Fractal Metamorphosis

Reasoning

2010-04-29T15:15:00.004-04:00

Anyone can tell you, and everyone will tell you, that attempting to reason with a small child is a lost cause, a road to madness.

Except it's not true.

So far, my findings (based on a sample size of one child) are that as early as 18 months, explaining the logic behind parental decisions does make a difference. Not that it always gains compliance or averts a tantrum, but at least half the time it helps. And it probably makes me a better parent - if I'm focused on explaining why we need to brush our teeth, it keeps me calmer than the escalating cycle of "say aahh, please... open your mouth... open your mouth now... DAMMIT KID OPEN YOUR MOUTH!" Also, if I can't explain my reasons, sometimes it's because there's no good reason to be found.

I have a feeling that this approach to parenting will yield an amusing/maddening echo in another year or two, when she can turn it around and give me logical reasons for doing what she wants rather than what I want her to do. If she learns to out-logic me, I'll be in trouble.

As promised: pictures!

2010-04-28T20:55:00.012-04:00

Don't get too excited; this whole posting of photos thing is not going to happen often.

With that disclaimer, I know I've been all about the garden lately, but for those of you who like toddlers more than plants, I'll start with a few photos of Annika, taken by her grandpa Khavin:

And some more of Annika, taken by me:

This is our new tree - a dwarf Hinoki cypress 'Fernspray Gold.' It's in a cedar planter, occupying a spot where a small rhododendron had declined and finally died this spring. It will eventually get about 6 feet tall; maybe less if it stays in a container.
On either side are smaller pots with an assortment of foliage-interest plants: purple-leaved ornamental sweet potatoes, "fiber optic" grass, creeping jenny, clover, dracaena and asparagus fern.

Below is raised bed #1, and from left to right it contains: 'european mesclun mix' from Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds, parsnips (the ones you can barely see), baby bok choi, spinach, and crimson bunching onions.

Here's that same bed when it was first set up, almost exactly one month before the above photo was taken. Set up: 3/24; above photo, 4/23. Hmm, those dates have symmetry. Cool.

Here's the first salad harvested from that mesclun mix. Yummy, although a little spicier than I usually like my salads to be. Also, it annoys me that I don't know what all the different types of leafy-green things are. Will have to start buying single-variety salad greens until I figure out what I like.

Here's a closer look at those baby bok choi... so adorable!

Meanwhile, in the basement under lights, tomato seedlings have gotten big enough that I don't think they're exactly seedlings anymore. They need to hang on for another week, and then they'll get to go outside.

Outside of the veggie garden, flowers are blooming... here's the bleeding heart that I planted last year.

Here's the dwarf crested iris (Iris cristata) that I'm so delighted to see bloom, because this is its 3rd year here and the first flower it has produced.

In the same shaded area as the iris, a fern (whose name I have forgotten) has emerged:

The lily shoots that I was so excited to see. When I found them, they weren't this big; they were mere nubbins nestled among the weeds.

These 'Starry Night' violas died back last year, but not before they left babies behind. Here's one of the youngins, carrying bravely on. And admittedly, clashing something wicked with the tulip just behind it.

My favorite of the three kinds of tulips we inherited with the house - a vibrant pink.

A passalong from my mother: foamflower, a woodland native.

That's all for now. More pictures... uh... when I get around to it.

Pleasant surprises

2010-04-21T10:06:00.003-04:00

I think one of the things that is most addictive about gardening is the blend of the predictable and unpredictable. I can pretty well rely on daffodils coming up and blooming every spring; on the yew near our front door trying to grow big enough to block the path and my half-heartedly pruning it back, on maple seedlings coming up everywhere (including the gutters if said gutters weren't recently cleaned); and on some of the plants I bought in previous years having sadly departed.

My expectations are set fairly low when it comes to perennials actually being perennial. This probably has a lot to do with my first attempt at a garden in our yard: back by the shed, there's a very shaded spot in which I envisioned a mostly-native woodland garden - lush ferns, spring ephemerals, hostas and so on. What I failed to realize is that woodland soil is not what we have in that spot. Instead of a rich leaf-litter-derived humus, we have thick orangish clay back there, drained of nutrients (and moisture, in summer) by the shallow roots of trees. Now, I did amend the soil when I first started planting things back there, but not nearly enough. The net result is that 2/3 of the things I put there haven't made it, and of the ones that have lived, some of them are just hanging on rather than thriving and blooming.

But last fall after most of the plants were dormant, I put a thick layer of leaf mold and compost over the area, and by now it has mostly been broken down and worm-eaten into the soil. The plants that are left appreciate it, and for the first time since it was put there in 2008, the dwarf crested iris (Iris cristata) has a flower bud - I'm finally going to see what it looks like in bloom.

Elsewhere in the garden, I thought I'd lost the native Turk's Cap lily I planted last year because I didn't see anything there when the oriental lilies were already 2 or 3 inches tall. But in the process of weeding, I found that for one thing, I'd been looking in the wrong spot, and for another, it simply was later to emerge: as I was pulling out wild strawberry and wild garlic, I found not one but six (!) stubby little lily shoots coming up.

The two monardas I've planted have come back and are just waiting for warmer weather to make them grow big. The lavendar has some new sprigs of green, though not very many - it's probably in a location too wet for it. Physostegia seems to have self-sown, or spread underground, or both, and is coming up all over the place (I discovered after I bought it that it has this tendency). Intriguingly, the Dusty Miller that is supposedly an annual managed to survive the wicked winter, and is making new growth. I had no idea it could do that; I'm glad I didn't pull it out to "tidy up" at the end of the season last year.

I promise, I promise, I'll try to get some photos taken and put them here soon!

Gardens and therapy, psychology, fiction...

2010-04-06T13:49:00.004-04:00

At May Dreams, Carol recently wrote about the overlapping ways in which gardening is therapeutic, and sometimes also the reason we gardeners need therapy.

I tried to explain the other day to my non-gardening husband why I feel the urge to dig in the dirt, to plant and weed and trim and water. And why I want a big rainwater storage tank that will be horrifically ugly until I cover it with vines or screen it with bamboo or lattice, and why I want to bother with growing food in the first place, when it's so much easier (and often cheaper) to just buy it, and why I have a lot of trouble preventing myself from buying random assortments of plants and putting them where I think they might grow well, rather that with any particular aesthetic goal or restraint. Alas, I'm not sure there's any way to have these things make sense to a non-gardener... but fortunately, he demonstrates great patience and forbearance nonetheless!

With Sparkling Squirrel, I pondered why it is that gardening is rarely a central theme of novels - maybe because it's so rich with opportunities for metaphor that it seems too easy?

Reading about the Square Foot style of vegetable gardening, I realized that the most important thing that's "different" about it is not a different shape of plot, but that it takes some of the quirks of human nature into account, in addition to having plenty to say about Mother Nature. Specifically, the benefits of placing limits on the size of the garden, and the number of seeds planted at any one time: people love to till up a big plot of earth in the spring, but keeping it weeded and watered gets to be an overwhelming task. People sprinkle a whole packet of seeds along a row, with every intention to thin the seedlings - but it goes against the grain to yank up those adorable little sprouts, so we tell ourselves we'll do it later. Acknowledging these tendencies and planning around them instead of trying to ignore or dismiss them is very wise, I think.

Almost all my reading (and thinking) lately has centered around gardening, can you tell?

Random garden notes

2010-03-30T18:30:00.001-04:00

Inside:

Tomato seedlings: both varieties started 3/20 have just begun to put out true leaves. They took 5-6 days to germinate but have grown fast since then.

Wonderberry: nothing yet, even though it supposedly wants the same conditions as tomatoes

Strawberry: only 2 containers have sprouts, out of 12! I didn't think strawberries should be so difficult. Planted 3/20

Mesclun mix sown in garden: beginning to sprout, though weather has mostly been chilly since planting so not much is happening.

Onion: little threadlings outside appear not bothered by cold, though not exactly growing fast either

Hardy Geranium: variety #1 is growing like mad, variety #2 is just starting

Rose Campion: first batch is doing fine, second is coming up

Thyme: sprouted recently, took about 10 days to do so

Tiarella cordifolia: nothing. maybe it needs cold stratification? if it doesn't sprout soon, I'll put it in the garden next to the original plant.

Lavendar: nothing, harrumph. might need more warmth.

Outside:

Crocuses are done blooming, about 2/3 of daffodils are blooming, iris and daylily are sprouting, hosta is starting to sprout, sedum has adorable rosettes of new leaves.

Spring Fever

2010-03-10T10:28:00.002-05:00

It's finally warm here, and this has prompted the annual re-emergence of my obsession with gardening. Daffodil buds are visible a few inches above the soil, crocuses are blooming (not in our cool shady yard, yet, but in warm spots around the area), and I peeked under the dead leaves of last year's irises to discover new green shoots just starting to poke out. The wild stonecrop that I brought home from a visit to Sparkling Squirrel last summer is happily growing in its container - I didn't know how tough that little plant is, but it survived a too-rainy summer and a cold snowy winter and is already green and content-looking.

This year is the year I will finally have raised beds for vegetables. We're starting with 2 beds, 3' x 6' each, and I already bought more seeds of more different kinds of plants than I can possibly grow in that amount of space. With my husband's help, I set up lights in the basement to start seeds last weekend, and just a few days later I already have a salad green mix sprouted, some onion seedlings up (I should have started them earlier, but oh well - I'll know that for next year), and of the seeds I collected last year, the Geranium maculatum seeds are germinating already. I also have lavendar seeds, rose campion, cinquefoil, and seeds from several interesting unidentified plants from the Penn gardens.

I haven't settled yet on a method of keeping records of my gardening activities. There's something satisfying about writing things down by hand, but there are definite advantages to electronic recordkeeping: searchability, ease of including photos, etc. What do you think - gardening-tagged posts on this blog? A separate blog? Or is reading someone else's garden notes and non-artistic photos even more boring than having to look at someone else's vacation pictures?

Broccoli Rabe

2010-02-25T19:56:00.003-05:00

I've tried the above vegetable a handful of times, and never liked it - too bitter. But Eating Well featured broccoli rabe as the vegetable star of the latest issue, and included tips for toning down the bitterness. Namely: blanch it, and balance it with other flavors. The broccoli rabe and orzo salad with lemon and feta was very good. I wonder, though - was it only the prep technique that made it likeable, or is it that my palate has grown more tolerant of bitter flavors since I last tried it? Many of the things I like these days (coffee, strong beer, very-dark chocolate) are bitter, so it could be both.

Headscratcher

2010-02-08T21:21:00.003-05:00

About 20 minutes before starting this, I put Annika to bed. I feel that this is a blogpost-worthy event, in part because it must have been the weirdest bedtime "routine" she has had yet.

Things were fine from teethbrushing to changing into pajamas and on through story time, with only the usual amount of protest at each step. The only thing that was slightly unusual is that instead of sitting in my lap during stories, she wanted to squeeze herself onto the chair next to me. But okay, fine, it's actually easier to read that way, and the chair is (sort of) big enough.

After stories, I braced myself and said, "Ok, that was the last story for tonight, time to turn off the lights." This is usually when the howling begins, and tonight was no exception. She cried, said "No!" about 500 times, then wanted "Chair!" So, I sat down in the chair with her in my arms - typically, she will snuggle on my lap and fall asleep, then I'll move her into the crib. But instead, she squirmed and hollered until she maneuvered herself off my lap and onto the chair next to me. We sat like this for a few minutes, then she asked for water. I gave her the cup, but because she was leaning back in the chair, half of the water that she intended to go into her mouth went onto her pajamas instead, resulting in a fresh bout of crying. Lights on, towel the pajamas dry, lights off again. More crying, and my attempt to get her to snuggle on my lap only resulted in her climbing down to the floor. So she lay down on the rug, still wailing "no no nooooo nooo no..." while I sat on the floor next to her. "Do you want your blanket?" She said yes, so I covered her up. "Do you want Barkley (her stuffed puppy that she sleeps with)?" Yes again, so I handed her Barkley. I kissed her on the forehead, told her I'd see her in the morning, and closed the door. Not surprisingly, there was soon much wailing and rattling of the door, so I went back in and ask if she wants to snuggle on the chair. She said yes, but again she refused to sit on my lap. I couldn't let her fall asleep in the chair the way she evidently wanted to, though, because it would be nothing short of miraculous to move her into her crib without waking her up, and it obviously wouldn't be safe to let her stay in the chair. So I put her in the crib; the bawling increased in volume and she pushed her feet against the bars, trying to figure out how to brace herself to climb out. By now, my patience had started to wear thin, so I just said "You're going to have to lie down and go to sleep now. That's how this works." I gently made her lie down, covered her with the blanket, gave her Barkley again, and said "Night night."

And she replied "Night night" and was quiet. From Hyde to Jekyll, exactly as if someone flipped the switch to "off" between one howl and the drawing-in of breath to get the next howl ready. I closed the door and went downstairs, and I heard one more halfhearted moan, then nothing more.

I have no idea why she wants to sit on the chair instead of my lap all of a sudden, or why she is more willing to lie down on the floor than in the crib, or what exactly made her decide to shut up and go to sleep so suddenly. Toddlers are weird creatures sometimes.

In other news, I made Chicken Chili Verde on Saturday while my parents were taking care of Annika, and it was a hella lot of work but the end result was worth it.

I seem to be on a kick of reading books about the Mogul Empire and the world around it at that time - I just finished "The Twentieth Wife" and started "The Enchantress of Florence," both of which take place at least in part during the reign of Akbar the Great. I'm tickled by the overlap, because I didn't realize it when I picked out the two books. "The Twentieth Wife" is enjoyable reading, but not great literary art in my opinion. "The Enchantress of Florence" is by Salman Rushdie, so I can safely say that the writing is wondrous and bizarre, but since I just started, I can't say much about the storyline. I also recently read "The Sparrow" by Mary Doria Russell, and I'm not sure what to say about that one - it was beautiful but tragic, so although I recommend it to any of my bookworm friends, the recommendation comes with the warning that it's not an easy read.

Playful

2010-02-05T12:33:00.002-05:00

One of my favorite parenting-related blogs, Child of Mind, is running a weekly "parenting challenge" where each week, there's a particular approach/technique for small-child discipline that they're exploring, and requesting the readers' feedback on.

The first one is playful parenting - the idea of using humor and play to guide your kid's behavior, instead of coercion/threats/punishments/rewards. Specifically, when faced with a situation where your child tends to put up resistance to something you want done (brushing teeth, getting dressed, taking a bath) you avoid the upcoming power struggle by saying "Let's pretend..." and make up a scenario where the troublesome activity turns into a game/fantasy. Let's pretend that if you put on the red shirt, you turn into Superman... let's pretend that this bathtub is a pond and you're a frog...

I like this one and although Annika doesn't quite understand "pretending" yet, I do try to use humor and laughter to bypass temper tantrums and power struggles, and I can definitely see using this technique as she gets older. Unfortunately, right now the main sticking point with her is bedtime, and I haven't figured out a "let's pretend" scenario that would encourage her to go to sleep.

I do wonder though - at what age do kids start to see through this and/or stop enjoying it? I would guess sometime around 5?

Raven mother

2010-01-20T10:00:00.002-05:00

I discovered that in German, "rabenmutter" (raven mother) is a put-down, a derogatory term for a mother who doesn't care about her kids - particularly mothers who put their kids in day-care to go back to work. A mother who flies away from the nest, so to speak.

But since I don't have a gut-level grasp of the implications, to me "raven mother" sounds really cool. I am a raven mother, hear me caw!

In other news, this morning Annika would not put on pants except the ones with dinosaurs on them. Pink flower-embroidered shirt, and T-REX pants!

Resolved

2010-01-06T10:24:00.002-05:00

In this illustrious and numerically lovely year 2010, I resolve that:

- I will cook a new recipe at least once a month. January is already taken care of.

- I will listen to two new songs a week if it kills me! And it just might, you never know. That's what I call living dangerously.

- I will spend no less than two hours a week petting and/or cuddling my cats. Strictly for their own good, of course.

- I will drink good beer at least once a month, and eat dark chocolate at least once a week, on the grounds that alcohol and chocolate have recently been deemed health foods and staying healthy is very important to me.

- If at any time I find myself feeling guilty about what cannot be helped (for instance, the inescapable fact that spending more time at work means spending less time at home), I will promptly find something to do or think about that provides a more sensible reason for feelings of guilt.

MDS

2009-12-09T15:13:00.004-05:00

This is a chunk of a large article I found here. http://www.brainchildmag.com/essays/spring2004_feature.htm

I'm posting it here for a number of reasons - in part, it's for my many friends who have recently become parents or who soon will. Food for thought, a defense against the "no one told me" shock. It's an interesting mental model of what happens in women's lives after children arrive, because it goes beyond just looking at individual issues as separate and unrelated. For anyone reading this blog and contemplating parenthood, read the whole article, not just the section I re-posted here. It's long but worthwhile.

But I'm also posting it as an answer. Family and friends have been asking when/if I will have another child, and usually say I don't know, but that's not quite true. I'm in the second third (see red text). I'll have another when and if my reserves of strength/health/sanity are rebuilt to the extent that I think I can handle another kid without being in the third third.

*****************************************************

What's more, a new, small field of study is focusing on mothers on a day-to-day basis, particularly on the effect of mothering on a woman's general health and well-being. For the time being, these researchers are concerned not with major illnesses like cancer or postpartum depression, but with all the minor ailments that can add up to a life lived at a lower level of happiness and satisfaction than it could be.

They're concerned about mothers who can't or don't take good care of themselves, don't eat well, don't sleep enough, don't get out enough, who spiral down, sometimes slowly, sometimes alarmingly fast, into a state of low energy, depression, marital dissatisfaction, guilt and disappointment, unhappiness with themselves and with their lives. These factors all add up to a condition that the authors of a recent book have dubbed Maternal Depletion Syndrome (MDS), a serious bio-psycho-social condition that they say affects the well-being of many women who bear and/or raise children.

The book that outlines MDS, Mother Nurture: A Modern Mom's Guide to a Healthy Body, Mind, and Intimate Relationships (Penguin, 2002), was written by psychologist Rick Hanson, nutritionist Jan Hanson, and OB/GYN Ricki Pollycove, the former chief of gynecology at California Pacific Medical Center. Together they're on a mission to bring MDS to greater public awareness.

In a Powerpoint presentation that Hanson and Pollycove often present to med school classes, they list "common presenting problems of women"--in other words, ailments that bring women in their childbearing and child-rearing years into their doctors' offices. These range from depression to low libido to auto-immune conditions, excess weight, fatigue, and gallbladder or kidney problems. The single common factor that increases the risk of each one of these conditions is motherhood, the authors point out.

The insidious thing about it, says Hanson, is that motherhood isn't usually considered a factor in any one of these conditions. Or if it is, it's written off as "just part of the job." Take fatigue, for instance, or stress. How many times have you heard people say that it's all part of having kids?

Maternal depletion is the number one unacknowledged health care problem in the U.S., Hanson says. We should take this condition seriously not only for the sake of the individual women themselves, but also for the impact on our country and the economy when so many women are "running on empty." Children are neglected, marriages get into trouble, jobs suffer--"all of which, one way or the other, costs our economy billions," Hanson says.

But research that correlates motherhood with particular health complaints is spotty. "There are virtually no longitudinal studies that match mothers with non-mothers over, say, a three to five year period to assess their risk for certain conditions," Hanson says. He and his co-authors spent months doing a thorough review of the medical literature, in the end compiling eighty pages of references. ("I'm the guy in your seventh grade class with three pages of footnotes on his book report," he says.) All of it adds up to a big gaping hole in our knowledge of how being a mother affects us on a day-to-day level.

The authors are both adamant and anti-alarmist. They don't want to sensationalize their findings, but they firmly believe it's both pervasive and invisible. It's been so easily ignored up to now, Pollycove says, partly because our culture doesn't like to hear mothers complain. And women who are ground down are less able to muster the energy to make a big issue of their health. Hanson also points to a psycho-social reason we've overlooked MDS to date: At some level, he believes, we're aware that our own mothers may not have always had an easy or wholly enjoyable time raising us. That makes us feel guilty, which makes us more inclined to stick our heads in the sand when faced with evidence that many women are suffering through their child-rearing lives today. "And you can't underestimate the economic motive either," he says. "We don't like to acknowledge that we are always exploiting the unpaid labor of mothers."

MDS happens, they say, when three common factors collide: the high physical and mental demands of bearing and raising children; the low resources many mothers have on hand when they have kids (ranging from poor-quality food to insufficient help from a partner); and "personal vulnerabilities," such as having children at an older age, a prior health problem, a temperament that's unsuited to the chaos of living with young children, or a bout of postpartum depression.

By their calculations, one-third of all mothers will sail through the birth and caregiving years relatively easily. They're likely to have the deck stacked in their favor: a loving, helpful partner, good overall health, youth, enough money, and "plain old good luck," Hanson says. One-third are likely to find it more challenging, suffering some depletion, fatigue, depression, or difficulty with their relationships--but they're able to rise out of it by the time their youngest child is in kindergarten.

The remaining one-third of mothers are at risk for significant depletion. "They have a really difficult time, especially in the early years, with more serious health problems and deeper depletion that has longer lasting consequences," Hanson says. "Their depletion may last into their children's teenage years, and then collide with the challenges of the transition to menopause."

Those mothers often suffer for years without pinpointing the problem. "It typically takes one to two years for a woman who has underlying risk factors to drain their deepest resources," Hanson says. "They'll have a lot of subclinical problems: they're run down, they're having weird periods, they've got no patience, they have insomnia, or a loss of libido. They see their doctor for the typical six-minute appointment, and they may get one of those thing looked at.

"But if one more stressor is added to her life--a spouse's job loss, a difficult child, even less sleep than normal--she starts circling the drain of depression and depletion."

Many women are able to begin building up their resources (sleep, time apart from their baby, healthier eating habits) at about the time their child starts coming out of the toddler years. But if she hasn't fully "restocked" before the next baby comes along, the cumulative stress could drain her more quickly and more deeply.

Some of the underlying issues of MDS can be easily addressed, they say. There are simple medical tests that can pinpoint a thyroid problem (which is often a culprit in fatigue), for instance, or a nutritional overhaul. There are relaxation techniques for dealing with day-to-day stress and communication strategies to help an MDS mother talk more effectively with a spouse or partner. But the first thing that has to happen, they say, is that the mother herself has to acknowledge that her health matters. "I've been trying for twenty-seven years to sell women on the idea of taking care of themselves," Pollycove says wryly. "It's a hard sell. Women will buy ten books on pregnancy and the newborn stage. But after that, it's like they drop off the planet."

"We're not knocking the wonderful parts of motherhood. We're just trying to point out that if we can gain some recognition for the idea of Maternal Depletion Syndrome, more research can be done," Hanson adds. "Maybe we could find a way to flag those women who are higher risk earlier in their child-rearing careers which would not only help them, but help the children under their care, and even the economy.

"Motherhood is not a clinical condition," he says. "On the other hand, it's a very serious undertaking that doesn't stop when mom and baby go home from the hospital."

Flying

2009-11-03T14:26:00.002-05:00

When we first saw our house, there were several major factors that made me want it - a large yard and a kitchen I didn't hate, for instance. I could very easily explain why I wanted those, although in retrospect my ideas about the benefits of a large yard might, just might, have been based on wildly optimistic assumptions.

There were some other things I liked, but couldn't easily explain. For example, the living room has 2 doorways, so that it's possible to walk from the living room to the kitchen to the dining room to the hallway and into the living room again, counterclockwise. I knew I liked this feature, but wasn't exactly sure what practical benefits it might offer.

Recently we've found one.

Annika learned about the game of "flying" - being held horizontally, arms outstretched Superman-style, with me running her around the house this way. It's especially fun to chase something, be it a cat or Daddy. Much better to run circles around downstairs than to be confined to one room at a time!

Now if only I was willing and able to "fwy" her as much as she wanted... alas, mama gets tired after a couple of rounds of this. Then there are many requests of "fwy? fwy? mama! fwy! mamamama!" and usually it all ends in tears. But only a little bit of tears, then she's distracted by something shiny.

That, I think, pretty much sums up the joy and pain of life with a toddler. Within the span of 15 minutes, you get a nice little tour of human emotion starting at baseline mood, onward to ecstatic giggling, to frustrated foot-stomping, to tears of bitter anguish, and back to baseline.

Words

2009-09-17T13:06:00.005-04:00

Annika now has about 50 words she can say. Here's a not-necessarily-comprehensive list, in approximate chronological order. Notice that "mommy" and "daddy" were not anywhere near the top of the list.

kitty (kih-yee)
cat
no
uh-oh
bye-bye
go
boom boom - used for any loud noise
head (heh)
nose (no)
mouth (mouw)
ear
eye
beep beep - the noise the microwave makes
hot (hah)
tree
sky
down (dow)
peepee
hi
bath (bah)
shoe
green (gree)
light (lie)
daddy (dah-ee)
hello? (he'o) to "answer" a cell phone
peas (pee)
moss (maw)
shirt (sher)
hat (haa)
mom
acorn (ee-cor)
flower (fow)
meow (meeow)
hug (huh)
up
door (doh)
spoon (poon)
book (buh)
vroom vroom - to describe the sound of a car or motorcyle. she likes motorcycles, god help us.
crayon (cra'n)
teeth (tee)
corn (cor)
cup (cuh)
food (foo)
car (cah)
plane (pain)
foot (fuh)
hand (hah)
broccoli (bah-ee)
belly
Barkley (baw-ee) the name of her toy puppy
hair
ball (baw)
night-night (nie nie)

Book quote

2009-09-10T12:25:00.003-04:00

Favorite quote from a book I recently read:

"How do you measure love? Quantify it? It's not something you can put on a scale or pour into a beaker to examine its volume and viscosity."

- Sirantha Jax in "Wanderlust", a sci-fi/romance novel by Ann Aguirre

The Ethics of Modern Agriculture

2009-09-04T11:30:00.002-04:00

http://www.springerlink.com/content/l12858476u034458/fulltext.pdf

I thought this paper was thought-provoking.

One sentence summary: compared to either pre-industrial agriculture or organic farming, modern agriculture is better for people, better for the environment, worse for farm animals.

Discuss (but only if you actually read the paper - it's only 5 pages long).

Moss snob

2009-07-02T12:30:00.004-04:00

"The work of moss gardening has an elitist quality that I must admit I find appealing. Every John and Jane grows grass. Only Nature's chosen grow moss."

- George Schenk, author of "Moss Gardening: Including Lichens, Liverworts and Other Miniatures"

I'm infatuated with moss lately, and having stumbled across this quote at Each Little World blog, I am amused that this apparently makes me elitist. And among Nature's chosen!

I've started removing grass in some already mossy patches of our yard, mainly around trees where the roots make it difficult or impossible to mow. There's something very Zen about both the process and the result.

I've also collected some mosses to try to grow in a shallow dish indoors... sort of like a bonsai garden. Er, without any trees. Just the moss. Hard to tell if any of them are actually growing, though.

What you wish for

2009-06-16T10:34:00.003-04:00

Since we moved back East, we have been complaining to each other that the summer storms here are weak and disappointing compared to those of Kansas. They're also less likely to remove our roof, but that's besides the point.

Yesterday as I was driving home... after a weekend of hard work on gardening projects (more details to follow when I can post photos), the wind kicked up, a torrential downpour became more of a horizontal-pour, the lightning stabbed down, and it HAILED. Pea-sized up to nickel-sized balls of ice. Now that's what I call a storm!

There's a price for such entertainment, though. My Cherokee Purple tomato plant fell over, and although the stem appears to be intact, I'm not yet certain whether it will survive. Same with the cute little Patio Tomato, a bushy thing designed to be grown in a container. The basil plants had some stems broken off, but nothing they can't grow back - and the "harvest" made a tasty addition to the stir fry we had for dinner. The new shrubs I planted had some of their leaves chewed up by the hail, but no major damage as far as I can tell. My poor hostas, though... the ones not protected by trees overhead really took a beating.

Annika thought the hailstones were interesting, but at this age she doesn't understand where they came from, or even that it's odd to have little balls of ice on the ground in June. What she really enjoyed was splashing in a puddle left on our driveway after the storm.

Predictable

2009-06-11T16:38:00.003-04:00

I ran across a piece in the NYTimes about iPhone applications that are geared towards kids of various ages, for purposes of education or entertainment. The first line line of the article posed the question "Say you were faced with a 3-year-old child on the verge of full meltdown — which iPhone apps would distract and delight him enough to avoid mayhem?"

Predictably, when I skimmed the comments to see what apps people had found besides the ones mentioned in the article, I found the following comment:

Pathetic. Parents are so helpless in how to handle their kids that they have to resort to this?
Somehow we’ve managed to raise kids for thousands of years without iPhone applications. Sometimes we’ve even done the strange thing called “interacting” with them.Oh, and occasionally saying “no” to tantrum throwing 3 year olds and leaving whatever place they’re throwing the tantrum in!— Library Lady

I wonder, has Library Lady ever been on a long plane flight with a toddler? This sounds to me like exactly the kind of comment made by people who don't have kids of their own, but are nonetheless experts on parenting. Or conversely, someone who raised their own kids long ago... long enough to forget their own troubles and shortcomings, and bemoan those of the newer generation of parents. Someone who, when faced with their own tantrum-throwing 3 year old all those years ago, would probably have killed for a device that could magically bring peace and quiet.

Personally, I plan to use my iPhone with Annika - to entertain, amuse, soothe, stimulate, teach, and whatever else I find it can do. I'm not the least bit worried that if I do so, I'll be depriving her of human interaction or somehow severing her from the "real world." The more puzzling question for me, is at what point it might be reasonable to get a kid their own iPhone. Not anytime soon, certainly. She'll have her own camera long before she has her own phone!

Botany help

2009-06-10T14:36:00.003-04:00

I know I've seen this plant before, and I can't recall its name. Here's a link to some photos on Flickr that someone took of the same thing.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/52074377@N00/2570898933/

I saw it at a rest stop, tried to remember if it's native or not, decided that either way it's kind of interesting, and put the seedhead-puff in my purse.

Because doesn't everyone want something in their garden that looks like a giant dandelion?

Stowaway

2009-06-02T12:00:00.004-04:00

Earlier this spring, I noticed some kind of alien (small, green, and of mysterious origin) putting up shoots in my rhododendron bed. I am not known for optimism, and my first assumption was that this was something invasive and nasty. I started pulling it out, and certainly it smelled nasty - imagine a combination of icky fish-smell, and harsh citrus cleaning solution. If you're trying to eat lunch while you read this, my apologies.

I didn't think I had seen the last of it. These shoots were scattered across an area about 3 feet in diameter, and if I made the assumption that it had come in - with one of the things I planted several weeks before that? With the mulch? Anyway, assuming it had arrived as a small piece of root/rhizome, it had already somehow spread underground before bothering to show itself.

At first I was afraid that it was the dreaded Japanese Knotweed - but then I saw something like it in UPenn's Kaskey Park, and plucked a piece to confirm, by the nose-wrinkling scent, that it was the same thing I had in my yard. The ones at Penn were bigger, and already blooming; the flowers were nothing like the photos I had seen of Japanese Knotweed. So I had ruled out one possibility, but wasn't much closer to finding out what it was. Knowing that it had white flowers and a weird smell was not a big help.

Finally I did a search for "groundcover shade" and, after reading through several articles, I stumbled across one that sung the praises of Chameleon Plant, and had a picture. This was the variegated cultivar, but I recognized the suspect immediately.

And I soon learned that I had jumped to exactly the right conclusion. Gardeners across the web have spoken thusly: "I made the biggest mistake of my gardening life when I introduced this into my garden"..."I will continue to dig and hold my nose (I think it smells horrindous) for maybe the rest of my life"..."This is the first plant that I have ever detested"..."I started trying to dig up all the roots three years ago, and it is STILL coming back! I even resorted to spraying it with brush killer which only succeeded in wilting it a bit before it came back more vigorously than ever. Trust me, this plant is TOUGH!"...."I finally gave in and bought Round-Up on the advice of our local nursery. I felt really bad, I never use stuff like this and I felt like such a plant murderer! Well, it's now fall and I have sprayed these plants many times over the season, and while the total number of plants has lessened, there's still more growing every time I look."

And my favorite comment of all: "good friends give you good plants; this is a plant to give to your enemies."

Here's a site with lots of photos. The one in my rhododendron bed has more ordinary-looking green leaves with a subtle red edging, but it's definitely the same species. Houttuynia cordata. http://www.srgc.org.uk/pport/Houttuynia/Houttuyinia.html

I expect to be fighting this one for a while. How annoying that something invasive and stinky either a) hitched a ride on one of the native plants I bought, or b) was hiding in the mulch that I put in that bed to prevent weeds from growing there!

Crows and coffee

2009-05-28T11:20:00.003-04:00

This morning as I got into my car to go to work, I saw a big crow zoom out of the silver maple and up over the roof of our house. I just barely caught a glimpse of something small and blue held in its beak - probably a robin's egg. I have a lot of respect for the intelligence and adaptability of crows, but I would like them better if they weren't egg-robbers and baby-bird-eaters.

I brought a plastic jar to work, put it near the sink, and posted a sign over it: "Be Green, Recycle Your Coffee Grounds Here". I'm delighted that the coffee-making folks of the lab are obliging me! The idea is to collect coffee grounds for the compost pile. Whyfore, other than to rescue them from the landfill? Having finished a graduate school degree wherein I learned a fair amount about ecological stoichiometry, I'm not sure if it's ironic or simply fitting that I now find myself thinking about carbon:nitrogen ratios when I think about composting. A compost pile made solely of materials with a high C:N ratio - think dry leaves and sawdust - will break down very slowly, and if it's used before it is well broken down, it will actually strip nitrogen from the soil to which it's added. A compost heap with a lot of high-nitrogen materials will heat up nicely, but will be stinky. Since our backyard provides abundant leaves every fall, we have a surplus of high-carbon stuff; coffee grounds have a C:N ratio of 20:1, which helps to balance out the dry leaves' ratio of 60:1. The 'ideal' compost heap has something like a 30:1 ratio. I'm nerdy enough to have looked this up, but not nerdy enough to try to calculate the exact ratios of my compost bins. I'm more of the "guesstimate, see how it works out" philosophy.

Bloodroot and basil, and The Battle of the Back Fence

2009-05-21T12:39:00.011-04:00

This year, I've already done much more gardening than last year. Not hard to beat "zero" though, really.

It started in mid-April when the weather suddenly warmed up. I visited one of the few local native plant nurseries, Redbud Native Plant Nursery. I bought some more shade-loving plants for the native plant patch near the shed:

bloodroot

wood aster, Jacob's ladder, phlox. I didn't get decent pictures of all of them, though.

And a few more for sunnier spots: a giant hyssop, golden star, spiderwort

bleeding heart

dutchman's breeches

Turk's cap lily.

So far: the bloodroot didn't bloom, but its leaves stayed green until just recently - it looks like it's starting to go into its summer dormancy. The Jacob's ladder seems to be growing quite well, and had lots of pretty light lavendar flowers. Some of them appear to have been pollinated - looks like I'll have some seeds to sow for next season. The bleeding heart is still blooming wonderfully, as is one of the golden star plants - the other seems unhappy, though I'm not sure why. The Turk's cap lily has grown from 3 inches tall to about 2 1/2 feet - hopefully it will bloom later this summer. The spiderwort started blooming last week - what a pretty purple! Since I planted it in my yard, I've noticed that along the train tracks I ride to work every day, there are thousands of spiderwort plants... too bad I didn't notice that last year, or I would have collected seeds.

Around the same time, on a trip to Lowe's to buy some gardening tools, I also bought two of these cuties - 'Starry Night' violas.

They've grown quite a bit since this photo taken shortly after they were planted; that was about 6 weeks ago, and they've now got about twice as many flowers as in this shot. They're much more vibrantly purple than the photo would suggest.

On Mother's Day my mom and I went to Bowman's Hill Wildflower Preserve. I restrained myself from buying anything at their plant sale, but on our way back we stopped at a nursery and I ended up buying two kinds of bee balm, Monarda fistulosa and Monarda didyma cultivars. I also bought an "obedient plant," Physostegia. Every time I think about its name, I wonder if I can train it to do dishes for me. My mom also brought me some plants from her garden: a cute native woodland wildflower called foamflower (Tiarellia), and some Jack-in-the-Pulpits and lily of the valley.

A week ago, my mom and I both took a day off and tackled a big project in the yard - I've dubbed it The Battle of the Back Fence. We have an old chain link fence separating our backyard from those of our rear neighbors. It does not, however, actually enclose anything, so the only purpose it serves, in my opinion, is to serve as a trellis for poison ivy and a hindrance to me reaching the poison ivy that grows behind it. We suited up in long sleeves, long pants, two layers of gloves, and we started cutting back brush (mostly Norway maple saplings and brambles) and pulling out poison ivy. We created quite a large brush pile, and filled several trash bags with poison ivy. Then, we started taking down the chain link fence - a task complicated by the fact that in places, tree saplings were growing through the chain link so that the fence wires had to be cut around them.

My plans for this area involve keeping it trimmed and poison ivy free for a year or so, and then planting some native shrubs and perennials where the fence used to be. Maybe a rain garden/mini-wetland in the back corner, where it gets very damp every spring.

I fiddled around with ideas for creating raised vegetable beds this year, but realized that I didn't have enough free time/energy/money for that. I'm hoping to get the beds built by fall, to use next spring. For this year, my edible gardening consists mostly of containers on the deck - basil, rosemary, sage, dill, cilantro, and two kinds of tomatoes. I also dug up some wild grape vines growing in several spots in the yard where they are most definitely not wanted (such as under the rhododendrons), and transplanted them next to the deck where, with any luck, they'll cover the deck, feed the birds, and give us a few wild grapes to eat, too.

And, for Jenny - a photo of the wild ginger where you can see a flower, to the left of most of the leaves.

Need to find a Gardeners Anonymous chapter.

2009-05-19T21:44:00.003-04:00

Hi, my name is Irene and I'm a gardening addict.

* I spend money on gardening that I should use for other things.
* I often garden alone.
* I frequently overdo it and suffer the consequences the day after.
* When I'm at work, I think about plants, and if possible I do some gardening as soon as I get home.
* I'm often outside gardening first thing in the morning.

However, for the 12 step program to work, the first step is realizing that you have a problem... I figure that this particular addiction is better for me than, say, playing video games (although more expensive, at least initially!), and certainly yields more tangible benefits.

If you're one of the three people reading this blog, be prepared to hear a lot about plants. Whenever I actually get around to posting, that is.

I plan to start blogging about my gardening projects, in part for the sake of keeping track of what I did, what worked, what didn't, and so on.

We moved into our house 2 and a half years ago, in January 2007. Having bought the house without knowing anything about the yard except its size, its trees, and the deck in the back, the first year I was mostly interested in observing. What would come up where? How would the sunlight fall? What color would the azaleas bloom?

But of course I wasn't content to just observe. I also undertook two small projects, both of which turned out to be... educational.

First, I bought some native plants at the Bartram's Garden plant sale, and planted them in a shady spot in the back yard, near the shed, along with some hostas that had been growing by the mailbox, but were getting choked by grass. I'm not sure I remember all of what I planted, but I think the list looked something like... wild ginger, crested iris, Meehan's mint, shooting star, Goldie's fern, Jack-in-the-pulpit. I remember thinking that since these were native plants, they should be carefree and grow happily where I planted them - especially since I took care to amend the soil with some store-bought stuff. However... what I failed to understand is that the soil in my yard (especially in that spot) is heavy orange clay - nothing like the rich, humus-y mature deciduous forest soil that most of those species prefer. I also didn't water them much during the second half of the summer; I was in my first trimester of pregnancy by then, and feeling quite miserable enough without venturing out into the heat and humidity. Here's a photo of this area, taken a week ago.

The best success thus far has been the wild ginger. From a start of just one 2-leaved plant, it has started to spread, and it bloomed this year. The flowers are easy to miss; they're low to the ground, and purplish-brown.

The hostas aren't happy - I think it's actually too much shade even for them, and maybe not enough drainage, plus they're getting eaten by slugs. The Meehan's mint and shooting star have vanished without a trace, sadly. The little iris shoots are spreading, but I think they're not getting enough light to bloom. Although it's hard to make out in this photo, the Goldie's fern has survived and is sending up some new leaves, and a lonely, pathetic-looking Jack-in-the-pulpit is coming up.

The other project I started that first summer was a vegetable garden. I picked a (fairly) sunny spot, dug up the grass, worked some packaged garden soil into the clay, and planted some tomatoes, bell peppers, and strawberries. The tomatoes got nibbled by deer, the bell peppers produced a grand total of one pepper, and the strawberries were underwhelming both in quantity and quality. Here, too, I think that the clay soil was the main culprit - I didn't add nearly enough organic matter.

The year after that, I didn't do any gardening at all - newborn Annika was keeping me very busy. So this year, I have a year's worth of pent-up gardening energy. It's getting late tonight, but in my next post, I'll describe what I've done so far this year.

Make it rain

2009-04-18T21:09:00.005-04:00

This is my kind of gangsta rap. Those of you who teach biology might want to bookmark this.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YyN0wx2AHfE

Also, on a very different (musical) note, just in case any of you that read this blog haven't yet heard Susan Boyle, you need to go listen to this right away.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RxPZh4AnWyk

Just be warned: have a box of tissues handy.

Far, far away

2009-03-10T11:00:00.003-04:00

I may not have the money or the time to physically travel to exotic places, but I recently discovered a blog from such a place, a heady mix of photographs and poetic writing, "the bemused tales of an American family's quest to build a guest house in Marrakesh."

Quote of the moment

2009-03-05T10:05:00.003-05:00

"... it's not like it's my job to go around remembering things. Wait, maybe it IS my job! AUGH I DON'T REMEMBER!"

-from this webcomic that I stumbled across

I feel like this most of the time; it is in fact my job to remember things like what I did the day before, and where I put the thing that goes beep, and what I'm supposed to do next. Anyone who knows me well enough to read this blog knows that memory has never been my strongest point, but motherhood has caused me to sink to new lows. I keep wondering if, unbeknownst to me, some large portion of my brain has devoted itself to making my offspring grow properly through sheer force of will.

Major Scientific Breakthrough

2009-02-06T13:49:00.002-05:00

Baby does not like medicine on a spoon. Baby does not like medicine in a dropper or syringe. Both result in a statistically significant amount of screaming - both signal and noise simultaneously. Either method leads to unacceptably large error margins, where error = medicine spat out or flung across room.

Baby DOES like yogurt, and will eat medicine when mixed with yogurt. Eureka!

This is what passes for brilliance around here, these days.

The Battle of the Bed

2009-01-30T15:13:00.002-05:00

Our first child is working hard to make certain that she will be our only child.

My husband was horrified when I said, about a month ago, that I was no longer on board with whole 2-kids idea. But last night may have changed that, however incrementally.

Ever since we made the trek to the West Coast for a week, Annika's sleep schedule has been unpredictable and incoherent. She went from waking once a night, about 2/3 of the time, and going back to sleep readily... to waking multiple times a night, every night, and going back to sleep only after being awake (and crying) for quite a while. There is a world of difference between the first state and the second.

The one is tolerable, almost pleasant. The other makes me a walking heap of disturbingly negative thoughts and barely-suppressed rage. I don't sleep well with a baby next to me, and I've had a baby next to me for significant parts of the night, the last few nights. Last night, my nurturing instincts finally short-circuited and I dumped the child in her crib, told my husband he could take over or leave the baby screaming as he chose, and put earplugs in my ears. Heroic husband spent nearly all night trying to get that creature to sleep: bottles, rocking, sleeping next to her on the spare mattress. She thanked him by kicking him in the nuts and pulling his hair.

I know that this is temporary, that it won't last forever. My rational mind knows that. My emotions haven't gotten the memo. Rational doesn't help. Even knowing that the phase she's going through is normal doesn't help.

But we have 2 nights of baby-free sleep ahead of us (thanks to my wonderful parents!), and that will most certainly help.

misc

2008-11-20T14:48:00.003-05:00

I'm at my parents' house today, having taken a day off to hang out with my brother who's home for a week. Brother and Mom are at the grocery store, and Annika is finally down for a nap, so I have a few minutes with nothing pressing to do.

This is a very weird feeling.

Not really sure what to do with myself.

Borrowed a few books from my parents' bookshelf to read on the train: "Blue Blood", the memoirs of a NYPD cop, and "Eggs in the Coffee, Sheep in the Corn", an account of a city girl turned farmwife.

I'm almost done reading "Crime and Punishment." I bought it in one of those moments when I felt that I should really read more classic literature, that was probably at least a year ago, but now I'm finally reading it. Why are Russian novels always so gloomy?

Yesterday Dooce.com announced that they're pregnant. I gasped and got choked up about it, and then spent the rest of the afternoon pondering how it's possible that I can feel so emotionally invested in someone I've never met or spoken to personally. I definitely don't have more than a passing interest in celebrity pregnancies or babies. Then I realized that if closeness is created by the sharing of information - what are you doing? what do you like and dislike? how are you feeling and why? Then I have a lot more information input from Heather than I do from most of my close friends and even family. The internet is a strange and wondrous thing.

Lucky 13

2008-11-04T10:33:00.003-05:00

I hit the polls early this morning, and was the 13th voter in line. Hopefully this is a good omen, not a bad one.

For me, it was certainly convenient - it meant that I only stood in line for about 10 minutes, and crossed one item off of my day's "to do" list before 8 am. Not bad.

Now, the mantra for the rest of the day:
Must not obsessively check election results.
Must not obsessively check election results.
Must not obsessively check election results.

Snippets

2008-10-17T10:28:00.002-04:00

Usually, I only bother posting on this blog when I have some big news, or at least something to ramble on about, at length.

I'm going to try posting shorter bits, more frequently, about more day-to-day things.

For example -

This morning on my way to the train station, I heard two songs on the radio that were a good start to the day: Weezer's "Troublemaker" and Jack Johnson's "Bubble Toes".

Sometimes I think it's odd that with all the different ways to get a music fix these days, I still listen to the radio a lot. I like not knowing what will play next (not just my iTunes library shuffled, but songs I don't own) - and also it's maybe the main way I keep in touch with mainstream pop culture, since I don't watch TV or movies much.

Not exactly on the ball

2008-08-19T15:48:00.004-04:00

So. I posted my monthly Annika-letter over on the dedicated Annikablog, and it's only two weeks late. Only. I think from now on I'll put most of the babynews over there, along with pictures (I wanted to upload more pictures but kept getting error messages last night).

Here, I'll keep rambling on about life, the universe, and everything. When I actually manage to think up a topic, write down my thoughts, and then type it up. That's a big accomplishment, lately.

Although I'm not writing much, I've been reading. Mostly on the train to/from work.

Since Annika was born:

Tangled Webs (Anne Bishop)
Operating Instructions (Anne Lamott)
Merle's Door (Ted Kerasote)
Sense and Sensibility (Jane Austen)
The Ill-Made Mute (Cecilia Dart-Thornton)

and currently reading: The Briar King (Greg Keyes).

I think I'm forgetting at least one book somewhere in there; I'm not counting books about how to deal with babies, of which I've read or skimmed several. Frustrating. Maybe I'll remember it later.

Letters and Adventures

2008-07-09T12:30:00.004-04:00

We're back from our 4th of July trip to Oregon, and I will blog about that in more detail soon.

For now, what I wanted to do is to post the first in what I hope will be a series of monthly letters to Annika. I'm shamelessly stealing this idea from Heather over at Dooce.com (a wonderful blog in general, but especially when she's writing about her daughter). I like the concept of not only writing regularly about each month's new developments, events, joys and sorrows, but to address it to the person who's most likely to be interested later on. I'm starting with Month 3, because I found it easier to write than months 1 or 2.

______________________________________________

Dear Annika,

At the start of this month, you started "Trena-care" and I went back to work. This required some adjustment for both of us, but all in all, it seems to be going well. Aerik has repeatedly declared his love for you, and Trena has negotiated with your dad so that Aerik may ask you on a date when you're 25. Anyone else must wait until you're 30. Kira is not sure whether you are something that might be good to eat, something to play with, or just a thief of Trena's time and attention.

When you look up at me with your sapphire x-ray eyes as you drink from a bottle, I wonder what it is you can possibly see in me. You look so knowing, so wise - and then you forget to coordinate swallowing, sucking and breathing, and start coughing and spluttering. The expression on your face says that you're a little annoyed that the bottle is trying to drown you.

Sometimes when you smile, you scrunch your nose and gasp in glee, and you look as though I just told you the most outrageous, juicy piece of gossip imaginable. It must be fun to watch grown-ups get so giddy every time you grin at them, and then make absolute fools of themselves trying to coax another grin out of you. But the best smiles are the ones you give me for no other reason than that I've magically appeared at your crib in the morning, or after a nap when you've started fussing.

According to the Authorities, babies your age should get "tummy time" to encourage upper body strength. You have a goodly amount of strength, you can hold your head steady, you can support your entire weight on your legs, but being placed on your stomach makes you grumpy. First you squirm, then you start making frustrated little noises, then you start to fuss - it's like you know you can't justify really crying hard, so you just go "Wah. Waawaah. Wah. Weh. Wehwaawaahweh." All the while, trying to use your legs to crawl, but not succeeding because you haven't yet figured out that your lower half won't move forward unless you use your arms to move your upper half forward at the same time.

This, obviously, is not your favorite activity. Your favorite? It's a close call between having a boob in your mouth, versus lying on the changing table kicking and squirming. You get so excited, and jerk all four limbs around so emphatically that it always puts me in mind of a marionette whose strings are being pulled by some kind of maniac. At times you look as though you yourself aren't sure who's controlling all this activity - your eyes get really wide and surprised-looking, and your solemn expression doesn't at all match the flailing and kicking.

You've gotten very good at cramming your entire fist into your mouth. Your dad and I look at the fist, and then your tiny rosebud mouth, and wonder how you do it. And recently, you made the astonishing leap of reasoning that if you can put your hand in your mouth, and if you can grasp an object in your hand, then that object can also be shoved into your mouth. You put a fuzzy toy alligator into your mouth the other day, and then made the most awful face, probably because fuzz on your tongue offended your aesthetic sensibilities. Those are some big words for someone who can, at best, say "ah-goo".

About two weeks ago you started sleeping through the night. At first, we would only speak those words in whispers, lest they turn out to have been simply a sleep-deprived hallucination, or a one-time deal. But now, we can reliably get you to sleep sometime between 10 and 11, and you sleep until 6 or 7 am. After the first two months, the sleep deprivation that made us feel more dead than alive, this is our idea of heaven.

I wonder if there is such a thing as too much affection - I have to fight the temptation to squeeze you too hard, to eat you alive with kisses. So far, you don't seem inclined to protest being gobbled and tickled and cuddled, and I intend to make the most of it before you're old enough to say "Aww Mom, stop it!" and push me away.

Love,

Mama

Parenthood Part I - The Birth

2008-06-18T15:44:00.002-04:00

I'm finally sitting down to start writing about the journey into mommyhood. I'll do this in several pieces, since it would be a gargantuan post if it were all in one.

I started my maternity leave on Wednesday, April 2nd. I hoped that not too many days would go by before the baby was born, although I did have grand ambitions of getting the house clean and organized before her arrival.On Friday at about 7pm, I had the first indication that things were starting to happen - a phenomenon called bloody show. This means that labor will start soon, but "soon" might be hours or days. I told my husband that if he wanted any more pregnancy photos, he'd better take them soon, and we spent part of the evening doing belly pictures. We went to bed as usual, but while I was waiting to fall asleep, I felt a contraction. Probably just practice... but it was followed by another, then another, around 10 minutes apart. I waited a while to see if they'd keep coming, and they did, although not at precisely regular intervals. They were somewhat uncomfortable, but not too bad at all.

At around 2 am, I woke the husband, and we finished packing our Birth Center bag, I called the midwife on call, and we got in the car to head down to Wilmington to the Birth Center. When we got there, I was disappointed to find that I was only 1 centimeter dilated - in other words, I had a looooooooooooooooong way to go.

We went to my parents' house 10 minutes away, and later in the morning, contractions started to seem more intense, so back to the birth center we went. But still, I was only about 2 centimeters dilated! Still, I thought I'd feel more comfortable staying at the Birth Center; with each contraction, I could feel myself sort of fighting it even as I tried to relax, maybe because of some subconscious fear that if I just relaxed and let go, things would happen too fast. Maybe if I settled in at the Birth Center and made myself comfortable, things would speed up.So, for quite a few hours we stayed there - I laid on my side on the couch, then I sat on the birthing ball, then I kneeled on the bed with my arms holding me up on the birthing ball, then back to the couch with one leg hanging over the side to try to get the baby to turn around. She was facing my front instead of facing my back as would be ideal.

Eventually, Katie told me that I might want to reconsider camping out there, because I was still dilating only very slowly. Because the Birth Center is a short-term care facility, they can't keep a patient there for more than 24 hours. And if my labor didn't speed up, I might end up having to transfer to the hospital just because of the time limit. I hadn't known about that before, so back to my parents' house we went. The plan was to take some Benadryl and try to sleep for a few hours, to give my body a chance to rest before "real" labor began.This was sometime in the afternoon. I decided I would take a shower to try and relax, and then take the Benadryl. But by the time I got out of the shower, contractions were getting more intense and closer together. Instead of taking the Benadryl and trying to sleep, it wasn't long before we were heading back to the Birth Center. Now, just breathing wasn't enough to get me through a contraction; I had to hold on to something or somebody, especially if I was standing up when one hit. Trying to climb up onto the examining table was really difficult, because the change in positions caused a contraction, and on top of that I had the shakes. Katie said "That's good, the shakes usually mean you're at least 4 centimeters!" At this point, I didn't feel especially great about the whole thing, but at least things were moving along, and 4 centimeters it was.

After a bit, I started having a lot of pain in my back, and Katie suggested trying the Jacuzzi. I climbed in, and immediately felt better - the contractions still hurt, but the back pain in between contractions was gone, and I could relax more easily. My husband sat by the tub and held my hands during each contraction, and during the worst ones, he helped me stay calm by telling me to breathe with him. If I focused on trying to match my breathing to his, it helped me stay in control.

Time no longer had any meaning; contractions came and went, and I started to take mini-naps between them. They started to become further spaced apart, but more intense when they did come. Finally Katie had me get out of the tub because the contractions were slowing down, and because things were moving so slowly - it was early dawn on Sunday morning, and this had started Friday night around midnight!When I got out of the tub, I was getting ready to insist that I couldn't do this anymore and needed drugs to hurry things up and take away the pain. Katie told me that all women say they can't, at some point. But I think she was just about getting ready to agree with me. She examined me and said, "Do you want some good news, mama?" I nodded. "You're at 10 centimeters... you're ready to push this baby out!" I wasn't sure whether to sigh in relief, or to cry. Push? PUSH? You've GOT to be kidding me, my body said.

I didn't feel much like pushing; unlike many women, I didn't have the urge. Those muscles were just too tired. So it was a battle of wills, me against this THING that was stuck inside me and was the cause of all my troubles. Contractions were far apart, and sometimes I napped between them; sometimes I caught my breath and then got bored and tried pushing in between contractions. I tried different positions: sitting on a birthing stool (which terrified me because I was sure I would tear if I let her come out too fast), on the bed on all fours, on my left side, on my back. Peggy (one of the nurses) took a set of handles with rope attached - I held onto the handles and pulled, while she provided resistance. This forced my tired abs to help with the pushing, but it also made my arms tired. Katie and Peggy switched my iPod playlist from my soothing labor playlist to a lively, upbeat, somewhat random and eclectic selection. They were greatly entertained by my music collection; I was too tired to really be amused.

The shift changed; Katie left and Dorinda came in. I was getting really close now; a tiny patch of the head showed with each push, but I couldn't seem to get any farther. I switched to my right side, with someone holding my left leg up out of the way. They tried to motivate me by saying that soon I'd get to see my baby; at that moment though, I didn't care about any flippin' baby, I just wanted it to be over. Finally, the tiny patch of head got bigger, very slightly bigger, and I got mad. Godf*^&ingdamnit, I had had ENOUGH - if I had to rip myself in two to get rid of this thing that was tormenting me, I would do it. So I pushed like I was going to turn inside out, and that head slowly came out. I remember feeling that it was out, and realizing "Oh shit, now I have to get the shoulders..." but that wasn't so bad; another gargantuan push and she was out, and I can't really say what happened next; they suctioned her nose and mouth, she cried, my husband cut the cord, and then after a bit they put her on my chest.

I sat back against the pillows, and paid only minimal attention to what was going on around me; I vaguely remember getting a pitocin shot to help my uterus contract, and one last push to get the placenta out, and lots of other activity. But mostly, I was busy looking at my new baby. She was tiny, and wrinkly, but surprisingly pristine-looking considering what she'd just been through.

One thing that was funny about the birth is the music selection: I hadn't intended that particular playlist to be used during the actual birth, and the song that it happened to play at that moment is definitely NOT what I would have selected, but I was too busy at the time (go figure) to change it. It was Eminem. Slim Shady. Dorinda politely commented, "I've never birthed a baby to Eminem before." Apparently, this has become somewhere between a legend and a joke among the midwives at the Birth Center, since it's more usually folk music, or spiritual music, or New Age. Not... Eminem. Sigh.

But the important thing was, she had arrived, she was healthy, and... not least... I did it! I had survived a 32-hour labor!

Vaccinated

2008-06-09T14:16:00.003-04:00

Friday, Annika had her 2-month visit to the pediatrician. She's now 10 lbs, 13 oz., and nearly 24 inches; in other words, she's growing just as she ought to be, and the doctor was impressed by her muscle control and her vocalizing - while the doctor asked me questions, Annika carried on her own monologue of coos. I think she intended to distract my attention and re-focus it on her. It worked well, I have to admit.

But then, after all the happy fun stuff, she had her first round of vaccination shots. Four of them, in the thighs. Baby skin is tender, so maybe I shouldn't have been shocked and horrified when she bled. But I was. As soon as the nurse was done, I picked her up and held her, but that didn't do much to quiet the screaming. So I put her to my breast, and like magic, she stopped crying and nursed instead, and soon had apparently forgot her trauma. I, on the other hand, walked around for the rest of the day with a bloodstain on my shirt and an ache in my throat whenever I thought about it.

But I confirmed, then, that all the struggles I've had with breastfeeding, the pain and the tears and pumping and the exhaustion and questioning my own sanity and pumping and guilt and frustration and lost sleep and did I mention pumping? Yes, all of that (I'll write in more detail in another post) and finally I'm certain it was worth it. Because even though the breast isn't her only or even main source of food, it's the one thing that is guaranteed to comfort her. It's hard to even express how much that is worth.

Thrifting

2008-06-09T13:56:00.004-04:00

Saturday and Sunday, I went on a dual mission of thrift-shop visitation. Both parts of the mission were driven by new-parenthood.

Part the first: to buy clothes that fit my current size and shape instead of bitching and moaning about how few of my pre-pregnancy clothes fit. I'm not going to go on any weight-loss diets while I'm breastfeeding, so unless I find the time and motivation to start working out, those pregnancy pounds will stay put for a while. Although I'd eventually like them to go away, I can accept the changes much more gracefully now that I have clothes that fit. At Impact! Thrift in East Norriton, I found several sleeveless tops, two skirts, and a pair of pants to expand my summer work wardrobe, and at the Philadelphia Aids Thrift just south of South Street, I found four pairs of pants, three tops, and another skirt. All this, for about $60.

Part the second was to browse the childrens' books section and find nifty books for young 'uns, but especially old books, the ones that I remember from my own childhood. I succeeded at both Impact! and P. A. T.; I found "The Little Engine That Could", "Robinson Crusoe", "A Fisherman's Tale" by Beatrix Potter, and some that aren't so old, or at least I don't remember them: an amazing pop-up book called "One Red Dot", an illustrated "King Arthur", and... Heather will be so pleased... my child's first book featuring a bat (Stellaluna).

I've started reading to Annika, and although she doesn't show much interest at this point, if nothing else it's good practice for me!

Two Months

2008-06-02T13:46:00.003-04:00

Yesterday, Annika turned 2 months old. And today, I'm back at work... wondering whether it's too soon, or just soon enough. My mother in her wisdom warned me that the longer you wait to go back to work, the more difficult it can be, because babies get so much cuter and more interesting than they were at 4 weeks or 6 weeks. She's learned the art of the social smile and is starting to carry on whole conversations made of "oooh" and "aah!" and sometimes a high-pitched "eee!"

It feels odd to be typing with two hands, instead of holding Annika with one arm and typing with the other.

I've been planning to do a series of posts about the transition into motherhood: the labor and birth, the first two weeks, the next two weeks, the second month. So far, I have part of the birth story written, but it's not nearly finished yet (it's a long story). I finally decided that I should write something, anything, on the blog instead of waiting and trying to do posts in chronological order.

My brother Alex and his girlfriend Anne were in Delaware last week, and they were both delighted with Annika. Whereas my youngest brother was afraid to hold the baby lest he break her, Alex couldn't wait to gather her into his arms and coo at her. It was definitely "love at first sight" on Alex's part, and although it's hard to tell with a baby that young, it seemed that she liked him too.

Over the weekend, she had her first party at the grandparent Khavins' house. She was a big hit with everyone, but especially her great-grandparents. A cousin suggested that to keep everyone updated with the latest news and pictures, we should start an Annika blog. Before I actually had a baby, I would've thought that idea was silly, but now it seems to make sense - I've had a lot of requests for pictures, and a baby blog seems like the best way to disseminate them.

Perspective

2008-03-13T10:35:00.004-04:00

For a while now, I've been certain, but without evidence other than intuition, that this baby will arrive early. I've been told several times by the nurse-midwives at the birth center that first babies have a tendency to be overdue, so I shouldn't be surprised if nothing has happened by my due date.

On Monday at my appointment, I got the first hint of evidence that I might possibly be right: the cervix is still closed, but has gotten softer and thinner (a process called effacement), and the baby is positioned fairly low in my pelvis, with her head down. Neither of these things necessarily mean that labor will start soon, but they're some of the preliminaries. I asked when I would be considered far enough along to deliver at the Birth Center, and the answer is "it depends." If there are no complicating factors whatsoever, they'll allow it at 36 weeks - a milestone that I just passed yesterday. If the mother is positive for Group B Strep and will therefore need antibiotics during labor, they require 37 weeks or better. I haven't gotten my culture results yet to know whether GBS will be an issue or not, but I'll soon find out.

I was excited both by the news that pre-labor changes are starting to happen, and that if labor did start early, I might be able to deliver at the Birth Center earlier than I thought. On Tuesday morning, it seemed that labor might actually be imminent - the baby had shifted even lower, and I was getting cramps that felt a lot like menstrual cramps. Braxton-Hicks contractions, probably; there was no distinct pattern to them. The intensity would vary, but I couldn't distinguish the beginning or ending of individual contractions. By the afternoon, the cramps had faded, and by the next morning, the baby had shifted position slightly so that she didn't seem to be pressing downward as much.

Although I knew that I should be feeling relieved, I was mostly just disappointed. It's difficult to be patient at this point, even though it's irrational to want to hurry things up - physically, it's almost certainly easier to be pregnant than to be recovering from childbirth and dealing with a newborn. But that didn't stop me from being cranky and wondering how I can possibly make it through another month - possibly even six weeks - of the various discomforts, plus the waiting and wondering if every cramp or backache just might be the start of the real thing.

Sitting at my computer and looking, I guess, for commiseration, I did a google search for "tired of being pregnant." As it happened, one of the first things I came across was the opposite of what I was looking for. It was a blog post written by a labor & delivery nurse, about how she is tired of pregnant women whining at 34 or 36 or 38 weeks that they're tired of pregnancy, ready to get the baby out, and want to be induced or c-sectioned. She raged against women who don't seem to realize or care that an early baby is more likely to have trouble breathing, trouble nursing, trouble fighting off infections, and convince their doctor to give them an early delivery. She held that women who carry their babies full term should be thankful for it, and think of all the women whose babies were premature and didn't make it, or had serious problems because of it. The post ended with "Go ahead readers...flame away at me over my opinions on this subject []", but the long, long string of comments that followed was almost entirely from moms who agreed, because they'd had a premature baby themselves, or been induced early because of pre-eclampsia or other complications. Many of them said something like "I would have given anything to be pregnant for longer, and it drives me crazy when women who stay pregnant for the full term complain about it!"

It made me feel guilty about wishing that mine would be early, even though I would never have an induction or elective c-section to bring it about. I don't feel too guilty about it, though, because every woman who's getting close to term gets impatient. But that dose of perspective did make me realize that I shouldn't feel too sorry for myself - I'll take all the pains and annoyances of late pregnancy over coping with a baby that's not ready for the outside world yet.

Brains and guts

2008-02-21T08:56:00.005-05:00

One thing that came up during my first Birth Center prenatal appointment, while going over my general medical history, was that I have a few episodes of depression and/or anxiety in my past. No huge drama, no hospitalization, not even any medication for it, but still it's there. The nurse-midwife cautioned me that women who have such a history are more likely to suffer from post-partum depression than women who haven't had past problems. That doesn't mean I will have PPD, but that I should be alert to the possibility. She said that many women have trouble recognizing the signs because there's so much else going on at the same time - sleep deprivation, the physical recovery from birth, sore breasts from starting to breastfeed, body image issues, the sense of huge new responsibility, and the list goes on. With all that, it's hard to say what's "normal."

I wondered whether that might happen to me - would I be able to tell if I was having problems more than just the usual adjustment period to being a new parent? Thinking about it made me realize that at least for me, mental health is nowhere near as self-evident as physical health. I know at any given time whether I'm in a good or a bad mood, but if it's a bad mood I can't say whether it will go away in an hour, or a day, or whether it might drag on for much longer. I can tell after a specific stressful event that it caused a stress reaction, but if it's the more ongoing, long-term kind of stress, I can't easily say whether it's getting to be too much, or if I'm coping well. I can't tell by "asking myself" whether I'm just having a bad day or a bad week, or if it's something that I need to take steps to fix.

Then I realized that I do have an excellent built-in barometer of my overall mental health: my stomach. I may feel stressed or moody, but if I'm eating normally, that's a good indicator that it's nothing too serious, and will resolve itself soon. When I lose my appetite or feel sick to my stomach and there's no obvious physical cause, it's a probable sign that there's something that I'm having trouble dealing with. In particular, during a few times in my life that were especially stressful, I thought that I had some mysterious stomach ailment; eventually I figured out that I was having panic attacks, but without the stereotypical hyperventilating and heart-pounding.

So for me, as for many people, a "gut reaction" is a not just a metaphor. It's an interesting example of the inseparability of mind and body. I wonder whether this tendency to physically express mental turmoil evolved for some reason - can there be any possible advantage to having physical symptoms of unhappiness? Or is it just a side effect of the fact that the physical brain is part of the body, and that having thoughts and emotions is a chemical process, and is not independent of the rest of the body's workings? It just seems funny that for all its power, the brain isn't very good at identifying and troubleshooting its own problems.

Unintended consequences (long post)

2008-02-07T17:08:00.003-05:00

Two weeks ago, Vlad and I went to a "tour for expectant parents" at Abington Hospital. I suppose such tours are intended to familiarize couples with the layout of the hospital, and reassure them that the hospital is a wonderful place to deliver a baby. I went to the tour assuming that's exactly what I would get out of it.

I was wrong.

Let me go into some background first, then I'll explain.

When I first found out I was pregnant, my general practitioner recommended Abington Hospital, which is one of the largest hospitals in the area. I hadn't been thrilled with my prenatal experience at the UPenn Hospital during my first (brief) pregnancy, so I thought okay, I'll try Abington. The first or second ultrasound showed that I had a low-lying placenta, which can cause problems in delivery. Before I found out about that, I was mulling over the idea of delivering at a birth center instead of a hospital. But with the low-lying placenta issue, I put those ideas on hold and remained at Abington through the first and second trimesters, because a birth center will typically only accept low-risk pregnancies with no complications.

About 6 weeks ago, when I last had an ultrasound, the placenta had moved up and was no longer a concern, and everything else looked fine. I was delighted, and although I didn't get around to it right away, I soon called the Birth Center at Bryn Mawr (a suburb of Philly) hoping to transfer there. They took a week to get back to me, and then it was only to tell me that they were booked for April, and weren't accepting any more patients due then. I sighed and figured that I'd just resign myself to having the baby at the hospital, like a normal person - and anyway, hospitals offer epidurals and most birth centers don't. Who wants to face a painful experience without at least having the option of some heavy-duty pain relief at hand? I wasn't sure I did, even if "birth center" does evoke a much more warm and fuzzy image than "hospital."

So, back to the tour. We arrived early, and I was impressed by the big atrium in the lobby, complete with a fountain - it looked almost more like a large hotel than a hospital. The conference room in which all the new parents gathered was also very sparkly-modern. So far, so good. I was pleased, and looking forward to the tour. But then our tour guide, a perky blonde RN, started to talk. With nearly everything she said, I could feel my stress level ticking higher. EFM, IV's, pitocin, alarms, c-sections, NICU, bathroom privileges (privileges?!). The supposedly "home-like decor" of the labor and delivery room consisted of a few pastel watercolor pictures on the wall, one of which turned out to be a clever hiding place for an array of medical instruments. At one point she mentioned a birth plan, asked how many couples there had one. About a fifth of the audience raised their hands. Vlad whispered to me, "What's a birth plan?" I indicated that I'd explain it later. On our way out, I told him through clenched teeth that a birth plan is a document intended to make a woman feel as if she has some control over what happens once she walks through the hospital doors. Everything I had heard made me feel certain that whoever would be in control, it wouldn't be me. And I didn't like it. At. All.

My own reaction took me by surprise. I've never considered myself anti-hospital, anti-Western medicine, anti-authority, anti-technology, or anything along those lines. When it comes to alternative therapies, I'm interested but skeptical - it drives me crazy to hear people talk about herbal remedies as if they're inherently safe because they're natural. If natural equals safe, go snack on some Atropa belladonna. Likewise, I distrust anyone who says that because birth is natural, it is safe.

So why then did the hospital tour leave me foaming at the mouth and ready to bite anyone in a white coat who'd come near me? I'm not sure, but I think it has to do with having some pre-existing exposure to the idea that the way hospitals approach childbirth is not necessarily ideal for the mother or the baby. Without specifically looking for such information, I had come across various arguments that the fewer interventions, the better, unless a specific situation required otherwise.

I learned when we did the hospital tour that my opinions and feelings are a lot stronger than I thought. I knew I wanted a minimum of medical intervention, but I didn't fully realize that if I went to the hospital, I would immediately have an IV stuck in my arm, and an electronic fetal monitoring device strapped to my belly - that these weren't merely available options, but pretty much mandatory. I hadn't thought about the fact that if I am sick or injured, I'm fine with handing over control to the medical establishment, but birth is not an illness, and shouldn't automatically be treated as such. At the same time, I'm aware that the birth process doesn't always go smoothly or safely, so I don't want to be too far away from all that fancy medical technology should it be needed.

So I started looking into other options in our area, and found the Wilmington Birth Center. They will provide the happy medium that I'm looking for - the freedom to move around as much or as little as I want, to eat and drink if I feel like it, to give birth in whatever position feels the most comfortable. The freedom to wear my own clothes and not a hospital gown, to go to the bathroom when I damn well feel like it, to have a calm environment free of the hospital's hurry and noise. And importantly, the support of a certified nurse midwife who can reassure me that everything is going well, and knows what to do if it isn't. They have arrangements with St. Francis Hospital (just a block away) and Christiana Hospital so that if necessary, they can quickly transfer a patient.

One of my worries was that perhaps birth centers aren't as safe as hospitals - they are, after all, less equipped to handle emergencies on the spot. I thought about various scenarios, mulled it over. Then I realized I don't have to rely on intuition and guessing - I have access to all sorts of primary medical literature, so I looked up some numbers.

A 1989 study of birth center outcomes for 11,814 women, published in the New England Journal of Medicine, found that there were no maternal deaths, and a neonatal mortality rate of 1.3 per 1000 - which is less than the overall rate of around 4.5/1000 as of 2003. Cesareans were 4.4%, compared with a recent national statistic of almost 25%. Another study in Australia with data from 1999-2002 had very similar perinatal mortality numbers, and a few smaller studies also found that birth centers are quite safe.

Just to confirm what I was already fairly sure of - that I'd be happier and just as safe at a birth center - I asked some questions of my ob/gyn at Abington at my appointment last Thursday. Found out that yes, I would be hooked up to an IV as soon as I was admitted, and not allowed to eat. Next, I asked about electronic fetal monitoring - that too would be required as soon as I was admitted, and I was surprised by what the ob/gyn said next. "Bad things happen to unmonitored babies, we've seen bad things happen. Not long ago we had a woman who didn't want monitoring, so we basically sent her to a birth center instead because we're not comfortable with that." Wow. Scary-sounding, yes?

As far as my research has been able to uncover, her statement does not hold up. Electronic fetal monitoring hasn't been shown to improve outcomes for the baby, especially in low-risk births, but it does increase the likelihood of a c-section. I couldn't find a single study that showed any real advantage to it. Even the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, a rather conservative organization, states that intermittent monitoring by handheld Doppler or electronic fetal monitoring can be used, and they do not recommend one over the other. So was the obstetrician lying to me? Or was she misinformed? Either way, it further reinforced my feeling that Abington wasn't right for me.

I had my first visit to the Wilmington Birth Center yesterday, and what a difference! In the waiting room, there's a large bookshelf full of books about pregnancy, birth, childcare, and women's health - you can borrow books by signing them out. Any place that has its own lending library has already made a big leap towards earning my respect, bookworm that I am. The nurse-midwife who examined me took plenty of time to explain how the birth center does things, and to ask and answer questions, whereas at Abington I always felt like the doctor had one foot out the door already when they asked if I had any questions. And she sent me home with a hefty binder full of information about pregnancy, labor and birth, and postpartum care of mom and baby. Now, much of this information I had already found on my own - but definitely not from my doctors!

Several people, upon hearing that I plan to give birth without an epidural, have expressed sentiments that I'm either really brave, or crazy, or some combination. Crazy I may be, but brave has nothing to do with it. It's simply that I'm more afraid of the hospital than of birth pains.

If you've read this far, you probably have at least a little bit of interest in the subject of childbirth. If that's because you (or someone you're close to) might have a baby at some point in the near future, don't be like me and wait until trimester 3 to think seriously about this stuff! Early on, maybe even before conceiving, find out the options available to you, and decide for yourself rather than letting the path of least resistance decide for you.

Finances - A wealth of books

2008-01-25T14:00:00.000-05:00

Some people, on discovering a need to learn about a subject that's currently a mystery to them, will ask people they know. Some will take a class. Some will rely on the internet. Some will read a book. And some will read ALL the books.

I'm one of those who will tend to read all the books, or at least as many as I have access to, and time for. Fortunately for my budget, I've learned not to buy such books unless I'm certain that they'll be useful beyond the first reading. Mostly, I borrow from the library, and spend an occasional evening at a bookstore perusing their books.

As I mentioned in my previous post, money is one of the three major things I'm thinking about these days (the other two being my MA thesis, and the baby I'm carrying), and my interest in the topic has resulted in a reading binge; I've borrowed quite a number of books from the library and from my dad's bookshelf.

Here are some of the books I've read thus far, with nano-reviews of each.

Rich Dad, Poor Dad This is one that if I had bought, I'd be embarrassed to admit it - there's a lot of salesmanship and pseudophilosophizing here. But it's less boring than a lot of books out there, and makes some interesting points. The main point is that many of the attitudes that people hold about money (including the reluctance to even think about it) prevent them from becoming wealthy. Useful for: thinking "outside the box", getting started thinking about money in general.

The Average Family's Guide to Financial Freedom One that's written by a "normal" couple, not some financial planner or hotshot investor. Lots of practical advice on frugality, debt reduction, and conservative investing. Useful for: getting started, living below your means.

Leg the Spread A riveting adventure story about the high-risk world of futures trading, focused on the few women who participate. Not a how-to, although you pick up some of the terminology along the way. Useful for: entertainment, and an inside look at part of "the Market" and the people that make a living by trading.

How the Stock Market Works A guide to the mechanics and behind-the-scenes happenings that make up what we think of as "the Market." Goes into a fair amount of detail about what actually happens when you place a trade order, or when a company makes a public offering of stock. On my first read, a lot of it was too detailed for me and/or went over my head, but I will likely read it again. Useful for: It's like a book explaining what happens inside your car when you're driving, and how road systems are developed and maintained, as opposed to giving you advice on how to drive.

Two for the Money Co-written by twin brothers, both professional financial advisors but who differ sometimes in their approaches and opinions. Aimed at "baby boomers" but has a good all-around overview of dealing with personal finances, from the basics of getting organized to the complexities of choosing investment vehicles for retirement, college savings, and so on. Useful for: covering the breadth of personal money management without getting too bogged down in the complicated stuff.

The Undercover Economist If you read Freakonomics and liked it, this book is in a similar vein, but not quite as sexy. Has some interesting stuff about a wide range of topics, from how grocery stores price their goods to global trade economics and the environment. Useful for: thinking about "everyday economics" and pondering the economic aspects of politics and environmental issues.

Die Broke I couldn't resist the title, especially since right next to it on the library shelf was another book called "Don't Die Broke." Unlike many personal finance books that try to use fear to put you on the path of the money-righteous, this one aims to reduce fear. The main points are 1) Don't make yourself panicky by setting some arbitrary date for retirement, many people are actually happier and healthier if they keep working. Just go at your own pace, building up assets that will support you once you're no longer able to work or no longer want to. 2) The ideal of passing on an inheritance is outdated; it's much more efficient (because of estate taxes) and much more enjoyable to pass on your wealth while you're living. Useful for: some contrarian ideas on retirement planning.

This is Not Your Father's Stockpicking Book Actually, I did borrow it from Dad. But anyway, it uses lots of examples to show how cues from everyday life, that most people don't think have anything to do with stocks, can be used for investing ideas. The weather, politics, television shows, fads, and advertisements are the main signal sources discussed. Useful for: learning about some of the things that affect stock prices.

The Warren Buffett Way It's impossible to take even a passing interest in investing without hearing about Warren Buffett. This book isn't written by the guru himself, but is about him - it is a sort of biography focusing on his business and investment decisions. Useful for: An insight into the life and strategies of the most successful investor in recent history.

And here are some other books that I'm currently reading, or plan to read in the near future, and why:

Unconventional Success: A Fundamental Approach to Personal Investment - Why most mutual funds are not a good place for your money. Right now nearly all my investments are in mutual funds, so I'm curious what this guy has to say about them that's so bad.

Rule #1 - A system for picking individual stocks, mostly based on the fundamentals of the companies. A mass-marketed, sometimes tacky, but understandable approach to applying a Warren Buffett-like investment strategy.

The Bogleheads' Guide to Investing - I've heard it's a good "getting started" book.

Your Money and Your Brain - What is going on, neurobiology-wise, when you make investment decisions. Why people tend to make dumb moves when investing, even when they know better.

The Alchemy of Finance - A lofty-minded tome by famous successful investor George Soros.

Goals, 2008

2008-01-23T21:10:00.001-05:00

I've never been one for resolutions. Not at the new year, or really any other time. The cynic in me says that if the resolution-maker (whether it's me or someone else) really has both the desire and the ability to change, they would already have done it, and not waited until January 1.

But the idea is firmly entrenched in our culture that the transition from one calendar year to the next is an ideal time to take stock of where you've been, and where you're going. 2006 and 2007 were eventful years for me, with a lot of changes that I would not have foreseen. At the beginning of 2006, I was a graduate student in Kansas, working towards a PhD in ecology, living in an apartment, with no near-term plans of buying a house or starting a family. The end of 2007 found me in Pennsylvania, employed at UPenn in a cell biology research lab, while simultaneously making gradual progress on a Master's, discovering the joys and pains of homeownership, and expecting a baby girl in April.

So, they're not exactly resolutions along the classic lines of "lose weight, quit smoking, spend more time with family." But I do hope to achieve certain goals for 2008:

- complete my Master's degree at KU
- increase my salary
- add $8000 to our savings/investments
- write to one friend or family member each month

These are the primary goals, and I figure that with a new baby that will take up much of my time and energy, that is plenty. There are numerous lesser goals or related aims that I could also list (get more organized, get parts of the thesis published, get various things fixed or improved around the house, and so forth), but I'm sticking with goals that are quantifiable, so that at the end of the year I can easily say whether or not they were achieved.

Many people that know me might be surprised to see that two of my goals are financial in nature. In the past, I was never especially interested in money. As long as there was enough to meet our immediate needs, and preferably to put some into a savings account as well, I didn't care how much we earned, or how much we spent. But owning a house and preparing for parenthood have changed my perspective. As the one who does most of the banking and bill-paying, I had become vaguely aware that since we bought the house (almost exactly a year ago), our bank account wasn't shrinking, but it also wasn't growing. It occurred to me that this was a worrisome state of affairs if our expenses were slated to increase and/or our income would decrease. I decided that a more proactive approach was needed, and that I should learn something about managing money other than "don't spend more than you have." So, I used Quicken to help me collect data on our spending, and I started borrowing books about personal finance from the local library. Together we started talking about planning for the future (farther ahead than next month's bills), about budgets and saving and strategies for investing. So far, we're only two months into our efforts to be more financially responsible, but I think we've made a lot of progress. We've set up a budget that should be workable when the baby arrives, and that includes saving up some money. We're still pondering what to do with our savings once it has been set aside; I still feel like I have a lot to learn about investing. Overall, the plan is to keep some in savings, and to invest some. The allocation to each, and the types of investments we make, have yet to be decided.

Have a geeky Thanksgiving!

2007-11-21T09:45:00.000-05:00

Maybe you're the sort of person who has always wondered what cranberry sauce looks like if you let the juice crystallize, then look at it under a microscope. Or maybe you get a thrill from saying "Please pass the Meleagris gallopavo!" Or perhaps you're just attracted to bright colors and shiny objects. If any of these apply to you, go check out this article at Wired.com.

http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/magazine/15-11/st_thanksgiving

In other non-Thanksgiving related geeky cheekiness, I recently found decorations for our little one's room when they move out of the nursery. Every child has to learn their ABC's, right?

http://www.tiffanyard.com/nerd.htm

Names

2007-11-20T13:34:00.000-05:00

Here is a list of the first names that we're presently considering, in alphabetical order. Comment on which ones you like or don't like, and why. The middle name will probably be Rose, after her dad's grandmother.

For those of you looking at this list and wondering where the "interesting" ones are, do not fear. They're just posted on a different blog.

Amalia
Annika
Anya
Eleanor
Eliana
Eva
Evelina
Lily
Maia
Miriam
Stella
Sylvia

Pincushion

2007-11-08T16:28:00.000-05:00

Many of the annoyances of pregnancy are generated by one's own body, but there are some that are external. This morning I went to get blood drawn for the second part of "sequential screening," which is a series of tests including ultrasound and bloodwork to look for Down's Syndrome and related chromosomal abnormalities. It's not the principle of such testing that annoys me, it's the practicality of the way it's implemented. It would be nice if there was a consolidated prenatal care center that served all the various needs, but at the two hospitals I've gone to for care the two times I've been pregnant, that's not how it works. You end up going to the ob/gyn's office for regular checkups, which are very brief after the first one. There's a separate facility for high-tech ultrasounds, and a lab across the hall where they collect blood samples for bloodwork, plus for my initial round of "test-everything-possible" bloodwork I had to go to Qwest Diagnostics. Between the ultrasound appointments, the regular prenatal checkups, and other stuff like the bloodwork, it seems like just about every week there's some appointment that demands my time. And it'll get worse - in month 8, the prenatal checkups will be every other week, and in month 9 they will be every week.

Looking on the bright side (sort of), I guess it's good training for the frequent visits to the pediatrician after the baby is born.

Peaches and fluffy clouds

2007-11-04T10:40:00.000-05:00

The project of painting the baby's room is finally complete! For those who haven't seen this room in person: it is a very small room, about 8' x 10', that is connected by an open doorway to the master bedroom (in the picture, the door would be just outside the frame, to the left) and has a small closet and a door to the hallway. We imagine that its original purpose was either a sitting room or a nursery; the previous owners were using it as an office.

I'm pleased with the peachy-tan paint and most especially with the "sky" ceiling. The leafy wall lamps are a tad too big for this room; they'd look more at home in a living room or dining room, and we might very well re-use them at some point elsewhere in the house. But since none of the upstairs rooms in our home are equipped with light fixtures on the ceiling, our options are more or less limited to floor lamps or wall lamps unless we did some major re-wiring. Ignore the blue tape on the floor - we're not quite done cleaning up the painting mess.

Next we'll get a crib, move the dresser back into the room, equip the top with a changing pad, drag upstairs a comfy reclining chair that we inherited from my grandma, and the room will be about ready for its new occupant.

Mini-update on the mini-human

2007-10-31T11:41:00.000-04:00

I had a regular pre-natal checkup this morning, and all seems to be well. At this stage, such appointments are very brief - weight, blood pressure, urine sample, and a check of the fetal heartbeat with Doppler, then "Any questions?" and if not, I'm on my way. At first, I felt sort of ripped-off - I have to make the trek to the ob/gyn office for less than 10 minutes worth of care, when I'm not sick?? But all those routine things really are important to keep tabs on during pregnancy, and it does provide an opportunity to get information. For example, I had been wondering if it's recommended to get a flu shot during pregnancy, or if it could be risky for the baby. The answer is that it's safe, and definitely recommended.

The doctor asked whether I've felt the baby moving yet, because it's around the time that its movements start to become noticeable. I think I've been feeling it move for the last 2 weeks or so, but it's hard to say for certain. Things feel generally "different" in the lower abdominal region, but there are two distinct sensations that I'm about 80% convinced are fetal movement. One is little brief jerks that feel a lot like when you get a muscle twitch, and are probably kicks. The other is a strange shifting/crawling feeling that's a little bit like butterflies, or a mild version of the feeling you get on a rollercoaster; I figure that might be the baby changing positions or rolling over.

Bittersweetness of autumn

2007-10-31T10:52:00.000-04:00

If I had to choose one word to describe what this time of year means to me, the mood of the season, it would be "bittersweet." In many ways, I don't like fall. The diminishing hours of sunlight, the leftover childhood dread of a new school year, the sense of loss when frost kills the last flowers and with them the joys of summer, all combine to make me feel uneasy. By December, I'll be accustomed to the cold and the shorter days, but after 27 autumns I still fight the transition. And yet, I can't separate those things from the season's pleasures: days like yesterday and today when the sunlight is golden-crisp and the temperature is invigorating but comfortable, the stunning contrast of a flame-red maple tree against an intensely blue sky, the sweet smell of fallen leaves. The re-appearance of some of my favorite foods and beverages - tea, hot chocolate, cranberries, soups and stews; the remembered excitement of Halloween and the warm glow of Thanksgiving. Still and all, I think the greatest benefit of fall and winter is that they prevent me from taking spring and summer for granted!

Control of my informations? Oh noes!

2007-10-29T13:44:00.000-04:00

I love it when phishers leave tell-tale signs that they're idiots, as per this email message supposedly from PayPal. I highlighted the most obvious bloopers in bold red, but almost every sentence contains some awkward phrasing or mangled grammar. It turns an annoyance - phishing spam - into something that makes me giggle. Maybe I'm just easily amused, but they try so hard to make it sound official. And then they forget to spellcheck.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Dear PayPal Customer,

This email is to inform you, that we had to block your PayPal Account access because we had to upgrade our servers in order to remove online fraud.

Our terms and conditions you agreed to state that your account must always be under your control or those you designate at all times. We have noticed some unusual activity related to our servers that indicates that other parties may have access and, or control of your informations in your account. Please follow this link to confirm your account access information :

https://www.paypal.com/us/cgi-bin/webscr?_cmd=login-run

Please be aware that until we can verify your identity no further access to your account will be allowed and we will have no other liability for your account or any transactions that may have occurred as a result of your failure to upgrade your account as instructed above.

Thank you for your time and consideration in this matter .

Sincerely, PayPal Account Departement.

Queenly quote

2007-10-25T15:16:00.000-04:00

The "Queen of Clean" Linda Cobb, upon being asked what household duties should be done daily:

There are only two things I do every day: feed the cat, and kiss the King.

A few years back, I borrowed a friend's copy of Linda Cobb's book on housecleaning. I have forgotten most of the advice, but I remember this quote. I can't quite put my finger on why I like it so much, but it makes me smile. Probably because I can picture the interviewer expecting to hear that at the end of each day, the kitchen sink should be spotless, the day's laundry should be folded, and everything should get a good dusting... and the answer defies that image.

The Heroin Rocker and the Almost Hitman

2007-10-23T15:30:00.000-04:00

One of the perks of working in the City, and commuting via train, is that I get to observe a big slice of human diversity. Between the door of my house and the door of my laboratory, on any given day I will see people from every walk of life - from the crazy homeless guy on the corner of 30th and Market to the investment banker on her way into Center City from the 'burbs - and of every color that human skin can be.

Sometimes, I amuse myself by making split-second assessments of personalities and life stories. This woman with the hard lines around her mouth but a sad look in her eyes is going through a divorce; that bespectacled young man grinning at nothing in particular has just aced his midterm exam in Accounting, and so on. It's not always easy to instantly invent something about those who just look like "ordinary folks," though sometimes the things that pop into my mind surprise me. And on many days, I tune out the whole parade and read a book.

But there are a few people I've seen that make a strong enough impression that I can't help but make up stories. One of them was the Heroin Rocker. Dressed in black leather pants and a black leather jacket, he's tall and sort of rangy, skinnier than he should be. Overall he might be about 45, but the bags under his eyes and the lines on his face make him look older. He has scraggly brown hair just past the shoulders, and looks like he must be on his way to a gig in some scuzzy bar, playing drums or maybe bass for a Black Sabbath cover band. Maybe in his past there were more glamorous venues, and the backstage parties went on all night, but they took their toll and those days are long past.

A character I just saw today, rather incongruous on the university campus, was the Almost Hitman. He had sleek sunglasses, a shaved head, a purposeful expression on his chiseled features, and a suit covering an athletic build. But the picture wasn't quite right; he didn't look entirely like a hitman and it took me a moment to figure out why. Then I realized - the suit was brown, not black. Hitmen must always and only wear black suits, it's one of the rules.

15 week ultrasound

2007-10-20T11:54:00.000-04:00

On Thursday afternoon, my husband and I went to Abington Memorial Hospital's Fetal Diagnostic Center, which is where they do all the high-resolution ultrasounds and amniocentesis and whatever else might be done to make sure that babies are developing properly.

I wasn't quite as nervous this time as I was with the first high-res ultrasound at 11 weeks. That time, I was (I think) outwardly calm, but inwardly biting my nails and squirming. I had a sort of negative association with ultrasounds because with my first pregnancy, I had no signs that I was going to miscarry until I had an ultrasound and learned that all was not well. So when I got pregnant again, I was pessimistic and refused to get my hopes up too much, but that didn't stop me from being very, very jittery about what the ultrasound would show. It was a major relief when the 11-week ultrasound showed that things were fine, but I was still a bit nervous - things can still go very wrong later in the first trimester or even early in the 2nd.

I relaxed when the technician said "There's the baby!" almost as soon as the ultrasound device touched my belly, and it was clearly baby-shaped, and moving. She proceeded to take a series of measurements of just about everything, all the while narrating what she was doing and pointing out what was what. I was amazed at how much can be seen now, and how much the bone structure has developed since last month - you can easily see the ribs and spinal column, arm and leg bones, etc. First she measured the dimensions of the skull, and the brain inside. At this stage, you can clearly see that there are two hemispheres, and there's still some space around them inside the skull. Then she looked at the heart - now evidently a multi-chambered thing although you couldn't easily see all 4 chambers at once. The heart rate is 144 beats per minute, which is normal for a fetus at this stage, and already much slower than the 163 of a month ago. Next she measured the abdomen, and pointed out the stomach and bladder. She looked at the arms and legs, took measurements of the femur and tibia, checked the spine, and used some sort of temperature monitor (I think?) to measure the blood flow through the umbilical cord and the blood circulation within the fetus. We also got a look at the face both in profile and from the front. The frontal view looked spooky because the ultrasound shows both the flesh and the bones under it, so it looked sort of skeletal.

The one thing that caused any concern is that the placenta is "low-lying" which means that its edge is near the cervix. That is a potential problem because if the placenta covers the cervix later in the pregnancy, it tends to bleed, and it makes a c-section mandatory. But fortunately, the placenta generally gets shifted upward as the uterus grows, so for now it's just something to keep an eye on.

All in all, I was very happy with the whole thing. I have another one scheduled in a month, and at that time we should get to find out the gender. I can't say I have any particular "sense" of whether it's a girl or boy, and waiting another entire month to find out seems way too long. On the other hand, knowing the gender answers only one aspect of the question "Just who is this new person?" And that question gets answered little by little over a span of about, I'd say, 20 years.

Crazy moods

2007-10-15T18:59:00.000-04:00

One of the things I have found most unsettling about pregnancy so far is mood swings. I was prepared for morning sickness, I expected the tender breasts. But the moods! I had heard that it's like PMS. Ah, no, I wish!

I'll share the most extreme (and therefore most entertaining) example, but I should preface it by saying that most days are nothing like this - I'm usually fine, or just a bit tired and "blah."

One day, I came home from work in an edgy, itchy-trigger-finger mood. It wasn't caused by anything at work; the day had gone pretty smoothly. But there it was. I went around doing the usual routine things; feeding the cats, bringing the mail in from the mailbox, scowling at the pile of dirty dishes that hadn't magically cleaned themselves overnight, and trying to figure out what I could eat for dinner without having to cook. My husband was stuck late at work, and had no idea that luck was actually with him that day.

I went through the mail, and saw an ominously pink envelope from our car insurance company. Sure enough, it was a notice stating that the bill was overdue, and our insurance was scheduled to be terminated at such-and-such date. Many of the household bills are my responsibility to pay, but this particular one was HIS fault.

I went beserk. I stomped around, hyperventilating, and looked for something to break. I wanted the sound of glass shattering, I wanted to smash anything and everything in sight. But the tiny part of me that remained sane said, just loud enough to be heard in the storm, "You don't really want that kind of mess to clean up right now, do you?" So I snatched a box of crackers off of the kitchen table, hurled them on the floor, and stomped on them (yes, just like a toddler having a tantrum). The crunch it made would maybe have been satisfying, but I was aware of how funny it would look to a hypothetical onlooker, and that just made it worse. I've always thought it's a good thing to be able to laugh at yourself, but in this case it was like having a split personality where one was tormenting the other by making fun of their troubles. This was enough to turn the murderous rage into a crying jag, which started off looking a lot like hysterics because I was entirely too worked up to have a nice quiet cry. Finally I tired myself out, and went to sleep. By the next morning, I felt fine except for a slight headache.

Now, of course it probably wasn't all about the pink envelope, or even the hormones. No matter how much you want a child, preparing to be a parent is stressful. Lots of new things to worry about, and any pre-existing worries or issues suddenly loom larger. This is actually a fairly normal process to go through during pregnancy, I know. But much like other pregnancy troubles, it's comforting to know that it's normal, but nonetheless it's rough going sometimes.

There's really nothing surprising about the equation (major life change)+(hormones)=emotional earthquakes. But it's still a bizarre experience to have such disproportionate reactions to minor things.

Blue Moon Faery

2007-10-14T09:05:00.000-04:00

I'm working on a cross stitch based on Beth Hansen's artwork, "Blue Moon Faery." It is going very slowly, because it's a large piece with approximately one zillion small stitches.

Here's a picture (of the artwork, not of my crafting).

Although it may not be finished in 6 months, which is when our new arrival is due, I'd like to hang it in the nursery. I told my husband I thought she would make an excellent baby-watcher. The conversation that followed made me laugh... he pointed out that traditionally, the fae are not exactly to be trusted with babies. "Well, she is pretty though. She looks nice. And all friendly-looking faeries are good... right?" Much snickering followed. But we reached a compromise: I can hang the fae lady in the nursery as long as we also put a dragon there to keep an eye on her.

The Naming

2007-10-07T10:23:00.000-04:00

The title of this blog implies a higher level of compsci/math geekery than I actually possess. Truth be told, it's just two of my favorite concepts stuck together, and it could mean any number of things. In my mind, it conjures up vague notions of high-powered computer modelling techniques on the one hand, or some deep inscrutable philosophical insight on the other hand. Something along the lines of... if you look at the big picture of life, it's made up of little details and patterns that repeat, and all the tiny decisions we make every day add up - or vice versa, the big changes also transform the minutiae.

I imagine this blog will be a little like Seinfeld - it's about nothing. Or about anything, really, that pops into my head. It will probably be a dusty, cobwebbed corner of the internet, seldom visited, of little note. And that is fine. Mainly, it's for my own pleasure - a repository for stray thoughts, a recorder of milestones, a soapbox for the occasional rant.