Happy Halloween!

It's not that the time is passing so quickly, it's just that so much happens each 24 hours

She isn't even 2 months yet!

Nose and Toes

What a beautiful baby!

I didn't learn that if babies are going to have a fussy period in their early lives, they are likely to begin fussing about 4 weeks after their due date until well into the fussiness. Incidentally, I find it quite interesting but not surprising that many of babies' early developmental milestones are clocked from their due date instead of their birth date. Talk about feeling irrelevant as a parent! At any rate, in E.'s case the onset of fussiness coincided with the arrival of a particularly heinous case of infant acne.



(this isn't E. I decided we didn't need to photograph her acne.)

Of course, I was slightly bothered that my baby reminded me of myself in 7th grade and that her erstwhile soft and smooth cheeks were now rough and oily. However, what was remarkable about the whole thing is the effect it had on strangers. Before the acne appeared and now that it's gone, strangers always speak to me about my lovely baby, asking how old she is, etc. When I walk down the street with a stroller, passers-by peer inside to get a look at E and invariable compliment my child. While she had her acne those folks who got a look at her would say nothing at all. They might give me a pitying smile but, more often than not, they would not react at all and fail to make eye contact.

Who cares right? It's only a case of acne. The most difficult thing about it was, as I said, E.'s acne coincided with a few weeks in which it was a challenge to keep her happy. I wanted all those compliments because they made it easier to weather the few stormy evenings I was having with my baby.

Field Trip

It being a beautiful, sunny, blustery fall day, we decided to take a little field trip down to Racine (pronounced rah-CINE for those folks who, like me, are regionally challenged when it comes to Wisconsin pronunciations). There is a fabulous off-leash dog park down there along the Root River (Johnson's Park). We had also heard that downtown Racine is quite nice. Lastly, someone brought us some great baked goods from a Racine bakery. Since I am always up for quality baked goods, have been searching for a good bakery since I got to Milwaukee and have enough of a sweet tooth that I would be willing to drive 40 minutes on occasion to satisfy it - and you know that's saying a lot since I am generally unwilling to drive anywhere - I decided we should check it out.

O&H Bakery, dear readers, is the best bakery I have encountered north of the windy city. It might even count as the best I've had west of Portsmouth if you want to discount my favorite Chicago Chinatown Bakery (Happy Garden) and the best fancy pants bakery (Bittersweet, also in Chicago).

We loaded up on kringle (I'm not really a fan of kringle but my partner is), a giant napoleon ring, a potato doughnut, and a slice of heavenly coconut cake. Next time I have an event, I am picking up one of these babies!

ipod, at last!

I've been wanting an ipod forever - talking about getting one for at least 2 years. The thing is, I felt it would not be responsible to spend our limited funds on an ipod since I had a perfectly serviceable Sony Sports Cassette Walkman (remember those bright yellow things?) that I purchased back in 1995. Yes, I was the last person at the gym listening to CASSETTES. Well, the landscape changed a bit this week. I haven't been to the gym since about August 26 and, apparently, they failed to process my membership renewal and cleaned out my locker. So, when I went to workout for the first time (a fiasco taking E. on the city bus that was 30 minutes late to hand off to her father at his office where she proceeded to cry), I was handed the contents of my locker with an apology. Missing (STOLEN, they determined) from the garbage bag of gym paraphenalia was my Sony Sports Cassette Walkman and my heart rate monitor. They're going to pay me to replace both items. I, however, am going to trade up on the Walkman for an ipod.

So, what do you think, should I go for the nano or the standard ipod? Wasn't there something called the ipod mini before? I think that was what I had decided on last time I was drooling at the apple store.

top o' the mornin'

I'm sorry that I don't have time for a proper post - this week has completely gotten away from me. For example, I just realized that I should have made the trip to Madison for my diss group today and I cannot for the life of me figure out what I have been doing since Monday - I remember Monday. I believe this sleep deprivation - 7 weeks with no more than 4 hours of sleep at any time - is beginning to take its toll.

At any rate, my little nephew is so amazingly cute. He looks like a little leprechaun.

If it's not obvious, he has flaming red hair.

that's my girl!

I wrote earlier about feeling that one's child is or is definitely not displaying characteristics they inherited from oneself. Everyone says that E looks like me - it's the upturned little nose they say. Well, I can't say that I see it but I guess that should come as no surprise since I am not used to thinking too much about what I look like - I am sure it would be much easier for me to see it is E. resembled her father. However, E. does take after me in at least this respect:
E.'s favorite non-uterine sounds to aid in sleeping
1. Box fan on medium setting
2. The Cure Disintegration played on the loud side

Are you hungry? Tired? Bored? Too hot? Too cold? Gassy? Oh, I know. You need the potty!

I like to think that I am trying to be a nouveau* mom and I mean nouveau in the sense that I am staying on top of the cutting edge wisdom when it comes to child-rearing. Amazingly, I do this despite the fact that Levitt claims it is likely to make little difference in terms of my child's life chances. So, yes, I offer my child the gift of sleep, make use of the other 4 s's, and put my child down for a nap after 1 - 2 hours of wakefulness. I firmly believe that "breast is best" and that you can't spoil a child for the first 6 months. I do a lot of baby-wearing, eschew schedules but love routines, and have even started collecting organic baby food recipes. Yes, folks, what's nouveau right now is primarily a return to the "ancient wisdom" of child-rearing (often what folks in non-Western and pre-Dr. Spock societies do/did) and I lap it up. This, however, might be going a bit too far. I mean, I will look into it but, I really can't see myself holding my 6-week-old child over the toilet and saying "Psp-psp-psp" 15 or 20 times a day.

*Please don't correct my grammar. Nouvelle, yes I know, nouvelle.

it's like that one movie. you know, the one about climate change in which the northern half of the u.s. becomes a frozen wasteland...

Last night when I woke up in the wee hours to feed E, I could hear geese flying overhead, migrating south, presumably. I don't recall hearing of geese flying south at 3 a.m. before. Have they changed their migratory patterns to elude air traffic or are they just in a hurry? Perhaps it's all a lot more bleak than that and, in a mere 72 hours, my home will be buried under 100 feet of ice and snow.

Today I am that tree that fell in the forest...

MIERS = LACKEY

I can't believe Bush would appoint another incompetent insider to an important post after that FEMA fiasco.

Rant: Where should I begin?

It's been a while since I've had time to post. Even as we speak I am writing frantically, glancing frequently in the direction of my little one who is sleeping fitfully - a potential sign that she is about to demand my attention. This is also how I shower, eat (I cannot tell you how many meals I've swallowed without even registering the taste), and even sleep these days. But that is not what I am writing to gripe about.

Today I went to a baby shower. It is important to go out and do things, I feel, even though it is a million times more complicated to get into the car and go anywhere with a 5-week-old baby than most activities are worth. However, you've got to do it, I reason, because at some point it will get easier, but how will you know when that is if you aren't going out to notice the change?

Anyway, I attended a shower on the other side of town. The guests were a bunch of folks I don't know (not counting the mother-to-be and one other guest). I arrived 30 minutes late because there was an accident on the highway and because my mapquest directions had me on a road that is closed for construction. But I digress...

When I arrived at the shower, the topic of conversation was one of the guest's working mothers blog and a NYT article she discusses on the blog about Harvard students who aspire and/or expect to be housewives/stay at home moms. Now, I know there is room to argue claims about the upswing in women staying home (or men, for that matter). However, what the folks at the shower wanted to talk about was how it was wrong for women who planned to "stay at home" to "take up a space" at Harvard when someone who would make "better use" of their Harvard education could have attended.

I am not sure what frustrated me more, their implicit devaluation of home-making vis-a-vis other things a college grad might do or their view that an elite college education is of no value to those who choose to stay at home. I said I disagreed with the notion that future homemakers should be banned from the Ivy League. Your career aspirations are not factored into college admissions and that is as it should be. What about those folks like Natalie Portman who waste their Harvard degrees as actors? What about all those super wealthy and well-connected kids at elite schools who will never have to work a day in their lives or who will land those CEO positions even if they go to BU because it is in their blood? From where I'm sitting, there are plenty of folks taking the spots of people who would "really use" a prestigous BA, whatever that means. When it comes to the value of education at an elite school to those who choose to stay home, the most obvious benefit, even though it ain't pretty, is locating a spouse. However, just experiencing college is of value. Just because one may eventually end up staying at home doesn't mean one can't be well-read, well-traveled, etc.

Anyway, E. is telling me that my time is up.