Another night of bedtime FAIL! Tonight featured Mommy (Em) for the first period, then I nursed him for a second time, then Mommy again, then she took him for a walk in the Ergo in sheer desperation from 9:20pm to around 9:50pm, tried to put him in the crib once he was down, his leg got caught, then the cats were ridiculous and I had to try again and a third round of nursing and rocking and he finally went down at 10:25pm. My only hope is that this was a full 20 minutes earlier than last night, so if we keep up this trend, in just a short 9 days, we'll be back to east coast time. Sigh...

Coming back from the West Coast is such a disaster for children's sleep.

Is too much, let me sum up*

• I am currently exiled to the bedroom because the first two times I tried to put the baby to bed this evening ended in such failure. This is try number two for Em and we have been trying for a collective 3 hours. I have decided to blame bedtime tonight on having arrived on a red eye from California yesterday morning and my kid believing it is 7pm right now and not 10pm.

• Except for the above, I would say that bedtime and naps have been going really quite well, except for the whole Traffic Game problem, which means I can never ever say that.
  
  
• X finally got around to learning to walk at 14.5 months, after 7 months of cruising. He apparently just didn't see any point in walking when he could get around just fine. Now at 17 months, he walks well, is trying to figure out running, climbs big people stairs only holding on to the railing with one hand, plays basketball (okay, so all he really does is throw a ball in a toddler basketball hoop, but he does it 20 to 30 times in a row and applauds himself after each shot), and is a big fan of downward facing dog.
  
  
• He has acquired an obsession with balls (a.k.a. ballp. We have no idea why he has decided there is a p on the end. He is perfectly capable of saying ball without a p, he just chooses not to do so.) He has five or six different types of balls in the living room at any given moment and loves throwing them to us again and again. He also enjoys throwing them past the baby gate toward the kitchen and then begging us to retrieve them for him.
  
  
• Which leads us to the next point, he has learned to say please. He has also discovered that smiling and tilting his head to the side while doing so gets an even better response. His first multi-word phrase was "ball please get". Now we are working on thank you once we get the ball for him.
  
  
• My mother (Nana) taught him another important word/concept when we were visiting last month. I love her dearly but she will never be on time to anything in her entire life. After twenty minutes of us telling him that we would go to the museum as soon as Nana was ready, he proceeded to stand at her front door in his coat and boots, holding on to the knob, yelling "GO GO GO!" A new word for X, a familiar experience for his Mama.
  
  
• He loves books. We are so happy. Our family of bookworms welcomes a new member. He brings books to us when he wants us to read to him. He also will pick up a book, sit down with it and turn the pages while talking to himself quietly (he's "reading" it to himself, just like his mommies). Last month, he fell asleep "reading" to himself for the first time. Cutest thing ever:

• He is also obsessed with ducks, or "qacks" as he is wont to call them. He loves all images of ducks and all books about ducks. He is also willing to accept substitutions as long as they are close.
  
  
• ....I return after my third and finally (!) successful attempt to put X to sleep. To sum up tonight's bedtime, five moms (Kate, Em, Kate, Em, Kate), four hours=sleeping child and bone tired moms. There is much else to say to sum up the last four months, but for now, this will have to suffice because it is 11pm and we haven't had dinner yet.
  

*title borrowed from The Princess Bride, by way of the awesome ladies at Two Hot Mamas

Birthrights of Many Kinds

My mom was raised Methodist and my dad Jewish. When they had kids, my mom's mom (Grand Nana) said, "I don't care what you raise them, just raise them something." This was actually remarkably open of Grand Nana, a woman born in 1916 in southern Virginia, who to this day sometimes says things so not politically correct that all her children and grandchildren wince at the same time. My parents went with no religion until I (the older child) was in fourth grade. My brother and I had been attending a Quaker school (Religious Society of Friends) since Pre-K and my parents finally decided to take the leap and become Quaker, my father's comment being that it was the only non-organized religion he had encountered and that worked for him. My brother informed his first grade teacher that he was "signing up to be Quaker." This was actually fairly accurate, as we each were given the right to choose whether we thought this was the right choice for us. Quakers sit in silent worship, believing that God speaks directly to each person and there is no need for the intercession of a priest or minister.

Emily was raised Catholic. She was passionate about her Catholicism, the way she is passionate about pretty much everything in her life. She memorized the prayers, the psalms, the ritual. She very much wanted to be a priest when she grew up. She says that this was clearly the beginning of the end for her as a Catholic. She continued to become more disillusioned with the church over the years. When we met in high school, I began taking her to meeting (what Quakers call church). By college, she had chosen to be a convinced Quaker. I love that instead of "converting" to Quakerism, one is "convinced". Before we were married under the care of Brook.lyn Meet.ing, I transferred my membership and she became a member. X, as the son of two members in good standing of the Religious Society of Friends, is what is called a "birthright Quaker". The first in either of our families.

I have very little understanding of the Catholic ritual, so Emily tends to explain bits of it when we attend services. Today, at Great Aunt C.'s funeral, we sat in the sound proofed children's room in the church (an interesting invention, allowing babies to have fits and not bother the other parishioners) and Emily told X, "Look, honey, now the priest in going to do magic." And to our birthright Quaker son, I think that must be what the Catholic service looks like, magic. A man in a robe sings and waves his hand and waves smoke making machines in the air and informs people he has changed water to wine and bread to flesh. But Catholicism is X's heritage, just as much as Judaism is, so I had better start learning about it, so I can help teach our son his past so that it can inform his future.

You Show Up

We are away from home. For the second time in two weeks, we have driven upstate to be with members of Emily's family. Two weeks ago, we drove up to visit her Great Aunt C., who had been doing poorly. The day we went up, Em's mom called and told us that she had gone to the hospital, so we visited her for two days in the hospital before going home. The hospital staff let X onto the critical care ward, which they probably shouldn't have done, but we greatly appreciated them letting us bring him to visit. He cheered up Great Aunt C., who told Emily that he was beautiful and looked smart (the highest compliment).

Sadly, we are back this weekend to attend Great Aunt C.'s wake and funeral. She died early on Wednesday morning. We rented a car from the same garage and are staying at the same motor lodge (10 rooms down) but life is very different. She was a great lady, so smart and opinionated and passionate. I only knew her a few years, but I miss her a great deal. She and her husband didn't have children, so she was very close to her sister's children, especially Emily's mother. Grandma (Emily's mom) was able to be with her this past few days, which I hope was a comfort, although it was very hard for Grandma.

X doesn't understand what it going on, but brings a smile to everyone's face when he enters the room, which is a very good service he is providing. He slept for about half the wake this afternoon and was then quite content to have Grandpa carry him around the funeral home (which his Great Grandpa used to own) and discuss everything they saw. He has gotten to meet the last of his great aunts and uncles whom he had not yet met, which has been nice. We have tossed his schedule to the wind in the evenings, because it is really impossible to walk away from family early enough to start bedtime at an hour when everyone else is just starting to eat dinner. He is coping admirably and we will get back on the bedtime schedule horse when we get home on Sunday.

Everyone keeps saying how wonderful and thoughtful we are for coming to visit Great Aunt C. as often as we did (which really wasn't that often, just twice in the last year). And Emily and I just keep saying, "But that's just what you do. You show up." I really hope this is a lesson that X learns from us. When it's family (blood or chosen), you show up. It's an over four hour drive and we're broke and renting a car costs a lot, but that isn't the point. You show up.

Strange Goo.gle Searches

This past February, when I was in the middle of my first nursing crisis, I wrote a post about my lovely mother-in-law and her helpfulness in calming me down and sending me off in the right direction in order to address the supply problem I was having. Without even thinking about it, I called this post "Grand.ma and Bo.obs" except without the dots. This became relevant last night, when I checked out the report from Goo.gle Ana.lytics for the first time in many months and discovered that, in one form or another, "Grand.ma Bo.obs" was the most common Goo.gle search that lead someone to our blog. Two hundred and fifty-two times, random people searched for what I can only assume was slightly bizarre po.rn and found our blog instead. I think I'm going to go change the title of that blog post now.

Hark, There Be Wild Things

Emily informed me a few minutes ago that I should write about the movie we went to see this afternoon. So, here I am, writing about the movie we went to see this afternoon. I'm a very obedient wife!

Uncle very kindly took the baby for the afternoon, so we could have some time to regain the parts of our sanity lost over the last week of sick, cranky baby. We took a long walk, lay down in the park on our coats and stared at the sky (well, I stared at the sky, she read Foucault) and went to see "Where the Wild Things Are".

First off, it is not a kids movie, it is a movie about childhood. I really don't think I would take a child much younger than late elementary, early middle school to this movie. It has lots of scary bits. However, I highly recommend it to the older set. It is beautifully made and so well written. To be fair, I've had a bit of a love affair with Dave Eggers since I read "A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius", so I was prepared to like the writing. I don't want to ruin the movie for those who haven't seen it yet, so I will just say it is definitely worth your time to go see it. Emily reflected at the end on the poor PA who had to vacuum the muppets during the shoot. I reflected on how I viewed it differently as a parent than I think I would have before X was born.

One Year Molar for the WIN!

And just to make life interesting, Emily called down the hall this morning while changing his diaper. Guess who just had their first one year molar break through during the night? The poor baby, his entire head hurts.

We have an answer (well actually two answers)

X was running a fever of 102 when we checked this morning, so we were off to the pediatrician again for the second sick visit this week. We waited 45 minutes to be seen, but as soon as they took his temp and it was 102.6, everyone was very helpful. We were given tylenol to give him (which made me a bit anxious as it was 20 minutes early and he's on both tylenol and ibuprofen, but oh well). The nurse tried to give it to us in a suppository, and we were like, "we are not putting anything up his butt that we don't have too, please can we have the liquid", and she gave us the liquid in a cup, and we had to ask for a syringe, because our twelve month old is seriously not going to drink medicine from a cup, even if he is the best baby ever at taking his meds.

Then we saw our doctor, without even seeing the resident first. And it was so great that we got to see Dr. A, because for the first time all week, X didn't scream the entire time he was being examined. He was quiet and let her poke him and check his ears without even turning his head away and even gave her a tentative smile. I love our pediatrician, she makes my sick baby smile. She smiled as soon as she checked his first ear and said, "We have an answer" and then checked his second ear and said, "Actually we have two answers." Yup, poor X has a raging double ear infection. Poor baby. He is now on anti-biotics and should be feeling better in the next day or two. Thank heavens for an answer that doesn't involve the word flu.

Baby continues to be ill

We are slogging through. He remains feverish, whiny, clearly in pain. We'll head to the doctor tomorrow if he hasn't improved. I really hadn't realized on a practical level how pleasant and lovely it is to have a well child until the last two weeks. No one is getting enough sleep and everyone is cranky. To remind us all that there is a happy, smiley baby in there somewhere, here is X on a happier day:

There is no place in the Baby Book for "Baby's First ER visit"

Well, we have survived X's first (and last, at least for a long time, I hope) trip to the Emergency Room. Chalk the trip up to first time parents and a child who has breathing trouble even before he has a fever of 101.3 for two days and heavy congestion.

We ended up going because his fever wasn't getting any better and after waking up from his afternoon nap, he seemed to be in worse distress and his breathing rate was increasing and so we called his doctor and she said to take him in because she couldn't tell if he was getting sicker and better safe than sorry. We rented one of the two Zip.cars in the garage a block and a half from the house (yay, I love Zip.car) and drove to the hospital where he was born, home of the local pediatric ER. It was actually a very positive ER trip. Everyone was kind and good with X and he was seen quickly and we were reassured and not told that we were crazy first time parents (which we were kind of expecting to happen). And we got him home in an hour and a half and only an hour late for bedtime.

The funniest thing to come of "Baby's First ER Trip" was this: The first sentence in his discharge papers: "Your son has been diagnosed with a viral syndrome, also know as a 'cold.'" When we saw this we couldn't stop laughing. The entirety of the discharge paperwork was so clearly written by someone insanely frustrated by constant ER visits for silly things. This is totally going in his baby book (if I ever get to filling it out!)

My baby is sick

My baby is sick. We were blessed in X's first year with a child who pretty much was never sick. I mean he has his breathing issue (a separate post to come), but no particular illness. But now at 12 months and two weeks, he is making up for lost time. He's had the family cold for the last few days (tired, achy, congested, seriously runny nose) but seemed to be doing a little better. He hasn't needed to swim breathe in order to nurse in a day and he can suck his fingers (the middle and fourth finger of his left hand are his best friends) without choking and having to suck in air through his mouth.

He's been feeling antsy and he was looking better so I took him to the first class session of Baby Boogie at the YMCA (we just joined two weeks ago) this morning. He enjoyed the first part of class, playing with the kids his age (playing = crawling over and attempting to play with the same toys they are already using) and then he suddenly started melting. We were in the middle of doing the "meet another baby" segment of class and he started crying and clinging to me. So I excused myself and sat down to nurse to see if that helped. He hadn't had his morning nap and Em and I had agreed that if he got tired at class, I'd just pack him up and come home. Nursing didn't help and he had started wailing in a way that he has done so rarely that I started getting worried. I strapped him into the Ergo and walked to the bus, took the bus home and walked to the house. He sobbed the entire time. He collapsed into sleep five minutes before I got to the house, but woke as soon as I got inside, beginning to scream, the scream he only does if he is in pain.

He felt hot, so Em and I took his temperature and it was 100.8. We called the doctor and were told to bring him in. We packed him up and took the subway to the clinic while X finally slept for 30 minutes. Em checked us in. She told the office staff we were here for a sick visit, they asked if he had a fever, we said yes, they said don't even sit down, we'll put you in a room and we were ushered right in. They are clearly pulling all potential flu cases out of circulation, which is really smart. He woke up and started crying again and continued to for the full hour we were there, except for five minutes where Em lay on the exam table and held him. The poor baby doc (intern/first year resident, he didn't say) was so scared of him. He found it impossible to listen to X's lungs or check his ears because he wouldn't stop screaming. Babies are like dogs, they can smell fear. The intern finally said he just go get the doctor and fled the room.

I love our pediatric practice. There are four doctors and I like all of them. The doctor we saw today was the only one I hadn't met yet and he was great. Friendly, good with X, and very informative, explaining everything really well. We are really lucky that the practice we had with our awesome insurance pre-job loss is also the practice that runs the peds clinic at the hospital X was born in and takes Medicaid. Dr. G checked his lungs and ears and declared them clear. X's fever had gotten to 101.3 by the time we got to the office. We are to give him tylenol and ibuprofen in rotation to bring down his fever and watch him closely. We took him home and he nursed and fell asleep for an hour and when he woke up, he was much more like the baby we know. Tired and hot, but friendly and smiling and playing some. He went down around an hour early for bed and I am hoping will sleep through the night and feel less dreadful in the morning.

We have too much money to be as poor as we are...

Turns out I was wrong about that whole qualifying for food stamps when my unemployment runs out in January thing. There is an asset test I was unaware of and we have just a bit too much saved. So there goes that small bit of help, although I suppose I should view it as a positive that we have money saved, which I do, but still...

There is legislation in the Senate right now that I thought would help us. It will extend another 20 weeks of unemployment insurance to those losing coverage. Except...it will cover those who lose their coverage by December 31, 2009. Guess when I lose coverage? Yup, second week in January 2010. Awesome. There is some talk of getting the date extended as soon as this extension passes, but at the moment, no 20 weeks for us.

There are unemployment advocacy groups looking for people to speak to the media about the need for the extension to cover those losing their benefits after December. I am thinking about saying I would do it, because I think I have a sympathetic story, but I don't really like public speaking. But at the same time, I have a good story: I lost my job six days back from maternity leave with a three month old baby and a graduate student wife who I was helping put through school. Now X is on Medicaid and WIC and I got fired 10 days too late to keep getting unemployment past January. Would it have killed my former employer to downsize me 11 days earlier? Oh wait, it would have, because I would have still been on maternity leave and it would have been illegal. Sigh.

Returning to Blogging

I went away from blogging. I think it had a lot to do with the level of denial needed to get through our life at the moment. Well, at least denial about the financial part of our life. I have this beautiful, amazing, funny child and a loving, wonderful wife and we have a roof over our head. Most days this is what I focus on and I let a lot of the little details of how our life has changed in the last nine month slip away. Writing concentrates the mind on the details and I've been taking a holiday of sorts. However, I think it may be time to stop with the holiday. So I'm back and we'll see how this goes.

A great deal has happened in the last year. X has grown from a tiny newborn baby
to a big one year old.


I went back to work for six days before being laid off in the middle of February. I have been a SAHM for X's first year, although this was not a choice I made but just how life happened. I would not trade this year home with him for anything, but I would trade the way I got there.

Emily has officially entered the academic job market, applying for quite a few jobs. It is exciting, yet nerve wracking, waiting to hear if/where we will be moving this coming school year. This job hunt has the effect of putting aspects of our lives on hold. I look forward to being able to move forward decisively at some point.

We are recipients of multiply types of state aid. X is on Medicaid and he and I are on WIC (because according to the state, I am a single mother), although now that he just turned a year, WIC is now just for him. I have been receiving unemployment benefits since February which are due to run out in the middle of January. When that happens our family will suddenly qualify for food stamps and more free health care, which is good because the COBRA subsidy for my health insurance runs out December 1st and I REALLY can't afford the COBRA insurance without it.

So this is our life right now. Well, at least a small portion of it.

Broke and Poor

All my life, I've made the distinction between broke and poor. You're broke if you don't have a lot of cash to spend around, if you don't have endless reserves somewhere, but, fundamentally, you're not deprived. You're poor if the lack of money is consistent, structural, and leads to deprivations for your family. Kate and I have chosen to be broke for this stretch of our lives; she chose a career in the nonprofit sector, which doesn't pay well, and I'm a grad student with barely any income at all. We've been clear that this is, in some ways, a moral choice for us, an attempt not to live high on the hog, not to live in a destructive manner. But we've always been broke, not poor.

I wonder if the day you find out you're eligible for WIC is the day you become poor.

Kate was laid off in February, which explains a lot of the radio silence from around here. It was fucked up, and it sucked, and we're dealing with the emotional fallout as best we can. But what's hitting us most, obviously, is the economic fallout. I don't have any research funding right now, and I'm not teaching this semester. Our plan was for me to take care of X in conjunction with Uncle, and to work on my dissertation this semester, while Kate worked. Well, that plan's fucked now.

Here's the thing: there are ways in which we are, now, officially poor. Our total monthly income comes from our two unemployment checks; together, they just about cover rent, utilities, and groceries, which means anything above that--new clothes for X, plane tickets to academic conferences, dinners out with friends, baby gates to keep our kid out of the kitchen--has to come from our savings or go on credit. We couldn't afford to continue COBRA coverage for all three of us, so I had to quickly jump onto my school's insurance, which is pricey but cheaper, and X is now on Medicaid; we can afford Kate's insurance alone, after the stimulus cut, but we did consider letting her go uninsured. We qualify for WIC because we qualify for Medicaid, which we are actually kind of glad of; the food benefits we'll get will substantially cut our food costs, which will be a big savings for us. Our combined credit card debt is around $19K, most of which is hangover from our wedding and the year-long illness of our now-deceased cat, and which we are now unable to keep paying down. Our student debt is higher.

But we aren't poor in some significant ways. We've collectively got quite a chunk of money in a brokerage account; it's the remains of Kate's college fund, and my inheritance from my grandmother. Our regular savings account has another, much smaller, but not insignificant chunk. The deprivations we've done have been minor: we've both cut back on how often we go to the chiropractor. I've blown off my allergist. I've negotiated with my therapist to a lower rate. Neither of us has an unlimited MetroCard, and we don't really ever leave the neighborhood unless we have a specific appointment somewhere else. We're canceling non-essential trips that we'd have to rent cars for. We couldn't go to a recent family event that was pretty major, but was scheduled last minute in a different state, and we couldn't afford plane tickets. We haven't cut off our cable yet; we haven't canceled our home phone, though we've talked about it. Between our unemployment, the money in our regular savings account, and these sorts of frugalities, we can get through until the fall, at least, if Kate doesn't find work in that time.

But: are we just "not quite poor" yet because we still think of ourselves as broke, not poor? The reason we don't think about our investment money as real money to use is because we both think of it as the down payment on a house, once I get a PhD and a real job. But should we start thinking about it more as money we can live on? I'm scheduled to teach in the fall and spring of next academic year, but should I be looking for work--even work unrelated to my field--right now, just to be bringing in money? Should I be putting my dissertation on hold to support my family? I don't want to do any of these things. I want to keep being broke, even while being objectively poor.

________

Then there's the psychological feeling attached to entering into the welfare state. Now, we around the Commune, we are commie pinko bastards; we believe that the government has an essential role to play in supporting people. We believe in socialized medicine and governments assuring a basic standard of living for all. We believe in paying our taxes when we're earning money and getting it back in the form of assistance when we aren't. But we have been, our whole lives, the people paying it out. Every April 15, we say, I'm glad I paid my taxes, for the part of it that means someone got health care, someone got a job, someone got services they needed. But we've never needed them. We have internalized that it is good to give to others. But we have also internalized that classic middle class feeling that it is shameful to rely on others. Kate has talked about feeling as if she's lost her reason for being in the family: she is the breadwinner. She supports me and X. She can't do that anymore. (Don't worry, honey, I say. Your unemployment check is three times mine. You're still the breadwinner. There's just less bread.) She didn't like that she had to fill out the application for state health insurance, putting together the paperwork for it. She shouldn't have to do this. She's the one who gets it for us as a family.

When we went in to be interviewed for health insurance, we were unsure what we'd get. We walked the ten blocks to the local Medicaid enroller's office, in a neighborhood quite demographically different from ours, but where we actually used to live. The office was in the basement of a medical plaza, and a nice older man, who everybody called Mr. M-----, took us into our office. First he decided I didn't count as part of X's family, since our adoption isn't completed yet. Then he realized Kate had filled out the wrong form, and went and got the right one. Then he told her she had brought the wrong paperwork from the Unemployment Office. But he was kind, and listened to some of the terrible details of Kate's firing, and told a horrible story of his own of getting laid off.

We went down the paperwork. "Do you want to apply for WIC?" he asked.

"No," Kate said, "we're fine."

"How does it work?" I asked. I'd heard it was a really restrictive program, lots of hoops to jump through.

"You get food for the baby," he explained.

Kate and I shared a look.

"You paid for it. Baby food gets expensive," he said.

We paid for it. We nodded to each other. "Yes, OK," Kate said.

________

I joined a LiveJournal community for families on WIC, since I had heard people complain about the weird food you got. The posts confused me. I never can figure out how to use the eggs, women said. Ugh, it's too many beans. I don't drink that much milk.

We are never going to have this problem.

WIC in New York state is very pro-breastfeeding. (Very: the table on what food benefits you get lists your child as receiving, and I quote: "YOUR PRICELESS BREASTMILK!!!" Yes, the government busted out the triple quotation marks, for real.) For fully-breastfeeding mothers of children under one, you get per month:

Two 18 ounce boxes cereal
1 pound whole wheat bread
$10 cash voucher for veggies/ fruits
Three 12 ounce cans frozen juice
6 gallons of non-fat (skim) or low-fat (1%) milk
1 pound cheese
1 pound dry beans
18 ounces peanut butter
30 ounces canned fish
2 dozen eggs

Let's see. Kate drinks at least a gallon of milk a week; we eat beans, usually cooked up from dried beans, at least three times a week; we go through a pound of peanut butter a week; often we run out of our carton of eggs before the end of the week. Granted, we probably eat $10 of produce per week. That's a hell of a lot of canned tuna, so I see a bunch of tuna sandwiches and tuna casserole in Kate's future (probably while I snarf peanut butter in the background.) Kate can't eat the bread, and probably not the cereal, but they might be able to swap out coupons for rice or something instead.

Why does this work so well for us?

Because the WIC program subsidizes a very specific category of food: inexpensive sources of protein, iron, and calcium. In essence, they subsidize a vegetarian, low-on-the-food-chain diet. That's what we've always eaten, as long as I've been cooking for us, because that's what I eat, so that's what I cook. A lot of Americans don't eat like that; they don't know what to do with eggs besides have them for breakfast (quiche; souffle; spanish tortilla, scrambled eggs with cheese; added to stir fry; egg salad.) They've never cooked from dried beans (you soak them and then boil) and don't know how you eat them (a thousand kinds of soup; tacos; rice and beans; veggie burgers). Peanut butter goes in sandwiches and not much else (with apples; with celery; on crackers; in soup with coconut milk and limes; peanut butter granola bars). If you haven't cooked like this, WIC could be a pain in the ass. It's a bit paternalistic (you must eat these healthy foods! not other ones!), but it's not badly intentioned or poorly designed.


_______

This isn't a very coherent post. But all of these thoughts are mixed up with us all the time. Can we afford to go to our friend's bridal shower? Have you checked with the Medicaid office about our paperwork getting there? Are there any jobs posted on idealist that Kate qualifies for? Can we use our WIC checks at the Food Co-op? Is the nonprofit temp agency taking resumes?

Hopefully we'll be coming back to blogging now. It's been a rough couple of months.

X is Four Months Old

Dear X,
You are four months old now. I can't even believe it. We went to your four month check-up on Monday and you are 13 lbs 7 oz and 25 inches long. Such a big boy. Okay, actually, you are a long, skinny guy just like your mama. But so much bigger than when you arrived only four months ago.

In the last two months you have done so many new things and gone so many new places and met so many new people. Here are a few highlights:

In December you went with me and Mommy on a visit to several of your oldest relatives. We went to upstate New York and visited your Great Aunt C, your Grandma's aunt. She was so delighted to meet you. She held you and you were particularly enchanted by the bird pin on her sweater. We then went to eastern Massachusetts and stayed with your Grand Nana (Nana's Mom), Pop-Pop (Nana's Dad) and Great Aunt B (Nana's younger sister). They could not have loved you more. You loved being held by your Grand Nana and you and she talked and laughed and enjoyed each other so much! You thought your Pop-pop was wonderful, and enjoyed many good cuddles and he gave you bottles and you took long naps on his chest. Your Great Aunt B. had bought you many new clothes for Christmas and they all looked very cute on you. While in New England, we also drove up to Boston and visited with your Auntie E (mama's friend from college). Although not very experienced with small babies, she thought you were very cool and was very happy to meet you.

In January, you took your first trip on a plane when we went to Florida to visit your Pops. You were very good on your first trip and didn't cry almost at all. You slept a lot on the plane and everyone commented on what a good baby you were. You had a good time in Florida and met many new people. We stayed with Pops and his girlfriend, J and drove to Northern Florida to visit with your Aunt I (mama's friend from college) who was so amazingly happy to meet you that she almost couldn't stand it. You also met your Aunt I's mom and sister. When we returned to Pop's house, your Great Uncle A (Pop's older brother) came to meet you and was enchanted. He took a LOT of pictures with you and held you a lot. While we were in Florida, you also went on your first boat and were a very good little sailor.

In February, we went to DC to meet with other members of the IVP. You got to meet lots of other kids; babies, toddlers and big kids. You laid on the floor with the other three little babies at the gathering and laughed. I think that seeing the other older babies inspired you, because the day we left the gathering and went to our vacation house in Rehoboth Beach, you rolled over from your tummy to your back for the first time. We had a great time in Rehoboth and showed you all the places that your Mommy and I love visiting when we are at the beach.

In the last two months, you have learned how to do many new things. As I mentioned above, you learned how to roll from tummy to back at the beginning of February. Two days before you turned four months, you learned how to roll from your back to your tummy. This is your favorite trick and you do it almost any time we put you on your back. You get frustrated once you are on your tummy, because you seem to have forgotten that you can roll over to your back again. I'm sure you'll figure that out soon. You continue to stand when we balance you any time you can get us to help you. You've started being able to push from a squat to a stand by yourself, although sitting eludes you completely.

You laugh all the time, finding Mommy to be particularly funny and are becoming more tickle-ish. In the last few days, you've started discovering kisses and have made a game of trying to kiss us before we can kiss you. You've started to express excitement when you realize we are about to nurse. You grin with your mouth open. You have discovered the joy of shreiking, exploring your voice and learning new sounds. The concept of "indoor voice" eludes you completely. You are absolutely enchanting.

Much love,
Mama

The Great Rolling Over Experience

We just arrived in Rehoboth Beach after a wonderful weekend in DC (much to be said on DC later, but tonight's post is on a different topic). Over the weekend, X got to play (ie. stare at other babies and toddlers while they played, he was the second youngest) with many children and had a wonderful time.

Perhaps inspired by the antics of all the other children, he did the most amazing thing at 8pm this evening. He rolled over for the first time! It was so cool. We were giving him naked tummy in the middle of a diaper change and we were talking about what soft skin he still has and we weren't even paying that much attention to what he was up to, and boom, he rolled over! We put his diaper on and then he rolled over two more times! For the sake of posterity, I will note that he is fifteen weeks old now.

Many thanks to the many children who inspired him over the weekend to go where he had not before!

A full Year of X

Today is the day. X has been present in our lives in one form or another for one full year. Yes, that's correct, today is the day our little baby was conceived (although there is some argument it might actually be tomorrow). It's amazing to think about a full year of X. Even as a tiny fetus he had so much personality. And looking at him now, he's the same little being he was long before he was an outdoor baby. On my way out the door to work today he gave me a sloppy, almost kiss and proved to me that all the work is worth it for a loving, happy baby who is always excited to see me.

In other news, my workplace is pretty much collapsing around my ears, but that is a thought for another day.

Grand.ma and Bo.obs

Something I never expected to mind useful and in fact reassuring when I was in high school and college was a conversation with my mother-in-law, let alone a conversation about my breasts. And yet, this evening, I had a very pleasant conversation with my MIL (hereafter to be known at Grandma) about my nursing concerns. She was a breastfeeding counselor when Emily was little and hence knows more than some, and being Grandma, is quite willing to make it up when she doesn't actually know the answer. We lovingly refer to answering a question authoritatively and intelligently without actually knowing the correct answer as pulling a "Grandma's first name".

At the end of the conversation, I felt a bit more confident and certainly a little less nuts about the issue, so thanks Grandma!

Things to say Later

Things I want to blog about when I don't need to have been in bed hours ago:

1) why nursing is making me crazy at the moment

2) how crazy my milk supply appearing to disappear due to one freaking illness is making me

3) how upset my mother made me on the phone tonight

4) how pleased I am to have completed Emily's taxes and discovered that the government owes her approximately $1,000

5) how frustrated I am at the fact that I should apparently be calling my uncle (my mother's brother, not my dad's) to apologize for the fact that HE didn't call ME back

Florida from Brooklyn

I find it a bit sad, but I'm declaring an amnesty again, so that I don't stop writing because I missed a few days. I tend to miss one day and then feel guilty and keep skipping and that's how I didn't blog for months and months the last time. So...

Florida was actually pretty awesome. Seeing my dad happy was really pretty cool. He held X a total of three times, all of them instigated by J or me, but he talked about how cool a kid he was and what a good baby all the time and mentioned several times that he thought I was a wonderful mother. I've had a difficult relationship with my father over my teenage years and beyond and it is nice to be slowly digging out and starting over.

We spent two days in Jacksonville during the trip visiting my college friend and our former commune member I, who was so excited about X. It was really sweet to see her interact with X. She really is the perfect Auntie. Every kid needs someone who thinks they are miraculous and special (who isn't Mom!) On the way to Jacksonville, we recreated part of our honeymoon trip up the east coast of Florida. We stopped in Meibourne and Daytona Beach.

X coped very well, all things considered. We were on the road from 10am to 8pm, and although we stopped frequently, that was really asking a lot of him. At the end of the trip at 7pm, we ran out of bottle (on car trips, we bring bottles of expressed breast milk, so he can eat while I drive) in the middle of his snack and he started screaming so loudly that we couldn't hear each other talk. I had to pull off the highway, park at the gas station and nurse him in the back seat of the car in order to calm him down and get him to stop screaming. But he did stop screaming and fall asleep for the night, so it ended well.

X also got to meet his Great Uncle A, my father's brother, who was in Florida at the same time we were. He lives in Michigan, on one of the great lakes, so this is his yearly retreat from the cold weather. He was enchanted with X and held him many times and wanted to take infinite pictures.

We flew back to Brooklyn tonight and got in a few hours ago. I don't like flying and we had to circle JFK for 45 minutes before landing, which I was not thrilled with, but now I don't have to fly again until August when we do our west coast trip. I need to work on the flying thing before X notices my anxiety. Ah, more things to work on.