My favorites of E's books... not counting the classics

Islander’s I-never-imagined-this-stuff-was-important must-haves for pregnancy and the first 5 months…

Naturally, we begin with books
Read these before you have the baby:
The Thinking Women's Guide to a Better Birth.
Sears' Pregnancy Book
Natural Childbirth the Bradley Way
Sears' Breastfeeding Book

Read during those first few weeks when you are basically living in the rocking chair:
Happiest Baby on the Block
Sears Baby Book (own this because you will need it often)

Read this at about week 5 when things start to get a little dicey:
Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child (re-read at 4 months)

Read these at about 4 months when even your baby is giving you guilt for holding off on solids
The Petite Appetite Cookbook
Super Baby Food

New Mother Stuff
Prenatal
Snoogle Get this by the 20^th week. If you'’re a drooler like me, make sure to spend a little extra for the one with the removable cover. It's a pain to remove but its well worth it.

Have this stuff ready for your return from the hospital
1. Avent Isis manual pump if not planning to pump at work or Isis IQDuo electric pump if planning to pump at work. I am telling you, the Isis kicks Medela'’s pump-n-style to the curb. I get more milk with the Isis manual doing one side at a time than with the pump-n-style.
2. Sleep bra
3. Lansinoh disposable Nursing Pads (reusable are terrible.– trust me.)
4. I also recommend that you steal some of those disposable fishnet panties, huge pads and icepack-pad combos from the hospital.

Baby Gear
Have this stuff ready:
1. A couple of days'’ worth of newborn/preemie clothes. My baby was 7 lbs 11 oz and she was still too small for 0-3 month clothes for the first 2 weeks.
2. Bedside sleeper. I used this one. I was planning to just use the crib in my room but someone gave me a bedside sleeper. I loved it!
3. The ultimate baby wrap. My newborn didn'’t feel very secure (my opinion, not hers) in the Baby Bjorn until about 2 months. I've just started feeling comfortable with her in the sling.

Needed by week 3 or 4
1. Baby straight-jacket a.k.a. Swaddle blankets. I used the Miracle blanket. Make sure that you have at least 2 in case one gets spit-up on or the baby blows a diaper at 2 a.m.

By 8 -– 10 weeks
1. An exersaucer or the Fisher-Price jumperoo. Even if they aren'’t playing, they like being put in it once they hold their heads well and their toes can touch the floor (you can also put a phonebook under their feet). If your baby looks unstable, you can wrap a towel around her middle to keep her upright in the seat.
2. Who knew? Hallmark'’s lullaby CD works like a charm for naps.

It's like they always say (take one)

My partner has this story he likes to tell when people ask "how we fell in love." His story goes something like this: "She thought I had a really nice ass." This being inaccurate, his gluteus maximus being neither particularly stellar or a factor in my romantic interest in him, I come up with much more appealing posthoc explanations of why we are together. You know, the kind of stories you don't mind telling for the next 40 years and having your kids tell their kids after that.

Anyway, I remember beginning to take an interest in my partner when I started to divine that he was a geek in jock's clothing. He also had this particularly cute habit of using idioms that seemed to be straight out of "Leave It to Beaver." My absolute favorite of the idiomatic expressions he frequently employed: Even a blind squirrel finds an acorn once in awhile.

So, yeah, I've been thinking about it lately and I've decided that I would like my contribution to humanity, apart from the offspring, of course, to be introducing a new idiom into the English language and I am going to use this blog to accomplish this task.

So, that right folks... um.... history in the making... I mean... This tattoo is forever and you watched them ink it, you know what I mean?

E's photo of the month: almost 5 months old

questions for my mom

1. Am I doing OK?
2. Was it scary?
3. Who are all those people in the pictures in the keepsake box you told me to take?
4. What happened to Grammy's plates?
5. When did I get my first teeth?

i'm a misplaced coastie...

which is exactly why it never occurred to me that the ASA paper submission deadline (3 pm) was referring to some other time zone (EST). At 1:50, as I was writing the second part of my analysis, it occurred to me that instead of having ample time to complete a competent first draft, I actually had 10 minutes to finish writing, add references, proofread, log in to ASA and submit the paper.

result: I submitted an incomplete paper. It's absolutely terrible after about page 8. Have I doomed myself to life outside of the tenure track by allowing this incomplete piece of crap to see the light of day? Please make me feel better by writing to tell about all the horrendous papers you've submitted.

That spoon in your mouth, is it Empire Silver?

Some indicators of intergenerational, intrafamilial social mobility:

Age at time of passport application:

• My Mother N/A
• Me 16
• E 3+ months

Preferred infant toy:

• My Mother ?
• Me Stuffed-animal dog with wind-up music box inside
• E this*

*When it arrived, we had absolutely no idea what it was.

rest-less

Sorry, folks, for the protracted silence. There is no help for it. I'm in way over my head right now -- working on a paper submission, prepping a new class, tending my child, who recently developed an aversion to sleeping more than an hour at a time between the hours of 10 pm and 7 am. Things are so crazy around here that the spouse and I have developed a color-coded daily schedule so we know which end is up. Things are so insanely busy, in fact, that I have E writing my dissertation.

another new year

I stand by my earlier contention that this is a crappy time to celebrate the new year and I refuse to go along with it.

It'll be the new year when the cloud cover isn't so thick that the whole world is a washed-out palate. It'll be the new year when I've felt the warmth of the sun on my face at least twice in a two-week period. It'll be the new year when the gray that hangs where the sky used to be rolls back enough for us to remember what the color blue is.

When these things happen, folks, I'll get off the sofa to make merry and feel optimistic about new beginnings. Until then, I am likely to be a little grumpy, punchy, sarcastic, snide and withdrawn. You'll have to just deal with it. I miss the sunlight and nothing you can say will make me less bitter about the gloom.

It all reminds me of a t-shirt I wanted to have printed my second year of college (the most sunless winter in Chicago history up to that point) in which the sun shone (not sunny days, days when the sun came out) 12 days total (or something like that) between the beginning of November and end of March.

On February 19, 1993, beginning at 1:37 p.m.,
the sun shone for 8 minutes on the campus of
the University of Chicago.

The idea came to me because it actually happened. We were all scurrying around campus between classes and the sun peeked through the clouds for a few minutes. Everyone stopped and looked up in bewilderment. No one moved for a while, trying to fathom what was going on. Then, slowly, we began to smile and look around us, taking in the wondrous transformation the light wrought on the gray quadrangles. Many of us stood resolute, resigned to being tardy to class, until the sun disappeared again behind the impenetrable cloud cover. Then we hunched our shoulders and brought our eyes back to the uneven sidewalks and, thus, in traditional Chicago style, turned our attention back to the life of the mind.

Don't blame me if you read the last sentence as the statement of a pompous ass. I may be a pompous ass but that sentence is intended to be snide and irreverent. It's not my fault if I'm too subtle for you.

talk about feeling like a heel

Give this book a try and you too can be horrified that you sat idly by complaining about our jackass president and the atrocities at Abu Ghraib while people were [ARE] being mistreated so terribly right under our very noses.

I am frequently struck by how blind we continue to be to the bigotry and injustice around us even as we believe we are taking a stand for human rights, freedom, democracy, etc.