perhaps a medic alert bracelet is in order....

last night was one of my nights to put wile to bed. as usual, i nursed him till he was groggy then picked him up and hugged him to my shoulder to carry him over to his bed. he heaved a big sigh, snuggled against my shoulder, and i thought my heart was going to just seize up right there.

i love lots of people: stephen, my parents, my brothers, my best friends. but none of that love has ever given me heart palpitations.

i can't count the number of times that my mother has tearfully told me that i'm the best thing that ever happened to her. and until mr. baby man came along, i just chalked this up to my mother's tendency to get a little weepy and sentimental sometimes. but now i understand: she really meant it.

and the funny thing, the ironic thing, is, of course, that until the minute i found out i was pregnant, i was sure i didn't want children. i'd never really connected to little kids. i was a terrible babysitter. my brother ben was born when i was 14, and i know some teenage girls would have been thrilled to have a cute little baby around the house to coo at and play with, but the main emotion i felt was royally pissed off. i couldn't understand why anyone would choose to put themsleves through what i was watching my dad and my stepmom go through—no sleep, poop everywhere, screaming crying, whining, tantrums—and didn't appreciate having no choice but to go through it all with them. so the thought of having my own? not appealing. i had been inside the belly of the beast, and i wasn't interested, thanks anyway.

of course, everyone assumed that i would eventually change my mind. it was always "when you guys have a kid..." or "how are you going to raise the children?" or "make with the grandchildren already!!" (that last one was inferred.) but i held my ground. i honestly believed that it wasn't going to happen. i mean, older people were (are) always telling me how i'm going to think differently when i too get older, and i find most of what they tell me to be total poppycock. for example, i've been told, by people who know me well and should know better, that i'm going to be less interested in food when i get older (yes, i can see myself totally giving up on something that has been a passion since i was five), and that i'm going to become religious because life without it will start to feel hollow (hi, have we met?). oh and the person who told me that i was going to find god sometime in my thirties also told me that it was not only the impending hollowness that would drive me to religion but also the need to send the children that they assumed i was going to have to sunday school so that they could learn "morals". so that was a double whammy, that one.

but while i still think that the other predictions are more projections of the predicter's own issues than anything else, i'll happily admit that i was wrong about the kid thing. granted, i didn't have a great change-of-heart moment and start downing folic acid and charting my cycle. nope, i had a blackout, which led to me not being able to refill my pills which led to a diaphragm which led to me peeing in a cup at my ob gyn's office because i knew that even though e.p.t.s said no, there was something lurking in my uterus.

and from the second that my ob brought me the results, i never had any doubts that i wanted to have the baby. but i could never explain why. i just...knew. years of thinking i didn't want kids? feh! some switch turned over in my brain and i just knew that having this kid was the right thing for me. i couldn't put it into words. and i guess i still can't. but the squeezing, aching feeling in my heart says it pretty plainly.

so i guess there is a chance that in 20 years i'll be a food-hating church-goer. but i doubt it.



[disclaimer: i started this post before i read dooce's post of a similar nature, honest. great minds just think alike and all that (or are on corresponding hormonal swings....)]

no, i'm not a furry

one of the tactics that the baby books suggest in the war for sleep is getting the baby attached to a stuffed animal, or, as the books puts it, to make a stuffed animal his "lovey". the theory being that it will help them to not freak out when they wake up in the middle of the night if they have their trusty lovey by their side.

so we're working on this with lamby, who was given to wile while he was still in the womb by aunt sarah, and is the softest thing i've ever felt. the boo likes to give lamby kisses, and always seems happy to see him, so he seemed like a good candidate. i put lamby in my lap with wile when he nurses, and we cuddle with him, and it seems to be taking.

the only problem is that whenever i go to think the words "make lamby his lovey", the phrase that instead pops into my depraved head is "make lamby his bitch." which conjures up all kinds of images of lamby in a gimp mask and ass-less chaps, and that just isn't right.

btietw

this week's winner is the aforementioned pasta with beets.

i had roasted some beets the night before but not eaten them, and wasn't feeling too psyched about just eating sliced roasted beets. i considered going out to get some goat cheese to slather them with, but this was day 4 of last week's monsoon season, and i pretty quickly decided it wasn't worth it. then i remembered that alice waters had a recipe for pasta with beets in chez panisse vegetables...which turned out to be a recipe for pasta with beet greens, which sounded good despite the golden currants (gick!), but didn't solve my problem of what to do with the beets themselves. and i knew that somewhere, somewhere, i really had read a recipe for pasta with beets....

finally i remembered where: in more home cooking, sequel to home cooking, by laurie colwin. of course. i should know by now that those two books are where i should always look first when i'm in the throes of culinary indecision/uninspiration. laurie colwin was a novelist (who sadly died about ten years ago at age 42) who also loved to cook and eat and wrote for gourmet fairly regularly, and hc and mhc are collections of those essays and transcripts of talks she gave (the recipes are worked in to the essays). she's funny, quirky, unpretentious, and the recipes are simple and unfailingly successful.

so what i ended up making was a combination of laurie's recipe (she uses angel hair pasta, which i find annoying, and chicken broth, which i didn't have in the house) and alice's recipe (yes to the greens, which i had in the fridge; no to the nasty currants):

chop up as much garlic as you like (i used two big honking cloves), saute with about 1/4 cup olive oil. dice your roasted beets and throw them in for a minute (you can also start with diced raw beets, just saute them for longer). wash and chop the greens and throw them in with some salt and pepper, rosemary, and a dash of cayenne or red pepper flakes. saute quickly until greens just wilt, then throw on a splash of vinegar (red wine, balsamic, whatever). mix with pasta (i used spaghetti), adding more olive oil and/or a spalsh of pasta water to coat if you need to.

and look how pretty!



that was actually batch two, made a day later without greens (i used them all up in the first batch).

wile recommends it be eaten with your hands. beet chunks may be grasped between thumb and forefinger and inserted into the mouth, or taken from mama's hand with the mouth. for the pasta, grasp strands at each end firmly in your fists, pull taut, and bite from the middle.

like paroled convicts, they were

in elementary school we watched this movie about kids living on another planet—i think it was saturn—where it rained constantly. there was only one day a year when it was sunny, and all the kids finally got to go outside and run around and go nuts.*

today at the park was kind of like that one day.

we'd all been cooped up in our houses for the past week, trapped by the rain. but today was bright and sunny, and everybody was at the playground—and everybody was just a little wacky.

little girls were climbing all over the railings of the stairs of the jungle gym, hanging on by one foot and two fingers and sheer determination. we were part of a traffic pile-up on the slide: two going up, three coming down, and no room for any grownup to get in there and straighten things out—we just had to let nature take its course and hope for the best. a little boy made his way through the gate on to the sidewalk and had to be brought back in by a pedestrain who happened to be walking by. it was anarchy! everyone was at top volume and top speed and pushing the limitis of their abilities. all the kids' eyes were darting in twelve directions at once, looking for the next thing to do before they finished what they were already doing, trying to make up for their lost week. "slide! swings! wobbly bridge! no, slide again! tunnel! slide! why! won't! my! body! separate! into! 3! pieces! so! i! can! do! everything! at! once!?!"

in the morning we went to fort greene park, where wile spent a good ten minutes flinging dirt out of one of the planters with enormous gusto, then fell and skinned his nose and forehead crawling from the asphalt back on to the rubber mat. in the afternoon we went to underwood, the closer playground, where he crawled around at top speed, yelling his head off as he went. "ba-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a!" he chased another little kid, who was actually older than him, through the tunnel and made him cry a little bit (hey, if you can't take the heat, get out of the playground). after i apologized to the kids mom, we went over to the slide, where wile climbed up the stairs on his feet (not knees). when he got to the top there was a 4-year-old sitting at the top of the slide taking a little too long to decide to go down, so the little man reached over and tried to hurry him up some with a relatively friendly push to the middle of the back. more apologizing—though the 4-year-old looked less upset and more confused that this very small person had been the one who pushed him.... we did some swinginating, some acorn-chucking, some digging in the dirt with sticks, then all the sudden he crashed and burned, started clawing at my sweater, and it was time to go home.

whew.



* the plot of the movie was that this one girl did something to piss off one of the other kids so to get back at her the other kid locked her inside for the one sunny day, and it was and still is one of the saddest things i've ever seen.

dog butt of the week

shiba!!

"f'n a, cotton. f'n a."

i just caught a few minutes of dodgeball on the tv, and i have to say: jason bateman's delivery of that line? award-worthy.

if you ever need to bail out a leaky boat, you know who to call

wile made two big discoveries in the bath tonight:

1. if you fill your hello kitty cup with water from in your inflatable tub and toss the water over the edge into the big tub, the drain will make the cool gurgling noise.

this led to the second dicovery:

2. if you fill your hello kitty cup with water from in your inflatable tub and then throw your hands in the air and wave 'em like you just don't care, the water in the cup will go flying everywhere and oh my god is that the funniest thing ever!

this led to mama moving her chair a good 6 inches away from the tub.

dismount

the jungle gym at our playground has these great big plastic tubes in it that wile loves crawling through at break-neck speed. for a while we had a little problem with the exit, though—there's a drop of about 2 inches down to the platform from the tube, and he couldn't figure out how to conquer it. but with a little help from mama and auntie meg, he adopted the tried and true method of scooting your butt to the very edge and then dropping down. genius. of course, i'm still trying to teach him the other method of flopping over on to your belly and scooting off an edge backwards, which is helpful for descending from greater heights. it hasn't really taken, though. usually when he senses that a drop is too big for the butt scoot method, he just calls for help.

then the other day we had to take the cushions off the couch due to an unfortunate feline puking incident, and found that the drop off the cushionless couch falls into a gray area.... i would have thought that it was too high for the butt scoot method, but apparently mr. baby man disagress. observe:




the deliberation...


the approach...


and he sticks the landing!

we got the beet

i had pasta with beets today for lunch and lo and behold, the little man likes beets.

the purple poop watch begins....now.

further adventures in delirium

we're trying, people. we really are.

last night, our best intentions were thwarted by technical difficulties and trucky.

i went to bed around 11:30 after putting mr. baby man back down from his first waking; stephen was already in bed with the monitor on. around 2:30, i woke up to the sound of wile crying, but from down the hall, not through the monitor. my first thought was "oh crap, he climbed out of our bed and is crawling down the hallway to the top of the stairs!".... as i sat there putting it together that wile wasn't in our bed to begin with and was safe (unhappy, but safe) in his room, stephen got out of bed and went to put wile back down. i still wasn't sure why i wasn't hearing him through the monitor, but i didn't give it too much thought, and lay back down. i could hear wile crying for a long time, then silence....then more crying, then stephen bringing wile in....

apparently the monitor had fallen off the mantle earlier in the night and hit stephen in the head, and when that happened the channel got switched. so when we both woke up, wile had been crying for a long time, but we hadn't been able to hear him, so he was really pissed off by the time stephen went to get him. hence the not stopping crying. stephen was finally able to calm him down and get him to stop reaching for the door (i.e. for me)—which was the period of silence that i heard—when trucky came barging in to wile's room and got him all riled up. they had some good kitty time, according to stephen, but then wile remembered that he wanted mama and there was no turning him asunder this time.

when stephen brought wile in, i rolled over and took him and he sat on my stomach. i pulled up my shirt so that he could nurse a little bit and calm down, and as soon as he saw the boobs, he let out the most relieved sigh/laugh, like "oh-ho-ho, there they are!", and looked at stephen like, "now, was that so hard?".

i know it wasn't productive, but it was damn funny.

dog butt(s) of the week

i'm just not that into her, pt. 3

the saga of ellen continues....

no, she hasn't shown up on my doorstep, or even called or emailed. it seems that she has given up on me, and turned her attention elsewhere. namely, to my friend susan.

bear with me through a little background information:

1) susan and ellen were on the same study-abroad trip to italy last spring (a trip i was supposed to go on until i got knocked up ), and susan got to learn first-hand what an f-ing tweaker ellen is. there were too many incidents to go into here (if you're interested in hearing them, comment me and i'll get susan to guest post....), suffice to say that ellen was as much of a nightmare as she was at school, if not worse. but because susan has the biggest heart of anyone i know, she tried to be decent to her. which, as we both know now, is a huge mistake.

2) when i started out at f.i..t, i was a part-time student, and therefore wasn't eligible for a locker even though i had nearly as much crap to haul to and from class as a full time student—and i was doing the hauling in heels b/c i was coming from work. so gay found me a gypsy locker: a random locker that had been sitting empty for half the semester that we just threw a master lock on and claimed. (as anyone who's familiar with f.i.t. or any other city school knows, that's the kind of every-woman-for-herself mentality you need to survive in those hallowed halls....) i used that locker for a year, until i stopped working and went full-time and....still wasn't given a locker b/c i wasn't technically full time, but was lucky enough to find a bigger gypsy locker. so, as i mentioned in part one of this series, i let ellen (and a couple of other people) put stuff in locker #1. then i graduate, clean out my big locker and take the lock off, but leave the lock on locker #1 and tell susan that she can use it when she goes back to f.i.t. in the fall (fall 04) to take a night class. ellen still had stuff in there too, and was also going back in the fall and wanted to continue to use it, but i thought we could all get along.

a couple of months ago i had dinner with susan and gay and trisha, another f.i.t.-er, and we have a little laugh over ellen: susan told us that ellen had called her to "warn" her that she had heard that the powers that be at f.i.t. were going to be clamping down on the rash of gypsy lockers, cutting the locks and cleaning them out, and she just wanted susan to know that so that she didn't lose her stuff, which sounded actually kinda nice...until trisha set us straight, telling us that ellen had been complaining to people in their classes about how susan's stuff was taking up so much room in "her" locker. typical ellen...

then susan calls me a couple of days ago to fill me in on the latest. a few weeks ago ellen called her with more dire warnings about locker raids, and susan again said "okay, thanks, i'll get on that when i can (you lying freak)". then ellen calls her to tell her that sinse susan hadn't come to remove her stuff yet, ellen had taken it all out of the locker and brought it home with her, for "safe-keeping"!! susan sighs, thanks her, and tells her that they'll have to arrange a time when susan can get it from her. ellen says okay, and then says "oh, by the way...i noticed that you were alwasy taking such wonderful pictures in italy, and i had some problems with my camera, so...i was wondering if i could get copies of all of your pictures..." susan was totally caught off guard, but recovered enough to spin a little tale of the pictures being on a disk at her mom's house in new jersey. ellen says okay, and they get off the phone.

but of course susan isn't all that pro-active about making a time to meet with ellen, so there's another call, in which she says to susan that she's very eager to set up a time to get her her stuff, but that it would be great if, before she "schlepps" all of susan's stuff down from her apartment, susan could guarantee that she was going to have the photos when they meet. oh and wouldn't it be nice when they met if they could grab a bite to eat!

yes, i always like to grab a little nosh with someone who's blackmailing me....

susan's plan is to tell her no problem, then give her a disk that has like 5 photos on it. heeeee!!!

oh, and i almost forgot the best part! ellen has also asked susan, numerous times, if she can keep the lock that was on the locker, because she "really like(s) that lock". that...plain black master lock. that you could buy at cvs for like $5. yeah, ellen, that's all you. consider it payment for my freedom....

the greatest show on earth

apparently this is what wile is training for.

dream on

the time has come, the walrus said, to break mr. baby man of his night-nursing dependence. he's finally taking to eating solids more, so i don't feel like i'm depriving him of sustenence—even though i hear his little stomach growl in the night sometimes and it makes it very hard for me to not give in and give up the boob. but he needs to sleep, we need to sleep, and the only way that's going to happen is if he gets over the whole "the only way i can fall back asleep is with a mouth full of warm milk" mental block that he has going on.

so we're trying. stephen goes and puts him back down as often as possible, and when i go i don't feed him unless he just will not go back to sleep. it's tough—he can smell the milk on me, and as i'm trying to soothe him back to sleep he's trying to rip my shirt off.

last night at the 4 o'clock waking stephen went to get him. i heard him go then fell back into a half-sleep, in which i dreamed that stephen had asked me to come in to wile's room and help him if he wasn't able to get him back down in 10 minutes. so about 10 minutes later i came to, heard wile still fussing through the monitor, and stumbled down the hall to his room to get him, just like stephen had asked me to! and of course i was met by a totally confused stephen.... he tried to keep wile from seeing me (unsuccessfully) and whispered something like "what are you doing?", at which point i woke up for real, realized what had happened, and just shook my head and took the baby....

pookiellamarazzi, take 2

isn't it always the way? when you're trying, you get nothing. but when you're just minding your own business, expecting nothing....

i was waiting for meg outside of blue ribbon in park slope on saturday night, leaning on a planter and watching the crowds filtering in and out of the restaurant. it was mostly barrel-chested, well-tanned, gel-haired men from bay ridge and the uber-highlighted, even-more-well-tanned, wonderbra-sporting women who love them. but then a very pregnant woman walked out in a really pretty silky maternity shirt and a cute little white jacket....and it was michelle williams! and right behind her, in a faded yellow-and-white striped polo shirt, was heath! and right behind him was some other guy who i didn't recognize but who was certainly good-looking enough to also be in the movies.

it was no joe lee, but it was a fun moment none the less. and i have to say, heath ledger? oh yeah.

overheard in downtown brooklyn

"yeah, i got these new pants that are mad tight. if i put 'em on wrong i woulda choked my coochie!"

excuse me?

dog butt of the week

correspondence

dear two young foreign students trying to get on the g train at the classon ave. stop on friday evening,

i'm sorry. but it had been a long trip home from queens....

i doubt that either of you have kids (though, who knows), so you've probably never had to endure an hour on public transportation with an overtired baby. it started off okay, but by the time we got on the g train—after the n train and the 7 train—the baby had had it. every time the train came to a stop and the doors opened and then the doors closed and we were still on the train, he'd get a little bit more upset. have you ever tried balancing a baby on your hip while trying to keep a folded-up stroller from falling over and your diaper bag from sliding off the seat on a moving subway train? i'll tell you this now: it's not easy. and you know what makes it worse? when you try to sit down and the baby tells you "no, absolutely not, you must stand", and then when you go to stand up again you whack your child's head into the metal pole over the seat. this leads to the kind of loud wailing that i didn't really know my baby had in him.

so you see, by the time i got to the classon ave. stop, where we get off, i had reached my limit.

but i do feel bad. i mean, maybe before coming here you heard all the stereotypes about how new yorkers are all rude and pushy, and here i am totally perpetuating that myth. and it's not true! most of us are very nice and polite. most of the time, i'm pretty freaking polite. you just caught me at a bad moment.

all of that said, however...there is a lesson you should take from this little incident: when getting on to a subway car, you let the people on the train off first. not that i'm not at fault too! i absolutely deserved whatever nasty thing i overheard you say about me in polish/czechoslovakian/what have you. i'm just saying, this whole thing could also have been avoided if you had been more familiar with subway ettiquette.

sincerely,
the harried woman with the baby who snarled "get the hell out of my way" at you and then (unintentionally!) nearly decapitated you with her folded-up stroller




dear wile,

snookums. sweetie baby. you know mama loves you more than life itself. i mean that. i would gladly throw myself in front of an oncoming train for you. but mama also needs to get out of the house sometimes without you.

you know how we have dance parties in the living room? to the fun loud music with the singing that sounds kind of like talking and the kickin' bass lines? i love those dance parties. i love how you laugh like a maniac when i twirl you around, and how you kick your legs and beat the air with your arms. but you see, before you were born, mama used to go out and have dance parties with her girlfriends. it was one of her favorite things to do. and i miss it. so sometimes i need to go out and dance without you, and you need to hang with dad.

and i need you to be okay with that, because it kind of puts a damper on mama's evening when she checks her phone between this is how we do and i've got a crush on you, at 1:35am, and finds a text message that reads "he's been awake since 11:45".

xxxooo,
mama




dear michael,

i wish i could have been there yesterday to say goodbye.

the greatest game i've ever attended was the game in 99 against the braves when you guys scored 10 runs in the 8th inning to beat the braves 11-8, and it was your screaming home run to the retired numbers in left that put us in the lead. some people have given you shit for not being as much of a "team leader" as they think you should have been. but when you hit that home run you came around first and pumped your fist and it was so evident that you were just as excited as everyone in the stands, that you were as invested in this team as we all were—and that's all i need to know.

thank you for everything. i hope you go on to a glorious semi-retirement as a d.h.

let's go mets,
the daughter of the woman who got your autograph in the pineapple discount beverage center in jensen beach florida 5 years ago.

ps - you should have slugged clemens.

further proof that anna wintour is indeed connected to evil powers on high

a couple of weeks ago it dawned on me that though i had seen the september issue of vogue on the newsstand, i hadn't received my copy in the mail yet. hmm. a couple of days after that realization, i got a bill in the mail and remembered that i had re-upped my subscription with a postcard but hadn't actually paid for it yet.... so i called up the 800 number on the invoice and took care of it.

not two hours later, wile and i went out to walk to the playground...and there, sitting on the steps next the mailbox which it wouldn't fit into because it's like 6 inches thick, was my september vogue.

a cute story about the baby, interrupted by a short rant

it all started with the monkey (speaking of starting with monkeys, the whole case going on in pennsylvania is making me alternately furious and terrified. there are already so many ways that the separation of church and state is breached—don't get me started on the pledge of allegiance—but this is batshit insane. science class is not the place to be teaching a creation myth! okay, yeah, whatever, they're not specifically teaching the biblical created-in-6-days myth, but they are putting out there that an "intelligent designer" exists. which is, to put it politely, purely speculation. i realize that as an atheist i'm in the minority in this country, but i was pretty sure that the constitution protected me from having my kid proselytized to at school).

so, yeah, anyway....where was i? right: the monkey.

aunt sarah gave wile an awesome stuffed monkey, who we like to cuddle with. so i started having the monkey give wile kisses, and when that seemed to be going well, started asking wile to give the monkey a kiss. and i think because he was trying to get his jaws around the monkey's muzzle, as it is his constant quest to put everything he comes in contact with into his mouth, he would open his mouth wide when he went in for the kiss. so when we then moved on to "now give mommy a kiss", i got a pretty good view of his tonsils.

i love the open-mouth kiss—the trick is to pick one lip, upper or lower—but i think it confuses some people when i say "give _____ a kiss" and all of the sudden mr. baby man is bearing down on them like a 7th-grader hell bent on learning how to french.

btietw

though i'm very happy that summer seems to be packing up and leaving and taking the humidity and heat rash with it, it does make me sad when i think about what the farmer's market is going to look like in a month or so: squash squash and more squash. so i'm savoring the last days of the summer harvest, especially the heirloom tomatoes. i like all the varieties: the firm, savory, virtually seedless italian hearts; the tangy green zebras; the meaty brandywines.... but my favorites are the ridiculously sweet yellow ones, the hawaiian pineapples and orange strawberries. i'm not sure which one it was that we had this week, but stephen and i ate it sliced and sprinkled with fleur de sel that susie brought us from paris and it was not only the best thing i've eaten this week but one of the best things i've eaten ever. i didn't want to eat the last slice becasue i didn't want it to be over. if you can get to a farmer's market and get your hands on one of these babies before they disappear, do it. yes, they cost like 4 times as much as regular tomatoes. and they are absolutely worth it.

no, you may not eat him

i'm so jealous i'm surprised my skin hasn't turned green.

stephen got to see this gentleman in the flesh (and fur) the other day, around the block from his office.

get behind me you freaking moron

i haven't been to a big stadium rawk concert in....jeez. a long time. and granted, keyspan park is no meadowlands, but still, the crowd is different at a big stadium show than it is at the places that i more frequently see music (knitting factory, bowery ballroom, roseland, et al.)

specifically: there are a ton more assholes.

stephen, syd, little brother ben and i went down to coney island to keyspan park last night to see the white stripes with brendan benson and the shins. and it was 99% awesome: it was a gorgeous night, the music was fantastic, jack white looked a lot less like michael jackson than he did on the cover of rolling stone, and we were in a good spot—close but not too close—and surrounded by people who knew how to be at a show: dance but don't flail, don't come in my square foot and i won't come in yours, don't let people by unless they promise they're going to keep it moving and not horn in on our nice little patch of ground, don't screech like a banshee or sing all the words to the song so loud that i can't hear the actual singer just to prove that you're like such a huge fan you know all the words to all the songs hell yeah!

then like a couple of songs into the white stripes' set this tall guy in a red t-shirt fell into me from behind. at first i figured that he was just waaaay too fucked up, because he was half-limp and had this kinda unfocused look on his face. but regardless of what his deal was, he had just almost taken me out and then bounced off me and knocked into syd, so i did what seemed to be the right thing to do in this situation: i shoved him off us on to the ground. he managed to not go down totally, but the stephen grabbed him and asked him what the fuck his problem was, and he asked stephen what his problem was, and asked him if he'd ever been to a rock concert before, and told him that he'd been to "over 100" rock concerts. stephen was like "you just almost decapitated my wife and my friend, jerkoff", but the guy just shook him off, turned around, and stepped over and stood in front of us! which is when i realized that he wasn't fucked up at all, but that flailing and thrashing and crashing into people was his way of making his way through the crowd to where he wanted to be! un. be. liev. a. ble. cause you know it's funny but i think i've been to "over 100" concerts, and i've never encountered anyone who thought that making yourself into a one-man mosh pit was an acceptable way to get through the crowd....

a little while later, i hear some commotion over to my right, so i look over and see some other ass clown falling into people, and hear people yelling "what the fuck?" and "take it easy, buddy!" while they push the guy off them, and then watch as this new guy rights himself and....comes over and stands next to douchebag number one! it's his friend! of course!

soon after douchebag number two arrived, syd, who had been keeping up a steady campaign of kicking number one in the heels, decided to tell number one that he was truly obnoxious, and he gave her the same speech about having been to "over 100" rock concerts.

of course, after the show, after the shithead twins had left (before the lights even came up to avoid the wrath of everyone they had pissed off), we thought of a couple of proper responses to the "over 100 concerts" speech:

option 1
"i've been to over 100 rock concerts!"
"can you suck your own dick? cause then i'd be impressed."

option 2
"i've been to over 100 rock concerts!"
"yeah, so have i. and there's an asshole at every one of them."

and of course me and my subtle, peaceful nature just fantasized about grabbing their heads and knocking them together like a couple of coconuts.

trogbaby the swinginator II: the revenge of trogbaby

dog butt of the week

o-dee-da, shmo-dee-da

auntie meg used to nanny for a little girl named stella (i know, could you just die? and her downstairs neighbor, a little boy around her age, used to stand at the bottom of the stairs and yell stel-la! up to her...) who lived in brooklyn heights. one of the first times that meg sat for her, there was a little bit of drama because stella kept asking to go to "the o-dee-da", and meg was all "the what now?" finally stella's mom was consulted, who apologized profusely and told meg that, for reasons unbenownst to her or stella's dad, "o-dee-da" was what stella called their neighborhood playground.

mr. baby man and i have recently visited the o-dee-da on a couple of occasions when we've been downtown running errands, and though i love saying "o-dee-da", i don't love the actual o-dee-da.

the first time we went with aiko (who is due to give birth to a little mets fan in november) and there were bad signs from the get-go: first we couldn't find the gate. then when we found the gate (waaaay over to the side!), it appeared to be padlocked. we stood there feeling kinda dumb, looking around for another gate, until some people walking by took pity on us and told us it's actually not locked, that the lock is actually just hanging there (waiting to make the uninitiated feel stupid, i guess) and you can slide the latch open no problem. ah-ha. so we go in and i let the little man loose, and five seconds later his legs look like he's been working the mines (i got the black lung, pop!). seriously, it was dirt like i've never seen before: thick, sticky, and black. it took me till i was talking to sarah later that night to realize what was going on: the o-dee-da is right above the b-q-freakin-e! my childs' legs were covered in highway dirt! exhaust soot! eeccchh! then a few minutes later the (stupid) gate opens and a group of elementary school kids comes barrelling in, apparently having been brought to the o-dee-da for recess, and all of the sudden it's like the antelope stampede scene in the lion king, and wile is mufassa (ooo-oo-oooo-oo! say it again, say it again!). i have to swoop in among the herd of 10-year-olds and scoop him up—he, of course, is totally nonplussed, just sitting there looking up at the galloping beasts like they're only slightly more interesting than the stick in his hand. as i'm getting my heart to drop backdown into my chest, a nanny points us in the direction of the fenced off section of the o-dee-da that is specifically for the wee ones. ah-ha number two. we manage to play there without incident (except, of course, for an even thicker buildup of black muck). but there's just something, i don't know, kind of unfriendly about the place.

so, all in all, not a top ten playground experience. but i chalk most of my dissatisfaction up to being a clueless newcomer, and decide to go back today....

we handle the gate like a pro and go straight for the fenced off area. so far so good. but then the unfriendly vibe comes back... i smile at all the moms and nannies who i pass on the benches and don't get one smile back. wile starts playing with his ball and a little girl comes over and tries to take it away, and instead of responding to my "wile, can you play catch with the little girl?", the mom just tells the little girl not to grab and leads her away. even the pigeons are unfriendly! the little man and i sit on the bench and have lunch and throw them our crumbs and instead of creating a nice tuppence-a-bag scenario, we incite a pigeon riot! the big fat pigeons hog all the crumbs and peck the ever-loving crap out of the skinnier, meeker pigeons. so i decide that's enough communing with nature for the day and we start playing climb the slide, one of wile's favorite games. it's a double slide, and a little girl about his size comes over and stars climbing the other side. i try to make conversation: i ask how old she is, the mom tells me but doesn't ask how old wile is; i say how cute she is, i get no response; i finally try talking to her when i realize i'm getting nothing from her mom ("wow, you're a good climber!"), this still gets nothing. oy. then they go and a bigger girl (5-ish?) comes and climbs the other side of the slide, and we have a nice conversation...until her mom calls her away and yells at her for talking to strangers. dude. i'm another mom on the playground. we're talking about climbing the slide. ease. up. so then this blond little boy (4?) all of the sudden comes barrelling down the slide while mr. baby man is still at the bottom of it. i whisk wile away and say something (very friendly-ly!) like "you should check to make sure no one's at the bottom of the slide before you come down!" but the little heathen just runs away and i'm talking to air. okay, fine, whatever, he's 4. but then he comes back around to the top of the slide, sits down at the top of the side that wile is halfway up (even though the other side is empty!), looks right at me, and starts to slide down! oh no he di'in't! i throw my arm out over the slide and say "can you please go down the other side, we're on this side!" he mumbles something, looks away, and slides down, so that i have to again airlift wile out of danger! then he comes back around to the top of the slide again and sits down on the side that we're on again! i look at him. he looks at me. another kid comes to the top of the other side, so i can't ask him to move over, so i ask him to please wait to slide until wile gets to the top and i can slide him (wile) down since he can't do it by himself because he's a baby. you can guess what happens, right? the little fuckwad slides, almost taking wile out. and because i'm 4 years old too, when he gets to the bottom of the slide i call him a brat. "brat!", i say. and you know what? it felt good.

but i think that's it for me and the o-dee-da. any place that drives me to calling small children names—whether they deserve it or not—should probably be avoided.

i haven't been hiding it on purpose, i'm just a flake

so some of you already know this, but i have another blog.

it's just a photo blog, of pictures of you-know-who, that i started so that i could share photos with people (read: family members) who don't need to read my ramblings.

many times the photos that go there also go here, but sometimes there are ones there that don't make it here. so you can check it out if you'd like double the fat baby goodness.

believe me, if there were more your father would have already found them

while the nursing is getting less painful, it is continuing to be interesting....

for a couple of weeks now, the little man has felt the need to see both boobs when he feeds. just to make sure they're there? for easy access if he all of the sudden decides he needs a little bit from the left? i don't know. thankfully he somehow instinctually knows that this is only appropriate behavior at home, and doesn't expose me in public. but in the past few days a new wrinkle has developed: in the middle of nursing he'll all of the sudden pull off and reach up and grab my shirt, which is invariably hiked up around my collarbone, and yank it up, peering under it like he's looking for some auxillary boobs that he might have, up until this point, been unaware of.

btietw: in + out

before the cali readership gets too excited, let me tell you that the title is not referring to in + out burgers. though they are right at the top of my list of things to eat when i finally do get out to the other coast, just below chez panisse and the french laundry....

no, i mean "in + out" as in "of my house".

the best thing i ate in my house was a batch of the much-requested muhamarra. remember when i said that the hearts of palm dip is the most crowd-pleasing thing that i make? i may have to amend that statement. when i served the muhamarra at my birthday party, it inspired such a feeding frenzy that susan and i had to whip up another batch during the party. as stephen says, it's the perfect combination of flavors: sweet (pomegranate syrup), tangy (lemon juice), bitter (walnuts), earthy (olive oil), spicy (hot pepper), garlicy (garlic).... i can only make a double batch at this point, a single one goes too quickly and makes us sad. so without further ado, the muhammara:

2/3 c breadcrumbs (i think it works best when i use slightly stale slices of bread)
1 T garlic
2/3 c walnuts
2 lg. red peppers, roasted (or the equivilent thereof from a jar/can)
2 t cumin (i use less, but i'm not a huge cumin fan)
1/2 t red pepper flakes
2 T lemon juice
2 T pomegranate syrup
1 T water
1/4 c olive oil

whip up all of the ingredients in the food processor, in the order i listed them, drizzling in the liquids through the hole in the lid with the motor running. serve with pita chips, blue tortilla chips, ak-mak, or a spoon.


the best thing i ate out of my house was my meal at la lunchonette (18th + 10th) with the f.i.t. ladies. i was going to pick one dish to write about, but the meal as a whole really was wonderful, there was no standout, everything just worked together perfectly and seamlessly. we did my favorite thing and got lots of small plates: artichoke vinaigrette; beet salad; goat cheese is puff pastry; seared scallops with a chunky tomato-y sauce; sweetbreads (okay, i was the only one eating those...); escargot in a cognac and garlic sauce; a cheese plate with a smoky cow's milk cheese, a cheddar-y cow's milk cheese, a boucheron-esque goat cheese (crumbly in the middle, brie-like on the edges, one of wile's favorite foods, of course, at $13/lb....), a triple creme, and a bleu (gay will be posting the names of the best ones on savortooth soon. ahem.); and a creme caramel to finish things off. it was all very simple and french, perfectly executed. nothing fancy, nothing surprising, just great french comfort food. and the place itself is so utterly charming—brick walls, low ceilings, wide-plank wood floors, a worn-in feeling—that you just can't help but love it and feel at home. that all said...the hostess/perhaps owner woman was a leetle intense/insane. the whole time we were there she was scurrying around like a ferret, leaving a trail of tension in her wake. but besides that, it was just lovely.

the best moment of every day

is when i pick wile up out of the bath and wrap him up in his towel and he latches on to my torso and wraps his arms around my neck and rests his head on my shoulder and he's all warm and smells good.


is this moment made even more enjoyable by the fact that i know he'll be asleep within the next 30-40 minutes? perhaps.

or "duffel skank", if you'd prefer

lulu has a thing for sleeping on luggage, bags, purses, etc. she prefers, of course, to burrow into the bag. but if she can't, she's just as content to lie on top of it. she's even been known to drape her stripey little body over my clutches, which cannot be comfortable... this all has earned her the nickname "tote ho".

so if i saw lulu like this:



and stephen asked me where she was, i'd say "oh, she's ho'in' it up in the dining room". heh.

then last week, when i asked him why he didn't get me a free bag from some event he had been to, and he asked me if i relly needed another canvas bag, stephen observed that i'm something of a tote ho myself....

so, fine. i'll wear the ho badge with pride. but i want to make it clear that though i do have a rather large collection of totes, i don't feel the need to curl up on them.

at least not when anyone's looking....

siegfried and wile

i think i've found the most entertaining thing on earth: letting wile "play" with trucky with the kitty teaser. oh. my. god. i don't know who laughs harder, me or wile. sadly, trucky doesn't seem to be laughing at all....

first i showed wile how to do it, and he started laughing so hard that he was snorting and hiccuping. then i handed it over to him. after a few tentative swipes...





...he started wielding it like a bullwhip, whipping it back and forth like a fly fisherman on crystal meth. observe:



trucky tried to hang in there, he really did...



i wish i had been able to get a better angle on trucky's face, which was so clearly saying "ow! no! that's not how the game is ow! played! ow! why??"

eventually he decided to just observe from a safe distance:



so trucky had a rough afternoon, but wile has learned an important life lesson: nothing is funnier than a cat spazzing out.

proof that there should really be "nursing stations" alongside public bathrooms....

the first thought that popped into my head when wile and i were in the elevator in barnes + noble and there was a little lurch and some odd beeping was "if we get stuck in here i'll have a quiet, private place to nurse him."

game, set, aaand match

for the past week or so, the little man and i have been engaging in a battle of wills. it goes like this:

he sees something across the room/lawn/playground that he wants. okay, 99% of the time it's a ball.

he stretches out his little hand to it and "eeeeeeehhhhh!"s.

i say "go on, go get it!"

he says "eeeeeeehhhhhh"

i say "no, wile go get it!"

he says "eeeeeeehhhhhh!!"

i say "crawl over there and get it, boo!"

he gives one last feeble "eeehhh......", then hoists his butt up and crawls toward it.

(now it looks at this point as if i've won, right? yeah. keep reading.)

he gets about a foot away from it, sits down, and recommences with the outstretched arm and the "eeeeeeehhhhhh!!"

i encourage him to just go the distance and get it.

"eeeeeeehhhhhh!!"

"no, wile get it!"

"eeeeeeehhhhhh!!"

"it's right there, just a little further!"

"eeeeeeehhhhhh!!"

"just reach out and get it, honey!"

"eeeeeeeeeeeeehhhhhh!!!!!!!"

....and on and on like this until he's close to tears, and i get up and nudge it over to him.

i know, i know. i shouldn't. but....well, it's kind of like the men's final at the u.s. open yesterday. you knew federer was going to win (i was going to get wile the ball). but then agassi won the second set, and was up 4-2 and 30-love in the middle of the thrid set! (wile crawled to within a foot of the ball!) but then federer came back, forced a tiebreak, won the tiebreak (wile began the barrage of "eeeeeeehhhhhh!!"s). they might as well have not bothered playing the fourth set (i might as well have not bothered trying to coax wile on those last twelve inches)—agassi had given it all he had, but federer just broke him. there's only so many perfect forehand winners that a man can take. just as there are only so many "eeeeeeehhhhhh!!"s that a mama can take.

football season has begun

jon fishman, the toddler years

if wile ends up in a phish cover band, we can say we saw where it all began:






ps - yes, of course it's sanitary for the baby to suck on the vaccuum hose....

fuzzy wuzzy wuz a block of wood not so long ago

at both our hotel and the cafe that we went to on two out of three of our days in steamboat, there were these carved wooden bears. maybe they were in other places in town too, i don't know. all i know is, the boo loved them.





so much so, in fact, that this one got a kiss:

cat butt of the week

lulu, leaning into a neck scratch.

would you like some ointment for those emotional scars?

in my pre-baby life, i was not a napper. naps generally left me groggy and grumpy and feeling more tired than i had been in the first place, so even if i was out-till-7am-the-night-before exhausted, it was a rare thing for me to take a nap. (which makes sense for me—unlike my mom, husband, and best friend, i actually function better on less sleep than an overabundance of sleep.) but of course when i was thrust into the wonderful world of night wakings, sleeping during the day became a way of life. as mr. baby man has gotten older and his night wakings slightly less frequent and definitely less obtrusive (i barely come out of my rem cycle for some of them), and as he is now able to nap without a boob in his mouth the whole time (i said able to, not prefers to...), my napping has decreased. but sometimes, if i lie down with him to put him down for his nap, i'll nap with him, whether i meant to or not. warm little baby body, comfy futon, nice breeze from the window, zzzzzz..... sometimes this is fine, other times i wake up in a post-nap bad mood, just like i always used to—only now compounded with being annoyed that i slept through his nap and missed my opportunity to be productive and/or alone.

this afternoon i fell asleep with him, and woke up in such a bad state i don't think i'll ever nap again.

we got up and went downstairs to get a snack. in my mentally weakened state, i decided that this was a good time to introduce him to yogurt. yes, brilliant mother, introduce the child who hasn't taken a morsel of food from a spoon since he was 6 months old to yogurt when your fuse is at it's shortest.... i plunk him in the highchair, get the yogurt and plastic spoon, and try to get a little bit in his mouth. he wants the spoon. i give him the spoon, go get another spoon. try again. he wants that spoon too. i give him the second spoon, go get a third. try again, smudging some yogurt on his lips hoping he'll lick it off and like it. he licks it, makes a face, and goes back to whacking the spoons together, then throws the first two spoons to the ground. i let him put a spoon into the yogurt, thinking maybe he'll eat some if he can do it himself. no, he just wants to use the spoon to take the yogurt out of the container and plop it on to his tray. i take the (third) spoon out of his hand to stop the process, he screams and cries. i can't fight through my bad mood to comfort him. i go get him a smaller spoon, thinking maybe he'll do better with that, plus he won't be able to get as much yogurt out of the container at a time. he tries to feed me, and stabs me in the gums, so i take away the smaller spoon. more crying. more absolutely no sympathy from me. i go into the kitchen to get a wet towel to wipe the both of us down, and when i come back he's taken the container, which i stupidly left within his reach, and dumped out the remaining yogurt. you know how people win america's funniest home video with scenes of adorable toddlers dumping food onto themselves while the family laughs? apparently the mothers of those toddlers are a tad bit more emotionally stable than me.... i yell "stop!", grab him out of the high chair, knock over the highchair in the process, plop him on the ground, clean off his hands while he cries, right the highchair, and then finally am able to pick him up and hug and comfort him. so now i feel cranky, annoyed, and horribly guilty.

we go into the living room and everything's okay for a little while, then i decide we should go hang in the backyard till bathtime, maybe the fresh air will do me good....

we go, and, inevitably, end up playing his latest favorite game, "rock". as in, throwing them. and, of course, he hits me in the head with one. i have to get up and walk away from him a little bit so he doesn't become alarmed by the sound of my teeth grinding together and the sight of the smoke exiting my ears. as i walk toward the house i see that trucky is peeing in the bucket of potting soil that i left out, so i take my frustrations out on him, poor thing. (although, honestly, don't pee in my potting soil! ew!)

bathtime is fittingly traumatic: he tries to turn on the water. i stop him. he cries. i pull him away from the knobs and he slips and falls backwards into the water—not underwater, and not paifully (he's in his little inflatable tub), but enough to totally freak him out and make him cry. i finish soaping and rinsing him while he cries, i'm not able to meet his eyes. finally i pick him up and wrap him in his towel. i feel like a monster.

then i hit bottom. i sit him on the changing table and try to find the balmex that i think is in the bag that i took to my parents' house last weekend and haven't unpacked. i can't find it, and while i'm rooting around getting more and more frustrated wile is trying to pull things out of the bag, which i have up on the table with him. so i snatch the bag away from him, dump the contents out onto the ground, and start crying. he's dead silent for a minute, then starts crying along with me, stretching out his arms to me. i pick him up and rock him and we cry together for a few minutes.

not surprisingly, he takes a long time to go to sleep, but that's fine. it comforts and calms me to lie in bed with him, holding and nursing him, smelling his head.

if i saw anyone else treating him the way i treated him today, i would cheerfully break their arm in three places. but if i broke my own arm, how could i pick him up when he said "eeeeeehhhhh!"? so instead i try to tell myself that it's alright, that even though newsweek has me all kinds of freaked out with their article about how babies comprehend and remember much more from their first years than we originally thought, he will be okay. and i'll be okay.

it's not all pig and chicken

he will eat vegetables once in a while, especially if they come in the shape of a large stick











....however, note the sadness in his eyes in that last photo. that is clearly a look that says: "this is just the appetizer, right? the flesh is coming up next?"

q: what's funnier than peeing all over yourself while your mama's trying to change your diaper?

a: absolutely nothing.

friday was mine and stephen's fourth anniversary (wedding, that is). which means that four years ago today, we were in new orleans, on the second day of our honeymoon. we chose new orleans because that was where, two years before that, on the last day of jazz fest, while the neville brothers were playing, stephen proposed to me by way of a banner being pulled by a small airplane. it was my second jazz fest, stephen's fourth. we had the perfect honeymoon for us: we organized our schedule based on eating at as many different restaurants as possible. we ate roast beef po' boys at parasol's, fried chicken salad and mango iced tea at commander's palace, oyster po' boys at acme oyster house, eggs atchafalaya at cafe atchafalaya off magazine street, fried green tomatoes with shrimp remoulade at upperline, perfect poulet at peristyle, gumbo and bud bottles at rock 'n bowl, brisket with creole sauce at tujague's, and crawfish at sid-mar's, which was out of town on the pontchatrain and may not exist anymore.

sadly, we haven't been back to new orleans since our honeymoon. every year we talk about going back for another jazz fest, but we haven't been able to make it happen. next year, even if there isn't a jazz fest, which i assume there won't be, we're going. we're going to support the city that has been like a second home to us. and in the meantime, we're doing what we can to support them from here. we chose to donate through the red cross, but there are tons of ways to help. the fug girls have put together a great list of organizations that you can give your money or time to, from people helping save the kitties to brett fav-ree's own personal charity.

whatever you can do, do.

dog (not butt) of the week

this is peanut:



peanut is the best dog i know. she's all dressed up here because her people are getting married and, being the spectacular dog that she is, she's in the wedding. once we get our vacation pictures back, you will see photographic proof of her amazing leaping skills. but for now, all i can provide is proof of her looking pretty skills and being the best behaved dog ever skills.

the first rule of playgroup is you do not talk about playgroup

perhaps you recall a few days ago when i posted about being adverse to group activities? well, call it hypocrisy (i prefer to call it "personal growth"), but i've started a playgroup. yes, not just joined, but instigated. but i promise there will be no baby nukem....

i had organized this baby roundup through a yahoo group for parents in my hood, and, once i had gotten some interested responses and a general consenus of nap times (the force that rules our lives: the nap!), had posted a message to the group that gave the time and place, and said that i'd be identifiable by my red-and-white striped shirt. (yes, the one that i'm wearing in the new photo that i just put up in the sidebar. purely coincidence. though i do love that shirt—esprit from like 5 seasons ago. anyway....) so i get there a little before the appointed time, the boo and i get settled, and then...we wait. the appointed time passes and...we wait some more. i start to feel totally conspicuous and like a total loser in my red-and-white striped shirt, like some dork who set up a blind date and is waiting there holding a red rose waiting for the girl, who came down the street, saw him and his rose, and kept on walking. fifteen minutes pass. we do some swinginating. finally, at around 20 after, a mom comes over by the swings and asks "are you guys from the yahoo group?" and though i want to say "yes, don't you see my stupid shirt and why are you so late my anxieties are all acting up??!!", i just smile and introduce myself and go meet her kids (twins!) and their babysitter...who had been there the whole time we'd been there, but how was i to know? i was the one wearing the striped shirt, they were suppose to be looking for me! so we chat for a bit, then another mom shows up with the most adorable little girl who is wile's age almost exactly but is walking like a pro, then deena and finn randomly show up, not knowing about the group, and even more randomly ask me if i know of any playgroups (of course i do! don't you see the shirt?!), so we pull them in, and then another mom with a little boy named lucas who i spoke to at the farmer's market once...and i don't feel like a dork anymore. in fact, i feel like a mover and a shaker. someone who gets things, um, moving and shaking.

oh, right, so how did wile like it? well, there was more mom interaction than baby interaction at this meeting, but i have high hopes for the future. i brought 4 balls with us, which minimized the "i don't have a ball in each of my hands oh my god!" freakouts. and wile and lucas did some slide-climbing and smacked each other on the head, which i take as a sign of a budding friendship.

home sweaty home

so i may have been overly pessimistic about the trip back there in my last post. it was, i must admit, an almost-total success. and here i am, on our first full night home, sitting at the computer while mr. baby man sleeps and has been sleeping as if we’d never carted him across two time zones and back in the space of three days.

some highlights of the trip:

> the kids’ play areas in the denver airport: i think whoever designed them had wile in mind: they’re little nooks enclosed by 7-foot-high hockey boards, with rubbery floors. and sticking out of the rubbery floors like little hills was half a soccer ball, half a baseball, and a whole hockey puck, each about 3 feet across. i don’t know who was happier, wile or stephen. stephen now wants to install hockey boards on the walls of wile’s playroom....

> conversation that i had with the supremely unfriendly woman who took my order at the “colorado crappy airport grille” or wherever i got our lunch:

me: ...and a guacamole bacon burger, please.
s.u.w.: how would you like that done?
me: medium-rare
s.u.w.: we only do medium, medium-well, and well.
me (smiling!): as close to rare as possible.
s.u.w.: okay, that would be medium-well
me: ......um, actually, i think medium is closer to rare.
s.u.w.: fine, medium.

o-kay!

>the reason we went out there: the wedding was just lovely. the spot was gorgeous, a pretty restaurant on the yampa river (yampa! yampa! i can’t stop saying yampa!) with a backyard where the short and pretty ceremony was held and a deck where the delicious food was served (wasabi mashed potatoes and prime rib with shitake gravy, yes please). and a shuttle that came to take me back to the hotel just was i was hitting the i’m-still-on-ny-time-and-am-usually-asleep-by-midnight wall....

like balls, but more painful to be hit with: yesterday between checking out of the hotel and catching our flight we drove out to fish creek falls, which was very pretty and more importantly had a spot where you could get down by the water and throw rocks!










....and a lowlight:

the altitude sickness: me and the mountains just don’t get along. i spent the weekend feeling somewhere from vaguely to very dizzy and naseous. unfortunately this carried over to our flight on the little propellor plane from steamboat to denver.... thankfully the flight was pretty empty and we had extra seats around us and stephen was able to keep wile from crawlimg all over me. (he also told me that i shouldn’t feel altitude sick on the plane anymore b/c the cabin was pressurized and there was plenty of oxygen. oh, really? could you say that again a little louder so that my stomach can hear you, because right now it still wants to eject the shrimp tacos we had for lunch.) so i managed to keep it together. unfortunately the family a few rows in front of us didn’t fare as well: first the toddler started barfing and wailing, then the mom, who was about 5 months pregnant, started barfing. the dad was sitting between them passing wipes and barf bags in both directions....

aside from that one, though, the flights were pretty painless. wile was awesome. he needed constant entertainment and i think a couple times he whacked the person sitting in front of me on the head (sorry!), but there was very little crying and even a little sleeping. and the flight back into newark from denver was underbooked so he got his own seat:



yeah, he just put his head down on that pillow and went to sleep....


and though steamboat springs was beautiful, i was happy to only be there for a weekend. i’m just not made for ski towns. and it’s not just the fact that the altitude makes me all wonky and i don’t ski. it’s just.... look, the people are very nice. really. i just can’t take the whole ski bum attitude seriously. it’s like even if they don’t actually say “bro” at the end of every sentence, there is an implied “bro”. or perhaps a “right on”.

oh and what the hell is up with the straws out there? every single eating/drinking establishment that we went to had black straws. huh?

so except for the fact that the air here feels like dog breath, i'm happy to be home.

first you go to pico....*

in the past week, my little somnolantly-challenged monkey boy has been doing some kick-ass sleeping. a couple of nights ago, he slept for a 5 hour stretch, which, all the baby books keep telling me, is the technical definition of "sleeping through the night" (though somethimes i feel like they just say that to make all the sleep-deprived mothers feel better...). so how are we celebrating this? by catching a 7am flight to colorado on saturday morning! 7am! which means we have to be up at like 5! and then when we get there, we'll be in a different time zone! and then on sunday night, we're going to a wedding and leaving him with a babysitter he's never met before, which should equal some very uneasy sleeping! and then on monday, we're catching a flight home that lands at 11pm! 11pm! can you picture what an overtired, overstimulated baby whose internal clock is all fuckered up is going to look like around 10pm on a crowded commercial flight? i can!

pray for me.





* a prize to anyone besides stephen who can tell me what that line is from....

meg and syd, this one's for you

behold, the glory that is the chicken wing!



when stephen saw this picture from a few feet away, he asked "what is wile doing a shot of?"



happiness is chicken grease all the hell over your face.



aaaaand we've moved on to ribs! please look at the way his fingers are glistening....



i can't say i've ever seen this look on his face from, say, cheerios.....

btietw: expanded vacation edition

i cannot choose just one best thing from all the good things that we ingested on our vacation. don't ask me to.

1) fayette hero: the cabin that we stayed in up in the maine wilderness was right down the road from the summer camp where stephen spent the first eighteen summers of his life—first as a faculty brat because his dad was head councelor, then as a camper, then, god help those children, as a councelor—and where wile is destined to spend his summers, unless he inherits his mother's profound aversion to any sort of organized group activity, especially ones that involve sleeping on bunks or being made to play "nukem". shudder. my parents finally wore me down one summer by signing me up for what they promised was an arts camp (day camp only, they knew better than to push their luck on a sleepaway camp). the first half of the first day was fine: we painted, threw some pottery, and had some snacks. then after lunch they told us we were going out to the back field to play softball!! when my dad came to pick me up at the end of the day i wouldn't speak to him, then later told him and my stepmom that they were liars and i wasn't going back. of course since i was eight, and the tuition was already paid, i went back. but not quietly. i think the next summer they let me just stay home and read and draw pictures—when i felt like it, not when it was "drawing period"—which is all i wanted to do in the first place. but stephen loved camp, still loves camp, and for his sake i hope that wile will love camp too.

but so anyway, the camp is in a little tiny town called fayette, and in fayette is the fayette store, and at the fayette store you can get a fayette hero. stephen has, in the past, pontificated on the glores of the fayette hero, but i'm pretty sure that the last time we were up there, some years ago, i wasn't eating meat and therefore didn't have the hero. in fact, i'm positive, because this is a hero i would have remembered.... the bun is like a hot dog bun on steroids, and it's chewy without being gummy, just the right balance of dense and light. i got oil + vinegar and mayo, and for my meat i chose ham and salami, and there were about three slices of each, which is so perfect—i hate when delis stuff my sub (hero, whatever) full of meat like they're doing me a favor or something. then there was one slice of white american cheese which i didn't ask for, but i was really glad it was there. i asked for whatever toppings they had except the green peppers, and i got tomatoes, halved kalamata olives (not crappy canned black olives!), and awesome crispy pungent dill pickle chips. it was the most perfect hero/sub/grinder i have ever eaten.

2) lobster cocktail: stephen's family all love lobster, with stephen's love eclipsing everyone else's. when they would have lobster night at camp, stephen would take the bodies from all the kids who just wanted to eat the tail and claws and be done with it and sit out on the dock working on them out until he had scavenged every bit of lobster flesh that he could. me, on the other hand, well....i'm not really on board the lobster trolly. i'd much rather have a good soft shell crab or some scallops. my problem with the lobster is that i don't like the tail—the claws, however, i adore. but it doesn't seem right to order a whole lobster just to eat the claws, so i usually get a lobster roll and enjoy the mingling of lobster meat with mayo and a hot buttered roll, mmmm. but then we went to j's oyster bar, a great dive-y spot in portland (where we spent the last weekend of our vacation), where they offer what they call a "lobster cocktail" and i call "the answer to my prayers". it's five meaty de-shelled claws on a plate with some cocktail sauce. hallelujah!

3) clam chowder: i only had one bite of this chowder, but it still qualifies for a btietw. perry ordered it at the dry dock, another waterfront restaurant in portland. i think i may have to write in to gourmet and see if they can get me the recipe. it was creamy but you could still really taste the seafood stock, the potatoes were red and cut into perfect little 1/4-inch cubes, and there was just exactly the right amount of fresh dill. i'm usually fairly wary of the dill—even the littlest bit too much can cause total havoc. but this was absolutely right. yummy.

here is a picture of perry and wile during that meal, communing with the deeply unhappy, overheated man in the stuffy lobster suit who wasn't too interested in making nice with the baby:



please note the boots.

well she got friendly down in the sa-a-and

our friend deron has a little girl named maggie who is about 6 months older than mr. baby man. the first time she and wile met, sparks didn't really fly:



i can't say i blame her for not going for him—he still looked like a potato, and he only had one sock on because he got poop on the other one. not really a strong first impression.


so, 8 months pass, and wile develops killer hair, some bone structure, and the ability to sit upright without support. he's a new man, and maggie can't help but notice when they meet on the beach:

things start off slow with a little game of catch...



but soon enough, it's into the loooove kyack...



wile dazzles her with his smile...



she tells him all about herself...



they pause for a glamour shot...



but then it's back to the hot baby lovin'...



what we were sadly unable to capture on film was the sequence in which they kissed, then maggie danced for wile, then he threw the ball at her face. ah, young love.

no go joe lee

people, i have failed you.

we went up to pratt to stalk, and came up empty. no dressing room trailers, no camers, no ethiopian adoptees. apparently wherever they were having the pratt campus stand in for does not play a major role in the movie. that, or deniro is running a clint eastwood-style shoot and they filmed like 1/4 of the movie in one day.

so, sadly, i cannot confirm or deny the pregnancy rumors. although i guess i could start one. hey, yeah! "filming on location at pratt university of the good shepherd was cut short due to complications with star angelina jolie's pregnancy, speculate local sources. 'one day they were there,' our source tells us, 'then they were totally gone. it seemed very suspect, and probably has something to do wth the love child she's carrying. i can think of absolutely no other good reason why they wouldn't still be there when i went to stal—um, i mean, visit her.'"

should i call page six, or do you want to?

i think the photos pretty much speak for themselves....

i don't know if you can really tell, but the grey part is kinda acid-washed.

the girl in the passenger seat, of course, saw me taking the photos, and the look of "oh. my. sweet. god." on my face. to her credit, she looked a little embarrassed, like "i know. i know. it's his car, not mine, okay?"

celebrity dog butt of the week

this is henry. you remember henry, the one who invoked the wrath of lulu? well, now you can put a butt with the name. he is sydney's baby, a purebred....um...irish setter? i think there are more words in the name of the breed, and i'm embarrassed that i can't remember it exactly. but he is a beauty, and very sweet, and though he's a little crazy because he still has all his male parts because syd wants to breed him, he is generally a good boy.

pookiellamarazzi

yesterday as stephen was biking home past pratt, all the streets were closed off for some big filming to-do. he asked a production lackey what it was all for, and they said it was a movie called the good shepherd. we imdb'd it, and it turns out that there might be some bonafide big-ass hollywood types in our little neghborhood!

1) it's being directed by deniro, but as stephen works in tribeca and has had to deal with tribeca film festival stuff for years, and deniro hasn't been in a good movie in years (please don't defend meet the parents to me. i hated that movie as much as i love zoolander, and that there is a lot of hate), and he's too old and boring to be involved in any fun celebrity scandal/gossip, deniro is really no big whoop. but don't worry, it gets more interesting...

2) billy crudup has a supporting role! i would love to see him and his cheekbones.

3) matt damon is starring! okay, actually that's not too exciting to me either. the only time i think i have ever really given matt damon any thought was like 6 years ago when i did a focus group for a company that was developing a new brand of vodka. they would name existing popular brands of vodka and ask us things like "what's the first thing that pops into your mind when you hear that brand?" and "what celebrity do you associate with that brand, and why?", and when they asked me those questions about absolut, i answered, respectively, "high school and vomitting" and "um, i guess maybe...matt damon? you know, bland, boring, safe, accessible....", which earned me some serious glares of hatred from most of the other girls on the panel, who had just pontificated about how much they loved absolut and used the bottles for vases, and probably thought matt damon was just dreamy. but, hey! it was a focus group—i was there to be honest, not make friends, especially not with a bunch of absolut-swilling ting girls. anyhoo. where was i? oh yeah, about to reveal the crown jewel:

4) mr. absolut's wife is being played by...the jolie! one half of bradgelina, miss superlips herself, is possibly hopefully going to be mere blocks from my house! joe lee!* in my hood! sorry for all the exclamation points, but this is exciting. i may be able to deny or confirm the pregnancy. i might even see brad. maybe he'll be there with the kids, taking care of them while joe lee "acts". the tabloids have landed in clinton hill, people.

so, have no fear—mr. baby man and the camera and i will be out there tomorrow seeing what we can see. we were going to go today but he's still a little sicky and therefore cranky and didn't seem up for a walk. i told him about joe lee, but he just said "nang!" and smacked me in the eye. but tomorrow, i promise.

joe lee!



* sarah told me a few weeks ago that one of her coworkers refers to angelina as "joe lee", and we have since taken it up as well. yes, it is kinda like just saying her last name, but there are subtle differences in intonation, and a definite little pause between the "joe" and "lee". it's pronounced with a teensy bit of a southern accent, with equal emphasis on the "joe" and the "lee", but always with empasis. as in "oh, joe lee," or "what have you done, joe lee?" try it, it's fun!

you might want to get a drink and a comfy chair...

ay yi yi. what a freaking week. to sum up:

monday - we arrive home at approximately 3am b/c we decided to take a little detour to the massachusetts seashore on the way home b/c a bunch of friends who we haven't seen in a while were all there at one friend's family's beach house and it was kinda sorta on the way home if you don't mind turning an 8 hour trip into a 14 hour trip. do i sound a tiny bit bitter? just a tiny bit, really. we had a great time at the beach (it deserves and will get its own post, later), but being in the car in the middle of the night with a baby who wakes up every hour or so and needs to be comforted back to sleep without being taken out of his car seat which means leaning over the carseat and nursing him when all you want to do is be asleep yourself? not. so. much. fun. so of course the rest of the day is totally lost, i am a total zombie (since wile still wakes up around 7! wheee!), and i conclude things by searing my flesh. (update on that: my big puffy water-filled blisters have deflated to smaller puckery brownish callous-blisters that are splitting open and about to start itching like a mofo.)

tuesday - i don't really remember tuesday, people. between the lingering exhaustion and the injury, the day is kind of a blur. not much gets accomplished besides making sure that mr. baby man gets fed and changed and doesn't hurt himself. so this is now two days in which i have a) not unpacked my suitcases, and b) not done a damn thing to get ready for the big 1st birthday party that we are throwing on saturday....

wednesday - wile's annual physical! yay! i've adjusted to having a gnarled monkey claw instead of a right hand by now, so manage to get us on and off the bus and to the doctor's office pretty easily. i've decided not to get him any shots on this visit just in case he has a reaction to them b/c i don't want to chance him being sick for his party. (please reread that last sentence and commit it to memory and file it under "irony".) he gets all checked out and passes with flying colors and has fun playing with the doctors' hoberman sphere, and then i remember that we need to take some blood from him to check his lead level (since he likes to pick the paint chips off the walls in the kitchen like the little baby in the poster) and see if he's inherited my weird blood disorder and is going to follow in my footsteps to the operating table for his very own splenectomy! i'm a little worried that our so far so good doctor's visit is going to end in screaming, but he is awesome. the nurse comes in and ties the rubber band around his arm—even moving it from one to the other b/c she can't find a good vein in his left arm—and he just looks down at it with mild interest. hmm. then she sticks the needle in and i brace myself for the screaming but he just lets out one little cry/yelp, looks up at me, i smile at him and tell him it's okay, and he decides to believe me and looks down to watch what the nurse is doing. she puts the second vial on the end of the little tubey contraption and he reaches down, starts playing with it, and pulls it right off the tube. so of course the nurse takes it from him, gently, and reattaches it...and then he starts crying. because we won't let him play with his own blood. later that night, my mom (aka the nana) arrives from florida covered in hives.

thursday - the nana, the boo and i trek all over downtown brooklyn in the hot hot heat gathering the food for the party. it's actually not so bad, we get plenty of great stuff at the farmer's market. wile is a little cranky when we get home, but i chalk it up to a long day.

friday - wile is still a little cranky, and very warm, so we break out the thermometer...and he has a 102.5˚ fever. the day before we have 30 people coming over to celebrate his first birthday. aaaaaaaaawesome. so i call the doctor, just to make sure there's nothing i should be doing besides what i'm doing (keeping him in air conditioning, plenty of fluids, rest), and she says (okay, break out that sentence you filed away now!) that there's something going around, she's seen a bunch of cases of it lately, it's fever and sometimes a runny nose and cough and usually doesn't last long. so but i'm supposed to be getting ready for the party (which we are contemplating cancelling), and instead i have a little 22-lb barnacle who is on me like stink on shit (break down!). he won't sleep unless he has the boob in his mouth. it's like we've regressed back to the first two months of his life. i'm holed up in the bedroom sending detailed missives down to the nana and my aunt peg, who has come down early for the party. no fun for anybody. they are envying me being in the air conditioning, and i'm envying them the use of their limbs for something besides supporting a sweaty overheated sickypants. poor little monkey.

saturday - wile's temperature is back down to normal so we decide to go ahead with the party. and considering that the heat index is 110˚ with the humidity, it's a fairly successful party! wile and i take many trips up to the air conditioning to cool off, and though he's not his normal devastatingly charming self, he seems to have a good time and entertain everybody pretty well. but everyone leaves for the sanctuary of their air-conditioned cars as quickly as decent manners allow, and i can't say i'm entirely sad to see them go, since it means i can get back to my air conditioned haven....

sunday - reprieve: we head out to long island to swim in the schmergels' pool.

monday - wile's temperature is back up, so i call the doctor, like she told me to do on friday if it went back up. we make an appointment and head in, she tells us that it's nothing serious, just a bug like she thought and it should pass, and we slog back home through the heat. wile won't sleep for more than 45 minutes at a time once he goes down for the night....

tuesday - the illness has entered the next phase: runny nose and cough. if there is any sound more patheitic than a baby cough, i haven't heard it. we lay low, the last dregs of disarray from the party remain un-cleaned-up. at least the weather is nicer. then in the evening the nana and i escape to shea so that she can get in one mets game while she's up north. we're waiting in line to buy our tickets when this guy comes over, puts two mezzanine tickets in my hand, says "here, they're free, i'm taking a group and not everybody showed up, they're good seats", and walks away before i can even say thank you. amazing! and it's a great game, benson pitches well and cliff blasts a big homer and everyone is on base at least once, even david wright who doesn't get a hit but walks ahead of cliff's homer, and i learn that cliff's first name is cornelius (!!!), and i see our benefactor later on and get to say thank you, which is good because they really are great seats: 2nd row mezzanine reserved, just under the eave so that when it starts to rain we stay dry.... unfortunately stephen, who is home with the little man, doesn't have quite as good a night: the yankees lose in extra innings to the devil rays (the winning run is walked in), and wile won't sleep for longer than 30 minutes at a time.

today - still massive amounts of snot, still heart-wrenching baby cough, still with the clinging and not sleeping, but no temperature and improved spirits and seemingly on the road to recovery. the suitcases remain un-unpacked, but i've made my peace with that. the nana and the little man and i have a lovely last day together—walking, gardening, playing ball—and i put her in a tinted-window car service car and wave her back to the sunshine state. tomorrow is another day....


[alas, i will not be posting any photos from our trip to the maine wilderness right now because stephen...well....while i have you here, let me tell you a little story: we were in our hotel room in portland (having left the wilderness the day before), and i was putting wile down for his afternoon nap. stephen was hiding out in the bathroom, where he was going to check some baseball scores on his phone, take a shower, and clear some photos off the memory card so that we had room to take pictures at bean's wedding that night. all of the sudden i heard him go "oh my god", followed by a strangled yelp. kinda loud. i couldn't tell if he'd seen something funny (on the camera or the phone) or if something terrible had just happened—it was an indeterminate exclamation/yelp. then he poked his head out of the door holding the camera and whispered "i just erased the whole vacation!". and though i felt for him, especially since he was on the verge of tears, i really couldn't move or talk—wile was on the verge of nappage, and i do not fuck with that. so he throws on some clothes and bolts. i get wile to sleep, then text him "are you okay? where are you?", and find out that he's in the lobby and just got off the phone with the canon help line. he didn't erase the pictures of wile swimming naked and sitting on the rocks at pemaquid and eating his first lobster completely, he just erased the formatting. which means that if we buy some auxillary piece of equipment and "image recovery software", we can have them back. as he said, we will take the money for those things out of his "bonehead fund."]

right here, not so much

in case you were wnodering why there haven't been any posts in the past week, it's because i was on vacation in the maine wilderness without a computer. i meant to post before we left that i wasn't going to be posting, but obviously thst didn't happen. and then tonight i was all geared up to import some photos and post all kinds of funny stories from the trip, but then i grabbed a hot pan handle like a total jackass and gave myself second degree burns all over my hand. so, a) i'm in horrific pain, and b) typing left-hand-only is slow and annoying.

so i'm going to go try to get my shit together a little bit, and i'll be bck soon. hopefully. barring further injury or mental lapses.

ps - if you're looking for something to read while you're waiting for me to post again (hee), i read a good book in maine: oh the glory of it all by sean wilsey.