Mid-May miscellany

Gonna see the folks I dig. There has been an awful lot of off-key singing of Joni Mitchell around here these days. The reality that we are actually moving back to California has sunk in at last. I'm trying to get our place cleaned up enough that the landlord can show it to potential renters, and weeding through old clothes and papers so that we don't end up hauling crap we don't need all the way back across the country. I browse Craigslist and the MLS every single day, and think gleefully about the full service movers that we're getting. On muggy days, I think good thoughts about bay area weather, and when we have thunderstorms I consider how much I'll miss them. And then I eat some ice cream, because that is how I cope with even positive stress like this.

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Nurse-in update. The nurse-in last Thursday was kind of fun. A lot of moms and babies (and a few dads) gathered on the terrace at the Cannon Building. My friend Melanie and I admired various baby carriers and the babies that were in them. A photographer from Mothering took our picture, and Melanie and I took pictures of each other with her camera. Adriana got hungry and I tried to nurse her, but she was too distracted by all the people around her (and you try to explain to a four-month-old that she is missing the entire point of the nurse-in). When they decided to start, we were encouraged to move behind the lectern where people would be speaking. I couldn't hear a word anybody said, but I clapped when everybody else did. And then Adriana was finally hungry enough to eat, so I sat down on the steps and fed her and changed her diaper and we all went home.


Me and Adriana, Melanie and Eliza

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Pachuquitos. The other day I pulled up at the stoplight outside the high school. It was a beautiful day, and I had my windows down and the radio on. A car rolled to a stop beside me, windows down and some Spanish-language rap playing so loud that it drowned out the music I was listening to. I glanced over to see four teenage boys, three with backwards caps, one with a bandana, all slouching in the car. Very badass. Except for the fact that they were driving someone's mom's Volvo stationwagon.

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Oops. Did you know that the expression is "to put the kibosh on something," not kibbutz? Which, I guess putting the kibbutz on something doesn't make a lot of sense. But saying it wrong will totally make your husband laugh. And maybe that's what you're going for.

But the day after someone around here made that error, there was an interesting piece on Marketplace about kibbutzim.

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Baby photos!

The other day I picked up my camera to take a picture of Adriana and discovered that Brian had grabbed a few shots of her that morning while I was sleeping in.










Those photos make me so happy. I guess I think it's sweet to think of them playing downstairs together so I can get some extra sleep after taking care of the middle of the night feedings and diaper changes.

Also, my in-laws seem particularly enamored of this photo:



Baby sunglasses! Heeeeee! And you should see her when I put my sunglasses on her, because they are even bigger and funnier. Only I can't show you that, because I lost them at the pediatrician visit on Monday (which totally sucked, by the way, and I am beginning to suspect that a large percentage of the people who choose not to vaccinate just don't want to hear their baby cry, and the people who space shots out and end up with more days of shots must be absolutely nuts, except, I mean, I considered it, so I see their reasoning, but oh my god the crying), and I went right back in to look for them, but couldn't find them then and no one had found them the next night when we took Adriana in because she was still running a fever (which, yes, I know a fever is a normal reaction and hers wasn't even that high, but the advice nurse told us to bring her in, so stop laughing at us as crazy neurotic first time parents, Dr. On Call, and didn't you learn in medical school that pointy stilettos are totally unhealthy?), so I suspect that someone found them and kept them, and then threw them away because they were the prescription ones I got last spring, and they will make anyone else extremely dizzy because of my particular screwed up eyes, which sucks because they were expensive, and that is totally why I should never buy expensive sunglasses, except having prescription sunglasses is very awesome.

I'm sorry. That was a long sentence, wasn't it? My apologies. Here, have another baby picture.