Happy October 31st!

We spent  a lovely evening with some of our old friends from Waco.  Jill throws a mean Halloween party, so it was quite fortunate for everyone when her little girl was born on October 30!  So here we are at Sophie’s First Birthday Costume Party.

Stephen doesn’t love costumes, but he agreed to be a good sport if I kept it simple.  Drawing inspiration from a theme party Laurashmaura threw a while back, we all came as crayons.  Stephen didn’t want a pointy hat (and I didn’t have black tissue paper anyway), so he is “used.”

Abby did not seem to mind her hat, believe it or not.  She actually wore it happily for a while.

We were part of a life group in Waco for four years.  When we started, we were all young marrieds with no kids.  Look at us now!

And a little more fall cuteness:

(You can tell she’s getting tired of the photo shoot.)

 

Boldly Going…

I’ve really been enjoying reading Lenore Skenazy’s blog at FreeRangeKids.  (For those of you who missed it, this is the mom who took a bunch of flack for letting her child ride the subway by himself.  Her basic premise is that parents don’t do their kids any favors by overprotecting them and micromanaging their lives to keep them from all pain and  harm.)

I really love this, in theory.  Stephen and his brothers grew up running around their property with slingshots and BB guns.  I would love to see Abby grow up to be (reasonably) fearless and strong; I want her to be curious and scrappy and not dependent on me for her security.  Unfortunately, the biggest obstacle to Abby being a rough-and-tumble Free Range Kid is…me, her neurotic, paranoid mother who imagines axle-cutting carjackers around every dark corner.

I don’t know where my constant worry came from, or really when it began.  But I realize that it is not rational, and that it’s a bit of a problem.  So, for the sake of my child, who should not have grow up into a timid little mouse, I must first become a Free Range Mom.  Yesterday I made a big, brave step: I took Abby for a walk at the city park.

Stephen and I found this wonderful walking trail last weekend.  Right in the middle of town, it’s a wide, paved sidewalk that winds through trees, across little babbling brooks, and beside green fields.  10 yards down the trail, the road noise is literally drowned out by the sounds of wind and insects.  It’s quiet, relaxing, and secluded.  Thus, it’s appeal…and it’s obvious danger.

After carefully weighing the risks, I decided to venture out.  Here’s how it went down:

Approaching the entrance to the walking trail.  A city worker is welding on part of the hand rails.  I make eye contact with him (Don’t even think about it, buddy…I could identify you in a line-up, now), and smile.  He makes a comment about the nice day.  I respond politely and keep walking at my brisk pace.  Although he seemed nice enough, I look back over my shoulder a couple of times just to make sure I’m not being followed.

I’m barely out of sight of the parking lot and I decide to turn off my iPod and enjoy the sounds of the wind and the water.  It’s so relaxing I barely even remember how much bravery I am demonstrating just to be here.  My mind wanders and I enjoy the mental meandering.

Passing my favorite part of the trail- a large rock spillway with two loud waterfalls.  I imagine my flexible future self stopping to let Abby stick her feet in the water and splash around.  Of course, as soon as she was finished I would cleanse her with a sanitizing wipe to remove the amoebas from her little hands and feet…but I digress.  I consider parking the stroller by the bench and reading my magazine for a while in this picturesque spot, but since it’s really sunny and Abby is in long sleeves, I decide against it and keep walking.

Stephen calls between classes to check in and finalize our plans for the evening.  I make sure to mention that I am at the park.  “It’s two o’clock and I’m passing the spillway,” I say, hoping that he will remember this detail if I turn up missing and they need to know where to send a search party.  We agree to meet at our house at five.

The trail is open to the public, but many of its features are still under construction.  The signs of workmen are everywhere.  Along the sides of the path there are plastic Gatorade bottles stuck in the branches of trees and assorted wrappers on the ground.  It’s like the trail that Hansel and Gretel might have left if they had stopped at 7-11 for some snacks instead of bringing their own bread.

Around the next bend in the road I see sunlight glinting off of a truck.  More workmen!  I debate whether to turn around before I get too close and they have a chance to see me.  Finally I lift my chin resolutely–onward!  The men are actually not that close to the trail; they are clearing some brush in the distance.  I wonder– who is more likely to bother me– one solitary welder (no witnesses) or three heavy equipment operators (pack mentality)?  I start to feel slightly guilty about my elitist prejudice.  These are probably very nice men who would just as soon come to my aid if I needed it.  But…I’m a good Calvinist and I believe in the total depravity of every man.  Am I crazy for being out here without a concealed handgun to defend myself?

Further down the trail.  I do not seem to have been followed.  I allow myself to enjoy the sun shining on the different colored grasses, and scope out prime spots for this year’s Christmas card picture.

30 minutes and 1.25 miles later, I come to the end of the trail.  It dead ends at a different busy road.  I make a mental note that if I ever have an emergency on the second half of the trail, I can flag down help here.

Triumphantly, I tap my sneakered foot agains the curb and do an about-face.  Now Abby is facing away from the sun and I open up her stroller shade to let her enjoy the fresh breeze.

About halfway back down the trail, I spy two moms pushing their strollers in my direction.  As we get closer, I want to salute them, “Hello, fellow brave travelers!”  But I settle for eye contact and a smile.  One of the moms is also walking a dog that she calls Bella.  This gets me thinking about Twilight, which is a pleasant way to spend the next quarter of a mile.

Past the bulldozing workmen, past the spillway, past the litter.  Before long I can see the welder working industriously at the entrance.  He seems to have made good progress down the railing, which makes me almost 100% certain that he has  not been following me this whole time.  His back is to me, and he startles a little when he hears me approaching.  “You scared me,” he laughs as I walk past.  Ironic.

I am now walking beside the busy street, and now I’m back in the parking lot.  I get Abby strapped into the back seat, and the stroller stowed in the trunk.  We drive off toward home, unscathed and stronger than ever before.

 

Family Matters

My sibs and I have never had much in the way of extended family.  We have had sets of doting grandparents, one uncle on each side, and one cousin, who is several years older than I am.  But when it comes to a Home Alone-style family, with lots of aunts and uncles and cousins running around, we’ve always missed out.

Well, I always forget, but I do have an extended family on my dad’s side if you trace back up the tree far enough, and we see them about once every 10 years.  This past weekend the relatives threw a surprise party for Aunt Margie’s 80th birthday, and so we made an appearance.

My grandfather (dad’s dad) had three siblings, and this was a gathering of all of their descendants.  Almost everyone lives in Houston and gets together pretty regularly, but we are the “distant” cousins in more ways than one.  Stephen was busy, so I rode to Houston with my parents, and we met up with my grandma and one of my sisters along the way.

My camera battery died before we even arrived at the party (I was taking pictures of Abby with my grandmother and uncle), so I’m having to use my words to record some snapshots of the afternoon’s festivities:

The party is at Doctor Steve’s house.  (He’s a chiropractor, and I’ve never heard a complete explanation of why his entire family addresses him by his title, but they do.)   As we pull into the driveway, Laura and I make a pact to never leave the other alone in a conversation.  Laura breaks this pact twice, but it turns out okay.

Speaking of nicknames, no one in the “first generation” is known by their real name.  The older siblings refer to each other as Brother and Sister.  My grandfather was called “Babe” for his entire life.  Brother is called Kuncle (k + uncle) by everyone else, and his wife is called Honey.  Laura and I are slightly embarrassed when we are the only ones who say her real name when we sing “Happy Birthday” to her.

Dad holds Abby and leads our procession to the front door.  He is greeted and hugged enthusiastically; I wonder if he feels like a little boy again when he is surrounded by doting aunts and cousins.

The rest of us are welcomed with equal warmth; although they know nothing about who I am, they know that I belong to Babe and Sara, and that I’m Mike’s oldest girl.  This is enough for me to get the family treatment, and I wish that everyone had a nametag so that I could respond more appropriately with something more than a smile and a generic greeting.

In fact, I wish that everyone had a nametag with a family tree on it, so I could see where they fit in the puzzle and make more personal small talk.  As it is, Laura and I sit in lawn chairs and make a game out of trying to guess who goes with whom.

Our very cute and perky cousin Sophie is flitting around documenting the day with her camera and helping all the older generations troubleshoot theirs.  My last memory of this girl is at a Christmas party thirteen years ago.  She was about four, and she ate all the radishes off of the veggie tray.

There are little kids everywhere.  Folks who ask look a little surprised when they find out that I’m 27 and only have the one little baby.

Does everyone go to reunions and think that theirs is the most normal branch of the family?

Laura holds Abby for a while, and while she is rocking her, three different relatives come by to snap our picture.  I’m pretty sure that no one will remember that the baby belongs to me.

We had been told to wear fall colors so that we coordinate for the picture, so I selected one of Abby’s cutest outfits,a brown jumper with light blue pants and little matching fake-Mary-Jane socks.  The jumper has blue hearts and bows on it, so I judge my cousin when he asks,
“What is his name?”
“Abigail,” I respond.
Kevin doesn’t even look apologetic, and he smiles, “Oh, she’s a girl.  I guess I’m not used to seeing girls in brown.”
(I am wearing a brown shirt, but whatever.)

One of the last activities of the party is the family picture.  We’re one of the last ones to hike across the yard, so we get a good look at everyone standing together, ranging all over the normal/awkward scale.  Dad snickers to Laura and I, “There’s your gene pool.”

Everyone wants a picture on their own camera.  The photographer is the friendly Indian neighbor, and he good-naturedly obliges.
“Get closer,” he urges as he prepares to take the first shot.
“Pretend like you love each other,” someone jokes from the front row.
“Pretend like you know each other,” Laura and I joke under our breaths as we squeeze closer.

On the way home, we debrief, pooling our memories to answer the questions and make the comments that no one wanted to say out loud at the party: whose hair is natural, who used to be married to whom, what happened to various BabyMamas/ BabyDaddies, whose awkwardness can be explained medically, which adult children were still living with their parents, whose gut has grown the most since we’ve last met.  It takes a while, but we get it sorted out.

After a brief silence in the car, Dad comments, “Isn’t it great to be part of a family?”  At first we laugh, but then we realize that he is right.  Even when we don’t know them, even when we think they’re super unusual, there is something special about those people who share our names and bits of our DNA.  So, we answer, “Yes, it is,” and we mean it.

 

Re-branding time

I just moved the furniture around in my house.  I don’t teach subjects the same way more than once.  I change my haircut at least once a year, and usually it’s more often than that.

While I am pathologically resistant to almost all varieties of significant change, I thrive on mixing things up in very small, non-threatening ways.  Hence, the furniture, the lesson plans, the haircuts…and, with frequent regularity, the face of my blog.

I thought that “If I Ran the Zoo” was appropriate for my perspective on life– it allowed for things to be a little hectic but still made me the zookeeper, even if I was just a hypothetical one.  But lately, even hypothetical control over the most basic elements of my daily life has proven to be elusive, and it’s forced me to acknowledge what’s been true all along: life does not go the way I tell it to.

So, I’m giving up on that.  What I’ve decided to seek instead is not control but balance, in areas both big…

(work vs. family
wife vs. mom
desire vs. obligation
contentment vs. striving
rest vs. productivity)

…and small

(cooking vs. eating out
shortcuts vs. real cleaning
literature vs. fluff reads
mocha vs. chai tea latte)

I thought about using the title “Life in Balance,” but that sounded too confident, too complete.  So I shortened it to a simple imperative, naming not only my final goal but the command I need to remember every day.

 

For Karen

Big girl in her Bumbo seat.

You can admire her lovely orange FuzziBunz from this angle.  No, I don’t make her wear pants around the house.  What can I say…she does not get that from me.

All that sitting up got tiring.

For those of you who have only seen Abby when she’s sleeping…here is proof that she does in fact have eyeballs.  And they’re blue, for now!

This is her polite smile.

And here she’s really cracking up.  It’s too bad you can’t hear the accompanying sounds…it’s super cute!

Here’s Abby snoozing in the chair that makes me covet her life– a thick, ultra-silky blanket nest in a bouncing chair.  I would totally buy this in an adult size if I could.  Of course, the adult version wouldn’t need the spit rag standing by.

A family self-portrait.

 

News from the Crib

Abby is seven weeks old this Thursday!  For those of you who are interested, here are some of our highlights from the past few weeks:

Week 6 was a big one for us– Abby has slept through the night several times now (that means 7 or so hours)!  Sometimes she will wake up once, rarely twice.  Hooray!  Her first night’s sleep followed her worst night’s sleep (4 hours, beginning at 3 AM), so we were especially grateful!  Her sleeping/eating schedule during the day is not super set-in-stone, but I think we’re getting there.

The other big development is that our little nonresponsive alien child seems to have turned into a little person–she makes lots of little happy sounds, and we are absolutely sure that we have identified a social smile!  She is getting much more alert and interactive by the day.  It’s super rewarding to get some positive feedback from our little girl.  We must be doing something right–phew!

This is not the smile, but it’s a cute face.  Stephen took this while Abby was helping him fold clothes:

On Abby’s other end, we’ve started transitioning into her FuzziBunz cloth diapers.  She wears them about 50% of the time.  Somtimes we go through our stash quickly and have to switch back over to her Pampers, and sometimes I just don’t feel like messing with the cloth, especially if we’re going to be out of the house.  Also, they are much poofier than her disposable diapers, and our little chubbo doesn’t have that much extra room in some of her clothes.  But the FB are super cute and, I think, more comfortable, and I love how they slow our progress through an expensive box of diapers.  We’ll probably try to transition into using them more and more as I get the hang of it.

Speaking of chub, Abby is packing on the pounds.  According to my last unofficial weigh-in (on my parents’ bathroom scale), she’s running about 12 pounds.  And that was at least a week and a half ago!  Some of her 0-3 month clothes are actually tight on her!  Tell me that Old Navy outfits run small… But her poundage has given her those super cute marshmallow cheeks, so I’m thrilled so far.

I headed back to work last Wednesday, and I have to say, I’m loving my schedule.  I really enjoy being back in the classroom, and I love my students and my co-workers.  My work days are short enough that I can enjoy time on the job and still feel like I’m giving Abby good quality time.  So far, so good!  Plus, it’s so fun to get to put on my dress clothes again!  Jeans and t-shirts are nice, but occasionally it’s fun to get put together.

The one sacrifice that I’ve made in my transition back to being a “working mom” is my hair–yesterday I got it cut dramatically!  It was taking too long to fix at night.  When the choice is sleep or blow drying, well, you can imagine how easy of a decision it was.  I like it pinned back  in a half-pony, so it looks like this:

And yes, Abby is making a goofy face.  We were trying to capture her smile, to no avail.

 

Too much of a good thing is…too much.

My first camera was pink and had a picture of Mickey Mouse on it.  It was the kind where you  had to buy an expensive attachment if you wanted to have a flash, and it was only good for ten flashes or so.  Plus, you had to pay to get film developed, so I remember my mom instructing me on making every shot count.

Fast forward about fifteen years, and picture rationing has gone the way of walking across the room to change the TV channel.  Now that everyone and their brother carries a digital camera around in their back pocket, picture overload is a much more common dilemma.

In the spring I worked on a scrapbook of our family trip to Germany.  Of the ten people in our group, at least five had a camera with them at any given monument.  Each cameraperson took a few shots of everything to try to get the best angle.  Click, click, click…that was blurry…a guy walked in front of my shot…now one with all of the siblings…now one with Mom and Dad in it…now one with just Alan and Katy…oh, hold up your ring and let me make sure it’s in the picture…well, you get the idea.

By the time we got home, we had literally hundreds, maybe a thousand pictures of our ten days overseas.  It took forever to sort through them all, distinguish the poor from the good from the better, and select just a lucky few to represent our trip.

Fast forward a few months, and picture these diligent documentarians in the presence of their first daughter/nice/granddaughter.  Oh, my!  Everything Abby did was new, or cute, or hard to capture on camera, so from her first weeks at home we ended up with–again–hundreds of precious images!  There were so many, it was  hard to really even enjoy them all.  Rationally, I know there’s really only so many pictures we need of those first yawns and snuggles with our various family members.  But how is a loving mom to cull the photos?

Even the pictures that are blurry or poorly lit can be hard to delete.  These photos represent moments of Abby’s life that we’ll never get back again!  Even if she’s making a weird face–not the one we meant to catch–it’s hard to get rid of it.  (Of course, if I am in the picture making a weird face, or looking excessively bloated, the choice was much easier.)

Anyway, the Germany scrapbook eventually came together, and just a few days ago, I got the bulging photo folders in My Pictures pared down to a representative hundred or so.  But it wasn’t without a few regretful scrolls through the recycle bin!

I started by making five or six sub-folders, so that I could divide the pictures up and look at a manageable number at a time.  Then I arranged “like” pictures side-by-side: all six images of Stephen dressing Abby in her coming home outfit.  Of those, I picked one that was the best.  Or sometimes I’d decide I really didn’t need a picture of Stephen dressing Abby in her coming home outfit at all, and all six would be deleted.  Hitting the delete button took some determination, but I feel a great sense of accomplishment now that it’s done.

Now I have a few great pictures that are easy to enjoy and share, and I have plenty of space on my hard drive for all of the cute faces and occasions that are coming up just around the corner!

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Follow up-  My mom and I were discussing this overwhelming problem the other day, and we decided that one good technique is to sort through pictures long after they were taken, so that you are not as emotionally tied to each one.  In hindsight, many lovely medieval buildings actually look basically the same.  It’s easier to get rid of the three or four versions of “Alan holds Abby at the hospital” when we’ve since taken several other lovely pictures of Abby with her dear uncle.  Just a little tip in case anyone else struggles with the same issue!  Meanwhile, I’m trying to break the habit of snapping three pictures of every sweet scene I’m trying to capture.

 

Two very different things I’ve enjoyed lately…

I love ice cream.  And just when I thought I could not love it any more, I discovered Blue Bell favorites on a stick…covered in chocolate.  Dee-licious!  The mint chocolate chip is the only one that I have tried, and since it’s a single serving of perfection, I haven’t felt a need to try any other flavor.  But you might like to!

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On a completely different subject, we have been reading to Abigail (and to each other) from the Jesus Storybook Bible.  It’s really good!  Sometimes I keep reading to myself even after we have finished the story for the day.  The pictures are charming, and the overall format is very similar to most Bible story books, but what really makes this version stand out is the way that it points out how every Old Testament story is pointing to Jesus.  How theologically sophisticated our little girl is going to be!  For example, here is the conclusion to the story of the Ten Commandments:

“‘God promises to always look after you,’ Moses said. ‘Will you love him and keep these rules?’

‘We can do it! Yes! We promise!’

But they were wrong.  They couldn’t do it.  No matter how hard they tried, they couldn’t keep God’s rules all the time.

God knew they couldn’t.  And he wanted them to know it, too.

Only one person could keep all the rules.  And many years later God would send Him–to stand in their place and be perfect for them.

Because the rules couldn’t save them.

Only God could save them.”

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Check out both of these great products!  Pure sweetness for the taste buds and for the soul!

 

That’s Just Wrong!

For the record- it is too early to sell Halloween candy in the grocery store!  Twice now I’ve almost picked up a nice big back of bite-sized goodness (you know, “for the neighborhood kids”) only to realize that it’s not even October yet!  Candy bought now would have NO chance of making it all the way to the end of next month.  Tricky, tricky, HEB, but I’m onto your little game…

 

Have I ruined my newborn already?

Advice for mothers of newborns tends to fall on one of two extremes:
1) You can’t spoil a newborn; do whatever it seems like she wants for a couple of months and worry about setting up routines when she’s a little older.
2)  Routines bring order and peace to your life and your baby’s life; unless you plan to cater to your baby/toddler/child/teenager’s needs for her whole life you need to start establishing boundaries and expectations right away.

My guess is that, as with most issues, the wisest choice is somewhere between the two extremes.  But, as with most searches for perfect moderation, I struggle with what that looks like.

Before Abby was born, I read Preparation for Parenting, which is the original “Christian” version of Baby Wise.  I love sleeping through the night, and I love routines and schedules, so the uber-order of this approach appealed to me.  But as a brand-newborn, Abby slept all the time.  She fell asleep while she was eating and would rarely wake up until it was time to eat again.  I couldn’t figure out how to force her to enjoy 15 minutes of independent wake time after eating, so I decided to let her do her own thing and sleep whenever she wanted to.  Her eating was always at least two hours apart, so I patted myself on the back for not letting her develop a “snacking” habit and figured that was good enough for now.

Well, last week Abby went through several days in a row of being irritable and fussy almost all day.  I decided that her problem is that she has not learned how to sleep on her own; she needed feeding or rocking to fall asleep, and she only slept soundly when I was holding her.  In desperation, I turned back to Preparation for Parenting.  But it was a little too severe for me this time around.  I did not appreciate the not-so-veiled insinuation that I was denying my child God’s best every time I rocked her to sleep.  So I purchased, and read, Secrets of the Baby Whisperer, which gave me similar advice about scheduling and routines, except with more warm fuzzy feelings.

So I am back to square one–I think it would be a great thing if I could get Abby on a more predictable schedule of eating, wake time, and sleeping during the day.  But how do I enforce that?  When Abby falls alseep eating, it’s hard to make her wake up.  If I do succeed, she doesn’t sleep well again until after the next feeding.  And how do I teach her to fall alseep on her own except for sticking her in her crib and letting her scream?  None of my books (and certainly not my feelings, for as much as those are worth) recommend the “cry it out” method, but I haven’t found very good tips for what to do instead.

So in the meantime I’m still letting Abby fall asleep however the heck she wants to, and we enjoy wake time whenever she feels like opening her eyes (which is getting more frequent!).  But, as the Baby Whisperer points out, bouncing a twenty-pound baby around the house to get her to sleep will not be nearly as fun as bouncing little newborn Abby, and I’m worried about sending a high-maintenance baby to her babysitters when I go back to work in a few weeks.  So I’m trying to think about transitioning her into more of a schedule.  Any tips from you veteran moms?