29 September 2010
I think I hate Glee now
It was funny and cute at first and Jane Lynch was great. But, each time I drag myself back to Hulu to see how the show is going, it seems worse. The most recent Brittany Spears-a-thon was maybe the most ludicrous plotline I've ever seen on a single episode of a television show. The vast majority of the musical numbers were supposed to be Brittany Spears fantasies on nitrous oxide? Actually that makes it sound a lot better than it was; that could have been clever. But it wasn't. Just a bunch of rehashed music videos. Gag. Intersperse a few teenagers/adults acting weird and pathetic and controlling (and not in sympathetic ways) and you have a serious waste of my time. Maybe I need to ditch TV again completely. Except Community. And maybe 30 Rock.
27 September 2010
That baby on the plane?
The one who fussed or cried most of the flight with that pathetic/dramatic oh-the-world-is-ending-whimper whimper? That was our baby. She was so so tired but just could not find the right position to sleep in. Believe you me she tried everything: on mommy, on daddy, on both, scrunched up, stretched out, on her tummy, on her back, on her side, legs hanging off the seat, head hanging off the seat, and every variation in between. Also there was that low fever she had, controlled somewhat by the Mexican Tylenol. She had two new little teeth to show for it. Aren't you proud, random stranger?
And anyway, isn't she cute?
See, that makes it all okay.
And anyway, isn't she cute?
See, that makes it all okay.
15 September 2010
Everything is Sentimental
Seriously. I mailed off my quarterly estimated taxes today and it was like "Wow. I am Self Employed. How did I get here?" [insert ruminations and ponderings]
Yesterday, Little A and I went on a walk in the early evening. It was the most perfect day ever: one part early fall crispness, one part late summer eve warmth, blue sky with feathery clouds breaking across it, zero humidity, much ahhhhhhh. It was a long walk.
As we walked I started to think about her as a teenager. Then I thought about myself as a teenager and how I wasn't very good at it. I spent most of my time waiting for it to be over. To my credit I did stop this habit once I got to college. College I loved and embraced as the first thing that had felt real in a long time.
But, this is not what I want for Little A. True, there was some benefit to me being more or less the impartial observer through my teenagedom. I learned a lot; I wrote it down, my life "wrapped up in books." But then again, when I actually HAD to do something instead of just watch and wait, I behaved quite stupidly. Behaving stupidly is definitely a rite of passage and Little A is welcome to it, but . . .
Mostly I just want her to live her life. I want her to be okay with who she is always.
I JUST WANT HER TO FEEL OKAY.
I was pushing her in her stroller and remembering this one thing I did as a adolescent that I am ashamed of to this day. I didn't have any trouble avoiding the obvious pitfalls: drugs and sex and what-have-you. But I managed to be insensitive, crass, and disrespectful to a peer in a damaging way that may have affected him for the rest of his life. It also may not have--I just don't know. What I do know is that when I was thirteen a girl in the lunch line told me I was "so not pretty" and I never forgot it. Not that I have a complex about it, but it's there. So something I did when I was thirteen could have had the same result. I wrote a hurtful letter one time, partially because I had been hurt and partially to look funny and cool to others, but I took it too far. This was almost twenty years ago.
I should have been better than I was then. I really should have known. I had been smart enough to know how to hurt people and how to be hurt.
So as I pushed Little A yesterday I hoped that she could be better, stronger, more confident in herself so that she never felt the need to put anyone down. To disrespect them.
But when I thought about it some more, I realized that maybe shame is a gift. Perhaps if we can feel shame it means we can feel love. As long as we know what to do with that shame it could be a good thing. As long as we can make something better with it. I mean there has to be a reason I have been remembering this one moment in my life so much at the same time that my capacity to love has been increasing.
When I look at my daughter and see the road of her life spread out before us I know I want to be there with her through all of it (okay, meaning the childhood part). I want to hold her when she feels the sting of rejection. I want to show her what we can become from what we are. Even if what we are isn't so awesome all the time. Mostly I want her to live courageously.
Yes it's very sentimental, but such is life.
Yesterday, Little A and I went on a walk in the early evening. It was the most perfect day ever: one part early fall crispness, one part late summer eve warmth, blue sky with feathery clouds breaking across it, zero humidity, much ahhhhhhh. It was a long walk.
As we walked I started to think about her as a teenager. Then I thought about myself as a teenager and how I wasn't very good at it. I spent most of my time waiting for it to be over. To my credit I did stop this habit once I got to college. College I loved and embraced as the first thing that had felt real in a long time.
But, this is not what I want for Little A. True, there was some benefit to me being more or less the impartial observer through my teenagedom. I learned a lot; I wrote it down, my life "wrapped up in books." But then again, when I actually HAD to do something instead of just watch and wait, I behaved quite stupidly. Behaving stupidly is definitely a rite of passage and Little A is welcome to it, but . . .
Mostly I just want her to live her life. I want her to be okay with who she is always.
I JUST WANT HER TO FEEL OKAY.
I was pushing her in her stroller and remembering this one thing I did as a adolescent that I am ashamed of to this day. I didn't have any trouble avoiding the obvious pitfalls: drugs and sex and what-have-you. But I managed to be insensitive, crass, and disrespectful to a peer in a damaging way that may have affected him for the rest of his life. It also may not have--I just don't know. What I do know is that when I was thirteen a girl in the lunch line told me I was "so not pretty" and I never forgot it. Not that I have a complex about it, but it's there. So something I did when I was thirteen could have had the same result. I wrote a hurtful letter one time, partially because I had been hurt and partially to look funny and cool to others, but I took it too far. This was almost twenty years ago.
I should have been better than I was then. I really should have known. I had been smart enough to know how to hurt people and how to be hurt.
So as I pushed Little A yesterday I hoped that she could be better, stronger, more confident in herself so that she never felt the need to put anyone down. To disrespect them.
But when I thought about it some more, I realized that maybe shame is a gift. Perhaps if we can feel shame it means we can feel love. As long as we know what to do with that shame it could be a good thing. As long as we can make something better with it. I mean there has to be a reason I have been remembering this one moment in my life so much at the same time that my capacity to love has been increasing.
When I look at my daughter and see the road of her life spread out before us I know I want to be there with her through all of it (okay, meaning the childhood part). I want to hold her when she feels the sting of rejection. I want to show her what we can become from what we are. Even if what we are isn't so awesome all the time. Mostly I want her to live courageously.
Yes it's very sentimental, but such is life.
13 September 2010
SICK
Everyone in my family (yes I'm talking about three people) has been getting sick lately. Today it's both me and the bebe. So, naps for everybody! Just hopin' we're all cured for the upcoming trip.
09 September 2010
getting it right
I finally participated in one of those political polls/surveys over the phone tonight while getting dinner ready and frankly it was fascinating. I had kind of a hard time with it because I'm a moderate mostly and all the questions were either/or. I found myself saying things like "well, it's not the simple." Or "both of these answers are wrong." I would even start to explain myself and then realize the person I'm talking to is more or less a specialized telemarketer. They're just reading the questions on the screen in front of them. "Can I do a write-in answer?" I asked once. Most of the time the woman would just repeat the question when I said anything other than a one-word answer and I'd either say "fine, I'll just go with X" or -- a couple times -- "I guess I just can't answer this question." I know it's just a poll, and of course they have to keep it simple to make any kind of statistical sense, but I could not help feeling just a little . . . cheap. Is that weird? It's probably a personal problem.
After the straight political section they asked me a whole lot of questions about the role of religion in politics and I think I had an even harder time. One question was whether I think what makes a person religious is a) their faith and beliefs or b) how they live and what they do. I was floored that this was even a question. "Definitely both," I said. "In exactly equal proportions." She just sighed and repeated the question. "I'm sorry but that's the best I can do." If I wanted to get into it I could say that if you truly have faith you will live it, but this is a multiple choice test--no essay questions--and faith without works is dead.
So then after dinner my daughter and I went upstairs for bathtime and while I was filling the tub and looking away from her for a couple seconds she unrolled half a roll of toilet paper and was just so excited that I couldn't help but laugh. After the bath we hung out in the hallway and she stood and held onto the bars of the gate at the top of the stairs and shook it and looked at me, smiling. I started to laugh and she started to laugh and then we were both laughing harder and harder because it's contagious. And later we both sang in the car on the way home from a baby shower. Then last of all I carried her upstairs for bedtime and she clung to me with ferocious affection (she's starting to really *HUG* now) and I patted her back and leaned her head onto my shoulder and kissed her goodnight and laid her down and said I love you. Then I came into the office to write this, about how I love being a mom and how I'm really starting to get it right.
After the straight political section they asked me a whole lot of questions about the role of religion in politics and I think I had an even harder time. One question was whether I think what makes a person religious is a) their faith and beliefs or b) how they live and what they do. I was floored that this was even a question. "Definitely both," I said. "In exactly equal proportions." She just sighed and repeated the question. "I'm sorry but that's the best I can do." If I wanted to get into it I could say that if you truly have faith you will live it, but this is a multiple choice test--no essay questions--and faith without works is dead.
So then after dinner my daughter and I went upstairs for bathtime and while I was filling the tub and looking away from her for a couple seconds she unrolled half a roll of toilet paper and was just so excited that I couldn't help but laugh. After the bath we hung out in the hallway and she stood and held onto the bars of the gate at the top of the stairs and shook it and looked at me, smiling. I started to laugh and she started to laugh and then we were both laughing harder and harder because it's contagious. And later we both sang in the car on the way home from a baby shower. Then last of all I carried her upstairs for bedtime and she clung to me with ferocious affection (she's starting to really *HUG* now) and I patted her back and leaned her head onto my shoulder and kissed her goodnight and laid her down and said I love you. Then I came into the office to write this, about how I love being a mom and how I'm really starting to get it right.
06 September 2010
If she were an embryo, she'd be born by now . . . or something
So. This baby has now spent more time living in the world than living in my uterus.
And while she's got a lot more learning to do about living in the world -- the last week has been a non-stop festival of "No, don't eat the plant(s)" including our second call to poison control -- I can definitely say that she l-o-v-e loves this place. She is a born explorer.
You know that phase everyone always says "isn't it the best" about? The one where the baby can sit and play with toys but is not mobile yet? Yeah, that did not happen in our house. Before she was able to sit on her own so that I felt like I did not need to sit behind her or right next to her she was lunging, reaching, rolling across the room -- aka exploring! Within days of her having the back muscle strength to sit on her own she was also army crawling. So yeah, "what phase?"
Now she's everywhere you don't want her to be. But she is the most fun ever.
I have recently become pretty sure that little A's personality type is the "spirited" baby. People have written many books to teach you how to parent such kids, and I may make use of them sometime, but for now I think she is doing a pretty good job teaching me. She's quite awesome at it.
From the beginning she was a lot of work for us. Of course since she's the first I just thought, well I guess babies are hard work--even moreso than I thought. Then we started getting these comments all the time: "Wow, she is really active," or "She's really excited/fussy/interactive/loud right now, it must be nap time/feeding time, right?" or "Is she always like this?"(answer: only when she's awake). So, I realize now that not every baby is so everything all the time as her.
And, though I have spent some time being a wee bit jealous of people whose baby sleeps through the night at two months, rarely cries, does not get into everything constantly, or even waits to show interest in crawling, etc., I love her so much for who she is (which is not any of those things). She is so much fun and interactive and such a charmer and I feel like she already knows herself. It's so cool to just watch her sometimes. The very thing that is pretty challenging about having kids is also the most wonderful thing: you just can't know what you're going to get. This baby is who she is. My job is to respect that and channel her energy for good. I actually feel very lucky to have this job. It is fascinating, inspiring, faith-affirming, and endlessly rewarding.
Edited to add stats for archival purposes or whatever:
The little shrimp is 26.5" tall (20%) and 15 lbs 11 oz (10%). She wears mostly 6-9 month clothes now but most are pretty baggy on her. She checks out on most of the milestones (crawling, standing, cruising) but they asked me at the Dr. if she plays pat-a-cake, which unless she taught it to herself is pretty unlikely. Haven't really been working on the all-important pat-a-cake skills so I suppose I'll have to step it up. Or give up as a mom.
And while she's got a lot more learning to do about living in the world -- the last week has been a non-stop festival of "No, don't eat the plant(s)" including our second call to poison control -- I can definitely say that she l-o-v-e loves this place. She is a born explorer.
You know that phase everyone always says "isn't it the best" about? The one where the baby can sit and play with toys but is not mobile yet? Yeah, that did not happen in our house. Before she was able to sit on her own so that I felt like I did not need to sit behind her or right next to her she was lunging, reaching, rolling across the room -- aka exploring! Within days of her having the back muscle strength to sit on her own she was also army crawling. So yeah, "what phase?"
Now she's everywhere you don't want her to be. But she is the most fun ever.
I have recently become pretty sure that little A's personality type is the "spirited" baby. People have written many books to teach you how to parent such kids, and I may make use of them sometime, but for now I think she is doing a pretty good job teaching me. She's quite awesome at it.
From the beginning she was a lot of work for us. Of course since she's the first I just thought, well I guess babies are hard work--even moreso than I thought. Then we started getting these comments all the time: "Wow, she is really active," or "She's really excited/fussy/interactive/loud right now, it must be nap time/feeding time, right?" or "Is she always like this?"(answer: only when she's awake). So, I realize now that not every baby is so everything all the time as her.
And, though I have spent some time being a wee bit jealous of people whose baby sleeps through the night at two months, rarely cries, does not get into everything constantly, or even waits to show interest in crawling, etc., I love her so much for who she is (which is not any of those things). She is so much fun and interactive and such a charmer and I feel like she already knows herself. It's so cool to just watch her sometimes. The very thing that is pretty challenging about having kids is also the most wonderful thing: you just can't know what you're going to get. This baby is who she is. My job is to respect that and channel her energy for good. I actually feel very lucky to have this job. It is fascinating, inspiring, faith-affirming, and endlessly rewarding.
Edited to add stats for archival purposes or whatever:
The little shrimp is 26.5" tall (20%) and 15 lbs 11 oz (10%). She wears mostly 6-9 month clothes now but most are pretty baggy on her. She checks out on most of the milestones (crawling, standing, cruising) but they asked me at the Dr. if she plays pat-a-cake, which unless she taught it to herself is pretty unlikely. Haven't really been working on the all-important pat-a-cake skills so I suppose I'll have to step it up. Or give up as a mom.
02 September 2010
eShakti: ridicul-awesome or meh?
So I ordered a dress. And I like it okay. Yup, just okay. I had read a bazillion random blog-reviews of eShakti and most of them were just so so glowing that I got really excited. But still in the back of my mind was a bit of doubt as I had seen the pics people took of themselves in the clothes and on average they were kind of ... well ... lackluster. Not bad, but just okay. However, the gushing. Just so much gushing I figured the pictures lied and people were just bad photographers.
On the plus side, the dress fits and it is pretty unique. I had them add sleeves and everything, so it's potentially one-of-a-kind. Oh yeah, back up a bit. That's the whole thing with eShakti. You can have them custom make clothes to fit your measurements and you can even customize sleeves, length, and sometimes neck style. A lot of the patterns they use are really stylish too, including some Anthropologie knock-offs. Anyway, it's a very, very cool concept. $70 for a tailor-made dress that maybe no one else has ($60 for off-the-rack sizing 0-26). Oh, and that's just the retail price. They have sales and a $15 off coupon. Definitely worth the occasional splurge, no?
I think where things go a wee bit wrong is in the fabric quality. The one I got just doesn't quite lay right and it's coarser than I thought it would be. So, fine for a summer-sun-dress-chillin'-on-vacation sort of thing, but not for dress-up when you want to look really swell. By the way, it's possible I just chose the wrong item. Perhaps "day dress" really does mean "yeah, don't try wearing this anywhere fancy and definitely not for a night out." If so, it's my problem.
Anyway, I'll post the pictorial tour after I get LCD to take some photos. I am keeping the dress as it will be useful sometimes and I can't get all my money back since it was tailored.
On the plus side, the dress fits and it is pretty unique. I had them add sleeves and everything, so it's potentially one-of-a-kind. Oh yeah, back up a bit. That's the whole thing with eShakti. You can have them custom make clothes to fit your measurements and you can even customize sleeves, length, and sometimes neck style. A lot of the patterns they use are really stylish too, including some Anthropologie knock-offs. Anyway, it's a very, very cool concept. $70 for a tailor-made dress that maybe no one else has ($60 for off-the-rack sizing 0-26). Oh, and that's just the retail price. They have sales and a $15 off coupon. Definitely worth the occasional splurge, no?
I think where things go a wee bit wrong is in the fabric quality. The one I got just doesn't quite lay right and it's coarser than I thought it would be. So, fine for a summer-sun-dress-chillin'-on-vacation sort of thing, but not for dress-up when you want to look really swell. By the way, it's possible I just chose the wrong item. Perhaps "day dress" really does mean "yeah, don't try wearing this anywhere fancy and definitely not for a night out." If so, it's my problem.
Anyway, I'll post the pictorial tour after I get LCD to take some photos. I am keeping the dress as it will be useful sometimes and I can't get all my money back since it was tailored.
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