Through The Looking Glass

My father has been in town since Wednesday. We’re having a very nice visit.

I have a deadline in one week for a project that is nowhere near complete. I am a little stressed out about it. And by “a little stressed out,” I mean, “panicking.” Also “knitting as fast as I can.” It’s a great pattern that I’m really excited about and so thrilled to have published, but I still have to finish the sample and grade the pattern for different sizes. ACK.

Lou (that’s my dad) bought Sam a bike. A Skuut, to be precise. He loves it. He hasn’t quite gotten the hang of it yet but he’s scooting around just fine and he has figured out the idea of coasting, just hasn’t managed it fully yet. When we left the bike shop (Metropolis Bikes in North Hollywood, who I whole-heartedly recommend to any locals–they were terrific) Sam insisted on wearing his helmet. We headed straight to Ernie’s for lunch and I was sure he would wear the helmet in, which was simultaneously too funny for words and kind of worrisome/embarrassing, but he left it in the car.

Grace is 40 days old (41 today) so I can take her out of the house now. Whew!

She has outgrown her newborn size diapers (anyone need newborn fitteds and covers?), is starting to be deliberate in the way she moves her body (or try to, anyway), grabbing at things and soforth, and still delights us by grunting and squeaking constantly. She sleeps so well that we are considering moving her out of our bed, which breaks my heart but delights the parts of me that can’t sleep in the middle of the bed with no space and my arm crammed under the pillow and oh man a little more room would be nice.

I found out, somewhat by accident, that the Little Grey Rabbit books are out of print. I can get most of them from third-party sellers on Amazon, but the shipping really adds up. Boo.

The laundry is winning. There are clean clothes everywhere and I need to wash diapers. I really cannot adequately express how badly I long for my own machine. I really and truly do not find the laundry aspect of cloth diapers at all problematic, but I do find shared coin-op laundry in the basement problematic. And not just because of the revolting “cleaning” products my neighbors all seem to use.

Oops, almost time to drive Lou to the airport! Drat. More later, possibly including some of the nice photos he’s taken this week. (I have taken approximately three pictures.)

My, this was random.

You know what sucks about having a New Year’s Baby? Waiting to file your taxes because she doesn’t have a social security number yet. It’s even worse when your New Year’s Baby was born at home, because you have to apply for a birth certificate first and they don’t even give you an appointment until mid-February. And it’s only once you have a birth certificate that you can even apply for a social security number. Who knows when you’ll get it.

There goes our streak of filing our taxes as soon as we get our W2s and 1099s. ANNOYING.

I’m still getting used to the idea that we have another person living with us. I’m sure it took me a while with Sam, too, but I can’t really remember. I do know that Gracie is so easy-going that I hardly recognize her as a member of this family. Ha ha, but it’s kind of true.

I call her Squeaky because she constantly makes funny noises. She also sleeps constantly, and the two do overlap. She sleeps so much! Oh my goodness! I have never seen a baby who loves sleeping this much. She puts herself to sleep half the time, and only requires a little bit of help the other half. Right now she is lying next to me and I can’t see her face. I have no idea if she is awake or asleep. She is squirming and making noise but that doesn’t mean she’s necessarily awake. (I checked; she’s awake.) Oh man, the squirming. Grace is not super-strong like Sam was as an infant (Muscles Klein, we called him) but if we put her down on her belly on a blanket she squirms off of it in about five minutes. I know, WHAT?

She started smiling about a week ago. She has always had lots of ‘gas’ smiles (are they really related to gas?) and contrary to what most of the experts say, her real smiles look just like the gas ones but she looks right at us when she smiles for real. Her very first smile was at me, which delights me, and she always has one for her daddy or brother. Oh, she thinks they are so great! I love it.

Did I mention that she loves to sleep? In the first week of her life she spent more time in the cradle than Sam has spent in it his entire life. She sleeps such long stretches that I wonder how she can possibly be eating enough. She also nurses very efficiently (ten minutes is usually more than enough), but she is a little fatty so I know she is getting plenty. I do not want to make an unfavorable comparison (they are two different people, after all), but Sam was nothing like this. It is WEIRD.

Speaking of Sam, he is turning into quite the big brother! He can say Gracie, which is kind of amazing considering his reticence to use words when something else will do. He asks to hold her. He pats her head and plays This Little Piggy with her toes.

In the time it’s taken me to type this, Grace has wiggled from her back to her belly. She didn’t roll over, but only her arm is blocking it from being a complete transition. Also she is asleep again.

If your mother has a totally unreasonable rule about television first thing in the morning–specifically, that you may not watch any, why don’t you play with your toys for heaven’s sake?–and you want to circumvent that rule, your best bet is to very sweetly beg to watch that Marx Bros. movie again. She will probably have it playing before you can settle your bum in your favorite spot on the couch.

So.

Will took sick days on Monday and Tuesday. Wednesday morning he went to make his lunch and there was no bread. I promised to bake a loaf that day so he could have sandwiches Thursday and Friday.

I didn’t bake bread on Wednesday.

I didn’t bake bread on Thursday.

Today, I baked bread. It’s in the oven now, in fact.

Of course, Will does not need to bring lunch to work again until Monday, when this loaf will be long gone.

I hope this is not how my entire life will be, now that I have two children. I’ll get better, right?

My daughter prefers Xena: Warrior Princess to just about anything Will and I might try to watch. For instance, last night we put on Brick and she fussed loudly enough that we couldn’t hear the dialog (which seemed like it might be kinda important) so we switched to Xena and she quieted right down.

My son is obsessed with Hercules: The Legendary Journeys. He now prefers it to all of his own movies. Even Wall-E.

Grace just spit up directly down the front of my shirt. It’s a v-neck shirt and she got the bottom of the v and the cleavage behind it. For reals. Girl has good aim.

I assume that if she could talk the upchuck would have been accompanied by an outraged yell along the lines of, “This milk is spoiled! TAKE IT BACK!”

I cannot stop laughing about this. I may be deranged.

We have all the baby stuff we could possibly need, but sometimes I find myself wishing for some fancy piece of gear or cute thing. These are a few of them.

Look, there is no part of me that thinks it would be fun to spend $500+ on a freakin’ stroller. But the Phil & Ted Sport Buggy with doubles kit would be a really fun way to get both kids out when I start running (by which I mean walking briskly) again. As it is I am not sure how I’m going to make it work, but at least my existing stroller only cost me $25.

This IKEA bunk bed (or something similarly simple) is less wishful thinking than it is The Eventual Plan. Assuming that we can ever afford to move to a larger apartment, the children will share a room. It doesn’t make sense to get one twin bed for Sam and put Grace in his toddler bed when she will outgrow it anyway, so why not bunk beds? Plus: FUN. Sam loves climbing up the ladder and playing on the top bunk, so I can only imagine how much he’d love if that was His Place.

I, um, apparently really like Phil & Ted’s brand baby stuff. Which is funny since I don’t own any. This is the Metoo portable seat, which I wanted to buy when Sam was small and would love to have for Grace. Do we need it? No. But I bet it would be awesome to have.

I don’t have a diaper bag. I had one once, which I got free with purchase at BabyStyle (have I mentioned that they went out of business the day I found out I was pregnant? Fuckers), and it was nice but pretty much useless for cloth diapers. So I just use whatever bag is handy, which doesn’t really work either but is free. I’ve been lusting after one of these Namaste knitting bags, to use for diapers now and projects later, but thought the $76 price tag was obscene. I just looked at actual diaper bags, though, and suddenly it seems really reasonable.

I really want my kids to have a dollhouse. Not necessarily this dollhouse (though it is very nice, with a pricetag to match–yeesh!) but a nice, wooden one that Will and I can make furniture and stuff for. This green dollhouse (with solar panels!) is pretty cool too, and of course there’s always the tree house option. Or maybe we’ll build the whole thing.

OK, that’s enough for now. Next I’ll tell you about the baby stuff we have and love.

An ambulance. I didn’t ride in one of these until I was 31!

A hospital. Talk about a hotbed of infectious diseases!

The corner store. Little Korean ladies fussed over her bare, purple feet. (They were purple because she was four days old. It was not cold.)

The pediatrician’s office. TWICE!

The playground. She didn’t want to go on the swings. Weird!

Vasquez Rocks. We brought Sam along to protect her from the Gorn.

Griffith Park. I’m pretty sure we just went to another playground. We are wild and crazy!

Romero’s. Our favorite Mexican diner, which happens to be in walking distance for convenient not-in-the-budget meals.

IKEA. I don’t know what we were thinking.

The Autry. Culture for my baby! And a tasty burger for Mama.

A major motion picture studio. Oddly, she was not “discovered.”

The kids and I drove Will to work today and had breakfast with him. He showed off Gracie to several people, and most of them just had to share some variation on “It’s too cold for her!” One of them asked how old she is, and when I said, “Three and a half weeks,” she replied, “And you’re out already?” Will responded as though she meant that she was impressed that I was feeling recovered enough to be out, and it’s possible that’s what she meant. Except it isn’t. She was criticizing me for bringing the baby out. Not Will–she looked right at me when she said it.

PEOPLE. The idea that newborns must never leave the house and their mothers must stay with them is outdated and ridiculously sexist. KNOCK IT OFF. My daughter is healthy (premature babies and unwell babies probably should be kept at home). My baby has a hat and a sweater and oh by the way IT IS ONLY 50 DEGREES OUT, NOT SUB-ZERO. Also you should keep your opinions to your damn self.

There. I feel better, don’t you?