Dallas, PA

We had some sad news on Tuesday night. SNG and Dianaverse's grandmother passed away. It was not unexpected, but it's always sad to lose someone you love. So SNG, e-baby and Dianaverse will be flying up to central PA on Friday morning, and Friday evening after class I'll be flying from DFW to Harrisburg, renting a car, and driving to Columbia, arriving around 1am. We'll all fly home together on Sunday morning. Although the circumstances are unhappy, it will be really nice to see family that we very rarely see. E-baby has never met SNG's cousins. I'm pretty sure she'll give them all big sloppy hugs and kisses. Or at least, she'll give their children big sloppy hugs and kisses.

Right now I am blogging from a Doubletree in N. Dallas, and I just got back from dinner with three dear friends from SNG's college days and their four kids, who were SO GOSH DARN CUTE I could have eaten them up. Even when they got grumpy and tired they were irresistible. At one point the restaurant was transfored into a 5-and-under dance club. The oldest of the girls was gracious enough to let me join in the dancing fun, even though I'm too old to be cool. Oh, it was great to see their parents, too. :-) I wish SNG could have been there, and he's going to have to just come out with e-baby some time for a visit.

After dinner I ran into a Kroger for some soymilk and came out with a double issue of People magazine. Hey, did YOU know that Angelina is pregnant again? And that people wore beautiful dresses to the awards recently? Now I can read all about it! I haven't read a serious trash magazine in probably a year, and the first thing I did was rip-rip-rip out all the pages with ads on both sides. After I hit publish on this post I'm going to plug my brain right into the backside of the collective unconscious and find out who's breaking up and who has a crazy voodoo lifestyle. I can't wait.

It's the perfect end to a perfectly lovely evening.

E-baby is getting better after her most recent illness, although my head is still packed with goop. Tomorrow I'm flying to Dallas, which hooray is only one flight, but boo is still flying with a headcold (ahem-- flu!! with head congestion!!).

This afternoon we came home and found a gaggle of kids 3-6 years old playing in the neighbor's yard, and e-baby joined right in like a champ. She rode the tricycle and the rocking horse, chased the kids on bikes, pet the dogs, squealed at the cat, pushed the wheelbarrow and the babydoll stroller, tried to stand on the scooter (tricky business, that one) and splashed in a puddle. It was great. The bigger kids were really gentle with her and shared their toys nicely, and her friend from across the street (a boy who is the oldest of the bunch) kept an eye out for her to make sure she was included the fun. We kept her out way past her dinnertime, and by the time she came inside, her great mood had given way to low blood sugar and for the next hour it was meltdown central. Somehow we managed to get a couple of bites of spaghetti into her mouth and she was OK after that, but still really clingy.

I'm looking forward to the trip to D and catching up with some old friends.

I just realized I haven't posted any pictures in ages. Soon. I'll get some up on Flickr soon.

A Tale Of Two Snotties

It was the best of boogers, it was the worst of boogers.

E-baby has begun to recover from her Frank McCourt symptoms*. This is the 3rd cold she's had in a row, and I'm starting to think it's something on our end that's causing her to get reinfected-- because it's also the 3rd time in a row I've caught her cold. I am a compulsive hand-washer but also a compulsive baby-kisser so who can say what caused it all. Maybe those babies just spend all day licking each others' faces at daycare.

Caution-- this paragraph contains graphic medical content. She woke up Monday feeling lethargic, but that was the only symptom. She'd nearly recovered from cold #2 but I knew something was wrong. Tuesday she had dark green nose trails, like forest colored caterpillars oozing from her head. Tuesday evening I noticed some stuff in her eye and tried to wipe it out, which might have made things worse, because by Wednesday afternoon both eyes were oosing green caterpillars too, and they eventually crusted shut and the lids were nearly purple from being swollen. It was painful to the touch and she wouldn't let me near her with a warm washcloth, tissue, anything. SNG took her to the doctor who prescribed an oral antibiotic, 2t twice a day for 10 days. He was right that we'd NEVER get drops into her eyes. E-baby calls the pink medicine in the mouth syringe "Baby's Treat." Actually it sounds more like "bay-bee-thh cheet- Mmmm!" I'm so glad it was cherry flavored and not spinach or listerine or something. I fully expect her to get sick of it by day 4 or 5.

I started taking Airborne on Wednesday night, but by Thursday afternoon I had the same lethargy that e-baby seemed to have on Monday along with a sore throat and chills and general body aches. This one? Not a regular cold. Definitely a flu. So much for that flu shot I got last Fall. I seem to be holding it mostly at bay with Tylenol and airborne. Since the last 2 colds I had also coincided with air travel, and (of course) next week I've got to fly again, I really don't want a head full of crud. Ascending is OK, but it's those descents that make your head explode with pain.

The good news is that the antibiotic is helping e-baby a lot. Her nose went from dark green to clear in about 24 hours, and by this morning the eyes had stopped oozing. She even went back to daycare today. Fingers crossed that she's actually getting better, and it's not just that she has blocked tearducts...

SNG needs to boil all our toothbrushes and bedsheets. Oh, and he has not caught either of the last 2 things.

* If you haven't read Angela's Ashes, you might not have caught the Frank McCourt reference. In it he describes working for a coal mine/delivery service as a youngster and having chronic conjunctivitis, causing his eyes to be described widely as "two piss-holes in the snow." Sorry if the colorful language offends-- it is literary so that makes it OK, right?

Oh for goodness sakes...

I feel like all I ever post anymore is "I have been meaning to post something but busy busy busy blah blah blah excuses-cakes."

Well, I am still busy busy busy blah blah blah excuses-cakes. I will post something more --- um, hopefully-- maybe-- I dunno -- tomorrow? -- this weekend?

The truth is that it's late winter, not much is going on except that SNG, e-baby and I have taken turns being sick almost nonstop for I don't know how many months (gotta love daycare germs), this morning e-baby's eyelids were swollen and puffy and now she looks like Frank McCourt, I've been CRAAAAZY busy at work, and the whole world is standing between me and getting a decent workout. That might have something to do with why I haven't blogged much lately.

But I'm in a great mood because five boxes of Girl Scout cookies were waiting at my desk when I got to the office this morning. Best of all? They've gone back to the REAL cookie names. What the heck are Samoas? Caramel DeLites, I love you so.

Another quickie

You just have to see the pictures of Dianaverse's dog Daisy and her loverboy, the neighborhood tomcat Singer.

Honestly, I've started several posts and had to run off and do something else before I could finish any of them. I will finish one of them soon. But for now, I just wanted to say I have nothing to say.

Nope, that's not true! I have an e-baby update: she has started using 3-word sentences with subject-verb-object structure. Today she said "Baby go outside!" and "Baby got teeth!" She also loves to tell us what belongs to whom (mommy's shirt, daddy's shoes, baby's jacket, baby's mommy, baby's bike...). As you guessed, she calls herself Baby.

Ummmm

I have nothing to say, but that's never stopped me before.

I decided I wanted to learn to create wikis, so I made one at work. It was easy. It is useful. It is a good way to share information with colleagues worldwide. So then I decided to make one for myself at home. Then it occured to me, what the heck will I do with a wiki?

You might never see the personal wiki unless I come up with something clever to do with it, but I will let you know if that happens. Up next... a Sharepoint site! That I have nothing to put onto! Woo!

I got back from Hartford last night. SNG kept e-baby awake for me, and she was in the tub when I got home. She did a little splash-splash of joy and swam a victory lap before sticking two fingers right up my nose and saying "Mommy-MINE!" She was right, of course.

What else? Oh, did I mention we joined Netflix? We have the $5 a month plan that they only offer so they can say "starting at $5 a month" in their advertisements. We can only have one video at a time, up to 2 in a month, and if someone else wants the DVD instead, we have to hand it over right away or get beaten up before they take our lunch money. We've watched the first 2 3/4 seasons of the "new" BBC Dr. Who series and I want the rest of season 3!! Netflix hasn't sent it yet and we've waited a long time. I'd complain, but I kind of get the feeling that Netflix hopes we'll go away and join Blockbuster.

And now I'm going to bed because it is Friday night, I'm brain dead and we're going hiking with Zen and Season first thing in the morning tomorrow.

Have a great weekend!

Sad News, Happy News

First some sad news. Dianaverse's dog Daisy has been diagnosed with Addison's disease. Daisy's a very sweet dog and has been a great friend to Dianaverse and to e-baby. Please send some healthy dog vibes her way.

And the happy news- Happy first birthday, c-baby!! We are sending you lots of love and virtual birthday cake!! I can't believe it was only a year ago that I was walking around Macy's pillow department and got a call from your mom that It Is Time. I am so glad you are one of our girls and e-baby, SNG and I love you very much!

Sixteen Months and The Nixon

E-baby turned 16 months old yesterday, and I haven't done one of these What's New posts in a long time, so here's what the Queen of Everything has been up to the past two months or so.

As I started on this, I realized that there's no way I can begin to list all the stuff that's been happening with this child. A friend told me that at 15 months, all sorts of new cognitive and social processes come into play. I probably had to know that for a final exam once upon a time and immediately drowned the knowledge in a margarita at a Scott St. party. This is definitely an exciting time. Four months ago SNG and I watched an infant shift to a toddler. Now we see a scientist, an explorer, a chef, a veteranarian, a rock star. It makes me wish I could videotape every cute thing so I could return to it someday and remember how funny these times were.

* Language: She picks up new words like they were M&Ms. Between the sign language and the spoken, she can say or sign around 80-100 words, and she understands much more, but it is hard to estimate at this point. The only trouble is that you can't always understand what she's saying, and sometimes she gets a little confused. Example- she learned the word and sign for snow the other day, but the next day pointed at a bottle of ranch dressing and said "snow!" Apparently the lesson learned was the color white = "snow."

* Fine and gross motor coordination. Spoons, forks, drumsticks, buttons, knobs, and other things that were kind of tricky to manage a few months ago are getting much easier now. Bigger tricks like climbing a stepstool to reach something, climbing onto furniture, and playing on the slide are also getting pretty easy for her. That means I've got to be careful not to put anything tempting up on those fun-to-climb bookshelves. The greatest barrier to success now is that pesky gravity.

* New games:
Lots of role-play. To me, the most noticeable change this month has been in the role-playing behavior. E-baby feeds her dinner to the stuffed animals that share her table. She puts them to bed and she tells them "night night!" She shares her pacifier with them, and they have their own blankets. Bigger dolls hold and rock their baby dolls to sleep. Smaller dolls go for rides on small toy cars. Bikes and boats drive all over the coffee table, and they go "vroom!" If I seem sad about something, she brings me a toy to make me feel better. I'm sure that it's related to the "lying to mommy and daddy" trick as well, since these are all aspects of developing empathy and understanding the perspective of other people. To me, that's the most fascinating part of the last few weeks.

Copycat. If I take a bite, she takes a bite. If I take a drink, she takes a drink. If I jabber on the phone, she jabbers on the remote control. If I go around the house picking up things, she picks up things.

Housekeeper. She will throw away anything we ask her to. She loves to blow her own nose (which is bizarre and funny), throw away the tissue, and tell me "thank you!" She learned this trick awhile back, but now I can tell her to throw away anything I give her and she'll oblige.

Animal noises. She can imitate the sounds of cows, horses, dogs, cats, sheep, and I forget what else.



Body parts. She can find any body part on herself, any person, or any toy. And she might decide to find your nose-- waaaaay up in there--- when you're in the middle of a nose-free activity, like paying at the grocery store.

Monster in the closet. She stands in the closet and says Boo! over. and over. and over. and over.

CRAZY face. E-baby has started making this maniac-neck-muscles-tensed-lower-teeth-bared face that probably all toddlers eventually learn. It sometimes comes on with such intensity that she'll shake a little. It's the most hilarious thing EVER. She does it just to make us laugh, usually when I ask her if she's cold. It makes me laugh so hard I snort.

The Nixon face. If she's suspicious of a person or of a situation, she gives The Nixon. She has become famous at daycare for the serious intensity of this face, but it was her Grampy who coined the term "The Nixon."



About 2 months ago I was having trouble keeping track of all the new words and signs she was using, and I didn't want to forget when anything funny happened, so I started keeping 3x5 cards in the kitchen to make note of anything new that was happening. In the last few weeks she's changing so fast that I can't even keep up with the cards.

Perhaps the only people who will find this post interesting are the grandparents, but this blog is as much as anything a way for me to keep track of things that are happening for posterity. Or for posteriority, as I like to say. Right now e-baby is sitting next to me having a complicated and serious conversation with the iPod cable. I'd better make sure they keep it peaceful.

Tucked Away For Winter

Starting around Thursday or so, the weather reports have forecast all kinds of winter weather for Raleigh, with the most likely devastation arriving today. Yesterday we were warned about Friday night rain followed by 1-3" of snow Saturday morning, followed by highs around 30 and lows around 10. This would result in lots of black ice on the roads until the temperatures rise above freezing again, which is forecast to be Monday or Tuesday.

In North Carolina, if winter weather is forecast, the schools close a day early in anticipation and there is a mad rush on the grocery stores for bread and bottled water. Three years ago, in a very poorly planned midday closure of the schools, frantic parents and, well, everyone else, sat in traffic for upwards of 12 hours to go a few miles to get their kids from school or just get home. This was primarily because of panic by the schools and local employers, because the minor snowfall should not have sufficed to wreak that much havoc. In fairness, there was a terrible snowstorm about 8 years ago that knocked out electricity and most options for transportation for over a week, leaving people in hotels with no food because the restaurants had run out or the workers couldn't get to the hotel to prepare it, and that was only forecast to be a couple of inches. Then there was the ice storm about 4 years ago that took down power lines and trees leaving behind $millions in damages and electrical outages for over 2 weeks in some areas (I hesitate to admit that we had power back within 12 hours. Oh, living on the hospital's power grid was so nice). There was also the miserable pair of F-hurricanes (Fran and Floyd) in the 90s made clean water hard to come by for a lot of residents. You can't blame people for taking precautions.

Still, it seems to be a teensy bit reactionary that people just clear the shelves of milk, bread and water and stand in long long lines every.time.snow.is.forecast. Heck, even people in Austin were less concerned about forecasts of ice and snow. Well, OK, snow is never forecast in Austin. Ice and sleet.

So back to my story. Yesterday we were low on dishwashing detergent and powdered buttermilk (don't ask), but knew better than to try to hit the grocery store the night before a forecast of 1-3" snow. Instead, we ate breakfast and scuttled out the door at 9:00 this morning to get our groceries (luckily we keep 5 gallons of bottled water in the garage, since the grocery shelves were, in fact, cleared). SNG and I agreed, if we were going to be holed up indoors for 3 days, we'd better make soup and bake some sourdough bread. So chuck is on the counter burbling away with his fresh lunch of flour and water, and I'm hunkered down over a hot bowl of chicken-vegetable soup with wild rice and fresh rosemary. It is still raining, but little chunks of snow have mixed with the rain. It's 35 degrees and I still have my doubts that anything newsworthy will happen. Chuck should be bread-ready in another 2-3 hours and by then perhaps we'll have some pretty snow that I can take a picture of.
Edited to add:

Edited again to add:

Eeeeeeeeeeewe

This post is not for the squeamish.

Sometimes when people find out that I travel for work, they make a comment about the luxury of staying at fancy hotels and eating in fancy restaurants. I've pointed out that expensive hotels are often just as dirty as cheap ones, but this is often met with skepticism.

And then you see something like this. (And don't miss the followup videos linked on that page)

And then you realize, "Hey, that's the hotel I stayed in the last time I was in Atlanta!" $209 a night.

And then you think about the time you came home from DC with fleas. $299 a night.

And then you remember the time you found a suspiciously smelly brown smudge on the bathroom wall in Chicago. $319 a night.

And then you remember the time you found marijuana in the couch cushion in Nashville. That place was actually pretty cheap, like $99.

And the countless occurences of curly hairs in the bed, suspicious-smelling towels, the list goes on.

Superbug spreading in hospitals and daycares? Maybe it only takes the hospitality industry to bring public health to its knees.

Thanks to my mother-in-law for sending the video links. I'm staying in a hotel in Memphis this week, so pardon me while I go buy some bottled water.

The Other E-word

My recent insomnia has been put to rest for awhile. It was a combination of things, really, one of which is something that I should have recognized: the other e-word. The one that has allowed me to sleep and keep serotonin balance for so many years, the one that used to be the central focus of many of my blog posts. Exercise.

It occured to me last weekend, as SNG and I trudged up a hill on bikes, e-baby in her trailer behind my bike, that I had not been exercising regularly since the weather turned cold about a month ago. I can't bring myself to put e-baby all Siberian-styley in her baby jogger when it's 20 degrees to jog to work. Over the holidays, there was just so much going on that we never got out for a workout. We have a big gym at work, but the daycare hours are pretty much my work hours plus 15 minutes to drop off and pick up the baby, so there's no time for a lunch workout. It was beginning to feel like there was some sort of conspiracy against my exercising! Gr. Arg.

This week we put e-baby into early care every day so that SNG could drop her off. That freed me to jog in the cold weather alone, and he left the baby jogger at my office on his way. I'm surprised how much fitness I can maintain when all I'm doing is chasing a toddler, so the running hasn't been too hard. Slow, but not hard. But most of all: sleep! Yaaaaaay, sleep! All but one day this week I slept until the alarm clock went off.

Other stuff- Next week I'll be teaching in Memphis, then home a week, then teaching in Hartford. If anyone knows of fun things to do in either place (besides trawling the Graceland gift shop) let me know.

So that was perhaps one of the more boring posts ever. Sometimes you just gotta dig deep and write about something.

Well, It IS An Important Thing To Learn, I Suppose...

E-baby told her first lie yesterday.

The Backstory: Like many toddlers, e-baby is addicted to her pacifier. I've pretty much limited her use of it to the carseat and bedtime, but even her doctor has noted that she's had a strong need to suck on something since birth, so it's not surprising that the girl will not give it up without a fight. One of her top-ten signs right now is pacifier. This week she was recovering from horrendous diaper rash, with every diaper change being very painful, so it just seemed the humane thing to let her have the pacifier ("chupon" in our house) when she had to have a poopy diaper change yesterday afternoon.

After the aquaphor and a new diaper were applied, I took away the chupon and she criiiiiiied, and signed pacifier and said "pon! pon!" but I told her that she didn't need it right now. We went downstairs.

The Mischief: Less than five minutes later, she went up to SNG and signed change diaper. She's been learning this concept of signing when she needs a new diaper, so he asked her whether she needed to change her diaper and she signed change diaper again, but the look on her face was clearly "I'm up to something!" SNG, always the slave of his brown-eyed-girl, carried her upstairs. She spotted the chupon, picked it up and ran back to the stairway. Her giggling clearly said "Heee! I got you, sucker!"

The Analysis: Learning to lie is an important part of development because it not only requires understanding the difference between "me" and "you" but it also requires understanding that "my knowledge" can be different from "your knowledge." Sounds simple, but it's really pretty complex stuff. She won't really have an idea of other people's perspectives for years to come, but this little "trick" on her part was fascinating. My only disappointment is that it worked: she came downstairs with the chupon. :-)

All of this brings up an interesting question, to which I don't have a good answer. To what extent should I be imposing limitations and when should I just let things go? This was a very important question when we had dogs, and it was SO EASY to answer: if you don't want your dog to do xyz or some variation of xyz when it is an adult dog, then humanely nip the behavior in the bud as soon as you see it. The problem is that my child is not a dog, and I don't really want her to grow up responding to my every command. Also, some of the things I wish she'd give up, like the chupon, will work themselves out in time anyway. No way will her friends let her have a pacifier at her first sleepover. So should I fight it now? Another case in point is mealtime behavior. Lately, e-baby HATES her highchair and would prefer to eat at her small table in a chair. I see this as a natural progression and don't mind indulging her, but so far she sits, eats a few bites, gets up to play, and wants to take her food with her. I don't want her wandering around with a fistful of crackers. If I take up the plate, she misses the rest of the meal. Eventually she'll learn that she has to stay seated if she wants to eat (just like at daycare, where they have the same policy). But the question arises again-- do I really need to fight this battle? Or should I just insist she stay in the highchair longer? Won't there be a thousand other battles to fight that are more important?

Dogs were so easy. But none of my dogs knew sign language.

Happy New Year!

I'm writing this before midnight, but the neighbors across the street threw a New Year's party for the neighborhood kids and we rang in the new year at 8:30pm, so I'm already an hour 28 minutes into 2008 right now. The party was fun, and e-baby had the time of her life, until she started to cry uncontrollably, grasping at her pants. I took her home and changed her and found that the fettucine alfredo she had for lunch did not agree with her. Poor kid must have felt like she had fireants in her diaper. We gave her a bath, she fell asleep before 8, and SNG watched football while I headed back to the neighbor's party to eat the best cannolis outside of Angelo Brocato's. Poor e-baby. I hope she feels better in the morning.

Christmas was SO much fun. We had my parents, SNG's parents, Dianaverse, and our friend Kiltman here for Christmas dinner. We'll be dining on leftovers until 2009. SNG and I gave each other matching iPods, which are great except then we realized that they won't show our home movies. So what's the point of a video iPod if you can't watch your videos on it? E-baby got lots of toys, including another bike which will probably fit her by summertime, a red wagon she can pull around, a singing kitchen, a book that meows/chirps/barks, a lovely pink handmade scarf, and countless other toys, books, and clothes. In spite of the riches bestowed upon her, e-baby's favorite toy of all was the $1.99 bathtub xylophone from a Walgreen's in San Francisco.

Last weekend we drove to New Bern to visit SNG's parents. E-baby terrorized their cat and played their harpsichord. We also toured Tryon Palace while we were there. And all of us slept well, which as far as I'm concerned, is all that's really required to make it a good weekend.

I guess that's all. One more holiday before returning to work. I can't believe the twelve days are almost over.

BTW, to see pictures from Christmas day, they are here.
Other pictures from December, including Christmas eve and a couple of shots from the neighbor's New Year's party, are here.