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.

In which we suddenly realize it is almost August, and Liam's mother gets married.

It is in a sleep-deprived haze that I realize that the month of July is nearly over. Every day has turned into another adventure along the lines of "Keep our baby alive for another day, then get some sleep, possibly a shower." Our summer has slipped away, as we tread water keeping our heads afloat with Baby. Despite all of this, we have to admit that Calvin has been a delightful child for his first month. He maintained a fairly even 4-hour rotation of feeding, social interaction for about half an hour, and then 3 hours of sleep before beginning again. We had a few nights of 6-hour sleeps, and one beautiful 7-hour sleep. As he nears 6 weeks, though, that appears to be ending. The purple crying has begun, and he refuses to be soothed, and he's quite suddenly awake significantly more, and he's quite unhappy about it.

Liam's mother finally tied the knot with her loving boyfriend of several decades, Pat! The ceremony was held in Elizabeth Claire's beloved garden, and a garden party with all of their family and friends. It was a bright June day, with nary a cloud in the sky to threaten the 70+ guests.
Calvin was 2 weeks old at the time and we brought him to the wedding, spending most of the day hiding away in a bedroom to keep him away from the crowds in the garden (he's not old enough to receive vaccines, yet, and there have been whooping cough outbreaks this year). While we were glad to participate in the wedding festivities, bringing an infant turned out to be a huge mistake: he was so stressed out by the unfamiliar location and the people who snuck in to see him! We learned our lesson for sure.

First family photo!

We puppy-sat an 8 week Labrador puppy named Yarrow for Guiding Eyes for the Blind. She was very sweet, and did a lot of what I call The Bumblebee Dance, where she is so excited and happy that her tail wagging pulls her bottom back and forth as she twists and winds her way around your feet.

"There's something over there! Can I eat it? I'm going to eat it."

Here is an picture of our adorable baby, being adorable.