baby-j

Don't ask: I'm not sure what he's doing here either.

veggie pie

Whew: that last entry was pretty depressing. Today was a far better day, due in no small part to the fact that baby-j took a 2-hour nap this morning and another 2-hour nap this afternoon. I even had time to make (gasp!) dinner for P and have it waiting when he got home. Such an occurrence is rare, obviously, or I wouldn't be writing about it. I made Savory Potato Pie: I found the recipe a few months ago in my Vegetarian Times Cookbook. I suck at cooking. I'm also only a wanna-be vegetarian. Translated, this means a) that I don't eat red meat and b) I'm too lazy to be a real vegetarian. The only meat I eat on a consistent basis is fish, and I'll occasionally have chicken or turkey, though I'd like to eliminate those altogether. Unfortunately, I've inherited some weird blood sugar issues (ok, my faithful lack of regular exercise has also contributed to these weird blood sugar issues), which means that when I need protein, I need it, and I'm often not prepared or together enough to have vegetarian options at hand. Thus, my laziness = the eating of a turkey or chicken sandwich.

The Savory Potato Pie is pretty good--even P likes it--and it's pretty easy to make. My favorite part about it is the generic reference to something like Boca Crumbles as the ingredient "meat," which is in quotation marks. I was thinking about this usage today as I perused Wikipedia's entry on quotation marks. The entry as of 11pm this evening reads:

One important use of quotation marks is to indicate or call attention to ironic or apologetic words. Ironic quotes can also be called scare, sneer, shock, or distance quotes. Ironic quotes are sometimes gestured in oral speech using air quotes.

Certainly, this reference to air quotes is an important part of the Wikipedia entry: the more I think about it, the more I realize that the air quotes are an essential part of the ironic quotation marks. When I read in my vegetarian recipe that I should stir potatoes and peas into the "meat," my impulse is to extend those four fingers and jab them into the air.

Hmm. Why do I keep going on about the "meat"? Perhaps it is because the use of quotation marks there gives that ingredient emphasis, though it is the potato that should be emphasized; I mean, it's given more credit in the recipe title. But then, I guess Savory "Meat" Pie has all sorts of other connotations.

thinking

Things I don’t want to think about today:

• All the work I have to do
• The fact that I should, right now, being doing this work
• The poison ivy that I underestimated in a previous blog entry
• The fact that this poison ivy has attacked P even more than it has attacked me
• baby-j STILL not being over his ear infection
• The fact that it’s going on a month since he was infected during his brief four-hour stint at stupid-ear-infection-givin’-daycare and he has to go through another round of antibiotics
• How hard it is to revise my dissertation proposal with 100 student papers calling my name each week and an adorable but very active toddler running around
• The fact that I’ve officially been working aforementioned dissertation proposal for a year now
• The fact that I appear doomed to never complete aforementioned dissertation proposal

Can you tell that I’m more than a bit down today? I started this entry with the intent of writing about what I do want to think about today so I don’t have to think of the above. Here’s what it is: baby-j’s pronounciation of the word “pancake” this past Saturday morning (also now known as Pancake-Makin’ Day). Let’s see if I can do it justice...


“Can you say ‘pancake,’ baby-j?”

(said with a growl and, oddly enough, a German accent)
“P-ah-ah-ah-ahn, Kehhh, Kuh. Kuh. Kuh.”

Makes me smile just to think of it.

after the turkey

It was good--albeit quiet--Thanksgiving. At least, it was quiet by Thanksgiving dinner-time. The morning was spent witnessing the festivities going on a few hundred yards away with the big football game between the two high schools in the area. People go crazy for this event. Despite my being momentarily startled by a face at my kitchen window and subsequently running a drunk guy off our property, the morning was a lot of fun.

Me: “Um, is there a reason you’re pissing on the side of my house?”
Drunk Guy: “People haven’t seemed to mind before.”
Neighbor, Watching in Amazement from her Porch: “Really? Where’s that?”
Drunk Guy: (runs off, giving us both the finger)

The last two post-Thanksgiving, pre-back-to-work days have been wonderful, consisting mostly of much playing with baby-j. He’s really gotten into books lately, and not just for eating! He’s taken to pulling half his books off the shelf, and then picking them up, one after another, for me or P to read to him. As much as I enjoy watching baby-j smile when the books are read, I think I enjoy P’s reading of these books even more: from the exasperated puppy-dog voice to the New York accent he’s for some reason given to the toy clown in The Little Engine That Could.

what's that?

I'm not quite sure what baby-j is admiring here: it's either his belly (who wouldn't admire that?) or his new snow boots. No snow yet, but he'll be ready. We can't get him to take the things off whenever he sees them.

P and I spent this past weekend preparing our front yard for Thanksgiving. As noted earlier this year, my previous attempt to do so led to a vicious bout of poison ivy. We waited for the bushes and vines to die a bit before attacking the front yard again, but we knew the PI was still there. I do have a bit on my face and arms (yes, I was covered when working on the front yard), and P has some on his neck, but so far we've managed to escape relatively unscathed.

So the front yard is now a dirt pit. I still think it's better than what was there before (crazy, creepy overgrowth that didn't allow us to walk through to the side of the house), but there's a lot more work to be done. We've now moved inside for our preparations. At first we thought we'd have 9 for Thanksgiving dinner, then 7, and now, only 5, but with P cooking, it shouldn't mattter... it will be delicious. :)

seeds on nuts

I've mentioned before that as a SAHM/WOHM/SAHD/WOHD couple, P and I can learn much about the other's parenting from the daily diaper update.

After a particularly difficult changing session yesterday, I'm wondering if P might ease up on the kiwis with baby-j.

hooray: an icon sans bottle!

It is amazing how pervasive the bottle images are. I was happy to see that the Mothering breastfeeding symbol I voted for won. It's quite a cute image, see?

Hopefully it will be used. Actually, I think I'll use it now on the right here. :)

rough week

It's been a few days since I've last written, primarily because it's been a rough week. Highlights include baby-j going on more antibiotics to fix the ear infection he got at damndaycare, and my brakes locking up on me Wednesday morning on the way to work when the two cars in front of me stopped short, causing me to slam into the car in front of me--a two-week old Honda Civic. Then the wireless went out, and I spent 2 hours on the phone with Linksys to get it back, but P says it's not quite right, and I'm getting sick from baby-j's being sick, and I'm very very worried about a friend at work who's having major health issues.

However, I did get to make some cookies tonight: chocolate chip, P's (current) favorite. I don't know what's up with The Joy of Cooking, but their recipe is basically chocolate chips and butter held together by the smallest amount of flour necessary to make the thing qualify as a cookie.

baby-in-a-bucket

Belly laughs are a good thing.

dates

P and I went out this weekend twice for pre-birthday celebrating. It was crazy, and decadent, and of course it was not without feelings of guilt for leaving baby-j, particularly as he's still somewhat recovering from being sick.

Friday night we went out to see a neighbor perform in his band at a local pub. I had some pumpkin ale, which was quite good, though the highlight of the evening was when the bartender put on the whole Tenacious D album--the old one, not the new one coming out this week. Tenacious D is my favorite band, so it was a very happy birthday surprise. I sang along to the lyrics with the bartender. P and I had a great dinner. We spent the first hour trying to figure out when the last time we'd gone out was, and the second hour thinking about where we might go on our next date, which, at the rate determined by the conversation of the first hour, will take place sometime in March 2008.

Saturday was a shorter evening, though we caught Borat and then went out for Indian food. All in all, a pretty great weekend with the man. And the dates with P were pretty great too. :)

working

Here's baby-j at my laptop. Is this bad? I certainly have higher hopes for him than being chained to the computer, as I typically am...

a beautiful rainy morning

It’s a gloomy, rainy morning and I barely made it to work on time since the commute took 2 hours. But you know what? There are at least 28 reasons to be happy about this morning’s “reshaped political landscape.”

a sickie

I took baby-j to the doctor today because he's been feeling poorly since last week, about the time he went to crappydaycare. (He woke up throwing up and had a fever this morning.) Besides the usual teething issues, he has an ear infection. It's his first, so we're a bit inexperienced in this department. The pediatrician said we were lucky he hasn't had one until now (15 months old). Is it coincidence that he got his first ear infection right after his day at crappydaycare? I think not.

And for anyone keeping track, baby-j's weight seems to be evening out. He is "merely" 31 pounds now. :)

yea, tigers...

So here's baby-j, watching the Tigers with his cool new cap (thanks grandma/grandpa!). So Detroit didn't do so well, we admit, but now baby-j has a new word: hat. Hat. H-hat. As with his beautiful pronunciation of apple, the word begins with a sweet aspiration.

Ok, I admit it: I am a complete sucker for the baby-j-words.

As you can see, it's taken a while for me to get this photo up. With the daycare debacle, we had a rough week. baby-j was sick for most of the week, and is just now starting to get better.

I think I'll have to reference the daycare mess via hyperlinks in each blog entry for a while. It's therapeutic, this referencing, like spitting out the worst parts of my day to P when I get home from work--it's out there, out where it can be dealt with. Who needs daycare anyway? Daycare is really overrated.

Damn daycare. I feel better already.

jack-o

Just had to post a picture of this year's jack-o-lantern. It's been a week since it was carved, and I really need to throw it out... at this point the teeth have shriveled up into the mouth and the thing is generally a gnarled mess. But here's a shot of it in its glory.

I really do love Halloween. We only had about 25 kids come by, but it was the first time in a long time--at least 10 years, maybe longer--that we've been able to give out candy. I guess that comes from a whole lot of apartment-dwelling. baby-j was/is under the weather (we're blaming the daycare since it makes us feel better about his getting kicked out), so there was no trick-or-treating, but we did dress him up as Charlie Brown and he ran to the door each time kids rang the bell. Pics of Charlie Brown will be posted here soon, I hope.

bye bye daycare

A few weeks ago we got a call that baby-j’s number was up--he was being offered a spot in a daycare we visited a while ago. We debated this for a while. He does need more exposure to other children, and we need some more time at home to work. At the same time, we were reluctant to send him. Perhaps it was the dazed look in the other kids’ eyes when we visited last Friday, or perhaps it was the fact that baby-j was bouncing around the room when he got there and trying to hug all the other children he saw. It made us dubious. He gets very excited around other kids, and unfortunately for them, his frequent way of expressing it is a smile and a cuddle, followed quickly and unexpectedly by a bite. His bites are powerful, and this was one of our concerns when we went for a visit.

“What do you do if he bites?” we asked.
“We write a report,” they replied.
“What do you do if he bites again?” we asked.
“We separate him from the other children,” they replied.
“Hmm,” we thought. “Because he has a tendency to bite to show affection,” we said. “At home we have to watch him to make sure he doesn’t do that,” we said.
“We call you to pick him up,” they replied. “If he can’t adapt to our program we do ask that you remove him permanently,” they replied.

It took less than a half-day of daycare for baby-j to get expelled.

After a good morning at home on Monday, P dropped baby-j off at daycare at 12:00. K and I did some discourse analysis of the short reports that are filed after each “incident,” and I encourage you to do your own.

10.30.06

12:30
Your child: bit another child for no reason while playing by the climber.
Therefore we: told him it’s not nice to hurt your friends & to use gentle touches.

According to the daily report, baby-j slept from 12:45 to 3:00. (P and I were pretty impressed with that.) For the time he was awake, he was quite happy, according to one of the women there.

3:35
Your child: bit his friend (it’s his friend now?) on the nose for no reason.
Therefore we: told him to use gentle touches and he was separated from the other children. Parent called.

3:40
Your child: bit his friend both on the arm and face.
Therefore we: told him to use gentle touches and he was separated from the other children. Parent called.

P was indeed called, though at the time he was surprised baby-j made it for almost 4 hours (not realizing that he had slept for 2 ½ of those hours). Later I found out that the woman on the phone called baby-j “vicious.” Vicious. The word keeps playing over and over in my mind. My son is vicious. My 14-month-old son is vicious. I am one of those moms; I am one of those parents. The one with the bullying son.

Wait a second. He’s only 14 months old. I don’t think any baby that young can truly be vicious. Is he “vicious” because he bites “for no reason”? If so, that cannot possibly be the case: everything is done for a reason. baby-j bites to show affection.

This is where I start to get nervous: surely the mothers of serial killers are also able to rationalize their children’s behavior in such ways. But again, he’s only 14 months old.

Can you tell that I’m starting to lose my mind? Monday was an awful day. P was humiliated and I was in tears.

But it isn’t fair to say that baby-j got expelled; that’s like saying that I got kicked out of my sorority in college (for those who haven’t heard it already, that’s another story for another time). I guess you could call what actually happened in both cases a preemptive strike. I talked to the manager of the daycare on the phone yesterday morning, who told me that even though the bruises/wounds on the other children looked “nasty,” they were will to give baby-j another chance--with the understanding that if it happened again, we would have to remove him permanently. I told her to forget about it; we would not be bringing him back. I apologized profusely for his hurting the other children and told her that he’s not ready for daycare yet. He needs closer supervision when around children.

The office manager was quite nice. I told her that perhaps we’d try again there in a few months. Of course, this was before I heard about one of the caregivers using the word “vicious.”

For those of you who are wondering, baby-j is still going to the parent/child class with us on Friday mornings. They have been wonderful for him. He is able to socialize quite well with the other children there, and as the weeks go by he is less tempted to bite. I wonder if the biting to connected to being with unfamiliar people. That is, as with food, he needs a taste of new things--including people--to see what he likes.

There I go with the serial-killer-mom rationalization again. Obviously we need to work on this biting issue before our happy little biter turns our lives into a version of Cannibal! the Musical.

bakin'

I've taken to baking and doing other things around the house on Friday afternoons. It's a needed relaxation after sitting in front of the computer/steering wheel for most of the rest of the week.

Today I made a version of these chocolate with peanut-butter filling cookies (only the ones I made were from my Big Cookie Book). Mmmm.

new words!

Our neighbor L. asked if I have been recording the new baby-j words, and I haven’t, so here are some from the past week:

oval (Heard by both me and K, on separate occasions, when actually looking at an oval!)

f*ckie (We’re not sure what he’s referring to with this one. P. maintains that he’s saying “Frankie,” a reference to a stuffed frog that I named and so baby-j’s new word f*ckie is all my fault.)

ah-ight (Referring to “light,” not some super-cool pronunciation of “alright.”)

up (I think he means “on” when he says this, as in turn “on” the “ah-ight.” So there’s a lot of gesturing to the ceiling and “Ah-ight. Up. Ah-ight. Up.”)

baby-j, you ah-ight up my life.

Ok, time to stop blogging and finish alphabetizing and checking the 300 references for my proposal. I will, I WILL get this damn thing finished this weekend and defended this semester.

bruises, part 2

Ok, so I know this blog will get boring quickly if I keep chronicling baby-j's bruises, as he is likely to have many more of them in the coming months (days? minutes?). So I'll be quick: we had a slight scare last night and almost a trip to the emergency room when baby-j fell down about 6 attic steps. He landed head-first into the wastepaper basket, which I think saved him a bit. No goose-egg on the forehead, but he is now sporting a Harry Potter scar. As long as I know he's going to be ok, the scar is even a bit cute to me.

matching bruises

baby-j’s tendency to flip over benches has us both bruised this week.

Some background: our dining room table is a family “heirloom,” originally used by my grandmother for a dancing school she founded and ran in the 1950s. It’s not a formal table; it’s a sawbuck table with benches on both sides... ok, it’s basically a glorified picnic bench. Even though my grandmother wouldn’t dream of putting it anywhere in her house (she’s an interior decorator for the wealthy and consequently her tastes have changed accordingly), the few times she’s come to visit, she compliments us on it. Well, I guess she’s complimenting herself, as it’s hers. She always reminds us to keep it in the family if we decide not to use it anymore. My family gives us those kind of reminders quite a bit, knowing how our constant moving has turned us into frequent Freecyclers.

Anyway, baby-j likes to pull over the benches and then slide them around the front room of the house, as seen here recently with his cousins. We’ve given up turning the bench back over for the most part and usually leave it upside down, another addition to the kid-inspired décor of the front room. Yesterday morning, the bench was right about where it appears in this picture when, in a tired haze, I ran down the stairs to head into the kitchen and tripped over the corner. I yelped loudly; as a result, baby-j began to cry in his highchair, and P was forced to try and calm both of us down at the same time. I knew that it was bad, but I didn’t realize that when I got to work and took off my sock, I would discover the toe next to my pinkie toe to be black. I don’t know if it’s broken, but from what I hear I guess there’s not much that can be done anyway. My students were remarkably concerned as I taught my classes sitting down yesterday: I’d like to think it was out of genuine concern rather than the appeal of my having to stay home for a few days. Unfortunately for them, my driving foot was not the one affected.

No, it’s my left foot, just like the spider (?) bite that I got this summer. Unlike this summer, however, I’ve made a decision not to risk comments and make any more readers of this blog ill by posting pictures. :)

Apparently, I was not the bench’s only victim. P informs me that a few hours after I limped out the door, baby-j tripped over the bench yesterday while I was at work, giving him a scary-looking bruise on his chest. He seems to be doing well and not harboring any resentment toward the bench, which has already slid back and forth across the room several times today.