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/]

Gendergarten

It’s really hard not to fantasize and/or worry about what my kid is going to be like. We’ve ruled out a few screenable diseases, but she could still be sickly, mentally retarded, deformed, schizophrenic, autistic, stupid, ugly, handicapped, or allergic to sunlight (it’s called polymorphic light eruption), and the list goes on… And then there are all the things that are not related to physical or genetic problems. She might want to get an ugly tattoo on her face, devil horn implants, or those super-stretched ear lobes with a matching lip disk, or she might want to become a scientologist. She might even, horror of horrors, become a republican! I consider myself open-minded, but what will I say when it really comes down to “Why can’t I, Mom?”

What other kind of new ideas she will bring to us? In what unfathomable new ways will I be challenged by her generation’s new trends or anti-establishment values? Thinking that she might be gay or punk-rock doesn’t concern me because she has so many wonderful role-models among my friends. However, the other day I was trying to sort out how to spell her name (Matilda or Mathilde), and a friend of mine said, “Well, you never know. She could end up transgendered and want you to call her Tom.” Um…is that Thom with an “H”?

That was when I realized that it’s just not worth thinking about her future just yet. Here I am considering myself as so ahead of the curve, all ready to accept and love my gay, overly-pierced child, and then I have to sit up all night collecting my thoughts on whether I would blink if she told me she wanted a penis for her 16th birthday. I’ll have to discuss it with Scott, but I think she might have to wait until she is 18.

[Image from: http://www.dikenga.com/films/firecracker/]

Welcome to the Dark Side

Scott’s 40th b-day BBQ bash was great fun. There were lots of friends (old and new), lots of Wii action, lots of yummy food, and my personal favorite--cake! I made two cakes: one chocolate-raspberry, decorated Hello-Kitty-style for my niece who turned 4 on the same day and one lemon flavored with a Darth Vader topper for my now-over-some-sort-of-hill husband. Sadly, I didn’t get any pics of the two of them blowing out the candles together. I think it is just darling that they will always share the same birthday.

Applying black icing

The cakes in all their glory

Wyley watching candle ignition

Birthday girl and momma

Liam, transfixed by Wii

Violet’s close up

Quilt-Bot

I just sent another one of these snuggly little robot quilts out to a brand new baby friend. I’m thinking of putting the pattern on sabbatical for a while. It is simple enough, but people are making babies so fast I can barely keep up. I will probably make at least one more for Tillie (my little squeaker), and then wait until she’s off to college to break it out again. That is, unless I cannot resist the power of the snuggly cute-bot…so strong!!!

Suh-Weet!

I’m at the post office buying sheets of stamps. Let’s see do I want another round of the triangle shaped Jamestown Commemoration series? A sheet of the new, quaint Pacific Lighthouse series? Or THE NEW STAR WARS STAMPS--heck yeah!!!! Yes, they are finally here! Yes, they are the most awesome stamps ever! Yes, I am a big nerd (squared by both my fandom for Star Wars and my enthusiasm for nice stamps)!

Oh New Star Wars Stamps, why do I love thee? Let’s see, you are very pretty, you cost very little money, and you have heroes and villains, which makes individual postage selection oh-so-easy. Icky bills get Vader and Queen Amidalah. Letters to your B.F.F get Luke, Leia, Artoo, and [sigh] the Han-Chewy double header.

May the force be with your snail mail!

[Image from: http://www.starwars.com/collecting/news/misc/news20070328.html]

TV of the 22nd Century?

I sense that we are nearing an asymptote in consumer technological design of actually owning a master appliance that will handle all things communication and entertainment. Don’t you ever wonder why you have to have separate DVRs, DVD players, CD players, gaming consoles, internet browsers, and phone jacks? They are all serviced by the same darn communications company--so why do we have to have a dozen different appliances to do the one thing I want to do: watch television and movies while looking things up on the internet. The iphone is close, but not quite there due to copy-protection limitations on television and probably some other bureaucratic hitches with Apple and AT&T. I mean, there is no reason why every gadget we own couldn’t have a wifi connection, right?

I just bought my husband a Wii for his birthday, and supposedly we will be able to connect it to the internet. I’m secretly excited that this could mean that I could watch all my free movie hours from Netflix on the big screen--without having to take my work computer, buy a fancy adapter cord, free up memory, and set it up to my television every time I wanted to watch some cheesy piece of crud that isn’t even worth the effort of renting. But, something tells me that it won’t be like having the real internet right where I want it. I think the Playstation 3 does have this capability, but it costs $500. (And then there’s the sad probability that the streaming that Netflix provides isn’t of high quality--rats!)

I suppose the problem with this master plan to have one robot do it all is that then no single feature would be perfect. It’s like owning one of those combo DVD-VHS players--the likelihood of both components being of high-quality is not as great as if you bought the best version of each in separate players. Only with my fantasy master appliance, you’d multiply those lame odds by a factor of 12. Also, what if one part goes bad? Hmm…my fantasy appliance is quickly turning into a nightmare box! I think I just need a second laptop for the living room, hee, hee. Some day…

[Image from: http://blog.wired.com/gadgets/2006/12/pope_technology.html]

When Onsies Approach Infinity

My unborn daughter has more outfits than any woman I know. She has, and I am NOT exaggerating, no fewer than 39 onsies. And these are all size 0-3 months, so she has only 3 months to wear them all before they no longer fit. Wow. I can’t imagine that I would need more than this, but what do I know about parenting? These are all hand-me-downs and gifts from excited aunties. I’m in a bit of shock, because this means that if just one aspect of her babyhood requires this much storage space, what will the other facets of her little life require? Yikes, I think we already need a bigger house!

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

Funderwear

“Your panties are beautiful,” said my four-year-old niece today of my new maternity underwear. I was at her house trying on some of her mom’s old maternity clothes because I have exploded into a new ungodly size of large and can no longer fit into my “early” maternity duds. These undies were fairly standard cotton bikinis (size large, of course), magenta with yellow and pink polka dots. I guess to Wyley, this color scheme on underwear was the height of elegance. She showed me her Disney princess briefs - also magenta. I wish I could remember a time when I used the word “beautiful” to describe underwear of any kind. What would you have to do to underwear to make an adult say they were “beautiful”? Embroidery? Hand-tatted antique lace? Jewels? I couldn’t tell you.

[Image from: http://www.joeparadox.com/underoos/]