ABCs of Me(me)

I like to open NaBloPoMo with an about-me type of thing each year since it's the month that creates the most opportunity for new people to arrive on my blog. I got this meme from the fantastic Miss Grace.

A - Age: 29

B - Bed size: Queen. Sometimes I wish we had a king just so there was more room for the dog and the kid.

C - Chore you hate: I cannot stand cleaning the bathroom.

D - Don’t eat: Anything made from pigs

E - Essential start your day item: Splashing cold water on my face

F - Favorite board game: Clue

G - Gold or Silver: silver

H - Height: 5’5

I - Instruments you play: I took many years of piano lessons, but I'm quite out of practice.

J - Job title: science geek (Okay, not really. But my actual job title is a little too google-able.)

K - Kid(s): Nico, 9 1/2 months

L - Love or lust: Both, thanks.

M - Mom’s name: Carol

N - Nicknames: Girl

O - Overnight hospital stay other than birth: None

P - Pants or pantyhose: Pants. I threw away my last pair of pantyhose in college and vowed never to buy another pair.

Q - Famous Movie Quote: "I killed the president of Paraguay with a fork. How have you been?"

R - Right or left handed: Right

S - Sibling(s): One sister, age 24

T - Time you wake up: Nico wakes me up anywhere between 3:30 and 4:30 AM to eat every morning, but then we go back to sleep until somewhere between 6:00 and 6:30. He doesn't believe in sleeping in, so even on my days off we're usually out of bed by 7:00.

U - Underwear: Ugh. I still can't fit into my pre-pregnancy unders, so I'm still wearing my post-C-section granny panties. So embarrassing.

V - Vegetable favorite: Cooked carrots

W - Ways you run late: I'm late a lot. I tend to underestimate travel time, or getting-kid-into-carseat time.

X - X-rays you’ve had: Teeth

Y - Yummy food you make: I bake cookies and banana bread and cheesecakes.

Z - Zoo favorite: Hmmmm...I really like the otters at our zoo. And the bats.

This is Halloween

The boulevard down the street from our house is a popular trick-or-treating destination, so we took Nico over for a walk in his stroller. He seemed to have a really good time watching the bigger kids in their costumes, and we got some compliments on our costumes as well. A tiny samurai kimono showed up in a box of hand-me-downs, and it felt like it was meant to be since MB and I still had the really nice samurai robes my mom made for us a few years ago. Unfortunately it didn't occur to me to take a photo of Nico alone in his costume until I'd already changed him into his pajamas. Therefore, you'll have to make do with this creatively-edited picture of Nico and me that was taken by my friend bibliophile81 in front of her parents' house:



My laptop is still awaiting repair, but I'm planning to make my fifth attempt at NaBloPoMo. I've finished every previous year, even though my automatic archiving has gone haywire and makes it look like I started late every time. So come back tomorrow and the day after and the day after.

Baby Story, Redux

When I heard that Kim at It's a Beautiful Wreck was collecting positive Cesarean birth stories to post on her blog in October, I knew immediately that I wanted to submit Nico's story. (The blog that initially published the story has disappeared, so I'm reposting the original version here.) I've been reading birth stories for ages, and I can't recall a single happy C-section story from all my years online. I'm sure they're out there, but the horror stories and sad stories and disappointed stories are the ones that stick in your mind. I still believe that the C-section rate in the United States is unnecessarily high. I still believe that natural birth is a worthwhile goal. But I know now that a surgical birth does not have to be an unhappy birth and that a totally gutted birth plan doesn't equate to failure.

I'm sure most of you have heard the story before, but I'm really proud of how the new version--infused with nine months of perspective--turned out. So, if you please: Surrendering:  a Positive Cesarean Birth Story

I wanted a natural birth. I’d been ambivalent at the beginning of my pregnancy, but before long I was totally converted. I read the Bradley book, I forced my husband to watch Your Best Birthon DVD (I don’t think he found it as empowering as I did), I practiced breathing and relaxing and visualizing. Having read over and over that doubt can be the downfall of an otherwise-possible natural birth experience, I tried to quash my nerves. I tried to read only positive birth stories. I read about how to minimize intervention, because my biggest worry was that I’d be pushed into an induction that would fail and result in an emergency C-section. We took classes, we wrote a birth plan, and we discussed everything with my OBGYN. She was on board even though she did warn me to keep an open mind about an epidural, and she agreed that we could wait until 42 weeks to induce, provided that the baby stayed healthy and happy until then. I was nervous, I’ll admit it. My husband was given the responsibility of keeping me focused and helping me hold out against the inevitable temptation of drugs when labor finally started.

Everyone predicted that my baby would be born by Christmas, even though he was due on the sixth of January. We finished his nursery on January 2, and I was hoping that moving the furniture and folding the laundry would spark labor. No such luck. My due date came and went. I lay in bed at night visualizing my cervix opening like a flower, analyzing the twinges of Braxton Hicks contractions that faded and finally disappeared. At 41 weeks we went in for a non-stress test and an ultrasound, and discovered that our previously head-down baby had turned transverse. (A friend later did some Googling and told me the odds of a full-term baby turning breech were 1 in 2500. It’s not exactly what we had in mind when we told the baby he would be exceptional.) As soon as the ultrasound tech turned on the monitor, I saw the baby’s head and I knew I’d be having a C-section. I watched the rest of the scan in a daze, trying to marvel at his toes and fists and hair, but feeling more than a little shell-shocked. Sure enough, the first thing my OB said when she walked into our exam room was, “Let’s book your C-section. How’s Friday?”

I asked if there would be any chance of getting him to turn, but at his age and size it was not recommended. She confirmed that I wasn’t crazy, the baby had definitely been head-down the week before, and told me that it was possible something had prevented him from dropping properly into position to be born vaginally. Later I would read that the etiology for breech babies is almost never discovered. We went home and told our families about the new plan. I made jokes about grounding the baby for his transgression, emailed friends who’d had C-sections for advice, complained on my message board. We wrote a new birth plan and brought the baby’s clothes and changing table down to the living room so I’d be able to get to them easily during the six weeks of post-surgery restrictions. I repacked my hospital bag. And then I had a spectacular breakdown and sobbed in bed for an hour. All the natural birth sources I’d read emphasized taking control of your experience, standing firm behind your choices. I had completely lost control and no longer had any choices.

Our appointment was at noon on Friday and we were supposed to arrive at 10:00 to begin prep. I couldn’t eat anything after 4:00 AM, and the last thing I dreamed about before waking up around 8:00 was going to a wedding reception with an all-you-can-eat pancake bar. We finished packing our last-minute things, I took a long hot shower, and we took our dog over to my parents’ house. I woke up calm but grew increasingly nervous as we approached the hospital, and was downright jittery by the time we got there. Once all the prep procedures started I actually felt better, maybe because everything was fully out of my hands and I was at that point part of an organized process that was pretty much routine for everyone else involved. Our labor & delivery nurse described what would happen during the surgery, which was nice even though I’d read about it.

Around 11:30, my OB stopped in and told us there was another patient who would be needing an emergency C-section, so we’d be pushed back just a little bit. The anesthesiologist popped in and explained the spinal block to me, then popped back out, our nurse had my husband MB change into his scrubs, and I decided I’d try to get a few minutes of sleep. It seemed like as soon as I settled in to rest, it was time to go. They wheeled my bed down to the operating room, and we had to leave MB at the door until after the prep was done. That was the hardest moment for me, because I knew that if the anesthesia didn’t take, I’d have to be put under and he’d miss the whole thing. He later told me he was waiting in the hall for fifteen minutes, but to me the prep seemed to go by in just a few minutes.

My nurse had me get up and walk from the inner corridor into the OR, which I thought was kind of funny. When we entered the operating room, there was only one other person inside, but before long there were at least half a dozen, maybe more. The anesthesiologist arrived and I sat on the bed and hunched my back the way the nurse had explained while he gave me a numbing shot and put in the block. It was crazy cold in the OR and either because of that or the nerves or the meds, I was shivering. I remember trying to hold really still while keeping my spine curved over and my head tucked down. At this point I discovered I would have a use for all that deep yoga breathing I’d practiced for months, and it really did help. The nurse stood right in front of me with her hands on my shoulders, and though I usually don’t like strangers in my personal space, it was very comforting. They’d told me that once the spinal was in, my toes would go numb right away, but I didn’t realize they meant instantaneously, and before they even got me all the way onto my back, I felt like I’d been Novocained from my toes to my hips. It was a slightly disconcerting experience — I could still feel my toes and legs, I just couldn’t feel any pain or move them at all.

They put the drapes up and the anesthesiologist explained that I wouldn’t feel any pain, just pressure, especially during one part of the procedure, and that he’d warn me when that part was about to happen. At some point he put an oxygen mask on my face, and told me it was more for the baby than for me. I don’t know if that was true or not, but it did help to take deep slow breaths through the mask. I was still freezing, but after they had my arms positioned on the arm rests sticking straight out from my sides, they draped a warmed blanket across my arms and chest, and it felt wonderful. My OB came in and joked that she’d taken it easy at the gym the night before because she knew she had a transverse baby to lift out the next day. I remember the anesthesiologist saying “Let’s have a baby!” and hearing one of the nurses ask “Should I get the husband?” The anesthesiologist told me cheerily, “They’ve actually already started,” and I remember simultaneously knowing they wouldn’t get to any of the good parts before MB got in there and wanting to ask them to wait for him.

They told us before we went in that the delivery itself would probably take five to seven minutes, and I’d be surprised if it was any longer than that. MB sat on a stool near my head, so I could turn to the side and see him, and I’m pretty sure he held my hand. I heard the OB say, “We’ve got boy parts!” and then “Oh, look! Strawberry blond hair!” and then I heard the baby cry. I remember being grateful that he cried right away and didn’t give me any time to worry. It was a strange experience lying there seeing only blue paper and hearing my baby squalling in the corner off near my feet out of my sight. MB was called away and I could hear the nurses telling him to take photos of the baby and the numbers on the scale. At some point he came to me and held the digital camera up so that I could see a photo of our son’s face. I remember thinking that the baby looked like a total stranger to me, not familiar at all. Later I found out MB got to trim the cord and put on the baby’s first diaper. It didn’t seem like much time had passed before MB was back at my side, the nurses were slipping the baby inside his scrub shirt to lie against his skin, and I saw him for myself. One of the nurses took over camera duty at some point, and there are photos of MB trimming the cord, applying a tiny diaper to our tiny son’s behind, and of me beaming at the baby from beneath my oxygen mask. I’m not sure if it’s common practice at our hospital for a nurse to offer to take pictures or if she just did it out of kindness, but the photos she took — whoever she was — are among the ones I treasure most from that day. The nurses had to call MB away again briefly to suction mucus from the baby’s lungs, but shortly after that they were back by my side and the whole thing was over. The most surreal part was near the end, when I could hear one of the surgical assistants counting, and I knew they were counting clamps and scalpels to make sure nothing had been left behind.  The moved me to a gurney and then someone asked “Do you want to hold your baby?” I said, “Yes, please!” and they put him on my chest under my hospital gown and tucked a baby blanket across us both. I couldn’t really see him, but I could feel him there.

Physically, the worst moment of the whole thing was when they wheeled me out and down the corridor toward the recovery room. It felt like they were sprinting, and I got extremely nauseated. I don’t know if I said it out loud, but I recall promising the baby that I wouldn’t throw up on him. More yoga breathing, which saved me from puking, and then we were in the recovery room and done. The baby was checked again and swaddled and brought back to me and I got to nurse him, and it felt like the most right thing in the world. All of a sudden, I was his mother.

Despite the complete gutting of my original birth plan, I don’t feel any lingering resentment or deep sadness over the experience. Of course I’ll always wonder what I missed and be a bit disappointed, but under the circumstances it’s hard to be upset. The facts are that our baby couldn’t be delivered naturally, and I feel lucky to live in an era and a country where the medical staff was fully equipped to deliver him safely and competently. There were moments of intense nervousness and jitters, but I never had any moments of fear during my delivery. When I look back on my surgery, I remember feeling safe and trusting that I was in good hands.

Without exception, every nurse and tech who participated in our care was fantastic. I never felt that any of the doctors who saw us condescended to us, and no decisions were made about our son’s care without our input. I had trouble with my milk supply but even when his weight loss exceeded the generally-accepted 10% drop, the staff respected our request that he not be given a bottle. And the hospital’s team of lactation consultants were absolutely amazing. Once my supply problem became evident, they swept in and literally saved our breastfeeding relationship and continued to work with us at weekly weigh-ins until my son was declared a normal nurser at 10 weeks old. Our experience proves without a doubt that having a stellar hospital staff can make all the difference in the world. We were set up for a terribly disappointing birth after most of our hopes and plans were pushed aside, and yet it was an overwhelmingly positive and joyful experience.

After my initial breakdown, I faced the new reality of my birth plan and I embraced it as best I could. I didn’t waste much thought on the what-ifs and the why-nots once we arrived at the hospital. I let go of my disappointment and refused to carry a chip on my shoulder. I made the choice to make the best of the birth that awaited me. All the natural birth info I’d read emphasized surrender, how I needed to surrender to the pain of labor, to the ability of my body to carry me through. Ultimately, I think surrender was the key: surrendering to what needed to happen in order for my baby to be born safely. And once they placed him in my arms, I knew without a doubt that he was worth it all.




(bonus baby pics from Nico's aforementioned nine-month photo shoot)

Greetings from the ambatsador of good cheer

(It occurred to me that I needed to add a disclaimer stating that I did not take these particular Nico photos. I wish I could claim them, but they were taken as part of his nine month photo shoot by a friend's super-talented photographer dad.)

Raise it to the sky

I am not a confrontational person. I don't like to stir up trouble. That's a polite way of saying that I'm a chickenshit and am usually too afraid of reprisals to take a stand against assholes. When I was working at the deli in high school my stomach would knot up to the point of nausea any time a customer was a jerk to me, even when the customer was completely in the wrong. I never sic the cops on borderline-dangerous drivers or loud neighbors because I don't want to make a stink or to run the risk that they'll know I was the one to make the call. When someone is rude to me, I'm far more likely to turn red and fume silently and then spend the rest of the day thinking of snappy comebacks.

The one place I'm most likely to stick up for myself is in the car, since in the city you have to be a little aggressive if you don't want to get run down and pushed around. To leave the building where I work, employees have to go through a stoplight at the top of a curve and a hill, meaning that oncoming cars don't see us until we're right at the light. Because there are only a few of us at any one time and lots and lots of cars turning left onto the bypass, if you're not at the light when it turns green, the whole line of left-turners tend to assume they're going to get to go first. I usually just roll on out into the intersection, because I've found that if I hesitate, the turning cars just keep pushing through even though I have the right of way. I did this today, and let me clarify - I did not come close to hitting the other car. The driver did not have to slam on his brakes or swerve to avoid me. If he'd kept on coming, I would have stopped. I wasn't going to play chicken with him. But it was my turn, so I rolled out.

And he slowed, then stopped, and then he starting yelling. Now, I occasionally get the palms-up what the hell? from people at that intersection. I've given it to other people at that intersection on more than one occasion. Every now and then, someone will decide they should've been allowed to break the rules and go first and they'll honk. But this guy lost. his. shit. He was screaming at me and of course I couldn't hear him, but there are certain words that are really, really easy to lip-read. And he was shouting them with such vigor that I'm sure he was spraying his dash with spit. All because I had the audacity to decline his attempt to cut me off in traffic, basically. For once, I didn't hesitate, didn't worry about whether or not it would piss him off. I would've loved a moment to hold up a neatly-lettered sign inviting him to eat a bowl of dicks with a side of entitlement sauce, but there just wasn't time. So I calmly and serenely raised my middle finger high as I drove past him. Maybe I should've been the bigger person, or refrained from baiting a guy who clearly has anger issues, but I say screw it. He deserved it and it felt good to give it to him.

Five

For my eighth birthday, a friend gave me a fill-in-the-blank Ramona diary, and that was the beginning. Once I filled it up, I spent some allowance money on a proper blank diary, and then another, and another. I kept a diary until I graduated from college 15 years later, sometimes writing almost daily, sometimes going for weeks between entries. I wrote about major events and boring day-to-day occurrences, about crushes and enemies, vacations and the family pets. By the time I finished college, I was spending less time writing in my journals and more time thinking about how I wanted to be a Serious Fiction Writer. But then I got married. I couldn't find a full time job, so I got two part-time jobs instead which often added up to more than 40 hours a week. I spent a lot of time reading but barely any time writing, and I started to miss it terribly. Then our landlord decided to wire our apartment building for cable and roll it into the rent, and it became feasible to get a cable / internet package at home for the first time. And not too long after that, I discovered blogs. After a year or so of reading, I decided I wanted to start my own.

When I set up my own site, I definitely had delusions of grandeur. I never really believed that I'd hit the big time, but I think I always secretly hoped I would. Unfortunately I jumped on the blog bandwagon a little too late and I just wasn't very good at it back then. I was out of practice and my early entries were infrequent and stilted. But blogging has been good to me. I have made friends, read stories that lifted me up and others that made me cry. I've been educated, I've laughed until I had tears running down my face. I've celebrated births and mourned passings and discovered a new kind of community. The (neglected of late) Photo Friday project inspired me to keep taking pictures. It took a while, but I eventually found my voice again.

I don't really know where I expected to be five years after I posted a painfully un-ironic picture of my cat and called it my first official blog entry. On this blog's five-year anniversary, I find that I'm pretty content in my little space. I no longer check my stats twice a day (or even once a month) or feel terrible when a post doesn't get many (or any) comments. A big thanks to anyone who reads and anyone who does comment, because even though I write for myself, it helps to have an invisible audience as well. I'll never be famous or land a book deal or even be picked to host a Wii party (sob!), but I'll always be grateful for the friends I've met and that blogging reminded me how to be a writer.

Humanity

There's been a lot of ugliness going around the internet and the world lately, and it's really easy to get bogged down by genuinely nasty behavior as well as the general asshattery that one encounters on any given day in a city of any considerable size. But a few things have happened in the last couple of days that have restored a bit of my faith in the general goodness of people.

(1) I was driving home from work yesterday (after being unexpectedly offered an afternoon off) when the gangsta-looking guy in front of me slowed and then stopped his car in the middle of the block. Just as I was saying "Dude, what the hell?" I saw the squirrel he'd stopped to avoid squashing go sprinting out from in front of his tires.

(2) Last night at the grocery, I was pushing Nico in his stroller while MB had the cart. A little boy, maybe five years old, broke away from his parents and trotted over to us as we passed. He swung close and leaned down to put his face near Nico's. Before I had a chance to worry, he hollered "Have a nice, safe ride!" and ran off.

(3) (my favorite) A local thrift store moved to a new location and had their grand opening today. I stopped by with Nico after story time this morning and picked out a few shirts for him before noticing that the line was long and moving very, very slowly. I hadn't brought the stroller, so I was holding him with one increasingly achy arm and trying to keep the clothes hangers out of reach of his mouth with the other hand. As our time in line stretched on toward 15 minutes, Nico started to get understandably fussy. And then the old man in line behind us started mugging for him, turning his ball cap sideways, making goofy faces, doing a little shuffly dance, keeping it up until Nico's whining gave way to grins.

It's nice to be reminded that sometimes people are decent just for decency's sake.



Reading:  The Book Thief by Markus Zusak

Playing:  Sigh No More by Mumford & Sons

Containment fail

He may not be able to get out of the baby pen quite yet, but he's not too worried. He'll just take the pen with him.




Reading:  I Shall Wear Midnight by Terry Pratchett

Playing:  Dosage by Collective Soul

Rumors of my demise have been greatly exaggerated.

I'm still using a loaner laptop and still not getting much sleep. I don't have any exciting news, but please enjoy the only existing photo featuring my kid's adorable teeth. He's now cutting his top two eye teeth in advance of his actual two front teeth. He'll have fangs by Halloween, I think. My mom says it's her fault because she's been calling him Zombie Baby for weeks due to the way he lurches at her and tries to chew on her arm.


For further enjoyment, my baby book nerd:


And finally, my new favorite Nico photo:

Other places, other faces

Just some linkity business:

I'll be doing another review sometime soon in partnership with CSN Stores, source of end tables and elephants. I post my reviews over here if you're interested.

You have until midnight Thursday to leave a comment for a chance to win a copy of Alexa's fantastic book. Trust me, you want to read this one.

I'm also giving away three kids' books and a comedic advice book.



DISCLOSURE: I participate in the CSN Preferred Blogger program and receive a gift certificate to CSN stores in exchange for posting a selected linked keyword. The words and opinions in my reviews are always my own.

Happy people just don't shoot their husbands.

I didn't intend to leave that cardio class post at the top for an entire week. In fact, I'm not entirely sure where the past week went. Things have conspired to keep me away from the computer, certainly. To whit:

(1) My laptop screen completely gave out and is at BoMB's place awaiting a few replacement parts. He has kindly provided me with a loaner laptop, but I don't have access to any of my documents or photos.

(2) We're having a yard sale this coming Saturday, so I've been spending a lot of my free time pulling out the stuff that was left after last year's sale, sorting through Nico's clothes to pull out stuff that he'll never wear, and posting stuff on Craigslist to see if I can pre-sale it. I really, really hope we make some cash...I'm itching to buy Nico a lightweight stroller and a new toy or two.

(3) The kid's sleeping schedule has really gone to shit in the last month or so. Some nights he wakes up every 2 hours and won't go back down until I go up and nurse him / rock him back to sleep. It's not the most horrible thing ever, but I have trouble writing when I'm interrupted over and over, and my usual blogging process is to work on a post all evening, so right now I usually give up after the first few times I have to run upstairs.

Speaking of the kid, good Lord. First, autumn weather has finally arrived, and for some reason a baby in a long sleeved tee is just about the cutest thing I have ever seen. We had a really good morning. We went to story time at the library and then hung out in the children's room for a little while afterward. He's starting to go through a Stranger Danger phase, but he crawled over to chew on another kid's board books and didn't cry when the other kid's dad read him a book (and can I just say, How sweet is that?). On the way home we stopped at the runners' shop so I could get a new pair of trainers, and he politely sat in a cushy chair playing with a toy for half an hour while I was observed and fitted. He followed that up with his first cooked carrot slices at lunch and a very long nap on my lap during which I watched two episodes of Hellcats. (This may destroy any semblance of cred that I have, but that show is surprisingly good.)

In the afternoon, though, things didn't go so well. Despite his nap, he was really whiny. Then, I left him alone for five minutes so I could start a load of laundry. He was sequestered behind his baby fence, which we have set up in front of the entertainment center to block his access to the electronics. When I got back, he was sitting on the floor chewing on a DVD which he had removed from the DVD player on the other side of the fence. SEND REINFORCEMENTS. Not too long after that, he was playing with his toy school bus and accidentally made it pop a wheelie. Right into his face. And then, THEN. He was sitting on a blankie that he wanted to chew on, so instead of moving off of it, he yanked on it as hard as he could. So hard, in fact, that he pitched himself onto his head. Babies: full of adorable, epic fail.


To end this disjointed post, I went back to cardio bootcamp tonight, and it was actually pretty awesome. It was hard, but I did not at any point feel like I was going to vomit or die, so I think that's progress. I think it helped that we only had to do box jumps for a one-minute interval instead of for the whole first half. I just might be able to hack this gym thing after all.




Reading:  The Tower, the Zoo, and the Tortoise by Julia Stuart

Playing:  Sigh No More by Mumford & Sons


PS The title of this post actually has nothing to do with MB. It popped into my head on the way back from the gym: "Exercise gives you endorphins. Endorphins make you happy. Happy people just don't shoot their husbands! They just don't!" Name that film!

Cardi-ow

I'm not a diet kind of girl. I never have been, probably never will be. I've always had the mentality that I'd rather be fat and happy than thin but miserable because I'm denied all the things I like to eat. Lately, however, it's occurred to me that I could probably afford to be a little less happy in order to be a little less fat and that the baby I had eight (!!) months ago is probably no longer a believable scapegoat for the state of my ass. I've been going to weekly yoga classes for just over two years, but being yoga-fit and hauling-a-22-pound-kid-around fit aren't the same as being actually fit, apparently, so I decided to try the cardio kickboxing class that is held right before yoga class in the same room at the gym. I went to that twice, and while it was hard, it was manageable. Each time, right when I got to the point where I started thinking I needed to quit before I died, the teacher would announce it was time to start cooling down. Hallelujah.

Cardio kickboxing is only on Thursdays, however; and during the weeks that I work on Thursdays I don't like to leave Nico in the evenings, too. There's a "cardio bootcamp" class on Monday nights, though, and I'm always off work on Mondays. Now at this point you're probably thinking something like Nothing good can come of something called "bootcamp." in which case you're smarter than I am, congratulations. Not being smart, I thought How much worse can it be? and went to find out. First off, I arrive to find that all four of the other girls in the class are already super fit and thin. I think I have more body fat on one thigh than any of these girls had on her entire body (so when you factor in the other thigh and both boobs, I think I pretty much have the whole class covered). They were nice girls, so even though I sort of wanted to hate them for being tiny and fit, I just really couldn't. And the great thing about going to gym classes with Serious Gym People is that they're so focused on Being Serious that they never look at the chubby chick in the back who's just trying not to barf up her spleen.

We set up our little aerobic step dealies and chairs and then we did some marching and some kicking and some jumping jacks, and it was great! I was breathing hard and sweating, but totally keeping up and didn't even feel like barfing a little! Bring it, bootcamp! "Okay," the teacher said, "everyone warmed up?" And really at this point I'm sure my face looked like something out of Hyperbole and a Half...probably this one. And she was just getting warmed up, because after the hard-but-not-awful jumping and marching and kicking, we did intervals of box jumps plus swing kicks over the back of the chair plus pushups plus mountain climbers. Three times we did this. Here's a box jump. (Except that video makes me laugh because I started with three little riser squares under my step instead of this guy's eleven and that was about three too many.) And here's mountain climbers. What the hell, y'all. What the hell? This shit should come with medical releases and warning labels.

By the end of this ridiculousness, I was seriously regretting my decision to get up off the couch. Exertion is not pretty on me. I get red in the face and sweat buckets and dude, it's just gross. After we put away our steps and chairs and the other girls all scattered to go help the teacher find stuff, I checked the time on my phone and was utterly dismayed to find that the class was only half over. Luckily, the second half wasn't nearly as terrible. We did circuits of crazy shit like squat lunges with a weight bar on our shoulders and agility ladder exercises and suicides and it was pretty bad, but at that point I was just happy we weren't doing box jumps.

I guess I should be proud that I made it through without quitting, even though I was barely limping along by the end. Today, though, I'm sore in places a lady should not discuss on the internet, and I suspect tomorrow I'll feel even worse. But I have a feeling cardio class is kind of like a bad boyfriend. It makes you feel like crap, but you end up going back for more even though all your friends think you're crazy.

Over there, on the right

If you haven't listened to the playlist for this month, you should. I really, especially love the bluegrassed-out version of Mumford & Sons' "Roll Away Your Stone," a song that snuck up on me and became my favorite while I was focusing on other tracks on the (great) album.


Reading:  Love and Other Impossible Pursuits by Ayelet Waldman

Playing:  Sigh No More by Mumford & Sons (of course)

Photo Friday

View the entire Photo Friday collection on Flickr.

Porcelain

There are things I hope he'll remember, that I need him to remember: the bedtime stories, the kisses and hugs, the way I know how to make him laugh, getting up in the night for feedings and snuggling, taking him to story hour and swimming lessons. And then there are the things he'll probably never know about until he has his own child, and maybe not even then. He won't remember me standing at the sink after he's finally fallen asleep, washing out his bottles and bowls instead of watching television. He's not going to look back fondly on all the times I swept the floor before putting him down to play on it, or all the umpteen tiny shirts and pairs of jeans I folded in the dusty basement laundry room. He'll never make me a Mother's Day card in remembrance of the literal hours I spent tethered to the breastpump.

He might never understand the feeling of finally settling down in bed only to hear the bleating cries of your baby on the other side of the wall, waking for the third or fifth time in one night, and how you know in a past life you would've lost your shit at that moment, but in this one, you drag yourself out of bed, maybe a little teary eyed but dredging up some last scraps of patience you didn't realize you possessed. Or how hard it is to stay calm when your kid is screaming in your ear and yanking his limbs out of his clothes as quickly as you get them in, flinging his shirt one way and fishflopping his head the other. The nights when he's overtired and nursing him is like withstanding a beating, pummeled by tiny fists and feet, clawed by ever-sharp little fingernails.

I hope he someday realizes that you can think your heart is full and then your baby smiles and you realize you were wrong. I hope he sees the way the tiny transcendent moments pile up in the balance, outweighing the times when you aren't quick enough to prevent the fall, aren't patient enough, find yourself wishing you had just a minute alone, just a minute. That moment, the one you can't quite neatly define, when you watch your partner watching your child and you think This is a family. The ebb and flow of his need for you and his growing independence. How the soft curl of his small body against yours in the dark feels like a blessing. How you never realized how much you needed him until you saw how much he needed you. He may never remember, but I'll never forget.

It's Book Blogger Appreciation Week!

For BBAW 2010 I'm hoping to post something every day on my book blog. This is a cross-post from over there:

Today is the kickoff of Book Blogger Appreciation Week 2010. I hope to have a new post up each day (and some will include giveaways) to celebrate. The official theme for Monday is First Treasure, but instead of writing about the first book blog I discovered, I'm going to write about a blogger's first book.

I began reading Alexa Stevenson's blog Flotsam in late 2007, just before her son Ames died and the tense wait for her daughter Simone's early birth began. Even though I've been following the story of Alexa and Simone -- now a healthy two year old -- since then, Alexa's memoir is so much more than a rehashing of things she'd already written. Half Baked:  the story of my nerves, my newborn, and how we both learned to breathe is an enveloping page-turner of a book, the kind that actually merits the statement "I couldn't put it down." Even though I knew the beginning and the end of the story, I found myself wrapped tightly in the weaving of the tale.

After several miscarriages and a struggle with infertility, Alexa and her husband conceived twins via IVF. She found herself uniquely qualified for the heightened worry of pregnancy after a lifetime of anxiety and an adulthood spent developing the ability to over-research anything. But as the back-cover writeup admits, Alexa had spent most of her life preparing for the wrong disasters. At 22 weeks and 2 days, after having been told the sexes of her babies and that they looked "ideal," Alexa received the devastating news that Ames had died. For three more weeks, the goal is to keep Simone inside and healthy as long as possible. Then Simone is born, and Alexa is plunged into a motherhood she never expected.

She finds that the personality quirks that once left her nervous and paralyzed have left her uniquely equipped for the numbers and stats that dominate NICU life. The ups and downs of Simone's long hospital stay are relayed with stark honesty and surprising humor. One doesn't usually expect to laugh out loud while reading a story of a very early baby, but Alexa has written that kind of book. The good and the bad, the transcendent and the mundane, the heartbreaking and the unexpectedly funny, Alexa lays it all out and turns it into a fantastic and immensely enjoyable read.


Because she's awesome, Alexa is going to send one commenter a signed copy of Half Baked. For a chance to win, leave a comment on this post (or on the book blog copy) before midnight CST on Sunday, September 19 Thursday, September 30. In the spirit of BBAW, please include a link to one of your favorite blogs so I can discover some new great sites! Residents of the US & Canada only, please.

Photo Friday

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I wrote about our cloth diaper experience here.

Where the magic happens

I'm participating in a neat one-day meme about how bloggers work:

Most of us are sitting for a large chunk of the day, whether at home or at an office somewhere. We are doing freelance, working on our blogs, tweeting, or doing whatever we do at the computer, but we all have our method. If you are blogging from your lanai on a private island, I don’t want to hear about it. Okay, I do. Kind of.

I’m always wondering what people are doing and where they are when they’re blogging or tweeting, in a non-perverted way, of course. I’m frequently in my bed with a laptop, but I’m mostly working at my desk with a steady steam of coffee and chewy Spree. The point is, we are all doing our thing somewhere in our own special way.

Write a post that sets the scene and shows how you do it. You might answer some of these questions:

• Where is your desk and what does your set-up look like? Inspiration board or dart board with someone’s face?
  
• What is your view? A view of the city, or a window to exotic happenings in suburbia?
  
• Is it quiet or are you listening to music, news or self-help audio books?
  
• What are you drinking, eating and wearing (details please)?
  
• Is your cat in your lap, your dog under the desk, or your baby on your boob?
  
• How do you keep from getting distracted? I don’t. It’s a problem.
  
• If you have kids, how do you get them to let you blog in peace? Oh, the controversy.
  
• With all that sitting, how do you keep from going numb from the waist down?
  
• And anything else that is part of the “process.”

We want pictures! Show us your view, your neighbor, the unfolded laundry piling up around you, or the back of your irritating co-worker’s head. And the pets! Pets photos are cute.

I suspect the meme applies more to people who blog for a living or at least get paid to blog, but I thought it would be fun to play along anyway. I work full time outside the home but I never, ever blog at work since my blog is anonymous. Sometimes I'll log in to fix a typo that's driving me nuts and I have signed on to post a photo maybe three times in three years. I do look at my blog at work more often than I should, usually to check for comments, ogle pictures of my kid, or listen to my sidebar playlist. I have to be quick on the draw, though, since I share an office with my boss and I don't want him catching sight of my site.

I blog at home, at night, almost always from my spot on the couch. By the time I sit down with the computer, I'm usually wearing shorts or comfy pants, or maybe even pajamas. Of course, I wear jeans to work every day, so sometimes I'm still wearing those. Usually I'm eating dinner or a snack while I do internetty things, and 9 times out of 10 I have a glass of milk on the table next to me. Here's my spot on our somewhat ugly (but mostly comfortable) hand-me-down couch:


The towel is covering the big spot where the upholstery has worn completely through to the stuffing. We should probably just buy a new couch, but with an almost-toddler in the house, it seems like a waste of money. I figure we'll wait until Nico (or his future sibling) is past couch-ruining age or the couch literally falls apart, whichever comes first.

My laptop lives on the end table beside my seat, since it only has about seven minutes of battery life when it's not plugged in:


I love my laptop, but I have a creeping suspicion it's not long for this world. Can you see the streak of discoloration going right down the middle of the screen? I usually sit on the couch with the recliner kicked out, laptop on my lap. If Nico is up, I have to be very vigilant since he likes to find and chew on cords. Often I watch TV while I putter around online:


If I look to the left of the TV, I've got a view of our very small foyer and the doorway into the kitchen:


Right now the view is reminding me that I keep forgetting to take Nico's pool float up to his closet before he goes to bed.

There's usually a steady stream of background noise, whether it's the TV or a conversation with my husband or music on my computer. While Nico is awake, the fence in the photo gets extended across the middle of the living room from the loveseat side to the couch side to create a play area for him where I can see and reach him while I'm working. He's usually pretty good about playing with his toys and cruising along the fence for an hour or so between cereal time and bedtime, but like I said, the child likes cords. He's only seven months old, so there isn't really any way to keep him from disturbing me if he's determined to do so. It usually takes several hours from the time I start a post until the point where I'm ready to hit publish, because of all the little interruptions. To be fair, though, Nico's probably only responsible for half of those. I'm a multitasker by nature, so I'm always up and down dozens of times, getting a drink or a snack, shuffling the laundry, tending to Nico, letting the dog in or out. The dog spends most of my blogging time curled up on the loveseat across the room, except when he decides to wedge himself between MB and me on the couch. Which was especially fun during his recent week of wearing a giant plastic cone on his neck.


It's definitely not a perfect process, and sometimes I'm thisclose to finishing a post when Nico wakes up for his late feeding and the whole thing ends up abandoned until the next night. All in all, though, I think it works for me.


Okay, your turn! I want to be nosy and see pics of everyone else's blogging spaces.

Kiddo

Best day ever!

No matter how crappy my day has been, no matter how bad traffic gets, my mood can be salvaged by one simple thing. If I see a car driving down the road with a dog hanging its head out the window, my happiness is instantly restored and I have to smile, I can't help it.

Today I wasn't even having a bad day and traffic was nonexistent, so seeing a dog hanging its head out the window would've been a total bonus. But that's not what I saw. What I saw was way better:



And then BoMB and his girlfriend came over and cooked Thai food and we played two rounds of Blokus. I win today!


Reading:  Bloodroot by Amy Greene

Playing:  The Crane Wife by the Decemberists

Photo Friday

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Baby, baby

In a box of dolls somewhere, there is a redheaded boy Cabbage Patch Kid that belonged to my sister. He was never her favorite -- that honor was reserved for Birthday Baby, the bald Cabbage Patch she received for her second birthday -- and so at some point he ended up packed up with my remaining dolls when I got ready to leave for college. I remembered the redheaded doll a few weeks ago and thought he'd be perfect for Nico. My sister gave the okay to hand him down, so I made a note to track him down as soon as I had a chance. I had convinced myself that the box of dolls had made its way into our attic, and climbed up there this evening to find it after Nico babbled happily at a photo of a baby in one of his books and it reminded me of the baby doll I'd meant to find for him. I didn't see the box (and am now hoping like hell that it didn't get misplaced in the course of several purges and moves since I last saw it), but I did rediscover a box of sentimental childhood stuff that I stuck up there when I was cleaning up the house pre-Nico.

And in that box was what must be my oldest surviving doll. It's a typical genderless baby doll but used to be dressed as a boy, blond and blue-eyed, made of soft rubber with fully rotating arm and leg joints so that he can be moved into many different poses, somehow more realistically floppy than I remember. He was supposed to be a drink and wet type of doll, but there was always something amiss with his works, and the water that went into his tiny pursed mouth never made it into his little cloth diaper. I loved him anyway. My mom bought him for me as a big sister gift. Memory is a faulty thing, especially when we're talking about a memory from 23 years ago. My instinct is to say he was my gift for when my sister came home, and that I remember Mom giving me the doll outside my preschool. But my sister was born in October of 1986 and didn't get placed for adoption until December, and I was in Kindergarten by then. It's a strange feeling when your personal mythology has holes in it, for certain.

Wherever it happened, whichever year, I have a very fuzzy but specific memory of Mom picking me up from school in her pale green Impala and pulling the doll out of the trunk, still in his big box with the crackly cellophane window. Was that this doll? It almost had to be. I rarely got "just because" gifts, and never anything so luxurious as a brand new baby doll, so that's probably why I remember it. I'm pretty sure he was my favorite. His white-blond hair used to lie straight and smooth against his scalp, but when my sister was a toddler, she latched onto this doll and dragged him around by his hair every day while I was at school. At some point, she also drew all over him with a red Sharpie, and there are still a few marks left. When I got him, I named him after my best friend at school, a boy. In a strange coincidence, that boy's name was the same as MB's middle name, which is also Nico's middle name.

After hesitating for only a moment, I pulled the doll out of the box in the attic and carried him down to Nico's room. Possibly he won't survive Nico's childhood, but he survived me and my sister, and leaving him in a dusty tub of old diaries and mementos seemed a bit of a waste. After a hasty baby-wipe bath, divested of the dusty baby shirt I dressed him in when I was in high school and felt bad about his long-lost original outfit, I set him on Nico's bookshelf. Nico gave the little naked baby a few glances and then moved on to something else, but it still felt right to pass the doll that welcomed my sister home on to my own child. Maybe he'll be Nico's favorite, too.

Nico & VBG's Excellent Adventures

Are we still saying staycation, or is that over? Either way, I had one. My mom had minor surgery and needed a break from Nico-sitting. I needed a break after my summer of somewhat unfun work stuff, so I took two weeks off to chill with the little guy while Mom recovered. It was fabulous to have so much time with him, often doing nothing but keeping each other company. He's at a great age (although I think so far, I've felt that way about all of his stages), independent enough to play alone with his toys for short periods but still interested in cuddling. I spend a lot of time looking at him these days, trying to memorize the way he is now, his eyes a hard-to-describe shade somewhere between blue and gray; his hair the exact rich burnished copper of a brand new penny, a hue impossible to capture in photographs; his lone tooth a barely-visible scallopy ridge, only seen in the widest of grins.

Between crawling and pulling up on every vertical surface he can reach, the time has come when he's pretty much into everything at every turn and any lapse in parental attention is an opportunity for mischief. One day I dozed off in the rocking chair in his room while he was playing with his toys on the floor, only to be awakened to the sound of him stripping the dust jacket violently from one of his nice hardback books. My book nerd heart in my throat, I dove to the rescue and subsequently removed all his non-board books to a high shelf for safekeeping. We are undeniably at the point where babyproofing has become a mandate rather than a good idea, no door left ajar, no laptop cord left untethered. I turned to my good friend Craigslist and obtained a plastic superyard for nearly half price that we can zig-zag across the living room to block off the entertainment center and keep dog and baby separate. It's certainly not the stuff of artfully-lit lifestyle-blog photos, but it does a damn fine job of shielding our stuff and our son from inevitable misfortune. And as an unforeseen bonus, my floors have never been cleaner, swept and Swiffered clear of clumps of dog hair and potential debris every day.


I booked a quite a few lunch dates during my time off and Nico was a champ about it, politely sitting in high chairs at various restaurants, eating bowls of oatmeal and fruit that I packed for him. Other than lunch dates -- which, let's be honest, are way more exciting for me than for him -- I wanted to take Nico on a few special outings during my second week off. Our swimming date with Julia and her son got canceled due to a cold that we didn't want to risk catching, but there was other fun to be had. On Wednesday, we went to the zoo with my dad. I tried to keep my expectations low since Nico doesn't even know any animals by name yet, but it actually went better than I'd hoped. Nico didn't really notice the animals in their enclosures until they moved, but luckily several of the large-ish denizens were extremely cooperative. He looked at howler monkeys, a tapir, and wolves. And while we couldn't get him to look at a gigantic giraffe that was right there in front of us, adorably stretching its neck in a vain attempt to eat some leaves that were too high even for it to graze upon, he found the thick cable fence in front of the giraffe's enclosure absolutely fascinating. Nico made it through the Amazon exhibit, part of the African exhibit, and about half of the children's forest before falling asleep and napping in his stroller for an hour while Dad and I checked out the rest of the zoo.



Zoo is serious business.
Well, maybe not that serious.



Our prize packet for completing the Summer Reading Program included a coupon for a free adult admission with paid adult admission to the children's museum. We used it on Friday to go for a visit and took my sister along. Nico did even better at the museum than he had at the zoo. We spent nearly two hours there, and he only fussed for a few minutes at the end when I put him back in his stroller to leave.


The museum is ridiculously cool, and I'm looking forward to taking him again. I think my sister had as much fun as Nico, especially when she used the stop motion camera exhibit to make a very detailed short film featuring Gumby being attacked and dragged off by an Allosaurus ("Gumby always creeped me out when I was a kid," she said by way of explanation.) We had the dinosaurs spell out hello to Nico using alphabet blocks, too, and I briefly considered making them spell out "Curse your sudden but inevitable betrayal," but by that point Nico was getting restless in his stroller, so we moved on to the baby room, where he spent some time boosting his immune system.


We ended our trip in the splash room, which was definitely his favorite exhibit of all:






All in all, not a bad way to wrap up a stay-home vacation.


Reading:  Half Baked by Alexa Stevenson

Playing:  Dosage by Collective Soul

Photo Friday

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The boy who lives on

A year ago today, my friend Eliza became a mother. Her son Gabriel was born and she held him in her arms. But Gabriel was born too soon. Due the same week -- maybe even the same day -- as Nico, he was born at only 20 weeks, too little, too early. There was no hope for a NICU miracle or a last-minute happy ending. There was a brief time to hold him and talk to him and tell him he was loved, and then he was gone.

That night, I lay in bed, 900 miles away, curled around the 20-week-old baby in my own belly, and I sobbed. For Eliza, for Gabriel, for the fragility of tiny lives. In the days and weeks after his birth and death, I was often at a loss. How could I offer comfort when I was a walking reminder of exactly what she had lost? How could I hope to console her in an embrace with only one pregnant belly between us instead of two? I hope that I was able to offer her words of love and encouragement. I hope I did not fail as a friend in those terrible early weeks and months.

For her part, she has been a wonderful friend to me. When she had every right and reason to turn her face away, she instead celebrated my son's birth. When it would've been easy for the seed of bitterness to take root, she instead has expressed joy, again and again, for me and my boy.

After Gabriel's birth, whenever I thought of Eliza, I wished her peace. I didn't know yet about the fraught nature of the word, about the possible pain of it. I do still think of peace and hope for her, but more often when I think of her I think about grace. The grace she has shown me, the grace that carries her through even the darkest of days. I am not a religious person and this is neither the time nor the place for me to discuss God. But I think I have come to believe in grace.

I hope it's not creepy or conceited to say that sometimes I feel Gabe's presence. Sometimes I feel like I can almost see him out of the corner of my eye, playing and growing alongside Nico, as if I could catch a glimpse of him if I just turned quickly enough. He is in my heart, always. Even if something happens and someday Eliza and I drift apart, I will never forget him. He will always be both a tiny, perfect, fragile baby and a mysterious almost-there boy, growing and changing with the months and years.

Eliza has said before that sometimes just knowing people are thinking of Gabe is helpful, that knowing he is on someone else's mind is proof of life, evidence that it wasn't some surreal and awful dream, an acknowledgment that she is a mother, she had a son. I know most of you don't know her, but if you have a moment and could summon the courage to leave a comment on her blog today, I'm sure it would help. Even if all you say is "I thought of Gabriel today." If that's too much, feels too intrusive, then all I ask is this:  find a quiet moment today and say his name, just once. A shout or a whisper, it doesn't matter, just say Gabriel.

Today I do not wear black for mourning. Instead I wear green, the color of Gabriel's birthstone, the color of new growth, of life and hope. Today I do not sit in silence. Instead, I speak his name, aloud and on this page. Gabriel. Gabriel Ross. You lived. You live on. You are loved. We remember you, we celebrate you, we miss you.

Happy birthday, Gabriel.

Twinkle toes

Poor Indy, I barely write about him these days. I had hoped his standard of living wouldn't suffer too much after we brought the baby home, but some demotion was inevitable. I truly had the best intentions to continue with his daily walks after Nico was born, but then I had a C-section, and then the winter hung on and hung on, and then I started working 7 AM to 5 PM, and then we had a brutal sweltering summer. Things just haven't worked out in our favor. With luck, my sister will soon start coming over a few days a week to walk him, and surely the weather has to break soon. (right?)

There aren't really any cutesy baby and dog stories or photos to share yet, either. Indy did better with Nico when he was tiny. The bigger and louder he got, the more anxious Indy got, to the point where he would shake when Nico cried. And then Nico started army crawling and Indy nearly lost his shit. He was scared to death, and I suppose the baby did have this freaky lurchy inexorable zombie thing going on for a while. We've been vigilant about never leaving them together and about never letting the baby down to play on the floor without removing Indy from the area or at least sequestering him via baby gate or other form of blockade.

For his part, Indy does seem to be relaxing. He no longer shakes when the baby cries, though he does serve as a mobile baby monitor. If Nico starts to fuss while I'm in the shower at night, Indy materializes in the bathroom, nose inches from the shower door as he stares at me, willing me to get out and make the kid shut up. He'll stay even after MB has fetched Nico from his crib. Once I get out of the shower, he's inches from my knee the whole time I'm toweling off and brushing my teeth, unless I shoo him out of the room until I'm done. When we play with Nico in his bedroom, Indy will hang out in the hallway on the other side of the gate, sighing mournfully every now and then to remind us he's out there. We're taking it slow, giving them space, and hopefully in the long run it will pay off. Only time will tell.

In the meantime, poor ol' Indy has one more unpleasant surprise in store. Tomorrow, we're taking him to the vet to have his dewclaws removed. He was born with double dewclaws on his hind feet, which everyone tells us is extremely rare. The dogs that are born with dewclaws at all usually have them snipped when they're three days old, but Indy still had his when we adopted him around four months of age. At the time, the rescue group told us the shelter vet had told them it was best just to leave them alone, so that has been our method as well. But the older he gets, the less tolerant Indy is of having the dewclaws trimmed, and the longer they get, the more danger there is of them getting caught in his collar when he scratches. He's already had one incident where the outer dewclaw nail got caught in his collar while we were at the pet store with him, and we couldn't free him before the nail was broken. It's finally come to the point where he'll probably need tranquilizers each time we need to trim his dewclaws and we worry that he'll get hurt every time he goes over to play with my parents' dogs.

We talked to the vet, and we decided that having the toes removed entirely is what's best for Indy in the long run. I won't lie, though, I'm pretty bummed about it. I've always loved his extra toes. I know he'll still be special without them, but I do feel bad, like we're taking away his winged sandals or something. Ridiculous, yeah, but I never claimed to be sensible when it comes to the dog.

Dude, don't look so crushed!
Much better, thank you.

Full speed ahead

Nico ushered in seven months with style. From Friday the 6th until Monday the 9th, he mastered sitting up from just about any starting position, figured out proper hands-and-knees crawling, and started pulling up to his knees in his crib and at the baby gate.





I put him to bed Wednesday night, and instead of sleeping he figured out how to pull all the way up to his feet. The next day, my dad came over and helped me move Nico's mattress all the way down to the lowest setting. While we had it taken apart, it also made good sense to go ahead and move the crib into Nico's nursery. I'd been planning to move him during the last two weeks of August, but I guess I expected to have a few days to prepare myself first. I suppose it sounds silly, but I was kind of sad to have him move out. It was for the best, though, because he's been practicing standing up every chance he gets.



On Thursday at our nursing group meeting, he weighed in at 22 pounds, 1.2 ounces, and is officially too big for his baby carseat. On Saturday, he was chewing on my finger and I felt the corner of his first tooth poking out of his gum.

I have a friend who rather aptly pointed out that anything babies do is remarkable, considering they basically start out as barnacles. And it's true, really. All of this new stuff he's doing, he figured it out on his own. Sure, we give him the chance to practice and encourage him along the way, but he just merrily barrels along, ticking off milestones and getting into new kinds of mischief. A year ago we were about to find out that we were expecting a boy, and now he's crawling and babbling and eating oatmeal and learning to stand on his own two feet. It's a crazy world, man. Just crazy.

Things I never thought I'd say, number 1

"If you put that curtain in the poop, you'll be in big trouble."