ExpectNet is a fun little online tool where you can set up a baby-prediction guessing game. Go here and enter "BabyCJ2" under Invited Guests (at the left) to post your guesses about the baby's date and time of arrival, sex, weight, and length.
Some helpful hints: Lea arrived 10 days past her due date at 12:37pm, with no indication of any progress until a check-up the day before, when I was slightly dilated. (It's also possible-- but there's no way to know for sure-- that labor was encouraged by some acupuncture that day. My gut tells me it helped get things started.) She weighed 9lbs 7oz and was 21.5 inches long.
This time: I'm due 1/20/09. I've gained about the same amount of weight as I had at this point in my first pregnancy. We haven't and don't intend to find out the sex in advance. Baby is definitely head down but still feels very high. If you're into old wives' tales: baby's heartrate is typically in the mid-140's. I feel like I'm carrying all out front and all belly. I usually crave salty things. (I mean, I love sweets too, but when I get a super-intense craving, it's usually for garlic bread or mozzarella sticks or, um, Buffalo Wing flavored Snyders' Pretzel Pieces.)
Someone must've been dreaming of a white second birthday, because we woke up to about 4 inches of snow, somewhat unexpectedly. (They'd been calling for a dusting.) Lea was thrilled. "It's snowy outside! See? See? See it's snowy outside!"
It was freezing, so we didn't last long outside before coming in for Lea's first hot chocolate. Also a big hit.
Most of the rest of the day was spent preparing for her party. We'd gone back and forth about whether we felt like throwing a party; I was afraid that our unusual house layout would be a challenge for families with little kids, but in the end we decided to just go for and make it as simple as possible. This meant simple food-- pizza from Bella's and cupcakes made from the box-- but preparing the house was still complicated, because we had to move tons of stuff around just to make sure there was a place for people to sit. I really only got pictures of the kids' section (we used our gigantic coffee table for the little ones, with milk crates to sit on.)
We had 11 kids under 6 and 11 adults. Not too bad. It was noisy and messy and chaotic, but totally worth doing. We realize that we actually have a nice core group of similarly-minded parents, who don't expect a children's birthday party to necessarily involve favor bags and organized activities; it's perfectly fine (preferable, actually) to just socialize and let the kids run around and wear each other out. Not bad at all.
In addition to learning some real conversation-stoppers like "I don't want to!", Lea has come out with a few pretty interesting and/or impressive and/or entertaining full sentences lately. A sampling:
"I have to wear a jacket 'cause it's cold outside."
"I go to the doctor and a-lookin' at my leg." (Sadly, yes, she's got a MRSA abscess on her thigh. Boo.)
"Daddy's work-en-ing in the little truck!"
"Miss Sharie read a story with a grandma's house."
"I have poop right there in my bum." (Also, "I'm stinky, Daddy. I need to be changed.")
"I saw Derek Jeter!" (OK, that's probably not what she was intending to convey. I can't figure out what she's going for that's sounding to me like "Derek Jeter." She's said it quite a few times. Hmm.)
Upon stepping outside first thing in the morning: "It's nice out here!" or "It's a nice morning!"
The other funny stuff has to do with her ability to answer questions. Example:
Lea: I want my cup!
Me: Hmm, kiddo, I don't know, I can't remember where it is.
Lea: It's upstairs! In the bed!
And it is. Amazing.
Me: What did you do at school today?
Lea: I had a snack at school today!
Me: Ok...
Lea: I had... goldfishies!
Me: What else did you do today?
Lea: I had... apple slices!
Me: Did you read any books?
Lea: I read a book with Cameron. I read a book with Raynna!
Me: Was that fun?
Lea: I do!
So, the syntax is not 100% there, but it still catches me off guard how well she's able to express herself. Of course, she's officially TWO tomorrow and it's showing in all the not-fun ways. She throws tantrums and outright refuses to pay attention. She tries to run away in parking lots and occasionally squirms away from me when I'm attempting to buckle her in her seatbelt. Worst of all, she is being awful, awful, awful to the cats. Pulling their tails, etc. It's very hard to get her to understand that this is a BAD thing. (I start to realize that she doesn't comprehend our anger. This feels like a mixed blessing, you know?)
Still-- I realize that I'm more suited in my parenting to a chattering child, despite all the extra stress that brings, than to a tiny infant. With every new skill she acquires, particularly the verbal/expressive ones, I can see a little bit of the light at the end of the tunnel of this most labor-intensive phase of being a mother.
Ahhh, she's two. Two years ago I was watching Studio 60 waiting for something, anything to happen.... filled halfway with delight and halfway with foreboding. Tomorrow, we throw a party for 33 people in a very small space. Similar emotional state.
I have reined myself in so far, and have done my best to not get too crazed over the minutiae of this election. That has included not blogging about it (I admit that my efforts to read anything other than political blogs have been less successful). But, okay. I am too incensed about this to keep my mouth shut.
Let me be clear; I'm voting Obama because of Obama. It never mattered to me who the Republican candidate was going to be, really, and my admiration for Obama's career and campaign has been enthusiastic and pretty dang consistent (well, I'm not wild about the forgoing of public financing, but other than that...). So for the most part, any scrutiny by me on the McCain camp would be a needless change in focus, and not just a little bit redundant.
That said:
A McCain campaign worker, a Muslim man named Daniel Zubairi, did something admirable at a Virginia McCain rally that turned ugly. He stood up to an attendee's xenophobic anti-Islam ranting, and told the man that the McCain campaign does not endorse his message. Nice work, Zubairi: stay calm, stand firm and tell the haters to cool it.
Points for the McCain folks, right? A welcome antidote to the fear-mongering associated with some nutjob supporters we've all been hearing about, right? Not so. CNN's Rick Sanchez has been trying to get Zubairi on his show for an interview, to talk us all through what happened at that rally. Zubairi wants to come. In fact, they've scheduled an interview several times, but each time, before Zubairi is set to go on the air, somebody higher up than him in the campaign has pulled him. Until today, we could only speculate as to why, but Zubairi's email to Sanchez today clears it up pretty well, explaining that he has been muzzled by the campaign because his story does not fit with "the tone" the campaign wants to be setting right now.
Um, WTF?
Meanwhile...
You've all heard about this one: a 20-year-old phonebanking staffer for the McCain campaign, named Ashley Todd, called the Pittsburgh police to report that she had been mugged at an ATM, and that the mugger, a tall dark-skinned black man (dressed in black!), upon seeing the McCain bumper sticker on her car, attacked her again and told her she had to support Obama, going so far as to "carve the letter B on her face" (B for Barack, so we presumed).
You know this too: she made it all up. Local police noticed some pretty bizarre irregularities in her story, and continued to question her until it became very clear and she ultimately confessed to fabricating the entire story. She wasn't even at the ATM in question, and the B scratched on her face is backwards, as though created while Todd was looking in the mirror. Oops. It's pretty clear what her intent was-- to try to turn the media narrative, and ultimately Pennsylvania voters, towards a sense that the Obama campaign is the dangerous, violent one.
But that's not what's significant. What matters to me is that the McCain campaign itself, pretty much as soon as the young woman's (not-yet-debunked) story broke, was pushing it as a news item. According to Talking Points Memo, the campaign got involved pretty directly:
John Verrilli, the news director for KDKA in Pittsburgh, told TPM Election Central that McCain's Pennsylvania campaign communications director gave one of his reporters a detailed version of the attack that included a claim that the alleged attacker said, "You're with the McCain campaign? I'm going to teach you a lesson."
So let me get this straight. When it comes to isolated incidents involving low-level McCain staffers, the campaign says that the story of a young Muslim supporter doing his job well (and doing his civic duty as a responsible citizen pretty damn well too) is not in keeping with the tone they want to set. Because....? Because their priority right now is to seize upon the support of people like the older white dude in the video, rather than the younger ethnic-looking dude (and anyone who might be proud of him)? But their tone remains unruffled by pushing a fishy story about a young white female supporter getting attacked by a black Obama supporter-- including helpfully supplying some direct quotes from the alleged attacker? They're cool with pouncing on a story that will thrust a (supposed) victim of a violent crime into the spotlight? What's more, they are so frantic for good (?) press as to associate themselves with a story that looked suspicious from the start, before the police could even confirm the woman's story?
What is wrong with these people? I'm not going to hold the campaign accountable for the anti-Islamic guy or the wacko self-mutilating race-baiting girl. I'm really not. (Well, maybe someday I will. It's hard to say right now with any objectivity whether or not the tone of the campaign is encouraging the crazies or if the crazies are just gravitating toward the campaign out of desperation). What I am saying is that the McCain folks are idiots this week, and that their decisions regarding the racial/religious/nationalistic undertones of many of their supporters have been baffling and hugely disappointing. At the very least, they are complicit in the "culture war" nonsense that has been poisoning political discourse for far, far too long.
In any case, it seems pretty clear to me: Ashley Todd needs to be prosecuted. And Daniel Zubairi needs to jump this particular ship. C'mon, Daniel-- the water's fine. We'll take ya.
...but even our beautiful daughter Lea is showing signs of partaking in the terrible twos. Before going farther, I should let you know this is Brian, making my first post on our blog. The last couple of weeks have moved me to post some pictures from our recent adventures, and more importantly, to give some much due credit to my amazing wife... We saved up our money and combined a work trip with some vacation time to take a trip out West to Montana and Wyoming. We spent a day in Yellowstone and a few days at a dude ranch (it was a little wild and a little strange making our home out on the range). Artists Point (above) and Bison Jam in Yellowstone and HF Dude Ranch in WY below:Anyway, back to my reason for posting. Lea was an absolute rock star during all of our travels, but since returning from our trip Lea has been having a slightly rough transition. She is a little bit testy (although it should be noted she also has a slight cold too) and she has started to really test us on a number of things. One of those is her willingness/ability to go to sleep. She has almost completely stopped taking naps and she resists going to sleep at bedtime now too. You can imagine that this is especially difficult for Paige, who most directly feels the brunt of the napping (and I must also add that Paige got up with Lea at 5am this morning).
Knowing this, fast forward to tonight. We sing our customary 4 bedtime songs and begin to leave the room. This is when the crying has been beginning recently. As I try to shuffle quickly out of the room, I hear the little angelic voice of my daughter say "Momma..." My first thought is to get out of the room quickly so that she might forget/not realize we're there. Even though she's been on duty since 5am with Lea, Paige's response is to say "what sweetheart?" Lea then asks, "Momma be right outside?" To which Paige answers: "Of course Lea, Momma is right outside the door. I'm always here for you."
I think about how lucky I am often, but tonight this struck me more than normal. Paige is so committed to being an incredible mother, and you can absolutely see the results as she and Lea's bond gets stronger and stronger. To steal/paraphrase from Lou Gehrig, I truly feel like one of the luckiest men on the face of the planet. Here's some more proof... Trike-a-thon 2009 at Lea's preschool (below):
Hiking on a beautiful SW VA Fall Day with her good friend Rylan (below):
Lea starts to cry at about 11pm, which is really unusual lately. Her sleep is not quite as reliable as it was for a while, but the disturbances have tended to come in the 4-6am range, not the late night. So it's surprising to hear from her as we are getting ready for bed. She quiets herself down after a minute or so, and I fall asleep, only to hear the same kind of pitiful crying at midnight. And then again at nearly one. At this point, I leap out of bed because the wheels have started turning, and I associate discomfort-occurring-at-regular-intervals with one thing: a stomach bug. When Lea has gotten them in the past, they've gone exactly like that-- a cycle of barfing with an hour break at first, then shorter and shorter until she passes out (actually, that's kind of how they go for me too).
So I'm really surprised to find no puddle of vomit in Lea's crib when I get down there. Just a sad little girl with a very snotty nose. "This bed!" she commands, pointing to the full-size bed right next to her crib. ("This bed!" means she wants one of us to crawl into the bed, and bring her along.) I'm happy to oblige, especially because I am so relieved to not have to deal with changing all her clothes and sheets.
"Sing a song?" she asks. "ABCs?" But she's snoring before I get to LMNOP.
It's fitful sleep, though. She is stuffed-up and not able to breathe easily. So I pick her up and stand and sway, hoping that being vertical will help her nose situation. It seems to, but that's not what feels so wonderful; it's that she's sleeping on my shoulder, which never, ever, ever happens, hasn't happened much since she was a newborn, and hardly even then. She always preferred to be on her own. Not much of a snuggler, especially when she's serious about wanting to sleep.
After a while she seems to have fallen into a very deep sleep, and I'm about to collapse so I put her back in her crib and hope hope hope she doesn't wake up.
She wakes up, but she doesn't cry. "Mama this bed? Lea... Lea's bed." She's ready to be sleeping but she doesn't want to be alone, so I crawl back into this bed and Lea stays happily in Lea's bed.
"Sing a song? Knee-en-toes?"
"Head, shoulders," I begin, but I'm so tired I just hum the rest. Very faintly, I hear Lea singing along, getting about every fourth syllable approximately right. "Eye uh eena mouf... nose. Heh... sola knee-en-toes."
It's quiet for a long time but I can tell she's not totally asleep. Sure enough, when my allergies (and aversion to dusting) give me a very badly-timed sneezing fit, Lea seems unfazed.
...that May-July is a very much worse time to be in your first trimester of pregnancy than February-April is.
In 2006, aside from being bowled over by shock (and ok, terrified and sometimes, if I'm being honest, devastated at the prospect of life changing so much so quickly, so unexpectedly), early pregnancy was not too bad. I had morning sickness, but it stayed true to its definition and usually faded by 10am. I gained weight quickly, but not terribly so. I had extreme (to the point of tears and angry cussing at Brian) late-night hunger, but only for about a week. It was late winter, early spring. I worked at a very casual job where it was perfectly ok to take breaks, to eat snacks, to go easy on myself.
This time, my "morning" sickness has been so bad it has required medication, and I'm still having occasional days of all-day sickness at nearly 15 weeks. I've gained an astonishing amount of weight-- really-- it's crazy. (How does that happen when one is throwing up all the time?) My crying, cussing, midnight hunger-fest went on for nearly a month and I still get it from time to time. It is HOT. Disgustingly hot sometimes. My job, while casual, does not afford many breaks. And when I try to eat a snack, there tends to be a little 20-month-old trying to climb me like a tree saying "Try it? Try it? Eat some?" Nevermind that she won't eat anything I actually suggest. But if I'm dipping a slice of bell pepper in some hummus, here she comes, begging for some like it's FunDip.
But, I am optimistic. I am firmly in the second trimester, and it's all starting to seem more like a pregnancy than a hangover. The little heartbeat is thumpthumpthumping at 160ish beats a minute pretty consistently. Lea is in a wonderfully charming and funny stage, and I can actually envision her becoming a big sister (it's weird to imagine that at the age Lea is now, my brother was only 8 weeks or so away from becoming a big brother to me-- I admit I'm glad to get another four months of her maturation process). I think we're on the verge of figuring out a way to have the baby at a birth center, which is like a dream come true. It's fun to think about all the uniqueness of pregnancy-- I never minded attention from strangers, and in particular treasure the memory of being at the movie theater and an old man saying, "Whoa! When are you due?" It gave me great pleasure to smile and say, "Tomorrow!" and watch him inwardly freak out. I loved not finding out the sex of the baby, and just wondering. I loved going to prenatal appointments toward the end, when it all felt so real, and doing prenatal yoga.
I love the thought of becoming a family of four. Nevermind the fact that it's all happening probably 5 years before we expected it to. I'll figure out the rest of my life when it gets here. For now, I am loving being a mama and a mama-to-be, and very grateful for all the support I'm getting along the way.
By the way, the due date is approximately 1.20.09. Inauguration day. I hope to be having a LOT to celebrate that day.
We took a little 24-hour jaunt down to the Smoky Mountains. Since it was just one night, we decided to live it up and stay in a really fun hotel with an indoor pool, which Lea went a little crazy for. Unfortunately, the weather was a bit nasty, so our hiking was limited (although we did make it to one waterfall and one cool trail with overlooks, for a total of maybe 5-6 miles of hiking, some of it wet).
The best part of the hike was having a picnic lunch, complete with Lea's first time eating a sandwich that hadn't been cut into tiny pieces. She's so big!
Well, now it's replaced, so it's time to catch up.
First of all, I took these pictures with the old camera, but couldn't even get them loaded onto the computer (the camera wouldn't even turn on). So, for all who have been dying to hear about Barack Obama's visit to my hometown, you're in luck! Luckily enough, he chose Downingtown as part of his whistle-stop tour through Pennsylvania, which just happened to coincide with a weekend we were up visiting. We got there a few minutes late and couldn't find parking, so we essentially missed most of the stump speech, but Jenn and I heard the end of it and it was awesome to just be there among the crowd. It was such a diverse group of people, I about wept. There was something really powerful about standing there among people from the community where I grew up (and recognizing many of them), and seeing pretty much every face intently focused on this message of unity and progress. Very cool. We stuck around to see the train off (and, helpfully I'm sure, pointed out that they were actually heading back towards Philly when they pulled away, despite the plan to travel to Harrisburg next. Of course, they were just backing up so they could switch to a different track, but we still felt like we had contributed).
I just found out from my neighbor who knows these things that the town planning commission approved a half-mile long sidewalk extension, which will span from the nursing home at Gray Drive all the way to White's Mill Road (where the "Historic District", and therefore the continuous sidewalk-connecting-everything, begins). I do not know when this will happen, but it is FABULOUS news. We walk all the time anyway (starting from our home on Henderson Court), but it's freaking stressful because drivers in this town do not seem too used to pedestrians. So certain busy times of the day are just really unpleasant, borderline scary, to be walking. Once this project is complete, though, it will be a breeze to get basically anywhere in town, and that's awesome. It's especially awesome because for now, our strategy is to get to Main Street as quickly as possible (involving cutting through a funeral home parking lot), since the other main drag, Valley Street, is the one with big chunks lacking a sidewalk or even a shoulder. But that part of Main Street is not pretty. Valley Street, on the other hand: very pretty. Phenomenally pretty. Pretty houses, pretty gardens, pretty trees. Shade. We will have no excuse not to take walks. And then, of course, there's all the useful places we can get: grocery store, post office, drug store, coffee/bookshop, library, doctor's office, wildly overpriced boutiques (just for looking). I love this small town living.
Shooting hoops with Dad (Lea shot this one, left-handed).
Learning to eat with a fork.
Helping in the garden (pants-free, naturally).
Dining al fresco at our favorite lunch spot, the Wildflour.
Of course, now that we're all into springtime mode, we are expected to get an inch or two of snow tomorrow night and Monday morning. Last year, on April 14th, it also snowed after weeks of warm weather. Very weird. I love snow- LOVE it. But this is creepy.
