Ollie has been "walking" for over a month now, taking steps ever since a few days after his birthday, but he really started to opt for the two legged method as his primary mode of transportation just about two and a half weeks ago. And you're just hearing about it now. I know. I never write, I never call.
His language has also taken off. He's kind of gotten lazy with the signs lately, which is slightly frustrating because I'm like a freaking puppet sometimes with all of my examples of signs. I have to stop myself from saying "look at mama!" all the time trying to get him to look at me doing the sign. Listen, self, it's more important that he enjoy the tree than watch you wave your arm about, my less-interesting, flesh-colored tree. Actually, he can sign "tree," so that was a lousy example. But I think he's making up for signing with actual words. I'm happy with either. Actually, I'm 100% content with the "baapdabaaavvffba" he says after interrupting himself nursing to look me straight in the eye, and then he gives me a giant sloppy kiss on the mouth. Oh, my heart. I baapdabaaavvffba you too, little man.
So, since language is both verbal and sign-y at this point, I'll list all of his words in both forms.
sign language (asl) he will do himself - nurse (milk) - more (although he's more likely to point at what he wants to eat) - eat (again, he's just going to point. but we have seen this sign) - stars (oh god, this one is adorable) (and kind of much more useless than the above signs? but for some reason, it comes up ALL THE TIME). - car - dog (we use a non-ASL sign (panting), and is always coupled with a loud DOG ("DUH")). - mouse (kind of. he moves his finger over MY nose) - tree - hat - music (again, non-ASL. I do use the ASL sign all the time, but ollie just stands in front of the silent stereo/instrument and "dances," indicating that he wants the music turned on.) - drum (I don't think this is an ASL sign) - airplane (kind of - he doesn't quite do the intricate finger work) - light
verbal words - cat (although he hasn't used this one in a while) - hat (sounds exactly like cat) - hot - ball (repeatedly, all day long with the ball-ing) - dog (repeatedly, all day long with the dog-ing) - woof woof - toes/toast (these things are exactly the same in his mind) - shoes (it sounds like "shits") (i'm totally serious) - mama - dada - rock - pup - bat (he said this once) - water (more like wawa, of course)
I'm only partially bragging. I'm mostly just writing it all out so I'll remember.
The best mother's day gift mama could ever dream of.
I can't write much, because I'm working on a deadline, but I just went through to the kitchen and ERIK HAS CLEANED ALL THE DISHES AND CLEANED THE COUNTERTOPS. Let me give you a little backstory.
Two people love each other very much and have a baby and live in a charming house with no dishwasher. Baby is hard work. Housework suffers. One person puts in 12 hour days (well, 9 hour days + 3 hours of train riding). Other person edits (interesting! but time-consuming!) dissertations whenever the baby is asleep. Two people also watch the Twin Peaks DVD box set whenever possible; I'm just throwing that in there so you don't think I'm a robot. Dishes, they pile. Pile pile pile. Charming house is less charming with no dishwasher. Craigslist is stalked for dishwashers. Dishes are pile-ier. Take-out is purchased. Rinse. Repeat. Comb in conditioner.
You're probably thinking, "oh, so what. He did a load of dishes? Whatever." No, my friends. Our cabinets were empty. Empty! Empty, because there were no clean dishes to put in them. Because they were all piled not only next to the sink, but on almost every inch of countertop space. I don't think anyone can really understand except for Lorien, who unassumingly stepped foot into the dish carnage yesterday. (Thank you for the cough pellets!) Don't try and pretend that it wasn't so bad in there.
I had originally intended to have a dreamy, sappy mother's day post wherein I waxed and waned on and on about sweet wee Oliver and how nothing is cuter than a slightly chubby baby scrunching over so that he can peek at and poke at his own belly button, but instead we get a dishwashing post. Happy Mother's Day '08! Clean dishes!
Here are some of my favorite former signs around San Diego. All have been removed or corrected, and I sorely miss them. In order of local fame/lore:
1. "CRUISE SHIPS USE AIRPORT EXIT." - seen from interstate 5 south, just before the airport, which is also near that cruise ship terminal. So if you're either driving your car or sailing your cruise ship down the 5, you'll know where to exit.
2. "OUR SAVIORS LUTHERAN." - this is a little Lutheran church in North Park. The technical name is Our Savior's Lutheran Church, with an apostrophy - they are stating that they belong to their Savior. However, the old signage out front didn't have the possessive, and simply informed us that Jesus was in fact Lutheran. I'm not saying it's not true, but the sign is now corrected.
3. "PLEASE HELP US NOT TO HAVE PETS IN THE STORE." - this was scrawled on a white board and propped up against the open door to a liquor store in Normal Heights. In smaller print, beneath the pet request was a significantly less polite command: "KEEP YOUR HOODS DOWN!" I'm not sure if the two messages were related.
Ollie turned ONE on April 12th, and I'm just now getting around to posting. Even more tardy is the birth story I'm about to post. (This is why I have been so late in posting about the little dude's birthday; posting his birth story was just too overwhelming for me).
On Tuesday, 4/10/07, around 9 or 10pm or so, we were at some random store (Bed Bath and Beyond? Macy's? Or somewhere else that I would prefer didn't make an appearance in my birth story) looking for organic sheets and mattress pads. Oh yes, it was Macy's. We were standing around looking at pillows and expensive sheets when I felt my first contraction. At that point, I was 2 days overdue so this was all very exciting. We hurried home and kept vigil by the clipboard and stop watch. Hindsight: hahaha.
That night, the contractions were coming anywhere from 6 to 19 minutes apart up until around 1 am, when I stopped writing them down until after 4 am. I did remember seeing times on the bedside clock between 1 and 4, but I assume I fell asleep right after the contraction peaked so never wrote anything down. The next contraction I recorded was at 4:10 am, and was strong (I had a column for "notes" *eyeroll* but excellent for the 1 year later story telling. Hindsight: type A pays off!) and that contraction was longer than any previous contraction - 90 seconds. I woke Erik up then and we had our little cliche "this is it!" - slash - "nobody's going to work today!" happy dance.
At around 5:30 am or so, I must have gotten in the bath for a little while. Baths were woefully inadequate for me while pregnant. The water never covered enough of me, even with a washcloth jammed around this little overflow drain, and it always got cold too quickly. I think I got out of the bath at around 6 am, even though I had envisioned myself spending the entire labor in the bath. Contractions ranged from 2 minutes to 8 minutes apart with the occasional 12 minute wait every so often, until around 9 am when they were consistently less than 8 minutes apart. I even wrote down when I pooed! (8:15 am). One day Ollie will read this and cry.
Sarah arrived just before 11 am, because her handwriting takes over in the notebook for the 10:57 contraction (1 minute long, 8 minutes after the last one, and strong). We were just randomly lulling about the house until my water broke at 2. We were listening to This American Life podcasts, snacking, and Sarah (who was 5 weeks pregnant at the time) started devouring my Ina May Gaskin library. Sarah at one point left to go pick up lunch for us (yet another excellent reason to have a doula, in my opinion), and during this time, Erik must have written "!Best one yet!" in the contraction log, including whatever you call the spanish language upside down exclamation point. I couldn't talk through any of these contractions (and really hadn't been able to since they started Tuesday night), but I wasn't exactly moaning or blaspheming reproduction or anything. Yet.
At 2:09, lying on the couch, I had the strongest contraction yet, and I literally feared for my intestines and bones. I thought I was going to blast apart at the seams. At the peak of that contraction, my water broke! Luckily, I was wrapped up in a robe and a blanket, so nothing got on the couch. When undressing and surveying the water damage, it was actually way less water than I had expected based on what I heard and felt.
From then on, the contraction pain really, really stepped up. We retreated to the bathroom where I camped out in the shower on my hands and knees with a constant flow of hot water to my back. Ollie was still posterior/sunny-side up, so the back labor was starting to be unbearable. Erik spoon fed me and we didn't really log the timing of the contractions. Sarah wrote "serious face" in the book, though. I was making lots of low groaning noises and trying to relax everything everywhere in the hopes that my cervix would catch on and comply.
When we started timing the contractions again, we realized they were about 2-3 minutes apart, all lasting over a minute. We called Best Start again at 5 or so, and they told us to get ready to come in and they'd meet us there. Kel, the midwife I'd been communicating with during my entire labor, was now going off-call, so she said that Roberta would be there for the birth. After spending most of my prenatal visits with Kel and not liking her as much as Roberta, I was surprised to be disappointed that she wouldn't be with us at the birth. I guess I had just gotten comfortable with her. This would definitely be reaffirmed later. The last contraction we recorded was at 5:22 pm. So you can rest assured that this will be the last dorky data fact I'll include in here. No wait! I just realized that they gave me a copy of my entire labor chart.
We packed everything up for the birth center and arrived just after 6pm. Nobody was answering the door, so we assumed Roberta the midwife wasn't there yet. It was a windy, cool, storms-a-brewing sort of evening, and I kind of rolled around on the grass out front of the birth center trying to battle some contractions for about a half hour. Some random construction worked just walked right up past us and opened the door, inviting us in. Roberta and the nurses had been there the whole time, but I guess nobody heard the doorbell. Oy. Roberta didn't want us settling into the room until she checked me, which was surprising to hear, and Kel had never even suggested any of it - just sort of nodded along with me when I told her what I envisioned. But, checked! On an exam bed! I had planned on not being checked until I wanted to get in the tub. And! She also wanted me to pee in a cup! And! You can't get in the tub anyway until you're 5 centimeters! If you listened closely enough you could hear the iron gates of my cervix slamming shut. Needless to say, I was only 2 centimeters. This was quite disappointing but according to Erik and Sarah, they had no idea I was feeling that way. Awesome - I was just bottling it up inside. Ina May, I'm sorry. Anyway, I was 100% effaced. "Paper thin," I remember Roberta saying.
They let us into the room, even though they gave us the option of going home. I really didn't want to go home and do the transition again; it was hard enough doing it once. Note to self: birth at home next time. Before we could even sit down, they whisked away all the pretty linens and pillows, leaving behind boring hospitally waterproofy white sheets. You can't blame them, but it was just one more thing that didn't mesh with what I had envisioned for my birth.
Ollie was still backwards, and stayed that way until I was halfway through pushing. We labored in the room a bit, and I kept asking for them to check me whenever they'd come in the room, just because I wanted to get in that hot water so badly. Finally, I was "4 going on 5" and I hollered to have someone start filling up the giant bath tub right then. It was amazing to get in the water. It certainly wasn't painless, not by any stretch of the imagination. In fact, it was still quite painful. But there was something about being surrounded by hot water that just calmed my spirits and relaxed my body enough. I felt light (well, light-er) and floaty in the water, my skin smooth and slippery, and the steam invigorating my senses.
Just before getting in the tub, I started having really strong trembly contractions where my whole torso area convulsed in the middle of the surge. We realized later on that this was when the pushing contractions started. Yes, at 5 centimeters. This probably had to do with the fact that he was backwards - his body was low and engaged, but the front side of his head was opening my cervix much differently than if he were facing the right way. I labored in the water for a while, with everyone applying counterpressure with whatever hands or limbs nearby. During one harrowing contraction in the water, I had a lot of bloody show, so they wanted me to get out to clean the tub and check me. This was when things got much, much worse for me. This was most likely transition. I couldn't move. I lay there, slightly writhing in pain, and completely tense on the bed. I started throwing up ridiculous amounts of purple vomit but couldn't even move enough to puke in a bucket. Sarah had just wipe the puke away from me with towels. I love her. When they checked me next, I was 10 centimeters dilated with just a little lip of cervix still stuck in the way. Roberta had me push with the next contraction while she manually moved that lip of cervix out of the way. I remembered reading about that in many of the birth stories at The Farm in Ina May Gaskin's books, so that comforted me a little.
In my mind, pushing meant that the baby would be there any minute. I expected to have just a handful of pushes and be done with it. Hindsight: hahahaha. I rushed everyone to get back into the tub because I was so set on a water birth and didn't want him accidentally coming while I squatted on the toilet. Again, hindsight: haha. During one push, Roberta helped turn Ollie around to face the right way, with me still in the tub. It was one of a handful of moments I was thankful for having a ridiculously experienced Midwifery Legend around. Anyway, that was a massive movement. I felt him move with every inch of my body. I remember hoping that the contractions would hurt less now that he had turned around, but they just kept getting worse. After that, he probably got comfortable in there and I'm pretty sure I started passing out between the pushing contractions. My face got all tingly, and I'd "fall asleep." Contractions spaced themselves out 6 or so minutes apart, and were relatively puny, clocking in at a mere 45 seconds or so each. My pushing was also relatively puny, no doubt related to my overall weakness. I tried to eat some mashed potatoes and drink some Gookinaid or water, but was just repulsed by everything. After about two hours of pushing, Roberta asked me to get out and try pushing on the birth stool or squatting to see if dry land would help speed things up. Oliver had started crowning in the water already. I knew that I could get back in the water again eventually, so I agreed to spending some time on dry land. Getting out of the tub right then? Oh holy hell. Oh, that was crazy intense.
4 dry-land pushes later, Oliver arrived at 1:56 am on Thursday, April 12th. I remember Roberta telling me to reach down to catch him, but I was white knuckling the birthing stool. I laughed when she suggested that, although I'm sure I probably could have let go. Erik was supporting me from behind, with his arms under my armpits. I had my feet on Roberta's knees who was sitting right in front of me. I think Roberta caught him but in almost one swift movement I grabbed him, too, and uttered the first worlds my child heard in the real world: "he's all slippery! I'm going to drop him!"
I didn't drop him. I didn't even realize that I had forgotten to get back into the water until much, much later that day. Ollie emerged into the world wailing away. Delivering the placenta and being stitched up was awful, but we survived. I eventually had to give the baby to Erik to hold while we finished taking care of me, and he then stopped crying for the first time, in his father's arms. Oh, my heart. After that, still just minutes after he was born, we laid him on my chest and he started rooting around, moving his whole body to try to find food. While he didn't exactly latch on, he did eventually get there and try to get started. It was amazing to watch something so biological, so natural. Oh, again, my heart. We all fell asleep for a little while until the nurse came back in to give him a once-over and weigh him. 7 lbs, 7 oz (just like his mama), and 19.5 inches long. Stunning Apgar scores :-). Very little hair. Very very cute.
We left the birth center at around 9 am that morning with our 7 hour old son. The birth center was filling up with pregnant women for their prenatal visits. I remember the strange, empty feeling I had when I saw them. Despite the fact that I was holding my sweet, peaceful baby, the joy and sunshine of my life, I wanted to stand there and tell them DON'T DO IT. Don't have a baby. Don't. Or, at the very least, go somewhere where they'll knock you out first. I had a really hard time reconciling the pain and everything in my mind right after the birth, but within a few days, I quickly snapped out of it and can barely remember what contractions feel like. Typical.
Childbirth was the hardest thing I've ever done, but ever since then, I've had so many moments where I thought to myself, "why did I focus so much energy and pre-baby reading time on the birth? When I should have been learning about XYZ random difficult newborn/parenting subject matter?!" Every day we're faced with new challenges as parents, you would think that the powerful birth story would leave our minds, forever replaced with how to remove poo stains or how to change a prefold diaper when holding your climbing-away baby upside down by one ankle. But I'll never forget that day. Day(s). My life changed forever. Life is so much sweeter with the little dude.
Oliver is the happiest person I know, and it's contagious. My sunshine, my sweetness, my little man: I don't know what I did to deserve you, but I am so lucky to get to be your mama. You're the best thing I've ever done.
I noticed recently in this picture that Ollie's eyes are slightly different from each other.
I would never have noticed in person, but now I can see it in certain light. I'm so glad I have it captured so clearly (in fact, it's more vivid in the lighting in that picture than in person). I'm definitely curious to see if this is just some sort of transitional, turning-hazel-at-different-rates thing, or if both eyes will end up different colors. His right eye has a little more yellowy brownness in it.
Also, he's cute. And, AND, he has taken a total of FOUR STEPS. Two sets of two stumbly steps. The first one was on Sunday afternoon (3/31), while frantically signing "nurse" and whining and lunging towards me. The second set was today, while shaking his maracas and squealing with a sort of maniacal glee. God, I love this kid.
Also also, hello April. You are already so, so different than April last year. Here's a glimpse into my life this time last year, in no particular order: 1. Assuming the baby would be early, but vocally telling everyone that of course he'd be late, trying to flirt with Murphy's law a little? 2. Training my temporary replacement and organizing my office (and entire program) for what I knew in my heart would be my permanent departure. 3. That wasn't that hard to do, so I spent most of my days "researching" cloth diapers online and reading birth stories. 4. Finding our that Sarah was pregnant! Yay! I almost forgot this, but she used my last digital pregnancy test that I had leftover in the medicine cabinet. She said that she didn't just find out that she was pregnant that afternoon, she was practically serenaded with a flashing neon sign. Ahhhh, fancy pants pregnancy tests... 5. Learning how to push. Our Bradley teacher was, shall we say, interesting? And didn't really cover that part. So, Erik and I taught ourselves. 6. Buying a delicious king size organic bed. Actually, we did that on April 7th because I remember Bob Davis asking me when I was due, and responding with "tomorrow." That was such a strange feeling. Equal parts sentimental, nerve-wracking, empowering, and kind of smug. Anyway, turns out Bob's daughter was training to be a midwife so we had a little chat about Best Start and midwifery in general, and then I almost fell asleep on some of their sample beds. Or almost peed my pants. Both of which took on a whole new level of urgency in those final few weeks. 6. Napping in the nursery glider thinking about how much easier the recline feature would be when I could use my abdominal muscles again. (Note: it's not. I must not be compatible with recliners.) 7. Napping anywhere, and wishing I could sleep on my belly or back. I still wish that :-D. 8. When not napping, chances are I was probably on my hands and knees with my head and shoulders on the ground, kind of a modified belly-space, butt-in-the-air child's pose. 9. Practicing fake birth announcements in Photoshop, testing out random middle names with Oliver. (He was 3 days old before we finally voted Liam and Graham off the island and decided on William.) 10. Wondering what kind of little person I was growing inside of me. My visions of a calm, serene child were usually countered by constant, full body, visible-through-my-clothes, violent in-utero acrobatics.
Things for which I am randomly thankful right this second, the nowhere-near-Thanksgiving edition.
ollie giving kisses on cue.
agave nectar. low glycemic!
being able to tell nelwyn "I've been totally bored, FYI" when her family was in town and therefore unable to waste the days away with us.
external flash.
the late-afternoon magical light soaring through the trees in between the tennis courts, the velodrome, and dog park at Morley field.
a friend's hand-me-down size 5 baby grass green converse high tops.
Amber Atkins. FYI, she'll most likely be on all of my lists like this because it's always a good day if I have quoted Drop Dead Gorgeous. and, she's the prettiest, the most talented, and the most smartest.
plotting out our back yard, a combination wildlife and wild-boy habitat. oh, and vegetables! oh, and native wetland!
cosleeping.
shelled hemp seed nuts. 11 grams of protein per tiny serving of soft, little miniscule buttery nutty seediness! omega 3s!
"when the birds are sleeping, that's when the trees sing." i sing, i swim by seabear. throw me a dream, please.
coffee shop workers knowing my drink and finishing my order sentence for me.
clean kitchen cabinet doors.
sleep.
old green soft and bendy flip flops.
my little family.
I think everyone who is reading this should go back to their own bloghomes and make their own lists (and post me a link!). happy happinesses to you all.
We just watched The Business of Being Born last night (get it, watch it, do it), but this post isn't about birthy pushing. It's about this:
(NOTE: please turn down your volume unless you want to hear me dorking out. I was trying to get Ollie to do this really cute thing he does where he babbles rapidly and sticks his tongue in and out. He didn't take the bait.)
So obviously my green hour documentation project has gone by the wayside, but that doesn't mean we haven't been doing it. I'm just not telling you about it. For several more remarkable green hour experiences/activities/whatevers, we took pictures, so I just decided to make a Flickr set for green hour. Hmm, I wonder if there's a flickr pool out there for this sort of thing.
Anyway, here are some of my favorite pictures lately: mission trails
let me at it, mama!
at Torrey Pines
And in other news, Ollie had Lucca, now a 1 year old!, over for dinner. His mama needed a little break.
More another time. I'm sitting in the car with him right now while he naps, and I really should be working on an editing project. Pretty soon we'll head over to Lucca's birthday party, and after that he's having his First Babysitter Experience. Well, if my parents count. We're leaving him with grandma and grandpa at night for the first time while we go to Jackie's wedding. I mean, Jackie and Craig's wedding. Yes! (Ex work girlfriend) Jackie and (ex work gay best friend) Craig are getting married! Oh, internet, we have so much catching up to do, don't we? One day I'll also tell you about how my ex work boyfriend turned carpool buddy Joel is having a baby and moved to the suburbs.
I mentioned Green Hour in my last post, and maybe you've seen the attractive little button over there to your right in the side bar. In a nutshell, this generation of children is the first in history that's at risk of a so-called "nature deficit disorder," and hopefully regardless of where you fall on the political, environmental, social and parenting spectrums, you can get behind that. To take it to a total extreme, some children's experience of the "outdoors" involves only parking lots.
Richard Louv wrote a quite well-received book, "Last Child in the Woods" about this nature-deficit disorder, if you want more information.
Anyway, I'm going to try to make a habit of briefly journaling our activities for Green Hour, even if it's just Green Few Minutes. It seems like it's going to be really easy to make experiencing nature part of our daily routine (even after 1 week I'm ultra-conscious of it), so the hard part for me is probably going to be blogging about it. So don't think I've failed if I'm not writing about it!
Week 1: February 10th- 16th, 2008
Sunday 2/10 We put Ollie in the carrier and hiked around the Florida Canyon Nature Preserve, which is less than a mile from our house. It's part of Balboa Park/Morely Field. This was so wonderful and lovely, and Ollie loved it. We did too. It was nice to get outside. However (and I keep trying to remind myself that everyone needs their green hours), Erik totally saw someone getting a BJ down a canyon. Note to self: stay closer to the roads from now on.
Monday 2/11 Nelwyn, a fellow green hour crusader, and I took the boys to the beach. We did a decent walk along the Coronado beach and then let the boys have at the sand and the waves. This was a lot longer than an hour! They loved it. The new textures of the sand and water, the new smells and sounds, the abundance of seagulls and other birds, delicious sea minerals (for lucca) and the amazing weather.
Tuesday 2/12 I was watching my friend's kid (just a few months older than Ollie) that day, so we naturally spent a lot of time walking around trying to manage naps. Then we met Nelwyn and Lucca at the Morley Field playground where the boys played in the grass and the woodchip playground. I have a picture on my camera of Lucca pushing Ollie in his little walker wagon on the grass. Oh, the cuteness.
Wednesday 2/13 A direct quote from an email to Nelwyn that night: "today we did a green "hour" (10 minutes) in our front yard and with the potted bamboo behind krakatoa. it was freaking cold out."
Our front yard is all (newly) native plants, and many of them are flowering right now. It's beautiful! (In a native coastal desert sort of way) They're also starting to attract some wildlife (mostly bees and caterpillars at this point - some birds). I can't wait to watch the garden come along! But yes, it was freaking cold out. Like, 60! We also let him touch the potted bamboo behind Krakatoa coffee house in Golden Hill. Meh, it counts as nature.
Thursday 2/14 It rained today, so we spent some time on the porch watching and pointing at birds. Maybe 5 minutes total.
Friday 2/15 Nelwyn and I took the boys to Ocean Beach to a little park by People's Co-op. We bought some lunch at the co-op deli and fed the boys steamed broccoli and let them crawl around and play in the playground.
Saturday 2/16 Erik and I took Ollie for a hike in Mission Trails Regional Park, the largest urban park in the country! I have an unhealthy love for Mission Trails. I spent a lot of time discovering the whole expanse of the park during my work as a coach and as staff for Hike For Discovery at LLS, and also, Erik proposed there! Anyway, it is absolutely STUNNING there right now. Go now! It's super green and smells delicious. We hiked from the visitor center down to the river at the bottom of the valley and bac up. Ollie loved pointing at things.
Ollie now has two front top teeth, in addition to the ones on the bottom. Actually, the top teeth are just teeny slivers of teeth so far. One broke through on Tuesday (his 10 month birthday), and the other yesterday (Wednesday). Teeth!
He loves being hand-fed. Hates the spoon, but will take anything that I manually put in his mouth with my fingers. He will pick up pieces of food, play with them, drop them, feed them to me (and as of this morning, to Lucca too) (yes, it was totally adorable), but he will not put the pieces of food in his own mouth. He has no interest in it. Usually he just holds it up for me to take from him, and waits with his mouth expectantly open for me to place in his mouth.
Did I mention that HE FED LUCCA? The cuteness of those two boys knows no bounds.
Even though he hates avocado, he loves garbanzo beans. Garbanzo beans are slightly redeeming. Lets see if they make him as gassy as they make his mama.
The pointing is now less of a circle and more of a Papal Blessing hand motion, as described by my dad today. Pope Oliver the First sort of gestures a little with a partially pointed hand. Bless you my child. Actually, it's more like: Bless you my light. Bless you my bird. Bless you my baby monitor green light. Bless you my ceiling fan. Bless you my light again.
He signed "more" very clearly tonight at Greg and Shawna's, and I almost didn't even notice. I was looking right at his hands, and just assumed he was trying to get two pieces of food situated in each hand. Sure enough, he wanted *different* food in his mouth.
We've been keeping "green hour" every day this week, starting on Sunday. Maybe we'll do it for his entire life. I don't know. It was raining today, so it was more like "green 5 minutes," but we more than made up for it earlier in the week.
I lost a similar (but, in my mind, way better) photoshoot when the laptop died before I backed up the pictures, so I'm just going to have to whore these out at all opportunities.
[by julia 9:52 PM]
2.07.2008
It's rude to circle.
Ollie has recently started doing this little pointing thing, which is adorable. It's really stepped up the interaction and I've slipped into this narration mode now that I'm realizing that he is totally tuned in (scary). Totally melts my heart. Except, it's not quite pointing. In fact, it's like the opposite of pointing. He'll take his little index finger and tuck it under his thumb to make a little circle, and then his remaining fingers will sort of flounce upwards. He's kind of making the not-universal-at-all sign for "a-ok!"
I probably don't need to spell it out for you: it's adorable.
Today, after he woke up from sleeping in the car, I got him out of his seat right as a guy walked by on a stroll. Ollie's little circle hand jutted out into the air in the direction of the man, and Ollie grinned with his little post-nap rosy cheeks thing. Oh, the cuteness. We went for a walk shortly thereafter, and he was going a little crazy trying to point (circle) all the birds flying by. I don't think he's really ever noticed birds until today.
And while I'm bragging, I swear I'm not making this up, but today we were playing on our bed, and he pointed (circled) to a space heater I have on a nearby nightstand. I looked at him and said "fan?" mistakenly. I don't know why. We've never used it as a fan, just a heater, and the only word Ollie has probably associated with it is "hot!". Anyway, Mr. Einstein then twists his little body around to point (circle) up at the CEILING FAN. Sure, he could have just been randomly surveying objects of his affection in the room, but I'm partial to the fact that he was all, "No no no, silly mother, that's the heater. THIS is the fan."
Ollie is now almost 10 months, so I'm going to commemorate 9 months by posting a bunch of pictures from the last month or so.
Here he is dressed as a pixie for one of his little friend's birthday parties.
It truly takes a village. To keep Ollie's Plumber Crack under wraps, that is. That's Nelwyn doing her duty. Here you can see his little ragamuffin pixie elf wings. I know, elves don't have wings. But Oliver = Elf Army, so we had to allow for his elven nature.
wearing a cape at another friend's birthday party. You should know that after this picture was taken, he was totally, painfully uninterested in the hippie play silks and only wanted to play with the plastic, electronic talking ride-on car. Le sigh. I can only do so much.
on Jack's porch
his new hobbies are: standing on everything, and screaming and screeching at the top of his lungs until he starts coughing. awesome!
I have way more, but Flickr Uploader kept crashing (as usual). I even managed to take some nice portraits of him this week, in the rare split seconds in between lurching towards the camera or crawling off towards electrical outlets. One day! This time I won't delete them from the camera until they're good and backed up.
In other news, Ollie is currently recovering from a bout of The Pukes. It was pretty bad - fever, severe dehydration, etc., and it involved the quintessential middle-of-the-night ER trip wherein I pretty much fended off their crazy interventions with a stick. Formula! Catheter! Anal tylenol! Actually, we let them do the anal tylenol. At least he wouldn't barf it up. Pretty soon he was all better and flirting with the nurses again, who were all, "you wash those diapers YOURSELF?" No, my servant does.
I was kind of alarmed at the lack of a system for getting ER patients a breast pump. Their reasoning for the formula was that they only wanted him to eat a small amount - 2 ounces. I then said, "you know, I can express breast milk!" Enlightened by what seemed like BRAND NEW INFORMATION, they looked into getting a pump and bottles down to us. By the time we left 6 hours later, the pump still hadn't arrived. And the best part was that as they were telling me that my only option was formula, the doctor was all, "don't get me wrong, we love breast feeding!" When we all came to terms with the fact that the pump wasn't coming, they finally just allowed me to nurse him for 2 minutes at a time. Whatever. I highly doubt that I have enacted or inspired any change there. The only thing they probably weened from the event was that Julia is a dirty hippie.
Tonight, I sort of blew off a deadline and we watched "Once," which is an amazing film starring the guy from The Frames, music I randomly and luckily stumbled into half a decade ago. Let me just cloud your judgement of the movie right now by telling you it's about an Irish musician. You love it now.
Right before the credits rolled, my eyes welled as I whispered "wow, it started... slow, but holy hell did it suck you in." (And you = me in that grammatical bad habit I like to drag around with me.) Sucked in indeed. It's one of those remarkable but infuriating things, infuriating in a good way, when you're so thoroughly convinced that something is so real that you walk around for days with your mind racing about the story, the characters, the connections. It's more than just wanting to know what happens next. It's just... more.
In one of the special features, the musicians/actors said that they always get people asking them questions about the film as if their characters were really them. That? Is awesome.
I don't want to link to all of the places where you can read about the story or listen to the songs online. I want you to see the movie and hold your breath as they start to sing together for the first time. So much of what made the film so beautiful for me was that huge swell of the music growing from just one person to that one person plus the other. If I had heard those songs a thousand times before, I surely would still love them, but I think they would just be musical things to me, not narrative things.
I have this habit of listening to songs over and over without even really paying attention to the lyrics, just getting lost in the music and the melodies and even the tones of the singers voices. My mind sometimes wanders even before the first word is uttered. It doesn't wander far - I'm still lost in the song. I think part of what created this in me is being a classical musician first before ever delving into song-writing or even having mature tastes in lyrical music. (and another part of it is an underlying attention deficit thing I'm increasingly realizing I've always dealt with). But it's so, so rare that lyrics or the story of a song grabs me first, and when it does, I'm, well, grabbed.
So don't listen to the Once music. Don't go to the myspace page where you can listen to them all. Don't download the soundtrack. Just watch it. Then buy the soundtrack.
I was just coming on here to make a big huge update post because we got our laptop back tonight, with a new hard drive because the old one was unsalvageable and Erik got offered his job back and Ollie is pooping real poops now and giving me kisses and using sign language, but that's going to have to wait.
When I came to blogger, it automatically redirected me to the blogger dashboard, with me all logged in. Logged in! We just replaced the hard drive! The old hard drive crashed! The Mac hipster geniuses couldn't get the data! It was ruined beyond hope! It took CHRISTMAS! Half of Sarah's birth pictures! The Sparrow Baby logo photoshop files! (And: photoshop). But? somehow managed to keep my blogger password or cookie or whatever tucked away in some safe corner? Where is this safe corner and what else might be lurking away in there that I might want? Government secrets? Grassy knoll pictures? Cold hard cash?
I can't get my pictures back but at least I can quickly and easily blog about it. Cest la vie.
Our Powerbook is currently in the capable hands of this little indie mac repair store in town. (Erik: "they were all dressed alike in black and dark rimmed glasses like it was some kind of uniform.") Also, they might not finish this week because they're all (yes, all) attending the Mac World convention. Good times.
The other night, I went to print out a paypal shipping label for a necklace sale, and suddenly, the laptop just started this weird clicking, like Mac tribal speak for "I'm dying, please put me out of my misery." Then, it locked up, and when I tried to turn it back on, it did more clicking and then just displayed a little folder with a blinking "?."
We just downloaded Christmas day pictures from the camera, and didn't get around to uploading them to Flickr yet, or even backing them up. Please think good thoughts for our little powerbook. And cheap thoughts, too. Our friend Chris said it cost him $1500 to salvage some data from a dead, faulty hard drive.
Ollie started officially crawling about a week and a half ago. !!. Big fun.
This also seems to affect his sleep. He'll stir slightly when drifting off to sleep, and instantly surge to the side to try to flip over onto his tummy. He just wants to practice :-). As cute as that sounds, it's really frustrating.
Anyway, I've been a little behind on posting pictures, so without further ado, here's some shameless catching up:
This is a picture from mid December at the Tuttle's house.
And here he is after a bath, looking completely edible. Le sigh.
In a swing, letting out a little yelp. This picture was from early December.
Wearing Lucca's reindeer ears.
Do these cheeks make me look fat?
Most of our pictures these days look like this - him lurching towards the camera strap.
That is all. Flickr uploader crashed like, 5 times while trying to upload these, and we're still stuck in late December.
Happy New Year everyone. We just got home from seeing baby Bryn tonight, and I promptly left the house upon hearing that my playgroup was at a bar in North Park. The mamas, that is. Anyway, Luci made a little remark about the Iowa post getting old, so I promised her a note. Dear Luci, hi. love, Julia. p.s., write back.
Anyway, off to bed. One weak Pink Elephant martini really did me in. I'm tuckered out. More blog posting to come. I always hate posting after I write something Important, because I don't want to follow it up with something lame (figure 1: this post for example). But whatever.
This post has nothing to do with Iowa, which I (sort of) affectionately refer to as "one of those vowel states," and it only has a tiny bit to do with a song called "Iowa" by Dar Williams, that was in my head Tuesday night as I raced (73 mph!) up to Orange County for Sarah's birth. The part where Dar sings about driving across the state 10 miles above the limit with no seatbelt, and she'd do it again. Although I wore my seatbelt and have a personal hang up about going any faster than 8 miles above the limit, as if it makes me less desirable to a cop or something. But, the do it again part is totally fitting. And come on, it's Dar's ultimate woman-help song. "I've never had a way with women, but the hills of Iowa make me wish that I did."
Sarah called me at 6 pm ish to tell me that her water dramatically broke. She said that I should be on standby while she called her midwife. Remember that I'm about an hour and a half away from her. At 6:45, she called again to tell me to eat dinner and put Ollie to bed (his usual bed time is 7/7:30). I was out the door by 8, and arrived at their house in record time at 9:15. I opened the door to see Scott and Sarah standing there while Sarah dealt with a contraction. This is all normal enough, but add into the mix that her parents were both standing there trying to corral their dog that they had brought over, a yipping little tiny thing called Bootsie. It stressed ME out, man, and I wasn't the one with the concracting uterus.
As soon as that contraction ended, we left the barking dog behind and headed towards the hospital, which was in Laguna Niguel or maybe Laguna Beach. I don't know which one. It was dark and rainy.
We got to the hospital room at 10:00 pm. The midwife, who otherwise was very great, decided to ask Sarah some pointless questions during a contraction, so I stepped up to Be The Doula, to (politely) (and quietly) remind the midwife that Sarah was having a contraction? And could we wait with the questions?
I had been having doubts over the last month or so about my purpose as their doula, if I was really necessary, and if I'd just get in the way. This was going to be Sarah's third birth, she was a fantastic doula at my birth, and also her husband was a proven birth partner. I figured a first-time birthing couple would be easier on my confidence. I had been imagining Scott and Sarah having these quiet late night conversations about them not wanting to hurt my feelings by uninviting me. After that moment with telling the midwife to hush, I realized that I had done at least one doula thing right, so as long as I didn't somehow stop the birth, I'd be okay.
The beautiful Bryn was born at 10:45 pm. Her mother roared her out with such powerful strength and beauty, and also an element of calmness and grace. Bryn pretty much slept through it, emerging so peacefully and beautifully into her new world. And if you have ever doubted how amazing Sarah is, let me add that Bryn was 11 lbs 2 oz.
Being with a birthing mother has changed me in a way that my own birth didn't -- and couldn't. It's a totally different ballgame to be the one on the periphery witnessing the miracle. I feel like this was a rite of passage into womankind, that this experience that was supposed to foster empowerment in someone else (Sarah) ended up doing the total opposite. Now I'm strong, inspired, and roar-y, all because a woman birthed a baby on the floor in front of me.
I left the hospital just before midnight. The storm chased the windshield the whole way home and I cried for having known such a moment.
This is my 700th post, according to my blogger dashboard. Excellent. Let's all have a cupcake to celebrate.
In other news, I'm thinking about doing Wild Miles next April. It's a 180 mile adventure relay race. It's running, but I'm going to go out on a limb and call it an adventure race, because if you can't call running 13 miles off-road uphill in the middle of the desert at midnight an "adventure," then to hell with it.
Anyway, there are 30 legs, and you can have teams of 10. There's also an option to have a team of 5, and they have a special name for those teams, something along the lines of "insane," because 180 divided by 5 = a lot of miles per person. Sick.
Most of the legs are about 5 miles long, so any one person would generally do about 15 miles in the weekend, which is relatively easy when you space it out over 24 hours. I can't believe I just wrote that. And actually, I think there's a 30 hour option, too, which is good, because 180 miles in 24 hours divides up to be, at the slowest, an 8 minute mile. Repeatedly. 180 8 minute miles, one after the other. In the desert. Not so much. I'll proudly sign up for the 30 hour option.
Two years ago, I couldn't do it because it was the same weekend as the inaugural Hike For Discovery Grand Canyon hike, and last April I was, like, due or something*. (*=direct quote from Drop Dead Gorgeous, best movie in the world) (* = birthing: also an adventure sport). So next year, it's on!
Fabulous Coach Sharon has done Wild Miles quite a bit, and she said that by far the worst part isn't running in the desert all day and night (she always does the half marathon leg, too), but sitting in a van with your sweaty, sore, irritable teammates in between your runs.
Is there anything more egotistical than thinking any of you care about what we'll eat this week? Actually, there probably is, so I'll go ahead and tell you. I have recently begun cooking my own beans instead of using cans (boo BPA), so due to the (relatively minor) extra effort, I make giant batches. This week we're going to make garbanzo beans and black beans. We also have a giant butternut squash to use up, and pots full of cooked bulghur and green lentils in the fridge. Oh, and 18 lemons with the rind zested off to use in hummus. Not all 18, we should note. So, those factors are going to shape our menu for the week. I'm happy to say that most of the stuff didn't have packaging. This is a giant feat for me, because you know I have the Trader Joes lust, despite their ridiculous over packaging temptationness. I haven't stepped foot in that store in over a month. Oh mercy.
But here we go, brace yourselves for some quality blogging RIGHT HERE:
wednesday -hummus (Veganomicon recipe) on top of poppyseed polenta (also Veganomicon), with zucchini and greens on top. Oooh, and we have avocados that are good and ripe now; those would be dreamy on top. Maybe more mujadara on the side. *soak black beans*
thursday -1/2 of a butternut squash, a sweet potato, greens and tofu, coated in maple syrup, coriander, salt, pepper, and garlic (slightly modified Veganomicon method of roasting winter squash) (I tried this the other day but misread "ginger" as "garlic," but am glad I did, so garlic it is). The best part of this is that it's all one pot. This makes up for having to saw apart the butternut squash. I'll set some aside for Ollie, too. *cook black beans*
friday -black bean & butternut squash chili from Vegan Planet, using the rest of the squash. we've made this before and it's fantastic. -spinach.
sunday? -black bean, sweet potato, and almond burgers from ExtraVeganZa. -maybe I'll try my hand at making some rolls.
I probably spent like, $20 on this week's meals. That felt like an exaggeration at first, but it's probably not that far off. I heart bulks!
And here endeth the ridiculous post. Be warned, I might do this weekly. Ha, ha.
This weekend, we did our darndest to feel a little wintrous and seasonal around here. Here's the Weekend Roundup.
We went to Balboa Park's December Nights both nights, despite the rain and freezing, frigid 50 degree temperatures. And despite the massive crowds (I think everyone else in San Diego got giddy for wintery weather?), we managed to run into a ton of people we knew. SD is such a weird place sometimes - you have the most random run-ins with people. Such a big small town. Ollie was such a trooper even though he was bundled up beyond belief.
Saturday, we walked up to the North Park Toyland Parade, but it was nonexistent. They didn't even have the street closed down, so we assumed that they pansied out with the rain overnight. It's kind of like how we slow down to 30 mph on the freeway when it starts to sprinkle.
On the same walk, we perused two (very) different craft fairs. The first was in Our Saviors Lutheran Church (that's the grammar on the sign, suggesting that Jesus himself was actually Lutheran all along). It was an eco-friendly gift fair, with a lot of fair trade and political stuff. And! Not one, but two old ladies from our church were there. The second craft fair was in the Bar Pink Elephant on 30th, and was hosted by the swoon-worthy North Park Craft Mafia. !!. Don't you wish you were the witty genius who came up with that? They had skull baby bibs. And it was in a bar! Ollie, our favorite under-21 year old, stayed outside with dad. Unfortunately, Sparrow Baby was woefully unrepresented at both craft fairs. Next year!
We got a Christmas Tree. We had contemplated not getting one what with the almost-crawler and sudden drop in household income, but decided to get a small cheap one anyway.
We started making limoncello tonight, to bottle in pretty little glass stopper bottles for gifts. We got a killer deal on organic meyer lemons today from the handsome citrus farmer's not-so-handsome-but-slap-happy-instead brother, or something. He was like, hollering and wooting today as he announced, no, proclaimed his deals. We're using this recipe without the rosemary, because we liked how they gave us the procrastinator option. Also, the photography is pretty.
Not exactly seasonal, but we finally sold my old car this weekend. Actually, we didn't officially sell it yet, but we found a buyer. That's good enough for me. Farewell, sweet little car! I love you! And hate you!
I love this picture. He looks so happy and sweet. But most of all, he looks so grown up. He's a little person! And this picture is almost a month old - just this last week we've been saying how much more kid-ish he looks and acts.
National Blog Posting Month officially comes to a close tonight. I'm going to see how long I can keep it up, because it was nice to write so much, if nothing else, to get back to why I started blogging in the first place - my own little searchable documentation. I would never have remembered when Ollie cut his first tooth had I not jotted it down here.
In that vein, yesterday homeboy started with the serious forward movement. He seems to do a little bit of tugging himself with his arms and dragging his legs, but other times he'll just step his knees forward, and then just flop his front end down, thus moving forward ungracefully. It's like he has both components, knees and hands, down. Just separately. Soon, he'll put it all together and we'll have a little crawler on our hands. Also, we'll be screwed. Our house is completely not child-proofed. Oliver has already shown a penchant for outlets and electrical cables, so we can't really be as nonchalant about this as I envisioned before we were parents. Also, our stove shoots flames.
Ollie finally pooped today after a week of no poop. This wouldn't be that significant, but not only did he wait a week, he waited EXACTLY a week. Like, down to the hour. Does this count as regular?
I only tracked this because a week ago at just after 6 pm, we had just sat down at the Thanksgiving dinner table when Ollie did his little pause/concentrate moment before letting loose.
The worst part is that tonight, right as we opened up his diaper, his grabby little hands, faster than a speeding bullet, were in there. In there with the poop. 7 days worth of poop. I tried to then pin down his hands so that he wouldn't spread it around (I almost wrote "smear" but that made me die a little on the inside), but that didn't help very much because he was flailing around everywhere. He was, like, giddy. I suppose I would be too, after breaking a 7 day fast.
So. Erik lost his job today. They had a round of layoffs, which was totally not surprising at all.
Not surprising doesn't mean not sucking, though.
I'm feeling kind of optimistic, which is strange for me considering how long he was out of work the last time. Well, I guess it's because he wasn't really out of work the whole time, he was just out of his field. And given the fact that his field isn't a very fancy pants high salary kind of gig, he really wasn't making any less in those in between times. I think that's helping me a bit. I know the bad side to him not doing what he loved was that he was uneasy and bored about it, but I think that nowadays there's a little bit more to life and he'd be more willing to just do something.
And a big part of me is really, really looking forward to having someone around during the day for a little while. Maybe we'll even catch up on cleaning the house. Maybe. Though if it were me, I'd hurry up and get a job so that I didn't have to organize the closets. Procrastination is a large motivator in my life.
Anyway, so I know I just spewed out two paragraphs of optimism, but we should leave on this note: this sucks.
I've decided to drastically reduce the amount of plastic in my life. We've done really well with Oliver up to this point, and I have to say, a baby is a perfect excuse to be all snobby and anti-stuff without really upsetting anyone. Maybe people will just think I'm an overprotective first-time parent. But wait till I do this again with the second kid! Ha, haha!
Anyway, enter: baby food. Homemade baby food is all the rage these days, with every modern mama keeping Super Baby Food nicely tucked on her nightstand next to the What To Expect series (or, to quote Sarah, the "What To Freak Out About" series). Homemade is definitely best, there's no doubt about it (well, actually there is in a few instances: iron additives and super processed grains in commercial cereals sometimes being touted as necessary for new eaters).
But that's another post. What's weird to me is the amount of plastic involved with the accepted methods of feeding your baby homemade baby food. I've taken it upon myself to bed over as backwards as possible to not use any plastic with Ollie's baby food, and here's how I've been doing it so far, in a handy dandy bulleted list!
Plastic/Toxin-Free Baby Food
Skip the spoons with the silicone/plastic-y coating on the end, and, of course, the plastic spoons. We started out just using our regular teaspoons, but they're just too big for the little dude. We finally found some wooden spoons with a small enough spoon bit ("bowl"), and they're super light.
Use little wooden or stainless prep bowls as an unbreakable serving bowl.
Buy glass spice jars to use as freezing/storage containers, and also serving containers for on-the-road. Baby food comes in glass jars anyway, so don't think of it as any more of a hassle to deal with glass in your diaper bag :-). We got some from Ikea. Remember that freezing changes your food's chemistry-ish-stuff, and that kind of scares me. I know not to heat food in plastic, but wouldn't freezing stuff be just as bad? Especially if you put things into the plastic while the food is hot. The doubt is enough for me to keep the plastic out of the freezer.
After preparing your baby food (say no to teflon!), put it directly in the glass containers in individual serving sizes. Stainless also works if you can find little stainless prep bowls with lids, but chances are the lids will be soft-ish plastic. Which is still better than all-plastic.
To freeze entire pieces of fruit/veggies, chop (and peel) and spread the pieces out on a plate to freeze (this means they'll freeze individually and not stick together). When they're frozen, just transfer them to a glass container with a lid. None of this multiple plastic bag business.
With purees or ground up cereals, if you want to do something like the ice cube tray method featured in Super Baby Food, you could try the "Phantom Container" version, and scoop spoonfuls of your puree onto a tray or plate, then surround them with an upside down glass bowl until frozen. Then, transfer the little frozen mounds into one glass container with a lid. Or you could just use the spice jar method I mentioned above.
Instead of those plastic mesh thingies that you can put a whole piece of fruit, ice, or frozen fruit and let the baby have at it (without risking them swallowing chunks), here's something we just tried tonight: Unbleached cheesecloth, rinsed and tied in a knot around a slice of peeled pear. Ollie sucked on it quite a bit and managed to get some good pear juice and seemed happy to gnaw. The edges of the cheesecloth that stuck out from the knot seemed like they might fray, so I kept a close eye on him. The downside is that this isn't reusable (well, it might be within reason), but, BUT! it's compostable! Everyone loves the compost! You can just put the entire thing, cotton and fruit, into the compost bin. I hope. Because I'm going to.
Honestly, I just didn't see the need for all the plastic bags and plastic ice cube trays and plastic containers, and wanted to do something about it. I promise that they're not paying me or anything, but I managed to find almost everything I needed at Ikea. The unbleached cheesecloth is the Beyond Gourmet brand - the brown and blue packaging with the earth logo.
Here endeth my little diatribe.
[by julia 11:05 PM]
11.26.2007
Sarah's Birth.
***note: if you are Sarah, please ignore most of this. Everything is under control! Just be happy and birth well, Ina May insists!***
A while ago, Sarah (who lives in Orange County) asked me to be her doula at the birth of her third child, due December 10th. I won't go into the sappy details on how honored this made me feel, and how excited and nervous and amazing I am at the prospect of witnessing my first birth-not-directly-involving me. (But I totally, totally, insanely am all of those things).
Sarah was out of town until this afternoon, at her parents' house in Sonoma. She was having daily mild and painless contractions since earlier in the week, but decided to stay up there for Thanksgiving, and come home normally, even if her contractions upped a bit. It's only an hour and a half flight to Orange County.
As some of you know, Sarah is my best friend in all the land, and was our doula. In fact, she was the only person at our birth other than Roberta the midwife and Karlee the amazing nurse with great taste in music and fabulous hair. In fact, Sarah, Roberta, and Karlee were the only people who knew we were in labor. Wait, I take that back. We had dinner plans with Tessa and Chris that night, and had to cancel. Hah. We really loved the idea of a sort of intimate birthing family. Sarah was incredible. in.cred.ible. She said all of the right things, in all of the right ways, at all of the right times. And also mopped up puke in all of the right ways.
When Sarah told her daughters, Grace and Natalie, all about my birth and what she did to help, she was hoping to impart on them excitement about being there for the birth of their future sibling, and maybe to begin to think about preparing them for loud noises and perhaps the odd "FUCKING POOP!" yell or something. Because Sarah spent most of my labor pushing against my back or pelvic area (which strangely seemed like it would hold all my innards in, lest I turn completely inside out), the girls really latched onto this idea of "pushing the baby out." They couldn't wait to help push their mama's baby out. Swoon!
The main issue with being at Sarah's birth is Oliver. He's exclusively nursing, because we don't count the daily half-spoonful of food that he usually lets fall out of his mouth anyway. And he's taken maybe 3 bottles his whole life, only one of them remotely well. The other times, he begrudgingly drank it, but fussed the whole time and had to be rocked to sleep while crying, which breaks my heart. I have a little hang up that I like him to fall asleep happy.
Tonight, we tried a bottle again, and it seemed fine. However, since he recently cut a tooth, the early part of the night has been really restless for him. He'll fall asleep just fine in our arms, perhaps even too easily, but go instantly from asleep and quiet to crying when we try to put him down. His crying started to get hysterical so I went in there tonight to nurse him and gradually try to lie him down. He's been asleep for over four hours now, which is good for him. I was hoping that he'd wake up so that Erik could maybe see if he could give him the rest of the bottle while he was lying down to quickly get him back to sleep.
I've never left the boy for more than 2 hours, and only once at bedtime (with Erik), which didn't go well at all. Say what you will about me needing my personal time or Erik and I needing dates, but whatever. Me leaving him would be infinitely more stressful and work than just taking him places or staying home. Totally not worth it, and besides, babysitters cost money. Going out takes on a whole new level of budgeting now. I'm sure I will change my tune when he's less dependent on nursing. Or when I find a good wet nurse. Hah.
But in the meantime, I've dusted off the pump and started building up a freezer stash. I've never had a stash before! Pumping is pretty much my personal hell, by the way. I'm also cutting it down to the wire here. Basically, if Sarah goes into real labor tonight or even tomorrow, there's no way I'll have enough milk built up for the trip to Orange County and however long her birth will be (12 hours? who knows. Grace was a multi-day affair, but with Natalie, she got to the birth center at like 9 centimeters, ready to go). I also have no idea how much Oliver eats all day/night. The night thing is because I'm usually half asleep, but we also don't measure anything or have any gauge for how much he eats at a nursing session. As someone in newborn breastfeeding support group once lamented, "boobs aren't clear." He also eats pretty inconsistently throughout the day, which is fine.
Another really sad kink in the plans is that my uncle suddenly passed away yesterday. My parents are leaving for England on Wednesday to be there for the funeral. He probably had a heart attack, because one minute he was complaining about chest pain, and the next minute he just fell over dead. He was my mom's little brother. I'm not going to ramble on too much about this, so I'll just say that logistically it means that my parents won't be able to babysit Oliver while Erik is at work.
This was a long and rambly way of saying that we're basically flying by the seat of our pants at this point, hoping that Oliver will magically be fed and happy. And if there's anything Ollie's good at, it's being fed and happy, so I probably shouldn't be too stressed, should I?
As usual, we didn't buy anything on Friday, except for our soy lattes, which probably makes me more of a yuppy asshole than anyone else, but still. But today we made up for it in a matter of a few hours. And we haven't even started working on our Christmas list yet. Actually, I think we might try to go all homemade this Christmas, but will still need to buy canisters or fabric or supplies.
First, we hit Ikea for a naptime stroll after church and lunch with the Tuttles. The nap idea was thwarted as we approached the kids' area and someone let out a blood curdling tantrum. To quote Erik: "stupid kids." Anyway, I managed to pick up some things I've been needing for a while. We got Ollie a little wooden bowl to eat from, and some glass spice jars with screw on lids that we'll use to freeze and store our baby food. We got a glass container with a lid to use for our grown-up leftovers. It was $5.99 though, so I think we might try to look around for cheaper ones to stock up.
We also got two giant canisters. We currently have a cannister deficit in this house, and most of our bulk stuff lives in the paper bags from the co-op, which probably isn't ideal for their shelf life. Also, I make a double batch of granola every few weeks, and it never fits in one of the large canisters we have, so I had to upgrade to the giant.
But the best purchase today was the Simple Shoes Green Piggie "weebit" soft-soled shoes for Ollie.
These are kind of like those Robeez shoes everyone has, but with less cow. There are other vegan ones out there made of things like PVC, which is kind of less-than-ideal. Also, they're like $40. But! The Green Piggie ones are made of hemp, organic cotton, and recycled/reclaimed bicycle tires for the grippy bits on the bottom. Hemp! Organic cotton! Hot damn! And they were $24 at Whole Foods. Unfortunately for normal vegans, my hunt for a picture online revealed that the little felt pig bit is wool. We use wool around here, because I prefer using that for baby waterproofing instead of plastics. I'm pretty sure I've beaten that horse around here. However, I like to use organic wool, and I doubt that little pig is organic. I'm not going to return them though, because I like them too much. That's how I roll. They're way too cute and their eco-quotient outweighs the slight non-organic wool guilt I feel.
Oliver looks ridiculously adorable in his little shoes. I can't handle the cuteness. He's a little man!
And here endeth the shopping confession. Someone just woke up.
This is a fairly old picture, but it cracks me up so much. Oliver doesn't often look like this, but we must have caught a transition moment between noises or expressions. That, or he's just had enough with us and our picture taking when all he really wants is a diaper.
more people I'm lucky enough to know, thanks to Ollie the social butterfly. these are his little friends or other mamas from various mama circles in town.
i entered the bright northern sky on august 16th, 1979, at 5:20am, in a green little patch of england.
port of entry: chicago o'hare, january, 1991. now only several words and pronounciations and nuances linger of a crazy brit. oh, and i'm pastey-white.
i live, breathe, blog, and dream of other places in san diego, california.
once upon a time, i was a technical writer, but now i work for a non-profit trying to cure cancer.
i am about to embark upon just began a life with the wonderful erik, who is blogless or blogfree, however you see the glass.
5.22.2008
