple more "Ma?!"s. I'll open the door to the bedroom and he'll be sitting on the bed with a worried look on his face. I'll smile and say, "Good morning!", and he'll stretch his arms up to me. I'll pick him up and he'll relax against my shoulder. I'll carry him out to the living room and he'll stay in that position until he wakes up enough to ask for the booby, or, "B" as he calls it. He'll nurse for awhile and then climb down off my lap and head off to look for a ball, or a rock, or the cat. I really like this weekend morning ritual. I can completely relate to the desire to be carried around in a sleepy haze until breakfast sounds good.

Apparently, during my work week when I'm not around when he wakes up, Linus will still call out, "Ma?!" Orion will go into the bedroom to get him, and when Linus sees who it is, he'll throw himself prostrate onto the bed crying, "No! No! No! No!" Orion will pick him up and he'll cry, "No, Da-ee!" He'll settle down pretty quickly, but still... Fortunately Orion thinks it's pretty funny, instead of upsetting, which is how I'd feel.

I usually get the better deal, which is totally how it should be, but not always. Sometimes I'll load Linus into the car and get in, ready to drive off, when he'll ask, "Da-ee?" The baby-sign for Daddy that we tried to teach him is hand open, palm out, with your thumb against your forehead (it should be thumb against your jaw for Mommy), but Linus translated this to pointing with his index finger into his ear (he pats his chest for me). So he'll point in his ear and ask, "Da-ee?" and when I say, "Daddy's not coming to the store with us, honey." boo-hooery ensues, with wails of, "My Da-ee!" over and over.

Really, I think he'd like to have both of us within arms reach at all times. Orion and I were sitting next to each other on the couch the other night, which is unusual as Or usually sits in the easy chair. Linus was beside himself with joy. He squished in between us, cupping our cheeks with one little hand each, and recited, "Ma. Da-ee. Ma. Da-ee." in a dreamy voice. You'd think he'd never seen us in the same room before. Kook.

Smiley Joe

2006-04-11T11:21:00.000-07:00

When Linus was a couple of weeks old, I started to worry that he didn't like me. Before they start smiling it's all business with babies. They're either sleeping, or rooting around for food, crying if they don't find it. They'll spend some time looking at you, but it's a look like, "What the...? Who..? Who are you?" I knew that babies don't start smiling until about 6 weeks. I knew it in my brain, but in my heart I was becoming sure that Linus was developing a deep dislike for me. He'd stare at me like he was very disappointed to discover that I'm his mother. Then, when 6 weeks came and he still wasn't smiling, I was convinced. He just didn't like me. Oh, I'd make light of it and laughingly joke with everyone about it, but it chilled me to the bone. I'd kitchy-coo and baby-talk until I developed a blister, but he'd just stare at me deadpan, "Just give me the booby, lady." I'd think to myself, "Well, ok. Sometimes you just don't like someone. Nobody's fault. Doesn't mean you can't work with 'em. I've had plenty of coworkers I didn't like. No big deal, right? Sure. It'll be fine."

And, it's not like it was unrequited love at this point. I wasn't too sure about him either. Oh, I was down with the care-giving, his every whim was my command, no question about that, but I wasn't all google-boogle yet. It wasn't so much of a torch as a match that I was carrying for him at this point. But I did want him to like me, like really bad. I was afraid that if he didn't like me I'd pull a Reverse Grinch and my heart would shrink and harden, and I'd shrink and harden, until I looked like Nancy Reagan. Even if we didn't like each other, I didn't want Nancy Reagan raising my son. I didn't want the grape of new motherhood to become the raisin of indifferent parenting.

But then at 7 weeks he started smiling. Sunshine, lollipops, and rainbows, people! That is really when I started to fall in love, you know? Who wouldn't?! Every time he caught sight of me, his face would light up. In truth, every time he caught sight of anybody his face would light up. It's like once he worked out this smiling business, he wasn't looking back. People would often comment that he was the smiling-est baby they'd ever met, and I believe it because he smiled all the time. And it's not like this lack of specificity in any way dampened the warm feelings that his smile engendered in me. It's baby magic. Think about it - when a baby looks at you and smiles hugely, don't you feel extra special? Like you and that baby have an unspoken connection? Like that baby's seen through your gruff exterior and into your gooey center? Yeah. Doesn't matter if you've never seen that baby before in your life, you are now BFF.

It's such a good strategy to get us to take care of their floppy selves.

His Dad's looks, but my incredulity

2006-04-10T17:11:00.000-07:00

Rocks and sticks

2006-04-06T12:38:00.000-07:00

Raising a boy is weird. I imagine raising a girl is weird too, but what do I know? I do know that raising a boy is weirder than I expected. I'm not sure what I expected exactly, but I know I didn't expect to spend so much time admiring rocks and sticks.

Linus loves him some rocks and sticks. You'd think they're much rarer than they are, given his response. We have a little patch of gravel outside our front door. Whenever we go out he'll stop and pick up a rock. He'll then exclaim excitedly something like, "Look at this AWESOME rock I just found!" Except, not in adult english, or any intelligible language. Then he'll hold it up for me to see. He'll insist on taking it into the stroller, or car, or whatever conveyance we happen to be using. He'll repeatedly examine it, then hold it up and exclaim it's virtues for all to agree. Over and over. Sure, he'll either eventually drop it and forget about it, or chuck it at something. Sometimes when he's getting out of the car, he'll find the rock he dropped at some point during the ride and it's all, "Wow! Look at this awesome rock I just found! Right here in the car of all places! Isn't it great?!"

And if it's not rocks, it's sticks. The bigger the better, of course. There are lots of parks with nature trails all around the edges of town here, and I'm trying to get more exercise and other such crap, so we spend a lot of time walking the trails. Linus will immediately find a stick, carry it for a few feet, then abandon it for another, better stick. He'll eventually settle on the stick, then he starts whacking the shit out of the trail. I'm not kidding. If he's not beating the ground into submission, he's clutching the stick in both hands, pointing it at you while making emphatic, "p-shoo, p-shoo!" sounds. I try and play it off with, "Oh, is that your magic wand? Are you putting magic in my leg?"

Totally bullshit, but what's a parent to do? We don't have guns, or play that way with him. We don't watch violent stuff on TV, though I'm sure he's seen some of that - even watching the evening news you'll see gunplay. It's like the gun gene turned on at 20 months. Wtf?! And it's not like he's old enough for us to have a discussion about the implications. Mostly, I try to play it off. I'm hoping that if I keep acting like he's pretending he has a magic wand he'll eventually be like, "hmmm, maybe this is a magic wand. Awesome!"

But this is what I mean about the weirdness. He's not mean, in fact he's a really sweet, caring kid. But he runs around all day alternating between reciting toddler poetry about the sublime beauty of the common rock, and chucking them at anything that moves. When he's not pretending to shoot you with a stick or a pen, that is.

C'mon!

2006-03-30T15:03:00.000-08:00

I mean, seriously.

Belly button privacy

2006-03-30T09:27:00.000-08:00

Linus doesn't have any of the usual transition objects. No blankies, binkies, stuffed animals, nothing. He doesn't suck his thumb, or twist his hair, or pull his ear.

What he does have is his belly button. It's his comfort touchstone. He will rub it if he's in need of comfort or reassurance. If he comes into a room full of people and noise and commotion, he'll stop a little ways in, rub his belly button, and watch what's going on before he decides whether to join in or not. If he finds a situation upsetting, his hand finds his belly button immediately. We were watching "Robots" the other day, and during the sad scene at the train station where Rodney says goodbye to his parents - finger on the belly button. He'll also rub his belly button when he's nursing - the complete Comfort Package.

I find it to be completely endearing.

His abdominal focus doesn't end there. He likes to press his belly against things, especially another person's belly. Often while he's nursing he'll decide that it's time for belly contact. He'll lift his shirt and arch his back, trying to press his belly against mine. If I lift my shirt and press bellies for a second, he'll smile and continue nursing happily.

It gets nuttier. He'll walk up to things and press his belly against them. I'll be fixing some food in the kitchen and he'll come in, lift his shirt, press his belly against the fridge, or one of the cabinets, turn around and walk out again. I freaked once when I saw him going bare-belly-first towards the oven. I let out a little shriek, which took him by surprise, causing him to stop, drop his shirt and rub his belly button while looking at me with concern. I needn't have worried - of course we have a modern oven with adequate insulation, so the door was cool to the touch. I just had visions in my head of 2nd degree belly-burns. How awful would that be?! I even saw him try to belly-press the cat. Didn't go over real well, but I can see the appeal of the warm, fuzzy cat belly.

I think this is an example of the kind of thing that's really cute when a baby does it, but it would be totally creepy in an adult. Imagine one of your co-workers pressing his naked belly up against the water fountain or the copier machine. Nuh uh. Not charming.

All of this means that onesies aren't too popular in our house any more - no belly button access. It's really quite sad when his pair of onesie pjs makes it up in the rotation. He'll be rubbing around for a couple of minutes searching for access. I usually take pity and unzip them down to the waist. You can just see him relax when he finally finds that navel. Aaaah.

And he's almost as interested in your belly button. If you lift your shirt, he'll poke a finger in it. This really cracks him up! However, this is where I've drawn the line.

I have declared my belly button OFF LIMITS.

I will participate in the belly press, no problem, but I will NOT have fingers in my belly button. I don't like it. I tried to be game for awhile, but I just decided, "nope."

I don't have a whole lot of physical boundaries these days. I will nurse him. I will take a bath with him. Closed doors are upsetting, so he can come into the bathroom when I'm showering or using the toilet. In fact, he really likes to hug me while I'm sitting on the toilet (I think I'm just at the right height). Fine. He sleeps with us and sometimes I'll wake up in the middle of the night and he'll be plastered right up against me. So? Sometimes when he's nursing, he'll feel every bit of my face, or he'll want to investigate my teeth. No problem. He likes to pull off my socks when I'm sitting on the couch and consider, and have a discussion with, each of my toes. You bet. The cat likes to sit on my lap while I'm watching TV, while the dog likes to sit on my feet. Ok. I will have intimate relations with Orion. Great!

But my belly button is PRIVATE.

I hope we can still be friends.

My little nutjob

2006-03-23T15:36:00.000-08:00

It goes without saying that Linus is totally effing cute. Like, melt-your-face-off cute.

See? Of course, he's not as cute as your kid, that goes without saying, but only yours. Everyone else's kid pales in comparison.

So, he's cute, but also... total nutjob. That is, in fact, one of his nicknames, "Nutjob" (it's overtaking "Peeps" as Most Commonly Used, as he doesn't peep anymore).

What's that? You doubt me?

Allow me to elaborate. He is, of late, completely enamored with two things; pretending to blow his nose, and throwing away tissue. Well, there are others, but these are the ones we're talking about today. He often combines his two loves. He's watched very carefully whenever he's seen someone blow their nose. Apparently, he thinks what we're actually doing is sniffing the tissue before we throw it away. I don't know if he's come up with reasons as to why we're doing this, all that's evident is he wants to do it too. If we leave a box of tissues within his reach, he will take one out, sniff it, and throw it away, over and over again, until the entire box is gone. Same with a roll of toilet paper. Sometimes with the toilet paper, he'll forego the sniffing and go right to the throwing away part. And he's not constrained to throwing things away into the garbage. He'll often "throw things away" into a drawer, or a box, or my shoulder bag.

Over, and over, and over, and over.

I have evidence. Video evidence! If you click on the link below, it will take you to a page with 2 short video clips. You have to click on the images to get the clips to download before you can play them. Be patient. Depending on how much server traffic there is it can take awhile to download. In the top one you will see the Sniff, Throw Away, and in the bottom one you'll see the Throw Away Not In The Garbage.

See the videos here.

I love how in the second one, if you look closely, you can see that the drawer is already full of wadded up tp. He'd been at it awhile.

Now tell me that isn't nutty!

Labor amnesia

2006-03-21T10:01:00.000-08:00

I realized after posting yesterday that I really don't remember all that much about my labor. I guess I have that labor amnesia that women get so that they'll be willing to go through it again. Evolution rocks! I mean, obviously I remember quite a bit about it, but not as much as I'd expect given that it was pretty much the biggest single event that's ever happened to me. I have no idea what filled those 54 hours. I remember being in the tub, breathing through contractions, blah, blah, blah, but I was in labor (and awake, mostly) for that first night, a whole day, another whole night, ANOTHER whole day, and well into another night. That is a LOT of time, but I have specific memories of about 6 total hours of it.

And I remember things at a distance. Like, I remember thinking near the end,

"I'm never doing this again."

"Nope."

"Not a chance."

But I don't really remember why. Or, I remember why - I was tired and it was painful and I was tired of being in pain - but I certainly don't feel that way now. Now I'm like, "Eh, wasn't that bad."

Some of the amnesia happened immediately, it's not just the passage of time that's muted the memories. I had no idea that 2 days had past, even while it was happening. I think it's a pretty common experience - you go into this primal, non-linear mode. You're so focused internally that external stuff doesn't register the same.

That limited world view stuck with me for quite awhile after Linus was born, but my bubble expanded to include him. I was all Gweneth Paltrow, "I don't care if I never make another movie again." But, eventually I read the screenplay for "Infamous" and decided I was interested in the outside world again.

Aaaaah, I miss the babymoon.

Birthed

2006-03-20T12:04:00.001-08:00

Well, I'd apologize for not posting for so long, but it seems no one reads these posts, so it's not even like my apology would fall on deaf ears (blind eyes?). Ah well, saves me from feeling guilty about it.

So, to finish the labor story. I labored for a long, long time. This baby was taking his time. I was progressing, just really, really slowly. Once the contractions started in earnest, or really, once the baby moved down to a certain point, I couldn't keep anything down. Every time I'd try to lay down, he'd apparently hit my vasovagal nerve and I'd suddenly throw up. You know this nerve - remember when Bush swallowed a big piece of pretzel and passed out? Same nerve at work. Sometimes even when I would turn a certain way it would happen. It was totally sudden and disconcerting. I think I've said before that I rarely throw up. And, it's not like I was continuously feeling nauseous at all. Just, get in the wrong position - Boom! Gross.

This led to an even more irritating phenomenon - heartburn. I have a low-grade, chronic acid reflux problem for which I take a certain purple pill every morning. On the purple pill, fine. Forget to take the purple pill and by about noon I have the worst heartburn. I was in labor for a total of 54 hours, during which time I neglected to take any purple pills. I wasn't planning on being in labor that long people! So after a day or two of throwing up at regular intervals and no purple pill, my esophogus was burnt. Should I ever be in labor again, I will have a designated Purple Pill Person. It will be their job to make sure I take the purple pill, and to have on hand a supply of low-acidity beverages. Fran had told me to have a couple quarts of juice on hand. I did. I was ready. I had about 5 quarts of juice on hand, weeks in advance. Are you kidding? Give me a list and I will have every item crossed off by the deadline. I was juice-ready. I was well-supplied with orange/pineapple, grapefruit, and cranberry juice. Yeah, that's right. All my favorite juices, to be sure, but not so good with the heartburn. Look, I had no idea, that I was

a) going to be throwing up all the time.

and

b) going to be in labor for 54 hours.

Why didn't somebody go out and buy different juice? you might ask. Yeah, I don't know. I think when I decided that I could keep something down it was very late at night. I'm not sure, honestly.

Anyway, all that aside, I labored, and labored and labored. I spent quite a bit of the first two days in the tub. We had a lovely old claw-foot, cast iron tub in that house. The side where you sit back was angled at the perfect angle. It was quite deep as it was, but Orion also caulked around the fixtures so that you could fill it to the rim if you wanted to. I spent hours in there. I even fell asleep a couple of time between contractions on the second day.

*sigh*

I miss that tub.

Throughout this long labor, the baby was fine. We'd listen with the doppler and his heart rate was perfect. Turns out, he was facing sideways. Once he got down far enough that Fran could feel his head, she announced that he was facing to my left. This is probably why the labor was progressing so slowly. In retrospect, I was having typical labor for a baby in this position. I would have one strong contraction followed by one or two weaker ones. I had lower back pain, whether I was having a contraction or not. Classic signs, apparently.

After about 40 hours, we had a discussion about whether I should go to the hospital. Heartburn aside, I was feeling pretty good, and the baby wasn't in distress, so we decided to stay at home. Fran gave me some herbs to slow the labor down temporarily so that I could try to get some sleep. I guess I did sleep for a couple of hours before the contractions woke me up again. I really hated that feeling, being woken up by a contraction. I wish I'd had someone with me monitor when I was about to have a contraction and then wake me up before it did. It was one of the few times I felt overwhelmed by labor, waking up in the middle. It made me resist falling asleep.

After another 12 hours or so of labor, Fran said we should talk about going to the hospital again. She was concerned that I was becoming exhausted, after 2+ days of very little sleep and nothing except a little bit of honey to eat. She said that if the doc at the hospital could turn the baby's head with forceps, he'd probably pop right out. I didn't really want to leave home, but we'd always said that if things pointed in that direction, we'd go to the hospital. I still felt like I could work through it, though I was pretty tired. By this time I could feel the top of the baby's head with my fingers, which was exhilarating, but I also really, really wanted to be done. Like, a lot. Seriously.

Maggie'd told me months before that if for some reason I needed forceps help, to not let anyone except Dr. Bruner near me. She called him "The Wizard With Forceps". Apparently, they don't really teach the proper use of forceps in OB/GYN schooling anymore. Nowadays, anything goes slightly out of the ordinary and *bang* you get a C-section. Dr. Bruner was older, had been well-trained, and knew what he was doing, by all reports. It was about 10pm by this time, so I had someone call the hospital to see who was on-call for deliveries. If it was anyone else, we were staying home and would just work through it, but as luck would have it, Dr. Bruner was the doc on call, so we decided to go ahead and go in.

That was a seriously uncomfortably car ride, though thankfully a brief one. I was still having regular contractions, and I'd progressed enough that these were the pushing kind. It was a slow walk into the hospital with regular stops for breathing through contractions. I told the nurses on duty how far along I was, but they totally didn't believe me, probably because I'd just walked in. They were a bit patronizing, like, suuuure you are, pat my hand. They led me into a small exam room to check me out, felt the top of the baby's head, and kinda freaked out. It was pretty funny. I felt a contraction coming on and got up so I could deal with it standing (my preferred position at this point) and one nurse was all, "You can't stand up! We don't want the baby to fall out onto the floor!" Hah. I just looked at her and got up. I reminded her that I'd been pushing for hours and if the baby was going to come out that easily, we wouldn't have been there. She came to her senses and was like, "Right, ok."

We all moved into a big labor and delivery room. Dr. Bruner arrived about 10 minutes later, checked out the scene and said I was lucky it was him, for all the reasons I've already enumerated. There was a brief discussion about whether or not I wanted an epidural. I asked him if the forceps were going to hurt. He said, "Not any more than regular contractions." Total. fucking. lie. I don't know what I was thinking, trusting someone who'd never been in labor, let alone had a forceps delivery. Orion stepped forward and said that I didn't want an epidural. This was one of his jobs. We'd talked a lot about it before and I made it clear that I did NOT want anyone sticking anything into my spine. I'd had a lumbar puncture in the past, and until The Procedure, it was the worst physical experience of my life. I'd asked Orion to advocate for me because I might not be able to do it myself. I'm glad I did, because I was seriously considering it. I was tired, and tired of being in pain, but I didn't really want an epidural. He was a champ.

Now, having said all that - If I had known how much the forceps were going to hurt, I would have demanded pain meds. I'm not kidding. I felt every bit of those forceps the whole way. I'm glad, in the end, that I didn't have an epidural, but I would never go through that again without some pain relief. Fortunately, it was quick. Forceps in place. Turn in one contraction. About 3 more contractions and the baby was out. From begining to end, my labor in the hospital was about half and hour long. Of course, Linus was all red and gooey and squishy and half-baked-looking. We toweled him off, I popped a boobie in his mouth, and he nursed away for quite awhile.

So, I ended up giving birth in exactly the position I didn't want to be in - that is, feet up in stirrups - but I don't really care. I'm glad I labored at home. I could do what I wanted, and I was surrounded by the most loving and supportive crew. If I'd been in a hospital the whole time, there is no way they would've let me labor that long. I would have ended up having a C-section. No doubt. As it is, I had a drug-free birth and the baby came out healthy and alert - pretty much just as I'd hoped.

If I ever get pregnant again, I plan on trying home birth again. The only thing I would do different is spend more time walking in my ninth month, and a lot of time on my hands and knees in the last weeks of pregnancy, to lessen the chances of the baby being in the wrong position again.

Oh yeah, and have different juices on hand. Maybe, apple?

Finally in labor

2006-02-15T15:01:00.000-08:00

I am so sorry about the gap in posting! I've been all caught up in work-related stuff and haven't been paying enough attention to my 3 loyal readers.

I was due on July 14th. I knew he (we found out we were having a "he" at our last ultrasound, in case I forgot to tell you) wasn't coming early, as much as I really, really wished he would. I mean, part of me wanted to postpone his arrival for as long as possible because I was freaked out like just about all new parents about what was about to happen, but I was so sick of being pregnant towards the end. All you moms out there know what I'm talking about.

Huge, huge, HUGE! Can't breathe when I'm sitting, can't stand for more than a few minutes. Can't fit more than two bites at a time into my stomach, have to pee every hour.

You know.

And my ears! I forgot to tell you all this before, but the most consistently annoying side effect of pregnancy for me, throughout from week 1 to week 40, was that my ears were stuffed up and muffled. Aarrgh! So annoying!! Because your hormones cause your mucus membranes to get all spongy when you're pregnant (nice), a lot of women have stuffy noses the whole time. Not me. Stuffy ears. I couldn't hear anything anyone was saying. It was like I was wearing a giant marshmallow hat with earflaps. I could tip my head to the side and my hearing would clear up, but then when I tilted my head back upright, within a minute I wouldn't be able to hear again. Seriously annoying.

So, though I was scared, I was also sick of it and I really wanted to be done. But I knew he wasn't coming early. I know first-time moms tend to deliver later rather than sooner, but it could happen. Right? "Dream on, hoser," said my instincts, and they were right. At about 4 pm on my due date, I decided to take a nap. I rolled over from one side to the other at one point and felt a *pop* down there.

"Wait, what was that?"

I got up and went to the bathroom. My water broke!

"Woo hoo!"

"On the way!"

"Wait, what's that? Is that a contraction?"

"Is it?...wha?...um...no."

"Ok, I know this can take some time" (12 hours on average for a first-time mom) "but according to my calculations, I will have a new son by tomorrow morning."

"Yay!" Clap, clap, clap!

Um, not so much.

I called Fran to let her know that my water had broken, to give her a head's up. She told me to call her again when I wanted her to come over. You bet! We'd laid in all our birthing supplies weeks (sometimes months, who am I foolin') ago. Sealed bags of clean towels, lots of absorbent pads, like the kind you can use for disposable changing pads, as well as about 6 yards of that padded vinyl used for outdoor tablecloths, a whole bunch of raspberry leaf tea, and a couple of other herbal concoctions. Fran had given us a list early on. I made the bed up with clean sheets and put another clean fitted sheet over the top of everything so we could just take it off when everything was through. I puttered around the house, pausing for the occasional moderate contraction, and eventually fixed dinner. I made salmon. I remember because I eventually threw it back up. Not right away, mind you, but...yeah.

I took a shower after dinner, and settled in for the big event. My contractions eventually came on stronger and more frequently, so at about 9 pm I called Fran back and told her that I thought it was time for her to come over. I thought, "It won't be long now!"

Wrong.

Pregnant again

2006-02-06T15:48:00.000-08:00

What is my deal, taking so long?! Blame it on the Super Bowl.

Oh, Seahawks. I was actually a little hopeful...Bah! Back to the story...

I got pregnant again on October 21, 2003. I know the date because I said, "Hon, if we're going to try to get pregnant this month, we should have sex tonight, or possible tomorrow." Yeah, that's how clock-like I was, not to mention romantic. All signs pointed to Go, and Go it was. Now that I knew what being pregnant felt like, I was pretty sure within a couple of days that I was. And lo, a couple of weeks later I peed on a stick and saw the pink stripe.

From the very beginning, I knew everything was fine with this pregnancy. Just knew it. I didn't have that feeling of dread that clung to me the first time. I wasn't full of ambivalence about being pregnant. I didn't want to be all secretive. I wasn't worried about neural tube defects. Sure, I wasn't going to fully relax until we had our first sonogram, but I knew it would be fine.

Everything about our experience this time was different. I saw Maggie once early on. No blood tests, no hormone supplements, nothing. She had us come in for an early sonogram at 9 weeks because she knew we were anxious. I think Orion was more anxious than I was. He didn't have my pregnant lady knowin'. The sonogram tech was very nice. Maggie'd told her about our history, so she knew what to do. She said, "First, see that little butterfly-shaped thing? That's the developing brain. It all looks perfect." Then she went around, declaring all the various parts "perfect". We saw the little bean's heart beat, and left with our grainy little pictures in hand, elated.

We agreed with Maggie to only see her every couple of months, mostly at milestone points, unless something was wrong, because we were seeing Fran for our regular pre-natal care. I'm telling you right now, if you can find a midwife you like, use her. We can't recommend it enough. We loved Maggie, but even a great doctor only spends maybe 15 or 20 minutes with you. They just can't spend much more than that, unless there's something requiring their attention that justifies the time. Fran would always spend over an hour with us. We saw her once a month early on, then twice a month towards the middle, then every week towards the end. She was also very available between visits, if we had any questions. A typical appointment with Fran went like this: We'd arrive, and I'd go to the bathroom and pee in a cup. She'd test it for all the usual, protein levels and the like. She'd take my blood pressure, then I'd lay down on the big bed and she'd measure my belly. Then she'd get out the Doppler and we'd listen to the heart beat. Sometimes she'd prod my belly a bit to listen for the change in heart rate. Then, she'd ask how I was doing (or sometimes she'd do that first, whatever). We'd talk about how I was feeling, sleeping, eating. Early on, she had me write down everything I ate for a week, then she went over it. We'd talk about whatever was on our minds. She had a pretty large library of pregnancy, labor and delivery, and parenting books, and we'd regularly take a couple home with us, so we always had plenty of questions. We'd talk about what was going to happen during labor, or what sort of stuff we should have on hand for the baby once he arrived. We'd even talk about how we were feeling about impending parenthood. Pretty much the definition of holistic care. We never felt like patients. She had an apprentice, Lilly, who was a professional doula. Lilly was training with Fran to become a midwife, so Fran asked if we'd mind if Lilly sat in on all our sessions. She asked when it was closer if Lilly could also attended the birth. We were happy to have her, and so we got another birth attendant at no charge. Lilly was also great. We're still in touch.

I had an uneventful pregnancy, mercifully. Most of my complaints were the usual, minor stuff - aches and pains, trouble getting comfortable in bed at night, trouble staying awake during the day, can't stand how anything smells, totally starving yet completely full-feeling at the same time. You know.

This time around, we'd planned a home birth from the beginning. A couple of the 6 of you who read this page regularly might be thinking, "What kind of crazy, granola-eating, mother-goddess-worshiping kook is she?!" Nope. Not me. I don't like granola. I've told you before that I'm all for modern medicine. I think it's great that we don't all die toothless at the age of 40. However, I also think that pregnancy and childbirth are natural processes, and unless you have some complication that warrants it, I don't think it should be managed like a disease, which is what happens to many women. Now, this is just me. You do whatever you want. I feel strongly that a woman should feel fully supported, no matter what sort of birth she has. A woman who wants to have her baby in the hospital and have an epidural should do it and feel good about it. A woman who wants to have her baby naturally in a birthing center should do it and feel good about it. Same with someone who wants to do a home birth. I'm going to say this only once, and if you want the supporting literature, I'm happy to point you to it: a planned home birth with a trained midwife in attendance is just as safe, if not safer, than a hospital birth. I'm not anti-hospital, though I don't really want to spend any time in one if I can help it (not a big fan of resistant staph). It was always our plan that if there was some reason for us to be in the hospital, then we wouldn't hesitate to go.

I could really go on at length about this stuff, but I won't. You came for the birth story, and I have yet to deliver (heh). Next post I'll actually get to the delivery, I swear!

Another short interlude

2006-02-03T09:45:00.000-08:00

Do you know what's balm for the soul? Lou Rawls voice, that's what. I'm serious. If you don't have a copy of Lou Rawls singing "Your Good Thing", get it.

You can thank me later.

On with the story...

2006-01-31T16:57:00.000-08:00

I originally started out to tell you all about Linus' birth, but I got sidetracked by this story of my first pregnancy. In case it wasn't clear, that was the worst time of my life. I sincerely hope it never gets topped. There's a little bit more in-between detail I should let you in on, before I get to the actual birthing-Linus part.

I'd made an appointment with the doctor that Fran, the midwife, had recommended before I found out that everything had gone wrong. I'd intended on ditching the awful OB, so the sonogram was supposed to be the last time I saw her. The appointment with the new doc happened to be scheduled for a week after The Procedure. Even though I wasn't pregnant anymore, I decided to keep the appointment. I needed a new doctor anyway. I arrived at my appointment with Dr. Carpenter, Maggie, and checked in at the desk. Her nurse was standing there and said cheerily, "Oh, you're here for a home birth appointment, right? How far along are you?" She looked at me with an expectant smile. I shot a look around at all the receptionists, and people in the waiting room, then back at her, and said quietly, "I'm not. Pregnant, I mean. Anymore." She looked so stricken that I immediately liked her. She'd obviously realized her mistake, asking me a question like that in front of everyone. It's just the kind of dumbass thing I'd do, stepping right in it. She took me back to the exam room and apologized. She asked what had happened and I gave her the bare outline. She wrote everything down and left me to wait for Maggie. I was trying as hard as I could to not to cry, but I knew I wasn't going to last long. Maggie came in, looked at me with much concern and said, "What happened?" I said, "I'm not going to make it through this story without crying," and burst into tears. She handed me a tissue, put her hand on my arm, and told me to take my time. See, as bad as the other doctors were, Maggie was good. Not just compassionate, but smart. She listened to my story, becoming outraged at all the right parts. At the end, I asked her if I could see her for my follow-up appointment in a couple of weeks. I told her that I just couldn't go back to Dr. Jerk. She said, "Of course, I don't blame you!"

I went back for my follow-up and she said that everything looked fine. She said that I could go ahead and try to get pregnant again anytime, we didn't have to wait. I told her that I didn't know if we were going to try again. I just couldn't face the possibility of going through anything like what I'd been through again. She pointed out that we needn't worry, the chances of something like that happening again were extremely small. I knew that. I knew the odds. But, anyone who's been through anything like our experience knows that that's small comfort. See, the chances of something like that happening in the first place were very small, but it did happen, so the fact that the chances of it happening again are small means nothing. Besides, maybe there's something about me, or Orion, something not found on standard tests, that makes it more likely that things would go wrong again. Maybe things would go wrong like that every time. Anyone who's been through anything traumatic can tell you that it changes the way you view the world. How you perceive your vulnerabilities, your chances of coming out unscathed. Long odds seem much shorter when you know how painful it can be.

Anyway. I got over it eventually. I saw a counselor who specializes in trauma a couple of times, but mostly it was just time. I mean, I'll never be totally over it. It's still in the not-so-far-back of my mind as we consider getting pregnant again. But, it doesn't loom quite as large as it used to. It took me about 4 months, then I was able to say, "I think I'd like to try again."

Totally played

2006-01-31T08:05:00.000-08:00

I'll get back to the story in a bit, but I just wanted to describe this conversation Orion and I had the other day while watching one of the dozen episodes of This Old House that's on at any given time.

Me (watching Norm and a couple of other guys walk around the remodel site): Look at that. Every single one of those guys is wearing Dockers. Khaki Dockers. What's up with that?

Orion (completely seriously): Yeah, I don't know. That look is so played!

Hahahahaha!

Comment away!

2006-01-26T15:13:00.000-08:00

I just realized that I had my settings such that if you aren't a "registered user" you couldn't post a comment here. It was not my intention to be all exclusive or anything. My pants aren't that fancy. I've changed it now, so if you haven't been commenting because you aren't registered, feel free to have at it.

The Grieving

2006-01-25T13:25:00.000-08:00

The grief is the big fish and I'm the little fish.
(photo by Jim Lavrakas)

Now that the anxiety about The Procedure was out of the way, all I had left was the sadness and grief. I spent so much time crying, at least hourly the first week or so. Not just crying - sobbing. Body-wracking, full-voiced, I'm-3-and-I've-skinned-my-knee sobs. I quickly became tired of all the crying, but there was no way to avoid it. It was inevitable. But, it was so exhausting and it didn't really make me feel any better. It seemed like such an inadequate response, in the face of the intensity of the grief. It seemed like my head should explode, or I should burst into flames. That would have been more like it. Anything besides this constant, impotent crying. I couldn't even tell you why, exactly, I was crying. It wasn't triggered by specific thoughts or images. I mean, yeah, there was the loss of the actual, as well as the loss of the potential. There was the physical and emotional trauma I'd been experiencing. There was also the hormone flux that intensified everything and threw it all into further disarray. But all that, all those words I just typed, weren't really it. That's what I've come up with in retrospect. At the time it was just this primal thing, raw and visceral. Like a great, gray monster that demanded hourly sacrifices. I guess the crying kept it from swallowing me.

Then there were all of the last painful details. My milk came in. I bound my breasts with an ace bandage, but they still became completely engorged. I had to lie on the couch with bags of frozen peas on my chest, but that didn't provide much relief. It just seemed like some sort of cruel joke, one last poke from the Fates. I also had to tell people. Some of this I started once we knew it had all gone to hell, but remember, I had gone on a little telling spree just before our first sonogram, so there were lots of people who had to be told. I tried to delegate as much as possible. Orion and my mom took care of family. I asked my friend Nancy to spread the word at work as much as possible. All that was a big help, but still, weeks or months later I would run into somebody whom I hadn't talked to in awhile and I'd have to go over it all again. Not in great detail or anything, but enough so that they got the drift. And of course, it was awkward and painful. People really didn't know what to say to us other than, "I'm sorry." That was enough, actually. What else was there to say? Many people offered support, though I think many others avoided us because they didn't know what else to do. I may have done the same thing in their position. My friend Christy, however, did the exact right thing. She called me every day. We wouldn't talk long, there wasn't much to say. Often I'd cry a bit, and sometimes she'd cry with me, but just as often we'd talk about office gossip, or the weather. She was just checking in, but that was exactly what I needed. Orion was also there, of course, but he had his own grief to deal with. Fortunately for us, this whole experience pulled us together, rather than pushing us apart. I'm grateful for that.

It was amazing to me how many people came to us in support with similar stories of their own. We got a card in the mail from our pharmacist expressing sympathy and telling us about his wife's difficulty conceiving. Apparently Orion had told him a little when he went to fill my prescription for the sleeping pill when he was concerned that I not take it while pregnant. I found his note touching. I had no idea how many people I knew had gone through single or multiple miscarriages, or IVF, or had children born with some kind of serious condition. People keep that kind of information pretty close, I guess, though once they heard what we'd gone through they would share openly. Not that I'd wish anything like this on anyone, but it was good to know that we weren't the only ones.

Eventually, I was only crying every couple of hours, and then only a couple of times a day. It was months, however, before I went an entire day without crying at least once. The sadness would come over me without warning and I'd have to stop what I was doing for a few minutes and succumb. Fortunately, my desk at work was in a secluded corner, so I could weep quietly for awhile, and no one was the wiser, I think. I'd still occasionally run into people I hadn't seen in awhile, but I could let them know what happened without actually breaking down. I got an email from a colleague I hadn't seen in a couple of months and he said, "You must be tired of people putting their hands on your big belly by now!" I had to write back and let him know the score and he was so mortified, it made me laugh. Poor guy!

Well, that's the story. It took a lot longer to tell than I thought. It was also a lot more difficult. I guess the monster still lurks. I'll get back to the originally intended story next - Linus' birth. That's one that you know has a happy ending. Should be balm for the soul after this, at least for me.

Thanks for sticking around.

The Procedure, Part 2

2006-01-24T09:32:00.000-08:00

I forgot to include a couple of things in yesterday's post that happened before we went to Dr. Jerk. We went back in to the perinatologist to get the preliminary results of the amnio. Nothing. Everything looked clean. No chromosomal anomalies. The genetic counselor went over the results with us. She said they were surprised, but had no reason to doubt the results. She said that, in this case, "It was just one of those things." Something went wrong somewhere, but we'd probably never know exactly what. She said that these things just happen sometimes. Nothing we could do about it. She said that some couples found this result a little comforting, because they see it as exonerating their DNA. I don't get that. I didn't find it comforting in the slightest. I would have liked to know what was wrong, have some kind of conclusion. Not knowing just left it to my mind to come with all sorts of ways it was my fault: poor nutrition, too much cold medicine, too much coffee, ambivalent feelings about being pregnant. In the deepest, darkest parts of my mind, accessible only while lying awake in the middle of the night, I was sure the last one was it.

The counselor told us that we could ask for an autopsy. She didn't think it would tell us much of anything that we didn't already know, but maybe they would find something. She said that we could tell Dr. Jerk that we wanted an autopsy and he could take care of the arrangements. We'd have to pay for it ourselves, but if we really wanted to leave no stone unturned, she would recommend it. We left with that to chew on, and her assurance that she would send us a complete report of the amnio results.

So, back to Dr. Jerk. Unfortunately, this relationship was going to be just as bad, if not worse, than the one with the OB. Why didn't I see that coming?

We went into Dr. J's office, like a real office with a desk and books, and sat down to go over our records. Blah, blah, blah, what you already know. Turns out, the OB wasn't kidding about his bad bedside manner. He was brusque, and a bit of an asshole, really. But, whatever, we weren't there to date him. He asked if I was having trouble sleeping. Yes, I was. He asked if I'd like something to help me sleep. I said yes, actually, that would be great. I was tired of lying awake every night, weeping and going over everything again, and again, and again. He added a box to a pile of pill vials he had on his desk that he was going to send home with us. Here's a fun fact - When you're at 20 weeks, The Procedure is a two day process. They start opening your cervix on the first day, both mechanically and chemically, then you go back the second day for the rest of it. He outlined for us what was going to happen, went over all the pills and what time I had to take them, then asked if we had any questions. We'd decided to at least talk to him about having an autopsy, so I brought it up. He got all pissy and extra brusque and told us that wasn't possible. I told him that the perinatologist told us to ask for it (so it was clear we weren't just talking out of our hats). This whole discussion just seemed to piss him off. We went back and forth for a while until he finally snapped, "There won't be anything left intact enough to perform an autopsy on!"

Yeah.

I think he was trying to shock us into submission or something. Just like the OB, he clearly wasn't used to patients questioning his authority. He thought he'd cow us with the harsh reality. In truth, we didn't really care all that much about having an autopsy. We knew it would be futile. I continued to argue a bit more, just on principle, but eventually we agreed to just forget it. We then went in for yet another sonogram. He was quick about it, but said, after looking around a bit, "Yep, just an empty skull." I just looked away. Seriously, at this point if I had tried to respond, I would have ended up punching him. I just wanted the whole creepy experience over. We went into the exam room, I got up in the stirrups, and he inserted a set of little seaweed sticks into my cervix. These would slowly expand overnight, opening my cervix. No anesthesia, no drugs, just, "Ready? Here we go." It was over soon, but I was gasping with how much it hurt. He said it wouldn't hurt for long and sent us home with strict instructions to call the emergency number if I started bleeding.

Worst. night. ever. I was in pain (he was such a liar), I was grieving, I didn't want to ever go back there again, but I knew I was going back. Oh, and the sleeping pills he gave me? Turns out the son-of-a-bitch gave me a sample of Lexipro. Lexipro is an antidepressant, not a sleeping aid. In fact, even if I was depressed, it takes two weeks for Lexipro to work, and he gave me a two week sample. Wtf?! I was so angry and exhausted and sick and sad.

We went back the next morning, again first into his office. I confronted him about the Lexipro. "Why did you ask if I wanted a sleep aid and then give me an antidepressant?! Do you think that I'm depressed, or that I might become depressed?!" "Well, yes, that would be the point," he said. He said that with the hormone changes following The Procedure, many women become depressed, especially given the circumstances of our situation. Then why didn't he ask me if I wanted an antidepressant?! Aaarrgghh!!

We went back into the exam room, back into the stirrups. They put in an IV so they could administer Versed. Versed is a sedative/hypnotic. It doesn't knock you out, but the idea is you aren't really aware of what is going on, and you don't remember what happened when it's over. They also put some sort of topical anesthetic on my cervix (or maybe they injected some into my cervix, I don't really remember exactly), and began. It was a horrible, horrible experience. The Versed didn't work on me the way it was advertised. I was aware of everything that was being done to me. I don't remember the exact order of events, but I remember what happened. It was all extremely painful. Something painful would happen and I would gasp and groan, then that part would be over and I would kind of drift off, then I'd be shocked by the onset of another painful act and would gasp in surprise and cry, "It hurts! It hurts!" Then that would be over and I would drift off again, and so on, on and on, for about half an hour or so (maybe longer, that's not really clear for me). Essentially, the Versed had the effect of not letting me brace myself for the painful parts, so I felt like I was being assaulted over and over again, completely out of the blue. Awful. Poor Orion was there with me, sitting by my head, holding my hand. He said later that it was all he could do not to haul off and deck Dr. Jerk every time I gasped in pain. When it was all over, the doctor asked how I was doing and I told him that it was extremely painful. He told me that he thought that the Versed had lowered my inhibitions a bit and that's why I was making so much noise during The Procedure. Fucker. If I had to do it all over again, I would have asked to be knocked out, really knocked out, completely. I know some clinics will put you under. Either that or have no sedative at all. I don't know why they would perform such a painful procedure on someone and not knock them out. They don't perform other kinds of procedures that painful without anesthetic. I can't help but think it's punitive. I'm not all women-are-great-and-men-suck, but I guarantee you that if they were performing some procedure on penises that was half as painful, they'd offer a spinal block and morphine.

After a while, the nurse came back and gave me a RhoGam shot (since Orion is O+ and I'm a negative blood type) and the biggest maxi-pad I'd ever seen to put in my pants. I got dressed and we went for one last meeting with Dr. J in his office. I was all sweaty and disheveled and felt like I was sitting on a log, with that giant pad. He gave us aftercare instructions and emphasized that I should try to remain active today, not go home and lie down. Great. I asked if he could please give me a prescription for an actual sleep aid, which he did. He at least had the sense to look contrite about it. We made an appointment for a follow-up some weeks later and left. I never went back there again.

We drove back to Lawrence and I tried not to doze in the passenger seat. It was midday by this time, and I hadn't eaten anything yet, so we decided to stop at a cafe downtown and maybe stay to eat, or more likely pick up something to go. We walked in and started looking at the menu, when I started to feel a bit queasy. I told Orion I wanted to go, so we bought some scones and left. As soon as we walked out the door, a wave of nausea came over me and I threw up into one of the big concrete tree planters that line the street. Awesome. I never throw up, so I was completely taken by surprise and mortified. Later, I was telling my mom and she said, "Oh yeah, that's one of the side effects of Versed, or any drug like that really, it will almost always make you throw up as it wears off. Didn't they warn you about that?" Hah! Right.

We went home and knocked around a bit, and then decided to go see a movie. I didn't know if that was still in the spirit of staying "active", but it would keep me from crashing on the couch, and the idea of sitting in the dark and being distracted was very appealing to me. We went to the theater and found seats. I have no memory of what movie it was. I think we picked something loud and stupid and in no way sad. I probably don't remember because I didn't actually get to see any of it. As Orion came back from the snack bar and sat down, he dumped the entire 32 oz. cup of Sprite onto my lap. Oh, don't worry, I didn't feel too wet because it was all absorbed by the giant maxi-pad in my pants. I looked up at him and the look on his face was so pathetic that I burst out laughing. He joined in and we both laughed for a good long time. We left the theater and went home, and after changing my pants, I fell asleep on the couch.

The Procedure

2006-01-23T15:14:00.000-08:00

We had our follow-up with the OB the next day. I was very curt and a bit rude. I did tell her that I thought the whole way she handled us was appalling. She seemed to kind of shrug it off, like she was willing to cut me some slack because of what we were going through, rather than owning up to the fact that she was an ass and a coward. Bah. I was never going to see her again anyway.

She asked if we planned to terminate the pregnancy, we said yes. Now remember, we were living in Kansas at the time, and there are exactly 3 places in the entire state that will perform the procedure; some place in Wichita, Planned Parenthood in Kansas City, and a private practice in the KC suburbs. The OB said, for what it's worth, she'd go to the private practice (let's call him "Dr. Jerk"), rather than Planned Parenthood. She said that Dr. Jerk didn't have the best bedside manner, but she trusted him more. She implied that she'd seen more women have some sort of trouble after going to the Planned Parenthood. Who knows, looking back on it, if she was talking out of her ass? Probably. We had no frame of reference, no experience in this arena. I sure didn't feel like polling everyone we knew about their experiences with abortions. So, we took her advice to heart and left.

I'm still loathe to use that word, "abortion". During this entire process I called it "The Procedure". Still do. I even capitalized it in my head. I think the a-word was too political, too fraught with meaning that didn't have anything to do with us, carried too much baggage. I felt like I already had enough to deal with, I didn't want to take on a whole other mess. Maybe that makes me a coward. Whatever. It was a hair I chose to split. I can only stand so much at once. We called Dr. Jerk and the soonest appointment we could get was the following week.

That week was the longest of my life. I'd started to be able to feel movement. Most women who have been pregnant will tell you that by the time you figure out that you're feeling movement, you've been feeling it for awhile and just didn't realize it. The day after our appointment with the perinatologist, I was lying in bed trying to sleep when it dawned on me just what was the fluttering feeling I had in my belly. That dawning was so painful, so overwhelmingly sad, I could barely breathe. Every night I would lie there, hands on my swollen belly, sobbing, while the tiny one kicked and thrashed.

Kansas has a 24 hour waiting period, so I had to go into the doctor's office and sign a bunch of paperwork saying I'd received all sorts of information about the potential risks and other options. Talk about a bunch of bullshit that just delayed the inevitable and caused more pain and waiting. If I'd had to do it all over again, I'd have packed up an gone back to Seattle, stayed with my Mom and gone to Aradia, or some other women's health center, where I would have been treated with caring and respect, I imagine, as opposed to being made to feel as though I was doing something vaguely criminal.

Then there was the matter of money. I was 20 weeks by the time of The Procedure. This meant that it was going to cost us $1200. Payable as cash or by credit card before the appointment. I was covered on Orion's insurance, but this was the insurance of the United Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners of America, Kansas City Local. While they'd for sure cover Viagra, they wouldn't cover birth control or abortions, not even "therapeutic" ones. We transferred almost all of our savings into our checking account so we could pay with our debit card, and heading in. When we arrived, they had us wait in a little, closet-sized room off the main waiting room. They called it a 'private' waiting room, but I know it was really called the Obviously Going To Cause A Scene With Sobbing Waiting Room. The receptionist came in and told us our debit card had been denied, so I got to make yet another sobbing phone call to the Credit Union to find out why. It turned out that funds transferred between accounts were subject to a 3 day holding period. Between sobs I explained to the bank lady that I was at a doctors office and they wouldn't see me until I'd payed, and I needed to see the doctor immediately. I think I completely freaked her out, because she put me on hold, and talked to whomever, and pushed a bunch of buttons, and turned off the hold. Just this once. The charge went through and we were let in to see Dr. Jerk.

Part Six

2006-01-20T08:41:00.000-08:00

Those four days of waiting were, you know, awful. My mother and grandmother wanted to stay, but I sent them home. I didn't want to have to be polite, or make small talk, or hold up under sorrowful looks. I spent the time learning all about the various conditions we seemed to be facing. The more I learned, the grimmer things seemed. Hydrocephaly, fluid in the brain, could be a relatively minor and completely manageable condition at one end of the spectrum, or it could be completely devastating and lethal, on the other. Same thing with omphalocele, defects in the abdominal wall. And the heart issue, again, depended on how bad. If the sonogram lady was right, then it was dire. If not...well, I couldn't see anyway it wasn't going to be the worst, especially given that there were multiple problems.

I spent a lot of time crying, and so did Orion, though I think he was trying to be strong for me. He relied on me to get all the information, and I relied on him to call up family and tell them what was going on. It became clear to us that if things were as bad as they seemed, then we were going to terminate the pregnancy. We were in complete agreement and resolved. We both felt that the harder decision would have to be made if things were bad, but not dire. Would we be willing to try and have a baby that would have severe developmental problems, need multiple surgeries, have a very shortened life expectancy, and couldn't leave the hospital? If so, what does that mean for our lives? If not, does that make us bad people? Unfit to be parents? If we weren't willing to take that on, then maybe we shouldn't be trying to have a baby in the first place. I really felt like I journeyed into the heart of darkness during those four days.

The time for our appointment finally came, and we made our way into Kansas City to one of the large hospitals there. On the plus side, this experience was the complete opposite, in terms of doctor/patient relations, than our previous experiences had been. First we met with the genetic counselor, who also seemed to be acting as our case manager, or something like that. She went over the records that we brought with us, and was aghast at our description of how everything went down. I made it clear that we wanted to know everything as they knew it. We didn't want to be treated like idiots or infants. She agreed completely and proceeded to tell us that things didn't look good, based on the first sonogram results. Shockingly (not!), she didn't see anything inconclusive about the results. She said that given the apparent suite of problems, we were probably facing a chromosomal abnormality. Probably a trisomy of some sort. I nodded. This made sense. I had said as much to Orion a couple of days earlier. Throughout this meeting, I was awash in this weird mix of gratitude for being treated like an adult, relief that we were finally getting some solid answers, and crushing grief over the news we were hearing.

She took a complete genetic medical history from both of us, looking for possibilities. Nothing came up. Then she brought out these chromosomal flash cards and asked if she should go over the basics. I shook my head, but Orion said, "Yes." I felt so stupid at that moment. It never occurred to me that Orion didn't really know what a trisomy meant. I taught Intro Biology labs, complete with an entire section on mitosis and meiosis. I'd just assumed that of course Orion knew how it all worked. I don't know why I reacted so strongly, but I felt ashamed that I hadn't taught him myself, that he had to learn it from the nice case manager lady. Anyway, she walked him through it with her karyotype flash cards, and then we went in for the actual sonogram.

It was a much more elaborate set up than at our OBs office, of course. There was a big monitor set up over the bed so we could watch everything the whole time. The case manager lady introduced us to the sonogram tech, and told her that we wanted to know everything. She said, "Good." and went to work. She took us on a tour of our little, malformed fetus. She showed us the two (or three?) omphalocele and explained that they were severe. She showed us the heart, beating away, but with only two real chambers, and a kind of blob where the atria should be. Then she showed us the skull, with two enormous fluid filled sacs where the cerebral lobes should have been. She was kind, but direct, and ignored the fact that I was crying the entire time.

She stepped out to get the perinatologist. He came in and was also kind and direct. He essentially went over exactly what we'd just heard. He explained that there was very little brain development beyond the brain stem, but that was all it took for the heart to beat and for movement to appear normal. I said that all of this seemed dire, and he said that I understood correctly. He said that floating in amniotic fluid was an easy environment to survive in, but that if we had this baby, it would die within hours of birth, if even that long. He apologized for bringing it up, but said that he understood from our interview with the case manager that we were considering terminating the pregnancy. He said he didn't want to offend us. I guess in Kansas a doctor has to apologize for even discussing all the options. Feh. I told him there was no need to apologize, and yes, that was our intention given the prognosis. He nodded and said that he thought it was the right decision.

He also said he thought they should do an amniocentesis so that they could test for genetic anomalies. My initial response was a flat, "No." I was exhausted and I was done with it. I didn't want anymore procedures, or poking, or anything. I was now facing an abortion, and that scared the shit out of me. I just wanted to go home. He said he understood, and it wasn't absolutely necessary, but it would be fast, painless, and easy since I was already here, and it could give us a better idea of what went wrong. I was sobbing by this point. He said he'd give us as much time as we needed to talk it over and left us alone.

After talking around and around, I finally decided to do it. It would always bother me, not knowing. Also, there was a slight chance that I had some sort of chromosomal abnormality that would cause this same thing to happen with any subsequent pregnancies, and that's something I'd want to know about. He came back in and did it. It wasn't, of course, easy or painless, or even fast. Though he's apparently a whiz at it, according to the nurse assisting, anything medical with me doesn't happen easily. He had to poke around and it took about 10 times longer than usual, according to him. Anyway, he finished and we left. We had a follow-up appointment with the horrid OB the next day. Why we kept that appointment, I'll never know.

Part Five

2006-01-19T08:07:00.000-08:00

To this day, I still don't know how to feel about the sonogram lady. She knew full well that we were going straight into the exam room and getting bad news, yet she kept up her jovial demeanor, and printed out all those pictures for us. Of course, it's not her job to give out the news, and it's not her fault that we brought half our family with us into the sonogram. But still. I don't know if I'd have wanted her to give some hints that all was not well, maybe frown a little and say, "Hmmm." No, that probably would have provoked lots of anxious questions and demands for more information. But maybe she could have been a little less, "Wooh, active little bugger! Here's the nose. Let's try to get a picture in profile!", you know? Not let us get up quite so high, so the crash seemed that much harder. I don't know, maybe this isn't a fair criticism. The crash was going to be hard no matter what.

We got back to our house and my mom and I talked about what we'd just heard. She's a nurse, used to be a pediatric ICU nurse back in the day, so she's good to have around when something medical is going on. She can give no-nonsense information, knows what questions to ask. We talked and she said, "Well, that's really not good, honey. There's really no way to survive without all four chambers of the heart." Yeah. I knew that, of course I knew that. But knowing and knowing are two different things. Hearing it out loud made it impossible to ignore. I started crying all over again. Well, maybe it's not as bad as all that. Maybe they just couldn't see well enough, like the OB said. Maybe the level 2 sonogram will show us that things aren't as bad as they seem. One can always hope.

After a bit, I decided, like I always decide, to arm myself with information. I needed to know what keywords to search for, so I opened the envelope with the medical records and started reading. I got to the page with the sonogram lady's report and saw, handwritten at the bottom of the page, "only 3 chambers present", but also, "multiple omphalocele", and "massive hydrocephale". Underlined.

Blink.

What? I didn't know what "omphalocele" meant yet, though I could guess, but I sure knew what "hydrocephale" meant. And "massive"?! The OB had mentioned nothing about this. Not one word. And these notes didn't indicate that they, "couldn't really tell what was going on", like the OB said. These notes stated exactly what was going on. There's no ambiguity in "massive hydrocephale". I was...in shock. Panicked. Outraged! I called Orion over and read it all to him, nearly hysterical. Hands shaking, tears streaming, voice rising. I couldn't believe that they (she) hadn't told us all this. How could they send us home with this information and not tell us about it first?! What? Did they think a manila envelope was going to keep me from reading my own medical records?! I called the OBs office back and told them that we were coming back in and I wanted to see her, immediately.

Orion and I drove back over to the office. To their credit, I think the nurses knew I was not to be fucked with any longer and they brought us straight in and didn't hassle us at all. The nurse who escorted us back to the exam room asked a few questions, but I think the medical records I was clutching in my shaking hands told her enough. The OB came in a couple of minutes later and said, "So, I understand you're upset?" Un. Fucking. Believable.

"Yeah, I'm upset. You told us you 'had some concerns' about the sonogram results, but what I read here goes way beyond that. This says 'multiple omphalocele", 'massive hydrocephale'! That all sounds dire! What is going on..."

I went on like that for a while. She told us that, in her experience, it's best to ease people into the news. Not give them too much at once. Plus, she said, they really don't know exactly what's going on. She actually said, "We don't really know what a normal 17 week old brain should look like." What?! Bullshit! Bullshit. This is what they do. They see sonograms at this stage all the time! All the time. They know full well what normal looks like. She just didn't want to be the one to give us the bad news, the dire prognosis. She was totally fobbing us off on the perinatologist. Let them deal with the grieving couple. She just wouldn't admit it. Coward.

I burned through my anger talking to her. Burnt off all the adrenaline. An exhausted sadness settle in. I wanted her to admit that things looked dismal. She still kept insisting that they wouldn't know until after the level 2 sonogram. Of course, our appointment was over a week away. I asked if there was any way we could get an earlier appointment. I just couldn't wait that long. I started crying in earnest again, pleading. She agreed to try, and left. The nurse came back in a bit and said that the absolute earliest they could get us in was in four days. We numbly took our appointment slip and left.

Part Four

2006-01-18T10:12:00.000-08:00

So, we had an appointment for our routine, 18-week sonogram. It was early May at this point, and my birthday's on the 10th, so my mother and grandmother made a trip out to Kansas for it. Or so they said. Really, I think they wanted to witness me in a pregnant state. Just knowing I was pregnant wasn't enough, they had to see it with their own eyes, even though I was hardly showing. Of course, there was the ritual laying-on-of-hands. My grandmother, who cries at absolutely everything even mildly sad or happy, or even slightly amusing, was a complete waterworks the whole time. She was 85 at the time, and she has tons of great-grandkids (my cousins are prolific), but that in no way diminished the Most Special status of my pregnancy. Aaah, Gram. What can I say, she's awesome!

The tension between my mother and I ramped up quite a bit with her visit. She really wanted to go out shopping for baby things, but I was completely resistant. She finally became too frustrated and snapped, "You are just going to have to accept the fact that you're having this baby!", like I was in denial. She just couldn't understand why I was so reluctant. I couldn't really explain it to her either.

Our sonogram appointment was on the last day of their trip. They didn't ask, but I could tell they were just dying to go. I wasn't psyched about the idea, but I thought it might make up a bit for my party-pooper attitude towards baby shopping, so we invited them along. So, we all piled into the tiny sonogram room; me, Or, my mother, my grandmother (in a wheelchair), and the sonogram lady. There was The Peanut, kicking and wiggling, heart beating away like crazy. Lots of Ooooh-ing and Aaah-ing and dewy-eyed significant looks. The sonogram lady took measurements and printed out about 10 pictures for us. She said she couldn't really tell the sex (wrong position), but she would hazard a guess, if we wanted. I didn't want any guessing, so we finished up. My mother and grandmother went back out to the waiting room, while Or and I went into an exam room to meet with the OB and go over the results.

This is the part where everything started going to hell.

In truth, I had an inkling something was wrong during the sonogram. It seemed to me that the lady was taking lots and lots of measurements, especially of The Peanut's head. This angle and that angle, this measurement and that measurement. What could they possibly need with all those measurements? I think that's why I didn't want her guessing at the sex. Does that make sense?

The OB came in and said, "We have some concerns over the sonogram results." Hot, prickly feeling up the back of my neck. Something akin to panic starting to come over me. The only way to deal with that is to sit very, very still.

"'Some concerns'? What does that mean?", I asked very calmly.

"We had some difficulty visualizing all four chambers of the heart. We want you to go in for a level 2 sonogram."

"That sounds very bad"

"Well, it's not a good result, but we can't really know anything until you have the level 2 sonogram"

She then goes on to explain that there is no level 2 sonogram in Lawrence, so we'll have to go to a perinatologist in Kansas City. She'd had her nurse call and make an appointment for us. They were putting together a copy of our records to take with us. I kept asking her questions about what she thought, what it meant, what was her opinion? Tell us more! Be more definite! But, she kept deflecting me saying that they just couldn't tell and we had to wait for the results of the next sonogram.

We left the exam room and stopped at the desk to get our appointment information and a manila envelope with our records. I sort of gestured to my mother and grandmother to head out to the car. I didn't want to start crying in the waiting room, in front of all those other pregnant women. I was barely holding it together at this point. I asked Orion to go out and tell my mother what we'd heard while I waited for the records, because I just couldn't. He came back in after a bit, and we left together. As soon as we stepped outside the door, I turned to him and started crying against his chest. A young, obviously pregnant couple passed us on their way in. Her smile of greeting faded when she saw my face, turned to a look of concern mixed with a bit of fear, I think. I'm sure that on some visceral level, seeing a crying woman outside of the OB's office has to be considered a sign of bad luck. Apparently, Orion had only told my mother and not my grandmother, because my grandmother looked up with alarm from where my mother was helping her into the car and asked, "What's wrong?" I could hear my mother quietly tell her that something's wrong with the babies heart. "Oh no! Oh, that's awful!" She started crying. No one said anything on the ride back to our house.

Part Three

2006-01-17T16:12:00.000-08:00

We're back. Albuquerque was nice, except for the 8% humidity, nose-bleed dryness. Oh, and Linus put my cell phone in the toilet. I don't know why, except throwing things in the toilet is apparently one of the super-funnest things ever, given how much time he spends doing it. Potty-training should be a breeze, right!?

Ok, so, to get back to the story - I didn't miscarry, and the OB had called in a prescription for progestrin. The sonogram lady gave me some pictures of what looked like a kidney bean or a peanut hanging out in my uterus, so we start referring to him/her as The Peanut. I went to the pharmacy and picked up my prescription, headed home and started doing research. I started pulling the primary literature and found a recent meta-analysis that essentially found that supplementing progesterone will not stop a woman from miscarrying, except for a few women who have a very specific inability to produce progesterone properly. Low progesterone levels are a symptom, not a cause, and the common practice of supplementing progesterone is not really necessary or recommended. Now, I'm all for modern medicine. I like that our life expectancies are in the 70s or 80s instead of the 40s, but I'm not about taking medications unnecessarily, especially while pregnant, and especially not hormones, which mess with everything. So, I tried to get hold of the OB to talk to her about it. Foolish me! It's Saturday at this point, so the best I can do is leave a message for one of the nurse-midwives and hope that someone gets back to me. Meanwhile, I take the first dose, because I'm still paranoid about miscarrying and I'm not willing to make a unilateral decision to not take the meds. I ended up lying awake that night until, seriously, 4 in the morning, obsessing about all that had happened. In the morning, I'm weepy and sleep-deprived, no one from the OBs office has called me. I decide to do some more research on the meds, so I type the name of it, "Provigil", into Google, and find out that what I've been taking is used to treat narcolepsy. What? Now I'm really confused, though being awake until 4 am makes all kinds of sense. I'm wondering if this is a dual-use drug or what? Of course, now it's Sunday, so not only is the OBs office closed, my pharmacist is off as well. Long story short(er), I've been taking the wrong med. Either the doctor's office called in the wrong thing, or the pharmacy keyed in the wrong code, I still don't know which. I'm assured by all parties involved that this Provigil will in no way harm The Peanut. Of course, what else are they going to say.

So, then I'm on the real progesterone, and it practically puts me into hibernation. Progesterone slows down your digestion and makes you sleepy, so when you're supplementing what your body is already making in early pregnancy, you become extremely sleepy! I can barely stay awake for more than a couple of hours at a time, and when I am awake, all I can think about is sleep. I met with my OB to talk to her about the whole progesterone-as-symptom-not-as-cause thing, I even photocopied a couple of papers out of journals to give to her, but she totally and completely blew me off. She wouldn't even look at the material I brought. It's at this point that I decided I need a new doctor. Still, I stayed on the progesterone for 5 weeks or so. I was sucked in by the whole better-safe-than-sorry thing. Oh, and I also developed a problem with my gall bladder, necessitating another sonogram, this time of my liver. It became "sluggish" and "full of sludge". I'm sure this was a direct result of being on the progesterone, even though my OB thought I was full of crap (she didn't say as much, but it was written all over her face, if you know what I mean). Funny how as soon as I stopped the progesterone at about 13 weeks, all my gall bladder problems went away. Hmmm.

Meanwhile, we weren't telling anybody I was pregnant. Even though the OB reassured me that everything was fine, I still had the feeling that things weren't right, and I didn't want to tell until I knew everything was ok. The exception to this was my mother. I did tell her, and she immediately flipped out and started pressuring me to tell the rest of the family (all the cousins and aunts and what-not). She just couldn't understand why I didn't want to immediately tell everyone, she was so excited. I kept telling her that I was still nervous that something would go wrong, and that I would tell everyone when I knew everything was ok. She was not happy about it. She also wanted to start buying stuff. We went 'round and 'round about it. I'm a scientist, but I was worried that would jinx things. Hey! Don't look at me that way! That's a major cognitive adaptation, the ability to hold two contradictory thoughts in your mind! Anyway, my mother kept harassing and I kept resisting. Finally, she told me that she "accidentally" told my aunt, and my aunt was probably going to tell my cousins, so I might as well call them up myself. I was angry, but I relented. I was about 16 weeks at this point, well past the real danger of miscarrying, and I'd just had a clean result from my quad marker test, so I was feeling more hopeful. Plus, at a certain point you just have to start telling people. I wanted to soak in the congratulations and well-wishing, to indulge in the happy fantasies. Once I started telling family, I ended up spilling the beans all over the place - coworkers, colleagues, everybody.

We'd started looking around for a midwife, asking everyone we knew, and kept getting recommendations for the same lady - Fran. By this point we had started to consider a home birth, and she was one of the few (maybe only) midwives in town that would attend a home birth. We made an appointment with her to see what she was like. She's a lay midwife, so she saw us in her house, in a bedroom she used for appointments with a comfy old bed covered in a beautiful quilt she made herself. After a couple of hours of talking, me with my list of questions, and her with over 30 years experience catching babies, Or and I walked out, gave each other a little nod, and knew we'd found our midwife. Fran is this awesome mix of absolute competence and lifetimes of experience, wrapped in a slightly hippy, grandmotherly package. While we were there I asked her if she could recommend another OB, maybe someone she worked with, because I disliked mine so much. She said, "Why do you feel you need to see an OB, what about a family practice doc?" "Um...well...you mean I don't have to see an OB?" Like there's a law or something. She recommended one of the few doctors in town who was supportive of home birth. I called and made an appointment, but I already had an appointment with the OB for the 18 week sonogram, so I decided to keep it and have that be the last time I saw her.

Next time - 4 generations and the sonogram lady.

Delay

2006-01-09T11:42:00.000-08:00

I'm in Albuquerque for a workshop all this week. I thought I'd be able to post, but I only have limited internet access, so I won't be able to really post again until next week. I know a week is a loooong time in blog-years, so I just wanted to let you know.

Part Two

2006-01-05T08:13:00.000-08:00

It's January, 2004, I'm pregnant but I don't know it yet. This pregnancy was...what? cursed? doomed? a bad ride? from the start. I've been searching for the right phrase, but I haven't found it yet. I'd never been pregnant before, so I didn't recognize the signs. I left for two weeks of travel to Florida and D.C. to give a couple of talks and meet with potential collaborators (at the time I was in grad school). I was a week late, but that wasn't so unusual given my history. I felt like I was having intense, prolonged PMS. My stomach hurt, I felt bloated, and my boobs were sore. I couldn't even put a shirt on without wincing.

I lay there in my hotel room in D.C. one night, not sleeping, grousing in my head about how weird and sore I felt, when suddenly I thought to myself, "I wonder if this is how it feels to be pregnant." That's when I knew. Duh! I felt so stupid for not realizing it sooner. Then the sinking feeling began. I'd been sick for weeks with the worst cold I'd had in years. That meant I was on pseudophed constantly and wasn't really eating. Bad. Also, I have Multiple Sclerosis (don't waste your sympathy - I'm lucky. I haven't had any symptoms since the ones that diagnosed me 8 years ago now) and was on a medication that they recommended you not take if you're pregnant. I'd stopped taking it a couple of weeks earlier, but not months ago like the packaging recommended. It did say there were no known adverse effects on pregnancy, but still...

I lay there in that hotel room with my sore boobs and my sinking feeling and didn't sleep. The sinking feeling was mixed with a deep ambivalence. I just couldn't get happy about being pregnant. I was too worried about getting off to a bad start. Plus, I hadn't resolved my concerns about whether I should get pregnant at all. Would I be a good parent? blah, blah, blah.

I got back home, peed on a stick, and made an appointment with an OB. Here's an example of how totally out of my element I was - it didn't even occur to me to see a family practitioner. I just assumed you had to see an OB if you're pregnant. I didn't have any friends who had kids, no one around me to ask or give me advice. I didn't really have a primary care physician, so the OB it is. We were living in Lawrence, Kansas, at the time and there was only one practice in town that also had certified nurse midwives, so I called them. I knew that I probably wanted to have a midwife attend me during labor (attend to me? attend my labor? Whatever. You get the point. Grammarpants I am not, obviously.). I was 7 weeks along at this point. I went in, peed in a cup, and met with the doc. I told her I was worried about neural tube defects and other nebulous frights because of my poor nutrition early on and she told me I was overly concerned due to my inexperience and hormones. Thus began my horrible relationship with this OB.

They took my blood to "check hormone levels" and sent me on my way. A week later, one of the nurses calls and says they want to take my blood again because my progesterone was a little low. Not that unusual, nothing to worry about, calm down. I go in, they take my blood again. I get a call in a couple of days from another nurse saying that my progesterone levels haven't come up, "like they'd like", so they want to schedule me for an ultrasound, but it's a Thursday and their technician won't be in until Monday. I numbly agree to a time on Monday and hang up. Of course, I then go back to my computer and start researching hormone levels and pregnancy. I know this response isn't unique to scientists, but that's what I do. I'm a research biologist, so I'm all about data and results. After an hour or two of reading, I call the nurse back to get my actual numbers. The nurse is completely puzzled by this request - "You want to know the actual hormone levels?" Yes. "You want the numbers?" Yes. "The actual numbers?" Yes. "We don't usually give out the numbers." Could I grit my teeth any harder? After a couple more minutes of further brow furrowing and puzzlement, she finally reads me the numbers.

Once I have my precious numbers, I go back to my research. After another hour or so, I become convinced that I've miscarried. So, now I'm facing a long weekend of waiting for the ultrasound to confirm the bad news. This is completely untenable, so I call the doctor's office back. I want to reschedule. I want them to stop doling out information like its dangerous and should only be taken in small doses. I want them to stop acting like I can't handle the truth. I want the nurse to admit that they think I've miscarried. I'm kind of flipping out. She hems and haws and finally says that "things don't look good". I ask if there's any way that I can get in sooner for an ultrasound. I end up crying and pleading on the phone. Unfortunately, that won't be the last time I end up on a phone crying and pleading during this experience. Finally, they relent and refer me to another clinic for an ultrasound the next day. I'm getting mad all over again as I write this. What are they thinking, calling a pregnant women with potentially bad news, not giving her the full story and expecting her to wait days to find out what's going on?! I know this happens to people all the time - what is the deal?!

I show up the next day for the ultrasound, and it's just me and a nice lady technician. I get into the gown and prepare to have my belly greased up when she busts out with the giant porno ultrasound dildo. Not what I was expecting! She, um, gets to work. I'm lying there feeling grim while she looks around. Then, she zeros in on a little bean with a flickering white spot and says, "There's the heartbeat." I burst into tears. Seriously. Body-wracking sobs. She looks at me with concern and says, "Oh, you thought you'd lost it." I sob and nod and snurffle. She assures me that everything looks normal and sends me on my way. I call my OB and they tell me that they want me to start on supplemental progesterone (progesterin) immediately and call in a prescription.

Enough for now. Look, I know this is a long story, but I'm going to keep writing.

Making Babies, Part One

2006-01-03T14:35:00.000-08:00

We've been talking lately about whether or not we want to have another baby. It's been a long, meandering discussion. Much the same way we went about trying to decide if we were going to have any kids at all. Anyway, I'll write about it in more detail some other time, but the thing I want to mention now is that it came out that one of the things holding Orionjob back from being whole-heartedly behind trying again is that, apparently, Linus' delivery was really hard on him and he's not sure if he wants to go through that again.

What? Really? Because, I'm the one that actually delivered Linus - out of my body - and that's not one of the things in my "Cons" column. Not that I'm like, "You know, the thing I could really go for now is active labor!", but the prospect of it wouldn't stop me from having another baby, if that's what we decide. Orionjob, however, seems to bear deeper scars than I do, which kinda pisses me off, a little. Not that I think he isn't entitled to his feelings, and yada yada blah blah, but if I'm ok with it, I feel like he should be too, you know?

It's possible I haven't got the full story out of him yet. He's a still-waters-run-deep kinda guy, and often the first thing you get out of him isn't the whole of it, and you have to wait a bit before he spills the rest and really comes to whatever conclusion he's going to come to. I used to get very impatient with him when we were first together (because Patience is NOT my middle name), but over time I've gotten used to the process. Plus, getting frustrated with it isn't going to make things happen any faster. In fact, the opposite may be true. And, I can't change a rock into a river through force of will. I don't have that kind of power, and probably wouldn't want to even if I did. So, I wait.

Meanwhile, I thought I'd tell you all Linus' birth story, for anyone who hasn't heard it already. So, be warned. I don't plan on going into super, squeamish detail, but still...

It was quite arduous - 54 hours total. Um, I guess I feel like I should first tell you that I was pregnant before Linus. We had decided in about November, 2003, to kinda, maybe, start to think about trying to get pregnant. We stopped using contraception, but we weren't really trying. I mean, we were having sex, so yeah, in that way we were trying, but we weren't taking my temperature every morning, or anything even remotely like that. I had always assumed I'd have a hard time getting pregnant. I'd had really screwy periods until I was about 30. By screwy, I mean irregular. Sometimes I'd go three months between, sometimes 20 days, there was just no telling. Then, sometime in my early 30s, I became regular. Like, phases-of-the-moon regular. But, when we started discussing pregnancy, I'd only had a couple of years of regular, vs. a couple of decades of screwy, so I was still kinda in the mode of thinking, "my cycle is weird and there's no way to predict what may happen", which was totally not true, had I been thinking. Still, I chose to believe that I was perhaps only ovulating once a season. Also, my mother had had trouble conceiving me. She tried for a couple of years, though this was in her 20s and not her 30s. I think she even took some kind of fertility drug eventually, though I'm not sure about that last bit.

These two things, plus the fact that I was 35 at the time and I'm a biologist and know how diminishing-fertility happens, clouded my thinking. This was also around the time when it was a cover story on every weekly news magazine how so many women were postponing having children until it was "too late". Oh, and Or and I had been using a sort of modified rhythm method for about a decade - that is, we used nothing most of the time until I thought it was around the time I could be ovulating, and then we'd use condoms. Now, I know that the rhythm method works for crap unless you absolutely know when you are ovulating. Since as far as I knew, I'd never been pregnant, I assumed that I must not hardly ever be actually ovulating, otherwise I would have gotten pregnant before. Yeah, I know that's some fucked up logic, using a contraceptive method that I assumed would normally fail, but this just serves to illustrate the fact that I seriously thought I would have to TRY to get pregnant. Like, months, possibly years, of data collection, strategic sex, luck, and possibly fertility-enhancing drugs.

So, I got pregnant immediately. That is so like me.

Well, I'd planned on telling one story, and now I'm telling another. I'll get around to the original plan eventually, but first I'm going to finish this one. But not in one post, because this is plenty long already. If you're still reading at this point - thanks.

Crunchy segments

2006-01-03T14:19:00.000-08:00

Here's something you should try, if you haven't already. Take one of those little satsumas, or madarins, or clementines - you know, those little oranges you get by the crate this time of year - peel it, separate the segments and arrange them so that they're not touching each other, and let them sit for about an hour or so. Now it's ready to eat! If you do this, the outside of each segment will dry out and become just a little crunchy. When you bite into it, you'll get this satisfying *pop* and then the sweet juicy goodness fills your mouth. I discovered how nice clementines are this way because Linus often asks for them (he has a sign for them - twisting a fist), but once you peel it and separate the segments for him, he'll eat a couple and then get distracted and wander off. Not wanting them to go to waste, I'll eventually eat whatever's left.
I admitted to Orionjob that I'd started leaving my clementine segments out before eating them when I'm at work and he says, "Yeah! They get all crunchy! It's nice!". He discovered it the same way I did. Toddler cuisine.

Meeeerrrrrry Christmas!

2005-12-20T13:53:00.000-08:00

Nothing puts me in the Christmas spirit like listening to the Charlie Brown Christmas album (or more accurately, The Vince Guaraldi Trio, "A Charlie Brown Christmas")! Seriously. I've been lamenting my complete lack of holiday enthusiasm lately, but I'm shuffling my iPod and "Christmas Time Is Here" came on. Poof! I'm the Ghost of Christmas Present! Come closer man, and know me better!

It seems harder and harder, year by year, to get into the holiday swing. Maybe it's due to the fact that we always seem to be going somewhere else for Christmas, so we don't have up any decorations, or a tree, or anything. Well, that's not completely true - Orionjob finally caved after much whining and moaning on my part and put up two fir boughs and one string of lights. Better than a poke in the eye, I guess, but not particularly overwhelming. Also, I do almost all of my shopping online these days. Used to be that I'd spend a day or two in downtown Seattle shopping. What with the lights, and the holiday bustle, and the eggnog lattes, you couldn't really help but succumb to the festive atmosphere.

Oh well, I've know the secret now! I don't know why I didn't think of it before.

Dancing, not deflicted

2005-12-19T13:29:00.000-08:00

We just finished watching all 7 seasons of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Linus LOVES the theme to Buffy. Well, he used to love it, anyway. He'd dance to it every time he heard it. That's a lot of theme-music dancing when you consider that the theme plays at the beginning and the end of every episode, and we've been watching something like 8 episodes a week since mid-May. In the last month or so, he stopped dancing to it, though his head still snaps around whenever he hears it. I don't know why he stopped, he still dances to other music. Of course, he's a toddler, so "dancing" consists of lots of bouncing up and down, foot-stomping, and fist-twisting.

When he was really little, like lay-on-the-floor-can't-sit-up-yet little, we were watching Alias from the beginning, and when that theme song came on, no matter what he was doing or what position he was in, he'd twist around so he could watch the spinning rectangles. Three months old and loving the techno. We're about to Netflix season 4 of Alias, so we'll see if he still loves that theme song.

So, we're sitting around the living room last night, and I look over at Or and he has a weird look on his face. I ask him, "Are you ok? You look a little dodgy.", and he replies, totally serious, "A good dodgy, or a bad dodgy?". Ha! He cracks me up!

Talking about talking

2005-12-15T15:26:00.000-08:00

Linus has started talking. He's been using sign language since he was about 10 months old, but I'm talking actual spoken words now.

By the way, I highly recommend the teaching of baby signs. Don't misunderstand, I'm not one of those flash-card wielding,must-maximize-every-possible-developmental-moment parents. No bellyphones piping Mozart into his fetal ears. I'm actually pretty lazy about that sort of thing. If it's not making my life easier as a parentin the here-and-now, he can figure it out the old fashion way; by hanging around people going on about their daily lives. I think of it as an evolutionary approach to parenting. And the baby signs fit right in with that philosophy. A happy baby is way easier to deal with than a frustrated, pissed-off baby, and I know Linus is happier for being able to tell us what he wants. He doesn't have a huge repertoire of signs, maybe 30, but he can tell us when he wants to eat and what he wants to eat (well, as long as he wants to eat one of about five things) and that goes a long way toward keeping him from getting all worked up becausehe wants something and we can't figure out what it is. In fact, lately he's been wanting to eat things we don't have signs for, and if he can't point to it, frustration and boo-hooing ensues. I need to make up a sign for noodles, and pizza. That would help.

But, I digress...talking! He's been saying, "Da" or "Dada" for his Dad for awhile now (though lately it's developed into "Dadee"), and "no" has been common for about 2 months. "No" apparently means "no", as well as,"I acknowledge that you're speaking to me", given how often we hear it. Just in the last couple of days he's added "more" (or "mo") and "boo"for book. He has no words for me yet (though he does have a sign), NOT that I'm taking that personally or anything (*grumble*, he's lucky he's so cute).

In all its glory...

2005-12-15T11:47:00.000-08:00

Well, Tina asked for it, and since she's one of maybe 2 regular readers, I can't deny her.

Here is the Annual Summary of Holiday Season Gift Rules Cheerful Holiday Poem, in its entirety:

"The holiday season -- a time for good cheer!
For egg nog, for parties, for friends to be near.
But I must be careful
Lest I accept free
A gift not permitted, no matter how wee.

Part two six three five of the 5 CFR
Explains in detail the relevant bar.
It defines the term gift
To mean all things worth money.
That's NBA tickets or jars full of honey.

Some gifts may be taken but some are verboten.
The source is the key -- it's the rule that I'm quotin'.
When from me or others
The source seeks some act,
I must find an exception or I could be sacked.

Even others who give can cause problems for me.
If my job prompts the giving -- my position, you see.
But lucky for me,
Some exceptions exist.
They're in subpart B and they should not be missed.

I can pay market value if the gift I do like,
Or I can at my option say "go take a hike."
I can always say no,
But I need not decline.
If worth twenty or less then the gift can be mine.

This exception has prompted some very loud hollers.
It says gifts are okay if worth twenty dollars.
But surely the public
Is certain to see,
I could never be bought for a sandwich and tea.

Restrictions apply so it does not suffice
To pay twenty bucks for a gift twice the price.
And in any one year
I can't use it, of course,
To go over the limit -- fifty dollars per source.

For gifts that a friend or my sister might send,
The rules recognize I don't want to offend.
Regardless of value,
It only must be
That their motive to give wasn't business, but me.

The rule's much the same in the case of my spouse
Who happens to work as she can't stand our house.
Although her employer
Is one of those sources,
I can go to their fete and avoid more divorces.

In the case of most parties, the rule's not so clear
As the agency must have an interest, I fear.
If worth more than twenty
And it's no friend true,
Then I'd better seek guidance or I could be blue.

What of those in the office with whom I share much?
Are all treats a taboo -- must we always go dutch?
The rules here are different,
They're in subpart C.
They okay some gifts even to and from me.

I can give to my boss to a limit of ten --
A baseball, a cap, or a blue ballpoint pen.
If not to my boss
Or my chain of command,
To a friend I can give more without being canned.

I always look forward to my office party.
We're all in good moods and the food is so hearty.
If no arm is twisted,
Collecting's okay
To make sure that everyone has a good day.

So go forth with good cheer and know there's no reason
To think that the gifts rules will ruin your season!"

Hahahahaha!

I just want to make it clear, I can totally be bought for a sandwich and tea.

Working for The Man

2005-12-13T16:58:00.000-08:00

Ok, I know I said just yesterday that I wasn't too interested in writing about my work, but I can't let this go by without mentioning it:

You know you're a federal employee when you get an email with the subject, "The Annual Summary of Holiday Season Gift Rules". Seriously, a hilarious, five page memo of what I can and can't give and/or receive in the way of gifts (hilarious for a variety of unintended reasons). No gifts to bosses, no gifts over $10 to coworkers, blah, blah, blah. That's fine. I get that there are ethics rules, and why we need to follow them. Doesn't mean I'm not going to make fun of it. Fortunately, it's ok to receive donuts! Oh, and "other modest items of food and refreshment". I love the "modest" part. And the idea of items of refreshment. The best part, though, is that the people who wrote the memo decided to attach, "a cheerful holiday poem that succinctly summarizes these important rules". I'm not kidding! I will post the first two stanzas for you,

"The holiday season -- a time for good cheer!
For egg nog, for parties, for friends to be near.
But I must be careful
Lest I accept free
A gift not permitted, no matter how wee.

Part two six three five of the 5 CFR
Explains in detail the relevant bar.
It defines the term gift
To mean all things worth money.
That's NBA tickets or jars full of honey."

Hahahahaha! It goes on for 11 more stanzas. I'm not making this up!

Introductory material

2005-12-12T16:19:00.000-08:00

It seems like there may be one or two people reading this journal on occassion who don't know me. So, I thought I'd kind of fill in some background information.

We (me, my husband, my son, our dog) just moved out to Oregon from Kansas. We moved so I could start a new job with a certain federal bureau charged with, um, guarding the, um, milieu. Let's call it the Milieu Guarding Bureau (MGB). I conduct research for this bureau. Scientific research. Not rocket science, mind you, biological science. Anyway, blah de blah, love my job. Love it! But, while I find it completely enthralling, most people don't. Not from lack of interest, really, more a lack of common ground. So, I don't/won't write about it much here. That's not a hard-and-fast rule or anything, I just find my family, especially Linus, to be much more amusing and journal-worthy.

My husband, Orionjob, a carpenter by trade, is currently a stay-at-home Dad. We probably can't afford for him to stay home long-term, but for now it's working, and it gives us a chance to figure out the local daycare scene. We may put Linus in part-time daycare after the first of the year. We'll see what we can find. I'm thrilled that Or and Linus get to spend so much time together. I imagine lots of napping and farting. Oh, don't get worked up! I know that staying at home with a toddler isn't all napping and farting and soap operas and bon-bons. I was home full time before we moved. I'm just saying...

We love Oregon. We're originally from Seattle, so it's nice to be back on the West Coast. Yeah, we liked living in Lawrence, Kansas well enough while we were there, but frankly, I'm just not cut out for that climate. And the bugs. There are a number of things I'm going to miss about Lawrence (Wheatfields, Sylas & Maddy's (Oh, Maddy's Mudd, how I will miss you. Come on! Coffee ice cream with Oreos, brownie pieces and a fudge swirl?! Shut up!). We left some good friends there (Hi, Brad!), and Linus will always be a Kansas native, but there's not much about physically being in Kansas that I'm going to miss. In fact, I checked the weather this weekend and saw they were expecting a high of 11. And, I'm sure there was a 20 mph wind to go with it. Nope, not for me.

Enough background, for now. I'll try to fill in more gaps in coming posts.

Linus has recently started making car noises. You know, "brrmm, brrmm"? He pushes around his little truck brrmm brrmm-ing all the way. I'm sure he must have seen some other kids doing this, because neither Or or I recall showing him. It's like he reach the Age of Car Knowledge and spontaneously started making the appropriate noises. Or, mostly appropriate. He'll also pulls his Keith Haring dog around and around, brrmm brrmm-ing as he goes. That's worth a good 20 minutes of non-stop, brrmm brrmm, circumambulation.

Good baby lovin'

2005-12-03T12:23:00.000-08:00

Linus loves to walk around with one foot in things. Boxes, big-people shoes, whatever. He likes to get an Altoid tin stuck on the bottom of his foot and clomp around with it. Weird, but funny. Not something I was expecting.

Before you have a toddler, it sounds like it's something you have to brace yourself for. Tantrums, the terrible-twos, and all that. There's some of that, but it turns out, toddlers are awesome! Really. Here's the thing - your toddler loves you more than anything, and isn't shy about showing it. This means that about every half hour or so, Linus comes over to me and gives me a big, baby hug, then goes on about his business. Best. Thing. Ever. Just, "Hmm, hmm, hmm, playing with my blocks. Oh! Better go make sure Mom still loves me and knows that I love her! Fhew. Hmm, hmm, hmm."

I don't know how long this stage is going to last, but I'm eatin' it up while I can.

As promised...

2005-12-01T19:42:00.000-08:00

Five Foos of Boring Work

2005-12-01T17:59:00.000-08:00

I did a lot of boring crap today. How do I measure "a lot", you're probably not asking? When I get ready to leave work in the evening, I clear the files off my desktop left from the various program streams I've been listening to all day. Lately I've been listening to back episodes of Le Show. I can only listen to talking-type shows when I'm doing really mindless, boring crap, usually involving database management. Bleh. If what I'm doing requires a little more thought on my part, I can listen to music, even more, nothing. Anyway, the audio files from Le Show show up on my computer as "foo", "foo-1", "foo-infinity". You get the picture. I had five foos on my desktop today - that's 5 hours of Le Show. That's on top of the 4 or so hours of podcasts I have waiting for me daily. That's a lot of boring crap for one day.

"How was work today, honey?" "It was a five foo-er." "Ew. Have a drink"

I can't tell if this post is amusing me, or boring me. I promise I'll post a cute Linus picture when I get home.

Epiphanies and Rainbow Pride

2005-11-28T14:31:00.000-08:00

So, I'm listening to Elvis Mitchel and Harold Ramis on The Treatment talk about how the movie Groundhog's Day is really about the Buddhist principle of destruction of self and how the way to find real meaning is through service to others rather than servicing your ego, when it occurs to me how much parenting is really a Buddhist process. You spend so much time taking care of your kids (serving them, if you'd like) that there's very little time left for focusing on your own self-construct. Or, maybe not, since I've seen a number of parents whose parenting is all about serving their own egos. Do I have to be specific? I doubt it.

I know that the most out-of-my-own-head (in a good way, not a crazy way) I've ever been was during the first couple of months of Linus' life. There's just so much to do and focus on that there wasn't any time left for all the me-crap that usually fills my head. This is another thing I'm grateful to Linus for, giving me the opportunity to, maybe, become a little enlightened. I just hope I can always keep that feeling. I want him to know how great I think it is taking care of him, and that it's not some kind of burden that I bear. That seems to be one of those messages that you get from our culture, like men are complete incompetents when it comes to anything domestic. Kids, while ya love 'em, are really just burdens that parents bear. I hope Linus grows up knowing that raising him is a joy and delight. Sure, not every minute, but mostly.

So, enough about epiphanies. My dog came out of the closet. Apparently, Lucky is gay. We took him to the groomer to get his nails clipped and he came back sporting a rainbow pride bandana (I'll post a picture once I get home). He's a 14 year old miniature dachshund who's been neutered, but it's never too late, I guess.

Shut your pie hole!

2005-11-21T15:36:00.000-08:00

Want to know what's peeving me today? People who make noises with their mouths other than vocal. Mostly I'm talking about gum chomping, but also drink slurping. I just came out of a staff meeting. What was it about? Yeah, I don't know, 'cause the guy next to me was making so much friggin' noise I couldn't hear or concentrate on what was being said! This is how it went,

"The research foc*chomp*chomp*squish*chomp*sluuurp*what we want*swish*sluuuuurp*chomp*squish*chomp* best methods *snarg*chomp*!!"

Eeeeew! Naaaasty! Seriously, for an hour and a half! How do you make that much noise with just one piece of gum and a cup of tea?! Two days ago I took Linus to the library and ran into a similar problem. We're sitting there at one of the toddler tables scribbling away on a squirrel picture when another kid, Zeke, and his mom join us. Zeke's mom is working over a piece of gum so loudly, vigorously, and publicly, that I had to get up and leave. That's right - two toddler boys with their runny noses, drooly faces, god-knows-what-encrusted hands, and poopy britches, and it's the grown lady icking me out.

What's the deal?! Don't get me wrong, I like gum. No, I LOVE gum. I chew gum all day long, every day. If it wasn't for gum, I'd probably smoke a pipe, or gnaw on pencils. I appreciate the desire, Nay! the NEED, to chew gum. But I know how to keep my mouth shut. I bet no one around me is aware I'm even chewing gum, let alone annoyed by it. And, I have manners. Mostly.

So, quit it! Quit grossing me out and quit giving gum chewers a bad name!

Gravity, dig it!

2005-11-19T16:39:00.000-08:00

Apparently, Linus is going through a Newtonian phase. He’s all about watching things drop. Well that, and carrying around garbage. He’ll push everything off the coffee table, one item at a time, and watch it fall to the floor. Sometimes he’ll even pick things up, put them back on the table, and push them off again. Push, drop. Push, drop. Pick up, push, drop. All with a very intent look on his face, like he doesn’t quite get why the stuff ends up on the floor each and every time. He’ll even crouch down and peer at the floor where everything is landing, trying to discern its mystical properties. Inertia: Nature’s Babysitter.

As for the garbage carrying, I don’t know. I’d like to fancy it up and say he’s developing theories on the nature of decay or something, but really, he just loves garbage. Bathroom garbage, kitchen garbage, all of it. Throwing it away, looking at it, rifling through it, carrying it around. Hmmm, come to think of it, this gives me another reason to try and get Orion to stop reading him “Oscar-the-Grouch’s Alphabet of Trash”, besides the fact that the middle of the book, and therefore the middle of the alphabet, is missing. I don’t want Linus singing his ABCs, “a, b, c, d, e, f, g, h, i, s, t, u, v, w, x, y, and z”. Completely messes up the song!

Let's never do that again, k?

2005-11-18T17:10:00.000-08:00

The stitches are out. There was lots of boohoo-ery, but I think it wasn’t as bad as putting them in. The Peeps was obviously not pleased to see the doctors and nurses. And I don't blame him a bit. No drugs this time, but that meant wrapping him up to hold him still. He absolutely hated it and cried and hollered. It sucked to watch, but only lasted a couple of minutes. I think the crying was more about not liking the situation rather than it hurting, though I think the last stitch did hurt a little. It was tied pretty tight and the nurse had to pull it a little to clip the knot. He got himself pretty worked up, but calmed down as soon as I could pick him up. There’s nothing sweeter than his little arms around my neck and his head nestled on my shoulder. Makes us both feel better.

Immediately after, I realized that I should’ve tried nursing him while they removed the stitches, instead of wrapping him. It probably would have worked better that way. Less stressful for him. Well, for all of us really. Fat lot of good it does to think of it after. It annoys me that I didn’t think more clearly about it at the time, and also that the nurses didn’t suggest it. I’m such a rookie.

V is for vim

2005-11-15T20:31:00.000-08:00

So, here is a picture of the most impressive wound. It’s not horribly graphic, but I didn’t want to confront the unprepared with grossness. (Yes, he's pretending to talk on the tv remote. I wish I could say he's woozy from the Incident, or something, but no, he does it all the time. *sigh*)

Unfortunately, I suspect that this won’t be our last trip to the emergency room with this one. He is Danger Baby. No fear. He goes headlong into everything. When he was learning to walk up and down stairs, for example, he refused to go backward downstairs. He always wanted to walk forward. I’ve seen plenty of babies on stairs and they all seem to do that backward crawl thing down the stairs. Not DB. Face first. Trouble! Fortunately, the house we just moved into doesn’t have any stairs. Much better than our old house with a big ol’ flight of stairs, with odd rise sizes no less! I fell down those stairs myself more than once.

I sincerely hope that our future isn’t full of more stitches and broken bones and whatnot, but I fear it may be. Of course, all parents of toddlers are constantly on guard - toddlers aren’t about Safety First.

So, we have to go back to the doc in a couple of days to have the stitches removed. Not looking forward to that, though on the bright side, no ketamine! That’s something anyway. They assure us that removing the stitches won’t hurt at all. Really?? I’m dubious.