Torturing the Wee One

When you’re a baby, people can do what they want with your helpless little body. They can pull your striped nerd pants up to your chest and dance you around like a pirate and say things like, “Yahr, clean the poop deck, matey!” and pretend that it is you saying that.

I love babies.

Capn’ Tillie

A first for everyone

Tills and Daddy napping

Glue Factory Supplier

“My name is Molly and I am a dog hater.”

Yes, it’s true—dogs really get my goat. I can’t stand them. I just hate the way that they get in my space, and they smell, and they destroy my things, and they make my house messy, and they jump at my face, and they scratch me, and they bark really loudly, and they leave hair everywhere, and they make it impossible for me to leave food unattended for even a moment while I go to the bathroom or get a beverage, and they sometimes bite my friends or my friends’ dogs, and they dig up my garden, and they hump on each other, and they make the yard unusable due to their crap, and they track crap in the house…. I really can’t stand all of these things. If a person did any of this to me, I would not be friends with them. Or, perhaps I would give money to the charitable cause that helped keep them away from me in some humane way.

It’s funny, because when we were kids, my brothers and sisters and I would always ask for a dog, and my dad would say no way and describe how much he hated dogs—and I used to get really annoyed with him for this. Here I am, 20 years later, and I myself am a self-proclaimed dog hater. But there is a key difference between me and my dad: I actually have two dogs. I live with them. I feed them. I take them to the vet to get their shots. I spend a lot of money on them. I let them lick my kid. Sometimes, I think they are cute. How did I get here?

Right before the baby was born, I really panicked about my feelings about the dogs. I just knew that I would no longer have tolerance for them. I thought that the baby would make me draw new, tighter boundaries on what I would be willing to do with my time, money, and energy. I thought, oh god, I am going to be that despicable person who neglects their dogs once the kids arrive. Or, I might say to Scott, “It’s me or the dogs.” Or, I might even secretly and evilly send them away to a farm or a rendering plant when he wasn’t looking. Well, the baby is here and I haven’t yet sent the mongrels to the glue factory.

Oddly, now that she is here, I have a new understanding about dog people. Before now, I never could figure out why their souls seemed so much more open than mine to that stinky, drooly kind of love. But, now I understand. They love their dogs in the EXACT same way that I love my baby. I finally get it. Tillie can puke on me, poop on my clothes, eat my food, and scream at my friends. And, I just giggle at how cute she is while she’s doing it. There are people, friends of mine even, who never want to be a parent and who say they hate kids. I finally get these people, too. I guess having all this cuteness (and baby filth) in my life is softening me up. Maybe I’ll even come to love dogs one day.

Or, maybe not.

[Image from: http://www.allposters.com/]

Belated Birthday Yummies

Scott bought me a Kitchen-Aid mixer as a belated birthday present. It’s pink! It’s lovely! Hypnotized by her rosy curves into a state of drunken domesticity, I whipped up a delicioso batch of mushroom and onion tartlets as well as some pear tartlets. Why so many small baked things? I dunno—perhaps it’s because miniature means fancy and I wouldn’t want my new mixer to think that I’m low-brow. (She’s so hoity-toity!)

Snuggles by Molly

There is nothing I love better than getting pictures of babies enjoying the quilts that I make. Now that I’m a mom myself, I am fully aware of how hard it is to set up a photo shoot that a) avoids puke fountains spilling onto said snuggly gift and b) gives the impression that the wee babe is enjoying his or herself. I just completed two robot quilts: one for my precious new nephew, Writer, and the other for Miss Tillie. Hurray—I finally get to keep one without feeling like a weirdo. Behold the cuteness!

Boobin’

Hooray--I've made progress! I lost over a pound since I began exercising. I'm not sure if my meticulous blog tabulations are doing anything for me though, so who knows how long I'll keep posting them. I wish there was a way to exercise my brain, too. My mind is really turning to mush. I spend a lot of time in front of the boob tube boobing my baby. And, the only things I seem to be writing about these days are babies and exercise. It's sadly a true representation of what is on my bimbo mind these days. All my fears of becoming a boring person once I had a kid are materializing. I've also got a messy house and stains on my clothing to really complete the picture.

Mileage to date:
5 miles running, 0.5 miles swimming
(28 pounds to go)

[Image from: http://www.msu.edu/course/isb/202/ebertmay/]

Mileage 3

Mileage to date:
3 miles running, 0 miles swimming
330 calories total
101,170 calories to go
(29 pounds to go)

And...because the above is boring and most of you are really here for the pictures of Tillie:

Mileage 2

Mileage to date:
2 miles running, 0 miles swimming
220 calories total
101,280 calories to go
(29 pounds to go)

Snack and Story

When we were kids, every night our parents provided us with "snack and story." Just before bedtime, Mom or Dad would read a chapter from a book, such as A Wrinkle in Time, or The Prince and the Pauper, or Little Women. We would get a beverage of our choice and one serving of a food item of our choice. Beverages were usually orange juice, apple juice, or chocolate milk. Food items were usually a chunk of cheese, a slice of bologna, a pickle, or maybe cinnamon toast. I am so excited about continuing this tradition with Tillie, though I might vary it a bit by providing different victual options. But then, maybe Tillie will take after her momma and delight in the refined combination of pickle and chocolate milk.

Bottle Scars

Pregnancy ages you faster than real life. There’s the fat. There’s the scarring from the exit wound. There’s the psychological feeling like you’ll never be free to do whatever you want ever again. But the worse part for me has been the skin stretching. I know that skin is the most flexible and healable part of your body, but I can still tell that mine will never be the same again. It’s horrible. My stretch marks look like bright magenta tiger stripes along my waistline, down my thighs, and radiating out like melon markings on my breasts. They shimmer in the sunlight. Everyone says they will fade, but I know that the texture is permanent.

Getting back in shape is triply difficult because of this. Yes, vanity plays a role in the trauma. Go ahead and hate me for being a weak-minded narcissist. But, who wants to put on a swim suit and go out in public when she has 19 extra pounds around her middle with colorful stretch-mark racing stripes advertising the new real estate? As someone who has always been thin (and clueless), I have the added hurdle of suddenly having to figure out how to get over what everyone else has been complaining about for years. No one every told me that jiggling fat actually hurts.

And, then there’s the bra issue. Before pregnancy I was a tidy-and-lovely B cup. During pregnancy a voluptuous-yet-manageable C cup. Now that I’m nursing, I’m a gimongous-and-ridonculous D cup. I clearly need to get some professional help in the underwear department, because this morning I went for my first jog this year and had to actually support my boobs with my own hands the whole way. Ow.

Is it all worth it? You decide:

Mileage 1

Some weight loss math:

3500 calories = 1 pound weight loss
1 mile of running = 110 calories
1 mile of swimming (40 laps) = 495 calories
29 pounds = 101,500 calories total to burn

That's 923 miles of running OR 205 miles of swimming that I need to do to reach my goal.

Mileage to date:
1 mile running, 0 miles swimming
110 calories total
101,390 calories to go
(29 pounds to go)

Petite Mani-Pedi

One aspect of parenthood that has surprised me is the physical intimacy that I have with this new person. I know all her little parts. I clean them, I cuddle them, I spluhbert them, I monitory their growth, and I make sure they are all in good working order. And when no one is looking, I might even take a little bite of them—the feet especially are very tasty. All her body parts are still kind of mine in a way. I wonder when they will be liberated from my possession. When will her body become her own? I wonder about this. And then I realize that my own parents had this special secret knowledge of my baby body over thirty years ago. Did they feel the same sort of bossiness over my feet, my bum, my crusty little hands, my cheesy neck rolls? Was it hard to start giving Young Molly her own way with their care and maintenance? Someday I will have insight into that change. Until then, I will enjoy giving little pedicures to little feet to the sound of little snores.

Anticimpatience

At 5 weeks, Tillie is now filling out her onsies, beginning to bust out of her newborn diapers, and has finally started showing a little excitement about her surroundings. Dadnabbit, she is growing! Man it happens fast. But, then it’s also not happening fast enough. I find myself obsessing about what she will be like when she is 1, when she is 5, when she is 15, when she is 40. Will I always be this preoccupied with her future? Her eyes are changing color, but we still can’t tell what color they will be. Her eyebrows are red and her hair reddish brown, but that all could fall out and any shade of hair color could replace it. And then there are all the questions about her little unformed personality. What will be her passions? Her pursuits? Her preferences? A mother wants to know! If I am not careful, I will forget to enjoy the present while fixating on the future. I wonder what her future therapist will have to say about all this. And, how old is her future therapist right now—is he/she even out of the 3rd grade yet?

One Monthaversary

Two to the fifth power is 32, and today I turned 32 years old. However, contemplating that numerological factoid is about as much excitement as I can drum up for myself these days. Relative to Tillie’s one month anniversary of being born (yesterday, hooray!), my 32nd birthday is just plain boring.

Having a baby makes me feel a little older, but having a back injury makes me feel decrepit. Today, for some reason I’ve been unable to move more than 3 degrees in any direction because of a shooting pain in my back. Since I can’t hold Tillie, I had to spend the day just looking at her. Of course, this pastime amuses me greatly. What can I say? I am her mother. Behold, the many faces of Tillie:

Holler Ween

This photo shoot didn’t turn out quite like I imagined it. But, isn’t that how you get the best pictures? Presenting: Baby’s first Halloween…

The pumpkin:

The squash:

Together for one night only:

Bathtime = Wrathtime

Tillie finally had her first bath this week—no, please don’t call child protective services. We couldn’t soak her per doctor’s orders until her umbilicus fell off, which is why we waited until Week 3. Obviously taking after her hoarding mother, she was retaining that stinking, crusty thing for sentimental reasons. Boy did she smell after three weeks of non-stop vomiting!

Here are the three stages of bath time wrath.

1. Curious:

2. Concerned:

3. Enraged:

Her clean, fragrant softness lasted maybe 15 minutes before she puked again. That’s my girl!

Cute Front

It finally got chilly here in Austin. I spent a whole day worrying about how I was going to keep my little babe warm in cold weather when a friend kindly pointed out that the stack of baby quilts that I have should do the trick. Uhm…is that what baby quilts are for? I’ve been making them for years, but for some reason it is very different to actually “use” one on your own baby. I’m so pleased with the results!

The Cutest Little Number

Oh my god, we made a taxpayer! This is the first piece of mail that we have received in Tillie’s name. Why is it so exciting to finally see her name in print? Poor little thing will some day have to pay taxes. She will have to protect herself from identity theft. She will need this number to open bank accounts, get jobs, apply for student loans, and convince customer service people she is who she says she is over the phone. But first, she has to develop a little signature. What will it look like? I can’t wait to find out!

Tillie Bean

She finally sprouted just two weeks ago today. I'm completely in love. Every feeling is so sappy that I'm not sure I can even blog about it (would get shut down by the coolness police). She has five modes:

1. Sleepy
2. Wakey
3. Hungry and Angry
4. Soiled and Angry
5. Eating

Here are my two favorites:

Emerging from Nap

I am officially a stay-at-home mom. Well…that is, if I wanted to call myself that I could. And well…except for the “mom” part. I still haven’t had the baby. However, I finished my last freelance job this morning, and now I am actually free…and lanced. It was a nightmare, as my previous vitriolic post indicated. I had to stay up all night once again to meet the deadline, went to bed at 11 am in the morning. I also had to enlist three poor souls to help me over the weekend. In the end, I made very few dollars per hour. When I complain in one month about how I miss the intellectual stimulation of being a professional writer, slingin’ les mots for la dough, please remind me of this day: a day in which many margaritas were needed yet none could be partaken in.

[Image from: http://www.frw.ca/rouge.php?ID=90]

No Editor Left Behind

After this horrible week (and perhaps next if I am very unlucky), I will NEVER:

1. work on a book for Glencoe Publishers
2. write, edit, or correlate standards to a Health book
3. sign up for a job that involves only correlating to state standards

I have repeatedly been burned by these three types of textbook jobs, and this week, they all three came together in one nightmarish quagmire that has trapped and tortured me. Accepting this job was a big mistake that has ruined my otherwise lovely week.

If you ever hear me thinking about taking this type of work again, please beat me to death humanely with a blunt Glencoe Health textbook (preferably one that has been correlated).

And while I'm complaining about work, let me go on record with the following statement: State education standards are the worst bullshit bottleneck on our education system. Indeed, Bush's "No Child Left Behind" nonsense should be labeled "No Child Left Un-meddled With," as quoted by one of my witty relations. The education standards are lies told by dirty, overpaid politicians who are trying to distract us from the real problems that school systems face.

[Image from: http://nhumanities.blogspot.com/2005/09/bad-movie-physics.html]

My One Talent Shines

I’ve had quite the busy week and put off studying for my first physical anthropology text until the last minute. Knowing I had two chances to take the test, I decided to go ahead and take the first version completely cold. By that, I mean that the only thing I knew about the test before taking it was that it covered chapters 1 and 2. I didn’t know the titles of those chapters. I didn’t even have a vague idea of what they were about. In fact, I’m not sure I could have told you what “physical anthropology” is.

I got an 87 on the test.

Boy did I feel like a badass. Now, of course, this is my only talent. I can pretty much pass any multiple choice pop-quiz on the first two chapters of any science class there is, even at the college level. No indeed, I am no scholar. I’ve just read, edited, or written every middle school book on science that has been published in the last 8 years. And given my profession as a textbook writer, I am “one” with the multiple choice question. Now, I don’t think I’ll be able to pull that off with chapter 3, whatever it is about…

[Image from: http://serc.carleton.edu/NAGTWorkshops/assess/exams.html]

7:30 AM Bedtime

I pulled an all-nighter to finish a work assignment. So painful. I think that it will be the last time I do that *for work* for a long time. I have been told that there will be plenty of that when the baby comes. Great. I ain’t pretty with no sleep.

[Image from: http://photon.sevensquareinches.com/?m=200608]

Audiophilia

I landed a little gig doing a couple of podcasts for a science journal—my first paid work as a freelance science journalist! (I need only do 300 more of these to break even with the cost of my masters degree.) The biggest thrill is that I used this new job as an excuse to buy some fancy audio equipment.

I have been slumming it with a phone coupler that lets my recording equipment tap into my phone line. Only, it worked really poorly and required an old-fashioned phone. Not just any phone—it had to be one with a coil-wired handset (no cordless phones) and the handset could not have the dialing mechanism in it (had to be a phone with the buttons or dial on the base). Also, I found that the audio quality was poor on all but this one rotary phone that we had a few years back—the last time I used this device. Anyway, long story short: Scott threw that phone away when we moved to Boston, thinking “Why the heck would we need some mustard-yellow dinosaur of a rotary phone?” I do not fault him, but trying to replace it has been hell. The worst part is that I have a lovely, pink, vintage rotary princess phone that I bought for our phone nook. But that one wouldn’t do because the coiled wire was hard-wired into the handset instead of jacked in. GEEZ—that means that the only phones that will work with this damn thing had to be made between 1965 and 1975 or something!

So after much lying awake at night worried that I was going to have to back out of my new job for lack of a 1971 Bell rotary phone (how would I explain that to my new client?), I bought the new fancy equipment. It is deliciously high tech! It allows me to patch into the phone line of any residential phone at the base wire. And, it supposedly lets me split the two tracks, but I haven’t figured out how to do that yet. There is nothing more thrilling than having new gear!

My dream is to convert one of my closets into a little one-woman recording studio. I’m now one piece of equipment closer to realizing it.

[Image from: http://www.pedalcarsandretro.com/Retro_Phones-p-1-c-66.html]

Belly Stats

For those of you requesting documentation of how giant I am, here is a pic that really shows the full story, hee, hee. Sadly, it does not do either of my lovely friends justice…BUT, this is science, people, not a beauty pageant!

Now that I’m in the ridiculous stage of pregnancy, I’m wishing that I had written down all of my growth info laboratory notebook style. For example, I’m just itching to make a graph of my changing girth and my changing weight. I guess I was just feeling a sense of dread back in the beginning, rather than a refreshing sense of exploratory curiosity. All that precious data lost! How selfish of my former self to deny my current self such nerdy delights. I suppose I could ask my doctor for at least the weight info…

Beh-Be Prepared

My big sister, who has a baby and a 4-year-old, took me to the baby store yesterday and helped me buy everything we need for the first two weeks of our baby’s life. This was a LOT of stuff. I feel completely relieved to have all the little diapers, washcloths, onsies, ointments, soaps, blankies, pads, tubs, bins, and pails that a newborn needs right away. We still have 6 weeks until she comes, but I just felt so out of control. I’m a person who likes to be in control, and here I am “planning” for a factor that is completely unpredictable. I don’t know when she’ll be born, I don’t know whether she’s going to be an easy or difficult baby, I don’t know when I’ll be able to work again, and I don’t know how the rhythm of my home-life is going to change. This is a control freak’s worst nightmare! At least now I know that I don’t have to stop by Target on the way home from the hospital. Now THAT sounded like a nightmare.

[Image from: http:// www.zaskmedical.com]

Unsure Ants

Huge victory for me, Scott, and Tillie—we have health insurance! Sadly, there is a brief gap in the coverage. For six days, starting today, we have no insurance. So, until next Wednesday, please do not ask us to participate in any dangerous or labor-inducing activities. We just can’t afford it!

[Image from: http://frostfirepulse.com/blog/cmarcelo]

I Live in the Future

A tech support guy in India took over my computer today to help me solve a problem I was having with MS Word. It’s pretty cool to be on the phone with someone while they are moving your cursor and talking to you about what is on your screen. I never tire of watching the body-snatching of my PC by remote IT personnel, but it was doubly thrilling for it be by someone on the other side of the world. This and car GPS make me think we are now living in the future.

[Image from: http://www.myplasticheart.com/]

Sewing Cryptology

I finally decided to combine the four sets of sewing notions that I have accumulated in the last 15 years—my own from various projects and the three sets inherited from my mother’s mother, my father’s mother, and my husband’s mother. It is pretty fun to see all the different colors of thread that we have used, the types of buttons we chose, and the different accessories and tools that pile up from all the different eras during which we four have sewed. It also makes me feel a little closer to these ladies, because I have gleaned just a little insight into their crafty pasts.

I came upon this one yellowed envelope with iron-on transfers for personalizing clothing. It had an aged look and an antique font that made me guess it was from one of my grandmothers’ collections. I opened up the letter sheet to see what she must have spelled. Because a “C” was missing, I figured maybe it was used to spell my father’s name, “Cliff.” But this theory didn’t quite work out with the other gaps. (I felt a little bit like Mendeleev piecing together his first periodic table.) After a little puzzling and detective work and I discovered it spelled out “Chuck” my uncle’s name. I don’t know why, but it just melted my heart to think of my grandma carefully cutting out and ironing these letters onto one of little Uncle Chuck’s team uniforms 40 years ago.

Feet Loaf

I’m not sure if it is the abundance of salty beach town food or just that time of my pregnancy, but my feet have finally started swelling. I’m not sure why I am surprised by this turn, as I was warned they would by all books, friends, and pregnancy-related media that I have read. Alas, I have two puffy loaves for feet. They look like little round buns with tiny, pink sausages for toes. None of my shoes fit. The only footwear I can squeeze on are a pair of cheap, red, Target-brand flip-flops. I now have the appearance of someone who has finally given up. My clothes have stains where my belly has caught dropped food, my rotund tummy peaks out ridiculously from under all of my now-too-small pregnancy tops, my pants are all near splitting threshold, and I’m wearing cheap flip-flops. There are six more weeks of this. That means 6 more centimeters of belly growth and 6 more pounds of weight gain. I just don’t understand quite how it will work physically. Ugh.

[Image from: http://www.ezfood.ca/dough.htm]

Beach Barnacle

Today I wanted to dig a giant hole in the beach sand—one that would be the exact right size to fit my belly. I imagined that this would be the only way that I could sleep on my stomach until the baby is born. Damn, I miss that feeling! Unfortunately, the wind picked up, the umbrella broke, and we all got tired of the sun before I could manage this lengthy engineering project. So sad! I really want to pretend for just a little while that I was not pregnant.

[Image from: http://iceblog.puddingbowl.org/archives/2006/01/]

No Squidding

I took a quick trip to Port Aransas this weekend to visit with a friend who is doing research there this summer for her dissertation on squid behavior. It turns out that not a lot of people do squid research—not because squid are boring (quite the opposite is true!), but because they are so darn hard to keep alive in captivity. Karin has spent many times more hours hunting for live specimens than actually getting to perform tests on these slippery little critters. Her tests, by the way, involve scaring the squid, which I find completely hilarious. They are like little nervous old ladies, pacing the tank, inking at the slightest provocation, and blinking their skin-chromatophore patterns pseudo-menacingly whenever someone approaches them. I want to give them tiny umbrellas to shake at the riffraff!

Last night, Karin and I went for a little midnight squid hunt to try and catch more test subjects. She has met many seasoned fishermen in her summer quest, and they have tutored her in the fine arts of trawling, hand netting, cast netting, and probably a dozen other forms of squid-napping. They’ve also pointed out all the best places for catching squid. We went to three of them last night and did some cast netting. At two of the locations, fishing was not allowed, which made the whole thing even more exciting. I just yearned to have the police drive up and arrest a biologist and a very pregnant lady for illegal angling! Alas, my rebel fantasies remain unlived—no one noticed us.

We caught nothing, but we did encounter a curious pod of dolphins. They were quite interested in us and surfaced a few times near where we stood. Dolphins make me nervous. (Why? That’s another blog entry…) Something about it being night-time, the illegality of our actions (oh thrill!), these slick and mysterious visitors, and learning a new skill that involves tethering yourself to a net—the combination made for quite an exhilarating adventure! I guess I’m easy these days.

[Image from: http://laughingsquid.com/laughing-squid-photo-by-brian-mccarty/]