Amsterdam
How does he manage to make me so uncomfortable simply by using foreshadowing? A good story with an interesting twist.
My Life in France
The perfect follow-up to Julie and Julia. What a sharp, funny, interesting woman she was.
I am in an air-conditioned Target, shopping for cheap cotton socks. I might buy some nacho chips and fake cheese before I leave.
What can I say about Britney, Lindsay, Nicole, and Paris that hasn’t already been said? I find it interesting that, for a couple of them (if the tabloids are to be believed about Nicole), their arrests/rehab stints/head-shaving meltdowns have coincided with parenthood. I guess if the paparazzi were following me around a year ago, when I was hot and sick and pissed about being in a place where I couldn’t communicate with anyone, I might have shaved my head too. But I couldn’t have afforded multiple rounds of hair extensions during my grow-out, so it’s a good thing I just sat around complaining instead.
This year, my American vacation will be very much the same (same destinations, same time of year, same plans for eating my way through the western United States) and so very different. Last year, I was trying to decide which hand sanitizer to place in my carefully-packed carry-on next to my specially purchased snacks. This year, I’m not allowed to bring hand sanitizer on the plane and I haven’t even thought about whether I have any clean clothes to wear tomorrow, let along prepared snacks.
So if you see a woman wandering around the Frankfurt airport tomorrow wearing only a Baby Bjorn and a stained bathrobe, look away. And don’t worry, I’m sure there’s a rehab facility that specializes in my condition: frazzled traveling mommy disorder.
Theo’s latest accomplishments:
-Remaining totally bald. I don’t really notice his lack of hair, but others have started commenting on it.
-Grabbing anything and everything, which reminds me of those people in the money cube on Name That Tune. You don’t remember it? The money and the person were locked in a glass cube, the air jets started and the contestant grabbed anything and everything he could get his hands on. In Theo’s case, that’s meant a lot of my hair, the webcam cord, and a big handful of Thai noodles. Of course it all ends up in his mouth. Maybe that’s where all his hair is? He’s ripped it out and stuffed it in his chubby little cheeks.
-Or not-so-chubby cheeks, if you ask the growth charts. He’s in the lowest quartile for both height and weight. Not surprising, considering his native gene pool. I’m secretly thankful that he will never be a linebacker. However, his veiny little head circumference is in the 95th percentile. Brainiac, that’s him. Perhaps his scalp is just growing faster than the hair can cover it?
-Vocalizing. A lot. Sometimes jabbering and other time just shrieking. It’s one of his trademarks. I hope the fine people on our transAtlantic flight appreciate his talent.
-Eating whatever his confused mother puts in his mouth. Thank heaven, because I am so confused about what to feed him when that I’ve just stopped thinking too hard about it. The German pediatrician told me to feed him a mixture of carrots and potatoes as a first food. The American books said rice cereal, followed by squash. One book told me avocado and my midwife said parsnips were the ideal first food. (Parsnips? Yes, parsnips.) So far he just seems happy to slurp down whatever we give him, which seems to have diminished the screeching. Do you think parsnips stunt the hair follicle?
I’m opinionated, introverted, and a good dancer. I’m a TV snob, a book whore, and I try to be ladylike most of the time, except when I say the F word. I am supposed to wear glasses but sometimes I don’t, especially when I want to look pretty, so if you wave at me from a distance and I don’t wave back it’s only because I prize my vanity more than personal connections. I’m not a dog person or a cat person, but I would keep Spike from Buffy the Vampire Slayer as a pet if I could.
I thought I would love being an expat but it turns out that moving to Germany from the States was harder than I thought it would be. Thanks to my funny husband, my adorable baby, the German public healthcare system, and Karamellgeback cookies, I’m surviving. It only took a couple of years.
I am an only child and I know how to brand a calf, make souffle, and keep my sorority password a secret. My friends think I’m a computer geek and the geeks think I’m a poser.
I would appreciate it if you could mail me some Nachos Bellegrande and a Coke Slurpee, please.
More info about this meme here.
blogme2007
This post from defective yeti, imagining a political debate as it might unfold in blog comments, made me laugh out loud this morning.
Also, the whole LOL Cats thing goes straight over my head. It doesn’t make me laugh. Am I uncool or stupid? I don’t get it. Help. Me.
*(I’ve just read Jeff’s mind. “MAYBE??” he says)
Theo has been sleeping through the night – ten or eleven hours at a stretch – for almost two weeks. I almost didn’t tell you. But the adage that every superstitious parent follows – don’t talk about the good stuff or it’s bound to go bad – doesn’t apply because in a few days, we will travel halfway around the world and thoroughly screw up his sleep patterns anyway.
I share this information as part of my “parenting doesn’t suck” blogging philosophy. I read a bunch of sleep books before Theo was born and laughed along with everyone who advised me to catch up on my sleep before the baby arrived to steal it all away. And those people were totally right, Jeff and I walked around for the first few weeks of Theo’s life like zombies. We were all right during the daytime, but at night it felt like someone had sent a little alien into our bedroom to conduct an experiment on sleep-deprived human beings. His schedule was predictable but it was difficult for us to figure out our own day- and night-time patterns; since we were getting up every couple of hours, we had to finally say to ourselves, OK, it’s dark, I’d better put on my pajamas, or OK, the sun is up, I think I’ll eat some cereal. And, of course, in the time it took to put on the pajamas or eat the cereal, he would have slept for his usual forty minutes and would be starving and want to eat and then, especially at about 1:30am, want to be rocked and jiggled for an hour or so before going back to sleep. Of course, the zombie moments were immediately counteracted by marathon photo sessions and hours when he slept snuggled up on my chest while I watched FoodTV.
So it was wonderful and difficult and there were lots of tears (not just Theo’s). But I realize now that my anxiety had a lot to do with the books and advice, and little to do with my concern for our tiny baby. I wasn’t worried that Theo was sick, or too hungry, or underweight, or turning yellow. With either my naivete or my new-mom-intuition, I could tell that he was all right. But I was terrified of becoming one of the case studies in the books, or the friends-of-friends, the ones who co-slept and couldn’t get their ten-year-old out of the bed; who had to wear the baby around the house in a sling until he was five; the ones who had broken their babies’ spirits by letting them cry too long or who said, “If only we’d done it right at first, we wouldn’t have to call the SuperNanny now.” All the useful information had become jumbled up in my sleep-deprived brain and it added up to the idea that if I didn’t teach him what he needed to know from his first hours at home, our whole family would pay in the months and years ahead.
And then, one day, instead of reading a baby book in the bathtub, I cracked open a novel. And I decided to put the books away for a while. And I started to notice that the things I had read that I was going to have to teach him how to do along with much crying and patting and gnashing of the toothless gums, he was learning to do on his own.
I know so many parents who, like me, just want to be informed and “do” parenthood the right way. We freak out about preventing nipple confusion and sleep training and eating tuna while we’re pregnant. But the one piece of advice that no one told me – or I just didn’t hear – is that Theo, like most babies, would have only handful of the hundreds of problems and issues that I’d read and heard about and prepared for. And the rest of the time, he would eat and sleep and grow and change and do what most babies do without anyone teaching him how. And even when I try to teach him, he usually does everything in his own time anyway.
We’ve had our moments (The Nap Wars) and I know we have a long road ahead (I don’t even want to think about the day we take away the binky) but I’ve started to assume that he’s doing what he needs to do, when he needs to do it. And when he doesn’t, I have a library full of books with helpful strategies for coaxing him along. Now I’m going to go back to enjoying the fact that I got a full night’s sleep last night, because since I’ve told you, it probably will never happen again.
-I’m pretty sure the high chair I ordered (because I had to have a particular fabric pattern since I’m sure Theo would go on a hunger strike if we’d bought the floor model, he’s got a real design sensibility) will arrive the day before we leave town. Thus, we’ve been feeding him in his swing. This means that sometimes he gets so excited about the mushed bananas that he kicks his legs and the whole contraption swings away from the outstretched spoon. This frustrates him.
-Why can I never find broccoli in the grocery store? Is it a North American native plant that won’t grow in Europe?
-Analyzing television shows is more interesting/productive (if that’s even possible) when they’re actually airing. Analyzing them five years later just bores my readers. So I’m not going to ask you what you thought of Evil Demon Willow. But dude, when she was surfing on that semi truck, I think Buffy might have jumped the shark.
-Am I supposed to blog while I’m on vacation? Because I might not. I’m just warning you.
-But I promise to post every day until my vacation starts. Consider yourself warned.
A few months ago, I emailed my friend Katie (who doesn’t have a blog but if she would ever start one I would totally link to it) with a link to Nothing But Bonfires. (I won’t mention that it was a link to a specific post about a specific reality show featuring a man choosing his future wife from a bevy of vapid beauties.) She, of course, became addicted because Holly, the author of NBB, has the coolest life ever including the talent to write a compelling blog.
Then, a few weeks ago, I told my friend Abby about NBB because she is a graduate student and what else does she have to do with her time besides read blogs and envy talented San Franciscans with English accents and hot boyfriends?
Then, last week, Katie and I were discussing these calendars and their awesomeness but we were sad that we couldn’t find them here in Deutschland or even online.
I swear, this story gets a little more interesting. But honestly, not that much more interesting but you’re reading a blog so what else do you have going on right now? Just stick with me, it will be fun.
SO, a couple of days ago, Holly posted about small things that have changed her life, including a specific brand of lipgloss. And I know what you’re thinking but, no, the awesome calendars did not change her life.
HOWEVER, I commented that Trader Joe’s roolz, and later Katie commented that she would willingly make an infomercial for her SoniCare, and immediately afterward Abby said that THOSE VERY SAME CALENDARS changed her life. And she linked to the website where we can buy them!
Which means that while the interweb is huge and overwhelming, it is also small and friendly and everyone I know lives there and wants to help me. And I should probably shut down this blog and just post comments at NBB and wait for my friends to reply.
THE END
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I wish I had a real post for you today, but since we spent the past five days exploring Berlin, hanging out with bloggers, and entertaining family members, all I’ve got is a picture of the famous Knut. You probably saw this polar bear cub’s appearance on the cover of Vanity Fair, next to Leonardo diCaprio a couple of months ago. Knut is bigger now and seems to be surviving just fine, despite the temperatures that reduced me to a little puddle of sweat and breast milk as I stood in the shade while Jeff took this photo.
Berlin was beautiful, houseguests were fun, and now I’m off to turn up the fan and throw another load of laundry in the wash.