The Pregnant Waddle

New digs

2006-12-21T08:49:00.000-05:00

This post brought to to you by Marvin and husbandlet.

Well, folks, I’ve finally caved to the pressures of my school’s firewall. I can’t access anything Blogger at all now, so I’m moving. I’ll keep this site up for the archives, of course, but for new content (as far as THAT goes), you can now find me at (got your pencils ready? #2 is preferred!)

http://carpematrem.wordpress.com

WordPress is accessible at work, so I just may start posting more often … you never know. (And hopefully this particular bit of writing isn’t being monitored by Them, or I may disappear again. They are out to get me. Obviously.)

Ah-ha moments

2006-12-05T20:29:00.000-05:00

Student: How come we have to write every little sentence out?
Me: Because I like to torture you.
(pause)
Student: Figures.

Late/Exhausted (i.e., it's 8:30 p.m. and this mama is ready for sleepytime)

2006-12-03T20:39:00.000-05:00

A few bullet points:

* That whole thing about not feeling quite so sick this time around? I spoke too soon. End of the first trimester, I cannot wait to know you.

* Ngaire now speaks in two-word sentences, as in, “Hi, truck!” “Hi, Daddy!” and “Hi, kitty!” She greets everyone she passes with a delighted “Hi!” … even dashing into other rooms to greet and re-greet the chosen ones. Also, if you ask her what a cat says, she replies "Mrrr" in a very convincingly catlike manner.

* In other Ngaire news, the Squid now has a cold. She barks. She is a Barking Squid.

* In non-Ngaire news, it just started to rain. Earlier, I left the door of our storage shed open so the place could air out a bit. Do you think I just ran out to close it? Surely you jest. The Husbandlet did the frolicking honors, just as it should be.

* I wish I had an interesting school story for you, but everyone’s been especially dull of late. Including self.

* So I’ll close in the hope that a picture truly is worth a thousand words:

Daddy and his Mini Me. In answer to your question, no, no, she really doesn't look like me at all.

This could be one of my students in about 15 years

2006-11-21T19:11:00.000-05:00

The other day, I came home to a message on my answering machine from my OB/GYN telling me that I’d need to re-schedule my 12-week ultrasound as the technician won’t be in on the day of my appointment. (Incidentally, this brings back the memories of my first pregnancy, when we kept showing up for re-scheduled ultrasound appointments, only to find the tech out again each time.)

So, today I called to re-schedule. I explained to the receptionist exactly why I was calling and that it was for my 12-week ultrasound. While we were hashing out the scheduling dates and details, the receptionist suddenly said, “You’re not pregnant, though, right?”

Marvin

2006-11-21T19:04:00.000-05:00

The Husbandlet has a Very Sexy New Computer. Technically, it’s for work (which explains its extremely high-powered, state-of-the-art nature), but it’s also a laptop. Which means that we are currently sitting side-by-side in bed while I blog and he runs through his computer games at different graphics resolutions, for comparison’s sake and, I’m sure, to see how effectively the graphics card will work for his dissertation-writing purposes. Right, Husbandlet?

When he started up a game, it automatically opened at the lowest resolution. The computer objected to this. “I’m barely idling,” it seemed to say. “For this you got two gigabytes of RAM?” Naturally, the Husbandlet humored it by upping the resolution a few notches.

So the computer reminds me of Marvin the melancholy robot in The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. The Husbandlet objects to the association, though. “I don’t want my computer to be depressed!” he says.

I am so very sleepy, but I must blog this

2006-11-14T20:27:00.000-05:00

This pregnancy fatigue, it is kicking my butt. I’m sleepy all the time. Last night, I was out cold by a quarter to nine.

I have only the vaguest memories of this, but apparently, last night, coming to bed some time after I did, the Husbandlet asked me, “Sophocles wrote the Oresteian trilogy, right?”

And I answered, “No, that was Aeschylus.”

My 10th grade lit teacher would be so proud. I can identify Greek tragedies in my sleep.

Whew

2006-11-09T20:42:00.000-05:00

I have become quite gaseous of a sudden. Apologies in advance to the Husbandlet, who is currently blissfully playing video games in the living room, little suspecting what fate has in store for him.

You know how when you haven’t blogged for awhile, it becomes difficult to know where to begin? I hardly know where to take this little baby postlet. So much to write about; it’s all jangling about in my head.

So, I’m pregnant? And this pregnancy? In slightly less than six weeks, it has established itself as totally different from the last. Last time, I suffered from the Bone-Melting Nausea and ate constantly to try to quell it. This time, I really don’t feel horribly sick, just slightly queasy, and I have no appetite to speak of. And it’s not even 8 p.m. yet, and I’m ready to crash for the night. I could have crashed some hours ago, in fact.

Fortunately, Ngaire goes to bed quite early in the evenings, while I still have energy to be something resembling a fun mommy. One of my favorite parts of each day, though, is morning. The Husbandlet retrieves the Squid and snuggles her and a bottle of milk while I get dressed, curried and combed. Then I join them in bed for cuddle time, and after a bit, the Husbandlet gets up and I have some quality time alone with the Squid, playing with her, changing her diaper and dressing her. It is so wonderful to come in each morning and see their almost identical faces on the pillow, or to see the Squid with her little arms around her daddy and her face burrowed into his neck. These days, she has become rather lavish with baby kisses, too, and freely dispenses them when I pick her up to hug her. It makes me happy to see how secure and content she is in the love of her parents. She is really an amazingly sanguine little girl, and I feel quite lucky to know her, let alone to have contributed to her production.

A few months ago, we were visiting with some friends who have older children. The Squid had just learned to walk, and the other kids were literally running circles around her. At one point, they frolicked off into another part of the house, and Ngaire obviously wanted to be one of their number. Laboriously, she worked her way through the living room and kitchen and started balancing herself on the step or two down into the sunken den where the kids were playing. At that point, the kids decided they were so done with the den. They went dashing past her back into the living room, leaving Ngaire poised—kind of stuck, actually—on a step and gazing wistfully after them again.

It’s amazing how much your heart can hurt for a little person. I know this topic has been done to death by mommybloggers worldwide, so I won’t beat it too much more, except to say that there’s nothing like having a child of your own to make you wish there were some way to delete all potential hurt from that child’s immediate vicinity. I see Ngaire’s happy trustingness, and I don’t want to ever see her happiness dulled or her trust become more tentative.

I certainly have a lot more perspective on the parenthood of God since becoming a mommy. I’m also working on my own trust, that God can not only protect Ngaire’s life and happiness a lot better than I can, but that his views on such things are a lot more comprehensive and wise than mine. He was involved in her production, too, just the merest little bit.

Sorry for the serious tone of this post … I’m obviously pregnant. I will post this and then lie here, until it’s a not entirely laughable time to go to sleep, in increasing comatoseness and gassiness. Sorry, Husbandlet.

I wish this actually gave me an excuse for not blogging, but I’m afraid it doesn’t really

2006-11-07T18:43:00.000-05:00

Some months ago, the Husbandlet asked me, “Well, since you’re no longer pregnant and you’ve lost the baby weight, shouldn’t your blog be called something other than ‘The Pregnant Waddle’?” I protested, rather feebly, no doubt, that the name had seemed like a good idea at the time, and I guessed I’d stick with it. Besides, that’s where my vast readership knew to find me.

Now, however, the point, it is moot.

Meet the Remora. The Remora has been gestated for five weeks, and is currently busy developing organs. ETA is roughly July 7, at least according to an online pregnancy calculator. So far, aside from a few brief episodes of mild nausea, I’ve felt great, though very, very, very tired. I don’t remember being this fatigued with my first pregnancy.

Other early tip-offs that I was pregnant, starting from conception (we know when we got busy):
* Emotionalism. Over nothing.
* Excessive gas (sorry, Husbandlet).
* Seriously, I could feel my uterus stretching. Really! Please believe me.
* My skin broke out—around ovulation, not around PMS time. Veddy unusual.
* Evening queasiness.

All this led me to jump the gun and take a pregnancy test on cycle day 23. Negative. But my period didn’t show up, so on the morning of day 30, after retrieving the Squid’s morning bottle, I peed on another stick. Then I left it sitting on the bathroom counter and went back to bed. When the Husbandlet got up, some time later, he checked the stick and brought it to me. “Have a look at this,” he said. I was changing Ngaire’s diaper and just glanced over, not looking too carefully. “Negative,” I said. “Look again,” replied the Husbandlet. And indeed, there was a very faint second line.

(Apologies for the poor photo quality of the pregnancy test.. I don’t have a digital camera, so I scanned it. There are two lines there! I swear!)

I love messing with their minds

2006-10-15T09:47:00.000-04:00

For our first quarter curriculum, my ninth grade English students study the short story. I’ve assigned them, as their project, to write a short story themselves. The other day, one of my students asked me, “Are we going to have to do this every quarter?”

Me: “No, we’re only writing short stories because we study short stories first quarter.”
Him: “What are we studying next quarter?”
Me: “The epic.”

A very silly girl

2006-10-15T09:41:00.000-04:00

Ngaire likes us to (speed) read her a Sandra Boynton book called Snoozers, which ends with a Very Silly Song. The last line of this song is, “It’s time to say Achoo!”

So, the other morning, Ngaire was reading me this book as I changed her diaper, and when she got to that page, she started babble-singing. I joined in and sang her the song. After I finished, she gave me a huge smile and said, “AH-chee!”

Now the Squid has trained her daddy and me to make utter fools of ourselves in yet another way, as we sing the song at every opportunity, leaving it hanging with, “It’s time to say—” and pausing in hopes that the Squid will chime in, “AH-chee!” She often does.

In case you were wondering

2006-10-15T09:40:00.000-04:00

We survived the stomach flu. The Husbandlet had a touch of the nasties, but never actually threw up. He seems to get everything Ngaire and I do, only about three times less badly.

Then I got another kidney infection. Then I got ANOTHER flu, this time the fever/aches/chills/no vomiting variety (the Husbandlet got a headache). I didn’t get a flu shot last Thursday, partially because they wouldn’t let me (I had had a fever within the last 48 hours) and partially because I really don’t want to believe there are any other flus out there for me to get. But there probably are.

Anyway, due to the general malaise and so forth, my grading In box is bursting at the seams and I decided for some crazy reason to give 98 students a test that can’t be ScanTroned. Oy. If you don’t hear from me again, it’s because I got buried in an avalanche of ungraded work, after which my honors students piled on, shrieking, “Have you graded yet? What’s my grade?”

In less overwhelming news, I had a Happy Teacher Moment on Thursday, when some of my poetry students asked if they could take my class again (for no credit) next year. When I told them I won’t be teaching next year, they said, “But we don’t want to take the class if you’re not teaching it!” Awwww. Such moments really do keep you going, though they tend to be few and far between.

Vomit

2006-09-28T18:19:00.000-04:00

I am so done with it.

I picked up Ngaire's flu bug yesterday. I was able to make it through my classes, but I started throwing up during my planning period. This joyful turn of events continued through the evening. By 8:45, I had thrown up toenails from several years back and was fantasizing about cold drinks, none of which I could hold down. The wonderful Husbandlet abandoned a hot dinner (his) to fetch 7Up (mine), a.k.a. Necter and Ambrosia, and that finally stayed put. There was much rejoicing.

Then this morning, we awoke to Ngaire's pitiful weeping. The Husbandlet finally went in to check on her, only to find her--you guessed it--covered with vomit, after going 41 hours (yes, I counted) vomit-free. So there we were, a little before 5 a.m., showering the Squid and conducting triage on her crib. Fortunately, that has been the only vomit-related incident of the day. We are hoping this trend will continue.

May the Husbandlet continue uninfected.

Ngaire says "Hi!" and a whole lot of other things, too

2006-09-26T10:10:00.000-04:00

Ngaire is a chatterbox. She says, "Hi!" whenever she or anyone else turns on the phone (as well as dragging her very non-mobile wooden phone around behind her while babbling into the handset). She says, "Hhhhhot!" often in a whisper, around ovens, mugs of hot tea, and food fresh out of the microwave; she even blows on the food to cool it. She amused her sitter mightily by choosing a book, crawling into a chair, opening it, and reading it out loud to everyone.

On the topic of books, the Husbandlet left for a three-day conference on Sunday. I snagged the Boo and a book to distract her from his departure, and sure enough, she curled up quite happily in my lap all unknowing that Daddy was currently pulling out of the driveway. But when the book was over, she slid out of my lap, chose another book, and went trotting into our bedroom to get Daddy to read to her. She stopped in the doorway, looking for him. Then she wandered into the middle of the room and, as the truth hit her, burst into tears.

Did I tell this story to the Husbandlet later to make him feel guilty? Why yes I did.

The Husbandlet and I have had Words in the past on the topic of appropriate methods of wiping spilt food off the floor. The Husbandlet like(s)(ed) to use my dish sponge. He does not use my dish sponge anymore. However, shortly after the Husbandlet left the other day, I was distracted from dishwashing by a clingy and emotionally fragile Squid (see: Daddy's departure, above) and set my sponge on the edge of the counter, within reach of the Squid (did I mention that she can now retrieve objects off countertops and tables? She can). Later, I went into the kitchen to find the Squid carefully wiping the floor with my sponge. No secret who her daddy is.

We are home today because the Squid woke me up twice in the night with very dramatic gagging noises (and very small amounts of vomit). She wasn't running a temperature this morning and hasn't thrown up again, but she does seem a bit under the weather and I am taking the day off to look after her (and do some cleansing of various sheets), rather than oh-so-generously passing her tummy bug around the day care. Incidentally, since I am the official diaper changer around the house (poopy diapers make the Husbandlet vomit), the Husbandlet is the official vomit dealer-with. And he's out of town (see above). They are out to get me.

On a more serious note, after the second vomit incident, around 5 a.m., I went into the Boo's room and held her for a while whilst she slept. As I felt her little limbs twitch, I was struck with the fact that there was nothing I'd rather be doing in the world than holding my sleeping sick daughter. Mommyhood does funny things to you. In my former life, you couldn't have paid me enough to sit under a little person who might suddenly shower me with stomach acid. I'd far rather have been off accomplishing great things in the world of English literature. I'm still all about the literature, but motherhood has reformated my priorities. My baby likes to turn her face into my neck and tuck her arms under mine. She toddles up to me with a book in her outstretched hand and a huge questioning smile on her face. She flings herself into my arms and snuggles close. I could give up anything, make any sacrifice for her, serve her in any way, and never see it as a burden or a loss.

Inspired

2006-09-16T20:39:00.000-04:00

Inspired (sadly) by the recent death of an elderly man at our church, the Husbandlet and I had the following irreverent conversation on the way to work this morning:

Him: Funerals are expensive. When I die, donate my body to science, after you take out all the organs that could do anybody any good. Or wrap me in a sheet and bury me in the backyard, and plant some interesting tree over me.

Me: Just not a mango tree. (The Husbandlet is allergic to mangoes.)

Him: Yeah, it might make the tree break out with some sort of weird rash.

Me: The mangoes would have this unidentifiable growth on their skins.

Him: No, donate me to VMRC.

Me: To what?

Him: I just gave you the wrong letters. I meant to say VCU. It’s a medical research center. VMRC is the Virginia Marine Resource Commission.

Me: “I don’t know why he wanted me to give you his body, but it’s here in his will! Do you know what to do with it? I don’t know what to do with it!”

Him: “Break out the meat grinder, Bubba! We’re feeding the crabs!”

Me: Yuck!

Him: Well, what else would they do with me?

Me: Prop you in a desk chair and just say you’ve got tenure.

La la la I should be grading la la

2006-09-13T21:00:00.000-04:00

I've got nothin'.

Week Two of school has been ... tiring. I'm feeling the strain of keeping my classes on task and on track, combating the withering forces of the Powers That Be Constantly Disrupting the Instructional Flow They So Laud.

In other news, I'm beginning to mull over thoughts about birth control. I have nothing tremendously huge against the theory of unnatural family planning, but I haven't met a form of contraception that I actually like. WARNING WARNING TMI A-COMIN': For the three-plus years of our marriage, the Husbandlet and I have been using this, but, as it turns out, this. So, now this, to the general angst of all.

Why not the good old Pill? Well, I'm pro-life, and though many dear and much-respected friends provide reasonable arguments as to why the Pill's implantation-preventing qualities aren't really that big a deal, I don't personally have freedom of conscience on the matter. Analogies about the difference between driving a car and having the brakes unexpectedly fail, and driving a car knowing it to have faulty brakes come to mind. I'd rather err on the side of caution, reproductively speaking.

So: the Pill, shots, ring, and IUD are right out. NFP isn't the most accurate method in the world. Condoms aren't much fun, spermicides aren't very reliable, and I'm totally and completely sick of the diaphragm and its attendant Issues. The cervical cap ... I'm not even sure it exists. So what's a girl to do?

All I can say is, the Husbandlet's testicles should be very, very afraid.

So how about y'all? Thoughts on the subject?

I have NOT disappeared from the face of the earth

2006-09-09T21:14:00.000-04:00

I’ve just gone back to work. I suppose there’s a difference.

Ngaire has so many new tricks that I’m going to talk about them first, lest I forget even more of them than I’ve already forgotten. First off, as of August 30, she’s been weaned.* I had to go on a round of antibiotics that stated quite firmly on the instructions, “DO NOT BREASTFEED WHILE TAKING THIS.” And I had to take it for seven days. So I figured, well, I could always start nursing her again, but then we’d have to go through the whole weaning process again later, and she WAS 13 and a half months old. So now the Husbandlet gets her in the morning and gives her a bottle, snuggling in bed with him, while I get myself ready. Then I wake them up and dress and play with the Squid a bit before we leave for work, while the Husbandlet readies himself for the day. This system seems to be working just fine; I enjoy the extra time to myself in the mornings and the Husbandlet claims to enjoy the Squid snuggles. The weaning process itself has been mostly smooth. Two nights ago, when my PJ’s brushing against my chest nearly drove me to tears, I broke out the breast pump, but other than that I haven’t been too uncomfortable. Ngaire has only asked to nurse a few times, and only twice with the piteous cries and clutchings at the boobies, which was fairly heart-wrenching but seemed to pass quickly.

She is getting more words all the time. She now says Daddy, Mama, baba (for bottle), hi, baby, deeky (for binky), please, and thank you, and she signs “All done” when she’s finished eating. She is trying so hard to talk, and it’s really neat being able to communicate with her a bit more and have her communicate back.

She’s quite imitative … today she spent quite a while walking around the house holding her little wooden phone to her ear and babbling into it. The walking while on the phone she gets from her daddy. The constant talking on the phone she gets from me.

She gives lovely baby kisses if we offer our cheeks and ask nicely, and she wraps her little arms around us and gives real hugs.

She has recently developed the stellar talent of falling back asleep if, after falling asleep in her carseat, she is wakened and moved into her crib. This means that Mommy and Daddy can occasionally have a later night out.

As for me … the first week of work went really well. I feel like I’ve finally gotten the hang of this teaching thing in the sense that I’m feeling fully satisfied with my performance. Ironically, this is likely to be my last year of teaching for awhile. That Murphy and his laws. However, by the end of the year, I will certainly be ready to take a good long break from the studentlets.

The Husbandlet has been tremendously busy with schooly/worky things plus an ear infection. In some ways, I think settling into the routine of me going to work/him finishing up the field season and settling in to write his dissertation will actually be rather restful for us. Especially if there are no more infections of any kind (I myself have had five infections of a variety of types this summer, and to the barrier method of birth control which we have been using and which I blame for ALL of said infections, I can only say: Feh).

In less intimate news, I just finished reading Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell, and I highly, highly recommend it. I found it a deeply satisfying book. It’s a bit of Jane-Austen-meets-Tolkien, if you can imagine that, but the modern novel I’d most closely compare it to is Possession, and from me that’s high praise. If you pick it up, though, be forwarned: it’s very, very, very long.

OK. Going to bed now. I’ll try not to let so much time elapse before posting again … don’t want to disappoint my vast readership, of course.

* Ngaire's last breastfeeding, though I didn't realize that's what it was at the time, occurred some time after her bedtime, when she woke up screaming. Normally we just wait and she finds her binky and goes back to sleep, but this time she kept crying, so I went in and nursed her one more time. Now I am so very glad that I did so, that I got one bonus opportunity to cuddle and feed her and feel her little warm, limp body in my arms. Sweet Boo.

As it turns out

2006-08-24T20:25:00.000-04:00

Ngaire didn't have the stomach flu.

She threw up in her carseat again two days later. (Her OTHER carseat.) I thought, "Oh NO, she's starting to get carsick." The Husbandlet is much prone to carsickness. I was not pleased to see this manifesting itself in our progeny.

Then, the next day, she threw up in her stroller. After which, we caught her in the act of GAGGING HERSELF. That's right: my sweet, dainty darling has been whiling away the dull moments of being strapped in a seat against her will by sticking her fingers down her throat and making herself vomit.

So I'm back in the backseat next to her these days, to keep her little fingers from venturing too deeply into her mouth. She seems more inclined to engage in such wickedness when she is tired and frustrated; the ride in to the sitter's in the mornings has so far provoked no vomit.

Also? The wisdom teeth, they came out yesterday. As he shot me up with sleepy drugs, the oral surgeon said, "You're a teacher; hope you don't lose any wisdom when the teeth came out." I said, "Maybe you should put a few extras in, instead." Then I passed out. I'm feeling generally OK today; not too chipmunk-like or anything, though I am getting a bit sick of pudding.

I'm back at work in staff development this week, Ngaire is back in daycare, and the Husbandlet is plugging away at his clam action. All is well.

Communication

2006-08-18T13:38:00.000-04:00

Last Sunday morning, Ngaire made the sign for “all done” when she wanted down from her high chair after breakfast.

Yesterday, she and I were snuggling on the couch, and she was babbling, “Ba ba ba ba ba.” I said, “Ba ba,” which seemed to please her, so I decided to try a little experiment. “Mama,” I said. There was a little silence. Then, “Mama,” said Ngaire.

Today, we were reading a little book whose main characters were bears. As we got to the end of the book, Ngaire was fascinated by the little angel bears decorating the inside of the cover. She pointed at one and said, “Beh.” Then she did this several more times.

We had a delightful time visiting our friends and their kidlets. My suitemate lives in a veritable children’s paradise, with a huge backyard and lots of play equipment. Ngaire enjoyed the big kids and also the amount of sand available for consumption. She did very well, too, on the two long car trips; the only negatives were the episodes of diarrhea she produced on the way home. I ran out of wipes, and at our next pit stop, begged a nice Exxon employee to equip me with little handiwipes (the kind you get at a barbeque joint), which he did most sympathetically. Ngaire’s tushie was definitely lemony fresh after that.

I guess that was a preview of the first instance of Ngaire getting an intestinal bug. She threw up once yesterday, and still seems pretty clingy and emotionally fragile today, signs that all is not well in her little insides. I seem to have caught a milder form of the bug from her, but it’s only manifesting in achiness and wooziness and a little headache. We have officially entered the Illness-Getting (and passing on to parents) Stage. Fun.

I start back to work next week, with staff development, taking a day off to get my wisdom teeth removed. Oy. That is all I have to say.

I'm off now to comfort a squawking Squid.

Fall cleaning

2006-08-12T20:50:00.000-04:00

Today, I gave our living room possibly the most thorough cleaning it’s had since we remodeled it last summer. I washed the floor. I even dusted. I don't usually do that. At one point, Ngaire took the dust rag away from me and started running it over our coffee table. Then she tried to eat the rag. I don't usually do that either.

In another stunning moment of coordination, Ngaire managed to lift a full glass of water off a TV tray—at eye level for her—without spilling it. She even started to drink out of it, and it was only then that she dropped it. The glass survived. The floor got an auxiliary backup washing (see above paragraph).

In my cleaning, I ran across tons of spider poop on our floor. I am fairly certain that my educational background has well prepared me for cleaning up spider poop.* But … who knew that something so small could excrete so much?

The Husbandlet is currently bravely plugging away at Phase XXXVIII of our Bathroom Remodel Project (est. June 2004). On the positive side, after tonight, the toilet shouldn’t have to come out again. On the negative, neither will we be completely finished with the remodel. Since we’re planning to put this house on the market this spring or summer, there is some doubt as to whether we will actually finish fixing up the place before it’s time to move. I find that my goals for our accomplishments have become far less lofty in the last two years … much less “Complete overhaul! With a smile!” and much more “Um, hey, at least the drains work, generally.”

Continuing the wild whirl that is my life, I’m off next week for a few days to visit my college roomie and suitie (suitemate) and their spouses and external and internal children. AND, get this, next Thursday I’ll see an oral surgeon about maybe getting my wisdom teeth removed. I’m in a hurry to do this, if it’s necessary at all, before September, for a couple of reasons, not the least of which being (a) the fact that I’ll be teaching again in September, and (b) a perverse desire to wreak as much havoc on my mouth as possible all at once. The gum graft went all too smoothly and painlessly, so I need to try again. This summer will be remembered as The Period of Much Traveling and Oral Surgery.

Ngaire waves bye-bye (she’s getting better at curling all her fingers at once).

* The question is, can one ever have too much education to clean up spider poop?

Ngaire can now

2006-08-09T20:06:00.000-04:00

* Toddle/walk/run/you name it.
* Wave goodbye using (a) her whole hand and arm (flapping madly) and (b) curling her fingers ... not all together, but she is trying hard.
* Climb--no, swarm--all over various pieces of furniture.
* Say "Uh-oh!" when she drops something.
* Obey (I haven't gotten bitten in days).
* Disobey (we're working on learning the "Hands off!" command).
* Did I mention the walking?

She is oh so cute. She is wearing me out.

I took her along to get my gum graft stitches removed today, and she did her little swarming thing all over the waiting room and my lap in the dentists' chair. But as soon as the periodontist began clipping the stitches, she became quite still on my lap and watched attentively. She gets this from her father's side of the family.

We have recently discovered that Ngaire really enjoys tumbling on our bed. She likes to be pushed over backwards to fall against a pillow, and she likes rolling and crawling and flopping about. This afternoon, after some tumbling, she lay on her back to take a breather, and looked at me. I was rather worn out (see above), so I lay down next to her and said, "Where's Mommy's belly button?"

She smiled.

She flipped over into a crawling position.

She crawled over, waited for me to pull up my shirt, and stuck her finger in my belly button.

So I KNOW she can learn "Hands off!"

Third

2006-08-03T17:21:00.000-04:00

Dearest Husbandlet,

We always forget our anniversary, but this year we remembered because I accidentally scheduled myself oral surgery for today. And boy, do I look pretty with my shiny new gum graft and black stitches. Never say I don’t fix myself up for you.

I loved you then

but I love you even more now, and I am ever so blessed to have you as my husband and the father of our little Squidlet.

Only three years? It feels like it’s been forever, but in a good way.

Love,
Jordana

Oh, and

2006-08-01T13:00:00.000-04:00

Very Mom is back.

Not a baby, not yet a toddler

2006-08-01T12:57:00.000-04:00

That makes Ngaire a Totterer.

Hi again!

My brother-in-law gave me a stern talking-to (hi Daniel!), so I am resolved to try to be a better blogger. The brain is creaking even as I write, trying to churn the events of the past few weeks so that the cream of entertainment rises above the curds of tediousness, whilst the whey of frivolity swims briskly around all. Or something to that effect.

Scotland was delightful. I mean, I didn’t actually see much of Scotland, but the conference was delightful, and I did so enjoy the creamy butter, the rolling hills, the interesting potato chip flavors (“Roasted Lamb with Moroccan Spices”), the round toilet seats, the accents (in which very few consonants are harmed), etc. etc. etc. The UK is just different enough from the US that one gets a tad tripped up, not in the big ways that one expects, but in little incidentals. You expect to have to pay attention to the money and looking the wrong way crossing streets, but I must say it was quite refreshing to sit down on an oval toilet seat again when I got back to the States.

I’m at an in-between period regarding my future career plans, as I’ve blogged about before … to return to grad school or not to return to grad school? If so, when? If not, what instead? I was afraid that this conference would make me feel sad about not grad-schooling right now, but actually, it merely gave me a kick in the pants in a side direction I’ve been working on, and a bit of encouragement to keep the future-degree/career door open. I feel pretty good about my decision to stay home with the Squidlet after the Husbandlet finishes up his degree, but neither pressured to stay home forever nor to definitely get back into academia. We shall see.

Anyway, the weekend after I got back from Scotland, we packed up the Squid and half the house and drove many, many hours to the family beach vacation. Ngaire loved the beach. Her daddy, granddaddy, uncles, and godfather were all too glad to toss her about in the waves, and the sand provided a lovely surface for trotting about. The abundance of relatives meant that she had her choice of fingers to clutch for walks, and our beach house came well-equipped with Stairs.

The vacation was all-around great, with the only potential blot being Ngaire’s reaction to her MMR or chicken pox shots from the week before. For the last three days of our vacation, she ran a fever and kept producing small red spots. Not a happy Squid.

However, now she seems to be over everything, and is happily tottering about the house in short, drunken bursts, with arms extended and a huge grin on her face. Methinks she approves of her mobility.

I’ve been working on this for three days now (not undistractedly), so I’m going to go ahead and post even though this entry is short on content. I will try to check in more often, if only to post an adorable picture or two. Hugs!

One year old!

2006-07-21T10:12:00.000-04:00

Ngaire turned one on Tuesday. I arrived home after my wild Highland adventure on Monday night, so the first she saw of me was when I got her up on Tuesday morning. I was afraid there would be blank stares or tears, but instead she smiled, said, “Hm,” and lunged for my breast.

There were presents to be opened in the morning and a small piece of cheesecake to be eaten after dinner. I broke a few small bits off the tip of the piece for her to try; she ate them with her usual inquiring look and seemed to approve. When I turned around to get the camera, she crammed the rest of the piece in her mouth.

Since the cake lacked frosting, I put a dab of Nutella on her nose for the obligatory messy-faced baby shots. She seemed rather confused by this. Most of the Nutella-nose was for me, of course, but I did share a little with her.

On Tuesday, Ngaire, climbing onto my lap, used her hands and teeth (attached to my pant leg) as leverage.

On Wednesday, she walked all the way across the living room all by herself! She also figured out the Play button on the DVD remote by hitting it accidentally, and then studying the remote to find which button she had hit, and then hitting it repeatedly.

She loves to walk back and forth across the length of the house, towing an adult by one finger. She has also realized that books are for more than just eating, and will now sit quietly being read to, or giggling madly while Daddy reads her Moo, Baa, La La La! Today, I was sitting on the living room floor, and she brought the book over to me and crawled into my lap. She can’t get enough of being tickled or swung about by her arms. Her babbling is definitely polysyllabic now, full of whispering noises and many different consonants. She will sit and play with a board book for ages, turning its pages and talking to herself.

Yesterday, I bought her two pairs of shoes at Chez Wal-Mart, and this morning we broke one pair in on a walk on our street. Ngaire happily towed me around, stopping every so often to examine something more closely, and then she got tired and reached up to be picked up. I’m certainly enjoying every stage of her life, but this particular one has lots to recommend it.

Leaving on a jet plane

2006-07-12T07:30:00.000-04:00

Well, if the good Lord is willing, the creeks don't rise, AND my passport arrives via FedEx by noon as expected, I'm off to Scotland till Monday. The Squid and the Husbandlet will remain behind, in the care of my mother-in-law. And I will miss them very much.

See you next week!

Briefly

2006-07-04T19:02:00.000-04:00

Yesterday, Ngaire took three consecutive steps to Daddy.

We are currently trying to finish a two-year-long bathroom remodel project. The Husbandlet has been scraping, leveling, and priming the cement floor in the bathroom, and he is now putting down new and improved linoleum. Then all we have left to do is some detail painting and tiling around the shower and putting up a couple of shelves above the toilet. Also, the toilet needs to be re-installed after the Husbandlet finishes the linoleum. The toilet has been uninstalled since yesterday. We are a one-bathroom family.

Last night's conversation:
Me: "If I'm very, very good, do you think I can maybe someday have a toilet?"
The Husbandlet: "Well, I've got you covered for our anniversary and Christmas, so I guess you'll have to wait till your birthday."

Also:
We have found a ton of wild blackberries growing near our house. This has led to rampant berry-picking. Ngaire is generally patient being set on the ground where we can keep an eye on her grass-stroking and gravel-tasting while we pick. So far, we've harvested lots of berries, and Ngaire a) has not met with any misfortune, and b) seems to like the taste of gravel.

Also:
This evening, I baked my first cheesecakes. They are to go under blackberries.

Also and finally:
Ngaire has learned to turn herself in a complete circle using her heels, while seated on the floor. She has also learned to punch buttons ... we had to hold her back from the debit card scanner thingy at Wal-Mart today. She's sleeping now, for which I'm grateful, as three sprouting upper teeth have made today an angst-ridden one.

Early signs of an (admittedly warranted) suspicious personality

2006-07-03T13:43:00.000-04:00

Ngaire has discovered that she can open the bottom left drawer of the Husbandlet's desk. When first she accomplished this, she discovered to her delight that the drawer contains instruction manuals, which, as we all know, are made of paper. An openable drawer filled with paper to fling and gnaw is one of Ngaire's ideas of heaven. (Another is being tickled by Daddy while nursing.)

Since we object to having the manuals completely destroyed--not to mention feeling some concern about the effects of that much ink and paper chemicals on the Squid--we tend to rescue the papers shortly after the flinging stage, early into the gnawing. The Squid patiently accepts that her lot in life to achieve a goal, only to have the fruits of her labor ripped from her hands, and, as often as not, find herself swooping up into the air in the grasp of one or other of her parents.

This afternoon, Ngaire had crawled over to the drawer, opened it, and begun to fling, when she realized that one of the papers in there was rippable. Rippable! And chewable! I saw a torn piece of paper making its way to a round mouth via a plump little hand, and started over to begin the detachment/swooping process.

Ngaire saw me coming and (I kid not) flung herself over the paper, shielding it with her body.

Silent but deadly

2006-06-30T09:01:00.000-04:00

The little boy who unrolled and flushed the roll of TP on Wednesday night, then picked his daddy's pocket? Well, last night after VBS, the Husbandlet went to use the men's room at our church. He found the lights on and the water running in the sink. Then he found the liquid handsoap and hand sanitizer bottles on the floor. Next to them, he found a tiny paper puppet on a popsicle stick (one of our crafts for the evening), soaked in hand sanitizer. On the handle of the popsicle stick was written that little boy's name.

Silent but deadly. It is his mantra.

One more night. The Husbandlet and I are going out with Chris and Sarah afterward for a celebratory sundae.

This week:

2006-06-29T09:03:00.000-04:00

VBS.

When I think about it, I note that Vacation Bible School week tends to be rather fraught with fraughtness for me; two years ago, I worked while feeling nauseous and sluggish and achy with a kidney infection, and last year, I worked while feeling acid refluxy, sluggish, and swollen with a 40+ week pregnancy. This year, we're leaving the Squid with my parents in the evenings so she can have a relatively normal bedtime, and things are going pretty smoothly. I don't know whether to be frustrated or amused that my parents seem to be unable to hear the Squid squeak without going in and getting her (this would be the Squid who now not only settles herself to sleep but then sleeps from 6 p.m. to 5:30 a.m. all by herself at our house every single night), thus waking her up and getting her all energized several times an evening. I keep telling them it's OK if she cries a bit, but their tender hearts can't stand for it. But I expect we'll all survive (big sigh) and any sleep re-training that is necessary can occur next week.

Sarah and our pastor's wife and I are in charge of the two-to-five-year-old group at VBS, and let me tell you, three of us to five of them (small turnout this year) seems like we're outnumbered. One little boy managed to unroll and then almost managed to flush an entire roll of toilet paper during the potty break last night. (Later, I was chatting with his father, and he picked his father's pocket and was happily playing with the photos and credit cards from his father's wallet when we looked around.) One little girl goes around alternately kissing and choking everybody, another little girl is constantly trying to make her escape, the third little girl likes to run around screaming inexplicably, and the final boy is always trying to move on to the next activity, whether we're ready or not. Between that and the tiny chairs, I'm glad I teach older (though debatably more mature) children generally.

Today, 11:35 a.m.

2006-06-23T12:24:00.000-04:00

Ngaire's checklist for that particular moment:
* Stand between Mommy's knees.
* Take a step or two out, holding on to said knees.
* Let go of knees.
* Stand with arms out for balance for a moment.
* Wobble.
* Lift left foot.
* Move it forward.
* Crawl over to chair, pull self up, and repeat.

(She looked just a bit like Tevye as he's dancing home to "Tradition!")

We have entered

2006-06-19T21:08:00.000-04:00

The era of the acrobatic breastfeeding.

(We've been there for awhile, but y'all have probably noticed that my blogging has been sketchy of late ...)

11 Months

2006-06-19T21:06:00.000-04:00

My Squidlet is getting so old.

She’s been cruising for awhile, and taking steps assisted, but you can tell that she’s beginning to think, when she cruises to the edge of a piece of furniture, “Hey! One of these days I’m going to just … keep going! How’s that gonna work?” And then she’ll hesitate, crouch, stand up, and then crouch again before crawling.

I have officially designated her first word as “Daddy.” Some weeks ago, the Husbandlet was away at a conference, and when I took Ngaire in bed with me for a wake-up nurse one morning, she looked over at his side of the bed and said, “Da da da da da da.” Last week, I brought Ngaire to the glass door to watch the Husbandlet coming in from work. As soon as she caught sight of him, she said, “Da da!” But the clincher was Sunday morning, when she looked at the Husbandlet and said, “Da [pause] Dee.” On Father’s Day, no less.

When she eats a banana, her favorite food, she will sometimes say, “Mmmmmm nana.”

I don’t mind the whole “Daddy” thing, but I’m not sure how I feel about being ousted by a tropical fruit.

(In all fairness, sometimes she calls “Emmmmmmma!” when she wants me, but I’m not sure if that’s just a babble or if she’s a particularly huge Jane Austen fan.)

Well, the school year ground to a halt

2006-06-19T21:05:00.000-04:00

And I’m breathless. Finals week was nuts. Lots of students wanted to hand in makeup work at the last possible second; I allowed a couple to pull their grades up above passing that way, but I drew the line at the honors student who emailed me after school let out on the last day to ask if she could come by the next day to hand in some late work.

This week, I’m scheduled to work at putting together computerized multiple-choice English 9 tests against that day when our school is required to have standardized departmental tests. Today, my partner and I finished the first of three tests in under two hours, which inspired us to give ourselves the rest of the day off and finish the other two tests tomorrow. We won’t have to work the rest of the week, then, which, as my partner said, means less money, but as I said, means more summer vacation.

Minutiae

2006-06-19T21:04:00.000-04:00

I am badly in need of a haircut. Not wanting to re-enact the Hair Shard Experience with Ngaire, I’ve been waiting for an opportunity to slip away sans Squid. This opportunity, however, has not yet been forthcoming.

I tried on bathing suits yesterday. Yeek.

I’ve been batting around the idea of writing a paper or essay on women’s voices in the blogosphere, but I’m not entirely certain where to begin or how not to sound like an Internet freak. The Husbandlet says I should (a) do research and (b) read C. S. Lewis. He is no doubt correct.

Oooh, and somehow I’ve managed to reduce down to just two pounds above my pre-pregnancy weight, much to my own astonishment. (No diets were harmed in this weight loss.) I fear that this means it’s time to get pregnant again. Oh, and how is it possible that I should be just two (2) pounds above my pre-pregnancy weight, but those pounds should be so very differently distributed from heretofore that I still can’t get into most of my pre-pregnancy clothes? I will always be one dress size higher, I guess, and none of those shirts will ever close over my bosom again.

Don’t even get me started on bras.

Summertime!

2006-06-19T21:03:00.000-04:00

Will I blog with greater regularity? We shall see.

Is anybody (still) out there?

2006-06-14T21:01:00.000-04:00

Hello? Vast, loyal readership? Um …sorry? Sorry I’ve been such a bad blogger. If you look at my posts from this time last year, I’m sure they are similarly sketchy. End of school year; you understand. You know it’s hard out there for a teacher.

Quick catch-up:
• Memorial Day weekend: we drove up to D.C. with friends to go to the Shakespeare Free For All’s performance of Pericles. I’ve been to a lot of Shakespeare plays, and I have to say that this was the most enchanting I have ever seen. The entire cast, the sets, the direction, the props, everything came together into a seamless dreamscape that I wish I could replay over and over. It’s all the more amazing as Pericles is, in and of itself, not all that much of a play. And it deals with some pretty hefty/melodramatic themes … incest, attempted murder, capture by pirates, etc. etc. Yay for visionary directors and very, very good actors! As a side note, when I first read the program, pre-play, my squeals could barely be contained: I went to college with one of the actors; lo, we were in a creative writing course, and he happened to marry my suitemate’s sister. So I’m almost famous.
• The next weekend: we decided our lives were going way too smoothly, and decided to re-open the issue of our bathroom remodel (begun in the summer of 2004 and on hold ever since). So we ripped out the linoleum, removed the toilet and shelves, and painted the walls. Then we decided we needed a toilet, so we put it back in. Then we decided we’d paint the shelves later, and put them back in, albeit in a wobbly fashion. So now we have gucky cement floors and a wobbly bright sea-green shelf system to go with our newly white walls (they used to be the same color as the shelves; the previous owner must have painted on LSD), but at least we have a functioning toilet. Though we had that before we ripped and removed. Anyway, hopefully this project will get done sometime before we sell the house. We shall see.
• Last weekend: we drove up to Baltimore and convened at the Husbandlet’s aunt and uncle’s house with their visiting daughters, sons-in-law, and grandbabies. The house was overrun by baby girls (and one slightly older son). We really, really enjoy that portion of the family a lot; there is something so wonderful about being in an environment that so delights in babies, good conversation, good wine, and good food. We ate a lot and passed the babies around. It made me want to have more babies (and more food).

In between, we had a visit from one of my college roommates, which was marvelous, Ngaire learned to stand by herself for longer periods of time, she and I got pink eye, she got an ear infection, and the Husbandlet and I got colds, the Husbandlet’s field season went into overdrive, and my school year ended. Tomorrow is my work day, and then I’m done, except for the week of half-days I rather stupidly volunteered to work next week, as part of a test-writing project. We have been so busy; the house is a disaster area, and I can’t wait to decompress and spend some quality time with the Boo. At the end of a long work day, when I’m tired and the Squid is hungry, I often wonder how I’ll be able to be a full-time stay-at-home mommy, but then I remember that it’s actually easier when you spend the whole day doing it than when you plunge into mommydom with all concerned tired and cranky. In truth, Ngaire is a pearl among babies: sweet, happy, funny, and companionable. (I’m sure many other mommies are equally sure that they have the most wonderful baby in the world. Ahem.)

I’ve missed passing on too many Ngaire stories to catch up; plus, I can see your eyes glazing from here. But anyway: this evening, while I was heating up food for the baby and she was sitting in her high chair, the Husbandlet and I started doing a bit of tae kwon do sparring. The Squid thought that was the most hilarious thing in the world … she regaled us with peals of laughter. Of course, this inspired us to further violence, which received further giggles. The Husbandlet: “Mommy and Daddy are fighting again.” Me: “Yes, Ngaire, we’re only doing it to make you feel secure.”

Seeing the world through rose-colored eyes

2006-06-06T19:07:00.000-04:00

I've been meaning to post about our wonderful, heavenly Memorial Day weekend, which was absolutely amazing and grand, but instead I got pink eye. Ngaire has it too, plus an ear infection. And I have some sort of cold virus. Honestly, this has been the sickest year of my life.

So: I've taken two days off from work, and Ngaire and I have been quarantined in the house and resting and drinking lots of fluids. The Husbandlet has thus far been spared these particular plagues; may it last. One of my college roomies is coming for a visit tomorrow, and we're supposed to visit various Husbandlet relatives this weekend, none of whom need pink eye, SO JUST GO AWAY, STUPID CONJUNCTIVITIS.

Ngaire and Isaiah

2006-05-31T21:29:00.000-04:00

In the church nursery two Sundays ago, Ngaire’s little friend Isaiah was lying on his back on the floor. Ngaire crawled over to him, pulled up his shirt, zerbered his tummy, and stuck her finger in his belly button.

Poor Isaiah just lay there looking long-suffering.

I, of course, was thrilled. I’ve spent many hours trying to teach her to stick her finger in the Husbandlet’s belly button. It’s good to know my lessons have sunk in.

Looking for Daddy

2006-05-31T21:28:00.001-04:00

After school one day last week, Ngaire and I were waiting with my father on my parents’ porch for the Husbandlet to come pick us up. Ngaire was sitting with her back to the door. We heard the car pull in, and my dad said, “Daddy’s here!” And Ngaire jumped, and looked over her shoulder.

Looking for keys

2006-05-31T21:28:00.000-04:00

The other day, the Husbandlet and I were playing on our bed with Ngaire. She was flapping my keys around, and I became concerned that she might stab herself or Daddy in the eye with them, so when the Husbandlet distracted her for a moment, I hid the keys behind me. Ngaire finished with her distraction, and started looking around purposefully. She spotted the Husbandlet’s keys on his cedar chest at the foot of the bed, and took off after them. The Husbandlet caught her as she crawled off the edge of the bed. However, as he lifted her up, his keys were clutched tightly in her hand.

This reminds me of the time she crawled off the edge of my mom’s bed after a dish of almonds. The Husbandlet caught her as she swooped and grabbed, and despite a lot of swinging about, she managed to keep the dish upright and not lose a single almond in the whole endeavor.

Bad, bad, bad, bad frustrations, or, This should have been at least two posts. Maybe three.

2006-05-31T21:18:00.000-04:00

I try not to blog about work for fear of getting dooced, so this will have to be rather vague. Every year of my tenure at this school, I have experienced a Crisis, sometimes Two Crises, usually occurring toward the end of the school year when graduation is in sight and tensions are high. This year has been relatively smooth, probably because I’m no longer teaching seniors. But an acquaintance of mine is.

The course he teaches offers two credits, one for class and one for an extracurricular activity. Many of his students have failed to engage in this extracurricular activity (hereafter E.A.), and so will get only one credit for the year. No big deal; most of them are blowing off his class (an elective, into which a choice group of apathetics have been dumped) anyway.

One student, though, is in such peril of not graduating because after four years of high school, the student is barely scraping by with the credits to the point where if the student does not get the credit for the E.A., the student will not graduate. Let’s all repeat together: Good planning! Never mind that the student is also currently failing two courses necessary for graduation. Those courses can be retaken in summer school, but an elective cannot. And remember, the student really really really needs that one credit.

The only problem being, the student has not engaged in the E.A. At all. All year.

My acquaintance, of course, has mentioned to the student at several points throughout the year the necessity of engaging in the E.A. He was not aware that the student really really really needed the one credit, but even if he had known this, there wasn’t much he could have done about it aside from physically dragging the student to the E.A. on a daily basis.

So, the student’s guidance counselor has been firing off emails to my acquaintance and the school’s administrators about my acquaintance’s incompetence. (My acquaintance, I must say, has been extremely gracious—and feeling extremely guilty, though this isn’t in any way his fault—about the whole thing.) My acquaintance, bending over backwards, has been tootling around the school trying to locate people with the authority to fix/override this issue. The buck has been passed up to my acquaintance’s departmental head, who, incidentally, was fired (no, I mean “promoted”) from her last job—as principal of our high school. Her solution: have the student write a short research paper and assign it a grade to cover all 540 hours of the neglected E.A.

Now, to me, it’s pretty clear, as it has been for the past three years, that this school will do just about anything to graduate students—never mind if the students do passing work or even, technically, work. Never mind that this particular student will probably do no research on and/or plagiarize the entire paper. And if the paper is poorly done/plagiarized? I can guarantee the administrators will not back up my acquaintance should he assign the paper a failing grade. I know this because it’s happened to me.

My acquaintance is not allowed to fail the student, even by merely acknowledging that the student has not done any part of a credit that was supposed to involve engaging in an E.A. for the entire school year. He is being asked to pretend that, in fact, the E.A. was done, and to essentially make up a grade for this figmental E.A.

If that is our administrators’ attitude, why make students attend class at all? Why not just pretend they’ve attended a year’s worth of classes, and then pull a figure out of the air—preferably an A; that’ll show we’re a High School That Works—to assign their imaginary output?

Academic honesty is such a needlessly nebulous thing. It seems to me that schools have become so concerned with student success, as measured in passing and graduation rates, that they have lost sight of what education is really about. My honors class is a microcosm of this. All A and B students; nearly all rampant cheaters. I try to design most work so that students can “help” each other, because I know they will whether I allow it or not. Tests and papers are the final frontier, and I for one will hold out for academic honesty on these as long as I’m in education and forever thereafter.

What bothers me about all this is that if our students stole objects with the frequency that they steal ideas and words, they would be prosecuted. I am a person who made it through 22 years of school without ever plagiarizing anything (except for that time I looked at the math paper of the person next to me, in second grade, but let’s not talk about that), and I worked damn hard. I worked for my grades the way I work for my paycheck; I craft ideas the way someone else might build a house or paint a picture. I have nothing but contempt for a student—any student—who chooses the easy way out of academic dishonesty over the fruits, however unsatisfactory, of legitimate labor.

But there is a larger issue of academic honesty at stake here: the academic honesty of those who promote a student to the next level, who assign a grade, who sign a diploma. An administrator who says that a student has done all the work necessary to earn a diploma when that student has not is lying. A teacher who passes a child just to get him out of that particular grade, because God forbid we deal any blow to the child’s self-esteem and assign an F, is lying. A parent who covers up a child’s academic weaknesses by insisting that teachers and administrators do these things is lying. They are all lying about the child’s abilities and saying something has been accomplished that, in fact, has not. And that’s when a diploma becomes worthless.

Last year, I confronted an issue of academic dishonesty which still has me reeling … and I’m not even talking about the student’s lack of honesty, though it was impressive. I was ordered by my administrators to pass this student, which I did and for which I am still rather ashamed. It all came down to how much trouble and stress I was willing to cause myself and my husband, especially when the outcome was foregone. The student would pass; the only variables were how much time I might spend fighting it and whether I would subsequently have a job.

(As a side note, I Googled my former student today, and found that the student has lied in a press release about the student’s senior year GPA. I know it wasn’t a 4.0, because I personally gave that student a D.)

Allowing academic dishonesty does no one any favors. It discredits the institutions that allow it, and it turns students into sociopaths who believe lying, cheating and stealing are relative and rules don’t apply to them. And it penalizes those who are honest by degrading the value of their diplomas.

I don’t really know how to end this—I’m having trouble stopping writing. Um, go to church*! And read I am Charlotte Simmons.

The End

(no part of this essay was plagiarized in any way)

* sorry, a rather weak inside joke that maybe nobody in my circle of friends but me remembers … The main point of many convoluted sermons … I’m done now.

Today, I have:

2006-05-20T20:11:00.000-04:00

* Organized baby clothes into Keep, Donate, and Send to Roomie boxes.
* Moved the Husbandlet’s very heavy desk into a new position in our bedroom (the Husbandlet is out of town at a wedding and thus cannot protest).
* Vacuumed my room.
* Washed and dried three loads of laundry.
* Washed dishes.
* Washed the baby.
* Cooked baby food.
* Removed several lots of scary-looking food from our fridge.
* Chased a wolf spider and (possibly) a black widow. Actually, the black widow chased me. I didn’t catch either.
* Had phone conversations with Becky and my very sleepy (at 11 a.m.!) brother-in-law.
* Updated my blog (twice!).

After Ngaire’s bath and re-dressing, around 5 p.m., I lay in an exhausted heap on the sofa whilst the Squid did her little Padding Bear Cub number around the room, pulling things off shelves. She padded over toward the sofa and disappeared from view. Then one little hand appeared, gripping the sofa by my head, then a beaming Ngaire face. She stood there and we just laughed at each other for awhile.

Her hair is starting to fluff out over her ears; she is getting to be less of a baby and more a little girl every day. She can also stand, now, for several seconds at a time. She slept in an adorable fallen-forward heap during one of her naps today, having evidently fallen asleep mid-protest. She can crawl after me from room to room, now, but can also entertain herself for long stretches of time with toys or standing at a glass door. She’s really quite companionable; we both miss the Husbandlet, but I definitely do not feel lonely.

Sorry if this gets tedious … I realize from time to time how much of Ngaire’s development I’ve forgotten already, which always inclines me to obsessively document her every adorable move. Of course, when I’m not doing that, on this blog, I’m obsessively writing about myself, so why should this post be different from all other posts?

Ooh, there goes the wolf spider again.

Must-haves?

2006-05-20T09:52:00.000-04:00

My college roomie is expecting a baby girl in October. She asked me to compile a list of things one actually should register for (as opposed to what Babies R Us says you should register for). The Husbandlet's cousin performed a similar service for me when I was pregnant, and I've happily begun a list. However, maybe it's leftover pregnancy brain being enhanced by mommy brain, but I'm having a tough time remembering what one needs for a tiny infant, and find myself writing things like "Books! Spoons! Baby fences!"

So, any suggestions? What was most useful to you as a new mommy? What do you wish, in retrospect, that you had got your hands on?

Ngaire moments

2006-05-20T09:48:00.000-04:00

Yesterday morning, I set the Squid on my bedroom floor while I got her lunch ready. She crawled into the kitchen—yes, our bedroom is just off the kitchen—still in her wearable blanket, and I saw her batting at the floor. Looking closer, I realized that she had found and was happily interacting with a trail of rather disconcerted ants.

I’m told that she similarly traumatized a bug on Tuesday.

* * *

Yesterday, Ngaire and I played together on the floor. (You will be relieved to learn that I share toys very well.) I stacked up some blocks. Ngaire knocked them down. I said, “Aaah!” I stacked them again. Ngaire knocked them down. Ngaire said, “Aaah!” in exactly the same pitch and tone as my squawk.

We may not have taught her English yet, but at least the Husbandlet and I are progressing quite nicely in our study of Squid.

* * *
Yesterday evening, I read Ngaire a Sandra Boynton book. This tends to be a chaotic experience, since Ngaire does not read books in a linear fashion, or indeed read them at all so much as flip pages randomly and then eat them. After I finished reading, we sat for awhile so Ngaire could gnaw the book as per usual. But I noticed that instead of her random flip and eat, she was turning pages from front to back, babbling all the while as if reading them out loud.

* * *

This morning, Ngaire was in her MegaSaucer, jumping away. (Lately, she has been far more interested in the delightfully loud noise it makes when she jumps in her saucer than in actually playing with the toys.) She cast me a brilliant smile, and I knelt down next to her to pat her. Resting a starfish hand on my arm, she leaned her head on my wrist and smiled at me dreamily.

"More fun with breasts."

2006-05-14T19:04:00.000-04:00

The Husbandlet just looked over my shoulder as I was writing the last post, and this was his comment.

The beginning of the middle of the end

2006-05-14T18:52:00.000-04:00

I love breastfeeding. I love the cozy snuggles, Ngaire's happy little nursing noises, being able to fill my baby's tummy.

I HATE pumping.

For the last week plus, my nipples have been killing me. Nursing is bad enough, but pumping is horrifically painful. Also, my milk supply has been gradually dwindling; while, when I started back to work, I regularly pumped 8-12 ounces a day, I'm now down to 4-6, and I'm not uncomfortably engorged by pumping time anymore, either.

So tomorrow I'm going to leave the pump at home and just hold out till I see Ngaire at 3:00. I always give her a hello nurse, and I figure that as long as she's hungry, she should do her breast-pumping duties quite admirably.

I have some ulterior motives, as well. I'm off to a week-long conference in July, right before the Squid's first birthday. I'm debating whether to wean her completely by then. If I don't, I'll have to get a hand-pump and use it every day to keep some form of milk supply going. She's not nursing all that much anymore; aside from an extended feed first thing in the morning, she's really down to short sips throughout the day and right before bed. So I'm not sure the effort of maintaining breastfeeding is worth the trouble.

That said, it makes me sad to think of bringing the breastfeeding part of mothering Ngaire to an end in the next few months. Sweet little snuggly Boo.

To sleep, perchance to dream

2006-05-14T18:38:00.000-04:00

We have a new bed.

Our old bed came with our house, and dates from perhaps its (the house's) earliest section, circa 1960something. It was a full-sized slab of foam on a box spring and frame. It was comfortable enough, but since our marriage, the Husbandlet and I have noticed it developing a hammocklike dip in the middle. Lately, in order to balance on our sides without rolling into the dip, we would have to arrange each other and lean, which required somnolent coreography to rival underwater ballet.

So yesterday, as a Christmas/birthday/Mother's Day gift to me, we hied us to a furniture and carpet place called The Dump and tried out nearly every one of their mattresses. The Husbandlet and I were pleased to learn that, along our spiritual, intellectual, philosophical, moral, money-managing, child-rearing, and toothpaste-squeezing compatibility, we also have similar taste in mattresses (firm, but squishy on top). The Squid expressed a marked preference for mattresses covered in plastic.

We are pleased to report the latest addition to our household: a queen-sized mattress, box spring, and frame, on which we got a Very Good Deal (the place is called The Dump, after all), and which, along with our new mattress accessories (sheets), we happily broke in last night.

The Rancid Lanolin would be a great name for a rock band

2006-05-11T21:58:00.000-04:00

It is somehow less appealing when unwittingly rubbed on sore nipples.

Note to self: nipple ointment acquired pre-baby does not keep till the baby is nearly 10 months old.

And just out of curiosity

2006-05-11T21:52:00.000-04:00

If you're from the Midwest (Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, etc.), give me a shout-out. I see I've been getting quite a few hits from that general area, and while I do have some college friends around there, I'm curious about my newfound Midwestern popularity.

Also, I feel a sudden urge to bake bars.

Ngaire developments

2006-05-11T21:51:00.000-04:00

She is so amazing! She pulls up, she cruises around the room holding onto furniture, she takes steps forward if we hold both her hands (if we hold just one hand, she falls over). She crawls purposefully, padding like a little bear, and with the focused stalking of a leopard. She can get where she wants to go, and she is heady with the power. The power! Mwa-ha-ha-ha!

She babbles like crazy, and has been heard to hum snatches of various songs (I swear!), like “Twinkle Twinkle,” “Barbara Ann,” and a little song I made up for her last Sunday which goes,

Baby Boo, Baby Boo,
Precious Squidgle, I love you,
Oh Ngaire, ooooooh oh Ngaire, ooooooh oh Ngaire,
Ooooooooh I love you!

Baby Bear, Baby Bear,
You’re so sweet, so cute, so fair,
Oh Ngaire, etc.

Dazzling, isn’t it? Incidentally, the lyrics of most songs we make up for her run along these lines, whether we’re singing to the tune of “Barbara Ann” or the Hallelujah Chorus. (I did make up a complex series of lyrics to a little ditty called “Great Is Thy Poopiness” rather early on in the Squid’s life—shocking!)

Ngaire still has just the two teeth, but they are getting Longer. She is also Chomping more. Hence the sore nipples. That and the breast pump. I will be so glad to shelve the extensive pumping when the school year ends. If things go according to plan and I become a stay-at-home mommy by baby #2, I may never (or hardly ever) pump again. Dizzy am I with excitement.

To Ph.D. or not to Ph.D.

2006-05-11T21:49:00.000-04:00

It has long been an ambition of mine to get a Ph.D. in English Literature. The Plan since before the Husbandlet and I got married has been for him to finish up his doctorate, and then we’d put me back in school. We also planned to have our first baby after my first year back in grad school, so you see how good we are at planning. In any case, the harsh realities of being a working mommy have brought me up short. I miss the Squid, I am sad that two-thirds of her waking hours are spent in the company of people who are not me (or the Husbandlet), and I never never never want to have to re-live the angst that was adapting the Squid to day care, with the Squid or with a subsequent baby. I also don’t want to become the sort of person who keeps producing children for other people to raise while I blithely cloister myself in an office and publish or perish. So, the Plan has lately undergone major revision.

It makes me sad to think of shelving the Phud indefinitely, perhaps forever. I’ve taught at college before and enjoyed it tremendously, far more than teaching high school. It makes me sad to give up the dream of the Husbandlet and I being the Drs. Waddle, as in,

Hapless student on telephone: May I please speak to Dr. Waddle?
One of us: The English one or the Biology one?

and working together at a college or university somewhere. But, on the other hand, missing the baby! And being exhausted all the time! And what about the possibility of homeschooling? (My tenure in the public school system has destroyed what little good feeling I had for it in the first place.)

Anyway, this is just a brief rundown of many weeks—months—of thought, prayer, discussion, and soggifying the Husbandlet’s shoulder. Trusting that God will give me the desires of my heart, even if not through the route I mapped out or in the ways that I anticipated, is incredibly hard; I’ve always been goal-oriented, do-it-myself, Type A. However, based on letting-go experiences of the past, I do know that I will not look back on this decision with crippling regret; I can’t rule out regret altogether, though of course I hope I feel none; but I do know it’ll all work out.

Sharp pointy teeth

2006-05-03T19:54:00.000-04:00

Yesterday, our sitter’s husband was feeding Ngaire her lunch, and apparently he was not doing so quickly enough for her. So she bit his finger.

Considering she also recently chomped the sitter on the chest, Ngaire’s new nickname is The Piranha. Fortunately, she only has two teeth.

Weird

2006-05-03T19:53:00.000-04:00

Ngaire was recently introduced to Spinach. Her reaction has been mixed, and lately she has developed an interesting quirk: sometimes, she refuses to eat it off the spoon, but will obediently consume said greenery if I feed it to her on my finger.

Overheard in our kitchen

2006-05-03T19:52:00.000-04:00

“I have two master’s degrees—I should be able to figure out a sippy cup!”

An open letter to my breasts

2006-04-27T20:12:00.000-04:00

Dear ladies,

Well, it’s been a wild, wild ride these last eighteen months. I feel like we’ve grown and developed quite a bit, and perhaps the time has come to take stock of our relationship.

It seems like a long time since we were lighthearted and carefree, perky, with a bounce in our step. Those golden days when nothing dragged us down, before the worrying teeth of care closed, bulldog-like, upon us, have faded into the distant past. First we sensed a percolating tenderness, followed by burgeoning soreness, followed by escalating swelling, followed by increasing floppiness. Though many tried to uplift us and lessen our burden, it remains with us still. Every morning we awake full and rejuvenated. By nightfall, we are drained.

You have been exposed to much this past nine months, and for this I apologize.* I have tried to provide you with space in which to express yourselves, but sometimes, unavoidably, the blanket of reticence is ripped away by the flailing arms and legs of demand. We must accept the fact that we cannot always conceal ourselves.

However, it must be said that, occasionally, I feel like we hold up unequal loads in this relationship. I will do all I can to support you; in return, please do not lose all sense of proportion and form. With this compromise, I am sure we can experience a lifetime of mutual fulfillment.

Respectfully,
Jordana

* Incidentally, the state I live in encourages but does not require employers to provide places for employees to express milk. I did contact the lone female assistant principal last summer to ask if there were an abandoned utility closet where I could pump, but she suggested A) the staff bathroom (ick!) or B) the school clinic (ick!!) instead. So I’ve been pumping in my classroom during my planning periods. Now, I keep my door locked, and you would think that anyone who knocked on a locked door and got no answer would assume I was busy or not there and would just go away. How wrong you would be. No, met with no answer, students get a hall monitor or another teacher to let them in; other teachers or hall monitors just let themselves in. Many are the times I have had to rip the pump off my breasts with an audible “pop” and yank my shirt down as someone opens my door and walks in. Many. Not, of course, that I would ever complain about such a thing.

Cheerios

2006-04-21T15:24:00.000-04:00

Yesterday, Ngaire was happily eating Cheerios in her highchair. I was feeding her bites of oatmeal in between Cheerios, and the Cheerios were gradually winning out in terms of interest. Ngaire picked up a Cheerio. She held it in a perfectly executed pincer grip, and extended it toward me. I leaned forward and opened my mouth. Ngaire held out the Cheerio, and I ate it.

In this family, we’re all about reciprocity.

And kack-ing

2006-04-21T15:23:00.000-04:00

A couple of mornings ago, Ngaire woke up in her room and didn’t cry. We heard her babbling through the baby monitor, and since she seemed happy, I took a few moments to get dressed before going to get her. Soon her babbles turned to squawks, and I rushed to her rescue. As soon as she saw me, she stopped squawking and began making her I-want-to-nurse noise, "Kack-kack-kack." She kept this up with increasing insistence while I picked her up and headed for the rocking chair.

Verbally communicative? Why yes.

And a thought

2006-04-21T15:20:00.000-04:00

Ngaire has had Very Bad Poopy Diapers since Saturday: not diarrhea, and not accompanied by any other symptoms, just very loose, and several a day. So I have to ask,

Why couldn’t she do this on a week when she’s at the sitter’s every day, instead of on my spring break?

That Murphy and his laws.

Other birthdays

2006-04-18T21:12:00.000-04:00

I meant to make a bigger deal out of this, but in the grand tradition of my family, I totally forgot. This blog turned one year old on April 11.

Also, I turned 27 years old on April 13. The Husbandlet gave me this lovely ring:

It has Ngaire's birthstone (ruby), the Husbandlet's (opal), and mine (diamond). I love it.

The blog, alas, got nothing.

A cautionary tale

2006-04-18T20:59:00.000-04:00

We visited the Husbandlet’s parents at his aunt and uncle’s house over the weekend. Per the pediatrician’s suggestion, we have Ngaire sleeping in her infant carseat these days. At home, we put the carseat inside the co-sleeper (in its playpen-level version). But for this weekend trip, we decided to leave the co-sleeper and just put the baby in the carseat on the floor in our room to sleep.

So, baby bedtime came around, and I put the Squid in her carseat and left the room. The last few nights, she hadn’t cried at all when we put her down, so we were rather surprised when she proceeded to cry for the next hour and a half. We didn’t go check on her, though, because of the whole if-you-go-in-it’ll-just-teach-her-that’s-how-long-to-cry-so-you’ll-come-get-her thing. She did stop crying, though, so we figured it was the new environment that was getting to her.

A couple hours later, we went up to bed. I opened our bedroom door, stepped into the dark room … and my foot bumped against something that felt suspiciously like a warm body lying on the floor. It took me a couple of seconds to get through the rush of possibilities of what it could be, but you’ll be glad to know I did arrive at the correct answer, dive for the light switch and then for the Squid, and get her hopelessly tangled in the fringe of the bedspread as I tried to pick her up. Ngaire had knocked her carseat over backwards (the head end resting on the floor), slithered out headfirst from the shoulder harness, and fallen asleep on the floor.

She was perfectly all right, but once the initial shock and terror of nearly treading on my baby was over, I still felt pretty shocked and terrified. Fortunately, the distance between carseat and floor was nearly nothing, and she didn’t seem to have twisted any tiny limbs in her slithering, but the thought of my poor baby crying herself to sleep on the floor was pretty disheartening, not to mention the incompetent-mommyness of leaving the situation open to slitherage and then not checking in during the lengthy crying. The stories of even greater parental incompetence and more miraculous infant survival told to me by sympathetic relatives did little to relieve my guilt.

Ngaire, though, seemed more put out by the fact that I woke her up, comfort-nursed her (my comfort; you understand), and then put her back in the (carefully-propped) carseat. In retrospect, I should have left her sleeping on the floor; she was perfectly content there.

Three-quarters of a year

2006-04-18T20:47:00.000-04:00

Today, Ngaire is nine months old. Having a baby is the strangest experience; in some ways, I can scarcely believe that she wasn’t born just last week, and in others, it feels like she’s been a part of my life forever. I know the Husbandlet pretty darn well; I can predict how he’ll react to something and why, we complete each other’s sentences, we understand each other’s routines. My understanding of Ngaire, though, is far more instinctual. I can interpret her kacks and expressions, but it’s more than that … I feel like I’m only a short step behind what makes her tick. This is probably not very well-put, but it’s my Intuitive-Feeling side talking. In any case, I’m grateful to feel so tuned in to my baby, since that was one of the things I feared I’d lose, going back to work.

The sleep training goes well. The Husbandlet and I have decided that we officially swear by (as opposed to at) the cry-it-out method: Ngaire now goes down without a peep, and sleeps through the night. On those rare occasions when she wakes up, if she cries, it is only briefly, and she puts herself back to sleep. We have been slightly disconcerted the last couple nights, though, to peek in on Ngaire awhile after putting her down, only to find her eyes still wide open … no crying, just staring around. We find this almost as distressing as her crying, for some reason; I guess we just don’t like the idea of our poor little Boo having given up all hopes of someone coming to her rescue if she cries, and sitting there in boredom instead.

The Squid is definitely on the move … she crawls very purposefully and somewhat floppily. I got a babycenter.com update recently that said babies her age can climb stairs, and I realized that, due to a dearth of stairs in her life, Ngaire hasn’t had a chance to learn to climb them. So, I set her next to the only step our house boasts, and lured her to climb it. She did, and showed great flair at it, if I do say so. My baby is developmentally on target!

She’s acquired a taste for Cheerios, which she scoops into her mouth in very acrobatic moves, sometimes. Speaking of acrobatics, she has also entered the stage of Creative Nursing Positions. She’s very interactive, and talks and giggles and plays with us, which we’re enjoying tremendously. The Husbandlet goes increasingly great lengths for her cackle.

She can also pull up on furniture now. No book/video/knickknack is safe. And she’s perfected the Lunge from adoring set of arms to adoring set of arms, particularly as a means of traveling across the room to Mommy.

All in all, she’s a delight: a happy, healthy, playful, good-natured baby who seems rather fond of us. Happy equal-time-outside-the-womb-as-inside-it day, Squidlet!

Conversation

2006-04-06T21:17:00.000-04:00

Him: I'm almost done with The Aeneid.
Me: You're very plucky.
Him: It takes pluck to read The Aeneid?
Me: I don't know, it's just not as interesting as, say, The Odyssey. I don't know if I would ever have read it on my own, unless I was feeling especially virtuous.
Him: How about reading The Aeneid AND Le Morte D'arthur at the same time, while also listening to Absalom, Absalom! on tape?
Me: OK, now you're just showing off.

Weirdies

2006-04-06T20:30:00.000-04:00

I don't usually write about marital spats on this blog--aside from the whole issue with the bungalows--but of course we've dealt with this on our end and I am curious to see what my Internet buddies have to say on the subject.

Since I've been sick, the Husbandlet has been beyond wonderful picking up the slack. He's made every dinner, washed dishes (usually my job), and cleaned our house all over. Every day as we'd come home from work, church, etc., he'd tell me, "I just want you to go lie down and rest. I'll take care of everything." And he has.

But I haven't rested, for the most part. Because the one job left to me has been baby care. And our precious, adorable baby is a little wiggler, a crawler, and a cuddler who is experimenting with twisting herself into pretzels during diaper changes, and who loves nothing better than constant contact with and attention from Mommy. I can't complain about that. I love playing with her. But the last few days, my energy has been so low, and every time I'd bend over to pick her up I'd feel dizzy; she didn't want to play for herself for very long, but would rather be held and lunge out of Mommy's arms at things, and it was a constant series of leaning over, lifting, putting down, picking up, balancing, catching, etc. etc. etc. All stuff I'm used to and love and enjoy, part of Mommydom, usually no big deal. But I was so tired.

So, coming home yesterday, after some talk of whether dinner was going to take a lot of preparation, I said to the Husbandlet, "You tell me every day to go rest, but I'm dealing with the baby, and I'm not resting at all."

Pause a moment and digest the full ouchiness of this. The poor Husbandlet had been working his tushie off to do all the work for both of us. My point--and there was other talk around this leading up to my comment--was NOT that the Husbandlet should do all that AND take care of the baby. I was just trying to say that if something less essential could be cut out--the dishes left unwashed, maybe a simple dinner prepared rather than a complicated one--and he could divide the baby-wranglin' with me, that would be more what I actually needed than, say, a sink free of dirty dishes. But it still sounded ungrateful and slave-driverish, and much talking-out was required. The Husbandlet was understandably hurt.

So here's my question: If someone is bending over backwards to help you, and it is helpful and you appreciate it and the person would be hurt if you suggested that the helpfulness was NOT appreciated due to the consuming nature of the helpfulness, BUT you actually would like a different sort of helpfulness, do you

a) Just let it slide. After all, the person is being helpful and self-sacrificial and caring, and what he's doing is helpful, necessary, and appreciated.
b) Bring it up, thus running the risk of sounding ungrateful and demanding, not to mention hurting the person's feelings as he sees all that hard work being dashed in his face.

I'm really curious.

P.S. I'm also really sorry, Husbandlet.

I feel icky, oh so icky

2006-04-06T20:28:00.000-04:00

Welcome to The House of Waddle, better known these days as The House of Woe. Without further ado, a tally of my complaints:

• A few weeks ago: laryngitis. No longer a problem, but it sure put a hitch in teaching and practicing my song for our church’s Easter pageant. My speaking voice is basically back now, but my singing voice is still in bad shape.
• I think I had a cold after that. Or a mild tummy bug. It’s hard to remember.
• Last Wednesday, I started to feel the onset of the latest flu to go around our community. By Thursday, I was a mess. I took Friday off. The Husbandlet, kindly matching me symptom for symptom, spent the weekend with me draped over furniture and moaning softly. We had stomach cramps, a little diarrhea, aches, pains, and chills, headaches and fatigue. A walk to the mailbox on Saturday afternoon (for which we wisely inserted the Squid into her stroller, lest we topple over) wiped us out. We feasted on oatmeal for breakfast, pasta with butter for lunch, and rice for supper.
• By Sunday, we were mostly better. The Husbandlet consumed a large hamburger for lunch, though I was only able to look with approbation on a salad. But then:
• Came my latest flu permutation: fever, chills and shakes and aches, headaches and fatigue and mild nausea, congestion, coughing, the pouring of disgusting-colored goo from the nose, and unhappy throat and ear canal. For the last four days. I am a mess.

The upside of all this is that I seem to be within spitting distance of pre-pregnancy weight; the pants I’m wearing now are only one size above my pre-pregnancy jeans, and they’re beginning to feel loose. I guess a diet of nothing but carbs and fluids will do that to you. Of course, I can’t quite get up the energy to stand on the scale.

The good news: The Husbandlet is feeling almost back to normal. The Squid wasn’t sick when we were, and it’s hard to tell how she’s feeling now. She is coughing and sneezing quite a bit, and had a touch of runny poop last week, but the pediatrician gave her a clean bill of health as far as ears--no infection--and respiration, though she probably suffers from a bit of my virus. The Squid is also a tad on the cranky side. But this could be due to other factors; deciding to compound all possible misery into as compact a time possible, we are currently:

Sleep-training the Squid

2006-04-06T20:24:00.000-04:00

Oy. Well, our daughter has set a record with her pediatrician: She has cried more than any other child following the pede’s recommended sleep-training. The pede guaranteed us 45 minutes or less of crying. She said we could call her up and cuss her out if she was wrong, but she wouldn't be wrong. The first night, Ngaire
• cried for an hour.
• Slept for 40 minutes.
• Cried for ANOTHER 50 minutes.
• Slept for around 3 hours.
• Cried for about 20 minutes (things started to get fuzzy in the middle of the night).
• I nursed her and put her down again.
• She cried for another 25 minutes.
• Then she slept, with only 2 brief wake-ups, for about 4 hours, until we got her up.

The second night, she
• cried for AN HOUR AND 40 MINUTES.
• Slept for 15 minutes.
• Cried for around half an hour.
• And then slept through the rest of the night, with only one brief whimpering period.

So, why, you ask, why now? Oh crunchy granola family bed Waddles, why this sudden and very hard-core sleep-training? Well, I’ll tell you.

First, there was the crawling. Ngaire has been crawling for a little while now, and among the many components of this skill is the ability to roll over and get on all fours, and, oh, say, CRAWL OUT OF BED AND HURL YOURSELF AT THE BEDSIDE TABLE, WHICH, AS YOU HAVE DISCOVERED TO YOUR SORROW, HAS SHARP EDGES, NOT TO MENTION THE DISTANT NATURE OF THE FLOOR. Ngaire never actually did this, but she tried, and every time it was just as I was going to sleep. I lived in fear that she would try it sometime when I wasn’t conscious to stop her.

Then there was the regressive all-night nursing. She would log off from time to time, but if I attempted to change positions, she would wake up and want to nurse again. In fact, every time any of us moved, she would want to nurse. Sometimes she would want to nurse when no movement at all had been evident. So I was sleeping all night in one position, all three of us were waking up constantly, and neither she nor I was getting a particularly high quality of sleep.

Then there was the bit of the good-sleep story I haven’t told you. Ngaire was for a long time an amazing sleeper. So wonderful, such long sleep. But this was because I was next to her generally from the time she went to sleep (around 7) to alarm-clock time. Sometimes she would stay asleep early in the night if I got up to use the bathroom, but more often she’d wake up and need to be nursed back to sleep. In the mornings, my attempts to get up were met with piteous screams which extended through our whole morning routine.

She was also getting bigger, her sprawls more emphatic. The Husbandlet and I shared half the bed, I kid you not.

The final straw came when I got sick last week. She wasn’t sleeping deeply, and I stopped sleeping almost at all. This pushed me over the edge of desperation, and on Tuesday I asked her pediatrician what I should do.

So far, we’re seeing more misery than benefit. Ngaire, of course, isn’t falling asleep early enough to get her full 11 hours at night, and she’s refusing to nap during the day, aside from falling asleep nursing and maybe a half-hour nap here and there at the sitter’s. For the first time in her life, she’s sleep-deprived. So she’s cranky. The Husbandlet and I are basket cases. We hate hearing our little one cry. But at this point, we feel committed: we have to see this through either to success (which may take a while) or to clear failure, or it will just help to reinforce the idea in our daughter that crying long enough gets results from us. Meep. Rock, meet hard place.

Tonight is night three, and she fell asleep after right around an hour. Updates will come!

You guessed it, October.

2006-04-01T16:53:00.000-05:00

Congratulations, Jordana!

Also, welcome to Alia, my friend Becky's newborn!

And yes, the Husbandlet and I had "the talk" today, and yes, we're still planning to wait a few years for another baby ... Sigh.

The experiment continues, albeit unsuccessfully and with much angst

2006-03-29T20:21:00.000-05:00

So. Theories on infant sleep habits, anyone? I mean, we've got some to spare. Our little Squid, it must first be said, sleeps very well at night. She goes to sleep around 7:30 p.m., waking maybe once toward 5 a.m. for a snack, until we get her up around 6 a.m. During the day, she takes two good long naps at Nanny’s house and another evening nap, very short, with us.

Nanny claims (and I see no reason not to trust her word) that she puts the Squid down for a nap without rocking or anything, and that Ngaire sometimes fusses for a maximum five minutes before conking out for hours on end. At home? Well, Ngaire now lets me put her down once she’s asleep, but she will only fall asleep while being nursed or pacified and rocked. Sometimes, she’ll be all peaceful and sleeping, but the minute I put her down, those big eyes pop open and we’re in for another round of nursing, binkying and rocking. And she still sleeps with us at night.

I don’t have a huge problem with this. I’m a working mommy, and I love snuggling my darling, feeling her warm little limbs go limp against me. It is a tad time-consuming, though, and I do feel a bit of pressure to get my child to learn to settle herself to sleep … not to mention curiosity about what Nanny has, infant-sleep-inducing-wise, that I lack. So every so often, I decide to experiment with one of the myriad of theories I’ve read about, all of which guarantee a self-settling Squid in a nine days or less or your money back.

The latest theory is a cross between attachment parenting and the cry-it-out theory (nice cross, eh?). It involves sitting next to the baby, not picking her up, but patting and stroking her while she cries herself to sleep. After a few days, the mommy is to sit several feet away, verbally comforting her sproglet. A few days after that, the mommy is to sit by the door. The next step is to leave the room altogether. Nine days or less!

Night one of this experiment was, overall, less successful than the cry-it-out-with-intermittent-parental-comfort-forays thingy we tried a few weeks back. I got the Squid good and sleepy, put her in her co-sleeper*, and sat next to her. She figured out what I was doing, and even though she was so tired that her eyes were almost closing in between screams, she gave those screams her all. My gentle pats morphed into trying to hold her back as she scrabbled at my arm and tried to climb up it.

This lasted almost an hour. It ended abruptly and heart-warmingly when Ngaire eluded my restraining hand and crawled out of the co-sleeper and into my lap.

Stupid theories. I lay down and nursed my Squidlet to sleep.

* whose main function, so far, has been to keep the Husbandlet from falling out of bed.

Apparently, October is the new July

2006-03-29T20:19:00.000-05:00

Last year, there was something in the water at my school; four teachers (including me) and the wife of another all had babies due in July. This year, there’ll be quite the crop of babies in October. Arwen, my college roomie, and two ladies from my church are all due then.

The poor Husbandlet is beginning to get a bit nervous at the renewed gleam in my eye. I’m finding all these pregnancies rather inspirational. If we didn’t have a baby still sleeping in our bed and requiring lots of snuggles and diaper changes, I think the Husbandlet would have true cause to worry.

Also, as of yesterday

2006-03-25T12:25:00.000-05:00

Our baby is now a Crawler.

Why marine biology is perkier than teaching high school English

2006-03-25T12:24:00.000-05:00

You get to eat what you study.

(You also get to go to lots of conferences and meetings, like the Husbandlet, who is in Maryland at present. He told me when he called yesterday that, amazingly, one of the speakers had managed to make a talk on crab-castrating parasites tedious. I can’t imagine how that could be.)

Excuses, excuses

2006-03-25T12:23:00.000-05:00

Yeah, so, this whole getting blocked thing is really providing an impediment to my already limited blogging energy. Last year, huge and pregnant and waiting at work for hours a day till the Husbandlet came to get me, I was all about blogs: reading them, writing them, giving them up for Lent so I could maybe get some actual work done. But this year . . . well, there are many differences. Not pregnant, for one thing, and it turns out an external baby takes up a lot more attention than the internal variety. I leave work every day as close to 3:00 as I possibly can. In the evenings, if I am so fortunate as to get the Squid to sleep and manage to stay awake myself

SIDE NOTE: Have you ever watched a baby going to sleep? The fluttering eyes? The deepening breathing? The drooping head and relaxed fingers? That and the sleep-inducing hormones produced by nursing usually ensure that I am desperately sleepy before the Squid has even begun to consider stopping with the partying.

Sorry. So, IF, given all that, I manage not to fall asleep resting gently on my baby’s tummy, there are books to read, and stories and poems to write, and Husbandlets to cuddle.

All that is my very convoluted excuse about my pathetic blogging record of late. I’m sorry! Please keep coming to visit! Maybe I will post another cute studentlet story or Ngaire picture! You never know. The pregnancy is over, but The Pregnant Waddle lives on!

What I really started to blog about

2006-03-25T12:20:00.000-05:00

Anyway, Ngaire has always loved music. When I was several months pregnant, we went to see The Phantom of the Opera (movie). Ngaire started boogying down during the opening credits. If I listened to the radio in the car, she would thump away in there. The Husbandlet frequently sang to her in utero, and she initially wiggled frantically at the sound of his voice, and later would become very still the moment she heard him.

These days, if Ngaire cries in the car, the Husbandlet lunges for the radio dial. A good dose of whatever’s playing on the classical station usually quells her. NPR, pledge drives and commercials, though, generate squawks of protest.

My parents and I took the little Boo to hear a klezmer band the other night. It was close to Ngaire’s bedtime, and she was a tad antsy, crying when strangers stopped by to coo over her, etc. But the moment the music started, she sat forward on my lap, tiny hands clutching the seat in front of her, attention riveted on the musicians. She remained totally absorbed and happy, until they stopped playing and started talking. Then her angst could not be restrained, and we took her off and put her to bed.

Hot cochoor, or, a rare pop-culture rant

2006-03-12T17:00:00.000-05:00

I know I’m a tad behind on this, but …the Oscars fashion this year? Oy. As Hollywood is increasingly producing, and the Academy honoring, movies that a) I’ve never heard of or b) I wouldn’t touch with a 10-foot Red Vine, the lovely red-carpet gowns have become the only reason I pay attention to the whole galumphing over-produced enterprise at all. I don’t watch the presentation anymore; I spend maybe a couple of minutes in line at the grocery store checking out the dresses in People Magazine or checking Go Fug Yourself and MSN’s Undressed. I do love pretty dresses. The Academy Awards can usually produce a couple memorable ones, the good including Minnie Driver’s red dress the year Good Will Hunting was up, or Hilary Swank’s incredible blue number last year, and the bad harkening memories of Bjork’s swan and that awful pink thing with which Gwyneth Paltrow, the world’s most overrated actress, offended our eyes the year she undeservedly won for Shakespeare in Love.

But this year? Blech. The stylists seem to have called each other the night before and said, “Let’s go with a mud-colored theme! My celebrity will wear it if yours does! BFF!”

WHAT was Naomi Watts wearing?! And Michelle Williams! My eyes! Michelle Williams actually made it onto MSN’s best-dressed list. I can’t think why. Her dress put me in mind of the time my grandmother gave a bottle of yellow mustard a vigorous shake, only to find that the top was open. Her lipstick added that much-needed ketchup accent.

On the other (good) hand, three words: Jada Pinkett Smith. And Jennifer Jason Leigh wore a gorgeous understated black dress, which will probably go mostly unnoticed.

This may be my favorite dress of the evening. I have no idea who this person is, but she or her stylist has great taste.

Also, I may be one of the few people anymore who remember that Helena Bonham Carter started out her career in intelligent E. M. Forster and Shakespeare adaptations, with a few historical dramas thrown in. Her metamorphosis into Tim Burton’s latest muse/Goth chick wannabe saddens me deeply on an aesthetic level.

A bunch of mini-posts from week 1 of Blocked Blogger-ness

2006-03-12T16:59:00.000-05:00

More weeping and whimpering. Thank God for infant Tylenol (or rather, the off-brand version). We’re going on week two of rough days for Ngaire; some are good, some are bad. Wednesday was full of smiles and playing, according to Nanny. Yesterday was quite bad due to teething, and I came home to a limp and moaning little girl who clung to me and cried on and off throughout her nap and didn’t want me to touch her mouth. But after the infant Tylenol-Equate thingy: oh what a difference! Sleep, calmness, chortling and playing.

She’s beginning to scooch forward more often. Now, when she whaps a toy just out of reach, she’ll hoist herself up on hands and feet in an inverted V, hop her hands forward, and fall on her tummy. This usually gains her a couple of inches.

Bomb threat at school yesterday. The fire alarm went off a little before noon, and we all herded out of the building. It was (relatively) quickly determined to be a prank, but I have to say that the 45 minutes of “sweeping” done by the non-existent bomb squad’s equivalent failed to inspire me with unmitigated calmness. Calming down my students afterwards has left me with no voice today. Thank goodness it’s Friday.

The Husbandlet is still in the northern wilds. My parentlets and the Squid and I are off to visit my in-laws for the weekend. The Husbandlet will be home Sunday, and I have to say that as far as I’m concerned, he’ll be the best thing to ever come out of Canada.

On a completely unrelated note, my left eyelid keeps twitching.

Blocked Blogger

2006-03-12T16:58:00.000-05:00

Gah. Well, no more posting from work, I’m afraid. But what shall I do now to procrastinate grading? Alas.

Better

2006-03-07T08:21:00.000-05:00

Well, the Squid is adjusting to her new childcare situation pretty well. She cried piteously yesterday and today when we dropped her off, but apparently calmed down pretty quickly and (at least yesterday) had a happy day of playing, eating, and sleeping. I'm trying to feel less guilty about the whole thing. This morning didn't help: when we dropped her off, Ngaire realized what we were doing and began clutching and clawing at my chest as I handed her to Nanny. That and the piteous cries. It was so very difficult to hand her over! Absolutely miserable. And that was just me. My poor baby.

Things are going to be a bit crazy around here. The Husbandlet is heading off to Canada for a conference for a week. We will miss him tremendously, of course, and that is a problem. Perhaps the bigger problem is that every time he mentions Canada, I am forced to break into song. Which may mean that the poor psychologically-conditioned Husbandlet will inadvertently offend some key Canadians in his travels.

Ash Wednesday

2006-03-03T10:18:00.000-05:00

I grew up in a liturgical tradition, and when Lent rolls around every year, I try to give something up. However, somehow I never feel like Lent has properly begun unless I receive ashes on Ash Wednesday. So, on Wednesday, I dragged the Husbandlet and the Ngairelet and my parents off to a local church.

I've heard other parents say that they find it very moving to see the ashes on their babies' foreheads: a reminder of mortality, etc. etc. etc. I was fully expecting to get weepy when Ngaire received her first ashes, since dog food commercials make me weepy these days. But when I carried Ngaire forward for ashes, this is what happened: the ash-distributor looked confused, I proffered the baby (like Danny Kaye with the infant king in The Court Jester, for those of you who have seen that movie), the lady aimed an ashy finger at Ngaire's forehead ... and Ngaire grabbed the dish of ashes.

We all escaped mostly unscathed. But we laughed pretty hard, which (it seems to me) is actually a better response to the whole ashes-to-ashes thing than weeping.

Toothy

2006-03-03T10:12:00.000-05:00

Well, it's finally happened: Ngaire is cutting her first tooth.

She had a rough day on Tuesday--actually, this whole week has been a tad on the rough side--since she's now with a new sitter. I was sitting next to her in the car on the way home, and she began crying ... and I spotted a little something peeking through her lower gums. A sharp little something, at that.

Our poor little Boo has many troubles this week: tooth, new sitter, congestion that made it impossible to nurse last night (though it did give me the rather sweet experience of sleeping upright in bed so she could sleep on my chest). It makes me sad to have her so unhappy, even though I know she's a tough little cookie and will pull through just fine.

Anyway, if you think on it, do send up a little prayer for my baby.

Dead? Russian? Composer?

2006-02-27T14:15:00.000-05:00

If I were a Dead Russian Composer, I would be Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov.

Considered the leader of the 19th Century Composer group "The Mighty Handful," I am indeed the teacher among them. My orchestration skills are superbly colorful, and are explained in my book on the topic, but works like "Scheherezade" explain my mastery better.

Who would you be? Dead Russian Composer Personality Test

I think I may have heard something by Rimsky-Korsakov, at some point ...

Yay God!

2006-02-23T07:58:00.000-05:00

Arwen is pregnant.

Those of you who haven't encountered her on the Internet before might want to read some of her backstory. This news has been a long time coming.

Thinking

2006-02-22T07:52:00.000-05:00

Why do babies' heads smell so good?

Oh, the guilt

2006-02-17T14:24:00.000-05:00

When I was pregnant, I read all sorts of books to prepare for childbirth, and even a couple to prepare for child-rearing. I don't recall any of them mentioning the horrible, crushing guilt that settles over some elements of parenting.

Have to head back to work so that the bacon keeps dropping in on a regular basis? Guilt, check.

Have to cause untold angst by removing a desired object from tiny grasping hands? Well, slightly less guilt, but guilt nonetheless. Though it does give me an opportunity to school the small Squid in French. ("Ngaire, I'm taking away t'objet désirée right now." For some reason, I remember this from college French.)

And the kicker: our dear 7-month-old is very cuddly. As in, she loves to cuddle. For the last seven months, nearly every one of her sleeping experiences has taken place either on the lap of or snuggled next to an adoring adult. The problem? She rarely sleeps EXCEPT in this condition. And it gets a bit wearing, as the adult, to have to sit or lie there for hours while she sleeps, with one's every move causing her to startle.

*DISCLAIMER: She sleeps intensely well at night, rarely waking at all. But she also still sleeps in bed with us, with ready access to the breast.*

For the last few days, she has taken short naps and awakened not-so-sweetly. So the Husbandlet and I decided to try the modified cry-it-out thingy with her last night. We let her cry for five minutes; then I went in and patted and soothed her. I left, and she cried for ten minutes. The Husbandlet did the patting/soothing thing. Then she fell asleep. She woke up half an hour later screaming, so we put her in bed with us and she slept through the rest of the night. Overall, we felt like our first baby step towards getting her to self-settle went quite well, and we'll try it for a few nights to see if it's effective long-term. But oh.

The guilt.

The big, tearstained, tormented eyes silently accusing us of betrayal! The crumpled little face and puddle of tears on the sheet! The pitiful cries! The clutch of little starfish hands!

Meep. Even if she's not traumatized for life, I'm sure I will be.

Reason #798,205 why I love this guy

2006-02-16T07:41:00.000-05:00

I have an ironic, somewhat backwards sense of humor. I blame this on my mother’s being from Oklahoma. I personally find myself hilarious, but the problem is that people often don’t realize that I’m not serious. For instance, last September I saw my brother-in-law Nathan, newly out of the Army and with a haircut to match (i.e., less than a quarter-inch long), and remarked that he was looking a bit scruffy. The next time I saw him, he had SHAVED HIS HEAD. Because he took me seriously.

So anyway, yesterday the Husbandlet and the Squid and I were out for a walk, and we passed a mobile home swarming with roughly 47 cats. (Well, maybe more like six or eight.) The cats’ owner came out to hush up his dog, who was barking at us. The owner had one of those Einstein just-stuck-a-finger-in-a-socket hairdos; somehow, he went all too well with the trailer and the plethora of cats. I said to the Husbandlet, “You know what my problem is? I look at that guy, and what I want to say is, ‘Well, I can tell you don’t like cats.’ But people don’t understand that I’m joking, and they just look at me funny. I could say that to someone like Nathan—”

The Husbandlet: “And Nathan would have to go shave his cat.”

And then, sometimes, it's all worthwhile

2006-02-07T08:25:00.000-05:00

Juliet: “What says Romeo?”

Student 1: “Why can’t they just say, ‘What does he say?””

Me: “That’s not how they talked back then.”

Student 2: “No wonder they’re dead.”

Quickly

2006-02-06T13:58:00.000-05:00

Busy, I am. But:

* Milk production is up again, slightly. I mean, it seems to be gradually lessening overall, but I'm reliably getting 3-5 ounces per Side. My last two at-work pumps have produced 8 oz. in total, a fact which impresses the Husbandlet's officemate Lance very much. Hi, Lance!

* Ngaire is really cute. She has learned to play peek-a-boo. Lying in bed a couple Saturday mornings ago, she started pulling the sheet up over her face. "Where's Ngaire?" we obligingly said, pulling the sheet away. "There she is!" She chortled and pulled the sheet up again. We played at this for quite awhile. SO cute.

* Also, we bought her a johnny-jump-up. Oh, the jumping. The first time I put her in that thing, she started bouncing and kept at it for a Very Long Time. I ate dinner without a squirming baby on my lap for the first time in months, that evening.

* ALSO, she appears to be teething, if the angst, intermittent sleeplessness, congestion and gnawing are to be interpreted thusly.

* The transformer blew out on our block on Sunday morning, just as the coffee was beginning to drip into the coffeepot. This began a frantic hunt for the tender cup of coffee, which is beyond necessary for the Husbandlet to function. We finally located this nectar at a small diner, which also provided us with blueberry pancakes. And all was well. The end.

* I have been oh so busy. Last week included the Wednesday of Great Horrificness, featuring the Class of Great Evilitude Hitting the Bottom of Great Rockiness. So I'm turning myself into the Witch-Teacher from Hades for that particular class, and that has involved a lot of work and lesson-plan-rethinking. I'm tired. Also, I feel like a bad mother, because here I am spending days with ungrateful little squirts instead of with my baby whom I adore.

* But hey, at least the milk production is up!

Moo. Now I'm off to tutor my dad in computery things.

The paradigm--it is shifting

2006-01-23T13:34:00.000-05:00

Like (I suspect) most other breastfeeding mommies, I have always had one side (if you catch my drift) that was all about the high production, and one that was of a more moderate, Type B variety. The Squid has always favored the former (hereafter referred to as "The Right Side"), as have I, since it would reliably produce 4-6 ounces each time I pumped, unlike its 2-3 ounce-producing companion ("The Left Side").

No more.

The Right Side is letting me down. For the past two days, it has actually produced less than The Left Side. Which is somewhat problematic, as The Left Side is not necessarily producing more. Moo--except, slightly less moo.

Note my restraint. I waited until this happened a couple of times before announcing it on the Internet.

Amendment to last post

2006-01-19T12:52:00.000-05:00

Yesterday, the Husbandlet started singing the Gilligan's Island theme song.

haHA.

Here on Ngaire-let's Isle

2006-01-18T08:12:00.000-05:00

For Christmas, the Husbandlet and I bought my parents Season Three of Gilligan's Island, a show I remember fondly from my childhood. Now, every day, my mom picks my dad and me up from work and takes us back to their house, and on most afternoons Ngaire and I unwind by watching an episode or so. (The Husbandlet is dreadfully annoyed by the theme song and has never watched any of the show at all.) Anyway, as a result, the song is stuck in my head constantly, and Ngaire has heard it A Lot.

Last Friday, my mom sang a bit of The Song to Ngaire. Ngaire's little head immediately swiveled around to look at the TV.

Yesterday, my mom decided to entertain the Squid by showing her a bit of Gilligan. During the theme song, Ngaire sat forward, clasping her hands to her chest and laughing out loud. She lost interest during the action, though, so my mom re-played the song. Again with the hand-clasping and the laughing.

I'm sorry, Husbandlet, it looks like you're outnumbered.

For those interested, the new Ngaire achievements are these:
* She can sit by herself with only a bit of toppling over (she hasn't quite figured out that flinging oneself in various directions does tend to cause overbalancing).
* She rocks when positioned on hands and knees.
* She babbles.
* She has officially made the switch from infant carseat to convertible carseat (she has her six-month pediatrician's appointment on Friday, and I couldn't bear the guilt of having to tell her doctor that we hadn't upgraded, as Ngaire is now over the 26-inch limit ... though I must say the detachable and carryable qualities of the infant seat were quite convenient).

'Twas some weeks after Christmas

2006-01-16T13:53:00.000-05:00

If I haven’t been in touch with you lately, or haven’t updated my blog lately (and I know I haven’t), it’s because we haven’t been home, much, really. First Christmas happened, and then New Year’s happened, and then the Husbandlet’s parents came for a visit, and then we visited them. And somewhere in the middle of all of that I went back to work and graded and wrote tests and lesson plans and tried to keep from tearing all my hair out in handfuls. Ngaire was a little angel with all the excitement and moving around. She has only demonstrated one behavior that could in any way be construed as stress-related, and anyway in her case I’m not so sure because it’s fairly par for the course as far as general Ngaire-ness: She only wants to sleep touching another person, preferably on that person, and that person is preferably me. So, during my at-home hours, my hands are generally occupied, and that’s just fine.

Right now, I am typing this semi-reclining in bed, falling over to one side to type on my laptop, with Ngaire on my lap.

Alas, poor Ngaire: her first Christmas and New Year’s will forever be remembered as The Great Pooping Strike. There was no pooping for a Very Long Time. It was the talk of the whole family. (I kid you not. After Christmas, we left one part of the family and went to visit another part. When we arrived at Point B—a.k.a. my brother- and sister-in-law’s house—my father-in-law called from Point A, and his first question was, “So, has she pooped yet?” And he was talking to my brother-in-law at the time. And my brother-in-law knew the answer [no].)

Last week was De-Lurking week, so if you’ve been lurking, please de.

I’ve been trying to write a clever poem about our break to be sung to “The Twelve Days of Christmas,” but I’m just going to accept right now that it’s not going to be done anytime before 2007.

And finally, a couple of pictures:

Ngaire as Roomba.

Ngaire and Rat.

Studentlet wisdom

2006-01-10T14:01:00.000-05:00

I normally don't post all the delightful things my students say, but yesterday there were a couple of gems that I just must pass along.

Scene 1 (in the computer lab. Students are working on a project in which they must plan a journey to three FOREIGN countries, then research those countries and the sites they will visit therein).

Student 1: Can I go to Hawaii?
Me: No, you have to go to a foreign country. Hawaii is part of the US.
Student 2: Nuh-uh!
Me: Yes.
S1: Can I go to Paris?
Me: Yes.
S2: Where's Paris? Is it in England?
Me: No, it's in France.
S2: Oh. Is the Eiffel Tower in England?
Me: No. France.
S2: Oh. I want to go there.

Scene 2 (in the hall).

Random student: I'm so mad--I'm moving to New York! Or--York something. I'm moving to Yorktown!

Back from break, meep

2006-01-02T08:30:00.000-05:00

This is the Husbandlet:

This is me:

Sigh.

We did have a fabulous break, though. I will post pictures of Ngaire's first Christmas (and Ngaire's first stuffed rat) as soon as I get them developed. Welcome to 2006!

The growling and the backwards scooching

2005-12-22T13:30:00.000-05:00

These are Ngaire's new talents. Put her down on the floor, and you may just look back to see her little head peeking out from under a piece of furniture she's back-scooched beneath. Dangle some toys before her and the soft growling will commence.

Other new skills include her first attempts at kissing, which mainly involve wet mouthing of parental cheeks and noses. She can also sit with very little balancing help, as she did on my lap this morning while I was getting my teeth cleaned.

She also screeches. Sometimes she becomes so shrill that the screech goes silent and dogs start circling our house. All our glasses have shattered.

She has several new nicknames: Ngaire-boo, Ngaire-doodle/noodle/boodle, Boo-Bear (see a pattern here?), The Slime Monster. Squidgle and The Squid remain popular choices, and the Husbandlet sometimes calls her Squawkle, though we are considering reserving that one for our next child.

We will be celebrating Christmas with the Big Family (my folks and his folks) on Boxing Day. I have some pics to post, including one of Ngaire doing her best Roomba imitation, but I may not post again till after New Year's. In the meantime, go visit Peter's "a brief history of the last book i read." Merry Christmas and/or Happy Hanukkah plus Happy New Year to all!

And, by the way, my verdict is: Udderly Fabulous!

2005-12-21T08:12:00.000-05:00

There have been times in my life when I have evaluated my self-worth based on all sorts of silly criteria, from test scores to tummy flatness.

A couple of days ago, I received a care package in the mail from one of my college roommates. It contained:

• Item: One golden cow trophy, inscribed “'Udderly' Fabulous.”

These days, the self-worth, it’s all about the milk production.

Bo-ored

2005-12-20T08:43:00.000-05:00

I'm getting that way with this blog's look. But switching templates means having to remember and re-create all the code changes I made with this one. Blech.

Bored. And lazy.

Stuck in my head, Part 2

2005-12-16T08:58:00.000-05:00

So sing it I just did, to my Poetry class. Oy. Have I no shame?

Stuck in my head

2005-12-16T08:14:00.000-05:00

I wish I could blame this on parenthood, but the sad reality is, I was addicted to VeggieTales long before Ngaire made her appearance. Today, my head is filled with "Bellybutton, uh uh, bellybutton, uh uh."

Which is absolutely one of the most wonderful Silly Songs ever. And I just want to . . . sing!

Toes

2005-12-13T09:47:00.000-05:00

Ngaire's got 'em. This is very exciting.

She loves to suck on her toes while we're changing her diaper, folding herself in half. This does make diaper fastening quite the challenge, but it's oh so cute and thus totally worth it.

Nose to the grindstone

2005-12-12T13:06:00.000-05:00

The new typical day:

5:22—The alarm goes off.
5:30—I get up, toss on several layers of clothes, slippers, blankets, etc. in the dark, and proceed to the kitchen, where I make tea and attempt to express more than 3 ounces of milk (side note: methinks attempting a diet while breastfeeding is not working for my milk supply) (Second side note: since writing the above, I have abandoned the diet, and my milk supply is back up. Hallelujah!).
6:00—I wake up the Husbandlet.
6:30—Husbandlet, self, and buntinged baby pile into car. Breakfast (bagels, coffee and tea) is consumed en route.
7:00—Arrive at parents’ house. Baby is exchanged for my father.
7:10—Arrive at high school. Father and self disembark; Husbandlet toodles off to torture clams.
7:45-12:04—Teach.
12:04-12:33—Lunch.
12:33-1:05—More teachin’.
1:05—Dash out to parking lot to retrieve the Squid from her grandmama. Dash back in in what is fervently hoped to be an unobtrusive manner. Conceal Squid in classroom for remainder of school day. (We are trying to ease the childcare transition by minimizing mama-child separation for the first few weeks. I have a planning period during fourth block. There you have it.)
3:05—Exit school. Proceed to parental lodgings.
4:30ish—Husbandlet arrives and the Squid and I pile back into the car to go home.
5:00ish-bedtime—various chores are done, food is consumed, after-dinner activities are performed, showers are taken, and snuggling and sleep recommence.

Ngaire seems to be adjusting all right to the new normal. A reliable source (my mother) reports that she (the baby, not my mother) is averaging about an hour and a half of crying or fussing a day, which isn’t all that bad. I do miss the little one most atrociously; not to mention—the guilt, the guilt! But the teachin’ is fun. And we’re keeping an eye on Ngaire for Horrible Personality Changes, which have thus far not materialized. So, good all round.

Ngaire developments

2005-12-02T12:04:00.000-05:00

At roughly 4.5 months (at some point I dropped the week-counting with a crash), Ngaire has added a few tricks to her repertoire. She now:

* Reaches out her arms to be picked up or transferred from one adoring subject to another.

* Giggles throatily when I blow zerbers on her tummy.

* Is more proficient at ExerSaucering.

* Can stand the rigors of Tummy Time for longer periods without complaint.

* Gazes intensely at all that strange Eating that goes on around here (solid food, here we come!) (Though I am stubbornly determined to wait until she's six months, if she'll let me.)

* Can take a few steps with someone holding her hands (though she only walks backwards for some reason).

* Has discovered the squawk-amplifying qualities of a cup.

* Growls while she gnaws on things.

She is currently laughing and warbling in her ExerSaucer.

Back to work on Monday for me--pray for us all!

’Tis the Season

2005-11-30T08:52:00.000-05:00

This morning, on our way to my parents’ house, the Husbandlet and Ngaire and I drove by a decorated tree. The following conversation ensued.

Me: Did you see that tree?
Husbandlet: What tree?
Me: You really didn’t see it?
Him: I was watching the road.
Me: It was covered with Christmas stockings, with a Santa hat on top! How could you miss it? It was covered with red things.
Him: There are a lot of trees out there.
(pause)
Him: Oh look! There’s a tree covered with fairies hung by their little toes!
Me: Oh look! There’s a tree covered with aardvarks!
Him: That guy must be from Texas.
(pause)
Him: I guess Texas would be armadillos.

Why was Ngaire looking at us like we were crazy?