It's official.

Skipper has a Social Security card!

thoughts

When I told Cook about my propane-in-hair-products discovery, he looked it up and discovered that propane is allowed in food. Like cheese. Then, of course, he had to do some research, and found out that it serves the purpose of "propellant." Then he went into a brief and happy reverie, imagining cheeses and other foods flying silently over our homes at night, headed to grocery stores all over the world. Then we decided it probably meant cheese in spray cans.

I think we were all pretty disappointed.

First, Skipper's hair clip.

Next, the bun.
This is what we started with.


Midway through.
The final product. "I look like a porcupine!" said Dutch. We definitely have to find a hairnet somewhere.

Untrained

I don't style my hair. I don't wear makeup. I don't know how to do those things. I am woefully ill-equipped to be Dutch's mom. Not only is her Fanciness Standard way way higher than mine, but she chooses activities that require skills I do not have.

For her ballet performance next week she is supposed to wear "stage makeup - earth tones only!" and have a perfect bun "with no wisps." Dear lord. She doesn't even have long enough hair to make a bun! And nobody in the world except ballerinas and long-haired cooks wears hair nets anymore, so it's impossible to find them at, say, your neighborhood drugstore. And should I ever be able to find a hair net, I will then have to make a no-wisp hairdo out of it. I can barely remember to brush my own hair in the mornings.

I took a first step today and went to the drugstore where they did not have hairnets, where I also looked for styling gel or hairspray or whatever normal people use to style hair. I was just going to buy the cheapest and smallest container, but then I made the horrible mistake of looking at the ingredients list, which went more or less like this: "Gives you cancer, probably compromises your fertility, screws up your lungs, and then kicks you in the head when you're lying in the hospital bed." Why, I'd like to know, would anybody put propane in a product that people put on their skin?* So I had to go to Whole Paycheck and buy something else, which cost almost twice as much but doesn't have any death in it.

Anyway, I told her she's not wearing makeup. She can wear the tinted lip balm I accidentally bought. And we'll have to practice the hairdo all week. I'll post a photo!

*If you'd like to figure out how to find products that make you Fancy without putting your health at risk, check out Skin Deep.

My neighborhood reputation

The other day I was walking Dutch and Skipper home from Dutch's evening ballet class, and we stopped along the way at the grocery store to get some desperately-needed items. Skipper started yelling inconsolably (I did try to nurse her as we walked around, but she was not buying it, and just kept screaming with the nipple in her mouth), and I got all sweaty and people were staring and muttering, so I decided to abort the mission and abandon the groceries. I told Dutch that we weren't going to be able to stand in the long line to check out, and were just going to go home. She looked at me with an expression of mingled horror and excitement and said loudly "You mean we're going to STEAL the milk?!?!"

So now the people who frequent our friendly neighborhood grocery store think I'm not only a terrible parent, but also a thief.

Not the same

Skipper is not like her sister. This is something of which I have to remind myself every day. We were parenting blank slates when Dutch was born, and we picked up on her preferences. This time, we assume we know what Skipper wants (ie what Dutch wanted), and we're thus slower to catch on to what she DOES want.

She often wants to be held away from the holder's torso, so she can look at us (and the ceiling, or something else totally random but apparently fascinating). Sometimes she actually wants to be just put down and left alone. I'd read about this phenomenon in various parenting books, but it was definitely not the case with Dutch, who wanted nothing more than to be snuggled up ALL DAY LONG, and was always the sort of baby who molded herself to your body. So I assumed it was parental fantasy, like that alleged "fussing" that babies were supposed to do. Today I got home from an outing with Skipper, who was grumpy and crying when we walked in the door. I put her into the Chair of Doom so I could put away groceries and wash my hands, and she almost immediately stopped crying. She sat there happily staring at furniture for about 15 minutes before announcing that she was done ("Eh! EEHHH!! EEHHHHH!!!!!!!"). I don't recall Dutch EVER stopping crying spontaneously after being put down. Ever.

Also, Dutch started smiling responsively in her 4th week of life, and Skipper has yet to give us any social smiles at all, well into her 6th week. When I look back at Dutch's infancy, in the brilliance of hindsight, I can identify things - crying as an immediate response to a problem, interest in interacting face-to-face, snuggliness - that are consistent with her personality - lack of resilience, desire for interaction, sensitive response to other people, etc. Where Skipper differs, I immediately assume it means she's going to be entirely the opposite of her sister. Hm. Maybe if I get all this assuming and generalizing and comparing out of the way now, I can provide these girls with an emotionally healthy sibling relationship...

And anyway, Skipper is truly not the stern, semi-autistic hermit I'm making her out to be. She's starting to show signs of turning into a baby-baby (you know, the sort of baby you see in commercials, all chubby and smiley) - she's just hit the 10-pound mark, and spends quite a bit of time looking around with wide eyes* and trying to make her arms obey her will. Her acne is clearing up a bit, and when strangers tell me she's beautiful, I say "Yes, she is! Thank you!" instead of "Ha! You're totally delusional, or maybe blind!"

The other main difference with this second-kid experience is that I'm having a really strong urge to put a hairclip in her hair, something I've always scorned when other parents do it. It's just... she has HAIR! Real hair! I just feel like I should celebrate it!** Also, I've got these hairclips that certain other members of the household refuse to wear because they're not pretty enough... photos coming soon.


* Not so much skeptical squinting going on. She does still look pretty worried, though.
** Dutch was practically bald for her first two years of life. She had this ridiculous mullet - about 2 inches long on top, and these long thin curls in the back, and I resisted Cook's pleading to cut it for far too long.

Dual citizenship is not permitted

I added a "Swedish" setting to our computer so I can use the extra Swedish letters... and when I changed back to the "English (United States)" setting, the computer didn't quite change back all the way. Picasa has gone entirely Swedish, so that my top toolbar reads "arkiv," "redigera," "visa," "mapp," etc. It's driving Cook crazy, but I'm kind of enjoying trying to figure out what the computer is talking about.

Bring in the clowns

unitasking

I'm currently nursing Skipper and typing one-handed. This is what I've done today since 8:30 AM:

• Schoolwork
• Procrastinated on the internets
• Nursed a lot
• Washed dishes
• Pumped breastmilk
• Washed the pump parts
• Taken out the big bag of dirty diapers
• Retrieved the big bag of clean diapers
• Prepared and eaten breakfast, lunch, and snack
• Packed a bag for my upcoming outing (to get Dutch and take her to ballet)
• Gotten the mail*

And... that's about it. It SEEMED like a lot.

*Which included a package from Sweden! (Not the whole country.) I love Polarn O. Pyret kids' clothes! Tack så mycket!

Memorial Day!

oh my god...

I got distracted (procrastinating!) into looking at all the pictures of Dutch we have stored on our computer. There are a LOT. I suddenly realized that Dutch was a baby for a long time. Somehow, I'd got it into my head that Skipper, once she gets past the first four months, is going to be much more like, well, a preschooler. I forgot about the whole baby thing, and the toddler thing. I forgot about Dutch at 6 months...... and a year... and 18 months... and two... and so on. We've got a long way to go before Skipper will be informing me that my wardrobe suggestions are stupid.* I feel both daunted by the path that lies ahead, and also happy to get to experience babyhood again with a new person. This, for example, is a picture of Dutch walking for the first time, on her birthday. That was pretty fun.

*Though... looking at Dutch's outfits in these photos, I can see where she's coming from.

Photos of Dutch from about the same age...

Prima Ballerina

Just Hanging Out in the Chair of Doom

Hey, we finally charged the camera batteries!

The Expensive One

Sheesh. Skipper has an umbilical granuloma.*  We're taking her in next week to get it removed. We should have just named her Baby MoneySucker. 

However, on the festive side, we learned that it doesn't cost anything to add more kids to Cook's "self plus children" insurance policy, so we can have an infinite number of kids** and pay the same monthly rate. Hm. That's a strange way to manage health care - we pay the same rate as, say, a family with 18 kids. How odd, in an otherwise entirely rational and beneficial system.

*Okay, I diagnosed this myself with the help of Dr. Google, so it's not an OFFICIAL diagnosis, but I'm pretty confident. Though not quite confident enough to get some floss and try to remove it myself .

** I wonder if infinite kids have tantrums. Are they ineffable?

crazy roommate

Dutch asked me to take a movie of her doing an interpretive dance of the Mt. Saint Helens eruption.

Durch has been very Jekyll-and-Hyde-y lately. Like Goofus and Gallant, bundled into one kid. She's totally lovely part of the time, funny and polite and kind, and then she's SO NOT lovely. Horrible, actually. Three days in a row, she threw massive tantrums in the morning because none of her clothes are pretty enough to wear. I  wanted to throttle her.* I am sympathetic; I understand that her world has changed dramatically with the arrival of The Other One. But geez. 

She'll grow out of it, I guess. If she doesn't, it's going to be hard for her to find a roommate in the future.

The good news is that she has no new cavities. Since her sister seems bent on spending all our money on healthcare, we are relieved. Hopefully Skipper will stay out of the hospital for a while so we can save up for Dutch's braces.

 *I didn't. I did yell, though, and I wasn't nice. I'm ashamed of how poorly I handled those tantrums. Hey, did I mention that I discovered recently that it's NOT ILLEGAL TO HIT YOUR KID? In half the states, they're even allowed to whack your kid at SCHOOL, WITH A PADDLE. Sorry about all the capital letters, but good grief - that is so VERY WRONG.  I can see why they don't want to go around arresting parents who snap and slap their kid (or hit them with a map on a stressful road trip...) once or twice, but really.  I'm pretty sure the parent is supposed to be the one who's able to use their words. Not that words can't be deployed to hurt at least as much as hands. Never mind. There are no good solutions here.

Unsolicited advice

Dutch announced Sunday evening, after we served up a meal of avocado soup and asparagus pasta, "My dinner is icksters! Can I have dessert?"*

Evenings are the hardest time for us, as for most families. We're all tired and cranky, and we have a short period to get everyone fed, cleaned, and ready for bed. It's the time when I most miss my child-free life. I used to have oodles of time when nobody demanded anything of me! Cook and I used to have conversations! We would even WATCH MOVIES sometimes!

Several people have inquired if we're going to have another kid (probably assuming that since we were crazy enough to have a second kid when we have no money and no prospects, we are likely to do just about anything), and Cook and I both instantly say "NO!!" It's not that we don't like these kids, or like parenting, even - it's just that it would be a bad fit for us to have any more chaos in our lives. We don't like chaos. I cannot imagine having three or four or five children. Or a pet. As a kid, I loved books about large families, and I imagined my future as the warm, sensible, firm but loving mom of a litter of kids who would run wild (in a charming, non-obnoxious way) around our messy but well-tended home, digging fresh carrots out of our big garden and romping with our large and lovable dogs. Nothing about this fantasy was actually grounded in my personality, and none of it has come true. Though I am fairly firm in my parenting.

Cook told me that yesterday, when he was coming home on the bus with Skipper and Dutch, a man sitting behind them growled at him "You need a nanny!"

Yes. Yes, we do, Mr. Grumpy McMeanie. Also a cook. And a housecleaner. And a therapist. And a personal trainer. Please send them over at the earliest opportunity.

* We did make her eat the dinner. She actually likes asparagus. Anyway, she usually just announces that she's not going to eat dinner in order to make a scene.

Care and feeding

I've started pumping breast milk, which is now another thing I have to get done in the time when Skipper is not tied to my body. Pumping breast milk is tedious and frustrating (though also totally hilarious - Cook, Dutch, and I all burst into giggles the first time we witnessed the operation), and I find that I slightly resent spending my baby-free time producing milk for the baby.

Cook and Dutch fed Skipper her first bottle yesterday* and apparently she took it without hesitation. Dutch was very pleased, as she got to meet two primary sibling goals of hers - getting to tend the baby herself, and getting the baby separated from me. She really doesn't like that I nurse Skipper - she deeply resents both the intimacy and the time devoted to the baby. I've tried doing some recommended sibling-rivalry-mitigation tactics, like reading to Dutch or watching her perform while Skipper nurses, but it's not enough.


* Cook met me at school, took Skipper, picked up Dutch at daycare, and then headed home - I realized only after the handoff that I had just sent the poor man off to sit on a crowded bus in rush hour traffic with a 4-year-old and a hungry newborn.This is a situation in which it's very handy to be able to nurse the baby (discreetly, because you're bound to offend somebody). Which he can't do.

Beauty

The Other One.

Cook took Dutch to a birthday party yesterday, and when asked where the rest of his family was, could not remember Skipper's name. He referred to her as "the other one." Poor kid. Because we didn't know her name until she was born, we didn't practice like we did with Dutch, and we keep either forgetting her name or calling her by Dutch's name. I feel like Poppy Bush.

Anyway, The Other One has stopped being a newborn (and she's 4 weeks old today!). She cries a LOT, particularly in the classic baby crying timeslot in the evening, just when we're trying to make dinner, prepare for the next day, and avoid playing princess games. She's all farty and angry... she still seems more mellow than The First One, but she's not happy about her situation. As my dad said* when I talked to him about it, "the honeymoon is over, huh?"

* with the glee you might expect from somebody whose kids are all grown up and can only whine to him over the phone.

Two

I haven't quite wrapped my brain around this business of having two kids. I am used to the feeling of having one kid, of always having Dutch in the back of my brain, being aware of where she is. Two, though, is throwing me for a loop. I feel slightly unhinged when I'm not with Skipper, because I keep having moments of panic - WHY do I feel so wrong?! - and then remembering that AGH I have TWO kids and WHERE is the little one?!

And I am not with her fairly often because... she naps. She naps in her crib. Okay, not all the time, but about a third of the time. So I have time to do stuff like put on my pants.*

I'm sure I'll figure out a way to mentally track them both, soon. I'm not having any trouble loving them both,** so organizing them should follow eventually.



*Activities requiring bending at the waist are difficult when there's a baby attached to you. Putting on socks, for example, or picking up the important thing you just dropped.

** Something of which I have yet to convince poor Dutch, who is still engaged in a serious drama of losing her parents' love to a leaky, squeaky nine-pound larva.

Not too far behind, but not on top, either.

I have been pleased by how relatively on top of things I am with this second kid. But yesterday I went to Dutch's 8 AM dentist appointment and discovered that in fact she had no appointment. So we scheduled an appointment for today. Today, as I tried to slightly tidy our filthy apartment, the receptionist called to gently inquire why we weren't at the dentist's office, where we were supposed to have arrived 15 minutes before. I got a little sniffly when I was talking to her. I'm not actually on top of things. I'm not having the baby blues like I did with Dutch, when I felt quite sad for several weeks. But I'm not exactly brimming with joy, I'm definitely not notably stable, and I'm not on top of things.

Prolonged postpartum period

We don't have that many friends in Portland. And the ones that we have aren't really the sort who are inclined barge in and take care of us without being asked. Not that they aren't lovely people, but they're just not that sort of people, and we're not the sort of people who ask. So we've had no meals brought to us, no errands run for us, etc., in the immediate postpartum period. (We did have one extremely opportune bag of groceries brought to us the day after Skipper almost died, when we were so tired we could barely stand, let alone operate a stove.)

That was fine, since we've had a pretty easy time of it (other than those pesky three days in the hospital) - I bounced back pretty quickly after delivery, thanks to the perineum-supporting midwives and my apparent natural aptitude for baby-ejecting, and everything seems much easier with a newborn the second time around. Anyway, I'm not really the sort of person to embrace the notion of a two-week lie-in of doing nothing but nursing and snuggling - I like the IDEA of it, but in practice it makes me twitchy. We would have loved some pampering, but it was okay that it didn't happen, and it's clearly due to our personalities that it didn't happen.

But this weekend, as we celebrated Skipper's 3-week anniversary, we had two visitors come to bring us treats, including one full (and extremely delicious) homemade meal. This was lovely, and much appreciated, but Cook and I can't help but feel a little weird about it, like we don't really deserve it. We're fully functional now, because Skipper has decent sleep habits for a newborn. Really, things are probably easier now than they will be in a month or so, when she's fully arrived and maximally cranky (if she follows Dutch's model of babyhood). I'm doing school stuff and spending my days alone with Skipper, Cook is working more than fulltime, we cook dinner every night (except last night! Yum!), we run errands, we even occasionally clean the bathroom, and we've been doing this for two weeks. So we're in the weird position of accepting wonderful generous gifts that we don't really NEED, which makes us miserly types feel uncomfortable. We're trying to move past it, because generosity is wonderful no matter when it comes.

In other news, Skipper's infant acne has taken over her entire head, and she looks uncannily like a mangy baby capuchin. When people say "she's so cute!" I become worried about their eyesight.

Brains

Dutch's list of ailments, last night at bedtime:

• hurting stomach
• tummyache
• headache
• hurting legs
• sore feet

When I sarcastically asked if she had pinkeye again, too, she gave me her best withering look.

Also, I learned last night that Dutch thought the whole baseball game was a performance, like a play, that had been practiced in advance. No wonder she thinks baseball is so boring.

Yes, more videos.

First, Happy Mother's Day!

Second, the Bunny and Monster cooking show.

Buy me some peanuts!

Today we went to a baseball game! It was Skipper's first, Dutch's second (we went to a Mariners game with Rockstar Uncle when she was 10 months old). Neither of them were very impressed. Skipper slept through the whole game, except the third inning, which she nursed through. In the fifth inning, Dutch started whining that she wanted to be HOME. She does not like CrackerJack - she explained "It's not what I was expecting!" She likes singing Take Me Out To The Ballgame, but was bummed  that nobody sang along with The Star Spangled Banner. (We'd practiced both songs quite a bit). There was an attempted (and foiled) double steal! And two home runs! Dutch met Lucky Beaver!* Dutch almost got hit by a foul ball! Dutch (along with all other children under 12, not including Skipper) got a free nutritious meal of a hotdog, soda, and potato chips! Yum! AND I treated Dutch to a session in the inflatable bouncy house thingy over in the Keeping The Kids From Whining About How They Want To Go Home area. Cook traded boring baseball minutiae with Brendan Behan, and I kept score. It was totally fun (except for the whining), and I look forward to going again. 

*The mascot. Really.

Taking risks

Skipper is sitting in the bouncy chair, the one in which she tried to die two weeks ago. Cook put it away in the closet, but I got it out yesterday, in the hope of having some time to take a shower (it didn't work yesterday, but I did get my shower while she slept in the cosleeper), and now she's sitting in it happily, staring at the wall and gently bouncing. She is a normal color, and she's definitely breathing. It's still a little scary, even though we're sure the bouncy chair had nothing to do with the episode.

I have very little to report otherwise. Skipper has a nice helping of baby acne, and is not particularly attractive at the moment to anybody but me and Cook. She does this charming thing where she clasps her hands adoringly under her chin while she nurses.

Dutch is struggling hard with the sibling thing, in her own special melodramatic way. Last night she told me that she doesn't want her sister to die but she does want her to disappear. Being a big sister is not fun! Her usual hypochondriac tendencies are wildly inflamed. Last night she claimed to have both pinkeye and "ammonia." Today she spent the morning sobbing over various catastrophes, like the fact that Cook had taken a shower and was now cleaner than her.* And that her shirt had a 7 on the label and it's not fair that only 7-year-olds can wear that shirt. Anything to wrest our attention away from that pimply parasite.

It's pretty trying - Dutch has always leaned toward the glass-half-empty perspective, but this is way over the top, and it's tough to deal with adequately when I'm trying to write a technical memo for a looming deadline, with the parasite dangling off my nipple, and Cook is scrambling to get some sort of nutritious meal together, and we're both worn out from nights of nursing and diaper-changing. But she remains very loving and gentle in her interactions with Skipper herself, and I expect that she'll come around to a more stable and positive position eventually. Hopefully sooner rather han later...

*Not something that ordinarily bothers her.

MORE videos!!!

I'd forgotten that it's a bad idea to wear a black shirt when you spend most of your day either exuding breastmilk or having it barfed back onto you. Now I'm wearing a black shirt with an irregular white pattern.

Today I ran into another disapproving old lady, who worried audibly that Skipper is going to come down with pneumonia. I clenched my teeth and refrained from pointing out that pneumonia is caused by infection, not by being outside (wrapped to a warm body, tucked under a raincoat) on a rainy day. I also did not say that if I only took Skipper out when it wasn't raining, she'd spend maybe 80% of her days indoors. I feel very noble. What's up with the age thing, anyway? Were babies in the 40s never allowed outside?

Anyway, here's Skipper and Dutch this morning.



And here's Skipper this afternoon (Day eighteen or so). I know she's not really doing anything I didn't capture on the last riveting video, but she just cracks me up, so I had to post a video. Look at her worried little face! Her crazy flying-superman fists! I'm actually most impressed by the fact that she was crying when I put her down (so I could wash my hands, not because I'm sadistic), and then she stopped, all by herself, and just hung out for a while. Also, look, she's wearing pants! I have such high entertainment standards.



Today's Newborn Workout was a weird routine of lifting her head off my shoulder, pecking her mouth repeatedly at my cheek in the hope that a magical nipple might have suddenly grown there, and then being overwhelmed with exhaustion and despair and letting her head crash back onto my shoulder, only to optimistically try again 30 seconds later.

Bulletin from MommyLand

Skipper's getting crabbier, and she has a diaper rash, two facts that may be related. Diaper rashes make me feel like a bad mommy. *

One of my Big School Project groupmates bought Skipper the awesomest onesie ever, in honor of the bus-based lifestyle into which she has so early been inducted. I've been getting some flak from strangers for taking Skipper out in the world so early. One toothless, cigarette-smoking old lady expressed particularly strong disapproval. I don't know - I can see that people feel new babies should be cocooned for their first weeks in the world. But I feel that the way she's out in the world (wrapped to my chest, like I'm still pregnant and carrying VERY high) is pretty much cocooned. Her world is me.

She hears and sees more than she would if we were cocooning at home, but basically all she does is sleep, nurse, and poop, as she would at home, and be very close to me, as she would at home. I think when she gets older, we'll want to spend more time at home, or other places where she can practice her skills. Right now, her skills are pretty easily practiced in the wrap and in some floortime at home. (Cinematography by Dutch. I have a slightly steadier hand.)

So I don't think I'm a bad mommy for wearing my brand-new kid everywhere I go. The diaper rash, though, is a different story. Apparently I have been doing better on the other end of Skipper; she's gained 3/4 of a pound in the last week.


*Clearly I'm a bad mommy because it never even occurred to me that anybody could think it was inappropriate to take a baby out in public wearing only a onesie. Bad me!

Tired

Skipper thinks nights are for nursing. Dutch thinks days are for whining and bossing. Somehow, other things still have to get done. 

You say tomato, I say mildly funny.

This afternoon, around 4:30ish, BOTH kids were sleeping. A miracle! Dutch had passed out on the couch (after a long boring day), and Skipper was sleeping in the cosleeper. I maximized this unexpected bliss by sitting at the kitchen table, eating cold French toast with peanut butter and reading the New Yorker.* This made me laugh so hard that I almost aspirated my delicious snack. I insisted that Cook read it, and he declared that it was, to him, "mildly funny."

How can we possibly be married? And which one of us is correct? Is it hilariously funny or just mildly funny?

*What, is that not how you would have taken advantage of the situation?

Really boring. Sorry.

Skipper spent two hours this morning awake (okay, including nursing time and some time spent half-asleep and unmoving in my arms) and is now sleeping deeply, resting from the effort of Thinking, not to mention Spastically Wiggling, so very very much. 

She's certainly making progress in her training. I don't know if she's any bigger (she got back up to her birth weight after about a week), but she can hold her head up like a champ, her bellybutton is all healed up, she's starting to make some nice little dove noises, and she keeps her eyes open a lot more. 

Here's a rivetingly exciting movie of some of the work she did today. (Beware: even grandparents may find it tough to stay awake for the duration.) Unlike my rookie colleague, I am not getting any work done today. In fact, I'm still in my pajamas, and haven't accomplished ANY of my daily goals. It's way more important to make really boring movies of Skipper.