The Seasons of the Asterisk

Posted on November 7, 2011 by Jody

A little about me: I grew up in the cradle of civilization. No, not the one between the Tigris and the Euphrates rivers; rather, the one between the Monongahela and Ohio rivers. The tri-state area is Pennsylvania, Ohio, and West Virginia, and we are a breeding ground for professional football players. I’ve seen Joe Montana’s retired football jersey at Ringgold High; my childhood Sundays are associated with visits from Grandma and Dad organizing his duffel bag for the game. My dad has had season tickets to the Steelers since the year I was born, and in that time, has missed maybe a season’s worth of games. My sister and brother both inherited the football gene, which is to say, they were born knowing about “downs” and “holding” and “safety.” They know why they say “hut” and they’ve understood false start since before they went to school.

Image from PittsburghSportsReport.com

I was born with the “go into the kitchen and make pizza” gene, which is what my mom had.

Once, during one of my few attempts to understand the game, I asked what they did at the stadium during commercials. My sister laughed until she cried, and then retold my question at numerous family functions, with my dad jumping in and embellishing by imagining people walking out onto the field with “Flic My Bic” signs. They never did tell me what happens during commercials, and it wasn’t until I attended my first pro game in 1999 that I found out what happens: nothing.

So I didn’t get football. Until 2005, when a fellow PA native saw in me the most wonderful kind of tabula rasa, someone who understood the culture and love of the Steelers, but who didn’t understand the game, so he took the entire season to teach me what I didn’t know. By the end of the season, I understand what all the words meant, although I still didn’t understand how everyone in the room but me could jump up simultaneously and yell “HOLDING!” But that was OK. I got football, mostly. And the Steelers won their first Super Bowl since before my brother was born. I cried with joy. My dad cried with me, because he was so thrilled that I finally shared something with him that I had never shared before.

This is me and Dave dancing the Pittsburgh Polka, Steelers version, after Super Bowl XL.

Fast forward five years. With a one-year-old around, we couldn’t get down to Dave’s every Sunday, but I still dressed in my dad’s old Franco Harris jersey during national games. And then we all found out that Big Ben, the slightly dopey yokel who somehow stumbled his way to a Super Bowl victory, was accused–for the second time–of sexual assault. As the details trickled out, people argued whether it was REALLY rape for a 250-pound 28-year-old man to have sex with a blind-drunk 19-year-old in a public bathroom.

I couldn’t have been more disgusted. At worst, he was a straight-up rapist who forced a girl to have sex with him after she’d said no. At best, he was a seriously idiotic asshole who got a girl wasted, had his friends stand guard, and then had sex with her in a public bathroom–all while, no doubt, wearing the prized ring that had made him so famous. I watched friends of mine from high school and college defend his actions on Facebook, vilifying the girl, saying maybe I just didn’t GET that he was a football star, and they’re just treated differently, and that makes it somehow excusable. And besides, she was wasted.

I got wasted in college, I told them. Did I deserve to be sexually assaulted?

Honestly? If he’d been a 22-year-old jackass in the same situation, I might have been willing to shake my head and just be disgusted. But he was 28, which is several years beyond the age of accountability and worlds away from college public-sex behavior. In the end, though, what really infuriated me was not that the charges were dropped, and not that the NFL penalized him with a slap on the wrist, but that the Steelers didn’t drop-kick his ass to the curb the moment any truth was found to the charges.

Why was I so bitterly disappointed? Because for my entire lifetime, I’d known one true thing about the Steelers: they don’t cotton to hiring criminals. They’re not OK with the appearance of evil in their players. They’re Not Like Other Teams. They’re a Family Team. They’ve booted players for having pot in their cars; the fact that they didn’t boot him for sexual misconduct has only one reason at the bottom of it: he makes them lots and lots of money. The only thing that would horrify me more is if I found out that Jim Henson had done what Roethlisberger did.

One of my friends, a lifetime Cowboys fan, put it best with gleeful malice: “Now those sanctimonious Steelers fans have to admit they ALL hire criminals.” Of course. Other teams have dealt–or not dealt–with this for years: murderers, rapists, dopers, dog abusers and cheaters… they’re everywhere. But they weren’t in Pittsburgh.

All last season, I couldn’t watch a single game with any shred of joy. My dad freely said he didn’t care–he just wanted them to win. My sister weighed in that she thought Ben had shown himself to change, and even I grudgingly had to admit that any reports from people seemed to support that.*** But I couldn’t shake my feeling of betrayal: I never understood the game like they did. I never got out of victories what they did. All I’d known for thirty years was the emotional connection to the Steelers, not about winning or what makes them great or anything besides they’re a good team, with mostly good people, and great owners. So I think that had a great deal to do with not shaking the tainted feeling I got every time I saw the offense run out onto the field. Every good play had an asterisk: Good play, but not really.

I skipped the big Super Bowl party, claiming pregnancy as my excuse. I watched the last quarter of the game, and found myself cheering for the Steelers in spite of myself. I was glad the Packers won, but still–I cheered for the Steelers. 35 years of conditioning is hard to overcome.

Last night, the Steelers played the Ravens, a long-time rivalry dating back to when the Ravens were the Browns. Flush with the new space afforded by our Murphy bed, we invited friends over to watch the game. I dressed Gillian in her Steelers sleeper, Eliza in her Steelers hoodie. I wore my Steelers t-shirt. And I felt OK about it. As I cooked a giant pot of Sunday gravy with meatballs, I caught maybe five minutes of the game, and that was OK. The Steelers lost, and that was kind of good, but not satisfying. (We agreed a perfect ending to that game would have been Big Ben and alleged murderer Ray Lewis colliding and causing career-ending injuries to both players.)

Halfway through the game last night, I was keeping the girls occupied in Gillian’s crib, and saw them giggling and playing in their gear, and thought: I can do this. I can live with an asterisk. After all, didn’t I leave the church for awhile in college, avoiding Christmas mass and all things Christmas, and then come back to it when I realized Christmas meant more to me than whether the savior of humanity may or may not have been born that day? I lost one piece of Christmas, but I didn’t have to lose all of it.

From now until Roethlisberger’s exit, Steelers victories will continue to have an asterisk. They’re not the team they purported to be. They’re condoning what is, at best, colossally reprehensible behavior, and at worst, a crime surpassed only by murder. But Heinz Ward isn’t that guy, nor is Troy Polamalu. I can’t bring myself to cheer for him, but I can root for the other guys. I can’t give up a lifetime of family tradition because of the actions of one horrible person, and the act of the people in charge.

A few years back, I attended the August 6, 2007 home Giants game, when everyone was on watch for Barry Bonds’ 756th home run. He didn’t hit it that night, but I remember feeling so thrilled to maybe be able to witness it… but also feeling a little relieved when it didn’t happen. Maybe he won’t hit it after all, I thought. He did, of course–the next night, the bastard–and I was kind of excited to be here for that part of the city’s history. But not really, because he had a big ol’ asterisk in the shape of a needle besides his name, and always will.

A t-shirt for sale during Bonds' last season.

When we won the World Series last year, though, without Bonds and his amped-up biceps, his needles and his home runs? THAT was fantastic. And I can look forward to the day when Roethlisberger is gone, and the games are asterisk-less, and we can all wear the black and gold with pride again.

If they were older, no, I wouldn't let him near them.

*** My sister Samantha commented on Facebook and the comment didn’t transfer here, so I wanted to give her her say: “I did not say that Ben had definitively changed. I said that I liked to believe that people, including Ben, are capable of changing. That doesn’t make what happened (either the at best or at worst case scenarios) any less stomach-turning. And I still like it better when they win.” I remembered her saying that people around him had testified that he seemed to have changed, and that she believed he was capable of it. I didn’t mean to misrepresent what she said–she was as disgusted with the whole thing as I was!

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Murphy Bed: A Photo Story, Or Project Last Stand

Posted on November 1, 2011 by Jody

Project Last Stand has begun. Phase I is the installation of a Murphy bed and the reclamation of 40 precious square feet in our bedroom nee sunroom. Phase II may be the purchase of a car. We’ll see how far the bed gets us.

We started shopping for the Murphy bed in catalogues and retail stores and realized right quick we were outpriced out of the gate. They range from $3,000 to $10,000, and our budget was $800 to $2000 at the very top end. My main requirements were: 1) Opens; 2) Closes; 3) Won’t fall. So $10k seemed a bit pricey.

(A friend of ours, the terrific architect Paul Baird, designed this mama for a client. I won’t say the exact price, but it was roughly 20 times our budget. But it’s a Murphy bed that’s actually a ROOM. Like a WHOLE ROOM.)

Our friend Kristen, of SF Space Angels, gave us a few names for contractors. One of them, of Squidbuild, answered us, and gave us an extraordinarily reasonable quote. We were a little worried, quality-wise, but figured that the construction is actually pretty straightforward, and the main reason for hiring someone was so that David wouldn’t have to spend three days swearing and paining his back.

So Sunday morning, we cleared the mattress into the hallway.

Like a stage in our own home!

Then we cleared out all the stuff under our bed–no easy feat, since we built a bed specifically for the extra storage. And David took apart the bed. What do you do with two sheets of plywood in a small apartment, by the by?

She does love her toolset.

Then we remembered what the room looked like before we moved in.

Is that... space?

 

Then Aaron arrived, and we went to SFMoMA and enjoyed their excellent Sunday family programs. We watched Harold and the Purple Crayon on a big screen whilst laying on beanbag chairs, played peekabo in the sculpture garden, and only weathered a few serious toddler cloudbursts.

At 5 PM, we arrived home, exhausted. David helped Aaron load the mattress onto the bed–apparently without sixty pounds of mattress, the hydraulic hardware doesn’t really stay open–and I vacuumed. And vacuumed. And also dusted. Tip: if someone’s coming to your house to do installation work, and he says he’s doing all the cutting before arrival, make sure to cover everything within a breeze’s distance, anyway. Otherwise you’ll likely be picking sawdust out of your kid’s felt sandwich bread for several days.

Once we were cleaned up, locked and loaded, though, we had this:

The straps keep the bedclothes from sliding.

And with a bit of a heave and only a tiny bit of ho, we pushed the bed into its box, locked the legs back, and had this.

Like a big cabinet that sleeps two.

See all that stuff in front of it? That’s a rug. And also floor space. Loads of floor space smack in the middle of our most heavily-traversed room. Eliza roamed around like a pony newly loosed into a meadow. David and I couldn’t quite compute that after several years of discussing it, we finally did it: we got a Murphy bed.

Opening and closing it is no more difficult than making the bed. The only real difference, sleep-wise, is that my head is under the box part, so I don’t have direct access to my alarm clock. I’ve had to move a small end table over to my side of the bed for nighttime, a temporary solution that will soon be remedied. We also need to do something about the Elfa drawers and wall unit–likely a full-size curtain instead of a piece of fabric hanging limply. And I want to paint the bed the same color as the wall so it blends in.

But lookit that, wouldja? Our bedroom is a sunroom again. Except at night, when it’s not.

P.S. If you’re interested in DIY, here’s the kit he used for the Murphy bed mechanism. It’s called Create-a-Bed and sells for only $299. And by Aaron’s account, the instructions are excellent.

Posted in Apartment, Bedroom, Furniture | Tagged , , | 1 Comment

Product Reviews: GoGo Babyz Kidz Travelmate and Sunshine Kids Radian 65 Carseat

Posted on October 16, 2011 by Jody

Stand by for more product reviews this week–and not all kid stuff!

A major problem to be solved by carless urban parents is: How do we get the carseat and the kid to the car? We use CityCarShare and ZipCar–public transportation just doesn’t always cut it–and for the first year, it was a cinch: plenty of strollers are made to accommodate an infant carseat. Strap into the carseat, lock into the stroller, and then just unlock and install into the car.

Once they’re past infant size, though, the carseats get gargantuan, and stay that way until they move into booster seats at 60 pounds. Based on its “foldable” feature, we ponied up $230 and bought the Sunshine Kids Radian 65. The Sunshine Kids website features a woman with this carseat cheerfully slung over her back, and this woman apparently is a vampire slayer, because that is the only explanation for smiling while carrying the Radian 65. When it folds, it’s only slightly smaller than it is open, and its steel frame tips it in at 23 pounds. In this case, at least, foldable does not equal portable. Throw in there that it’s a monster to install and we hate the evil thing.

No wonder it's so heavy. It's eight feet tall.

The main issue with installing it is the top tether, which is required for stability. You can shorten and lengthen the length of the tether, but the buckle at the Y of the tether is not adjustable. Because we install it every time we go anywhere, and often install it in different cars, this creates a problem that can only be solved by sounding like Chef Ramsay on a bad night. If the headrest doesn’t extend more than a half inch from the seat–and many don’t–it’s virtually impossible to pull the tether tight enough, because the Y-buckle won’t pull all the way under the headrest. Because the placement of the Y is locked, we can’t tighten it closer to the carseat, or loosen it so it goes around the entire headrest. Because of the tether issue, the LATCH system is no easier or faster than just using the plain ol’ seatbelt. We timed it, several times.

Caveat to that rant: in some cars, like the Honda Fit, we can install this in less than four minutes. The headrest goes up high enough for the buckle to slip under. But in the low-headrest cars, no dice.

Got all that? No? Then just trust me: installing this beast every time you go somewhere could make you want to kill someone. We’ve started gauging our outing success on the number of swear words we say pre-departure.

On the upside, it’s narrower than most carseats, so it does store better than the really big ones would. And it’s undeniably safe–the steel frame makes it feel like an astronaut could break atmo and never flinch.

If you’re installing this once and leaving it in the car until the kid outgrows it, this would be a fine carseat, although the foldable feature would be pretty much useless at that point. But if you have to uninstall and install a carseat every time you get in the car, this may not be the best choice for you.

GoGo Babyz Kiz Travelmate

The one thing that’s made the Sunshine Kids seat tolerable is the GoGoBabyz Kidz Travelmate. (Worst name ever, by the by–always makes me think of smoothie names at Jamba Juice.) The idea’s pretty simple: make your carseat into a stroller. According to the reviews, most folks use the Travelmate for airports, and have complaints about it not fitting through security, and that it’s difficult to latch and unlatch in a hurry. We just use it to get the carseat to the garage, so we haven’t dealt with the airport situation.

Image from amazon.com

Note: do not attempt to fasten this without thoroughly reading the directions. We did this and ended up having to cut off a long strip of the strap because the buckle was poorly marked; their “quick release” is not always so quick. But our screwup didn’t make it unusable, and David has since become expert at sliding it through the seat belt hole in the carseat, slipping it through the buckle, and tightening it into place. He’s even managed it with Eliza asleep in the seat. It collapses fairly flat and small, so it doesn’t take up much space. My only complaint, other than the poor markings on the buckle, is that it costs $80. It’s essentially a rejiggered plastic hand truck.

We’re likely going to be buying a new carseat to replace the Radian, but when we do, we’ll continue using the Travelmate to get the stroller to the garage.

 

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Metro Shelving: The Bedroom Goes Industrial

Posted on October 8, 2011 by Jody

I keep saying we’ve been crazy around here, and we have been, but we’ve also been doing mad upgrades to the apartment, mostly in the form of Metro shelving. It’s not just for industrial kitchens anymore.

You might remember our former free-hanging closet in Eliza’s room, the one for which I made a curtain. Since then, this happened:

She doesn't actually sleep in it.

Of course, she still sleeps in her Pack’n'Play. And Gillian still sleeps in the hallway nursery. (The bonus of having a well-laid-out one bedroom is that we now have a three-bedroom.) But we’re working up to the toddler bed, and in the meantime, we had to shift around some furniture to continue upping our storage, increasing our closet space, and getting Eliza’s damned car seat out of sight.

So we did this.

Pay no attention to the carseat behind the curtain.

Obviously, I need to finish the second curtain. And we anchored it to the window sill, our version of seismic retrofitting. Behind that curtain is all of my dresses, David’s sports jackets, Eliza’s carseat, and a few other miscellaneous items.

This is a perfect example of why we love Metro shelving; it breaks down easily, goes up fast, and is eminently scalable and modular. It’s not cheap, but because it’s so storable, when we don’t use in the girls’ room, we can break it down and put it back up in a pantry. Or an office. Or a garage, should our life ever include any of those things.

All of her toys are on the bottom shelf, and the green Bigso box on the right contains her “dress up” clothes. All the blue Bigso boxes on the top are assorted storage items–my purses, our football jerseys, tchotchkes, and even some dishware.

I’m thinking about getting some fabric that matches the curtains here and sewing over the blackout curtains so the whole wall looks more uniform. I’d like to use the same fabric, but I’m not sure how much I want to spend. We’ll see.

Coming eventually: More Metro shelving. More Elfa. And a Murphy bed.

Posted in Apartment, Bedroom, Nursery, Organization | Tagged , | 1 Comment

Monday Quick Links, and a Prescription for Beauty

Posted on October 3, 2011 by Jody

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I keep saying I’ll post more often, and it just ain’t happenin’. I could’ve posted on Saturday night, but instead I made most of Eliza’s Halloween costume, which she then refused to wear. At all. They break your heart, don’t they?

But a few anniversaries are coming up on my favorite blogs, along with some other tidbits, so I figured I’d share.

Yellow Brick Home is a terrific small-space blog about a couple tricking out their small apartment in Chicago. The difference between them and us is that they own, they’re extremely crafty, and their babies are furry. Check out their fourth-year anniversary post here.

Also, Regretsy celebrates its cotton anniversary today. I started reading it when I was on maternity leave with Eliza, and haven’t stopped ROTFLMAOing since. She’s a little bit mean, a little good-hearted, and a whole lotta funny.

Happy Anniversary, Meanies!

Lastly, autumn has officially arrived for most of the Northern Hemisphere (in these parts we’re just hitting summer), and it might be time to shake up the homestead a bit. One of my favorite design philosophies is Wabi Sabi, a tough-to-describe Japanese aesthetic that is about respecting and venerating the old, while including the new; recognizing impermanence, imperfection, and incompleteness, and recognizing it as good.

In other words: a renter’s dream.

The best American parallel is “shabby chic,” although that’s not right, either. It’s the beautifully tarnished vase holding fresh flowers; the well-made, but chipped, walnut picture frame. (Read about it and you’ll see that everyone says that, by the way: “It’s kind of like… but not really.”) In any case, of of my favorite wabi-sabi ideas is changing out your artwork by season–kind of like pulling out the Christmas decorations, but doing it on a smaller scale, four times a year instead of once. Put away the summery field-of-flowers and put up a beautiful autumnal tree; replace the green pillow covers with pumpkin-colored patterns; that sort of thing. Mix up the chi a little. Of course, living in a small place, storing all the artwork might be tough, so my advice for today? Dig out a battered pitcher or vase you’ve been meaning to a) get rid of; or b) use again; and then go out and buy a beautiful bouquet of autumn flowers. Put them on a neglected shelf (the one with a layer of dust because it’s been that long since you moved anything).

And if you can’t do that, go here and buy an autumn wallpaper for your work computer. It may not brighten up the space like daffodils, but it’ll feel right for those waning hours of early sunset. And get you in the mood for Halloween, to boot.

Image from FeaturePics.com

 

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The Worst Picnic Ever

Posted on September 24, 2011 by Jody

You won’t believe me. You’ll look at the pictures and think, good lord, she’s ungrateful, or delusional, and does she ever do anything but complain? But pictures LIE. They show smiles where a moment before there were tears. Angled right, they hide zits, muffin tops, spilled drinks, and occasionally wild raccoons. Which is why I think it’s so important that I put this down for posterity.

Also: if you have no children, but have friends that do, and you wonder why they always want to do the same things all the time, why they keep to a schedule and only ever go to the same places and say annoying things like, “No can do, because that’s naptime”? Read and learn.

Last weekend, we had a bit of a heat wave in San Francisco, which is to say, it got above 78 and stayed there for 48 hours straight. No bone-chilling Pacific winds to carry away the day’s warmth, no fog, just three perfect days of glorious warmth and sunshine.

The entrance to the Golden Gate. Ah, San Francisco.

Lovely, eh? Reminds us of why we live in a small place paying rent higher than some of my friends’ mortgages.

We love picnicking, as you know, and just the week before, we went on an impromptu picnic with friends to McLaren Park, a lovely spot in a part of the city I’d never visited. It was brilliant: Eliza flew her first kite, played with a dog, and while we froze our butts off, it was a swell way to wind down the weekend. So when the temperature went up 15 degrees and we had another Sunday, David suggested we grab the backpack and head out again.

“Lafayette Park?” I asked.

“We always go there. Let’s go across the bridge. Maybe Rodeo Beach.”

This was the first mistake. Really, it was our only mistake. We always go to Lafayette Park, yes, but it’s because they have a lovely fenced-in green space we call the Toddler Run. We can sit and enjoy our baguette and cheese while Eliza runs her little butt off and, in every direction, eventually stops at a chain link fence. It’s perfect, and since we didn’t have two extra friends to keep her busy, we can enjoy ourselves.

We’d been to Rodeo Beach once before, on a chilly but nice day, but Eliza was still being carted around in her infant carseat, and what I remembered most about the picnic spot was not the lovely marsh and bird-watching it brought, but the fact that it was a 30-foot-wide strip abutted on one side by a lake, and the other by a row of parked cars. The other side of that? The only road to the actual beach itself.  But I didn’t want to sound like a boring freakout mom,and the spot was lovely, so we went.

The parking spaces were full. The traffic was fairly constant. The picnic spot was sunny, shadeless, and our little San Francisco native really wanted nothing to do with any of it. She preferred to play in the car, or at least around the cars, and occasionally, she made a break for the road. When she was in the sun, she whined and ran back for the cars.

I just hope she’s the moody kind of vampire, not the soulless evil kind.

Don't look at the sweet bonding moment. Look at the cars, and how close they are.

So began 45 minutes of tag-teaming out to play Chase-the-Toddler. At one point a fellow picnicker began banging a stick against a cypress tree to chase away a hissing, bold raccoon, and she finally stopped when a passerby mentioned that raccoons, being nocturnal creatures, are usually not so aggressive in the daytime, and so she should lay off because it was probably rabid. At another point, I turned around to get something from the backpack and then had to beat into a full run before Eliza wandered into traffic. Walk. Chase. Pick up. Head back. Cry. Rinse. Repeat. At the point when she began screaming bloody murder and the other patrons of the park started staring, we packed up. I mean, seriously, kid. I was only bloodily murdering you a little bit.

Sweet baby's head is blocking the cypress tree that housed the possibly rabid raccoon.

The moment I strapped her into the carseat, though, she stopped crying. It was in the shade, you see.

Heading back to the city, David and I sat sullenly for a bit, longing for the days when we could just head out and bask in the sunshine, chase-free, for hours at a time. Then this happened:

Best part of the day.

So we took advantage and tooled around the city for an extra 45 minutes, enjoying a Sunday drive like my grandparents used to in their Buick, and marveling at the beauty of our home.

The white dots are sailboats. Life of Riley!

The moment we got home and unpacked, David turned to me and said, “We should’ve gone to Lafayette Park.”

Habits exist for a reason, folks, and sometimes that reason is self-preservation.

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OK, kid. Time to grow up.

Posted on September 18, 2011 by Jody

NOTE: Goodness, re-reading this the morning after, I sound like such a Negative Nellie. And how am I repaid for my annoyance toward my youngest love? It’s almost 9 AM and I’m at home, and EVERYONE is still sleeping. Shame on me, shame!

I just heard of Parkinson’s Law recently, and it’s this: Work expands to fill the time allotted. And I’ll bet you that no parent knows that like a preemie parent.

Back in March, when our little Gill came two months early, we knew we’d be in for a longer year than we expected. Coming two months early doesn’t mean your schedule bumps up two months; it just means you get two more months of babyhood. You deal with something called “adjusted age”: subtract the number of weeks your kid is early, and that’s her real age. Which is a little weird, especially until she reaches her due date, because you’re saying things like, “Six weeks. Well, really, negative two weeks.”

Granted, she’s perfectly healthy, adorable, yadda yadda yadda. She didn’t have to be on a ventilator like many preemies; she was the star of the NICU for three weeks, amazing all the doctors with her ability to breathe, eat, poop, and sleep like a baby who wasn’t born at 32 weeks gestation. Now, at six months old, she rolls over front to back, sits up in a Bumbo, is enchanted with her bird mobile and finds nose-rubbies hilarious. And her favorite thing to look at is, I think, her big sister.

But good lord, kid. Grow UP, already.

She's got a stripe in her eye, too.

Contrary to the calendar, she’s not six months old. She’s four months old. A pretty well-developed four-month-old, I should add. Eliza didn’t sit up in the Bumbo so well at four months. But… I have pictures of Eliza on my phone at six months, and she’s sitting up on her own, smiling for the camera; she’s wearing a supercute little pinafore and shoes and a yellow sweater. She had two teeth and her favorite food was pureed spinach.

In other words: the girl was earning her keep.

I adore Gillian, of course.  I love how she kicks wildly when she sees my face up close from the vantage point of the changing table. I love her giggles when David pokes his nose into her cheek, which is inexplicably ticklish. I love that everyone says she looks like me. I especially love how her face beams like a lighthouse when Eliza bends down to poke her in the nose. But we’re just getting tired of her infancy, that’s all.

The thing is, with Eliza, the timeline looked like this:

  • Weeks 1-6: She doesn’t sleep much but she hardly cries. Thank god we don’t have a colicky baby.
  • Weeks 6 – 9: OH MY GOD SHUT UP WHAT’S WRONG WHAT IS WRONG WITH HER AM I POISONING HER?
  • Weeks 10 – Five months: God, I wish she’d just SLEEP.
  • Five months on: We have the cutest baby in the whole wide world.

With Gillian, it’s been more:

  • Weeks 1-3: Hospital NICU. Breeze.
  • Weeks 4 – 12: She’s so mellow. She sleeps for four to five hours at a time. I wish she wouldn’t barf so much, though.
  • Four months to five months: She rolled over EARLY for her age! Brilliant! I wish she wouldn’t barf so much, though.
  • Six months: I really. Wish. She wouldn’t. Barf. So. Much.

I remember being on hospital bedrest, writing about how the first two days were kind of easy, just because we had to power through the first 48 hours. Get through two days, and her lungs will be perfecto! Problem was, of course, that I made it through the first 48 hours just fine, and then I lay there in limbo, waiting. And waiting. And not even waiting very long, but by the time they rolled me into the OR for my C-section, I was thanking the gods for the infection I’d gotten. Six days on bedrest and I was done. I’d have made a crappy spy.

See it? It's right there.

I feel like that’s where we are now. Every parent goes through the awful hazing of the first three months, the sleeplessness, the exhaustion, the crying, the baby’s crying–all of it compounded, of course, by however many other kids live in your house. But at the end of that is the shining light of babyhood: at six months, you’ll get real kid clothes, solid foods and solid poop, sitting up and rolling around and working toward crawling.

I feel like we’ve been stuck at four months old for three months now. I’m starting to not want to pick up and cuddle my baby because I know it’s going to end in a trail of barf running down my arm and onto my pants. She’s strong–so strong!–strong enough to do a full cobra and then contract into near-downward dog, all at 5:14 AM while I’m begging her to please, please go to sleep. She’s still only 14 pounds, which makes her too small for night-weaning and, therefore, sleep training. We’re thinking about moving on to rice cereal, but then my mind plays games: is four months too young for rice cereal? Or is her belly more like five months? Or six? If I feed her rice cereal, will she keep it down better? Or will the barf just get really gross? She’s been so close to rolling over for weeks and weeks, and I keep thinking she’s going to do it, but she doesn’t, so does that mean she’s behind? Or ahead?

Every baby has an eight-week window of development; there’s a range of skills, because every infant develops differently. But her window is more like 20 weeks. She’s either a month ahead or a month behind. Eight weeks behind or just right. Thank god she’s a second kid, or we’d really be going bananas.

My sister-in-law had a barfy baby and assured us he grew out of it at six months. Great, I thought. She’ll be six months old when she’s eight months old. Right in time for the holidays. Please, Gillygirl: be six months old at eight months for mommy.

OK, you win. Darned cute baby.

 

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Friday Links!

Posted on September 16, 2011 by Jody

Here are a few clicks to get you through the weekend!

The Womb Chair

Where’s Ann Margret when you need her?

Image from SFGate. Article, too!

570 Square Feet of Beauty

I think I require that chair to live.

From Apartment Therapy. Le sigh.

 

Missoni Target, Roller-Derby Style

A hilarious look at Alix of ModernKiddo’s mad dash for the zigzag

From ModernKiddo.com

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A Tale of Four Strollers

Posted on September 9, 2011 by Jody

I’m mad hectic these days, but I’m trying to, at the very least, take some pictures of what’s happening lately at the RocketDigs. One thing is lots of shifting of stuff. Another thing is erecting Metro shelving, and also a toddler bed, and more computer items. But I thought I’d share a picture of the closet in Eliza’s room, and how we finally Shifted Enough Stuff that all of our strollers (count’em, four) fit into her closet.

I majored in Tetris.

That’s an infant Graco Snugride 32 carseat, a Graco Quattro Tour Sport something-or-other, a double stroller, also Graco, that fits the carseat, a Snap’n'Go, also that fits the carseat, and a cheapass Walgreen’s umbrella stroller that replaces the nice Chicco umbrella stroller that someone stole and I have personally cursed.  Not shown: Eliza’s Radian carseat and GoGo Baby Kidz Travelmate, which are finally hidden away in the Metro shelving we’ll be displaying at some point.

Bottom line: when you have no car, the crap’s gotta go somewhere, and you better have a way to get it to where you’re going.

Posted in Bedroom, Kids, News, Nursery, Organization | Tagged , , | 2 Comments

Rocket Taco Tip of the Day

Posted on September 6, 2011 by Jody

Whilst pulling out the Pyrex brownie dish and dreading the prospect of carefully balancing taco shells against each other, I saw our V-shaped roasting rack and came up with my best idea since wondering if Lucca Ravioli sold stuffed shells:

In the words of John Hodgeman: You're welcome.

Sherri Howe liked this post
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