Neither do I bungee jump

While we were driving up to Maine, The Husband and I spotted a flying contraption. Yes, contraption. "Merlin's pants!*" I exclaimed, pointing at the contraption. "What the heck is that?" There seemed to be one person in the "cockpit" which was not enclosed in any way, and, to my untrained eye, appeared to be powered by pedals a la Leonardo da Vinci. The Husband, however, was familiar with the flying contraption in question and told me it was called an "ultralight trike" or something, and that it was a perfectly legitimate air vehicle**.

"Legitimate nothing!" I cried. "You would not catch me in one of those things! It's completely open! It doesn't have an INSIDE! I require an inside on any vehicle that will be transporting me through the air."

"Oh, come on," replied The Husband. "It's no worse than a hang glider."

A hang glider. Right. Good argument, The Husband. Because, of course, hang gliding is a perfectly reasonable pastime. I go hang gliding all the time. Why, I was just out hang gliding this morning.

Look, I'm sure that both hang gliding and the ultralight trike are thrilling. I bet it feels just like you're flying on your own without mechanical assistance. The sights, the sounds, the feel of the wind in your face... all wonderful I am sure. But that is only if you can get yourself past the blind terror of knowing that there is nothing but a few straps and buckles preventing you from experiencing the sights, sounds, and wind in your face caused by plummeting one thousand feet to the earth. And, given that I am the chicken who refused to go down a water slide for about five years after that one time when I was seven and I accidentally turned around backwards en route, I think that I will pass on the flying contraptions.

Now if you'll excuse me, I'm off to put the training wheels back on my bike.

*The Husband and I are trying to clean up our language before Jack is old enough to start repeating things back to us, and I'm attempting to replace my naughty phrases with wizarding curses. The funny looks will all be worth it if we can get Jack to imitate these phrases.

**Apparently, this is one of those products that emits guy particles.

These eyes!*

I don’t post pictures of Jack on this blog. This is because the internet, while fantastic, is full of scary, freaky people, and I have no way of filtering those people out. The unfortunate result of this is that you, my friendly blog audience don’t get to see how adorable Jack is, and I, your friendly blog author, don’t get to read all of the comments from you telling me how adorable Jack is.

So I have decided to share with you Jack’s best feature. Why, yes, I do get a lot of comments on his eyes! In fact, it has gotten to the point that if we meet someone new and that person does not admire his eyes, I feel vaguely insulted.



Wouldn’t you?

In other news, I am considering moving my blog to Wordpress. I either want to do that, or figure out how to change my Blogger template from this boring, standard one, but I have no idea how to do that. What do you guys think? Are there Blogger and Wordpress users out there? Has anyone used both? Which do you prefer? Also, if you have a Blogger account but use your own template, can you tell me how you did that?

*Shout out to The Doktah. THESE EYEEEES!

The boy (or mom) who cried, "Tooth!"

Remember those teeth I claimed were coming in? Twice? No sign of them yet. Unless, that is, you count crankiness, neediness, a slight fever, and very bad sleeping habits a sign of teeth. And maybe they are! I certainly hope they are. But the very best sign of teeth I could have right now would be an actual tooth, because I would be immensely relieved if there were a clear reason for the recent behavior. Especially for the poor sleeping behavior.

I have an easy, easy baby. I realize this. In fact, I often find myself thinking, "Man, I'm glad Jack doesn't do that," when I hear or read the horror stories moms tell about their crying, screaming, tantrum-throwing babies. Unfortunately, my comfortable smugness never lasts long, because I always follow up that thought with, "Moron! You mean you're glad Jack doesn't do that yet." It is true; Jack does not throw toys at my head, scream, "NO!" and fling himself on the floor, kicking and wailing. But he is only 9 months old. He doesn't yet have the coordination to throw toys at my head, scream, "NO!" or fling himself on the floor, kicking and wailing. He does have the wailing part down, though. He's been practicing.

So these past three or four days have been my first real wake-up call that Jack is not going to stay relaxed and easy forever and ever. We're going to have some tough times. I understand that molars won't come in till he's one? At any rate, today I am in a funk. I'm having one of those days where I'm lonely but I don't want to talk to anyone, it's too hot to go for a walk, Harry Potter is all done, and there are ninety more minutes till The Husband gets home to keep me company. I have therefore decided that instead of cleaning up the kitchen from lunch, I am going to make a list of the top ten things that are impressive, but only if a baby does them.

Top Ten Things That Are Impressive If Done By A Baby

1. Using hand gestures to reveal the fact that that thing up there, that ceiling fan thing? It goes 'round and 'round.

2. Using a similar hand gesture to explain that the washer and dryer also go 'round and 'round.

3. Possibly using a similar hand gesture to say goodbye, but then again, maybe just waving your arm around at random.

4. Asking for a book by pointing.

5. After five minutes of playing with a completely different toy, remembering that there is a decorative bird hanging from the china closet when someone says, "Tweet tweet!"

6. Snuggling your face into a blanket.

7. Drinking from a cup.*

8. Self-serve breastfeeding.

9. Rolling a plastic circle across the floor.

10. Discovering the Grand Unification Theory.**

*This would be even more impressive if it happened more than once.

**Technically, this would be impressive if done by anyone.

Done and done

Attention, Internet:

I have finished the book. You may commence discussion.

What? You mean people have already been discussing it? But I told you not to!

Muffliato!

At least, that's the spell I'd like to use on myself until I get a chance to finish HP7. The Husband and I got to go see Order of the Phoenix last Monday night*, and during the movie I realized that I have forgotten many things and must re-read HP6 before I can read HP7. I'm only a quarter of the way through it. (If I could hold it open with one hand, I'd be much farther along because I'd be able to read it while nursing, but such is life.)

So I'm asking the internet as a whole to please refrain from posting anything about the last book before I have time to finish it. That would be great, thanks.

*At first we couldn't find a babysitter, but then Father-in-law volunteered to drive to our house after work and sit for free while The Husband and I went to the movies with Leah Lar and D and then went for ice cream afterwards. Jack was awake when we left, asleep when we got home, and stayed asleep until 6 the next morning. It was AWESOME.

Things to look forward to

So as you are aware, or at least should be aware, I have a lot of nieces and nephews. (Jack, however, has no nieces or nephews, despite recent reports to the contrary.) And as you should be equally aware, they are pretty darn adorable. For example, while in Maine, I discovered that Elfin Nephew, 3.5 years old, has taken to channeling a Jewish mother. "Mama," he said at the table, "I am very hungry, but this corn is so hot!" Turns out he wanted some of those corn-on-the-cob shaped corn holders. At the next meal, he was heard to say, "Mama, do you see how low I am?" He wanted to sit in the old-fashioned high chair, you see.

His little sister, the two-year-old Spitfire, was doing some channeling of her own, but in her case she was copying her own mother. "Elfin Nephew, stop whining," she said.

"Spitfire," said her mom, "you mind your own business. You are not the boss of Elfin Nephew. If you tell him to stop whining again, you're going to get a time-out." Meanwhile, Elfin Nephew continued to whine.

"Mama, I just want to tell him, 'It's OK, Elfin Nephew, it's OK.' Can I just tell him it's OK?" asked The Spitfire. She got permission, and then turned to Elfin Nephew. "Elfin Nephew, stop whining." Into time-out she went.

I will leave you with another heart-melter. The five-year-old Charmer said to his mother yesterday, "Mommy, sometimes I feel like you love me so much, I get heart bubbles."

Non sequitur

This is a bit out of left field, but I just felt the need to tell the world that I cannot believe that "bling" has become an acceptable word for non-ironic use. It reminds me of how I used to jokingly give people a thumbs-up which slowly transitioned from being an ironic hand gesture into a way for me to genuinely tell people I thought something was well done. It had just become a habit! And while an ironic thumbs-up does not detract from a person's cool quotient, an earnest one most certainly does.

Vacation, had to get away!

A couple of months ago, I signed up for weekly newsletters from BabyCenter.com. They often provide helpful quick tips targeted for moms with babies exactly Jack's age. Just yesterday, in fact, I learned that eight-month-olds like to play tug of war, and it turns out they are right! Since that is not a game I would have thought to play, I have to hand it to BabyCenter.com.

Nevertheless, sometimes BabyCenter.com thinks I am a complete moron. For example, at the start of the summer travel season, there was an article on "Seven secrets to successful travel with a young child." Seeing as how The Husband and I were planning a trip to Maine, I clicked on the link to learn these seven mysterious secrets that would make my life easier. Except as it turned out, they weren't particularly mysterious after all. Take secret number 2: "Pick a family-friendly destination." Really? A family-friendly destination? Not a couples' resort? Not a hike through the rain forest? You don't say.

The final "secret" was to take practice trips; that is to say, start out with a short one or two night trip to see how your kid travels before you head across the country for three weeks. Once again, this seemed obvious to me, and is actually what we were already planning. My sister had invited us up to her family beach cottage in Maine, and we went for one night. This past Sunday night, in fact. We had been slightly anxious about how Jack would do sleeping in a strange place, but we needed to get the heck out of our house for a while, and a beach house complete with free babysitters in the form of cousins seemed perfect to us.

Our plan was to drive up during Jack's morning nap, but of course we couldn't pack everything he needed until Sunday morning because he was still using a lot of it on Saturday night. This meant that we had to use Jack's two hours between his getting up and his going down for his first nap to feed him, dress him, pack all his stuff, and get all the stuff to the car. Oh, and The Husband also had to go to Home Depot to buy brackets or some such for the new porch railings we had to put in on the downstairs apartment. (These railings need to be painted, by the by. Someone kill me.)

Do you realize how much stuff babies need? Even for one night? The Husband and I had one suitcase between us; Jack had a suitcase of clothes and diapers, a suitcase of blankets, toys, and books, a Pack 'n' Play, a booster seat, and a bag of groceries. And we still managed to forget some stuff.

Happily, the trip was fun. Not as relaxing as a trip without a baby, but Jack napped just fine in the afternoon and went to bed without complaint. He did wake up again when The Husband and I went to bed four hours later and he naturally had a leak. That was when we discovered that we forgot to bring extra overnight stuffers for our diapers and we that had only brought one pair of pj's. But eventually he went back to sleep and we did well until morning.

Unhappily, Jack woke up at 5:00, the worst possible time for a baby to wake up. At 5:00, the baby has had lots of sleep, so he is less tired and takes longer to go back to sleep, if he ever does. You know what doesn't help matters? Moronic parents. Because a travel tip that BabyCenter.com left out was that if your normally contented baby is crying and fussing after 6 hours in the same diaper, his diaper just might need to be changed. I tried to get Jack back to sleep for an hour, and The Husband and simply I could not understand what could be wrong! "What is the matter, Jack?" we kept saying. "Just go to sleep! Why won't you go to sleep? We can see you are tired! What could possibly be making you uncomfortable? WHAT COULD IT BE?" Eventually, The Husband got up to take Jack away somewhere and give me another twenty minutes or so, and lo and behold, he had leaked through again. And was also poopy.

But still, Jack - and therefore we - had a great time. The weather cleared for an hour or two on Monday, allowing us to go to the beach. Although we put Jack in his retro bathing suit for the sheer adorableness of it, neither The Husband nor I wore our bathing suits. This is because the water in Maine is cold. Very very cold. Bone-chillingly, painfully cold, and we are getting older. Besides, we figured we would only be able to stay at the beach for an hour or so before Jack got hungry for lunch.

Of course, I neglected to consider that Jack would try to eat sand for lunch. And then, after tasting it the first time, try to keep eating it. In fact, we spent a lot of time this weekend fishing foreign items out of Jack's mouth. One in particular that he was loathe to relinquish turned out to be a mysterious black slimy thing that we didn't even want to think about until someone realized it must have been a piece of Oreo dropped by his two-year-old niece. Hey, I would also be mad if someone held me down and took the Oreo out of my mouth.

But all in all, it was a successful "practice trip." We now know that Jack will sleep in the Pack 'n' Play in a strange house and that we should always bring extra pajamas. We know that sand and Oreos are equally delicious and that it is not possible to stay clean at the beach with a mobile infant.

Oh, and we know that sometimes, he needs his diaper changed.

Signs you're getting older

1. Bridal shower gifts are no longer dull; in fact, you sort of covet those hand towels.
2. You know what wainscoting is.
3. You care what wainscoting is.
4. You really wish you had wainscoting in your kitchen.
5. Conversations about mulch are now interesting.
6. As are conversations about wainscoting.
7. After falling down the stairs and skinning your knee, you find that your entire body is sore and achy, not just your knee.
8. You think staying up till 11:00 is crazy.
9. Kids you used to babysit are getting married.
10. Married, people! You remember when they were BORN.
11. You no longer want to go swimming if the water is too cold.
12. Although you can still sit on the floor with your legs bent under you, you really really wish you hadn't when you try to stand up.
13. All you ask for in life - besides wainscoting - is to get your hardwood floors refinished.
14. And to get the rest of your woodwork painted.
15. And your yard landscaped.
16. With mulch.

Teeth

Remember how I claimed that five new teeth came in? It turns out that was not exactly true. First of all, I did not actually mean to suggest that five new teeth were coming in all at once; I meant that three new teeth were trying to join their two brethren. But even if I had made clear the actual number of teeth making an appearance and had not inadvertently implied that I am rearing some kind of mutant five-tooth-spurting… uh… tooth spurter, I still would have been misleading you. Because as it turns out, there weren’t any new teeth.

There are now, though. We have a confirmed new tooth sighting on the upper gum area. It looks like a canine is erupting, and I just now suddenly realized that this will make Jack look like a small vampire.

I hope the other canine is the next tooth to show up.

Some of my best friends are flakes

My recent post about my stellar memory evoked a first-time comment from Big Sister #4. I am not surprised by this. In fact, I think that most of my family will enjoy that particular post. Why? Well, I'm glad you asked.

There is a famous anecdote in my family about me in the first grade. You see, my teacher had been trying to teach the class something, and we were not getting it. "Why are you guys acting like such flakes?" she finally said in exasperation. This caused the class some confusion, because no one understood what she meant. Seeing this, my teacher asked "Don't any of you know what a flake is?"

Good student that I was, I shot my little arm high into the air. "I do!" I shouted. "My family calls me that all the time!"

War paint

This weekend was a productive one, in that we finally finished painting the landing. Of course, I am using the word "finished" in the Grad Lab Household sense of "not actually finished but with only smallish things left to do which will probably take us the next five years to complete." Still, the horrifying blue with white patches is gone. Gone I say!

Recall what the paint looked like when we moved in:







Lovely, no? And this is the very first room visitors see when they enter our home. (To answer your question, that filled in doorway in the first picture used to lead out to a second floor porch which is no longer there. Now, if it were not filled in, it would lead out to a doozy of a first step.)

Now the room looks like this:







So far, I've hung the mirror over the radiator and brought down my diploma and two frames of flower pictures from the attic. I figured I'd post the pictures now, though, because Emily has been pestering me for pictures of the new color, and if I wait until we finish hanging all the pictures and getting furniture that is not ugly and figure out a way to organize the office area so it doesn't look like a bomb went off, we'd all be dead of old age. Still the color is much improved, and I no longer have to force people to enter our home with their eyes closed.

Finally, I present you with a parting photo. We are doing some completely un-fun renovation work in the basement, so we had to take all the stuff out of there for the week. What follows, my friends, is the reason that I never ever ever ever ever want to paint anything ever ever ever ever again.

Cleverness in babies is overrated

Guess who figured out how to undo his diaper? Through his onesie?

Two thousand what now?

A couple of weeks ago, one of the moms in my playgroup asked me how long The Husband and I have been living in our house. This question always stumps me, because I have absolutely no concept of the passage of time. It was not until I had been dating The Husband for about three years (then again, who knows how many years?) that I figured out the main reason I was always late to everything: You have to account for the time it takes to get somewhere. For example, if a movie starts at nine, you can't plan to leave at nine. The Husband is a very punctual person, and those three years were very long for him. (Side note: The Husband was early for our first date. He was very early. He was a half hour early. I had wet hair and was still wearing sweatpants, and no one else was home to answer the door.)

But I was talking about my concept of the passage of time and how I don't have any. If something didn't happen within the past week, I have absolutely no idea when it happened. Two weeks ago? Two months ago? Who knows? Sometimes I can date events by where I was living at the time, but sometimes that only narrows the date range down to a certain window. I lived in the same place for about three of my five years in grad school, for example.

So when my friend asked me how long we'd been in our house, I didn't know what to say. "Um, two years? I think?" I tried to do the math, but that's when I ran into my second problem. Sometimes - not always, but sometimes - I sort of forget what year it is. I did not realize that I was somewhat unique in this until this conversation with my friend. "I think it's two years, but I always have trouble remembering. You know how sometimes you forget what year it is?" I said.

"Uh, no. I always remember what year it is," she replied. And she also gave me a very funny look.

I have been doing some thinking about this since the conversation, and I decided that this happens to me because I am always surprised that things that seem so fresh and recent in my mind happened so long ago. It can't be 2007, because that would mean I got my Ph.D. three years ago, and I only just graduated! Still, that's not really a good excuse for forgetting what year it is. So let's all hope I never hit my head, because the doctors will think I have a concussion.

"What year is it, you ask? Wait! I know this one! It starts with a '2', right?"

Bring me the soft one who sings!

A while ago, The Husband put Jack to bed, a job that is usually mine. Meanwhile, I went to Target, all by myself. Par-tay.

I came home to a house that was, to my immense relief, blissfully quiet and full of sleeping baby. I asked The Husband if Jack cried before he fell asleep. “Yeah,” came the answer. “It was rough going for a little while there. I kept telling him it was OK, and he would look at me and it was as though he was saying, ‘I believe you, but I am not comforted by you. BRING ME THE WOMAN!’”

“Tough beans” is a legitimate expression

I know that it is considered gauche to post an excuse about lack of posts. Tough beans.

Top three reasons I have not been posting much lately and won’t be posting much until two weeks from now:

1. I suddenly have to prepare a talk on the stuff I did in grad school. And I have to start by finding out what, exactly, I did in grad school. I haven’t looked at that stuff in three years, and I swear someone else wrote it. Did I really know all of that? Man, I used to be smart.

2. For reasons that remain unclear, The Husband decided last week that the entryway landing needed to painted right now. I am not complaining about this, as our entryway is so ugly that I feel embarrassed when people see it for the first time, but I do have to wonder, why now? Really? Right now? When I have a presentation to work on? It’s been hideously ugly for two and a half years, we couldn’t have waited another two weeks?

At any rate, my free time that is not occupied by relearning what I used to know has to be spent – God help me – painting, because I will not live for weeks with furniture scattered all over the apartment. I’ve done that before, and it is not fun. The good news is that the paint, which we chose and bought two years ago, is quite lovely. The lesson here is that I should not be allowed to choose paint by myself but together, The Husband and I can pick a good color.

3. Five new teeth. The end.

The world may never know

It’s raining, and this morning I saw a couple of birds fly to the shelter of a nearby tree. This reminded me of a picture book I once read in elementary school, called, Where does the butterfly go when it rains? When I saw that book in the classroom library, my curiosity was piqued. “Where does a butterfly go when it rains?” I thought to myself. It seemed to me that a butterfly is fragile enough that a heavy rainstorm could easily kill it, but they must do something, or they would not have survived. So where did they go? I eagerly sat down with the book and looked for the answer.

“Where does a butterfly go when it rains?” it began. I turned the page and read, “A bird covers its head with its wing, but where does a butterfly go when it rains?” I turned the page again. “An ant hides under a leaf, but where does a butterfly go when it rains?”

The book continued on in this fashion for several more pages. I found out where a caterpillar, a mouse, a bumblebee, and a squirrel go when it rains. That was all well and good, but I was not reading for information on squirrels. The book had posed a question, and now I wanted to know the answer.

Well, too bad for me, because the book never explained where a butterfly goes when it rains. Although the question was raised on every page, the answer was not forthcoming. And if that isn't false advertising, I don't know what is.

So does anyone know where a butterfly goes? Anyone? Anyone?

Bueller?

Lessons in probability

Area of my kitchen floor: 209 square feet
Area of a Cheerio: 1 square centimeter
Probability that I will step on the single Cheerio on the kitchen floor and grind it into fine powder: 100%

Science magazine comes out weekly, too

Am I the only one who is consistently surprised that I have to buy groceries every week? And clean the bathroom? And vacuum? (Not that I vacuum every week. Ha.) It just always seems impossible to me that I have to do any of these tasks when I clearly just did them last week.

And by way of explanation for my non sciency readers, Science magazine is just about the most prestigious journal to publish in, and it comes out every week. Every single week. So if you stick your copy in a pile to get to later, you will quickly have a small pile of backlogged issues to read. And then you will have a large pile. And then you will have a large lump that used to be a pile, but the pile got too big and all the magazines slipped and you won't even bother to try to straighten it up because you know they will all just slip again. And then you'll let your dues lapse for AAAS because it will be the only way to get them to STOP SENDING THE MAGAZINES.

Life in this, the 21st century

This is madness.