Travel journal: San Francisco

A few weeks ago, Brian came home from work saying that he wanted to take a vacation. With a three-day weekend coming up, we decided that we should leave town for the weekend but not go too far--it would be the perfect chance to test out traveling with a toddler without spending a fortune on plane tickets and dealing with the hassles of flying with a toddler. We went back and forth, trying to decide between a city trip and a trip that would be more hiking, and finally decided on the city trip, because we've missed wandering around cities, we knew we needed to experiment with that kind of travel with Adriana, and we haven't spent any where near enough time in San Francisco since we moved back to California. Also, it's easier to find a last-minute affordable hotel in the city than up in Point Reyes.

On Saturday we ate an early lunch at home and then drove up to San Francisco. We parked at the de Young museum, and headed inside, only to realize that it was a beautiful day and we would rather spend it outside. We spent the afternoon wandering around Golden Gate Park, loosely following a couple of walks from our deck of City Walks cards: we circled Stow Lake and wandered onto Strawberry Hill, strolled through the botanical gardens, and then ventured into the Sunset district where we grabbed a couple of wraps and returned to the garden, so we could eat and Adriana could get out of her stroller and play on the lawn. I was worried because Adriana hadn't nursed since nine that morning, but she had been nibbling on Cheerios from her snack trap while we walked (we began calling her Gretel over the course of the weekend, because she was leaving a trail of the things all over the city) and was very interested in what I was eating, so I shared my falafel with her and realized that I should be happy that she can go longer between feedings from me.


Turtle in Stow Lake


Chinese Pavilion


Freedom!

Eventually we headed back to the car and went to our hotel (the Westin Market Street--I found a great deal through hotels.com) to check in. We let Adriana wreak havoc in the room for a bit, before I realized that being trapped in a hotel room with a baby who was getting into everything was certainly not my idea of a good time. Even if we weren't yet hungry, it was time to get OUT. We put the baby into the Beco and headed over toward Union Square. Adriana fell asleep on my back as we wandered around the square and surrounding streets. We finally decided to stop and get a bit of dinner, which was fine until I decided I needed to get the baby off of my back. I tried lowering her gently onto the bench of our booth, but she woke anyhow. And she wanted nothing to do with the high chair, so we took turns holding her and eating dinner. And in spite of the late nap, she still went to bed at a respectable hour that night.

We got a fairly early start on Sunday. I wanted to have a big yummy breakfast somewhere but hadn't planned on any place in particular, so we walked down to the Ferry Building, thinking that one of the restaurants there would serve the kind of Sunday brunch I was hoping for. Alas, all the restaurants were closed, so we got pastries at Peet's and let the baby run around outside, patting friendly dogs and chasing pigeons. I studied my walk cards, and we went from the Ferry Building to Chinatown. It wasn't yet ten o'clock, and the streets were fairly quiet when we got there. We peeked inside the Golden Gate Fortune Cookie Company, and the people there motioned us inside. I stood and watched for a while as the machines turned out perfect circles and people folded them into fortune cookie shapes. One man said something to me, and pointed to a basket of crisp circles that hadn't been folded into cookies yet. I didn't understand him, and he said something again. When I still didn't get it, he pointed to me, then the basket and said, "You. Take." So I did.

At St. Mary's Square, we released Adriana onto the playground. She spent a fair amount of time just playing with the gate, but eventually discovered the play structure--the one that wasn't in a sandbox, as she refuses to walk on or touch sand. She finally even asked to nurse, which surprised me, as I had been expecting a repeat of the previous day. We spent a little more time after our play break wandering Chinatown while Adriana napped in her stroller, and then we tried to get ourselves some lunch.



Lunch was a fiasco. We found the place where my friend Melanie and I ate last fall, which had been recommended by her copy of Lonely Planet. They didn't have high chairs, but back in September when Adriana and Eliza were eight and six months old, that wasn't too much of a problem. At first we weren't concerned, because Adriana was asleep in her stroller, and they let us squeeze the stroller in by our table. But then the baby woke up and wanted out, and the restaurant was getting more and more packed with other tourists, and we ate quickly and left. The food wasn't even that great.

We made another playground stop, but Adriana was obviously still tired and didn't want to play, so we decided to go back to the hotel to see if she would take another nap. She didn't sleep then, but she did nurse well, and we sorted through the deck of walks, and picked out a couple that would take us through the Mission. I had planned on doing the Cole Valley and Haight Street walks, but somehow these other ones sounded more interesting--plus we figured we would end up near some good Mexican food in time for an early dinner--so we hopped on BART up to 24th Street.

I'd never done much walking around the Mission, and it was interesting to take the time to see the neighborhood. It reminded me of DC's Columbia Heights or Logan Circle, with the transition to hipster gentrification in process, but with more murals and more signs in Spanish. There was a beautiful playground with murals and a mosaic dragon, but Adriana had conked out in the stroller again. Starting to get hungry, we headed toward Valencia--it was early, but we thought if we ate something light, we could have a second, later dinner. We just knew that we needed to get food before we got cranky--a valuable lesson we learned when we first traveled together back in 2001. We stumbled upon Dosa, and I immediately remembered that on a trip to California when we lived on the east coast, but the only night we were going to be in the city on that trip it had been closed. I gave up on the idea of Mexican food (or even on the idea of one of Jeff's pizzerias, since I'd left the list at home). They weren't serving dinner yet, so we settled into a coffeeshop for a snack. Adriana woke up while we were there, but we were able to keep her happy with Cheerios and repeated readings of Good Dog, Carl.

After the disaster that was our lunch, I was a little intimidated by going into another restaurant with a rambunctious toddler, but the staff at Dosa handled it great. We stashed the stroller by the coat rack, and they had a high chair ready for us. I was also relieved to see two other groups with babies--it made me feel much more comfortable. Adriana loved the pappadam that they brought to our table, and our dosas arrived quickly and were delicious. We live near some excellent Indian restaurants, but I had missed South Indian food. Still, we didn't linger over the meal, and we wrestled the baby, our daypack, the carrier, and the stroller out through the crowded restaurant fairly quickly.

The busy day had left Adriana tired once again, and after dancing around the hotel room to the radio (she was quite pleased that she could turn on the clock radio herself by just pushing on the sleep button), she was asleep by 8:30.

We were determined that on Monday I would get my brunch, although we decided that we might grab something light beforehand to make that possible. But our dinner the night before had been early, so I woke up starving at 6:30. I showered quickly and ran across the street to pick up something at Starbucks. After juice, croissants, and hot chocolate, second breakfast seemed unnecessary, so we decided to pack up our things and head out to Land's End for our final walk before heading home.

The City Walks routes all begin at a spot along a bus route, but because we were driving we began just above Ocean Beach. We loaded the baby into the backpack, stopped to look out at the water, and were pleased to see dolphins porpoising just out beyond all the surfers. Realizing that we had taken a long enough time getting out of the hotel that we could eat again, we decided to grab second breakfast at Louis' before heading out on our walk. Adriana and I shared a big plate of pancakes that were fantastic.


Those little specks are dolphins, I swear.

The views along the Coastal Trail were fantastic. We marveled at the wide open ocean and speculated about the container ships we saw making their way toward the bay. We had intended to walk to the Palace of the Legion of Honor and then back to our car, but when we came around the corner at Land's End and saw the Golden Gate in the distance, we started talking about walking all the way there. I am a bad judge of distance but it looked like it could be done. And Brian had never walked across the bridge. We went back and forth as we walked, wondering if we could do it. As the trail emerged out onto the road, there was a sign that included distances: 2.7 miles to the bridge, 1.7 miles back to the Cliff House. Adriana was tolerating being in the backpack fairly well. Some of the time she babbled and giggled to herself, and when she started with her "Eh? Eh?" noises, we knew to check to see what she was signing for--usually she just wanted her water bottle, sometimes she was requesting a snack, and once she had asked for milk. So long as we met those needs promptly, she was fine. We decided to do it.





Things did get a bit confusing once we'd emerged from the Coastal Trail near Eagle Point. We could see the bridge, and we could see the beaches below us, but walking through Seacliff, we were unsure if we were on the right track. We stopped at China Beach, hoping that there would be a ranger or someone there (I don't know, it seemed reasonable at the time) who could help us. Instead we used the restrooms there and gazed back up at the huge houses above us. While we were there I thought I heard a cat meowing, but decided I was probably crazy. But, as we were leaving, I heard it again, and noticed a large, grey-striped cat sitting there looking at us. I approached it, in spite of Brian's warnings that it was probably mean. I scratched his head and noticed he had a tag on his collar: I PLAY BEACH I KNOW WAY HOME KTHX. I laughed, remembering our neighbor in Alexandria who had been stuck with vet bills a couple of times when her cat had been picked up by well-meaning strangers who had noticed his limp. He was a former barn cat who liked to be outside and had had the limp as long as Karen had had him. He died last year, but I thought that if he were still alive I would have had a similar tag made for him.

Back on the road, confused about whether we were actually going to find a trail to follow, I dug through our deck of cards and found a walk from the Golden Gate to Baker Beach. That didn't quite connect us back to the Coastal Trail, but we were able to tell from the map on the back of the card that we were on the right track. As we walked down toward Baker Beach, we started wondering if we would feel up to the walk back--after all, between the baby and the backpack itself, Brian was carrying an extra 30 pounds on him ("Hey, I lugged around an extra 30 pounds when I was pregnant with her," I told him). Once we were past the beach, the signs telling us how far to our destination were more frequent, giving us the encouragement we needed. There were several artillery batteries along the coast, and we stopped at the first one we came to, Chamberlin, but I refused to walk down the steep steps to the other ones, determined to just make it to the Golden Gate.

And then we were there, just like that. First it was right ahead of us and we could see the cars heading onto it, and then we went through an underpass, and suddenly we were on the other side. We stopped on the grass for a drink and a snack and a diaper change. As we sat there on the grass, Brian asked me, "Do you want to walk to the other side?" I considered it for a moment, thinking that it wasn't a very long bridge and that I was feeling pretty good, before realizing that he was joking. Instead, we picked up our things and headed back the way we'd come. We laughed noticing the little three-wheeled yellow cars we'd been seeing around since Saturday, because this time we could hear the computer talking to the passengers, reminding them to look to the left at the stop sign before continuing on to the right. "In case you don't have your wife with you to nag at you," I told Brian.


The other side!

The walk back seemed shorter than the way there. The sun, which had come out sometime between our pancakes and when we'd reached the beach, was starting to disappear into the clouds again, so we kept up a good pace to stay warm. Adriana was starting to lose patience with the whole endeavor (she had napped a little bit on the way to the bridge, but the backpack isn't ideal for sleeping), so I walked along putting Cheerios and pieces of freeze-dried apples into her mouth, since she'd given up on feeding herself.


Looking back the way we came.

We made one last detour, up to the Palace of the Legion of Honor. We watched a couple having wedding portraits taken while we stretched out our legs and backs. Adriana asked to nurse, so I fed her and then took a couple of pictures of Rodin's Thinker. We circled the parking lot, studying the Holocaust Memorial and admiring the views of the city before looping back down to the path.





It was a relief to see the Cliff House in front of us at last. We passed by it back to our car ("Look at that view!" a Go Car computer exclaimed to its passengers as they came around the bend and passed us). We wondered about heading back into the Mission to find a good taqueria, but instead opted to head back down the peninsula, giving the baby a chance to rest. We saw hang gliders and parachuters as we drove down the Great Highway, which seemed somehow like the perfect end to the weekend.


Finished!

And it would have been the perfect end. We would have come home triumphant, pleased that we had managed a successful trip with the baby, having figured out how to travel in a city and do a decent length hike (10 miles!) with a toddler, but we pushed things a little too far by deciding to grab a bite of dinner in Palo Alto on our way home. Adriana woke up as we got her out of the car, and proceeded to let her discontent to be well known. Brian drank his margarita while I took her outside, then I went back in to drink mine and eat my enchiladas while he occupied her looking into storefronts, and then we switched again so he could eat. Finally we went home, where Adriana delighted in seeing all her toys again, and fell fast asleep by eight o'clock. And we weren't too far behind her.

So now we feel pretty confident about traveling with a toddler, although I am a little terrified of taking her on a plane. We know how to meet her needs while we're out and about, and if we do so promptly, we don't have to move at a much slower pace than we used to. Last fall we declined a trip with some of Brian's colleagues for a hike near Stinson Beach, but now I think we could handle it. I'm looking forward to doing more hiking, and to doing more walking around the city. The City Walks deck of cards was a good investment, I think. I wish the cards included a bit more detail, both on distances, and on some of the things you come across, but they gave us good starting points. The walks are pretty short and easy, but they can also be combined with nearby walks for a longer outing. We did the walks from eight cards over the weekend, so we only have 42 more to go.

Happy Valentine's Day

I am sort of amazed at how grown up she seems compared to this time last year.

13 months

I was going to post this on the eleventh, but then fate intervened. And by fate I mean a gigantic tantrum that lasted seemingly forever,* and left me shell-shocked and exhausted. Adriana didn't want me to sit at the computer and type. She didn't want me to play with her toys with her. She didn't want to be held or snuggled or nursed. She didn't want me to put her down. She didn't want to play peek-a-boo. She didn't want her sippy cup, but she also didn't want me to take it away. She also didn't seem to really want to arch her back, hurl herself to the floor, and scream, but she did plenty of it anyhow. It was a warm day and the windows were open and I started to wonder what the neighbors were thinking, as the baby was screaming and sobbing as if in pain. After about an hour of her screaming and my attempts to comfort her, I asked her if she wanted to read Good Dog, Carl, Adriana's book of the week. Still crying, she went and found it in the other room, and brought it back to me. She sat on my lap, shuddering with residual sobs, and I read her the book over and over. Whenever I started to set the book down to reach for another one, she protested, so we looked at the same picture book for about 40 minutes. Then everything was fine. Adriana toddled off to play by herself, and I sat and stared, wondering how on earth I would ever deal with a two-year-old, if this is what a one-year-old is like.

But then, awhile later when she was playing by herself, I sat down in the armchair, hoping to finish my book, and Adriana brought me over another book that she loves these days and asked to be picked up. We read that book over and over too. Adriana would look back and forth between my face and the book with a big smile, as I counted dogs and made barking noises. Sometimes she would take the book from me, and then turn the pages and babble. And then she leaned back against me, sighing and stroking my face, and we snuggled there in the armchair.

In spite of the tantrums, things are more positive than negative these days. Adriana is so loving right now. She gives her monkey and her doll hugs and kisses, and carries the monkey around the house. She come to me with her arms open for a hug, and pushes her open mouth against my cheek for a slobbery kiss. She loves other babies, and will crouch down in front of a baby in a carseat at yoga, so she can wave and smile, or gently pet the hair of a baby having tummy time on a blanket near his mama.

While she can go longer between feedings now, there are still days when she hardly eats any real food. But there are days when she eats well, and I actually notice a decline in how much she nurses. She loves to eat Cheerios, beans, bananas, little pieces of tofu and cooked carrots and sweet potato and chard. She doesn't object to strong flavors, often sharing our curry with us, although sweet things, such as toast with peach jam, are also big hits.

She walks relatively steadily now, getting where she wants to go (and is frustrated sometimes when we insist on putting her in a stroller or backpack). She climbs the play structure at the park (with me hovering right behind her), and easily climbed onto the hearth and the couch at my sister's house last weekend. Sometimes she crawls after a ball, and I love to see her do that--babies look so funny when they crawl. But whereas a month ago she would drop down to crawl when she wanted to get somewhere quickly, she usually realizes quickly that now she can get there more quickly on two feet.

I've struggled some with adjusting to toddler-hood. I think some women have difficulty adjusting to life with a baby, but I feel that I was able to get into that routine fairly quickly (or perhaps it just seems that way in hindsight) and instead am hitting a sort of wall as I try to deal with a determined toddler. Some of it is that I miss having a little baby. Some is that I am simply learning to deal with these new challenges. After my yoga class on Sunday, Brian and Adriana were waiting for me on a nearby plaza. It was wonderful to see Brian kneeling down, playing with Adriana, and even better to see the little girl in striped leggings and a navy blue windbreaker turn to see me and toddle over with an excited grin on her face.


*And then I didn't post yesterday because fate intervened in the form of a sunny day that totally required a trip to the beach.

Parkfairfax

Sometimes I am surprised by what it is I miss about our time living in DC. I wasn't surprised to miss my friends or even some of our favorite restaurants, but I wasn't expecting to miss my old neighborhood. When we "lived in DC," we weren't actually in DC--we were in the Northern Virginia suburbs. I went out a month before we moved to find a place for us to live, with visions of a cute basement apartment in Georgetown or a row house in Adams-Morgan, or maybe some sort of apartment in Dupont Circle. But the reality of all those things wasn't exactly what I'd pictured--the Georgetown basements I looked at were dim and cramped, Adams-Morgan was out of our price range, and the one Dupont high rise I checked out was...a high rise. I was soon calling about listings in Arlington and Alexandria, and on the morning of the second day of my househunt, I took a bus from the metro to a development in Alexandria which had cute, colonial brick condos, plenty of trees, and even parking. I called Brian afterwards to tell him I thought I'd found us our place, excitedly telling him that it was large, full of light, and not a bad commute for either of us, although it wasn't on the metro. I'd lived my whole life in the suburbs, and, in spite of romantic ideas of city life, apparently that wasn't going to change any time soon.

We lived in that neighborhood, Parkfairfax, for all of our five years. After three years, when we wanted to move to a place with an extra room and a washer/dryer (and when our landlord wanted to sell the unit we were living in), we moved just down the street from the place I originally picked out. Parkfairfax was built during the 1940s, just a little south of the Pentagon. There were some things about the apartments that let you know that the place had been built that long ago--weird wiring for the light switches, and original wood countertops in some kitchens. There was a condo association that kept everything looking rather Camazotz, I suppose--they had an azalea sale every May and a bulb sale every fall, so that most people's gardens were similar, and there were rules about what you could have out on your patio--but it did seem sweet and even sort of quaint. As a Californian, I was amazed that the large lawns weren't watered--they just stayed green most of the year--and by the brick buildings, which I was pretty sure meant we were all doomed in the event of an earthquake.

Mostly I miss Parkfairfax in the evenings when I close the blinds in my bedroom so that the people in the next building five yards away can't peer directly into our windows. I miss my Parkfairfax bedroooms. In our first apartment there, our windows were at ground level, but they were partially hidden by large azaleas. I could lie in bed and peer through the bushes at our little patio. Our second place in Parkfairfax lacked a patio, but the bedroom window was perfect: nearly right up against it was a dogwood tree, and an oak towered over the open space below us. In the winter the trees were bare, and we could sort of see across to other apartments, but they were far enough away that we couldn't see much. In the spring the dogwood bloomed, and then it and the oak leafed out, keeping our room relatively cool and shaded--in fact, I hadn't realized how much darker our room was in the summer until I stood there just before we moved and remembered how bright our room had been as I'd laid in bed in labor with Adriana back in January.

But what started me thinking about this was something that completely took me by surprise. When I went to vote on Tuesday, I missed voting in Parkfairfax. I loved getting ready for work a little earlier than usual and then walking over to the nearby synagogue to stand in line with my neighbors while we waited our turn. Even if I didn't know many of them by name, we recognized each other from our bus rides (I think half the neighborhood rode the bus to the Pentagon Metro every day) and walks, and we would all nod and smile politely. The last time we voted, when I was quite pregnant, we waited with a man who lived across the street from us and rode the bus at the same time most mornings, and as he stood with his two-year-old in his arms, he joked with Brian about doing curls to get ready for our baby. When I was sent to wait in another line because when we'd moved the previous year I hadn't changed my address but the registrar somehow knew about it, I wasn't the only one in that line who had to change my registration right there because I had moved within the precinct. Maybe I'll feel differently when we've lived here a bit longer, and perhaps the fact that not working means I was able to vote after lunch, when there wasn't any line, rather than before heading in to the office. But I definitely missed my old community this week.

Signs

One of my professors from Santa Cruz started encouraging Brian and me to do sign language with Adriana last summer. His granddaughter is only a few months older than Adriana and, by nine months old, was already able to communicate a bit with it. Brian and I thought it sounded like a great idea, and in fact, I'd been occasionally signing "milk" to her before nursing since she was a few months old, but we hadn't been really dedicated about it. Eventually, though, I checked out Sign With Your Baby from the library. We read a chapter here and there, looked up a couple of signs, and then when back to just signing milk occasionally. I knew she recognized the word when I said it, but

So a week or so before Christmas, when Adriana signed milk for the first time, we were surprised and immensely pleased. After enjoying this new ability she had to communicate we started adding more signs. Soon she was pointing at the stereo and signing for music when she wanted me to turn some on, or signing when she noticed music coming on during the news in the evening. Brian is better at it than I am, pointing at something and making the sign for it over and over as they play: he is the one responsible for teaching her "ball" and "monkey," her two favorite toys.

It's fun watching her catch onto a sign, and she is learning a couple of new ones every week. Early last week I put her in her highchair and gave her a slice of cheese to snack on while I cut up some vegetables for soup. She started to fuss and I went to get her out of the chair, but then seemed to sign "eat," so I gave her another piece of cheese, which she ate happily. On Friday as I was folding laundry, Adriana kept dropping her sippy cup into the hamper, and then whining for me to get it out. Each time I went to retrieve it for her, I would ask, "Do you need me to get your water out?" putting a ridiculous amount of emphasis on "water" and "out" as I signed them. Finally, I heard the cup hit the bottom of the hamper and looked over at the baby, who was patting her mouth with an open hand. Not quite the sign for water, but close enough. And she's done it over and over since then, both when she sees her cup and when it's not there but she wants a drink.

I heard somewhere that babies that sign often talk late, probably because they can communicate without speaking. I'm not sure if there are scientific data to back that up, and I think I've also heard that it doesn't affect when babies talk and that babies who sign talk earlier. But at eleven months old Adriana didn't have any words at all, and now, at nearly thirteen months she still doesn't (according to my baby book, I started at nine months), but I am finding it doesn't matter. She is going to be a late talker, so it relieves us all to have Adriana able to communicate with us beyond just fussing. Normally when we are at my dad's for a visit, I have trouble knowing when to feed her, because even when she seems to be fussy and a little hungry, she is so busy playing with Grandpa and getting into cupboards, that she won't eat. Last week when we were there, I didn't worry about nursing her until she asked, which she eventually did, and she really ate, too, not just nursing for a second before pulling away to see what she was missing.

This morning, I was awake but still exhausted, so when Adriana began to stir, I closed my eyes and pretended to sleep, hoping she would go back to sleep. Instead I felt her sit up and then touch my face. I opened my eyes, and there, so close I couldn't even focus, was a little fist signing for milk.

Words I like

• persimmon
• covert
  
• trousers
• indigo
• chuckle
• gossamer
• sea
• onomatopoeia
• rosy
• crud
• delight
• cascade
• ache
• riverbed
• stagger
• daffodil
• ombudsman
• silver
• bitterness
• bougainvillea
• sunset
• hobo
• curve
• arabesque
• mourning
• olive

Sentimental

A few days ago, walking through the Stanford campus, I inhaled the scent of the eucalyptus trees, and was suddenly surprised by a memory of a night nearly exactly seven years ago. My mother had just died, and Brian and I had returned to Santa Cruz. We were invited to the home of some friends, and I reluctantly consented to go: I knew I needed to get out of the house, and most of our friends didn't know yet, so I wouldn't receive too much sympathy that I wasn't prepared to handle. No one said anything to me about my mom that night, which was something of a relief, but our host walked us out to the car and gave me a rib-crushing hug. Imprinted in my mind now are the intermingled sensations of the cold, coastal night air, the scent of the eucalyptus trees along Western Drive, and the almost-painful embrace of someone who understood.

This morning I sat at the kitchen table while the baby napped, sipping hot chocolate and watching the rain. The image that came to mind was my first day in Madrid in May 2001. A bright, refreshing morning had given way to a gloomy and wet afternoon, and Brian and I wandered through the narrow, winding streets, which are bronzed in my memory by the rain of that day and the time since then. Lost and wet, but still having a good time because it was the beginning of our trip and everything was exciting, we took refuge in a crowded cafe where I ordered a cup of the rich, thick Spanish hot chocolate, and immediately fell completely in love with it. I don't remember the rest of the day at all.

Pet peeve

I hate it when people whose first language is so obviously not French talking to someone whose first language is so obviously not French insists on pronouncing "croissant" in the French way. What is the point? Other than to make me have a fingernails-on-the-chalkboard cringe when I hear you order your coffee and cwah-sahhhh?

The Runner's High

I am here to profess my true love for a shoe store.

Six years ago I signed up to walk a marathon. At the beginning of the training, I bought a new pair of running shoes, some Nikes that I liked the feel of. But on the very first walk on which I wore them I was left with a painful blister on my little toe on each foot. I tried again on the next weekend's training walk, and once again was hobbling by the time I'd gone five miles. I sucked it up and bought myself a new pair of shoes, and gave the almost-new Nikes to Goodwill.

A couple of weeks ago I realized that my Asics were losing their support--probably because I've been walking around in them since before I was pregnant with Adriana. They were my third pair of the same shoes--once I had found a pair I liked, I would just walk into The Running Company in Georgetown on the way home from work and say, "I need a new pair of these." Now that The Running Company isn't on my way anywhere anymore, I looked for a good athletic shoe store recommendation online and decided to try out The Runner's High in Menlo Park. I picked out a pair of Brooks, and as I paid for them, the saleswoman told me about the store's return policy: I could return the shoes in ten days for a full refund or in thirty days for store credit, even if I'd worn them outside. On Friday I walked five miles at Crystal Springs with Mary and found that the shoes came up too high in back so that they were rubbing the skin on the back of my ankle raw. That night I told Brian about the return policy and we speculated whether they really meant it: would they give me all my money back if I tried returning a pair of running shoes with a bloodstain on the back?

Turns out the answer is yes. I walked into the store today, handed over the shoes and my receipt, and explained what had happened. I told the guy who was helping me about my old Asics, and he brought me out a pair. I put them on, and they felt just right. He had processed the exchange and placed the shoes in the basket under Adriana's stroller by the time I had finished tying my chucks back on.

WYDSILSMOTDKA*, Part II: Carriers for bigger babies

Steph! Clara! I'm so glad you asked.

By the time Adriana was four months old, the one-shouldered baby carriers that I'd loved were causing me a lot of pain, and I'd never really gotten the hang of the Moby, so I was down to just one carrier--my meitai. I was considering purchasing another one in a different color, because really, how can you have only one baby carrier to choose from, but I was sometimes frustrated by the readjusting I had to do with the meitai, so I started looking at other carriers. In the fall, we ended up with two new ones.

Beco
At a Bay Area Babywearers (formerly NINO) meeting, I tried on an assortment of "soft structured carriers"--an Ergo, a Beco, a Sutemi, and a Patypum, and maybe another one. I didn't completely fall in love with the fit of any one of them over the others--they all seemed pretty similar to me--so I went with the Beco because it was the prettiest, and I am a sucker for a pretty baby carrier (I have the "cocoa butterfly" pattern--approved by me for being pretty but not too loud, and approved by Brian for being not so girly that he won't wear it, although I actually think it's more girly than the green dragonflies of the meitai that he objects to, but what do I know?). That carrier has become my default. The Beco is more bulky than a meitai, so I can't shove it into a diaper bag as easily and it somehow doesn't feel as snuggly. The bulkiness is partly because of the big waist strap, which I think helps distribute more of the baby's weight to my hips. I like that I don't have to tighten the straps up after I've had it on for a while, and in the wetter weather, I don't have to worry about long straps dragging on the ground when I'm putting it on outdoors.

At first I used the Beco just as I had the meitai, with Adriana strapped to my front. I found quickly that the sternum strap, which goes across the back for a front carry, doesn't shorten quite enough to make this comfortable for a long haul; the shoulder straps would start to slip relatively quickly. Still, it was good for getting the baby and groceries up to the apartment, and for longer carries, I could lengthen the shoulder straps and wear them crossed over my back. That gave me more support, and made the shoulder straps unable to slip. (If you do this carry with it, take the sternum strap off and place it in the pocket so you don't lose it!) Where this carrier has been invaluable, though, is in getting Adriana onto my back. Someone at the Babywearers meeting had helped me figure out a way to do a back carry in the meitai, but I was never sure that I had Adriana securely in there. The Beco, with its clip closures, made me more confident that I had things right. Now I rarely carry her on my front, and she travels around town on my back and often spends time there in the evenings while I am fixing dinner.


Deuter KidComfort II
Shortly after the Beco arrived, Brian decided that he really wanted a frame backpack carrier for hiking with Adriana. We went to REI and tried out everyone they had, which included the Deuter, a couple of Kelty carriers, and the REI one. It figures that the most expensive one is the one we both liked the best. It seemed easiest to adjust, which is important when there is a 10-inch height difference between you and your spouse, and the seat seemed the most comfortable for Adriana. I also liked that it had a good-sized pocket/backpack underneath the seat.

Adriana loves riding in this carrier. We use it for the farmer's market every weekend, and she really seems to enjoy being up high and able to see what's going on. (In the Beco, she can see to the sides but not over my shoulder, as she rides so low that sometimes people don't notice at first that it's not just a backpack that I've got on.) Brian is the one who carries her in it, and he seems fine with the fit. I did carry her home in it once, and it didn't feel quite right, but I don't think I'd really taken the time to adjust it properly. We've only used it on a couple real hikes so far, although I am hoping to use it more this spring. He was able to do a fair amount of maneuvering in it. I was worried at first about whether Adriana would be able to fall asleep in the backpack, but although it takes her longer (for a while we were taking the stroller to the farmer's market, and we would time the walk there with her morning nap, which was perfect), she does manage; it doesn't seem as though her head is quite as comfy as in the Beco when she sleeps because she's not pressed right against us, but she can just lean her head forward slightly and rest it on the padding. After our failed attempt to see Body Worlds, Brian and I both wished that we'd had this carrier with us. Perhaps if she'd been up high and able to see everything, she wouldn't have objected so strenuously to the fact that we weren't letting her run around.


I'll try to update this post with pictures later, but naptime is ending soon, and I need a snack. A nursing mother needs her calories, you know.

*Original review of carriers here.

Ah, the trials and tribulations of a white, upper-middle class liberal

On Tuesday I turned on KQED for All Things Considered, and after listening to the pledge drive spiel a couple of times, I went online and made my pledge. Then I kept listening to the program and kept having the news interrupted by the pledge drive spiel. When Brian came home, I complained, as I always do, that it doesn't seem fair that after I've handed over my credit card number I have to keep listening to them asking me for money. But you know what makes it worse? When they add cooler gifts further on in the pledge drive. Next time I am totally waiting to pledge until I hear them name off a gift that I want.

I think gracefulness comes later

Photos courtesy of Grandpa Andy.

Twelve-month stats

We saw Adriana's pediatrician on Tuesday. She (Adriana, not the pediatrician) was 22 pounds 2 ounces (68th percentile) and 30 inches tall (78th percentile). One more inch and she'll be half my height! They say (and by "they" I mean a few of my girlfriends) that if you double a child's height at her second birthday you'll know how tall she's going to be as an adult, so Adriana should definitely get to be taller than I am. Oh, and her head circumference was 18 inches (93rd percentile). It's amazing to me that she has grown so much in the past year--her weight has more than doubled (some babies triple their weight in the first year, but since she started out big she hasn't), she's grown eight inches, and her head has grown by four inches.

Adriana also got three immunizations--the measles, mumps, and rubella vaccine, the Hepatitis A vaccine, and then the booster for the haemophilus influenzae type b. She screamed her head off from the time of the first shot to when the nurse finally left the room, but then she had a pretty quick recovery and hasn't had a fever or any other reactions. The chicken pox vaccine was also offered, but we've decided to delay it for the time being; the doctor said we can do it whenever we want or not at all, but if Adriana doesn't get chicken pox by the time she's eleven years old or so, we should probably consider going ahead with it. I'm thinking we'll probably do it before then, but I hate for her to get too many shots at once.

One thing that was revealed by Adriana's vocal dislike of having her hips examined was four swollen spots on her gums--the poor baby is working on four molars at once. I had been a little upset by her sleep patterns and was considering night weaning, but now that I know what's behind the wakings, I have more sympathy for her and will try to give her what she needs (which is to say, Tylenol before bed and milk whenever she wants it).

Definitely back in California

Yesterday in Palo Alto, an older man saw me and exclaimed, "You have a baby on your back!" It's a reaction I get often, and I usually just nod and smile. (Brian thinks I should say, "Shit! How'd that get there?" or something to that effect.) This man stopped me, though. "What do you call this contraption?" He studied it carefully and asked me a couple of questions about it. Then: "My stepson and his husband are adopting a baby this year. I'll have to let them know about this."

12 months

It's much easier to say "twelve months" than to say "one year." I guess I am in some sort of denial when it comes to acknowledging that my baby is becoming a toddler. Although, in spite of the fact that I am finding parenting a toddler to be more challenging that parenting a baby, I am enjoying this age just as much as I've enjoyed every other one.

Over the past month Adriana has started signing for milk. It's funny how such a little thing is such an amazing change around here. She fusses and signs and I know exactly what she wants. Or sometimes she just fusses and I ask her, "do you want milk?" Sometimes she makes the sign in reply and I know that she wants to nurse. I am thrilled by this communication, although she has been making other sorts of signs for a while now--raising her arms to be picked up and pointing at things she wants. We are trying some other signs with her, and while she seems to understand some of them (Brian signed for "ball" the other night without saying it out loud, and she went and picked up the ball), she isn't attempting to make them herself.

She walks fairly well now, without reaching for my finger to hold most of the time, and her skill at and willingness to walk increases noticeably every day. Last Friday I set her down on the floor when we arrived at yoga, and she got to her hands and knees and crawled over to the ball she wanted. On Wednesday when we got there and I set her down, she immediately toddled over to the toy she wanted. She still falls down a lot, but now she can pick herself up off the floor without pulling up on anything. In some ways it's nice--trips to the park are more fun--but it's also made her slightly less portable. We tried to see the Body Worlds exhibit in San Jose last weekend but had to make a hasty exit because the stroller and the carrier were both unacceptable to her, and I wasn't prepared to let her walk by herself in a crowd.

And of course there is the climbing. It started with a ride-on toy that her Grandpa Ted gave her for Christmas. At first I thought the toy was obnoxious because of all the stupid songs it would play at the press of a button, but it kept Adriana busy while I fixed dinner or (gasp) went to the bathroom ALL BY MYSELF. But then I discovered her standing on the toy in the middle of the room. She squealed and waved at me. She quickly learned that she could push it over to the bookcases to get to things that were formerly out of her reach, or to climb onto the couch, where she leans back against the cushions looking mighty pleased with herself. And then came her discovery that she could squirm her way onto other furniture without a stepping stool, so that one day I could leave her alone in a room for a few minutes, and the next I was fearful that within two minutes she would have climbed onto the chair and from there onto the chest where she could hurl CDs to the floor and open and close the stereo. So right now our projects are teaching the baby how to turn around carefully and slide off the furniture safely, and figuring out a way to keep the electronics in this house safe from curious little baby hands.

I am comforted when other women I meet say that their children didn't really get going on solids until 18 months, because Adriana is still going back and forth. There was a week or so when she greedily ate breakfast and lunch with me. Now, she has a few bites and is finished, and she must feed herself those bites--having me spoon-feed her is once again unacceptable. But she is eating more food at dinner with us now (another reason to appreciate the later bedtime is that I don't have to fix her dinner at 5 or 6 and then make a real dinner for Brian and me after he gets home from work), gobbling up black beans, carrots, enchiladas, and pretty much anything else I put on the highchair tray.

She is sleeping better at night (although still not through the night) than she was a few weeks ago, but she did not get the memo that all the other babies got about going to bed by 7 or 8, and instead prefers to be up until 9:30 or 10. For a while that was bothering me, but then I figured out that if I stopped trying to get her down to bed at 8, I would stop being frustrated by her refusal to sleep at that hour. I am fairly sure that the late bedtime is the result of her tendency to nap later in the afternoon than she used to, but because she is still taking two naps a day and is sleeping in an hour later than she used to, I am trying not to complain.

And it is hard to complain when we snuggle up to nurse down for the night, and after she finishes eating she rolls away and lies there in the dark, just looking at me. Then she pats my cheek and comes back for just a little more milk before drifting off.

My job just got 5,784,998 times harder

I mean, look, now I'm going to have to pay attention to the child:



After mastering walking (well, "mastering" is used fairly loosely here), she's decided the next step is climbing the furniture, apparently. Unfortunately she hasn't yet figured out how to climb down safely. Or that mama doesn't like it when she pushes all the buttons on the stereo and throws CDs on the floor.

Merry Christmas

With my whole heart

I read somewhere, maybe in one of Madeleine L'Engle's books, that there are essentially two prayers: "Please?" and "Thank you!" I told a friend earlier this week that the insanity of the winter holidays was starting to get to me, and I needed to see the ocean to give myself perspective. So today, even though there is stuff to be done around the house and errands to run before Christmas, I finally took the time to drive down to Santa Cruz. As I drove over the summit on Highway 17 this morning and caught my first glimpse over the tops of the trees of the low-lying clouds over the bay, it was that second prayer, the prayer of thanksgiving, thanks for the beautiful world, for being here, in this life, with all that has been given to me, that sprang to my lips.

A suburban housewife for one year

A year ago today, I woke up with nothing in particular to do. It was the first day after I'd quit my job to be a stay-at-home mom. I tried writing about the strangeness of it that day, and again a week later, judging by the dates of unfinished files in my Google Docs folder. I was exhausted at that point, so every time I wrote a sentence I needed a nap, which wasn't conducive to getting much writing done. And what was there to say? It wasn't a very exciting thing to write about:

This morning when the alarm went off, I stayed in bed. Brian got up, turned it off, and went downstairs, while the cat curled back up beside me. About half an hour later I wandered downstairs for some orange juice, just as Brian was heading back up to get ready for work. I did the Sudoku and puttered around a bit. When Brian left for work, I wandered around the house aimlessly for a little bit. I had told Brian that on my first day at home, I wasn't going to set any goals for accomplishing things. I was going to eat and sleep, and just enjoy not doing anything. Getting things done could wait until Thursday. But after I checked my email, I started a load of laundry, made the bed, wrapped some presents, and tried to clear out the slow-running bathroom sink with baking soda, vinegar, and boiling water (which totally failed, but did make cool noises).

So it wasn't particularly interesting, although no longer being required to show up for work was a relief, even if I had had an easy desk job. It was nice to not have to commute up to Glover Park from Alexandria each morning. When I got tired during the day, I could lie down and nap for an hour. I tried to get something done around the house each day, and I tried to get out for a walk every day, but other than that, my only task was growing the baby. It was strange to become "a stay-at-home mom with no kids," although apparently, according to what I wrote last year, one of my friends had noted when I described myself that way that the Bush Administration would probably just call me a stay-at-home-mom, and even give my fetus Medicaid. (I have no recollection of that conversation, but I know exactly which friend would have been the one to say that.) I ended up with three weeks off before Adriana's arrival--three weeks to rest up, to allow myself time for the quiet contemplation of the end of pregnancy, the strange turning inward that seems to happen for most women. That was a huge blessing.

Then Adriana arrived and everything changed. Moments for quiet contemplation seemed few and far between, even with our easy-going little girl. IN the early days, when I wasn't busy with her, I was too exhausted to think. But there wasn't that scary end-of-maternity leave date looming six- or twelve-weeks ahead on the horizon. I found it comforting that for the time being, my sole job was to nurture my baby.

Before we were ever married, Brian and I talked abstractly about kids ("our subjunctive children," we referred to them), and I recall him saying that he assumed that if we had children I would continue to work afterwards. I was thinking along the same lines at that point, but as we began to talk about starting a family more seriously, I realized that it was important to me to be able to stay home with our baby, and Brian agreed with me. I feel incredibly lucky that we were able to afford to give up my salary. That means it's important for us to stay a one-car family, and that it will take longer for us to get to a position where we can buy a house. Most of the people around us were very supportive of our choice, although there were a few comments that annoyed me because they made me feel defensive ("Your brain will turn to mush!") and others that made me want to jump to the defense of families where both parents work ("It's really the best thing for the baby."). For the most part I haven't felt the need to proclaim that "Of course I work!" or that "Adriana is my job!" when people ask me if I work, although when couple of (childless) friends have commented that they wished they didn't have to do anything Brian has had to listen to me bitch about them that night.

There are days when I have my doubts, days when Adriana and I are both sleep deprived and cranky, days when I wish someone else were dealing with her refusals to nap and the constant fussing. Then I think that trying to do another job on so little sleep wouldn't be fun, either, and I'd really only get to spend time with Adriana at the end of the day, which is not her finest time. There are those days. But most days we play together and I use her naps to take some time for myself or get things done around the house. She holds my finger and leads me around and around the apartment on her wobbly legs, stopping to laugh at the cat or investigate a magazine that was left on the couch, and I am completely aware of how good life is, how lucky I am.

In one of the posts I began last December, I wrote, "I spent most of my final commute home wondering if I'd made the right decision. All that time and money spent on grad school to become a stay-at-home mom? Would I go absolutely crazy in the first three months of being home alone with the baby? Should I have at least kept working right up until when the baby came?" A year later, I do feel that it was the right decision. That's a nice feeling to have.

Best husband I ever had, part 2

Last night we ordered pizza so that we wouldn't have to cook or do dishes, and after the baby was in bed we divided up some of the housework that needed to be done.

"I just don't know how the kitchen got so messy all of a sudden," Brian said as he emptied the dishwasher and cleaned off the kitchen counters.

"I haven't done the daily straightening up I do in here the past couple of days," I told him.

"Were you trying to make a point?"

I explained that, no, it was just that the baby had been a handful the past couple of days (that's what I get for gloating about the fact that she hasn't been teething--I think she is again), and since we had planned to go out on Wednesday night anyhow, I just hadn't done the normal clean-ups I do before I cook dinner. And then said something along the lines of being impressed that I can cope with the baby all day and still manage to do even minimal tidying up, and how sometimes on the weekends the amount of time he gets with the baby seems like a lot. Basically I don't remember exactly what he said, just that it warmed my housewifely heart.

No other sight spreads cheer so well

Last year I realized for the first time that people really do have themes for their Christmas trees. One friend's tree was all done up in blue and silver. We went over to someone else's house and their tree was decorated all in red and white. I was surprised by both trees, because in my world Christmas trees are covered in multicolored lights and a variety of ornaments of all colors that have been made and collected over the years. These themed trees were absolutely perfect, though.

I thought about those perfect trees last weekend as Brian and I decorated our Christmas tree, a tree that we both agreed on immediately, and then got home and discovered it was too fat to fit where we'd planned to put it. We passed the long string of lights around and around getting them just right--and then discovered that we'd done the strand the wrong way, so we didn't have the plug end when we got to the bottom of the tree, and we wound them back around the piece of plastic, and started over again. We dug out ornaments that I've been collecting since we first moved in together, including a bunch I made out of plastic yogurt lids, photographs, and glitter glue that first year when we didn't have any ornaments. Now we have a bunch of glittery ornaments that I bought at the Crate and Barrel outlet last year, pretty glass globes that I've picked up in various places, delicate outlines of rose windows from Cathedrals we've visited, a ceramic giraffe that says "Baby's first Christmas" and is personalized with Adriana's name and the year, and of course my photo ornaments--Brian and me at our college commencement (I miss those hot pink leopard print sunglasses), the two of us sunburned in Hawaii, his parents kissing under some mistletoe, our friend Jeff rolling his eyes, my mom and me in San Diego. We put all these treasures up on the tree--with none lower than about three feet--settled a sock monkey at the top, and stood back to admire our work and eat some warm gingerbread. It's its own kind of perfect.

***

Last night I sat in the dark and rested my cheek on Adriana's head. I could smell the Christmas tree behind us, and I thought about the huge trees we had when I was growing up and how exciting it was to find our favorite ornaments as we dug through the decorations every year; about decorating our first tree together, even though we weren't going to be home for Christmas that year; about sitting in a room that was dark except for the lights of the tree last year and feeling Adriana kick at my ribs; and about how someday Adriana is going to be as excited about Christmas as I am. And then I stopped myself and thought about how Christmases past and future were less important in that moment than the simple fact that I was rocking my baby and smelling the Christmas tree right then.

Maybe writing this down will help me remember sooner next time

Why is it so hard for me to remember that the days where leaving the house with Adriana seem the most daunting are the days that it is most important for me to do so? This morning Adriana slept for half an hour, about an hour after I expected her to take a nap, and upon awakening went immediately back to seeming cranky. It seemed that if I was holding her she was wiggling away, but every time I put her down she was fussing for me to pick her up. At 2 this afternoon, I realized that we were both still in our pajamas, and I hadn't even brushed my teeth. Taking a fussy baby out of the house is always somehow a terrifying thought, but eventually I remember that staying in with her when she's like that is worse. So I got us both ready to go and by 2:30 we were out the door. Immediately I felt better. We walked downtown, where I picked up a few Christmas presents and got a hot chocolate, and stopped at the park to play on the swings on the way back to the house. When we got home, Adriana was getting fussy again, but I was somehow more prepared to deal with her mood.

Eleven months

I hate telling people that Adriana is eleven months old. Whenever I do they always remind me that she is nearly a year old (because, what? I might not have noticed?), and I'm not sure I'm ready for that.

I say that, and I do sort of miss Adriana being a tiny (tiny! ha!) baby, but I'm also finding that I love and will miss every stage she goes through. Right now, she is playing with us more and can communicate with us, to a certain extent, and is just a lot of fun. Which is what I say every month. I should probably just write, "My baby is growing up! So I am sad! But she is more fun to play with now and learning lots of things! Because that's what babies do!" And then I could copy and paste that every month and save us all some time.

That would be nice, but it's not what you'd expect from the woman with the 10,000-word birth story, now is it? So:

There are some days when I wonder if this is what eleven months is like, how on earth am I going to deal with a two-year-old? That's usually when Adriana is fussing to be picked up, and then fussing to get down as soon as she's up, and then arching her back and screaming when I put her back down. But then she takes a nap (we still get two a day out of her; ssshhhhhhh) and after an hour or so we are all much happier.

Right now Adriana seems to be between bouts of teething, and it's heavenly. We still aren't sleeping through the night, but I can handle waking up only once or twice. We've talked about the possibility of moving her to her own bed, or even her own room, but she does seem to sleep for longer spells when she's snuggled up with us, and I am content to have her warm, cuddly body beside me this winter. She still not a big eater, but now that there are a few things she'll eat regularly and she seems more willing to try the new things we offer, I feel okay about it. I know she's getting what she needs nutritionally from me, and that at this age "real food" just lets her experiment with different tastes and textures.

I am constantly forgetting how high she can reach. Things set near the edge of the kitchen table are easily within her reach, and I have been surprised at how far back things need to be. We have a couple of little poofs we bought in Spain that she climbs on top of to reach things on shelves that used to be safe from her little fingers; I'm in trouble when she figures out that the kitchen chairs can serve the same purpose. She is closer and closer to walking. Over Thanksgiving weekend she pushed herself to a stand for the first time without pulling up on anything. When I set her down on the floor, she stands for a second on her own, before slowly lowering herself the rest of the way to the ground. She "cruises" easily around the furniture, and when I am in the kitchen she often pulls up on my leg, and I walk around slowly as I do dishes or put away groceries so that she can "follow" me. I get a kick out of letting her hold one of my fingers while we walk, as if we are holding hands and going for a stroll. She giggles and shrieks with excitement as she takes her pigeon-toed bow-legged steps on her fat little feet. On Saturday she took her first unaided steps. Of course, she promptly fell over and has only done it twice more since.

She loves music, and will stand in front of the stereo bouncing in time with the music. Sometimes when a song ends, she applauds. She waves bye-bye when we say to, if she feels like it. She gives hugs to her stuffed monkey, her grandparents' dogs, other children her age, and would even hug the cat if the cat would tolerate it.

She is very much a mimic. I comb her hair after giving her a bath and then hand her the comb so she can try to comb it herself. If I give her the bottle of baby lotion to play with as I am rubbing the lotion into her skin, she tries to dab on more lotion from the closed bottle. Unless she is too busy trying to fit the bottle into her mouth---she is, after all, a baby. She watches the way we feed ourselves and tries to mimic with her own little spoon.

There was a song we used to sing at camp when I was little:
Late last night while we were all in bed
Old Lady Leary left the lantern in the shed
And when the cow kicked it over she winked her eye and said
"It's gonna be a hot time in the old town tonight."
Fire fire fire!
Water water water!
Jump, lady, jump!
Ahhhhhhhhh....splat!
Adriana likes to shriek and will copy us when we do so, so I sing the song to her and she copies me when I shriek at the end. Now when I just start singing the song she begins her shrieking. It's kind of cute. And also probably a trick I am going to regret encouraging. I should have just stuck with singing "ba ba ba" instead of "na na na" for the chorus of "The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down" so that she could "sing along" with me on that one. Well, live and learn.

Book review: The Latke Who Couldn't Stop Screaming

Lemony Snicket's The Latke Who Couldn't Stop Screaming: A Christmas Story is awesome. It made me laugh a lot. You should read it.

December in California

I still have the Washington Post set as my homepage, and I am still registered with a metro-area zipcode, so when I opened my browser the other day I saw that it was snowing in DC, and I was a little sad. I did love the (rare) snow that we got when we lived there. It wasn't until that afternoon when I took the baby to the park to play on the swings that I realized that it's probably best to not have snow days anymore.

Lesson learned

If you are heating milk to make yogurt and you smell something suspicious from the general direction of the baby, TURN OFF THE STOVE BEFORE YOU TAKE THE BABY TO THE OTHER ROOM FOR A DIAPER CHANGE. Because burnt milk smells bad. And also because when you hear the noise of the milk boiling over and come running out to the kitchen to turn off the burner with an undiapered baby on your hip? Well, let's just say that no good can come of that.

At yoga on Friday there were two new moms--one had a six-week-old baby, and the other was the mother to a three-week-old. I had my normal reaction to seeing little newborns--basically a longing for the days when Adriana was that wee and squooshy. Because, you know, what I really need around here is another baby.

But I was surprised by what hit me next: a very intense series of memories of how crazy I felt those first few weeks.

I remembered being in the hospital room alone with her the day we were going to go home. I carefully dressed her in the sleeper that was to be her going home outfit. Then, studying her as she lay in the bassinet, I panicked, afraid that she wasn't my baby. I quickly undressed her again, checking the name tags on her wrist, both her ankles, and her umbilical stump. And then I held her and cried because there was surely something wrong with me if I didn't recognize my own baby.

I remembered standing by myself in a dark room, looking out the window at dusk, while Brian held the baby in our bedroom. It was only a few days after we'd brought Adriana home from the hospital--she must have been a week old at the most--and I felt helpless and scared. I cried, wondering if I loved the baby enough, if I loved her too much, if I would be able to be her mother. I felt that Brian was handling being a new parent better than I was.

I remembered cradling her in my arms in the middle of the night and, seeing her eyes shining in the dark, having a sudden fear that she was possessed by demons. I bit my tongue and made a conscious effort to keep holding her, knowing that I wasn't being rational, and telling myself that the fact that I knew I wasn't being rational was a good sign. But I didn't tell anyone--not Brian, not my midwife, not my closest friends--about that moment for fear that someone would try to keep me from Adriana.

I remembered an intense fear that there was somebody in the house. I knew I was not being rational, but to reassure myself I checked closets and under the bed, the baby clutched tightly to me. For a couple of days I wouldn't leave the baby alone in a room by herself even for a moment because I was afraid that whoever was in the house would steal her away if given the chance. I clung once again to my knowledge that my fear was irrational, telling myself that reading Outside Over There as a child had somehow scarred my psyche.

I remembered my first day home alone with Adriana. I nursed her and changed her diaper and set her down in her little chair. I sat in front of her and looked at her wondering what to do next. She wasn't hungry, wet, or fussing--just awake and looking at me. Surely there was something else I was supposed to be doing. But I didn't know what it was, so I sat and cried.

Adriana was nursing as class ended on Friday, and then she needed her diaper changed, so we were the last to leave. As I was rolling up my yoga mat, the instructor and I talked about those early days and how sweet they are, and then I tentatively confessed a couple of my moments of postpartum panic, forcing myself to laugh them off. It felt good to finally say them out loud.

When baby isn't feeling well

1. Realize that baby is warm
2. Take temperature
3. Administer Tylenol, feel guilty for not noticing earlier that this might be why she was fussy, fret about whether to call doctor
4. Nurse baby
5. Rock baby to sleep
6. Try to set sleeping baby down
7. Immediately regret decision as baby fusses
8. Return to rocker with baby
9. Wish you'd left your book nearby
10. Wish you had a glass of water
11. Remained pinned to rocker with feverish baby
12. Baby wakes up and cries
13. Nurse baby
14. Change baby's diaper
15. Note that temperature is coming down
16. Try to put baby down so you can put in a load of laundry/pick up toys/check e-mail
17. Change your mind as baby screams
18. Rock baby
19. Nurse baby to sleep
20. Baby wakes up and cries
21. Realize that baby is warm again
22. Return to step 2 and repeat cycle several times over next seven to eight hours
23. Notice just before your spouse returns home and you will finally have back up that baby is feeling better and no one will believe how today went

Thanksgiving

Over breakfast in Albuquerque a couple of years ago, I told my colleagues that I was the anxious one in my marriage when it came to travel: I am the one worried about traffic and parking and security lines. I think others at the table were a little concerned about Brian when I said that because when we were doing site visits, if I wasn't sharing a cab to the airport with anyone else, I would usually up at National only a few minutes before our plane began to board.

Wednesday morning I was worried. Brian and I had considered driving down to South Pasadena for Thanksgiving, as Adriana had handled the drive fairly well when we went for Halloween. But the Christie mentioned something about 11 hours on I-5 on the Sunday after Thanksgiving, and I decided that we would fly, in spite of the airport crowds. So I packed Adriana's and my duffle bag on Tuesday night, and planned on leaving for the airport almost two full hours before our flight was scheduled to depart (it's about a 20-minute drive with no traffic). And you know what? There was no traffic. We found a parking spot immediately and were taken quickly to the airport by the parking shuttle. We walked directly to the front of the line to check in (no checking in from home when you are traveling with a "lap baby"). The short security line moved quickly. Our plane boarded and left on time, and there were enough empty seats that we had our own row. Flying the day before Thanksgiving? No problem. What was I worried about?

It was a nice trip down to see The In-laws. Wednesday night my sister-in-law made a cheesecake topped with fresh berries to celebrate my birthday, and there were even a few presents for me. I spent most of Thursday over at my sister-in-law's apartment where she baked bread and a pecan pie, I made two pumpkin pies and an apple pie, and we took turns chasing after the baby. I gave many thanks for her standing mixer. Brian loves this recipe for pumpkin chiffon mousse, which I've made only twice before, both times deeming it good but not worth the effort; with the standing mixer it was a piece of cake (er, pie). Dinner was fantastic and we spent time after dinner playing a fun game of Trivial Pursuit, in which we kept reminding each other that the copyright on the game was 1981--questions about the Soviet Union and sports records weren't exactly up to date.

We spent a good part of Friday at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. It wasn't Adriana's first art museum, since we did spend her first six months in the land of the free museums, but it was the first since she'd become mobile, so I was a little concerned about how she'd hold up, but she did fine: she nursed through the exhibit on Islamic art, slept through Southeast Asian, European, and Japanese art, and was up in time to enter the Dalí exhibit. She didn't last long in there, but I didn't really mind slipping out, as surrealism isn't really my favorite. I was glad to be able to enjoy the exhibit Japanese Prints: Word/Poem/Picture, especially several scrolls by Otagaki Rengetsu. I liked the simplicity of her drawings, the curves of the Japanese characters, and the translations of her poetry:

"Through fields and mountains the autumn moon follows me on my joyful way home as if to send me to bed."

Saturday we headed back home. The Burbank airport was virtually empty, and there was again plenty of room on our plane. We found our car, in spite of the fact that we didn't take the little card with us and didn't know the name of the lot. "No, I think our shuttle is yellow," I told Brian as we wandered outside at San Jose and he pointed to a blue van. Luckily a white van with yellow and black lettering pulled up just behind the blue one and it took us to the right lot, with Brian teasing me the whole way about how all I knew about where we'd left our car was "yellow." I don't know what he was so worried about; it was obviously plenty.

After a couple of hours at home we headed back out, to see my friend Lynn, who was at her parents' house for Thanksgiving. It was fantastic to see her and her husband. She's expecting her first baby in April (a girl!), and I was a little envious of her belly, but it was fun to talk baby stuff and catch up.

And to round out a perfect holiday weekend, Adriana slept for nearly six hours straight when we got home. What more could I want?

29

Today is my birthday.

Seven songs

First, anyone else ever realize that you've been up for two hours and all you've eaten is a brownie and you go into the kitchen to get something healthy and end up eating another brownie? Gah! Why do I bake when I know I'll just eat what I bake constantly until it's gone?

Okay, seven songs I'm into right now, courtesy of Mary.

"St. Peter's Bones" by Girlyman: I am totally in love with Girlyman's harmonies

"Do You Remember?" by Jack Johnson: This somehow reminds me of when Brian and I first started dating

"After Party" by Ozomatli: With such profound lyrics like "Oye, baby! Oye, mami! Donde esta la after party?" this band is clearly destined for greatness

"Subterranean Homesick Blues" by Bob Dylan: So fun to try to sing along to

"Cease Fire" by Sarah Lee Guthrie and Johnny Irions: I don't know what it is about this song, but I can listen to it over and over all day long

"36-24-36" by The Violent Femmes: Another one that's fun to sing along to

"Born at the Right Time" by Paul Simon: Perhaps my all-time favorite Paul Simon tune

I wasn't going to do the bit where I tagged others to do this, but then it occurred to me that I am curious about what folks are listening to. So, Caitlin, Lauren, Ruthie, Anna, Jewel, Christie, and Eleeza, you are it!

Why is it that when I do stupid things I feel compelled to tell the internet about it?

Just as I was getting into bed, Adriana woke up. As I nursed her back to sleep, I realized that she needed a diaper change. I went into the other room and got everything ready (double thick diaper, plenty of toys to keep handing her in order to keep Her Wiggliness on her back long enough to get her cleaned up), and then returned to the bedroom for the baby, who miraculously kept her eyes closed and stayed calm and cooperative throughout the change. I sat in the dark, rocking her until she was completely asleep again. Once I had her in her bed, I went to start a load of diapers. Sure, it was eleven at night, but there were only two left, and we needed to leave early in the morning, so it made sense to get them going now.

And then the good luck that kept the baby asleep while I changed her ran out.

As I began to pour the detergent into the cap, I couldn't see it coming out. So I tipped the bottle further. And felt detergent run all over my arm and splash onto my bare foot. Aha! Because I hadn't wanted to disturb Brian's sleep, I hadn't turned on the light (which I guess I thought would be more disturbing than the sound of the washer running right outside our bedroom door). I couldn't see the detergent coming out of the bottle not because it wasn't happening, but because it was dark. Very clever of me to figure that out, don't you think? Well, I do have a master's degree.

Now I need to figure out how to keep the detergent from ruining my carpet. I mean, I wiped it up as best I could, but I don't think that's enough. The internets tell me that I may be in need of a carpet shampooer. Guess what I'll be doing this weekend!

On the first day of sixth grade, back in 1989, I sat down across the table from a pretty girl with brown hair in Mrs. Sanchez's social studies class. If someone had told me that eighteen years later we'd be spending an afternoon together playing with our kids, I don't think I would have believed them.


Why yes, the baby is sitting in a doll stroller with a wheel falling off. Perhaps letting the five-year-old do the assembly wasn't the best idea?

Time for cheer

A few years ago I was in Chicago for work in early November. As our taxi from Midway approached the hotel and we saw the Christmas decorations up in the windows at Marshall Fields, my boss said happily, "I love Christmas decorations." Which probably wouldn't have stuck in my head if it weren't for the fact that she was Jewish.

And I have to agree with her. I know some people are appalled at how early the Christmas marketing seems to come, but I have to admit I find it kind of exciting. I mean, seeing the Christmas section at Macy's back in September was a little strange, but I love the season. Yes, it's commercialized and the "real meaning" of the season sort of gets lost in the madness of it all, but it's still fun. There are goodies to bake, presents to wrap, secrets to keep, songs to sing. There are get togethers with friends and family. Halloween is over, the cooler weather seems to be here, and I am ready for one of my favorite times of year. (Okay, so by the time February rolls around, I'll be calling spring my favorite, I'm sure; although I just remembered that now that we're back in Calfornia, so February won't be a big horrible mess of "freezing rain" and "wintry mix," which is what an angry, vindictive god gives west coast kids who think that east coast winter precipitation is only lovely, fluffy snow. Not that I'm bitter.)

Anyhow, this is just to say that last week I came into possession of a Baby's First Christmas ornament. And that a cute little red Christmas dress that I've been wanting for the baby went on sale, so I had no choice but to purchase it. And that I started Christmas shopping. And it was all quite fun and exciting.

But I'll probably be tired of hearing "Winter Wonderland" by the end of November.

Ten months

Time goes so fast when you have a baby. I am pretty sure that just last week I was sent home from the hospital with a new born, and now it's like we have a little person around here. I mean, sure, she's a little person who poops her pants and can't get to sleep without help and whose audible communication skills are fussing, crying, and shrieking, with the occasional raspberry and "ba ba ba" thrown in, but still, she is noticeably moving from baby toward toddler.

Not that she is a toddler yet. In spite of dire predictions from various family members, Adriana is not yet walking. She cruises quite well these days, but still prefers to crawl if she wants to move quickly. I'm actually sort of excited for her to start walking. Yes, I know that comment is going to come back to bite me at some point, but I just think that if she's going to be mobile it would be easier, especially when we're out and about, if she were up on two feet instead of crawling.

Adriana is more fun to play with every day. She puts blocks into a box now, instead of just dumping them out. We have a stuffed monkey that she hugs and pats (and sits on and waves around). If you sing "If You're Happy and You Know It" she claps her hands, although not at the right time. She likes to chase and be chased, although it seems funny to call a version of the game that moves so slowly "chase." She likes the swings at the playground, and splashing around in the bathtub. She sits still for stories sometimes, and seems to particularly like the books we have with photographs of babies and children.

She is finally seeming to enjoy food a bit more. She never eats very much, but she is willing to try, and that is progress enough for me. In the mornings, she and I share a bowl of oatmeal. At lunch we usually have some yogurt with fruit and flaxseed. Snacks are Cheerios and slices of fruit that she feeds herself, or sometimes we feed each other. At dinner time, Brian and I feed her from our plates. The other night she ate lentil soup with great gusto and I wondered if the main problem with all the food I'd been offering in the past few months had been the lack of cumin, but the next night when we had leftovers she barely ate any at all, so I once again have no idea.

We go back and forth with sleep. For a few days last week, she was waking up too often at night, and I was exhausted. When she woke up "only" five times one night I felt refreshed--after all, that was better than waking up eight times--but that feeling was short lived. The past few nights she seems to be sleeping a little better, and both nights there has been a four-hour stretch that is absolutely heavenly. I know there are going to be good spells and bad spells. The problem is that when we are having bad spells I am too exhausted to try to fix things, and once we get through the bad spells, I think that things are going well and there's no need to worry.

These days, my favorite parts of the week are our yoga classes. The best one is the Friday morning one, which isn't as well-attended as the others. Adriana is usually the oldest baby there. She plays with the other crawlers, and investigates the smaller babies. And on Wednesdays when there are often older children there, she watches the toddlers with great interest and follows them around the room (usually picking up the Cheerios they drop behind them). She climbs on me as I do sun salutations, and cuddles up to nurse during the relaxation time at the end. Unless she curls up to nurse with me while the rest of the class does sun salutations and climbs on me (or one of the other moms) during the relaxation at the end, which isn't too bad either.

In orbit

I was moving laundry from the washer to the dryer when Adriana pulled up on my jeans and hugged me around my leg, grinning up at me.

"What's it like to be the center of her universe?" Brian asked, joking, as I loosened her grip so I could move without knocking her over, just as I do many times every day now that she has discovered that my jeans are great for pulling up on.

"A little stressful, and mostly wonderful," I told him honestly.

But after he asked, I started to think: right now, yes, I am the center of her universe, but she is also the center of mine, and I think that's exactly how it's supposed to be right now.

Courtesy of Helen and Sami

Brian came home from work and asked if we had any beer. I checked the fridge. No beer, but there was a bottle of sparkling wine that had been brought to our housewarming party back in August. So we had left over lentil soup and champagne for dinner.

And we lived happily ever after.

Halloween

When I first met Brian I didn't understand his deep true love for Halloween. I mean, I love candy and playing dress-up as much as the next kid, but is it really a holiday one must celebrate with family?

Well, it turns out that if you come from a neighborhood that gets exponentially more trick-or-treaters than I've ever seen in my life, you certainly do. I mean, you don't even worry about having people ring your doorbell in this neighborhood: you just sit out on the front porch and people form a line that reaches down to the street.



That graph right there shows that my in-laws provided candy to 1,715 trick-or-treaters last Wednesday, just slightly more than last year. So Brian, Adriana, and I spent all of last week in South Pasadena, where we decked out the front yard with ugly ghouls strung across the lawn on fishing line, fun jack-o-lanterns, and Herman, the dummy who is dropped on unsuspecting little beggars as they made their way up the the driveway.

Herman, hanging in the trees:


The ugliest Halloween decoration ever:


Pumpkins (I did the witch):







And now, what I know you've all been waiting for, my favorite squooshy monkey:

The Music of the Universe

From Isabel Allende's Paula:

Celia was walking back and forth, leaning on Nicolás, never losing her calm, taking short breaths when she doubled over with pain, and resting when the small being in her womb gave her a brief respite. My daughter-in-law carries in her veins secret songs that mark the rhythm of her steps as she walks; during the contractions, she panted and rocked back and forth as if listening to an irresistible, internal Venezuelan drumbeat. Toward the end, I thought that occasionally she made fists of her hands and a flash of terror passed through her eyes, but immediately her husband make her look straight at him, and whispered something in the private code of husband and wife, and her tension eased. . . .

By midafternoon, Celia made a sign; Nicolás helped her climb onto the bed and in less than a minute the apparatus and instruments the midwife carried in her station wagon materialized in the room. That girl in shorts seemed suddenly to mature; her tone of voice changed and millennia of female experience were reflected in her freckled face. "Wash your hands and be ready," she told me with a wink. "Now it's your turn to work." Celia put her arms around her husband, gritted her teeth, and pushed. And then, on a surging wave of blood, emerged a flattened, purplish face and a head covered with dark hair, which I held like a chalice with one hand while with the other I quickly unlooped the bluish cord wrapped around the baby's neck. With another brutal push from the mother, the rest of my granddaughter's body appeared, a blood-washed, fragile package: a most extraordinary gift. With a primeval sob, I felt in the core of my being the sacred experience of birth--the effort, the pain, the panic--and, gratefully, I marveled at my daughter-in-law's heroic courage and the prodigy of her solid body and noble spirit, designed for motherhood. Through a veil, I seemed to see a rapturous Nicolás, who took the baby from my hands and placed her on her mother's belly. Celia rose up from among her pillows, panting, dripping with sweat, transformed by inner light and, completely indifferent to the remainder of her body, which continued contracting and bleeding, she folded her arms about her daughter and welcomed her with a waterfall of words in a newly coined language, kissing and nuzzling her as every mammalian mother does, then offered the baby her breast in the most ancient gesture of humankind. Time congealed in the room, and the sun stopped above the roses on the terrace; the world was holding its breath to celebrate the miracle of that new life.

Orchids at the Huntington

Overheard in Beverly Hills

Man on cell phone: So do you want to have sex with me, or do you want to marry me? . . . Both?

384 days until I turn 30

Last night, I had a glass of white wine, several garlic bread twists, two slices of pizza, a glass of red wine, a couple of seven-layer bars, a brownie, a slice of kahlua cream pie, four peanut butter cups, two miniature Milky Ways, and a cup of hot chocolate. That night I had a stomachache. This must be one of the downsides of getting older. I would swear I was able to eat like that not too long ago.

Must go eat through a nice green leaf now.