These Days

I feel compelled to apologize for the long silence this blog has undergone. As mentioned in the previous post: we have in fact moved to Texas. We are now happily residing in Waco:
While we aren't this happy every moment of our days, Katya keeps us well aware of the opportunities for joy that present themselves in every thing from getting dressed in the morning to crunching ice cubes.

I cannot remember who to credit, but I recall hearing said that motherhood is made up of long days and very short years. This seems to perfectly fit our time of life. Katya is 15 months old now and she is quickly running towards toddler status (toddlerhood? toddledom?). Each day I'm still challenged by simple tasks like cooking dinner, but on good days, I can breathe easy and revel in the quiet pleasure of holding a steady-breathing sleeper on my lap for an afternoon nap.

I am constantly amazed by this child. I stand humbly in the ranks of all first-time parents marveling at every gesture and step along the way. There is just no way of maintaining a respectable nonchalance in the face of such overwhelming cuteness.

And we're off and running again.

News as big as ...

We're moving back to Texas!

Crazy right? I know. And we'll be there before the New Year. Andrew accepted a job at Baylor. He's super excited about it and we're all looking forward to living near some old friends and family.

We're sad to leave our friends up North. Our time here in Canada has been great.

I'll try to keep up communications with some more frequency, in the meantime, I can assure you that babies are not conducive to packing. I put stuff in boxes; she takes it out. Great game. Slow progress.

Is this the face of a child who knows she's moving to Texas?

But we were taking a nap

While it's true that having children causes you to reassess your priorities; it's not exactly a shortcut to attaining altruism. We now value sleep as being one of the greatest of all possible goods. We go to great lengths to let sleeping babies lie.

So this only partially justifies our hesitation when asked to evacuate our home last Saturday. Katya and I had just laid down for a nap, when the policeman came to the door. There was a natural gas leak in the neighbourhood and he suggested that we leave the area immediately. Andrew only later realized how far eschew our priorities have taken us, as he hesitated because, "My wife and daughter are taking a nap right now, do we have to go?"

He was rationally considering the distance from the source of the leak and the diameter of the blast radius. We could be protected from the explosion by the basement walls...

And then maybe he noticed the odd look he was getting from the policeman. We did not in fact have to go; it was a voluntary evacuation. But could we kindly refrain from taking dangerous measures like starting our car.!?!

"I'll go wake them up," Andrew said.

Our flight from our home, lacked the intensity you might expect from such a feat. We put the baby in the stroller and walked down the block past the blockade of fire trucks and emergency workers. As we headed for the park where Octoberfest was in full drunken swing, I couldn't help thinking, were we later going to regret not grabbing a few family heirlooms or identification papers?

We stood among the lederhosen-clad revelers watching the Bavarian Strongmen pull dump trucks, laughingly wondering if all refugees face such surreal contrasts as they reach safety. I know the old masters understood tragedy, but polka dancing seems an insult worse than itchy horse-rumps. Were we going to return to find our neighbourhood flattened? "We'd feel the blast," Andrew assured me.

After a few hours of wandering the carnival, we safely returned to find everything still standing and the gas smell dissipating. A nap was the only thing lost.

The Post Wherein I Pat Myself on the Back

After a couple of posts where I beat myself up over my many mother failings, I figure I owe it to me to sing my own praises. Because a website where I chronicle the mundane details of my life just isn't enough some days. Pass the wine and chocolate. Did I mention I spent $10 in dark chocolate at the grocery store? I excel at self-care.

But to the self-congratulation at hand: I diaper my child in cloth diapers. Yes, I know, I'm awesome. The environment would be sending me a thank you card any day now, but the carbon emissions and use of paper would cancel the minuscule amount of good I'm doing. Don't misunderstand me, I do believe that cloth diapers are an environmentally sound choice (even though they are washed in a washing machine that uses energy and water). I just tried to insert a little humility - you know - to cover the smug expression that creeps over my face whenever I notice my baby's well-padded bum.


Honestly, I do feel a warm glow of smug happiness at the sight of Katya's cloth diapers. But I think that's because they are so darn cute. In case you want the specifics, I use Bummies: they are pre-folds, with separate covers (yes, I speak cloth diaper fluently now). They much cheaper than regular diapers and have I mentioned how cute they are? In an age where guilt is pushed and peddled, it's nice to breath easy over something.

As long as I'm being honest, cloth diapers really aren't that hard. I think they have been mystified somehow. On a daily basis, I find that a little preparation: a diaper pail, a dry sac for the diaper bag, a certain laundry pattern (a cycle that washes and rinses with cold water, then an additional cycle that washes and rinses with hot water) really doesn't overwhelm an already busy life. In the interest of full disclosure, while vacationing, I use disposable diapers and I feel terrible about it. I guess that's why I was surprised to find this article:

NY TIMES: Green but still feeling Guilty

These people are really going for the green gold. They are buying carbon offsets, washing their hands in toilet water; they go green for a living. I find it amazing that they aren't using cloth diapers. Diaper services would even help a mom and dad too busy blogging about greening the world to wash some diapers. I believe the environment does need saving and we have a responsibility to reduce, reuse and recycle; I also realize the messengers can be a little annoying.

My plug for cloth diapers is this: You too can recoup in self-congratulations all the effort spent rinsing and washing diapers.

Save the whales.

File Under Evidence

My baby has a bruise on her forehead, a little purplish semicircle. And it's MY FAULT.

Is it the result of her bolting through my fingers off of the bed? No, that one didn't leave any external markings, I can only conclude the injuries she sustained are internal. I was sitting beside her. I was holding onto her foot. How did she come to be down on the floor wailing at the betrayal of gravity and unreliability of mothers? I don't exactly know. As far as I can tell, she launched herself from the edge of the bed off into space and somehow I did not hold on. She seems to have recovered.

Andrew had to come hold me and say, "You're not a bad mother. You're not a bad mother."

So when he arrived home from work yesterday and noticed the bruise, he asked, "Is this from the bed?"

"Nope, it's empirical evidence of a whole new level of mother failure."

Our little adventurer takes more than her share of tumbles as she now attempts to climb everything in sight. She has even learned to hold her neck up to prevent her head from receiving the first impact of the fall. A small mercy for me.

So, why the bruise? Ah, well, I walked into a pole. while holding her.

This makes me feel awesome. I would worry about CPS looking for me, but I don't even know what they call them in Canada.

If it helps, she is dressed in a purple polka dot dress so the bruise matches.

Solid Food: We Hates It

This is Katya before tasting her food:


This is Katya after a bite of pureed apples:

No Zen for You or Why I'm Not Regularly Updating This Blog

I apologize for the long silence here. Thanks for your support & encouragement. I miss writing about our little life within our life even as I struggle to live it. You see, the problem is this:


Adorable: absolutely. It's like having an infestation of bunnies. Completely heart-warming, but still overwhelming. My house looks like it's been hit by a 28-inch tornado. My solution: throw a dinner party. Why, you ask? Because I've never recovered the brain cells sacrificed during gestation.

Dinner plans aside, life here is busy. When I managed to squeeze in time to do a little parenting research reading, I discovered that we'd skipped several months of developing because of Katya's determination to be on the move. The section for five month-old babies recommended we master sitting up unassisted. Where, I scanned the pages, was the information on unassisted, one-arm push-ups? Did the six months section cover: how to convince your baby that scaling the walls of her playpen is not safe?

Yes, she is Andrew's daughter. But really? Where's the genetic predisposition to caution that saturates my blood? When I did find the section of the book that describes our child it was under the heading: Accident-Prone Babies.
Does your child race through mobility milestones? Check.
Does your child move on to the next feat without bothering to consider the demands of gravity? Check.
Does your child need to put any and everything in her mouth?
Check.
Diagnosis: You may get to know the staff at your local emergency room on a first-name basis.
And I can't turn to scotch for solace.

There is no tranquility from which to recollect emotion and write. There are occasional minutes of preoccupation in safe spaces (high chair, bouncer seat, middle of the room) that allow me to eat or perform brief mindless tasks.

Currently, I'm writing this standing up, bouncing, while Katya naps in the carrier (because she doesn't like to nap out-of-arms- obviously). You see, I'm learning, making some much needed progress. I even washed dishes the other day, all while playing an elaborate game of fetch from the high chair. Major victory!

When I finally got around to enrolling us in mommy & baby yoga classes (so darn bourgeois-bohemian I can hardly stand it), I discovered something rather telling: Our local yogi welcomes babies 6 weeks to 12 months old, UNLESS they can crawl. Mommy & toddler yoga classes are for children starting at 3 years of age. It dawned on me: Zen and all that accompanies the art of breathing and posing is evidently not for those with creeping crawlers. No zen for me.