What is . . .

Today Sullivan is 3 months old. Of course he wears it well; he doesn’t look a bit over 2 months and 2 weeks. In order to maintain some semblance of order, we’ve established an evening ritual around the house. Dinner together, followed by Sully’s bath, which I give him while Jeff and Jude play pirate ship or Spiderman or Fireman and Fireman’s Daddy (Jude has a boundless little imagination, a trait that I hope he keeps even as he grows up). Then I dry off Sully and change him, usually with some help from Jude (which involves a lot of “Please don’t touch your brother that way.” “Why, Mom?” “Because you don’t want to break his arm.” “Why don’t I want to break his arm?” Etc.)

After Sully’s bath he gets an after dinner bottle and I settle on the couch to feed him and can really focus on him. I talk to him, but interacting with him while he is eating is often futile because he closes his eyes, this look of supreme ecstasy on his face. As Sully eats, Jeff gets Jude’s bath ready and goes through the Jude evening ritual of using the potty, brushing teeth, etc. By the time Jeff actually corrals Jude into the tub, it is time for Jeopardy.

I recently rediscovered Jeopardy after a long absence and I was happy to discover that not all of my quiz show brain cells had atrophied. Sure, some of the categories (World History, Mathematics, Ancient Sumeria, guess Alex Trebeck’s annual salary) make me frown and make wildly inaccurate guesses (yes, I always guess) but I smile at the Cinema, Literature and Stuff Even an Idiot Knows categories because I can clean up in these areas. When I know the answer, I try to explain to Sullivan how I knew I was right and sometimes he will open one eye and look up at me. When I guess wrong, I explain to him why I didn’t have any clue.

When I was younger, I loved Jeopardy and when I lived with my parents, I would watch it every night. My stepfather and I would get wildly competitive. No one else cared, but we would try to beat each other to the answers. It seemed the one thing that we had; he always had far more in common with my brother and stepsister than with me. And from the comfort of my living room, I was pretty darn . . .adequate. Some days I was on fire, other days I didn’t know how to spell my own name (and my maiden name was a pretty simple one, so that is embarrassing).

Feeling cocky in my youth, I even auditioned for Jeopardy – twice. Both times auditions were held here in the Midwest, so I didn’t have to travel far: once for the regular show and once for the college tournament (obviously when I was in college). The audition process was actually pretty fun in that it was a written test in 50 different categories. Yes, to me taking that test was fun. Then the tests are scored, but the potential contestants don’t get to find out how they did unless they did well enough to warrant the second part of the audition and I didn’t get that far. This is a genius technique, in that it allows you to delude yourself into thinking that you were only one question from passing. Amazingly, I was only one question away both times. So close!

Rediscovering Jeopardy made me nostalgic for learning. More than that, it made me nostalgic for game shows. In my youth I would devour quiz shows and the shows today don’t seem to have the same draw to me. I have never deliberately sat down to watch an episode of Deal or No Deal, but have seen parts of it many times. Inevitably, at just the right moment turning off a DVD or turning the channel, I will settle on Deal or No Deal and physically cannot turn it off. It seems a celebration of people making monumentally foolish decisions. Perhaps if I were the one on television, I, too, would throw away huge wads of cash in search of a dream million that I will likely never see. But the show frustrates me and makes me mad because people are taking stupid chances when they have life-changing amounts of money right in their hands. I know Jeff gets amused that I get so worked up, often saying things to the television that I should not. I feel like I just can’t help myself.

A few years ago, before Jude was born, the show The Weakest Link was wildly popular for about two months and the show came here to my town seeking contestants. I was there in line to audition. The test given for that was very brief (10 questions maybe – I forget), but the main part of the audition was all about personality, about being able to brag about the wildly fascinating things that you have done. Since I have no discernable personality, I didn’t have a chance. The show-off seated next to me was a law school student who composed her own operas and fixed helicopters in her spare time (yes, really). How could I possibly compete with that?

Answer: The sweetest, most cuddly three-month-old on the planet

Question: Who is Sullivan?

I Need to be Committed

There are certain things to which I have committed with no hesitation. For example, several years ago when Jeff came home from work one day and threw a ring at me, saying “You want to get married or what?” I replied without hesitation “I wish you had taken the ring out of the box before you did that.” Then, an enthusiastic “Yeah, okay.”

Then, in May of 2004, I was feeling a little unwell and went to the doctor. “Doctor,” I said. “I’ve gained a pound or fifty and wanted to know if that’s normal.” Immediately, he said “Well, you’re pregnant, so, yes, that’s normal.” “Are you sure?” I wondered. “Yes, I’m sure. And you’re almost eight months along.” Staring at that ultrasound of a full-grown baby, I decided to commit to having that baby.

But I have an inability to commit to a “best of” list. I can’t choose my favorite movie or favorite song. I can narrow it down to 20 or so, but have an impossible time choosing an absolute favorite, and, even with a list of 20, am always worried that I am leaving something off. Jeff and I occasionally discuss “the list,” that silly list composed of 5 famous people that you would “be allowed” to have sex with, no questions asked from your spouse. It is a silly exercise, and certainly one that could cause an argument if not handled in the very silly spirit in which it should be intended. So, this morning as I got ready for work, Jeff threw down the gauntlet. I picked it up and said “I think you dropped this,” but I did accept his challenge to choose my 5 people. He posted his list on his blog last night: http://dungtheblog.blogspot.com/

So, after much anxiety and fretful nail-biting, here is the list (in no particular order) that, once I actually post it, I will likely want to change, fearing that I left someone off:

James Marsters. I am certain he never gets tired of people saying “Do the accent. Do the accent.” Or maybe he loves that, either way, I would have to insist on the Spike accent. And the hair.

Tom Welling. The baby on the list. The hot, dark-haired farmboy/Superman from Smallville.

Julian Sands. I’ve always been oddly drawn to him. British and proper, but there is definitely something really sexual going on underneath.

Jude Law. Just so beautiful to look at. He runs a tie with Ewan Macgregor. I have harbored my crush on Ewan longer, but I really think that they should be counted as one selection. If I had to choose one (and really, Jeff, isn’t that cruel and exclusionary?) I would have to go with Ewan with a slight edge.

Jake Gyllenhaal. So adorable. I really want to hug him.

Honorable mentions: Christian Bale (talented and attractive, plus there’s the whole Batman suit); Jason Lee (he was always so cute and funny in Kevin Smith’s movies, but I am afraid that the Earl mustache is a deal breaker); Brad Pitt (whose name I feel almost guilty in including, as it seems so cliché, but that would be the long-haired tortured soul Brad Pitt of Interview with the Vampire and Legends of the Fall; and John Krasinski (very boy-next-door quality that I like).

So, there you have it: my probably definitive list.

Subject to change.

Jeff has embarked on a “365” blog project, posting a picture every day for a year.” If you’d like to see the photos or learn more about it, here you are: http://project365jeff.blogspot.com/

Song of the day: “Rest in Peace,” the James Marsters-sung song from the "Once More With Feeling" Buffy episode.

Douglas, Christopher and Me

It began with a Borders gift card and spiraled into trademark introspection. Although there is a Borders bookstore less than ten minutes from my house, I opted to use my gift card online. Immediately, I decided to purchase a couple of Christopher Moore books As I perused the many Moore choices, thinking of Moore's very wicked sense of humor, it occurred to me that there were other writers whose works I am interested in collecting. Chief among these is Douglas Adams.
And, cause and effect being what they are, thinking of Douglas Adams made me remember my introduction to his brilliance. In high school, hanging out at a friend's house, I would occasionally get the opportunity to talk to her older sister. After a few conversations with said sister, she handed me a book and said "Read this. I really think you'll love it." The book was Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency and Jeri was right: I did love it.
Jeri was a popular girl, very pretty, very smart and very funny. Just all-around cool. What she ever saw in me to make her think I would be interested in Adams, I'll never know, but I am glad for the introduction. She was just cool. There isn't any better way to describe her.
Adams saved me the summer I spent working on Mackinac Island. I purchased all of the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy books from the island bookstore and spent my days off camped out in Marquette Park, reading. Without a doubt it is some of the funniest stuff I have ever read and I loved every moment of reading those books.
Then, years later, a friend introduced me to Christopher Moore's book Lamb and I admit that was also love-at-first-read. I adored it and laughed hysterically through it. This friend of mine, also much cooler than I am.
I have discovered that I don't mind being the least cool person I know. I have cool people in my family, very cool friends and a husband way cooler than I am. That tends to keep life interesting, I think. I have always sought the company of interesting people and populate my bookshelf with interesting reads. Life is too short to do otherwise.
For now, I am cool to my children, but I know that will pass quickly and they will discover my utter uncoolness and that's fine in a whole circle-of-life kind of way.
I ended up buying books by Adams and Moore and I can't wait to read them. And, if my obvious eagerness makes me even less cool, well, so be it.

Song of the day: "Most of the Time" from Bob Dylan. A perfect song of heartbreak and loss from a very cool guy.

Parental moment of the day: Sometimes, I just feel like a mother. Jude wanted me to read a book to him, his Big Frank firetruck book so I asked him where it was. He said "I put it on top of the thing that I take stuff out of" and I knew exactly what he meant.

My Boy Likes to Potty . . . .Some of the Time

It is a new year, time to look ahead, to make resolutions, a time to focus on the future. I’m bucking that trend and discussing a topic that was so last year in my home: potty training. It is the topic that will be last year, this year and possibly next year. When we decided to potty train Jude, it occurred to me that this is a somewhat sadistic process. Basically we are telling our small child that everything he has done up until this point has been wrong and now he has to put that in there or he will forever be ostracized by polite society (and impolite society is just as apt to call him “poopy pants.”) But, Jude is a bright kid (so says his very biased mother) and he took to potty training right away. Brilliant, I thought. Potty training is great.

Then, as weeks, then months, wore on, potty training was not great. It was a struggle of wills, a battle of wee child and frustrated mother. We bought books, as I am a firm believer in the written word and find that I personally learn best from books. There were big grown-up books for us and adorable potty books for Jude. So, we read books and shared Dora and Elmo potty stories with Jude. We had stickers as rewards for each successful deposit. We experimented with big potty vs. little potty, standing up vs. sitting down (and though Jude did all combinations of these, he prefers his little potty now). There was much hugging and high-fiving with successes. Then, the successes stopped. Jude treated his pull-ups as diapers and my taking him into the potty every half hour did no good because he refused to use the potty.

One book that I read promised a “no crying” potty training approach. Lies, lies, lies. Evil propaganda. I cried. Jude cried. The cat cried, thinking “I go potty in my litter box every time. Where are my damn stickers?”

We had decided many months ago just to try underwear, but, unfortunately, the smallest underwear were still too big for Jude (boy will he love stories like this when he gets older!) Instead, we opted for Pull-ups (or as I now call them “those things that are just like diapers, only bigger”). Over the weekend, we decided to try said underwear again and though they fit very well, we had a completely disastrous day. More crying ensued, along with much laundry, but, since we have over a foot of snow outside our door, we weren’t going anywhere anyway. Then, the next day, a wonderful success. I was so happy and proud, as was Jude, who pronounced that he was going to show all of his friends at daycare his “cool big-boy Elmo underwear.” When I left him this morning, he had a spare pair in his hands and I think that’s what he meant, but suddenly I have visions of him flashing his Elmo-covered bum at the other kids at daycare. If that happens, though, I’ll know he is more like his dad than I originally suspected. And, I will have a good laugh because, as any elementary school kid will tell you, ultimately pee and poop are funny. So with a sense of humor and plenty of stickers, we will survive.

Song of the day: Death Cab for Cutie's "Lack of Color"


Photo: portrait of the potty-er as a young man

Let the Healing Begin

Two weeks ago we took Sully for his two-month check-up. He is healthy and is growing very steadily. He now weighs 10 pounds, 13 ounces and is 23 inches long. Of course, with these early doctor visits come shots, but we take Sully to the health department for his vaccinations. He fared those very well, too, with a bit of crying, then an extended nap. Fortunately, he did not get a fever afterward, which can happen.

We brought Sullivan home from his doctor’s visit and Jeff and I watched the children, baby Sullivan and Jude, our preschooler who learns a bit too much every day. Our hearts were full. We turned to one another. “Let’s have another child,” we said, “Another addition to this family.” Then we laughed, deep, full-body laughter that filled the house. For, you see, we had already decided that two children was the perfect number for us. No more pregnancies for me, no more babies for us. As it is, unless things pick up in the finance department, we may have to just pick a favorite child and let him go to college. Let’s see how school goes. Maybe we won’t have to worry about college.

So, as brave men before him have done, Jeff opted to get a vasectomy. In fact, he was quite mature about the whole thing. Mature, that is, until we had a consultation at the doctor’s office and were given a video to watch that outlined the whole procedure. Then we both snickered and mocked the video, laughing until the doctor rejoined us in the room. We had the maturity level of junior high school boys in a sex ed class.

A few days later (last Friday), I drove Jeff to his appointment. An hour later, the deed was done. Jeff described the experience as “painless” (yes, really) and spent the weekend lying about with a strategically placed bag of frozen peas, per the doctor’s orders. By Monday, he was doing very well, though he had a ten-pound weight restriction, which meant he couldn’t pick up Jude. (Defying the weight restriction didn’t even cross his mind after the doctor’s vivid descriptions of what could happen if he did.) Here it is, one week later and it is as though nothing ever happened. I thought it was a bit in bad taste for him to unzip his pants at his mother’s Christmas party and offer to show everyone the (tiny) scar, but it did make a very lovely centerpiece.

Just so he didn’t feel left out, Jude managed to cut the tip of his forefinger on a chair. He didn’t cry, but came to me and said “Mom, I cut myself,” as he left a trail of blood. I cleaned and bandaged it and it wasn’t until the band-aid came off that Jude decided that it hurt. Fortunately, that, too, passed and he has recovered.

And as for me? I am sleep-deprived and experiencing a bit of holiday hangover. In other words, I am just fine. All is well.

Song of the day: Lou Reed's "Perfect Day." No particular reason: Just a great song, one of my favorites.

Movie of the day: Spiderman 3. I am now in my third viewing since Christmas and, though I will never admit it to Jude, I actually enjoy it.

Weekend Update

There is a scene in the movie, Ordinary People, between Donald Sutherland’s character and Mary Tyler Moore’s character where he says to her something along the lines of “You can’t see things except for the way they affect you.” Her response is “no, I can’t and neither can anyone else.” It is one of my favorite exchanges in the movie and such a true sentiment. If that weren’t true, I likely wouldn’t even have a blog. I write about what interests me, not really considering whether anyone else would be interested in reading it. I suppose that there are worse reasons for writing.

Speaking of writing, I recently discovered the very first draft (thirty pages only) of the novel that I continue to write and discovered that it is actually older than my oldest child. My novel turned four in October. Four years. In that time, I managed to have two children and get a new job, but haven’t been able to finish this novel. Still, I haven’t given up. The trouble I have now is that ideas are coming faster than I can write them. That rarely happens and I certainly am not complaining. Just need to set aside more time to write.

Friday evening I went to bed as usual around 8:30, as Jeff and I are sleep-sharing (like time-sharing, only we don’t travel and one of us is always with the infant). I awoke from a sound sleep just before 1:00 a.m. (Jeff generally comes to wake me up at 1:30 or 2:00) and went to check on them. Jeff was holding Sully and he looked up at me and said “He’s warm.” We took his temperature and it was 102 degrees. Jeff packed Sully’s diaper bag and took him to the hospital while I waited at the house with Jude. Just after Jeff left, Jude awoke and I went into his room to comfort him. It was agony waiting for Jeff to call, but it just wasn’t practical for us both to go to the hospital. Finally, he called. There was nothing to worry about. Sully still had a good appetite and wasn’t dehydrated or listless. They arrived home shortly afterward and I held onto him as he slept. I just let him sleep there the rest of the night, as I did not want to set him down. There isn’t any other feeling in the world like holding a sleeping baby, feeling the complete trust that the baby has, just watching him sleep. No one ever told me that I would have that feeling. No one ever told me that I would wake up in the middle of the night, concerned because the baby is not crying, would stand over him just to make sure that he is still breathing. Sully continued to have a fever until Sunday afternoon and seems just fine now.

Sunday morning Jeff had to work so as he got ready, I heard a fire truck siren. I told Jude so we could go to the window and watch the truck drive by, but the truck did not drive pass. We looked through the other living room window and right across the street from us were two fire trucks and three police cars. A car apparently slid off the road and hit a tree. As I fed Sullivan, Jude and I observed the firefighters and policemen at work, removing the windshield from the car. As we watched they also removed the top of the car. I felt a bit like a ghoul, watching someone else’s auto accident, especially when it became evident that it was a fatality. Fortunately, Jude is too young to fully understand what was happening and there wasn’t anything that we saw that would lead him to think that the person in the car had died. He was fascinated with the firemen and their hoses, then the tow truck that came to move the car, so he paid no mind to the ambulance. Of course for our neighborhood, this was just something that happened on a Sunday morning, something to be immediately forgotten as we continued on with our days, but I couldn’t help but think that it was a life-altering event for someone sitting at home waiting for him or her to return.
Song of the day: “Asleep” from The Smiths because it is a perfect song for a cold, miserable winter day and because it is the prettiest song I know about death. Runner up song of the day: “Tonight is the Night I Fell Asleep at the Wheel” from The Barenaked Ladies.

Is That Raccoon Eating E.T.'s Head?

One of the great joys of being a parent as any parent can attest is watching your child discover something for the first time. Of course, when your child is a preschooler, such discovery is inevitably accompanied by several questions, many of which are the “why” variety. At first, watching your child’s brain working, formulating questions feels you with great pride, thinking, “My child is so smart, so inquisitive.” After several hours of “why” questions, however, I dare even the most patient, caring parent to not feel a little insane.

I received an email from my friend, Josh, in response to a blog in which I wrote about Jude discovering Spiderman and Josh mentioned that made him think about his own childhood. Although I smiled and nodded at this, I realized that, with two boys, there is not a strong likelihood that I would have that same feeling as my sons discovered something I enjoyed in my childhood. After all, my childhood obsession (yep, obsession) was with Strawberry Shortcake. Not the Strawberry of today, with her blue jeans and puppy, but the Strawberry of my childhood, the one with the red-and-white dress and white-and -green striped tights. Many nights I spent reading books with a flashlight under my Strawberry Shortcake sleeping bag and days were spent playing with Strawberry Shortcake and her kitty, Custard, as well as her whole collection of lightly-scented friends (and I think that we should, as adults, all hope to have lightly-scented friends).

Jude did recently discover something that I loved as a child: the movie “E.T.” I was eight years old and it was the first movie I saw at the theater twice: once with my mom and once with my dad. I am enjoying watching Jude fall in love with E.T., so much so that I try to be very patient with the questions: “What is E.T. doing?” “He’s getting dressed to go trick-or-treat?” “Why is he going trick-or-treating?” “Because it is Halloween.” “Why is it Halloween?” (There really isn’t a good answer to that last question, but it is similar to the exchange we had this morning: “Put your hood up. It’s cold outside.” “Why is it cold outside?” “Because it is winter.” “Why is it winter?” “Because it is just that time of year.” “Oh, it’s that time of year.”) Of course in the midst of the movie-related questions, Jeff glanced at the TV screen and asked, “Is that raccoon eating E.T.’s head?” (It was not.)

It was nine degrees when we headed out this morning. Nine. I have been back to work for a little over a week and life is pretty hectic, as we are constantly running. But Jude is a good assistant and Sully is an easygoing kid, as long as he is well fed and gets his sleep (though not nearly enough of that sleep comes at night). Today, Sullivan is eight weeks old.

Songs of the day: “Chestnut Mare” by the Byrds, as I am nostalgic today and this song makes me think of an old friend and “A Girl Like You” by Pete Yorn because it makes me happy.