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.