A Trip to the Beach

This weekend, X went to the beach.




His family can be pretty boring at the beach. Especially when they have the new issue of Buffy Season 8. (Best. Comic. EVAR.)



Mama got a new bikini for the occasion. (Mommy thinks she married a hottie.)


X got to swim in a pool for the first time! He really liked it.




Then he went to his first funeral: his moms and uncle buried their kitty, Vodka, who died a year ago.



Then he came home. He likes the beach. He's going back next weekend.

He can dance if he wants to.

It's official. Willa's a he.



And he likes kicking himself in the head. My mother suggested the Simpson Gene. Our donor had hair, though.

At 22 weeks, he weighed 1 pound, 2 ounces. And his legs were measuring two weeks ahead of date. Ha!

While we could keep calling him Willa, we've started calling him by his outside name, and it would be nice to be consistent. So, for Intarwebs purposes, he'll be called X.

No, we won't tell you what it stands for. But, well, you know us. Guess.

Fatherhood

I took these tests yesterday.

32 As a 1930s wife, I am Poor Take the test!

77 As a 1930s husband, I am Very Superior Take the test!

I have to say, I'm a little surprised. Folks who know me in real life know that I pull off a credible pre-feminist housewife routine, though with a heavy layer of snark on the side. I can my own pickles and put up local produce. I throw dinner parties with the nice china (although lately we've been too lazy to dig out the dinner table so we've been having them on the living room couch). I care about other people's emotions more than my own, I craft, and I like there to be flowers on the table.

It's been a long standing joke about Kate and my relationship that I really, really want to be the butch one, but I fail miserably at it. The best example was our previous roommate calling me the butch one while I sat, legs neatly crossed, doing needlepoint with something in the oven, while Kate sat at the other end of the room, legs splayed, hand down her pants. All it was missing was the beer, folks.

But the thing is, with the baby on the way, I'm sensing something happening. It's not that I'm getting butcher, it's that I'm starting to feel like...a father. I didn't believe this would happen before--I was firmly convinced that my experience was going to be of mothering, just one that didn't include the experience of birth. But I'm not feeling nurturing; I'm feeling protective. I'm not feeling like caring; I'm feeling like providing. (Which is singularly ironic, given that I make about $25K less a year than the wife.) I wonder how much of this package of emotions comes with not being the one carrying the kid around: I can't care for or nurture Willa right now. What I can do is feed Kate, run lotion on her belly, pick out her clothes, make her lunch. When Willa is kicking her in the bladder at bedtime, I can lean my head on her stomach and sing REM songs until she falls asleep, or kicks me in the nose. What I can do now is protect and care for my family, which our culture assigns as a task to fathers.

Maybe some of it is watching the process of growing a kid at a distance, being second to feel the kicks, being the one next to the one going through it. I wonder what is structural, what is cultural, and what is personal in all of this. (And to what extent I feel like a father because I overidentify with a certain fictional character.)

So, readers: do you feel like a father?

(And feel free to share your scores on the tests above. A friend of mine got a -9 on the wife test, which I thought was a little awesome.)

Basketball

We hate the Lakers.

There are a lot of reasons for this. Their terrible color combination. That they were so mean to the Sixers in that first finals we ever watched. Because no group of professional athletes should have such a poor free-throw percentage. That they seem so culturally and athletically dominant. (I also hate the Cowboys. If I managed to care about baseball, I might even dislike the Yankees, though I'm not sure of that, entirely.) Anyway. We hate the Lakers. A lot.

I started this. I saw it was the conference finals, and somehow now we've got five hours of ball a night on the TiVo, which is seriously screwing with my three-week X-Files backlog. (It's season 6. That is, it's the shippiest season until season 7. And then season 8, which wins the shippy awards because, you know, they have a baby.) I just had to watch three whole episodes on fast forward (stopping only for "Dear Diary, today my heart leapt" and "I lack your feminine wiles" and assorted other goodness) and delete this week's Top Chef (which reruns three times in the next 24 hours, so I'm not anxious) in order to see the Lakers not win tonight. WHICH WILL HAPPEN. BECAUSE WE HATE THE LAKERS.

Anyway, it's been a wonderful week of basketball. Every evening, my wife will come over to the couch, and we'll sit curled up under a blanket, her leaning against me, both of us holding onto Willa, who kicks along happily. Kate feels her all the time; I've felt her, but I get distracted by Kate's pulse, which is close to the surface along her belly. I explain to Willa what I know about basketball, all of which was learned from watching the game. I'm still not certain what the rules are for various fouls, in particular why it's not a foul every time someone gets shoved around. (I think I came up with a good moral lesson in the structure of fouls: "Every time you foul somebody, it's wrong. But sometimes, you do it anyway, because it'll make something else better. Still, you have to take your punishment, because it's still a wrong thing.") We've decided we need to actually know the rules of the game before she comes out, so this time next year, when she's sitting on my lap for real, I can explain it to her. And she'll sit there, in her tiny little New York Liberty shirt, and learn to hate the Lakers. Because, really, she should.

Things We Have Done in the Past Month

• Told Kate's grandparents. Upon hearing one of our girl names--which happens to be the name she and Kate's mom share--she said that's what we were calling the baby. Regardless of sex. OK, Nana.
• Told my great-aunt. She thinks we're awfully young to be having children. And it's too close to the wedding. But she's happy. (I love my great-aunt.)
  
• Told the first of our friends. They're all freaking out appropriately, given that we're one of first among our friends to have kids. (The other kid came eight years ago, right out of high school.)
  
• Heard Willa's little heartbeat for the first time. She sounds like a horsey. We heard it for the second time today.
• Willa has become visible to the outside world.
  

• Kate felt the first kick. Last night, when she woke up at 3:30 AM. And a bunch more today. We have bought her soccer shoes already.
• Kate's also had gas so bad she's thrown up. Twice.
  
• Incidentally, I've been writing like a demon. I'm about 7 pages from being done my last semester of coursework, and being able to start in on my dissertation. Whoo-hoo!
• We've been on the road more than we've been off it. Visits to our families, going to a conference and staying with family while there. Thursday we leave for Kate's five-year college reunion. I'm considering making her a t-shirt that says "Yep, it's a bump."
• And I really cannot tell you how many times I've watched this. Or this. Or this.
  

More detailed posts to come. But we wanted to touch base.

In Which The Commune Has A New Favorite TV Show

Why, oh why, fuck why did I not start watching Battlestar Galactica until now? Holy shit. HOLY SHIT. People, it's good. So good. It's actually better than Buffy, and that is something.

Plus, BSG and The X-Files share so many elements that it's blowing my mind. Like hot hot hot women named Starbuck? Badass redheads with a cancer problem? Major male characters who see ghosts, and later are set up as Jesus figures? A major pairing full of not necessarily resolved sexual tension but a lot of cuddly goodness? Teh Evils stealing people's ovaries? Half-human babies as the key to everything? Clones with superpowers? So much awesome there is in this show, people.

So we've watched the entirety of the first three seasons in the past week. As I write this, we are watching Friday's episode. We're going to have to start actually waiting a week between episodes. We may die.

So, anyway. Anyone want to talk about BSG? Please?

Also, I hereby publicly tag the wife to write about our weekend shopping.

Hello there, Teh Intarwebs!

Hi, everybody. My name is Willa.

This photo was taken when I was 11 weeks and 3 days old. My mama went for an Ultrascreen test at the hospital where I'm going to be born (with my mommy for moral support). From what they say, we all went into a little room, and Mama lay down on the table. The nice technician had really good aim, so that the moment she put the sonogram wand on Mama's belly I popped right into view. Mommy immediately started crying. (She's like that. Funny, she's not even pregnant.) I put on a nice show for them all, kicking my long legs, patting my face, and jumping up and down. Actually I put on such a nice show that I gave myself the hiccups.

After a little while, Mama and Mommy got annoyed, because the technician said I wasn't in the right position. I got called recalcitrant, and ordered to move in the right position. Then Mama coughed a lot, which was really annoying, and so I stayed because they were annoying. So Mama and Mommy went for a walk, and Mama even jumped up and down, which was fun. Apparently the tech liked where I was this time, so they were able to get the photo for the test.

Mama and Mommy have been running around being silly since they got the pictures. They keep calling me by my outside-world name, and crying, and emailing these pictures to my grandparents. They even have photos on their cell phones. Silly moms.

Anyway. They just wanted me to say hi. So hi!