Sicky sick sick

I am in the throes of some kind of stomach virus right now. Blech... Nobody else in the family has gotten it yet, which is good. I think I am going to be on the upswing here today but when I woke up this morning I had this dreadful, fuzzy, woozy feeling where I was almost convinced my head and limbs were made of lead or some other very dense substance. Probably just a smidge of dehydration and/or low blood sugar from the lack of eating much for a few days; I’m feeling better after some toast and applesauce. We actually had a pregnancy false alarm in the early stages of being sick when I felt exhausted and queasy for a few days but it is pretty definite at this point-- I am sick, not pregnant. A baby is a much nicer thing to have than a stomach virus, of course, but also a bit more complicated. Rob is working a lot right now, which leaves me on my own with Grace from waking up to her bedtime. I am predicting she will be hitting the TV pretty hard in the next day or so.

Grace is going through a period of intense craving for independence and autonomy right now. She insists “Gracie do!” when there is something she wants to do, and she will get into a frustrated, trembling frenzy if I try to pull whatever it is away from her. Diaper changes now involve her pulling the tabs open on the diapers before I can put them on her, she demands to put on her own mittens and hat, and tooth brushing is a carefully choreographed pas de deux. When she successfully does something, she will stand up, spread her arms high in the sky, and shout proudly, “Gracie do!” It is a good thing to see her learning how to be independent, and it reinforces what I’ve thought about our parenting style. We have leaned toward what people call attachment parenting, and I think that what the AP folks say is true-- doing things like extended breastfeeding, lots of babywearing, believing that her cry is communicating to us and paying attention to it, etc. can develop more confident, independent kids. I think that Grace’s personality is just naturally independent as well, though.

Grace has really discovered music lately. We got a non-annoying children’s CD for Christmas and have been listening to it a lot. A lot. I mean, seriously a lot. My NPR-listening time in the car has gone way down as Grace asks for, “Mee-zik! More mee-zik!” Anybody have other favorites for their little ones? I especially wouldn’t mind finding some Christian music, but I am kind of afraid of the schmaltz. I seriously can’t handle something like this. Our other big music outlet right now is going to a weekly music program for toddlers in New Haven. It’s kind of informal and the guy who leads it is really great. He strikes just the right note of kid-friendly but not vacuous. Grace really loves it and is starting to do the hand motions and sing along a little. The guy plays guitar and Grace refers to both him as an individual and the whole experience as “man-tar”, which I believe is a contraction of “the man and his guitar”. She often asks “Man-tar?” when we are getting ready to leave the house and I am sad to have to disappoint her with our less fantastic journeys to Costco and Trader Joe’s. The first few times we went, she loved it so much that she threw an absolute tantrum when we got back home, sobbing to go “bye-bye” at the door and demanding “more man-tar”. Now that we’ve gone more regularly, she seems to adjust to leaving a little better. The man-tar is going on vacation for two weeks, though. Aack! What shall I do?!

Has anyone seen this man?

So Rob is in the midst of a string of night shifts right now at the hospital. It is-- how do you say? ah, yes-- very sucky. When Rob works night shifts, he is gone from the house about 14 hours, returns in the morning for about an hour of vegetating with ye olde Internet, then sleeps until dinnertime. He really just gets up to eat dinner with us and then heads out the door. Grace and I are with him for less than 2 hours, I think, in any given day. It’s tough on family life and I’m starting to feel the strain of it here after about a week of this schedule.

The evils of resident scheduling do give me a renewed appreciation for Rob and his impact on my life and our little family. Earlier I mentioned my propensity to wonder about other possible life paths and it almost surprises me to realize I don’t do this about my marriage. I really can’t imagine life without Robert and I don’t have any desire to. At a stage in our dating relationship when I had more apprehension about marriage than Rob did, he told me he felt confident that he was the right guy for me to marry. It sounded uncharacteristically cocky at the time, and still does, actually, but it turns out that he’s right. Rob’s combination of quirkiness, mellowness, slight tendency to obsess, and seriousness about his faith makes him my ideal husband. Oscar Wilde would be pleased.

I’ve been keeping plenty busy, even with my better half largely absent. Mostly I’ve been working on preparations for getting our house on the market. My parents (who live about 30 minutes from where we’ll probably live) very graciously said I could ship some boxes of stuff to them to get them out of the house for showing it. This is especially kind of them considering the intense aversion my mom has to clutter (which apparently has a strong genetic component). I’ve been boxing up Grace’s outgrown clothes, board games, books, and other things that we can live without for 6 months but don’t want to get rid of and sending it their direction. Do you know how much cheaper media mail is than regular parcel post? It’s quite shocking, and makes it quite a temptation to claim that all your boxes are nothing but books, CDs, DVDs, and the like. I resisted, however. The house is starting to look more neat and less lived in, so we are on our way. A big plan for this week is to call some realtors and start having some scary conversations about prices and listing and whatnot. Aack!

Whassat? Whassat whassat?

Grace is talking more and more with each passing week and right now she is really into asking what things are called. She will point her little finger at something, demand to know what it is, usually with a bit of repetition in there, and then try to repeat whatever answer we’ve give her. In recent days, I have found myself trying to explain nonstick cooking spray and packing tape. Perhaps most frequently, she asks about something that she already knows the name of. “Whassat? Whassat whassat?” “That’s your slipper.” “Slippuh!” She also loves to play games where she identifies things she knows the name of. Whenever it starts to feel a bit tedious is a good time to review the chapters in my child development books about how toddlers are learning about cause and effect through repetition, need to see that things’ names stay the same, and so on and so forth. When I stop to think about it, though, this isn’t just a toddler characteristic. I think it is a pretty basic human quality to love the familiar, especially in verbal things like jokes and narratives. There is, of course, the comfortable pleasure of watching a favorite movie (how many times have Rob and I seen The Matrix?) or re-reading a favorite book (I am truly scared to think about how many times I have read Pride and Prejudice). And then if I want to get all Joseph Campbell on you, it’s possible that most of the stories we as human beings tell each other are really the same story with the same archetypal characters, themes, and patterns. Grace is obviously just very interested in the human condition and monomyth.

My clumsiness has been rearing its ungraceful head lately and caused me several injuries. I was near the beginning of a run along the main street close to our house and totally fell down, a dramatic flailing fall that caused people half a block in front of me to turn around and walk in my direction until they saw me get back up and begin running again. Sigh... My physical injuries were limited to scraping up my palms and knees, which is good, but my pride was also a bit bruised. It took me a few seconds to really commit to continue on my whole planned run with my palms all cut up, but I was certainly motivated to run in the immediate aftermath to get away from anyone who may have seen me. And then a few days after that, I was making Potage Parmentier a la Julia Child and cut my thumb with our big chef’s knife a la Dan Aykroyd impersonating Julia Child. I cook a lot and I am not normally prone to hurting myself with our knives, but this time I really did a number on myself. The book I’m reading right now has a lot of ancient Greek sword fighting in it and the memory of my self-inflicted injury has made me feel all squeamish every time someone in the book breaks out a sword.

In other news, it has been crazy cold around here lately, with low temperatures in the single digits and high temperatures that don’t get above 20 degrees. This seems excessive to my Texas-bred self, like taking this whole winter idea a bit too far. I do enjoy winters here in general, with the occasional snow and wearing wool coats and sweaters. And winter is the season that makes me love our house here the most; when it’s cold outside, our cozy house with its small, 1920s-sized rooms feels delightfully warm and snug. Rob is not a fan of winter, however. He starts to feel that winter has taken liberties with him when the temperature drops below 50 degrees. That’s what growing up in California will do to a person.

Ring in the New

I’ve purposely waited to post this until New Year’s Day just so I can say I did not blog in 2007. You know, because I’m contrary like that. Perhaps 2008 will be different. Perhaps it will be my most blogorrific year ever. That would be not too difficult, of course.

2008 will be different, of course. This year will see us move across the country, for starters. As Rob has said, he finishes up his residency here at Yale this summer and will start his allergy/immunology fellowship in Dallas. I’m looking forward to being back in Texas; there’s going to be a lot of positives about being there. Relationally, it will be great to be close to my family and friends from college, med school, church, and even all the way back to high school, for me, at least. And financially it will be a good thing. Rob will make about the same as a research fellow as he does as a resident but moving back to Texas will make it feel like a 25% raise, according to those online salary calculator thingies. This gives us a lot of flexibility about how much I will work, when to have another baby and take some time off, etc.

Part of me does have some mild regret for all the places we might have moved to. This has happened to me at almost every big transition in my life-- going to college, grad school, moving up here. I am always content with the path that I end up on, but I wonder about all the parallel universes where I made other, perhaps more glamorous choices and the alternate me had new and different experiences. I do have a strong streak of wanderlust which makes me a smidge ambivalent about moving back to Texas, a mere 30 miles from where I grew up, despite the comfort and support of family and friends and a steep decrease in financial stress.

Living here in the Northeast for several years has done a lot to make me value Texas on its own merits, however. I did not know if I would ever feel homesick for Texas, but although homesickness is too strong a word, listening to much of anything by Lyle Lovett will make me nostalgic for the prairie openness and sense of place in my home state. Or I will try to listen to the radio here, or go to the grocery store, and think longingly about Texas. And the Mexican food! Don’t get me started on the Mexican food. I think the best Mexican food we’ve had here has been something I or our fellow transplanted Texans have cooked at home. I haven’t spent our years here in Connecticut yearning to be anywhere else, but I’m pretty sure moving to Texas this year will feel like going home.

Baby-Tested, Mother-Approved

It is that season of life for us where many of our friends are having babies. It is amazing to see all these new individuals coming into the world, and to see our friends growing into new roles as parents. Having a baby does come with an overwhelming number of decisions, though, many of which involve baby gear. I’ve been asked a couple of times about what we registered for, what we actually used, what we liked, etc. so I thought I would collect all that info here. These are just our experiences, and although I certainly hope they would work as well for others as they did for us, your mileage may vary. I am not affiliated with any of the following companies or products, but I wouldn’t mind becoming a spokesmama for some of them. Maybe there is a lucrative endorsement deal in this somewhere for me!

Pregnancy Piercings- I am part of the huge percentage of women my age with a navel ring, and it started to get uncomfortable at about the 25-week mark. I replaced my normal surgical steel ring with this flexible barbell about then and kept it in until I was about 4 weeks postpartum. It didn’t bother my skin (which is pretty finicky) and I am sure my piercing would have closed up if I had left it empty.

Belli Elasticity Belly Oil- Yes, I know this is kind of expensive, but I really do think it works. I used it on my belly and I have zero stretch marks there, even though I got huge. I did get some on (ahem) other areas that I did not anoint with this precious stuff. Not scientific proof, perhaps, but convincing to me!

Arms Reach Mini Co-Sleeper- The AAP recommends that your baby sleep in your room with you to reduce the risk of SIDS, as do parents who like to get more sleep. No, seriously, having Grace in our room for the first months of her life drastically increased the amount of sleep we all got and this little bedside bassinet helped. I could nurse her in the middle of the night without actually getting out of bed, then pop her back into the bassinet. You can’t get much better than that! Also, the “Mini” version of this thing fits in our small, 1920’s-era bedroom and can use king-size pillowcases as the sheets. (The official sheets kind of suck, FYI.)

Bundle Me- This is like a tiny sleeping bag that you put in the car seat or stroller to keep your baby warm. I’d never seen one in Texas but lots of babies have them here, and they are genius for cold weather babies, especially newborns. You use it instead of outerwear, perhaps with just a hat. I remember trying to wrangle floppy, no-head-control Grace into a bunting and then into the carseat-- sheesh... This is a much better idea, and taking Grace out into the world got much easier after I acquired one.

Boppy- Yes, it has a silly name. This pillow is a great idea, though, and it does make nursing so much more comfortable and convenient. With Grace at 10 months old, I still use ours multiple times a day.

Fuzzi Bunz- I didn’t really consider cloth diapering as a possibility until during my pregnancy Rob made some comments about the environmental issues surrounding diapers. I had the image in my head of complicated folding and pins and those yucky plastic pants. When I looked into the current status of the cloth diapering world, though, I was pleasantly surprised to see there are a ton of options out there, some of which seemed quite doable to me. We chose to try out Fuzzi Bunz, and we really like them. We started using them when Grace was about 4 weeks old (we waited that long just because having a newborn was overwhelming and we didn’t feel ready to add another new thing into the mix until then) and at 10 months Grace is currently in the medium size. Our initial motivation was the environmental impact, but it turns out to save quite a chunk of change to cloth diaper as well. Also, I really can tell a difference in the state of Grace’s skin. And being perfectly frank, it does not add that much work to our everyday lives-- just one load of laundry every other day. It is awfully nice to have Grace’s behind soft and fabric-y instead of crunchy and plastic-y.

Baby slings- These are my number-one, can’t-live-without baby item. I don’t think any other physical item has made my life as a new mama easier than the baby slings I have. When Grace was tiny, there were days when she wanted to be held ALL FRACKING DAY, and one of these allowed me to do this and still be active, do stuff around the house, go for walks, etc. I use them to go grocery shopping, to walk the dog, to vacuum, to walk Grace to sleep for a nap, etc. You can’t use them to cook because things like stoves and knives are not safe for babies, but other than that, there is not much you can’t do. I think most babies like being in the slings because they are close to mom or dad, just part of your everyday life, able to see what is going on, and sort of swaddled. There was a learning curve in using one, but after about the first 10 times I put her in it, I felt comfortable with it. It only got easier when she gained head control. I wouldn’t recommend the brands that they carry in the baby stores because they all have weird padding and straps and things. A simple unpadded ring sling is probably the best kind to start out with. I made mine using these directions, but if you don’t sew there are a ton of places to buy them online, including the best-known and reasonably priced Maya Wrap. I also really like pouch slings and have a Hotslings one that is ubercute. Hooray for babywearing!