If it hadn’t happened just like this…

…how would it have gone down? If somehow hormones hadn’t conspired to convince my body to ovulate that ONE AND ONLY TIME THAT ENTIRE YEAR (I have the data to prove it), if we hadn’t happened to have sex at just the right time, if that one sperm hadn’t figured out where to go and found that pretty egg–if it hadn’t been that egg, or that sperm–if the myriad ineffable happenings thereafter hadn’t happened, or had happened differently, like if the great flood had been somehow more gushy (or, and I don’t know what else–which is the whole point–could have intervened), and on and on, creating at every millisecond the chance of alternate realities, rushing off in unknowable directions: well, what if? I can’t even think about missing this, just as perfect as it is.

Privacy

Recently, a Real Life friend of mine discovered my blog (hi B!). When I realized this had transpired, I had a little freak out, and then I wondered why. I’m really basically the same on this blog as I am in Real Life; it’s not like I, in actuality, am a 66-year-old ranch hand who likes to skeet shoot and speculate about government conspiracies. Those of you who have met me (hi C!) or talked to me on the phone (hi a different C!) or emailed with me (assorted) and so forth can attest to that. Though I don’t use our names, I do (uh, obviously: see below) post pictures with no compunction, and so haven’t made this blog especially anonymous.

And yet I enjoyed the pleasant division between blogging life and Real Life (why I insist upon capitalizing that phrase I don’t quite know) that I had cultivated. Husband does know I have a blog, but (claims) he doesn’t read it since he’s “sure [I'd] tell him anything important, and besides, it’s not like [I] share my innermost feelings on the internet.” I don’t know about that, but at any rate, no one else knows about it; most notably, my friends are/were ignorant. In fact, I originally went public with this blog in an effort to have an outlet for my endless need, at the time, to ruminate about pumping and breastfeeding issues, so as to reduce the burden of my friends who otherwise kept having to hear about it, so it was explicitly intended to be a separate, supplemental part of my social life. And so it continued until recently.

It’s been a few weeks now since B may or may not have started reading (I know she knows the address and has visited, but I don’t know how much reading she has done, and we haven’t really talked about it yet). Before posting about this development, I gave myself some time to see if my blogging would change in some qualitative or quantitative regard, and it hasn’t. My interest in blogging has not been affected, and I’m glad. But that doesn’t mean I’m going to start telling all my other friends about this space (and I swore B to secrecy as though we were still in the sixth grade). Sometimes a person needs some kind of private life, I suppose. Though I guess it’s rather ironic to think of a public journal as a form of private life. How very modern.

What’s the status of your blog with regard to friends and family readership? How do you feel about it?

Por fin

At last–some halfway decent pictures of me with Baby! Husband snapped these at the park Sunday.

PS: I want to get a haircut. Ideas?

Gifty: Part 2

About a month and a half ago I posted a thank you to my readers, and offered to make handmade gifts for three of them. Today I mailed these fleece baby/toddler-sized pillows (all the recipients happen to have small children). I made one of these for Baby when she was just a few months old, and it’s handy for car trips, the stroller, the playroom (she likes to put her baby doll to bed on it), bedtime, and such. Thanks again, readers!

That man cracks me up

From time to time, Husband will say something so stunningly hilarious that I spend a good five minutes doubled over in laughter, barking like a seal, red-in-the-face, hitting the sofa cushions with a fist. There doesn’t seem to be any rhyme or reason for it: who can say why I think it’s so all-consumingly entertaining that one of his coworkers thinks the phrase “my bad” is actually “my bag”? And how he goes around saying it in meetings and stuff? Oh man, I’m sitting here laughing again just thinking about it. “My bag“!!! HAHAHA! I don’t know if it’s Husband’s delivery–it must be–but at any rate no one makes me laugh like him. “My bag“! That is too funny. I love how he can make me laugh.

Point by point

Thank you all so much for your reassurance on the topic of Baby’s weight, build, and diet, and for your valued opinions on travel (we’ve decided to do the Stockholm route and went ahead and bought the tickets). I am so appreciative of my wonderful readers and your input; my life has been very much enriched by the people I have gotten to know through blogging.

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Tonight Baby WENT POO POO IN THE POTTY! Yes! Husband was giving her a bath, and she started standing up and talking about poo poo, so this ingenious man whisked her out and plopped her on the potty. He had to hold her there and she wasn’t very happy (because, obviously, you stand to go poo poo, duh), but she went! And afterwards she continued to be a little dismayed, and kept peering into the potty and commenting on how the poo poo went uh oh, but eventually my excitement (not Husband’s; apparently he didn’t know you’re supposed to demonstrate jubilation beyond all reason in this sort of event) caught on and she started smiling and informing me about the poo poo in the potty! Yay!

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Our cable went out for several days, maybe a week, and we didn’t even notice. I think that’s awesome that apparently we don’t depend on the TV (though I did watch some taped stuff), however of course the cheapskate in me is pissed we paid for cable we didn’t get. That’s gotta be, what, like eight dollars or something? Think of all the potatoes I could have bought with that!

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A friend of mine gave birth to twins yesterday–a girl and a boy. I had talked to her last week, and she said she wasn’t worried about childbirth, she wasn’t worried about breastfeeding, she wasn’t worried about handling two newborns. No, she was worried about the realities of cloth diapering. I didn’t know what to say to that, but I can only hope that cloth diapering is indeed the biggest issue she’ll face.

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It’s been raining a lot, which means my kitchen floor is just filthy from the dogs. I keep daydreaming about some kind of magnet-like device that sucks the dirt, loose fur, and water from the dogs as they go through the door. Isn’t my fantasy life exciting?

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I teach ESL at an organization that supports immigrants from Latin America, and which also teaches Spanish to native English speakers (that’s their big cash cow). We do a thing sometimes where the students of English and the students of Spanish mix to get to practice their new languages. Invariably, when the students are paired up and they are doing their introductions, one of the English students will say he/she does housecleaning or landscaping or whatever, and the Spanish students will start insisting they hire this person to come work for them. Oh man, it is so obnoxious. I know they are thinking they are being helpful, but I just think it is so rude to put the native Spanish speaker in the servile role like that when heretofore they were equals learning languages. I don’t know what I could say, though, to ameliorate the situation.

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My mother keeps talking about coming to visit, but every time the day comes, she has to stay behind to, say, take my grandmother to the neurologist’s because my grandfather has an attack of gout and can’t move around. My grandmother no longer can be left alone at all–really, in terms of safety, she’s worse than Baby, because she can turn on the gas stove and leave it indefinitely to go put dirty clothes in the dryer and things like that–and has almost no short-term memory now. Sometimes, by the time you’ve gotten to the end of your sentence, she’s forgotten what the beginning was already. It’s just so upsetting.

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We’re finally coming to the end of a two-week period of illness and can interact with other human beings again. However, during our quarantine, I guess because we did a lot of extra lying around and reading and talking, Baby’s verbal development really took off. Below the cut are her current words as of turning 18 months (though in the days since I compiled this, she’s said even more things; it’s really an exciting time, with several new words a day, though mostly I’m the only person who understands them.)

Does this child look too skinny to you?

The answer is no, no she doesn’t. She looks perfectly fine.

Unfortunately, Baby’s pediatrician does not agree with you. She wants us to fatten her up significantly. The pediatrician argued at Tuesday’s 18-month well-check that since Baby, at 21.5 lbs., is in the 15th percentile for weight (75th percentile for height), while at 6 months she was in the 50th percentile for weight, that therefore she is not gaining enough (she nonetheless gained one pound and one inch in the last three months, and stayed in the same percentiles from last visit).

I ask you: do 6-month-olds move around as much as toddlers? Why, no. In fact, toddlers are quite active whereas six-month-olds can barely SIT effectively. Particularly mine, who spends hours a day outside throwing balls and dumping sand and rearranging rawhide dog bones and whatnot.

The pediatrician further argued that Baby really needs to drink more formula (she has some issues with regular milk so we spend a huge amount of money on toddler formula). The pediatrician suggested she drink at least 18 ounces a day. Well, doctor, I don’t see how she will drink that much, since she barely took that much when she was eating nothing BUT milk, which I know since I was exclusively pumping and kept obsessive records, but why don’t you talk to Baby and see if you can convince her to drink more? Hm, what? You can’t force toddlers to do anything, like drink more milk than they want? Surprising.

Look, I feed her every 2-3 hours during the day. Usually real meals, too; even snacks are normally more than cereal or fruit. She is offered milk (formula) throughout the day and takes a bottle at bedtime (and on the occasions she wants some in the night); she also drinks water (rather a lot of it on the nights she bathes). Most of her fat intake comes from avocado and dairy and nuts and seeds (i.e. almond butter and tahini) and some oils used in cooking. She eats pretty much any damn thing–e.g. raw spinach and broccoli, bok choy and carrots, sweet potatoes and peppers, lots of beans and lentils, all manner of fruit, any and every cheese, whatever grain we come up with, really, a vast variety of cuisines. People who witness her eating are invariably amazed by her delight in it, the breadth and depth of her gustatory enjoyment.

Here is videographic evidence:

She eats just what we eat, and we are the kind of people who take three types of cookbooks to the grocery store with us to figure out dinners for the next few days and then wander around buttonholing confused stockboys to ask where the soba noodles are. And she eats her fill and when she’s done, she’s done; I don’t argue with the bowl she proffers for me to take to the sink. Often I’ll then bring her subsequent courses until she is clearly uninterested.

Personally, I think she’s fine. Plus, what more could I do? Besides feed her deep fried lard with peanut butter and honey?

Help me pick my poison

It seems we will be traveling to Sweden this summer, despite how horrific last summer’s European expedition was and how we vowed never to do that to ourselves again. Unfortunately, though, if we don’t go, Baby’s family won’t get to see her, and she won’t get to play with all her many cousins and such.

We have two options this year: a) fly to Amsterdam (nine hours), have a two-four hour layover, then fly to a city in Sweden (two hours) just a forty-five minute drive to Husband’s parents’ house; or b) fly to Stockholm (ten hours), then drive four hours to their house.

Although both options promise misery, particularly since Baby will not be in her own seat on the plane (she’ll be 22 months old, and we are way too cheap to pay more than $1,500 for her to have her own seat if we don’t have to), which will be marginally less soul-suckingly tortuous, in your opinion?

Wow, that sucked

Despite months of satisfactory interaction with sun-dried tomatoes, tonight at dinner Baby started choking on one. Usually if she has trouble with something she can hack it up pretty speedily, but not this time. I got her out of that highchair so quickly and ungracefully I unhinged part of it, then stood her on my chair and gave her the Heimlich. After three or four thrusts, she was able to wail her fool head off, with good reason. Though I did take, a few months back, a CPR and first aid (and Heimlich maneuver) training course, I wasn’t 100% certain of my skill in that area; nonetheless, it did the trick. And now she’s perfectly happy so I assume I didn’t break any of her little ribs, though I wonder if I bruised her. Poor Baby.

A love story for Valentine’s Day

One year during college I served as a counselor in the freshmen dorms. I signed up for this primarily because it assured me a room all to myself. The type of counseling I was supposed to do centered on “women’s issues” (which were never properly defined) and in practical terms, this meant that I kept a bunch of different types of condoms and dental dams in little homemade paper pouches on the outside of my door. Regularly, very regularly, I had to refill these at health services. I actually still have some of those condoms in my possession today; I like keepsakes, what can I say?

The only time I ever really did anything genuinely useful as a counselor was the time I helped one student through her discovery that she was pregnant, her decision to terminate the pregnancy, and the termination itself and its aftermath. I still remember having to cross the picketers at the women’s health clinic, and the lone wait while she was in surgery and recovery. How well I really navigated that tricky territory I don’t really know, but she wrote me a nice letter thanking me, saving me from years of guilt about the whole affair. Though I still think about it.

There were two other counselors for our particular group of freshmen: one for “minorities” (again, fairly nebulous in function and import) and one that was more general in nature. I was buddies with the “minority” one; the general one (we’ll call her Helvetica) was somewhat too, I don’t know, bouncyfor my taste.

But she was really good at creating and hosting fun events. The problem was that she only seemed to bond with the freshmen boys. Every time we walked past her room, she had a host of them hanging around, giving her backrubs and laughing really loudly. People started coming to me, saying they felt Helvetica was unapproachable and that her relationship with some of the boys bordered on the inappropriate and made them uncomfortable, particularly in regards to one guy, BlondSpikyHairGuy.

At the time, full of a misguided sense of the seriousness of our roles as counselors (really, I think we were just there so that the university could tell anxious parents that their 18-year-olds had some supervision), the “minority” counselor and I were just Outraged. How could Helvetica flout the Ethics of Counseling so boldly? It became a kerfuffle. Helvetica was asked to resign. We were smug.

I had entirely forgotten about this whole unfortunate series of events until I got my alumni magazine yesterday in the mail. As always, I checked for names I recognized for people who graduated in my year. And what do I find? Helvetica and BlondSpikyHairGuy just got married, lo these many years later. Aw, true love.

Happy Valentine’s Day!

Snotty

Sick. Fever. Me and Baby. Midterm. Paper. Little sleep. Bad parenting when sick, tired, and busy with school. Trifecta. Blech.

I don’t know what the moral of this story might be

A month or so ago Husband got it into his head that I need a new laptop (honestly I reckon his line of thinking involved his wanting a new computer, but my having the older one, so that he couldn’t in good conscience, or without my complaining, get a new one before I did). My computer is about four years old, and while it’s perfectly serviceable, it does have problems (mostly these date from a disastrous trip to a celebrity gossip site the first time Britney was pregnant causing the computer to contract spyware and viruses, the venereal diseases of the internet). He started researching deals and ordered me something refurbished, as is our usual practice. It arrived a few weeks ago, and it wasn’t until today that we finally opened the box (clearly I wasn’t that into this whole new-computer thing). And the laptop totally didn’t work–produced only the Blue Screen of Death–so we’re sending it back. Huh.