Everyone in the family has been sick for two weeks. First we had the flu, then Adrian's morphed into an ear infection, Julian's morphed into bronchitis and a possible sinus infection, and I am fighting a sinus infection right now.

Adrian was getting better from his flu, and then all of a sudden he took a big turn for the worse, with goopy green eyes and nose. That was right about the time that he stopped sleeping. Two nights in a row of sleeplessness, where he only slept for half an hour at a time, and then not at all after 3:00am. A 15 minute nap on both days. Crying all the time.

Julian was waking up every few hours screaming and crying and coughing, usually just when I had managed to get Adrian back to sleep.

This is the very definition of misery, when your kids stop sleeping, cry endlessly, and you don't feel so hot yourself.

On the second night of Adrian's not sleeping, he was crying "MOMMMEEEE!!!!" and I asked him "Baby, what's wrong, can you tell me?" This time he pointed to his ear and made the sign for "hurt". Aha! An ear infection!

Next morning I had the kids in to the pediatrician first thing. Unfortunately by the time I got them out of there, got the prescription picked up, and ran all the other errands I had to do, I was feeling pretty damn sick myself and it was too late to see anyone.

It was late Friday afternoon (of course...I ONLY get sick on Fridays after the doctor's office closes). Super sore throat and one completely blocked nostril, accompanied by a burning fire in my left sinus. Since my last sinus infection was so bad I thought I was going to die, I was a little panicky about the prospect of developing a sinus infection late on a Friday afternoon, and so far it hasn't been fun.

Yesterday I got out my Neti Pot and gave my sinuses a good cleansing. I normally do it just once on either side, but my left sinus was still blocked after I poured a whole pot through it, so I just kept going.

Green goo kept coming out, little by little, and then after the third pot I blew my nose hard into the sink and this....this....THING shot out of my left nostril. It was at least an inch long, and about half an inch wide, and the very first thing I thought when I saw it was that I had just had a miscarriage out my nose. It was a total meat purse. I am absolutely kicking myself for not taking a picture of it, because it was so utterly weird and unbelievable, but I was a little too freaked out at the time to think clearly.

I grabbed it and started dissecting it with my fingers. It had this meaty sort of tough core, and flecks of blood in it. I'm pretty sure it was just layers of dried up mucus that had piled up to form a stalagtite of sorts in my sinus, but Jesus Christ, it was odd. Odd and HUGE and more than a little bit creepy.

I could instantly breathe clearly on that side after it came out. No shit, huh? I can't believe that was inside my head. No wonder I felt crappy. The other side was still kind of blocked, so I kept washing and washing it out with a few more Neti pots full of saline, but nothing else came out except a little more green goo.

I still felt sick last night, but my throat was not as sore today, and I *think* my sinuses might be improving. I don't feel worse, and that's a good thing.

So what I'm wondering is...if you have a giant freaky Snot Clot up in your sinuses like that, and you take antibiotics, that might kill the bacteria, but what happens to that creepy creature? Does it just break up and come out on its own? It just seems odd that a doctor wouldn't try to wash things out somehow and get the blockage out of your sinuses in the first place, if the blockage is what's causing the infection. Or is that what ENTs do?

Maybe I never did get the Snot Clot cleared out after prior infections, and that's why, after NEVER having had a sinus infection in my life despite hayfever, colds, flu and even about of double pneumonia, I have suddenly started getting them in the past two years after every little cold and flu, even mild ones. In that case, I'm freaking THRILLED to have gotten that monster out of my sinuses. I'm thrilled anyway, but even more so if it has possibly been the root of all the sinus evil I have had over the past two years. From the looks of it, this thing had been up there a long time. It practically had hair and teeth.

We'll see how things go...my fingers are crossed for improved health and LOTS more sleep for everyone.

Posted by msLaura at 01:30 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)

I got so ripped off this time around.

Last pregnancy I gained SEVENTY pounds. When I got out of the hospital after the Home Birth Gone Wrong scenario went down, I had lost 35 pounds already. In like, three days! I didn't lose a single pound after that until six months post-partum, then all of a sudden those stubborn 25 pounds of extra junk in my trunk melted off.

This time around I gained forty pounds total. I thought I had it made. I was patting myself on the back for doing such a great job keeping my pregnancy weight gain to a nice high-end-of-normal amount this time.

If I lost 35 pounds right out of the hospital, then this time I would only have five pounds of excess chub to lose. And how easy was that? Five pounds...who would even notice? Sweet!

Well, it did not turn out that way. I got home from the hospital this time and I had lost 13 pounds. That's it! So I still have 27 pounds to lose, which means that even though I gained THIRTY POUNDS LESS than I did last time, I am actually fatter now.

I can't figure out what happened. The only possible explanation is that I was in labor for three days last time around. Not eating or drinking. Breathing like a steam engine. Screaming. That's quite a workout. It's more than that, it's like an extreme crash diet.

This time around I was pinned to a table for a half an hour of paralysis. Then I had broth and Jello for one day, and resumed eating three squares with relish. The hospital food was pretty good, and the fact that someone else was cooking and doing the dishes made it delicious.

Since then I've lost 4-5 pounds, but the neddle is pretty much stuck. I'm trying to remember how last time around I was jogging, walking, lifting weights and STILL not a pound melted off until the 6 month mark. At 2 months I should not feel discouraged. There's nothing more to be done right now except eat healthy foods in smaller amounts and stay active.

But man, I would really like to get back into my clothing. The saggy maternity wear is really getting old. The sausage-casing fit of my fattest fat clothes is not appealing either. Sweatpants are not appropriate for every occasion, after all.

Posted by msLaura at 12:08 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Today I went to the post office to ship out some international orders, so I actually had to find a legal parking spot and wait in line.

I pulled into the lot only to realize that there were no available parking spots. When I tried to back out to park on the street, I looked behind me and some dude was already riding my bumper, so I was stuck.

I waited, and waited...and eventually two cars parked next to each other left at the same time. I pulled into the far spot, and the bumper-rider behind me pulled into the other spot.

I got out of my car and popped the trunk to get my packages out. The bumper-rider was already out of his car and approaching me. He glanced at my pregnant belly (which is getting quite large) and then launched in:

FAT SCHLUB: "So what's up with your sticker? What does THAT mean?"

ME: (Disoriented, because I had taken Dan's car to the post office, so I thought he meant one of the stickers that I have on MY car) "Huh? What sticker?"

FAT SCHLUB: "THAT one." (pointing at it) "It says 'SCIENCE'. What's that supposed to be, that shape...a fish?"

ME: "It's a rocket ship."

FAT SCHLUB: "Well it looks like the fish, which is a Christian symbol. Are you trying to make fun of Christians?"

ME: "You can interpret it any way you like."

And then I walked off. What a dork.

Can you imagine if I stopped to accost every person that I saw with this creationist crap on their car?

"What does THAT mean? Are you making FUN of evolution? Huh? Are you? What's that shape supposed to be right there...is that the Darwin Fish being EATEN? Well IS IT, you punk-ass bitch? You think you've cornered the market on truth? I got your truth RIGHT HERE pal..."

Yeah, not too likely to happen. But funny to imagine.

Posted by msLaura at 05:16 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Love this. I found it in Barbara Coloroso's fantastic book Kids are Worth It!
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Fritjof Capra, a renowned physicist and philosopher, explained in his book The Turning Point: Science, Society, and the Rising Culture the dilemma faced by adults in our culture as they try to impart to children the value of everyday, ordinary chores.

As far as the status of different kinds of work is concerned, there is an interesting hierarchy in our culture. Work with the lowest status tends to be that work which is most "entropic", i.e., where the tangible evidence of the effort is most easily destroyed. This is work that has to be done over and over again without leaving a lasting impact -- cooking meals which are immediately eaten, sweeping factory floors which will soon be dirty again, cutting hedges and lawns which keep growing.

In our society, as in all industrial cultures, jobs that involve highly entropic work -- housework, services, agriculture -- are given the lowest value and receive the lowest pay, although they are essential to our daily existence. These jobs are generally delegated to minorities and to women.

High-status jobs involve work that creates something lasting -- skyscrapers, supersonic planes, space rockets, nuclear warheads, and all of the other products of high technology. High status is also granted to all administrative work connected with high technology, however dull it may be.

This hierarchy of work is exactly the opposite in spiritual traditions. There, high-entropy work is highly valued and plays a significant role in the daily ritual of spiritual practice. Buddhist monks consider cooking, gardening, or housecleaning part of their meditative activities, and Christian monks and nuns have a long tradition of agriculture, nursing, and other services.

It seems that the high spiritual value accorded to entropic work in those traditions comes from a profound ecological awareness. Doing work that has to be done over and over again helps us recognize the nautral cycles of growth and decay, of birth and death, and thus become aware of the dynamic order of the universe. "Ordinary" work, as the root meaning of the term indicates, is work that is in harmony with the order we perceive in the natural environment.

Not only can ordinary chores help children recognize the natural cycles, they can help kids:

* Develop the ability to organize their own resources
* Experience closure on tasks
* Organize themselves
* Set goals and build skills necessary to work through more complex physical and mental tasks.

As well, chores are a great way to say to kids, "You are important members of our family; we need you, and we are counting on you to help out." Children need to believe that they can make a contribution, can make a difference in their families.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Julian helps pick up his toys and put them in the basket. He also feeds the dog (with help and supervision), keeps his water dish filled, and generally helps me with whatever task *I'm* doing.

Sometimes this is a pain for me and slows me down, but he learns something each time. He wants to be part of the action, so I try to find some little aspect of my task that he can do, or at least mimic.

If I'm chopping vegetables, he has little Velcro fake veggies and fruits that he "cuts" with a wooden knife. He stands up on a stool at the counter next to me.

He also helps clean up any spills around the house with a cloth, and he empties his own potty in the toilet when he's done. I also will hand him a well-squeezed sponge and have him "clean" or "wipe" if I'm cleaning the kitchen. He loves it!

I treat it as an honor and a privilege for him. He is a helper, and has proven himself capable of handing a certain task, etc. It's not a punitive thing, but a privilege, whereby he takes part in the household activities. There's nothing that I *make* him do, I offer these little tasks to him like a special little treat. He's so proud of himself afterwards, and cheers "Hooray!" Adorable.

Yeah, I'm sure THAT won't last forever. LOL. The cheering that is, not the adorableness.

Posted by msLaura at 11:12 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Julian came to get me at 6:something a.m. and I went to sleep with him in his bed. While I was sleeping, I had a short bad dream.

I was 18 again, or some young age thereabouts. I was living in a small, shabby apartment with Charlie Brown, but I didn't really interact with him in my dream, it was just his place, and I was living there. Some windows were broken out, and the single room was full of unknown dream people, all chain-smoking.

What the hell? Why was I in this nasty place? Why was I with Charlie Brown, of all people? Why was everyone SMOKING, for crying out loud? Where was Dan, and Julian, and Bugs?

This is not my beautiful house! This is not my beautiful life! I was wracked with despair, and then Julian woke me up to tell me that the sun is now up, so time for milk.

It took me a moment to realize that I was in my son's room in our beloved house, with Dan and Bugs snoozing nearby, but when I did I was overjoyed. I've never been so thankful to be here in the present and not anywhere in the past, thank you very much. Even a weird not-so-accurate dream past.

I'd like to have the skin of an 18 year old, but that's about it. Everything else is so much better NOW.

I told Dan about my dream, and about the phrase that had come into my head while I was looking around in my dream and despairing. He teased me about paraphrasing from the Talking Heads song, because he knows David Byrne's voice grates on my nerves. The guy is talented and everything, but his voice is awful.

We were having a shitty time a few weeks ago, what with illness and teething and exhaustion and all. Non-stop tantrumming, rainy weather, PMS, pooping in pants. Sooooooo not fun.

But now the teething has abated, the colds are over, PMS has passed, smiles and laughs and funny moments are plentiful and abundant, leaves are budding out on the trees, and Julian pooped in his potty all by himself FOUR times today. I think he pooped twice as much as usual just to show off. And he even dumped it in the toilet by himself too. Astounding. Business is good too.

I'm just enjoying it while it lasts, because these moments of health and happiness and luck and pleasure are fleeting. They pass in the blink of an eye. Life is pain for so many. So let me write that I so dearly appreciate what I have. I love my family most of all. I love my home. I love my work. I love my friends. I love the Internet. It's great to be alive... right here, right now.

These are the good old days.

Posted by msLaura at 11:02 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I am doing online traffic school right now and just read this interesting tidbit:

Behavior experts say that it takes about three weeks of making conscious choices to develop a new habit.

So if you can force yourself to do some worthwhile action or activity for three weeks, chances are that it will be simple routine for you by the end of that time.

Likeiwse, if you continue doing something bad or unhealthy or unkind for more than three weeks, it could ALSO become habit.

Hmmm...useful knowledge, that. Makes me more aware of what I do on a daily basis.

Posted by msLaura at 04:39 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

January 1, 2006
Op-Ed Contributor - New York Times
Why I'm Happy I Evolved
By OLIVIA JUDSON

London

IF chimpanzees observed New Year's Day, they would have much to reflect on. In 2005, they joined humans, chickens and mosquitoes, as well as less famous occupants of the planet, on an exclusive but growing list: organisms whose complete genomes have been sequenced.

What would they make of this news, I wonder? Perhaps they would resent the genetic evidence that they are related to us. Or perhaps they would, as I do, revel in being part of the immensity of nature and a product of evolution, the same process that gave rise to dinosaurs, bread molds and myriad organisms too wacky to invent.

Organisms like the sea slug Elysia chlorotica. This animal not only looks like a leaf, but it also acts like one, making energy from the sun. Its secret? When it eats algae, it extracts the chloroplasts, the tiny entities that plants and algae use to manufacture energy from sunlight, and shunts them into special cells beneath its skin. The chloroplasts continue to function; the slug thus becomes able to live on a diet composed only of sunbeams.

Still more fabulous is the bacterium Brocadia anammoxidans. It blithely makes a substance that to most organisms is a lethal poison - namely, hydrazine. That's rocket fuel.

And then there's the wasp Coesia congregata. She injects her eggs into the bodies of caterpillars. As she does so, she also injects a virus that disables the caterpillar's immune system and prevents it from attacking the eggs. When the eggs hatch, the larvae eat the caterpillar alive.

It's hard not to have an insatiable interest in organisms like these, to be enthralled by the strangeness, the complexity, the breathtaking variety of nature.

Just think: the Indus River dolphin doesn't sleep as you or I do, or indeed as most mammals, for several hours at once. Instead, it takes microsleeps, naps that last for a few seconds, like a driver dozing at the wheel.

Or consider this: a few days after its conception, a pig embryo has become a filament that is about a yard long.

Or: the single-celled parasite that causes malaria is descended from algae. We know this because it carries within itself the remnants of a chloroplast.

It's not that I have a fetish for obscure facts. It's that small facts add up to big pictures. For although Mother Nature's infinite variety seems incomprehensible at first, it is not. The forces of nature are not random; often, they are strongly predictable.

For example, if you were to discover a new species and you told me that the male is much bigger than the female, I would tell you what the mating system is likely to be: males fight each other for access to females. Or if you discover that the male's testicles make up a large part of his weight, I can tell you that the females in his species consort with several males at a time.

Suppose you find that a particular bacterium lives exclusively in the gullets of leeches and helps them digest blood. Then I can tell you how that bacterium's genome is likely to differ from those of its free-living cousins; among other changes, the genome will be smaller, and it will have lost sets of genes that are helpful for living free but useless for living inside another being.

Because a cell is a kind of factory that produces proteins, and because proteins can have a variety of components, some of which are cheaper to synthesize than others, you might expect that proteins that are mass produced are made from cheaper components than proteins that are constructed only occasionally. And you'd be right.

The patterns are everywhere. Mammals that feed on ants and termites have typically evolved long, thin noses and long, sticky tongues. A virus that is generally passed from mother to child will tend to make its host less sick than one that readily jumps from one host to another via a cough or a sneeze.

When I was in school, I learned none of this. Biology was a subject that seemed as exciting as a clump of cotton wool. It was a dreary exercise in the memorization and regurgitation of apparently unconnected facts. Only later did I learn about evolution and how it transforms biology from that mass of cotton wool into a magnificent tapestry, a tapestry we can contemplate and begin to understand.

Some people want to think of humans as the product of a special creation, separate from other living things. I am not among them; I am glad it is not so. I am proud to be part of the riot of nature, to know that the same forces that produced me also produced bees, giant ferns and microbes that live at the bottom of the sea.

For me, the knowledge that we evolved is a source of solace and hope. I find it a relief that plagues and cancers and wasp larvae that eat caterpillars alive are the result of the impartial - and comprehensible - forces of evolution rather than the caprices of a deity.

More than that, I find that in viewing ourselves as one species out of hundreds of millions, we become more remarkable, not less so. No other animal that I have heard of can live so peaceably in such close quarters with so many individuals that are unrelated. No other animal routinely bothers to help the sick and the dying, or tries to save those hurt in an earthquake or flood.

Which is not to say that we are all we might wish to be. But in putting ourselves into our place in nature, in comparing ourselves with other species, we have a real hope of reaching a better understanding, and appreciation, of ourselves.

Olivia Judson is an evolutionary biologist at Imperial College in London.

Posted by msLaura at 09:44 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

So I completed Phase 2 of my "Pâté de Foie et de Porc en Brioche" last night....ground the meat and made the pâté. Today I'll take the chilled brioche dough, and the partially cooked pâté, and bake them together for the final step. Then chill for 24 hours and taste-test.

I'm concerned that the meat is not ground finely enough. Julia said to grind it on the medium blade of the meat grinder. I only have two blades, big and small. I used big. Hmmmm. Well, I'm only doing one batch first, so if it doesn't turn out I'll do it all finely ground next time.

Let me tell you, that meat grinding process was not pretty. I'm not squeamish or anything, but grinding pork liver was freakin' nasty. It turned into a foul-smelling purplish gooey pulp when I put it through the grinder. I was actually kind of grossed out during the whole rest of the pâté-making process, until I sauteed a spoonful of the mixture to taste and adjust the seasonings at the end. Then it was like, "Oh....yummy!"

That's the thing about French food. If you think about some dishes, they seem somewhat disgusting (not really though, if you compare to McDonald's), but then you taste them and they taste so amazingly good. Snails? Every time I've made snails I've been slightly skeezed out, but then they taste so delicious with all the herbs and butter and garlic, slightly crusty on top in their pretty shells...mmmm.

When I was grinding the pork fat and liver and tenderloin with my fine Czech-made Porkert meat grinder (which broke a world record for meat grinding I'll have you know), I kept imagining that scene from The Wall where the English schoolboys march in a line and fall into a big meat grinder, to be turned into sausages, I suppose.

One interesting thing about grinding the meat...when I put the pork tenderloin through the large blade, it came out with a gross-looking consistency. But then I re-ran it through with the fine blade, and it came out magically transformed, looking exactly like the high-quality ground pork or beef that you buy at the supermarket. Because it looked familiar again, it became appetizing. It's all about your cultural frame of reference, I suppose.

Posted by msLaura at 01:48 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I have a lot of really good stories to tell, but I have a lousy memory. Part of the reason that I'm keeping this journal is so that I can record things before they slip through the cracks and start fading. So here's an interesting story that I don't want to forget.

The weirdest thing that ever happened to me was a dream that came true, down to the smallest detail.

I was about 17 years old, living in a cottage on the Balboa Peninsula with Charlie Brown (no joke!), my much older boyfriend of 37 . That's a story in itself, but we'll just stick to one story at a time for now.

I had a dream one night. In the dream we went over to Charlie's friend Mike's apartment for a party. Some nondescript party stuff happened, people were milling around chatting and eating and drinking in the kitchen. Suddenly I wondered where Charlie was, so I went walking through the apartment to find him.

I found him in the next room. As I walked through the doorway from the hall I saw him in profile, siting in a chair next to a birdcage. He was feeding turkey to a parrot.

WHAT? I was shocked and appalled. How could anyone on their right mind feed turkey to a bird? Why, it was cannibalism! Disgusting!

"STOP THAT RIGHT NOW!" I screamed.

He didn't see why he had to stop feeding turkey to the bird, so we started arguing about it, and ended up having a huge fight.

The dream ended, I woke up. It was morning. Hmmm, that was one *crazy* dream. I wonder what it meant?

"I had a dream that we went over to a party at Mike's", I said to Charlie.
"Hmmmm", he replied.

Four or five months later, the dream was long forgotten. We were at a party at Mike's house and I was milling around in his kitchen, chatting and eating and drinking.

Suddenly I wondered where Charlie was, so I went walking through the apartment to find him.

I found him in the next room. As I walked through the doorway from the hall I saw him in profile, siting in a chair next to a birdcage. He was feeding turkey to a parrot.

WHAT? I was shocked and appalled.

Wait, was I really shocked and appalled? Yes, but mostly because my dream came flooding back to me and I knew exactly what was supposed to happen next. I even knew what I was supposed to SAY next. And I already knew what Charlie would say back to me.

It was a picture-perfect replica of my dream. The room, his profile, the bird, the turkey in his hand, my perspective on it all. Did Mike have a bird before? This was the first I knew of it. Holy fucking shit!

Rather than say anything, I just stood in the doorway stammering.

"What's wrong?" Charlie asked me.

"Oh my GOD I had a dream about this! This exact moment and situation! You were feeding turkey to a parrot, and then I wondered where you were and I came in looking for you and saw you do it and I was SO pissed and I yelled at you and then you yelled back at me and we're supposed to get in a fight now!"

My mind completely blown, I had no idea what to do next. I felt like I was breaking some universal space-time law by not following through with what I was supposed to say.

But honestly, I didn't give a crap if he fed the turkey to the bird or not. I'm not hung up on cannibalism. It wasn't my bird. What did I know about birds anyway? Maybe it was perfectly OK.

So I just stood there watching Charlie do it, not saying anything at all. I couldn't believe what had just happened. What WAS that? I felt like I was going to be struck by lightning after not speaking the line that had written for me, and not following the destiny of the fight afterwards.

I guess we do control our own destinies. I don't know that anything would have been any different in my life if I had said what I was supposed to say according to my dream. But maybe it *would* have been different somehow. Maybe I avoided a whole negative repercussion that would have been sent spinning into action by my scream. Like "Sliding Doors" or "A Wrinkle in Time". I have no idea, and I have no explanation for what happened that day.

Posted by msLaura at 08:19 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (1)

I am having a somewhat rough day, as you can probably tell from my previous posts.

My Loving Husband just took Julian and Bugs out for a walk to give me a break, so I sat down to send some emails about contract work. Then I got distracted, started reading this and it totally cracked my shit up. All bow down to the Flying Spaghetti Monster, Creator of the Universe!

Many thanks to dooce for turning me on to the FSM!

Posted by msLaura at 01:55 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

My Dearest Julian,

Today is your first birthday. I can hardly believe it, the time has absolutely flown by.

Well, in some ways it feels like an eternity. I don't really remember anymore what life was like without you. Before you were born, I couldn't imagine what it would be like to have a baby. Now I can't imagine what it would be like to NOT have a baby, you are so ingrained in my every thought and action.

Wow, a whole year. A year ago at this time I was holding your tiny precious body in the hospital room, and I couldn't put you down. I couldn't stop staring into your alert beautiful eyes, examining your face and your toes and your hands and your smiling rosebud of a mouth. *This* is what has been in my belly for the past 10 months? Remarkable. So glad to finally meet you!

You were such a good nurser from the very beginning. I was freaking out because your birth was so hard and so traumatic. After you came out I couldn't swallow, I couldn't feel anything from my chin on down. I was so looking forward to a peaceful birth, and being able to bond with you right away, and then it just didn't work out that way. I had to look at you on your Daddy's lap until the anesthesia wore off. I cried my eyes out because I couldn't use my arms and I couldn't feel my legs and there was my baby right THERE and I was just a useless lump of flesh.

When I could feel my arms tingling a little bit I called the nurse over...please help me! She put you in my arms, helped guide you to my breast and you just latched on like you had been doing it all along. "He's doing it perfectly," she said, and I was so happy I thought I would die. I held you and held you and held you, all day and all night long. I didn't even put you in the bassinet to sleep, I wanted you right there next to me, skin to skin. That was the way you wanted it too...every time the nurses put you in your bassinet to change your diaper, you cried your eyes out. That little goat cry. Meeehhhhhh!!! I couldn't wait to get you back.

It was hard in the early days, not because you weren't wonderful, but because I wasn't used to taking care of something so small and fragile and helpless. It has been hard to be a mama sometimes since then, but it gets easier every day. I made the decision to try to show you the very best in myself, to be patient and loving with you, to always be there for you day and night. I'll be honest, sometimes I just wanted five minutes to myself. Sometimes my back hurt from holding you. Sometimes I really wanted to sleep by myself. Sometimes I got really tired of nursing you non-stop. But I always thought, this will pass so quickly. And it did!

It's a year later, and you don't need me quite as much as before. You are a strong, happy, secure, confident boy. You play and explore happily on your own. You have an incredible sense of humor and crack us up with your witty ways. You are so smart and so physically agile! You watch Daddy or me do something once and then jump right in and try to do it yourself. You love people and are not afraid of them. You love your dog. You are very strong, but gentle. You never hit your playmates, even when they are not so nice to you. I feel like you were born with the gift of a sweet loving nature, and my job is basically to keep it intact and help guide it along without altering or disturbing it. I'm so proud to be your mama!

The other day I woke up before you did. As I was looking at you, you sleepily opened up one eye, then the other, then a HUGE grin spread across your face and you started clapping with joy. My little love. I can't wait to see what life brings as you get older. But don't grow up too fast. You're so much fun to be with, and I don't want to miss any of it.

Daddy and I love you very much, with all our hearts. Stay sweet, little boy. I promise that we will always be there for you, no matter what.

Love,

Mama

Posted by msLaura at 09:44 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Today is my 35th birthday. First of all, I can't believe I'm already 35, because I feel about 22. Also, I swear I just celebrated my 33rd birthday. What happened to my 34th birthday?

This was the most low-key birthday I've ever had. We celebrated at a champagne brunch yesterday, but today the only out-of-the-ordinary thing that I did was take Julian to Hogue Park. I put him in the jogging stroller and ran over there, then we played in the little kids' playground. He had a blast pulling up on everything. They have a fire truck sort of thing, and he pulled up on different parts of that.

Two little sisters came by to play as soon as we arrived, about 2.5 and 5 years old. The 5 year-old came up to him, said, "My name is Ava.", then stared into his face, touched his hand and announced, "I love him." They practically played right on top of Julian for about ten minutes. I kept having to rescue Julian's fingers from being crushed by the 2.5 year-old's sneaker, and her full-face attempts at kissing him. Finally their mother shooed them away.

Julian crawled up onto one of the play structures and experimented cautiously with crawling up and down various sloping ramps. There was a bridge that was shaped like a slight U. He crawled to the edge of it, tapped in front of him with his hand to test it out and make sure it was OK, then gingerly crawled over it. Once he got to the other side he continued speed-crawling again. Very cute. My little adventurer!

He played some music on the musical tubes, turned a steering wheel around and around, and for a grand finale we went down the big slide. Fun! I put him back in his jogging stroller and ran home again. I knew it was past his naptime, but when I got home it was already after 1:00pm...we had been at the park for over an hour and a half! Well, we'll just have to go earlier from now on. It's too bad I can't take Bugs to the park too, but he's not allowed in the playground.

Our baby has been quite the social butterfly lately. Lisa and Ray were over the other night, and Julian woke up not too long after they arrived. He was all fired up and not going back to sleep, so I just brought him downstairs to visit for a while. He sat quietly and contently with us for several hours on my lap and just hung out and listened to the conversation. I was amazed. He made up for his lost sleep that night by sleeping in the next morning, which was great for me.

Whew, the next few weeks are going to be hectic. First we are spending a week in Southern CA with my family, which isn't hectic by itself, but all the traveling and adjusting and having J in a lot of different places that aren't childproofed is going to be challenging. Then back to start packing up the house, we move on January 10-11, and unpacking/putting away after that. I foresee Julian spending a lot of time on my back in his backpack during that time! Not that that's a bad thing...he's cozy and safe back there, and can see what's going on. But my back might be a wee bit sore after all this.

Oh, and Dan and I have our 2nd wedding anniversary on January 3rd. Can't believe it's been two years already. Did time go by this fast before, or do we just have more milestones to gauge it by now?

Posted by msLaura at 09:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

It has been way too long since my last journal entry. I thought only checking in once a week was stretching it, but now I see that it has been 3 weeks or so since I last wrote! Awful.

Well, obviously...I've been busy with the Little Man. Julian has been going through a developmental spurt in the last few weeks. He can grab and hold a toy now, he laughs out loud when you play with him, he makes all kinds of new sounds, he grew a whole new head of hair, and passed a slew of other milestones. He has excellent head control in all directions and is trying really hard to sit up now. If he is in a semi-reclining position, he will actualy lean forward and do a mini-crunch to try to sit up. Looks really funny. When you hold him in your lap he wants to sit up *straight*, not be cradled like a little baby. He's very vertically oriented...the only time he likes to lie down is if he's nursing or if someone is laying right next to him. Potty training is going fine, same as before, which is how it will be for a while. It's a very slow process.

He will play in his Gymini for 30-45 minutes at a time, and is happy to sit in his bouncy chair and watch me cook dinner or garden or whatever it is that I'm doing, instead of *always* needing to be held.
I feel good about the fact that I *did* hold him or wear him in a sling almost all the time up until now. Some people were telling me that he would be spoiled and always want to be held, but I think it had the opposite effect...he feels secure enough that he can sit and play away from me a little bit now without worrying that I'm going to leave him. I always pick him up right away when he wants to be held, but I think he enjoys watching me from a little distance away too. He loves to watch people, he really studies them intently.

I talk to him ALL the time about what I'm doing, or what we're doing together, or just random stuff..."What should we make for dinner?" He LOVES being talked to in a sweet voice and will smile and laugh in response.

Singing...man, does this baby love to be sung to! He goes to the "Church of Dan" as I call it...Dan calms him down by doing a sort of choral humming that sounds like a hymn. No words, just humming in a droning kind of style reminiscent of medieval monks.

I'll sing just about anything at all, but I have found somewhat to my dismay that he really likes "Kumbaya". ;-) I was eating breakfast with him in his bouncy seat next to me one morning...I could tell he was tired and ready for his morning nap, he started fussing and Kumbaya just popped into my head so I started to sing it. Kum-bay-a bay-bee, Kum-bay-a! He went to sleep almost instantly. So now I have to sing Kumbaya all the time. I amuse myself by singing different words..."Close your eyes, bay-bee...go to sleep...mommy wants some food, food to eat" and so on.

Dan's sister-in-law Sylvia (does that make her *my* sister-in-law too? What is the right term for the wife of my husband's brother?) picked up a jogging stroller for $10 from a friend who was going to donate it to a yard sale, and she gave it to me for Mother's Day. So great...those suckers cost $250 or more! Julian loves it. In his regular stroller he was semi-reclining (now a hated position, see above) AND he was facing back towards me, so the scenery didn't ever really change all that much. He loves me and all, but he wants to SEE things when we go on walks, not just look at my upper body nonstop. The view is so static when you are facing backwards.

We went to Baby Boot Camp with the new jogging stroller this morning and it was a hit. He looked and looked and looked at everything in his upright sitting posture, then he fell asleep for a little while and woke back up in time for our ab exercises, which he watched happily from the stroller without crying. It's much more of a pain to get in and out of the car...I have to disassemble and re-assemble it each time, take off tires, etc., but it's pretty damn cool. I think I have enough stamina to actually jog now, so maybe I should try taking him out running on my own, outside of Baby Boot Camp.

I took Julian to Yahoo! today to show him off to my coworkers. So weird driving there, I almost forgot which exit to get off on. I haven't been in the office since January 9th when I went on maternity leave! It was great to see everyone, and Julian was like a movie star, everyone thought he was so cute. At one point I had about 15 engineers gathered around in a semi-circle looking at him and he chose that exact moment to let loose an incredibly loud poop...the liquid-sounding extended version. AND it was super-smelly too. I totally knew that was going to happen. I just knew it. But no big deal.

My manager Peter is as awesome as ever. He is working on a part-time schedule for me, three days a week in the office and one day a week at home, 30 hours total. I only get 2/3 of my full-time salary, which is lame, but I do get full benefits, which is key. If we're shipping product and it gets to be crunch time, then I will work extra hours, but I can get comp time when things slow down. Sounds like a fantastic deal to me! I wasn't hoping for anything that good, I'm really happy. I didn't even think to ask for part-time work because I thought either it wasn't possible or else I would get no benefits...it was all Peter's suggestion to do part-time while Julian is still so small. He is the best manager I've ever had. Could ever have. Just amazing.

Julian was getting fussy and tired today before we left to go to Yahoo!, so Dan got him to sleep on his shoulder and then he slept in his car seat on the way there. OK, now normally I am ALWAYS trying to get this baby to sleep longer, take longer naps, and either he wakes up on his own or a toilet flushing somewhere in Pakistan wakes him up. Bugs also has a habit of sneezing right next to the sleeping baby, or skittering around on the hardwood floor next to him, loudly clicking his nails, or else barking. Or Dan sneezes, since it's allergy season. Or an eardrum-shattering Harley drives by...the phone rings...the list is ENDLESS.

Oh, the absolute RAGE we moms feel when we spend an hour getting the baby to sleep and someone or something wakes that baby up. The white-hot fury that arises is just incredible. I have almost skinned my beloved dog alive at times when he wakes the baby up. I hiss at him between clenched teeth, "Shut UP you goddamned beast!". Awful. But that rage just comes over me...all my work for naught! Now I have to start all over again! It's just too much to bear.

If looks could kill, Dan would have been dead a few weeks ago when allergy season started and he began sneezing incredibly loudly. His sneezes not only wake the baby up but scare him so badly in the process that there's usually no hope of getting him back to sleep anytime soon.

Anyway, so the baby is sleeping and we arrive at Yahoo! I pop him out of the car seat into his new Girasol baby carrier (which I really, really love and he does too) and he doesn't even wake up. We walk upstairs, say hi to Peter and go into a conference room to discuss my schedule. I sit *down* and he doesn't wake up. We talk loudly, nothing. We finish talking and Peter asks if I want to go around and show the baby to people. I do, but he's so much cuter when he's awake...who the hell is this comatose baby? MY baby wakes up when a pin drops, what's going on?

I take him out of the carrier and move him around, kiss him, stroke his cheeks, play with his hands...nothing. He's like a droopy newborn. Floppy body, head rolling around, eyes firmly shut. It's unbelievable. The one time that I *want* him to wake up and he's completely knocked out. A bomb could go off next to this baby and he wouldn't even flinch. I'm poking him and jiggling him, still nothing. I give up and go out into the hall, where we see some people. I'm showing them my sleeping baby and still trying to wake him up. Finally I practically *throw* him up in the air and he opens his eyes. After that he was awake, but what a task! I just couldn't beleive that he slept that hard.

He was Mr. Personality at Yahoo!, smiling, laughing, waving his arms and legs, charming everyone, then when we got back in the car he passed out again and has been asleep ever since! It's hard workto entertain the masses. ;-)

He's stretched out on a Boppy on my lap rightnow. He sort of wakes up every hour or so, nurses a little bit, changes position, then goes back to sleep. Remarkable. Temporary reversion to the newborn state ;-) Reminds me of when he was only a week or two old...Dan and I would sit on the couch trying SO hard to keep him awake until it was time to go to bed. He was sleeping all day and waking at night, which wasn't really working out too well for me. Dan got the brunt of trying to keep him awake while I made dinner. At around 9:00pm it got to be really, really difficult. Dan had to practically slap him around to keep him awake.

I get so nostalgic already, remembering when he was *really* little. Not like I want to go back to those days, but they are sweet to remember. I have him on the Boppy pillow now...I remember holding him on my lap sleeping like this, but he only took up half the pillow instead of the whole thing. I was nursing him the other day and I remembered when he was tiny and would nurse in a pike position with his arms down by his sides and his legs extended straight out, perpendicular to his body. He would be so thrilled when he nursed, it made him almost rigid with excitement. That pike position. So cute! Those are the things that I wish I had on video.

Now he's all relaxed when he nurses, he lounges, stretches out, and he grabs my bra with his free hand, or pats my boob. Such a big boy, this three-month-old! And to think that I'll look back a few months from now and say, "Oh, I remember when he used to do *that*,", *that* being whatever he's doing now that I'm just taking for granted as normal behavior. Really, I should be shooting hours of video every day to capture all this. He does things that seem so normal at the time, and it seems like he'll *always* do them, so what's the hurry? Then he stops doing that cute or amazing thing and you realize it's gone forever and only exists in your memory now.

As his mama it's especially poignant, because I know many times I'm the only one who ever noticed something (like his cute nursing pike position) and now it's gone. No photo. I alone hold him in my memory like that. Even HE won't remember it. Only me. I can often say to Dan, "Remember when he used to do X?" and we'll reminisce, but not always. During the first eight weeks it was mostly just me and the baby bonding. Luckily every old cute thing is replaced by five new cute things, so it's not so sad, just poignant. It just makes me appreciate every little moment with him that much more. My boy! I love him so much.

There's nothing like having a baby to make you think about time philosophically...that someday this little baby will be an old man, and I will have crumbled into dust. Then he'll hold *me* in his memory as his young mama, and I won't exist anyplace else but in his mind. It's the same kind of realization about time that people have expressed over and over in different ways throughout history, I'm just not saying it as eloquently as the poets do ;-)

We were talking with a woman and her mother in Khanh's the other day (a Vietnamese restaurant nearby). They were in the booth next to us and were commenting on how good Julian was, how he wasn't crying. The mother was visiting from Hawaii, she was a regal-looking woman who didn't speak much English, so the daughter was doing most of the talking. She said her mom was crushed because neither she nor her brother had children (at ages 40 and 45), and likely wouldn't *ever* have children, and the mother was really upset, she LOVED babies and wanted grandchildren so badly. She offered to raise the baby if her daughter would just have one! But no dice. The daughter just wasn't interested. Which I could understand, but I felt really bad for the mother, and then I thought that if Julian doesn't have kids I'll be crushed too! But it's something you just have no control over.

So now I'm already worried about grandchildren. Good grief!

Posted by msLaura at 06:38 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I have a problem...I start to shed memories after they lie dormant for a few years. The only way to hold onto my history is by recording it: what moves and excites me, what I love, what I think about, what conversations I am having at any given time. Visual recordings too....how our faces and expressions change over time, what we wear, even how we wear our hair. That's the stuff that's fascinating for me to go back and look at in a month, a year, a decade.

Looking through old photos the other day, I realized how much I have changed with time, and how much those changes had escaped me until I had the photographic evidence of how I used to be right in front of me. Not to say that I've changed so much physically, it's not even about that, though that's interesting too. But when I saw the photos of myself at 6, 12, 18, 23, 27...it flooded back to me what I felt at each of those stages, what a different voice and mind I had then, as compared to now. Like parallel universe Lauras, obviously the same, but so obviously different.

And what will I be like in the future? I can't say, but I know that in five years this voice too will sound like someone else's...familiar, but utterly strange to me. So let's get this show on the road!

Posted by msLaura at 11:02 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)