winker

Happy Halloween

2011-11-01T15:44:00.001-04:00

Cleo went as a lamb. I was mutton dressed as lamb. Okay, a mama sheep. Very close.

This afternoon, as I was singing her to sleep for her nap, we had this exchange:

Cleo: "Next Howlaween, I want to dress up as Dark Vader, okay?"
Me: "Um, sure, sweetie. That's fine" (pause) "Do you know someone who dressed up as Darth Vader this year?"
Cleo, breathily, impressed: "Ian!"

So, there you go. Innocent lamb one minute, wooed by the dark side (boys!) the next. Babyhood is quite definitely over.

This One's For You, Sprout

2011-02-04T21:51:00.000-05:00

One of my dear sisters-in-law has just managed to leave her beloved Egypt (with her husband, mother and two small children). Her fortitude, resourcefulness, and bravery are remarkable, and her fellow Egyptians who are fighting for their freedom are just as impressive. If you live in the US, please take a moment to urge the White House to keep up the pressure on Mubarak to step down immediately. Here are phone numbers:

Comments: 202-456-1111
Switchboard: 202-456-1414
FAX: 202-456-2461

Another of my dear sisters-in-law is outdoing even The Great Kingsolver in finding ways to eat locally, sustainably, and deliciously. They're making their own cured meat! From their own lovingly-raised animals! And what are you doing this week?

And my third dear sister-in-law is not only getting her PhD in General Awesomeness and Smartitude (or something like that), she's making a brand new human being. Inside her very own body! From scratch! It's mind-blowing.

Which brings me to my two points today. One: I am related to amazing women. Two: I have a lot of opinions about baby gear. My pregnant sister-in-law just asked for some advice in the gear and stuff department, and I figured a blog response, with its linkable links and searchable terms, might be the most convenient way to reply. So, for you, dear mother-to-be of my niece or nephew Sprout, are my best gear tips:

Ergo Baby Carrier. We started using this as soon as Cleo could hold her head up, and she's still comfy in it at age two and a half. It's flexible, adjustable, comfortable, and sturdy. However, for the first few months, we only used...

The Moby Wrap. I LOVED the Moby wrap. For the whole first year, I could wrap Cleo up snugly next to me-- we used three or four different positions as she got bigger and stronger and heavier. When she was small and slept a lot, I could actually work with her in there! I adored it, and so did Cleo. But not all kids like being that confined. I wouldn't buy it until after the baby's born, so you can tell if Sprout is a "wrap-me-upper" or a "don't-fence-me-inner"

Aden and Anais swaddling blankets. Cleo loved being swaddled, and it calmed her right down. These blankets are thin, soft, and very big. We loved them and used them constantly. I feel like I could still swaddle a newborn in my sleep. And will do so if asked!

Nosefrida and saline spray. Cleo doesn't exactly liked being squirted up the nose and then hoovered out, but it sure helps with stuffiness. Way better than the bulb syringes.

Baby Bjorn bouncer. She slept in this at night for the first few months, when she wasn't in our bed or her cradle. I have a clear memory of hanging one arm off the side of the bed, so I could bounce her as I "slept." We liked this one, but there are lots of baby bouncers and there's no need to spend this much. The major benefit of this one is it's foldability and non-cutesy style. I also hear raves about battery-powered baby swings, but we never got one.

A travel bed/bassinet/moses basket. This one is fantastic-- lightweight, folds down to travel, can have rocker-legs or sit flat on the floor, has a sunshade, and the handle folds down. Ours was a gift from the grandparents that Sprout and Cleo have in common, and is yours if you want it!

Baby Bjorn travel bed. When Sprout's a little bigger, this is the travel bed to get. It's like a pack-and-play except lighter, simpler, more compact, less dumb and more good in every way. And we have used both. There's one you can test drive at the grandparents' house.

The great stroller issue... We started out with a snap-n-go, which is a frame that you just plop the infant car seat into. It worked great, and was way cheaper than the infant carrier conversion kit that our fancy stroller was made for. Speaking of the fancy stroller, I love it. It has gotten a beating over the last two and a half years, and I'm only now starting to wish we'd treated it nicer (we tend to leave it out on the porch, and the sliding mechanism is getting a little sticky). The only drawbacks are that there's not much cargo space, and it's so not a one-handed fold/unfold. But I love that it stands alone while folded, and its maneuverability and ability to handle rough terrain are awesome. It's also compact and lightweight for how big and sturdy it is.

Diapers.com. If you use disposable diapers, this is a great way to get them. Free quick shipping and good prices. Or look into the Amazon Subscribe and Save program, where the diapers are slightly cheaper, and you sign up for regular deliveries.

The exercise/yoga/pilates ball. This saved our lives. We loved it so much, we traveled with one. If Cleo was overtired, it never failed for us hold her tight, bounce really hard, sing really loud, and just outlast her. It also makes a good footstool to use with...

A glider. They are big, ugly, and expensive. But if you ever end up holding Sprout during naps, it will make you cry tears of gratitude if you can put your feet up, lay your head back, and snooze a little too. We used our (hideous, hand-me-down, four-babies-and-counting) glider with strategically placed small pillows to make everyone really comfortable and secure. Most gliders can either rock or be locked in position. That was a nice feature, since you could lock it in a semi-reclined position, for maximum parental comfort. And yes, I'm sure someone at the AAP is getting hives since I talked about nodding off in a chair while holding a child. It worked for us. I do not guarantee that it's a sensible idea for anyone else.

Sleep sacks and a space heater. We keep our house cold at night, but we want the good old baby to be warm. What to do? She's not exactly a pro at keeping a blanket on, so once she graduated from swaddling (six months? eight?), we moved on to the sleep sack. She did recently discover how to unzip it, and also how to unsnap all four thousand snaps on her pajamas. The adorable/pathetic result of this is that when we checked on her before going to bed ourselves, we found her huddled in the corner of her crib, sound asleep, naked except for her diaper. Poor kid. I picked her up, re-pajama-ed her, and put her back down. She barely woke up. The next night, we told her that we had a special new way to put on her sleepy suit! Backwards! How funny! Works great.

An infant nail clipper is not necessary. You can just bite 'em off until you're comfortable using grownup clippers, and you can be much more precise and gentle with your teeth than with a fiddly little tool.

If Sprout uses a pacifier, you might want a night time pacifier retention device. We made our own by securely sewing one of these pacifiers to the hand of one of these bunnies.

Cotton flannel wipes. When I thought we were going to do cloth diapers, we got a supply of these. We ending up going with disposable diapers, but those wipes have been great for spit ups, highchair wipe downs, hand wipes, face wipes, nose blows, etc. They're sturdy, soft, washable, and plentiful. We probably put a dozen in every load of hot white laundry we do. So 12 or 18 wipes should do it, if you want to always be able to grab one.

See Kai Run shoes. These are expensive, but awesome. Cheap kids shoes are a terrible thing: stiff, slippery, crappy, pinchy, bad (one exception: we found some comfy Ugg-style winter boots at Target). Scrimp on the baby clothes, where there are lots of great ways and places to save. But go for the good stuff with shoes. My advice is to let the grandparents and aunts and uncles know that shoes are an excellent gift and here's the size we need right now. These shoes were Cleo's first. Sigh.

A white noise machine. We only started using this later, maybe around a year or eighteen months, but it really helped Cleo keep sleeping once she was asleep.

The Green Light! Again, a bigger-kid item, but it has saved us from the horror of waking up every morning at 4:15. You set the clock so it lights up at the appointed wake-up time, and explain the the little dear that morning does not begin until that light comes on. Before that, it's time for sleeping.

Sippy cups. These are for older kids, obviously, but learn from us: pick one kind of inexpensive and widely available cup, and stick to that. Otherwise, you'll have an avalanche of mismatched plastic and silicon parts threatening to engulf your kitchen and you can never find the right damn part when you need it. Most are BPA-free now, and if you don't put them in the dishwasher and you replace them when they start to look worn, I think the health risks of plastic are pretty well minimized. We like the kind linked above since they don't leak, and they only have three parts, unlike some that have up to seven parts per cup.

Christmas Wrap-Up, Brought to You by Christmas Smack-Down

2010-12-30T15:07:00.000-05:00

The Christmas Smack-Down is called walking pneumonia (or, as they like to call it these days, "atypical pneumonia" which, as my dad helpfully pointed out, is only appropriate). The good news is that I feel pretty well, as long as I don't do anything helpful or productive. Stairs, more than a few minutes of brisk walking, and a little feeble snow-sweeping have all sent me to my bed in the last few days.

The even better news is that I get enough down time to write a blog post! Oh boy! And so I'm going to commit to the immortal brain that is the internet all the things I want to remember for next year's holidays. So, Christmas Wrap-Up:

1) Singing and candlelight are a magical combination. We lit the advent wreath every Sunday evening, and sang O Come, O Come Emmanuel. The lyrics can be found here. This lovely practice has led to a certain two-year-old wandering around, mutter-singing "an' ranson cappive I-i-isra-rew" in a husky alto. Here's a sweet, if not strictly traditional, rendition by Sufjan Stevens (who is blessed among singer-songwriters for producing Christmas music that everyone in our house likes to listen to).

2) I have discovered The Easiest Recipe in the World (That Can Still Be Served to Guests). It's a delicious roasted sausage/bean/tomato concoction, and it's even easier if you use canned tomatoes, frozen chopped onions and dried garlic bits (heretical? I don't care. A good dinner in four minutes worth of work trumps that kind of heresy). The next day, if you have leftovers, chop up the sausage and dump everything in a pot with a bag of frozen chopped kale and some chicken broth, and you get a super hearty and tasty soup.

3) Silver glitter-glue on brown paper makes elegant giftwrap. It takes a while to dry, so make big sheets of it right before you go to bed so you can monopolize the whole dinner table and maybe some of the kitchen counters. Just draw swirly lines and patterns with the glue bottle, and it'll leave a lovely raised glittery line.

4) Salt dough is a great kid activity, and if you're all crafty and fairly anal, you can make some surprisingly refined ornaments to keep or give away. Here are a couple beautiful examples of what's possible. For the little kids, of course, it's all about squishing and rolling and mashing and poking and just enough tiny little licks to establish that it tastes pretty bad, just like Mama said.

5) I can't cook whole poultry to save my life. Somehow, every single time, I manage to turn out a bird that's overcooked on top and still bloody on the bottom. Between those unappealing strata, there's always a thin band of perfectly cooked meat, but it's awfully hard to carve around. So, that will be my next kitchen challenge to master. And until I've done it, I'm not cooking another whole bird on a holiday. Next year, I'll make a hearty beef stew sometime in November and stash it in the freezer. On Christmas day, I'll heat it up, add some fresh vegetables, and we'll eat it with hot rolls, extra-good butter, and a pie for dessert. Rhubarb, if we see some in the store.

6) Kids and icing are a classic combination. If you're decorating cookies with people less than a yard tall, Cheerios are a nice option along with (or instead of) sprinkles, colored sugars, and candies. The dry, savory crunch is actually a tasty combination with all that sugar. Other dry cereal would work too, of course. We might tackle gingerbread houses next year, and I can just see a roof thatched with Corn Chex. Royal icing is my adhesive of choice, although I noticed this recipe the other day, that looks like it might be a little tastier, what with the presence of actual butter.

7) Gingerbread makes extra-pretty decorated cookies. I used a recipe from my Great-Aunt Issy, which is spicy and easy. I made a double batch, which made enough for a cookie swap, an open studio party, four Christmas packages, and a good stash left over for the household. There are still two left, and they get better with a little age on them, so it wouldn't be a bad idea to bake them in late November next year.

Gingersnaps
(from Church Recipe Book, Lennoxville, Quebec)

1 cup shortening, butter or clear bacon fat

1 cup molasses

3 cups flour

1 tsp. salt

1 tsp. [baking] soda

1/2 cup brown sugar

1 egg

1/2 tsp. baking powder

2 tsp. ginger

1 tsp. cinnamon

Method:

Boil together molasses, brown sugar, and shortening. Cool and add beaten egg and dry ingredients. CHILL OVERNIGHT. Roll out 1/4 inch thick on generously floured board. Use small amounts of dough, keeping remainder of dough in fridge. Cut in desired shapes, place on ungreased pan and bake in moderate oven (325-350) for 10 minutes.

[I learned that when "chill overnight" is in all caps, it means that it looks like cake batter when you first make it, and you'll be sure you've screwed it up. Fear not. As long as it's cold, it's nice and easy to handle, and is very hard to overwork since there's so little liquid in the dough to toughen the gluten (thanks to Joe Pastry for that geeky tip), so it's another good parent/kid project.]

8) Don't worry about finding a parking place for church on Christmas Eve. The church is packed, but the rest of downtown is deserted. Do remember quarters for the meter and some care packages with sandwiches and warm socks, because the only people still downtown are Parking Enforcement and the homeless.

9) I have a wonderful family and delightful friends. Cheers, all. Merry Christmas.

The days these days: two and a half years old

2010-12-02T11:33:00.000-05:00

Cleo wakes up at 5:30, sometimes even six. This is much better than 4:30, and it's all thanks to one of those ridiculous gadgets that Parents These Days rely on, and without which generations of children grew and thrived. It is this silly thing, and it has saved us. Saved Cleo from being a tired, out-of-sortsy kid, and saved her parents from being grouchy about experiencing hours of pre-dawn darkness (mostly experienced by her dad, it must be said, but if Dada ain't happy, ain't nobody happy).

So now, the first thing we hear most days is, "The green light is green! Mama! Dada! The green light is green! It's morning!" And so we begin. The morning routine is what it's been for a while: oatmeal, milk, waking Mama at seven o'clock, and sending Dada off to work in the attic at 7:30.

Once the urgent items (clothing, food, etc) have been taken care of, the first question is, "What day to is?" Which means, in toddler-ese, "What day is it and how shall we amuse ourselves?" Monday is Mama and Cleo Day, Tuesday and Thursday are school days, Wednesday is Dada and Cleo go to the library, and Friday is usually Have Someone Over Day.

Her friends and their parents are an endless source of fascination. She declares several times a day. "I'm named [some friend], you're named [that friend's mother]." Or she'll pick up a rock and declare that it is named Layla (always, always Layla). And she and her dad make up collaborative stories, usually featuring people we know in some kind of conflict or peril. The themes of these stories ebb and flow, persist and change, until they're nearly incomprehensible to people who haven't seen the whole evolution.

"Once upon a time, there was a..."
"A little girl named Hazel, and she was crying!"
"Why was she crying?"
"Because monkeys stole her mama!"
"And what did Hazel do?"
"Pauline was there!"
"Did Pauline help her find her mama?"
"Yes! And they had pacifiers!"

And so on. Some other recurring themes this month are bears who live in caves, the macaroni monster, brushing one's teeth, eating one's clothes, the monkey-catching kit, robot mechanics who fix garbage trucks, frogs who are experts in animal sounds, going to the doctor's office, and a honeybee who can't buzz.

She has an insatiable appetite for this, and as soon as one story is all wrapped up, she says, "Tell me anonner 'tory!" This can get tedious sometimes, but the power of a story to immediately captivate and distract her is a useful tool.

Another thing she loves is going for walks. At any hour of the day-- dark, light, or raining, she'll ask to go for "a yiddle walk" Sometimes she walks happily, but other times we'll get ten feet down the sidewalk, and she'll stop, turn, throw her arms in the air, and say dramatically, "Carry me!" I think her perfect day would be to be carried around the neighborhood, being told story after story after story, with stops at the bakery, the toy store, and the library just to break things up a bit. One new attraction of the library is the bathroom, which is a thrilling destination for a recently potty-trained girl. Part of the appeal there is the automatic flush, which is the height of excitement. Every time we use an unfamiliar public bathroom, it gets the question, "Does it fush automatit-yee?" and there's a moment of disappointment if the answer is no.

Meals are always good for some entertainment, too. Luckily, she still likes sitting in her high chair and watching me cook. There are a few things she can do to help, like stir, grind pepper, dump measuring cups into mixing bowls, and poke the egg yolks with a fork before the serious scrambling begins (sometimes I think she requests eggs for breakfast just because she looks forward to the yolk-poking). She's a good eater, and has recently been parroting our food policy back to us

"I don't want it!"
"Well, you don't have to eat anything you don't want to eat, but..."
"...but dat's what's for dinner"
"Exactly right"

And three minutes later, if I carefully don't pay too much attention to what she's doing, she'll usually be munching happily. The only consistent refusals tend to be texture-related: big pieces of cooked onion, cooked mushrooms, fresh chopped herbs, and any kind of greens, cooked or raw. She has enjoyed lemon slices, raw onions, spicy Indian lime pickle, stinky goat cheese, and kim chee. I know this is the age that many kids start resisting foods, so I'm trying to stay grateful and happy for each good meal, and hope I won't despair if she takes a turn for the pickier. The result of all this cheerful eating (or maybe the cause) is that she's grown like a weed. I was so used to having a baby who was slight and small, hovering around the tenth percentile for height and weight. But now, she's beautifully average! I was so surprised the first time I realized that she was bigger than some of her peers. And she's so sturdy, with strong, fast arms and legs (that get a lot of exercise doing laps around the kitchen island).

In the last few months, I've noticed that the baby that used to live with us is now really, really gone. Cleo is a kid with a developed personality, preferences, habits, and interests. Sometimes I miss my cuddly little baby, but I'm loving this kid who I can hold hands and have a chat with as we walk down the street. In some ways it's harder now, in more ways it's easier, but mostly it's impossible to completely realize that this is a short, fleeting stage too, and before long we'll be on to a whole new kid yet again.

Potty Training

2010-11-04T21:07:00.000-04:00

Day One

This is going to be easy! She's a genius, she'll get it right away. I bet there won't be any more accidents after... oh. Well, by this evening she'll have it down for sure.

Day Two

You know, she's always been so stalwart in the face of minor scrapes and bumps. You think there's a correlation between a high pain threshold and having trouble identifying that uncomfortable "I have to pee" feeling? You think she'll be in diapers forever? I mean, she's a genius and all, that's clear, but maybe she'll just be the first incontinent nobel laureate.

Day Three

That book said we'd be going on outings by now. This is taking forever.

Day Four

Hey, this isn't so bad. No accidents yet today! And maybe by next week we'll be able to expand the potty proximity radius enough that we can go for a short walk.

Day Five

Those kids still in diapers are a bunch of chumps. I mean, sure, it must be nice to leave the house for longer than half an hour, but she's so accomplished! She's doing great!

Day Six

I can't believe it's only been a week. I can't believe I thought she'd never get it. By next week, I bet we'll be ready for an impromptu weekend road trip! Or we would be, if we were those people. Maybe a nice impromptu weekend Dry Pants Festival at home instead. Sounds good. But I'm not giving any speeches in front of a Mission Accomplished banner yet. Give it a little while.

Bulk Chicken, Master Recipe

2010-09-04T11:17:00.006-04:00

This recipe is the pinnacle of my career as a lazy/cheap/picky home cook. It is tasty, fairly cheap for a meat dish, and unbelievably easy given how nice it looks and tastes. Like most recipes, it could be endlessly varied and changed, so let me draw back the curtain and show you the reasoning behind the recipe, and invite you to do your own tinkering. Here's what makes the difference for me:

1) Boneless chicken thighs. Cheap and tasty, yes, but here are their oft-overlooked Special Features: They are both Fatty and Thin.

Fatty means that (unlike chicken breasts) they're good even if they get a little overcooked (a bonus both to busy cooks and to cooks who get freaked out by salmonella).

Thin means that they will both thaw quickly and cook quickly. If you really get intimate with a boneless skinless chicken thigh, you'll see that it's relatively uniform in thickness once you open it up, and that that thickness is less than an inch. When you lay them out flat in a preheated roasting pan, those suckers can cook through in fifteen minutes.

1) A dryish marinade. Browning is the friend of flavor, but liquid is the enemy of browning. I'm not interested in doing a lot of tedious patting-dry of marinated raw meat, so I kept the wet ingredients down to one: balsamic vinegar, since it's so intense, you don't need much to do the job. Everywhere else, I went for flavorful but dry. I used salt instead of soy sauce, tomato paste instead of canned or sauce, and dried herbs and pepper flakes. With the addition of olives and olive oil, I hit all my marinade bases (salt, acid, sugar, spice, oil), with no extra liquid that would get in the way of browning.

2) Oven browning. When I think of baked chicken, I don't usually think caramelized and delicious. I tend to think soft and pale. But that's not necessarily true. If you use a hot oven and a heavy pre-heated roasting pan, and leave a generous amount of room between thinnish pieces of meat, the liquid that the meat gives off during cooking will have a chance to reduce and caramelize, resulting in the sticky brown residue that is the sign of a delicious meal to come.

3) Double tomato. The tomato paste will get a little browned in the oven, along with the chicken juices and the rest of the marinade. This is a good start. The real trick is in getting that delicious brown goop off the pan and onto the dinner plates with a minimum of fuss and trouble. Here you go: canned tomatoes. They're wet enough to deglaze the brown bits, and they add their own oomph to the sauce when they mingle with the olives, garlic, and herbs. The ones I recommend are Muir Glen Fire Roasted (and when you say BPA, I put my fingers in my ears and say lalalalalafire-roasted. I don't use them often, but when I do, I use these). The tomatoes also pretty up the chicken nicely. I can't be bothered to flip the chicken as it cooks, so only one side gets brown. But it doesn't matter how pale and gnarly the chicken is when it's camouflaged under a little pile of olive-and-herb-flecked tomato. You could, of course substitute many different liquids and vegetables (or liquidy vegetables) for the canned tomatoes.

4) Vast quantities. Chicken thighs can often be bought at a good price if you go for the huge packages, and this recipe works well for that. All the ingredients freeze and thaw well, and there's not a whole lot of chopping or prepping involved (chop garlic and olives, assemble marinade, mix with chicken). Just freeze the raw chicken in dinner-sized batches (this recipe makes about twelve servings, and I usually freeze it in three two-pound batches). Making this one huge recipe is easier than many single-meal recipes I make, and it gets me three almost-done dinners. Yay.

One freezer tip: if you use big gallon-sized plastic bags and press out the air before you seal them up, you can flatten the chicken and spread it out. If you then lay the flattened bags down in the freezer, they'll freeze like big tiles, and be easier to stack in the freezer and way quicker to thaw when it comes time.

5) Completely optional ingredients. I like olives. I like garlic. As established, I like those fire-roasted canned tomatoes. The good news to those of you who are not me is: the success of this dish rests on none of these ingredients. Tinker! Tamper! Adjust! And let me know what you discover.

Tomato and Olive Roasted Chicken Thighs

1/2 cup finely minced garlic (this chicken cooks very quickly-- practically pulverize the garlic, or you'll end up with crunchy hunks of raw garlic. Sorry, unwitting recipe-testers!)

3/4 cup olive oil

1/4 cup balsamic vinegar

1 cup roughly chopped kalamata olives (1 10-oz jar pitted olives)

1 tsp salt

1 tsp red pepper flakes

2 tbsp tomato paste

1 tbsp dried oregano

6 lbs boneless skinless chicken thighs

3 cans fire-roasted canned tomatoes

Mix garlic, oil, vinegar, olives, salt, pepper flakes, tomato paste, oregano, and chicken. Let it marinate for an hour or a day (or freeze for later use as outlined above). The directions below are for one quarter to one third of this recipe. To cook it all at once, your best best is to do it in several batches, so that the chicken doesn't get over-crowded in the pan. On the other hand, if you're cooking for twelve, do what you can do and good luck to you.

Preheat your oven to 375 degrees, with a heavy roasting pan or large skillet in the oven to heat as well. Lay one and a half to two pounds of the chicken pieces flat in the hot pan, and bake 20 minutes. Leave enough space around the chicken so that the juices can brown. After twenty minutes in the oven, remove chicken from pan and set aside in a bowl. Deglaze roasting pan with one can of tomatoes. Cook down until thick. Add any accumulated chicken juices to sauce. Put chicken pieces back into hot sauce to heat through, and serve when ready.

Equal Parts Shrimp and Spinach (read on! really!)

2010-08-30T20:31:00.001-04:00

The latest contestant in the Quickest, Healthiest, Easiest Dinner is this:

Shrimp Saag

1 teaspoon olive oil

3 cloves garlic, finely chopped

1 teaspoon ginger, finely chopped

1 small onion, finely chopped

1 teaspoon curry powder (or to taste)

1 pound frozen spinach

1/2 cup milk or cream

1 pound shell-on frozen shrimp

salt to taste

1 tablespoon butter (optional)

First, start the rice cooker. Then, dump the frozen shrimp in a big bowl of cold water to thaw. In a medium lidded saucepan, saute the garlic, ginger, and onion in olive oil until golden and fragrant. Add the curry powder and let it toast for a few seconds, then dump in the whole bag of frozen spinach and the milk or cream and put the lid on. Bring to a simmer. While that's heating, drain and peel the shrimp and set them aside. Puree the hot spinach mixture (an immersion blender works great here), and add the peeled shrimp. Cook until they're pink and curled, and then taste. Add more curry or some salt if you like, and if it tastes a little meager, stir in some butter.

The shrimp can, of course, be substituted for at will: leftover meat, canned chickpeas, paneer (where do you get paneer, anyway?), etc.

Heat Wave

2010-07-07T10:43:00.003-04:00

A comb made of ice. That's what I need. Can't you imagine it? A re-usable plastic handle, a comb-shaped ice mold for the freezer, and an improvement (quicker! colder!) on the tedious two-step process of running your head under the faucet and then combing your hair.

Until that product comes out of R&D, I'll be running ice cubes over my head, which is surprisingly effective (soak your hairline first, work back from there). However, it's only appropriate for fellow heat-wave sufferers who have reached the point that cooling trumps all other considerations, namely, don't let's look like freaks.

This heat doesn't keep Cleo from wanting to run around outside wearing a fleece jacket. I'm not sure what her goal was with that idea, so I suggested instead that she play naked in the wading pool in the shade, and that was an acceptable alternative. So yesterday, she had an hour-long intensive course in fluid dynamics while I sipped my iced coffee with my feet in cold water. Not a bad way to spend the afternoon.

Vietnamese Salad

2010-06-08T13:38:00.002-04:00

Cabbage is cheap, long-lasting, full of good vitamins and fiber, and can be delicious, but it suffers from an image problem. It never looks very available in the market-- it's so pale and hard and undelicious looking and once you've smelled overcooked cabbage, it's hard to forget it. Luckily, it's pretty easy to overcome. Here's last night's dinner.

Vietnamese Salad

1/3 cup fish sauce

1/4 cup sugar (white or brown)

2 teaspoons roughly chopped ginger

1 garlic clove, roughly chopped

1 teaspoon chili-garlic paste (or some fresh chilies)

juice of one lime

one small cabbage, thinly sliced

one red pepper, thinly sliced

two carrots, julienned

three scallions, sliced

one handful basil, chopped

one handful mint, chopped

3/4 cup roasted peanuts, chopped

Heat fish sauce and sugar together and stir until sugar dissolves. Add ginger, garlic, chili paste, and lime juice. It will smell awful, but persevere. Blend until garlic and ginger are pretty well pulverized. Mix cabbage, peppers, basil, mint and dressing together. Scatter roasted peanuts over each serving.

We had this with rice noodles and roasted salmon. Delicious and quick.

Baby of the Month is... Mae!

2010-05-03T12:38:00.007-04:00

I'm in the part of my life when there are a lot of new babies around. A couple times a year, I'll get the emailed photo of a red-faced little loaf of bread and a mother with the classic thousand-yard stare (softened by a sheen of pride and love). I have not yet forgotten what it felt like to be that woman, so my second thought (after "Oh, yay!") is, "They must be exhausted! I should bring them some food!"

Sometimes I get my act together and do it, but other times I'm just stymied by indecision. What's the right thing to bring? If I don't know them well enough to have their dietary preferences memorized, I'm stumped, and don't feel like I should interrupt their newborn bliss/exhaustion with annoying questions about food. The other factor is that new-baby-time doesn't often coincide with regular-meals time. So I want to bring something that can be eaten right out of the fridge, warmed up or not. And also delicious. And I'm busy these days, so easy is also good. Now maybe you can see how it happens that these babies are often walking around before I can make up my mind about what I should bring their poor parents for dinner.

Well, I finally have a fairly good solution. And I'm immortalizing it here so that I won't forget. It's Peanut-Sesame Noodles with Vegetables. It's vegan, so it takes care of vegetarian, dairy-free, kosher, halal, no red meat, no pork, no shellfish, and lots of other strictures. The only people who can't eat it are people who can't have gluten, people who can't have peanuts, and people who don't like delicious food. I generally deliver it in several containers (noodles, veg, and sauce) so people can always eat the parts they want and not the parts they don't.

And it's delicious, as implied above. For years, I tried to figure out a good peanut-sesame sauce, and they were always too gloopy. And once mixed with cooked pasta, they became both gloopy and sticky. Bleah. But this one cracks the code. The answer? Water. Duh. The sauce is adapted from Smitten Kitchen's recipe here.

Welcome Home Noodles

vegetables:
red peppers
steamed zucchini
steamed carrots
steamed green beans

topping/garnish:
fresh basil, mint, bean sprouts, scallions

sauce:
1/2 cup natural peanut butter
1/4 cup soy sauce
1/2 cup warm water
1 tablespoon minced ginger
1 clove garlic, minced
2 tablespoons rice vinegar
2 tablespoons sesame oil
1 tablespoon honey
1 good squirt sriracha sauce

noodles:
KaMe brand "plain chinese noodles" or similar wheat noodles

Combine all the sauce ingredients and give them a good whiz with an immersion blender, if you have one (and do-- have one, I mean. They're awesome). Let the sauce sit while you cook the noodles and prep the vegetables.

About those vegetables:

You could obviously use almost anything, and this is a great recipe for seasonal adaptation. If you're pressed for time, go through the salad bar at the grocery store, and get all the credit for about half the work.

About the noodles:
The package I had said to cook them for five minutes, but they would have been way too soggy if I had. I ended up boiling them for two or two and a half minutes and they were great. The key is to taste frequently. Soggy=bad. The next trick is to rinse the cooked noodles very well with cold water. This washes all the loose starch off the noodles, the stuff that will turn things into a sticky mess later if it's still hanging around making trouble. So, rinse! Immersing and swishing the noodles in several changes of clean cold water is the best way, but a nice long shower in the colander is better than nothing, and quite a bit quicker. Once they're rinsed, let them drain well, even going so far (if you have time) as to spread them out on a clean kitchen towel for a while, so that they don't sit in that water, absorb it, and sog right up. After they're washed and dried, toss them with a little sesame oil so they don't stick together, and put them in a container (if this is a meal for delivery).

About containers:
We've just made the switch to all-glass in our house, and I think it's a good thing to do for the health of families and planets both, but I still think new-baby dinners are an excellent application for disposable plastic containers. If the new family can just pitch (or rinse and re-use) the things and move on to the next urgent item, everyone's happy. We had someone's lidded casserole dish for eight months after Cleo was born, until she mentioned it to me and I blushed, dug it up, and gave it back. Oops.

Pack up the noodles, sauce, vegetables, and garnish in their own containers, and drop the dinner off with the new family with my heartfelt congratulations and commiseration. If they're having a particularly hard time, include take-out chopsticks, plastic forks, and paper plates and napkins.

PS: Fonts are now fixed! And some grammar and stuff. Thanks, in-house team!

Easter

2010-04-05T11:23:00.004-04:00

We celebrated Easter by strewing a dozen colored eggs over the back yard and then pointing them out to Cleo and her best friend Levi. They humored us and collected them cooperatively, but didn't understand why exactly these balls were funny shaped and not at all bouncy. Then we had some snacks and ran around the yard and that was Easter.

It's nice that we've had a couple of years to really nail down our various holiday traditions before Cleo starts noticing, because we don't really have a default plan. We come from different traditions, but we do agree that it's important to mark holidays and festivals as a family. We just have to settle the particulars. Luckily, we also agree on some general values: celebratory meals = good; candy-crazed kids = less good; a sense of gratitude and loving-kindness = good; a sense of entitlement and materalism = less good; homemade decorations = good; lots of plastic junk that has to be stored somewhere 11 months of the year = less good. So we've been keeping our ears perked up for holiday celebrations that fit into our style. For future Easters, I think we may incorporate some of these ideas:

bunny treats

civilized egg hunt

Happy Easter, everyone!

The Days These Days: Nineteen Months Old

2010-02-26T09:55:00.003-05:00

Cleo wakes up at 4:15. I wish there were some other, less brutal way to say that, but let's just stick to the plain truth. We've tried earlier bedtimes, later bedtimes, ignoring her, bringing her into bed with us (and all of these things with a reasonable degree of consistency, in their turn). But it seems like the hard-wired alarm clock in her head will not be reprogrammed. Our current strategy is to let her think about the day to come until five o'clock (which she does by alternately crying, sitting quietly, and calling Mama-Mama-Mama Dada-Dada-Dada). It's a combination of denial and resolve. It's not really getting us anything but another 45 minutes of dozing.

At five, her dear, dearest Dada gets up and they start the day. I am happily unaware of what exactly goes on between five and seven, although I know it involves dishes and oatmeal and honey.

"Why do we put honey on our oatmeal?"

"Ummy!"

"That's right! Because it's yummy!"

Then they come upstairs. The first thing I'm aware of is Cleo saying, "Uppa dairs!" And the answering, "Yep, up the stairs! Let's go get Mama!" And then the feet come running down the hall and the door gets pushed open. They've been practicing saying, "Good morning, Mama!" It's going well, but this morning, she came in and he said, "What were we going to say to Mama?" And she said, very proudly, "Mo', pease!" So I told her how nice it is to say please, and how she's such a polite little girl, and also good morning.

Then I have half an hour to put myself together for the day and have breakfast, and Cleo has half an hour to alternately play and ask for bites of my oatmeal. This girl is made of oatmeal. She likes it not only the Dada way (milk, butter, honey) but also plain, and even the Mama way (butter, salt and pepper).

Then we all brush our teeth together. This is a relatively new part of the routine, partly because we're lazy and partly because she still only has four teeth, and why stress about brushing what's largely still theoretical. She's into it. It took some cajoling and a few days of whole-family-tooth-brushing before she came around, but now she asks to "Buss teef" whenever she catches a glimpse of the Elmo toothbrush (a helpful item in the campaign for dental hygiene).

Then we kiss good old Dada goodbye and he goes upstairs to work ("Uppa dairs! Uppa Dada!" She's working it out.) We often go to the grocery store at this point in the day, because although it's mid-morning in Cleoland, the store is just opening and it's nice and empty. There are usually just enough people that we can have some nice chats and lots of waving. If it's Tuesday or Thursday, there are four and a half hours of school to be had, and Cleo is loving it. Her teachers are delightful, and have that toddler magic all figured out. In other words, they know it's very important that Elmo get his diaper changed, and that we pile all the babies up in the crib so that they can have a nap. It's a wonderful feeling to have some time to myself while I know that Cleo's enjoying herself in a warm, friendly place with people she likes.

After school, it's naptime. These days, that means a bottle of milk (guk), a book (guk), and a pacifier (bab-doot). Hey, we can understand her. Usually. She sleeps for an hour, then wakes up and cries, and then one of us (weekdays=me, weekends=him) will sit in the glider in her room and hold her and she'll sleep another hour. This routine is under the same heading as morning wake-up time: Not Ideal/Not Insufferable, It's Been Worse/It'll Get Better. Since she doesn't seem to mind a dimly-lit room, we can either read or doze as we hold her, and there are much worse things than a quiet hour with a sweet sleeping baby.

Afternoons, we often get together with other kids and parents. Yesterday, I told her we were going to see Jane, Max, and Ella* and she said, "And cheese!" As it happened, she was right.

I'm running out of time (father-daughter music class ends in five minutes), so here's the rest of the day, shorthand:

Dinner: a struggle.

Bedtime: easy.

This kid: the darling of my heart.

*not their real names

Context is everything.

2010-02-22T17:20:00.003-05:00

Pea ha papah!

Mo pea ha papah!

More peas and pasta?

[Emphatic nod]

Would you like more fish paste?

No hih pase. Pea ha papah.

Okay, here you go.

Otay!

[eats by the fistful]

ooooh noooo! papah!

[sound of pasta hitting the floor]

I take it you're done?

Ou'!

Peasant Food, Times Two

2010-01-17T14:50:00.002-05:00

It's cold and grey and I'd much rather be rolling around on the floor with Cleo, so I've been making a lot of one-pot hearties. While good and filling and very leftoverable, food like this can sometimes get a little stodgy. So here are two adaptable recipes that welcome the addition of some fresh (or fresh-ish) vegetables.

Red Lentil Dal

one cup red lentils (actually a gorgeous orange, which fades to a sad putty during cooking)

2 or 3 cups water

1 tablespoon oil or ghee (or more)

1 tablespoon curry powder (or more)

subject to taste and availability:

minced garlic

minced ginger

chopped garlic

zucchini

green beans

tomatoes

peas

carrots

cilantro

salt

Bring the lentils and water to a boil, then reduce to a simmer and cover. While they cook, saute the onions in the oil. Once they're soft and browning, add the ginger and garlic. Once they're also soft and browning, add the curry powder. Stir briefly (you don't want to burn the curry powder, but you do want to warm and toast it in the oil), and then add the mixture to the cooking lentils. If the lentils seem too dry, add more hot water. It they seem too soupy, leave the lid off and let it cook down. Aim for an oatmeal-like consistency, and cook long enough that the lentils totally fall apart into brown sludge. It'll be ugly, but tasty and digestible. While the lentils simmer, assess your vegetable options. Add raw vegetables now, so that they can cook. Leftover cooked vegetables can be added at the end, along with fresh tomatoes and cilantro if you have them.

Pasta Fagioli (sort of)

2 italian sausages

1/2 cup tiny pasta

1 can garbanzo or other beans

miscellaneous vegetables

1 pint grape tomatoes

fresh basil

grated parmesan

black pepper

olive oil

lemon juice

Simmer the sausages and beans in water to cover. Once the sausages are cooked, chop them up and add them back in to the pot. Add the pasta and any raw vegetables you want to use, along with more water if necessary. Once the pasta is done, add any cooked veg you have, and heat throughly. Just before serving, mix in cheese, fresh tomatoes, and basil. You probably won't need to add salt, because of the cheese, sausages, and beans, but taste it and see. Drizzle olive oil and lemon juice on each serving.

Happiness, Aisle Six

2009-11-02T11:59:00.003-05:00

I try to be a good person. I try to make the world a better place. But all my previous efforts in this area are looking pretty paltry lately.

In terms of people-made-happy versus time-and-effort-expended, nothing I've ever done has been as effective as taking Cleo to the grocery store. Even on days like today, when she has a runny nose and is wearing a mishmashy sort of outfit, color-wise, she can be depended on to delight at least seven separate people in the course of a twenty-minute visit to the grocery store. She wiggles with delight as I put her in the cart, and proceeds to point and wave excitedly at all the people we pass. She loves identifying all the foods, even if she's more enthusiastic than accurate. Any round fruit or vegetable between three and six inches in diameter is an "App-puh!", any white, yellow, or orange hunks are "cheeeee!", and any boxes that show beige-ish, squarish foods are "kack-uhrs!" Another shopper who appears at the end of the aisle is hooted and waved at like a long-lost friend, and many people get called Da-da (a mark of seriously high esteem). If a fellow shopper has app-uhs, cheeeee, or kack-uhrs in her cart, Cleo lets her know that they have a lot in common, and shall we have a chat about it, perhaps over a little snack?

I've seen people go from surly and harried to completely charmed and at ease within seconds. Some people are immune to the charms of a loud, slightly grubby baby screeching at them (can you imagine?) but most people walk away in better moods than they approached in. I like to imagine those people leaving the store, being more patient drivers, nicer to their co-workers, more likely to give to charity... Well, maybe I'm reaching. But I do sometimes think of Cleo as the butterfly that starts a hurricane, only with goodwill. So I don't feel bad these days if I forget something at the store and have to go back the next day. Every little bit helps, and the extra gas is just the cost of doing business as a milkman of human kindness.

Timeline, Yesterday

2009-10-27T08:39:00.005-04:00

8:30 AM, at the park with Cleo: "Today's his birthday! I'll call tonight."

2:30 PM, driving home from a Hallowe'en party with a sleeping pumpkin: "Can't forget to call tonight!"

6:15 PM, feeding Cleo crackers: "I bet he'll be home from work soon. I should call in an hour or so."

3:30 AM, waking suddenly: "Crap."

Happy birthday, Pops! Hope you had a great day, even though only half your children managed to call you.

Dinner for a Baby

2009-10-25T18:10:00.003-04:00

Good news, loyal readers! Another fairly boring post! I know, I'm a giver. You needn't thank me. I do it out of love. Here's a tasty, easy, healthy, quickish baby meal that's good freshly made, or straight out of the fridge.

Spinach and Cheese Pasta or Food Brick (hat tip to the inventor of Lunchblock)

1 pound uncooked smallish pasta shapes

1 pound frozen spinach--the good kind*

24 ounces marinara sauce

1 to 2 cups shredded cheese

Thaw the spinach and chop it up nice and small. If the pieces are too big, they'll be pick-out-able by a dextrous baby. If a dextrous baby does not eat your cooking, chop it any old way, but do chop it so it doesn't straggle off the fork in a pathetic way. Cook the pasta, drain it, and mix it with the sauce and spinach over medium heat. The pasta will absorb some of the liquid from the sauce, which is good. Once it's evenly mixed and very hot, turn the heat off and add the cheese. Stir briefly, then let it sit so the heat of the dish melts the cheese. If you keep stirring and heating, the cheese will glob up and get generally goopy. If you let it melt without harassing it, it'll stay evenly distributed and won't get rubbery. Once it's melted, you can serve and eat immediately, or you can proceed with the Food Brick portion of the recipe, which is this:

Pack it firmly into a leftover container. Refrigerate overnight, or until thoroughly congealed. Unmold it from the container, and if you packed in it tightly enough and used a suitably adhesive quantity of cheese, it will be a solid block which you can then slice into little hunks which make excellent, neat finger food for a toddler. Without the Food Brick portion of the recipe, this dish is messy enough that it might cause your co-parent, if you have one, to turn to you mid-meal, covered in sauce and cheese, and say, "Is there some other way people feed their children?"

*If you're a frozen vegetable comparison shopper, you'll know what I mean. In my neck of the woods, it's Stop & Shop "Nature's Promise" Cut-Leaf Spinach.

Barf City

2009-10-25T15:05:00.001-04:00

The first time she threw up, it was helpful. A friend of mine, also with an eight-month-old, was wondering what the difference was between spitting up and throwing up, and Cleo obliged with a textbook example (markedly more forceful, more voluminous and more smelly than spit-up, if you're wondering). My friend went home reassured that her baby had never vomited, and Cleo and I went home with a bit more dirty laundry than we'd gone out with.

The second through fifth times were only helpful in that they convinced Cleo's doctor and parents that she had trouble digesting foods containing soy. But they were mainly stressful, messy, and exhausting for all concerned. She'd be surprised by the first barf, resigned to the second, and get progressively weaker and more pitiful every subsequent time (usually every ten minutes for a couple of hours, depending on how much soy she ate). It was rough for all concerned, but we have refined our baby rehydration techniques, which follow, in case they might be helpful to anyone else:

Ice chips will sometimes be taken when sips of pedialyte are refused; once pedialyte is voluntarily sipped, five swallows every two minutes are a good maximum (more can trigger more vomiting), and once it's been twenty minutes with no vomiting, ten swallows every two minutes, then increase again after another twenty minutes, etc. The relationship between hydration and alertness is direct and dramatic, which is scary when a baby's dehydrated, but quickly reassuring as they start to take fluids again. I hasten to add that this is based on one family's experience with one child, and may or may not be applicable to anyone else. If you find yourself with a dehydrated kid, follow your instincts and go to the doctor or the ER if that's what you feel is necessary.

We had her tested for allergies, and she's not allergic to soy foods, her gut just has a hard enough time digesting them that they get forcefully evicted about two hours after she eats. We've discovered that even small amounts of soy can set her off, and there are small amounts of soy in lots and lots and lots of packaged foods. Soybean oil doesn't have enough soy protein in it to cause her problems, nor does soy sauce (at least in small amounts--we're not doing any more research, thank you very much).

The day care center she goes to two mornings a week provides lunch for the kids, which is great, but they're understandably spooked by anything resembling a food allergy, so they gently recommended that we provide the grain/protein part of lunch for her. This is fine, but they (for good reasons) also ask that all food brought in be vegetarian and nut-free which limits our options a bit. No soy, no meat, and no nuts bring us to beans and cheese and eggs. And eggs bring us to egg whites, which seem to cause problems for Cleo's gut as well (less dramatic, other end, still not so nice), so we're down to beans, egg yolk and cheese, which is why I was delighted that she ate these:

Vegetable Fritters

egg yolk

flour

wheat germ

cooked chopped vegetables

salt and pepper

Mix according to whim and inventory, fry like pancakes, serve to baby.

Other popular lunch items have been:

bean/cheese quesadilla: allowed to cool, cubed.

mac and cheese and peas

white bean puree on pitas

cream cheese sandwich

pasta, red sauce, spinach, generous amounts of cheese

tortellini

beans, pasta and pesto

The Days These Days: 15 months old

2009-10-21T10:30:00.002-04:00

She wakes up at five, and this is so much better than four, I take pity on her and bring her into bed for a crack-of-dawn snack and a little nap. She nurses on one side, looks up at me and says, "Mo!" as if I might forget, and then nurses on the other side. She sleeps between us until six-ish, when she rolls over, stands up, and says either "Dada!" or "Cheese!" depending on how hungry she is, I suppose. Her version of cheese sounds like "deezh!" or "jeezh!" or sometimes just "deee!" She loves cheese, and gets excited and asks for it whenever she hears a similar word: jeez, she's, peas, please, Jesus, etc.

Her dear Dada gets up with her at six and they do the dishes and clean the kitchen while I sleep in until the luxurious hour of 7:30-ish. Then we all eat breakfast together, and she waves and says "Ba-ba" to her dad. I check my email, she plays, and eventually she realizes that we are inside when we could be outside, and she reminds me that it's time to go "Outh!" She gets her hat, and we head into the back yard, where I rake leaves into piles and she helps me by spreading them around again. I work slightly faster than she does, so it's a net benefit to the yard, and keeps us both happy.

Naptime's around ten, and lasts for a precious thirty minutes. She wakes up and goes instantly from half-asleep and bleary to bright eyed and grinning and asking to see Dada. So we go upstairs to the office and say hi. Once she's changed, we go see friends or go to the park or the market. She loves her friend Ari, and asks to see him at least twice a day: "Ar-ruh? Ar-ruh?" We have lunch, and she eats either almost nothing or an astonishing volume. According to the parenting books, I'm supposed to cultivate an air of detachment about this. It is hard. But her average diet is varied and plentiful, and she gets bigger and heavier all the time, so it's all going well. She loves noodles, apples, rice, bananas, cheese, crackers, carrots, oranges and peas. If nothing else is available, she'll eat green beans, white beans, tomato, bread, egg yolk, vegetable fritters, chicken, and fish. She will spit out avocado every time, along with anything that's too big or too tough for a kid with only two teeth.

The afternoon nap is similarly brief, and at three o'clock is the changing of the guard. I go to my studio, and Dada takes over, and there's generally a trip to the park. At the park, or, in Cleo-ese, "guck! guck!" she climbs up and slides down the slide feet first, on her belly. Her ability to do this all by herself is directly related to the Dada school of park/kid management, i.e.: let 'er alone, she can do it. I admire this approach, but I find myself having to jam my hands into my armpits and hold myself back from hovering when it's my turn at the park.

At six, I come home and it's time for a wash and bed for Cleo. Our current baby-bathing technique is for one parent to shower, the other to hand in a naked, grubby baby, wait five minutes, and then remove and wrap in a towel a wet, clean baby, and bundle her off to be pajama-ed. Inexplicably, she loves this whole process, including being held right under the shower for a good rinse. Well, she tolerates that part. She loves everything else, especially the towel.

The current bedtime story list has grown: we're now up to (in strict order) Miss Mary Mack, Mr Brown Can Moo, The Little Book of Hugs, Yummy Yucky, and Goodnight Moon. Each of these has its own favorite phrase or page or illustration, and there is a lot of pointing and conversation and turning back and forth of pages.

Once sleep is firmly established (I've Been Working on the Railroad), it's time for grown-up dinner. This meal has been drifting downwards in quality recently, and hopefully we hit bottom the other night with frozen fish, frozen peas and carrots, and rice. But that's another story.

Temperature Fluctuations, Target Practice

2009-10-12T16:59:00.004-04:00

We've taught Cleo that hot food has to cool off before she eats it, and she helps it along by blowing intently--sometimes on the hot food, sometimes off into the air, just as a supportive gesture, I guess.*

We have also taught her to love peas. Hooray. She eats them by the fistful, which is nice, considering her disdain for many other vegetables.

Both those things are good, but I hadn't realized that, combined, they create a situation. Say her mouth is full of cooled peas and her tray is full of hot peas. Yes. She has learned that she can make Mama laugh really really hard if she blows peas across the room like a little pellet gun.

*She has also started blowing when she steps out into the cold air. Which, although not a proven way to warm the planet, might bear some research. You have your farting cows, your belching gas-guzzlers, and your chilly toddlers. Someone get on that.

Impressive writing even if she weren't sleep deprived.

2009-10-07T09:16:00.003-04:00

A woman named Evany had a baby ten weeks ago, and has now written one of the best descriptions I've ever read of life with a newborn (minus the love and wonder, which she covers elsewhere in her post):

"I feel like I’m constantly playing that game Concentration, where you have to puzzle together plastic shapes into their appropriate holes as time tick-tick-ticks away, and if you don’t finish in time the whole game flies apart and you leap six feet into the air and spend the rest of your shellshocked life in therapy. I’ll get maybe two minutes into a bath or a bowl of oatmeal when The Tyrant Awakes (“Baby Alive!” yell Marco and I) and it’s back to the mommy salt mine. And even when he does manage to sleep for longer than a handful of minutes, the downtime is tainted with the looming spectre of his potential awakening. I always have one ear cocked for baby yells, underscoring my long, house-bound days with a spicy mix of tension and intrigue."

I had kind of forgotten about that, and now I remember just enough to feel very grateful for a fourteen-month-old who sleeps in fairly predictable chunks.

Fritters! Hooray!

2009-10-04T17:38:00.002-04:00

Here's the recipe. Story later (she likes it! Hooray!).

Cleocakes (or Frenchiefritters)

2 egg yolks

2 tablespoons flour

1/3 cup finely chopped cooked chicken

1/3 cup finely chopped cooked cabbage

salt, pepper, and curry powder to taste

Mix the flour and egg yolks until they're smooth. Add the chopped ingredients and seasonings, then fry like pancakes. This can, of course, be adapted to include any kind of leftovers and seasonings. I bet a sweet apple one would be delicious.

I am braced for angry emails

2009-09-22T09:35:00.005-04:00

I don't usually touch on controversial subjects here because I have both affection and respect for my readers, who are an impressively diverse bunch. But a topic has come up in my life which is impossible to avoid. My mind has been changed, I have switched sides, and I wanted to let you all know how I came to my realization: the toilet paper should come off the bottom of the roll, not the top.

I had been an "over-the-topper" ever since I stayed at the Savoy in London twenty two years ago. That's how they did it there, and I figured if they thought it should be that way, well, they must have come to the right conclusion. It was also the first hotel I stayed in where they folded the end of the toilet paper into a dainty point, which I found exceedingly elegant. So while I never folded the end like they did, I did put it on the holder that way, with the sense that I was doing something right.

My eyes were opened this weekend when I took Cleo into the bathroom with me. In the past, she's been content to play with the bath mat or a small toy, but this time the toilet paper attracted her attention. She batted at it with a downward swipe, and it obligingly let loose a whole stream of lovely white paper. She was delighted, and gearing up to do it again when I distracted her with a plastic cup placed on the edge of the sink and asked her if she could reach it.

This kid cannot resist a challenge. The paper, while amusing, had been done. That cup, however, was the Everest of the moment. I admit that I feel a smug sense of victory when I outsmart her like this, until I remember that she's only 14 months old, I am 408 months old, and it would be a sad state of affairs if I couldn't. While she was reaching for the cup, I quickly re-rolled the paper and switched it around. The cup attained, she turned back to the paper and gave it another downward swipe. It spun around its little bar, but nothing more exciting than that, since the end was being held in by the spin, not unfurled as it had been before. She did the infant version of a little oh-well shrug, and went back to her old buddy the bath mat.

My eyes were opened, and my mind was changed. In a house with cats or babies, or anyone else that's likely to find paper-unfurling entertaining, the paper should come off the bottom of the roll. It is possible, of course, to unfurl the paper by swiping at the roll with an upwards motion, but that's just not as natural a gesture (try it), and so while not impossible, unfurling becomes less likely. In a house with no infants or cats (or, say, a fancy hotel populated largely by adult humans), this rule does not apply, and you can use whatever logic you like to decide which way is preferable. But those of you who live with small, curious creatures, your way is clear.

PS: Confidential to S. in Cazenovia: If you would like to leave a comment, look below the end of the essay, down there where it says "0 comments." Click on it, and a window should open which allows you to type to your heart's content. Then, where it says "choose an identity" you can select "anonymous" and then click "publish your comment." Or, you can just call me! It's always nice to hear your voice!

Hot, Tired, Hungry

2009-08-23T15:27:00.004-04:00

Since the Era of The Kid (EK) began, my time in the kitchen has shrunk. We get to the end of the day, the baby's in bed, the most urgent chores have been done, and we have about 45 minutes to cook and eat before our foreheads start drooping table-ward. But I hadn't realized exactly how much things had changed until recently.

The other day, feeling that the man of the house deserved an extra-good dinner (I don't remember now what feat of domestic heroics he had performed--they tend to run together these days), I made one of his old favorites from the Era Before the Kid: Pasta with Kale, Sausages and White Beans. This is a fairly straightforward recipe, and I used to make it all the time, EBK. But going back to it after more than a year, I couldn't believe how long everything took. You par-cook the sausages, then slice them thinly at an angle, then brown the sausage slices (on both sides!), then take the sausage out of the pan again, then deglaze, then saute the garlic, then put the poor beleaguered sausage back in, along with the kale, which had previously been blanched and chopped, and the beans, which are easy. Good god. Now I know what I did with my time before Cleo was born. Apparently, I spent the last ten years cooking dinner.

But, by this spring, I had pretty much come to terms with the new normal, and had some good standbys: pizza, curry, chili, soup, and pasta-with-stuff, all of which could be cooked mostly if not all the way ahead, and so I could make a bunch of dinners at once. This routine worked well all the way through a cool, rainy early summer, but then the weather changed. The last few weeks have been hot and humid and sticky and horrible, and while we've coped fairly well during the day (wading pool, one window AC unit, and, if all else fails, The Horrible Mall), dinner is a challenge. I don't mind eating something warm for dinner, but I draw the line at standing by the stove while it gets that way. All my best summer recipes are from EBK, and so involve a lot of labor and/or a lot of farmers' marketing. So I'm at a loss. This is not one of those times when I recount a dilemma and then recount my solution. No, this is one of those times when I say, "Help! What do you make for dinner when it's hot, you're exhausted, and you have 20 minutes until plate/table contact?" Extra credit if you chime in in the next two hours, and you suggest something that uses only ingredients currently in my fridge.

Quinoa Salad

2009-08-16T13:46:00.003-04:00

This is a magical recipe. It's not only tasty, it's also vegan, gluten-free, delicious with meat, great by itself, very healthy, can be made ahead (but doesn't have to be), is good at any temperature, and is pretty cheap given how marvelous it is. If you're still not convinced, know that it's also pretty, with its flecks of red and green and gold. Its only drawback is that it takes a little bit of work--but just tedious work, nothing finicky. This makes a lot--maybe 10 servings as a side dish? Great leftovers, great packed lunches, great for a crowd, so I always make a lot.

It's based on a recipe from the 1997 Joy of Cooking, but over its years in our kitchen it has evolved quite a lot. So change it at will, and let me know if you discover any particularly crackerjack variations.

1.5 cups quinoa

1 large clove garlic, minced

5 tablespoons olive oil

1 tablespoon cumin

2 15-ounce cans garbanzo beans

2 red peppers

1 vidalia onion

1 cup sun dried (or roasted) tomatoes

1 bunch parsley

1/2 cup pine nuts

3 tablespoons balsamic vinegar

red pepper flakes to taste

salt to taste

First, cook the quinoa in 3 cups water (I use the rice cooker). While it's cooking, here's your list of tasks:

Mince the garlic.

Mix garlic, olive oil, and cumin in a large (huge) bowl.

Add each ingredient to the bowl as it's ready:

Rinse and drain the garbanzo beans.

Dice the red pepper and onion.

Finely chop the sun-dried tomatoes.

Finely chop the parsley.

Toast the pine nuts.

Stir in the vinegar, pepper flakes, and salt.

Add the cooked quinoa.

Mix, eat now or later.

Update/Pastries

2009-08-11T19:50:00.003-04:00

It's been a busy summer. Cleo would now walk everywhere if only we would let her (out the door! straight off the front porch steps, Wile E Coyote style! down the street after the garbage truck!). She also has a single tooth and a burgeoning vocabulary, which I will lovingly list, in order of appearance:

Dada: Dada

Mama: Mama

dado: [sweet] potato

nana: banana

buh: ball

buh: book

buh: block

buh: baby

Yeah, maybe a few of those are a reach. However, there's no disputing that she is the master of the urgent point-and-grunt, her main way of telling us that she wants more food/our keys/to go on a walk/to send a text message to all her little baby friends so they can plot their mass escape.

In addition to baby development, there's been a lot of traveling (for all of us) and teaching (for me). Which brings me to the item that made me break my silence here: pastry.

One of my students this summer brought Bismarcks to our last class. I was unfamiliar with both the pastry (insanely delicious) and the name (curious). So, being like a dog with a peanut-butter-filled bone when presented with curious information, I googled. And, dear reader, came up with the blog that I would aspire to write were I a Pastry Master: Joe Pastry

He is funny, informative, well-organized, comprehensive. What are you waiting for? Go be amused and/or learn something.

First Word!

2009-07-12T16:32:00.003-04:00

It's official: potato. Alright, it sounds more like "day-doh" and what she really means to say is sweet potato (her habitual breakfast) but, hey, we'll take it.

The girl loves sweet potatoes so much that not only does she ask for them by name, she waves excitedly as they approach her mouth. Do we think she's the sweetest and cutest and best baby ever? Yeah, okay. I guess we pretty much do.

Worst. Day. Ever.

2009-07-02T14:25:00.003-04:00

Not for me, thankfully, since I have thirty three years worth of days that a day has to be worse than to get top billing, but for Cleo. Got that? A bad day in the life of the kid, poor thing.

Being a beginning walker is a little like being a beginning anything: lots of missteps, lots of uncomfortable lessons, lots of learning the same thing over and over in slightly different ways. How Not to Fall Face-First Onto The Floor she has down pat, but she has a ways to go on How Not to Fall Face-First Into A Pesky Chair-Leg. She put out her arms to catch herself, but the chair leg got right through her defenses and whacked her hard on the cheekbone. Now she has the kind of bruise that indicates a good story in her recent past. A real you-should-see-the-other-guy blooming up in blue and purple. The holler that this face-whack produced was one of those slow-building eardrum-busters, impressive in both length, tone, and volume. She was a little subdued the rest of the day, so I'm not sure what we were thinking when we did what we did at lunchtime (the foreboding music starts here).

Months ago, I had to go away for a whole day, and instead of blowing through our supply of frozen breastmilk, we decided that she could have some formula. Some soy formula, since she does not like (will not drink, no way, no how) the dairy-based stuff. She sucked down two or three bottles, and by the time I got home, she had been throwing up for an hour already. We weren't sure it was the formula, since there was also stomach bug going around, so we tried it again a few weeks later. Same story: barf, barf, barf, doctor visit. The doctor was unconvinced that this was soy-related-barfing, and suggested that we try it again. At that point, my response was a polite version of, "Hah! Right! As if!" But yesterday, after a vomit-free few months, it seemed like a reasonable (and doctor-recommended, after all) thing to do. We gave her three small bites of soy-based veggie burger. Two hours later, the answer arrived: Soy=No Good For Cleo. That answer kept arriving every ten minutes for two and a half hours, and left poor Cleo limp and sad, and her parents sad and covered in, well, you know. We got enough fluids back into her that she could get reassuringly cranky, and we all slept fitfully.

Today she's a bruised and subdued baby, but no serious harm was done. There are thunder clouds gathering over that benighted doctor's head, though, as the wrath of A Mother Who Has Been Proved Right prepares to descend upon him.

Good Morning

2009-06-06T06:06:00.002-04:00

It's 5:45 in the morning. I'm blearily checking email and generally farting around online while Cleo sings to her two-headed duck and says, "Ba ba buh buh nuh nuh nuh naaaaa" to her wooden cup. Soon I will be awake enough to make some toast for myself and a vile yogurt/prune concoction for her. But for now, I have to share a link with you. I'm a loyal reader of Antonia at Whoopee, and this is why: she misses the sea.

The Days These Days

2009-05-17T19:43:00.003-04:00

It seems impossibly dull to recount right now, but I know that in three months, three years, three decades, I'll look back and wonder, "What were all those days like? Was she ever really a baby?" So, for my future self, for Cleo some day, and (possibly) much to your bored eye-rolling today, here's a typical day these days:

4:30: The baby monitor lets us know she's awake and none too happy about it. One or the other of us mumbles, "Snot five yet. Less juss wait till five. Swhat tha book said." She settles after a few minutes.

5:00: Using her Atomic Superbaby Clock, accurate to within thirty seconds, she wakes again, hollers again, and The Sainted Dada stumbles in, changes her, and delivers her to Mama, who can only bring herself to open one eye at a time. After her first meal of the day, Cleo is carefully watched for signs of nodding back off. This hasn't happened in weeks, but we fondly remember the days of sleeping until seven.

5:30: Up. Sometimes one parent sleeps in, sometimes the other, but the official version of events starts the day now, for everyone. Once Cleo hears full sentences come out of our mouths, some containing the magic word "up," she gets the full body wiggles and starts her monologue: "Dadadadadada. Pah. Pah. Pah." We're pretty sure by now that Dadadada means Dada, but we have no idea what the significance of "pah" is. All we know is that if we say it to her, it always results in her whipping her head around and fixing us with her full attention. Maybe it means "We're going to take you for a walk in the sling, but first some Cheerios and maybe a visit from a puppy."

6:00: Solid food for all! As we have breakfast, we spoon mushy stuff of various colors into Cleo's mouth. These days, sweet potatoes, peas, prunes, pears, oatmeal, and carrots are in heavy rotation, complemented by bits of cheese, yogurt, egg yolk, pineapple (a new hit), and the perrenial favorite: Something From Mama's Plate.

8:30: First nap. The naptime routine consists of a book (Everywhere Babies? Goodnight Gorilla?), a new diaper and a snack, then a pacifier and into the crib for a rest. This nap, and all of Cleo's naps, is about half an hour long. I have friends who casually drop mentions of their babies' two hour or three hour naps, but I'm pretty sure they're just messing with me. Impossible, right? Right?

9:00-3:00: What do we do all day? Damned if I know. There is rolling around on the floor, there are trips to the market, there's coffee with other mom-and-babe duos, there is standing up, sitting down, crawling around, and putting things in the mouth. Popular games include "Mama goes awaaaaay, sooooo far awaaaaay [crawl slowly backwards].... Mama's coming to get you! Mama's coming to get you [grab, tickle, tickle, roll around]" and "Cleo does a handstand!" Both result in shrieks, giggles, and multi-generational laughter. Lunch is in there somewhere, as well as a midday nap.

3:00: Dada time. Having started work at 6:30, Dada is now done for the day. The idea is that now Mama gets some work done, and this does happen some of the time, but other days, the afternoon disappears into a haze of dinner preparation, showering, email, bill-paying, and staring blankly into space (emphasis on items three and five). Sometimes Cleo has another nap, sometimes not.

6:00: Baby bedtime. Bedtime routine is much like naptime routine, with more books (Hop on Pop, Yummy Yucky, and Goodnight Moon), and a few more rounds of "I've Been Working on the Railroad" before she's happy to be put down.

7:00: Grownup dinner. These days, it's often the same thing a few nights in a row: curry or homemade pizza or tortellini with vegetables. The theory is that I can cook once, and we can eat three times, and one of my great pieces of good fortune is that The Washer of All Dishes doesn't mind at all. It's rewarding to cook for someone who manages to be so accepting of repetition and mediocrity, while also being appreciative of a good variety of delicious food when it happens.

7:30-9:30: I spend these hours doing more time-frittering non-accomplishment, all the while telling myself to go to bed already, since five AM is just getting closer every minute.

11:00: Operating on the principle that, "it's dinnertime somewhere," Cleo has her first nighttime meal. I stumble down the hall, feed her, and she generally goes right back to sleep. Occasionally I'll hear people or cars outside, and my first thought is, "What are they up to in the middle of the night?" And then I remember that I didn't always go to bed at nine, and they might not either.

3:00: It's dinnertime somewhere else! Cleo's second meal. I realize that feeding a ten-month-old twice every night might seem excessive to some, but it's so much better than the five times of just a couple months ago, it seems perfectly reasonable to me (although that might be the Stockholm syndrome talking).

And Cleo's a very active baby, so I admit that I like those nighttime feedings, when she lies quietly in my arms, my big heavy baby, and then goes back to sleep cuddled against my shoulder. During the day she's a bundle of muscle and activity, always on the move, and she seems like what she is: a strong, agile baby who's small for her age. But at night, when she's sleepy, she seems to double in size and weight, and I remember the days when she was a much smaller sack of potatoes sleeping on my chest.

4:30: And we begin again.

Research

2009-04-27T07:48:00.003-04:00

There was a baby squirrel hopping around the yard this morning: cute, but worryingly small. It was clearly an escapee, and I tried using my special mamamojo (that's a thing, right?) to let its mother know that she had a runaway. No concerned adult squirrel appeared, and the little one kept cavorting, inexpertly climbing trees, tripping over sticks, and gamboling in the leaf litter.

Cleo and I watched from the window. Or, rather, I watched the squirrel and sent urgent telepathic messages to its mother, and Cleo kept her eye firmly on the cup of dry Cheerios on the table. She has recently graduated from "baby puffs" (essentially less substantial, more expensive Cheerios) to the real deal, and she's smitten with the little round things. If she's in her high chair and I set one in front of her, she'll delicately pick it up, pinkie extended, and transfer it to her wide-open mouth. If I present a whole little pile, she'll fill her fists and try to cram both hands, all her fingers, and multiple Cheerios into her mouth at once. The concept of one-at-a-time apparently requires thinking above the pay grade of a nine-month-old.

Once her mouth contains at least one Cheerio, she thoughtfully gums it while she manipulates any strays with an intense focus. Some of her Cheerio projects include:
Testing Gravity
Feeding Mama
Down The Shirtfront
Down The Shirtback
Sticking a Damp One Behind The Ear
And testing hypotheses like: "I will be able to eat a Cheerio and suck on my pacifier at the same time"

Inevitably, a few will get away from her (even when she's not Testing Gravity). Once they hit the floor, they change status and become Floorios. This does not necessarily render them unfit for comsumption. On the contrary, thanks to a well-timed article in the New York Times, I welcome the chance for a serendipitous immune challenge. And she seems to like discovering a Floorio even better than being given a Cheerio.

Which brings us full circle. You know how squirrels hide food all over the place in the fall, and then spend the winter digging up stuff and eating it? Don't you wonder if they remember where they've buried all their nuts so they can find them later, or if they just bury willy-nilly, and trust that they'll somehow find food when they need it? Well, Cleo certainly seems to be operating by the latter principle. She makes an effort to scatter her treasure as widely as possible, and then her whole day is just a series of exciting, surprise snacks.

I eventually lost sight of the baby squirrel this morning, but I hope it found its way home, or failing that, that it at least happened upon some of the Groundios that litter our yard.

The Cleo Songbook, Month Seven

2009-02-28T16:45:00.003-05:00

The key to Cleo's taste in music is: quantity, not quality. She'll tolerate almost any length of car trip, even when she's fussy, as long as the singing flows without ceasing. This works out very well for me, since I'm not much of a singer, but boy do I have stamina. The best songs (besides the evil "Song That Never Ends") for singing forever are ones that combine a singable tune and a structure that lends itself to stream-of-consciousness lyrics. Some songs that have proved effective:

-She'll Be Coming 'Round The Mountain, since she'll also be doing any number of other things that have the right number of syllables, like:
She'll be driving to the market.
She'll be wearing her sunglasses.
She'll be flipping off the jerkwads.
She'll be hunting for some parking.
She'll be scaring off the pigeons.
She'll be turning off the engine.
(this is the grocery store version, as you may have gathered)

-The Wheels On The Bus, since there can be a lot more things on the bus than you might have thought...
The jocks on the bus go "Dude, that's sweet!"
The kids on the bus say "Yo, wassup?"
The grandmas on the bus say "What's that, sonny?"
The girls on the bus say "That's my phone!"

-And finally, the tune of My Country 'Tis Of Thee (Or God Save The Present Monarch), which for some reason lends itself beautifully to the singing out loud of random road signs (try it, it's fun):

My country 'tis of thee
sweet land of liberty
stop light ahead.
Providence twenty miles
Fall River Exit four
from ev'ry mountainside
Pete's Lube and Gas.

Bulk Soup

2009-02-01T15:52:00.003-05:00

Soup is usually an opportunity to improvise. It gets concocted out of a little of this, a little of that, and whatever odds and ends seem compatible and need using up. All in the pot, simmer til done, eat, and move on with a cleaner fridge and a fuller belly. My dad is an expert at this kind of soup improvisation. If asked what's in one of his creations, he'll just smile and say, "Have some first. Then I'll tell you." Secret ingredients of his that I can recall include jam, old salad, and ketchup. But the soup pot always manages to transform the mixture into a meal worthy of the family, if not reliably something you'd want to trot out in front of guests.

But the other day, faced with the prospect of a tablefull of wintertime lunch guests, I needed a more predictable soup. Far be it from me to follow someone else's recipe, I started from scratch. I was out of homemade broth (thanks to an intestinal bug that made the rounds), and I didn't have the patience to make a whole new batch that would be used up in one meal. And I wanted something easy. So I started with the tricks I knew worked: sausage (it's pre-seasoned, pre-cleaned, and contains enough fat to carry a soupsworth of flavors), dried garlic and onion (optional, of course), browning, long simmering, and the magic of the overnight wait.

About that overnight wait: soup and soup-like foods are always better the next day, after the flavors have had time to swim around each other for a while, so it only makes sense to harness the power of that phenomenon and serve day-old soup to guests. The problem arises when you have a lot of guests and not a lot of space in the fridge. So in the recipe below, only part of the soup sits overnight: the ingredients that have the most to give (sausage, onion, garlic, spices) and the most to gain (beans, potatoes,) by the wait.

Sausage and White Bean Soup
serves 8-10
cooking time: 2 days (mostly waiting and simmering)

2 pounds sweet Italian sausage links (or 2 pounds bulk sausage)
3 cans cannellini beans, drained
4 white potatoes, diced
one or two bunches of kale or collards (you could use frozen)
1 tablespoon dried onion flakes
2 teaspoons chopped dried garlic
3 boxes low-salt chicken broth (or 12 cups homemade)
1/2 teaspoon red pepper flakes, or to taste
sherry or white wine, to taste

The day before you want to serve the soup, brown the sausage links well on all sides. Once they're cooked through, chop them up into small bite sized chunks. If you have time and the inclination, brown the chunks again. In a large pot, combine the beans, sausage, potatoes, onion, garlic, red pepper, and one box (or four cups) of the broth. Simmer for an hour or so. Refrigerate overnight.

The next day, de-stem and steam the greens and chop them (do this neatly to avoid long stringy green bits trailing from people's soup spoons). Heat the bean/sausage mixture in a large pot and add the rest of the broth and the chopped greens. Let the soup simmer for at least two hours, if not four. There is nothing in this soup that can be over-cooked. You want the greens to go from bright green and springy to dull green and tired to dark greenish-gray and thoroughly limp. The potatoes and beans should fall into mush at the lightest touch. The sausage should be but a shadow of its former self, having given its all for the good of the broth.

Once the soup seems good and cooked, and you want to eat it soon, start tasting and adjusting. With all the simmering, it may have lost a good amount of liquid, and may benefit from the addition of water. Depending on how salty the broth and sausages were, the soup may need dilution even if it didn't get cooked down much. And it will likely need some acidity to perk it up a little. I tend to add wine or dry sherry, but vinegar would do it too. If you want it spicier, a little hot sauce would help.

And a word about volume... Thanks to our one-cup measure which works nicely as a ladle, I happen to know that this recipe, as made by me this week, made a little more than twenty cups of soup, and two cups make a nice serving size, with bread and salad and dessert.

Fortissimo!

2009-01-03T16:04:00.004-05:00

She wears her pants pulled up to mid-chest. She has learned (today!) that her plastic chain makes a lovely noise when she thrashes it back and forth with some vigor.

She looks like nothing so much as a fat, bald conductor, leading the orchestra with great concentration and a slightly furrowed brow.

Morning Memo

2008-12-08T09:07:00.003-05:00

Dear Cleo,
Yes, it's chilly in our house in the mornings. We are both wearing hats and hoodies and cozy socks for just that reason. But if you think it's still too cold, there are more options: vests! thicker hats! shoes!

And although I admire your initiative in trying to solve this problem in your own way, and it did work for a while, I would prefer it that you didn't pee all over yourself and me right after breakfast. The warmth only lasts for a couple minutes, and then we're wet and cold and have to do more laundry.

Thank you for your attention to this matter.

Love,
Mama

Don't worry, it's just that I'm a loser.

2008-11-20T16:16:00.002-05:00

The problem with every day is that it happens so damn often. Everything's fine around here, but the blog train is running low on steam.

More later.

(um, maybe)

Vocabulary

2008-11-19T07:34:00.003-05:00

bonkle: noun. The inevitable tinkly impact of the baby's head and her (soft) dangling bell toy as you try to extricate her from her Baby Amusement Center.

The Inevitable Poop Post

2008-11-13T16:20:00.002-05:00

Babies start out as little poop machines. When Cleo was first born, she ate about every two hours, and pooped almost as often. Now that she's a burly almost-four-months, that has slowed to once or twice a day, with the increase in volume that you might imagine would come with that decrease in frequency. It was still manageable, though, and we were unconcerned with the change in her habits.

Until.

As of yesterday afternoon, it had been a solid two and a half days without any activity. Every diaper change felt like handling a grenade whose pin had been pulled. We started dressing her pre-emptively, with a mind to slowing the inevitable explosion. This meant a long sleeved, high necked onesie, plus long pants, plus a hooded jacket. It was in this state (and outfit) that I handed my daughter over to my parents and went out for a few hours. It was a testament to their love for Cleo that they took her, and it was a testament of her love for them that she waited to let loose until ten minutes after they'd gone home.

I can't blame her.

2008-11-12T17:01:00.002-05:00

My inner editor used to have a much better office. It was right behind my left eyebrow and spacious, with cushy carpeting, a nice view, and one of those big squishy leather chairs that adjust eleven different ways for optimal support. Since the re-organization of my brain, however, she's been moved to the boiler room, where she sits on a rickety stool and has only a headlamp for light. Poor thing.

She hasn't quit yet, though, she just takes a little longer to get things done. For example, I wrote a post last night at about seven, and it wasn't until I woke up to feed Cleo at midnight that the memo arrived at Central Command from the boiler room. It was not kind: "Nashing? Nashing? You have the rare chance to use a word as satisfying as "gnashing" and you blow it? This is your first warning. If things don't improve around here, I'm taking my headlamp and quitting for good."

Life Lessons

2008-11-11T19:04:00.002-05:00

Kids learn not only from what you say, but from what you do. This week, Cleo has learned a couple good things. From her father: make regular back-ups of your computer, whether you think you need to or not. This was a boring lesson, consisting mainly of watching him do it. From her mother: use pyrometric cones in every kiln firing, whether you think you need to or not. This was a more exciting lesson, consisting of watching her mother not do it, and then observing the wailing, nashing, and rending that ensued. Live and learn and be like your dad, sweetheart.

Eating the Freezer

2008-11-10T17:27:00.002-05:00

After you have a c-section, they suggest that you not climb a lot of stairs. My midwife said I should keep myself to one round-trip per day. Since we don't have a bathroom on the ground floor, this pretty much kept me out of the (ground-floor) kitchen for two or three weeks. It worked out well. Cleo's grandmothers and father kept the grown-up meals coming so that I could concentrate on baby meals and healing. The baby meals were a bit of a challenge in the beginning, and I had to use a pump to help out.

One effect of this was that there was a lot of extra milk hanging around. I was not going to let such a hard-earned liquid go to waste, so we started freezing it. The freezer started to fill with containers of milk. And then it started to over-fill, and something had to be done. That something was the Disappearance of several years worth of bread heels, tubs of mysterious leftovers, kitchen experiments, and general detritus. What can I say? I do like to save things. So while I was marooned upstairs, my husband (with the collusion of my very own mother) was living the dream of a lifetime. Things that moved from our last house's freezer to this one were thrown away with no ceremony at all. Not even Taps hummed softly over the garbage can. It was all just Gone.

I admit now that it was a good idea. Why, for the first time in years I can actually use the freezer! You can see what's in there! It's kind of weird. They did save the identifiable, usable things, and I'm now in the process of working my way through these things. It's all part of a new plan to actually take things out of the freezer occasionally, instead of just jamming things in. So now we're reaching the end of the freezer stuff (and the milk supply has been thinned as well), so I have Freezer Real Estate burning a hole in my pocket (how's that for a mixed metaphor? I think I win). What should I make and freeze (and later use)? What's the saving grace dinner backup in your freezer? And can I steal your brilliant ideas?

It's November

2008-11-09T17:44:00.002-05:00

And you can tell because we were doing the annual half-assed yard clean-up, and this was heard as the rotting, fetid jack-o-lanterns were being gingerly carried to the compost at arm's length:

"Is there anyone we don't like?"

Moistest Baby on the Block

2008-11-08T09:54:00.002-05:00

There are post-meal traditions in various cultures. A genteel stroll around the village square, a small, strong, foul-smelling drink of something. A cup of herbal tea. Being not quite four months old yet, Cleo's not really ready for any of these. So she's working out her own way of easing the progress of her meal through her belly.

Unfortunately, her current method is to play and squeal and exercise until she barfs. It seems to work well for her: there's no distress involved, and she's still getting bigger by the day, but it is a bit of a laundry issue. Between the teething drool and the post-prandial eruptions, the top four inches of her shirt were almost always soaking. Enter the bibs. Enter all six presentable bibs she owns, sometimes all in one day. Enter the most bedraggled of the hand-me-down bibs. And then run out of bibs, and re-enter the least-soiled (and now dry) of the previous set. So, we need more bibs. I did what I do, and looked online (somehow, the kids thrift store doesn't have bibs. Too gross? I guess). And guess what? I'm both cheap and picky. We need a lot of bibs, and I don't want a bunch of bibs that have dumb sayings on them. I also don't want to spend eight bucks on each lousy (but attractive!) piece of cloth that's just designed to get between my daughter and her goop, and then be tossed in the laundry.

So I learned some things. I learned that Cleo's dad has a bunch of old white t-shirts that are surplus to requirements. I learned that machine-sewing comes under the category of Easy With Baby in the Sling (or at least Possible With Baby in the Sling). I learned that you don't need a serger to sew knits, and I learned that while Cleo's fascinated by the sound of the sewing machine when she's awake, she finds it intensely annoying when she's trying to sleep.

So, if you want to make your own bibs, you can do it this way: trace an existing bib onto an old t-shirt, leaving some extra space for the seam allowance. Pin the front and back of the t-shirt together, along the traced line. Using a zig-zag stitch (I'm not sure it's strictly necessary to zig-zag. But it sure is fun to say! Zig-zag! Zig-zag!), sew around the line, leaving one end open. Turn the bib inside out (actually right side out), and topstitch around the edge, closing the end you left open. Add ties or a snap or velcro. And then do that forty more times, and you'll have enough bibs for three days (so far, my homemade-bib-count is a grand and lofty One).

Boring? Yes. Useful? Possibly.

2008-11-07T14:19:00.001-05:00

Since Cleo's still waking up three or four times a night, I get a lot of practice in going back to sleep. It might be my chronic sleep deprivation, but I think I've worked out a good method over the last few months.

I tried reviewing my day in my head, but that just resulted in anxiety over all the things I hadn't done, and a longer to-do list.

I tried thinking of boring things, like sheep, but it was too boring, and my mind would drift back to the to-do list.

I tried a yoga-style progressive relaxation, but there was too much stuff to remember.

I tried an lengthening-exhalation relaxation I learned in our Hypnobirthing class, but it always made me feel like I wasn't doing it right. Not relaxing.

So, I ended up with a combination of things that works really well for me. Starting with my head and moving south, with each exhalation I say (to myself--no need to wake the whole family) each area of tension. Just the one word per exhalation. And, of course, focus on relaxing that area.

So, like this: Inhale. Exhale forehead. Inhale. Exhale jaw. Inhale. Exhale neck. I'm usually asleep by the knees. If not, I start over at the feet and work up.

It's just enough structure to keep my mind from spinning and drifting, it eases tension without getting too woo-woo about it (no auras or light or mantras to remember). But it's simple enough that my brain can keep doing it even as it's falling asleep.

So, having trouble getting enough sleep? First do the obvious things: cut out caffeine and alcohol, dim the lights in the evening, get some exercise in the afternoon, and don't share your bedroom with an infant. If you've tried all of the above, try my method. Maybe it'll help. Or maybe thinking about how boring this post was will send you to sleep even quicker. Either way, I live to serve.

Easy Thai Curry

2008-11-06T13:33:00.003-05:00

Cleo spends most of her time in the sling. She happily looks around or naps, and we both enjoy it. It keeps her with me (or her dad), but frees our hands for other things. It does make working at a table awkward, and bending over is not really practical (I end up doing a lot of squats to pick things up). And some things just aren't safe. So domestic chores are now divided into two categories: Easy With Baby and Hard With Baby.

Easy: putting in a load of laundry
Hard: getting the wet clothes out of the bottom of the washer

Easy: chopping vegetables
Hard: browning vegetables in a super-hot skillet

Easy: eating cooked meat
Hard: handling raw meat

So cooking has changed a bit around here, which is why I'm really happy with this curry recipe. There's enough flavor in the sauce that it's still good even if you don't sear or brown the meat and veg, the work can all be done in stages throughout the day, and any raw-meat handling can be last-minute, while Cleo and her father are telling each other about their days.

sauce:
1 can coconut milk
2 tablespoons sriracha sauce (or other hot sauce to taste)
3 tablespoons fish sauce
1/2 teaspoon dried minced garlic (one fewer thing to chop!)
2 tablespoons sugar

vegetables (green beans, red peppers, snow peas, onions, carrots, cauliflower, etc)
protein (we usually use shrimp or beef)
1 tablespoon cornstarch
optional garnishes (cilantro, basil, chopped peanuts, lime wedges, scallions, sliced jalapenos)

Chop all the vegetables. Mix the sauce ingredients together. Do whatever you have to do to the meat: thaw, chop, peel, etc.

The easiest thing to do is to bring the sauce to a boil and throw everything in and simmer until it's all cooked, which might result in some things getting overdone. If you have more time and energy, saute or steam or blanch everything separately. Bring the sauce to a boil and mix all the cooked stuff into the sauce to heat up. Serve with rice and any (or all, or none) of the garnishes.

It's Over!

2008-11-05T09:22:00.002-05:00

The sensible choice last night was to go to bed early as usual, and wait to find out the election results in the morning.

The sensible choice this morning was to have something besides leftover halloween candy for breakfast.

The sensible choice right now is to go on a victory march around the neighborhood.

One out of three is the best I can do right now. Yippee!

(Returning to regular, non-political programming tomorrow. I know I have some readers that disagree with my politics, so thanks for your patience, and a shout-out to McCain for a gracious and thoughtful concession speech)

I have a good feeling about today...

2008-11-04T11:51:00.003-05:00

I was starving this morning; but there was leftover pizza!

It's been so gloomy lately; but it was a sunny morning, perfect for a long walk with breakfast and the baby!

I needed two hands to close the door; but my piece of cold pizza balanced perfectly on Cleo's head for a moment!

I only had $1.24 on me (not enough for a coffee); but I found a damp two bucks on the sidewalk!

The last eight years have been grim and horrible; but... but... (fingers crossed)

Introducing...

2008-11-03T11:07:00.002-05:00

So I can't just keep calling her The Baby, since eventually she won't be one any more, and very eventually there might even be another one around to confuse things--not that I can imagine such a development now. My memory might be shot from hormones and sleep deprivation, but it's not so shot that I can't remember, say, last night. I will forget eventually, and you'll be able to tell because I'll start entertaining the notion of another little creature to call The Baby.

But I don't want to refer to her by her actual name on here because I have a chronic, low-grade case of Internet Paranoia, and I don't want us to be googlable. This is too bad, because all the funny songs we've been making up for her would be good for at least a couple days of posts this month. Suffice it to say, her name rhymes with dances and enhances and glances and pantses. Extrapolate hilarious lyrics on your own.

So, the need for a pseudonym arises. Since she's an enthusiastic eater with not much finesse or regard for table manners, her meals often end up all over her face and running down her neck. And since her meals are always the same thing, she ends up bathing in milk more often than a certain historical queen. She's also similarly worshiped by her loyal subjects, and her beauty is renowned for blocks around. So, Cleo it is.

Is The Baby Hungry? Three Things to Look For

2008-11-02T11:10:00.004-05:00

1. Watch for subtle cues: is she moving her mouth in a way that looks "nursy"? Does she turn towards your finger when you touch her cheek?
2. With practice, you'll be able to hear the difference between her "hungry cry" and other cries.
3. When you pick up the baby, does she firmly grasp your ears, approach your face with a wild look and an open mouth, and attempt to suck your cheek off? This, too, might indicate hunger.

Posting While Nursing, Part One of Thirty (or is it thirty-one?).

2008-11-01T19:24:00.004-04:00

What the hell. I'm doing it again. A post every day for the month of November. I know, crazy, right? Well, if I poop out in a few days, I'll have an excellent excuse.

Standards: down.
Quantity: up.
Punctuation and capitalization: possibly spotty
Editing: what?

Here we go...

(and yes, this counts. I meant it about standards going down)

B Through BBBBBB: A Comprehensive Rating System for Infant and Adult Burps, Belches, and Other Oral Emissions

2008-10-26T18:33:00.012-04:00

B (or "onebie"): Gas only. Varies widely in length, tone, and volume.

BB (or "twobie"): Mainly gas. Some stomach contents enter throat.

BBB (or "threebie"): A just-prevented BBBB (see "BBBB"). Also, Big Blue Boat.

BBBB (or "fourbie"): Stomach contents exit mouth at negligible velocity.

BBBBB (or "fivebie"): Moderately forceful expulsion of stomach contents. Does not cause distress.

BBBBBB (or "sixbie"): Extremely forceful expulsion of stomach contents. Unpleasant. Not suitable for illustration.

If you are turning 64 years old today*, the hard copy of this is to be your present (plus a few more colors). Happy Birthday! A worthy present for a man of such mature and refined tastes!

*and if you are my father. Explains a lot, doesn't it?

Helpful Hints

2008-10-26T16:09:00.002-04:00

One never knows what to get a baby. They don't need all that much, and one doesn't want to give something superfluous. If you're wondering what to get our little cherub for Christmas, here's a hint. She doesn't have one of these yet.

For the Record

2008-10-25T08:46:00.003-04:00

When I was pregnant, I often wondered what I would have made of the bizarre sensations I was experiencing if I hadn't had never-ending input from Culture and Science to reassure me that they were all Perfectly Normal. It was nice to be able to know what oddity to expect next, and even how I might expect to feel about it. It didn't keep me from worrying, but it helped make the process less mysterious.

But now that I'm well into the postpartum phase, I have a new set of physical experiences, with a lot less input from culture and science to help me navigate them. One hears, "You'll be very tired." But that goes exactly nowhere in describing the sensation of chronic sleep deprivation. "Very tired" is when you stay up late finishing a term paper (okay, or a novel). You feel a bit raw; in some ways kind of... peeled. Your defenses are lower, lights seem brighter, sounds are more grating. It's a feeling I'm reasonably familiar with.

But chronic sleep deprivation is different. Three months of it has given me the feeling that there is a cat that lives in my ribcage, and it's a scrawny, half-blind, dirt-matted scrap that's making that low, rumbly cat noise that tends to precede an all-out teeth-and-claws attack. I can suppress the temptation to act on these feelings, but the beaten-down stray is still a tangible presence in my chest.

Sounds nice, huh? Well, it's almost worth it just for the contrasting feeling I get with enough sleep. Last week, with two whole naps some days (thanks to Supergrandma) and a baby who was going through a "Let's sleep when it's dark out!" phase, I felt fine. Superfine, even: like the sugar. The cat in my chest was a fat, purring pet, with big calm eyes and a thick coat. Enough sleep makes me feel like I could climb a mountain, cook a five-course meal, and give a riveting speech to three hundred strangers, all at the same time.

It's like having motherhood-induced bipolar disorder, and, according to a couple of new-mom friends who have leveled with me, Perfectly Normal. So, Culture? Science? Make a note of it.

Please notify when available

2008-10-21T16:21:00.002-04:00

The Babyprodder

Duplicates a mother's gentle "are you still breathing" poke, resulting in an audible baby sigh but not a woken baby. Powered by remote control, soft nightlight included

Teething Epaulets

To be worn by the parent (or patient, slobber-tolerant grandparent). Hard silicone nubs mounted on absorbent terry cloth, to allow baby to pursue her two hobbies: gnawing on whatever comes within hailing distance of her mouth, and seeing what's happening behind you.

Plum Torte

2008-10-17T16:27:00.002-04:00

April 2008, my kitchen:

Him: I have a business trip to Mexico in October.

Me: Oh, that'll be fun.

Him: [waiting]

Me: [counting on my fingers] Wait, October? This October? Mexico? Oh, no you don't, bucko.
She'll only be three months old! No way! Quit your job! Tell 'em to stuff it! We'll survive somehow. Like, by, um... well, we'll figure something out. There's just no way you can go away while she's still so little.

Him: Well, okay, I'll stay home if you want, but your folks will be nearby in October. Maybe they could help out.

Me: [exhaling, lowering the knife] Oh, right. Right. Have a good time! Bring home some little Mexican baby pants or something.

October 2008, my mom's kitchen:

So here we are, me, my mom, and my three-month-old daughter, hanging out, missing The Dad, waiting for The Grandad to get home, singing the lumberjack song, clipping tiny little fingernails, and making...

Plum Torte

3/4 cup sugar
1/2 cup softened butter
1 cup flour
1 tsp baking powder
pinch of salt
2 eggs
6 ripe purple plums
sugar
cinnamon
lemon juice

Preheat the oven to 350. Halve and pit the plums. Cream sugar and butter together. Add eggs, flour, baking powder, and salt. Beat well. Spoon batter into an 8 or 9 inch springform pan with high sides. Place plum halves cut side down onto batter. Sprinkle with sugar, cinnamon, and lemon juice. Bake 35-45 minutes.

Never Mind

2008-10-17T16:25:00.000-04:00

In the months after September 11th, I had a fatalistic habit. Right before I checked the news on the radio or the internet, I'd wonder to myself what fresh tragedy I was about to discover. That habit has become less pronounced, but I still brace myself a little whenever I turn on the news.

Apparently, this grim attitude has seeped (sept?) into other parts of my brain.

My computer thinks it's online, and the connection signal is strong, but I can't seem to load any pages. It's like the whole internet just disappeared. If you read this, you'll know I was wrong, but right now I have a sinking suspicion that the civilized world has come to an end, and it just hasn't reached me yet.

I'm with her.

2008-10-01T10:27:00.003-04:00

The baby's doctor is great. He's thoughtful and patient knows the value of prefacing almost everything he says to anxious new parents with a soothing, "That's an excellent question..."

Since my current doctor is a dolt, and this guy's in family practice, I'm in the process of switching to her doctor. Being an excellent doctor, he's in high demand, but being in family practice, he gives preference to family members of existing patients.

All this is just to say that for the first time today, I dropped my daughter's name, and it got me in the VIP door. First time of many, I bet, kiddo.

Cleopatra, Bathed in Milk

2008-08-18T17:37:00.004-04:00

She's a month old today. It feels more like a parent milestone than a baby milestone, somehow: She's still alive! No blood has been shed! No babies have been harmed in the making of this family! I still chant a little safety mantra when I carry her down the stairs, and I can't stand to watch her father suction the boogers out of her nose with the blue sucky thing, even though he's very gentle and careful, and she always feels better afterwards (although the piggy little sounds she makes with a stuffy nose are adorable).

All that aside, though, we're starting to emerge from the foggiest part of Babyland Forest. We've been on a couple of family outings (bakery, concert in the park), and I'm almost back to being a functioning member of society. I've made dinner a few times, I can go up and down the stairs as many times as I want (woo!), and Cleo and I survived while her father went to a movie.

(edited to add: It's July 2010, and I just found this post lurking in "drafts." Cleo is now a robust almost-two-year-old who walked into the bakery with me this morning and requested a "bistuit an' a hightair", and this all sounds like a very long time ago.)

Quick, while she's sleeping.

2008-07-23T13:40:00.002-04:00

Signs that you may be on heavy pain medication and/or the sleep-deprived mother of a newborn:

In the middle of the night, you try to drink from the moisturizer instead of the water bottle.

You cannot subtract 15 from 36 without a pencil and some paper.

Your first taste of non-hospital food almost makes you cry with its goodness.

(Baby girl. Born at 2:30 am on June 18. Everyone now delighted and happy and healthy and home.)

Month Nine: Evolution

2008-07-15T16:00:00.002-04:00

In the first part of my pregnancy, as I was excitedly watching my body's appearance change, I had a little sadness in the back of my mind for the old body I'd never see again. It made me feel silly to be diluting my joy with vanity, but it was like saying goodbye to a friend, knowing I'd see them again eventually, but that things would always be different.

Well, nature has an answer for those mixed feelings. It's called the ninth month. Now the way my body will look after pregnancy seems inconsequential compared to how my body will feel. I'm no longer fazed by the prospect of the new squishier me. I'm instead completely captivated by the idea that one day, I'll again be able to run up a flight of stairs, walk a brisk mile or two on a whim, and even roll over in bed without first planning a strategy.

These feats all seem especially miraculous because there's a little, primitive part of my brain that believes that I will be pregnant forever; that maternity clothes will be my permanent wardrobe, that my feet will forever be strangers to me, that I'll always be this awkward and feeble.

Fitting into my skinny jeans by Christmas? Whatever. The ability to lift and tote and bend and jog? Yes, please! Oh, please. And soon. Please.

Month Nine: What? This is the Easy Part?

2008-07-14T14:05:00.002-04:00

When I was trying to get pregnant, I was worried. Would it take a long time? Would I be able to? The waiting was stressful, and I was intent on our goal. I had this idea that once I was pregnant, I could relax and everything would be fine.

And then we found out I was pregnant! Hooray! We were both excited, I was relieved, and I did relax. For about a week. And then I started worrying about the baby. Was it okay in there? How about now? And now? Now? Each time we passed a milestone (end of the first trimester at 12 weeks, 20 week scan, viability at 26 weeks, full-term at 37 weeks), I'd again be relieved and happy, with relief and happiness giving way to worry again eventually.

I feel silly worrying so much, since I know we've been very lucky so far, and there's no sign that anything's wrong, but while I can turn down the worry, I can't shut it off completely.

And now, with birth coming so soon, I have this feeling that I'll finally be able to stop worrying once she's born. We'll hold her in our arms and everything will get better and easier and less scary.

Yes.

I am delusional.

Month Nine: Small Scare (No Suspense, Happy Ending Edition)

2008-07-13T19:46:00.003-04:00

By now, the birth is getting so close we're going to see the midwife every week. Wednesday's visit was shaping up to be routine, until the nurse looked at my blood pressure and said calmly, "I think I'll just check your other arm." It has been routinely 120/80 for months, but Wednesday it was 138/90. On both arms.

That means one of two things: either I have high blood pressure from gaining 25 pounds in six months and running around like a headless chicken, or I have high blood pressure from pre-eclampsia, a reaction some women's bodies have to pregnancy. The cure for the first is pretty much just to chill out already. The cure for the latter is to induce labor and deliver the baby.

So they had to figure out which one it was. This got me a ticket to the lab to test various bodily fluids and also something called a Non-Stress Test, which, let me tell you, is badly named. It was stressful. The wires and printouts and monitors were bad enough, but the absolute worst part was when the nurse had to hunt around, looking for and not finding the baby's heartbeat. It probably took her 30 seconds, but it was not a reassuring moment. She finally found it, strapped me to the various devices, and left us to our appointed jobs for 20 minutes: baby to happily kick and squirm, mother to freak right out, and father to remain calm, tell a few jokes, and make conversation in a casual and reassuring way. We all performed exactly as described.

The midwife came in to review the printout, and said the best words ever: "That's a very happy baby. Just what we like to see. She's doing great."

So, while we're still waiting for the lab results, things look fine. I've been taking it easy and checking my blood pressure at home (it's gone and stayed back down a bit) and even bad news from the lab wouldn't be too bad. It might just speed up the baby-getting timetable a little, which is fine, since I'm almost 39 weeks along.

The really good news is that the baby is head-down and starting to engage, and I'm 2 cm dilated and 80% effaced. If you don't know what any of that means, that's okay. You can just move right along and think no more about my innards. It's good news.

And the less-important-but-still-good news is that I have official medical advice to: "Lie down, rest, eat bonbons, and read." Well, okay.

Update: For the third time in the last couple months, the lab results are... mixed. They need some more absolutist lab techs over there, if you ask me. People who can really commit to a one decision or another, and stay the course, evidence to the contrary notwithstanding. It's a great way to run a country, right? So it would be for medical care. Oh, wait. Never mind.

So, mixed results. They'll retest on Friday. Keep up with the feet up and the bonbons. Check.

Month Nine: Maybe I'll See Her at Naptime

2008-07-10T07:11:00.004-04:00

My dreams are usually swashbuckling adventures, with lots of running and hiding and good guys and bad guys, but pregnancy changes your dream life as well as your waking life. Last night, I dreamed about my grandmother for the first time since shortly after she died, seven years ago. In the dream, it was morning, and I was going to take her a cup of coffee, a piece of leftover birthday cake (whose, I don't know) and the newspaper. She phoned down to the kitchen from her room and we chatted a bit. Eventually, she sweetly asked for a cup of tea and a novel instead, if it wasn't too much trouble.

It was really nice to dream about her again, but the downside of pregnancy dreams is that they're often interrupted. My pregnant self woke up to go to the bathroom before my dream self made it up the stairs with a cup of tea, a cup of coffee (one for her, one for me?), and a pile of books.

Month Nine: Maybe This Will Be My Eggplant Casserole

2008-07-09T10:35:00.002-04:00

There are many steps along the path to motherhood. The biggest one, of course, will be some time this month, but there are also more subtle shifts. For example, an interest in trying a recipe that looks like this one.

Month Nine: FAQ

2008-07-09T06:45:00.002-04:00

People keep asking me the due date, which is a natural thing to ask a woman who looks like I do, but I'm trying not to dwell on it. All the books like to remind me that the due date is a bit of a shot in the dark, and that the most specific prediction we can really make is that the baby will probably come sometime between week 38 and week 42. Beyond that, there's no saying with any more certainty (after week 42, though, they get out the crowbar. Or something).

I'm officially 38 weeks today, which puts me in kind of a funny place between gearing up and trying to stay patient. It's hard to hold both "any day now" and "maybe not for another month" in my head at once.

But it does make sense to approach it this way. It's like having a soft opening for a restaurant: you get ready, you see if what you think is ready actually is ready, you have a chance to get a little more ready, and then you see how that seems before things get all official.

So we've been doing all kinds of ready-getting. My nesting instinct has been satisfied by a pretty motley collection of accomplishments. We weeded and mulched the backyard, we got the car detailed, we planted some annuals, we got a huge stack of kids' books at a baby shower, I washed and stacked lots of ridiculously small cotton items, I cleaned out my office, we installed the car seat, I organized the basement, we took a carload of castoffs to the Salvation Army, we hung a new laundry line, and I made six casseroles for the freezer. I realize that most of those things have nothing to do with keeping a newborn happy and well, but a primal need was satisfied all the same.

After they ask about the due date people then tend to ask, "And are you all ready with the nursery and everything?" with visions of matching curtains and dust ruffles and crib bumpers obviously dancing in their heads. And well, no. We're not. It still looks like a half-moved-into room, any matching that's going on is accidental, and frankly, that probably won't change much before she gets here. But, really, yes. Yes, we're ready. And if she waits another month to make her appearance, maybe we'll have regrouted the shower, cleaned the gutters, and fixed the porch step too, so we'll be even more ready.

Month Nine: Progress?

2008-07-08T13:51:00.002-04:00

We've been watching a lot of old Star Trek in the evenings, after our nightly midwife-mandated creep around the block. It's been hot here, and there's something cooling about outer space and the future.

In addition to a wide and entertaining variety of Space Unitards and Space Cocktails, the show features Captain Picard, who likes to give orders with a stern, deep, "Engage."

Well, it finally feels like the baby's been listening.

Month Nine: Malachite

2008-07-08T07:59:00.001-04:00

Although I grew up in the friendly south, where smiling at strangers on the street is a way of life, I've lived up north long enough to develop a stern don't-mess-with-me face that I wear when navigating urban crowds. It usually helps would-be solicitors pick someone else to approach, but it's not always effective.

The other day, despite my best efforts, a man gifted with hair and deprived of teeth came right up to me and said urgently, "Excuse me, miss? Miss? Excuse me?" I couldn't sidestep his persistence or his politeness, so I said, "Yes?" while, I admit, stepping back a bit and holding my bag a little tighter.

"Here, take this. It's malachite. It's good protection for your baby when she's born. Just keep it by her bed."

And he handed me a little green rock. As my brain hustled to accommodate this unexpected development, I realized that in every folk tale I'm aware of, when a scruffy stranger offers an unsolicited kindness to a pregnant woman, she'd best take it and be grateful, unless she wants her first-born child to have some sort of colorful life-long curse.

So I did take it, I was grateful, I thanked him sincerely, and he went on his way. The stone is now on my bedside table. I'm not usually superstitious, but there are some archetypes you just don't mess with.

Month Nine: The Open Mouths of Babes

2008-07-07T16:01:00.000-04:00

At the pool, in my belly-friendly bikini, I apparently make quite a spectacle. Women smile, men try not to look alarmed, and kids just stare, gaping at my mass.

The other afternoon, I came out of a bathroom stall into the ladies changing room, and surprised two eight-year-old girls. They stopped mid-chatter, mouths open, and proceeded to follow me with huge eyes as I washed my hands, dried them, adjusted my suit, and made my way back out into the sun. I didn't mind the inspection, and would have happily answered any curious questions, but I think the visual was as much information as they could handle, if not quite a bit more.

Neighbors of ours who swim at the same pool, three and five-year old boys, know me better and aren't afraid to ask questions. So far, the favorites are, "Have you started cracking open yet?" and "When are you going to crack?" and, "Is the baby naked in there?" and "Are you sure it's a girl?" (the last very skeptically, with a wrinkled nose). The youngest likes to pat my belly, which is the sweetest thing ever, and once evolved into him gently patting it with his knuckles, which made his poor mother have a heart attack when she glanced over, and yelped, "No punching pregnant ladies in the belly!"

Month Nine: I Chose a Pale Pink, Myself

2008-07-06T18:14:00.001-04:00

Taking an infant first aid class at the hospital, we were surrounded by expectant women. They all looked to be about as pregnant as I am, which is to say, very. There was a wide cross-section, with people from all over the area, all over the economic spectrum, variously partnered and unpartnered, and of lots of ages, colors, and sizes (although there didn't happen to be any small women. Just large, larger, vast, and huge). But we were all learning about choking, bleeding, and anaphylactic shock together. And we'll all be mothers of infants pretty soon, and, based on a quick visual survey of all the toes I could see, none of us can reach our feet any more. I've never seen so many pedicures.

Her House Is On Fire, After All

2008-07-05T19:33:00.003-04:00

I know that among my readers are a good many soft-hearted folks who are inclined to be friendly to helpful insects. Well, now's your big chance. The good sciency people of Cornell are trying to figure out how native ladybugs are doing all over the country (the answer so far? not that great). So they're soliciting photos of the ladybugs in your yard/garden/neighborhood. Catch some bugs, take their pictures, mention where and when you found them, and that can be your good deed for the summer. Cheap karma, if you ask me. More details here.

Month Nine: Gemütlichkeit? Bildungsroman?

2008-07-05T11:37:00.000-04:00

As I get more and more pregnant, and the summer wears on, people keep asking me with delighted looks, "So, how're you feeling now, pretty awful, right? All swollen? Can't sleep? Achy joints? Real cranky?" The long German word for this is schadenfreude, I think, but I don't know the long German word for how I feel, which is: pretty satisfied to be able to say right back, "Nope, I feel great, actually! Never better!"

And it's true, too, just as long as I don't try to do much and stay off my feet and take a daily nap or two and eat every couple hours and drink lots of water and take my vitamins.

So, yeah. Short answer: great. I feel great.

Month Nine: A Review of Fetal Development

2008-07-04T13:37:00.002-04:00

Dear Baby,
My main cravings over the last eight months have been for fruit, and as the seasons have changed, so have the fruits. As you grew your various parts, month by month, I kept up with various fruits. I ate other things too, of course, but a lot of you is constructed out of produce. For future reference then, my dear, a list:

Your heart is made of apples.
Your bones are made of red grapefruit.
Your teeth are made of prunes.
Your fingertips are made of pineapple.
Your eyebrows are made of cantaloupe.
Your eyelashes are made of cherries.
Your chub is made of blueberries.
Your lungs are lined with peaches.

And everything is held together with cheese, almond butter, and ice cream sandwiches.

Love,
Mama

Month Eight: Famous Last Words

2008-07-02T17:37:00.002-04:00

As you might guess from what I've been writing about lately (food, dinner, recipes, eating...), I've been feeling a lot more like myself lately. Still pregnant, but not particularly hampered by it. Maybe my best month of this whole thing so far. It's really only in the last week that I've started feeling like that very pregnant woman you see in movies and on TV: huffing and puffing, walking funny, finding any opportunity to put my swollen feet up, and going to the bathroom every half hour. But, still, I feel good as long as I don't try to do much.

This feeling-good, not-doing-much does not lend itself to Exciting Writing Topics, though, so I've limited myself to the always-reliable subject of food. However, I want to have a record of the happy-pregnant part of this process, and not just the dreary-pregnant part, so I'm going to try to up my writing frequency, which will probably result in a related increase in the why-would-anyone-care factor. You have been warned.

One recent accomplishment is worth noting, though. Not knowing anything 'bout birthin' no babies, we took a class. The aim of the class was to teach anxious yuppies how to relax enough so that their bodies could take over and do what they were made to do (see "birthin" above). The curriculum sounded great: a lot of emphasis on letting go of anxiety, relaxing muscles and positive thinking. And gravity. Gravity is your friend in labor, apparently. All of those sound like good tools for a natural labor and birth, right? Right! Except when the teacher is shriller than your high school gym teacher, more anxious than any of the aforementioned yuppies, and keeps barking, "RELAX!" and "NO NEGATIVE THOUGHTS!" and "IT WILL BE PERFECT IF YOU JUST RELAX!" There was some serious message/messenger disharmony going on.

But in the end, it worked out just fine. We survived her drill-sergeant-style guided meditations, we practiced our calming breathing techniques, and we relaxed after every class by laughing at her teaching style. Our last class was a couple weeks ago, and it was a relief to be done. Now we just have labor and birth ahead of us. Piece of cake, I'm thinking.

Nime Chow

2008-06-19T10:39:00.003-04:00

Making nime chow (or goi cuon or vietnamese spring rolls) is only worth doing if you have a good reason. They require a certain amount of fiddly knife work, a wrapping technique that takes practice, and last minute assembly. That said, they're superdelicious, healthy, festive, good finger food, cheap, and most of the prep work can be done ahead of time. So I'm not trying to convince anyone to make them, but if you do, here's a recipe that worked well.

Makes 15 rolls and plenty of dipping sauce

rolls:
3 carrots
1 english cucumber
15 rice paper wrappers (banh trang)
1 block firm tofu
thin rice noodles
cornstarch
salt and pepper
15 large basil leaves
30 mint leaves

sauce (nuoc cham):
juice of 2 limes (makes one part)
one part sugar
one part fish sauce
two parts water
2 cloves garlic, minced
chili sauce to taste

Cut carrots and cucumber into 4 or 5 inch long matchsticks.
Cook rice noodles in boiling water until tender, then rinse in cold water.
Measure the juice you get out of the two limes, and then make sauce.
Mix the sugar, water and fish sauce. Heat it to dissolve sugar.
Cool the sugary mixture, then add the lime juice, garlic, and chili sauce.
Squeeze and blot the tofu to get rid of some extra moisture.
Cut it into three flat slabs, then each slab into 5 long bars.
Mix cornstarch with salt and pepper, then dredge the tofu bars in it.
Fry the tofu in a well-oiled non-stick pan until crisp and golden brown.
Set up your work area: carrot, cuke, mint, basil, noodles, and tofu.
Dip one rice paper wrapper in hot water.
Lay the wrapper on a clean tea towel.
Lay one basil leaf and two mint leaves in the middle of the wrapper.
Pile some carrot, cucumber, noodles, and one tofu bar on the leaves.
Wrap like a burrito.
Once you've made all 15, you will have worked out your rice paper technique.
Next time will be easier. Here's some more info.

Variations:
Substitute cooked shrimp (or other tasty protein) for the fried tofu.
Substitute bean sprouts or iceberg (or other crunchy veg) for the carrot or cuke.
For strict vegetarians, use soy sauce instead of fish sauce.
Skip the rice paper all together, and have a pretty little cold noodle salad.

Fish Tacos

2008-06-18T18:03:00.002-04:00

I'm don't have a lot of affection for Martha Stewart. This is not a high-toned feminist or post-feminist position, I just feel like she manages to un-fun a lot of pretty fun stuff: making things, messing around in the garden, and cooking delicious food: all things that are best enjoyed with an experimental attitude and a sense of adventure. Instead, she tends to present The One Way to do things, and emphasizes the product over the process. I find this kind of annoying, but it's probably why I like her food magazine, Everyday Food, when I just want something reliable yet new to make for dinner. In those recipes, the process has been worked out, the product is predictable, and you don't have to do a lot of experimenting. That said, I've probably never been able to truly follow a recipe in my life, so here is the Everyday Food recipe for fish tacos, as altered and rearranged in our kitchen yesterday.

Makes 12 small tacos to serve 4 people.

slaw:
3 cups finely shredded red cabbage (about a quarter of a cabbage)
1 cup finely sliced scallions
1 jalapeno, minced (de-ribbed and de-seeded if you like)

sauce:
juice of one lime
zest of that lime
1/4 cup sour cream
salt

1 lb tilapia (or other mild white fish)

12 corn tortillas

Mix the lime juice, lime zest, and sour cream. Salt generously to taste. Mix the cabbage, scallions, and jalapeno with half the sauce and set aside. Save the other half of the sauce for serving. This slaw can be made the day before.

When you're almost ready to eat, cook the fish. I followed the recipe (really!) and fried it in a hot pan in a little oil, but it stuck to the pan, fell apart, and didn't get particularly brown. Despite its inauspicious appearance, it didn't seem to matter to the deliciousness of the end product, so if you have a preferred method of getting fish from raw to cooked, do it now.

As the fish is cooking, heat the tortillas until they're soft and warm. Wrap or cover them to keep them from drying out and cooling off.

To assemble, pile some slaw, some fish, and a drizzle of sauce onto a warm tortilla. Fold in half and eat while dripping pink spots onto your plate.

Easy Spring Pasta

2008-06-15T11:44:00.002-04:00

This is easy food. Easy in the shopping, easy in the cooking and easy in the eating, which, as we approach Cooking With Infants time, seems even more important than usual. But this one's actually fairly healthy, tasty and cheap too. Win win win win. Serves two or two and a half.

nine ounces cheese tortellini (fresh-ish, from the refrigerated section)
ten ounces frozen peas (get the good tiny sweet kind—not the giant starchy ones)
1/2 cup chopped ham (or more)
1/2 cup chopped fresh mint (or more)
4 cloves garlic, chopped
grated parmigiano
pepper
butter

Cook the tortellini like the package tells you to.
Saute the garlic and ham until the garlic softens and smells good.
Add the frozen peas to the ham and garlic and cook, covered, until peas are hot.
Combine the tortellini, ham mixture, ground pepper, and a big pat of butter.
Add mint and a generous amount of cheese to each serving.

Variations:
The first time I made this, I used orrechiette and prosciutto instead of tortellini and ham, and it was good too, and more sophisticated-seeming. To make sure the end result wasn't too dry, I tried a flashy new move (new to me, anyway):
Cook the pasta in well-salted water. Save a half cup of the liquid, and drain the pasta before it's quite done. Dump the pasta back into the hot pot, turn the heat to medium, and add the saved water, a bunch of grated parmigiano, tons of ground pepper, and a big hunk of butter. Stir energetically. The starchy, salty water will mix with the cheese and butter, making a flavorful, emulsified juice. The pasta absorbs enough liquid from the sauce that it finishes cooking in a few minutes. Once the pasta's done, add the (still warm) prosciutto and peas. The sauce will lightly coat everything, distribute the flavors, and keep the whole thing from being dry and gummy. So, a good technique if you have the time and inclination, but eminently skippable if you just use cheese tortellini and some butter.

Month Eight: Part Two

2008-06-13T18:11:00.002-04:00

It's been hot here lately, and I've been very pregnant. These two factors combine to create a serious gap in my wardrobe. I tried my best to solve this the American way, by shopping my way to a solution, but some moron seems to have convinced the producers of maternity clothing that pregnant women want to wear nothing but clingy polyester dresses when it's ninety-five degrees outside. Well, maybe all the air-conditioned pregnant women like synthetics, but I have a different idea of what I want to wear. Which is: nothing. This weather calls for complete nudity and an icy glass of lemonade. But fear not. I like my neighborhood, and I think they might throw me out if I start waltzing around in the (massive) altogether. So I was shopping for, and not finding, thin cotton dresses. Dresses that would be both wispy and tent-like. Both huge and weightless. Think "gossamuumuu." But no dice. The marketplace failed me, which is how I found myself sweating onto my sewing machine earlier this week, making my own damn dress, and inadvertently learning things:

-The light on the sewing machine throws off an impressive amount of heat, like a little brunch-buffet heat lamp for the prime rib that is your fingers.

-When it's this hot, and one is this pregnant, every ten minutes sitting at a humming sewing machine needs to be balanced out by fifteen minutes of lying motionless right in front of the fan.

-When you're this sweaty, lying motionless in front of the fan is remarkably cooling. Hooray for physics! Or is that hydraulics? Whatever it is, it's a very refreshing demonstration.

-Working for ten minutes and resting for fifteen minutes is actually a very effective way of avoiding stupid mistakes when you're liable to cut corners and be slapdash. Many dumb decisions were avoided at the last minute by the Smart Brain having a chance to catch up to the Lazy Brain and overrule its plans.

-As soon as you finish the Breeziest Garment Ever Conceived, the weather will break and your other clothes will suddenly seem reasonable again.

-If there's not another brutal heat wave this summer, I'll be delighted. If there is, I'll be prepared.

Month Eight: Part One: Best Use of iPhone Yet

2008-06-09T15:08:00.001-04:00

If you ever find yourself due to have a baby in late July, here are the cons:
-the first heat wave will turn you into Jabba the Hutt, but sweatier.
-at the first barbecue of the season, it will be impossible not to notice the resemblance between your fingers and your hot dog.
-the onset of prime dumpster-diving season (late sunsets, no more cold drizzle) will coincide with your passage from the Pregnant But Limber phase to the Downright Ungainly phase.
-you will be too ungainly, swollen, and sweaty to make the 500-mile trip to The Wedding Of The Year

And the pros:
-just as you grow out of your winter coat, it'll be warm enough not to need it.
-just as putting on socks becomes a real trial, it'll be sandal weather.
-just as it's warm enough to wear skirts without tights, that's all you'll be able to wear.
-your dad will take pity on your delicate and ungainly condition and live-blog the WOTY for you.

Delicifficient!

2008-05-21T16:54:00.003-04:00

In the mood for a banana split? Of course you are. Not interested in all the dishes that would dirty? No way, right? Here's the solution:
Right hand: banana (peeled the monkey way, of course).
Left hand: ice cream sandwich.
Alternate bites. There you go.

Crock Pot Pulled Pork and Old-Fashioned Coleslaw

2008-05-17T17:33:00.003-04:00

My appetite has returned, and it's highly suggestible. A photo, an aside in a novel, a whiff of a restaurant's exhaust fan, and I can develop a craving. Usually these cravings are easily satisfied, but I recently made the mistake of reading a book that included a reference to barbecue. I grew up in the South, so I know what barbecue is supposed to taste like, but I live in the North, so access to the real thing is a problem. There is a neighborhood barbecue restaurant, from which my sound judgment had kept me until now, but the craving would not be denied. We went there for lunch.

The good news is, whoever is choosing the meat and running the smoker isn't doing a bad job, but that's where the good news ends. The "pulled pork" sandwich that I ordered was more of a "chunked pork" sandwich. And the chunks, instead of being bathed in thin, savory, vinegary juice, were dry. There was a bottle of thick, homemade-looking sauce on the table, but after tasting it, I realized that they must have run out of the real thing and borrowed some mysterious condiment from the Indian restaurant next door. It wasn't bad, but it wasn't anything that should go on barbecue. So there wasn't even any liquid to help my sandwich stay a sandwich. Big hunks of dry meat ejected themselves from the back end of the bun at every bite. I ended up using a fork. And the coleslaw, which I had been relying on to prevent the meal from being a complete loss, was... pasty. It had an indefinable textural wrongness to it that, well, I can't define. All I can say is that although it looked likely enough, it tasted almost, but not quite, entirely unlike coleslaw.

Not only was my craving unsatisfied, I now had a taste to get out of my mouth and an experience to rinse out of my brain. Since pork is cheaper than airplane tickets, I figured I should try something I've never done: making barbecue at home. I realized I should try this when I saw a big hunk in the back of the pork case in the grocery store: a picnic shoulder. It was bigger than my head and its thick skin still had a few little pig hairs sticking out if it. The real deal, and only a buck a pound. So I brought it home, figuring I'd find a recipe for pulled pork somewhere.

I consulted cookbooks and the internet, looking for the common threads. Unfortunately, the common thread was "things you don't have in the house." You might say that I'm interested in efficiency, or you might say I'm lazy. Either way you'd be right. I didn't want to get involved in a project involving smokers or brine or wood chips or, heck, even another trip to the grocery store. All I really wanted was one good sandwich, and I was only willing to go so far in order to get it. So I read enough recipes to get a feel for Pulled Pork Theory, and then got as close as I could with what I had around.

And it was good. Well, I liked it, and the four Yankees I shared it with liked it too, but what do they know. All I can say is, it seems reasonably close to the barbecue (or pulled pork) that they used to serve in my elementary school cafeteria, and that you can still get at little places all over the Upland South.

No Browning, No Chopping, No Smoking, No Shopping Crock Pot Pulled Pork
Serves 8-10. Takes at least a whole day, if not two.

1 14-oz can diced tomatoes
1 teaspoon dried red pepper flakes
2 teaspoons dried minced garlic
2 teaspoons smoked chili powder
1 tablespoon dried chopped onion
2 teaspoons salt
1/2 teaspoon ground cloves
1/4 cup molasses
1/4 cup worcestershire sauce
1/4 cup red wine vinegar
1 picnic shoulder of pork, bone-in, skin-on, hairs optional (8.5 lbs)

to taste, at the end:
honey or sugar
more salt
more chili powder
more vinegar

Mix everything but the pork in the bottom of a large crock pot. Set the pork on top of the sauce. Let it cook on high for 8 to 10 hours (I set it for 8, and it looked like it could have gone longer). Once it's done, you can either set the meat and sauce in the fridge overnight and deal with it tomorrow, or you can get to it. Either way, you'll want to remove the fat from the sauce and set it aside (don't throw it away yet). Remove and discard the skin and attached big hunks of fat from the meat. Get rid of the bone(s) and any obvious tendon-type things. Put the sauce and the hunks of meat in a saucepan, and if the sauce is too thin and soupy, bring it to a simmer to reduce it. As it cooks, stir. If the meat is cooked enough, it'll will break down into shreds as you stir. Taste and adjust seasoning. You might need more sweetness, more salt, more spice, or more vinegar. As you taste and add, also evaluate how rich it is. Add in as much of the reserved fat as you like. Aim for just enough so it doesn't taste thin, but not so much that it becomes actively greasy.

If you're trying to replicate that (well, my) Southern barbecue experience, serve it with coleslaw on squishy rolls that compress down to almost nothing as you squeeze your sandwich. They're not substantial enough to interfere with the relationship between the hot juicy barbecue and the cool crisp slaw, but they still do a fine job of holding everything together and absorbing whatever juice isn't busy dripping off your elbows. If you're from some other part of the country and had a culturally deprived childhood, you might enjoy it on a bread of more substance. I'll allow it.

*Bread Update*
The first round of buns was from the regular grocery store. I didn't scrutinize the ingredients, but I bet they had all kinds of hydrogenated and high-fructose ingredients. They were great: nice and squishy when dry, chewy even when soaked, and just bready enough.

The next round was from the fancy store, where they don't use any of that fake stuff. They were awful. Dry and stiff when dry, gluey when soaked. Almost bad enough to keep me from having a barbecue sandwich every day for the last four days. Almost. So beware! If you're a no-crappy-ingredients stickler, don't even try to go the squishy-bread route. You'd be better off with a nice yuppie bread.

Innovation-Free Coleslaw
Serves 8-10

1 savoy cabbage, finely sliced or shredded
1 small onion, finely chopped
3-4 carrots, grated
1.5 cups Hellman's mayonnaise
1/4 cup vinegar
1/2 cup sugar
1 tsp ground pepper
salt to taste

Mix. Let sit 2 hours or up to overnight.

Month Seven: Part Three

2008-05-08T09:42:00.000-04:00

It was hard to tell, on my scratchy cell phone, whether the nurse had said, "You are not diabetic" or "You are now diabetic." I decided to go with positive thinking, and said, "Yay!" figuring she'd probably just ask why I was so excited to be diabetic if that was indeed the case.

Luckily, not. Not diabetic. I have medical permission to go eat doughnuts. And I will celebrate that permission with a nice apple and some lovely almond butter.

Month Seven: Part Two

2008-05-02T17:18:00.002-04:00

5/1
I have the one-hour glucose test to screen for gestational diabetes today. It involves drinking a sugary substance, waiting an hour, and then having your blood sugar checked. I've heard that the test can make you feel horrible and the drink is disgusting, so I wanted a little more information. As usual, I turned to the internet. And I'm finally wising up. Instead of googling "glucose test disgusting", I googled "glucose test not that bad." And what do you know, there are people for whom it's not that bad! And that's all I need to know about it before I have to do it.

5/1 (later...)
And the verdict is... not that bad! Really! The drink was not tasty, not something I'd order in a restaurant, but do-able. It was about a cup of very very sweet, slightly syrupy, slightly carbonated soda. And if it made me feel weird at all, the weirdness was indistinguishable from my base level of pregnancy weirdness, so I couldn't tell. Apparently some places have flavors, but this was just Sugar Flavor, and a real waste of calories as far as I'm concerned. I understand the need for ingesting a specific, measured amount of sugar for this test. But in this age of standardization and international corporations, why couldn't the standard measure be a certain number of glazed doughnuts? I'm sure that Dunkin makes his "donuts" pretty standard everywhere. They could've given me a choice between drinking their stuff and bringing a sticky dozen with me to my appointment. One for the midwife, one for the lab tech, one for the nurse, one for the receptionist, eight for me. Maybe I'll bring that up the next time I'm in the office.

5/2
Blood sugar affects mood, right? Pregnant women tend to worry, right? So, a pregnant woman with screwy blood sugar is likely to be both irritable and anxious already. As such, the call from the nurse, with the news that the glucose screening test has been soundly and decisively flunked, is not likely to result in a measured, reasonable response. It's much more likely to result in some tears, a certain amount of slamming things around, and possibly also a smattering of oaths. Like this one: crap. And this one [censored]. And this one: [extra censored]. And then back to: crap. But don't worry. I held off swearing until I hung up the phone.

This flunk doesn't mean I have gestational diabetes, it just means I probably do. It also means I have to take another, more serious, test next week (no food for 11 hours, followed by a blood draw and a big glass of that awesome drink-that-isn't-doughnuts, followed by three more hours of fasting and a few more blood draws). I feel jittery and weak if I don't eat for two hours. How is fourteen hours of fasting going to feel? Again: crap.

If I were feeling more like myself, I'm sure I could take this development in stride and just do what I had to do without making a big deal of it. But I'm not, so I'm not. I'm having a hard time eating again today, and it's driving me crazy to be both hungry and unable to swallow anything without really concentrating. Tiny bites help, as do crunchy fruits and vegetables, but it's hard to get a lot of sustenance out of nibbling radishes and grapes.

Well, if I do have gestational diabetes, maybe it explains all this energy level and appetite nonsense. If I start eating three (!) eggs for breakfast every day, maybe I'll finally get that pregnant energy surge everyone talks about.

Crap.

Month Seven: Part One

2008-05-02T17:13:00.001-04:00

There are a bunch of things that have been floating around in my head lately, waiting for me to recall them, compose them into actual stories, and post them here. I'm kind of skipping that middle step.

One:
He sings and plays with his head leaning against my belly. He's worked out how to play a Fugazi song on the piano, but he makes up new, less suicidey lyrics for the baby. We both love it when she kicks her father in the head.

Two:
Worrying about the baby. I hope she's doing well. I wish she could call, email, send a photo. All we get is the sound of her heartbeat once a month, and movements that could equally well be described as happy acrobatics or pained seizures, for all I can tell. Only in retrospect can they be described as perfectly normal and good.

Three:
At the end of the day, I get tired from being so damn pregnant all the time. So, lie down to rest. Think about how tiring parenthood will be. Wonder how we will ever manage. Despair. Realize that this depressing thought never occurs to me when I'm not collapsed on the couch. Realize it might be okay.

Four:
Two nights ago, I dreamed I had twins. A dark-haired girl and a fair-haired boy. Last night I dreamed I had a little boy named Ali, with milk chocolate skin and dark chocolate hair. In my dream, we didn't wonder much about how he could be such a dark child of such pasty parents. He was a happy, giggly little guy, who could stand by the time he was two days old.

Five:
I still half think that I can take off this pregnancy like a fat suit, just for a few hours, just for a sec. There is no more flopping down on the couch. There is no jumping up when my sweetheart gets home. It takes a while to lower myself onto the pre-arranged pillows, and it takes even longer to get up again.

Six:
He says, "Why don't you talk about me much on your blog? It sounds like you're doing this all on your own; like you're going to be a single mother." Alright then, let me turn down the griping and sarcasm and make a full report and a clean breast: he is patient and loving and can make me laugh even when I'm irritable and filled with heartburn. Also, he is strong and brave and good and makes dinner when I give up. All these things are true.

Month Six: More Bonus Material!

2008-04-30T15:04:00.003-04:00

Stroller Search, Part I: The Dithering
I like to think of myself as sensible about money. I trained myself pretty well in the lean years during and after college, and I still hesitate and consider before spending money. Well, hello Humbling Experience. Here comes The Stroller Decision.

As I have learned in my endless baby-gear googling, there are two kinds of strollers for infants: the suburban strollers and the city strollers. A suburban stroller looks like an SUV (huge, lots of molded plastic, cupholders for everyone), and assumes you have an SUV to carry it around in (it's huge even when it's folded, and it's heavy). They come upholstered with cute fabrics that look like nothing I would ever wear or buy (wow, look at that. I can't figure out how to say that without sounding like a real bitch. True Self revealed, I guess). And they cost around $200.

The city strollers, on the other hand, are like high-end camping gear: lots of metal tubes and technical-looking fabric, in colors like orange and red and black, and generally lighter weight and more compact than the suburban strollers. And they're in the neighborhood of $900. Yes, nine. Nine hundred dollars. And you can spend even more without breaking a sweat.

There are a few differences in ease-of-use between the two kinds, but it's mostly a matter of cost and aesthetics. And there's no way around it: $700 is a ridiculous amount of money to spend just to look cool. On the other hand, I can easily imagine just how grouchy I'd be pushing a frilly SUV around the neighborhood for the next few years, and a part of my frugality has always been to not spend money on the cheaper thing that will make you so crazy (or be such bad quality) that you end up ditching it for the more expensive thing in the end. Of course, I'm usually applying that philosophy to decisions like measuring cups and underwear, where the difference is in the five dollar range.

The less decisive I feel about this, the more research I do online, and the more ridiculous things I learn about adjustable handles, degree of recline, solid vs. inflatable wheels, harness adjustability, and who has the rare, sought-after "sunset" color in stock.

I'm tempted to go to Home Depot and check out the wheels and pipes and hardware, just to see if we could make our own. Of course, it would end up weighing as much as an actual SUV, and either wouldn't be foldable or would be a deathtrap for our beloved firstborn, but it would be so cool...

So, circles. I'm going around in them (tight turning radius, smooth ride, solid rubber wheels).

Stroller Search, Part II: The End?
We spent a day test-driving strollers, at both the suburban big box and the upscale neighborhood yuppie-baby-mart. I was hoping to have some kind of breakthrough; to learn something in the real world that had escaped me online. I would have been equally happy with either, "This one's not that bad! And only $170!" or, "This one is clearly worth the extra hundreds of dollars. Why, we could all live in it!" But alas, no. I was left with the same two feelings: "They're just so ugly" on the one hand and "HOW much money?" on the other.

The helpful shop assistant had just wrapped up her third stroller-spiel in the fancy store when a passing mom said, "Can I give you some advice?" She had 6-month-old twins in a stroller and a look of sympathy on her face. The three of us turned to her politely, expecting a real-life endorsement of one of the candidates in question, but she said, "Don't get any of them." The shop assistant's face fell a bit (although she recovered with impressive speed), but the two of us suddenly became much more interested in what she had to say. She explained that she'd been through three or four different strollers already, and the most useful thing was none of them, but the simple, cheap, wheeled frame that the babies' car seats just snapped into. By the time our baby has outgrown the infant car seat, she said, we'd have a better idea of what stroller features are important to us and we'd be able to test drive strollers with the actual kid. In the meantime the frame (called, snappily, the snap'n'go) is lightweight, cheap, and compact. We could have kissed her. Instead, we thanked her and the shop assistant and skipped out of the store with wallets and marital harmony intact. Snap'n'go, here we come. And a year from now, maybe there'll be an attractive, lightweight, compact stroller for less than $300. Or maybe, through a haze of spit-up and sleeplessness, I just won't care quite as much.

Month Six: Deleted Scenes!

2008-04-30T14:53:00.003-04:00

I have two images living in my mind lately: number one is a pregnant woman in heels and a (maternity) business suit, working at a high powered Office Job, taking good care of her family on evenings and weekends. Image number two is that damn woman in the rice paddy that I keep hearing about: one kid strapped to her back, pausing for 10 minutes to give birth to her next kid before getting back to work. These images tend to pop up just as I lie down for yet another little rest.

I had a big deadline last Friday (which, for procrastinators like me means a lot of work in a little time), hosted a book club meeting Friday, taught a class Saturday, hosted a dinner Sunday, and was back at work Monday morning. In planning for this crazy week, I knew that if I pushed myself as hard as I could, I'd just work myself into a worthless lump, so I made a Plan. I'd work a few hours every morning, take a long siesta midday, work a few more hours in the afternoon or evening, and maybe achieve a balance of health and productivity that way. Well, I did make it through the week, met my deadline, taught the class, and had a nice time at the social events, but it's now Wednesday and I'm still feeling crappy. So crappy, I decided it was worth the ten bucks and the loss of quality in produce to get groceries delivered. So crappy, I decided to take the day completely off. What the hell is wrong with me?

Well, to be perfectly honest, it's not a complete mystery. My pregnant body obviously has more serious needs for food, water, and rest than it used to, but at the same time it's somehow gotten a lot less demanding about those needs. My hungry/thirsty/tired cues are way more subtle than they used to be. If I'm focusing on something else and don't notice the tiny shift in sensation that (it turns out) means,"Fooooood! Foodfoodfoodfood nowwwwwww!" then the little twinge goes away and does not return. The same for thirsty and tired. So I carry on, feeling fine, eating/drinking/resting only as it occurs to me to do so and the chickens don't come home to roost until days later, when suddenly, I'm too tired to be hungry, too thirsty to eat, and too hungry to fall asleep.

Which I guess is why I do the best when I'm just farting around, being unproductive, with plenty of mental space to register those twinges. If I want to be a high-powered rice paddy executive, it looks like I have to be more proactive in the whole keeping-body-and-soul-together department. Crap.

So, I'm spending the day in bed, blogging. Lucky you.

Month Six

2008-04-30T10:45:00.001-04:00

4/1
When the baby moves, it feels a lot like a muscle spasm—kind of a flippy twitch. And she shifts around a lot, so sometimes I feel the muscle-spasmy feeling on the right, sometimes the left, sometimes high, sometimes low. I love feeling her move. But the other day, my brain said, "Hello baby!" before I realized that no, no matter how smart and strong she's getting, that's not the baby kicking me three inches above my right knee.

4/4
I've been feeling and seeing the baby move for a while now, but today was the first day that I really realized I could feel her when she wasn't moving too. She gave a big jump, and then settled down. I was watching my belly, and noticed that one side was sticking out a little more than the other. I put my hand there, and there was definite resistance—more than on the other side. So I took the opportunity to give her a little back rub. Or... butt rub? head rub? Who's to say?

4/16
Now that we know that she's (probably) a girl, I'm much more tempted to look at baby clothes. Our plan has always been to only buy the basics before she's born (diapers, union suits), because parent friends of ours have all warned us about the onslaught of tiny adorable outfits and toys that will arrive. But it's hard to resist shopping. I'm a pregnant American woman, with nurture and nature pushing me from both directions to stock up! Nest! Prepare! Shop! So I spend a little time every week looking at tiny adorable outfits online, I admit.

But today I found a good way to talk myself down from the ledge of internet shopping. I was all ready to click away twenty two hard-earned dollars, when I looked down and asked my belly if she needed some socks. It instantly became clear to me that not only has she not attained full person-hood yet, not only is she no bigger than a blind kitten, she's not even coming out until July, when her feet will be plenty warm until at least September. I have months and months before she'll need socks.

Although, thankfully, since that last ultrasound, I have been able to turn off the morbid voice inside me that had been keeping me from buying socks by saying, "But what if she doesn't have two healthy feet? What then? Don't tempt fate! No limb-dependent purchases!"

4/26
Weird Little Thing About Pregnancy #476:
Imagine a non-inflated puffer fish (jalapeno-shaped, non-protruding spikes). Now imagine what happens to those spikes when the puffer fish puffs: they go from flat against the skin to sticking straight out, right? Now apply that principle to the fine hairs on a pregnant woman's belly. With each growth spurt, I develop perpendicular belly hairs. Within a day or so, everything adjusts to the new size, and they relax again. And over and over. Navel gazing? Me? Why, yes, now that you mention it. Quite a lot.

Month Five

2008-04-30T10:38:00.002-04:00

3.1
I found a great quote on another blog, referring to newborn care, "Buck up, cookie. Whatever it is, it's probably not your fault." I'm seriously considering learning how to cross-stitch so I can make a dopey little pillow for the baby's room, to gaze at as I try to calm a tiny squalling tomato-faced infant.

These days, if I'm lying back on the couch at around 8pm, the baby has a little dance party. Strongest kicks all day. My favorite thing to do is just lie there and watch my belly jump.

3.5
I'm kind of blown away by how little energy I have these days. I thought the middle trimester was supposed to be all about full speed ahead energy. It did come into my head that since babies need a lot of sleep just after they're born, they probably need a lot of rest before they're born too, and I was feeling better about all my loafing. And then I remembered that, of course, before they're born, just like after, babies can sleep while their mothers climb mountains. At least in theory. Crap. Will that realization make me get up off the couch? No. Will it make me feel useless? I'm afraid so.

3.7
Ultrasound: it's (probably) a girl! "She" was sitting with her legs and feet all tucked up under her as the ultrasound tech was trying to invade her privacy, so we're not completely sure. But most importantly, all her limbs and organs look fine! Hooray! And we have to go back for another ultrasound in May, so maybe she'll be less shy then, and we can get some confirmation. We weren't planning on a lot of pink lace and ruffles anyway, and we don't want to commit to a name before we meet her, so it's mainly just for our own curiosity.

3.13
Earlier today, I was having a lot of painless contractions (my belly kept going from water-balloony to bowling-bally), and neither lying down nor taking a warm bath stopped them, so I called the midwife's office. She wasn't in, but they got me in to see an obstetrician right away. And let me put it this way: if I had made it through this whole pregnancy without hearing a medical professional say, "Perhaps you're being a little hyper-vigilant," it just wouldn't be me. I love hearing people with stethoscopes around their necks say, "Everything looks just fine."

My Brother's a Genius

2008-03-05T15:24:00.002-05:00

And he knows me very well. So well, he sent me the link to: How To Make Dishes Out of Bacon.

I'll let you know if I try it. Return the favor, wouldn't you?

Blogging of the Weak (nothing here but a link to someone else's creativity)

2008-03-04T15:16:00.003-05:00

I am not a fan of the Garfield comic strip.
I am a fan of the Garfield Minus Garfield comic strip.

The Week of Healthy Delicious

2008-02-27T19:42:00.003-05:00

In my second trimester, I've mysteriously developed the eating habits and food preferences of a two-year-old child. I can only imagine that this is nature's way of preparing me for the actual two-year-old child who is fast approaching me like a bowling ball bearing down on the poor, oblivious pins.

With my newfound two-year-oldness, I go from perfectly fine to desperately starving in about four seconds, and I Must Eat Now, except I don't want any of That because it looks yucky. And even when I find something that seems appetizing, I can only eat about a half a cup of it before it turns to ashes in my mouth, and I'm so done with eating. I get desperately hungry again in another twenty minutes, and the whole cycle starts over. This is driving me crazy. It's also driving me tired and grumpy and ill-nourished.

My old way of cooking and eating was to have three good meals each day, with a heavy reliance on leftovers. These days, I eat six or seven times a day, and I get tired of food a lot quicker than it gets used up. This leads directly to my eating more snack foods and fewer real foods than usual, just when I should be eating the healthiest diet of my life. And on top of this, my habitual cooking time of late afternoon is now the time of day at which my energy is the lowest. It feels like a lose-lose-lose situation.

So after some careful deliberation and a close look at the budget, we've decided to hire a round-the-clock, seven-days-a-week personal chef. She's been instructed to have a wide variety of healthy, delicious meals at her fingertips, any of which can be ready within moments. She just got back from her first trip to the grocery store, and things are looking up in the food department.

This personal chef is, of course, me. I realized today that if I can't figure out a way to feed myself better, I'm not going to be much good for much else. So I made a plan. I made a list of the healthiest, most delicious foods I could think of, and planned eight different meals around them. I'll do as much pre-preparation as I can, so that whenever the hunger strikes, I can be with moments of Real Foods of Great Variety.

In case this works out really well, and gets us a delicious, healthy week of eating with not too much fuss, I'm keeping track. And so both you and I know where to find this list in the future, I'm sharing with The Good Ol' Internet. Here's the grocery list and menu plan:*

8 whole wheat tortillas
8 whole wheat mini pita breads
1 box whole wheat angel hair pasta
1 loaf multi-grain bread
1 frozen ball of whole wheat pizza dough

2 lbs flank steak
12 oz mozzarella
1 lb cheddar
7 oz whole-milk Fage yogurt
2 19-oz cans white beans
6 eggs
1 lb sliced deli ham**
8 oz hummus

2 avocados
4 red peppers
2 sweet onions
1 lb baby spinach
4 tomatoes
1 head lettuce
1 bunch carrots
5 zucchinis
1 can tomato sauce
1 meyer lemon
1 head garlic

Prep Work:
Chop a whole head of garlic, and keep it in olive oil.
Broil and slice the flank steak.
Grate the mozzarella and the cheddar.
Marinate the beans in lemon zest, garlic, oregano, and olive oil.
Wash and dry the spinach and the lettuce.
Slice and broil half the zucchini, half the peppers, and half an onion.
Wash and chop the rest of those vegetables.
Peel the carrots.
Divide the pizza dough into 4, stretch and pre-bake

Menus:
Steak Salad (lettuce, spinach, onion, peppers, carrots, sliced steak)
Tacos (beans, steak, peppers, cheddar) and Guacamole (avocado, onion)
Roasted Veg and Ham Panini (zucchini, peppers, onions, ham, cheddar, bread)
Frittata (ham, spinach, zucchini, eggs) and Salad (lettuce, onions, tomato)
Pita Pockets (pita, hummus, flank steak, yogurt sauce, spinach, carrot, tomato)
Wraps (tortillas, lettuce, onions, spinach, beans, yogurt sauce)
Pasta (tomato sauce, zucchini, carrots, cheddar) and Salad (spinach, onions, beans)
Pizza (dough, tomato sauce, mozzarella, ham, peppers)

*In the interests of maximum tastiness, nutrition and variety, I've all but abandoned my usual goals of seasonality and affordability. This is a more expensive and less sustainable way of eating than I prefer, but you have to pick your battles, and this week, my battle is to get enough good food into me to make a healthy baby and a mama that has the strength to pick her head up off the couch. Don't worry, I'll make sure the kid feels guilty about it forever. You can rely on me.

**Yes, yes. Lunch meat, pregnant = pestilence, death, blah blah blah. I will heat it thoroughly before eating and somehow keep myself from munching it cold out of the fridge.

Month Four

2008-02-26T18:18:00.001-05:00

2.13
The Pregnant Hunger: it is here. I woke up this "morning" at 4:30, starving. I went down to the kitchen, zapped a hot dog in a tortilla, and ate it along with a bunch of grapes, in about three minutes. On my way back to bed, I passed my husband, just getting up. Señor Stalwart is getting up at 5 these days, partly so we can go to bed at the same ridiculously early hour. Thinking of calling us after 8:30 in the evening? Think again.

2.21
The wee-hours-snack is now a pretty firmly established part of my routine, and the house is cold at three and four in the morning. You'd think I could just keep crackers on the nightstand, wouldn't you? Nope, has to be cereal and milk these days. I'm thinking about keeping a little thermos of milk by the bed, next to a bowl of dry cereal. Or maybe I'll make up a little bedroll in the kitchen by the fridge.

I still have a hard time eating a full meal, or even wanting to eat sometimes. I feel hungry, I know I should eat, but nothing that I think of seems appetizing. Although sometimes I'll see a picture or hear a description of food and develop an instant craving for about half a cup of it. I really need to make myself a little Heathy Foods picture book to browse. I'm up six pounds now, though, so it seems like I'm getting enough.

Along with a nice round little belly, I've developed off-and-on cramps in my sides. Stabby, stabby cramps. Apparently they're caused by stretching ligaments, which makes sense given all the abdominal renovations going on. Lying down helps, so I spent a few hours in bed yesterday afternoon. It was warm, comfortable, stab-free heaven.

What with the lying down during the day and lying awake at night post-snack, I've been reading an awful lot. So far, the almost complete works of Terry Pratchett and Jane Austen, alternately. Witty prose, appealing characters, eventful plots, and happy endings. Perfection. What other authors exist in the same Venn-diagram space as Austen and Pratchett? I'm running out of books.

2.24
Imagine getting a big, energetic new goldfish at the pet store. It comes in a plastic bag of water, right? Now imagine that taut bag of fish and water nestled in your pelvis. Feel the fish flipping around in there? Yeah, me too. I felt the first flips a few weeks ago, and I wasn't sure if they were The Goldfish That Is Our Child or The Goldfish That Was Last Night's Dinner, but now I'm sure. I feel it several times a day, especially in the evening, when the baby and I are draped on the couch and the man of the house is making us dinner. When I make dinner, there's not quite as much flippy action, which could be taken a couple of ways. My preferred interpretation is, "The baby loves it when you make dinner. I wouldn't mind cooking, but think of the child!"

Feeling movement has been a strange new part of being pregnant. It creeped me out a little at first, but now I'm used to it, and my instinctive, worried response is to wonder if the baby is doing a jolly little dance or if it's kicking at the walls in annoyance. This pointless level of concern for my baby's happiness does not bode well for my future as a mother. I can see it now: every room filled with discarded plastic toys, half-eaten candy and new puppies, all because I couldn't bear to see the little angel's lower lip tremble. I'm going to be awesome.

2.26
Two things I heard this week:
"Wow, you're really big for only four and a half months along!"
"You're the cutest pregnant lady I've ever seen."
The only thing I believed? The former. The only thing I want to hear again? The latter.

As a woman currently living through Things People Feel They Should Say To A Pregnant Woman, let me share some advice. Unless you have a well-established tradition of affectionate mutual taunting with the pregnant woman before you, any observation about her appearance that doesn't include the words glowing, wonderful or gorgeous should be kept to yourself, bub. Especially things that include words like tired, huge, whale-like or spotty. You can safely bet that she's aware of the novelty of her appearance, and doesn't need you to point it out. Because of this, a loving, supportive and patently false compliment is likely to be very welcome indeed.

Being pregnant is like trading in your old, dependable body for a new model that, while it has lots of exciting new features, is buggy, unpredictable, and crashes at inconvenient moments. It's true that there's lots of tech support out there, but most of it tends to fall into two not-very-helpful categories: Impending Doom (also known as You're Doing It Wrong) and Fluffy Rainbow Kitties (also known as Don't Worry Your Pretty Little Head About It).

Month Three

2008-02-22T14:01:00.002-05:00

1.4
Second ultrasound: the baby is huge! Well, two inches, head to butt. But it's twice as big as last time! We saw it wiggle and flex and wave its little limbs, and we saw fingers! Five fingers! We're hoping for about twice that many, but five's a really good start. We saw the baby's profile, and so far, the baby has its father's nose: very small and cute. Whew.

1.10
This week, my craving has been grapefruit. I've had two whole ones already today, and I could really go for another one. I try not to grunt as I devour them, but I'm not always successful.

1.17
Apparently I'm over the grapefruit craving. Had half a one this morning, and it was just a nice piece of fruit, not the Amazing Citrus Adventure it's been for the past couple weeks. I don't have a big appetite in general these days—I eat, but I don't get too excited about it. So, in the grocery store this morning, not in a hurry, I just pushed the cart up and down and looked at all the various foods, waiting for something to jump out and be my new best friend. No surprise: beef hotdogs. Surprise: baked beans. I think I need iron.

I had trouble getting dressed this morning. Hmm. Maybe I really am pregnant. Luckily, I had a meeting of my Council of Advisors tonight (well, my book club, same thing), and they gave me the list of yeahs and nays in the world of maternity clothes. Good: Gap, Target, and Old Navy. Bad: Motherhood Maternity.

1.18
How am I feeling these days? Bloated, gassy, heartburny, and alternately cranky and grumpy. The levels of crank and grump are unprecedented. Despite the fact that I've never been known for my willpower, I've always assumed that my sunny mood was thanks to an intentionally healthy outlook and a good dose of self-control in times of trial. Turns out I have nothing to do with it. It is a bestowed gift, and can apparently be unbestowed.

When eating makes you feel bad (see gas, bloat, and burn above), it can be hard to work up much of an appetite. These days, eating and cooking are tedious and unbelievably frequent necessities. I am not used to this.

1.20
I want to go live all by myself in a small, plain shack and eat small, plain meals. In other words, Prenatal Depression: I have some. It sucks. I have decided not to implement the Shack Plan, so instead I slouch around the house, growling and spitting. In good news, I still enjoy chopping vegetables and working in my studio. Everything else? Not that much.

1.21
You can make instant mashed potatoes with all milk (no water). They're fine that way, and extra-calciumy. And also good cold, for second breakfasts. I still haven't gained any weight, so I'm having as many breakfasts as I want.

1.28
I was better! Chipper, energetic, happy. Then I stayed up late to watch as the BBC messed with Jane Austen and got only 8 hours of sleep. Turns out my new good mood was dependent on the 10 to 11 hours of sleep I'd been getting every night. I'm going to take a nap.

Month Two

2008-02-22T13:53:00.002-05:00

12.5
I'm finally starting to feel a little gross. It's kind of reassuring to have a sign of pregnancy beyond all the peed-on sticks. Yeah, I saved them. You have a comment about that?

I have a craving today for gooey macaroni and cheese. But I'm not sure it counts, because it's not like I've ever NOT wanted gooey mac and cheese. So I don't know. I do know that I got two boxes of Annie's Deluxe at the store. Oh boy.

Later... Ooogh. It takes 20 minutes to make a box of Annie's Deluxe. It takes 3 minutes to inhale a third of it. Now I don't feel so good.

12.10
I'm trying to stay detached and accepting about this process, especially before we see a heartbeat. Last week, feeling fairly well, I was calmly thinking that I'll just take it as it comes and experience whatever happens day by day. This attitude is much harder to maintain with nausea and fatigue and epic gas to contend with. This morning I was thinking, "Feeling crappy sucks. I better get a really awesome baby out of this. If this doesn't work out, I'm going to be so pissed." Maybe I should start meditating.

Here's what might work for nausea: Drinking ginger tea or lemon soda.
Here's what's not working: Imagining I'm drinking lemon soda.
Since we don't have any lemon soda, maybe I should make some ginger tea.
Later... It works! Ginger tea works!

12.16
My favorite food these days is cold, congealed oatmeal. No joke. I flat out love it. I'd rather have it for breakfast than a fancy pastry or eggs and bacon. I can only get half a bowl of oatmeal down at a time, so I eat half hot and half cold, later. It is fantastic.

12.21
First ultrasound! There are two hearts in me! An increase of 100%! Crazy! And also, the baby looks like a lump of oatmeal, which seems appropriate.

12.28
I've gotten used to the nausea, and it goes away as soon as I eat something. My favorite thing these days is a bowl of cheerios right before bed. Just the smell of them makes my mouth water.

My folks were here for Christmas, and they said their style of pregnancy and childbirth was Clueless Hippie, which worked out really well for them. My style, apparently, is Over-Informed Geek Girl (no surprise).

Earlier today, I said I'd gotten used to the nausea. Well, I should amend that to: I've gotten used to dealing with nausea when I'm at home. Shortly after I wrote that, I made the mistake of leaving the house without proper preparation, and so found myself marching around on errands, not really sick enough to give up and go home, but plenty sick enough to wear a truly wretched look on my face and hate everyone who dared cross my path. I really have to make myself a bag that holds a tiny bottle of lemon soda and three triscuits. I know, a flask! Every pregnant lady should carry a flask. Although, by the time I look more pregnant, I'll probably be over the nausea, so I wouldn't get much real shock value out of it.

Month One

2008-02-22T13:22:00.002-05:00

In an ironic twist, I got pregnant right as my Month of Every Day Posting began back in November. Trying to come up with something to say every day without talking about that newsiest and most distracting of life events was a challenge. But it was all for the best, because now I have the chance to edit my stream-of-consciousness journal with the benefit of a little hindsight. So, read on! Catch up! But first a warning: it might be edited, but it's still the navel-gazing reflections of a woman who's pregnant for the first time. Grains of salt? Please?

11.12.07
It looks like my first symptom of pregnancy is the development of the legendary Mothervision. Usually manifested as "eyes in the back of your head," mine is more like "can make out the faintest of pale blue lines on a pregnancy test." Yesterday, only I could really see it. Today, both of us can see it, but it's still pretty faint. Probably only visible to people who are genetically related to the line-producing blob. I'm cautiously over the moon.

11.16
Over the last three days, I've taken four more pregnancy tests. By now, the line is probably visible from space. Hello, dear parasite.

11.17
It's November. Therefore, I'm chilly, and I find myself browsing newborn legwarmers and hats and cozy little shirts online. Forgetting, apparently, that if all goes well and the baby comes in July, it'll be plenty warm for at least a couple months. Maybe I should just go put on another sweater.

11.23
I'm traveling for Thanksgiving, and still feeling very well, although everyone is clearly ready to be helpful and supportive if I start feeling feeble. They were all happy when I decided to take a nap in the middle of the day yesterday, although I think I was just Transcontinental Travel Tired, not Pregnant Tired.

My main inclination is to cook all day, quietly, by myself. This is the perfect mood to be in on the day after Thanksgiving, when there's soup to be made and everyone else is happily lolling on the couch.

Fecha de Caducidad*

2008-01-09T18:32:00.001-05:00

As I've mentioned before, my mother's a great baker. Because of this, she never feels completely at home in a new place until she has all the ingredients necessary to throw together a couple loaves of bread, some biscuits, and a few cookies at short notice. So when she's vacationing in a place with a kitchen, she'll stock it appropriately, and proceed to bake up a storm for the duration of her residence. I've been lucky enough over the last few years to have her vacation near me, so not only have I enjoyed more baked goods than usual, I've inherited her vacation pantry once the trip was over. Win/win. And also, now, after several years of this, a home pantry with four cans of baking powder in it. This is three and a half cans more than would be reasonable given my rate of consumption. Even if I made biscuits every month, four cans of baking powder would last me slightly less than twenty years, if there were no science-fair volcanoes to contend with (or is that baking soda?).

I wanted to clear the decks in the pantry, so three of those cans had to go. However, I've heard that baking powder can get stale, so some experimentation was in order. Apparently, the way you test is to dump a teaspoon of baking powder into half a cup of hot water, and root for it to burst into fizzy action immediately. So I turned on the kettle, set out four little bowls and four littler bowls, and doled the teaspoons out into the latter (I admit to having a pretty comprehensive collection of small dishes, and to using them at the slightest provocation). I poured half a cup of steaming water into each of the little bowls, and then realized I'd need an extra limb for the next step: Fizz Race! I dumped the baking sodas into the waters as simultaneously as I could manage, and learned something right away: Baking Powder Lasts Forever. They were all promptly, extremely, identically fizzy.

So I just kept the one with the prettiest label (good old Rumford) and the moral of the story is this: if you have a nagging concern that occurs to you in the middle of the night, that your baking ingredients might be stale, and your tea cakes might be a little on the leaden side and it's just that no one wants to tell you, don't worry. Your baking powder's probably fine.

*when we were in Spain, we saw "fecha de caducidad" on a food package and, curious, looked up caducidad in the spanglish dictionary. The translation? Caducity. Gee, thanks. Well, once we got to an English dictionary, we learned that "fecha de caducidad" translates into the poetic "date of senility" or, of course, expiration date.

Merry Christmas

2007-12-22T10:49:00.000-05:00

Running out of garlic makes me a little panicky. Not having a pen on me has the same effect. So, when I'm leaving the house, I tend to grab a pen on my way out the door, and I do the same thing with garlic and other staples at the grocery store. Just in case. The more scattered I feel, the more I tend to do this, so I can use the number of pens that end up in the bottom of my bag as a kind of index. I believe my record is in the low twenties.

And now, a quick inventory of the kitchen:
three pounds of butter
four cartons of eggs
six different packages of cheese
seven heads of garlic

Time to do a little deep breathing, apparently. I'm not even going to check how many pens I have in my bag.

Homemade Cream of Tomato Soup

2007-12-16T15:25:00.000-05:00

Luckily, I went grocery shopping before all the snow and sleet and rain and sleet and snow and wind, so I could stay inside and only care about the precipitation when it started coming through a chink in the badly-named storm window. The Chief of Physically Difficult Maintenance took care of that after he took care of the snow and ice on the sidewalk, the driveway, and the neighbors' sidewalk, so I felt that an extra nice lunch was called for. One of us really deserved a nice treat, and both of us would enjoy it.

It seemed like a good day for grilled cheese sandwiches, but they always seem kind of lacking if there's no tomato soup. And even though we were rich in groceries, we did not have one of those red and white cans. So, after a brief consultation with the internet about curdling (the answer is baking soda), I made my first batch of:

Homemade Cream of Tomato Soup
1 onion, chopped
1 tbsp butter
1 tbsp flour
half a cup of cream or milk
1 cup chicken broth
1/8 tsp baking soda
1 can diced tomatoes (14 oz)
salt, pepper, and sugar to taste

Melt butter in a saucepan. Cook the onions in the butter gently until they are softened and translucent (maybe 15 minutes). Stir in the flour until it's completely combined with the butter. Gradually stir in the cream or milk and the broth. Mix in the baking soda and heat through. Add the tomatoes with their juice and puree with a stick blender. Heat through and add salt, sugar, and pepper to taste.

This isn't exactly how I made it, but with all my adding a bit more here and a bit more there, trying to get it creamy enough and tomatoey enough and just the right thickness, I ended up with twice as much soup as I was trying to make. So I'm fairly sure this recipe gives good proportions and amounts to make a nice soup for two, but I can't give an ironclad guarantee. I can only say that this is the way I'll make it next time. And I see no need to ever buy a red and white can again. This is tasty.

Chicken Fat Biscuits

2007-12-14T19:33:00.000-05:00

For once, I had prepared my work area ahead of time. I dusted a clean board with flour, set out my ingredients, assembled all my measuring spoons, and only then embarked on a new recipe. I had a bunch of chicken fat to use up, so I was trying a new way of making biscuits: a recipe that calls for liquid fat. I usually just abuse my regular recipe for cold-butter-biscuits, but I figured I should try something new, and maybe I'd learn something. So I measured, mixed, and only made one change: I substituted whole wheat flour for half the white flour. Well, two changes: I also doubled the recipe in my head as I went. Never a good idea.

And once I added the liquid and fat, the mix resembled no biscuits I'd ever seen. The only way that nicely floured board would come in handy would be for making the real biscuits I'd hanker for after these strange objects were done. The dough looked like greasy oatmeal: not an attractive look. But I persevered, dropping the dough by big spoonsful onto the baking sheet, and banishing the whole catastrophe into the oven. We'll see what it looks like in ten minutes...

Hmm. Looks: not good. Taste: not bad. They didn't brown on top, so now they just look like flat, slightly swollen, dried out lumps of oatmeal. They taste good, though, and they don't seem wrong enough for me to blame their looks on my inability to do math in my head. The outside is crisp, insides are tender and steamy, and they have a nice flavor from the whole wheat and chicken fat. Maybe they're so flat and the dough was so wet because whole wheat flour absorbs less liquid than white. Sounds plausible, right? So next time, less liquid and maybe a little sugar or molasses for browning. Actually, with molasses and fennel seeds and orange juice (instead of some of the milk), these would be very nice tea biscuits. And I can call them Chicken Fat Tea Cakes. Not appetizing? Heh. More for me.

Next Morning Update: Apparently they were not only Not Bad, they were quite good. Between the two of us, we ate seven of them with dinner. I won't disclose which of us ate a sensible, restrained two and which of us had five (hey, they're half whole wheat, so they must be healthy, right?).

Next Week Update: They freeze well, and they turned out to be just flat enough that they can be thawed and warmed in the toaster. So a big batch can get you weeks of last-minute, no-fuss, fresh hot biscuits. That's worth a little flatness and ugliness in a biscuit.

Ugly Chicken Fat Biscuits

1.5 cups whole wheat flour
1.5 cups white flour
3 tsp baking powder
1.5 cups milk
2/3 cup chicken fat, melted

Mix dry ingredients, add milk, mix briefly. Add fat, mix until dough just holds together in a horrible glob, about 20 seconds. Drop onto a cookie sheet and bake at 400 for ten to fifteen minutes.

Meaty Red Sauce

2007-12-06T14:49:00.000-05:00

This sauce is one of the key elements in my four part winter survival plan. The other parts, you ask? Shoe spikes, homemade chicken broth, and microwavable heating pads filled with feed corn. With this sauce, you can have a pasta dinner that feels warming, satisfying, hearty and thoroughly homemade in the amount of time it takes to cook the noodles. Or, in slightly more time, you can make a pizza that gives you the same wonderful feeling and makes the house warm and fragrant to boot. I make a big batch and freeze it in one-pint containers, which is about the right amount for one pizza, or for pasta for two or three people.

This recipe does take two days to make, but I bet there's less than 20 minutes' actual work involved, and it gets you a head start on about twenty servings of dinner. One minute per serving? Not bad at all.

3 beef short ribs (about a pound each)
4 28-oz cans ground tomatoes
1-2 cups red wine
1 tsp dried garlic (fresh is fine too of course, but dried is easier and tastes just fine)
2 tbsp dried oregano
1 tsp red pepper flakes
salt and sugar to taste

Brown the short ribs well on all sides. As they brown, add the tomatoes and spices to the crockpot and set it to cook on high for 8 hours. When the ribs are browned, add them to the crockpot too. Deglaze the browning pan with the red wine. Use the deglazing liquid to rinse out the tomato cans, and pour the wine and last bits of tomatoes into the crock. Now cover it up and go away to do something else all day.

After 8 hours or so, lift out the short ribs and shake off any sauce that clings to them. Refrigerate the meat and sauce separately, and have something else for dinner. The next evening before dinner, de-bone and chop the meat. Pick most of the solid orange fat off the cold sauce and discard it (leave a few bits—they make the sauce better). Combine the chopped meat and sauce in a large pot. Heat thoroughly, mix well, and add sugar and salt to taste.* Have some for dinner and freeze the rest in pint sized containers. This recipe will fill seven containers if you don't have any for dinner.

*Tomatoes vary widely in how acidic they are. Sometimes I don't need to add any sugar, and sometimes the sauce has such a harsh bite I add a whole tablespoon. I have used pureed cooked carrots instead of sugar, which works very well, adds a nutritional boost, and is undetectable in the finished product, but I'm usually too lazy. As for salt, if you used canned tomatoes that contain salt already, you might not need to add any. If you used salt-free tomatoes, you'll probably want some.

Now, to define "some." I've always wondered, as I stood over my huge pot of sauce, guiltily wielding that salt shaker, how homemade sauce compared with commercial, and how many actual teaspoons of salt were in those jars at the store. Well, now that I have you people to please, I figured I'd actually, finally do the math and quit just wondering about it. So I googled "nutrition facts" "tomato sauce," recorded what I found for sodium, standardized the serving sizes and units of measure, did some number crunching, and found out that typical commercial sauce (not salt free or low salt) has about a teaspoon of salt per pint of sauce! If you can't visualize this, go measure out a teaspoon of salt. And then think of the volume (depending on your preferred indulgence) of a pint of beer or cream or chocolate fudge ripple. A whole teaspoon! Per pint! If I made my sauce as salty as commercial sauce, the recipe would call for more than two tablespoons of salt! I can't even imagine that tasting good! Sorry for all! the! punctuation! but I am shocked. And, I suppose, consoled. No matter how much salt I add to my sauce, it would still end up with a big "reduced sodium" sticker on it if I were selling it in the grocery store.

Month: Over!

2007-11-30T15:18:00.001-05:00

I did it! I posted every day in November, whether I had anything to say or not (maybe half and half). Now I have two things: a great sense of accomplishment, and no desire to do that ever again.

I'll be going back to my actual life for a while now. I'll see you again when I have something to say. My guess is, a couple weeks at least.