Artificial Sweetener is the Devil

Day Eight PB

2011-11-18T13:42:00.000-08:00

Days seven to eight showed no improvement and contained no developments worth noting. No progress seen in length of time from placement of subject in "bed" to onset of REM state.

Day Eight:

1:20 pm: Subject fatigued from lack of nap on previous day coupled with extreme delay in onset of evening REM state. Subject provided six ounces of organic whole milk. Subject instructed to transport bed covering and small plush toy equine ("Aurora") to "bed." Subject complied. Subject placed in "bed." #1 remained with subject, alternating soothing with folk songs for span of fifteen minutes.

1:35 pm: Subject asleep. Considerable improvement.

Thank God.

Day Five PB

2011-11-13T22:43:00.000-08:00

2:00 pm: Typical naptime onset resumed. Subject provided six ounces whole milk. Subject attempted to negotiate cessation of naptime. Subject repeated assertions of being, "not ready to be a big girl" as well as "not tired." Attempt failed. Subject placed in "bed" accompanied by #1. #1 followed typical protocol of comfort by presence, soothing and random assortment of folk songs. Subject resisted. Following thirty minute period of increasing level of subject activity, #1 departed with instructions for subject to remain "in bed." Subject declined to follow instructions, instead removed to doorway to exhort #1 and #2 to "come snuggle." #1 replaced subject in "bed" and remained.

3:00 pm: Subject asleep. Mild improvement.

9:15 pm: Subject provided six ounces whole milk. Subject placed in bed by #2. #2 followed typical protocol. Subject resisted onset of REM state by a combination of vigorous and sustained physical activity and recitation (extemporaneous) for a period of thirty minutes. #2 departed with instructions for subject to stay in "bed." Subject resisted and removed to doorway to demand presence of #1. #1 declined but followed with detailed instructions for subject to remain in "bed" until a set time when #1 would join subject. Subject complied. #1 removed to "bed" to sing folk songs and "snuggle." Subject restless. #1 instructed subject to assume an appropriately prostrate position or suffer the removal of #1. Subject complied, briefly. Subject initiated extended recitation (extemporaneous) while attempting to insert one or more digits into nostrils of #1. #1 reasserted instructions. Subject non-compliant. #1 departed with words of comfort.

10:45 pm: Subject quiet, REM state unlikely. Sounds of thumping in region of "bed." No improvement.

Day Four (Part 2) PB

2011-11-12T22:56:00.000-08:00

9:30 pm: Subject's bedtime moved back by thirty minutes. Subject fatigued and irritable, partly due to cleansing routine involving apparently undesirable attention to hair and partly due to subject's desire to remain unclothed indefinitely and the impossibility of acquiescence by #1 and #2 due to median air temperature. Subject given six ounces whole milk. #2 attempted to induce somnolence in subject by combination of presence, soothing and recitation of narrative (extemporaneous). Subject unwilling, demanded presence of #1. #1 continued course of presence (in "bed"), soothing and subject's choice of folk song(s). Subject surprisingly alert. #1 ceased presence and soothing when subject commenced licking of #1's nasal region while repeating vigorous contact of subject's forehead to that of #1. #1 removed to floor. Subject demanded extensive narrative dictating possible contents of subconscious during REM state. Subject stated list of "dream contents" "not good enough." #1 provided expressions of affection and removed to lower level of lab.

11:00 pm: Subject silent, possibly in REM state. Improvement of thirty minutes from previous evening.

Days One through Three PB (Post-Binky)

2011-11-12T14:27:00.000-08:00

Day One:

9:00 pm: Subject given six ounces of whole organic milk as part of ritualized evening dairy consumption. Subject placed on horizontal sleeping apparatus ("bed") and investigator #1("mother," heretofore known as #1) explained process of removal of soothing aid (heretofore known as "binky") from nighttime routine. Subject vociferously objects, stating that, "she's not ready to be a big girl," despite assertions earlier in day of readiness. #1 sings random selection of British and American folk songs in attempt to soothe subject. Effort fails. #1 calls in investigator #2 ("father," heretofore known as #2). #2 repeats attempts of #1 while subject exhibits considerable distress, evidenced by increasingly vociferous lacrimatory expressions. #1 and #2 alternate periods of presence and soothing with periods of isolation. Isolation coupled with verbal reassurances from a distance of ten feet. Subject fatigued but unwilling to remain in "bed" until #1 occupies "bed" with her.

11:00 pm: Subject asleep.

Day Two:

2:00 pm: Subject given six ounces of organic milk. #1 repeats description of experiment. Subject again states unwillingness to participate. #1, without the aid of #2, who is not present, attempts to soothe subject in similar manner to previous evening. Attempts unsuccessful. Subject escalates into pyrexia. #1 provides subject with six ounces of water. Subject refuses. #1 remains with subject in "bed" with no periods of isolation.

3:30 pm: Subject asleep. Improvement over previous evening by thirty minutes.

Day Three:

9:00 pm: #2 proceeds with experiment without presence of #1. Anecdotal evidence suggests that subject exhibited similar behaviors to previous day.

10:30 pm: #1 returns to lab and proceeds to provide subject with soothing interspersed with random folk song selections while occupying "bed" with subject. Subject awake but tractable.

11:00 pm: Subject asleep. No improvement over previous evening.

Day Four:

1:00 pm: Due to extreme delay of onset of sleep cycle of previous three evenings, subject extremely fatigued, irritable and intractable. Attempts to induce daytime sleep cycle moved up one hour. Subject given six ounces of organic milk. #1 and #2 attempt by role play to introduce to subject replacement of dependency on "binky" with plush, irregularly shaped toy bearing initial of subject that subject can utilize when experiencing emotional distress. Attempt seemingly successful. Subject placed in "bed". Replacement toy rejected and hurled across lab with considerable force, indicating unwillingness to transfer dependance. #1 repeats folk songs and remains with subject in "bed."

1:45 pm: Subject asleep. Considerable improvement over previous evening.

Experiment ongoing.

Big Girl

2011-07-11T22:40:00.000-07:00

We set up Viv's big bed tonight. She climbed out of her crib last week, so we thought it was finally time. We put her down an hour and a half ago. She told us to leave her room and go downstairs, so we said good night and left. Sitting in his office, Christian heard the thump...thumpthumpthumpthumpTHUMP of her feet hitting the floor and dashing to the door, then excitedly wrenching it open. He went upstairs to find her naked from the waist down, saying that she wanted to pee on the potty. He let her, but nothing happened, pee-wise, so he re-diapered her and put her back to bed. More thumping a few minutes later, this time in ended with her descending the stairs to tell me that she was "nudie-patootie." I brought her back upstairs and let her pee on the potty, this time successfully. I put her back in bed, laid with her in the dark for a few minutes and told her several times that she was not allowed to get out of bed, and that she could only get up when I came to get her in the morning. I asked her if she understood. "Mmm-hmm," she assured me. I asked her to repeat what I said. "Um, I can get up when it's summer time, but it's not summer time right now because it's dark, but there are stars that will come out in summer time." Well, sure. So, I repeated what I had said and didn't leave until she repeated it back to me, with only short stream-of-consciousness detours along the way. However, I was not surprised to hear her door open again. I went back upstairs and told her that I would not be leaving until she fell asleep.

I laid down on the bed and started to sing, and she reached out her hand to pet my hair comfortingly. She whispered, "Say 'Daddy'." "What?" I replied, not understanding. "Call for Daddy!" She explained. I told her that Daddy was cleaning the bird cages and that it was time for her to sleep. This was our conversation over the next few minutes:

V: I can't sleep.
S: Are you too excited?
V: Yes, I'm too excited.
S: Well, just pretend to sleep.
V (looking surprised): What?
S: Close your eyes and pretend to sleep.
V: I can't close my eyes. They're too little to close.
S: No, they're just the right size to close.
V (kicking off her blankets): I don't want any blankets. They aren't needed.
S: Fine. You'll be cold, but go to sleep.
V (waiting five seconds, then covering me with blankets, giggling): Hide! I'm hiding you!
S: I'm going to count to three, and then I'm going to lay you down. One...two...do you want me to lay you down?
V: Yes!

This went on for five more minutes, with requests for rocking and another pee break, before I sternly told her that she was absolutely not allowed to get out of bed until I came for her in the morning. So now she's singing to herself and kicking the wall, but at least her feet aren't on the floor.

Beautiful

2011-04-04T20:36:00.000-07:00

In preparation for the next 20 years, I'm reading Cinderella Ate My Daughter, a look at the current aggressively pink girly-girl culture, as the author aptly calls it, and the impact it has on girls, especially very young ones. The impetus for the book was the author, Peggy Orenstein, having a daughter who flung herself unencouraged into princess fantasies, even while the author attempted to keep the "beauty first" mindset out of her child's developmental life.

The book asks disquieting questions that have been coming to my mind, as well, as Christian and I raise Viv. We are careful to sparingly use words that would value her appearance over her intellect, which has been far harder than I expected. She's just so damn cute, and it's the simplest thing in the world to comment on her apparel or hairstyle and not think what, if any, repercussions that will have on what she thinks we value in her later. To me, being told that I looked pretty or lovely or even just nice was the highest compliment I could ever be paid. I didn't care if I were smart until after Anne of Green Gables, and that was too late. I only knew that other girls had the gene that seemed to tell them what to wear, how to be thin, what to say, and I didn't have it, and because of that, no one would ever like me. I was supposed to wear makeup, Mom did, Tina did, other girls did, but I hated it. I always felt grubby wearing it, and I couldn't touch my face, which was impossible as I was always trying to hide behind my hands as well as my oversized clothes, as my weight was the albatross following me all my life.

This issue of weight and body image is the most resonating for me in the book. Ms. Orenstein discusses how a friend has a chubby daughter, who has always been chubby and probably always will be. A healthy kid, but one whose parents have to control her portions and ignore her constant pleas for food. As a fat person, I find that I feel towards Viv the author's gratitude over her own child's current slender size. This relief, however temporary, makes me worry, as it does the author, that we are already valuing this slenderness in our children too much. Is it that we don't want our children to be teased in preschool, or is it that we want to look with pride at our children who are more attractive than we are ourselves? I can take no genetic pride in my child's looks, and she doesn't like to eat, despite having two parents who love it, so it simply is who she is. She's actually too thin for her height, and that should be a bad thing. But it isn't, if I go by the comments I get from strangers about her "adorable" skinniness. I keep hoping that maybe her attitude towards food is a healthy one, that she can instinctively control her portions, unlike me as a child, and that this is her way of getting enough nutrition without using food as comfort, as I did.

I realize that she's only two and her eating habits will likely change dramatically and often, so I am stunned by the amount of time I spend thinking about her eating. I'm very aware of my own issues towards food and weight, so have begun to be extremely careful in the language I use in front of her. I never use words to describe body size other than comparatively (ie., our hands are big because we're adults) and I never refer to myself in terms that could influence her ideas of worth according to BMI. I have taken the lead from my friend Jen, the mother of two girls, and use the word "healthy" when discussing what we can and can't eat. We have actually started to eat much better since we now all sit down for dinner together. I'm trying to replace my old, terrible food habits now that I have someone watching me to set an example. But I still have this desperate wish that she'll stay small, as I'm illogically convinced that it will eliminate an enormous amount of problems she might face down the road if she ends up like me.

There are so many aspects of raising a girl, especially an African American girl, that we are trying to tackle effectively. We want her to love her hair and accept it as it is, so we tell her how much we love her curls and how soft they are. We want her to love books and reading, so we praise her interest in memorizing her stories. We want her to form her own opinions of what is for her, to shirk gender roles and avoid being put in a girl's only corner, so we tell her that men wear dresses sometimes and buy her dinosaur flash cards. We compliment her for trying to achieve instead of only achieving. It's okay if the tower of blocks falls down, it's supposed to when they're all piled on top of each other. But it's not enough. She has to be empowered but not in a way that places value on her appeal to others. She has to be tough but kind, smart, resilient to the incredibly damaging array of images that affect especially black girls and know and respect herself well enough that she demands the same from others. And this is while everyone is telling her something different, opposite from what we're saying. It's a good thing that I'm loud, I might be able to drown out some of the noise, but she'll have to learn to how to shout for herself, all too soon.

I'm now an advocate for leashes.

2011-03-30T18:31:00.000-07:00

Viv got drinking fountain blocked today. She knows that she can reach the button on the kid-height fountain in the Zoomazium with the aid of the stepstool that the zoo leaves out so kids can climb the elephant sculpture, so she carried the stool from its usual spot on the left side of the statue and centered it underneath the fountain's button. As she put one foot on the stool and started to step up, a horrid little beast of a four year old ran over, stepped on the stool, elbowed Viv in the ribs and started drinking. I put my hand between the two of them, gently pulled the little boy off of my kid and told him, rather sternly, that he needed to wait his turn. Viv managed to squeeze in a sip before he open palmed me, shoved Viv again and kept drinking, paying not a modicum of attention to my raised voice telling him that he was behaving very rudely. His mother then came over, smiled at me as though her flailing sprog hadn't just shoved my tiny snowflake, and blandly told her son that it was polite to wait his turn. She even him continue to drink while Viv was standing there asking me if it was her turn yet. If Viv had behaved in that manner, she would have never had a chance to put her feet back on the ground before her little hiney was back in the carseat. We walked away, and I told Viv that we would have to come back later when he was done. However, he continued to drink and play in the fountain for a long while, so we did not get a chance to try again. I did notice his mother earlier, sitting with the boy's father, both of them engrossed in their phones, although I didn't realize that the boy running through the play area, screaming and throwing things, prompting the other children to tell him to "stop scaring them," was theirs until she claimed him from the fountain.

I find the school of "oh, well," free range parenting infuriating. I don't allow Viv to run through crowded indoor play areas and she is always required to share, wait her turn and put away any toys she uses. I find that I dislike going indoor places where parents congregate on rainy days as they somehow seem to feel that being indoors allows them to not supervise their children. She's been drinking fountain blocked, slide blocked, tunnel blocked, bobbly animal blocked, everything you can imagine blocked by free range kids. Damn those bland parents and their unwillingness to make their kids dislike them.

Man Plans...

2011-01-13T13:49:00.000-08:00

There are days and weeks where I feel that the swift hand of fate has come to bitch slap me back into my proper frame of mind. Feeling good about having gone out to the opera in a nice outfit like a damn adult? Here, have a child with a 104.8 degree fever and vomiting at 11 pm when you get home to make you feel like the worst parent on earth for leaving her. Ready to tackle those house projects and finish the kitchen? Have two inches of standing water in the basement, submerging electrical cords and power tools left there after the cabinets were installed. Ready to start rehearsing again after a long hiatus? Here, have persistent laryngitis for a month.

On the other hand, we do have the first three seasons of The Muppet Show to keep us occupied today, so it might be a wash.

Birthday the Second!

2010-11-28T19:05:00.001-08:00

Hello, my angel! It's your second birthday today. We celebrated with the family yesterday in Spokane, and it was a wonderful time. Thankfully, the stomach virus that caused you to throw up last night and then in the car on the way home waited until after the party. That chocolate cake was probably better the first time, for which I apologize. You'll hopefully be able to keep another chocolate cake down when we get together with all your favorite Seattle people on Tuesday.

So, every middle class parent thinks their kid is gifted. You'll find this out as soon as you start preschool. However, I believe I'm right in thinking that you're rather brilliant. Because you're so bright, though, I tend to think that you're older in wisdom than you are, so I expect a great deal of you that is probably a little unfair to expect of someone who's only two. I need to reevaluate my expectations, I think.

In most other ways, you're a pretty typical toddler. You hate to eat at times that we designate, you collapse to the floor when we even slightly furrow our brows at you, you draw on the walls and you throw books when you're tired. However, that's pretty much the extent of your misbehavior. You're a wonderfully even-tempered child who is also pretty self-aware. I can leave you alone while I shower, as long as Sesame Street is on, and I know that you won't swallow a nail or climb the cabinets while I'm gone. That's been an unexpected perk. I'm waiting for the really bad behavior to begin. It'll be spectacular, I'm sure.

Viv, I love you. I say it all the time, I kiss you constantly, I ask for hugs more often than you would like, but I do it because I know the time is coming soon when you won't let me. So, I'm taking it now when I can, because I want to make sure you know that you are my sun and moon, that you are my life, and I love you.

The first, surprisingly non-traumatic, haircut.

2010-11-15T21:50:00.000-08:00

About six months ago, Viv's sparsely populated head suddenly exploded and she, seemingly overnight, grew a fro. We let it go, wanting to see how it would grow and fill in. Recently, though, she started to get crazy ends to her curls that would stick out in all directions and catch on clothes and rings and fingers and break off, so we decided it was time to get a trim. As she despises anyone touching her hair (usually), I was dreading taking her to a salon, fearing a screaming fit in front of the very posh women who shop at U Village. Imagine my surprise when she not only allowed the stylist to drape her in a cape but mist her hair and TOUCH HER HEAD:

We had rallied the support team (Shelly and Angie) to come with us, to witness the big event as well as provide distraction, but the phone provided enough entertainment to keep her occupied when the cutting started:

The stylist must be considerably more gentle than I am with a comb, so I took notes on her technique to give my kid some relief as well as prevent CPS from coming to our door during our comb-outs. The screaming, oh God, the screaming. Anyway, she seemed the find the end result satisfactory, as she wanted us all to see how she looked in the mirror, especially as the stylist had dusted her with pink glitter.

To reward her for surpassing my very low expectations, we got her a chocolate cupcake, which she ate very sparingly, in her usual dainty fashion. I mean, how many kids leave cupcake for later?

I'm sure next time will be just as successful and easy.

And a well done to you, madam.

2010-10-08T14:09:00.000-07:00

I don't buy a lot of things for myself, especially jewelry. I'm really cheap and nice jewelry isn't. However, when Viv was born, I very much wanted a pendant with her initial on it, and, because I'm apparently a huge snob, I got it at Tiffany. I liked it so much that when my nephew A was born, I bought one for my sister. However, the chain that came with the pendant was ridiculously fragile, and one tug from Viv broke it in two places. As the same thing happened to Tina's necklace, I took both back to Tiffany to see if they could repair or replace the chain. They took the jewelry and gave me a work order and told me to expect the necklaces in six weeks. Months went by and I almost forgot about it, but the other day, I suddenly missed the necklace. I found the receipt and called Tiffany's repair number and was told, very nicely, that they didn't seem to have any record of the repair order. When I called the store where we took the jewelry, the manager was sweetly and genuinely upset. She promised to fix the problem, called me back shortly and, in a very apologetic manner, told me that the necklaces had been lost somewhere between Seattle and New York. She assured me that she would make it right, even though she knew that the sentiment couldn't be replaced. Still, I was surprised when I received a box today from Belinda, the manager, with three boxes inside, our two pendants and a gift. Behold:

That's some unexpectedly remarkable customer service.

Day Twenty-Seven

2010-09-29T13:43:00.000-07:00

Where did all of the other days go? I have no idea. Not a lot was done in the intervening days but the foundation. However, the framers are here, and man, they don't let any grass grow under them.

They had to take off a lot of siding and, well, other house-holding-up-stuff to add the supports for the new addition.

Holy crap, this is our new kitchen floor! Well, it will be. It's starting to seem like we're adding something and not just making our already trashy backyard worse.

Day Five

2010-09-02T16:33:00.000-07:00

The inspection is done, so today, the concrete trucks arrived...

...to pour the supports for the addition's basement floor:

And there goes the back door. The rebar on the concrete marks the center of the new walls. Small addition, but huge to us. And the stupid overhang? Still waiting to be filled.

Day Four

2010-09-01T12:18:00.000-07:00

The foundation crew arrived yesterday in the deluge to pound in rebar and lay forms. And today, they removed the basement door to allow them to fill it before cutting a new door in the foundation.

That will be the door that leads to the new area of the basement once the addition is complete. We couldn't keep the existing door as it falls outside the new footprint. Notice the left corner of the house? Why in the name of all that is holy would the original foundation have been poured in this manner? What is the purpose? There's a little shelf in the basement, but that could not possibly have been the reason for this absurd little overhang. So, the workers are drilling in for rebar installation and then they'll fill to stabilize the area. Fortunately, when the mudroom was removed, the outlet remained, so the powertools can be plugged in outside without having to run cords through the windows:

I'm hopeful that the foundation will be done by the time we leave for Panama so we can get the structure up when we get back. Well, by "we" I mean the construction team. You know, the capitalist "we".

Laying the foundation for my dreams.

2010-08-23T11:31:00.000-07:00

It has begun! Years of wishing, months of planning, it all came to noisy, filthy fruition this morning. The excavation has begun, the mudroom...

...is gone!

The hole is almost dug for the foundation for the addition and the bees infesting the foundation have almost given up the fight.

The wood from the house and all of the concrete will be cleared away by tomorrow, and the foundation will be poured before we go to Panama. I'm not quite sure how we're going to get into the hole to access the basement to do laundry, but Christian will enjoy the challenge. He'll probably practice high jumping.

Speaking of Christian, honey, here's a picture of the concrete piled on the lawn:

My dreams, they might come true. I'm still expecting something to go horribly awry, but for now, I'm hopeful.

Standards in America

2010-08-04T13:13:00.000-07:00

I really wonder if we've ruined marriage in America. Do romantic comedies and porn make it impossible to have a successful, realistic marriage that isn't expected to be a non-stop, sex-filled travelogue with few money problems and, occasionally, perfect, rosy-cheeked children? According to some recent threads I've read on two very disparate websites, in which women were basically reviled as money-grubbing, duplicitous, lazy opportunists who want nothing more than to be validated by men who they then try to trap into marriages of misery and failure, the only type of happy man is one who is living the life seen only in those two kinds of movies. The wife is supposed to be a fit, cheerful, sports-loving, sex-crazed executive who only needs the perfect average Joe to make her life complete. There's no responsibility on the part of the man to elevate himself to the perfection of this mythological woman. She's supposed to be merely grateful for his attention. And, on the other end of the spectrum, girls who were raised in environments where they were denigrated in value because of their gender, given fewer opportunities than their brothers and taught that their only asset was their ability to put out, are treated as disposable commodities, not worthy of respect or consideration because feminism has supposedly given them the opportunity to choose this type of self-destructive behavior.

Awareness is a tricky thing, self-awareness even more so. How do you teach people what is realistic and what is not? I read an article recently in the NY Times that discusses how the current culture of non-criticism has left an entire generation without the ability to recognize their own limitations. So, now, we have marriages that are expected to follow a profoundly unrealistic blueprint that doesn't allow for personal difficulties or preferences to muddle the perfect construct or be deemed a failure coupled with a generation who has been taught that everything they do or want is what should be. And it's apparent to me that, at least regarding the people who read the types of sites listed above and comment on them and who seem to be of this no-fault generation, that those who don't fit in that construct must have chosen to do so without any cultural or familial influences on their decisions. It's the laughable idea that anyone is truly free to make their own decisions, free from the influence of their society and upbringing that I see trumpeted in these threads. My favorite comment from both was "Sluts will slut." Such absolute knowledge from someone who most likely was taught that everything they did was perfect and worthy of praise and who never wanted for approval or validation. So little sympathy, so little understanding, so little hope.

Channelling Mom

2010-07-05T23:27:00.000-07:00

After we got home from our trying and fatiguing nearly five hour trip back from Portland, Christian went out to get pho and I made Viv her dinner. I sat with her as she attempted to scoop beans out of her bowl with a too-small spoon, the only clean one in the kitchen. She suddenly stopped scooping, looked at me and said, "Don't worry, Mama." I thought I must not have heard her correctly, as she's never said anything close to that before, so I asked her, "What did you say, baby?" She replied, "Don't worry, Mama," very seriously. I paused for a second to let what she just said ruminate, and asked her, "Don't worry about what?" She thought for a second and said, "I don't know," and started eating again. Smart enough to relay the message, too young to comprehend, maybe. Got it, Mom.

Stats

2010-06-01T22:01:00.001-07:00

Viv had her 18 month appointment today. Her stats are:

Height: 32 inches (75th percentile)

Head circumference: 18.75 inches

Weight: 21 lbs 12 oz (15th percentile)

Teeth: 6

Apparently, she needs some fattening up. Still, she seems pretty happy:

She's perfect to me.

So far ahead...

2010-05-28T22:01:00.000-07:00

Viv, you're 18 months old today. It's one of those baby measuring milestones that we stop celebrating once you hit two. No one gets excited over halves ever again, but 18 months is a big one. There are special shots still, and that always signifies a big day.

You're a toddler now, although you run a lot more than you toddle. You also dance and kind of jump, you spin in circles until you fall over and you can walk backwards all while telling us you're doing so, because kid, you're really, really smart. You're the kind of smart that makes other parents of toddlers disbelieving, as they simply cannot understand that you just said, "Airplane is in the sky!" or, "Thank you and you're welcome!" But you did, and you can say a great deal more. You have a truly incredible vocabulary, but the best thing about your mad verbalosity is that you actually speak in context. You're also able to form new sentences using the words you already know, which is especially impressive. I'm awfully proud, even though I can't take credit for your genetic predilections. Still, I've read Hop on Pop to you so many times that I can take SOME credit for your development, as I think Dr. Seuss is guaranteed to improve your rhyming abilities, at least, so maybe you'll become a rapper. That would make Stephanie happy.

You know, though, butterbean, while I love that you can communicate with us so well, it's not your talking that makes you the greatest kid on Earth. It's not that or your mean dancing moves or the way you stroke my hair when you're tired. You're just so WONDERFUL. All around. You're funny and sweet and perfect and lovely. I just love to hold you so some of the overburdening love I feel for you can maybe be shared by osmosis. As clingy as this makes me sound, I just despise being away from you because I miss the way you change the air in a room just by your presence. You make it that much more worth breathing. You have brought a grace to our lives, a fulfillment, and I hope you can see this in the way we tell you we love you, which is a lot. Thank you, my sweetest monkey pants, for being our daughter.

And I'm sorry I mess with your hair so much. I know you hate it. I won't stop, but, you know, sorry.

I love you, love you, love you.

Now, WHO could have taught her that?

2010-05-27T16:19:00.001-07:00

And, while watching this video, she commented, "booyah, baby!"

Starting Blocks

2010-04-20T21:58:00.001-07:00

I've never, ever started anything new, be it role, hobby or lifestyle, without being utterly and implacably convinced that I was too stupid to do it properly or even at all. Knitting, singing, gardening, cooking, parenting, etc, I've always been sure that whatever I undertake will be a monumental failure. Why? No idea. Mom and Dad always believed that all of us kids could do anything, so it must be inborn. I also hate starting new things because the learning curve is so incredibly frustrating, which is why I make myself learn new things. I'm trying to cultivate patience, but I still suck at it. I hate not instantaneously understanding all related components to whatever it is I'm learning, and, even though I have yet to give up on a hobby I've started (as an adult-I mean, I only took figure skating for two weeks when I was twelve), nothing can ever convince me that the next thing I learn won't be the one that licks me.

Enter these socks. Socks, you say, incredulously? Feh. How can they be so difficult? Do you see that little window of color? That's not one yarn that is dyed to stripe or pool. That's a different strand of yarn for each single stitch. That's a bitch. I'm knitting these socks as a gift to Julie, and her PhD is almost finished, so I need to get off my dimply backside and get going. Failure is imminent, I just know it.

Geography Lessons

2010-04-08T22:31:00.000-07:00

Viv calls every woman who looks even vaguely like my sister (and many people who absolutely do not) "Tina". She does this many, many times a day, and my usual response is, "Where's Tina?" She'll then point to whatever woman she thought looked like T at that moment, be she 80 or Asian. However, as we were leaving the house today, Viv looked over my shoulder and said the name. I asked the usual question, expecting her to point to someone walking her dog or to our crazy neighbor possibly up on her roof, but instead, she replied, "Spokane." I think she needed to prove that she really does, in fact, know who and where Tina is.

Whatever happened to Baby Vivienne Jane?

2010-03-29T11:52:00.001-07:00

Christian has been telling me for months that Viv is a toddler now and not a baby, but I've been resisting the title change as her baby months went by too quickly, and I wanted to extend them. He's right, however, even though I'm still not able to say those words aloud.

Today, while standing dripping in the bathtub after all the water had been drained out, she adamantly refused to put her final toy back in the net hanging from the side of the tub after she had put away all of its mates. If I tried to hand her the toy, a little green car, she would hit it and back away. If I tried to put it in front of her, she'd turn around. She would rather have frozen to death (in the 80 degree bathroom) than put that toy away. It was our first true battle of wills. I mean, we've crossed spoons over certain foods, but she'd always eventually eat enough to satisfy us both. However, I have never asked her to do something that she then utterly refused to do, and she's never thrown a tantrum to prove to me how steadfastly she holds her opinion of my request. She's usually so good about bringing me whatever object she's illicitly purloined, like as tissues from the trash or the remote. I merely have to ask her for the object and then look at anything other than her and she'll bring it right over. In the tub, though, she discovered that she has a say in what she does. Or she THINKS she has a say. I finally resorted, after 10 eternal minutes, to putting the toy in her hand, holding her hand shut and putting her hand and the toy in the net. I even dried her off and put on her lotion and diaper, all while she was standing irritably on the rubber mat on the bottom of the tub, with suds swirling around her toes.

We knew the tantrums would be coming, though, as she's started doing a little ritual of annoyance, usually when she's in a car seat, shopping cart or high chair, that will escalate to a tiny eruption. First, she'll whine loudly. Then, she'll ask for a cracker,which we'll refuse to provide. She'll then clench her fists, stiffen her body, stick out her legs, grimace and howl through clenched gums. It's actually a pretty funny little display, but laughter annoys her even further. We're trying to respond to these moments with calm and rational conversations about using words and being patient, but I think we're forgetting that, despite her ability to speak in complete sentences, she might not actually understand the request to breathe deeply.

I miss my baby already.

Interesting Sartorial Observations

2010-03-22T21:34:00.000-07:00

I started cleaning out Mom's closet today, just the one in the bedroom, as the clothes are getting dusty and seeing them hang there makes it impossible to not burst into tears every time I go into the master bedroom to answer the phone. I noticed something interesting. Well, interesting to me, anyway. Mom had conservative and practical fashion tastes, which I knew already, but what I didn't know what that she had started to purchase attractive, stylistically appropriate designer clothing. She had always shopped at Penny's and The Bon (nee Macy's), but everything she purchased was on the 70% off sale rack and usually the house brand or something similar (read slightly sad). However, I found a Kors jacket, a brand new pair of DKNY jeans and a whole panoply of highly colored button up shirts in jaunty hues from Ralph Lauren. Mom was making an effort. I guess the years I spent mocking her love of pleats finally wore her down, as I did find her two virtually identical pairs of boot cut jeans that I know she wore every day, because once, after she had returned home from a visit, she called to ask me if she had left the first pair at my house, as she couldn't find them and they were her "good" jeans. Hence the second pair.

Maybe in a few years' time, she would have flown to Vegas twice a year to shop exclusively at Versace. Well, if she could part stand to live without her 17 silk shells in an array of fetching beiges, purchased in bulk from the Macy's outlet.

The Battle vs. The War

2010-03-16T18:26:00.000-07:00

I should count my blessings and not complain, but that would defeat the purpose of having a blog. Viv really hates to nap. I've said it before, but I thought things were going better. It's not that she's napping any longer than she did before, but putting her in her own room made a huge difference in merely getting her to go to sleep. Her naps are still brief, 20-45 minutes at most, and maybe twice a day, but at least they were reliable. I could shower during the first nap and put in laundry or check email without having her press the power button on the laptop or slam it shut on my fingers. She really dislikes the laptop. Anyway, she napped a little. Now, she doesn't seem to want to nap at all. For the past week, I've been fighting with her at least twice a day in an attempt to get her to nap even a little. She will lie down with her binky and behave just as before the battle began. Five minutes later, when I'm downstairs cleaning or making calls or checking email, I'll hear the first howl. I'll let it go for the next ten minutes and then she'll escalate. So, I'll go upstairs, put her binky back in, lay her back down and leave. She'll be silent and then the wailing will turn into shrieking and then hysterical tears. So, after a half hour of all of this, I'll get her up, feed her and play with her for another two hours or so until she is fairly dropping to the floor with exhaustion. I'll put her down again, and, if I'm lucky, she'll sleep. However, I haven't been very lucky lately.

I know she's probably adjusting her own schedule to do away with one or both naps, but I don't deal with change as well as she apparently does. I don't want to war with my child over sleep, but I need a few minutes each day to myself. I think I'll get a treadmill with Elmo taped to the handlebars.

As Viv stands wailing in her crib upstairs...

2010-03-03T13:48:00.000-08:00

...as I unsuccessfully try to get her to nap, I'm remembering her last year at this time, chubby and serious, still sleeping in the bassinet next to the bed, and finally ours. And now she's so tall and independent that I swear she's going to ask to take driver's ed so she can drive herself to work. I mean, look at the difference one year makes:

The day of her final adoption court hearing:

And now, at fifteen months:

Does every passing year bring changes this dramatic? I hope so.

A Mighty Big Difference

2010-02-16T21:51:00.000-08:00

I think I finally understand the difference between my abilities as a musician and other singers' abilities. I have no master's degree and I've never attended a YAP. Before, these things really didn't matter, and I would get easily irritated with those singers who could only talk about which programs they attended. What does it matter, I thought? Where are you singing next, as that's what matters. Well, now I know why it matters. It matters because of Mozart.

You can't hide in Mozart. Everything is incredibly exposed. The quantity of recitative in Figaro alone would make up the duration of another composer's entire composition. Because I didn't study Mozartean recitative as an undergrad or in graduate school and I didn't have a chance to work out its difficulties in a YAP, I utterly suck at it. Apparently, my Italian isn't good and I have no musical flow. I am missing some key skill, consequently, that makes learning and rehearsing Mozart excruciating for me and annoying to those around me.

Since Mom died, I've been hugely struggling with focus. I simply don't seem to be able to concentrate for long periods and I have very little desire to do anything other than spend time with my family. While preparing for this role, I did something I've never done before: I missed four pages of music I should have learned. I didn't realize my mistake until our first music rehearsal, where my sightreading attempts when it came to those pages was disastrous, and I may as well have been unprepared for the entire show for how it made me look, even though the rest of the opera was off book. I'm ashamed of my unpreparedness, but I'm more alarmed at my response to it. I, of course, came home and immediately started learning, coached the missed music the next day and worked very hard to get it memorized, but I still felt out of sorts and incapable of setting my mistake aside and moving forward. I got sick, probably from the stress, and I lost my voice, and I would have far rather quit than keep going at that point. Now, every time I sing the music, I feel thick and unresponsive. I can't seem to get my brain completely around it and I just want to move on and come back to it later, but it doesn't work that way, so my incompetence inconveniences the other singers around me as we have to repeat my scenes. Now I'm tired and depressed and the plumbers are coming first thing tomorrow morning to redo our entire house, so I'm anxious about water in addition to everything else.

I have come to a realization about all of this from the last week. I wonder how much longer I will keep singing. My joy in it is fading greatly, but what I can't tell is if it's from grief or a true desire to move on. I'm hoping that will become clear as time goes on, so now all I can do is work harder than I have the energy to do and hope it all works out.

You're not my mother...er, contractor.

2010-01-05T20:39:00.000-08:00

We're going to remodel our kitchen. Yes, we really are. I mean it this time. After seven years, we finally have the money to address the cracked tile and expand the lone countertop. We also need to replace all of our plumbing, as, of course, we couldn't possibly have one catastrophic system failure at a time, oh no. I wanted to do all of the repairs and renovations at the same time as I thought it would save money (since we'll be adding a washer/dryer hookup in the kitchen for the remodel, may as well do all the pipes), but we may need to address them singly, as it turns out.

Of course, all of the proposed work is dependent upon finding a contractor who will work with us within our budget and allow us to do as much work ourselves as we are able, which is quite a bit. Now, you'd think that that would be no problem, wouldn't you, especially in a recession? Well, you'd be WRONG. At least, you'd be wrong according to the contractor I spoke to yesterday who, without having even seen our house told me, after whistling condescendingly at my budget, that I should consider refinancing to be able to afford a real remodel. Because he was also a banker? And, you know, loans are so easy to get these days. He told me that framing a 4x10 bump out of the back wall will take all of our budget, but he, of course, wouldn't be able to give us a REAL estimate until he spent $2,000 of said budget to draw up plans. Oh, and he also let me know that, again, not even having seen my house, I would need to address my deferred maintenance issues sooner or later. I asked him politely what he meant, which, really, I shouldn't have even answered as he had already told me that I was too poor to remodel, and he said that, since the plumbing was old, chances are there were many other problems we'd need to address. Because his magic 8 ball told him that our roof had moss. Oh, OH! and, when I told him that we were planning on doing all of our own tiling, cabinet hanging, painting, etc, and that we had a friend who was an excellent carpenter, he asked me why I needed a contractor if I had a carpenter friend. Um, because he's not an electrician/plumber/foundation pourer, etc and he's not magically able to complete all of our remodeling needs in a weekend, damn him. It was patently obvious that the contractor had absolutely no interest in working with us, as our budget was, apparently, thousands less than his strip club spendings every month.

Since that degrading call, which reminded me of the first realtor we worked with when buying our house (all problems, no solutions), several friends have come forward with names and number of recommended contractors, all of whom are said to aid homeowners in completing some work themselves. I am hoping that none of them will recommend hooking or selling a kidney to support my kitchen and plumbing habit.

The cheese stands alone.

2009-12-29T19:27:00.000-08:00

When I was in junior high, I had a friend. She was a Mormon and had many brothers and sisters. Five, if I remember correctly, which I probably don't. Her father was a local newscaster. He was robust and cheerful and excessively smiley while reading the reports.

This friend invited me over after school one day, and from her description, they lived the fancy life in a big house. Made sense, her dad was famous. When we got there, though, imagine my surprise when I met her large, braless, angry, shouty, sweaty mother, who laid on the couch for the duration of my visit, screaming at her grubby brood to bring her more diet coke while she watched Wheel of Fortune and bellowed incorrect answers at the screen.

When we went into the kitchen to get a snack before returning to the friend's room (which we had to enter by climbing over every toy owned by the sibling who had the lower bunk), we found nothing in the fridge, possibly because all of the cheese in the house had been grated onto the linoleum. A whole block of mild cheddar in a huge, greasy, crunchy, glistening pile, lying in a defeated heap on the curling floor.

I've never been able to escape that image. I can still see the one working bulb dimly casting its meager light over the filthy countertops and sink filled with cold, scummy water and rusting pans. So, whenever, while making dinner, shredded cheese escapes the grater to lay on the floor, wormlike and shiny, I must vacuum. To leave it there would be the first step down a road which can only end with Pat Sajak.

The best baby, empirically speaking.

2009-12-09T22:48:00.000-08:00

I'm an extremely competitive person. I really have to be, as a singer, as there are too many of us who all want the same thing, and competition forces me to improve myself or fail, pretty much. I now find that I'm also incredibly competitive about Viv. What is there to be competitive about, you may wonder, if you have no children of your own. Oh, so very much.

It starts simply, early on. "Is your child letting you sleep?", other parents ask. It seems innocent enough, but what this question really means is, "Does your baby sleep through the night, like mine does/did from the time she emerged, composed and transcendent, from my womb?" Every question is from a mental checklist being ticked off by a parent wondering if her child is ahead or behind. Is another baby still not able to sit up at three months? The parent of the child who sat at 2.5 months knows that her child is better, more special than the slug who still can only lie there and drool.

It gets worse, though, as the baby gets older. Crawling is a huge indicator of a child's ability to win one for the parents. If you chance to meet a parent of a child who is the same age as yours and, by seven or so months, one child can crawl and the other can't, the crawler's parent leaves the room (field, mall, playground, etc) victorious, smug in her knowledge that the other baby, poor thing, will cost his parents thousands in physical therapy but that her child will continue to excel in such a dramatic manner as to leave other parents agape and despairing when they witness the genius of the early crawler's future accomplishments.

I have two friends with children who walked at nine or so months. This troubled me. Viv could pull herself up and cruise (move from furniture to furniture) without our help by about then, but she couldn't walk, dammit. When she finally did take her first solo steps at about ten and a half months, I was jubilant, but also a little disappointed. I mean, yes, how exciting, she took her first steps, and yes, I told everyone and was genuinely happy, but what did this mean? Was she muscularly challenged? Was she not very smart? Was she merely...average? God forbid.

At her one year appointment, I filled out one of the usual developmental questionnaires, but this was the first one where I couldn't answer yes to every question. No, Viv hadn't taken off an article of clothing (other than socks, shoes and hats), she couldn't eat independently with a spoon very well and she couldn't scribble. When the pediatrician reviewed the form, I asked her if it was a problem if Viv couldn't do everything on the checklist. She gave me that look, you know the one. The one that says, "Oh shit, you're going to ask me if there are any flash cards you should be using, aren't you?" I said that Viv couldn't scribble, to which she replied, "I wouldn't give a one year old anything to scribble with, much less expect her to scribble." I asked why it was on the questionnaire, then, and she said that the questions pertained to children up to two. She turned over the paper to read our replies to the questions on the second page, the ones geared towards developmental milestones of two year olds, and she asked me, disbelievingly, if Viv actually had more than four intelligible words she could use in context. I thought about it, and came up with about a dozen words Viv uses on a daily basis. When we (Christian was there, too) started telling the doctor which words Viv could use, she was surprised. She looked at Viv who was looking back at her, and said that she was considerably ahead of the curve.

It was better than any trophy.

How is it possible?

2009-11-28T21:10:00.000-08:00

You cannot be one year old today. You cannot. I remember so very little of the day to day happenings of the last year and I want a do over so I can etch every day in my brain. I've heard from other parents that the first year of their child's life was an equal blur. Too little sleep, too many diapers.

You have no idea how much you have made my life worthwhile, and kept me from going crazy when things became too difficult. After Mom died, you were my little rock, and I'm hoping that you have no recollection of all of the times I held you while I cried.

When I think of last year at this time, and how we were in the hospital with you, staring at you, stunned and in awe, I had no idea if you'd be ours, and even less did I know that you would grow into this astonishing little person who exceeds my expectations every day. You're such a funny girl, you love to laugh, you're so social and you read to yourself. You READ to yourself. God, that's my favorite thing you do right now. You pick up a book and you turn the pages while speaking your own language that sounds like a combination of Turkish and Klingon. And when you get to pages that we read with emphasis or a particular voice, you try to imitate it as closely as you can. ALL THE HIPPOS GO BERSERK! I think that's your favorite, behind Binky.

My sweet, sweet baby girl, I love you so much it frightens me sometimes. I had no idea I could love anyone this intensely, and I hope that you know it, that you know that I would do absolutely anything to make your life happy. Of course, that doesn't mean I'm going to give you everything you could want, because that might make you a brat, but you will have everything you need.

We're talking lately about how to tell you that you're adopted, and we need to start reading about these things, as you're growing up so fast we'll be telling you all about your birth story soon.

I hope you're happy with us. You seem happy, we work so hard to make you happy, as does everyone else around us, because everyone loves you. We will always love you.

One more time.

2009-11-20T21:21:00.000-08:00

How many times can you say that you miss your mother and wish more than anything in the world that the last five months were a dream and that you hoped you would soon wake up to one of her patented phone calls where she reminds you that it is, in fact, your mother calling, without everyone completely losing patience and telling you to just get the hell over it?

I have one of her infamous calls on my voicemail still. I apparently can go to Comcast's website and access my messages, and hopefully make an audio capture, but I'm terrified that I'll accidentally delete the message, and I really need to keep it as it's her voice and it's an incredibly long and completely typical Mom monologue about how our Costco membership (in my dad's business' name) is going to expire and that we need to send money if we want to keep it going. It's one of those messages that, if I were in an espionage movie and needed to make a recording of Mom's voice to get me past a security terminal that was coded to her speaking a specific phrase, would win the affections of the leading man, as I think she actually says every word the nuns ever taught her merely to let me know that I could either pay her back the $40 or write a check directly to Costco.

The Smell of Evil

2009-10-14T12:35:00.001-07:00

So, I know what my kid eats. I know that she eats vegetables and oatmeal and fruit and a little cheese and, occasionally, small amounts of meat. There's nothing mysterious about her food, she's not consuming steak tartare or sashimi, so why does her poop smell like 1,000 festering corpses? Sweet zombie Jesus, I have never smelled a stench like her poop stench. And when her diaper disposal unit is full and has to be emptied? If I could ralph up everything I've ever eaten because of the pervading aroma issuing from that pit of evil, I would. No amount of washing, bleaching or deodorizing makes even a modicum of difference. Post-cleaning, the thing just smells like bleach or soap or lavender and the breath of the Sarlaac.

Would you think that someone so adorable could produce such a smell?

Nor would I.

"Lessons learned from surgery" or "Wow, that really sucked."

2009-10-06T17:07:00.001-07:00

Mom's memorial was this last weekend, and I had been dreading it since Dad mentioned that he wanted to have it. It was just so soon, so painful, so immediate. Tina likened the emotions rolling with it to the water held back by the little boy with his finger in the dam. I have my finger in the tragedy dam, and I can let out as much grief as I can handle, and then I can plug the dam back up. This service was the dam breaking for me, and, coupled with Dad's insistence that we understand why he wanted to have the service whether or not we wanted to understand, I was flooded. I had also been in charge of editing and timing the slideshow with appropriate music, so I had repeatedly watched Mom grow up, marry and have kids to the point where I couldn't bear it any more. So, I wasn't surprised when I started to feel unwell on Friday, before the drive to Spokane. By Saturday I was mildly nauseated, achy, sneezy and congested. The service itself was actually much better than anticipated and I came out of it feeling slightly improved. No one told me that Mom was in a better place, and the conversations revolved heavily around the babies in the family.

Sunday we drove home and were much delayed by a dust storm and consequent road closure on I-90, necessitating our taking the 2 most of the way. It was a seven and a half hour trip from beginning to end, and was exhausting. I still felt poorly on Monday and thought I had a sinus infection, but meds coupled with food from Shelly made me feel better, and rehearsal was surprisingly enjoyable, so, at the end of it, I felt well enough to go for a drink and some food.

I had one drink with lemonade and vodka and three little cheeseburger sliders, and started to feel abysmal about a half hour later. By the time I got home, I was intensely nauseated and desperately needed to vomit. I tried and tried and tried, but was utterly confounded, as the surgery I had in May to repair my hiatal hernia restructured the lower sphincter in my esophagus as to allow nothing but small amounts of gas to reverse course. Because nothing was moving in either direction, the nausea wouldn't pass and my abdomen became distended with the air I was gasping in. I continued to retch horribly for an hour before allowing Christian to take me to the ER. Thank God they were quick and got me in as soon as I made it out of their bathroom. They immediately gave me Zofran and dilaudid and within moments I stopped trying to barf out my intestines, which I would have welcomed, actually.

We stayed at the hospital for nearly five hours as I was hydrated and medicated and my lab results were returned. Chris was home with the baby, who woke at an uncharacteristically early hour and refused to sleep again until Chris met her unreasonable demands. We relieved him at 5:30 am and slept until she woke again at 9, when Shelly came over to watch her while we slept some more.

While I'm grateful that the surgery has prevented most of the reflux that has dogged my the entirety of my life, I'm not sure that I would recommend the procedure to someone in my situation. Maybe last night is too recent, but Jesus Christ, that was truly horrific. At least I know it worked.

All right, that's it.

2009-09-21T11:19:00.000-07:00

I have absolutely had it with the airline industry. First, we're being charged for meals, then to check bags, and now, to receive a credit on an already booked flight that has seen a $30 per ticket fare reduction, we'll be charged between $50 and $75 for each price adjustment. It is utterly absurd to think that issuing a credit would require $50-75 worth of employee time. I don't know how to address this issue other than let the offending airline, VIRGIN AMERICA, know that I am furious.

In this time of enormous economic hardship, those who can fly are usually doing it at the expense of something else in their lives as travel is a luxury. That $60 Virgin could easily give us would go a long way in encouraging us to use them to travel in the future, but I will not use them again. At least the nameless, faceless giant wholesalers online offer credits.

Note to self...

2009-09-15T22:31:00.000-07:00

or, I should be smarter than this by now. Don't read other singer's websites, don't read interviews with them, don't read reviews, don't read bios, don't have anything to do with the industry except when it directly pertains to me. When skinny singers start calling fat singers "elephants" and say that audiences will be rendered unable to dream when said fatties are on stage, that's when I know this business is a crock of crap.

Happy ninth month, poodle!

2009-08-28T09:41:00.001-07:00

Oh my heavens, poodle, it's your ninth month birthday today!

It is unfathomable to me how so much time could have passed already. We were looking at pictures of you as a newborn the other day, and you were unimaginably tiny, so skinny and light, we could carry you around constantly without getting at all tired. You're so big now, so incredibly tall. Everyone who meets you asks how old you are and then marvels at your length, but you're still so lanky! All of your pants bag at the waist, but you have the greatest chubby, ham hock thighs in the world.

You still don't have any teeth, however, which makes your smile all the more adorable, drooly and gummy. And you talk now, constantly, sometimes even using real words, although whether or not they're in context is up for debate. You have met all of your milestones early, you've been sitting on your own since April, you've been crawling for six weeks, you're now using furniture to pull yourself up, and you can move from chair to chair in the dining room while standing. EVERYTHING goes in your mouth, thankfully including the things you're supposed to have in there, like food. You love finger food, especially Cheerios. You even are ambidextrous when picking up things to shove in your pie hole.

You're such a smiley baby, too, good-natured and possessed of great equanimity. You love other people and are extremely social, thank God, as I'm constantly passing you off to friends and relatives, all of whom adore you.

I love your crazy Kid n' Play hair, and I'm a little sad that it's filling in on the sides. We bought you your first hair product, which is pretty hilarious. We can't wait, though, until we can put it up in little elastics, making pom-poms all over your wee heid.

Viv, we love you so much. I hope that we show it enough. I'm trying to get in all the kisses and ear noms and squeezes I can, as you'll soon enough not want any of that stuff. You are the greatest thing that has ever happened to us, and we're happier every day than the last that you're our baby.

Giggle Pants McGee

2009-08-12T15:28:00.001-07:00

Meet the new girl.

2009-08-07T12:38:00.000-07:00

Meet Gladys, the Gulf Coast box turtle:

At the vet yesterday, while getting Cyril groomed, the subject of box turtles came up, as it usually does with my vet. It just so happened that the Humane Society had given the clinic a turtle with a shell infection to be treated and then be adopted out, and we have plenty of room. And, as Gus is not a good eater, which has always worried me, adding another turtle to the habitat can trigger competitive eating, so Gladys will be a therapy turtle, as well. So she's useful, as well as pretty.

Milestones

2009-08-04T13:12:00.000-07:00

Crawling:

And pulling herself up:

Some kind of weird poetic justice.

2009-07-21T11:36:00.001-07:00

Viv is SO going to be a soprano, and a really high one, at that.

Far away and all alone.

2009-07-20T19:46:00.000-07:00

I leave for Montana on Wednesday, and I'll be going alone. Christian got the week off for Mom's funeral and all the requisite support duties, so he really can't be away again this soon. Viv will be cared for in a rotation of battling honorary aunts who are all a little resentful that they have to share her.

I haven't been away for a job since my only other Montana gig singing Messiah, but that was to the ever charming Billings, the land of it's-eight-o'clock-where-did-everyone-go? This time, I'll be staying with a host family, which I haven't done since I spent that semester in London my junior year of college. I'm hoping I won't have to chat or mingle or be chipper and chummy too much. My conversation would just be so stunning:

Them: How are you?

Me: Really terrible. I'm devastated by the loss of my mother and I'm away from my husband and child and life means nothing away from them and the world will suckuntilthedayIdie.

Them: Oh. Um, well, your room is down the hall.

I hope they have laundry facilities I can use.

Nighttime

2009-07-11T23:44:00.000-07:00

I still don't know how we're all going to do this, live without Mom. Nights are the worst. I keep expecting to see her walk by in her flowered cotton shorts, trying to tidy up before going to bed. Seeing her grave filled and her name on a little plate at the head of it was shocking, terrible.

Every night I think of her and the long future ahead for all of us before we can see her again, if there is such a thing as heaven. I miss everything, the flip flop of her shoes, the hairclips on all the tables, the smell of her hand cream, her tubes of pink and coral lipstick in the bathroom drawer. I miss her saying the rosary in the morning and checking on the baby at night. I miss her pancake mix with the thousand different types of whole grain and her fondness for chocolate cake and pumpkin pie. I miss the way she loved the grandkids, how she truly cared about their opinions, how she could soothe any hurt or worry by rocking them in her chair. She always said she wished I had a rocking chair at my house, other than the tiny one from the upstairs guest room. She wanted to rock Viv to sleep at night whenever she visited.

Life will be returning to "normal" soon, which is when this will get even harder, I think. Dad asked me today when he thinks we'll all hit the ground, and I said I thought it would happen when everyone had gone home, back to their lives. I have to go home next week to get ready for Montana, my aunts and uncles all have their jobs and kids and grandkids of their own. Our grief will become something we have to bear without putting the burden on others.

Dad gave me an article today about how most people have very little patience with the grieving process of others, how the five stages should be on a timeline with a quick end. All I can think of is how I don't think I'll ever get to acceptance, because that would mean that Mom is truly gone.

The hard part.

2009-07-04T21:56:00.001-07:00

I don't know if I should have stayed so long with Mom after she had passed yesterday. I didn't want to leave her alone, but she stopped looking like herself after a while, and I stopped being able to play the "she's going to wake up" game.

The problem is, I keep expecting her to walk around the corner from the kitchen to the living room, looking exactly as she always has, in her flowered cotton shorts and yellow t-shirt, with the two silver clips in her hair to keep it from curling. I keep looking for the yellow handbag, but Kyan wanted it to remember her by. I keep waiting for her voice to call to us from the kitchen, asking us if we want food. She just can't be gone.

It was too fast, too unpredictable, the way she went. How could she have had pneumonia badly enough to end her life? How could they not have known? We have a thousand what ifs and whys and none of them will bring her back. I'm angry at her for not bothering the nurses more if she wasn't feeling well, but she hated to be a bother. I'm angry at the doctors for not giving her prophylactic antibiotics, just in case something like this happened. I'm angry that we were robbed of Mom, when we expected at least a few more years, or at least Thanksgiving and Christmas in Seattle while she was there for the marrow transplant. I didn't expect that I'd be back in Mom's house, five days after I left, but without her here.

This is HER house. There isn't a room in this place that she didn't decorate. She bought every piece of furniture at estate sales or garage sales or local shops where she could find a good sale. That makes this place sound shabby, which it isn't. It's pretty and comfortable and elegant, except for the livingroom carpet, which she wouldn't get rid of. I hate that carpet.

Why isn't she here? Why isn't she home to see her grandkids, or at least at the hospital where the kids could see her on Skype. Why isn't she still alive? It makes no sense, which, I realize, is something that everyone says when something like this happens, but now it means something to me. She was FINE. I spoke with Mom twice on Thursday, once on our usual morning call and once on Skype, when I was feeding Viv. She liked to be part of our daily lives and watching Viv eat is pretty funny, besides. She even posted to her Caring Bridge website that night, not ten hours before she went to the ICU.

Mom didn't want to die. She wasn't ready, she wanted to watch her grandkids grow up. She was supposed to live to 100, surrounded by great-grandbabies. When she fell unconscious, she must have been pissed, in that corner of her mind where she was still aware of what was happening. I'll bet she was thinking, "No, not yet! I need to do so much more, be with my family, it's not time." And oh man, would she have been furious that we all halted our lives to be here. She hated it when we interrupted our routine for her.

What's my Dad going to do without her? How do you make your life again when the person you spent the last 43 years with is gone? How do you sleep in your bed when the last time you slept there, your wife was with you?

She can't be gone. It's not possible. Too many people loved her, depended on her. She was too young, too healthy, even with the cancer, too concerned with antioxidants and working out, too active to die. How is it possible that she's never going to visit us again, that she'll never sit on our couch and say how much she loved to visit us, and how our house is so cozy. How will Viv not wake up to Grandma holding a bottle, waiting for her? How is it possible that Viv won't know her Grandma Judy?

It was too fast. Too unfair. I didn't get to say goodbye, I didn't get to hold her hand while she died. I love my mother, she was my hero. She was my savior, in a very real sense. No one else could have cared for me the way she did when I was small and sick. I have such memories of her holding me, walking through the house in the middle of the night because I was too sick to stay asleep, and she would let me hold the crystal bell my aunt Barb brought back from Germany. It was special and made me feel like I was being given a treat. She would carry me outside to see if there were any crocuses, after the long winter. I know she was over protective, but I honestly didn't care. I was so safe with Mom.

I'm now thinking awful things, like tonight at church. I saw all of the extremely elderly ladies and I though, "What makes them so special that they're here and Mom isn't? She was the best of all of them." I feel truly wretched for these thoughts, but that doesn't make them go away. Mom should have gotten a pass, a dispensation, an indulgence. She was too kind, too loving, too giving. Why was that taken away from us and the world? She should have been exempt.

I don't want to hear that she's in a better place. She's not. This is the better place, where her grandkids are, where we are. This house is the better place. Her rocking chair is the best place, where she held almost all of our kids, rocking them to get to sleep. She got to hold Andre in her hospital room, so she got to rock him there. She needed to be able to hold him until he slept here, where she belonged.

I don't want to be planning her funeral, but I have to. We all do. I don't want to think about caskets and flowers and fucking food. I want to think about her next reaction to a new outfit of Viv's, to how much weight Andre has gained, to Jayden's t-ball game outcome, to a Kyanism or to one of Declan's new words. I want to be able to give her the video I take of Viv almost crawling, just to hear Mom's reaction. Her reactions were always the best. My cousin Amy always said that you called Mom or one of her sisters if you wanted a good, satisfying reaction to news, good or bad. I want to be sitting on the downstairs couch with, watching "A New Leaf" again, hearing her exclaim about the poor condition of my feet. But I don't want to be here without her.

Without her. That's going to be the rest of our lives. Without Mom. It's going to suck.

2009-07-04T00:15:00.001-07:00

I want my mommy.

Slowly and quickly.

2009-06-23T13:52:00.000-07:00

Each day seems to drag on as we wait for Mom's cytogenetic test results. They determine how the doctors rate prognosis, which seems awfully callous. If we didn't know about chromosomal abnormalities pointing towards poor outcome, would we view the cancer any differently? Is it just for the insurance companies so they know what to allow for treatment and what to deny? Is it to give us a realistic notion of Mom's chances or is it only to help target treatment? As Tina keeps saying, Mom isn't a statistic, and she's doing very well so far, so maybe the cytology will have little impact on her actual outcome, but what does knowing you have a genetic tendency that makes your cancer less responsive to treatment do to your morale, which is a key factor in treatment success and recovery?

1 in 10 to 20 adults with ALL have a chromosomal abnormality called Ph1 that can indicated a poor response to chemo. If Mom has Ph1, then she may not qualify for a marrow transplant, which is usually the best bet for remission. I feel tense and angry that the test is taking as long as it is to be completed, as it seems to be all we can think about. However, Rigoletto is next month, and that's seeming to approach all too rapidly, as I'm not memorized yet. Thank God I'm only in three scenes, although even they seem impossibly dense right now. Frigging Verdi. It couldn't have been Handel, could it?

So, we wait and play with the babies and chew our nails and cook meals and do laundry and edge lawns (Marianne, you tireless badass) and go to sleep each night wondering what news we'll wake to in the morning. Every night we just pray for the best and cry a little as we wonder if it will be the worst.

A bit of good news.

2009-06-19T16:04:00.001-07:00

The cancer is not in Mom's spine. She started chemo today and it was a bit rough, but she's been feeling fine since it ended. I'll be Twittering updates as well as posting them to Mom's Caring Bridge website, https://www.caringbridge.org/visit/judyblewett.

Last night, Kyan, my godson and second oldest nephew, was lying in Mom and Dad's bed watching Snow White. Mark asked him if he liked doing so and he said, "Yes, when I'm here I feel like she's with me." Sniff.

Every worst case scenario.

2009-06-17T20:52:00.000-07:00

Mom does not have the type of leukemia we were hoping for. She has ALL, the most common type of childhood leukemia, but a rarer type for adults, and one that is harder to treat. Mom had to have a lumbar puncture to determine if there are cancer cells in the central nervous system. When the puncture was performed, chemo drugs were injected into the spinal cord, just in case. She will begin chemo on Friday, which will initially take a month, and then she'll have maintenance chemo and then stem cell transplants in Seattle. And she will not rent an apartment to save me bother, despite her protestations.

This is going to be a long, sucky road.

Why can't the good be left alone?

2009-06-16T17:21:00.000-07:00

Why must there always be bad to temper the good? I hate having my pessimism validated. You all know the good, here's the shit stack: Mom has leukemia.

I cannot even write it without wanting to throw up. She was admitted to the hospital Monday as she had gone to the doctor to have her lightheadedness, shortness of breath and fatigue analyzed, and her hemoglobin was so low that they admitted her for a transfusion. She had her marrow biopsied today, so we'll know the type tomorrow, and the DNA typing will be done next week. She'll come home for two days starting tomorrow afternoon, and then will be in the hospital for a month for chemo.

This is a woman who has eaten a healthier diet than an army of vegan hippies, who takes vitamins of varying degrees of strangeness, who works out, who does everything right, and this still happened. She is the epicenter of the universe to the grandkids, and they won't be able to see her for four weeks. There is no shit like cancer shit.

Follow Up

2009-06-03T12:18:00.000-07:00

When an infant has a UTI, there's a concern that an abnormality of the kidneys, urethra or ureter could be causing reflux of urine, leading to repeat infections. When Viv was diagnosed with the UTI last week, the pediatrician at Children's and our own pediatrician both recommended an ultrasound and voiding cystourethrogram to evaluate the health of Viv's kidneys, bladder and involved anatomy. So, yesterday, we took her back to Children's to have both done. I am again grateful that we are lucky enough to live in Seattle. Children's staff members all seem to have excellent senses of humor.

The ultrasound was easy, Viv was perfect and laid still with nary a fuss for the 10 minutes it took to capture pictures of her TEENY TINY ORGANS. We saw her wee little uterus, which was a little odd. I felt like I was invading her privacy. Christian thought her kidneys looked like a baboon's face. The ultrasound technician had never heard that one before. No, literally. She guessed that Christian was an artist, as she said that artists and engineers always see bizarre images in the ultrasound.

The VC was less pleasant. Viv had to be catheterized, have dye injected via the cath into her bladder and then be x-rayed voiding. She was incredibly calm, though, and didn't flinch or fuss when the nurse inserted the cath, which was remarkable. The nurses were impressed that we had thought to bring Viv's favorite toys, as, apparently, most parents don't think of it. Oh, and everyone said she was just beautiful and called in other staff and faculty to see her. She's the prettiest baby ever.

Anyway, both tests showed that everything was functioning normally, and that she doesn't need to be on prophylactic antibiotics, thankfully. We're relieved, for us and for her.

That first trip is the scariest.

2009-05-28T12:03:00.000-07:00

Until this week, I felt very lucky that Viv has been so healthy, especially as she wasn't breastfed, and without clostrum, she may as well be thrown into a pig wallow in Mexico for all the immune system she has. She had a mild case of croup that cleared up on its own, requiring only occasional treatments with albuterol delivered via nebulizer and her demeanor never really changed during that short illness.

She woke up Sunday, however, with a fever and seemed listless and out of sorts. We called the doctor that night, but she was out of town, so we spoke with the consulting nurse at Children's. She told us to just keep an eye on her, especially as she had no other symptoms, but she vomited twice that night and couldn't sleep, and was running a higher fever the next day, which was, of course, a holiday. Another call to the consulting nurse, another keep an eye out. We made an appointment for Tuesday, and my lovely pediatrician examined her and took a urine sample, which looked suspicious. Her fever was 102.5 by then, and she vomited up the Tylenol we tried to give her to take down the fever, all over me, the doctor, the floor and her own clothes. However, by then, the fever had climbed to an alarming 104. 3. She was so hot it was difficult to hold her, so we tried to cool her using cold washcloths. The doctor's office was out of fever reducing suppositories so the pediatrician actually ran to the pharmacy for us. It was quite above and beyond.

However, by the time she returned, Viv was not improved, so she called Children's and they asked that we bring the poodle over. A slightly tense drive during which I was convinced that Viv was not, in fact, sleeping, but was in a coma, and we were in the ER, but I couldn't have felt more low rent, as I hadn't anticipated the barf episode, and had no change of clothes. So, I carried in my sick baby, swaddled only in a diaper and an industrial towel from the doctor's office. However, the suppository had, blessedly, started to work and she began to improve. They did give her a teeny, tiny hospital gown, which was actually quite fetching, but then Shelly arrived with actual clothes.

After a four hour wait, during which they took a urine sample via catheter (which I hope to never, ever have to do to her again), the urinary tract infection was confirmed and we were sent home after a primary antibiotic dosing. I just got a call that it is an E. coli infection, the most common of the childhood urinary tract diseases. The next morning, she was hugely improved, her normal, happy self. Now we just have to take her back to Children's for a screening ultrasound to examine her ureter for defects.

I am curious as to why she didn't sleep last night and why she had worked herself into a frenzy before bedtime. Barfy McSpewy couldn't keep down her antibiotic until the second go, so she was grumpy until we finally got her to sleep around 10:30. Once she was asleep, though, I kept prodding her to make sure she didn't have a concussion, because, you see, she fell off the bed yesterday. I set her in the MIDDLE of a pile of laundry, surrounded by bedding and clothes, and I didn't even know she could roll over the way she did. Why do children always celebrate milestones with grievous personal injury? And why do things always happen so quickly when one has merely turned one's back to grab a blanket? Anyway, she was, and is, fine, but I was terribly afraid that she was going to bleed on the brain, so I kept checking her eyes and pupils. Right now I'm just letting her sleep. Poor kid deserves it.

So it's come to this.

2009-05-24T22:41:00.000-07:00

When we brought Viv home, we were so panicked and desperate that we purchased our equipment willy nilly with nary a thought to ease of use or any similar considerations. We bought our stroller and car seat as a set, and I knew they were very safe, but I had no idea they were so damn chintzy and awkward. I've come to despise the very sight of our horrid, bulky, cheaply made stroller whose parts fall off with a visceral passion. It's incredibly heavy, I can't lift it with one hand, it's difficult to open and close and it's so large that it occupies the entire space of the trunk and I cannot navigate store aisles without knocking over displays in a comical, sitcomish fashion.

Still, I had no idea that, in a post from several years ago in which I cruelly made fun of parents and their strollers, I would jinx myself into becoming the worst of them. We bought a Bugaboo today. More specifically, a Bugaboo Bee, one of the most expensive and pretentious strollers available on the market. Well, in the top five of pretentious strollers, after Stokke, Inglesina and Orbit Baby, and above Quinny and Phil and Teds, although not by much. However, we did get the stroller secondhand from Craigslist for a really excellent price, and it had been used a very limited amount of times. It's the smallest and lightest weight Bugaboo, and folds with one hand and fits behind the front seat of the car. It is a thing of beauty and genius and I adore it. Too much. It's embarrassing. I still will never get a luxury SUV, though, despite that seeming to be the next link in the fancy pants chain of events. My Toyota is good enough for this family.

Oh come ON.

2009-05-19T11:33:00.001-07:00

Last Friday, I finally had my Nissen fundoplication. I spent the night in the hospital and came home Saturday. I was catheterized during the procedure as I was under general anesthetic, and developed a bladder infection by Sunday morning. It's disturbing to urinate blood, even when you're half expecting it.

After calling the clinic which houses my surgeon and his residents and fellows and being ordered by the nurse to bring my sorry sad self down within a half hour, I was driven down my Mom, gave them a sample and waited two hours in uncomfortable chairs in the waiting room only to have the initial orders given to me on the phone contradicted by the front desk staff, who told me that, despite the initial assurance that I would be squeezed in by 10:30 am, my appointment with the resident was not, in fact, until noon. This was at 11:30, and I just couldn't wait anymore.

After waiting three hours at home, I called the office, received a call back at 4:30 and was told my sample was full of unfortunate substances and a prescription had been called in for me. But what did they call in? Not your average, run of the mill Sulfa drug, no. They called in anthrax-busting Cipro. What the hell was in my pee?

As I can't swallow pills yet, I took the first pill in ground form and hoped for few if any of the myriad of terrifying side effects listed in the pharmacy handout. When I awoke this morning, my throat felt full and sore, and upon investigation, I saw the normally pink roof of my mouth covered with white patches from candida. The ground pills wiped all of the good bacteria out of mouth and now I'm reduced to gargling tea tree oil twice a day, because the three types of ground pills I'm taking in addition to the antibiotic aren't foul enough. However, the narcotic pain pills are giving me fun dreams, even though they're keeping me from knitting as I can't focus my eyes. I'll take it where I can get it.

Time, you deceiver.

2009-04-28T13:23:00.000-07:00

Five months old, Viv is five months old today, and is celebrating by coughing her lungs up from a bronchial virus. Can she be this big? She weighs 15.8 pounds, according to the doctor's scale, still spot on at the 75th percentile, but lanky. She has a long, skinny midsection and all of her pants, while too big in the waist, are already too short. Her twiggy arms are utterly unlike her pleasantly hamhocky thighs. She also has really big feet. Can it be that she'll be tall?

This kid, this little peanut has completely reordered the way I think about life, and even though it's going by way too fast, the changes she undergoes every day are so exciting that I eagerly await each new coordinated hand eye movement. She smiles every time she sees me, even if I've only been out of the room for a second. Every morning, she wakes up happy, thrilled to bits to be seeing us again. I wondered, before bringing her home, how to spend time with her. What would we do? Now, the days seem to fly. I chew on her ears and cheeks constantly, and the bald patch on the back of her head is more bald because I rest my cheek against it. She likes to play by herself already, which I hope is a good sign for her future intellect. She's teething and so droolier than a hungry basset hound, and she's eating real food, so the mess is substantial. She goes through five bibs a day at least. She's sitting up almost entirely on her own and she can roll partially over in both directions. She's an utter genius and I love her so much I have to close my eyes and remember to breathe.

Manometry twice, fix once.

2009-04-25T12:44:00.000-07:00

I had debated whether or not to repeat the worst one of the battery of tests I underwent in September of 2007 to determine if I was a candidate to have my hiatal hernia repaired, as that horrible test showed the first time that my esophagus had so little motility that I could only have the hernia partially repaired. This did not make me happy.

Before I scheduled the partial, I wanted to meet with the surgeon to see if there was any way I could have the full, and he recommend the repeat manometry to check if the motility had improved. He thought the improvement unlikely, but as it had been a year and a half and a really, really wanted the full repair, I redid the test. It was as wretched as I remembered, full of gagging and nose pain, but it turned out to be worth every discomfort as it showed that my motility had improved to the point where I can have the full repair. This means no more stomach drugs, no more reflux, no more pain, and that makes me very, very happy.

Sad, lonely Fritz.

2009-04-13T15:04:00.001-07:00

Fritz is destined to be alone, I think. Poor little Pierre was lost to us today. He never was quite himself after the beak injury, and he wasn't terribly hale to begin with. Christian found him on the floor of his cage today, emaciated and very weak. I tried to feed him with a needleless syringe, and he ate for a while, but gave up after filling his crop. His little heart and kidneys were most likely too weak.

We'll miss his little fuzzy butt terribly.

They're actually implanting a microchip with that syringe.

2009-04-10T23:36:00.000-07:00

I'm not a conspiracy theorist. I don't believe that there's an Area 51 UFO coverup, I think that JFK was shot by one wacky guy, I think that Elvis is long dead and I don't think that Beatles' albums played backwards relay a secret message. I believe in science, and that, to be accepted as fact, any scientific findings must have consistently repeatable study results. And, if the author of a non-repeatable study admits that his results were falsified, the conclusions of that study should be deemed void.

It shocked me when I learned that Wakefield's single, small sample sized study caused an estimated 12% drop in the vaccination rate among children. Hundreds of thousands of parents believed the anecdotal evidence of one physician (and their countless friends who repeated the findings of the study as fact) above the adamant assurances of most of the rest of the medical community, and thousands of children were put at risk because of (repeatedly disproven) fears about mercury-based preservatives in vaccines. It was believed that the medical profession was lying to parents about the true risks of these vaccinations, and that the government was in league.

There is so much irony in this controversy. Seemingly, those who quickly jumped on the anti-vaccine bandwagon didn't bother to do even the most rudimentary search to reveal that no mercury-based preservatives have been used in regular childhood vaccines in eight years (and most for much longer), or that multiple similar studies were unable to confirm or even approximate Wakefield's findings. Parents who believed they were protecting their children from the risks of developing autism hung on word of mouth tales of seemingly normal children who, after their first or second round of vaccinations, suddenly developed symptoms pertaining to the autism spectrum. They didn't bother to read that these symptoms emerge in vaccinated and unvaccinated children alike at the age where social skills are emerging and difficulties with those social skills become evident, which is at the same age where some vaccines are recommended. The link between the two is coincidental, not causal.

I see the desperate need to blame as being the driving force behind these controversies. An imperfect child must have been damaged, as the genes of the parents couldn't possibly be the culprit. The diagnosis of autism must be crushing to parents, but especially those who have placed all of their hopes on the future of their child. Again and again I've seen in parents my age the same desire to have children who are the fulfillment of their lifelong quest to matter, children who are the answer to the unsatisfying career, or the tarnished dream to change the world. Children who must be raised in the most progressive, the most correct, the most expensive way, because then, and only then, will the parent feel as though they have succeeded. And what would a disability do to those parents? Would it mean they have failed? That they chose poorly for their child?

Viv has been vaccinated. She was vaccinated because I couldn't find even one shred of evidence, in all my reading of the scientific journals, that vaccines cause anything more than a mild fever in almost all children. There are, of course, rare instances of life-threatening reactions to vaccines, usually because of an allergy to an ingredient, but these instances are so few and far between that I could only find a few single case studies detailing them.

Children with suppressed immunity cannot be vaccinated, because live virus strains can fatally infect their defenseless systems. Therefore, to keep infections such as measles from coming into contact with children who cannot fight them their own, our child, like other healthy children, has been given the vaccine to create herd immunity.

We will continue to vaccinate our daughter. I believe it is our responsibility to protect our children as well as the children who cannot protect themselves.

Mark, I'm expecting to hear from you about this one.

Stats

2009-03-30T16:29:00.000-07:00

Viv had her four month appointment today, and she was again deemed perfect. Even the ARNP said that she has an ideally shaped face. So, professionals have confirmed her to be so, to no one's surprise. I mean, look at this face!

She is now 14.5 pounds, which is the 75th percentile and she is 25.25 inches long with a head circumference of 42 centimeters, both of which are in the 80-90th percentile. Her muscular development is ahead of the curve and her sleeping habits (so far) are exceptional. I'm so proud!

If only these tricks were part of my audition package.

2009-03-30T11:33:00.001-07:00

I've often thought I was born in the wrong era. I wanted to be born in the 20s to allow me to be in my 20s in the 40s, so I could be a big band singer. In my elaborate fantasy, Christian is a trumpeter in the band and we meet and fall in sparkly, lyrical love set to fantastic dance routines in sound stages made up to look like Paris. However, if being a singer in the 40s would mean competing with the Ross Sisters, I would have been screwed. I can't compete with that.

Who are these women and why have most of us never heard of them until now?

It was the shrimp, wasn't it?

2009-03-28T09:32:00.001-07:00

God, let's have a little chat. I gave up two things for lent: buying yarn and eating fast food. I've been incredibly devoted to that first promise, which has been surprisingly difficult. I've mentioned before how yarn is my soul's warm blanket on a cold, cold night, and not picking up a beautiful skein here are there has been utter torture. The skeins I already have are not shielding me from the bitter cold of the recession. However, not spending any money on anything, much less yarn, has been another kind of balm for my worry, so I'm at least glad for that. Oh, and everything I've knitted in the past month has been with yarn from my stash, so there.

So really, fast food was a secondary promise. I only gave it up to save us some money and calories. I don't eat it all that often, really, it's mainly a convenience thing, so when Christian brought home Ivar's shrimp and fries last night, I gladly ate the meal. It was already paid for, so throwing it away would have been wasteful, it was Friday, so no meat, and I've been sick for over a week with a sinus infection, as stated in my most recent post, so I haven't had a lot of energy to cook. So why the disproportionate punishment, oh white haired One?

That first call to the bathroom at 1 am started out blandly enough, I thought I just had a little distress from the fried food. Happens sometimes. I have tempermental bowels. But then, the violent one two to the gut, wrenching my stomach out through my belly button and wringing out the contents in front of my eyes, not one, not two, not even three but five or six times, until there was nothing left but tears in my eyes? And then, the next bout at 3, so brutal that the force of it lifted me to my tiptoes, gasping and choking. But that wasn't enough! At 5 I was so grateful to have a bathroom small enough where I could sit on the toilet and reach the tub that I could have kissed the porcelain if it hadn't been visited once before, and not by a kiss.

And now, unable to even keep water down, so wrung out and exhausted that even typing this is an effort that will render me useless for hours, wondering when it will end. And all because of that shrimp. I get it. You made your point.

Warm now, please.

2009-03-27T19:55:00.001-07:00

In three weeks, I will be here:

Right now, I'm cold, I've been sick for over a week and I have a messy house littered with hampers of laundry. At least it's clean laundry. That way, if I fall asleep under it, I won't wake up smelly.

They help her self-confidence.

2009-03-25T11:19:00.001-07:00

I have a shameful addiction, even more embarrassing than my love for Duran Duran and Easy Cheese. I cannot stop watching pageant shows on WE and TLC. Exploitative parents? Check. Unrealistic expectations? Yep. Enormous pressure placed on tiny shoulders? Of course. Women who wish they were still young enough to compete so they force their daughters to dress in matching outfits so they can compete together? Don't you ever doubt it. Tragic, inbred families who have one lone beautiful child they hope will save them (and their gene pool) from poverty/obscurity/institutionalization? Yes, oui and da. Fathers who watch blandly as their wives/sisters/mothers/grandmothers turn their children into hateful, vain, selfish, spoiled, greedy, arrogant little bitches? You betcha. Mothers who spend an entire month's salary on one beaded dress that makes her daughter look like a cowgirl stripper from the 50s, but keep the expense from the husband? What he doesn't know won't hurt him. Telling the world that no expense (nails, hair, tanning, clothing) is too great as long as it makes the little girl happy? Paging Suze Orman. Hiring a pageant coach/hairdresser/choreographer for a two-year-old because only the most artificial child with the biggest hair is allowed to win? Sing out, Louise. Teaching the next generation that the only thing in the world that matters, aside from getting married before you get fat, is being pretty? Mirror, mirror, on the wall, who's the vainest of them all? All-encompassing fury boiling in my innards, so hot and violent that you can hear the enamel being ground from my teeth three counties over? Just ask Farmer Bob in Snohomish. He made a complaint about the noise.

I'm so deeply ashamed that I now know the what flippers are and that the Grand Supreme title is for the contestant with the highest overall score. Now where's my shoe so I can beat some sense into these parents?

The constant struggle.

2009-03-20T13:01:00.001-07:00

Christian and I have already started talking about schools for Viv. I went to Catholic school, he went to a free school in Seattle and then public grade school and high school in Bellingham. I believe the education I received at private school put me ahead academically of my peer group in public school, and, as I spent a year and a half at a public junior high and was years ahead of my classmates in math and English, I had a good basis of comparison upon which to make that judgment.

We agree so far that Viv should attend a private high school such as Blanchette, as their academic, extra curricular and sports activities are exceptional, and by that age, she'll be able to form her own judgments regarding the things she's taught, and we'll have had ample opportunity to instill in her the values we find important.

However, grade school has become a bone of contention. I want Viv to have the greatest opportunities for academic success, but I'm just not sure I can send Viv to a school that teaches the things the Church taught me while I was growing up. I don't want Viv to think that gay people are sinners and that their love is less than that of straight people and that they can change if they choose. I don't want her to be taught that condom use will exacerbate the AIDS pandemic in Africa. This pope is supposed to be God's representative on earth? I find the current pope to be a reprehensible, arrogant and spiteful old man, and refuse to pay money to any organization who takes his orders as handed down from God, and am deeply ashamed that the administrators of the Church have chosen to continue to cloister themselves from the needs of their flock.

These issues chafe on a painful and long-worrying problem I've been wrangling with since I was a teenager. My objections to the Catholic Church and its dogma make it extraordinarily hard for me to remain a member. I've stayed because I've always believed that the Church is defined by its members and not its leaders, much as America wasn't defined by George Bush when he was in office. However, Catholics lack the ability to make their dissatisfaction heard by voting their appointees out of office. We are beholden to the entrenched, conservative bigots who continue to appoint individuals who forward their agenda, and those who disagree are marginalized. I have remained a Catholic because of individuals like our parish priest, a devout, kind, welcoming, intelligent and compassionate man, but a man who is on the verge of retirement. Who will the Church appoint in his place? Surely not another one such as him, the man who founded the gay ministry at our parish and who jeopardized his own position by viewing it not as a career in need of advancement, but as a means to do what was right. The direction will likely be one of revisionism, a reversal of all that I value in my congregation. I've also always believed that change can only come from within, but if those within continue to try and downplay the importance of progress, love and tolerance and instead push the doctrine of exclusionism, judgmentalism and all of those things I find so contrary to Christ's teachings, I cannot see how those who wish for change will find a willing ear.

I'm often surprised at how heart-wrenching I find this conflict. I was raised Catholic, yes, but that's not why I feel a strong attachment to it. It's the fact that the Church has survived in spite of itself, in spite of the terrible deeds and injustices and greed and baseness. It has survived because members believe in something far, far greater than themselves, and they only find that greatness in each others presence, in the sharing of that sense of love and wonder, in the ability to more as a group than as an individual. Whether we believe that Christ was human or divine, he was a really, really great guy who came to us to forge a new relationship with God and with each other. So much beauty has come of that message that, even though the worst kind of ugliness has resulted from it as well, I'm not willing to give up the quest to find the means to have the former without the latter, to keep the beautiful rituals that bring comfort and hope and community without having those rituals take the place of enacting real good. Attending Mass on Sunday doesn't free one from applying the lessons of that service to the rest of the week. Giving money to help Catholic Charities doesn't mean that you can conveniently forget that charity starts at home, or at work, or at school. We understand the Mass, we feel that it gives us a sense of continuity with our forebears, we can go anywhere in the world and know what is being said, even if it's in a language we don't speak. I would be loathe to give that up, I would hate to not hear the music I so adore in a context I value, but I'll do it. I'll do it because I don't want my daughter to have a hypocrite as a mother.

The cheeks are legally ours.

2009-03-03T14:50:00.000-08:00

Since we brought Viv home, I've tried not to think about the steps we would have to take before she would legally be our daughter. I knew that if I let myself dwell on the post placement report, the additional fees, the paperwork and the final court date, I wouldn't be able to just enjoy the first few months of Viv's life, her life as our girl. Because I had so vigorously pushed down the painful what ifs that would pop into my head when people asked us questions about such things as whether the birth parents could change their minds and take her back, I had avoided thinking about the court date as it would arouse similar anxieties.

So, March 2nd's seemingly instantaneous arrival surprised me almost as much as the springlike weather that accompanied it. I had knitted Viv her berry tart hat and planned our outfits and made arrangements with those who wanted to come to the courthouse with us, but I didn't think about what the actual event would be like, or if it would make us feel any different, which is why I was so surprised to find that, upon arriving in the courtroom to meet the judge, I was actually shaking with excitement. When Judge Fair (so auspicious) signed our papers, I would have cried had I not been smiling like I was in a toothpaste commercial. I felt not just relieved, but elated, proud, indescribably grateful and bucolically happy, which I can't really say is an emotion I've ever felt before. On my wedding day, at the moment where we were told that we were married, I was happy but dazed, like the event was happening to someone else. I had planned for so long that it seemed like it would never arrive, and when it did, all I could think was, "Oh, thank God, we can go eat now."

Because I had planned for nothing and halted myself from even imagining what the event would be like, I had absolutely no expectations for the final court date. It was more different that I could have imagined from even the fragment of thought I had given it in the few minutes we were waiting for our time. It was so quick! We answered a few questions, the judge signed the papers and then held Viv while praising her sweetness, we took pictures, Christian posed with Viv in the witness box, we had lunch, and went home.

I'm now exceedingly glad that I didn't run the day in my head a million times, as I think it would have lessened the perfection of the way it really happened.

I do not think that word means what you think it means.

2009-02-18T17:43:00.000-08:00

Just seen on the license plate frame of a Volvo, of all things, "I'm a bitch, I'm just not your's."

Now, even if "your's" was a word, it would mean, "your is," which is still just as incorrect as the contractive form. And this wasn't an email with an accidental apostrophe, it was an object whose production required foresight and special ordering, but apparently no proofreader. The driver of that car certainly isn't the English language's bitch.

Watch out, bottom feeders and scavengers, I'm coming for you.

2009-02-16T21:09:00.001-08:00

I can eat shrimp! I tried it again (after having briefly tried it in September), and nothing, not an itch, not a swell, not a hive. I haven't eaten any since that fateful night all those years ago, where an ill-advised trip to an indoor circus ended with an ER visit for one of the worst, scariest asthma attacks in history. The negative associations with that evening led me to avoid shellfish, a beloved food group, for the past 15 years. Shrimp and pasta, shrimp salad sandwiches, barbecued shrimp, fried shrimp, garlic and butter shrimp, OH MY GOD, I can eat at Pike Place Market again! All restaurants serving seafood are no longer off limits to me. Oh, the glory. The deliciousness. The high calorie many-leggedness. So, so happy.

The Smiling Butter Bean

2009-02-10T19:52:00.000-08:00

Stupid, stupid interwebs.

2009-02-03T20:58:00.000-08:00

I hate the intertubes. When I started going to therapy for anxiety, my therapist told me to never, ever do internet research on subjects upon which I had fixated. Don't keep carting the coals to Newcastle, as it were. However, when I went online yesterday to look up dosages of tylenol for Viv post-immunization as the bottle only listed doses for babies over 12 months, I wasn't intending to read anything about the immunization controversy, and, in fact, deliberately avoided any website with even the barest mention of autism. We had already discussed the concerns surrounding vaccinating Viv and had decided to go with the shots as the risks of contracting the illnesses to be immunized against were greater than the risks associated with triggering autism. In addition, I wasn't able to find any peer-reviewed research published in a reputable journal (using PubMed) that found a plausible link between the two.

And then, AND THEN, I found website after website claiming an elevated risk of SIDS after one particular immunization. How could this be possible? How did I miss this new subject specially engineered to keep me up at night, necessitating me to check Viv's breathing every time I jerked awake from an unwelcome doze, during which I had panic dreams of horrible outcomes? So, I went to PubMed again, and there were a few case studies of infant deaths that could possibly be associated with this vaccine. So now I'll be utterly paranoid for the next two months, convinced that any fussiness in our usually placid baby is a sign of impending doom. OK, the next five years. Let's be realistic.

Of course, every individual website claiming this link uses the exact same copy and even calls asthma "a condition not unlike SIDS." That's a head-scratcher. Still, I'm now very worried.

Stats

2009-02-02T17:15:00.001-08:00

When Viv was born, she weighed 6.2 pounds, was 19 inches in length and had a head circumference of 13 inches.

At today's doctor's appointment, she weighed a whopping 12.1 pounds, measured at 24.5 inches her head is a planetoid at 17 inches around. She's at the 90th percentile for head and length and 80th percentile for her weight. And here I thought she was so little. Of course, all the babies I know top out at the 100th percentile at around their 6th hour, so maybe the scale should be slightly altered.

Now that's tired.

2009-01-17T23:21:00.000-08:00

I got to the show today, and put on my makeup before getting changed into my costume. Wait, I have to start earlier. Viv and I spent the last few days in Spokane rehearsing and visiting loved ones, and we flew back today. Viv decided that, last night, she no longer needed sleep and neither did I, but at 8 am, when we had to get up to catch our flight, she suddenly decided that sleep was all she ever wanted and that I was a wretch for making her do such an absurd thing as, you know, wake.

Once home, I couldn't take a nap as Viv was fussy with Christian and I could hear her wails through the bedroom door. The birds also decided that my return home and subsequent laydown meant that it was the best time EVER to imitate every sound they've ever heard in their lives, ever. Ever. I slept not a whit, especially when Christian brought a sleeping Viv in to her bassinet so he could go to Target and then she woke up and wanted nothing but to be held on my chest so she could drool copiously into my cleavage.

Back to the show. I had put on my makeup and done my pincurls and went to the rack to get my dress. I pulled it off the hanger, stepped into it and turned around to have the dresser zip me up. When I reached into my bodice to lift up my boobs so it would be easier to zip (I like my bodices tight), I noticed that I could see my feet between the boning and my bra. Wow, and the dress was zipped up already? Yep, I hadn't even noticed. Huh. I glanced at my sleeve and noticed buttons. Huh. That's odd, I thought my dress had ties on the sleeves. It wasn't my dress. Huh.

Revelations of SAHM

2009-01-14T12:35:00.001-08:00

As Christian is now back at work, I am an official stay-at-home-mother, something that I would have believed impossible and inadvisable when in my 20s. I have made a few discoveries that will shock or surprise absolutely no one. Here they are:

1. A baby will only sleep when held, either while on the chest, allowing one to type awkwardly, or actually in the arms, allowing nothing to be accomplished at all.

2. The house will never be clean again, at least not clean as it was before the arrival of the baby. All activities directed towards furthering cleanliness will be interrupted so many times as to render said activities futile.

3. Laundry will reach proportions heretofore unseen outside of a correctional institution, and no matter how much is washed, the rate at which clothing is soiled is so rapid that the amount needing to be washed will never be smaller than the amount washed.

4. Daytime TV commercials are appalling crap, unlike nighttime commercials, which are merely crap. I don't want to buy Xenadrine, nor do I need to learn how to sell things on Ebay. I don't have scrap gold to sell and I don't really need AARP-approved life insurance.

5. I cannot ever find a phone, as all phones are buried deep under burp cloths and onesies. See #3. Consequently, when the phone rings, the house gets messier and the clean laundry again becomes soiled when the clean clothes on the bed are shoveled onto the floor allowing me to unearth the handset.

6. The second I decide that it is safe to eat because the baby is sleeping, she will awake, ravenous for time, food and my soul, all three of which are hers for the taking.

7. The Golden Girls are awesome at 1 pm or 1 am, the two times at which they are on.

8. Birds understand when they have become second fiddle and they don't like it. There will be regressive screaming. Spending extra scratching time with them while the baby is sleeping will make them love you again, and that is important. I need Cyril's love in my life. It's uncomplicated and pure. And fluffy.

9. Friends really prove their love and devotion by endlessly and cheerfully babysitting while I'm away at tedious rehearsals and performances.

10. Time only has meaning as it applies to others. Nowhere to be today? 9 am or 2 pm, makes no difference to me. Pediatrician's appointment or a show? Time is my enemy, as punctuality, beloved and unwavering punctuality, becomes a hardship rather than a virtue.

11. Very little knitting gets accomplished. Very, very little.

12. Real baby smiles hit you like a white hot spear of transcendental love.

13. My latent cheeseball tendencies are no longer latent.

14. Getting sleep is almost worse than not getting sleep. Once the body has realized that sleep is an elusive luxury, getting a full dose of that luxury reminds you why alcoholics can't just have one drink.

15. Nothing will ever matter as much to me as how many chins my child has. Four? We win.

Insufficiencies

2008-12-19T19:16:00.001-08:00

I periodically write posts about my many personal failings, most of which revolve around my tendency to over-worry and inability to focus on the now. Well, I have now reached Olympic gold medal standards of not allowing myself to enjoy the day to day moments. I have a DAUGHTER now, a daughter, who only lives in the very moment happening. She doesn't think about whether or not I have all of the Christmas presents purchased, or when the snow will fall again, or how much laundry there is to put away, she only thinks about her sleep, her food and her poop and pee. These are now all things on which I fixate, but I still manage to find time to allow my mind to dwell in an out of control manner on any number of ridiculous and unimportant issues, like how I'm going to occupy my mind not having to go to a day job, how I'm going to sing and find gigs with a baby, whether or not we'll ever be able to afford to remodel our house, all things that only time and good planning will tell.

This is all particularly ludicrous this time of year as I'm a Christmas junkie who can usually set aside daily realities to revel in the escapism of festivities. However, I'm finding my enjoyment of the holiday dampened rather than increased by things like the gorgeous snowfall and our consequent entrenchment. Now I'm concerned about the inevitable melt and following depression. I feel muddled still by the change in our life, even though my mind is slowly clearing and we're finding our new situation to be pretty wonderful. Maybe I'm just expecting too much in light of all the mountainous changes we've faced in the past month. I just want to revel in this, our first family Christmas as parents.

Again, they taunt us.

2008-12-17T11:27:00.000-08:00

Olympic mountain shadow my ass. Snow later today, please. Why don't they just tell us the truth, that we all don't deserve the peace, beauty and serenity that snow grants us in this hullabalooing world? Our Sodom to Portland's Gomorra, trapped in warm pockets of as little blissful billowy snow as meteorologically possible. Wind, oh, we've got wind, rain, slush, fog...but no snow. Never snow. We're bad and must be punished.

Quickly Changing

2008-12-15T21:40:00.000-08:00

I am utterly floored by how quickly Viv is changing. She's chubbier, thankfully, and often alert. She enjoyed meeting her great-Grandmother, for whom she is great granddaughter number eighteen:

And she already has become as enamored of Christmas as the rest of our family:

What do you get a two week old baby for Christmas?

Four Days

2008-12-06T16:29:00.000-08:00

To begin the story of the four days that changed our life, I suppose I have to start with shopping. At 5:30 am the day after Thanksgiving, the phone rang. The alarm clock had gotten unplugged during the night and I had overslept. Angie was calling to ask if I was still going Black Friday shopping with her and Shelly and Shelly's mom. I needed a few things for Christian and the in-laws for Christmas, so I thought I'd go with them to the mall. As I'm a shopping tard, I exhausted early and went home after seeing the line at Kohl's that went all the way through the store into the bathrooms and stock room.

I went back to bed and didn't wake up until Christian came in to the bedroom to tell me that Anne was on the phone. Anne is the mom of my dear friend Karen, and the social worker at a hospital south of Seattle. I thought she was calling to check on the progress of our adoption paperwork, and asked Christian to take the call. He came back in a few minutes later. A young woman had come into the hospital in labor, Anne said, having previously been unaware of her pregnancy, and had given birth to a baby girl. She felt that she would be unable to parent and wanted to find an adoptive family. Did we want to come meet her? I sat up in bed, and Christian and I looked at each other for what seemed like an eternity. We jumped up then, and I ran to the shower, thinking what I wanted to wear to meet the birth mother. I dressed up, even putting on makeup, and made Christian wear ironed pants.

We drove as fast as we could to the hospital, slowing down due to an accident (not ours, fortunately) and got there around 2:30. We were taken to a small waiting room where we were told that the birth mother didn't want to meet us and asked if we wanted to meet the baby. This was not what I was expecting. According to the usual practices, a birthmother who had not chosen an adoptive family would be presented with a variety of information packets provided by adoptive parents and then choose several with whom to meet before deciding on one. And, our homestudy wasn't done, the social worker who had come to our house in September never wrote the report. She emailed us on Halloween to tell us that she had been delayed by family health problems and would do the homestudy immediately. That was the last we heard from her.

We agreed to meet the baby and were taken into the nursery. There something that those who have never done an adoption have to understand. From the moment you first begin reading your first book or your first website, you are told repeatedly that 50% of domestic adoptions fail. That's half. We were also told that there are few babies available in Washington State and that the means of starting our family would be painful and arduous. But here we were, in a nursery, holding a tiny, perfect baby to whom we really weren't supposed to get attached. The hospital had a room for us to stay in, Anne said, so we could get to know the baby. We pushed her hospital cradle down the hall to the empty room and looked at her for a while. She was so calm. We took turns holding her and started talking about what the hell we were going to do. Anne had told us to call our lawyer right away, but she was out of town. We couldn't get in touch with the social worker who never finished the homestudy, so we sat and held the baby and talked. I was supposed to be in a dress rehearsal that night for Hansel and Gretel, but I called the company and begged to be released. They had mercy on us, and we decided to stay the night, and called Shelly to ask her to bring us some clothes. The birthmother, though, wanted to have the baby in her room that night, as they had some things to discuss, she said. We went home, calling everyone we knew on both of our phones, trying to get an attorney. We spent the next three hours rearranging our bedroom and the bird room to give us more space.

We woke up early the next morning and saw that an attorney recommended to us had emailed us, asking us to call him. We spoke, he knew exactly what to do, and so we hired him on the spot. He gave us the number of two social workers who might be able to redo our home study for us that day. One of them agreed to come over at 1. We tore around the house, cleaning and organizing, wanting to get back down to the hospital to see the baby. The birthmother asked for the baby to be taken back to the nursery early that morning, and the nurses told us to come at any time. We drove the forty minutes each direction, seeing the baby for a half hour, before getting back to the house, where the social worker was in conversation with Chris and Angie, who we had asked to wait at our house for her. They showed her around, talked about us and our marriage, and generally saved our bacon. The social worker was incredibly gracious and we talked for almost four hours, until Christian left to go back to the hospital and I had to get ready for the first performance of Hansel. I remember very, very little of that evening, other than the two blackouts we had on stage due to the light board overloading.

After the show, I drove down to the hospital and spent the night with the baby we now thought might possibly be ours. We were still reserved, though. Anne and our attorney met with both of the birth parents that day and had them sign all of the paperwork, but there was always the chance of one or both of them changing their minds before their 48 hour window had passed. She was so sweet and easy and alert that we couldn't help falling painfully for her, but the idea that this whole thing might not work made me withdraw somewhat. Both social workers told us that this wasn't uncommon, though, and that it could take a while to allow our emotions to take ahold.

The next morning, we waited to hear from all of our people about our progress. We had so much to gather, our fingerprints we had submitted six weeks before to the FBI, our medical reports for the homestudy which had been sent to the first social worker and which we would have to redo the next day, the DSHS report which we had faxed in, all of which couldn't be gotten until Monday. So, we waited, getting to know the baby we now tentatively called Viv, as that would be her name if she was ours. I had to sing Hansel again, one more time, and there was no new news upon my return to the hospital.

The next morning saw us up very early on the phone to the adoption agency in Texas with whom we thought we were going to do our adoption, as they were supposed to have received the fingerprint reports. They hadn't gotten it yet, but called the processing office and got a copy to fax to our attorney. We each then had to go see our respective doctors to get the medical reports, which I then had to fly home to scan in and send for our homestudy. I brought the scanner back to the hospital for Christian's medical form and waited for 3:30 pm, the 48 mark after which no one could change their minds. Our attorney wanted to make absolutely certain that the birthmother, who still hadn't wanted to meet us, was protected, so he arranged for her to meet with her own attorney when she returned to the hospital for her post-partum visit. She and the attorney met right outside the doors to the ward, and when I went to the cafeteria that evening, caught a glimpse of the baby's birthmother as she was counseled. I wish we could have met. The day passed beyond the time we could make it to court, so we settled in for another night at the hospital, hoping that DSHS would come through first thing so we could make everything final. We did manage to make dashes to the store to buy a stroller and car seat, however, and made it to the home of a couple selling a bed on Craigslist, so at least we'd have a place for her to sleep and a means to get her home.

DSHS didn't come through that morning. We had to resend all of our forms as they claimed to have never received them. Christian drove to meet the social worker to pick up the notarized homestudy to give to our attorney. We waited extremely impatiently, me at the hospital and Christian at home, for our attorney to call when we had been approved by DSHS and Christian and the attorney could get to court before it closed at 4. At 3 pm, just in time, the form came through. We were legally made parents at 4:45 pm on Tuesday, December 2nd.

We had nothing at home. No crib, no clothes, no diapers, absolutely nothing. It's said that, in times of trial, those who are your real friends will reveal themselves. Ours did with a vengeance. Everything we could need, all washed and ready for little Viv's arrival home.

It's Saturday, a week and a day after we first met our little daughter. I still feel bewildered, as though I suddenly grew another arm and have no idea what to do with it. It won't fit in any of my shirts, after all. Everyone told us that this would happen, as the whirl of those four days gave us little time to prepare in any way, and that, once we were home for a while, we would stop feeling as though we were babysitting, and start feeling like parents. I've only had 10 or 11 hysterical breakdowns, which has to be a record for me.

My parents have now met her, as I begged Mom to come over the day we brought her home, as I have absolutely no idea what I'm doing, and Dad drove over today to meet his first granddaughter. We're anxiously awaiting the visit of Christian's parents, who want to come down when the dust has settled. She's to be their one grandchild, so I hope they approve. I don't see how they couldn't, as she's perfect.

We've already made some rookie mistakes. The bed we bought her was not rigid, so we'll have to resell it. A bassinet was purchased instead. I got drenched bathing her as I've never bathed a newborn before, but she didn't seem to mind. However, her disposition is so sweet that she forgives us as soon as we make a mistake.

I want to do what's right and best for her. We are now a racially diverse family, even more so than usual, so we have to find the means to show her that she's not the only one whose family looks like ours. I'm already worrying about what schools she'll go to and what friends she'll make, and whether or not she'll struggle with her identity. Will we be good parents? Will we meet her needs, emotional and physical? Is our house too small? The list goes on.

I'm waiting for the moment when I finally realize that she's ours. Tiny Viv, the four day baby. I know it will come soon.

I had no idea.

2008-11-22T13:00:00.000-08:00

I really adore sock yarn, especially hard to get, desirable, expensive, European sock yarn. Last night, when I wanted to go online and buy and buy to soothe the bitter gaping babyless hole in my heart, I thought, wouldn't it be better if I pulled out all of my sock yarn to see what I had and to maybe, just maybe, convince myself that I didn't need anymore? Yeah, it worked.

As I also have five more skeins of the expensive, super-excloosive, you-have-to-wait-up-all-night-to-get-it German yarn coming soon, I think I need to knit for a few more years until I can justify the next purchase. Of course, Christmas is coming, and yarn is a perfect stocking stuffer.

I miss the magic.

2008-11-17T13:36:00.000-08:00

I'm getting the itch, the yen, the longing. I need to visit Disneyland. I ache for some escapism. We promised to take Jayden to Disneyland for his seventh birthday, which is next year, so we're thinking maybe February, when the parks have historically low attendance and the desperate state of the economy means that Disney will need to offer progressively lower prices and greater incentives to guest to get them to spend what little money they have to make the trip. I'm hoping for deals so absurd that Christian will be unwilling to say no. I need a rice krispie treat with candy coating.

A little like it.

2008-11-13T12:33:00.000-08:00

I was awakened at 5 am this morning my a ruckus in the bird room. I rushed in to find Cyril thrashing against the sides of his cage, panting and flapping. My bird has night terrors.

I spent the next half hour holding him and petting him and talking to him as he shook and hyperventilated. When he had finally calmed down, I put him back in his cage, to have him promptly climb out and offer his neck to me for a scratch. I couldn't not scratch him, he's too sweet, so I didn't get to bed until about six.

If a little bird can keep me up in the night, I don't stand a chance with a kid.

The two cutest nuns.

2008-11-11T11:55:00.000-08:00

As the director said, there's nothing funnier than men dressed as nuns. Is it disturbing that they're also pretty smokin'?

The morning after.

2008-11-10T10:54:00.000-08:00

Do I feel sad about the show being over because I love performing, or is it because I hate taking events off the calendar on my website? This show had an unusually agreeable cast who also happened to be extremely talented as well as adorable, so saying goodbye was hard. There's no break, as Pearl Fishers' rehearsals start tonight and Hansel and Gretel started rehearsals two days ago, but, as I whinge and moan when I'm not so busy that I forget to put on pants in the morning, I'm grateful that I have work, even if I'm still convinced that I'm going to be laughed off the stage (and not in a good way) when I dress as Hansel. There's only so much a costumer can do.

Oh, and we got a great review.

The icing on the happy cake.

2008-11-05T11:39:00.001-08:00

Dino Rossi is set to concede. I don't think I could have swallowed the bitter pill of having a 1920's ganster throwback as my Governor.

And, oh yeah, HOLY FUCKING SHIT, OBAMA WON! The tears, they were aflowin'. I love that man and his badass wife and my withered heart has been suffused with the revivifying elixer of optimism. So suck it, Republicans, suck it.

A terrible day for the brass section.

2008-11-04T12:55:00.000-08:00

I always looked forward to hearing Der Holle Rache played four octaves down when I'd arrive at the opera house for performance nights. We'll now only be surrounded by PETA protesters and there will be no one to drown them out.

These are not the Hammer.

2008-10-31T13:39:00.000-07:00

Phew.

2008-10-30T13:10:00.001-07:00

Our social worker contacted us today. A family emergency, now mostly resolved, had kept her from the office, but she's back and will complete our homestudy this weekend.

I'm more than relieved-I could feel the depression and defeat I've been smothered under lift once I knew that we could move forward without having to begin again. We would have needed to wait until February to redo all of the home visits and necessary appointments, what with my absurd schedule over the next three months.

I am hoping that all will be well and that we can start matching soon.

Whither and whence the whinging?

2008-10-29T13:44:00.001-07:00

I don't know if it's the shifting weather patterns or that everyone is fed to the teeth with Dino Rossi's teeth-gnashingly oily and insinuating election commercials, but there has been a definite tendril of rudeness wafting into my environment today. This morning's bus driver, after reluctantly stopping for me as I ran down the cigarette butt-littered sidewalk, waving at him as he pulled away from the curb, chastised me, as I breathlessly climbed the stairs, to "Move faster next time." Even my winning smile just succeeded in making him look more disgruntled.

Then, upon arriving at my chilly office, a terse and accusatory email from an accounting unit on campus was waiting there to accuse me of not performing my duties, despite evidence in the form of an email from August proving that I had, in fact, done exactly what they asked me to, and it was, to be precise, said accounting unit's fault for not keeping me abreast of developments as I am not privy to any successive communication between the troublesome accounting unit and the sponsor. And this charming epistle received more than a year after my initial attempt to solicit the aid of the truculent accounting unit over this very issue, which they ignored except in a cursory manner until nine months after the previously mentioned first contact and despite my repeated attempts to address this issue with them, the only organization who could accomplish my required task. Oh, and, at one point, they told me they had lost the file.

And, to add a layer of ice to the permafrost which is my day, the shipping rep on the phone repeatedly interrupted my responses to her questions with the phrase, "I understand that, but..." in a crisp and almost crunchy tone quite unlike the one of simple syrup sweetness spooned over me at the outset of the call.

What for the ornery and combative mien, Mr. Bus Driver? Why you up in my grille, Accountancy Bizznatch? Must you be so gosh darn mean, Shipping Lady? I promise the election will all be over soon, and, if it's the cold that ails you, I hear Florida is lovely this time of year. And, if you relocate to that sunny, tropical shore, you can help swing that state to Obama! Won't that feel good? Won't that put a smile on that grumpy face?

Chelonian Crusader

2008-10-24T12:41:00.000-07:00

In my fantasy life, I am a superhero, living in the jungles and on the seacoasts of Costa Rica, fighting to save sea turtles from human predation and parrots from horrifying harvesting practices used in the illegal pet trade. In real life, I'm just torturing myself by frequently searching Petfinder and Craigslist for unwanted parrots, and boy, do I find them, in tragic spades shaped like insufficient cages littered with inappropriate perches and nutritionally deficient seed as the only food.

It's the special needs birds who make my stomach clench and blood vessels dilate with worry and longing. It's the plucked macaws and the semi-blind juvenile Amazons (a four month old orange-winged Amazon whom I want to buy and love and kiss and hug but my mean husband won't let me near enough to smuggle out in my coat) who make me wish that we had the means to build a bird room right now and give all of these troubled little souls a place where they'll be loved and can rely on us for everything they need and want. I mean really, what's one more bird? Or twelve.

I've said it innumerable times on this blog alone, but I wish there were a way to truly educate everyone in the world about care of exotics, especially parrots, as any creature with the average intelligence of a kid in preschool requires exceptional provisions which cannot be attended to without extensive research. The World Parrot Trust works uphill towards this goal and they even have John Cleese promoting their work, but the public at large has little interest in the issue, as most of them are unaffected. It's not those people at whom I'm pointing my finger of reproach.

I want to prevent parrots from being sold in pet stores, from being impulse buys, from being traded like baseball cards and sold like old couches on free websites. I want every parrot purchase to be either from a licensed, inspected, reputable, loving, small aviary breeder or rescue organization. No mills, no chain stores, no seed, only cage and enrichment requirements and proper diets, and no need for the ASPCA to intervene.

There's a part of me, and not a small part, that wants to quit this singing nonsense and do something worthwhile. Maybe I can somehow couple my zeal for saving the chickerns with my notion of opening a laundromat for the homeless. And I just now realized that I have a Messianic complex. Be saved!

Resignation

2008-10-15T12:59:00.000-07:00

I think we're going to have to start over with the homestudy. It's been a month with no word from the social worker, and I'm just about fed up. If the market hadn't uttery collapsed and we were able to get financing, this would have been an even more aggravating problem, but I supposed the disaster has bought us a little bit more time. I'm dreading having to do all of our paperwork over again, but I'm willing to do it if we absolutely have to. I suppose this is another test of how much we want a kid.

Sitting on my Hands

2008-10-09T20:54:00.000-07:00

Things I'm waiting for:

1. The homestudy to finally be complete so we can send it to the agency.

2. The financing to come through.

3. My conflicts to be okayed by one of the companies I'll be singing for so I can buy plane tickets to and from Spokane before the prices go up.

4. The agency to review our dear birthparent letter and photo portfolio so we can make changes and get it back by the time our homestudy is done.

5. A possible reclass at work so I won't have to be an assistant anymore.

6. The election to be over so I can stop wondering if we are inevitably descending into a fascist state.

7. This week to be over so we can finally start rehearsals and I can stop wondering if people are going to find out that I'm a hack and fire me.

It's all out of my hands. Not even buying yarn will make my waiting tolerable.

Reluctance

2008-10-07T11:37:00.000-07:00

You know why Sasha's looking straight at the camera? He's subliminally telling me that he's only allowing Christian to hold him like this because I'm on the opposite side of the room, and that he'll bite my face off if I come any closer. I used the zoom. It was necessary for my health and well-being.

Good Bones

2008-10-05T15:52:00.000-07:00

It's a sprain, we had Pierre's tiny wing x-rayed at the emergency clinic by a vet who actually knew about exotics, which was surprising and nifty. She also had fantastic hair.

She gave us three days of pain meds compounded with an anti-inflammatory and he's already showing improvement. As a bonus, she gave us Pierre's digital scans so we could bring them to our regular vet, so they must, of course, go on the blog:

Tiny chicken head! Look at those wee, wee boneses! So dainty, he is. Poor sweet injured peanut. You can see the damage on the left hand side, the grey by the left elbow is the mass of swelling. In larger birds, the injured wing is usually strapped to the body so it remains immobile, but a bird as tiny as Pierre would be quite difficult to find a wrap that wouldn't double his inconsiderable body weight. Hee hee. The image makes me giggle. Tiny mummy. But, he's now resting comfortably, drugged, in his corner-free plastic container. He's my problem child.

Protect them from me.

2008-10-05T09:33:00.000-07:00

I am a curse. I am a jinx, a plague, a blight, a scourge. Pierre has now injured his wing, and it's completely my fault. He's in a round Rubbermaid container to keep him from having a place to strop his beak and reopen his injury, and that container was on top of the secretary in the bird room. The cord for the heating pad underneath was hanging down in front, and the secretary must have been too full, as the front door opened, pulling his container down with it. He sprained his wing in the fall, and the joint is swollen. The vet is closed until tomorrow, but the doctor isn't in until Tuesday, so we're going to give him cayenne pepper as a natural anti-inflammatory until we can get him in. He can still use the wing, he's holding it slightly away from the body, as I don't think the inflammation will allow him to close it completely.

I don't know what more I could possibly do to that little bird. We didn't separate him and Fritz and he received his beak injury, we didn't anticipate that he would continue to try and clean his beak and he repeatedly reopened his injury, and now I actually caused an injury to him, directly. I should be forcibly separated from the birds. I shall henceforth be known as Typhoid Suzy.

Backfiring

2008-10-02T12:15:00.001-07:00

On reading about Joe Biden (from www.ontheissues.org):

1. Given an F grade by the NRA regarding pro-gun issues.
2. Rated 0% by the NRLC, indicating a pro-choice stance.
3. Rated 16% by the Christian Coalition, indicating an "anti-family" stance.

Since the enemy of my enemy is my friend, I guess this makes Joe Biden my bestest chum ever.

Self Infliction

2008-10-01T21:40:00.001-07:00

One of the things I didn't anticipate when Pierre got injured was that he would continually try to get off of his beak whatever it was that was continually annoying him. This is obviously a problem as what's annoying him is the lack of beak. Preening has become mostly impossible, but he sadly tries, and frustratedly shakes his head every time he fails to use the remnant to get his messy feathers ordered. Because the parrot beak has a hole at the base and the two disparate sides can only join together in the egg, the lower mandible is only partially attached once broken, and must feel loose.

When Christian went in to visit with the birds, he saw that Pierre's face was covered in blood, and that blood had splattered all over the hospital cage as well. It was a horrible sight, and poor Pierre was still pushing his beak against the perch, most likely trying to make the pain stop. We cleaned him up in warm water, and could see that he had stropped the live, remaining piece of beak until it pulled away from his jaw and bled. The bleeding stopped and, once clean, we wrapped him in a towel and scratched him until he calmed down. We returned him to his warm cage with the heating pad turned up and he even ate, which was unexpected. For such a tiny, fragile little bird, he's a fairly resilient little bugger.

However, my biggest concern now is that he will repeatedly re-injure the beak until the piece that is left dies as well, and, as our vet doesn't have a call system, we couldn't contact her to ask what we should best do to prevent this from happening tonight. I'm at an utter loss to know how to keep him from hurting himself. He's had such a tough little life so far, I just want to make him happy and contented. I suck at it so far.

Demographics

2008-09-29T20:22:00.001-07:00

Et tu, Walgreens? I know I said that my childhood doctor thought I had a health history far more advanced in age than my actual chronological years would indicate, but I thought you knew me better. I mean, I know you fill my prescriptions for asthma meds and even once, before a trip, tranquilizers, but a free AARP membership coupon with my purchase?

I understand that the purchase was of hemorrhoid wipes and stomach acid reducer, but come on, lots of people my age have hemorrhoids and leaky esophageal valves. Don't they?

Parts

2008-09-26T19:34:00.000-07:00

It's been said by mothers and fathers throughout eternity that good things start to happen when we stop looking for them or have, let's be honest, stopped caring whether they happen or not. Well Mom and Dad, you were right. Once auditions stopped causing me to gnaw my fingers off and wet my pants a little, I started getting work. The scales of wisdom have tipped in your favor.

Five kinds of awesome.

2008-09-25T12:20:00.000-07:00

Why did I eat that chicken salad? I knew it had been in the fridge too long, even though it smelled fine. I seemed to remember leaving it in the food processor on the counter for a few hours right after I made it, but I then refrigerated it and consumed some on crackers with no ill effects. So why did it turn on me so, causing vast digestive distress and dry heaving 12 hours after the final serving was eaten? Why, on top of a respiratory infection, did I have to get food poisoning? Because I'm apparently Homer Simpson, that's why. I could never stay mad at you, chicken salad.

Tragic and Unnecessary

2008-09-18T22:14:00.000-07:00

Christian and I spent a while at the courthouse today, as we had to get fingerprinted for our adoption application, just in case we are hiding that we're international jewel thieves who need a third with really small hands to fit into those unreachable back corners of safes. We had to wait for the fingerprinting technician and were sitting in the lobby when a young woman came in, pushing her shirtless two year old son in a stroller. The lobby was for both the fingerprinting/gun permit office and for filing civil and small claims cases and restraining orders. The woman approached the latter desk and spoke with the clerk, and attempted to communicate her story of an abusive ex-boyfriend and papers being served to her fraudulently, but, in her anger and frustration, she wasn't able to explain herself sufficiently to allow the clerk to understand and be of any assistance. She said over and over that she had been in a safe house when the papers had been supposedly delivered and that she was going to have to leave the state to escape her ex-boyfriend's violence. She said that he was trying to get custody of his son, and she didn't know what to do. The clerk kindly offered to call a detective to see if he or she could be of any help, and the woman sat down to wait.

As this scenario was playing out, the woman's little boy had been playing with the rain cover of his stroller, to her intense annoyance. He hopped out of his stroller and was about to start pulling on his mother, so I started talking to him to distract him long enough to give her a chance to do what she needed to do. I asked him question after question, and heard his answers around the thumb he was loudly sucking. I said above that he was two, but that's because he told me that was his age, whereas he looked closer to four due to his size. He and I spoke for a while about nothing, and, as I had my phone out, thought he might like to see pictures of the birds. So, we looked at those for a while, and he was fascinated by the birds as well as the way the phone flicked through the pictures. He came to my side at one point and wedged himself between my arm and my side, and I have no idea how he did it. That a child that little wanted to attach himself to a total stranger and his mother seemed relieved to see it made me terribly sad.

When she was leaving, she made an effort to tell us that she was going home to change her son into more clothes as he had had an accident with his lunch, necessitating his shirtlessness. I shared that Shelly and I had taken the boys to the zoo and, when they both wet themselves to soaking, had dressed them in whatever we could find, so I understood insufficiently dressed little kids. She left, and the kindly officer who was on front door duty, who we could see through the door but not hear, pointed at her son with a smile and she laughed at whatever it was he said. Everyone tried to be so good to her, but I could see that the life she had made for herself and the choices she had been required to make had taken away her chances of normalcy.

Upon seeing a girl like her, I couldn't help but think of how her life is laid out for her now, and how, unless she and her son are both incredibly lucky, he will end up exactly like her, or worse, his own father. And how would they change their fortunes when they are obviously alone, without even anyone to go with them to the courthouse?

Women like her break my heart and make me feel spoiled and selfish, and also make me wonder if what we've heard said is true, that the women who choose to keep their children when they become unexpectedly and unwelcomely pregnant are often the ones the least equipped to raise their children. Were their mothers like them, insufficiently educated and taught that their only value is in what they can give to men?

It does break my heart so. I hope that our adoption will help break this cycle for one family, at least.

Deeply Hung

2008-09-08T13:37:00.000-07:00

I have a massive Fair hangover. Four Dr. Peppers, barbecue, onion burgers, fries, elephant ears, livestock allergies and a first prize ribbon!

Eat it, acrylic whores.

For he's my dear, my darling one...

2008-09-04T10:43:00.000-07:00

Happy birthday to the only man on earth who could challenge Gene Kelly for the title of best backside in the history of asses. You are awesome in every way, not the least of which is how amazing you are with people of all ages, and kids in particular. You are willing to perform such feats as running incessantly up and down punishing sand dunes in order to entertain tireless nephews, and that makes you spectacularly cool, in my opinion and theirs. You never shirk at doing hard or tiring things if they will make other people happy, and you seem to derive great joy from seeing others having fun that you helped make. You're also so polite, and really think before saying anything to those who need to be handled a little more gently. Because of this, you make them feel as though they are respected, and that's more than they usually get in their daily lives.

Thank you so very much, too, for the incredible work you've done with Sasha. He's a completely different bird than he was a year ago, and that's utterly because of you. He's so happy and content and well-loved because you cared for him enough to make an effort, despite the very difficult times at the beginning. It makes my heart burst to see him raise his little foot to his neck and invite you to scratch it every night before he goes to sleep. You're a softie, which kills me. I'm sorry I make you occasionally watch Animal Cops. I just really like to see the bad guys get theirs.

So, my smiling and beguiling one, I hope that, despite having to stand in line at the DMV, this birthday is the happiest, because you deserve it.

All my love,
Suz

A Quote for the Ages

2008-09-03T13:28:00.000-07:00

While seeing absolutely no irony in their own criticism of Obama's perceived inexperience, Republicans defending Palin's inexperience in the light of Democratic party comment about the same (from the Guardian) had this to say:

"Tennessee congresswoman Marsha Blackburn suggested that Palin's work on the parent-teacher association of her son's school gave her useful experience for the vice-presidency.
'Every woman in this room knows that if you can handle being a room mother… a PTA chairwoman, Girl Scout cookie mom, there's a lot of things you have the ability, the organisational skills, to handle. She transferred those leadership skills to the political arena.' "

Yep, that's exactly what qualifies a candidate for nomination to the Vice-Presidency, a mean hand with the Girl Scouts, those little bitches. So, apparently, all Obama would have had to do to prove his readiness for leadership was chair his girls' PTA.

We won't even discuss the hilarity of this same group of women calling for a moratorium on discussing Palin's family situation (both teenage daughter's pregnancy and husband's DUI) when Michelle Obama has been out and out called a racist by this same group because of her Princeton Master's Thesis. Oh pot, stop teasing the kettle.