Four Short Years

Wow, a post a month is not exactly a great record. I will pretend that there are readers who object to the long wait, and apologize. Sorry, ya'll.

This past Thursday was our fourth wedding anniversary. We celebrated by eating dinner later than usual (8:00 instead of 6:00), and in Jim's case, by waiting until 10:00 to fall asleep on the couch. Spicy! On the one hand, four years seems like a long time, that is, it's hard to believe that we've been married that long already. On the other hand, our lives have changed so drastically in those four years that it's difficult to see how all those changes could have fit into that span of time.

I remember as a teenager, or maybe a young twenty-something, asking my mom how she knew that my dad was the man she wanted to spend the rest of her life with. I was hoping for a peek into my mom's fairly secretive emotional life, and thrilled a bit to the anticipation of some semblance of girl talk between her and me- a rarity. I can't remember the exact words she used, but her answer was along the lines of "You know, we were just both at the age where people get married, so it seemed like the right thing to do." Was she just getting over a recent spat with my dad? Or did she really just get married because she was the right age, and so was he, and there they were, the right age, together?

The main piece of advice about marriage that my parents passed along to me (besides the one where my mom repeatedly harangued me not to get married before I finished my degree and found a good job) was to "marry a friend." Which, when you're a teenager, sounds ridiculous and even a little creepy. It was creepier still when my dad would explain that he and my mom didn't do that (but instead, just got married because she was so good looking, and he, the right age?), and this made it a lot harder when they ran into problems and had to work them out without a strong basis of friendship to stand on. I don't know how old you have to get before it's comfortable hearing your parents discuss problems in their marriage. They had their forty-fifth wedding anniversary (I think that's the right number) this year, so, all's well that endures well. The friendship must have seeped in along the way.

As with many pieces of parental advice that seemed at the time really not to apply to me, of course my parents were right about this. Having a good friend, one that you can really count on, by your side every day is absolutely the best thing about being married. It is a super sweet bonus if that friend is smart, kind, funny (goofy), strong, brave, a great father, a good singer, a good cook (if memory serves, ha ha, just kidding, honey), and last but not least, goooood looking. Reader, he is the bomb.

I thought it would be a palate cleanser to write about something other than my super cute and adorable girls and their winning ways and amazing vocabularies. And I could have gone the sitcom route and described all the things that drive us crazy about each other (I mean, not in a good way), or the absurd argument we had the other day about whether the giant powdered wigs that guys used to wear can be compared to something like modern day jeans in a historical big picture analysis of superficially inscrutable "fashion" (Me: they cannot! Him: they can!). Instead, I up the syrup ante with a little anniversary tribute to my man, and the institution that binds us.


Now married 4 years, in this picture, right around 4 minutes...

Gay King Zachy!

Naomi fears no word. She tries words out as soon as she hears them, and then tosses them into her everyday speech like croutons in a salad. Except in most cases it's more like marshmallows or chocolate chips in a salad- it's good to see (hear) them, just maybe not exactly where they show up. As C and B, our recent visitors, can attest, she practices her speech skills nonstop, which is why she is so darn skilled at yapping. Some recent language development anecdotes:

- We checked out "Curious George Goes to the Hospital" on our last library run, and in one scene, George performs in a puppet theater (because his feet are like two extra hands), and Naomi said "That looks like Theodore!" Looks like is Naomi's way of saying looks like, sounds like, reminds me of. Theodore is an elephant with a bad leg in another book that we have. Theater sounds like Theodore, so now every time we read one book or the other, she points out that although they "look like" each other, theater is a place to see a show, and Theodore is an elephant with a bad leg. To take this one step further, when Jim was wearing a brace on his wrist, Naomi informed him that his arm had a bad leg.

- Also in the same book (the Curious George one), George gets an operation. Later, when we were singing a particular verse of "Bananaphone" over and over (because Naomi likes to hear me say "Operator, get me Beijing-jing-jing-jing"), Naomi observed that operator sounds like operation. Now we must have similar exposition of these related words when either of them comes up. And she also likes to inform people that Beijing is a city in China.

- Again with the Curious George. Who knew these books were such a source for vocabulary building? George rides on a record player, loses his "valance" (we have a b and v mixup issue), and flies through the air. Whoopee! Naomi insisted on knowing who said Whoopee! I explained that it wasn't George, it was the narrator. Remember learning literary terms in high school? Naomi now has a head start.

- This one is not so much about vocabulary- it's just funny. Some Pottery Barn packages arrived, and Naomi was very anxious to open the one that contained the curtains, because it is the right size to come from her Grandma with presents inside. I had to work hard to persuade her that it wasn't something nice for her. Here was her position: "Look at my hands! There are no any presents in them!"

- Occasionally I will not be able to figure out what Naomi is talking about, even after much interviewing on both sides. Recently, this happened when she asked me if I remembered Gay King Zachy. Wow! I didn't. Where did Gay King Zachy come from? Finally we revisited a wacky book, "Nonsense Alphabets" written by Edward Lear (of "The Owl and the Pussycat"), and it turned out that after the one time we read it, she had managed to retain the verse for the letter X:

X was once a great king Xerxes,
Xerxy
Perxy
Turxy
Xerxy
Linxy Lurxy
Great King Xerxes!

Hee.

Tuesday Evening in the Park

On Tuesday evening, after hurriedly eating our spaghetti and meatball dinner, we drove up to Kirkland for an outdoor concert with a local community orchestra. I know what you are thinking. Either we need to just move to Kirkland and get it over with, or we need to get a calendar of events for our own city already. But in this case, Jim's coworker is a member of the orchestra, we saw them play last summer as well, and the venue is a grass-surrounded gazebo on the shore of Lake Washington- really lovely.

First, let me comment on the awesomeness of community orchestra programs. No one on the planning committee feels any motivation to go any deeper than the absolute surface of pop classical music. So most of these concerts are greatest hits concerts, and this one was like the greatest hits of all. "Skater's Waltz"? Check. "Eine Kleine Nachtmusik"? Check. "Carmen," "Camelot," "Stars and Stripes Forever," "William Tell Overture"??? Quadruple check.The weather was great, too. It has been a cloudy, gloomy couple of days (or, let's face it, entire summer, on which I would totally like my money back, Seattle area, you big cheater), and the clouds seemed to break up a bit just in time for the sunset.

We found a seat on the wall of a big planter, and also immediately bumped into the daughter of Jim's coworker. She shared her blanket with Naomi, and tried to share her snacks, but Naomi could not be convinced to eat a cool ranch Dorito, for some reason. Then Naomi began her starring role as cute little lunatic, becoming obsessed with the idea that she needed to see Brad (the coworker) up on stage, and dragging the helpful daughter closer and closer to the stage, at one point almost going up onto the stage, and finally, narrating to all around, for the rest of the night, with great dramatic sweeping gestures, the saga of how she really wanted to see Brad, and looked and looked, and couldn't see him because there were other people all around him. Wacky little girl.

For myself, I got confirmation of what I already know- that I am lonely. I clung to every scrap of conversation offered by Brad's wife, by Jim's other coworker and his girlfriend, by the high-school and college age daughters who patiently listened to Naomi's endless oral tradition. It's not as though work is some kind of social whirl- I can go for four or five hours at a stretch without speaking a word out loud when I'm in my office. But something about being in the house so much, and offering a constant stream of supportive chatter to the afore-mentioned kooky toddler, results in acute adult-conversation starvation.

I also got confirmation that Muriel is a super cutie, when two women and their daughters came from across the park to admire her. At least that's what I thought was happening, until one of the daughters, a camera-ready 13 year old, gave me her contact information, including the fact that she had taken a babysitting class and her mother was always close by for backup. Heh. Maybe if Muriel were six years old instead of six weeks. I didn't get a picture of Muriel that night (a shame!), but I just took one before her current nap (with a nice unflattering flash), so here it is.

A Handful of Embarrassing Tidbits

- I am weirdly delighted that the ventriloquist won "America's Got Talent." I watched this show last year (I have already forgotten who won), but had to skip it this year due to a middle of the night wake-up on the couch which resulted in a hazy, unwanted, for some reason really horrifying viewing, on one of those Access Hollywood-type shows, of the footage of the blotto Hoff trying to eat the hamburger, which resulted further in me having a higher than normal case of the heebie jeebies when I see the guy on TV (which one does a lot when one indulges in "America's Got Talent"). I watched maybe forty-five minutes of the show altogether, in little channel flips, but still managed to catch the ventriloquist, and unlike so many of the contestants (my friend C. has offered that the name of the show should actually be "America's Got Skills"- dancing on stilts? Right, more of a skill...), he really does have talent. Also, so so out there that America's best new act, as they bill the winner of this thing, is a ventriloquist.
- I was flipping through the Pottery Barn catalog (because we need some specific drape-related hardware that is specific to these people, and it came in the mail, and whatever), and I couldn't help but notice that some bored catalog editor decided to sprinkle the pages of this direct-mail retail shop with inspirational quotes. The embarrassing part is not that I was reading the PB catalog, or that I just now used their own precious abbreviation for themselves, but that I really like the quotes. Which means I am going along too easily with the Pottery Barn ethos or whatever. The quote picker did a fine job. From Pab To the Lo Picasso: "Inspiration exists, but it has to find you working." And from Einstein: "Joy in looking and comprehending is nature's most beautiful gift." These quotes do not make me want to shop, however. So in that sense, maybe, quote picker, back to the library with you.
- This isn't really embarrassing, but it is a tidbit- Naomi has suddenly turned a corner, or is conducting some kind of social experiment, wherein every stranger is just a friend she hasn't met yet. So everywhere we go, she yells out "Hi!" to whoever we see. Even people that are twenty yards away and looking in the other direction. This is great when we're on walks, because there are people going by who fully intended not to make eye contact and give the minimum acknowledgement due to a passerby (in my book), and they are surprised into social grace by my obnoxious little diplomat. Hee. I hope this phase or social experiment lasts. It's fun.

Drowsy But Awake

Before we had Naomi, a couple of coworkers of Jim's recommended the book "Healthy Sleep Habits, Healthy Child" to us. We (I) read it, and although it is not the best written book (a common thread in parenting publications, for some reason), the main points are important and good to know, and we became staunch (and to to childless friends, pretty aggravating) nap and bedtime advocates. I hadn't read it in a couple of years, and because it feels like Muriel is no longer in the newborn, "anything goes" period, I thought it would be a good idea to read through the 0-4 months section for a reminder of what's supposed to happen. As I was reading, last night, that around five to six weeks, patterns of "going down for the night" emerge, I realized that she has been falling asleep just after Naomi's bedtime (7:30, on our best days), usually in her swing, and going from there to the bedroom for the traditional three nighttime wakeups/feedings. So, neat, right? I should mention that although it is a bit of a drag waking up three times, the point of the wakeup has been eating and going back to sleep, so it's not entirely stupefying.

And then, there was last night. Jim turned the swing off and let her sleep in there until she woke up, just before 1. After she ate, I did everything I normally do to get her back to sleep- swaddling and rocking in her bassinet until I doze off, she makes her little grunty "I'm still awake" sounds, then I wake up, rock her bassinet some more, and eventually there are no more sounds and we're all sleeping. Except that last night, the night I am feeling all confident and well-informed on baby sleep issues, she didn't go back to sleep at all. Finally, at four-thirty or so, I brought her back to the living room (a.k.a., Jim's bedroom), put her back into the swing, made apologies to the groggy dad, and went back to bed. zzzz. The book advises that babies be put to bed (for naps and night sleep) "drowsy but awake," so that they can learn the process of falling asleep themselves. I wouldn't say I am in the position to be offering master classes on this particular process, but yeah, I'm pretty sleepy.

Despite her newfound party ethic, life with Muriel is good. I was worried that I would feel overwhelmed and unhappy staying home with a baby and a toddler, but I have found to my amazement and delight that I do not feel that way at all. I am finding Naomi to be really good company most of the time, and pretty agreeable in general. When I have some activity planned for her/us to take part in, such as an art project or an outing, I feel like a super mom. When I don't, we just dork around the house and read "One Fish, Two Fish" for the seven hundredth time this week, and I feel like a pretty good mom. It doesn't hurt that Naomi has taken to saying things like "You're a great, great, great Mommy that takes care of everybody." Hey, yeah, thanks! Nobody at work gives me that kind of affirmation, heh. "You're a great, great, great technical writer!"

I am worried that Muriel is not getting quite the amount of stimulating (constant) attention that her big sister got at the same age. When she generously offers to sleep through Naomi's breakfast, my doing the dishes, our reading of a hundred books, and a trip to the park, really, I just take her up on it. Even though the sleep book says (in a little inset text box) "Remember: never wake as sleeping baby," I can't help thinking that she's getting cheated a little.

There are so many things to say about both of them, and really, I should just keep a bulleted list going so I can throw it in here once in a while, but I hear one of them making nap is soon to be over noises, so this is it for now. I just have time for a shout out to the 'Tudes who visited us over the weekend- it was so fun, and way too short a visit, and Naomi enjoyed having you here, especially Maria's books, which she quotes now and then. Thanks for reading them to her, and thanks for coming!

Let The Wild Rumpus Start

Naomi was generously gifted with a big treasury of children's literature a few days ago (as a consolation for having lost forever the undiluted love and devotion of her parents), and it includes Where the Wild Things Are, a book I remember but that she has never read before. We read it together TWO times only, and since then she has been going around saying "I'll eat you all up!" and, more hilariously, "Let the wild rumpus start!" Seems like a good name for the "how it all went down" post that has been long forthcoming. So here it is.

In the interest of full disclosure, I wrote the complaint post about waiting for the ol' mucuous plug the day before the fourth of July, but then didn't post it until the day after. So right about the time I was posting it (can't remember now if it was before or after), the newly named "Red Curtain" actually did descend (thanks to M.T. for that), and gave me a genuinely giddy thrill. I had been having contractions that seemed more like the real thing to me since the night before, but they were not so strong as to keep me awake all night, so I had a decent amount of sleep. I called in sick to work, hoping that would validate my hopes, and hung around the house wearing an old sundress that was not maternity wear, but still fit over my belly, somehow. A picture of that would liven up the story; alas, no such picture exists.

Taking the day off was a good plan, not only because my contractions were getting stronger and more frequent, but also because all the preparations I had made for having the baby had kind of all worn off- that is, the clean bathroom and kitchen were no longer clean, the sheets needed a wash, etc. So it was housework and contractions for most of the day. We had been timing the contractions on and off during the day, and in the late afternoon, it started to look like things were standardizing a bit. Jim went to get Naomi at daycare, and I called my midwife, who said that six or seven minutes apart really wasn't that different from five minutes apart, and that I should plan to go into the hospital at 8:30 that night for a check. She said that if I was progressing, I could just stay and make things happen, and if I wasn't progressing, they would give me something to help me sleep through the night. As a person who is fairly committed to natural childbirth, I am embarrassed at how delighted I felt at the prospect of getting some morphine. It sounded great!

Our friend and designated toddler caregiver headed over to our house while I fed Naomi her dinner. I had a nice big contraction while trying to eat my PB&J, and Naomi said, "Mommy, why are you making that mad face?" Heh. I managed to keep the really hearty moaning in check until she got into bed. Then, it was all moaning all the time. Like every three minutes. Youch. Naomi went to bed at 7:30. Our friend arrived around the same time.

Jim and I left for the hospital just before 8:00 pm. I should mention that our garage door had broken the day before, though not completely (now it is completely broken), and Jim had figured out he could get the thing to close by pushing the button and then manually forcing it past the sticking point. So as we left for the hospital, there was a bit of slapstick as I attempted to follow his pantomime for when I should push the button again as he tried to force the thing down, his fingers with a spare grip on the tiny ridges of the door. Super duper absurd. I finally threw the button thingy at him, and he managed to get the door closed enough, and we departed. The drive to the hospital was very much like the drive to the hospital in movies or tv shows that feature a birth, except that we did not get pulled over. I was yelling away in the front seat, Jim was patting my leg and gritting his teeth. Exciting! And despite being in what was probably the transition phase of labor, I still managed to backseat drive on where we should park.

I should back up a bit and explain that the single most effective pain management technique during the last marathon go-round was being in the tub. I sat in there for a long time, and felt pretty good about it. When we toured the birthing center for this one, I was instantly smitten by the big giant whirlpool tub in each birthing room. Awesome. So during our trip to the hospital (which I felt fairly certain was going to be the real trip, not just a check and morphine shot trip), I sustained myself by imagining how much better I was going to feel once I got into that giant tub.

Just as we were arriving at the check-in desk, a woman who had been sitting in the waiting area got up and strode to the desk, effectively cutting us off from the attention of the receptionist. Then I had a contraction, and the companions of the woman made some significant throat clearing noises, she backed off, and the receptionist said some inane thing about me looking uncomfortable, but that she would get us back there as soon as the contraction was over. She told us to go to room 605, which I only remember because when we got to 605, the sheets were all in a big pile, and there was a guy mopping. The mopping guy said, "You're probably going to be in 606, because that one is clean." Hooray- I didn't have to wait for the guy to finish mopping.

I knew they had to strap the monitors on me for a while when I first got there, but I was very discouraged when the nurse (who had absolutely no sense of urgency whatsoever) told me that it would have to be for half an hour before I could get in the tub. Woe! She tried to get a urine sample from me, but despite following all advice on staying hydrated, it was not happening. As she hooked me up, she started explaining all that she would have to do to get the tub ready (fill it up, run it to get the jets all cleaned, drain and wipe down, refill). I felt more and more discouraged. Somehow the goal had switched for me, from having a baby to getting into the giant tub. And this nurse did not want me to reach my goal.

The gown was on, the monitors were strapped on, and it was time for the exam/assault. The nurse seemed flummoxed when she reached her entire arm up somewhere near my esophagus and then admitted that she was "having trouble" finding my cervix. Ow, I said, over and over. The last time I remember looking at the clock, it was quarter to nine, and I am pretty sure I said something to Jim about how I still had fifteen minutes to go on my "strip" (monitoring) before they would let me into the tub. Things started to whirl around a little. Some other nurse started poking me in the wrist, saying she was starting an IV. I remember asking why I needed an IV, and she said something about their protocol, and getting pitocin after the delivery. News to me. Someone said something about making sure my midwife was on her way, and then there was some banter about who else was available (no one!). The nurse said to let her know if I was feeling pushy. I was feeling pushy! But the nurse seemed not to believe me. Everything felt like total chaos. I decided to keep my eyes closed for a while.

Then I heard the voice of my midwife. She said, "I know you had to push a long time the last time, and I just want you to know, it's not going to be like that this time." Someone said something about seeing hair (yikes), and my midwife said if I wanted to push, I could. Someone made the usual offer of reaching down to touch her head, which I politely refused. So I pushed. About three times, I think. And then, there was the baby. Just like that! We got to the hospital at 8:15 or so, and Muriel was born at 9:03. Huzzah!

That's it for the birth story. Sorry for any details that seem too detailed. Life with Muriel in our family has been really pleasant so far, so, more on that another time...

4th of July

It's funny to try to figure out how to explain the Fourth of July to a two year old, since I am not inclined to raise her believing that our country is superior to all others for reasons both earned and pre-ordained by God. Which reminds me, can someone explain the bumper sticker I have seen on a few different cars lately, that has a swoop of stars and stripes, and says "Power of Pride"? I have so many questions about the meaning of this slogan, I don't even know where to start. So if it is in fact the name of a drum corps or something, please tell me that so I can just let it go. But back to Independence Day. We talked about how it is like a birthday celebration for our country, the USA. Naomi, who likes to hear us talk, apparently, then asked what the name of some other countries are. Hee.

Where I am going with this is a general question of whether you are starting down a certain path if you focus on how you celebrate something and leave until later the question of why you are celebrating. Because a lot of Fourth of July activities are super fun, and talking about them in advance (and even learning about them when you are too young to stay up late enough to take part in them) is part of the fun, too. I don't know why we have parades on the Fourth of July, but we do. I am not sure what the apple pie thing is about, but yum, I made one! (It was ugly but tasted good.)

Anyway, yesterday was an amazingly beautiful day, and we went north one exurb to Kirkland for breakfast and the Fourth of July parade. We have a library book about a Fourth of July parade, so I knew Naomi would be into it, but seriously, it was like she had been waiting her whole life to be an appreciative spectator of a Fourth of July parade. She clapped and shouted hooray and waved.

The first part of the parade is the Children's Parade, wherein Kirkland's forty thousand children (seriously, it went on and on and on) pass by on their scooters and bikes and Barbie Power Wheels Corvettes, all decorated up with sparkly red, white, and blue doodads. Naomi kept saying, "Hooray for the children!" Ha!

Despite my problematic relationship with patriotism, I still cried outright when the World War II former POWs went by. Damn!

All the veterans got a lot of applause. After the veterans came a bunch of corvettes, each carrying a member of the Little League Championship team from like 1982, or something. Which means a bunch of 39 year old guys, riding above a blown up photo of themselves, age twelve. Weird. Coming as they did right after the WWII POWs, they didn't get quite as good a reception. There was some gigantic military vehicle (a Striker?) covered with signs that said "Support our Troops- and their Mission." Remember the sucker's choice? Sheesh.

My favorite parts of the parade? The retirement home group was awesome, with a couple of Rascal scooters and a fully ambulatory Statue of Liberty impersonator leading the way, and the retirement home bus (complete with shaded windows) following behind, clearly packed with residents, bringing up the rear. Yea!

And shortly after them- the DeLorean club. Hee!

Naomi's favorite was all the marching bands. She loves her some marching bands! The inner band geek in me is, well, geeked. Happy Birthday, USA. Thanks for letting us assemble peacefully, bedecked in patriotic colors.

Mucous Plug? Or Bloody Show?

I begin this entry with a disclaimer that I know I am extremely
fortunate to be right on the verge of having a most likely healthy and
wonderful baby. Indeed, I am lucky. Please know that I know it, and forgive
the subsequent complaining. That said, the ninth month (or, as I am just
now entering it, the tenth month) of pregnancy is a virtual playground
of delights. Profuse sweating in strange, unmentionable places. Joint
pain in joints I normally never give a thought to. Irrational fears
about all kinds of things. Weird, unprecedented facial acne. Swollen
fingers. Grouchiness. When I read through this list, I realize I really don't
have it so bad. But it's funny that this magical time should be
dominated by me looking out for the sign of labor with two name options, both
of which are pretty gross. So I'm opening up the phones for a "Rename
the Bloody Show" contest- if you can think of a more pleasant and
auspicious name for the mucuos plug, I want to hear it.

The other interesting thing about being this pregnant is the weird
quality of becoming community property. People at work who normally never
speak to me, and often, in fact, completely random strangers will ask me
when I'm due and make other related comments to me. (Fortunately,
there has been no touching.) When my grouchiness is flaring up, I don't so
much like this. I know I am not super interesting on my own merits, but
now that I'm procreating, I'm good enough to chat with? When I am
feeling less grouchy, I know that's what lies beneath even the clumsy smart
ass comments ("Oh, that black dress is really slimming, ha ha!") is a
real excitement and joy at the prospect of a new life. People can't
seem to help themselves. So I hope I can focus on that part of it, and
less on the grouchy part of it. But really, I'm ready to just let the new
life out, to go back to being me, or at least, to having the baby on
the outside so that well-meaning strangers can speak directly to her
instead of me. Come on out, kiddo!

Vacation!

I have taken more than a little vacation from regular posting, and since big life changes are on the way, it seems like a good idea to get a couple of posts out before I completely drop off the map. And it is an even better idea to write a little bit about our vacation while there still remains in my consciousness some of the relaxed, golden goodness it
bestowed upon me. So- on the first Saturday in June, we drove up to Anacortes to catch a ferry to a place I had neither
been to nor heard of before bidding on a week's stay there at a charity auction last fall, Orcas Island. This aution was
before I was pregnant, so a. I was a little tipsy and eager in the bidding, and b. didn't have any idea I would be eight
months plus pregnant on our trip. Turns out that neither factor was a factor- the place we won was a true prize, just the right size for our little family and our friends with their two little girls.

It was a guest house for what I can only imagine is a truly swanktastic
getaway home, just below. The house seemed to be newly redone, with slate tiles, a fantastic kitchen, a really oversized
tub surrounded by marble, a loft bedroom with twin beds (and intriguing little closets in the low walls, specially
designed to delight toddlers), a downstairs bedroom with a creaky queen, and even a laundry room. And, unlike other
getaway spots I have known, nary a taxidermic trophy to be seen. From the picture windows, and the big deck outside, we
spotted porpoises going by in the sound, as well as beautiful birds and hungry, ever-in-attendance black tailed deer.
Nevermind the staggeringly large slugs and snails (ah, the Northwest).

The first two days were sunny, and on the first day, we went to the Eastsound farmer's market, where carrying only locally
grown produce meant that there was, um, not very much produce to be had just yet.

Fortunately, the shaved ice crop had come in already! On the second day, Jim, Naomi, and I took a hike to several waterfalls in Moran State Park, then drove to the top of Mount Constitution for a really wonderful view of the San Juan Islands (of which Orcas is the largest, I believe). Through relentless conditioning, I managed to get Naomi to use a slow, booming, dramatic voice whenever she said "Mount Constitution".

It was pretty cool. After nap (which is something you say when you have tiny children along on your
vacation), the whole big gang of us went to Cascade Lake for some beach action. The water was too chilly for real swimming
(though I was ready, with my gigantic burgundy pregnancy swimsuit!), but the girls had a wonderful time digging in the
gravelly dirt that passed for beach sand.

We enticed them a little ways out into the water as well.

The next day marked the return of the clouds and showers that make Orcas Island the lush paradise where slugs the size of
your arm can flourish. We read books, played games, and ate a lot of overly large meals. The guys went out one afternoon
for a sea kayaking trip, of which I was intensely jealous, even as I saw the wisdom in sitting it out at this stage. The
girls hovered around the baby, played with all the pots and pans in the kitchen, and walked down to the rocky beach near
the house for some lessons in rock chucking from their dads. We took a short trip to the historical Moran mansion, where a
former mayor of Seattle and apparently huge Orcas Island fan recuperated from stress and just generally had a good time
(wonder if that huge bar on the main floor was open when he lived there?).

Our friends had to leave on Wednesday, but we decided to stay a little longer. We returned to Eastsound for lunch, some
groceries, and a visit to the free-wifi coffee shop (Jim's web surfing hobby having suffered considerably out at the uber
-relaxing, completely un-connected guest house).

On Thursday, we went in to town again, for pizza and gelato (can you
believe there is a local chain on the island- two coffee houses with tasty gelato?). That afternoon, we visited
Obstruction Pass state park, a place name not a little suggestive of gastro-intestinal difficulties. Oh well. The .5 mile
hike to the beach seemed a nice doable distance with a not-too-trail-hardy two year old, but it seemed much longer while
we hiked it. It was worth it, though, to find ourselves on the beautiful, sunny, rocky beach with a thick border of
driftwood.

As always, the hike back seemed shorter, though probably not for Jim, who was carrying the smallest member of
our party for most of the half mile. Unless you count the member of our party that I was carrying.

The return of the sun meant a beautiful ferry ride home on Friday.

Often a vacation can feel too short, or too rushed, or
too long, even, but this trip to Orcas Island, in so many ways, felt just right. We were sad it was over, but it felt like
it was over, not like we could go on staying in the "Tiny House in the Forest" (as Naomi called it) forever. Thank you,
Orcas Island, for a really wonderful week. Hope to see you again someday...

Made Up Self Interview

In the interest of making myself actually post something, I will now manufacture some categories to attempt to round up all the things I've been meaning to mention in this thing...

What's cheering me up: Work is really interesting right now as I have two projects that are finishing up before I leave for my three month "vacation." I really like to be busy at work.

What's bumming me out: I have pneumonia, or probably do, since there can be no x-ray to confirm it. I am getting better, though. I hate missing work when I am closing in on a big deadline.

Stupid thing that made me laugh: In the huge pile of dead computer equipment that had been cluttering up the hallway (and the feng shui, as my office neighbor pointed out) at work was a small printer whose explanatory post-it note declared, simply, "DIRTY PRINT JOBS" Heh.

Stupid thing that made me cry: Everything. No kidding. I'm up to fifteen times a day now.

Secret confession: I am a fan of the Gilmore Girls, and was genuinely sad when the show ended last week. Embarrassingly, see category above.

Bit of hilarity from Naomi: She named her baby doll (small, pink clad, with pink "binky") Clark. Where has she even ever heard this name before? Have I already mentioned her imaginary friend, "Dobo"?

I am now reading: Consumed (with some long important subtitle that I can't remember) by Benjamin Barber. It was my Mother's Day present from Jim after I got all pissy about the endless signs in the mall trying to make you feel like a loser if you don't spend some serious cash on your mom.

I have just finished reading: The Best Firefighters Ever, by Richard Scarry, in which Mr. Frumble, a little frazzled after having his pickle car flattened by a steamroller, pulls the fire alarm over a faint wisp of smoke in the next yard and summons Smokey, Sparky, Snozzle, and Squirty to blast the Greenbug family with water during their small-scale though still festive barbecue. At the end, all the named characters return to the firehouse, where the firefighters (who are all pigs) problematically grill sausages for their guests. Yikes.

OK, that's all the categories I can muster today. There is one (4-day!) week of work left before our Orcas Island Odyssey. You can bet there will be some photos from that! Happy Memorial Day!

Bunny Update

There is so much to say about Naomi these days that it is difficult to boil it down into a theme. So I am going the way of the technical writer (minus the succint quality, I am sure) and using bullets. –

• Naomi has a big(ger) girl bed now- she just completed her fourth cribless night. The bed is from IKEA (of course) and sports a nifty blue canopy kind of thing. She has fallen out twice already, but neither fall awakened her. Don't worry, we have created a landing pad around the gap, so when she falls out, it's into a pile of pillows. Miraculously (everyone knock on wood as you read this), she has not once removed herself from the bed on purpose.
• Does anyone else remember that Steinbeck story where the local developmentally disabled man plays back conversations he has overheard, in the saloon, for tips? Naomi could give this guy a run for his tip money, except that what she plays back are the things she hears at daycare. I am sorry to say they are almost all discipline-related. I am only going to say this once. Listen to my words. No hitting. We don't hit. Listen, are you listening? Do you understand? Do you understand my words? The comic twist is when her dad and I are subsumed into this dialogue of commands. Mommy, don't hit dancing bear (as though she has caught me in the act of assaulting one of her toys). Daddy, you take a bite of that sandwich RIGHT NOW. Whew.
• On the cuter, nicer side, she also plays back songs she has learned. There's something that sounds like "Goolee goolee goolee a-rum-sum-sum" or something like that, as well as some song that I assume has all the kids' names in it at some point, but Naomi only likes to sing it with "Colby." "Colby, Colby, Colby, let's take Colby!"
• I think I have already mentioned that Naomi is very skilled with context. By this I mean that she remembers words and phrases and grasps the context they are used in really well, so that she startles us sometimes by saying things that seem to imply a very complicated understanding of things and of language, but really, she just knows where to put certain words. It always keeps us guessing as to what she really understands. Probably more than we think. One example- I was cooking shrimp, and (against all child safety suggestions) picked her up so she could see what was in the pan. "It's shrimp," I said. "Shrim," she said. I said shrimp again, emphasizing the P. "Actually," she said, "actually, it's shrimmm." I stand corrected.
• Last night Naomi made a joke, and a decent one at that. For a while in December, when we were all sick all the time, she got her head around the fact that all of us have doctors, and each doctor has a different name. So if you had asked her what her mom's doctor's name is, she could have answered correctly. It happens that the doctor Jim sees is named Applebaum. Last night, during a brief revival of the what's your doctor's name game, she said, "Daddy, you should see Dr. Applebaum." Pause. "You should see Dr. Carrotbaum." Hee! Maybe you had to be there, but the fact that she laughed even before we did seemed to indicate that this girl was trying to be funny.
• I don't know how to explain this one, but she sometimes uses a slightly different voice, one that's a little lower in her throat. When she really gets going on a topic, she drops the second part of the sentence into this other voice. I have no idea where it comes from. This is completely different than the super squeaky, high-pitched voice that she uses when channeling the personalities of her stuffed toys, creatures she has created by chewing her bread or bagel, or her own fingers or feet. Mommy! Put a sock on me! I need a shoe!
• Whenever I arrive at school to get her, Naomi smiles a huge smile, announces to everyone that her mommy is here, and runs to me from wherever she is (lately, outside in the play yard). It is a joy I look forward to all afternoon long. No one else that I know is ever this happy to see me, let alone if they were to see me every day. Kind of sounds like I'm just in it for the love.

Girls' Imagination Gone Wild

(Apologies for the length of this post...) The morning after our guests left, I hopped a plane to Vegas, where my good friend from high school days lives with her husband and baby. When we finally found each other in the airport, my friend had her 10 month old son strapped to her front in a Baby Bjorn, and the spectacle of cuteness was almost too great to bear. In the interest of our "Girls' Weekend," though, we had to abandon the cutie with his grandma, head out for a sophisticated lunch (on a typical Vegasy artificial lake, where the appearance of a pair of Canada geese, which are like pigeons in Minnesota, caused our waiter to get all Audobon Society on us and tell us what a rare treat it was to see them there...), and drive to an off-strip casino to meet some 30-year old gazillionaire who was going to caravan with us up to the "compound" where our Girls' Weekend was to commence. My friend's dad is, I guess, connected around town, and one of the people he has connected with is this young developer guy who, among other things, has a part in this kind of cooperative getaway property that was put together by some famous Vegas real estate family (and a bunch of other well-off folks). Somehow word got out that I needed a place to spend my girls' weekend, and the rest is history.

Actually, I don't really know what went down, but after locating the fellow, we followed his SUV up a very rough dirt road into the foothills of Mt. Charleston, through a gate, and into this, um, compound, I guess. There was a spring fed pond, with a pretty fabulous "boat house," which my friend and I both assumed was the place to stay. But no, we drove further up the road, past the horse paddocks and the caretakers house to the "main lodge," which was palatial, and appeared to have been decorated by Gaston from Beauty and the Beast. Outside the main lodge were three mini-cabins, and up another winding road, a fourth cabin with a loft and a bathroom complete with a glass-walled shower (glass walled to the outside, I mean, so as to titillate the creatures of the brush). The ranch or farm or whatever it was originally is in the high desert, with scrubby trees and bushes, and beautiful views of Mt. Charleston and the valley below.

We decided to stay around the main lodge, and our host (who was actually leaving- he had just driven up with us to make sure we found it and so he could show us the fantastically stocked liquor cabinets- ouch! says the pregnant lady) showed us around the place, and told us that he liked to just sleep upstairs in the murphy bed. After he left, we continued our Girls' Weekend by engaging in the well-known female bonding ritual of photographing each of the many, many dead and stuffed creatures which lived (or, you know, didn't live) in the lodge. I risk sounding ungrateful to the people who, out of sheer generosity of spirit, let two strangers stay at their ridiculously lavish getaway destination free of charge, but I have to say, surely there is a limit to the number of taxidermy elements you should include inside one building. The place, admittedly, was huge (maybe three thousand square feet?), but still: one bearskin rug, one cow skin, one stuffed turkey, a buffalo head, a moose head, an elk head, a deer head, two pheasants, a wolf, and the piece de resistance, a snarling stuffed mountain lion (or bobcat or something) at the top of the stairs in the loft. And let us not forget the towering antler chandeliers, antler wall sconces, and, in the bathroom, antler magazine racks. Both lavish and super creepy.

(One of my new friends...)

We chose the mini cabin closest to the main lodge for convenience, and also because the other two had dead animal wall art (the bust of a snarling badger, for example). Before dinner, there was an extremely slapstick episode wherein we frantically paddleboated away from one of the caretaker's friendly and very mangy dogs, who swam obstinately behind us with the calm determination of that robot cop in the second Terminator movie. After we prepared our yummy dinner in the ginormous kitchen (Which refrigerator has the condiments? Oh, this one over here.), and scrolled through three hundred satellite channels on one of the staggeringly large TV, we decided to head to the little cabin for some magazine reading and chit chat before bed. This is when things began to go, though not horribly wrong, just, I guess, wrong. As I tried to turn on the little TV, an ominous high-pitched whine filled the cabin. OK, so we wouldn't watch the Chris Rock DVD that someone had thoughtfully left in the cabin for us. We climbed up onto the bed plateau, and the whining started again. After which, of course, the lights went out, and despite an army of decorative candles, the lighter was not functional. As good a time as any for sleep, we decided. But as we laid there in the complete darkness, a feeling of unease crept into my consciousness. This feeling was followed by two complementary reflections. One: Was this not a perfect horror movie setup? Two women completely alone in a big nice facility in the middle of nowhere? A "caretaker" who lives on the property with a pack of dogs, that the women haven't met? A door on the cabin with a lock that does not function convincingly? The power going out? Never mind the subtext of women deserving punishment for leaving their husbands and babies behind. Yikes. Two: The Gift of Fear. Which is some book that has been mentioned more than once in an online advice column I read, and the gist of which, I gather, is that you feel freaked out by people or situations for a reason, and you should be grateful and go with that to preserve your safety, since personal safety should trump your wish to be polite and gracious.

So convened the little terror conference in my head, and I asked my friend if she would be bothered (or think I was a freak) if I just moved the rustic chair in front of the door. She agreed that it was not at all a bad idea. Thus fortified, back to bed, pitch dark, and the whining noise started again. Augh! We decided to move back to the main lodge. Which appealed to pregnant me, since that's where the bathrooms were, but still meant walking a whole twenty or thirty yards through the extreme middle of nowhere darkness to a big inviting lodge with twelve unlocked glass doors all the way around. And lots of dead snarling animals. We made the move (and eventually even went back to the cabin for the comforter, together, with a tealight on a bread plate). We went around the inside perimeter, locking all the big glass doors. We convinced ourselves that it was surely a bunny when the motion detector light outside went on, then off, then on again. And we headed upstairs, past the snarling bobcat, to make up the murphy bed and have our pleasant dreams.

So generous was my Gift of Fear that I decided it would be a good idea to just lie quietly as my friend's sleep breathing became obvious, so that when the psychopath did creep up the stairs, I could at least have a moment of perceived agency before the inevitability of my doom solidified. Eventually, sleep prevailed. I have failed to mention in advance my friend's predeliction for terrifying sleeptalking when under stress. So when I was awakened, some time later, by my friend sitting up in bed, pointing to the corner of the room, and shouting, He's over there! He's over there!, it only took me the longest thirty seconds of my life to realize that's what was going on. The logic of the half-asleep convinced me that my friend was going to climb out of bed and go tumbling down the extremely steep stairway, so I patted her hand and asked her if she was OK until she laid back down. Then, another hour of shallow sleep until the sky outside began to lighten.

Unless your horror movie involves highway driving, hitch-hiking, or the like, the sunrise always brings a welcome respite to the terror. And so it was on our Nevada ranch- the sky was blue, the breakfast delicious, the patio perfect, the hammock relaxing, and the fear of dismemberment entirely dissipated. It was easy to feel foolish about the whole thing, and I still do. It was a beautiful place to stay, taxidermy notwithstanding, and there really was no need to muddy up a relaxing getaway with fear for one's life.

(It really was a nice place.)

Oh well. We did laundry, unlocked all the locked doors, tidied up, bid adieu to the menagerie, and headed back to town. After an embarrassingly long nap at my friend's parents' house (where I felt very, very safe, apparently), we fancied up for a formal event that was in honor of my friend's dad, ate some dry salmon and those tiny whittled down carrots that still have the greens on them, and did a couple of songs worth of frightening pregnant lady dancing (in my case) before heading home. My flight was early the next morning. Vegas, Baby!

Family Fun

It has already been more than a week since I returned from my weekend trip to Vegas, a weekend preceeded by a full seven day visit from my sister and her two kids (a sister who adorably and with all sincerity informed me that next time they would visit during the summer, and stay for much longer!), yet I have been unable in that time to come up with a decent post. I keep vacillating between telling about the visit and my trip, and giving space to the many toddler (or wait, is she officially a pre-schooler now?) developments and intrigues that bubble up these days. And also, maybe, I'm feeling lazy or uninspired. Too bad for me. So here is the jumbled account from receding memory of our time with family, and my time in Vegas, baby.

My sister (the middle sister, though they're both my big sisters) has two kids, a fifteen-year-old girl and a ten-year-old boy. Weirdly, they never thought to visit when I lived in Minnesota...but I was happy to hear they were planning a trip here to the emerald northwest. The visit was good- the kids were very helpful and polite, leaping up to clear the table every time we ate. Jim got my nephew attached to Medieval II, and watched Casino Royale with him; I took my sister and my niece for pedicures and a shopping trip at the cheesy but adequate Factoria Mall. We went to Pike's, and to the space needle (which Naomi calls the space noodle) and the science center, and on their own they went to the science fiction museum, back to the market, and on a search for the house our family lived in when my sister was born (she is native to Seattle, though this was her first time in the city since before she turned one).

On their last full day, I took a day off and Naomi and I went with them to the aquarium and on a boat cruise from Puget Sound, through the ship canal and the lock system, and into Lake Union. It was pretty great, and we actually had sunny, decent weather for part of the trip. I will not go into detail about the ridiculous abject fear I felt, gripping Naomi as we rode on the deck of the boat. Why did having a kid turn me into a person who can visualize the worst case scenario down to gruesome detail at any given moment? Ridiculous.

On board: safe, sound, wearing a cute hat.

The part of their visit I am least proud of has to do with my nephew and his tendency to be a bit of a sore loser. I have read and repeated many times that it is easiest to be most critical of others when they exhibit tendencies that we share (and dislike in) ourselves. I know myself to be a bad loser. I can recall with cringes of embarrassment the mini-golf matches (I know) where a few bad putts sank me into a foul temper, or even the occasional mah jong game with the in-laws, where I declared that I was no longer participating. Eeee. So I feel even worse that I gave a ten-year-old (and one that I should be giving lots of love and a general pass on things, both as an aunt and a hostess) a bit of a hard time for getting so grouchy when Pictionary and Risk didn't go his way. In any case, Naomi loooooooved having her cousins around, and I did too.

Effing Daylight Savings

Remember last week when I was rhapsodizing about the dawn's earlier light, and walking the crunchy nature trail, and spring, blah blah blah? Well, daylight savings has come, and with it, the cold pitch dark of my morning walk returns. On the return route today (all sidewalk), just past the cheery harbinger of seasonal change, the camelia bush, the world's slowest construction crew (seriously, Naomi, Jim, and I could work together and get their 15 week "intersection improvement" done in a couple of weekends. Naomi could be the flagger, flipping her sign from Slow to Stop and smoking four packs a day like the pros all seem to...) had erected some barriers around 7-10 feet of re-poured sidewalk. Instead of crossing the street, I walked in the road around the barriers, and in the daylight savings pitch darkness, stepped into a giant hole, which caused me to "spring forward" onto my face. Awesome.

After scrambling out of the way of an oncoming car (so much for the reflective vest) and walking another fifteen yards down the sidewalk, I realized that my right ankle and left knee were hurting really bad. That was also the length of time it took for me to realize that I had fallen
right onto my stomach on the curb. And that although in my logical mind I know that little Fetus Khooler is traveling, basically, encased in a waterbed, and probably didn't even wake up (after her long night of poking me), I was slipping into a crazy panic that I had just ruined her with my careless early morning dog walking.

I fell once during my first pregnancy too. I was walking out of work, down a snowy path that was
of course completely iced up. I didn't even realize what was happening until I hit the ground, full out on my back. I lay there a moment, got up carefully, evaluated myself as uninjured, continued walking to my car, got inside, and promptly lost my shit. I remember calling Jim, crying, saying, What if I ruined the baby? His calming response (and immediate phoning of the midwives, finding out where to take me for some soothing fetal monitoring) was the best thing, because it gave me a glimpse into the near future, where labor and delivery lurked, where I would be all out of my head and not in control of the situation, and where I now knew there would be someone with a level head who would take care of things. Not that I didn't trust that before, but the test run was nice.

This morning, after the pain and panic set in, I found a little wall to sit on. I was still about a half mile from home, and of course had not brought my cell phone along. Even if I could successfully flag down a car with a driver who did have a phone, was I going to have Jim wake up Naomi and throw her in the car seat so they could drive half a mile to pick me up? That was what gave me renewed vigor, frankly, the thought of the display of cheerful fun I would feel compelled to enact when sleepy Naomi, in her jammies, encountered her mommy on the street corner, all teary and covered with construction dirt. So instead I limped along and indulged my right to a melodramatic homecoming. Jim was suitably concerned, though he tried to attach a little ice pack to my ankle with the raggedy t-shirt he uses to wipe up the floor after the dog slobbers water on it. When I demurred he told me I would never make it in battle or something like that. Note to self: bring some ace bandages into battle. Also, into our linen closet.

So, I got cleaned up, called the midwife's office for an early appointment, and took Naomi to school. In the flurry of concern from her teachers (brought on by my pathetic limp), I completely forgot to reassure them that her lunch contained NOT the strictly forbidden peanut butter and jelly, but rather, soy butter and jelly (now we need a soy substitute for peanut butter? Really, people, Mr. Peanut is not an animal. He is .... what? A legume? And kind of a dandy.) I headed to the midwife's office, where, after the requisite weigh in (sigh) and cup-peeing, a student helper located little Khooler's heartbeat on the first try. The midwife told me that although the baby was almost certainly totally OK, she was going to send me across the street to the hospital for another ultrasound. Whee. My third one. This baby is getting more in-utero camera time than Suri Cruise.

The ultrasound was fine, of course. The technician was nice, told me what it's like to have your
second kid when your first one is still a little tyke (summarized as "you get through it"). Then a doctor, I guess, came in, and started in on how it's super duper rare for them to see any kind of placental damage or abruption, which is what they're looking for, from a simple fall, and really you would only find that from a high speed car collision, but that with the medical environment being what it is, of course they are going to take a look anyway. You don't have any bleeding, right? Or Fluid leaking? he said. Huh? As though I had come to the ER straight from the street corner, in my reflective vest and dirt, demanding an ultrasound and hours of fetal monitoring, rather than being sent here by my duly diligent midwife. I am not hysterical with fear over here, Doctor Whoever You Are! But thanks for stopping by.

Anyway, wiped off all the ultrasound goo, limped off to work. Stupid Daylight Savings time, is all I'm saying.

Spring!

I have been intending for a long time to write a post about the little signs of spring that are emerging in the last few weeks. The first sign to catch my eye was an apparent bloom on a camelia bush along my pitch dark early morning walk route. I try to stick to the main drag close to our house because it is slightly better lit than the neighborhood streets. So every morning (OK, maybe three or four mornings a week), Luna in her leash and I in my fabulous reflective vest tromp up to the main intersection, turn around, and tromp back home. On the way we pass a lot of wood fencing, one excitedly barking dog (who inspires another), and a camelia bush, which started to bloom a few weeks ago. I wasn't sure I was really seeing blooms, because it really was dark on these walks. But now the bush next to our driveway, too, is covered with dramatic hot-pink flowers. Delightful!

The other, even more welcome sign of spring is that for the last week, when I leave on my walks, it is just barely light enough for me to abandon the sidewalk of the main drag and head into the nature trail. Our house is about a quarter of a mile from a long hiking trail that supposedly can take hardier walkers than myself all the way from Lake Sammamish to Lake Washington. One of the two legs of the trail that we can easily reach winds through a little patch of beautiful northwest woods and a kind of marshy grassland, past a few farm fields and a little stand that sells vegetables and gorgeous big bouquets of dahlias in the summer, and down to a medium-sized lake with houses all around and a healthy range of birds and occasional muskrats or otters or something to gawk at (I've seen a kingfisher, a pileated woodpecker, some kind of quail, lots of neat cormorants and duck varieties). The other leg leads through a blueberry farm, in the midst of which is a pretty pond, also with ducks and the occasional heron. We have been going the way of the blueberry the last few mornings, because it is much more open- a boon to the pre-dawn paranoiacs like myself. (What am I afraid of? Thugs, a little, but also...coyotes. Luna is probably too big for a coyote to try to eat, but why tempt a greedy one? There is also a sign that says to watch out for bears and panthers...heh.)

It's not a long walk- probably about a mile and a half from our house to the main road that borders the farm and back. But it is so much nicer than walking up the main road- so much more interesting for Luna to sniff, so many birds warming up their daytime voices. The trail is gravel, and my shoes make a satisfying crunch with every step. The moon is just past full now, and hangs low in the sky the last few mornings, behind light, misty clouds. The same clouds, on the opposite side of the sky, turn pink as the light grows. The most beautiful part this morning was the mist on the perfectly still pond. I could find a star, or a planet, more likely, reflected through the mist off the pond's smooth surface.

I always feel good when I take a walk in the morning, but the last week, the walks have brought me more joy than usual. I know when early Daylight Savings begins this weekend, my just barely light nature hikes are going to have to revert back to the pitch dark city street stroll. But I won't have to wait long for the light to return. Hooray! I love the transition to a new season. Spring here is long and damp and crazy with blooms and greenery, and leads to the warm, clear blue season of eating out on the patio and wandering around the botanical gardens. Also waiting for us, at the end of spring, is a new family member, who hopefully will enjoy eating outside and whatever else we come up with to do to celebrate summer. (Have I told you it's a girl? Poor Jim, now hopelessly outnumbered.) Spring is still a ways off for some of you, so I send you a big bunch of camelia blossoms and my best wishes for some sunny days in the meantime.

J. Crier

The first time I was pregnant, I was tired all the time. It got better after the first trimester was over, and got worse again as the due date got nearer. This time around, I didn't have that first trimester wipe-out, and have been feeling fairly normal even up to now (week 20!). But there are other things about this pregnancy that are different too, and one of the most notable is the fact that I cry at the slightest provocation. I have always been an easy crier, but since this fetus came along, it has become an absolute pathology. So if the first time around was the sleepy pregnancy, this one, it seems, is the weepy pregnancy.

What makes me cry, you ask? First, just about any item on the news. Soldiers who thought they were coming home this month are redeployed until July. Wah! And again, any time they give the slightest personal detail about a soldier killed in Iraq. Wah! He had a mother and two sisters! He had a ten year old son! But of course it is not just bad news. When the two guys in New Jersey or whatever caught the toddler that fell out of of his fourth story window? Wah! Last week DURING THE TRAFFIC REPORT, they guy explained that the slow-down on I-5 was because someone had to pull over and give birth to a baby. Nice! I cried the rest of the way to work. Just now I was watching some of the video contest entries on the intranet here at work (don't ask), and one of the videos from some guy in India showed a young techie go-getter mountain biking through a rural village, where a mother was holding a very sick child. WAH! Of course the techie uses his technology to get help, and at the end of the video, the kid is frolicking. More tears from me!

There is a song on the mix CD I got from a way-too-nice classmate once (she gave one to everyone in the seminar!) called "Last Fare of the Day," and I can't remember the name of the artist, though if you're reading this, CW, feel free to remind me with a comment. The song is about a cab driver who picks up this couple who are in a really bad place (you know, emotionally, or whatever, not a bad neighborhood), and then later in the song he picks up the same couple (at least in my mind, it's the same couple), and they are just leaving the hospital with a new baby, and flowers and balloons. And things are a lot better with them, as you may imagine. (Here's the line, so corny, which sends me over the edge: "I asked about her name, and we all laughed when he said 'Hope' and she said 'Grace.'") Even when I wasn't pregnant, I teared up for this song, but now that I am? Forget it. I think it actually frightened Jim once, how hard I cried when this song came on. He claims he can't understand the words, so obviously he is somewhat less affected by it. One morning when it came up in rotation on the drive to work, I thought, oh, I can handle it. Then I heard the first few strums of the guitar and had to immediately turn it off. That's how bad it is with me and this song. And these hormones.

I am reminded of my hyperextended lachrymosity today because of a little breakfast tableaux that has had me dabbing at my eyes two or three times now, at random points during the day. Naomi has been talking now and then about babies being born, how they are in their mommies' tummies, then they come out and that means they are born! And they're on the outside! My friend's baby is due any day, which we talk about a lot, and Naomi is also starting to get it that I have a baby in my tummy, too, so it's all good with me if she wants to talk about the miracle of birth. This morning while she was eating her mini-bagel, she said, I was born! I was in your tummy, then I came out! And I was born! We talked about what it was like when she came out, how it was light and Daddy was there and I held her on my chest and we named her.
Then I told her that I was born too- that I used to be inside of Gramma's tummy (which I'm sure was a stretch for her, but she seemed to go along with it), and then I came out and was a little baby. I said, you know, because Gramma is MY mommy. She thought for a second, then she said, where is Gramma's mommy? Oh, man...really? I said, right, Gramma had a mommy too. Gramma was a little baby once too. And she said again, where is Gramma's mommy? What I did not say is that Gramma's mommy was a beautiful person and an excellent Gramma herself, with a cute Swedish accent, who passed away in 1997 at the age of 92. And what I did not do was try to figure out whether Naomi had any sense of what she was actually asking me about. I just said, Gramma's mommy is not here anymore. At which point, naturally, I had a huge surge of crydrenaline and had to whisk my cereal bowl off to the sink to avoid weeping all over my unsuspecting kid (who of course has seen me cry before, an embarrassing number of times- no strong as steel mommy in this family).

Fortunately, she moved right on to something else. Like gleefully pointing out for the fifteenth time that she had both a milk cup and a water cup. Luxury! I went through a hundred quick thoughts at once, that I missed my Gramma, and that I wish Naomi could have known her, and that she could have known Naomi, and that yeah, my mom was once a little baby, just as I was, and that was almost as hard for me to imagine as it probably was for Naomi to imagine her big, giant mommy in Gramma's tummy. None of these instantaneous musings were much good for stopping the crying. I got my act together, we finished up breakfast and got on with our day. When I think of the things I get to enjoy when this pregnancy is done, I hope a slight cessation in the weeping is one of them. Otherwise you will find me, greedily eating cold cuts and soft cheeses and sushi with a glass of beer, crying over whoever got eliminated from American Idol.

The Khoolest

A post about our trip to AZ is forthcoming. In the meantime, is there a cooler baby than this one? Hard to imagine.

Again with the Daycare-Related Post

Thanks to all who gave me their thoughts on the situation described in the previous post. I have thought about things a lot, and I think I am overreacting. The teachers really have been nothing but nice when I'm around, despite having a crazy bunch of little guys to ride herd on. So what if the voice volume is a little higher?

I still have some concerns, though. The main one is that Naomi, normally a fan of school, has said every day either that she wants to be in the other class, or that she doesn't want to go to school at all. This is probably normal considering that she's getting to the age where she has figured out that she doesn't always want the same things for herself as the things that are frequently thrust upon her. School is thrust upon her every day, so it's not surprising that she has started to have something to say about it. On the other hand, wah!

It's hard to hear that she is not as happy now as she has been in the past.Her first transition, from the baby class to the teeny toddler class, was hardest on me. I actually cried on her last day, and made ridiculous personalized presents for the teachers so they would never forget my kid. Ha. For her part, Naomi talked about her old teachers a lot, but she seemed to really like being in the new class, and playing on all the great new playground equipment, and doing the songs and activities that went along with being a slightly bigger kid. For some reason this second transition, to the two-year-old class, is harder on her. She is the littlest in the class, one of very few girls. And I know she misses her teachers from the teeny toddler class, who were very sweet to her. Even so, it was clear for the last few weeks she was in that class that it was time to move up. There was a new influx of tinies from the baby class, and seeing all of them together made me realize that it was going to get frustrating and boring for her (am I really saying this?).

My other concern, which may or may not be related to the main concern, is that I've heard Naomi say a few things to her animals, usually when she is putting them down for a nap (a favorite past time), that were a little surprising. "Get that head down!" "Look in my eyes, you hear me?!" Yipes. This makes me think that naptime in the new class is not as relaxing as it should be.

In the interest of full disclosure, I will relate that I spent a year as a preschool teacher. My class was the "young 4's." Man, were they cute. The place that I worked had a very yelly head teacher, and she set the tone for how we interacted with the kids. This was particularly bad for me, as I can be a wimpy chameleon in work and social situations, so there were times when I got yelly too. Frequently, at naptime, I was determined that all my charges would sleep if I had to give myself a stroke making it happen. I am sure I said "Get that head down!" or worse tothese little ones. The result was that a bunch of kids that were probably developmentally ready to stop napping developed the ability to lie still and quiet for an hour or more in the middle of the day. Not necessarily the most useful skill outside of a monastery, but there you are.

Right. So getting all worked up over hearing Naomi bring home nap-coercion techniques that are (I promise) not learned from her parents feels on the one hand like my job as a mom, and on the other hand like a certain pot casting aspersions on a certain kettle. It is not going to be the first time that Naomi picks up something we're not crazy about. And the next time she does, rather than looking at Jim with horror and saying, did I just hear her right?! I will talk to her about using kind words with her animals, and with people. In the meantime I will ruminate endlessly about this very long test that is constantly being administered to me, wherein I have to decide whether to continue doing everything in my power to protect and shield my child within a world that is endlessly safe and kind and loving, or whether (and how quickly) I have to accept that she is part of the actual world, and everything that goes along with that. How lucky for her and for me that our version of the actual world is still so safe and kind and loving. Not so, in so many other places.

Old Yeller

Naomi is in a daycare that I really like. The facility is not too big, not corporate, nice setting, secular, calm, kind, good teacher to kid ratio, etc. Recently she moved up into the slightly bigger tiny kid class (she's almost two!), and now has two new teachers. They also seem kind and caring. Here's the sticking point: one of them is a yeller. She speaks in a normal-to-loud voice to me, but when she addresses the kids, it is all yelling all the time. I don't mean to say that she is mean (when I am there), I just mean to say that she is LOUD. Given that the classroom is propotionately small, even with a busy play buzz going on, you would only have to raise your voice just a bit to be heard at the other end. But when she is right in front of us, when we arrive in the morning, she says hello to me, and then she shouts HELLO to Naomi (who occasionally cowers back into my leg).

Naomi is at an age where she is just starting to understand the concept of rules. She says them back to us all the time, even things we said three weeks ago, sort of off the cuff, that normally we wouldn't think we would need to make an actual rule around ("We don't lick the couch. The couch is not for licking."). This is exciting in a way, because it feels like she recognizes the need to think about her behavior and what effect it will have. It's a little bit discomfiting as well, though, because it shows us how often we are decreeing, and about what ludicrous household minutiae. Yikes. Because it seems like she is starting to sort out her response to authority and internalizing some of it, and also simply because my gut tells me that a loud and shouty environment is perhaps not the ideal one for any kid to spend long hours in, I am uncomfortable with the fact that her authority figure and primary caregiver in the daytime hours displays the "American talking to a foreigner" behavior each and every day.

Which leads me to a fork in the road. Do I accept it's not that big of a deal, and just concentrate on teaching Naomi the difference between an inside voice and an outside voice on my own time, hoping for no hearing damage while she's in this class for the next six months? Or do I say something? If I say something, whom do I say it to? It would take a lot of courage to say something directly to the teacher herself. The alternative is to say something to the administrator (although I believe the owner is off having a baby this week). But unless I convince the person I talk to about this not to mention my name in connection with the feedback, that would mean the teacher knows who the feedback is coming from. My fear, of course, is that she might then see Naomi differently from the rest of the kids, or treat her differently than she did before she found out my opinion of her pipes.

I have read other daycare dilemmas on message boards, and I remember some angry retorts from caregivers who claim that they would never, ever treat a child any differently because of something a parent said or did. I want to believe that. But I know how people are. If you feel resentment, which a person might if they were told that they have a big giant mouth, you tend to let it out somehow.

Now I am flashing back to Crucial Conversations, a book I had to read back when I was in the lowest rungs of management (rungs I let go of, dropping gracefully back where I started). The authors talked about a common mistake people make, which is assuming what I seem to remember them calling "the sucker's choice." This makes it hard for people to deal with a situation because they think there are only two choices- in my case, say nothing, or say something and risk alienating the person who takes care of my kid. But maybe there is a third way? Maybe I can tell the teacher that Naomi has been shouting more at home (which she has a bit), and that we don't shout at home (we really don't, barring the occasional call to another room), and that I was thinking perhaps it was due to the fact that there are so many boys in her class (in Naomi's new class, girls are outnumbered five to one. This is a good ratio to get used to if she ever decides to follow in her mom's footsteps and get a job at a software company...). See how I assume the mantle of sexism and take the teacher out of it completely? I could ask if she would mind just practicing quiet, inside voices with them a few times a day, and see if Naomi adds this to her list of a thousand rules. Could this work?

I can't resist adding here that Naomi has made a verb of the word "loud" and has created a rule out of it, a simple one - "No louding." Ha! Maybe if that rule has already taken hold, we really don't have anything to worry about. No amount of shrilling and louding from Ms. Yelly will shake it loose!

Your Personal Penguin

Although Naomi very much likes both the book and the song (shout-out to gift bestowers C & B!), and although I admit to being surprised by how much better the song is than I suspected it was going to be, and although I am glad to know that Davey Jones is still getting work, still I
can't help wondering if it was a mistake to download "Your Personal Penguin." All day long I have been singing it to myself in my office (with my door closed, yes). I am about at the end of my rope. "Lots of other penguins seem to do fine in a universe of nothing by ice. But if I could
be yours and you could be mine, our cozy little world could be twice as nice."

We are finally emerging from our universe of nothing but ice. For the past week, the weather in Bellevue rather resembled...the weather in Minnesota. At least the weather we remember- who knows what it's doing this year. Last Wednesday afternoon, the work hallway buzz was that it was starting to snow, and that people were having trouble getting up the ramp out of our subterranean parking garage. I decided to join the herd and get on the road. I left at 4:30 to a traffic jam in our own little parking lot (and a beautiful, fluffy snowfall). I had to wait ten
minutes to get out of my parking space. Traffic is a strangely big deal here, and is rabidly tracked and reported on. But normal traffic is meaningless as compared to what happens when any sort of precipitation other than our normal warm rain enters the picture. People here simply do not do winter driving. Collectively, we lose our nerve. In our defense, of course, we can cite the hilly terrain. When I finally got out of the parking lot and around the corner onto the main road, going up the long, steep, impressively iced-up hill to the freeway at a slow crawl was a little nerve wracking, especially as we had to snake around cars with tires making that futile RRRRRrrreeeeeeeee sound, and other cars that had been outright abandoned. (Abandoning one's car is a common response to winter driving conditions here.)

The freeway was easier to navigate, but when I got back off, things were similarly nuts. On a stretch of road that normally takes me four minutes to drive through, I sat behind a burgundy Ford Explorer, stopped sometimes as long as five minutes before we would creep forward another ten feet. The Explorer had a DVD playing, and at first I thought it was "Air Bud," because I don't know of any other movie that has a cute yellow lab as the main character. Then of course there was scene after scene of lots of cutie cute yellow lab puppies running around. I have never seen "Air Bud," but I know it has something to do with basketball, and there didn't seem to be any sports in this puppy-centered film. Was it the yellow lab version of 101 Dalmations? You can have that one for nothing, Disney. I could tell who the bad guys were, because, just like in the dalmation movie, they were always sitting in some kind of van. The puppies somehow found the last functioning drive-in movie theater in the country and for reasons unclear to me, invaded the snack bar. A woman ordered a large popcorn and a moment later a cutie cute yellow lab puppy burst out of it. What a mess! But, cute! All the while, George Bush addressed those of us with the radio on about his brilliant plan to fix a much messier and much less adorable popcorn spill far, far away. That's when I started to regret that I couldn't actually hear the 101 Yellow Labs movie.

Normally, if I leave work at 4:30, I can pick up Naomi at her daycare and still be home shortly after 5:00. On Wednesday I didn't get to her daycare until 6:15. There were only a few kids left, and two teachers, and Naomi's biggest concern was that she had just received some snack food, and surely I wasn't going to make her leave it there! I stopped for gas, milk, string cheese, and cheezits (the selection of nourishing food at this quikstop was about what you would expect). We sat in traffic, munching our snack food and drinking our milk, singing songs, and talking about snow. There is a strip mall near our house with a big empty K-Mart (classy, I know), and as we drove past the vast snowy parking lot, a Subaru wagon with the windows rolled down was doing harcore doughnuts. It looked like fun, but I felt like Naomi and I had about reached our winter excitement peak. Parenthood can really wreck some of your thrill seeking instinct. We got home at 7:30.

Nothing can make this already long story short, but to bring it to a close, I will report that both Thursday and Friday were "snow days," meaning that Naomi's daycare was closed. Jim and I both went to work for a half day on Friday, passing the all-wheel drive Audi baton. The snow
stayed all weekend, bolstered by a troop surge on Tuesday, resulting in another snow day. Now, finally, the temperatures are rising out of the low thirties, the snow is disappearing in the way that it normally does in the first four hours after it falls in these parts, and we are weirdly looking forward to an actual 5-day work week... barring unforeseen circumstances, of course. To the other parts of the country (and now Europe) who are having similar run-ins with this big bad winter, we stand with you. That's the real reason we abandoned our cars.