Precocious Skills

All parents think their children are precocious. We rack our heads to find something that makes our little darling stand out from the crowd.

Walking? Nope, she's well behind average there.
Talking? She does fine, but nothing phenomenal.
Toilet Training? We have only gotten as far as the mommy-having-nightmares-about-it stage.

Ah-ha! There is one area where she is well ahead of the pack of poor, average children.

Nose-blowing.

Yes, for a couple of months now, D1 has been skillfully blowing her own nose. Not only that, she thinks it is one of life's great pleasures. For awhile it was just when she found a Kleenex box incautiously left near the ground. Lately, though, she will use her skill on any available piece of cloth. This morning I heard her wandering through the house, giggling with delight. When I went to check on her, she was trotting down the hall, cheerfully blowing her nose into a spare bib. Burp cloths and washcloths are also favorite choices.

Now, I've spent enough time in the nursery to know most one-year-olds will tie themselves into knots to avoid having someone else blow their nose, much less attempt to blow their own. She loves it so much you can end a crying spell just by producing a Kleenex.

The only trouble is, she doesn't have a cold. She hasn't had a significant cold since she was six months old. (Then again, that's a good thing, considering how indiscriminate her taste in handkerchiefs is.)

I guess we're ready for winter.

Cleaning out the Mental Corners

Did you know that John Lennon went on to design baby gear? I finally realized this after a year of puzzling over the scrawled signature on the clothes and diapers. Kind of weird. The designs are a lot cuter than the name brand diaper stuff with Sesame Street and the like, but I never expected to be diapering my kids with Beatles lyrics.

I have a theory that graphic design is in the process of turning into a standard literacy skill of the well-educated. Gone are the days when you could churn out two columns of small type and get your message across. People are so used to seeing things well-designed that to communicate anything, it must not only be written clearly, it must look good. Writing was once a skill of the hired specialist that now is expected to be universal; graphic design is moving that direction. (See? I've thought about something besides diapers!)

Yet another library sale this weekend. Fortunately this time my sister is here to take half the books and help us figure out where to hide the rest.

Aunt Becky has been taking lots of pictures, and I finally have my hands free for long enough to post a few.

D1 with two of her favorite things: a book and a laundry basket.

This is asking for a good caption, but I haven't figured out what yet.

In which I answer questions you may or may not have wanted to ask

How are they getting along?
D1 thinks D2 is her particular responsibility, and thinks it essential to verify his safety and happiness every time she gets up from a nap or otherwise feels a need to check. She can help burp him and brings extra baby outfits in case he has wet one.

When D1 first showed signs of starting to talk, DOB started coaching her in taking her turn at praying during family devotions: "Dear Heavenly Father,Thank you for Papa (pat Papa), Mama (pat Mama), and Little Baby (pat Mama's stomach)." She was starting to get the hang of this prayer and talk and pat along. However, as soon as D2 was part of the activity, the prayers started to go like this:

DOB: "Dear Heavenly Father, Thank you for Papa,"
D1: "CAHHRLL!" (pointing to playpen)
DOB: "And Mama,"
D1: "CAHHRLL!" (pointing to playpen)
DOB: "And Baby Carl."
D1: (with relief) "CAHHRLL!"

D2 thinks D1 is another strange phenomenon of this world, and a non-milk producing one.

What developmental milestones would you like to report?
About a week after D2's birth, D1 finally, finally, finally started walking as her standard means of transportation, to the great relief of all concerned. Although I worked on teaching her to climb in and out of things while I was on no-heavy-lifting orders, she would still much rather have me lift her. Now she has progressed to the carrying things everywhere stage, allowing preliminary instruction in setting the table, putting things in the trash, and running errands.

The inevitable: Is D2 a good baby?
But of course. Actually, he's quite manageable. He only cries for good reason, and sleeps between feedings at night, which is all I ask of a newborn. He likes to stay awake--with a few catnaps--for several hours in the morning, take a long afternoon nap, stay mostly awake in the evening, and sleeps well at night. I've never seen this suggested as a newborn schedule or even newborn behavior, but it works well for me, because I can get a long afternoon nap. So I'm not about to try to change it.

What else would you like to report?
My sister is here for two weeks. Great strides in organization and decoration proceed, while I sit around, feed D2, and raid her stash of airplane reading material.

Yes, we have two kids

The nice thing about having two is you can finally talk about "the kids." It rolls off the tongue so smoothly:

"The kids keep me so busy."
"I have to go see what the kids are doing."
"Did you check on the kids?"

The annoying thing is that it draws out the fertility police. Especially if you have a full sampling.

"Oh, a girl and a boy! How nice." Sometimes they go ahead and say what they're thinking next: "Now you're all done!"

I missed the posting that only alloted us one of each. We haven't even reached the population replacement rate yet, much less done our part to raise the average IQ of the human gene pool.

The bad thing is, I only have two hands. Can I get a surgical implant of a few more?

Maternal things I still can't do

Swaddle--With D1, I gave up after a couple of weeks. With D2, I gave up in the hospital. Neither of them liked it much anyway, even if I told them that Baby Jesus liked it. I just toss a blanket over the top of them and hope for the best.

Wipe a face clean--There's always a little bit of mashed bean lurking somewhere just out of sight, where I will see it only after we are out in public with no washcloths nearby.

Fasten disposable diapers properly--I don't know if it's me, the diapers, or the children. But after a week of trying to use disposables to make life easier, I decided I'd rather do a load of diapers every morning than a load of sheets, towels, and clothes every morning. No matter what diaper I use, however, D2 can last only two hours in one. At two hours and five minutes, I also have to change everything in his vicinity. But at least with cloth I don't have to get any stains out.

All clothed and in our right minds!

Caffeine on IV and other medical oddities

Law students everywhere will be pleased to discover that it is possible to get caffeine administered via IV. The downside is, to get it you have to have what is known as a "spinal headache," which I can assure you is not conducive to bar preparation. Caffeine on IV is also not conducive to getting lots of rest, which is what you are likely to be supposed to be doing after activities that might have given you a spinal headache. It didn't help me much either, so I opted for the patch treatment that fixes the headache right away, but leaves you with a backache.

The whole medical treatment thing tends to build on itself in a This-is-the-House-that-Jack-Built way. This is the medicine to treat your nausea, which was caused by the medicine to treat your pain, which was caused by the other treatment for your pain, etc. By Sunday night, though I had progressed as far as only needing hot rice packs for my back and ice water, which I'm pretty sure don't have any further side effects.

D2, not too surprisingly, had a touch of jaundice, which meant he had to spend Sunday night catching rays at the hospital. I was not at all pleased when my doctor's new partner, whom I have never met, told us by phone we should stop breastfeeding him because of the jaundice. I miss her old partner.

Nowadays when I see someone with multiple body and facial piercings, I think, "Amateur!"

Another thing that is not conducive to rest is coming back in for checkups, for one or the other of us, every day. (Or, while in the hospital, having them check your vitals every few hours. I'm still breathing, OK? Let me sleep.) We should be done after tomorrow, though.

And now, the rest of the story

Contrary to DOB's confusion of the medical lingo, the placenta was not abducted, which sounds like some urban legend email forward ("And then she woke up in a tub of ice, and her placenta had been abducted!"), but abrupted, which means it decides it's ready to leave whether baby is or not.

Anyway, my plans for Thursday included driving D1 to the chiro and then Grandma's house, driving back to our town for my doctor's appointment, taking a nap, meeting DOB in town to run several errands and get a caramel apple cider, going back down to get D1, and coming home and catching up on the dishes and laundry I left lying around in my rush to get out the door.

Up until 10:30 everything proceeded according to plan. My only regret was that I had not put "pack snacks in my purse" on that list and was ravenously hungry. The doctor had just finished checking things and announced that although there was no sign D2 intended to come really soon, he was in the wrong position and we would need to get him scooted around. She went out to call the doctor who does the scooting around, and I started to get up.

I promptly realized that something was very, very wrong and sat down again before the carpet got messed up worse. Unlike hospitals, doctor's offices are not equipped with handy buttons to call. And, as is probably necessary in a family practice, the walls and doors are very thick. So it took awhile before someone realized I was yelling for help, in a calm and dignified manner, at the top of my lungs. Once they came in, though, they promptly called the ambulance. My doctor said later it was fortunate the ambulance was handy, as otherwise she would have had to drive me herself and she had just had the inside of her car detailed.

Meanwhile I called DOB and his mother. I was apparently a little too calm at that point, because it took them awhile to realize the seriousness of the situation. I let them work it out between them, because by this point the parameds were starting to pelt me with questions. One guy asked me my name twice in thirty seconds.

"Not doing too well today, are you?" said one.

"I'm testing the patient's coherence!" he retorted, and rammed the gurney into the doctor's scales.

It's not as exciting to ride in an ambulance as it should be. The ride is very smooth, so you can't tell if you're going fast, and you can't see that you're running red lights. It only took about five minutes to get to the hospital, and hardly any more to thread the hospital hallways to a room where about fifty people commenced to introduce themselves, brandish papers that needed signed, and prepare me for surgery. I signed and hoped I was doing the right thing. (I was.)

I commented to the doctor, "Well, I guess we won't have time to go over the birth plan today." "Oh, that's what did it," everyone said, "Birth plans always jinx you."

The anesthesiologist's name was also Karen, which was most confusing. People would keep yelling at her to do something or other medical, and I would wonder how on earth I was supposed to do that. Fortunately they decided they had time to give me a spinal instead of knocking me out completely, which was good except that I was still acutely aware of being hungry and they wouldn't give me anything to eat.

At 11:29, within less than an hour of when things started, I could at least hear them announce D2's entrance into the world. Unfortunately they brought his head out first and started commenting on what a pretty baby he was, so for a few minutes I thought he was a girl. But that was quickly clarified.

Meanwhile, DOB was proceding at a safe but somewhat superlegal rate of speed in an effort to arrive before it was all over. Unfortunately, he encountered Inspector Javert, who is now patrolling rural Ohio highways, and does not think such trifles as emergency c-sections justify exceeding the precise legal rate of speed. Fortunately DOB decided to take it up later with the judge rather than forcibly debate the distinctions between the letter and the spirit of the law on the spot. But the delay was enough that he reached the hospital only in time to learn that he had a son.

Anyway, D2, though a little small and early, came through quite strong and healthy, rating a 9/10 Apgar score (for those of you who know about such things) and eating like a small version of his Papa from the beginning. I seem to be recovering pretty well, the doctor being amazed at the discrepancy between the mess in her office and my blood count when I left the hospital. Either of us could have easily had much more serious problems, if I had been anywhere else when it happened or if anything had been delayed longer.

And now, we are all very, very happy to be home. Especially D1, who has discovered that even Grandpa and Grandma's house palls after four days.

Here's D2. (We tried ones with us, but we don't like them. We'll try again tomorrow.)

And So We Were All Wrong . . .

It's a boy!

Ronald Carlton (we'll call him Carl)
Born September 29th at 11:29 a.m.
Weight: 6 lbs., 11 oz.
Length: 19.5 inches.

His early arrival was due to a placental abduction (or something like that) and an emergency c-section. But QOC and D2 are doing quite well, and we're just thankful.

QOC will fill in all the details on the exciting time, and God's miraculous working later. All went well except for an encounter between yours truly and a rather unsympathetic sheriff on the way to the hospital.

Enter now for your chance to win!

That's right, folks. For a limited time only, you too can compete with a chance to win a prestigious title from the one and only Duchy of Burgundy Carrots.

Here's the deal: Guess the gender, birth date, weight, and length of D2. The person whose collective guess is the closest (based on a complicated but fair mathematical formula I fully intend to figure out one of these days) will be awarded the title of Earl of Estimation, or, in the event of the correct guesser being female, the Countess of Calculation.

Data for reference: D2 is, according to doctor's measurements, due October 15; according to QOC's I-know-when-I-started-feeling-sick calculations, closer to the end of the month. D1 was born three days before her official due date, weighed 7 lbs. 11 oz., and was 20 inches long. (And I am a bad mother. I had to look that up.)

No allegations of gender bias, by the way. Estimation and Calculation are both equally large and prosperous regions of the Duchy. It's not my fault that the titles for that rank of nobility are not alliterative.

Some recent reading

Soldiers and Ghosts, by J.E. Lendon--The ethics and ideals of ancient Greek and Roman warfare, as exemplified in the epics and in the real-life battles. This is DOB's pick, but I'm finding it quite fascinating. Did you know those famous Spartans generally refused to fight on holidays? And they had lots of holidays. Plus, now I finally have the Persian, Peloponnesian, and Punic wars straight in my head. (Why do all these ancient wars have to start with "P"?)

The Disciplined Mind: What Every Student Should Know, by Howard Gardner. He's the guy best known for the "multiple intelligences" theory (no doubt you've taken the online quiz). This book looks at education more generally, however, arguing for a deep focus on a single topic in order to learn the tools for a specific discipline (history, science, the arts) rather than trying to cover a little bit of facts from everywhere. The goal should not be so much to cover all the dates and facts of history, or all the vocabulary and lists of the sciences, but to learn how historians or scientists approach problems.

The Creators, Daniel J. Boorstin. This is a history of human arts, with an emphasis on how people's beliefs are reflected in what they create. The Christian belief in a single creation, by an all-powerful transcendent God, for instance, encouraged a much greater emphasis on man's power to create, and human beings as supreme over creation, than did the emphasis of eastern religions on endless cycles and escaping material reality. So for instance permanent works of architecture are much more common in Europe, whereas in Asia landscape painting dates back much further (because humans are more or less just part of the landscape).

The Secret of Father Brown, by G. K. Chesterton. Some of my favorites of all the Father Brown mysteries. We're discussing it over at the Parliament of Fools.

The Very Hungry Caterpillar, by Eric Carle. Will the caterpillar recover from his stomachache? What will happen when he emerges from his cocoon? A classic of suspense.

I Am a Bunny, by Richard Scarry. The timeless story of the change of the seasons, viewed through the eyes of an overall-clad bunny.

Out to the Ball Game

DOB got four free tickets to a Reds game, which we redeemed on Saturday, taking along the two of his brothers who are most devoted Reds fans.

It was just as well the tickets were free, as it took all of our capital to get a parking spot and a small bottle of water.

I am not a devoted Reds fan, or a devoted baseball fan in general, but I am a devoted DOB fan, and I like going to ball games. There is so much other stuff going on that actually watching the game is completely superfluous. And baseball moves slowly enough that I generally can follow it.

Our tickets, being free, were for seats somewhere in the upper reaches of the Himalayas. By the time we reached them, I was ready to lie down and take a nap. After a few innings, DOB scouted out an empty section lower down and sneaked us in while The Enforcer of the section was distracted. She later came by and asked us about our tickets, but allowed us to remain as long as no one came to claim the seats. She was far too busy harrassing a group of six teenage boys, ticket status dubious, whose goal in life was apparently to get on the camera wearing a series of t-shirts they had painted to spell "GO REDS" (or, when the "S" guy didn't feel like going along with it, "GORED.") They were in the wrong part of the stadium, however, and eventually gave up and left for a party.

I couldn't help but be reminded of the time I had to write a sports story for a journalism course and wound up writing the article about a group of little-leaguers watching the game. When I sent it to DOB for his comments, his response was something to the effect that I wrote sports stories like a girl.

D1 meanwhile got to try spending the night at Grandma and Grandpa's for the first time. She was completely unfazed by the experience and was far from excessively thrilled to see us. On the whole a good thing, I suppose, but a little enthusiasm for parental return is in order, I think. (Grandma thought she was just disappointed to find out that she had been standing by the door to wait for us rather than standing by the door to go outside.)

I want a refund

I'm sending this day back in to the weather bureau. Ninety degree weather on the first day of fall is just wrong.

They'll probably get to it after they refund me that week in April when it snowed.

Yard sale retrospective

Judging from the paucity of ads, the yard sale season has about come to a close.

I now know a whole lot about how to run a yard sale, should I ever get energetic enough to host one. Such as:

• Advertise in the paper, on the main road, and in front of your house. You don't want people passing you by because they're not sure if you're having a sale or just a messy garage.
• And make your signs big enough to read.
• Advertise specific items. Ninety percent of yard sale ads center on the phrase, "lots of misc.," which any seasoned yard sale shopper knows means tacky Christmas decorations and old shoes.
• Put prices on things. Nobody wants to stand in line in the sun waiting for you to remember what you wanted to charge for that thingymabob.

I try to keep my yard sale shopping in check by mostly limiting myself to sales within walking distance of our house, which I can hit while out walking with D1 on Friday mornings. Only two times this season did I decide to drive to exceptionally juicy-sounding yard sales. Both were worth it.

Best finds of the year:

• Four-foot high clear plastic drawers. ($5) I thought this would be a great place to keep D1's toys. It was, for awhile. Now it is itself her favorite toy. She loves pushing the drawers out and back in, taking things out of one drawer and putting them into another, and hiding behind it.
• Nursery-school chair. ($.50) D1 loves sitting (and standing) on this. It's the only chair I've ever seen that is really short enough for a one-year-old. It fits perfectly in a little cubbyhole between the office bookshelf and filing cabinets.
• Plastic picnic table. ($15) Yes, I broke down and now have Little Tykes plastic in my house. It was cheap. And now D1 has her own table in her room, of suitable height to climb on without catastrophic injury should she fall off. I'm still looking for something more charming someday, but in the meantime D1 isn't getting any younger.
• Silver nativity set. ($10) I have really wanted a nativity set for some time, but had found none that I cared for at all. I thought about this one at $20, and decided against it. Then I told DOB about it and he decided to go see if it was still there the next morning. Not only was it, it was marked way down.

Pardon the dust

Owing to blogback shutting down next month, I'm trying to fix up a few things on the blog. I exported the old blogback comments but have NO CLUE how to import them, so for now they'll just be in hiding.

Those of you who don't have blogger should still be able to sign in as "other" and just type any name and (if you want) webpage. Please don't be anonymous!

The font size problem seems to have fixed itself, which means the small font is now really, really small. Oh well.

Old links are gone. There's only about fifty gazillion links I should have added there, anyway. Maybe someday I'll get to it.

Today, someone is not happy. I must go.

Talking it over (by D1)

I'm having to say different words a lot more these days. Mama (I usually call her "Baba" cause "b" is a really fun sound to say--also she likes to pat her tummy and say that so maybe it's another name for her) usually knows what I'm trying to say. Other people need clarification, though. Like Mama knows that when I hold my glass or my plate up I want more food. But Papa doesn't get it. He wants me to say "More" and put my hands together. Well, fine, I can do that, although I think waving dishes around makes the point more clearly.

Then Mama knows if I make any sound and point I want to go somewhere. But Grandma doesn't understand until I say, "Go." That's ok, because "g" is another interesting sound.

I really do like words with "b"--bib, block, blow, banana, baby, ball, book, Bible, and most important, blankie. Some of the other sounds in the words are hard to tell apart, so if I point at the same time, it helps.

My favorite thing to say is still "Quack, quack." Sometimes I say that and then everyone else says "Baaaa." Then I say "Baaaa" and everyone else says "Quack, quack." I can keep them going for several minutes like this; it's hilarious. Sometimes I do it by myself with Duck and Sheep, or with my magnets on the refrigerator.

I like to read books the best. I think the most interesting ones must be the ones on the shelves in the living room and the pile by the couch, but I get in trouble if I read those by myself. So I usually go read the ones in my room. My favorite is the one about the hungry caterpillar. It has these nifty little pages with holes in them.
In fact, I like to read so much that lots of times I just go off and read when Mama is distracted with someone else. Then she comes wondering what happened to me. Of course, sometimes I like to go and check out the soap dish, too. It tasted really bad the one time I tried, but maybe they have a new flavor out.

Walking without holding on to someone is still pretty tricky, but I discovered this morning that when I do, I can carry something around with me. Very handy. I think I may have to work harder on this.