Broccoli Blues

It's funny how many parenting ideals get thrown out the window as soon as there's an actual baby in your life, isn't it? I mean, I recall many a conversation with my dear friend Brat about the merits of natural childbirth, cloth diapers, organic baby food and other such things. Oh we were all about virtuous child rearing when neither of us was anywhere near pregnant. Then we got that big fat positive and had to rethink a hell of a lot.

For me, natural childbirth was something I wanted to attempt, but I had no illusions about my own pain threshold. And I was induced, so I was pretty clear about my willingness to get an epidural. Things weren't going exactly naturally at that point anyway, so I had nothing to lose. I went through a few hours of contractions, put up with the experience for as long as I wanted to and then... opted out. Since I couldn't just up and head home, I took the next best thing and went with the pain meds. I wouldn't change a thing about Dessa's birth - it went swimmingly.

Cloth diapers were a possibility for about two weeks and then I got my head on straight and went with disposables. More power to ya if you're all about the cloth. I... just couldn't do it.

But one of the things I sort of always figured I'd do for my baby was make his or her baby food. I love to cook, after all, and baby food is barely even cooking. At first I assumed that I'd be providing the food with my ample chest, and we all know just how well that went (not at all, for those of you just tuning in). And then I broke my leg so whipping up fresh fruits and veggies (in the dead of winter) was not really an option.

But, a week or so ago I got with the program and boiled a few heads of broccoli, threw them in the Cuisinart, added a splash of lemon juice to keep 'em green and doled them out into freezable containers. My attempt at homemade baby food, you see.

And it worked. Dessa doesn't exactly thrill to broccoli the way she does to, say, applesauce, but she tolerates it well enough. Except when I added some plain brown rice to it. I sort of figured that she'd like it, since she likes cottage cheese mixed into everything well enough.

I was wrong.

Posted by GoddessKristin on 02/21/08 at 03:20 PM [link]

Pretty In Pink

I don't know what it is, but there's something absolutely irresistible about feetie pajamas. I suspect it has to do with cuddliness and associations with freshly powdered bottoms and nighttime rituals. Whatever it is, I'm a sucker for blanket sleepers and tend to keep Dessa in hers longer than strictly necessary in the mornings. I virtually never change her into regular clothes until after her morning nap - what's the point? She wakes around seven, eats and plays until nine or nine-thirty and then down she goes. It's got to be more comfortable sleeping in her pajamas than in street clothes.

Or so I tell myself. It's just an excuse, I know, but it's my excuse and I'll stick with it, thanks. Besides, who would mess with this?

I especially love the ones with faces on the feet. I know it's a weird thing, these feet turned into disembodied heads, but it's pretty common in infant sleepwear. Dessa has a whole collection of this type and has, over time, had feet that were horse heads, frog heads, cat heads, duck heads and the ones pictured above which are... unclear. There is a sheep on the actual sleeper, so I suspect that the heads are supposed to be ovine in nature. However, I can't get past the sneaking suspicion that they are, in fact, kangaroos. What they're doing is, again, unclear. Dave has opined that they are actually aardvarks, but this seems esoteric, even for babywear.

What I'd really like is a sleeper with something totally bizarre on the feet. Something beyond suspected aardvarks, I mean. Pirate heads would be cool. Lemurs would be most excellent. Octopii would be good, though tricky (not advised for early walkers, definitely).

Seems like it could sell, you know? If you got the right look? There's got to be a market for such things - a hip, cool segment of the parent world that could get down with the idea. Of course, with my luck someone's already doing this and making their fortune on it.

I'm always the last to know.
Posted by GoddessKristin on 02/20/08 at 12:20 PM [link]

Success

As always, I hated my hair when I left the stylists'. No matter what they do, I always hate it right off the bat. In this case, I loved the color but loathed the cut, which is a bad sitch no matter how you look at it. So, of course, I went home and washed it all out and then... then it became clear that my stylist is actually much smarter than I am.

Because the cut does exactly what I mentioned, in brief and vague passing, I wanted it to do. And this despite the fact that I didn't even really know what I wanted when I walked in! Pure genius.

I don't generally show many pictures of myself around here because... well, who needs that? But we took Dess to the park today and Dave took a few pictures with both of us, so there ya go. A picture of my new hair and of Dessa's first time in a swing at the park. Look! I'm standing! Didn't get very far on the bad leg but I'm vertical!

Please note that she is wearing both a floppy sun hat and sunglasses. If one had been available I might have wrapped her in a burkha so paranoid am I of sunburn. She ignored both hat and glasses, which makes her a relatively uncanny child, I think. Don't most of them hate these things?
Posted by GoddessKristin on 02/09/08 at 04:59 PM [link]

Lord Help Me

So it's like this. The last time I got my hair cut was about 2 weeks before Dessa was born. I knew I wouldn't be heading in to the hairdresser's anytime soon postpartum, given my notoriously lax hairdressing habits in the past. Even when I have copious amounts of time, money, energy and a decent idea of what I might want my hair to look like... I still don't always go when I need to.

The truth is that my hair and I have always had a less than comfortable relationship. Ever since the great "feathers" fiasco of 1980 I have had an uneasy truce with my coif. My hair was not meant for feathers, you see. I was way too young to handle the hot curling iron and hair spray combination that any Farrah-do that might have sprung from my tender scalp would have required. And I was not born to a family in which heavy hair-grooming has ever been a priority. My mother didn't know what "product" was until approximately 1998.

So I was really behind the 8-ball when I decided to take my hair into my own hands and have it cut into feathers. My mother, for the record, was violently opposed to this move. I cannot say that I was not warned about the folly of the feather.

But I forged ahead. And when the stylist was done with me, I had the Aquanetted feathers of my dreams. I looked hot, yo (as hot as a fourth grader with crunchy hair can look, that is). And I felt victorious because all the naysaying in the world from Mom had been proven wrong. My hair looked fantastic.

Until I washed it.

Once I washed all that hairspray and the 45 minutes of work that the experienced stylist had put into my 'do? I was screwed. I had no idea whatsoever of how to tease and torture my new cut back into the look I craved. And nobody around me knew how to do it either. I had no curling iron, no hairspray, no older mentor and... no clue.

I was devastated. My hair now looked like crap (shaggy crap at that) and I was stuck with it. I took to pulling it back with hand-knit hair bands that my Gramma made for me. It was not a hot look.

This fiasco was the opening salvo in my ongoing hair wars. I have had blunt cuts that made me look like I was wearing a lampshade, crispy bangs curled up and to the side in best Bon Jovi bitch fashion, crimps, bobs, layers, straightenings... I hate to think of all I've put my hair through.

The problem is that I always think I'm more willing to fiddle with my hair than I actually am. I have this ridiculously thick, frizzy curly head of hair that has a mind of it's own and will hold a curl like no tomorrow but won't stay straight on a bet. I can spend 45 minutes straightening the stuff with hot iron and product and if somebody so much as breathes heavily on it, it curls back up.

It's difficult hair, is what I'm saying.

But stylists love it. It's thick and lush and does whatever they tell it to do. My hair, like an unruly 8th grader, will do whatever someone else wants but rebels at even the slightest sight of me. So I always get convinced by the stylist that with just a little product... with just 5 minutes a day... with just this flip of the wrist (that I later find I am anatomically unable to perform)... my hair will look stunning.

And it always does. Until I wash it. Then I am stuck with it until it grows out enough and I've screwed up my courage enough to head back in.

During bad hair times I tend to stick it in a pony tail for months at a time (washing it of course, but then... right back up). There were the baseball-cap years, better left undiscussed (I was relatively depressed at the time...). There was the French haircut, a too-short lesbian oriented affair that repeatedly got me addressed as Monsieur, to my chagrin (I blame a lot of that on the language barrier because I can).

By this point in my life I'm really hesitant to go to the hairdresser's. And yet every once in a while something will seize me and I will have had ENOUGH. Then I call someone - anyone - and get a haircut. There comes a point when anything is better than this and so I have the guts to do something about it.

Today's the day.

This afternoon I'm going in to get a haircut. I have no idea what I want. Fortunately, I have a history with this stylist, who also cuts my sister's hair and my mom's hair (at my recommendation). She understands my hair and has done me well in the past, even going so far as to color my hair fantastically a few years ago. I was an almost-blonde with her and got so many compliments I could hardly stand it. I may go that route again. I dunno.

Basically I intend to walk in and say, "Tammy, this is the situation. I have an 8 month old. I will be returning to work soon. I need a wash and wear hairstyle that doesn't make people wonder why I'm not going into the men's room. I have no preferences for how short or long you leave my hair. Anything is better than this ponytail, so let's talk. What do you suggest?"

And then I will listen attentively, refuse anything that requires tools to accomplish, and come home with the perfect cut for me.

Right? RIGHT?

Oh my god. I'm going to wind up with feathers again, aren't I?
Posted by GoddessKristin on 02/07/08 at 10:36 AM [link]

Growing Fast

Things move so fast when you have a kid. There are times these days when I pull Dessa close to me and don't understand why she doesn't... quite... fit... into the crook of my arm anymore. It could be because she's getting huge! 28 inches and 19 pounds, 1 oz at her 6 month check-up at the beginning of December and you know she's grown since then (though I will deny it with every fiber of my being). She was in the 95th and 93rd percentiles for height and weight. My kid is big.

But well-proportioned. She, like I did when I was a kid, looks older than her age. People always guess older and that's OK, though sometimes they've asked how many teeth she has (until recently, none. Last week - pop! We have lower tooth sighting! And now? The one next to it seems to be pushing through. Fast, I tell ya), or how well she crawls (thankfully, not at all yet, although she's revving up for it. That will happen far sooner than I'd like).

She does, however, sit with her toys for hours at a stretch now (you can see her tonguing her incoming tooth in this picture):

She's a funny little thing. She chews on her toys, or flips at them with the fingers of one hand (but not the thumb), or she passes them back and forth, back and forth. But she doesn't throw them or fling them around. She's very gentle, in general, despite what those scratches on our necks say (what they really say is, "Mommy needs to get a move on with the nail clippers" but the damn things scare me).

Her latest conquest is the bathtub, which she plays in like a champ:



My aunt and uncle got her a big floating fishing boat toy for Christmas that she loves. She pulls it to her and pushes it away, watching closely. She takes items out of it's cute little fishing boat hold with great deliberation and planning, as if she is defusing a bomb. She examines the floating fish, the life preserver, the octopus comb with the intent of a Talmudic scholar. When one of the little cups fills with water and drops below the surface, she follows it and grasps at it - sometimes successfully, sometimes helplessly watching as it falls to a watery grave. Then Mr. Bubbles floats over the thing and it's forgotten. She's gotten quite good at balancing herself while still slapping the water and kicking around. You'll notice, of course, my hand hovering just next to her - I'm not stupid. That's a big tub and a very little girl.

But she's getting bigger every day. To my pride and sorrow.
Posted by GoddessKristin on 02/06/08 at 10:11 AM [link]

In Memorium

It's sorta quiet Chez YarnHacker today. Yesterday afternoon Dave and I made the hard decision to put our sweet golden retriever, Rhett, to sleep. He was suffering from a growth on his inside lower jaw that was becoming quite aggressive. Though we didn't have it biopsied because of Rhett's age (over 13 years), it was pretty clear what we were dealing with and that the road ahead for him would just be harder and more painful. He was far too good a dog to put him through pain and suffering for what, in the end, would simply have been my own selfish desire to keep him with me.

My sister, who is a vet tech, offered to do what needed to be done, and at her suggestion Dave and I bought a pizza on the way to the vet's office. Once there we let Rhett enjoy, for once, as much pizza as his heart desired. He loved pizza crusts and anything else that stuck to the crusts "accidentally". For years now, at any time and any place, Dave and I have habitually set our pizza crusts aside for this dog. When we realize he's not with us in Italy, France, Hawaii, San Diego, San Francisco... hell, just down the block... I have to admit that I feel a little foolish. But it's such a habit...

He ate his pizza dutifully and with gusto, despite the fact that I know the growth made it all uncomfortable. But, damn... pizza, dude!

When it came time for him to go, he went very quickly. My sister told us that it was clearly his time, since it took very little medication for him to slip away. His body grew slack, heavy... he didn't fight and I kept eye contact with him all the time. He never felt a thing, I'm sure of that... except that I believe he felt a good deal of relief.

I really believe that Rhett closed his eyes for a moment and when he opened them again, my Dad was there to welcome him with his customary greeting. Then I think Dad opened a back door where Roman was waiting to play. I think Rhett must be very relieved to be back in the shadow of his idol and I believe that wherever they are, there are plenty of toys to share.

I am really looking forward to meeting up with them all again someday.

Goodbye, Rhettster. We'll miss you always.

Posted by GoddessKristin on 02/02/08 at 12:29 PM [link]