somewhat uninteresting general update

What a crazy week. On Monday we closed on our house, which was great, memorable fun. The sellers are four adult children who had inherited the house, and you could just tell they loved it. I’m a sucker for the back story of a place. And knowing how much I love and miss our PA house, in which we lived for only a year and a half, I totally understood their emotion in letting it go.

On Tuesday I handed in my dissertation, accomplishing what I had set out to do this semester. I know I’ll have more revisions, but I’m hoping to set a date to defend it sometime in March.

Last week P finally got over his cold, and this week I caught it. I’ve been desperately trying to get well and also avoid baby-j so he doesn’t get sick. A 2-day car ride to Michigan with a sick toddler would not be fun. I’ve washed my hands so much this week, they’re starting to crack and bleed. (I know: I should use lotion. But then I use lotion and feel like I need to wash my hands again.)

Daycare continues to go pretty well. baby-j has become a master at the pouty, don’t-leave-me look when we leave, but apparently he’s fine a minute after we leave.

I took some video of the house to share with (or, if you prefer, to bore) the relatives over the holidays. Here's a picture I took this week of the view out the kitchen window.

hearing voices

Last night I finally got out the Kitchen Aid mixer that I received as a birthday gift last month and baked some oatmeal-chocolate-chip-cherry cookies (from N’s delicious recipe). The mixer was surprisingly easy to use and clean, and it was great to have it for this recipe, which typically involves a lot of sweat-while-stirring because of the oatmeal, chocolate chips, and cherries.

So this afternoon, after lunch, I mentioned that the cookies were calling my name. “Eat me! Eat me!” I intoned, imitating the cookies... at which point P complained that I always use the same Adam-Sandler-inspired voice to personify inanimate objects.

P then helpfully recommended that I try a different voice for each inanimate object. Did I comply? Of course not: who am I, Jim Dale? Instead, I took the opportunity to get on his nerves by using the same Adam Sandler voice on all the food on the counter. Tomatoes, avocados, coffee—they were soon all shouting greetings at P. Hi, P: I’m a tomato! Whassup, P? I’m some coffee! You get the idea.

piece of me redux

So Britney Spears has a new video out called “Piece of Me.” (P, you can click here to see the first 30 seconds of it; I know you’re dying to do so.)

As you may recall, baby-j has his own poem entitled “Piece of Me.” Since we still don’t know from where this recitation came, we can only assume that baby-j actually wrote the song for Britney and was rehearsing it back in October. For some reason, though, she didn't incorporate his lyrics. Or his choreography. Click here to revisit baby-j's version of "Piece of Me"; I’ve also posted his video again below:

anti-latte

Ah, the latte. It looks innocent enough, doesn't it? Unfortunately, I consumed what will likely be my last this past Tuesday, December 4th due to what I assume was food poisoning.

There's a Starbucks in the library of our grad school where I went to write for a bit before meeting with my advisor Tuesday night. After drinking my latte, I immediately felt ill. I've been in bed with extreme nausea and a massive headache since. This afternoon I began to feel better, though. Even resumed eating solid foods this morning. Whoo-hoo!

I had actually been working on eliminating most of the milk from my diet (not the cheese, though--I can never give up the cheese). I had pretty much stopped getting lattes. I really don't know what I was thinking, getting one earlier this week.

Anyway, P, as usual, was totally awesome in assuming all household duties, including taking baby-j back and forth to school... how fortunate that we had school, because I was not in any condition to take care of him.

In other news: in case you needed it, here's one more reason to hate "The View." This should go without saying, especially if you've read this post and that post, but should he desire it, baby-j can wear all the dresses he'd like, in school, out of school, whatever. I really can't believe we're having these conversations in 2007, but then, I guess I can.

third (first) snow

This is a pic from yesterday’s frolic in the snow, which went well until baby-j decided that he wanted to get into the car. He loves the car lately—this bodes well for our upcoming Michigan holiday trip.

This was his reaction when he realized we wouldn’t be going into the car:




Today was a productive day, at least. baby-j was in daycare/preschool from 9:30-3:30, which will be a typical day once I return to teaching in January. I spent the time away from him in my office, alternately freaking out about being away from him for so long and working on revisions of my dissertation. I printed out my current hefty draft, which was interesting... it actually looks like a dissertation. I might actually finish it.

Back to daycare: I’m really so impressed with the one at my work. Ms. S has been AMAZING. This morning she stayed with baby-j in the regular classroom, knowing how much he hates the “combined” room. Then, when I went to pick him up, it looked like she had been hanging out with him during naptime. Though he takes 3-hour naps at home, he woke up early from his first attempt at naptime away from home. I think Ms. S sat down and hung out with him while the other kids slept, comforting baby-j. It’s times like these when I wish I could stay at home with him... but with the daycare at work, it feels like it’s the next best thing, which is really great.

daddy / daycare

This is a guest blog entry by P, father of J and partner to L. As always, all critical comments, especially on grammar and syntax, will be ignored.

J started part-time child care this week, more than a year after our first aborted attempt to have him begin the lifelong hell of dealing with other people, aka socialization (see Sartre, Beckett, etc). As you might remember, that first go lasted all of three hours, during which J was sleeping for two and a half. In the waking 30 or so minutes, he managed to cause enough damage to warrant a phone call for me to pick him up, in which he was called names that I wouldn’t call a dog by a mangy middle-aged woman.

Needless to say, we were a bit burned. And very, very nervous about enrolling him at the child care center at L’s school, which came highly touted by everyone. But, as the entry age of 2 years, 3 months got closer, we knew we had to make another go at it, or L’s dissertation, my new job, and our sanity might be permanently marred.

So L dropped him off on Monday. There were about 15 kids from 2.3 to 5 years old in a medium-sized playroom. And about 5 adults. We like that ratio, thinking it might keep J’s animal side in check, more than that bad-mouthed lady of a year ago, at least. And after a few minutes, they separated into even smaller groups, with J in a group of about 5 with 2 adults.

And then L left, to go pay the tuition and ostensibly to work on her dissertation for three hours until picking him up again. And waited for her cell phone to ring, saying we had to pick him up and take him away and throw him into the jungle where he belonged.

The phone never rang. L picked him up as he ate his lunch at a table with several other kids. The lovely teacher, Ms. S, said he had a pretty good first day: there had been a few bouts of tears, especially when J realized that Mama was gone. But he’d played well and hard, and was doing fine. And then the same thing happened Wednesday.

Friday, alas, was my day to drop him off. When he started bawling as soon as he entered the room, Ms. S pointed out that I had the harder job than L--J now understood, as it had been repeated, that he was to be left parentless for an extended period of time. J cried loudly, screaming at me in sloppy, budding J English that I dare not leave or, or, or...

As I was sitting next to him, rubbing his back and trying helplessly to distract him with a toy truck, a boy a little older, maybe 4, came over and started rubbing J’s back as well, saying, “It’s OK, J, don’t cry.” And then a girl of about that age came over with a paper towel and began rubbing J’s eyes, drying his tears (if a little roughly). While these efforts had little effect on J’s tantrum, they brought tears to my eyes, and hope. That this place might work out. And that in a year or so, J might be the one trying to comfort another.

all the leaves are brown

We need to move out of this area, for no other reason than the *&#!cking leaf-blowers. Whatever happened to a damn rake? I try to do dissertation writing at home in the afternoon when baby-j takes his monster-long naps, which is always the time when the landscaping dudes (our landlord hires them to come to the house twice a week) decide to blow the leaves around. It’s loud and difficult to focus.

As so this morning, I drop baby-j off at the pre-school at my work, settle into my empty office with a cup of coffee in hand, prepared to work hard for a couple hours, and the whirring starts up. I look out my office window, and find more leaf-blower dudes, different ones, with bigger and louder equipment… I mean, they have a whole campus of leaves to blow into plastic bags.

Not to mention the fact that it’s late November. There are *supposed* to be orange and yellow leaves on the ground. A bare green lawn under naked trees seems somehow unnatural.

sesame redux

The first episodes of Sesame Street are out on DVD.

Here's an interesting piece about it in today's New York Times Magazine.

From the article:

Sunny days! The earliest episodes of “Sesame Street” are available on digital video! Break out some Keebler products, fire up the DVD player and prepare for the exquisite pleasure-pain of top-shelf nostalgia.

Just don’t bring the children. According to an earnest warning on Volumes 1 and 2, “Sesame Street: Old School” is adults-only: “These early ‘Sesame Street’ episodes are intended for grown-ups, and may not suit the needs of today’s preschool child.”

deciphering baby-j

baby-j calls hummus “mook.” He loves mook. Apparently mook can only be eaten with carrots, but few carrots are actually eaten—the carrot, as baby-j has discovered, is the perfect utensil for mook.

Another strange word choice of baby-j’s is his word for pretzel, which is pronounced “mek-um.” (Also odd: for some reason I have always spelled this “mechum” in my brain.)

But the detective-award this week goes to me: I discovered the origins of Too-oh-day, the mysterious phrase I first described in September (but he’d been singing this for much longer):

And the real stumper, the phrase P and I cannot figure out, is “Too-oh-day, too-oh-day.” Typically it is yelled in staccato: “Too! Oh! Day! / Too! Oh! Day!” and is accompanied by lots of foot-stomping. A cash prize will be awarded to any blog readers who can provide the origins and meaning of this mysterious phrase.

Lately he had added an “ahhhhh” after the phrase. Also, P suspected for a while now that the phrase was actually more like “Too! Oh! Nay! (Ahhhh!)” and wondered if baby-j was referring to Ernie of Sesame Street fame. Though baby-j doesn’t watch much TV, he does enjoy a Sesame Street DVD from time to time. There’s a part in one of the DVDs when Big Bird, having searched everywhere for Ernie, sings:

“My journey... to Ernie... is done!!!” Having not really watched this much with baby-j, I didn’t realize it until this week, when it finally hit me. He was singing “To Ernie... is done!”

You’d think I’d discovered the Holy Grail. P told me I should have called him immediately after my discovery, which would have been while he was at work. The best thing about this revelation, though, was baby-j’s reaction as I began to sing the correct phrase. A huge smile lit up his face; I could feel the joy as he sang along with me. I got the subtext: Yeah, mama, how come it took you so long to get it?

My journey... to Too-oh-day... is done. Thank God.

from "flight of the conchords"

A French friend of ours sent along this link, so I'm sharing it here. I found it hilarious, probably because it showcases the extent of my own mastery of the language. Baguette!

you should see the other guy

Ah, so he tumbled head first down some concrete stairs outside Wednesday aftrenoon and we ended up in the ER. It doesn't look too bad in this photo, but when I took him in, the bump was sort of scary-looking... like the time when I was 13 and fell on my face in the street, blacked out, and woke up to my brother looking at me with a horrified expression on his face. How do I look? I asked. Fine, he lied (poorly). Later, he told me that I looked like The Phantom of the Opera.

baby-j is doing well now--happy and energetic as usual. This morning we woke up at 6am, all huddling together to stay warm. Turns out yesterday the plumber who came to replace the hot water heaters neglected to turn the gas back on so we had no heat last night. We ended up hopping in the car to run errands as a way to avoid nose icicles.

change the margins

See http://www.changethemargins.com/.

Not only would we save paper, but I wouldn't have to get any more of those papers from students in 16 pt. font with 3-inch margins on each side. :)

definitely not a brown recluse

As promised, here are some pictures of baby-j in costume. I carried this heavy spider on my shoulders for about a half hour walk through the woods on Halloween night. My body is still recovering, but I still prefer this one to the brown recluse.

I just realized as I write this: what a strange choice I made in putting baby-j in a spider costume. Maybe next year he can go as poison ivy, or an injured middle finger.

housing news

I’ve been waiting a while to write about it here, but now we’re gotten to a point in the process where it’s ok: we’re purchasing a house! We’re finally in contract with the sellers (it took about a month), and the closing date should be in December or January.

We are still sad about leaving our first house, but in spite of that--or maybe because of it--we are very excited about this new place. It’s close to a lake, and the house itself and yard are both a great size for us: modest, yet roomy. It’s on a corner lot, and there’s a fence all around the property, which is great for baby-j and his tendency to rove. There are several big old trees on the lot, and room for some gardening. One room in the basement is partially finished; I am referring to it as the “future toddler art room.” We will be able to walk to the (very small) downtown, and bike to the public beach in the summer. It will be about 20-25 minutes to work for P, and about 40-45 minutes to work for me (anything closer was completely out of our price range). So the commute, especially compared to the old one (90 minutes each way!), is not too bad.

Oh, we are just so excited.

Fun Fact #1: This will be our sixth residence in 3 1/2 years.
Fun Fact #2: If we move in December, we'll have lived in three different states this year. That should provide some excitement at tax time.

jack-o 2007

Here's a shot of this year's jack-o-lantern. I carved it Monday but it was shriveled by Tuesday.

Last year's jack-o-lantern looked a bit more cheerful, I think. No sure why. Maybe it's the buck teeth on this guy.

baby-j Halloween costume pics will be posted soon...

progress. sort of.

I’m currently revising the first draft of the final chapter of my dissertation. (I fear this may make you think I’m almost done--if only that were true! I will have to go back and revise it all in November and December. But my goal is to submit the first draft of this last chapter to my advisor this week.)

This chapter is by far the hardest one. I’ve been moving and adding, moving and adding for weeks.

Overheard this morning in our home office:

Me (Sighing): “This is just so hard.”

P (Laughing): “Well, it’s not supposed to be easy.”

As always, the man has a point. And with that, I provide a link to this article about how, if you enjoy writing, you best keep it to your own damn self if you're around me. It about sums up my feelings this morning.

jammin'

It's been a great weekend, but a long one. I'm so tired I can barely stay awake... so I'll let this clip speak for itself. Taken a few moments ago as he was getting ready for bed, this is baby-j jammin' to his dump truck.

in a box

P and I have the occasional lame argument from time to time. Today’s concerned last year’s Saturday Night Live sketch, featuring Justin Timberlake and Andy Samberg, about a special holiday present. Basically, the conflict arose over what, exactly, made this video so funny. The argument erupted over the definition of “player,” and actually, continued discussion about what makes something funny makes it decidedly un-funny, so I’ll spare you. But I’ve included the video here for your enjoyment if you haven’t already had the pleasure.

(By the way, it’s a bit indelicate, so you might play it when children aren’t in the room.)

dough

We've been making bread here lately: this is baby-j during one of these sessions. He insists on using the fork to knead.

Of course, there is also much eating of the dough.

think before you pink

Here's an interesting site about pinkwashing, a term with which I was previously unfamiliar.

grandpa

We have a calendar on the fridge with a picture of baby-j, one of his cousins, and Grandpa. Each time he passes by, baby-j points to it, and calls out: “baby-j! C! Creepa!”

Yes, that’s right: “Grandpa” is pronounced “Creepa!” P says maybe it could be his gangsta-rap name.

onslaught

I've posted before on my feelings about the Dove campaign, but... this video is some nice work.

hmn conference

Today I went to the Holistic Moms Network national conference and got to hear Elizabeth Pantley, Peggy O'Mara, and Chef Ann Cooper speak. It was most amazing. I got my copy of Lunch Lessons: Changing the Way We Feed Our Children signed by Chef Ann Cooper, who spoke while we dined on hotel food that, ironically, made me feel ill for the rest of the afternoon.

Her statistics were crazy (they can be found on her Web site). Ten companies control 90% of our food supply? Philip Morris receives 10 cents of every dollar spent in grocery stores, but farmers receive 9 cents of every dollar? What the hell? If this is the kind of stuff my sister-in-law learns about each day in graduate school, I have gained (even) more respect for her: if I had to think about these depressing facts each day, I might just go insane. (P: No comments on that last point, please.) ;-)

baby-j poetry slam!

I caught baby-j reciting the poem mentioned in my last blog entry. It takes a few moments for him to prepare, but there's no stopping him once he's up on the boot box.

poetry

baby-j has taken to standing again on the boot box next to the couch, as he did a few months back. Now, though, he does pliés, and shouts his original poetry while using his hands to express himself. This is this week's poem:

I see...
a piece a' me, a piece a' me

I see it!
I see it!

Oh. Wait.

I saw... a piece a' me, a piece a' me.

I see it!

(stomp. stomp.)

(hurls self onto couch.)

what will they think of next?

Ok, so I posted this already on my Facebook page, but I just find this link so crazy, I have to share it here, too:

Don't Tase Me, Bro!

Could this be 2007's version of "Make Love, Not War"?

the fruit formerly known as “bo-chi-chi”

This morning I was awakened by my son plopping a crate of strawberries down on the pillow next to my head, poking me in the shoulder, and saying “Mama, strawberries!”

(He used to call them bo-chi-chis. How fast they grow.)

a mess

Tonight I went out to dinner with my friend L and our doc advisor. On the way, I negotiated the madness of news crews smack in the middle of the block—ABC, CBS, NBC, and NY1. I imagine there will be more in the next few days, especially in light of the events in Jena.

Go here for a brief run-down of the story if you haven’t seen it. But don’t read the guest comments. The supposition that Dr. Constantine placed the noose herself is so upsetting to me I want to scream.

this way

Last week we went to the park and had a great time trying to catch up to our son the whole time. When baby-j points, we follow. Which way are we going now?

:(

Feeling just a bit down this week because:

--I handed in about 75 pages of the dissertation to my advisor Tuesday and now, as I wait for her to read it, I'm doubting myself, and feeling that it's awful and I suck and I'll never get this whole thing done in time.
--I was reviewing old blog posts and saw that a year ago I predicted we'd have to move from our house for the simple reason we liked it so much.
--we don't know where we want to live even though we know we have to move from this apartment because the rent is more expensive than a mortgage and we're not crazy about living in this kindasnooty neighbornood anyway.
--tomorrow we're headed to the old neighborhood to visit with our wonderful old neighbors and I'm just dreading it because I'm already miserable thinking about how great our old place was and how we'll never get that back and also we'll have to see our old house and how the new owner has changed it. Oh, yes: welcome to the selfishness that is me.

So... bleh. Sorry for the depressing entry. Hopefully I get back to the cute-baby-picture posting tomorrow.

live lightly

If you get a chance, check out this site:

The Live Lightly Tour:
sustainable living in an RV powered by veggie oil

It is pretty sweet. I especially love her amazing pictures and narratives; they're inspiring.

talking up a storm

I enjoy observing the development of baby-j’s words. Up until now, it’s been mostly nouns, but in the last month, he’s started to string words together.

His commands are actually descriptions or desires. Some examples:
“Try again.” (Meaning: I’m going to try something again.)
“Brush your teeth.” (Meaning: I’m going to brush my teeth. For hours at a time.)
“Come here.” (Meaning, oddly: I’m going to come there. If he wants you to “come here,” he uses…)
“Down” (Meaning: come down from the couch, or get out of bed, or anyplace else where you are comfortable, and read me a book.)

Of course, now that he can open the refrigerator door (!!!), he doesn’t need to use words as much when asking for food. Yesterday I came in to the kitchen to find him struggling with a bag of grapes he had pulled out of the fridge. Today I watched as he opened the fridge, grabbed some leftover pasta, a container of tomato sauce, and the green cylinder of Kraft parmesan cheese. I think he was going to try to figure out how to heat it up by himself if we didn’t.

It’s when he’s tired or cranky--or both--that baby-j reverts back to one word “sentences.” If P or I try to rock baby-j to sleep and he’s not being cooperative, he employs the noun-blurt technique: yelping out the names of things he sees or, in some cases, things he remembers that exist. Last night went something like this:

“Doggie!” (referring to his doggie bath towel, hanging on a hook)

“Lotion!” (referring to the bottle on the dresser that we use every night)

“Bedtime Stories!” (pronounced “beh-tahm staw-wees”)

“Mama!” (self-explanatory)

And then in desperation, as he drifted off to sleep, he sobbed,

“Cookie!” (nowhere in the vicinity)

brush your teeth

We had a lot of bathroom fun today, from experimenting with the potty seat (climbing on it, that is), to moving the stool, to turning on water, to making funny faces in the reflection of the faucet, to lining up the toothbrush just so on the sink.

Then there was a good 10 minutes when baby-j repeatedly brushed his teeth, put down the brush, ran to P, kissed him, and shouted “You’re welcome!” before P could say “Thank you.” Then back to the teeth-brushing. He’s getting very good at kissing people--as an example, the new neighbor we just met tonight--and then telling them that they are “welcome” for the kiss with the assumption that he will be thanked.

bear sighting

We had a pretty busy day, driving all over various towns trying to figure out where we might want to settle and buy a house. We’re doing lots of research, which is important, though I’ve kind of appreciated our previous way to make big decisions together. (“Um... is this the cheapest car on the lot? Yes? We’ll take it!” and “Our rent is going up. Should we buy a house? Yes? How about this one? We’ll take it!” and “Should we have a baby?” Well, you get the idea.) This decision-making process has served us well in the past, so all this background research is making me a bit nervous.

But the crazy event of my day was seeing a bear--and not in a zoo. This afternoon, I visited my friend J, who lives in a town to which we’re thinking of moving. J and I were in the front seat of her car when we saw the car in front of us put on its lights and stop. Then, behind that car and about 20 feet in front of ours, a black bear the size of J’s car lumbered from right to left across the street. In the middle of the street, it stopped, then picked up speed and ran off in between some houses.

This is a town where seeing a bear is not unheard of, but it is still remarkable. This is J’s fourth bear sighting in 15 years of living there (one of which was when one stopped her moving car in the dark). I can’t exactly describe how I felt during and immediately after the sighting. Fear mixed with awe, I guess. Wow. Just... wow.

a "worthy cause"

This makes me very frustrated:

Alumna Gives $128 Million to High School

Barbara Dodd Anderson, an alumna of the high school, yesterday used much of the fortune from that original investment to endow George School, a private, 500-student institution set on a leafy 240-acre campus in Newtown, Pa.

“It was hard for me at first, because it seems like a ghastly amount of money, but it’s going for a worthy cause,” said Ms. Anderson, who lives in Fresno, Calif., where she was once a kindergarten teacher.

I just took a look at the George School Web site. Maybe it's just me, but I can think of many, many ways to use $128 million to help educate students that wouldn't start with an elite private school in Bucks County.

sorting

Today I've been sifting and sorting diss. data. Though I can't believe I hadn't done this already at some point, I also sorted myself here.




I'm a Ravenclaw!

I think I cheated, though. If you've read at least a few of the Harry Potter books, you can fool this quiz into putting you into the house you wish. But then, that's what Harry does, right ("Gryffindor... Gryffindor...")? So are we really "fooling" anyone? A better question is: what does it say about me that I really want to be a Ravenclaw?

One of my favorite quotes from the series is this line of Dumbledore's from Goblet of Fire: "You place too much importance... on the so-called purity of blood! You fail to recognize that it matters not what someone is born, but what they grow to be!"

Into what house would you be sorted? And in what house would you wish to be?

this has me thinking but also irks me.

For the past year (pre-lead scares, even!), we’ve been working to cut down on the amount of plastic toys that baby-j has. We use a sorting approach: generally, plastic toys go in the bedroom, non-plastic in the living room. Since baby-j mostly plays in the living room, the non-plastic toys get more attention.

However, this current push I'm reading about in various blogs (see here, here, and here) to go “China-free” for Christmas is something that a) I am conflicted about* and b) seems nearly impossible. Really. Since the start of previously-mentioned sorting approach, almost everything in the living room is either made of wood, or is a book. Even so, when P did a further toy-sort in our living room this week, we were amazed: basically everything baby-j plays with in the living room is manufactured in China. Oh, I don’t know what to think about all this. But I am interested in Bitch Ph.D.’s take on it.

Sigh. Now I’m going to post a video of baby-j playing with a loud plastic toy because he is cute and it makes me feel better about not being a perfect mama. Forgive me. This is of baby-j, mixin’ up a mean “Pop Goes the Weasel” near the end of the video.



* e.g., Is it only products from China one should be concerned about? And carrying that banner to “free” oneself from any particular country, or place, or people is worrisome to me on many levels.

getting dissed

Progress is being made on the dissertation front. My plan is to write at least two pages (usually more) a day: every day. I shared the many reasons for this with P this weekend. I could tell he was interested in this discussion of how to write over a sustained period of time. Witness:

“Did I share all this stuff with you when I was doing my dissertation?”
“Um, yeah, you did.”
“Sorry about that.”

And thus, dear readers, I completely understand if you wish to gloss over this paragraph. I feel that if I can churn out at least 2 pages a day--whether it’s crap or not, and some of it is really, truly crap--then I shall feel I am making progress. It is interesting how 2 pages feels like much more of an accomplishment now that I have a kid. See, I can justify such small output by saying to myself, Well, I had to take care of baby-j quite a bit today, so think of how impressive those 2 pages are, having been written by hook or by crook, in between lunchtime and naptime and dinnertime and bathtime. And thus the mediocre dissertation will be written.

Mantra: The best dissertation is a done dissertation, The best dissertation is a done dissertation, The best dissertation is a done dissertation...

weird shit my kid did today

P told me that he happened upon a suspicious sight: one of the hardcover books that I’m reading for my research was lying in the middle of the kitchen floor... next to a crayon. P wondered if baby-j’d left me a nice little dedication. And indeed he had: inspired, no doubt, by the composition book that my grandmother got for him, there was a sweet little black “Z” on the first page. I'm glad it wasn't a library book.

The potty-training is more of a potty-experiencing. baby-j is excellent at putting the potty seat on the potty, and even climbing up on it. However, this is simply because it provides access to the light switch, which he can turn on and off while one knee is wedged in the hole of the potty seat for support. He can also flush now before saying “bye, bye poose,” but the “poose” involved is usually coming from the diaper, not him.

Today, as I was emptying the contents of his diaper into the toilet, he decided to throw a pretzel in, too, just for good measure.

This week’s baby-j-phrases include:

“Try, try again. Try, try again.” (I have no idea where he got this.)

“Bye, bye.” Actually, “bye, bye” isn’t new, but he just started adding, usually when closing a door in your face: “See-uh later!”

And the real stumper, the phrase P and I cannot figure out, is “Too-oh-day, too-oh-day.” Typically it is yelled in staccato: “Too! Oh! Day! / Too! Oh! Day!” and is accompanied by lots of foot-stomping. A cash prize will be awarded to any blog readers who can provide the origins and meaning of this mysterious phrase.

Also, there is much impromptu baby-j yoga going on lately. Mostly a lotta naked downward facing dog.

baby-j's addiction

...is to blueberries.

On the way in from a tricycle tour of the neighborhood this morning, P headed up to start lunch, while I let baby-j run around the house a few more times. “Don’t you want to come in for some corn, baby-j? Grapes? Yogurt?” Nothing seemed tasty enough to warrant his going inside; in fact, baby-j decided that it would be a good time to run towards the street into the path of a car that had just turned the corner. As I ran to catch him, I quickly called out, “Let’s get some blueberries.” He immediately stopped, turned around, and marched up towards the front porch. Knowing full well that we didn’t have blueberries in the house, I immediately altered the appeal: “Um, grapes, baby-j; don’t you want some grapes? Grapes... mmm... grapes.” Unfortunately, the damage had been done. He climbed up the stairs to our apartment, chanting “boo-berry, boo-berry, boo-berry.” When we got to the top, P said, “No, baby-j, no blueberries here,” as he hoisted a bowl of grapes from the fridge. “Boo-berry!” baby-j shouted. P looked at me incredulously. “I didn’t say that word.” “But I only said it once,” I protested. “To stop him from getting hit by a car!” P just shook him head, trying in vain to calm the protesting baby-j with the clearly inferior fruit.

...

Ok, I just watched http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ugCw1UZ7ZjU. That was 1 minute, 57 seconds of me going like this: Aw! Ah! Aw! Eh! Aw! Aw! and so on.

transcription hell

Ok, first: I just realized that I have this thing set on "moderate comments," which means that I have several comments a few days old that have not been posted until now. Sorry about that; they're on the next post now. Thanks, everyone!

Also--and this is a very good point that E brings up and indeed, I mentioned it to P when he bitched about the lack of comments--why no P-comments on this blog? What's up with that? Comment on my blog, you hypocritical blog-reader! :)

Not much to report here. I'm spending the week finishing interview transcription for the dissertation, which is useful work, despite its monotony. There is one former student of mine who, while brilliant, makes me cringe eveytime I hear his voice because he is simply impossible to transcribe. He speaks very fast and his many ideas are all over the place. This means that I will likely use things he says, so I have to translate them carefully. Unfortunately, it takes me about 5 minutes per sentence.

P is at his first week at the new job this week, and I think things are going well. Until regular child care (starting next week with baby-j's babysitter K), I've spent this week squeaking in dissertation work while baby-j naps. I've also been cooking dinner. P has gamely endured my attempts at fried chickpeas, sloppy "janes," and "beef" stroganoff this week. I've gotten better at timing all this, and have only burned one cookie sheet this week. Go, me.

tribute

Here is a plea from P: please comment on my blog.

P checks it out everyday, and is always disappointed that no one leaves any comments. I know you all are out there reading. Please, so my husband doesn't think I'm lying about my having some readers, just post something once in a while. See where it says "comments" on the bottom-right of each post? Yep, that's it. You don't even have to give your name.

And on that note, I am off for the night to do some serious puzzles with baby-j. I leave you with the greatest song in the world from the greatest band in the world, Tenacious D. An oldie but a goodie.

man of letters

I’ve realized in the past week that I am officially addicted to caffeine, at least in the morning.

I have also realized that a counter-attack of three Advil is too much for me to handle. That’s twice now I’ve gone from super-headachey to super-woozy. Note to self: gradually back off caffeine. And Advil.

In other news, baby-j knows his letters! On the long drive back from Michigan, we went to a restaurant; its name was printed in large letters on the wall. Baby-j looked up, and proudly announced “S. A. L. S. I. T. A. S.” It’s a fun word to say, or at least it must be for me and P, since we like to randomly exclaim Salsitas! anytime baby-j works on spelling out letters.

I didn’t plan on referring to Everyone Poops yet again, but the cover provides more good spelling practice for baby-j:

(from left to right...) "E. V. E. R. Y. O. N. E. (and then, moving down and going right to left on the second line...) S. P. O. O. P."

By now, you have probably concluded (correctly) that my toilet-training strategy (if it can be called that) consists of peppering conversation with the word "poop" as much as possible. I’ve been encouraging baby-j to wave “bye bye” to the contents of his diaper when we flush them down the toilet. “Bye bye poose!” he calls as he waves. Not sure if he gets the connection, though, since he seems to be using “bye bye poose” when bidding farewell to people, too.

some updates

1: Yes, I am still a vegetarian. Even made some “sloppy janes” for dinner tonight. Ah, how I adore vegetarian meals that require quotation marks.

2: After 2 years, I finally took a shower without baby-j being asleep or in the care of someone else. (It helps that we’re back in an apartment and thus on one highly-child-proofed floor.) baby-j decided to celebrate the event by briefly getting up from reading his book to throw a few plastic balls at me in the shower, all the while laughing hysterically. Then he was back to absorbing the subtext of Everyone Poops.

3: I am getting new glasses. Once they come in, they will look like this. Also, when I look at the price listed on this Web site, I realize that I love the eyepeople at Costco and their cheap deals on glasses.

4: P is still working on his show in NYC all week. He wrote and directed it. And so, I submit to you that my hubby is awesome. I mean, that’s not the only reason, but still, he is awesome.

teaspoon

Today I attended the devastating funeral of a colleague who passed away Sunday after an illness. I can’t really write more about this than that; I’m rather numb.

And so to pull me out of this gray day, I’ve been sending cute pictures of baby-j to friends around the world--or at least, around the country. I’d been intending to compile the summer photos anyway.

Here’s a little sampling of some baby-j video from up North. This one usually cheers me up:

Teaspoon

sunday sunday

This is my South Park avatar, created here if you're looking for a way to waste 15 minutes of time.

Other things I did today:

--Watched my father assemble a tricycle for baby-j. It looks great, and it only took him 5 hours to put it together. (My engineer father is a pretty meticulous sort of guy when he's focused on something.)

--Got baby-j down for a nap and did a few hours solid work writing/organizing thoughts. I've found solace in the ABD Survival Guide, and this article that I read today talks about getting a little bit done each day, and then rewarding yourself with a treat (e.g., reading the Times over coffee or checking email). Perhaps blogging should be my post-writing reward. This might mean I never write here nor there, though.

--Read Everyone Poops to baby-j 17 times. The kid just can't get enough of it. His pronunciation of the title is "one poose, one poose," so every now and then he'll point up to the book chanting "one poose, one poose."

All in all, it's been a good Sunday.

two-year-old in da house

Yesterday was baby-j’s actual birthday; today we’re celebrating.

I assume that many parents engage in some sort of yearly recollection of the moment when they first met their children. As with last year, I’ve thought quite a bit in these last few days about the hours (and days) surrounding baby-j’s birth.

I went into labor with baby-j on a Monday night at 9pm, and he was born on Wednesday at about 1:30am. He kept us waiting a while. Those hours seem more traumatic in retrospect than they actually were at the time. I’m not sure if it makes much sense, but I recall being so excited that I was actually going to meet this baby and find out what he or she looked like, that the hours didn’t seem long.

After the birth, I breastfed him for the first time, and then after a while the nurses took him away so we could each get some much-needed sleep. (Had I known a bit more, I would have insisted that he sleep in the same room with me. Well, next time… if there is one.)

The thing was this, though: I couldn’t really sleep. I woke up about 3 hours later, lying there in the quiet dark, thinking, I have a baby! I want to see my baby. When can I see the baby? When will the nurses come back? I thought these same four things in a row over and over and over again. Then--and I had never considered being amazed by this--I thought, I am a mom. How cool is that?

August 17, 2005 remains the best day of my life. Now maybe that says something about the quality of the other days, but there you go.

boring finger saga part 2

I went to the orthopedist this morning, after two weeks of being in the splint for my poor finger. I love the technology now: the clinic forwarded my X-rays via CD-ROM to the orthopedist. In the exam room, he popped the CD in the computer and we took a look together.

We pulled up the first image. It looked pretty normal. Then the second, then the third. I was straining at the screen to see where the chip fracture was on the bone. I was just starting to think that doctors must have far better eyes than I...

It turns out that it wasn’t fractured after all: according to the local orthopedist, it’s probably a sprain, or some sort of weird tendon twist.

And yet, I have a paper from the emergency clinic that says I have a bone fracture based on these same X-rays.

The best part? It turns out that putting my middle finger in a splint was actually detrimental to my recovery. Now the middle finger is just “buddy taped” to the index finger so the stronger one can help it along. Though I could bend my finger before the splint, the muscles have atrophied as a result of it, and it’s extremely painful to bend the middle finger. So now I need to work on getting it to move; if it’s not moving freely in 3 weeks, I have to start physical therapy.

Having originally said it was probably a sprain, P has been good about trying to not say "I told you so." Actually, that’s not true. He’s been good about figuring out ways to express the meaning I told you so without saying the actual phrase. Some examples: I thought so; You know, I am a doctor; and—my personal favorite—I’m really not going to say I told you so.

back from the lake

We got back last night after two days of driving: I forgot how long a trip it is! It was fairly uneventful, though, as baby-j was pretty good in the car. He even took a few naps each day.

We had such a great time during our two weeks of vacation time: swimming, chasing baby-j, camp-firing, etc. There were some awful sleepless nights of teething near the end there (the two-year molars?), but other than that, it will be a vacation sorely missed.

So now back to real life and preparing for fall. P goes in on Thursday and will hopefully get set up in his new office then. I'm happy for him, and we're both happy for some additional space for all his books. :) Now that we've unpacked here, I plan to sort through the mess that is our office so I can continue dissertation work.

And for those who haven't heard the sad-yet-ultimately-boring-tale, I apparently fractured my finger during the move at the end of June--over 6 weeks ago now. The pain started to worsen over vacation, so I visited a clinic while we were away. Their X-rays confirmed that I have a bone fracture. Too bad that this is on my right middle finger, which I am now supposed to keep elevated and in a splint. I was stopped by a stranger at a restaurant last week who asked (jokingly) why I was flipping him off all during my meal. Nice.

The splint, unfortunately, is starting to smell a little strange, which should not be surprising, since it's been on the beach and the lake for the past 10 days. Mmm. I am looking forward to Friday, when a local doctor will look at it. I'm hopeful that it won't need surgery or some kind of nasty re-setting.

It's becoming a yearly thing, these injuries. But though my typing has significantly slowed as a result of my middle finger, I think I prefer this to the Spider Bite Incident of Oh-Six.

vacation

We're headed off to the annual August vacation to Michigan today, so it may be a while until I have any new posts... though I'm not sure it matters, since I think I'll be actually seeing (and talking to! Imagine that!) those few people who read what I write here. :) So looking forward to it.

oh, no!

This is what my son did today. Usually he's so careful with Chef. But one swift, sudden movement, a flash of teeth, and, well--

countdown

1 day left! My book could be in this picture here, even...

some shore photos

I was able to get a lot of fun pictures of baby-j down at the shore (not too difficult when you take 700 shots and weed out 90% of them); here are a couple favorites. We got him this suit mostly because of the UV protection, but it fit pretty nicely. He wore the white hat you see here most of the time so he didn't have to look like this while running around the beach.

july 18

Three. More. Days.

784 pages.

Call me a dork, but I can't wait.

good things

We've been a little bit down in our new home the last few days, thinking about all that we're giving up. Today was a bit better, I think. We met with a new pediatrician, who P and I decided immediately is *the* pediatrician, even better than the one we had in PA and we loved her.

Also, we're starting to think about things that we were forced to give up when we moved to PA three years ago. Costco and the YES Network were two of these things, and I know it seems completely absurd, but it's nice to have 'em back. :)

veggin' out

So I’ve been thinking about changing my status from wanna-be vegetarian (or as the Vegetarian Times cookbook politely—probably too politely—calls us, “flexitarians”) to lacto-ovo vegetarian. The title essay of David Foster Wallace’s Consider the Lobster, which I read last week, served as a good wake-up call, as he discusses the Maine Lobster Festival and the public killing of these lobsters via the "World's Largest Lobster Cooker":

Why is a primitive, inarticulate form of suffering less urgent or uncomfortable for the person who's helping to inflict it by paying for the food it results in? I'm not trying to give you a PETA-like screed here--at least I don't think so. I'm trying, rather, to work out and articulate some of the troubling questions that arise amid all the laughter and saltation and community pride of the Maine Lobster Festival. The truth is that if you, the festival attendee, permit yourself to think that lobsters can suffer and would rather not, the MLF begins to take on the aspect of something like a Roman circus or medieval torture-fest.

Foster Wallace wrote this essay in 2004; I just checked out the MLF's Web site--the 60th anniversary this year promises a new, updated Lobster Cooker. In the context of the above quote, the new, updated LC plan seems bizarre:

The World's Greatest Lobster Cooker is getting a makeover!
You can be a part of the fun and excitement by purchasing a personalized brick that will be used to construct the new cooker. What a great way to have your name or message carry on forever. It's also a great way to pay tribute to someone you love, "In Honor of..." or "In Memory of..."
from http://www.mainelobsterfestival.com/release.php?ID=15

I’m not sure--actually, I doubt--that Foster Wallace is a vegetarian himself: he muses about the inhumane deaths of lobsters, but also critiques alarmist techniques of organizations like PETA. But I like that he seems to be honestly weighing these options: he claims that he hasn't succeeded "in working out any sort of personal ethical system in which the belief [that animals are less morally important than human beings] is truly defensible instead of just selfishly convenient."

And there's the rub. My biggest fear in becoming a vegetarian is that I will eventually be unable to understand the decision of those who eat meat, which includes (will always include!) P. And this seems (a) highly hypocritical, as I’ve been a fake-vegetarian for so long, and (b) unbelievably selfish, as P does most of the cooking in the household, though that of course would have to change. So we'll see. I’ve cut out all the meat in the past week, but I have to admit that I’m finding it difficult to do. Feeling a bit spacey, but that's likely more psychological than anything.

more on bratz

A few months back I wrote about Bratz dolls. Bratz doll books are now apparently marketed by Scholastic in schools. See here: http://www.commercialfreechildhood.org/news/bratzschools.htm. The Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood also has a petition going against it.

I’ve included an image of the Baby Bratz here. The bottle on the S&M chain is a nice touch, but I wonder if there might be just too much lipstick? No?

I was going to write something here about how I don't know how parents with daughters deal with all these influences, but that's only one part of the issue, really. How are we parents of sons going to deal with the increased sexualization of young girls, too? Though there is a powerful argument for getting such images out of school-sponsored Scholastic book fairs, we cannot completely shield children from Bratz dolls and the images that inspire them. I wouldn't want to. But how to start the conversation about these things with a teenage son in a way that encourages him to be a good feminist...

I know you're rolling your eyes at me since baby-j only turns 2 next month. I am, however, glad for the time (ok, years) I will need to consider this.

travel food

We all just returned from a week down at the Jersey Shore with my folks. It was fun, but we’re happy to be back. With all the traveling lately, we’ve gotten to be experts at keeping baby-j calm in the car (it involves lots of grapes—or “dips,” as baby-j calls them—and playing the same CD over and over and over). I’ve also gotten pretty good at helpign to feed P as he drives. Of course, I don’t actually feed him, but I’m decent now at wrapping a meal so it’s less likely to spill all over the car as P drives down the highway. On our last trip back from Michigan, we somewhat successfully managed meals like salads and thick sandwiches. This prompted a discussion of what our next challenge might be. P’s suggestion was spaghetti, which we decided would work well with bread dipped in olive oil in a dish that we could somehow affix to the dashboard.

Clearly, we need to spend less time in the car.

the best damn ringbearer in the world

For those of you who are wondering how my brother’s wedding went this weekend--the wedding in which I was a bridesmaid, P was a groomsman, and baby-j a ringbearer--well... suffice it to say that the rings were not well-borne.

But for those who wish more detail: baby-j screamed in my arms going down the aisle at the beginning of the ceremony, then screamed again in P’s arms exiting the church. Apparently he was calm during the actual ceremony, when he played in the kids’ room downstairs with P. That makes 2 weddings and a funeral that P has missed this year as a result of baby-j. I think we’ll wait until he’s about 8 to take him to another one of the former.

But there were sweet moments this weekend, too, like hanging out with baby-j in the air-conditioned limo Hummer (that’ll be the last time you’ll ever read that prepositional phrase on this blog), reading stories to him and my mom. Bopping him every 20 seconds on the head with the ringbearer’s pillow prompted all sorts of fun hysterical giggles. My new sister-in-law looked absolutely radiant, and being a bridesmaid got me up close on the altar to see my brother pushing back the happy tears at the ceremony. With the exception of our clearly-not-wedding-party-material-family, everything else, including the weather, conspired to make a lovely day. And once baby-j was finally passed out on the floor of the country club bridal room, P and I had a good time at the reception. In shifts, of course.

moving on

This picture was taken at baby-j's last day of "school" (the parent-child class we took him to this year). Goodbye, PA.

We finished moving in this weekend to the new apartment. No movers this time, so we did everything ourselves, including our couch and big-ass TV cabinet. P did most of the work, but I'm still amazed--by how much I was able to help him, and also by how much crap we have. You'd think that moving each spring for four consecutive years would have made a significant dent in the amount of crap, but it really hasn't. We could blame baby-j, but as we know, it's really more my fault, with all the papers and books and office supplies. P says we could open our own Staples.

u-haul blues

Feeling. Sore. And. Tired.

P and I decided we have spent far too much on moving costs over the past three years, and are planning to do this one ourselves, with toddler in tow. Today we moved almost all of the items from the basement and attic into the first U-Haul truck to prepare to move it tomorrow. It took all day. I think we have a little bit less than half the crap we own in there. The sheer amount of it really is amazing when I consider how often we've moved and how much Freecycling we've done over the past few years here in PA.

It's clear that my weakness (well, at least in terms of holding on to stuff) is old papers and student/teaching materials. I snuck a few peeks at old grad school notebooks as I packed them today; it's fascinating to read what I thought about just a few years ago. Note to self: if I want a good procrastination tool as I work on my dissertation, I have two boxes full of these things.

Sigh. I'm going to go take some preventative Advil now.

have your duckies been fed today?

My favorite part of this video is that baby-j goes back to feed the first duckie, who must not have been sated.

607 love letter

We’ve been busy over here. We put the house on the market last Tuesday and had multiple offers by the weekend; we chose one on Sunday and are currently under contract. (Wow!) We’ve already had the code inspection and the house inspection, and our closing date is currently set for June 27.

So come July 1st, P will be both jobless AND homeless. (He doesn’t begin at the new job until September.)

I have such mixed feelings about all this. It’s a wonderful thing, being able to move back to the NYC area where we’ll be closer to dear friends--not to mention my work. This point hit home as I sat in traffic for two hours getting home tonight. There will be no more of that once we move. No more covering over 150 miles each day just getting to and from work.

And yet, I love our house and our neighbors and our neighborhood. I love that we live right next to a college. I love that we live right next to the college stadium and I love how at night, when the stadium lights are lit up, there’s no need to turn on the porch light in the back. I love that baby-j can go "gar-diiin" in the small dirt pit formerly known as an herb garden out in our tiny backyard. I love that baby-j said his first words and took some of his first steps here. I love our home. I love that I finally feel at home. There is something about this house: even though for the first few months here all I saw were the many flaws, I have to say that it is the first place in my life that I have truly felt is mine. Ours. This is probably because of all the work we put into it when we first got here, but also because it’s such a great size for us. Wherever we move will be smaller, and a rental, and won’t have all the things to which we’ve grown accustomed to here. We’re headed out tomorrow to find a new place, and I’m just a bit sick about it.

This will be the fourth consecutive year that we’ve moved in spring, and I think this one, without doubt, will be the hardest.

big news

In the fall, P applied for a job 10 miles from where I teach. We had given up on his finding a job in the NYC area, but it came up, and so he applied. He couldn’t not apply. We figured it was unlikely that he’d get it, but he got it. He got it!

So... we’re moving. Again. For the fourth time in four years. Unlike the other three moves, though, this one requires putting our house--our house that we love and in which we’ve finally felt settled--up for sale. We may be here a while. I just got an email from family friends who’ve had their house on the market for a year and a half (gulp!), so I’m not holding my breath about this getting sold anytime soon.

But the craziness of all the crap we have to do to the house to get it ready to go on the market (for next week) might provide good blog fodder. See? There’s always a bright side.

the romans had 'em, and they didn't do too bad...

I watched some of SNL on Saturday night--I think it was the first time in about 3 years--and I caught this sketch. You gotta get yourself some.

stylin'

It’s been a beautiful weekend. We’ve been gardening, baby-j and I. Ok, so “gardening” means scooping and piling dirt, splashing in the watering-can stream and making mud pies. But it’s fun. Today we head out and I realize that the sun is really coming down, so I try to find baby-j’s Tigers cap to cover that little lightly-covered pate of his. After a few unsuccessful laps through the house, I come up empty, so I grab some sunscreen and slather it on. He isn’t too happy with that, as you can see here, but at least it did the trick. An hour later, when we come back inside, I try to get some of the sunscreen off. Sunscreen is thick; his hair is thin. Clearly this is not the hair product of choice for a twenty-month-old.

I cannot seem to get the sunscreen out, or even smooth his hair down effectively, so I grab his baby hairbrush, pin the writhing baby-j between my knees, and style his few strands of hair. It takes a bit of work to get it right, but I soon figure out that it’s more effective to brush it forward. With the sunscreen, each hair sticks neatly in place, and voila! A babycombover. Lookin’ good, baby-j. Lookin’ good.

While searching online to determine whether or not combover is spelled with a dash or a space (the answer appears to be neither), I discover that on Monday, April 16, Combover: The Movie premiered on the Sundance Channel. There’s an interesting tidbit for the day.

mama lyrics

You know that you’ve gone a little bit crazy when you’re creating new lyrics for songs that don’t quite fit. Over dinner, “Fever” was playing on the radio, so post-meal, I enticed baby-j up to his bath with the following little ditty:

You give me duckies
when you kiss me
Duckies when you hold me tight

Duckies!
In the morning
Duckies all through the night

Everybody’s got the duckies
That is somethin’ you all know
Duckies aren’t such a new thing
Duckies started long ago

easter outfit

This was the outfit that P and baby-j got last week at the store. Man, he cleans up nice!

apple's latest product

If you haven't seen this already, I urge you to go right now and view Apple's latest product:

http://www.glumbert.com/media/irack

I didn't know whether to laugh or cry: I think I did a bit of both.

sweet and weird

As I type this sitting at my office desk, every 30 seconds some guy on a bike goes flying by in the alley behind our house. Left... then right... then left... then right... I'm not watching, but I can see him out of my periphery.

It's been a crazy few weeks, including family illnesses, a death (my grandpa) and subsequent last-minute trip to Massachusetts, happy visits from the in-laws, and my first overnight conference trip without baby-j. Easter weekend was frenetically wonderful. There was much cousin fun and craziness, and even though I missed much of it by being away in Chicago, I got to enjoy having loads of people in the house Sunday morning. I promise to post some pictures once I can find the damn cord that will bring these adorable shots from my camera to my computer. For now, these crazy pictures of baby-j will have to suffice. I took them a few weeks ago. He's wearing his "Keep Austin Weird" T-shirt, which P purchased before baby-j was born, before we knew he would be baby-j and not baby-n, or baby-a, or baby-s, or any of the other names we had selected for a potential girl.

I love these shots. I love any picture or video of baby-j where he is laughing with such abandon. That giggle is infectious.

Alley-bike-rider is going backwards now. No, wait. He just turned around and is going forward. And left. And right.

fine dining

We found this table at a garage sale down the street. baby-j loves to sit at it and draw nowadays. He'll also have the occasional fake meal here. Here he is having tea with froggy.

And this shot was taken a few minutes later.

housiversary

One year ago today, P and I closed on our first house. We didn't move in until about a month later, but we've owned this house now for a year. A year! It goes so fast.

This picture was taken that day: March 24, 2006. I found it in my Kodak photo album with all the pictures from that day. I'm somewhat amazed by how much work we've done on the house. It certainly needs a lot more, but I would have completely forgotten how much we've done if we hadn't decided to run around the house and take lots of pictures of the vacant rooms and bare floors.

Baby-j looks so small here; he was only 7 months old then. Before having baby-j, I didn't quite understand why people referred to the age of small children in months, rather than in years and half-years. Part of the reason, of course, is to have space to mark the developmental milestones that occur in a child's life: first smile, first roll, first laugh, first crawl, first steps, first word. But there's something about marking time in months that slows the time, even a bit. Because when they hit a year, you can't quite believe it's only been a year, since those months added up so quickly and without your quite noticing, and your son has grown so very much.

I have my own litany of which baby-j is a part, and it's something like this: first apartment together, first car, first baby, first house. P and I have had 4 of the first, 5 of the second. I can't count higher than 1 yet for the last two.

...a new car!

Without this blog as a record, I wouldn't have realized that exactly one month after P and I debated the virtues of our respective automobiles, we decided to get a new one (well, new to us, anyway). We'll be doing a lot of driving this year, so we wanted something more reliable for my commute and for the family car, and so we got this:

It's a 2005 Ford Focus station wagon. I've wanted something with a hatch in the back ever since my (ok, my in-laws') Honda Civic died on us in 2000. I loved the idea of getting back to the Civic, and since a Honda is out of our price range and parts of it are too likely to be stolen, I've had my eye on the Ford Focus 5-door for a few years now. Add a kid to the equation, and our needs expanded the dream to station-wagon-length. However, its rear is still pretty cute: see?

This baby is supposed to get 32 miles per gallon on the highway, which--with my commute--is where it's mostly driven.

So let's gas 'er up and crank up the NPR.

book club

I recently sent along a letter from my friend M to continue an "informal book club." I was asked to send the letter to 6 people, who would in turn send the letter to 6 people each, and each of those people is supposed to send me a book. The idea is that each person only mails one book back up the chain, but gets 36 books total from the 6x6 people to whom he/she sent the letter.

Sound confusing? Well, the point is that I am supposed to have 36 books arriving in the mail, and I'm really interested to see what I get. I'm going to keep updating this page as a way to keep track... and to see how many of the 36 I get.

This week, I got 3:

1. Persuasion, Jane Austen
I love that I got this! I was/am a huge Austen fan, and Persuasion was always my favorite. I haven't read it in at least 10 years, though, so I'll have to add this one to my summer reading list.

2. Empire Falls, Richard Russo
I read this already a few years ago... loved it, though nothing can compare to Russo's Straight Man. I need to re-read that this summer.

3. Shopgirl, Steve Martin
I haven't read this one, but I'm definitely interested. And the person who sent this gave me the audio CD, which is GREAT for my long commute. Plus, Martin narrates it. (I've discovered that nothing kills the audio book experience faster than a crappy reader. Just "read" the audio version of The DaVinci Code and you'll see what I mean. Of course, it might not have been the recording on that one. Maybe I would have been eye-rolling at the book in print had I read it that way.)

March 16:
4. Moo, Jane Smiley
Ok--not only have I read Moo, but it was the book that I sent back the chain to the person on the back of my letter. Too funny. Well, I guess I got it back! :) P and I are starting to wonder about the kinds of books I'm getting. It may well be that I read the same things as the people to whom I sent the initial letter, and they read the same things as the friends to whom they sent the letter.

March 22:
5. Daughters of Copper Woman, Anne Cameron
I haven't read this yet, but am looking forward to it after checking out its Amazon page.

Sometime at the end of March:
6. Stones from the River, Ursula Hegi

7. The Westing Game, Ellen Raskin
I started to read this during my conference trip to Chicago and I am really enjoying it. Thanks, J! Now I need to find some time to finish it. So much fun.

So far I have 7/36 books, which is many more than I thought I'd get. Whoo-hoo!

towhead

Check out the hair on baby-j: it's coming in fast! It's probably not fast enough for him, though. He has total hair-envy when he sees other kids. He wants to grab it, run it through his fingers, smell it, yank it... oh wait, he's made the kid cry. We're working on that. Soon he will have hair of his own to brush, which will be a very good thing, because baby-j's way of wielding a hairbrush is a bit frightening.