My little sweet pea is sick again (since Friday) with another cold and/or a reaction to the vaccines. No fever. We’ve been giving her extra TLC.
And guess what? I made art! I made a collage last night. It’s a gift for someone who reads the blog, so I won’t post a photo of it until after I know it’s been received.
I received an email this morning announcing a study. I participated. Here’s the information:
ATTENTION BLOGGERS!
I am a doctoral student in Communication Studies at Kent State University. For my doctoral dissertation, I am studying bloggers. Would you be willing to participate in my survey?
This online survey should only take about 15 minutes to complete, and it would mean the world to me. If you participate, you will be entered in a drawing to win one of ten $20 Amazon.com gift cards.
To participate in this study, you must be at least 18 years old, and you must currently maintain a blog that is primarily about your personal musings about your life, internal states, opinions, thoughts, or attitudes. Finally, you must write in your blog at least once a month.
If you would like to participate, please visit the following website: Survey Monkey.
Thanks so much for your help!
Sincerely,
Erin E. Kleman
Doctoral Candidate
School of Communication Studies
Kent State University
eekleman@kent.edu
Bean had her six-month check-up yesterday. On her last visit she was 12 pounds, 8 ounces and 24.5 inches tall. She is now 14 pounds, 6 ounces (at last, a little more than twice her birth weight!) and 26 inches tall. If she’d been born in Austin, we’d say she’s got the makings of a long, tall Texan. She is gaining weight, but since she’s also growing longer more rapidly (it seems), she keeps dropping in the weight/length ratio percentiles. Now she fits the 5th percentile (actually a bit less, 4.94%). But she is healthy!
The doctor put her in a sitting position, and Bean was a little wobbly but stayed up. The doctor thinks she’ll be sitting independently in another week or two. Bean recognized the doctor’s office and started to cry once we were in the examination room. I suppose she remembers what happened her last visit — the dreaded shots, which she got again. She cried this time too, but quickly stopped when we showed her the baby in the mirror. 🙂
Bean is fascinated with everything. She tried to grab the doctor’s stethoscope. When the doctor examined her ears, she kept moving her head to see what was being stuck in her head. She babbled up a storm; the doctor said she’ll probably start talking soon. I asked for clarification, and she meant that Bean will be attempting to intentionally make sounds similar to the thing associated with it, such as “mah” for “milk.”
Because Bean is rolling both ways and almost sitting independently, the doctor said it was okay to put a blanket in her crib. I’ve been using a cuddly blanket and stroking her face while I hold her during naps. My hope is that she’ll have associated the blanket with comfort and that it will provide this when we transition to napping in the crib. I still don’t have the gumption to try again yet. I really do cherish holding her. I’m relying on my intuition to tell me when to attempt another time.
The doctor also said Bean can start solids. We gave her the first serving of rice cereal this morning. That stuff tastes like paste, by the way. (Yes, I sampled it.) Awful, bland. But that’s what is recommended. She ate some. I took a couple photos and made a little movie for posterity. She didn’t spit it out, and she willingly opened her mouth for it. Since I made it with formula, and it was practically liquid, I suppose it tasted familiar.
As far as anniversaries go, it was a quiet one. We did give ourselves the gift of a new mini stereo for the downstairs area. We play a lot of music for Bean, and we needed something high enough to keep from her little hands. The old boom box was moved to our bedroom. (I fall asleep to the sound of waves.)
Yesterday afternoon we went to the park, and Bean sampled her new sand toys. (The playgrounds have giant sand play areas, but she’s too young yet to play in it.) Here’s another photo.
And since I’ve been posting so many photos of her lately, I suppose I’ll take a few days off from blogging here and give my readers a break.
I helped make forty-eight centerpieces for an Easter/Spring event hosted by my Las Madres play group. The house was chaos (a friend hosted), full of kids and moms and craft supplies. We had fun! Bean was watching kids run around outside while I stuffed flowers into pots.
My daughter is seized by paroxysms of laughter by crinkly plastic grocery bags, tissue paper being scrunched, and wrapping paper being torn. There is nothing more amusing in the universe to her.
Makes me happy too!
Wow! Six months have passed. So has a lifetime, it sometimes seems.
So what is notable about Bean at six months of age?
Beautiful Bean, you’ve grown so much in just six months! I look forward to discovering more of the world with you over the next half a year and beyond.
I knew that I had come face to face with some one whose mere personality was so fascinating that, if I allowed it to do so, it would absorb my whole nature, my whole soul, my very art itself.
–Oscar Wilde
We want to provide Bean with a variety of musical exposure. The Music Together songs are an excellent start. We listen to a classical music radio station sometimes. And we have a huge collection of music on CD which is stored also on our computers. (Ain’t technology grand?) So I made seven CDs of music (no classical but pretty much everything else) to spice up every day life. We listen to regular rock stations too, but I like the idea of having personally created playlists for her. Husband made one for her the night we returned from the hospital; it’s called Bean Dance Mix. I haven’t listed that here, since it’s his compilation. If you’d like to see the (very long) list, you can see more. I’ll probably make more over time, since we have thousands of songs. (Ain’t technology grand?) Continue reading
It’s 9:36 p.m. as I begin writing this, and I still haven’t bathed today. I thought I might actually take a long soak, then wash my hair before bed tonight, but already it’s closing in on my bedtime (if I want to be decently energized tomorrow). Instead I spent the evening (from 7:00 until now) organizing photos.
The thing is, this mothering is intensive. It’s becoming more so as Bean grows more alert and interactive for longer periods. No sooner than I rise in the morning than it seems time to put her to bed, but my body aches from all the hours in between.
Today there was a meal at 5:30 and play until 6:45 a.m., then a nap until 8:30 a.m. (I hold her for all naps), then a meal and play until 11:30 a.m., then a nap until 1:00, then a walk to the park and swinging on the swing, then an attempted nap at 2:30 p.m. (plus more eating in there), then up at 3:00, playing and a crying jag (Bean’s) until we got out of the house for a walk in a different park from 5:00 to 6:00 p.m., then picking up unhealthy food to go, eating dinner, then bathing Bean and putting her to bed by 7:15 p.m. She self-amuses briefly, but she really wants to be interacted with, so by “play” I mean either interacting with her and her toys & books, or involving her in watching me do a household task. Also, Husband does a lot of interacting on weekends with her.
The amount of time I have to spend on the computer is incrementally decreasing each week, so there is no point having it on the coffee table in the living room. Also, because the cat destroyed nearly all my laptop cords, and because Bean’s little hands will soon be over everything, my laptop will now live in the office. A logical place, eh? I feel a distance developing between me and the Internet. There just isn’t much time anymore, not if I want to spend my few precious hours doing other things for myself as well.
There was a point before Bean was born that I wondered if I would be able to sever the addiction I had to my computer and the web. Would I rise to the occasion? The answer is clear. I am constitutionally incapable of choosing the computer over my daughter. I’ll still use the computer, but it will have to be squeezed in among the many other pursuits — reading a book, knitting (which I haven’t done in ages), exercising, etc. Wow, imagine that. I’m actually living! In the real world. In the here and now. More often, at least.
I’ll still read my favorite blogs, and I’ll still post. And a lot of my play group communications are via email, so I’m not going Luddite on you. Just don’t worry if you don’t see much activity ’round here. I can also always be reached by email.
This meme has been making the rounds. I’m not certain how I feel about the relevance of posting three sentences from a nearby book (and skipping the five preceding sentences), but what the heck.
I’ve been tagged by The Friendly Humanist for a new blog meme. Here are the rules:
The book nearest me with at least 123 pages is a book I’ve had in queue for at least 10 years. I pulled it off the shelf the other day to think about reading it (so little time, so many books). Here are the sentences:
R’tu enabled the sisterly cooperation and dietary control women needed to successfully bear larger-brained babies. R’tu braided the mental, physical, and spiritual together in ever-expanding spirals of cultural expression. We thus led ourselves along the course of our evolution by enacting consciousness.
This begs the question: What is R’tu?
It’s a Sanskrit word. If Wikipedia is correct, it means:
Ritu (?tú) in Vedic Sanskrit refers to a fixed or appointed time, especially the proper time for sacrifice (yajna) or ritual in Vedic Religion. The word is so used in the Rigveda, the Yajurveda and the Atharvaveda. In Classical Sanskrit, it refers to an epoch or period, especially one of the six seasons of the year, Vasanta “spring”, Grishma “the hot season”, Varsha “the rainy season”, Sharad “autumn”, Hemant “winter”; and Shishir “the cool season”, or the menstrual cycle.
This link doesn’t define it, but it gives a sense of the concept’s importance in Sanskrit literature.
The book I used for the meme is Blood, Bread, and Roses: How Menstruation Created the World. Here is how the author defines the term.
Ritual, fromt Sanskrit r’tu, is any act of magic toward a purpose. Rita, means a proper course. Ri, meaning birth, is the root of red, pronounced “reed” in Old English and still in some modern English accents (New Zealand). R’tu means menstrual, suggesting that ritual began as menstrual acts. The root of r’tu is in “arithmetic” and “rhythm”; I hear it also in “art,” “theater,” and perhaps in “root” as well. The Sanskrit term is still alive in India, where goddess worship continues to keep r’tu alive in its menstrual senses; r’tu also refers to special acts of heterosexual intercourse immediately following menstruation, and also to specific time of year.
This should be an interesting book. The author, Judy Grahn, is an American poet, was a member of the Gay Women’s Liberation Group, helped establish The Women’s Press Collective in 1969, and is co-director of the Women’s Spirituality MA program and Program Director of the MFA in Creative Inquiry at the New College of California.
As for tagging others, I’m copping out on this one. I barely have the energy to finish this post, and I’d like to eat dinner. Besides, I don’t want to wear out my welcome with friends and recently tagged five people for another meme. If you want to play along, feel free, and leave a comment.
Today was a Big Day. We went to the park, and Bean rode the bucket swing at the playground. She was thrilled. She grinned and flirted and giggled. She stared at the trees swaying in the wind. She watched other children run around. And then, I decided to see if she was big enough to sit in the stroller without being in the infant seat. And she was! So instead of facing me and looking up at the world, she faced away from me and got a whole new perspective.
I’m really pleased for her. It’s odd; I felt a little lonely pushing the stroller. Up until that point, I could always smile, coo, talk and sing, and she’d be engaged with me. The new position engaged her with the world. It’s a small reminder of the eventual direction her life will take, and it was poignant.
However, she isn’t through with me yet. I held her for two naps in the chair, and she fell asleep within three minutes each time. (I love watching her sink into sleep. She smacks her lips a little and turns her head toward me.) Then around 5 p.m. she got whiny; I pulled out the Moby wrap and she brightened. I put her in it and danced slowly to lullabies with her, and then she fell asleep against my chest.
Ingredients:
1 nearly five-month old baby
Pet store
Parakeets in a big cage
Yourself
Take the baby into the pet store and push the stroller in front of the parakeet cage. Tap gently on the cage containing about 12 blue, green, and yellow parakeets. Say the baby’s name to get her attention and encourage her to gaze toward the cage. Observe the baby observing the parakeets as they flit, screech, tweet, twitter, and hop from branch to dangling toys to feeder. Notice baby’s rapt attention. When she turns to you with her first smile of enjoyment, exclaim how fun it is, smile back, and act excited. Watch her smile and giggle, then turn her attention back to the birds, then look again at you giggling and smiling. Continue for as many minutes as the baby finds it interesting.
Savor. Have as many as helpings as you can as often as possible.
—
Other fun: machines that do nifty things such as clean rug spots by themselves. Now that our cat is becoming older and has more, ahem, stomach and potty issues, and now that we have a child who will soon be eating solids and who drools a lot now, this seemed like a good purchase.
Eden tagged me, and I haven’t played a meme in awhile, and so why not?
A Texan’s (and yes, we still consider ourselves as such) diet must include some of this:
Good with carrots and other veggies:
This stuff really is better than boullion. It’s not as good as stock from scratch, but it serves well:
Husband eats the salsa like it’s manna from heaven, and I drink the V8 (an easy way to get some veggies):
Standard fruit supply:
Now it’s my turn to tag five people. How about:
Gerry
Shirley
Donna
Marta
Fran
…and anyone else who wants to play (leave a comment on the post).
On this stormy Friday, we actually went out. Bean and I went on a play date at a Las Madres member’s home. Talking with other women was a tonic for me, and Bean enjoyed watching the other babies. I also met someone who’s child was born the day before Bean at the same hospital. A happy coincidence.
I really liked going to the mom’s house rather than meet at the park. (Since the weather is perfect here from April to October, the groups are typically scheduled to meet at a park. Except if you don’t arrive all at the same time, you might miss each other.) So maybe some mothers will host at their homes, and we’ll make some friends.
Speaking of friends, this evening is the 40+ Mothers Night Out. I intend to go, despite the icky weather.
For giggles, please visit Do’s and Don’ts With Babies. Just don’t be drinking a beverage while you look at it. I had an unfortunate encounter with my V8 as I did. Thanks to Tiffany for sending the link!
I’m middle-aged. I’m overweight. My muscle tone is weaker than it was a decade or more ago. I have a baby. My left knee still hurts from pregnancy. Hmm. I’ve got a bit of a problem.
In 2006 I joined Fitness 19; paid $200 to join and a $12 monthly fee after that. I used the facility sporadically in 2006, even less in 2007. But the monthly fee was so low, it didn’t feel like a huge waste of money. Previously I’d been a member of Curves, which at $40 a month grew too high a price for the limited access (they close part of the day and early in the evening), the limited kind of workout, and the intrusive, over-friendly staff who insisted on “engaging” women during a workout when they might just want to, you know, work out.
Well, tonight I attempted to go to Fitness 19 to work out for the first time since my late pregnancy. It’s located in a strip mall with a puny parking lot, but usually by 7:00 p.m. the place would clear out. However, tonight there were no spaces. People were illegally parked in fire lanes. And there were new signs in certain spaces that said No Fitness 19 Parking. I groaned with frustration. What the hell to do? I turned around and went home. Ooo, I was grumpy.
I was mad. Mad at the parking lot size. Mad at the stupid parking restrictions. Mad that people hadn’t gone home sooner. Irrational, I know. Mostly I felt mad about the limitations on my time. The only opportunity I have to go out alone is after 7 p.m. weekdays and on weekends. However, to be functional, I usually try to go to sleep at 9:30 p.m. daily. This doesn’t leave much time for eating dinner, cleaning up, working out, showering, socializing, or “me” time.
One of the biggest changes for me in becoming a mother has been accepting the loss of “me” time. Mothering calls for much more of me than I imagined. I don’t begrudge this; it’s simply quite an adjustment.
I’m trying to figure out how to care for my physical well-being. Someone suggested the YMCA. Membership is $100 to join and $52 a month, with reduced fees for classes, and reasonable baby sitting services. But at $52 a month, I’d need to be sure I really went; it’s a lot more money, and we’re carefully managing our expenses. The other option is to go out for walks in the evenings in the neighborhood (knee permitting).
But now, since I’m supposed to be getting sleep, I’ll close here. Maybe I’ll wake up refreshed with a solution.
After the last post, I felt better. Freer. My mother called back and gave me excellent motherly support. Then I made peanut butter toast and ate while talking to Bean. Then we played more, then she ate, then she was very sleepy.
So a few minutes shy of noon, I took her to her room and rocked her. By noon she was asleep. And I? I had made sure to use the bathroom before we sat down, I had eaten, and I brought the Charles Schulz biography with me. At the beginning I dozed with her (I recently bought a Bucky pillow to prevent cricks in my neck). About an hour later I became alert when the phone rang. I stirred, she opened her eyes, but she went back to sleep, still on me. I began to read. Finally after 2.5 hours it appeared she’d happily remain asleep, but I was thirsty and my butt was numb. So I rose from the chair, and she woke. She was ravenous.
The Las Madres group I’m in had a date to meet at Central Park from 1-3 p.m. I’ve been going there every day now, and although it was 3:10 by the time we arrived, I approached a young woman with an infant in a stroller. It turned out to be the nanny of one of the mothers. So we chatted and strolled awhile, after which she departed with her charge, and I strolled a bit more with Bean. At 4:00 we stopped at the store for fruit, and then we got home.
She’s in the swing right now, because she’s tired, but she’s a bit restless and whiny. We did play and dance first, so it’s her usual sleep resistance.
I also emailed the Las Madres play group members and another Las Madres support group for mothers age 40+ and shared I was having a rough day. The responses have been sweet and supportive — and I’ve never even seen most of these women. One thing I discovered from reading their responses is that I am not alone in having a child who dislikes napping in her crib, or who takes short naps, or who is assertive and not “an easy baby.” Someone made a point that when she’s mobile, she’ll want to be held less and less, and I might come to cherish the chance to cuddle and rest with her.
And now the Pixie has given in to the Sandman, and is finally asleep in the swing. She’ll wake ravenous again soon, then Daddy will be home, and it’s his turn!