Friday, March 23, 2007

I live in a place...

... where the sign outside Shoney's has changed from "Try Our Breakfast Buffet!" to "#3, You'll Always Race in our Hearts," and everyone knows why.

That's right, friends, it's race weekend! And here we are, mere minutes from the Bristol Motor Speedway, where people have been "camping" for upwards of 10 days, shelling out hundreds of dollars a night for plots of asphalt to park their RV's.

Oy.

So I had a revelation today, while I was waiting in line at K-Mart for a very, very, very long time as the many people ahead of me bought tailgating supplies. You know how some people have tried to reclaim Black Friday as "Buy Nothing Day", and pledge to spend no money to try to counteract the impact of all that retail madness?

I am hoping to make the remainder of this weekend "Drive Nowhere Weekend." If anything, this will preserve some of my sanity, since most places we might find ourselves driving promise to be absurdely crowded. But also... maybe I'm a snob, but my biggest issue with Nascar and the like is the utter wastefulness. So hey, maybe I can find a way to make "Drive Nowhere Weekend" catch on in communities The Race descends upon once or twice a year, and use a little less fuel. Or maybe I will just enjoy walking places this weekend. It shouldn't be hard. Here's a list of cool and useful places we can walk to:

(1) Zazzy'z coffeehouse and independent bookshop. OK I really am a snob because I just feel cool and intellectual and interesting when I'm there.

(2) The Washington County Public Library.

(3) The Trail Cafe', which is situated at the head of the

(4) Virginia Creeper Trail.

(5) At least three different churches, two of which we've been to, and the third of which(the closest, actually), we might attend this weekend: The Charles Wesley UMC, which has its roots in the African Methodist Episcopal tradition.

(6) Food Country, an average-sized, average-quality grocery store.

(7) The Whole Health Center, a tiny, very crunchy grocery store with local eggs, meat, and milk, and other fun things like homemade soaps and really interesting looking teas.

(8) The Barter Theatre-- Virginia's state theatre, in fact (whatever that means!)

The only problem is that the S-curve on Walden Road (which connects our little street to the main part of town) is without a sidewalk. Not such a big deal if one of us is feeling energetic enough to tote the kid in one of our various baby carriers, but a bit dicey with the stroller. Every once in a while I envision myself in a Stars-Hollow-town-meeting type situation, petitioning the town council for a sidewalk around that curve. I think if the circumstances were just so, I could get crazy into local politics. Especially if I found myself up against a Taylor Doose. That'd be awesome.

Wednesday, March 21, 2007

Four months!

Today we took Lea to her first well-baby checkup since we moved. Turns out that because it's a family practice (as opposed to a pediatrician's office), and they get very few babies, they don't stock the immunizations infants are supposed to get-- the biggest reason for a two-, four-, six-, or nine-month appointment in the first place. So, a second doctor's visit, or at least a trip to the health department, is in order.

But it would be an understatement to say the appointment was worthwhile. While we waited for the nurse, Lea entertained herself. And us. I guess we can wait on toys for a while and just get a big old roll of crinkly paper. Good times.







Louisville things

Something you might not expect to find on Eric's couch: an assortment of cloth diapers, fresh from the dryer.

Something you very well might expect to find: Eric, Paige, and Brian being fiercely competitive over a confusing-- dare I say nonsensical-- "board" game (you get to make the board-- the island-- out of little tiles that you then turn over to find things like "Tiger Trap" and "Hatch" and "Food Stash-- Hurley gets minus one to his power here.")





Something cute: Eric and Lea having a heart to heart.



And watching basketball.

Friday, March 16, 2007

Smallness

When I was getting Lea dressed today, something a little sad happened: a very cute lavender onesie with a peanut printed on it, a staple of her wardrobe pretty much since birth, was undeniably too small. This came from a set (thanks, Jon Nicol!) marked "Size: Newborn." For some reason, this brand of clothes runs huge, because in other brands, she's been out of newborn sizes for quite a while. But we were hanging on. And now it is time to say goodbye, at long last, to the newborn stage.

Some things I never want to forget about Lea's life as a newborn...

... Brian changing virtually every diaper for the first week of her life. In particular, that very first sleep-deprived night when she was crying and crying and neither of us had yet thought to check her diaper-- we were so addled-- and when it finally occurred to him to check, her diaper was just a huge mess. And he said, mournfully, "Oh... I'm so sorry!! I'm such a bad dad!!" And I remember thinking to myself, "He's the greatest dad." It was a very special moment.

... Our first Thanksgiving. Lea was two days old. Brian was with her, and I decided to get on my feet and prepare the meal (read: reheat the food my parents had brought us). We thought we might actually get to eat at the table, and put Lea in her bouncy seat. She was fine with this for about 90 seconds. Just as we started to eat, she began to wail. We realized that she couldn't see us (that 12-inch limit to her eyesight and all), so we ended up sitting on the floor, using our chairs as individual tables, with our teeny little baby in between us.

... The Visitation Marathon that was Lea's fifth day of life. I believe over a dozen people came by that day. The highlight was, of course, Eric's comment that she was "radiating heat." In fact, what was radiating heat was Lea's pee. Which was soaking through and spreading across his lap.

... The intense emotions that came with breastfeeding. Every time she latched on during the earliest days, I remember feeling like she and I-- this tiny little creature and I, her mother-- could somehow know, together, all the secrets of the universe. This feeling would last for just a moment, but it was overwhelming. It was an ecstatic sadness. I can't think of another way to describe it. We had gotten a free issue of Parenting magazine, and one day I happened to glance at it during the first moments of a feeding. I was struck with the strangeness of such a magazine existing. All we need is this, right here, I thought. I cried a lot.

... An early outing to the mall. I had gone into a store to try some things on, leaving Brian with Lea in the stroller waiting out in the hallway. In the fitting room, I thought I heard a baby cry, but continued with my shopping. When I emerged, I found a beet-red, screaming, starving baby and a borderline weepy Brian. I came to find out that when she started to cry, a very well-meaning (and non-native-English-speaking) woman had approached Brian to insist that "Hungry. Bottle."--going so far as to pull an empty water bottle from the diaper bag and hand it to Brian. As far as I know, he didn't get so far as to pantomime breastfeeding.

... Our Christmas card photo shoot, most of which the star model slept through.

... Our first outing away from Lea, to the bank! and Starbucks!

... Those first smiles, usually accompanied by closed eyes. Then the first real social smiles around Christmastime, right along with the first non-crying vocalizing she did.

... Her magic pj's. These were a shower gift and one of the first things she wore frequently. They were green, and everytime she wore them she slept like a rock.

... Our first trip to the doctor. It was so immensely stressful, as she cried and cried while we waited, and we looked around at a room full of children and thought-- well at least I thought-- how sad it was to wake up from our dream-like first few days and realize that she wasn't the only baby in the universe.

... Lady Whippets games, and watching my mom show Lea off to her colleagues and some of the players and their moms.

... Going back to the Birth Center at 9 days old for a breastfeeding support group, and seeing my lovely and strong and wonderfully kind midwife, Gazelle, and exceptionally helpful nurse/lactation consultant Patti.

... The day Lea's tear ducts kicked in. Prior to that, crying=yelling. Then, when tears were first introduced into the equation... oh, my... the saddest thing you will ever see.

... My dad constantly remarking, with the certainty that he could probably prove it in court if he needed to, that "She's the best baby ever."

... The tiny little contented noises she makes as she's finishing a feeding, and I realize how safe and peaceful she must feel at my breast, her little body snuggled up to my squishy belly, letting me stroke her hair. In the beginning, when she was eating every 90 minutes or so, I would get impatient and pick her up as soon as she was done eating so we could go do other things or I could get a break. Now, I try to remind myself to relish that time and let her fade in and out of sleep and make those sweet little sighs. And I look at how much she has grown, and I marvel that every bit of nourishment she's every gotten has come from my body.

... The way she always sleeps with one hand next to her face.

... The insane amounts of toe jam. And finger jam. Where does this stuff come from?

... Biting her nails because she won't hold still to let me clip them.

... The Fray. "How to Save a Life" was always on the radio right before and after she was born. It will forever make me think of the days and weeks that my life and my world were changing so fundamentally. [OK, it also makes me think of that ad for the new season of Grey's Anatomy, the one where Izzie throws herself down on the floor in her prom dress. Also a very powerful memory.]

It is late, late, late at night and this didn't end up being the carefully revised, rearranged-for-style piece of poetry I wanted. There are also a million more things that I never want to forget... and right now, I feel like I already have to an extent.

OK, loved ones: tell me what you remember most about Lea's newborn days... or those of any baby in your life.

Wednesday, March 7, 2007

Lea gets her nature on

One of the cool things about Abingdon is a 35-mile long rails-to-trails project called the Virginia Creeper Trail. It starts in Damascus and winds its way slowly downhill towards Abingdon. Local shuttle services will haul you by truck up to Damascus so you can spend a leisurely day basically coasting through some really spectacular scenery. Like this.

Nearest to Abingdon, at the end of the trail, things aren't so spectacular, sad to say. I decided to combat my grumpiness (it turns out there IS a "four-month sleep shakeup," and Lea is, as ever, slightly ahead of schedule) by getting out on the trail today. It was a pleasant walk, for sure, but the recent growth in this part of the county has turned the end of the trail into, essentially, a journey through McMansionville (oh, and there's a country club too). I strolled just over three miles, and it was a nice enough walk. Just not the idyllic ahhhhh-the-mountains kind of experience I was going for. Oh well. It was fun to get Lea outdoors and wearing her most hipster article of clothing to date.





In other news, not only have we moved several hundred miles, but we also seem to have found ourselves in an entirely different decade, thanks to:

(1) The Moonlight Theatre, a drive-in(!) just a few miles from here, whose north-facing sign says "Opening Soon." The south-facing side of the sign? "See other side." I kind of think they didn't have another "P."
(2) Local milk, which can be purchased in thick glass bottles to be returned to the grocery store for a deposit. You can actually still get the stuff delivered to your house if you want.
(3) Our fantastically friendly next-door neighbors, Becky and her two-and-a-half year old granddaughter Emmy. When we pulled into the lot at the same time, Emmy rushed over to see Lea and proclaimed "I like my new neighbors!" in a tone that made you really feel like her day had just been made. Awww.