You said it, Jane Austen

What dreadful hot weather we have! It keeps one in a continual state of inelegance.

-Jane Austen, in a letter from 1796

Boy, that Jane Austen knew what she was talking about. I’m not sure how the July weather in Connecticut compares to the English summers she experienced, but we certainly share this sentiment. It is pretty hot here these days. The heat doesn’t compare in objective terms to the Texas summers I’ve lived with up until last year, but it seems to affect life more because so few places have air conditioning. Both our house and my office have less-than-ideal cooling systems. The physics building on the Yale campus has some old-timey pumped air system that does take the edge off but does not give the Arctic blast that central AC can muster. Our house has nothing but the two window units that we have acquired-- one in our bedroom, one in our little study. I will admit to having dawdled recently running errands at the grocery store or Target in their blissful icy air.

Like Jane Austen, I find all this heat to have a negative effect on my appearance. My hair is a bit challenging these days since I absolutely cannot bear to turn on the hair dryer. The challenge is increased since I swear 25% of my hair has fallen out since the last time I blogged. Postpartum hair loss, anyone? I have an appointment for a haircut next week that should improve the situation. And don’t get me started on my skin... Inelegance would be putting it kindly.

We’ve gotten creative with cooking in the hot weather since the usual cooking appliances (stove, oven) exacerbate the problem. A lot of grilling has taken place; Robert is becoming quite skillful at the manly art of grilling meat. The other cooking appliances I am currently employing are the slow cooker, the microwave, the rice cooker, and the bread machine. They don’t put out nearly as much heat as the stove or oven. I think Rob is getting tired of the limited cooking mechanisms, but I find myself not caring too much. Me, who normally loves to plan meals and cook and eat. It’s too hot to really eat much. I think this is contributing to an acceleration in my pregnancy weight loss (which is going well, thank you) but is probably tempered by the fact that a large component of my diet right now would fall under the heading of “Frozen Desserts”. Ice cream, popsicles, sorbet, etc. So much colder and more refreshing than actual food, don’t you think? Maybe we should get an ice cream maker to add to our funny collection of countertop appliances.

Grace doesn’t seem too affected by the heat, which is good. She does get cranky if she gets too hot. She then wants to be held, which makes her hotter, which increases the cranky factor. A tactical retreat to the air conditioned bedroom is then called for. Nursing in the side-lying position under the blast of the AC unit is not a bad way to beat the heat. I recently packed up some of her tiny newborn clothes and it was weird to realize how cold it was back in February. We would dress her in a onesie and a warm zippered sleeper outfit and socks. So many layers! It is fun to have more of her delightful baby self out for us to enjoy now. Her toes are much easier to nibble now that it is summer and she is largely sockless. Delicious baby toes!

I try to regularly remind myself that I don’t have to live through too much summer, unpleasant though it be. We really had quite a mild beginning to summer and it has been out-and-out hot for just a number of weeks. And most likely there are only about 6 more weeks until it turns comfortable again for our air-conditioning-free life. That’s not so bad, right? Six weeks is nothing, right? I won’t melt away into a pool of sweaty organic matter before then, right?

Right?

Leaving on a Jet Plane

A lot of memorable events have transpired in the two months since I have last blogged. One of the biggest was Grace’s first plane ride. She and I took a little mother-daughter trip back to Texas to visit my family, and I am proud to say that she was not one of those screaming babies you dread to encounter on an airplane. (Of course, being proud is wildly inappropriate since I’m pretty sure her good behavior was unrelated to anything in particular that I did.) We had a nonstop flight on the way back home, which was easy peasy lemon squeezy. We did have a stop in Chicago on the way to Texas, which was a trifle more challenging. By the end of the second flight, Grace started to get a little unsettled and antsy. It was far from dreadful, though; I declare our first air travel a success.

We had a lovely time in Texas. We stayed with my parents, who are still head-over-heels for Grace. Shocking, no? She is in a lovely stage of development right now, full of personality and smiles and sociability-- a good stage for cementing grandparents’ devotion. I also got to hang out with a number of friends of ours who are still back in Dallas. Tina came over to my parents’ house to chat for a while, and I hung out with friends from our old small group and their babies. I got to see one set of my grandparents as well, as they were visiting Texas from St. Louis. It was delightful to introduce Grace to them, as she continues her unstoppable conquest of all our family. Throw in a sister and an aunt, and you’ve got yourself a visit full of fun people!

The motivation for this visit back to my old stomping grounds was my 10-year high school reunion. I have been out of high school for an entire decade; isn’t that madness? I graduated from a teeny tiny high school that doesn’t organize official reunions so this was a very casually organized event. I was pleased to see that we found contact info for almost everyone, and about half of our 30-odd classmates were there. It was really fun but kind of surreal to see all these people again. Not so much for the handful of girls that I keep in contact with, but for those who I hadn’t seen since graduation, a definite sense of alternative universe prevailed. You spend every day with these people, then don’t see them for years, and then POW! There they are again, somehow both different and the same as they were back then at once.

When it came time to head back to Texas, I made a rookie mistake trying to catch our flight back to Connecticut. I was running late and ended up missing the cut-off for checking bags (and thus getting on the flight) by one minute. Grrrrr... Traveling with Grace was not horrifying, but everything I tried to do took longer. I was just plain running late, and the particular airline person I was talking to was not in the mood for flexibility or grace. These travelers have to be taught a lesson! she thought. The consequences were not too dreadful; I ended up back home a number of hours later than originally planned. However, the whole rest of that day, I kept thinking, “If only I had eaten breakfast one minute faster... If only I hadn’t hit snooze that one time... If only...”

Signs of Spring

Spring comes to New England much later than my Texas-bred self is accustomed to. We had our first unequivocally warm days this past week; this seems impossibly late when my entire life has been spent somewhere where shorts and tank tops could be first donned sometime in March. The warm days were thoroughly enjoyable, but I find that I did not mind the long end to winter. I’ve never been much of a fan of hot weather so delaying the onset of the warmth makes me hopeful that there won’t be too much real summer for me to handle in our house with its definite lack of air conditioning.

The balmy days were lovely, however. They finally motivated me to do something in the gardening department. We did absolutely nothing last year. We moved into our house at the beginning of June and were kept pretty busy with the interior renovations throughout the summer. Everything outdoors was neglected, so much so that we cultivated a few giant weeds in our flower beds. Then autumn came, and we even failed to rake our leaves. Winter brought a bit of relief from the guilt of a disheveled lawn (anyone’s lawn looks nice blanketed with snow), but the warm weather brought back the guilt with renewed force. Fortunately, it also brought some motivation to address the problem. One day last week, I transformed the front flower beds. I put Grace on a towel next to me shaded under an umbrella and proceeded to weed, remove leaves, and then plant some new things. The last was definitely the most fun part. Just being outside in the warm spring air with a little cooing baby next to me was pretty wonderful, though.

The signs of spring back in Texas are a little further along, of course. The area where I grew up (and where my parents still reside) is home to the breed of tiny, lime green lizards pictured above. When Rob and I lived in Texas, we would see them sunning themselves in the front courtyard of our condo. My dad recently spotted the first lizard of the season at their house, snapped a picture, and sent it to me. I am thoroughly enjoying living in New England, experiencing a new part of the country with all its differences (cultural, climate, geographic, and otherwise). Seeing my dad’s tiny lizard reminds me of the familiar delights of a place that is still, in some ways, home. Stay warm, little lizard; it’s rainy, gray, and chilly here where I am today.

Pacification

Grace had her 2 month birthday yesterday; it is amazing to realize that she has been part of our lives for a whole 8 weeks, an entire 1/6 of a year. We are enjoying her tremendously and much of life with her is starting to seem easier. Hitting the 6 week point really made a difference. I started to do things like go to Target or the grocery store without it feeling like a monumentous undertaking. Don't get me wrong; leaving the house is still quite a challenge, but now it feels less like a Herculean feat. Our current challenge is my gradual return to work; we’ll see how that turns out...

One prerequisite for me leaving Grace is her ability to take a bottle, and she has been most cooperative in this endeavor. She doesn’t put up any fuss at all (using the first kind of bottles we tried) and it doesn’t seem to have negatively impacted her breastfeeding habits so far. This comes as a bit of a surprise because she is not interested in pacifiers at all. We did not introduce a pacifier until she was about 3 or 4 weeks old, as advised by all the breastfeeding people. At first, she would suck on the thing for a while, with some convincing from us. With every passing week, however, she grows more determined in her refusal of the pacifier and more able to emphatically spit it out, as she gains head and neck control. We would not have minded her taking to a pacifier as a tool to help her soothe herself, so one of those trips to Target involved buying one of practically every style of pacifier available to the baby consumer. Grace was not to be convinced with variety, though, and apparently there will be no pacification for us. She concurrently enjoys and is frustrated by sucking on her fists; perhaps soon she will manage to separate a thumb or finger and suck away on that. Possibly a harder habit to break, but an easier comfort object to find in the middle of the night.

Grace’s 2-month birthday also brought her first experience with immunizations, and thus some serious need for pacification. It actually didn’t seem too awful to me; Grace has screamed with equal vehemence during particularly unwelcome diaper changes or baths. I was expecting her response to be worse, somehow, and to feel tremendously awful myself about the whole thing, as many others do. Oh no-- I shall compare myself to other mothers and find myself lacking in sensitivity! Anyway, in the immediate term, she calmed down when I nursed her for a bit after the mean doctor finished with the painful poking. She was fussy for the rest of the day and well into the night; it was obvious that she didn’t feel well or like her normal baby self. The next day found her back to her charming and demanding self, at least until the next round of immunizations at 4 months. She gets immunizations at every doctor visit until she is 18 months; can you believe that? It’s like the doctors don’t want babies to like them or something; thankfully she is still pretty fond of this pediatrician.

Genes and Jeans

So this week I took advice from rookiemoms and went to go buy myself a pair of normal jeans. It does feel really nice to wear a pair of pants that is neither stretchy yoga pants nor maternity wear. Wearing them makes me feel more like I’ve begun to re-enter “normal”, non-pregnant life again. On the other hand, they were a somewhat horrifyingly large size. I’ve decided not to stress about it now at the one-month-mark but I really hope that breastfeeding and daily walks will help me not to still be wearing these jeans six months from now. I think I actually went a little too big, as they are jeans with a bit of stretch to them and after a few hours of wear, they start to fall down. I vaguely remember this being the norm for this type of jean from way back in my pre-pregnancy past. Just imagine; it’s been so long since I’ve worn regular jeans that I can’t remember how to go about it!

Another significant, more serious happening this week was a call we got from Grace’s pediatrician. They did the state-mandated tests and screenings in the hospital after she was born, and it turns out that Grace is a carrier for cystic fibrosis. This was quite a surprise to Rob and me because there is no history of CF in either of our families. (For anybody who is a little rusty on your Mendelian genetics, Grace will never get the disease but if she has a child with another carrier, their child could have CF.) My first response was really overwhelming thankfulness that Grace is OK. Rob and I turned down pretty much all the prenatal testing offered to us and talked then in an abstract way about the possibility of having a child with a serious disease or birth defect. This revelation now felt so much more real and immediate, though, and really brought me up short with the realization that Grace’s health is such a blessing.

So Grace’s status as a carrier means that either one or both of Robert and I are carriers. The vastly more likely case is that one of us is a carrier and thus statistically half of our children will be carriers. However, it is a slight possibility that we’re both carriers, which would mean that a child of ours would have a 50% chance of being a carrier, a 25% chance of being “normal”, and a 25% chance of having CF. A rather important item has just been added to both of our to-do lists; I think I’ll be able to be tested at my 6-week post-partum checkup. It feels sort of surreal to be thinking about all these genetic possibilities, especially as it could affect Grace’s future. Unlike whichever (or both) of us is a carrier, Grace will have this bit of information when she gets to her childbearing years. It’s crazy to think about how that could affect her decisions decades from now about children and relationships. It reminds me of quantum mechanics and Schroedinger’s cat and all that about how having information changes reality. Rob and I have started joking that we are going to subtly encourage her to date only non-white boys. We would love to extend the cultural depth of our family regardless, but CF is most common in the Caucasian gene pool and much more rare in other ethnic groups. Maybe we can have a nice Asian or black son-in-law? Shall we arrange the marriage now? Any takers?