Joy and Peace, etc.

Dutch has had a spectacularly wholesome Christmas. It snowed more than a foot, and she romped in the snow, built a snowman, went sledding, participated in snowball fights, built a snow cave, climbed a snow mountain, and shoveled the walk several times.








































She also helped make applesauce, bread, and gingerbread cookies, design and sew a quilt, and string cranberries. She wrote a note to Santa. She woke up at 6:20 on Christmas Day. It was like Little House on the Prairie with more money and without the imminent fear of death. I hope you have all had equally happy holidays!

Portland vs Portland

Last Week:

Sunday: Snow, about 1.5 inches

Monday: Snow has not melted, and due to the total lack of plowing, roads are kind of slippery. DAYCARE CANCELLED.

Tuesday: Snow starting to melt. DAYCARE OPENS LATE.

Wednesday: Mix of snow and freezing rain predicted, instead it rains a bit, all snow and ice is gone by midafternoon. DAYCARE CANCELLED.

Thursday: Some snow and rain in the morning. Nothing sticks. Bare streets at noon. DAYCARE OPENS LATE.

Friday: Snow predicted overnight, but daycare opens as usual, to everyone's relief.

Grand total of maybe 2 inches of snow for the week, two days of daycare lost, and two late mornings. The local school district was closed four out of five days.


Now, of course, a week later, there's been all sorts of snow in Oregon, and if daycare wasn't already closed for the holiday, I'm sure it'd have been closed every day. Happily, we are in Maine now, close to the other Portland, and even when 14 inches of snow fall overnight, the streets are plowed before the workday starts, and NOTHING IS CLOSED. Business as usual, except for the huge mountains of snow in the middle of Main Street. Hooray for the East Coast!

appreciating

Cook and I are trying to appreciate two things for the next 4 months: 

1) Time with no baby! Child-free time in the evenings, going to bed in our own room with no kids.  Free time that's actually free. Reading books. Taking a shower without having to rush. Feeling okay about spending a full 8 hours at work.

2) Time with a kid who's got 4 grand years of experience under her belt! No diapers. No naps. Asking her to do something (get dressed, peel a tangerine, put on shoes, put away toys, entertain herself while we make dinner, answer the phone, etc.) and having her do it.  Understanding what she wants. Not having to carry her everywhere. Trying to explain Zeno's Paradox and having her understand a tiny little bit. Listening to her prattle.

Four precious months! 

knocking

Since I'm home due to Portland's inability to handle snow (daycare was cancelled due to PREDICTED SNOW), I'm surfing the internets. No, not getting ready for our epic holiday vacation. Not cleaning the house to prepare for the insanity of the next six months. The internets are way more fun.

Except also not fun. I blundered onto a blog called Knocked Up, Knocked Down, about pregnancy loss, and then onto a zine on the topic.  Reading these articles pointed out to me how hateful pregnancy can be for people who cannot get pregnant, or who have lost a child. One of my  friends expressed to me (in a nice way) some jealousy that I am embarking on my second kid, when she wants a kid more than anything.  I actually have experienced a faint shadow of this - when I see a pregnant woman, or a woman with more than one kid, I am jealous of them. Even though I don't WANT more than two kids, I have this weird reproductive jealousy. It must be hardwired.

But is is strange to know that now that my pregnancy is showing (though still muffled enough in fat that strangers hesitate to ask), I am a walking, complaining reminder for some people of the fertility that they wish for. With this pregnancy, as with the last, I try not to talk about it much unless I know I have an interested (or at least tolerant) audience, and I definitely avoid the smug-looking belly-rub maneuver. That's just annoying, regardless of the parenting/fertility status of the people around you. But... it's hard not to feel smug and excited about your tucked-away baby-to-be. It's hard not to reach out for the mysterious baby-to-be when it's wiggling around your insides.* It's hard to imagine how it would feel to lose a baby, to want a baby, and to have to watch other people gestating happily (or whinily) away.  Since I can't imagine, I think that the best I can do is pay attention, read the stories, not take anything about this pregnancy for granted, and not complain so much about how much I hate being pregnant. I'm lucky to have this pregnancy, with all its minor irritations, and I will be lucky to have a baby at the end. 

* Unless it's pretending your bladder is a trampoline, in which case you want to give it a timeout. 

Sad.

Thanks for trying, everybody. Unfortunately, our new Secretary of Agriculture is... Tom Vilsack. We can expect him to come to work every day to diligently represent the needs of Cargill and Monsanto.

Snow Day

It snowed about an inch and a half yesterday morning. Therefore, Dutch and I are home today, because her daycare is closed.* Here are some photos from yesterday, when Cook taught Dutch the fine art of snowball battling.





















































* Portland has no capacity to handle snow - the streets don't get plowed and people don't even shovel their sidewalks. When there is snow on the road, all vehicles are required to have chains on. When it snows, the city shuts down. City employees are required to work today (so you have to take time off to take care of your children, because all the schools are closed), but are encouraged to come by public transit... you can stop laughing now, Midwesterners and East Coasters.

Logorrhea for Eternity

Cook, in the early days of our relationship, charmed me with a story of how yakkety he was as a child. Apparently he used to stall bedtime by inviting his parents to sit at the foot of his bed "to have a nice chat." Aww. He's still seriously yakkety, in his weird introverted way.

Dutch, however, makes him look taciturn. She also makes him taciturn because she never stops talking long enough for anybody else to get a word in edgewise. Cook and I are pretty fried after this quarter of school, and we spent this morning lying around reading books and not-listening to Dutch while she carried on a continual monologue. We're often able to get away with using "Mmhmm," or "Hm?" or "Ah..." for a while, but somehow after four or five hours, even when virtually no participation is required of you, it starts to feel like you're being bludgeoned with a stick.

But we had a nice day. Dutch and I went downtown to see the big tree in Pioneer Courthouse Square (but mostly just to interrupt the flow of words), and ran into the end of Tuba Christmas. Dutch almost got crushed* by a mob swarming the hapless Starbucks lady giving out free samples, but we did score a tiny free cup of cocoa. Dutch bought another Playmobil figure. We went to the library. Dutch loudly pointed out homeless people to me and said wistfully "I wish nobody was homeless."** We went to the mall so I could pee, and Dutch played on the Reactrix, her favorite thing in downtown Portland. Then we went home. Dutch was great the whole time, and then she spent the rest of the day talking about our adventures and narrating an epic Playmobil drama including the motley assortment of figures she's collected so far (two zookeepers, one truck, a seal, a giraffe, two fairies, a horse, a cat, two rabbits, an equestrienne, a wheelbarrow, a bucket, three flowers, etc.).

I guess the point of this boring travelogue is that our free time tends to be framed by Dutch's constant narratives/monologues/conversation. It just never ever stops. Sometimes I think what I'd like most to steal from my old pre-parenting life (other than to be able to sleep past 7 AM) is the option of silence.



* Okay, not exactly crushed, but I did have to do some serious football-style blocking in order to extract her from the scrum.
** Later on we determined that she thinks there are 12 homeless people in the world.

Your mama is so old...

I was working on my umpteenth powerpoint presentation for school last week, and I realized that when I was doing my senior "comps" in college, we didn't use powerpoint. It may have existed, but only the army and Al Gore were using it. I made transparencies for my final presentation. I used an overhead projector. An overhead projector! And... we had email, but it was a text-command-interface email. We used reference books. Microfiche. Those of you who are not as incredibly old as I am will have no idea what I'm talking about.

I don't feel that old, but the technology I used as a young adult is now spectacularly antiquated. I can't even begin to imagine what kind of technology Dutch will use when she reaches the advanced age of 32.

labels

We're trying to come up with a name for our fetus. Cook and I barely managed to settle on a first and middle name for Dutch, and we never did even come close to agreeing on a boy's name. This time around, we have tentatively settled on a first name for a girl, but I don't know what we'll do if the kid turns out to be a boy. Today Dutch (who's been helpfully coming up with names like Snow White, Totoro, and Wall-E) suggested "Oats Corellian Scot," which must have come from some sort of Star Wars naming source.

Names are tough, though, even when you're inspired by Steven Spielberg. It's basically the only thing you can control about your kid, and even then they can change their name later on. (I insisted on being called "Heidi" for a while, and also "Tiffany."*) We'd like something not incredibly common, but not uncommon enough to attract bullying (which we fear will be attracted to our combined gene pool no matter what we name the kid). And it's hard not to feel like you've got to get the perfect one. When I wrote Dutch's name down on her birth certificate and social security application, I felt weird - when you meet people and hear their names, you experience those names as organic and part of the person, so actually assigning a name feels very artificial and awkward, and also sort of rude, like you're imposing a label on this tiny person. Also, when you announce to people your baby's brand-new name, there are invariably some negative responses...

Anyway, whatever we name this kid (and I'm still taking suggestions, folks), I'm sure you'll all be very positive about it. Little Oats will thank you.



* I liked that name before I moved to Connecticut and started at a new middle school, where I met the Evil Queen Tiffany. I guess, looking back on her, that she couldn't possibly have been as horrible as I remember her, but now I have a conditioned fear response to the name, and just typing it makes me feel kind of shaky.

Action Item!

Hey everybody!

Please go read this, and then go sign this petition.

It's important.

I'm done!

Just with school, I mean, and just for three and a half weeks. Hooray!