Another Passover survived. I got through all of the cooking I had planned, and I approximated the quantities better than normal. (I usually make way too much food, and we eat leftovers all week and I still end up throwing out leftover food. This year, we had enough leftovers to last almost but not quite the entire week, none was thrown out, and we had non-leftovers for a few meals. Woo hoo!) The house was presentable for guests without an unreasonable amount of stashing-junk-in-corners-where-no-one-will-notice. LL was a bit cautious around all the visitors for the first, oh, 30 minutes or so, and then he was like, "Oh, grandparents are FUN! They'll play with me all the time!" LL even stayed awake for both Seders, tried small bites of a few new foods, and clapped along with the songs. A few things that we learned during Passover:
1. LL likes wine. A lot. He has had wine before -- he had some at his bris, and he sucked a few drops off my finger at last year's Seders. This year, at the beginning of the Seder, when everyone drinks the first of four ritual cups of wine, I held up my wine glass to his lips so that he could have a sip as part of the service. He then spent the entire rest of the Seder, and several days afterward, pointing eagerly at wine bottles and plaintively asking, "More? More? More!?!" At first, I thought it was just that he liked the sweet kosher wine, so I switched him to a dry pinot noir for the second sip. Nope, he liked it just as much. I finally had a conversation with him about how some foods and drinks are only eaten on special occasions, so there would be no more wine until next Passover, which actually satisfied him and he hasn't brought it up since. Still... alcoholic toddler.
2. LL loves matzah, too. He eagerly ate it for the first several days before growing sick of it. But honestly, every Jew I know grows sick of it halfway through Passover, so that was expected.
3. I couldn't get LL to try any brisket or gefilte fish or matzah balls, but he did eat a little bit of charoset. And S fed him a little horseradish during the Seder, which I feared would make LL never take food from us ever again, but he actually liked it and asked for a second taste. He also ate beet borscht, which is very yummy but also very very messy. If anybody has advice on getting out beet stains, I'd love to hear it, because so far nothing has worked.
4. LL hates when other people try to sleep in his presence. My father and my uncle were both fairly exhausted from traveling, and kept dozing off on the couch while LL played with my mom and my grandfather. Whenever LL would notice that one of them had fallen asleep, he would walk over and tap them on the leg and insistently hand them toys until they opened their eyes. Then he would clap. Good to know that it's not just me and S who aren't allowed to sleep, ever.
5. We don't know where he picked it up (must be daycare) but LL is suddenly into playing with action figures. My grandfather brought him a little toy dinosaur, and LL immediately "walked" the dinosaur over different surfaces while making little "walking" noises, then paused to make the dinosaur ROAR several times before continuing on his way. It was very very cute. Also, "roar!" is now one of LL's favorite words. Also, "wow!" They sound a lot alike.
6. I work too much around LL. There was one day last week when I had no childcare but needed to pick something up at my office, so I took LL with me. He immediately asked to sit in my office chair, in front of a keyboard, mouse, and large monitor that weren't attached to anything. (Normally they're hooked to a laptop, but the laptop was at home.) I let him touch whatever he wanted, since nothing was hooked up. He spent half an hour (!) typing very purposefully at the keyboard, moving the mouse, scrutinizing the test pattern on the monitor, picking up a pen to jot down notes on a notepad, then returning to his typing. It was all very serious and deliberate, and he was very obviously emulating me. Yikes.
All the out of town visitors have returned home now, so it's back to work. I have no other major distractions between now and graduation, so it's just one continuous uninterrupted climb until my thesis is done. Graduation is in a little over two months, but after talking with AdvisorA and AdvisorB, it is becoming increasingly clear that there is no way I will be able to schedule my defense to occur before graduation. (The delay is because of scheduling issues, not research issues. Getting five professors in the same room for four hours is hard under normal conditions, but when one of the five lives three time zones away and refuses to be at all flexible about her travel schedule... it's a lot harder. Thanks again for all your "help," AdvisorA.) So, I will probably "walk through" my commencement even though I haven't turned in my dissertation, then I will defend later that month, and take part of the summer to finish writing and revising.
As for my plan to finish three thesis chapters by Passover? Derailed a bit. I was almost there, and then I found out from AdvisorB that he'd really prefer to see different chapters than the ones I was working on (specifically, he won't look at anything else until he sees a full draft of the one chapter that I hadn't even started yet) so I had to switch tracks. I have lots of chapters that are part-way done, notably the three that I had been working on and the one that AdvisorB wants, but none that are finished. Ah well, at least it's still progress.
Showing posts with label holidays. Show all posts
Showing posts with label holidays. Show all posts
Tuesday, April 6, 2010
Tuesday, March 23, 2010
Uh Oh!
I'm falling back on bulleted lists again, because argh! I'm really busy again.
- LL had his 18-month appointment. He is holding steady around the 30th percentile for height and weight, and above the 80th percentile for head size. He almost always wears baggy shirts because the shirts that actually fit his arms and torso properly will not slip over his gigantic head.
- Inspired by K, I made a list of LL's spoken words: mama, daddy, all done, this, up, down, bear, ball, cheese, keys, no, yes (actually, he says "da", which is "yes" in Russian; thank you Natasha), uh oh, more ("moo"), moo ("mmmm", cow sound; is it weird that he says "moo" for "more" but refuses to pronounce it like "moo" for an actual cow?), arf (dog sound), hsss (snake sound), vroom (car sound), puff (rice puffs), spoon. There is some debate about whether to also include "wee!" which is what he squeals when he's doing something fun, like going down a slide. Also, he only said spoon for one day, and has refused to say it again since, so that one is kind of iffy. The rest are all heard almost every day. You gotta love a kid that manages to fit that entire set of words into conversation every single day.
- I'm told that most toddlers learn "no" long before they learn "yes", so we're rather grateful that the Russian "da" is so easy for him to say. It makes him quite agreeable, and he always says it with a little smile. Natasha asks him yes-no questions all day long because she is so charmed that he answers in Russian. And this morning, he started saying "nyet" instead of no, which somehow makes me want to cast him in a 1980s James Bond film.
- "Uh oh" is a very recent addition. LL learned to say it, and a few days later he said it to a police officer who was writing S a traffic ticket. ("What's the problem, officer?" "I'm sorry, sir, but I pulled you over for speeding." (loudly from the back seat) "UH OH!") Sadly, the officer was not as charmed by LL's sense of humor as I was, and he still gave S the ticket.
- All of the kids I know who are around LL's age seem to have several times the vocabulary that he does. Tons more words, says their own name and the names of other kids, stuff like that. LL's exposure to three different languages (English, Russian, and Spanish) on a regular basis is probably slowing him down a bit, as is his early adoption of the word "this", which seemed to convince him that he didn't need to know any more nouns. Still, I was concerned enough that I asked Dr. K about it. She says that she only gets concerned at this age if a kid has fewer than 10 words or fails the M-CHAT (test for early autism). So we're fine.
- I did answer one question "wrong" on the M-CHAT, but I'm convinced that it's just a bad question. "Does your child sometimes stare at nothing or wander with no purpose?" I said "yes" because although he doesn't stare at nothing, he does wander with no purpose, all the time. So do most kids I know. Dr. K informed me that there is a difference between "wandering with no purpose" and "wandering with a specific purpose that only LL understands." She had no answer for me, though, on how I was supposed to distinguish those things. Apparently the question is meant to identify disengagement with the world, and not whether your child has the heart of an explorer but doesn't always submit a flight plan with his parents.
- Ever since we returned from our trip, LL keeps getting his snow pants out of the closet, putting them in his sled, filling the sled with stuffed animals (usually Winnie the Pooh), and dragging the sled around the house. And now I just feel bad that he's not around snow more often.
- LL has also learned how to sweep. Which is odd, because I rarely sweep, so I'm not sure who taught him this behavior. He gets out the broom, runs it over the floor of the kitchen, gets a dust pan, bangs the dust pan on the floor several times, then puts both the broom and the dust pan back where they belong. Carefully putting them back is the part that kills me.
- My parents, uncle, and grandfather are arriving for Passover in less than a week. Despite LL's attempts to clean the kitchen, our house is a gigantic mess, and I'm a bit panicked about whipping it into shape before they get here. I finally made the seder menu this weekend, did my first round of grocery shopping, and roasted two briskets to freeze until next week. The rest of the cooking will happen next weekend. I'm excited about the menu -- there's an apricot chicken recipe that I only make for Passover, and I didn't make it for the past two years (first because I was pregnant and had a huge aversion to chicken, and last year because the recipe is rather involved and messy and I didn't want to try it with a newborn in my arms). I love this recipe, and I'm excited to have it again.
- Our Passover plans are a bit more scaled back than recent years, mostly because S's family decided not to come this year. First seder will have just 7 people, and second seder currently stands at 22. (For comparison, last year it was 10 and 28; I don't remember the last time second seder fell below 24 people.) For any Jewish readers who are curious about why second seder is bigger: it's a tradition that I accidentally started back in college when I hated the seders run by my campus Hillel and invited three friends to do second seder in my dorm room instead. That first year, I stole most of the seder foods from the cafeteria earlier in the day, and had to take two different forms of public transportation to get to a store that sold kosher wine. None of my friends had a corkscrew, and we had to decant the wine after shredding the cork trying to open it with a pocket knife. After that, I started hosting second seder every year, and it kept growing and growing. By my count, this is my 14th year doing it. It's nice because most people have somewhere to go for first seder, but everyone we invite is generally free for second seder.
- I'm having serious senioritis lately, which is bad because I have a thesis to finish writing and a defense to schedule. In an effort to motivate myself, I'm going to announce some public concrete milestones: by the time my parents arrive on Sunday, I will have decent drafts (ie, good enough that I'd be willing to show them to people) of three (3) full chapters. Possibly without figures, but with full text. One of those chapters might be an appendix, but only if I wuss out midweek. You heard it here first. Check back next week.
- LL had his 18-month appointment. He is holding steady around the 30th percentile for height and weight, and above the 80th percentile for head size. He almost always wears baggy shirts because the shirts that actually fit his arms and torso properly will not slip over his gigantic head.
- Inspired by K, I made a list of LL's spoken words: mama, daddy, all done, this, up, down, bear, ball, cheese, keys, no, yes (actually, he says "da", which is "yes" in Russian; thank you Natasha), uh oh, more ("moo"), moo ("mmmm", cow sound; is it weird that he says "moo" for "more" but refuses to pronounce it like "moo" for an actual cow?), arf (dog sound), hsss (snake sound), vroom (car sound), puff (rice puffs), spoon. There is some debate about whether to also include "wee!" which is what he squeals when he's doing something fun, like going down a slide. Also, he only said spoon for one day, and has refused to say it again since, so that one is kind of iffy. The rest are all heard almost every day. You gotta love a kid that manages to fit that entire set of words into conversation every single day.
- I'm told that most toddlers learn "no" long before they learn "yes", so we're rather grateful that the Russian "da" is so easy for him to say. It makes him quite agreeable, and he always says it with a little smile. Natasha asks him yes-no questions all day long because she is so charmed that he answers in Russian. And this morning, he started saying "nyet" instead of no, which somehow makes me want to cast him in a 1980s James Bond film.
- "Uh oh" is a very recent addition. LL learned to say it, and a few days later he said it to a police officer who was writing S a traffic ticket. ("What's the problem, officer?" "I'm sorry, sir, but I pulled you over for speeding." (loudly from the back seat) "UH OH!") Sadly, the officer was not as charmed by LL's sense of humor as I was, and he still gave S the ticket.
- All of the kids I know who are around LL's age seem to have several times the vocabulary that he does. Tons more words, says their own name and the names of other kids, stuff like that. LL's exposure to three different languages (English, Russian, and Spanish) on a regular basis is probably slowing him down a bit, as is his early adoption of the word "this", which seemed to convince him that he didn't need to know any more nouns. Still, I was concerned enough that I asked Dr. K about it. She says that she only gets concerned at this age if a kid has fewer than 10 words or fails the M-CHAT (test for early autism). So we're fine.
- I did answer one question "wrong" on the M-CHAT, but I'm convinced that it's just a bad question. "Does your child sometimes stare at nothing or wander with no purpose?" I said "yes" because although he doesn't stare at nothing, he does wander with no purpose, all the time. So do most kids I know. Dr. K informed me that there is a difference between "wandering with no purpose" and "wandering with a specific purpose that only LL understands." She had no answer for me, though, on how I was supposed to distinguish those things. Apparently the question is meant to identify disengagement with the world, and not whether your child has the heart of an explorer but doesn't always submit a flight plan with his parents.
- Ever since we returned from our trip, LL keeps getting his snow pants out of the closet, putting them in his sled, filling the sled with stuffed animals (usually Winnie the Pooh), and dragging the sled around the house. And now I just feel bad that he's not around snow more often.
- LL has also learned how to sweep. Which is odd, because I rarely sweep, so I'm not sure who taught him this behavior. He gets out the broom, runs it over the floor of the kitchen, gets a dust pan, bangs the dust pan on the floor several times, then puts both the broom and the dust pan back where they belong. Carefully putting them back is the part that kills me.
- My parents, uncle, and grandfather are arriving for Passover in less than a week. Despite LL's attempts to clean the kitchen, our house is a gigantic mess, and I'm a bit panicked about whipping it into shape before they get here. I finally made the seder menu this weekend, did my first round of grocery shopping, and roasted two briskets to freeze until next week. The rest of the cooking will happen next weekend. I'm excited about the menu -- there's an apricot chicken recipe that I only make for Passover, and I didn't make it for the past two years (first because I was pregnant and had a huge aversion to chicken, and last year because the recipe is rather involved and messy and I didn't want to try it with a newborn in my arms). I love this recipe, and I'm excited to have it again.
- Our Passover plans are a bit more scaled back than recent years, mostly because S's family decided not to come this year. First seder will have just 7 people, and second seder currently stands at 22. (For comparison, last year it was 10 and 28; I don't remember the last time second seder fell below 24 people.) For any Jewish readers who are curious about why second seder is bigger: it's a tradition that I accidentally started back in college when I hated the seders run by my campus Hillel and invited three friends to do second seder in my dorm room instead. That first year, I stole most of the seder foods from the cafeteria earlier in the day, and had to take two different forms of public transportation to get to a store that sold kosher wine. None of my friends had a corkscrew, and we had to decant the wine after shredding the cork trying to open it with a pocket knife. After that, I started hosting second seder every year, and it kept growing and growing. By my count, this is my 14th year doing it. It's nice because most people have somewhere to go for first seder, but everyone we invite is generally free for second seder.
- I'm having serious senioritis lately, which is bad because I have a thesis to finish writing and a defense to schedule. In an effort to motivate myself, I'm going to announce some public concrete milestones: by the time my parents arrive on Sunday, I will have decent drafts (ie, good enough that I'd be willing to show them to people) of three (3) full chapters. Possibly without figures, but with full text. One of those chapters might be an appendix, but only if I wuss out midweek. You heard it here first. Check back next week.
Wednesday, March 17, 2010
Mountains and Follicles and Passover, Oh My!
We are back from our long weekend away with friends, and it was fantastic. Just what I needed.
We had eight adults and four toddlers, and we rented a five-bedroom cabin in the mountains. LL loved having all the people around, and he loved sledding and playing outside in the snow. (For comparison: two of the other kids screamed bloody murder every time we went outside, and the third one took half an hour to get used to the weather every single time we went out. While the other children were fairly miserable in the cold weather and thin air, LL ran circles around them and kept trying to hand them snowballs. The other kids spent a lot of time inside the cabin.) One of my friends is hyper-organized, and thanks to all of her pre-planning, all of the logistics went smoothly. We all drove to the cabin more or less together, we stopped together for lunch, we stopped again to play at a park to give the kids a break, we checked into the cabin without a hitch, we each brought a small collection of groceries such that all of our meals were planned and ready to go... it was wonderful.
I was most worried about whether LL would sleep in the cabin, since he usually doesn't sleep well in a pack'n'play, but it actually wasn't too bad. He went to sleep well each night. He then woke up around 1am, and we just brought him into bed with us and he went back to sleep (after flopping around for a bit). In the past, whenever we've attempted to co-sleep, none of the three of us got much sleep. I don't know if all the heavy playing wore LL out, or if he's just older and more adaptable, but this weekend it wasn't so bad. And the cabin was a bit cold at night, so I actually appreciated the hot little body in footie pajamas that insisted on sleeping on top of me.
Best of all, since we were all staying in the same cabin, we weren't constantly needing to leave in order to get kids home to nap or eat or whatever. We all got some adults-only time each day during naptime, and again at night after the kiddos were all asleep. And we traded off subsets of adults playing with all the kids, so we each got a fair amount of time during the day to put our feet up, have a drink, and chat with other adults. Heavenly.
And now... back to reality. I had another follicle scan, which showed that my one and only little follicle had been reabsorbed back into my ovary. It didn't grow, it didn't shrink, it definitely didn't release an egg (if it had, the corpus luteum would have been visible on the ultrasound). Instead, it just faded away. Since I'm already at cycle day 20+, Dr. M gave me a progesterone shot to quickly end the cycle, so we can move on to the next one. We're going to try one more cycle with 200mg of clomid.
In the mean time, I need to turn my attention to more pressing matters. Like the fact that my entire family is arriving for Passover in less than two weeks, and I have done none of my normal pre-holiday prep. Passover seders for 30 people don't just plan themselves. Also, I'm theoretically graduating in less than 90 days, and my thesis isn't going to write itself.
We had eight adults and four toddlers, and we rented a five-bedroom cabin in the mountains. LL loved having all the people around, and he loved sledding and playing outside in the snow. (For comparison: two of the other kids screamed bloody murder every time we went outside, and the third one took half an hour to get used to the weather every single time we went out. While the other children were fairly miserable in the cold weather and thin air, LL ran circles around them and kept trying to hand them snowballs. The other kids spent a lot of time inside the cabin.) One of my friends is hyper-organized, and thanks to all of her pre-planning, all of the logistics went smoothly. We all drove to the cabin more or less together, we stopped together for lunch, we stopped again to play at a park to give the kids a break, we checked into the cabin without a hitch, we each brought a small collection of groceries such that all of our meals were planned and ready to go... it was wonderful.
I was most worried about whether LL would sleep in the cabin, since he usually doesn't sleep well in a pack'n'play, but it actually wasn't too bad. He went to sleep well each night. He then woke up around 1am, and we just brought him into bed with us and he went back to sleep (after flopping around for a bit). In the past, whenever we've attempted to co-sleep, none of the three of us got much sleep. I don't know if all the heavy playing wore LL out, or if he's just older and more adaptable, but this weekend it wasn't so bad. And the cabin was a bit cold at night, so I actually appreciated the hot little body in footie pajamas that insisted on sleeping on top of me.
Best of all, since we were all staying in the same cabin, we weren't constantly needing to leave in order to get kids home to nap or eat or whatever. We all got some adults-only time each day during naptime, and again at night after the kiddos were all asleep. And we traded off subsets of adults playing with all the kids, so we each got a fair amount of time during the day to put our feet up, have a drink, and chat with other adults. Heavenly.
And now... back to reality. I had another follicle scan, which showed that my one and only little follicle had been reabsorbed back into my ovary. It didn't grow, it didn't shrink, it definitely didn't release an egg (if it had, the corpus luteum would have been visible on the ultrasound). Instead, it just faded away. Since I'm already at cycle day 20+, Dr. M gave me a progesterone shot to quickly end the cycle, so we can move on to the next one. We're going to try one more cycle with 200mg of clomid.
In the mean time, I need to turn my attention to more pressing matters. Like the fact that my entire family is arriving for Passover in less than two weeks, and I have done none of my normal pre-holiday prep. Passover seders for 30 people don't just plan themselves. Also, I'm theoretically graduating in less than 90 days, and my thesis isn't going to write itself.
Tuesday, December 1, 2009
Toddlerhood!
LL is climbing on everything, and he's like half an inch away from being able to open doors. He's addicted to peek-a-boo, and has developed a dramatic flourish for when he throws his arms wide to reveal his face. He blows on food when it's too hot. He can more or less feed himself with a fork. But most exciting of all:
LL is walking!
Wait, "walking" is a bit strong. LL is taking five steps or so before carefully falling gracefully to the ground! Yes, he is now the definition of toddler. The Friday before Thanksgiving, he consented to take some steps while holding onto somebody's hands. (Before that, he would only take steps while holding onto furniture. Other human beings were apparently not stable enough to trust with the support of his 24 pound frame.) On Sunday, he let go of me and took two steps to S. On Monday, he rested. (Learning to walk is very hard work.) After saying a cheerful "hello" to his auntie, S's sister, on Tuesday, LL spent the entire afternoon insisting that Auntie and I sit on the floor a few feet apart from each other so that he could toddle between us. By Wednesday, our house was packed with all of the visiting in-laws, and everybody had to be very careful not to trip over LL, who was pulling himself up on any and all available legs and then setting off across the open floor before falling prostrate onto the ground, usually right in front of an older relative carefully balancing a heaping plate of food.
In related news, Thanksgiving was fun and busy and entertaining and frustrating and stressful, and thankfully, it is now over. S's family has some weird dynamics, and even after ten years, I'm still getting used to it. Also, S's childhood friend, D, who has known his family for a long long time and often spends Thanksgiving with them, was with us for the week and drove me crazy. (As an example: Friday afternoon I had just finished serving lunch to 20 people, for the third day in a row, and finished prepping dinner for the same 20 people, for the fourth day in a row, and finally gotten LL to nap, and my house was still full of guests but they were happy and entertaining themselves for a change, and I sat down to relax a little for the first time in forever, when D came over to me and told me that he and his wife wanted to go shopping but they didn't want to bring their two-year-old with them, so they were going to leave him with me for a few hours. And then they just left. And the two-year-old was in a strange house filled with people he didn't know, and he freaked out. And I spent the next two hours trying to calm him down and reassure him that mommy and daddy were going to come back for him real soon. Because in addition to hosting tons of family for 5 days and cooking a ridiculous amount of food, I was apparently running a holiday baby-sitting service. Also, D arrived at our house on day four with a horrible cough, and when we asked him about it, he said that he'd been really sick for a while now, but he'd been masking it with cold medicine so that he could still come over for Thanksgiving. He'd run out of medicine, so he couldn't hide it from us anymore. Jerk. Yesterday, LL started coughing. Shocking, right?)
On the plus side, S's family was totally charmed by LL, who really ramped up the cuteness for the week. No traces of separation anxiety -- he was totally equal opportunity, playing with everybody and going to the park alone with aunties and uncles that he hadn't seen since he was three months old. He even spent a good hour with a particularly grumpy uncle, handing blocks and stacking cups back and forth and clapping enthusiastically whenever the uncle smiled at him. I even got to see the first half of the Packers game while the turkey cooked (go Pack!) and LL wore his little Packers jersey and cheered for every first down, and crawled around the room tugging on people's legs to make sure that they knew that they were supposed to be clapping. He is scarily comfortable being the center of attention.
So, we survived. Everybody is now back safely at home, our fridge is full of leftovers, and we're slowly putting the house back together. I told S that I'm not cooking again for a month, but I'll probably break down after a few days of pizza and spaghetti. We won't have to host Thanksgiving for at least 6 years (longer if S's sister gets added to the rotation, which will probably happen soon). So, the next time we host, LL will be in grade school, we'll probably be living in a different state, we could have another child, and theoretically, I could have tenure somewhere. Freaky!
I'm feverishly back to working on job applications, with the hopes of getting all of the materials done by December 10 (a little over a week from now). If I can hit that deadline, I can turn my attention to a paper that I'm trying to finish, hoping to get it done before Christmas. If both of those things get done on time, I will be free of work obligations through the December holidays. S's office shuts down between Christmas and New Year's, which gives us an 11-day stretch of vacation during which we will both be free. Amazing! We had been planning on staying home and relaxing and playing with LL for that entire time, but we're starting to feel a little guilty about not bringing LL to visit family, so we might travel for New Year's after all.
Deadlines are looming. No more break time for me. Back to work!
LL is walking!
Wait, "walking" is a bit strong. LL is taking five steps or so before carefully falling gracefully to the ground! Yes, he is now the definition of toddler. The Friday before Thanksgiving, he consented to take some steps while holding onto somebody's hands. (Before that, he would only take steps while holding onto furniture. Other human beings were apparently not stable enough to trust with the support of his 24 pound frame.) On Sunday, he let go of me and took two steps to S. On Monday, he rested. (Learning to walk is very hard work.) After saying a cheerful "hello" to his auntie, S's sister, on Tuesday, LL spent the entire afternoon insisting that Auntie and I sit on the floor a few feet apart from each other so that he could toddle between us. By Wednesday, our house was packed with all of the visiting in-laws, and everybody had to be very careful not to trip over LL, who was pulling himself up on any and all available legs and then setting off across the open floor before falling prostrate onto the ground, usually right in front of an older relative carefully balancing a heaping plate of food.
In related news, Thanksgiving was fun and busy and entertaining and frustrating and stressful, and thankfully, it is now over. S's family has some weird dynamics, and even after ten years, I'm still getting used to it. Also, S's childhood friend, D, who has known his family for a long long time and often spends Thanksgiving with them, was with us for the week and drove me crazy. (As an example: Friday afternoon I had just finished serving lunch to 20 people, for the third day in a row, and finished prepping dinner for the same 20 people, for the fourth day in a row, and finally gotten LL to nap, and my house was still full of guests but they were happy and entertaining themselves for a change, and I sat down to relax a little for the first time in forever, when D came over to me and told me that he and his wife wanted to go shopping but they didn't want to bring their two-year-old with them, so they were going to leave him with me for a few hours. And then they just left. And the two-year-old was in a strange house filled with people he didn't know, and he freaked out. And I spent the next two hours trying to calm him down and reassure him that mommy and daddy were going to come back for him real soon. Because in addition to hosting tons of family for 5 days and cooking a ridiculous amount of food, I was apparently running a holiday baby-sitting service. Also, D arrived at our house on day four with a horrible cough, and when we asked him about it, he said that he'd been really sick for a while now, but he'd been masking it with cold medicine so that he could still come over for Thanksgiving. He'd run out of medicine, so he couldn't hide it from us anymore. Jerk. Yesterday, LL started coughing. Shocking, right?)
On the plus side, S's family was totally charmed by LL, who really ramped up the cuteness for the week. No traces of separation anxiety -- he was totally equal opportunity, playing with everybody and going to the park alone with aunties and uncles that he hadn't seen since he was three months old. He even spent a good hour with a particularly grumpy uncle, handing blocks and stacking cups back and forth and clapping enthusiastically whenever the uncle smiled at him. I even got to see the first half of the Packers game while the turkey cooked (go Pack!) and LL wore his little Packers jersey and cheered for every first down, and crawled around the room tugging on people's legs to make sure that they knew that they were supposed to be clapping. He is scarily comfortable being the center of attention.
So, we survived. Everybody is now back safely at home, our fridge is full of leftovers, and we're slowly putting the house back together. I told S that I'm not cooking again for a month, but I'll probably break down after a few days of pizza and spaghetti. We won't have to host Thanksgiving for at least 6 years (longer if S's sister gets added to the rotation, which will probably happen soon). So, the next time we host, LL will be in grade school, we'll probably be living in a different state, we could have another child, and theoretically, I could have tenure somewhere. Freaky!
I'm feverishly back to working on job applications, with the hopes of getting all of the materials done by December 10 (a little over a week from now). If I can hit that deadline, I can turn my attention to a paper that I'm trying to finish, hoping to get it done before Christmas. If both of those things get done on time, I will be free of work obligations through the December holidays. S's office shuts down between Christmas and New Year's, which gives us an 11-day stretch of vacation during which we will both be free. Amazing! We had been planning on staying home and relaxing and playing with LL for that entire time, but we're starting to feel a little guilty about not bringing LL to visit family, so we might travel for New Year's after all.
Deadlines are looming. No more break time for me. Back to work!
Monday, November 23, 2009
Status Memo II
Busy busy busy don't have to time to stop must get through the next week... month... 6 weeks. But as busy as things are, they are getting better. Not so much better that I have time to write an essay, but enough better that I have time for another set of bullet-point-ish paragraphs.
Sleep: We're getting some. Not a ton, but hopefully enough. LL isn't completely reliably sleeping through the night, but he's doing it most of the time. He still seems to be sleeping more lightly than usual, so we've instituted some desperate "please oh please don't wake the baby!" measures that we normally try to avoid. He's mid-transition from two naps to one, which isn't helping. S and I are going to bed earlier and earlier ourselves to compensate, as much as that has been possible while also getting done all of the work and chores on our ever-present to-do list.
Health: I'm probably at about 85% right now. Definitely getting better, definitely still a bit weak. I'm still having some nerve pain, but it's at the Advil-can-help stage rather than the Vicodin-barely-works stage. And my fever is gone. Sleep is my friend.
School: A carefully worded email to AdvisorA has brought her back into my corner. "Hi! Remember me? Your student who is graduating very soon? You don't have very many former students out in the world, and it would really help your reputation if the ones that you DO have don't hate you. Also, it would help you if they had really good jobs that you could brag about. Can you perhaps think of some ways in which you could help me to get a good job and not hate you?" (I'm paraphrasing. She seems to have figured out the whole "helping me will help you" part mostly on her own.) She's suddenly super psyched about helping me to find an awesome job.
Jobs: Interview number one, at a mature mid-sized company doing some fairly cool work, went really well, despite the fact that I had a fever of 101. (In general, I don't recommend interviewing while delirious with fever. But my particular delirium convinced me that I wasn't impaired at all, so I didn't reschedule like I probably should have.) Luckily, the CEO loved me, and has all but promised me a job offer. He loved me so much, in fact, that when I told him that I didn't want to make any final decisions until March or April, so that I could see what happens with academic positions, he said, "No problem; we'll make the offer and you can hold it until you're ready." I'm not sure whether this job is something that I'd want to do, but it will be good to have something in hand while I look around. Most of my effort is going into applying for tenure track assistant professor jobs. Applications, for the most part, are due at the end of the year. I'm frantically working on application materials now. (CV: draft done, being reviewed. Research statement: 20% done. Teaching statement: 80% done. References: three confirmed, lining up two more. List of schools to apply to: currently at 9.) Hence the 6 weeks of busy busy hell.
Thanksgiving: Everything that could be made ahead has been made. Two 18-pound turkeys have been ordered (I'm roasting one on Wednesday, the other on Thursday). The house is clean, and the furniture has been rearranged to accommodate all the extra people. Other than a small list of fresh vegetables and fish that I'll need to buy on Wednesday, all of the shopping is done. By the way: yes, fish for Thanksgiving. S's family is from Hawaii, so poke and lomi-lomi salmon are required dishes at Thanksgiving. Also, seaweed salad and fried saimin and arare and spam musubi. When I host, I also add Jewish favorites like brisket and noodle kugel and mandelbrot (my grandmother's recipe, with chocolate jimmies). This is all in addition to the traditional turkey, stuffing, sweet potatoes, green bean casserole, cranberry sauce, and pie. Can you see why it's good that we only have to host once every six years or so?
The Thanksgiving guests all arrive tomorrow. Happy Turkey Day to all, and to all a good night.
Sleep: We're getting some. Not a ton, but hopefully enough. LL isn't completely reliably sleeping through the night, but he's doing it most of the time. He still seems to be sleeping more lightly than usual, so we've instituted some desperate "please oh please don't wake the baby!" measures that we normally try to avoid. He's mid-transition from two naps to one, which isn't helping. S and I are going to bed earlier and earlier ourselves to compensate, as much as that has been possible while also getting done all of the work and chores on our ever-present to-do list.
Health: I'm probably at about 85% right now. Definitely getting better, definitely still a bit weak. I'm still having some nerve pain, but it's at the Advil-can-help stage rather than the Vicodin-barely-works stage. And my fever is gone. Sleep is my friend.
School: A carefully worded email to AdvisorA has brought her back into my corner. "Hi! Remember me? Your student who is graduating very soon? You don't have very many former students out in the world, and it would really help your reputation if the ones that you DO have don't hate you. Also, it would help you if they had really good jobs that you could brag about. Can you perhaps think of some ways in which you could help me to get a good job and not hate you?" (I'm paraphrasing. She seems to have figured out the whole "helping me will help you" part mostly on her own.) She's suddenly super psyched about helping me to find an awesome job.
Jobs: Interview number one, at a mature mid-sized company doing some fairly cool work, went really well, despite the fact that I had a fever of 101. (In general, I don't recommend interviewing while delirious with fever. But my particular delirium convinced me that I wasn't impaired at all, so I didn't reschedule like I probably should have.) Luckily, the CEO loved me, and has all but promised me a job offer. He loved me so much, in fact, that when I told him that I didn't want to make any final decisions until March or April, so that I could see what happens with academic positions, he said, "No problem; we'll make the offer and you can hold it until you're ready." I'm not sure whether this job is something that I'd want to do, but it will be good to have something in hand while I look around. Most of my effort is going into applying for tenure track assistant professor jobs. Applications, for the most part, are due at the end of the year. I'm frantically working on application materials now. (CV: draft done, being reviewed. Research statement: 20% done. Teaching statement: 80% done. References: three confirmed, lining up two more. List of schools to apply to: currently at 9.) Hence the 6 weeks of busy busy hell.
Thanksgiving: Everything that could be made ahead has been made. Two 18-pound turkeys have been ordered (I'm roasting one on Wednesday, the other on Thursday). The house is clean, and the furniture has been rearranged to accommodate all the extra people. Other than a small list of fresh vegetables and fish that I'll need to buy on Wednesday, all of the shopping is done. By the way: yes, fish for Thanksgiving. S's family is from Hawaii, so poke and lomi-lomi salmon are required dishes at Thanksgiving. Also, seaweed salad and fried saimin and arare and spam musubi. When I host, I also add Jewish favorites like brisket and noodle kugel and mandelbrot (my grandmother's recipe, with chocolate jimmies). This is all in addition to the traditional turkey, stuffing, sweet potatoes, green bean casserole, cranberry sauce, and pie. Can you see why it's good that we only have to host once every six years or so?
The Thanksgiving guests all arrive tomorrow. Happy Turkey Day to all, and to all a good night.
Thursday, November 12, 2009
Status Memo
Thank you for all of the encouraging comments on my last post. It's good to get kicked around sometimes and reminded that worrying about contingencies does very little good. Just take one step at a time and keep moving forward. I'm working on it. Here's my status:
Teeth: LL is up to 14 teeth. All 8 incisors, all 4 canines, both top molars. The bottom molars seem to have receded a bit for now, so we're hoping for some relief. It seems that, at just under 14 months, he is almost ready to rip apart steak. Gnaw the meat right from the bone. He is a toothy force to be reckoned with.
Sleep: We finally took LL to the doctor because his sleep was getting worse and worse. We were dosing him with every child-safe medication we could get our hands on (Motrin, Tylenol, Benadryl, teething tablets) and he was still waking up by midnight every night and refusing to go back to sleep unless held upright in the glider by a loving and perfectly still parent. After several weeks of sitting upright in the chair for 6+ hours at a time, averaging only 3 hours of sleep/night for myself, something had to give. The doctor noted a little fluid in his ears (but no infection) and gave us prescription ear drops to add to the nightly regimen. He is now finally breaking through. Two nights in a row now, he hasn't needed us at all. It could be that his ear pain is resolving. It could be that the troublesome teeth broke through. It could be that he's just ready to be sleeping again. Don't know, don't care. Sleep is good.
School: AdvisorA is officially ignoring me. I don't know if it's because she found out about the funding thing, or if she just doesn't care. I haven't spoken to her on the phone for months. When I send her an email, there's typically more than a week's wait for a reply. I've been trying to set up a phone conversation with her for the last two weeks, and it still hasn't happened. Her latest "effort" earlier this week was an email that said she was available at 4:30 this afternoon, was I free then? I saw her email within an hour of her sending it, and replied that 4:30 would be great. A day later, she replied that by the time she saw my email, she had scheduled that slot with someone else, sorry, but she might be available sometime on Friday. I should just wait by my phone between 9am and 1pm on Friday, because she might call me then. Or she might not. Um, thanks.
Jobs: I have two job interviews. Yippee! Here's to hoping that LL lets me have more than 3 hours of sleep the night before.
Health: I came down with a horrible virus this week. Quite possibly the worst I've ever had. Not flu, but really really ugly. Like, attacking my nerves ugly. When I finally saw my doctor today because good lord I feel awful, she was a little shocked by how bad I was, and asked me if I was under any stress or missing sleep lately. Heh. I summarized the above bullet points, and she prescribed meds. And urged me to sleep, as if that's something I have control over. And told me to expect to feel like crap for several more weeks. At least the prevailing medical opinion is that I am not contagious, so I can continue my ridiculous life while I convalesce.
Thanksgiving: So far, I have made two briskets, one noodle kugel, one sweet potato casserole, two cranberry nut breads, two pumpkin breads, and one poppy seed cake. They are all happily snuggled in the freezer, awaiting the upcoming holiday. Spinach bars and mandelbrot are next. Twenty out-of-town relatives arriving in twelve days, and staying for a week? Bring it on!
S asked me this afternoon how in the world I'm still on my feet. I'm not entirely sure. One step at a time, right?
Teeth: LL is up to 14 teeth. All 8 incisors, all 4 canines, both top molars. The bottom molars seem to have receded a bit for now, so we're hoping for some relief. It seems that, at just under 14 months, he is almost ready to rip apart steak. Gnaw the meat right from the bone. He is a toothy force to be reckoned with.
Sleep: We finally took LL to the doctor because his sleep was getting worse and worse. We were dosing him with every child-safe medication we could get our hands on (Motrin, Tylenol, Benadryl, teething tablets) and he was still waking up by midnight every night and refusing to go back to sleep unless held upright in the glider by a loving and perfectly still parent. After several weeks of sitting upright in the chair for 6+ hours at a time, averaging only 3 hours of sleep/night for myself, something had to give. The doctor noted a little fluid in his ears (but no infection) and gave us prescription ear drops to add to the nightly regimen. He is now finally breaking through. Two nights in a row now, he hasn't needed us at all. It could be that his ear pain is resolving. It could be that the troublesome teeth broke through. It could be that he's just ready to be sleeping again. Don't know, don't care. Sleep is good.
School: AdvisorA is officially ignoring me. I don't know if it's because she found out about the funding thing, or if she just doesn't care. I haven't spoken to her on the phone for months. When I send her an email, there's typically more than a week's wait for a reply. I've been trying to set up a phone conversation with her for the last two weeks, and it still hasn't happened. Her latest "effort" earlier this week was an email that said she was available at 4:30 this afternoon, was I free then? I saw her email within an hour of her sending it, and replied that 4:30 would be great. A day later, she replied that by the time she saw my email, she had scheduled that slot with someone else, sorry, but she might be available sometime on Friday. I should just wait by my phone between 9am and 1pm on Friday, because she might call me then. Or she might not. Um, thanks.
Jobs: I have two job interviews. Yippee! Here's to hoping that LL lets me have more than 3 hours of sleep the night before.
Health: I came down with a horrible virus this week. Quite possibly the worst I've ever had. Not flu, but really really ugly. Like, attacking my nerves ugly. When I finally saw my doctor today because good lord I feel awful, she was a little shocked by how bad I was, and asked me if I was under any stress or missing sleep lately. Heh. I summarized the above bullet points, and she prescribed meds. And urged me to sleep, as if that's something I have control over. And told me to expect to feel like crap for several more weeks. At least the prevailing medical opinion is that I am not contagious, so I can continue my ridiculous life while I convalesce.
Thanksgiving: So far, I have made two briskets, one noodle kugel, one sweet potato casserole, two cranberry nut breads, two pumpkin breads, and one poppy seed cake. They are all happily snuggled in the freezer, awaiting the upcoming holiday. Spinach bars and mandelbrot are next. Twenty out-of-town relatives arriving in twelve days, and staying for a week? Bring it on!
S asked me this afternoon how in the world I'm still on my feet. I'm not entirely sure. One step at a time, right?
Tuesday, September 22, 2009
Happy Birthday, LL!
Time moves in odd ways when you have a baby. The old saying goes something like, "The days are slow but the years are fast." I don't think that I ever really internalized that sentiment until LL was born. But this weekend, faced with the fact that I now have a one-year-old, I couldn't help shaking my head at how quickly the year has gone, yet how far away the time before LL seems. Being pregnant was ages and ages ago, yet surely he was a tiny squawking newborn only yesterday. For the last few weeks, I've been working on putting together LL's baby book, covering his whole first year. Going through old photos month by month has been fun, but seeing the passing of time lined up in front of me has been startling. It really hits home how much he has grown and changed. His face is different, his hair is different, his eyes are different. No longer helpless, he can now move where he wants and reach for what he wants and smile and wave and share toys and share hugs to show us that he loves us.
This past month alone, he has developed so many new skills. He pulls himself up on every piece of furniture in our house, and has begun tentatively taking steps as he cruises along. He loves opening drawers and cabinets to discover hidden treasures. Faced with a room full of toys, he ignores every age-appropriate thing around in order to play with drink coasters and shoes and tupperware and VHS tapes. After a week or so of pinched fingers, he has learned how to properly close drawers without hurting himself. He is growing increasingly adept with a spoon, and insists on feeding himself a few spoonfuls of food at each meal. And his random babbling is starting to become remarkably ordered, organized into sentences with beginnings and endings, intonation and emphasis, with real words occasionally shining out from the randomness. After a week of babbling the same syllables over and over and over, we discovered that he was actually saying something in Russian, phrases that he picked up at daycare and uses in context-appropriate ways. We wonder now whether he has even more words than we think, split among English, Russian, and Spanish.
He has always been a very social baby, and continues to love large parties and being among friends, both old and young. He crawls after babies his own age, he tries to imitate the behavior of toddlers and preschoolers, he happily shares toys with kids of all ages. He never went through a real "stranger danger" clingy phase, but he has started crawling over to me and just resting his head against my leg for a few moments when he feels overwhelmed. After a brief mommy recharge, he goes back to playing. When I walk into a room, he immediately gives me a giant smile and crawls over to say "hello!" before returning to his activity. I love that he is social, that he immediately started playing with his grandparents when they arrived even though he hadn't seen them in five months, but deep down it also warms my heart to know that he knows I'm his mommy, and that he sees me differently than he sees everybody else. It's great that he'll let new people feed him and play with him, but he knows that I'm Mommy. We're not all interchangeable after all.
He is increasingly aware that people bigger than him have the ability to do things that he can't do yet, and has begun asking for help when he wants to do something beyond his capabilities. He hands blocks to me, pointing at a tower to indicate that he wants me to keep building it bigger. He loves the buttons and levers on his activity box, but doesn't quite have the dexterity to turn the nob, so he gently takes my hand and places it on the nob with a "dah!" command, requesting that I turn it for him. He hands me his caterpillar pull toy, then giggles and gets into crawling position, waiting for me to start pulling the caterpillar around the room so that he can chase it.
He had a wonderful birthday weekend, playing with grandparents and great-grandparents and aunts and uncles and cousins and friends. At his party, he happily ate a collection of his favorite foods: kiwi, watermelon, cantaloupe, grapes, cheerios, cheddar cheese, and crackers. He was enthralled investigating his first helium balloon, and clapped when he saw the "Happy Birthday!" banner. He wore a birthday hat without complaint. And the highlight, his first dessert, provided all the smiles and giggles and mess that I had hoped for. I made him a vanilla cake with lots of gooey frosting, and he happily ate some and played with some and mashed some and rubbed some into his hair.
LL had a great visit with all of his family, and is spending this whole week with S's parents. (When they found out that we were having daycare problems, they made plans to stay the week to help out. They were very very excited to have him all to themselves for the whole week, so when we solved the daycare problems and didn't need them anymore, they were crushed. So, we told them that they could stay anyway. I love my in-laws, but having them in the house for the whole week is stressful, and it's only Tuesday. But LL is loving all the attention.) He had his one-year check-up, where he weighed in at just over 22 pounds, maintaining his below-average weight class. He shot up in height, though, to the 85th percentile, which means that he has officially outgrown his infant carrier. And he still has a big head.
Most important: he's healthy and happy and learning and growing. He eats and he sleeps and he plays and he laughs. My baby is one year old.
This past month alone, he has developed so many new skills. He pulls himself up on every piece of furniture in our house, and has begun tentatively taking steps as he cruises along. He loves opening drawers and cabinets to discover hidden treasures. Faced with a room full of toys, he ignores every age-appropriate thing around in order to play with drink coasters and shoes and tupperware and VHS tapes. After a week or so of pinched fingers, he has learned how to properly close drawers without hurting himself. He is growing increasingly adept with a spoon, and insists on feeding himself a few spoonfuls of food at each meal. And his random babbling is starting to become remarkably ordered, organized into sentences with beginnings and endings, intonation and emphasis, with real words occasionally shining out from the randomness. After a week of babbling the same syllables over and over and over, we discovered that he was actually saying something in Russian, phrases that he picked up at daycare and uses in context-appropriate ways. We wonder now whether he has even more words than we think, split among English, Russian, and Spanish.
He has always been a very social baby, and continues to love large parties and being among friends, both old and young. He crawls after babies his own age, he tries to imitate the behavior of toddlers and preschoolers, he happily shares toys with kids of all ages. He never went through a real "stranger danger" clingy phase, but he has started crawling over to me and just resting his head against my leg for a few moments when he feels overwhelmed. After a brief mommy recharge, he goes back to playing. When I walk into a room, he immediately gives me a giant smile and crawls over to say "hello!" before returning to his activity. I love that he is social, that he immediately started playing with his grandparents when they arrived even though he hadn't seen them in five months, but deep down it also warms my heart to know that he knows I'm his mommy, and that he sees me differently than he sees everybody else. It's great that he'll let new people feed him and play with him, but he knows that I'm Mommy. We're not all interchangeable after all.
He is increasingly aware that people bigger than him have the ability to do things that he can't do yet, and has begun asking for help when he wants to do something beyond his capabilities. He hands blocks to me, pointing at a tower to indicate that he wants me to keep building it bigger. He loves the buttons and levers on his activity box, but doesn't quite have the dexterity to turn the nob, so he gently takes my hand and places it on the nob with a "dah!" command, requesting that I turn it for him. He hands me his caterpillar pull toy, then giggles and gets into crawling position, waiting for me to start pulling the caterpillar around the room so that he can chase it.
He had a wonderful birthday weekend, playing with grandparents and great-grandparents and aunts and uncles and cousins and friends. At his party, he happily ate a collection of his favorite foods: kiwi, watermelon, cantaloupe, grapes, cheerios, cheddar cheese, and crackers. He was enthralled investigating his first helium balloon, and clapped when he saw the "Happy Birthday!" banner. He wore a birthday hat without complaint. And the highlight, his first dessert, provided all the smiles and giggles and mess that I had hoped for. I made him a vanilla cake with lots of gooey frosting, and he happily ate some and played with some and mashed some and rubbed some into his hair.
LL had a great visit with all of his family, and is spending this whole week with S's parents. (When they found out that we were having daycare problems, they made plans to stay the week to help out. They were very very excited to have him all to themselves for the whole week, so when we solved the daycare problems and didn't need them anymore, they were crushed. So, we told them that they could stay anyway. I love my in-laws, but having them in the house for the whole week is stressful, and it's only Tuesday. But LL is loving all the attention.) He had his one-year check-up, where he weighed in at just over 22 pounds, maintaining his below-average weight class. He shot up in height, though, to the 85th percentile, which means that he has officially outgrown his infant carrier. And he still has a big head.
Most important: he's healthy and happy and learning and growing. He eats and he sleeps and he plays and he laughs. My baby is one year old.
Thursday, September 17, 2009
L'Shanah Tovah
This month is my last first day of school. Sort of. There are a whole host of reasons why that is not technically true. If I decide to go into academia, I'll have lots of future first days, but as a professor instead of a student. LL will start school some day, and I'm sure that the first several of his first days will have a huge effect on me as well. I'm also likely to take a class on ... something ... again someday, so that will technically have a first day of school. But this month is my last traditional it's September and I'm a student and school starts today! day. Weird. After preschool, kindergarten, grade school, middle school, high school, college, and grad school, I'm going to finally be done. That's 25 years of education there. I've crammed in just about all the book learnin' I can handle for now.
Honestly, I don't know if I'll even be able to convince myself to get through the next several months. I am ready to be DONE, and the academic year has barely started. Nine months to go....
LL's new daycare is working out great. LL even made a new friend! They sit on the floor vaguely near each other and play (separately) with toy cars. Then they both crawl over to the big basket of blocks and lean on it at the same time to make it tip over. In one-year-old terms, I think that means that now they're BFFs. (For one-year-olds, the bar is pretty low. "You didn't steal my crackers?!? You're my new bestest friend!")
My entire extended family is flying into town tomorrow for LL's big birthday bash on Sunday. Our theme for the party is "Stuff LL likes." We're serving yogurt and oatmeal and watermelon and crackers. Everybody will play with cars and blocks. There will be regularly scheduled dramatic readings of Sandra Boynton's Barnyard Dance! Then, we will all take a nap. Truly, a party for the history books.
Honestly, I don't know if I'll even be able to convince myself to get through the next several months. I am ready to be DONE, and the academic year has barely started. Nine months to go....
LL's new daycare is working out great. LL even made a new friend! They sit on the floor vaguely near each other and play (separately) with toy cars. Then they both crawl over to the big basket of blocks and lean on it at the same time to make it tip over. In one-year-old terms, I think that means that now they're BFFs. (For one-year-olds, the bar is pretty low. "You didn't steal my crackers?!? You're my new bestest friend!")
My entire extended family is flying into town tomorrow for LL's big birthday bash on Sunday. Our theme for the party is "Stuff LL likes." We're serving yogurt and oatmeal and watermelon and crackers. Everybody will play with cars and blocks. There will be regularly scheduled dramatic readings of Sandra Boynton's Barnyard Dance! Then, we will all take a nap. Truly, a party for the history books.
Friday, July 10, 2009
Party Time?
I've been feeling unbelievably unmotivated lately. Work, home, you name it... I don't feel like doing it. No particular reason. (Actually, it's probably lots of small reasons, but whatever.) At least today is Friday; I'm hoping to recharge this weekend, and be able to attack everything with renewed vigor come Monday.
LL is doing great. He's up to seven teeth. The only one of the "set" that he's missing is the bottom right one, and that one seems to be taking its sweet time, since it's not even puffy. He's still chewing on everything he can reach, though, so maybe it will surprise us. LL's four top teeth are descending fast, now that they've broken through the surface, so it is becoming easier to see them when he laughs. He's still getting used to the feeling of them, though, and we hear him grinding his teeth and slurping through them all the time. It's very cute.
His sleep is doing much better, sleeping through the night more often than not. His wake-up time, however, seems to be moving earlier and earlier. For a long time, he was a 7:00-on-the-dot kid. Over the past week or two, that time has been slowly creeping closer to 6:00am, and this morning he woke up at 5:15. Way too early, but we don't quite know how to break him of it. We've also been finding him on his tummy a lot, which is very cute, but a bit frustrating for him since he still can't crawl, so he just lies in his crib and cries to be rescued.
As LL approaches the ten-month mark, we're getting pressure from family to start planning his birthday party. I'm still in denial that he's going to be a year old soon, so I had been trying to avoid thinking about it. We finally had to at least pick a date, though, because my mom needed to apply for time off from work, and all of the grandparents (plus aunts and uncles, apparently) needed to start booking airline tickets. We were hoping to do something relatively small, but as it stands right now, we have fifteen relatives (yes fifteen!!!) flying in from out of state for LL's first birthday. It's hard to keep it small when so many people are coming from so far away.
I still don't quite know what I want to do for the party, but if I don't start planning something soon, S's mom is going to start planning it herself. I wouldn't mind a little help, but I'd rather maintain some creative control over the thing, so I should at least come up with a theme, and probably some limitations on how crazy we're going to let people get.
The New York Times ran an article this week on babies and consumerism. It talked about how some parents, partially driven by the economy and partially driven by social and environmental concerns, are trying to scale back the scope of their spending on small children. Parts of the article had me shaking my head (really? People used to buy $400 toys for infants, and they're just now realizing that maybe it's not necessary?) but other parts of it had me looking around our house and trying to objectively analyze what we've spent on LL.
We haven't bought very many toys, but mainly that's because everybody else has bought so much stuff for him already. And I like to think that we're doing a good job of collecting mainly toys with "staying power," like blocks and books and stuffed animals, that he'll be able to play with for many many years. But when the article mentioned the statistic that, on average, kids in the US receive 70 new toys every year, I first laughed, because that is an absurdly high number, and then I turned to LL's toy box and thought, "Hmmmm...." Yep, there are a lot of toys in there. I don't think it's 70, but it might come kinda close. And sure, he definitely got more new toys this year than he will probably ever receive again, because he was starting out at zero. But still... that's an awful lot of toys for a twenty-pound munchkin who can be entertained for a good long time with a sheet of newspaper and a plastic cup.
So, yeah, we're going to have to figure out how to rein in the grandparents a bit when it comes to spending money on LL. And we might have to start figuring out a strategy for Chanukah and Christmas as well. It's awesome that LL is so lucky and so loved, but a little discretion should go a long way towards teaching him some responsible habits, starting right now.
LL is doing great. He's up to seven teeth. The only one of the "set" that he's missing is the bottom right one, and that one seems to be taking its sweet time, since it's not even puffy. He's still chewing on everything he can reach, though, so maybe it will surprise us. LL's four top teeth are descending fast, now that they've broken through the surface, so it is becoming easier to see them when he laughs. He's still getting used to the feeling of them, though, and we hear him grinding his teeth and slurping through them all the time. It's very cute.
His sleep is doing much better, sleeping through the night more often than not. His wake-up time, however, seems to be moving earlier and earlier. For a long time, he was a 7:00-on-the-dot kid. Over the past week or two, that time has been slowly creeping closer to 6:00am, and this morning he woke up at 5:15. Way too early, but we don't quite know how to break him of it. We've also been finding him on his tummy a lot, which is very cute, but a bit frustrating for him since he still can't crawl, so he just lies in his crib and cries to be rescued.
As LL approaches the ten-month mark, we're getting pressure from family to start planning his birthday party. I'm still in denial that he's going to be a year old soon, so I had been trying to avoid thinking about it. We finally had to at least pick a date, though, because my mom needed to apply for time off from work, and all of the grandparents (plus aunts and uncles, apparently) needed to start booking airline tickets. We were hoping to do something relatively small, but as it stands right now, we have fifteen relatives (yes fifteen!!!) flying in from out of state for LL's first birthday. It's hard to keep it small when so many people are coming from so far away.
I still don't quite know what I want to do for the party, but if I don't start planning something soon, S's mom is going to start planning it herself. I wouldn't mind a little help, but I'd rather maintain some creative control over the thing, so I should at least come up with a theme, and probably some limitations on how crazy we're going to let people get.
The New York Times ran an article this week on babies and consumerism. It talked about how some parents, partially driven by the economy and partially driven by social and environmental concerns, are trying to scale back the scope of their spending on small children. Parts of the article had me shaking my head (really? People used to buy $400 toys for infants, and they're just now realizing that maybe it's not necessary?) but other parts of it had me looking around our house and trying to objectively analyze what we've spent on LL.
We haven't bought very many toys, but mainly that's because everybody else has bought so much stuff for him already. And I like to think that we're doing a good job of collecting mainly toys with "staying power," like blocks and books and stuffed animals, that he'll be able to play with for many many years. But when the article mentioned the statistic that, on average, kids in the US receive 70 new toys every year, I first laughed, because that is an absurdly high number, and then I turned to LL's toy box and thought, "Hmmmm...." Yep, there are a lot of toys in there. I don't think it's 70, but it might come kinda close. And sure, he definitely got more new toys this year than he will probably ever receive again, because he was starting out at zero. But still... that's an awful lot of toys for a twenty-pound munchkin who can be entertained for a good long time with a sheet of newspaper and a plastic cup.
So, yeah, we're going to have to figure out how to rein in the grandparents a bit when it comes to spending money on LL. And we might have to start figuring out a strategy for Chanukah and Christmas as well. It's awesome that LL is so lucky and so loved, but a little discretion should go a long way towards teaching him some responsible habits, starting right now.
Monday, May 11, 2009
In Praise of Daddy
In honor of Mother's Day, I would like to spend some time in praise of S, LL's wonderful daddy. Just a few of the reasons why S is awesome:
S shares nighttime duty with me, and he has since LL was very very little. For the first several weeks, when I was recovering from my c-section and couldn't lift LL out of his bassinet very easily, S got up at night every time LL and I did, until I was able to handle the nighttime feedings by myself. Later, S spent several weeks acting as nighttime first-responder, comforting LL when he cried at night, to try to put him back to sleep without needing to eat. More recently, now that LL is on bottles, and doesn't eat at night very often, S and I alternate nights being "on duty." (I still wake up even on S's nights, but I don't have to get out of bed. Thus, neither one of us is exactly well-rested, but at least neither of us are dying of extreme exhaustion, either.)
S has never been afraid to change diapers, and I would guess that we're pretty close to 50-50 on splitting this duty. I was a little worried about this before LL was born, because S is a bit of a neat freak, and I was worried that he would try to avoid dirty diapers. But, it turns out that S's sense of responsibility outweighs his squeamishness. Also, I think that he views the perfecting of cloth-diaper-folding-and-fastening as an engineering challenge. We have very few diaper blow-outs at our house.
S is amazing at soothing LL. Several of my friends can't go out at night, or even leave their babies/toddlers at home with Daddy for stretches during the day, because their husbands "can't do bedtime." S and I were both a little horrified by this thought early on (really? Dad doesn't know how to put his own kid down for a nap?) and we went to semi-extreme measures to make sure that LL was happy being comforted by S. S got off to a good start because he was the most amazing swaddler in the whole world, and he's still better at getting LL to go down for a nap than I am. For bedtime, we both know the routine, we each do different parts of it on different nights, depending on who wants to do what, and we've each done the whole routine alone when necessary. (I've never missed a bedtime, but there have been a few nights when I was cooking dinner during bedtime, and just popped in for a book and kisses while S did everything else.) I have no doubt that S and LL would be fine if I needed to leave them home alone together for an extended period of time.
S does ~75% of LL's laundry. Including folding it. But, oddly, not putting it away. He's worried about messing up my organizational system. As if I have an organizational system for LL's laundry beyond "The stuff in this drawer fits. Burp cloths go over there."
S washes bottle parts and baby spoons. He sterilizes pacifiers. I think the only thing that he has never done for LL is food preparation. (He hates hates hates grocery shopping, so he has never bought baby food, and he hasn't attempted any of the homemade baby food recipes.) But, he makes up for it by taking the lead on making bottles. And S helps to feed LL breakfast several days a week, so he still gets to experience the joy of pureed veggies at the consumption phase. (I still have to do all the dinner feedings, because S doesn't get home from work in time for LL's dinner.)
And, of course, there's playtime. S roughhouses with LL, and always knows how to make him giggle. He snuggles with him in bed. They play with blocks together. They read books. S takes LL for walks in his ergo carrier. I can't fully describe how awesome it is watching the two of them together.
Most importantly, it's obvious how much S enjoys being with LL. When S gets home from work, he swoops in to play with LL, and more often than not, takes care of most of LL's needs for the rest of the evening, all the way until bedtime. Which is really nice for both of us -- I get home from work between 3:30 and 4:30, so I play with LL and take care of him alone until S gets home around 6:15, and then S gets to spend some quality time, too, before bedtime at 7:00.
I worry sometimes that we won't be able to keep splitting responsibilities going forward. A lot of kids go through an "I want Mommy!" phase, where they insist on mommy doing everything. (Sometimes there's a "Just Daddy!" phase, too, but they're usually rarer and shorter.) And I wonder sometimes how much of our ability to share responsibilities like diaper changes and bedtime are because LL is laid back enough to not care which of us is there. But for now, we're kind of enjoying being somewhat interchangeable for LL.
With the possible exception of middle-of-the-night responsibilities, before we had a good routine down, S and I have never really had arguments about taking care of LL. Things are definitely not perfectly equal, with an exact 50-50 split of responsibilities, but that's not really the goal. I'm home with LL more than S is, so I end up doing more. And there are things that I'm particular about, so I do them. And while I wish that S came home from work a little earlier (I end my work day a full hour or two earlier than I'd like to, but he he still works basically the same hours that he did before LL was born, sometimes walking in the door right as bedtime is starting) there's no task that I can point to and say, "I wish S did that for LL more often." He's a fantastic father, a fantastic partner, and the love of my life.
Also, for Mother's Day, he let me sleep in and he made me pancakes. I love that guy.
S shares nighttime duty with me, and he has since LL was very very little. For the first several weeks, when I was recovering from my c-section and couldn't lift LL out of his bassinet very easily, S got up at night every time LL and I did, until I was able to handle the nighttime feedings by myself. Later, S spent several weeks acting as nighttime first-responder, comforting LL when he cried at night, to try to put him back to sleep without needing to eat. More recently, now that LL is on bottles, and doesn't eat at night very often, S and I alternate nights being "on duty." (I still wake up even on S's nights, but I don't have to get out of bed. Thus, neither one of us is exactly well-rested, but at least neither of us are dying of extreme exhaustion, either.)
S has never been afraid to change diapers, and I would guess that we're pretty close to 50-50 on splitting this duty. I was a little worried about this before LL was born, because S is a bit of a neat freak, and I was worried that he would try to avoid dirty diapers. But, it turns out that S's sense of responsibility outweighs his squeamishness. Also, I think that he views the perfecting of cloth-diaper-folding-and-fastening as an engineering challenge. We have very few diaper blow-outs at our house.
S is amazing at soothing LL. Several of my friends can't go out at night, or even leave their babies/toddlers at home with Daddy for stretches during the day, because their husbands "can't do bedtime." S and I were both a little horrified by this thought early on (really? Dad doesn't know how to put his own kid down for a nap?) and we went to semi-extreme measures to make sure that LL was happy being comforted by S. S got off to a good start because he was the most amazing swaddler in the whole world, and he's still better at getting LL to go down for a nap than I am. For bedtime, we both know the routine, we each do different parts of it on different nights, depending on who wants to do what, and we've each done the whole routine alone when necessary. (I've never missed a bedtime, but there have been a few nights when I was cooking dinner during bedtime, and just popped in for a book and kisses while S did everything else.) I have no doubt that S and LL would be fine if I needed to leave them home alone together for an extended period of time.
S does ~75% of LL's laundry. Including folding it. But, oddly, not putting it away. He's worried about messing up my organizational system. As if I have an organizational system for LL's laundry beyond "The stuff in this drawer fits. Burp cloths go over there."
S washes bottle parts and baby spoons. He sterilizes pacifiers. I think the only thing that he has never done for LL is food preparation. (He hates hates hates grocery shopping, so he has never bought baby food, and he hasn't attempted any of the homemade baby food recipes.) But, he makes up for it by taking the lead on making bottles. And S helps to feed LL breakfast several days a week, so he still gets to experience the joy of pureed veggies at the consumption phase. (I still have to do all the dinner feedings, because S doesn't get home from work in time for LL's dinner.)
And, of course, there's playtime. S roughhouses with LL, and always knows how to make him giggle. He snuggles with him in bed. They play with blocks together. They read books. S takes LL for walks in his ergo carrier. I can't fully describe how awesome it is watching the two of them together.
Most importantly, it's obvious how much S enjoys being with LL. When S gets home from work, he swoops in to play with LL, and more often than not, takes care of most of LL's needs for the rest of the evening, all the way until bedtime. Which is really nice for both of us -- I get home from work between 3:30 and 4:30, so I play with LL and take care of him alone until S gets home around 6:15, and then S gets to spend some quality time, too, before bedtime at 7:00.
I worry sometimes that we won't be able to keep splitting responsibilities going forward. A lot of kids go through an "I want Mommy!" phase, where they insist on mommy doing everything. (Sometimes there's a "Just Daddy!" phase, too, but they're usually rarer and shorter.) And I wonder sometimes how much of our ability to share responsibilities like diaper changes and bedtime are because LL is laid back enough to not care which of us is there. But for now, we're kind of enjoying being somewhat interchangeable for LL.
With the possible exception of middle-of-the-night responsibilities, before we had a good routine down, S and I have never really had arguments about taking care of LL. Things are definitely not perfectly equal, with an exact 50-50 split of responsibilities, but that's not really the goal. I'm home with LL more than S is, so I end up doing more. And there are things that I'm particular about, so I do them. And while I wish that S came home from work a little earlier (I end my work day a full hour or two earlier than I'd like to, but he he still works basically the same hours that he did before LL was born, sometimes walking in the door right as bedtime is starting) there's no task that I can point to and say, "I wish S did that for LL more often." He's a fantastic father, a fantastic partner, and the love of my life.
Also, for Mother's Day, he let me sleep in and he made me pancakes. I love that guy.
Monday, April 13, 2009
Food! Sleep! Physics!
My writing lately has been fairly consumed by dealing with LL's nursing strike (which, by the way, continues. Everything I've read says that nursing strikes typically last 3-4 days, but "occasionally last a week or two." Apparently, nobody bothered to tell that to LL, because we're on Day 26 right now). Also, we had a house full of out-of-town guests for the past week, so I haven't had time to write anything at all. As a result, I've failed to record several other major changes in our lives. And since I use this blog to be my memory, there are a lot of things that I need to get written down.
It's unfortunate that the nursing strike began in earnest on LL's six month birthday, because that is also when he embarked on all sorts of new developments and firsts:
Solid Food! LL loves butternut squash. He's happy with oatmeal and sweet potatoes. He'll tolerate peas and carrots. He'll only eat green beans if fed to him by a grandparent. Other than the carrots, that pretty much aligns with my preferences as well. All in all, he gives Food, as a whole, a big thumbs up. Which is good, because he's mainly getting formula these days, and while he will occasionally gobble down a huge bottle of it and then ask for more, he often prefers to just chew on the nipple of the bottle and fuss. (Silly boy! If you like breast milk so much more than formula, you know what to do....) After forcing the kid to eat vegetables for several weeks, we're going to let him have fruit in a few days, which I expect will be a big hit.
Growth Spurt! In my desperation to find a fixable cause for LL's nursing strike, I brought him back to the doctor, even though he had an appointment less than a month ago. I wanted to rule out thrush or ear infection or any other illness that might have been undetectable a few weeks ago but causing nursing havoc now, just to be absolutely sure before I gave up trying to get him back to the breast. (It's pathetic when you find yourself hoping that your child is sick, so that at least you'll have something to fix.) The diagnosis was ... drum roll ... teething (like I didn't see that coming), and an obnoxious reaction from the not-our-regular-pediatrician who we saw that day. ("Yeah, he's teething. Just give up the nursing already. Six months is long enough." "Um, I wanted to nurse longer than this, and I thought that even the AAP recommends one year?" "Sure, if you can do it. But clearly you can't." Ouch.) LL was still mainly eating pumped breast milk at that point, so the only real change to his diet had been the addition of meager solid foods, which we'd been told often made babies stop gaining weight. My little LL, though, had gained a ton of weight since his last appointment, averaging almost two ounces/day. He has since slowed down his ridiculous gobbling of milk, corresponding with my further drop in milk supply, necessitating more and more reliance on formula, but each day he really does seem remarkably bigger. And he's starting to push the length limits on his car seat, so a new big-boy convertible car seat and non-infant-frame stroller may be looming in our future.
Sleeping! Before six months, I could count on one hand the number of times that LL had slept through the night without needing assistance. (To be precise: I could count it on one finger.) Then, he suddenly did it four days in one week. Oh, the joy of uninterrupted sleep! Of course, then he got sick and was up all night for several nights, and then the grandparents visited, so we're slowly working our way back. But, there seems to be a light at the end of the tunnel.
Sitting! Yes, my lazy little boy has discovered the joys of being upright. After lots and lots of setting him on his cushy cloth diapered bottom and immediately catching him as he toppled over, I put him down one day and he sat for a few short seconds. The next day, it was 30 seconds. The day after that, he could just do it. Just like that. He's still a little unsteady... you can see him making little corrections as he lists one way or another, and eventually he gets tired and just lets himself tip over backwards, but he can sit for a good long time now. And he can reach for toys and play and laugh and talk while he's sitting, so it's lots of fun to set him down and watch him go.
Jumping! We went ahead and got a Fisher Price jumperoo, as suggested. The first two days, LL seemed uncertain, sitting uncomfortably in the seat, batting questioningly at the toys, not moving his legs at all. He laughed when I bounced the seat for him, but he didn't get it at first. Then, like with the sitting, something just ... clicked. And now he's unstoppable. We put him in that thing, and he jumps jumps jumps without rest, wearing a big dopey grin the entire time. He couldn't care less about the toys, but oh the joy of jumping through the air! He also recently discovered that he doesn't need the jumperoo in order to jump -- all that's required is something (ie, me) suspending him upright over a surface. Any time I try to hold him in a standing position, he starts jumping and bouncing like a hyper puppy.
Passover! My parents, S's parents, my uncle, and my grandfather all flew into town for Passover last week. The first seder was just the nine of us. Second seder was our usual grand affair, topping out this year at 26 people. I cooked a few dishes in advance and froze them, but I did the majority of the cooking after all the grandparents arrived on Tuesday, so that LL would have lots of people to play with while I was busy in the kitchen. I even added some new dishes this year. (The pomegranate walnut chicken was particularly well-received.) We had hoped that LL would be awake for both seders, since we were starting at 6:00 and he generally begins his bedtime routine around 7:00, but all of the excitement of four grandparents all in the house at the same time proved to be too much for him. Grandpop held him throughout the first seder, with LL drowsily resting his head on Grandpop's shoulder, sucking on a thumb, eyes mainly closed, until we rushed through the last of the service so that we could get him to bed. On the second night, LL started yawning and rubbing his eyes at 5:45, so we just kept him up long enough to say "hello" to all the guests and pour the first glass of wine. He even slept through several raucous rounds of "Dayenu!" so the poor little guy must have been really worn out. The out-of-town visitors were gone by Sunday morning, and LL spent much of yesterday trying to figure out what happened to his entourage. This week, we try to get him over his grandma hangover and back onto his normal schedule.
Physics! Yes, that's right, my baby boy is figuring out rudimentary physics. The small course corrections needed to maintain an upright posture while sitting are just one example. He has also figured out that if he pulls on the blanket, the toy that is out of reach will move closer to him. If he lets go of the spoon over the edge of the high chair, it will fall to the floor (though he still peers over the edge just to make sure). And I spent an astonishing afternoon watching him figure out how to use a tool: he was lying on his back, staring at a wooden block that was just out of reach. He stretched and stretched for it, but it was just beyond his fingertips. After surveying his surroundings, he picked up a rattle, then turned and whacked at the block. His eyes grew wide as the block bounced a little into the air and landed in a different location. He stared and stared at it some more, then got a big grin on his face as he started hitting the block over and over and over, until it had bounced within reach. He immediately tossed the rattle aside, and triumphantly grabbed the newly accessible block. Problem solved! (Ten seconds later, he discovered that wooden blocks are rather boring when you only have one of them, and he dropped his hard-won prize, but you know, sometimes it's all about the journey.)
Communication! LL has always been an extremely expressive baby. For months now, he has been making liberal use of facial expressions and squeals and screams to indicate what he likes and what he doesn't like. But these last two weeks have brought a new level of communication. When we're holding him, he grabs and lunges for thing that he wants, much more emphatically and purposely than when he's playing with toys. He grimaces and pushes things away with his hands when offered something that he doesn't want (like a bottle, or a washcloth to wipe his face). When he was sitting on the floor with his grandma, and she accidentally let him tip over backwards so that he fell onto a hard toy, we expected him to act hurt and cling to Mommy; we didn't expect him to turn purposefully to Grandma and give her an angry scowl, accompanied by an extra-loud yowl, to let her know that he blamed her for his fall. (Gotta move faster, Grandma, if you want to avoid the wrath of LL! Luckily the guilt trip only lasted five minutes. He places blame where blame is due, but he doesn't hold a grudge.) And while he has enjoyed various games for quite some time, now he's taking a more active role in many of them. Covering up and revealing his own face for peek-a-boo. "Singing" along with Mommy and Daddy. Repeatedly picking out his favorite book from a big stack, then turning reliably to his favorite page. (He enjoys all of Karen Katz's Where is Baby's Belly Button?, but he laughs hysterically at the "Where are Baby's hands? Under the bubbles!" page, every single time.)
It's very cool to see more and more of his personality developing, and also a little scary to see how independent he already is, just shy of seven months old.
It's unfortunate that the nursing strike began in earnest on LL's six month birthday, because that is also when he embarked on all sorts of new developments and firsts:
Solid Food! LL loves butternut squash. He's happy with oatmeal and sweet potatoes. He'll tolerate peas and carrots. He'll only eat green beans if fed to him by a grandparent. Other than the carrots, that pretty much aligns with my preferences as well. All in all, he gives Food, as a whole, a big thumbs up. Which is good, because he's mainly getting formula these days, and while he will occasionally gobble down a huge bottle of it and then ask for more, he often prefers to just chew on the nipple of the bottle and fuss. (Silly boy! If you like breast milk so much more than formula, you know what to do....) After forcing the kid to eat vegetables for several weeks, we're going to let him have fruit in a few days, which I expect will be a big hit.
Growth Spurt! In my desperation to find a fixable cause for LL's nursing strike, I brought him back to the doctor, even though he had an appointment less than a month ago. I wanted to rule out thrush or ear infection or any other illness that might have been undetectable a few weeks ago but causing nursing havoc now, just to be absolutely sure before I gave up trying to get him back to the breast. (It's pathetic when you find yourself hoping that your child is sick, so that at least you'll have something to fix.) The diagnosis was ... drum roll ... teething (like I didn't see that coming), and an obnoxious reaction from the not-our-regular-pediatrician who we saw that day. ("Yeah, he's teething. Just give up the nursing already. Six months is long enough." "Um, I wanted to nurse longer than this, and I thought that even the AAP recommends one year?" "Sure, if you can do it. But clearly you can't." Ouch.) LL was still mainly eating pumped breast milk at that point, so the only real change to his diet had been the addition of meager solid foods, which we'd been told often made babies stop gaining weight. My little LL, though, had gained a ton of weight since his last appointment, averaging almost two ounces/day. He has since slowed down his ridiculous gobbling of milk, corresponding with my further drop in milk supply, necessitating more and more reliance on formula, but each day he really does seem remarkably bigger. And he's starting to push the length limits on his car seat, so a new big-boy convertible car seat and non-infant-frame stroller may be looming in our future.
Sleeping! Before six months, I could count on one hand the number of times that LL had slept through the night without needing assistance. (To be precise: I could count it on one finger.) Then, he suddenly did it four days in one week. Oh, the joy of uninterrupted sleep! Of course, then he got sick and was up all night for several nights, and then the grandparents visited, so we're slowly working our way back. But, there seems to be a light at the end of the tunnel.
Sitting! Yes, my lazy little boy has discovered the joys of being upright. After lots and lots of setting him on his cushy cloth diapered bottom and immediately catching him as he toppled over, I put him down one day and he sat for a few short seconds. The next day, it was 30 seconds. The day after that, he could just do it. Just like that. He's still a little unsteady... you can see him making little corrections as he lists one way or another, and eventually he gets tired and just lets himself tip over backwards, but he can sit for a good long time now. And he can reach for toys and play and laugh and talk while he's sitting, so it's lots of fun to set him down and watch him go.
Jumping! We went ahead and got a Fisher Price jumperoo, as suggested. The first two days, LL seemed uncertain, sitting uncomfortably in the seat, batting questioningly at the toys, not moving his legs at all. He laughed when I bounced the seat for him, but he didn't get it at first. Then, like with the sitting, something just ... clicked. And now he's unstoppable. We put him in that thing, and he jumps jumps jumps without rest, wearing a big dopey grin the entire time. He couldn't care less about the toys, but oh the joy of jumping through the air! He also recently discovered that he doesn't need the jumperoo in order to jump -- all that's required is something (ie, me) suspending him upright over a surface. Any time I try to hold him in a standing position, he starts jumping and bouncing like a hyper puppy.
Passover! My parents, S's parents, my uncle, and my grandfather all flew into town for Passover last week. The first seder was just the nine of us. Second seder was our usual grand affair, topping out this year at 26 people. I cooked a few dishes in advance and froze them, but I did the majority of the cooking after all the grandparents arrived on Tuesday, so that LL would have lots of people to play with while I was busy in the kitchen. I even added some new dishes this year. (The pomegranate walnut chicken was particularly well-received.) We had hoped that LL would be awake for both seders, since we were starting at 6:00 and he generally begins his bedtime routine around 7:00, but all of the excitement of four grandparents all in the house at the same time proved to be too much for him. Grandpop held him throughout the first seder, with LL drowsily resting his head on Grandpop's shoulder, sucking on a thumb, eyes mainly closed, until we rushed through the last of the service so that we could get him to bed. On the second night, LL started yawning and rubbing his eyes at 5:45, so we just kept him up long enough to say "hello" to all the guests and pour the first glass of wine. He even slept through several raucous rounds of "Dayenu!" so the poor little guy must have been really worn out. The out-of-town visitors were gone by Sunday morning, and LL spent much of yesterday trying to figure out what happened to his entourage. This week, we try to get him over his grandma hangover and back onto his normal schedule.
Physics! Yes, that's right, my baby boy is figuring out rudimentary physics. The small course corrections needed to maintain an upright posture while sitting are just one example. He has also figured out that if he pulls on the blanket, the toy that is out of reach will move closer to him. If he lets go of the spoon over the edge of the high chair, it will fall to the floor (though he still peers over the edge just to make sure). And I spent an astonishing afternoon watching him figure out how to use a tool: he was lying on his back, staring at a wooden block that was just out of reach. He stretched and stretched for it, but it was just beyond his fingertips. After surveying his surroundings, he picked up a rattle, then turned and whacked at the block. His eyes grew wide as the block bounced a little into the air and landed in a different location. He stared and stared at it some more, then got a big grin on his face as he started hitting the block over and over and over, until it had bounced within reach. He immediately tossed the rattle aside, and triumphantly grabbed the newly accessible block. Problem solved! (Ten seconds later, he discovered that wooden blocks are rather boring when you only have one of them, and he dropped his hard-won prize, but you know, sometimes it's all about the journey.)
Communication! LL has always been an extremely expressive baby. For months now, he has been making liberal use of facial expressions and squeals and screams to indicate what he likes and what he doesn't like. But these last two weeks have brought a new level of communication. When we're holding him, he grabs and lunges for thing that he wants, much more emphatically and purposely than when he's playing with toys. He grimaces and pushes things away with his hands when offered something that he doesn't want (like a bottle, or a washcloth to wipe his face). When he was sitting on the floor with his grandma, and she accidentally let him tip over backwards so that he fell onto a hard toy, we expected him to act hurt and cling to Mommy; we didn't expect him to turn purposefully to Grandma and give her an angry scowl, accompanied by an extra-loud yowl, to let her know that he blamed her for his fall. (Gotta move faster, Grandma, if you want to avoid the wrath of LL! Luckily the guilt trip only lasted five minutes. He places blame where blame is due, but he doesn't hold a grudge.) And while he has enjoyed various games for quite some time, now he's taking a more active role in many of them. Covering up and revealing his own face for peek-a-boo. "Singing" along with Mommy and Daddy. Repeatedly picking out his favorite book from a big stack, then turning reliably to his favorite page. (He enjoys all of Karen Katz's Where is Baby's Belly Button?, but he laughs hysterically at the "Where are Baby's hands? Under the bubbles!" page, every single time.)
It's very cool to see more and more of his personality developing, and also a little scary to see how independent he already is, just shy of seven months old.
Wednesday, March 4, 2009
New Bit
Apologies if this seems like nonsensical gibberish to some of you, but I'm going to be geeky for a moment. Today is my birthday. It's not a particularly significant birthday, except to us computer sciencey folks: I got a new bit today! (My sixth one.) I'm 100000 years old. I'm likely to only get one more bit in my lifetime, and I've got to wait a long time for that one, so I'm trying to enjoy receiving this one. S pointed out to me that we didn't even know each other when I got my last one. My little LL has, um, zero or one, depending on how you want to look at it, but he'll get a bunch in fairly quick succession very soon, which is kind of amazing. (Yes, I'm still able to be amazed by exponents. Sue me.)
S got me a birthday card from him and LL. It says, "One of us remembered your birthday! The other one of us just kind of lives in the house and is totally unaware of everything." It's not clear that the card was supposed to be from a father and baby combo, but I'm not sure who the intended card-buyer is. Partner and pet? Roommate and ... bad roommate? Wife and clueless husband?
For my birthday, LL woke up at 5:00am, refused to eat, refused to go back to sleep, and just whined and cried for two hours. Have I mentioned that teething sucks? I finally just handed him to S and told him that all I wanted for my birthday was another hour of sleep, followed by a shower. Good times.
S got me a birthday card from him and LL. It says, "One of us remembered your birthday! The other one of us just kind of lives in the house and is totally unaware of everything." It's not clear that the card was supposed to be from a father and baby combo, but I'm not sure who the intended card-buyer is. Partner and pet? Roommate and ... bad roommate? Wife and clueless husband?
For my birthday, LL woke up at 5:00am, refused to eat, refused to go back to sleep, and just whined and cried for two hours. Have I mentioned that teething sucks? I finally just handed him to S and told him that all I wanted for my birthday was another hour of sleep, followed by a shower. Good times.
Wednesday, January 7, 2009
Mama Bear
I think that everybody has a moment when they first feel the need to leap to action for the safety of their child. I'm not talking about doing research for safety issues, or deciding on the healthiest way to feed your baby, or leaving baby home instead of bringing him into a dangerous (or just less than ideal) situation. I'm not even talking about taking baby away from somebody who is making him uncomfortable for some reason. I'm talking honest to goodness sudden danger that makes a parent spring into action. My moment happened while we were in Wisconsin. Spoiler: it turned out that there wasn't actually any danger. But, we thought that there was, which is what really matters, I think.
Here's the scene:
My parents' house is full of people for Chanukah. Me and S and LL. My brother and SIL, M and A, and their three kids, who will now have official blog nicknames: Bee (boy, age 8), Sam (girl, age 5) and LiLi (girl, age 6 months). My parents. My grandfather (age 86). Several additional older relatives. The menorah is lit for the last night of Chanukah. Food is cooking on the stove. After several days of S and me both complaining that the house is too cold, and wondering whether my parents' furnace is working properly, the house is now pleasantly warm from the cooking, and from all of the additional people in the house. Outside, it is 15 degrees Fahrenheit, with a fresh layer of ice. The kids are happily opening presents.
Then: BEEP! BEEP! BEEP! BEEP! The carbon monoxide (plus other things) detector goes off. Very loudly. The digital display just says "gas", and the numerical reading which normally reads 0 suddenly reads an alarming 221. Honestly, I don't even know what the units are. But when the number is supposed to be 0, a reading of 221 in just about any metric is alarming. Especially when the oven is on and there are several candles burning. Even more so when we were just commenting about a possibly faulty furnace. We know that it's not just a bad battery because the detector plugs into a wall outlet, and the electricity is working fine.
S and I grabbed LL's coat and bundled him up as quickly as we could, then did the same with LiLi, freeing up A to tend to Bee and Sam, who were freaking out a bit from the noise and urgency. My mom turned off the oven and stove, then ran to call the fire department. My grandfather blew out the Chanukah candles (not knowing what kind of gas the detector was referring to made open flames seem like a bad idea). Less helpful: my father and my brother stood in a corner arguing about what gas the alarm might be referring to, and how often one should replace smoke detectors. Even less helpful than that: one of my uncles, who is a perfectly capable able-bodied middle-aged man, went and got himself a snack, then returned to the couch to watch the rest of us scrambling to get the kids (and ourselves) out the door without leaving ourselves open to frostbite. (Remember: 15 degrees outside.)
We slipped and slid down the driveway and up the street towards a neighbor's house (the fire truck passed us on the way) where we waited for the all-clear. Everything turned out okay -- the firemen went through the whole house with their instruments and ultimately declared it perfectly safe (faulty carbon monoxide detector, apparently). And it was kind of nice to visit with the neighbors. I used to babysit for these neighbors, and their youngest daughter was home last week for winter break from college, where she is a senior majoring in international relations. Yes, the same little girl who, as a two-year-old, made me read Berenstein Bears books to her over and over and over and over has now explained to me her plans for graduate school, after which she hopes to work in South American diplomacy. I feel incredibly old. But I digress.
Our little gas scare was the first time that I really felt like LL was in any serious danger, and my overwhelming need to get him out of the house as quickly and safely as possible was pretty over-powering. As was my annoyance at the many relatives who put on their own coats, then just stood around getting in the way instead of doing anything helpful. (Really? You can't help Bee find his boots? You can't help Sam get her hat on? You can't help open some doors to air out the house? You can't help me figure out how to shut off the furnace before we leave?)
Other than the threat of the house blowing up or my entire family dying in a haze of poisonous gas, Chanukah was a lot of fun. My mom and I made a treasure hunt with little poem clues for Bee and Sam to follow, with their presents waiting at the end of the trail. ("Sam likes unicorns and LL likes bears. / For your next clue look at the bottom of the stairs.") Though some of my more creative poems were vetoed by my parents. Something about age appropriateness and the need for Bee and Sam to respect their parents. ("Bee and Sam love to sing songs. / Go look where your Dad used to hide his bongs.") And everyone respected my request to only get LL toys for 6+ months that encourage free play and don't need batteries -- things like alphabet blocks and shape sorters and pushable toy cars. (Though the toy that was the biggest hit with everyone was for LiLi: this jar of bugs, which looks and sounds odd, but all the kids loved it. In particular, LL and LiLi both very much enjoyed chewing on the spider.) Also, Bee started Hebrew school a few months ago, so he got to read the prayers when we lit the menorah, which was cool to watch. All in all, a fun holiday!
Here's the scene:
My parents' house is full of people for Chanukah. Me and S and LL. My brother and SIL, M and A, and their three kids, who will now have official blog nicknames: Bee (boy, age 8), Sam (girl, age 5) and LiLi (girl, age 6 months). My parents. My grandfather (age 86). Several additional older relatives. The menorah is lit for the last night of Chanukah. Food is cooking on the stove. After several days of S and me both complaining that the house is too cold, and wondering whether my parents' furnace is working properly, the house is now pleasantly warm from the cooking, and from all of the additional people in the house. Outside, it is 15 degrees Fahrenheit, with a fresh layer of ice. The kids are happily opening presents.
Then: BEEP! BEEP! BEEP! BEEP! The carbon monoxide (plus other things) detector goes off. Very loudly. The digital display just says "gas", and the numerical reading which normally reads 0 suddenly reads an alarming 221. Honestly, I don't even know what the units are. But when the number is supposed to be 0, a reading of 221 in just about any metric is alarming. Especially when the oven is on and there are several candles burning. Even more so when we were just commenting about a possibly faulty furnace. We know that it's not just a bad battery because the detector plugs into a wall outlet, and the electricity is working fine.
S and I grabbed LL's coat and bundled him up as quickly as we could, then did the same with LiLi, freeing up A to tend to Bee and Sam, who were freaking out a bit from the noise and urgency. My mom turned off the oven and stove, then ran to call the fire department. My grandfather blew out the Chanukah candles (not knowing what kind of gas the detector was referring to made open flames seem like a bad idea). Less helpful: my father and my brother stood in a corner arguing about what gas the alarm might be referring to, and how often one should replace smoke detectors. Even less helpful than that: one of my uncles, who is a perfectly capable able-bodied middle-aged man, went and got himself a snack, then returned to the couch to watch the rest of us scrambling to get the kids (and ourselves) out the door without leaving ourselves open to frostbite. (Remember: 15 degrees outside.)
We slipped and slid down the driveway and up the street towards a neighbor's house (the fire truck passed us on the way) where we waited for the all-clear. Everything turned out okay -- the firemen went through the whole house with their instruments and ultimately declared it perfectly safe (faulty carbon monoxide detector, apparently). And it was kind of nice to visit with the neighbors. I used to babysit for these neighbors, and their youngest daughter was home last week for winter break from college, where she is a senior majoring in international relations. Yes, the same little girl who, as a two-year-old, made me read Berenstein Bears books to her over and over and over and over has now explained to me her plans for graduate school, after which she hopes to work in South American diplomacy. I feel incredibly old. But I digress.
Our little gas scare was the first time that I really felt like LL was in any serious danger, and my overwhelming need to get him out of the house as quickly and safely as possible was pretty over-powering. As was my annoyance at the many relatives who put on their own coats, then just stood around getting in the way instead of doing anything helpful. (Really? You can't help Bee find his boots? You can't help Sam get her hat on? You can't help open some doors to air out the house? You can't help me figure out how to shut off the furnace before we leave?)
Other than the threat of the house blowing up or my entire family dying in a haze of poisonous gas, Chanukah was a lot of fun. My mom and I made a treasure hunt with little poem clues for Bee and Sam to follow, with their presents waiting at the end of the trail. ("Sam likes unicorns and LL likes bears. / For your next clue look at the bottom of the stairs.") Though some of my more creative poems were vetoed by my parents. Something about age appropriateness and the need for Bee and Sam to respect their parents. ("Bee and Sam love to sing songs. / Go look where your Dad used to hide his bongs.") And everyone respected my request to only get LL toys for 6+ months that encourage free play and don't need batteries -- things like alphabet blocks and shape sorters and pushable toy cars. (Though the toy that was the biggest hit with everyone was for LiLi: this jar of bugs, which looks and sounds odd, but all the kids loved it. In particular, LL and LiLi both very much enjoyed chewing on the spider.) Also, Bee started Hebrew school a few months ago, so he got to read the prayers when we lit the menorah, which was cool to watch. All in all, a fun holiday!
Monday, January 5, 2009
New Year Reflections
We're back from our winter wonderland trip to the Great White North, and now that LL is sleeping peacefully in his crib, I have a few moments to reflect. But only a few, because I've been up for 19 hours and counting, including several on airplanes and several more wandering around what has to be the worst organized airport in the country, waiting out a weather delay. I'm really looking forward to sleeping in my own bed tonight. The really fun stories from the trip, about LL and his cousins and Chanukah and snow, will have to wait for later in the week. For now, I need to get down my feelings about the New Year.
We spent New Year's Eve with my parents, my brother, M, and my sister-in-law, A. After all four kids were asleep, we played poker and ate New Year's foods. (It was a pretty random food assortment -- my dad always eats herring, M and A wanted shrimp cocktail, and S and I made soba.) We also had a bottle of champagne that was leftover from my wedding.
As midnight approached, S and I made the soba and poured the champagne and turned the television to the coverage of the ball dropping in Times Square. We kissed and told each other how much we were looking forward to 2009. Meanwhile, M and A and my parents groaned about how late it was, and how silly the Times Square thing was, and how this was just another night so what was the big deal? M complained about the weather. My parents were fighting about ... something minor .... Mainly, they all made fun of me and S. I finally had to ask them to just let us have our moment.
I spent several New Year's Eves in a row going out to parties while just feeling sad that I wasn't home with a baby. 2007, in particular, really sucked, and a year ago I was thrilled to see it go. We got our positive pregnancy test on December 30 of 2007, but didn't get it confirmed by a doctor until January of 2008. So, even last New Year's Eve, while I was thrilled beyond belief at finally being pregnant, it was still really freaking early and I was still holding my breath. It was the latest in a series of years that felt like all we were doing was waiting.
This New Year's Eve, I finally didn't feel that way anymore. Instead, I feel like in 2008 we were really living our lives, enjoying life, growing closer and being happy. We had a wonderful 2008, and not just because of the pregnancy and the birth of LL. We also traveled a lot. Got to spend a lot of time with friends. Visited a lot with family. We paid off our second mortgage. We bought our first new car in ten years. S made some great career advances at work. I made terrific progress on my PhD, finally reaching ABD (All But Dissertation) status. We got our home into a de-cluttered state that I'm really proud of, and that no longer feels like it's decorated in cheap college dorm furniture style. And I feel like, as a couple, we learned to be more patient with each other. And we got better at making each other laugh during times of stress, putting us day-by-day on a much more even keel. Heck, even a presidential election finally went our way!
That's not to say that everything was perfect. S was in grueling physical therapy for the first half of the year, trying to recover from his knee surgery. My pregnancy wasn't always roses and sunshine. Learning to be parents, and dealing with how being parents has changed our relationships with our own parents, has been a challenge. And honestly, it feels like I spent most of 2008 in a slight panic, brought about in part by a continuous state of sleep-deprived haze.
Still, it felt wonderful to spend a New Year's Eve feeling more joy than sorrow. More hope than trepidation. More excitement than emotional exhaustion. When midnight rolled around and we kissed, we stayed that way for longer than we have for many New Year's, even though my parents and M and A were making fun of us the entire time. It's good to be hopeful again.
And I'll brush right past the fact that LL woke up screaming at 12:05am.
We spent New Year's Eve with my parents, my brother, M, and my sister-in-law, A. After all four kids were asleep, we played poker and ate New Year's foods. (It was a pretty random food assortment -- my dad always eats herring, M and A wanted shrimp cocktail, and S and I made soba.) We also had a bottle of champagne that was leftover from my wedding.
As midnight approached, S and I made the soba and poured the champagne and turned the television to the coverage of the ball dropping in Times Square. We kissed and told each other how much we were looking forward to 2009. Meanwhile, M and A and my parents groaned about how late it was, and how silly the Times Square thing was, and how this was just another night so what was the big deal? M complained about the weather. My parents were fighting about ... something minor .... Mainly, they all made fun of me and S. I finally had to ask them to just let us have our moment.
I spent several New Year's Eves in a row going out to parties while just feeling sad that I wasn't home with a baby. 2007, in particular, really sucked, and a year ago I was thrilled to see it go. We got our positive pregnancy test on December 30 of 2007, but didn't get it confirmed by a doctor until January of 2008. So, even last New Year's Eve, while I was thrilled beyond belief at finally being pregnant, it was still really freaking early and I was still holding my breath. It was the latest in a series of years that felt like all we were doing was waiting.
This New Year's Eve, I finally didn't feel that way anymore. Instead, I feel like in 2008 we were really living our lives, enjoying life, growing closer and being happy. We had a wonderful 2008, and not just because of the pregnancy and the birth of LL. We also traveled a lot. Got to spend a lot of time with friends. Visited a lot with family. We paid off our second mortgage. We bought our first new car in ten years. S made some great career advances at work. I made terrific progress on my PhD, finally reaching ABD (All But Dissertation) status. We got our home into a de-cluttered state that I'm really proud of, and that no longer feels like it's decorated in cheap college dorm furniture style. And I feel like, as a couple, we learned to be more patient with each other. And we got better at making each other laugh during times of stress, putting us day-by-day on a much more even keel. Heck, even a presidential election finally went our way!
That's not to say that everything was perfect. S was in grueling physical therapy for the first half of the year, trying to recover from his knee surgery. My pregnancy wasn't always roses and sunshine. Learning to be parents, and dealing with how being parents has changed our relationships with our own parents, has been a challenge. And honestly, it feels like I spent most of 2008 in a slight panic, brought about in part by a continuous state of sleep-deprived haze.
Still, it felt wonderful to spend a New Year's Eve feeling more joy than sorrow. More hope than trepidation. More excitement than emotional exhaustion. When midnight rolled around and we kissed, we stayed that way for longer than we have for many New Year's, even though my parents and M and A were making fun of us the entire time. It's good to be hopeful again.
And I'll brush right past the fact that LL woke up screaming at 12:05am.
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