Eight things

Eight things you may not know about me, brought to you by Ann and my insomnia:

1. I've had the same recurring dream about someone breaking into my house since I was a child. Well, it's not exactly the same every time, but close enough: someone comes to the door and I know I shouldn't open it, but I do and they force their way in. It's been going for so long now that when I'm in the dream I realize it's a dream, except then it turns out it's real life and it's really happening. Except then I wake up. It does make me nervous about answering the door sometimes.

2. I have this thing about socks: specifically, I don't like the way they feel. I am very specific about what socks I am willing to put on my feet because of this. Brian does not have this concern, so he has many socks that feel "wrong" to me. Because of this, we have a crate in our bedroom that I throw all socks into when I'm putting away wash. That way I have to touch them as little as possible. Although it does mean that I have to dig through the yucky feeling socks sometimes when I need to find some. I am so glad it's summer and I get to wear sandals all the time now.

3. There's a major part of me that doesn't want to be vegetarian anymore. I frequently decide that it's too much work, that it makes me seem ridiculously picky, and that since I don't really have ethical issues with eating meat, I should just give up vegetarianism. Then I realize that this would require me to actually put meat in my mouth and chew and swallow, and the whole idea makes me feel rather ill.

4. When I was little I was afraid of the dark and liked the hall light left on when I went to bed. When I was in the second grade, firefighters came to our school to teach us what we should do in the event of a house fire, and one of the things they told us was that we should sleep with our bedroom doors closed. Such a dilemma: I was terrified of fire, and I thought keeping my door closed would keep me safe, but then my room would be too dark. My fear of the dark won out.

5. I have "internet friends"--a group of women I met on a public internet message board. There are 12 of us and I've met 5 "in real life" now. The other six I still consider friends, and I will sometimes say, "my friend said..." and then realize that I'm talking about someone I've never actually met. And when someone asks me how I met one of these friends, I'm always embarrassed to admit that I met them online.

6. In the summer after dinner my dad would sometimes walk us up to Baskin-Robbins for ice cream. I nearly always picked Gold Medal Ribbon. Brian and I walked up to Baskin-Robbins after dinner the other night. I considered the Gold Medal Ribbon, but went with World Class Chocolate instead. I felt sort of guilty.

7. I like movies where people talk a lot and nothing much happens. But sometimes I think the best moments in those movies happen when no one is saying anything. And just so I don't sound really boring, I also really like alien invasion movies, so long as they're not too scary.

8. I love the oaks and dogwoods and magnolias and cherry trees here, and the way things blossom in the spring and burn with color in the fall, but I have missed the cypress trees that show you the shape of the wind. I am looking forward to seeing those more often.


Why, yes, this is the bloggy equivalent of a chain letter. Nevertheless, I am tagging:

Christie
Eleeza
Champ

4:30

Sometimes the nighttime wake-ups don't go as well as they might. Sometimes instead of helping the baby latch on to eat and falling back asleep, you hear the cat hork something up, and you lie there wondering if your husband heard it too, but even though he's not breathing as deeply as he was, he still seems to be asleep and you figure you're awake anyhow, so after the baby finishes eating, you get up and get a drink of water and go looking for the cat puke. You find it and clean it up and then dig through the hall closet looking for the carpet cleaner, not bothering to be quiet for your husband's sake, because it's too early to be that polite, when suddenly you remember that you didn't double the baby's diaper before she fell asleep, so she's probably soaked, and if you don't want to deal with diaper rash or changing the sheets, you're going to have to change her and risk waking her up. You find the carpet cleaner, spray the spot on the rug, and go to change the baby. When you pick up the baby you realize that she is soaked and the diaper has leaked, so you also have to change her clothes, which means she will almost certainly wake up, even though nothing has to go over her head. And yes, when you unsnap her clothes, her eyes open and she smiles, and changing her is a struggle, because now she is wiggling and trying to play. Finally she's changed and you put her back down in the bed, and go to wash your hands and wipe up the carpet cleaner, and feed the cat while you're at it, because she's going to come around asking for food in another hour anyhow, as she still likes to be fed at the same time she was back when you had to get up early to get ready for work. When you come back to bed, the baby is awake, cooing and giggling and kicking her legs, while she watches the ceiling fan. You climb in between her and your husband, and curl your body around her, and she turns to look up at you and smile. You groan inwardly because it's too early for her to be really awake, but then you kiss the top of her head, so that you can feel her soft hair and smell her new baby scent, and you rest your hand on her lightly, and her eyes slowly close. And everything is okay, perfect, even, and 4:30 in the morning isn't so bad after all.

In fact, it might be exactly want you wanted. (Well, except for the cat puke.)

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.

***

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

***

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.

***

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.

***

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.

Mother's Day

After my mom died in 2001, I did my best to avoid Mother's Day. The first year was actually the easiest, as Brian and I spent all of that May traveling around Spain. I didn't look too closely at a calendar before we left, so I wasn't even entirely sure which Sunday it was. The only other Mother's Day I remember in particular was one a couple of years later, after we'd moved to Washington, when we decided that spending the afternoon at a bar near our house watching NBA playoff games would be fun, and that the bar was likely to be free of people celebrating Mother's Day. After all, who takes their mom to the billiards bar to watch basketball on Mother's Day afternoon? The bar was fine, but getting there wasn't much fun, as we walked down the row of restaurants where families were sitting outside enjoying the sunshine and their late Mother's Day lunch.

For six years I indulged a rather Grinchy feeling on Mother's Day. I didn't get to celebrate it, and I didn't want to watch others celebrating it. I told myself it was a fake holiday, one created (or at least marketed) by Hallmark to sell more cards, made sure Brian got a card and flowers to his mom in time, and then did my best to ignore it.

But now I am a mom. This weekend Brian brought me home a bouquet of gerbera daisies, my current favorite flowers. He gave me a card and a bird guide, and after going out for brunch (french toast and a bellini--yum), we drove to Mason Neck for some bird watching. It was an altogether perfect day, with my perfect little family.

Now Mother's Day doesn't seem so bad. I mean, dude, it's totally like getting my birthday in May. And I love my birthday. I should have a baby every year.

Four months

One day last week I was feeling particularly sleep deprived, so in the afternoon, after nursing Adriana to sleep in the armchair, I stayed where I was and closed my eyes. I couldn't actually fall asleep, but it was nice to relax there with her sleeping on my chest, her head nestled into my neck. We used to nap that way when she was brand new. But now she's big enough that when she woke up, she pushed up so that she could look me in the face. I smiled at her, and she smiled right back. I felt sentimental and happy.

Then she spit up down the front of my shirt.

Even though I was tired that day, mostly I'm not too sleep deprived. For the past month Adriana has been waking up a little bit more than she used to, but it hasn't too bad. She nearly always goes down at a reasonable hour, and when she wakes up to eat she falls back to sleep immediately. But the real reason I'm so well rested is that after she wakes up in the morning to eat, Brian takes her downstairs and plays with her while he gets ready for work, allowing me to sleep in. And on the days he works from home, I sometimes even manage to sleep until 8:30 or 9, which leaves me rested and full of energy--and in shock as I remember that in my "past life" I was the sort of morning person who slept in until 7:30 on weekends.

Sometimes I think she's waking up more often because she is teething, but so far I can't feel anything through her gums. Sometimes I think it's a "sleep regression" because she's developing new skills, like a couple of weeks ago when she began rolling over. She still only goes back to front, and it involves a lot of wiggling and grunting. The first few times she was unhappily surprised to find herself on her belly, but I'm pretty sure at this point that she's doing it on purpose. She is still fascinated by her own hands, and I laughed yesterday as she moved one back and forth in front of her face, opening and closing her fingers with amazement. She is also reaching for her feet these days, and studying them carefully.

She's very aware of the world around her at this point, the world beyond her own hands and feet. Nursing her anywhere but at home can be a nightmare, as she is too distracted to really eat and spends most of her time pulling away from me to look around. She smiles at strangers in the grocery store, and coos and laughs when they talk to her. She likes toys now, and the touch-and-feel books we have are getting a lot of use. Her favorite toy, though, is the cat, and Adriana is always trying to reach out and touch her. At one point I glanced down at where baby was lying on the floor to see that Cecilia had settled down beside her. I wasn't worried about them, since I was right there, but I clearly wasn't paying enough attention, because a couple of minutes later when I looked, Adriana had grasped the cat's tail (the most fascinating part of her, since it sways back and forth and fits so nicely in a fist) and the cat was looking at me as if to say, "If you don't put an end to this, I will." I quickly released the cat and promised to watch them more carefully together. I think Cecilia will soon learn to steer clear of the baby.

It's amazing to me how much she's grown in the past four months. On Monday we'll have a pediatrician visit and I'll get to find out exactly how big this child has gotten, but I think she's about fifteen pounds and probably 26 or 27 inches long. Last week, after a middle-of-the-night diaper blow out that required a "costume change" for both of us, the first sleeper I tried to change Adriana into didn't fit. She had gotten too long and couldn't stretch out her legs. So, over the weekend I went through the box of clothes that I've been waiting for her to grow in to, and picked out most of the "6-9 months" items, and that's what she's been wearing for the past week. I don't know who comes up with these sizes, since I've never met anyone who found that they were accurate.

Our love for her grows faster than she does. That sound horribly corny, but I can't think of a better way to put it. In the first days after her birth, I would look at her and cry because I was so overwhelmed by the strength of my love for her. If someone had told me that my love would only get bigger, I don't think I would have believed them. I've got the crying pretty much under control now. But every day I notice little changes in her. Every day she laughs when I blow raspberries on her belly. Every day I cradle her in my arms as I nurse her and look into her eyes. And I think that everything is just perfect.

Baby's first rally

Today Adriana and I are headed for Capitol Hill, for a nurse-in to support the re-introduction of Congresswoman Maloney's Breastfeeding Promotion Act. You can read about the rally and the legislation here. And if you're in DC, you should join us.

Why, yes, Dr. Sears, I'd love some more of that delicious Kool-Aid

A review of baby carriers...and an excuse to post more photos.

Before Adriana was born, I was buying baby carriers. Actually, to go back a bit further, before Adriana was born I was researching baby carriers. When I lived in California, I was always seeing people with their babies in simple canvas slings. Then I moved to the DC area and noticed everyone with front pack carriers. I assumed I'd go with one of those, until I met my friend Tonjia and she introduced me to the world of silk ring slings, fleecy pouches, stretchy wraps, and fun mei tais. Actually, next time Brian starts making comments about my various carriers, remind me to just blame Tonjia. I think we were mostly pretty frugal in our preparations for Adriana's birth, but with carriers I didn't even bother trying to rationalize my purchases; I just clicked "submit my order" and waited for the next one to arrive. By the time the baby arrived, I had a ring sling, an adjustable pouch, a wrap, and a mei tai. I saw carriers as a great way to get around town with the baby. I take a lot of public transit, and I didn't want to deal with folding a stroller up every time I had to get on a bus. And I didn't want to lug the carseat into restaurants and the grocery store with me; that just looked painfully heavy. Now I take pride when a friend comments on how light we manage to travel with the baby, showing up with just a small diaper bag and the baby strapped to one of us in a sling of some sort.

I was right that the carriers are a great way to carry the baby and keep my hands free while I'm out and about, but I didn't know I would become so addicted to wearing my baby. Or that Brian would be too. Or that Adriana would be addicted to being worn. Brian dismissed my ring sling and mei tai as too girly, with their beautiful brocades (although he did discover that the mei tai can be worn inside out so it is a solid khaki, with the dragonfly-print silk hidden so no one will question his masculinity), but was fascinated by the wrap and pouch. When Adriana was about a week old and we had recovered from the shock of her birth (OMG, we have a BABY????) we started playing with the carriers. I was being overly careful at first, because my abdomen was still sore, but Brian was soon folding laundry with our daughter nestled against his chest in the wrap. Once I was feeling stronger, I was popping her in and out of the pouch, which was the simplest to learn how to use and taught me to love wearing my little girl.

Kangaroo Korner Adjustable Pouches

Our favorite sling at first was the adjustable fleece pouch from Kangaroo Korner. I was in the market for a pouch-style carrier, and Jennie praised this one enough that I decided I had to buy it. I had been considering getting the fleece Hotsling, which I've also heard good things about, but the size charts made me realize that the Kangaroo Korner one would fit both Brian and me. I bought a medium sized sling in elephant grey, and we wore it all winter. It was easy to learn to use: I successfully lowered Adriana into it in a tummy-to-tummy hold on the first try when she was about a week old. Brian also likes that hold, and once she got a little bigger, he masted the cradle carry, which keeps her more out of the way when we go out to dinner (although she still sometimes gets crumbs in her hair). We've worn her all over town in this pouch, and she spent an awful lot of time in it in the house too. The nice, snug fit is sort of like a swaddle, one that keeps her close to us. Putting her in the sling was one of the most reliable ways to calm her down the first couple of months, and usually a few minutes of walking around with her in the pouch lulled her to sleep.



The Kangaroo Korner pouch, keeping baby cozy.

The weather has gotten warmer, and even though we've gotten better at using other carriers, Brian and I still both love the simplicity of the pouch, so a couple of weeks ago I ordered another one from Kangaroo Korner, this one in a lightweight stretch cotton. This one is light blue with cream trim--I would have liked something prettier, but since I share this one with Brian, I knew it had to be something he would approve of. One thing about these pouches is that as we have become more comfortable with them, we've begun wearing them more snugly. I think we are more skilled at getting Adriana in and out, so we don't need as much extra room to do it in, and a tighter fit somehow distributes her weight on our backs a little better. So, I ordered our cotton one in a small, rather than a medium. The two smallest rows of snaps on the medium are the same as the two largest on the small, and since that's where Brian and I were wearing our medium, and I was thinking I might like it a little snugger. I'm glad I made that decision. The material of the cotton pouch stretches even more than the fleece, so a tighter fit is definitely necessary. I don't like the cotton one as much as the fleece one. I'm not sure if that's the sling itself, or whether I've simply gotten used to other carriers that do a better job of distributing the baby's weight. The cotton pouch is nice and small, so that I can roll it up and fit it into the diaper bag.

ZoloWear Silk Ring Sling

I laughed at a couple of my friends when they bought silk ring slings from ZoloWear to carry their babies in. I mean, serious, SILK? That has to be DRY CLEANED? To carry a baby who is going to spit up? Whatever. Except...they were so pretty. And then I got a positive pregnancy test, and I was so excited, and the blue one with the butterflies...that would be good for a boy or a girl. And there was only one left in size small. CLICK. Oops.

I love the way my Zolo looks--the material is beautiful and I like the way the "tail" flows. My yoga teacher described it as glamorous, and really I have to agree. I had to have some help figuring out how to use it, but now I tuck Adriana into it with no problem. It doesn't adjust as easily as a cotton rings sling would, as the material is so heavy, but I haven't really found that to be a problem--I have it adjusted the way I like it, and I just don't mess with it. The problem comes when I try to wear her in it for longer carries: it's a one-shoulder carrier and the fabric across the back and over the shoulder is narrow compared to my pouches (and to other ring slings I've seen). I wore my Zolo when we went to see the cherry blossoms and after walking from the Smithsonian metro around Tidal Basin to the FDR memorial, my left shoulder was killing me. Still, it is my prettiest sling, and I still wear it when I'm not going to be using it for long, just because I like the way it looks



Wearing the Zolo at Tidal Basin.


Moby Wrap

Brian was the first of us to try babywearing, and he decided to start with the Moby Wrap. I guess he thought it was more manly in appearance than some of the other carriers. He got Adriana into it in a cradle hold on the first try, when she wasn't quite a week old. He felt that she was secure there and went around the house with her sleeping like that. I didn't get up the nerve to try it until Adriana was about six weeks old, when I went to a NINO* meeting to find out how to use it. It was such a relief to have someone walk me through the steps, because this style of carrier is intimidating. It's basically a gigantic strip of material that you tie around your body to hold the baby against you. A friend said that you need a degree in fabric tying to be able to use it, and she's not too far off--it sometimes takes me two or three tries to get it tied in such a way that Adriana and I are both comfortable. Nevertheless, I do like this carrier, as it does the best job of any of them at distributing Adriana's weight. I spent several hours at the Air & Space museum with Adriana against me in a tummy-to-tummy hold, and my back felt fine. I would use this carrier much more often if I were able to get her in and out more easily. With other carriers I can pop Adriana in and out fairly easily for diaper changes and nursing, but I've found with the Moby that once I take her out, I have to re-wrap and re-tie the whole thing in order get her back in securely. Maybe with a wrap that was less stretchy that wouldn't be a problem--I think that taking her out stretches the material a bit too far so that it's too loose to hold her.



The proud new dad with baby in the Moby.



Out for a nature walk in the Moby at Mason Neck State Park.


Divas 'N' Babes Mei Tai

Full disclosure: My friend Tonjia, the one who made me realize that the world of baby carriers was not limited to New Native slings and Baby Bjorns, runs Divas 'N' Babes.

I was more intimidated by my mei tai from Divas 'N' Babes than by wrap even. Something about the rectangle of fabric with ties coming out of each corner struck me as complicated, and it didn't look like it would be all that secure. Again, I learned how to use this one at the NINO meeting, and I was glad I did. It doesn't do quite as good a job at distributing the baby's weight as the wrap does, but it does get a substantial amount of her weight onto my waist, and it's easier to put on and to get right on the first try. This has become my carrier of choice these days (with the cotton pouch tucked into the diaper bag, just in case), as it's pretty and practical. I do find that Adriana slips down in it a little when she falls asleep, and the ties need to be tightened after awhile. I'm willing to tolerate those issues in exchange for having a comfortable, pretty carrier.



Hanging out in the mei tai in Laguna Beach.



The carriers hold Adriana close to our bodies, so she can share our body heat and relax with the vibrations of our voices. We have spent countless hours pacing our bedroom floor and dancing around our living room with her in one carrier or another, soothing her when she is fussy. She sleeps quietly against me when we go out to dinner, and looks around at people and places when I take her on errands with me. I think she recognizes the carriers now. After she's been fed, changed, and played with, she often gets fussy as she begins to tire out. But when I put her down for a moment so I can tie on the mei tai or wrap, or slip the pouch or ring sling over my head, she smiles at me, knowing what is coming. Sometimes she is instantly soothed when she goes into the carrier. Sometimes the carrier doesn't result in an instantly calm infant--she continues to fuss for a few minutes as I bounce and sing--but it allows me to free my arms up a little bit, and to not have to worry that if I put her down she will be instantly awake; instead she spends her whole nap close to me, and I can go about my business--folding laundry, paying bills, reading blogs, whatever--without worrying about listening for the baby.

*NINO is great. I've only been to one meeting, but I may go to another to try more carriers (shhhh....don't tell Brian). Basically, it was an informal meeting where everyone brought all their various baby carriers so that other could try them out, and people who knew how to use certain styles offered instruction in how to get your own carrier on.

So fast

I was going through some photos looking for the ones I wanted for a post I was writing, but I got distracted.

How did we go from this wee squooshy monkey



to this already?




Oh, and so long as I'm posting gratuitous photos, I really love this one of Adriana and my sister.

Three months

This gets more fun every day. Adriana is suddenly much more aware of the world around her. This has some downfalls--she's easily distracted when I'm trying to feed her when we're out and about, which makes it harder to be quite so modest--but mostly it's just incredible to watch her notice things. She reaches out to grab the toys handing from her play gym, watches the cat come down the stairs, stares intently at the other babies in our yoga class.

She's stopped minding her tummy time. Now when I put her on her belly, she pushes up and kicks and smiles. Usually. Sometimes she still is pretty sure that tummy time is a vast right wing conspiracy. After I fed her on Sunday morning she accidentally rolled from her side onto her tummy as she was dozing back off. After a few seconds she woke back up grunting angrily and giving me an accusing look.

A couple of weeks ago, she discovered her vocal chords, but can't figure out how to make them stop, as Brian put it at first. She'd been cooing a little bit from time to time, but now whenever we set her down by herself she starts with her noises. A lot of the "words" start with an "ng" sound, making us wonder if we somehow ended up with a Vietnamese baby. She also laughs. I don't remember the first time I heard a laugh, but I remember the first time she laughed for Brian. He was bending into the car to take her out of her carseat, and I don't know what he did that amused her, but she giggled and he stuck his head back out of the car to ask me "Did you hear that?" The next night she laughed at him again. It's a wonderful sound, as are her occasional squeals of happiness when I pour water over her head in the bath.

Recently she's stopped sleeping quite so well: instead of getting up once with her every night, it's usually twice. But she goes right back to sleep, and then so do I. And she's become better at nursing without much help from me, so I don't have to sit up and pull the boppy onto my lap in order for us to get comfortable. For a while I was blaming some of the lack of sleep on teething--she is drooling, her cheeks are red, she is constantly chewing on her hands, and our normally happy baby is incredibly fussy some evenings. I called Brian's mom one night to ask when her kids at gotten teeth. When she told me she thought it had been around three months, I decided that must be what was happening and, after thanking her and Brian for those genes, adjusted to the idea of waking up every hour or two at night. Of course, that night, Adriana only awoke once.

Several people have asked me if I miss my old job. And in some ways I do miss it. I enjoyed the work I was doing and the people I was working with. I know that the next couple of years will be an interesting time in health policy. Last week, Adriana turned 12 weeks old and I realized that under FMLA my maternity leave, if I'd taken it, would be up and I would be heading back to work. I knew that I would miss Adriana a lot more than I miss my job, and that given the way we do things in this country, it will always be an interesting time in health policy. I'll go back at some point--paid employment is a good thing--but for now I am content to make taking care of Adriana my job.

Blossoming

Two years ago I walked around Tidal Basin, admiring the cherry blossoms and thinking that in another year I'd be one of the new parents taking pictures of a baby underneath the flowering trees.

Last year I walked around Tidal Basin, admiring the cherry blossoms and thinking that I was supposed to be preparing for the birth of my baby in April, while trying not to stare too much at the couples pushing babies in strollers.

I don't think the cherry blossoms are as spectacular this year as they have been the past couple. Maybe I got there too much beyond their peak. Or maybe I am just happily distracted.

Damn Yankees

As I was picking out cheese at Whole Foods on the other day, an African-American man in his late thirties turned to me.

"Do you know the difference between the New York cheddar and the Wisconsin cheddar?" he asked me.

"I think the New York one tastes better. And the Wisconsin one melts kind of funny. It gets rubbery," I told him, putting a block of the New York cheddar in my cart.

"I want to put it on my grits."

I looked at him blankly. "Grits? I don't think I've ever had grits."*

He gave me a good-humored look of disbelief and asked a passing Whole Foods employee, who, like me, was a white woman in her twenties, about the difference. She told him that the New York cheddar was sharper, and didn't have a good answer for him when he asked about his grits. She was midsentence when another employee passed us.

"Excuse me," he said to this second employee, a young, African-American woman. "Which cheddar should I put on my grits?"

"The New York one," she said immediately without even stopping completely to look at what he was talking about.


*Brian pointed out to me later that I have had grits. But I top it with parmesan and call it polenta.

I heart DC (most of the time)

We've made up our minds to leave the DC area...and we mean it this time. After a few years of talking about it, we've decided that now is really the time to get back to California. We always knew this move was temporary for us, figuring that we'd stay only four years--two for me to go to graduate school, and two for me to work in my field in Washington. Now it's been five, and it's time to go. We're eager to get back to the West Coast, but there are certain things I'll certainly miss.

Even though it was supposed to rain yesterday, I desperately wanted to get out of the house. I wasn't sure about going down to Tidal Basin to see the cherry blossoms, as that would be a bit of a walk from the Metro and I didn't want to get caught in the rain with the baby for too long. We decided that we'd head down to the Mall anyhow, and check out Natural History or Air & Space. On our way toward Natural History from L'Enfant Plaza via the Sculpture Garden, though, a poster outside the Hirshhorn Gallery caught my eye. An exhibit in which light is the main feature in all the works appealed to me, so we headed inside.

The exhibit was fun--definitely worth checking out if you're in the neighborhood, and maybe even worth a trip down to the Hirshhorn, especially if you've never been before (I hadn't)--and afterward we checked out some of the sculpture on the same floor. Two pieces by German sculptor Ernst Barlach were my favorites:

I love that we can wander into a museum to see a single exhibit without worrying that we should spend a whole day in order to get our money's worth; it's hard to feel cheated out of your money when you haven't spent any. And I'll miss having so many free museums so nearby to choose from.

I think proximity to family and the beach will make up for that, though.

I totally have a life outside of my child

To prove it, here is a picture of my cat.



A couple of weeks ago The Sister and Her Fiance came to visit. Her Fiance, Brian, and I were all setting up the Scrabble board, and didn't even notice that Cecilia was hoping to join in until The Sister came down the stairs and started laughing.

Note: We didn't let the Cecilia play. She just likes to try to steal the tiles.

Raising a girl

That feminism post from last week got me thinking a little bit about raising a daughter.

When I told Brian about the "America's next top model" comment* and mentioned the NOW t-shirts to him, he wanted to know exactly what made someone a feminist. "Feminism is the radical notion that women are people," I spouted. Because really, isn't a bumper stick definition enough? Not for Brian. So then I babbled something about equal pay for equal work and voting rights and...

And I wasn't sure what exactly it meant. I wanted to say that it means that I am not defined by my gender, but knew that wasn't entirely true. I have long hair and I wear dresses (sometimes I even get around to shaving my legs). I am proud of my ability to grow and nurse a baby. But I like to think that my preference in school for subjects other than science and my distaste for spiders are just a fact of who I am and don't just reflect my lack of a Y chromosome. (I concede that the way I've been socialized has something to do with the former. But I like to point out that I was socialized not to like it, not to bad at it.)

I met a woman a couple of years ago who refuses to call herself a feminist. She says that if it were about equal rights and equal pay, she certainly would, but the main fight she sees feminists fighting now is abortion, which goes against her religious beliefs. I was surprised by this idea, but as I talked with her about my view on the matter (that it's really about making decisions about one's own body, which is why the feminist movement has embraced the issue), I could see where she was coming from. She believes that a human life begins at conception and that any action to end that life is murder. How could she accept the label of feminist in that case? She still believed in comprehensive sex education and the use of contraception, so I think she could label herself a feminist and disagree with some elements of the movement, but I guess that's not my call to make.

I don't think that woman is less of a feminist that I am because she doesn't believe in abortion. Maybe I would have thought that if I hadn't talked about it with her. But talking about it made me realize that I don't think there is a feminism scale. Don't laugh: some of my friends seem to think there is one. I was somewhat offended by someone commenting that another friend was the only one she knew who is as much as a feminist as she is. I wasn't sure it was something that could be quantified (and I certainly didn't like the implication that I was not as much as a feminist). In fact, I was pretty certain it was a yes or no question. But I also don't think about feminism all that often. It's just something I take for granted most of the time. But I think I know why my friend would measure my feminism as something less than hers: I made the decision to stay home with Adriana beyond a standard maternity leave before she was even born, leaving the world of paid employment. Does being a housewife (a housewife with a master's degree!) make me less of a feminist? There are a lot of people who probably think that's so. I prefer to think that the feminist movement is what gave me the opportunity to choose between staying home with Adriana and continuing in the professional world. I think the movement still has work to do--that our culture has work to do--to allow more people make the decision I made (if they want to), so that they don't have to worry so much about the financial effects of having one parent stay home and of how that break in their resume looks when they want to go back to work.

Except I wasn't talking about public policy here. Feminism. I can stay on topic. Really.

Brian asked if he could be a feminist. I told him yes, he could, and remembered that in college, I heard a guy in one of my classes say, "As a feminist, I think..." I don't know what the discussion was about or how he finished that sentence. I just thought it was awesome to hear a guy say that and I wanted to make out with him. So I did. (Hey dude!)

I find myself trying to work out not only my definition of feminism (since I hadn't thought of that, really, until Brian brought it up), but on whether my ideas about gender are affecting how I raise Adriana and how I interact with her. I tell her she's pretty an awful lot. Is that bad? I remember reading somewhere, probably in a psychology or sociology class, that we hold our baby girls facing toward us and our baby boys facing out toward the world. I do carry Adriana tummy-to-tummy in a sling most of the time, but she doesn't completely have control of her head yet and tends to fall asleep when we're out walking around. But sometimes I become self-conscious and I am sure to sit her on my lap facing out toward the room when we are visiting with other people and she is awake.

I'd like to think that if I had a son instead of a daughter, I would raise him the exact same way that I'll choose to raise Adriana. I know that's not possible: even if I could overcome my own prejudices, I would still want to raise a child who wouldn't be a complete outcast in our society. Before I knew whether I was having a boy or a girl--before I was pregnant, even--I thought it would be easier to raise a boy, actually. That wasn't necessarily about feminism though, but about some of the things women have to deal with: I thought it would be easier to teach a boy to respect women than it would be to teach a girl that women have to be a lot more careful than men, in some respects.

I want to teach Adriana to be a feminist, and not just because she's female. For Adriana to respect men and women as equals even if individuals sometimes have different abilities. For her to understand that men and women face different challenges because of gender and because of our world's perspective on gender. So I dress Adriana in pink some days, blue or green or red on others. I read her The Paper Bag Princess and sing her songs from Free to Be You and Me. I speculate that someday she might be a forest ranger or a teacher or a lawyer or a mama or a poet or a mechanic. I snuggle her and kiss her and tell her she's beautiful. It may be a bit early to be worrying about teaching her feminist values, but I want to make sure I've got my bases covered.

When I was little, I subscribed to an astronomy magazine for kids. Each issue there was a question posed that readers could write a response to. One month they asked whether women should be allowed to go on a mission to Mars, or something like that. I was about twelve years old, and the question bothered me. I thought it was ridiculous to ask such a question at all. I wrote a lengthy response, citing a picture book I loved when I was small called Mothers Can Do Anything. I was surprised to see my response (well, an excerpt from it, due to my issues with brevity) printed a few months later. (I was more surprised by the responses--from kids!--that said that women had no business on a Mars mission.)

To being a feminist means that I am my own person. That Adriana will be her own person. That she can be whatever she wants to be--mother, astronaut, teacher. All of the above or none of the above. Whatever she wants.**



*Someone else commented on Adriana's height since my original post. She followed up her comment with "I bet you'll make a great volleyball player." I thought it was awesome and I wanted to make out with her. But I didn't.

**Except a Republican.

I can't be the only one to find the acronym 'NIP' funny

I am not as uncomfortable nursing in public as I thought I would be. I knew I would do it, of course, but I thought I would be self-consious. In fact, I've found that I'm not uncomfortable at all at this point. ("I guess I'm just that kind of girl," I told Brian today as I settled down to feed the baby in the grass at Farragut Square at lunchtime.)

The first time I had to nurse in public was at Kaiser, when we took the baby in for her first visit with the pediatrician. I nursed in the exam room while we were waiting for the doctor and I thought Adriana was full, but when we went down to the lab so I could have some bloodwork done, she started fussing to be fed again. The waiting room was small and full, with no corner to hide in, and since we were only just getting the hang of latching, I wasn't sure I could be very discreet. I bounced the baby and hoped she could wait. Finally, Brian went to ask the receptionist how much longer I would be waiting, figuring that we could go find a place to nurse if we were going to be waiting much longer. We were assured it would be just a couple more minutes, but Adriana was getting more vocal about her hunger, and I decided I'd rather have people see me nurse than be the woman with the screaming baby. As I struggled to unfasten my nursing bra without lifting up my shirt (learning quickly that turtleneck sweaters are not appropriate for new nursers to wear in public), I noticed that there was a man standing beside me, looking down at me. He was just looking at the baby, I'm sure, while he was waiting his turn in line, but his presence made me fumble more. Before I could get the hook undone, my name was called, and I handed the baby to Brian, hoping he could keep her gone while I was in the back. Once I was done, we found a quiet corner near the pharmacy where I could feed the baby while facing away from everyone else.

Since then, it hasn't been a problem. In the beginning, I needed a boppy to get into a good position to nurse, but was able to improvise with the diaper bag, my jacket, or the sling. Now, I've nursed the baby in various bookstores, by the receptionist's desk at my former office, the birth center, a La Leche League meeting, a babywearing meeting (okay, perhaps those last three aren't surprising in the least), Whole Foods, a yoga studio, a restaurant at brunch with friends (holding baby with one hand, mimosa with the other), the Smithsonian's Air and Space Museum (just feet from the Wright brothers' plane!), and in Farragut Square. For the most part I think I've been pretty discreet, although sometimes I see someone looking at at me and I start to wonder. One day I sat in the cafe at Barnes and Noble to feed Adriana. I got her latched on and looked up to see a man a couple of tables away staring at me. I knew that with the angle of the tables and where the baby was, he hadn't seen anything, and I don't think I would have cared if he had. I looked back down at the baby, but when I glanced up again, I saw that he was still looking my way. I made eye contact with him and smiled. He looked away. I kept checking to see if he was going to stare again, but he never even glanced in our direction. I was disappointed: I thought it would be funny to wink at him if I caught him looking again.

Brian asked me at one point whether there were laws in Virginia and the District to protect breastfeeding. I remembered that a year or two ago there was a bit of a stir when a woman was asked not to nurse her baby in a Starbucks in Maryland, which violated both Maryland law and Starbucks corporate policy. La Leche League has a good list of breastfeeding laws on their website. I was happy to see that Virginia does protect women's right to breastfeed in public, and that they even exempt breastfeeding women from jury duty. The District isn't so great: there are no breastfeeding laws in DC. But federal law does protect women breastfeeding on federal property--including museums, so we were totally cool at Air and Space last weekend.

I complained about the lack of laws in DC to a friend, who pointed out that there may not be any laws on the books because it hadn't been necessary: women breastfeeding in public generally aren't asked not to do it. I thought he had a point. And I don't know if he was just unobservant, or if I am really becoming more discreet, but he had no idea I was feeding the baby at the table at brunch that day.

Feminism, baby

Adriana is the only baby girl in our mom-and-baby yoga class, and last week she was also the only baby who was pretty quiet. I held her in my lap as she gazed around at the other people in the room. She would smile when people would smile at her, but she wasn't kicking and waving and cooing as much as the other babies. One of the other moms commented that girls are so much quieter and sweeter than boys. The other women agreed. Baffled--she's only two months old!--I explained that Adriana had been up for a couple of hours already and was just sleepy.

At the end of the class, someone else looked at Adriana stretched out on the blanket in front of me and asked how long she was. Twenty-four inches, I told her.

"Aw, what a tall girl! Are you going to be America's next top model sweetheart?" she cooed at my baby.

"Or a basketball player," I responded without stopping to think.

I'm thinking about getting one of these shirts for Adriana to wear to class soon.

Two months

People have been telling me since Adriana was born that I should appreciate this time because "it all goes so fast." I already know they are right. I will her to slow down, to stop growing so fast. But then I am eager for a chance to weigh her the next time we visit the pediatrician* to see how much she has grown and get excited thinking about the things we will be able to do as she gets older.

*Actually, we were just there today. She's up to 12 pounds, 6 ounces, and is 24 inches long. No wonder she's outgrowing her clothes so quickly.

It's only been two months. It seems like forever, and it seems like only a minute. She seems so grown up compared to just a few weeks ago, but I know in another couple of months I will look back and laugh at the very idea. She is so small and delicate, but so much bigger and stronger than she was in January. I am still a clueless new mother, but I am feeling more confident and happier every day.

It feels like ages since I emailed my best friend, begging her, "Please tell me this gets easier." She promised me it would, and she was right. I no longer look helplessly at this little baby, wondering what I ought to do with her, or if she's crying, what on earth is the matter. Okay, that's not entirely true. There are days when Brian comes home to find us both in tears, because Adriana has been fussing all day and I have no idea what to do for her anymore. But those days are the exception rather than the rule. We are developing a routine (but not a schedule), and I am beginning to recognize her cries, and to anticipate her needs (not that she has a great many needs to choose from--food, clean diaper, nap, snuggle--one of those will usually work).

Every day Adriana is more of a real person, her own personality, not just a blank slate of a baby. Her smiles are getting more and more frequent, and longer lasting, so they can actually be captured on camera. They also seem to be truly directed at us, not just random twitches of her facial muscles: one night I was sitting in bed trying to nurse her to sleep, while Brian read to me. She kept pulling away from my breast to give him big gummy grins. When he stopped talking, I could get her to latch again, but whenever she heard his voice she would be happily distracted.

She doesn't cry when we bathe her anymore, and even seems to enjoy the time in the tub. She usually still shrieks when we take her out of the nice warm water, though. And she would really rather I didn't dress her in anything that had to be pulled over her head. Unfortunately for her, the footy pajamas that don't require any over-the-head action don't last very long around here, as they are less forgiving of her rapidly increasing length.

She stays awake for longer periods of time, and we can even manage to play a bit. But she (thankfully) is learning not to stay awake for long periods of time at night. Instead of walking with her and rocking her for an hour or more after she eats, with most night wakings I can snuggle her back down to sleep after we nurse.

Snuggling with her while we sleep may be my favorite part of this whole thing. I was always in favor of cosleeping in theory, but in practice it made me nervous at first. We got the Arm's Reach Cosleeper, so we could have her near us at night, without the worries of cosleeping (blankets accidentally pulled over her face, me rolling on top of her). But I kept falling asleep holding her after night feedings, and after Brian got up in the morning, I would often let her sleep beside me in bed after nursing. Then one morning, before Brian and I were ready to wake up, she started to squirm and fuss in her cosleeper. I pulled her into the bed beside me, pushing the blankets down to my waist, and figured I would feed her in a just a couple of minutes. Instead, I dozed back off with her in the crook of my arm, and woke an hour later to discover her still sound asleep beside me. And really, who's going to argue with a snuggly baby who will sleep for five hours at a time? (Well, I would have the first week or two of her life, since I was sure she wasn't getting enough to eat.) She starts out each night in the cosleeper, but after she wakes up to eat (and sometimes before, if she just gets noisy and squirmy on her own), I keep her close against me in bed.

And that's really what I want to remember from this time: how perfect it feels to lie in bed with Adriana's head tucked under my chin, Brian warm against my back, and Cecilia nestled against our legs--my cozy, happy family.

Baby's first nature walk

We took advantage of the nice weather last week to get out to Great Falls. I'm feeling pretty out of shape still, so we walked the flat tow path, rather than trying to do the Billy Goat trail. Plus, hiking over those rocks with the baby in a sling doesn't seem like a great idea. The river was quite full, I suppose due to melting snow and recent rains. I had never seen the falls and surrounding area so wild. Unfortunately, I hadn't charged the camera batteries, so we only got a few pictures, and none of the actual falls. Still, the river on the bridge out to the viewing area was pretty impressive.

Part 6

Oh no! Is she still talking about this?


One last thing about the birth story, and then I'm done with it, honest.

Last night was the reunion of our Bradley class. Our teacher always has her previous students come in to share their birth stories with her current students. I thought it was great to hear birth stories when I was a student, but I liked last night's class even more, because I got to hear the stories of people I'd gotten to know over the course of the twelve-week class. It was wonderful to hear from the women who had had relatively short labor and got to experience natural childbirth. I had wondered how hearing their stories would make me feel. To my surprise, I was only a little bit envious and not at all angry or bitter. I was afraid I would be horribly jealous. Mostly I just felt happy for them. It was amazing to hear how everyone--those with relatively simple births and those who had faced more complications--told their stories with such humor and grace. I loved hearing the stories of other women who would characterize their labors or births as fun or enjoyable, because I did love the experience of laboring at the birth center and it's nice to know that others had similar experiences.

I hadn't planned out what I would say when it was my turn. I just started talking. And talking. And talking. I maybe told too much, but perhaps the expectant couples learned something from my experience that could help them. But I think I learned something from telling the story. Writing it all out had definitely helped me process everything that happened. Then there was the time between when I wrote that and now, and something happened in that time: I began to accept things. There are still things that I will always wonder about--just last week I was saying to Brian that I was disappointed that I'd gone for the epidural when I had, as there were so many relaxation techniques that I hadn't tried. I was wondering yet again whether I gave up too soon. Last night I realized, by telling my story and listening to others', that I hadn't given up too soon. I did what I needed to do. Things happened that were beyond my control, but I think I did have an unusual amount of control over the birth compared to some people, because we had prepared so well. I did what I could, and not everything went as planned, and I'm (mostly) okay with that.

Besides, I'm sure it's not the first time things with this girl won't go the way I expect.



Could somebody please send some hair product?

Does PETA have a stance on wearing the fur of obnoxious little monsters?

Walking around Washington Circle on Tuesday morning, I noticed a woman with a bright red, fuzzy handbag. I considered screaming out, "Oh my God! You killed Elmo and turned him into a purse!" I didn't know whether I ought to have followed that up with and angry "You bastard!" or grateful "Thank you!" but I was inclined toward the latter.

When I told Brian he said he was glad I was too shy to act like a complete freak in public. But I still think it would have been funny.