Stocking stuffers and bananas

I say it often, a bit tongue in cheek, but there's a hint of truth to #SorrySecondChild, especially this Christmas. I looked at Calvin's tidy pile of gifts and at Genevieve's much smaller pile, and felt guilty. It's not that I favor the older child over the younger, it's that all of the things that we bought for Calvin's second Christmas, developmental toys to delight an almost-2-year-old, are still here and it doesn't really make sense to purchase a pink version of a learning table or an easel just to have a new and shiny version, not when Genevieve would be just as delighted by a banana. This leaves us with very little that we could reasonably purchase for her, so we found ourselves scrambling.

It doesn't help that Calvin has real and defined interests and goals at 4 years old, which make it easy to find something to gift him. The new DogMan book. A small locked-down digital device so he can finally stop begging us to pull out our phones for music. A pair of fingerless mitts ("mittens with no fingers and thumbs, please, Mom"). A big fuzzy blanket "just like a kitty" that he fell in love with at the clearance shelf in the store. He likes things. Genevieve delights in the world with equal wild abandon for everything, and also abandons things wildly in her wake, leaving behind a trail of stuffed animals that she passionately adored in the store for 20 minutes before dropping it and walking off as soon as we got it home. Miss G wants everything and nothing (unless her brother has it, and then she wants it desperately). Her interests are transient and tenuous at best, and really she'd really rather that you play with her, to get down on the floor with her or to pull her into your lap while you read her a book. Eleven months out of the year this thrills me, that I have a child that likes experiences and people more than Things. On that twelfth month I feel a whole lot of Mom-Guilt as I looked at the disproportionate piles of gifts. The Middle Child in me screamed that things must be fair.

This extended to Christmas stockings; not something that my family did in my childhood so I find myself asking co-workers what kind of things one is supposed to put into stockings (so far the consensus seems to be "cluttering junk that you don't actually want and will probably be thrown into a landfill within two months" which seems horrifically wasteful, "hygiene supplies" and "school supplies," candy, and "small presents that you would otherwise put under the tree" and honestly the whole thing still seems very strange to me). Calvin's stocking bulked out quickly while Genevieve's lagged behind.


I will say that Liam put in a lot of effort to help me navigate my first stocking Christmas, and I started to get it when he sent me a "just bought the first stuffer for your stocking" and it occurred to me that I would be getting trinkets and doodads as well. In a way, it appeals to my particular love language in that everything in a stocking was picked out because someone saw something small and said "you know, that reminds me of Elisabeth" and that means that I mean enough to someone that they remembered.)

So I put a banana into a shoe box and wrapped it, and Genevieve was just as delighted to open that package as Calvin was to open a tablet with pre-downloaded Spotify playlists. She liked dramatically  ripping open wrapping paper and shouting "oooo!" though, so she had a good time, and really that's all that matters.

Ten Years

Ten years ago, I fired up my laptop, waited while Windows Vista loaded, and opened Facebook up in a tab while I checked my email to see if I had heard back from the grad school I had applied to. I had a new Facebook message! It was a slightly cryptic message from another Facebook user, someone with an obviously fake name pulled from literature, whose profile was not yet connected to my own, asking if I was the Elisabeth Sokol they thought I was, peppering their paragraph with enough clues for me to deduce that they did in fact know the real me (or at least the real High School Me from six years previous).

That was the beginning. There were fun chats and phone calls back and forth as we reconnected as friends, reminiscing and catching each other up on our lives. We had grown up dramatically since high school, and were eager to be friends as adults. With promises of mini-golf in the future, I met up for a friendly friend-group meetup of dinner (they had never had Indian food before!) and watching a cheesy movie. I didn't dress up like it was for a date, because that would be silly, but I did wear my cute new lace blouse and style my hair nicely.

After all, Liam was my ex, and one must look their best when meeting up with exes, so they can see what got away.

The chemistry was immediate, and we promptly spent almost a whole month trying to ignore it, because neither of us was in a particularly great headspace for relationships.

But sometimes something can be incredibly easy, and when you know, you know. We moved in together less than a year later. We were engaged a year after that, and married four months later. Two apartments, two houses, four moves, three cats, and two children later, here we are. It seems like the last decade has flown by (how can it have been ten years? Ten full years, with at least 365 days in each year?), but at the same time I cannot remember a time when we were not two halves of a matched set.

I'm glad we didn't work out the first time, in our teens; we were terrible in our young relationship. It was only with several serious (and terrible) relationships under our respective belts that we could recognize what it took to make a good one. So here's to you, darling. Here's to mini golf, and making cookies at 11 pm, by the romantic light of a preheating oven. Here's to hiking Mount Major, and knowing when I'm willing to share desserts.* Here's to buying a WHOLE BOX OF SPOONS from the gas station to eat a WHOLE CARTON OF ICE CREAM on the swings near our home until twilight fell and we had to go home. Here's to remembering each other's favorite flavors, and hiding love notes and presents, and knowing how to argue without fighting. Here's to the rest of our lives.

*never. I never share dessert. Get your own. Your "one bite" is negative one bite for me.

What the fork?

I've mentioned before that our household objects have a peculiar habit of disappearing at random (you may remember me mentioning that our power drill vanished after a move, and our seeming inability across the years to keep our pie pans from escaping), but this new instance is more peculiar than others.

Our silverware is disappearing.

Over the last year, I've noticed that our silverware drawer is dwindling. We came to this house with a multitude of flatware, but as of this moment there are only four proper forks in my entire kitchen. I got up and counted just now.

"That's weird. Maybe you can use the salad forks instead?"

I am. That count of four included the salad forks. There are two dinner forks and two salad forks. (Some friends at this point might ask me if I really have actual real salad forks, and the answer is 'yes' because my flatware was gifted to me by my mother when I moved into my first apartment, because she had something like 37 full complete table settings of this fancy silverware, because she purchased one full table setting each month from Oneida when she was footloose and fancy free, building up her household over time in a frugal and reasonable manner. In the end she turned out not to need 37 full table settings for her household.)

"That's... really weird. Did you check to see if little hands stashed them somewhere?"

We've checked under all the furniture and all the cushions. We've checked all of our late-night-snacking crash points. We've checked under the refrigerator and under the stove. We've even surreptitiously checked the silverware drawer in the in-law apartment to see if Calvin has been bringing and abandoning forks at my parents' home (they use the other 20 table settings, so an extra fork wouldn't be noticed) and they have fewer forks too. It's very peculiar.

"So... how do you ... eat.... food?"

The full table settings happened to include seafood forks, which I call dessert forks, because I like to eat desserts with them with a tiny fork, partly because it makes the dessert last longer so I can savor it, and partly (okay, mostly) because it makes me feel very fancy. I don't particularly mind using shrimp forks to eat the occasional meal. It's getting really old, though, to eat every meal with them in order to give Calvin and Liam a full sized fork to eat with.

"So.... buy more forks?"

But then they won't match all my current flatware (which I really like, it's heavy but not too heavy, and it's so nice looking and it's really nice quality), and I can't just go buy new forks from the manufacturer because Oneida discontinued this pattern and I'm not willing to spend $10/fork on eBay*, and now it's turning into buying a whole new flatware set which is really not a justifiable expense right now.
Although now that I think about it, I notice that we have significantly fewer dessert spoons, and an extra soup spoon with a different handle pattern.
And our plates and cups have all broken enough pieces that we've got a weird mismatched set of everything, so we would not be amiss to purchase a new set of dishes.
And honestly our dining set is getting a bit creaky, because it was purchased when we were young and couldn't afford something that would last for decades.
Do they make "you've been together 10 years and need to upgrade all your stuff to Grown Up Stuff" registries?


~*~*~
*one day let's talk about how I got banned from eBay

Hobbies as a parent

It has been an eventfully uneventful (and sickly) 2018 for us so far, with several visits to Urgent Care/E.R. (Liam got turned into a newt*, Calvin spiked a dangerously high fever, etc), as we all adjust to our first year with Calvin bringing home the pathogens from the public school germ season. There's an extra petri dish in the household too to percolate the microbes this year, too, as Genevieve adds her immune system to the mix. Recently she has decided that she has learned how to kiss, which is more of an open mouth slobber with extra saliva and boogers and light suction. It's... charming. And full of love.

It has been the sort of winter and spring where we are astonished to realize that it is nearly summer, and nearly 8 months since my last blog post, and yet we have no news to report. Liam's job continues well. My job continues well. Calvin is almost done with his first school year. Genevieve is hitting all of her milestones and continues to blow the growth charts away.

Liam and I are trying to figure out who we are as thirty-somethings. Aren't we supposed to be wearing fashionable clothing and hosting dinner parties effortlessly by now? We've so much less energy and time for hobbies, but we both refuse to be subsumed entirely by the societal expectation of disappearing into the mantles of Parenthood and instead cling stubbornly to old hobbies and interests. I've had not time for my art lately without little fingers pulling all the pieces around to stain the furnishings or tangle the expensive silk fiber, and Liam's old physical hobbies must obviously be curtailed after all of the doctor visits the last few years.
I've gotten back into reading books, by which I mean that I move a book around the house every day but if you look closely you'll observe that I never actually get a chance to read the book. I'm also actively trying to say "yes" to invitations and that's how I made two new friends in the last few months, and also how I naively ended up in a year-long commitment on the board of a local non-profit.
Liam tried several varieties of meditation/tai-chi but none of them seem to be sticking. Tabletop gaming stuck around the longest, but getting a good group to show up on the same day, or, honestly to show up at the same time twice, is a Sisyphean task.

Calvin has taken up writing letters, which mostly means me convincing him to scribble a drawing in a card and tell me a sentence or two about his day, but it was in fact his idea; he saw a packet of unicorn greeting cards in the store and asked me to buy them so he could send letters to people. His enthusiasm lasted for three letters, so now I suppose it's now MY hobby to force him to send letters. He did get a letter back from on of his June2014 peers, though, so perhaps he'll stick with it now.

Genevieve has taken up couch climbing and is trying to take up base jumping but we keep catching her before she tips over the back of the couch. Also she enjoys putting small objects into cups and boxes and then taking them back out, and pulling tissue after tissue out of the tissue boxes.

Maybe she'll sign Calvin's letters for him. "hugs and light-suction-saliva-booger-kiss, Genevieve."

--------
*he got better

A philosophical post about cake, in which we bury the lede (in cake)

Back in June, as I furtively ate the remains of my oldest child's birthday cake, I realized that at some point we were going to have to address who owns a birthday cake. Is it the entire family and they can eat slices of cake until it is gone? Is it the person who made the cake, payment for their efforts (as I am the primary baker and primary cake eater in the household, you can guess my preference)? Is it the birthday boy himself? In the past this has never been an issue, but now we have passed out of the halcyon days of Calvin not remembering that he had leftover food. It used to be that he would wander off from the kitchen table, full, and I would dispose of (read: eat) the last of his (tasty) toddler lunch. Now, he comes back half an hour later and asks "hey, where's my girlchee [grilled cheese]?" and I explain that it is gone forever. Normally this inspires no feelings of guilt in me (eat it or lose it, buddy) but when he asked for pieces of his stop-sign birthday cake during the day I felt conflicted as to whether I should deny him from the cake. Pros: it's arguably HIS cake. Cons: I don't want to foster the expectation of cake during the day. Also, then I would have to share his leftover cake.

I think we all know Elisabeth well enough by this point to know what happened: I ate most of his cake. But what will we do in future years, once he starts to point out that it is, in fact, HIS birthday? (The solution I'm gravitating towards is that after the initial song and sharing of cake with celebrants, the cake belongs to the birthday person themselves to eat/dispose of/smash as they see fit. This may mean that Elisabeth needs to acquire her own secret cake to avoid sneaking off with the leftover main cake.)

This came up most recently when Liam declared that we would share his own cake until midnight, and then cake leftovers were off-limits to anyone except him. We ate half of the cake in his preferred method, which is to say that we attacked the cake as a whole like savages, eating forkfuls rather than cutting slices. In deference to my twitching eye at this act of cake barbarism he carved the cake bites off in a clockwork pattern, as if we had indeed cut off slices with a bizarre notched knife.

All of this is a roundabout way, of course, to bring up why we had leftover cake. See, Liam got a new job designing training materials for the fire service at the State of NH, and I had purchased a delicious 8" dairy-free chocolate cake in celebration. He'll definitely miss a lot of co-workers from Bellwhether, but is excited about the new opportunities to come! Our next task is to figure out a new professional wardrobe now that he won't be wearing business-casual logowear all week long.

If you read this far, here is the reward of a .gif of Calvin at a dance class open house, boogying to the music.

The Morning Mom Meander

I call it the Morning Mom Meander, and it's why I get lots of projects at a very slow pace. For a visual representation, see here:

TL;DR:

Feed baby and jump into the shower before the Older Child barrels into the bedroom. He finds you before you're finished and helps you shower by handing you, one by one, everything that was on the bathroom counter. Send him on the hunt for a banana for breakfast (there are some on the counter near the refrigerator downstairs). Get dressed, stick empty Fitbit band in pocket (do steps taken without a fitness tracker exist?). It's sheets day in the laundry rotation, strip half the bed and toss sheets down the stairs. Before you can finish, the Older Child has found the bananas and brought two of them to the bedroom so as to give you one to eat ("Two bananas, Mommy! One for me, and one for you.") This is very sweet but you can't eat raw bananas because they give you horrible stomach aches. He is insistent, though, so you noisily pretend to eat it and put it on top of the shelf in your closet as you're getting dressed, hiding it from him. Grab a handful of business cards from the box in your bedside drawer, because three times this week someone has asked for a way to contact you and your wallet has no business cards left in it. Go downstairs and bring the bathroom laundry basket with you; throw towels into washer and start the load cycle. Gather all of the abandoned child clothing from around the downstairs and put in a laundry basket. Pop recharged Fitbit out of its charger and back into the bracelet and put it on your wrist. Pull daily vitamins off the shelf in the kitchen and put on counter so you remember to take it later.

There are fruit flies in the kitchen, your arms are full of more discarded kid's clothing but you pull the kitchen garbage can out from under the sink to take out later. Pull vacuum into the living room so you remember to vacuum when your hands are free. Cat was sick overnight, only once but apparently while running a race. Scrub cat spots out of carpet, Older Child is more than happy to point them all out for you. Go upstairs to put acquired detritus away, bringing carpet shampooer with you and it put into the spare bedroom, there are a few carpet stains that you've been meaning to get to. (Everytime you go upstairs, take two or three pieces of laundry from the drying rack in the dining room and toss on to bed to hang up later.) Strip the rest of the sheets from your bed and toss down the stairs. Strip the sheets from the older child's bedroom, oh, you've been thinking he's old enough for a PROPER pillow now. Go back into bedroom and pull a spare pillow out of the closet while you're thinking of it. Start to resheet child's bed. Find the household's extra pillow cases in with the child's clean sheets, Liam wanted to try layering the pillowcases this week so he could have a fresh one every day. Tell yourself to bring those into the big bedroom as you finish resheeting the child's bed. Toss child's sheets down the stairs, evaluate his blankets (seven of them, sometimes he decides he needs all of them) for needs of washing.

What time is it? Remember that I still have yet to hang the new wall clock in the bathroom.

Carry the sheets from the bottom of the stairs and dump them in the laundry room. The towels are still mid-wash-cycle. Separate blankets into a separate pile for washing, empty the dryer and start folding last night's clean dry laundry. When putting kitchen hand towels away, spot the kitchen garbage can still out and remember to take it out. It's only half full, but those onion skins from last night's dinner (spicy peanut noodles) are what is attracting the fruit flies. Bring kitchen garbage out to garbage can, bring out two boxes full of recycling as well. See the gallon jar of bubbles (we go through a lot of bubbles) from yesterday's playtime and pick them up and put them on the porch with the spare bubble wands. Inside, put a clean bag into the kitchen garbage can. Laundry wash cycle is done, swap over wet laundry to dryer and shove the sheets into the washer to wash. Bring the baby's bathtub from the laundry room to the kitchen counter because it's easier on your back than washing her low on the ground in the bathroom tub/shower. Vacuum the living room because you've tripped over the vacuum twice now. Bring the vacuum upstairs with an armful of clean folded laundry. Put the vacuum in the spare bedroom next to the carpet shampooer. Bring an armload of picture books downstairs and put those away. The dryer is buzzing, unload and dump the dry towels onto couch (there are no empty laundry baskets), refilling dryer with clean and wet sheets. Remind self to purchase a mattress protector for Calvin's bed, because we've been lucky that there have been no vomit-incidents so far. Actually, we should get two, to layer protector-sheet-protector-sheet, for easy middle-of-the-night-with-a-sick-kid cleanup. Kick loose ping pong balls towards the living room, there's a bucket there for them (theoretically, if it hasn't been repurposed as a helmet.) Find folder of preschool registration forms on the dining room table, make a note to call the school to see if they'll accept the internet bill as a major utility bill as proof of residency. (I called. They said yes.) The vitamins are still out on the counter, you haven't taken them, nor actually have you had breakfast. Suddenly remember the banana in your closet, and run upstairs to get it before you forget it. While you're up there, let one of the cats out of the Older Child's bedroom, where the Older Child has shut her in there.

Snap a clean dry cloth diaper insert into a diaper cover every time you walk past the drying rack. Stack each one on the bottom of the dry diaper stack. Baby is awake upstairs! By now mother-in-law has picked up Older Child for a day of summer fun (he didn't want to go because he wanted to to hide under the couch cushions. Finally agreed to go when we offered him a receiving blanket to hide under as he walked around. He looked like a Charlie Brown ghost walking down the driveway). Run upstairs and grab the fussing baby and bring her downstairs to nurse. As you walk through the room, load the DVD player so you can watch The Avengers while you're couch-bound (you're running through the series again since seeing the new Spiderman over the weekend). Half an hour of The Avengers later, pause the film and draw the baby a bath in the tub on the kitchen counter, look at you thinking ahead, good job, lady! While the bath is filling, run around gathering clean baby clothes for the day. Put baby in bath and watch as she soaks the floor with excited bathwater kicks. Make note to mop the floor later as it is already wet. As she happily kicks next to you, put away clean dishes from last night, left to dry overnight in the drainer. Come across new package of toilet paper (next to drainer, not in it), open and grab two rolls to toss upstairs, the roll upstairs is looking skimpy. The soon to be empty toilet paper tube will be useful to making Dragon Finding Binoculars later in the week. Shampoo baby's hair and rinse the soap off her. She likes the sprayer. She likes everything.

Spot wedding invitation on counter, grab phone to remind husband to take the day off for that wedding in September. (He already did so! Well done Love.) Get into a text conversation about the size of furniture in the Older Child's bedroom. Baby is angry that the bathtub is being drained, and decides to fart directly into the towel in revenge as you are drying her off. You're in luck, it wasn't poop. Drop damp (poo-free!) towel onto the water she kicked on the floor from the bathtub and swipe it around with your foot. The baby is signaling that she's tired or hungry (again?) so you drop her into the swing for a nap.

You chose poorly, she is now angry.

Settle onto the couch to nurse her again and start The Avengers up again while you are suddenly aware that you haven't eaten breakfast yet. Consider eating chocolate chips by the fistful.

While trapped under a hangry (hungry angry) baby on the couch, hear your mother in her attached apartment transfer her own load of laundry into their own dryer and start it. Realize suddenly that you did not start your own dryer. This is unfortunate because while there are two dryers in the extended house, they share a vent and therefore only one can be used at a time. This means that your sheets will not be dry for another two hours instead of one.

Thank goodness for digital calendar reminders, because a reminder pops up on your phone that you have a digital webinar on running large-scale author events to attend in one hour. You would have totally forgotten otherwise. Hopefully by then the baby will be asleep.

Settle the baby back into the swing. This time, with a full tummy, she prepares to fall asleep. Run upstairs to vacuum the upstairs carpets while she's drowsy, hopefully the white noise of the vacuum will help send her to sleep (it does). While vacuuming the Older Child's room, discover the pillow cases that you pulled out earlier and subsequently forgot to take into your own bedroom. While vacuuming your bedroom, realize that you forgot the pillowcases again. Turn off vacuum to run and pick up pillowcases and toss them onto your own bed, before you forget. Shoddily vacuum the rest of the upstairs because you're rushing now.

It is now 1:30, and forgotten breakfast is turning into forgotten lunch. You have 25 minutes before you have to sit down for the webinar, so scavenge for food in the kitchen. Eat last night's leftover spicy peanut noodles. Finally take those vitamins and put the bottles away up on their shelf out of the reach of little hands. Eat a handful of chocolate chips and grab a packet of brown sugar Pop-Tarts left over from that 90's-themed tv-watching party you threw a few weeks ago¹, because you're an adult and you do what you want².  Suddenly remember that there's a library DVD due today, and the overdue fee is $1/day. Renew DVD loan online (for the 2nd time, you really should watch that and bring it back.)

Eat a second packet of Pop-Tarts as well, because you've lost control of your life.

The business cards are still not in your wallet.

^{1 - Legends of the Hidden Temple is still amazing, GUTS is not. AH! Real Monsters and Are you Afraid of the Dark? were tolerable but not particularly inspiring.
2 - This applies to both superfluous parties and to eating Pop-Tarts irresponsibly.} 

In which our toddler becomes a Child, and we get a second one, which probably is not a great idea

Calvin welcoming Ginny home from the hospital.

So it turns out that one of the first activities that gets pushed to the side once you run out of time is blogging. Which is a shame because I've had about a dozen clever ideas of family stories to write that I've promptly forgotten.

In April we had our daughter, Genevieve, who came very late, and got very stuck, and forced Momma to get an very unexpected and slightly traumatic emergency c-section. She upended out lives (in a good way?) and we're relearning how to be a new family all over again. Calvin was initially excited to meet her (and to have Momma back as a playmate!) until he realized that she was splitting the attention that he formerly got all of, and Momma did not, in fact, have more time to play now that she was no longer heavily pregnant and unwieldy. He promptly started ignoring the baby, and declared Daddy his favorite by sullen glares at Momma and a refusal to spend any time with her. This has lasted until... well, until a few days ago when he snapped out of his funk and returned to his loving snuggly old self, launching himself at either parent for hugs and declarations of his affection. Just yesterday we had our first spontaneous positive sibling interaction, where Calvin crouched down near Genevieve's face and cooed back at her (she's always cooing at him). "She's trying to talk to me, Mommy! She's not very good at it."

"She's trying to talk to me!"

On that note: Happy third birthday, Calvin! You like the color pink, and peanut butter crackers (so many crackers. so many.), and stop signs, and Paw Patrol*, and painting, and Play-doh, and feeding the cats. You like running and jumping, and when the " 'cito" song comes on the radio (Despacito, the original version, not the one with Bieber), and can be easily bribed with a single gummy bear (although you'll try to bargain for one of each color, because that gets you more gummy bears). You like the pepper nuggets at the Market Basket hot counter ("Chicken? Chicken, Mommy?"), and you don't like when the car window is down too much because it's "cold" (read: windy). You picked Batman velcro sandals this summer instead of the Spiderman ones. You like going to daycare, and when they've got the water table out we have to pry you away with a crowbar.
Happy birthday, sweet boy.

Genevieve is a fat and happy baby herself, 10 weeks old today, hair surprisingly reddish and waving sky-high, fresh from her first round of vaccines. Downsides: that moment when their face crumples from happy to BETRAYED and they howl. Upsides: NO POLIO OR WHOOPING COUGH. My bathroom scale is massively off, though, as I thought I weighed her at 13.4 lbs last week (remember when I said she got stuck during birth? Yeah. She's big), but it turns out that the doctor's delicately calibrated baby-scale says she's only 12lbs 11oz. She's a better sleeper than even our mellow Calvin was, which is bizarre and seems like we've had an offspring "bank error" in our favor, since you're not supposed to get TWO excellent kids in a row**.

In other news, we've (I've) picked up baking again, as evident by my slowly regaining all of the baby weight that I've lost. The culprit this time is the Great British Baking Show, three seasons of which are on Netflix, which is exposing me to all sorts of pastries and breads and flavor combinations that I'd never heard of, and inspired me to Try New Things. The first New Thing was choux ("shoe") pastry, which is most recognizable to Americans as eclairs or cream puffs. The first batch was an abject disaster, as I'd added the eggs to the stovetop pan too quickly (you cook the pastry on the stove first, then bake it, interestingly) and ended up with bitter, dense, scrambled egg breadsticks instead of puffing flaky pastry. The second batch was slightly burnt, but at least puffed up like they were supposed to. Baking hasn't been something I've allowed myself to get back in to, I used to bake a LOT*** and I have a lot of great baking gear/cookware****, so it's fun to experiment now. My Facebook friends have become accustomed to seeing pictures of my latest baking adventure pop up in their newsfeed late at night, and I marvel at the mess my kitchen is each morning even though I could have sworn that I'd wiped the counters down the night before.
(And I'm not very good at decorating, either. Tastes good, looks a mess.)

I promise I'll start writing down my story ideas when they pop into my head. Maybe I need one of those dopey notepads on a string to wear around my neck. (This is a terrible idea, the baby gets herself tangled in EVERYTHING without even trying.)

Happy birthday, Calvin! (Ginny was sleeping.)

*despite having only seen maybe five episodes. Paw Patrol is toddler crack.
 **note to siblings: I'm not yet certain if this is a zinger directed at you, or if I've just zinged (zung?) myself
***but then I gained 20 lbs because of it and had to stop
****have managed to not lose our new pie pan for three whole months, an improvement over the half dozen or so that have disappeared over the last decade. But now my muffin pans and mini-muffin pans are missing.

In which Hobbes goes missing, amidst general panic.

It finally happened. After 2.5 years, we couldn't find Hobbes at naptime. Hobbes, you may recall, is Calvin's stuffed animal lovey, a stuffed tiger that he sleeps with and cuddles when he's feeling a need for snuggles or encouragement. This tiger is precious to Calvin, and thus to us, because Calvin does NOT go to sleep without his Hobbes and we very much like it as parents when he gets a good amount of sleep. This Hobbes does not leave the house except in extreme conditions, because it is irreplaceable (moreso than we had originally thought, as you will see).

The scene: Calvin's bedroom, 1pm, cuddled up under his blankets in the dark, having just had me read a book to him (four times, once forwards, once backwards, and then forwards and backwards again.), with his music on a timer and the shades drawn. He was ready to sleep. He wanted to sleep. And then.
And then.
He sat up.
"Oh! Where Hobbes?!"

Where was Hobbes indeed? Hobbes wasn't in the bed, under the blankets, or squashed between the bed and the wall. Hobbes wasn't stuffed into a bureau drawer, or under the armchair, or tucked into the closet. Hobbes wasn't in the bedroom.
So I promised I'd be right back with Hobbes and dashed out to tear apart MY bedroom (terrorizing Butterscotch the Scaredycat who desperately tried to find new hiding spaces ahead of my frantic search, sorry kitty), to tear apart the whole upstairs, and then to search downstairs. Hobbes was nowhere to be found. I ran upstairs in defeat with a different version of a stuffed Hobbes, not wanting Calvin to grow suspicious that I might not come back in my promised timely manner and come searching. I could hear him singing to himself through the door, and he was thrilled to have Hobbes... until he realized it was Not The Right One and tossed it to the ground with a "No Mommy, wrong Hobbes."

Out I went again. Where could Hobbes be? Did I remember Calvin carrying Hobbes downstairs that morning? No, but I'm not exactly a detail oriented person in the morning.

This was okay. We had trained for this. We had a BACKUP HOBBES, which we had acquired at great personal cost. (By which I mean that Calvin's beloved Hobbes is discontinued, and goes for about $95 online as of writing this, since the creator of the comic Calvin & Hobbes refuses to allow licensed trademarked merchandise after a terrible falling out with his publisher, and this generic stuffed tiger looked quite a bit like Hobbes. Three out of the four backups we purchased online were mislabled or mismeasured as the incorrect larger sized stuffed tiger, which did not have the same details as Calvin's particular lovey and were thus rejected.) I pulled the brand new stuffed Hobbes out of its packaging and brought it up to Calvin.
"Mummy found Hobbes, Calvin!" I found Calvin curled up in his armchair, trying to cuddle Not the Right Hobbes but looking very uncomfortable. He was very pleased at first, until he held New Hobbes and a distrustful and betrayed look came over his face.
"...different Hobbes." New Hobbes was dropped onto the floor, rejected. I felt like a fool. Of course. New Hobbes had fresh and fluffy stuffing evenly distributed through his squashy body. New Hobbes felt completely different from The Right Hobbes, who has had his stuffing settled and squashed into a floppy pleasing shape. We had failed. Oh, we had failed. In our arrogance as parents, we did not consider that we ought to have swapped the two stuffed animals out periodically so they would wear evenly. Oh what fools we were.

So I left Calvin in his room as I trudged downstairs to look again. At this point it had been about 45 minutes since his nap was supposed to start, and I could still hear him singing quietly to himself over the baby monitor. He was not napping. This evening would be difficult. I needed a break from Mom'ing before I went in to work a holiday retail shift at the Bookstore, and here I was searching for a stuffed toy.

I did find it, eventually, a stuffed paw spotted out of the corner of my eye as I passed the cats' scratching post/climbing tree. Hobbes was stuffed into the cats' carpeted tunnel hideyhole at the bottom of the tree. Calvin was silent and asleep on the monitor within two minutes of receiving him. ("Hobbes! T'nk you, Mommy.")

Well-loved-Hobbes on the left, Fresh-Hobbes on the right.

Let this be a lesson to you. Acquire several copies of your child's beloved sleep lovey, and wear them out evenly.

In other news, Elisabeth has decided to fully embrace her label as being a wimp, after literally fainting (whacked into the wall on her way down to the floor, threw up, the whole 9 yards) while watching a clip from a horror movie. Being scared was never an enjoyable experience for her, anyway.

Oh, and we're having a second baby. Wheeeee!

Oblivious Election Night 2016, and Calvin's Halloween

 When I was a child I hated Election Night because my parents (particularly my mother) would keep flipping the television channel away from Monty Python reruns to check the local ABC channel for polling location result updates scrolling across the bottom of the screen. It was incredibly frustrating to have her click away from British absurdity and fill the screen with a suited news-anchor in a studio talking about people I didn't know as a mid-90's computer graphic (usually blue) filled the bottom 1/3 of the screen with names and percentages.

As a young adult, I found it moderately more exciting, as I finally had a say in what was happening. I even got excited about some of the candidates.

Now, as an adult, I find myself sitting here on Election Night, avoiding social media and news sites, feeling my blood pressure rise just thinking about what happens if front-running Candidate A wins (nausea), and what happens if front-running Candidate B wins (nausea plus fear).* My Grand Plan is to go to sleep tonight without having seen any numbers and have one last rage-free evening and night's sleep before waking up to a new President. We'll see how that works. So far there have been two episodes of The Flash on Netflix, and some knitting and ice cream.

So we pretend that nothing is frightening and awful, and that tomorrow 50% of the country won't be in an angry rage, and we talk about happier things like silly discussions Liam and I have, and Calvin's second Halloween.

Last year was Calvin's first Halloween trick or treat. You might recall that he was a fluffy chicken, and that he got more and more upset at every house we went up to (all six of them) because we would go up and climb the steps to the front door and knock/ring the bell, but then not go inside, which confused his little toddler brain because that is what you do at doors, you go through them, and here we were going up to doors and not going through them. There was a feathery meltdown and we went home and considered six houses a roaring success. He was very adorable, and I ate the candy he had collected in his bucket.

This year was Calvin's second Halloween trick or treat, and it went much better. We went to 12 houses around our neighborhood (a very popular trick or treat neighborhood, even in this age of "trunk or treat", where about 250 children come to our door. This is down from 600 in our childhood, but many of those children then were from rural neighborhoods that now host trunk or treats in municipal parking lots), and Calvin very much enjoyed walking around among throngs of happy people, walking up to doors and mumbling "tssk n tick!" and choosing a brightly wrapped candy from a bucket (he doesn't know what candy is yet, but he likes bright shiny things), and chirping "t'nk you!" at the grinning neighbors. He was dressed as a panda, and we learned that apparently pandas are viewed as effeminate bears, because no less than four different people said that he was a "very cute little girl". I ate the candy he had collected in his bucket again.

And now for something completely different, several ridiculous conversations Liam and I have had lately:
 ~~
Me: "LIAM. I found our new nightlight for Calvin's room!"
Liam: "Is it Captain America fighting Iron Man?"
Me: "No, it's a chubby cat!"
Liam: "Ah, that would have been my second guess."
~~
Scene: grocery store baking/spices aisle
Liam: /thoughtful pause. "Should we regret purchasing brownie mix this week?"
To really imagine this, add a pinch of resignation at our own faults to his tone.
~~

Also, we're painting the upstairs bathroom. This isn't particularly exciting to most people (it's Sherwin William's "Aloe," in case you're curious, and it's a really nice color), but it's really exciting to us because we've been in the house for a year and we're finally starting to feel like we're putting our mark on the decorating. Unfortunately, I made the mistake of seeing Pinterest ideas of bathrooms decorated with the paint color and now I'm totally unsatisfied with how my perfectly functional bathroom is decorated. I've got Home & Garden aspirations but a standard layout full bath and a Nope Can't Do That budget.

* Candidates C & D are disappearing quickly in the rear-view mirror, I assume. I purposefully haven't seen any voting results yet, and it's 9:30 p.m. as I write this. From Liam's grunts and carefully non-committal answers, as he tries to keep Election news from me at my request, I'm gathering that there is nothing really to be learned yet as West Coast states haven't closed their polls yet and no battleground/swing states have reported in yet.

And now, a note from our sponsor

Some reflection on turning 30
Liam here, and I apologize in advance that I'm not nearly as talented as my dear wife when it comes to waxing poetic about the daily life in the Jewell household - her prose is a tough act to follow!  Nonetheless, we proceed... fair warning, if you arrived at this blog update and were looking for a light post with cute pictures of a 2 year old I give you leave to skip this and continue to the next section by Elisabeth... I can be a bit wordy and serious and that's not for everyone - especially when it's unexpected.

I've been asked more times than I can count in the last few weeks about how it "feels to be turning 30" as if this 30 turns on a huge rock around the big ball of hydrogen we call the sun had some sort of mystical meaning or purpose attached to it.   News flash... in the bigger scheme of things it's just another day.  If you know me, and presumably you are reading this because you do, it means you probably already know that birthdays are not a big deal to me.  But it's as good of a milestone as any to evaluate the question, how am I actually doing at 30?
As you may or may not have heard, I'm now enduring a life in chronic pain.  My shoulder injury is neurological in nature, and has spread to much of my body.  After 4 years of poking, prodding, x-rays, MRIs, and declining health... the doctors are running out of ideas and have pivoted mostly to pain management instead.  There are days when I don't want to get out of bed, and many other days that I just can't physically do the things I want to do like go for a walk with my wife or even just pick up Calvin when he asks.

Yet despite that, I'm happy to report, on balance, I'm doing frickin' awesome.  I've worked my butt off and it's paid off - whether it was working 3 jobs at 14, working full time for real world experience through college to give me a leg up when I graduated into the worst job market since the 1930s, or forgoing fun for responsible choices many times over... after half a life of effort (and a hearty dose of fortune and parental guidance) I'm very pleased with the results of my endeavors.  I have a job I love and finally found a career I really can see staying in for a long time.  I have a loving wife, and a wonderful son... each of whom bring joy and light to my heart. Every. Single. Day.  I have a nice house.  I have paid off my student loans.  I own my car outright.  Life is stable, enjoyable, and rewarding.  On paper, I live the American dream... and while that means something, it also means nothing as it provides no actual meaning in and by itself.

Faced with the prospect of living your entire life twice over in constant pain has given me ample opportunity to ponder about what makes life worth living, and after all this rambling, I'd like to get to the thrust of why I chose to share all of this with you.

So, what am I thinking and feeling about turning 30?  Being 30 is the same as being 29 or 31 or 91.  You, I, all of us, knowingly or not, consciously or not, spend each moment looking for meaning, and what that meaning is, is unique for each of us.  My purpose, why I mean, why I choose to get up each day is not with the goal of making it to retirement so I can sit in a chair bored all day.  It's not to make a million dollars so I can buy a bunch of stuff that doesn't actually make me happier.  I strive to make each moment count, and I personally find most of those moments with my family. I challenge you to find the moments that count to you...and then pursue them.  Nobody will do this for you.  No matter our age, background, or experience, it's up to each of us to make each day count.  It's up to you and I to find our own purpose and it's up to each of us to decide why we get out of bed tomorrow.  And let me tell you, there's no time like the present.
~Liam

~*~*~*~

 

Ordering crepes is exciting.

It has been a year since we moved into our "new" house, and it feels like home. We've had a few disasters (remember the sewer pipe bursting in the basement? It turns out that it was a sheared off sewer main in our front yard, which ended up involving excavators and expensive plumbers and several thousand dollars. Incidentally, have we mentioned that you should check your insurance policy? You should know that most insurance doesn't actually cover pipe repair or replacement, only the damage caused by a broken pipe ), and lots of things have been breaking all at once, but interestingly it is all not nearly half so stressful as it was at the old house. I suspect this is because no matter what has been breaking, none of it has actually threatened the structural integrity of the house. The sewer pipe was stressful, but was ultimately outside the house. I remember February 2015 when we had an ice dam that threatened to actually soak and damage our walls and house frame (thank goodness that didn't come to pass the way the first contractor predicted) and siding and roof, and we spent sleepless nights wondering how we would pay to have it fixed. None of that sort of stuff has happened here. There's a ceiling fan that suddenly stopped working, and there's a bedroom door that sticks and doesn't fully close, and the shower sprays mist against one of the bathroom walls, and all of these things are fixable. We don't miss that old house. (We do miss the wide flat grassy back yard that we spent several years imagining filled with future children and puppies wrestling over soccer balls. But that's about it.)

Calvin is blossoming under speech therapy. His vocabulary is exploding day by day, and he's newly interested in "cooking" ping pong balls for people to "eat" in his snazzy new kitchen play set. He has added "Pop Goes the Weasel" to his repertoire of songs (which formerly included golden hits such as "The ABCs", "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star", and "Frere Jacques") and begs us to put a charming British children's show Sarah & Duck onto the television (it's on Netflix, and sometimes we watch it without him, because it's just that good).

In which our basement turned into a swamp

Let's clear one thing out of the way: It's a heck of a lot easier to Life-Changing-Magic-of-Tidying-Up your possessions when you're faced with sorting through a soggy box that has been sprayed by your leaking water main.

On Tuesday the water main broke in our basement. I'll spare you the details, but it was... not sanitary. It took 5ish sweaty hours and $1400 for our plumber to finally find the blockage: a root ball in the pipe in our front yard. (This means that it's likely to happen again in the future, with the charmingly nebulous date of "5 or 20 years from now".) The whole experience really pushed into focus how precious a commodity on-demand potable water is. It's a pretty terrible feeling when you aren't allowed to turn on any faucets or taps, or flush any toilets, and you're feeling dirty and just want to wash your hands. Not an experience I will soon forget. (Incidentally, if anyone needs a plumber recommendation, our guy was fantastic. I'm pretty sure that was NOT how he imagined he'd be spending his Tuesday evening.)

What this meant for us this week is that we've been abruptly forced into sorting the boxes in our basement left over from moving (cough cough, last August, cough cough). Lots of items are being aggressively donated, and there are lots of rediscoveries along the vein of "oh THAT'S where this was, I've been looking for this!". It has also shown us that there is a lot of work that we put off doing in the house, such as setting up our extra bookshelves, or setting up the furniture properly in the den/parlor/small-livingroom/whatever you want to call it, or fixing the fallen hanger rod in the walk-in closet. So this week we've set to fixing that. With the nerve damage in Liam's shoulder, most of this has fallen to me. To be honest, most of this would have fallen to me anyway because Liam lives a largely minimalistic lifestyle and so the things that are boxed up and need sorting are pretty much all MY things that he can't make decisions on. I'm fairly certain that were we to need to pack up and move tomorrow, Liam would be able to fit all of the worldly possessions that he actually wanted to bring with us into a single car, with most of the space being taken up by his computer and by our three cats. (Whereas I'm pretty sure I could fill a single car with my beloved yarn stash alone.)

Last evening we shoved and cajoled furniture into place into in the den/parlor/small-livingroom/whatever you want to call it in a large-scale sliding-puzzle game. We're really happy with the initial placement, but Calvin almost immediately began climbing on things and we realized that we needed furniture safety straps to secure them to the walls before our daredevil toddler pulls a 100lb bookshelf down on top of him. (Calvin quietly turned 2 last month, by the way, and apparently DOES NOT LIKE FROSTING which makes me question whether he is actually my child.) We have to get the furniture placement right the first time, though, because furniture anchor straps leave holes in the walls and we'd like to minimize the number of repairs we have to make.

Forgive the mess, we're still not done moving things. To our shock, Butterscotch "Shycat" Jewell spent most of the evening on top of our giant foam pouf. She was very upset that we had moved furniture and disrupted her Secret Lair of Hiding, but seems to be taking it much better than we expected.

In the meanwhile, I've come across stacks and stacks of "Oh I meant to read that" books, which I'm sorting into stacks of "I might still read this" and also "I need to gracefully let this book go". The new Little Free Libraries at our city parks have been the recipient of many of my books already, and I feel a little thrill of victory every time I come back to find that the books I left behind have been taken, and that the ones OTHER PEOPLE brought look untouched. Is there such a thing as competitive literacy spreading?

In which we move the vast difference of one mile, sell our old house, and all grow slightly older

Goodbye, old girl.

In August we moved across town. The move was arduous, in part because we are no longer invincible twenty-somethings, and in part because we had intended to grow old in this house and we had stopped keeping portability and future moves in mind when we purchased furniture and items for our house.

The new house is amazing. A larger footprint, with closets and a basement that has never ever flooded. A safer neighborhood that has streets that are easy to push a baby carriage in. Ceilings with right angles were confusing the first few mornings when we woke up.

In October we closed on our house sale. Our house was a unicorn (in a Concord suburb, 3 bedrooms, 1 bath, move-in condition, in the under-$150K price range) so it went very quickly, and to a nice family that knows how to keep up an old house and do things like trim doors so they fit in settled door frames. I hope they enjoy the park across the street. I'll miss that park.

At a paintbar for 30th birthday celebrations.

The morning of the closing I dropped by the house to walk through it for one last nostalgia trip, and to drop off muffins and a 'Welcome home!' card for the new buyers. I walked through the front door for the last time. I admired the tall windows for the last time. I hung out in the bedrooms where we had had plans to raise our children, and looked at the closet I had designed. This was the room I was going to grow old in. Here was the lovely large bathroom. I looked out the back door at the beautiful private deck surrounded by rhododendrons, and remembered how I had received the screen door as a gift for my 28th birthday. I stood under the graceful maple trees in the wide backyard, and remembered how the front pear trees showered petals in a fluttering white rain in the spring. I have fond memories of the beautiful kitchen, with the polished and glowing wood ceiling and the expansive counter space. I had doubts about selling.

Upon completing one full revolution around the sun, Calvin was rewarded with cake.

And then I tripped over the sloping floor, and whacked my head against a slanted ceiling, and caught my hip against the ancient door latch catchplate that sticks out an obscene amount, and the door knobs wobbled in my hands, and I remembered how cold the tile floor was in the cold cold bathroom. And how the kitchen needed that much cupboard space because there was NO storage space in the whole house except a difficult to reach attic with nail tips reaching out to scratch at your scalp and face if you dare to try to stand. "Charming" sloping ceilings where you lost about 20% of usable space. Doors that didn't shut.

At Ryan's wedding in June.

The move was not fun, but it was over in a day. And while we're still digging out from the boxes (let's not talk about unpacked boxes), we have closets and a basement, and the only thing we've whacked our heads on is the chandelier in the dining room, before we put a table underneath it. The strong water pressure is lovely, and I remembered what it was like to live in a warm and well-insulated house*. Living out of boxes while my parents finish moving 30 years worth of their life into their apartment has been a challenge, but it also shows you what you are really able to live without**.

Since we still live in the same town, every now and then I find myself by the old house as I'm running errands, and take that street instead of the more direct route, and I smile to see how quickly the new owners have made it their own home. There are blinds in the big picture window now, and pumpkins on the stoop.

What else did we do this summer? We went to weddings, we flew kites. Calvin turned one, and followed his cousin, Bryce, around at the family Fourth of July get-together. Elisabeth turned 30 and got a visit with her cousin Thad for the first time in over a decade. (Liam also aged, of course, but he didn't hit a milestone birthday, and he dislikes celebrating his birthday.)

Silly cousin pictures are more interesting than serious cousin pictures.

*when I was growing up, I thought that people wore long sleeves in the winter because long sleeves in the summer were too hot, so by default you had to wear them in the winter. I also wore short sleeves in the winter. I wore whatever struck my fancy. It did not occur to me that most people wore long sleeves in the winter because it was cold, and you NEEDED long sleeves to stay warm. This is a testament, I think, to the excellent insulation in my childhood home. Moving out after college showed me that pretty much everyone else spent their winter in a permanent state of almost-shivering. And that was when I started wearing socks around the home instead of bare feet and short sleeves.

Let's go fly a kite, up to the highest height.

**Except my knitting needles. Where is my binder of circular knitting needles? We haven't found the box that it's packed in, and I'm getting antsy to start new projects. I have a dragon wing cowl I would like to start knitting. Replacing $200+ worth in knitting needles (accumulated over twenty years) wouldn't be fun. It seems something goes missing with every move. We never found out what happened to that drill five years ago, or why ALL of our pie pans that disappeared seven years ago. We still haven't remembered to replace our pie pan, although we discover its loss and complain about it every few weeks when we're trying to make dinner and end up using a rounded casserole dish instead.

In which Sirius Black forgets how to Cat

"Prrrpt? Meow."

Liam scoops up Sirius The Cat and rubs his face into the cat's soft belly. Sirius goes limp. He is used to this. He lets his 14 pounds hang mostly limp and observes the room from a different perspective.

"Honey, you've got to trim his claws again, they're like talons!"

Sirius purrs. He is upside down. This is a novel experience for him.

"Seriously, look at these! Hawks would be envious of these claws! They'd be like 'Holy smokes, dude! Where do you not get your nails done!'"

Sirius lazily rolls out of Liam's arms and thuds to the floor, crouching. He checks the food dish. The Food Fairy has refilled it. We contemplate the idea of nail salons where eagles and hawks go to get their nails *not* filed.

~*~*~*~
Two weeks later
~*~*~*~

Liam comes home from work. Sirius the Cat wanders down the stairs to greet Liam at the door, and flops at his feet, face disinterested, but belly conveniently arranged from rubs. His ears betray his anticipation. Liam stares for a moment before swooping down to aggressively rub and razzle the cat's fur. His fingers sink knuckle-deep into black fur. Sirius barely twitches an ear, and lays his head on the ground.

"If I were an eagle, you would be dead," Liam informs the cat.

Sirius purrs, unconcerned.

In which we recognize that owning a house is a bit like Stockholm Syndrome.

Owning a house is a bit like Stockholm Syndrome.

"I love my house," one says. "It is full of charm, and it is Mine."

This keeps up until one has an opportunity to leave said house, to end the mortgage and find a better place to live.

"I hate this house," one says. "Nothing is level, and that cabinet sticks, and it's cold and tight and cramped, with no closets or basement or storage space, and an inefficient heating system and insulation, and I had to hang the curtains crooked just so they would look level!"

We're selling the house this year and moving across town to the house I grew up. (Well, we're hoping it sells quickly, that awful Thanksgiving snow storm tore down several large limbs on our flowering pear trees and crushed our rhododendrons, and honestly I'm pretty annoyed that that happened to some of our selling features only once we had decided to sell.) My parents are building an in-law apartment behind the house, downsizing from the two-story house that is ideal for raising a family but not ideal for the long-term plans of retirement (this works out ideally for Liam and I, as we are, indeed, at this moment, raising a family). It's a return to multi-generational living that was the societal norm before the 20th century brought the Postwar construction boom! We get the space, they get the security of independent living with family right there to help out (I'm sure my father is thrilled that he'll no longer be solely responsible for the front yard and the driveway). We're delighted to have the opportunity to have Calvin grow up with his grandparents right next door, convenient for sneaky cookies and play. We are also excited for a house with closets.

Here is a picture of Tomoe being cute.

This decision couldn't come at a better time, as we just got Calvin's routine one-year lead levels bloodwork back, and his lead levels are at the highest possible measurement that is still technically in the "normal" range. Did we mention that our current house is 140 years old, and probably full of lead in all sorts of spots that we didn't realize? All those "charming architectural details" that dazzled us when we were naive first-time homebuyers are suddenly a lot less charming now that we've lived with them for three years.

In which Elisabeth finds herself with more "free" time than she is used to filling.

Last night was my last night at the NHTI Library. Today, for the first time in 7 years, I only have one job (plus minding a baby full-time). I find myself a little bit lost. What does one do with "free" time? How does one stay focused without the constant threat and stress of missing deadlines, and getting to see your family only 1 1/2 evenings per week? It's a little bit baffling and a whole lot of overwhelming.

This transition to Only One Job (plus baby) is exciting (I'll finally be able to give both my job and my lonely child proper amounts of attention and interaction) and terrifying (oh jiminy cricket, that's 4 nights less a week of adult interaction where I am Elisabeth instead of Mummy, and what does one DO with a child all day when you're not constantly distracted and hoping he can entertain himself for ten more minutes while you frantically finish a press release?*). It comes as a good time, and Calvin seems to have skipped the Toddler stage of childhood and skipped straight to the lesser known Runner stage of childhood. This morning alone there were several terrifying moments where I feared for his safety, the worst being during my morning shower when I heard a loud thump from upstairs, which I immediately assumed was him somehow climbing out of the safety of his playpen and crashing to the floor. I then flew upstairs in a flurry of soapsuds, hoping to catch him before he toddled (read: ran) out of the bedroom and fell down the stairs. (This story concludes with me finding him still safely ensconced in his playpen, methodically flipping through an upside-down board book, and he was very happy to see a silly wet Mummy in the doorway, Mummy let's play now, Mummy, Mummy, MUMMY I DON'T WANT TO BE IN THIS PLAYPEN ANYMORE, MUMMY.) All unknown noises in the house are usually assigned to the cats. Sirius came trotting into the room with a hair tie moments later, begging to play "fetch". I blame him.



Liam will not need knee surgery, we are happy to report. His awful knee pain was fixed nearly immediately by purchasing a new, different pair of work shoes, with cushy padding in all the right places. This was thrilling (hurray, no surgery! no more pain!), and also incredibly frustrating (seriously? all this time and it was that easy a fix?).

In a short week, we shall be celebrating surviving a year as parents (the child survived, and even thrived, as well). In anticipation of our party (seriously, he won't remember the party, we're claiming the party as our own), I have purchased a bubble machine**. I wish I could say that I purchased the bubble machine for my child, that it was because I got light headed from constantly blowing bubbles, but the truth of the matter is that I have had my eye on bubble machines for some time, and only pretend to be a functioning adult. One of the benefits of having children is that people assume the childish amazing things you buy are for your children.

*(The answer to this is apparently finger painting, in case you were wondering.)

**It is shaped like a little round robot and moves around the room on little self-propelled wheels, like a roomba vacuum, spewing bubbles as it goes.

In which our little potato becomes a People

Well, it's happened. Our small child, The Hatchling, The Sprogling, Grasshopper, Player 3, Calvin (of the House Jewell, Slayer of Sleep, Destroyer of Avocados, the first of his name) has taken his first steps.


 
It is a reminder that the year anniversary since his birth is fast approaching. (When people say "they grow so fast" I suspect they mean "A year of my life passed so quickly, without me noticing, because I was paying attention to Someone Else" and honestly it sort of freaks me out that a year of my own life has slipped past with little accomplished except Keeping The Small Child From Dying, which is no small accomplishment, to be sure.




Our little person is now developing things that People like. He has preferences (bathtime splashtime, yay!) and acts on them (he crawls to the tub multiple times throughout the day and tries to climb into the dry and empty tub, good luck, buddy). He has a favorite book (Dragons Love Tacos, by Adam Rubin) and seeks it out, and carefully (and enthusiastically and imprecisely) turns the pages over and over and makes happy noises. (This book has also grown in thickness by about double, now, what with all the taped rips in the pages and binding.) He does not like shirts being pulled over his head, because they cover his eyes.

On that note, Liam and I have started planning Calvin's first birthday party. By "Calvin's" first birthday party, we mean "Our Party To Celebrate Surviving a Year as Parents, In Which The Small Child Also Survived and Thrived". Let's be honest, he won't really remember a party, and we are due for some fun with friends. He may end up with a cupcake of some sort. We will probably still have a pirate or dinosaur theme, but that's mostly because we like pirates and dinosaurs, and now that we have a child in the family we are more easily able to pretend that we are buying ridiculous things for him. We're uncertain if there will be an eyepatch dress code, but please plan accordingly.

Liam has just finished six months of on-the-job shadowing and training, where he learned the credit union's different job functions in-depth by practicing them three days a week on top of his normal job of trainer and putting together financial literacy fairs. It's been a long six months of unreliable schedules while we tried to arrange babycare coverage between our schedules, and long hours and heavy work loads, but it's over and he made lots of friends among his temporary co-workers, and he now has a very good overview of what his trainees need to learn when he brings in a new employee.


Elisabeth has had lots of exciting authors at her bookstore events, most recently two Newbery Honor winning authors in one week as she hosted Gail Carson Levine (Ella Enchanted) and Katherine Applegate (The One and Only Ivan). Charles Simic (former Poet Laureate) also stopped in for a poetry reading in April, his second visit to Gibson's.

On handymen who are not, and baby's first [fill in the blank]

Owning an old home is frustrating. There have been lots of previous owners, I believe we have mentioned, who fancied themselves handymen, and we have spent a significant amount of money fixing their mistakes. The oil heat has been a source of frustration to us in particular. For the last two years we have stayed warm during winters mostly by wearing lots of thick socks and sweaters, and staying near the pellet stove that we had installed. Imagine our shock, then, when our chimney guy came by to do a routine chimney sweep and pointed out to us that our boiler (the one we purchased to replace the antique one when we bought the house) was improperly installed. Literally the pipes had just been slapped onto the chimney with large gaps sucking in extra air, and had never been optimized for efficiency. He took three minutes to do a temporary fix and then came back a week later to optimize it, and our oil consumption has plummeted. I mean that literally. Before we kept the oil heat off because using it drained the tank in under a month, and now we have gone weeks with the heat on and barely registered a dip in the oil tank's level.

I won't tell you the name of the company that so haphazardly installed our boiler the first time around (I will pretend that that is because I am not a vindictive person, but really it's because I forget who did it, and I don't feel like looking for the invoice from 2.5 years ago).

It does make me angry that something so simple could have made such a large difference in our life. Our house could have been warmer. We wouldn't have gone through so much oil so quickly. It wouldn't have sounded like a dragon was in the basement every time the boiler kicked on to heat more water (although a dragon for a boiler does seem appropriate). We wouldn't have wasted hundreds of dollars on oil that was inefficiently burned through.

This same chimney guy also noticed that our forced hot water radiators were installed on a peculiar system where, instead of forcing the heated water through the a radiator and on to the next one, a circuit of pipes was set up with offshoots where hot water could go through them but instead usually took the path of least resistance and circulated past the radiators. We had a very warm basement, and cool radiators.
Who decided this was a good idea? It's a terrible idea, and I'm not a plumping or heating expert and I can still figure this out. And it must have cost more in copper piping to set it up this way, too. Oh previous home owners, I have dreams of punching you in the face.

(And seriously, if anyone needs a chimney guy, I would love to give you a referral. Kevin at Integrity Chimney is amazing.)

Baby's first 3AM firetruck and smoke filled house.

It has been an eventful early winter for us. Calvin grows and experiences more and more firsts (Baby's first time sitting up unassisted! Baby's first Lapsit adventure at the Bookstore!). Of particular note is the first he experienced early Thanksgiving morning where, with the power flickering off and on during a major snowstorm (Baby's first snow storm! Baby's first power outage!) we awoke to the smoke alarms beeping and the first floor filled with smoke. We were out of the house within a minute of discovering the smoke, all the while thinking "This isn't happening. This only happens in movies. This only happens to other people." Exhausted fire fighters arrived (having been out all night, going from one call to the next, remind me to make them a plate of cookies for the station) and examined our house (Baby's first fire engine!) while we huddled in coats and boots and bathrobes in the driveway, fat snowflakes fluttering down to land on our heads (Calvin was delighted! Everyone was up at 3:00AM, just like he liked it!). It turned out that we were never in any danger, the power had momentarily kicked on and our pellet stove had turned on and then dutifully smothered the flame when we lost power again, the smoke being pushed back in through the exhaust pipe by the wind.

It was still terrifying.

In other news, Liam and I have tried to get out on a date at least once a month (we have managed this 3 times in the last 6 months, so we actually figure we're doing quite well). We had our first date for my birthday, going to see Guardians of the Galaxy at the movies and eating at Buffalo Wild Wings, which was, incidentally, the last place we went out to eat in the days before Calvin was born. It was not intentional, but it seems fitting that it was the first place we went out to eat afterwards. We had our second date on our wedding anniversary, spending an hour furtively eating pizza at C.C. Tomatoes. We had our third date this past Friday, attending Liam's company holiday party in Manchester (delicious hors d'oeuvres and a production of A Christmas Carol at the Palace Theater). While we knew intellectually how important dates were to a marriage, it was startling to realize how different it felt to be together at home vs together away from Calvin. While we have carved out time to spend together at home (difficult since we have opposite work schedules in order to provide care for Calvin), a part of one's brain is always spent listening for the child to call out or cry or need you. It is only when you are away from the baby that you realize that you have really been spending time coexisting in the same room but not truly being together or being present for the other.
It was nice to reconnect, to be Liam and Elisabeth again, together.

In which the ceiling fan reigns supreme and the Mommy Wars have begun already

What's going on in the Jewell household?!
Liam has developed a new training program at work, and it is being well received. He's been at his training coordinator job for a year now, and loving it still!
Elisabeth has gone back to work in the evenings, leaving Grasshopper with Liam when he gets home from his own job. She loves getting out of the house and being "Elisabeth" for a few hours instead of "Mommy-Milk-Creature", and feels like she should feel guilty for not feeling guilty about being away from her child. Not being a full-time Stay At Home Mom is very necessary for her mental health. (Liam also kicks her out of the house without the baby periodically for her mental state. Empty errands to get strawberry milkshakes have never tasted so much like freedoooooom!)
Some part of our roof is leaking, probably some part around the chimney or the eaves, and dripping water in to our house. We noticed it when it dripped its way down in to first floor living room, soaking the horsehair plaster enough that it sagged and bowed and created new and sudden cracks in the wall. Hurrah. We are grateful that the cracks are not because a load bearing wall lost its foundation. A chimney sweep is coming to inspect our chimney and hopefully tell us where the problem is. (Also, we are delighted at the thought that we are hiring a honest-to-goodness chimney sweep. I imagine he will be wearing a cocky black tophat, have soot smudged across his face, and speak in a Cockney accent and call us "Gov'ner". In reality, his name is probably Bob, and he'll be wearing a Red Sox baseball cap.)
Liam is getting glasses. Partly because his job requires long hours at a computer and he is getting eye strain headaches, and partly because glasses give him a dignified appearance (yee gahds this man is aging well) that will help him greatly when he encounters people in professional circles who automatically discount his abilities because he appears very young. We spent a fun morning examining different frames to find ones that suited his face.
We went out mid-July to enjoy Market Days, making it one of our few family adventures this summer. We miss being able to tube down the river with our friends, or drop everything and go to dinner at someone's house. But we also watch all the little children running around at the street festival and imagine Calvin's delight at being allowed to ride the miniature train ride, or play with the bumper cars. Calvin did well for being taken out of his familiar home and wheeled around in the heat and humidity. He lasted nearly an hour before he decided he'd had enough. Well done, little man.

Parenthood has made the last year quite a journey of self-revelation. Our lives have changed so much!
You can always expect the relationships in your life to change when you go through a major life event. Some relationships will grow closer, some will fade. You will gain some friends, and some will fade away. Some of the people in your life will respond as expected, and some will respond in baffling ways, and some people will utterly surprise you by which category they place themselves in. Our old friends who have withdrawn we miss most terribly, and our newly strengthened relationships delight us. Movies and books and TV shows all seem very different now, a change similar to when we got married. Parent/child distress is more upsetting, we empathize more with the parents than we did with the children, news of war or terrible accidents make us think of the fear that the children went through, or the despair of the parents as they tried to save their children. We would do anything for this little man, and our hearts bleed for the parents who cannot save their children. Parenthood is wonderful and exciting. Parenthood is miserable and frustrating. The love is familiar and foreign all at once. I miss who I was before motherhood, and also look forward to adventures with our little man.

Baby news!

Uncle Henry holds Calvin for the first time.

I nipped Calvin's little finger when I was trying to trim his scratchy little claws. He screamed. He bled. He cried. I cried. I felt terrible. It healed quite quickly, but I still feel terrible, and afraid to try trimming them again.

Little man has learned how to smile socially, and expresses excitement sometimes (usually by kicking and panting in the bathtub, or reaching and vocalizing when he anticipates a feeding is imminent). No giggles yet. He is enamored with ceiling fans and shadows and bright lights, and has shown little interest in the toys we have for him. I feel like he is taking secret lessons from the cats and will soon start trying to play with the orange juice cap.

Our doctor's advice was to politely listen to everyone's advice, and then do what we were going to do anyway. It gets frustrating when someone circumvents this and says things like "Well, of course you're going to do such and such/would never dream of such and such/I hope you are going to blahblahblah," and then they clam up and pointedly stare at you with a hopeful expression, and you can't politely deflect their "suggestion". The Mommy Wars (where women passive-aggressively shame other women for their parenting decisions, who does she think she is, can you believe that she lets her school-age children run around with lemonade, it has got sugar in it, oh I hope you aren't going to use disposable diapers at all, or let him near a television before he's 12) have started early, apparently.

Wheeeeeeee!

The number of people who assume that my baby is like their baby is truly frustrating, especially when they couch their advice in the guise of 'stories'. "Well, my baby used to like me to dance around with finger-cymbals while wearing sequins. That would make him stop crying. Also, he had a Chilean stomach worm so he screamed for hours," they say, while giving me an expectant look. I feel like I'm being pressured to try their advice right then and there, and next time I see them they repeat their same story, discretely trying to figure out if I tried their advice. No. No I did not. My baby does not have a Chilean stomach worm, he has a stubborn burp, and likes to be soothed by gentle bouncing in an upright position. He also likes listening to music with a thumping bass, since he spent a lot of time listening to Lady Gaga in-utero, or rousing classical music instead of lullabies (1812 Overture is a favorite, as one, at one point, The Marriage of Figaro).


I do like stories of commiseration, though. "Oh, he's projectile spitting up/refuses to quiet unless you're holding him/peeing on you as soon as you get a dirty diaper off/chomping down while he nurses? Ah, yeah, I remember those days. You'll get through it. Little Joey/Shanaynay used to be able to pee on his father from across the room!" It feels like we've joined the world's biggest secret club. There's the head-nod of membership, where you exchange tired glances with strangers across the aisle in the grocery store, and smile in delight at a stranger's baby who is happily "Baa baa baa baa baa!"ing in the cart and banging a toy in rhythm against the cart's bars. There is the watchful eye

Today in microfashion: puppies, perfect for morning naps.

of stranger parents who keep an eye on the swarm of children playing at the playground, not unlike the  watchful eye of a herding dog who makes sure that no sheep stray further than the invisible boundary line. Not unlike the secret code among women (where you will give even your worst enemy a feminine sanitary product if they ask for it, you just do), other parents are there to stretch out an arm or leg to prevent a toddler from walking out a door when Mom is distracted for a second, or to lend a diaper in the case of an empty diaper bag.