She's Back

These pictures don't really convey.

But obviously, the hair that took me so long to grow is gone again.

(Mama feels like a rock star.)

Great things are happening.

1. Our neighbor gave us a boat. And a trailer. He's happy a young family wants to use it, and so he passed along this 15', aluminum fishing boat for FREE. Isn't that AWESOME?

2. Annaliese will never need clothes. Ever. Our church gave her (and another new baby girl) a shower over the weekend. I asked for toys, and we got some of those, but we also got outfit after outfit after outfit. And two eyelet-covered Baby Bibles from Belks. Gotta love Mississippi.

3. We all slept 8+ hours last night. Not straight, mind you, but after a very tired mama said enough! she's going in the bassinet! she's begun sleeping in it. She goes down at 10, wakes at 12.30 for a bottle from her papa, wakes at 4.30 for a feeding by her mama, and then wakes for good at 7, and comes in the bed with us for some morning happiness and more food.

So, so, so doable.

Being me, I had some guilt about whether or not I've perpetuated our sleeplessness by cosleeping for the first three months. But I don't think so...A. really did come into this world as a suspicious little baby who need to touch us all the time, and so we did. Cosleeping was the only way we got any sleep at all for the first three months, so I can't regret it. Now, she's more confident in us, in the world, and her night-day patterns are established... she's ready to sleep on her own.

It's fabulous.

After Bathtime...and Easter Sunday

another wordy post sans pics...check back later this week!

I just returned home from an all-day trip to Memphis with Annaliese. K. was at work, and though I was nervous about the whole sole expedition with an infant...it went brilliantly.

She napped on the way there, ate and had her diaper changed pre-a Wild Oats run. Rode peaceably in the Baby Bjorn for an hour's worth of grocery shopping, then napped on the way to the midwives, then ate/diaper again so she was bright-eyed and chortling for the hour with Amy and Andrea. Another small feed and then an hour-and-a-half nap back to WV. Brilliant!

We're now thoroughly stocked up on meat and I'm once more cognizant of how much I miss sisterhood...I love visiting the midwives so much, and unless I get knocked up again, I'm out of reasons to go back there. And I just don't love them that much.

Finding funny women who speak the same pregnancy/parenting language as me is so affirming. The moms I know locally are all overbooked with little time for socializing, and my good friends are sans children, so the only people I get to talk to about my child and random parenting thoughts are my husband and my mother. And whining about my post-partum body isn't really what I want to do with either one (though I still do.)


It's not what I expected, since I've always heard about moms groups being hotbeds of sisterhood...but of the few moms in my age group I know, they're working full-time, and with small children and husbands, that leaves them less than zero time for get-togethers.

Maybe my circle will expand when Annaliese enters pre-k, but that's a long way off.

In the meantime...

the three writers I'd like to meet

So we all know I'm a reader. The girl who got grounded from reading, who checks out 10+ books a week from the library, etc. etc. (I'll add that I often read junk. I love me some good junk).



But despite all my reading, I don't often come across authors that I recognize as kindred souls, as people I'd like to meet because we have stuff to talk about.



I can count three: Barbara Kingsolver, Louise Penny, and Pearl S. Buck.



I've always loved Kingsolver's fiction, but it wasn't until her essay book Small Wonder that I felt like I wanted to meet her....I think it was this line, "I do my best thinking looking out over a clean plank of earth"--- or something like that, I'm writing from memory, though the book is in the living room. Of course, why it took the woman nearly 20 years to move to a farm in southern Virginia from her adopted hometown of Tucson, I don't know. It brings out the handwaving in me... (what, you want heaven on a plate?) Because they had the farm the WHOLE TIME... gar.



Louise Penny writes mysteries from her home in Canada. They're wonderful. She's created what she calls an idyllic village populated with people she'd be friends with, and since I want to move to southern Canada every time I read one of her books (ME. ME!), I think we'd get along and enjoy many savory cups of hot chocolate together while talking about how much we adore our husbands.



And now, Pearl Buck. I read the Good Earth many years ago and re-read it probably once a year-- it's not at all one of my kinds of books...instead, it's a gem, and unlike anything I've ever read. Probably why she got the Nobel. But now, I'm reading her autobiography, and the woman and I agree on so much!!! She's writing in the 1950s about local and seasonal eating, raw milk, the evils of technology, the virtues of community.... so naturally I find her extraordinarily wise. She also admits to being really happy making a house and gardening, and that she could not write until her surroundings were in harmony.



Always fun to read someone and go, me too!

I spent the weekend and my free hands (since my mother-in-law was here!) working in the garden, shoveling up dirt and earthworms.

It was a blast.

Couple that with the long walk K. and I took solo-- sans bebe and dogs-- on Friday night before going to dinner ALL BY OURSELVES and it was an outdoorsy weekend, good for the soul and my back. Ain't nothing like shoveling for the back.

Sometimes I think living in town is pretty great. I can walk to the drugstore, the library, the post office. But give me a field and a big blue sky and the realization that no one can see me, and I remember why I want a farm of my own; it's exhilerating, rejvenating. Myabe someday I cna have a farm within walking distance of town.

That would be way cool.

In the mean time, I've got my bamboo-fenced plot of land, where I labor mightily over plants that will probably die. Given my history. (But this year it will be different! This year I have a SYSTEM, a PLAN, and it will be oh-so-GLORIOUS!)

Appropos of nothing, here's some baby pictures:

Annaliese is growing, growing, growing, and more fun every day. Tomorrow she gets shot up by the pediatrician. Pray for us.

I'm not a fan of gadgets.

But this kicks the iphone's ass.

The bebe has been so awesome these last few days that K. and I think that our caterwauling fussy baby must have been swapped out in the night or something.



She was the belle at church yesterday; after sleeping through most of the service, she concluded the hour being awake and bright-eyed, strapped to her pap's chest in the church's foyer after worship, nodding and smiling to the crowd gathered around her. Many a fake nail stroked her cheek, and she loved it.



She watched Pirates of the Caribbean with K. in the afternoon, as I took a nap, and then hung in with us for an evening viewing of the Darjeeling Limited (which is fab. I recommend it. Though it sure does make India look...cleaner.)



And then she wound up her 9th week by sleeping by herself (meaning, not attached to me) until 3am. Rock ON.



K's back at work today...we miss him so when he's not here during the day. But the good news about Daylight Savings is that he can take a walk with all his girls in the evening after work and still savor this amazing day...blue skies, sixty-something degrees-- just perfect.



My weekly feature for the local paper is becoming a monthly feature, due to their budget concerns and the town's dwindling pool of interviewable people-- I've done one a week for the past year.



I'm trying to look at this as an opportunity, so I'll be writing some personal essays and the like and sending them off to magazines. Who knows, maybe this will end up being a good thing.



Novel #2 got its first rejection. It's not finished yet (still revising), but enough is done that I can send it out, ergo the rejection. Never fun, and it always gets under my skin more than I think it will.



So that's the Monday update. In-laws coming for their first-ever Mississippi-- and grandchild-- visit this week, so here's hoping Annaliese's angel streak continues.

On diapers

Annaliese is two months old!

As if to mark the occasion, she skipped her usual midnight feeding and slept solidly until 3am. Her papa and I appreciated it.


Many of you have asked about the cloth diapering thing. Here's our system:

baby in crib on uncovered wipe-down mattress

a basket full of cloth diapers-- the basic ones which are like squares, made from white cotton by Gerber, with absorbent centers

a few pull-up vinyl panties

and these.

Dirty diapers go off the bebe and straight into a 5-gallon bucket with a lid and some white vinegar on the bottom. When full, the pail is taken to the washer and its contents are run on hot water with heavy soil and extra rinse directions. We do this about every 3 days.

We bought our energy-efficient frontloader before I was even pregnant, but it sure has paid off. I can rest easy knowing we're using so much less water, and the diapers come out clean. Stained, but then we don't bother with bleach.

We put a disposable on at night so she doesn't sleep in a soaked diaper.

On day trips, we bring a plastic bag for used diapers.


That's it! Really pretty easy. If it was hard, I wouldn't be doing it; and our initial diaper investment was about $30-50; our only costs now are diaper cream and energy.

Today my mother asked me if I've given up on blogging.

Au contraire. It's just that I'm trying to use my available typing time for the novel. Plus all I have to talk about is the bebe, anyway, and as superlative as she is, I'm kinda sure that's obnoxious.

But really guys, I got nothing else.

She's eight weeks old, and way more fun than she was. She still sleeps in our bed every night, and I'm usually awakened by her kicking me. Sometimes I wake up when she's sound asleep, and I'm so disconcerted that she doesn't need anything that I have to stop myself from messing with her.

I kind of love sleeping with her in our bed, actually, though I do look forward to her moving into the crib in a month or so. But I like knowing where she is, how she is, and the sight of her curled up next to me makes me feel like an ocean liner with a dingy floating adjacent.

K. dresses her more than I do, which is why she's in that purple outfit above half the time. He thinks it makes his girl look like a princess, and who am I to object?

We've had the next-kid conversation, which surprises me. Memories of labor really do fade fast. (But it'll be a while yet.)

Spring is coming to Mississippi. Since we live in a house with a certain lack of outdoor privacy, I'll be turning a small side porch into an outside nook where we can spend some private time outdoors. That and the garden I've planned should get us outside during the day, which will be fab; my husband loves me enough to let me do what I want with the veggie garden, so we are having...drumroll...a tomato garden.

Nothing but heirloom tomatoes. Forty seedlings are ordered, and I'm going to plant basil between them.

I'm seriously excited. I have this idea that maybe we'll sell our excess at the local farmer's market, since a vendor's permit is only $5 a week, and that way I can spend spring and summer toddling with my baby girl and hopefully my snooze-a-bed husband down under the magnolia tree, where we can sit next to the bed of the truck and sell beautiful Nebraska Weddings and Mr. Stripeys to our neighbors and friends.

Sounds fun, eh? What are y'all planning for spring?

One Sentence Updates

On the child: She's still alive.

On motherhood: I'm a little bipolar on this, because depending on the day (and the night that preceeded it), I'm either like, eh, hand wave, it's fine, not so bad, we're doing well; or I'm clutching at my hair and googling like mad because I'm doing EVERYTHING WRONG.

On the novel: Really, people, I'm working on it, five days a week, often with a baby attached to me.

On marriage after baby: I miss K.

On Clinton vs Obama vs McCain: I feel the same way about them as I do about baby experts, meaning that I can see the points of each and every one of them; Clinton tries so hard, don't you feel for her? And Obama's totally too cool for school-- really, he's just so cool, plus he'll probably win and it's always fun to be on the winning rockstar side, while McCain-- besides the fact that he went to my prep school, the man's a hero, that tough gritty kind of hero that puts James Bond to shame, what's not to dig?

A Belated Ode to E.

My sister came to visit last week. She's five years to the day younger than me; a time gap that means we spent a childhood hunting frogs and making bows and arrows together, but have since been in different places. When I turned 18, she turned 13; when I entered college, she wasn't yet in high school; when I married, she was a senior in high school.

And now I have a baby. E. on the other hand, doesn't yet have a pet; she's a sophmore in college, a sorority girl who posts her niece's pics on Facebook.

So it's always been a blessing to me that despite the age gap and the different circumstances, we're still good friends. And it looks like she's going to be a fab aunt for my little girl. Even if her major impression of childbirth comes from the film Knocked Up.

on motherhood

I've been completely in love with my daughter this week.

That's not to say that I'm not happy to hand her off in the evenings; that I don't revel in Wednesdays, when K. is Annaliese's primary caregiver; but man alive, it's been fun to have a baby in the past few days.

She's nearly 7 weeks old. That means that if I was in the corporate world, it's likely I'd have headed back to the office in the last week and plunked her in daycare, with a nanny, or a grandmother, or something.

I don't judge any mother out there for what she does re. childcare. Go to any baby in a daycare center and say-- would you rather not be born, or endure daycare before you're ready? and I guarantee you that they'd pick being alive. You do what you got to do.

But it sucks that working women don't get more of a choice.

My baby's barely learned how to recognize me; she's nowhere near ready to entertain herself with strangers and other kids; she needs one on one attention. In other words, corporate America has completely ignored the needs of babies (let alone mothers) in their six-week window; I'm beginning to see why government workers in Canada get an entire year; maybe after a year, a baby will be alright in a clean, well-lit place stocked with other kids and responsible caregivers.

Extravagant, sure, but what's not extravagant about a brandnew human being?

Here's to hoping that telecommuting, flextime, and job-sharing makes motherhood easier for working women out there. I have a hunch it's hard enough without having to choose your baby versus your job.

Below are quite a few pics, taken over the course of my wee sister's visit. It was great seeing the girl, and even greater that she gamely took on caring for her niece. I have to say I abused the priviledge!

But we interrupted the extensive Annaliese coverage for a very special event: K. turned 27! We had a great big steak dinner, the traditional overcooked cookies, and Annaliese sat quietly through the festivities. My old, old man was a big fan of his little kid presents... the airgun target is sitting on the kitchen counter as I type this.

The child has stopped squalling, and K. wants to hand her over. So goodnight all. More later.

K. seemed to like his birthday presents (fishing net, solar lantern, and airgun with glow-in-the-dark pellets) quite a bit.

He gave me a present in return.

K. had a birthday, and all in the family put on a crown (made by my sister) to celebrate!

My sister came to visit. Annaliese was pretty comfortable with her, to say the least.

my starry-eyed baby

Sometimes my baby is so cute I want to eat her.

I think she can tell.

Heh.

For the last two nights, I've spent the four am hour in my kitchen. The routine goes like this: baby pukes up milk on me, feels better (for whatever reason, the gas doesn't bubble out unless she's upright), nurses, and then pleasantly dozes as I wait for her to enter "deep sleep." After an hour or so, we return to bed, where she wakes up. I then wake up K., who takes her and continues to walk her... then we all sleep! for a whole hour! until I am awakened by the child pooping, so much so that it runs down her back, through her onesie, and stains the sheets!


And yet, she's still cute.

p.s. she's not lactose intolerant. this is a night problem caused by the fact that I fall asleep while she nurses, and she-- being a big fan of the nip-- keeps idly sucking long after she's done feeding, thus swallowing lots of air. which makes her tummy hurt. which makes her want to nurse more, since it's her favorite thing to do. which makes her have to poop.

why don't i just stay awake while she nurses? well, i'll try. but i'm in my sixth week of sleeping in two-hr bursts, so the odds aren't good.

Baby girl slept from 10.30-2 last night, then nursed only 3x between 2 and 7.30. Huge, people. Huge.

But even better was the hour she spent with us last night, grinning, taking in the world, and most importantly-- not crying.

I'd like to take the credit, but ain't nothing changed. That's my new parenting philosophy: I do the best I can at all times, and I don't take credit for her easy behavior or blame for her bad.

But her good looks? All me. And possibly her papa.

The Good ole Funk

Yesterday, the umpteenth of ladies from our church came by and dropped off a onesie for annaliese. We've had phone calls offering babysitting, meals dropped off at our door, and handmade baby blankets galore.

It's a neat town, this place where we live. I'm from Virginia-- a proud, rich state, with a lot of history. You say Mississippi in Virginia, and people raise eyebrows.

It's no secret that K. and I don't plan to stay in MS. But when we leave and head back easterwards, there are things I'll miss about this place...

the fact that people take a week off from work to drive their RVs, full of family, fifteen miles away to the lake. And that's their annual vacation.

the bumbling but goodnatured antics of our board of aldermen...the vanity plate of the town mayor, which reads "WVMAYOR"-- he paid for it himself.

the fact that people aren't easily pigeonholed here--the ponytailed phone repair man also plays rock'n'roll, and like every other person in MS, has written a novel.

And places can't be dismissed either...the most dive-looking shack might turn out to be the hottest restaurant for miles around.

People know how to have fun down here. When we move back to the staid East Coast, I hope we can borrow some of the joi d'vivre and good neighborliness.

Who knew babies are so loud? She snuffles, grunts, coughs, sneezes, burps, and farts... and that's before the crying!

4 weeks in and life HAS improved. If we could get her down to 2 feed-and-burps a night, we'd be golden... for the past 2 nights, the routine has been she gets very gassy at 3-ish am, vomits milk all over me a few times, and cries for 15 mins or so before going back to sleep. (BUT SHE'S NOT COLICKY. Here's why: colic is inconsolable, high-pitched wailing that lasts for more than 3 hours, on 3 or more days a week, for at least 3 weeks.)

Annaliese is just fussy. And gassy. But so far, thank Heaven, never inconsolable.

She's going with me on 2 interviews this week. Wish the sling magic powers...

It is a fantablulous day here in Mississippi... jeans and long-sleeved shirt weather, blue sky, warm sun. K. and I took the bebe and the dogs for a log walk this morning; it's funny, since Annaliese has come I find myself longing more for our own land. Because I want to walk-- boy, do I want to walk!-- but I don't want to see anyone, avoid the neighborhood's loose dogs, deal with the occasional car... I just want to go tromping, but there's nowhere within walking distance to tromp alone.


Still, though, it's a beautiful day. K's down at the building-- he's resumed his Saturdays here, though the hours are shorter-- and I managed a nap on the couch with my beautiful daughter. So life is good.

Enviromental tip of the day: three years ago, at 4am in a Virginian Wal-Mart, K. and I found that the Black Friday cheapo laptop we had come to purchase was sold-out, so we bought a tiny $4 crock pot instead.

It was very early.

Since the crockpot is too small to actually cook with, we've ferried it around with us...but now we have a baby! who dislikes cold things on her nether regions, and who has parents who dislike throwing wipes out! So, we launder the baby wipes after they are used (they hold up fine, and are incredibly soft), then subsequently use them with the warm water that sits in the crockpot.


And in good movies updates, if anyone loves wacked-out British movies the way I do, Keeping Mum is great-- especially seeing Maggie Smith and Patrick Swayzee (sp?) in the same film.

Chip chip cheerio.

Mom has gone, and it's just me and the kid. Or, the Mom and the Kid.

Man, I don't really feel like a Mom yet. More like the Great Milk-Provider.

Happy Monday, y'all!

Well, I know I'm feeling better-- because I'm bored. Three weeks on Sunday, meaning next week... next week I hope to be a bit more active than I've been.

In an effort to talk about something besides our darling daughter (who is hanging peacefully in her sling as I write this), there's been a whole lot of presidential debates going on in this house. I'm of the opinion that whomever does get elected will be so darn tired from the drawn-out campaigning that they'll collapse of exhaustion or have a heart attack right off the bat. You think we could condense this whole process...it's not like they have a lot to say.

So there! A non-baby thought!

In baby news... she really is very cute. We had a big day Wednesday, with a 2-week appt with the midwives in Memphis and her first visit to her pediatrician in Oxford. She handled both well, thought 1. it sucks watching your baby get a needle poked in their heel and 2. it sucks to watch her cry in her car seat b/c she's hungry, and not be able to feed her because you're late and it's illegal to take her out in the car.

Health-wise though, she's a strong lusty little thing, despite her fine looks...she's over 8 lbs now, which is more impressive when you realize that (like most babies) she lost weight after being born. 14 ounces in 9 days; I'm very proud of my milk.

K.'s still the husband of the year-- such a good-natured man I married, even at five in the morning!

Check it out:

Good Lord, child.

(note time.)

2 weeks in, and we're still here

I drafted a column today. It felt good to do something with my mind; granted, I was writing about the baby, but man alive, I was WRITING, after all.

My start date for my my old jobs is Feb. 1st. It'll be good to get all my balls back in the air, I hope the baby thing gets a bit easier between now and then. Because right now showering, making breakfast, and taking a walk seems like a reasonable list of activities for a full day.

In Annaliese news, we went through a brief spell of discussing how much we could get for her on the baby black market, but then she got cute again, thank Heaven. Nonetheless, it'd be nice to get some sleep at night (and by some, I really do mean some...)

(Regardless of my whining, I'm really very glad that she's been here for 2 whole weeks. I wouldn't go back to two Sundays ago for ANYTHING (right about now was when I was moaning like a dying cow and forcing myself to walk up and down our front porch steps, since "steps are good for getting babies out" and we don't have any INSIDE). )

So happy 2 weeks, kidlet. It'll be neat to see what tricks you pull in the next 14 days.

In the world's greatest role reversal, K. is actually now the one in need of r&r, between caring for me, the dogs, the baby, and starting back at work. hence the lack of posts over at his blog. I'm attempting to take up some of the slack.

We had a fab Sunday (one week! yes!!) and went on our first excursion that was not within spitting distance of the house, so we could listen to our baby girl cry under a bright blue sky.

The dogs were very happy to be somewhere different, as was I-- so much so that we hopped in the car and went a-driving. It's true; cars really do puts babies to sleep. She didn't make a peep.

Oh, and K. shaved his beard....in stages of varying grossness, as he likes to do, by which I mean he emerged from the bathroom sporting this:

But now, thank heaven, he's all cute again:

In Annaliese news, she's doing just fine. She's a great baby, though some sense of circadian rhythm would be much appreciated.... Because we are us, we still mock the baby though:

saturday

every day gets better. we ventured across the way on saturday. super-fun. my first time out since the 6th!





ain't she gorgeous? apparently new babies should spend a lot of time nekiid, but i love stuffing her into her "outside" outfits...

the two faces of annaliese

of course, we think she's darling, even when she's crying...

so.

I had a baby. What have you been doing?

I now know that the smell of milk and baby is heartwrenchingly lovely. That living in the present is the only way to get through this; right now, I can type and reach my juice. Yesterday, I shaved my legs. This afternoon, I ate some gingerbread. These are the small good things that mark my hours, since I am not going to be my old self, bounding around the house unencumbered, ever again, and nor am I yet the sling-wearing mama I hope to someday be.

But progress is being made...Sunday night, I could not sit up. Monday, I could not walk to the bathroom without help. Tuesday, I took a bath. Wednesday, I gained some breast-feeding confidence after a visit from the midwife. And today? Today I walked around the house for a whole ten minutes while Annaliese slept on her own. We're doing good.

Amazing how accurate the term "labor" is, and that's all we'll say about that.

Funny thing:

I am sweating up a STORM. Apparently, it's one of the ways your body gets rid of all the fluid you retain during pregnancy; consequently, my legs, feet, arms, face, etc-- so much thinner than they've been. I hadn't realized.

http://picasaweb.google.com/alexe.pvb/AnnalieseUpdated

for a few pics and video.

so many blessings

Our freezer is full of grass-fed beef and gourmet frozen meals. Roses sit in a vase; "we're sorry you have to wait," said the friends who dropped them off.

The L.P.'s crib has a hand-made crocheted shawl draped around it; next to the bookshelf is a basket full of hand-knit booties, a pair for every day of the week in every color of the rainbow. She has two handmade sweaters, a handmade quilt on its way, and onesie after onesie. She has dresses made by a great-great-grandmother, carefully passed down; a box full of clothes she won't be able to wear for months yet...and so much more.

We've received a child care manual, recommended by a mother of four; a pampering home-care pregnant mama book, an organic baby book, a DVD on communicating with infants. We have boxes of chocolates waiting until after the baby comes, a pot of very rich skin cream, lavender soap, fancy talcum powder, diaper rash cream. We've gotten card after card, call after call, email after email; "I can get you groceries," one friend said. Another recommended a pediatrician and told me not to hesitate to call at two in the morning if I ran into problems.

People tell me they dreamt about us. "She was beautiful," they say, and all I can do is nod and hope that it will be so.

We've gotten support from our families, excitement from the friends that don't have children, wisdom from those who do. Our neighbors, in this small town we've been in for just a year, are beyond kind.

So many good thoughts for one little baby, when babies are born all the time all over the world. I wish that every mama-to-be could have some of the love that surrounds me on all sides.

(yep. K.'s building, inside second floor. Isn't the brick beautiful?)

Who knew?

80% of first-time mothers deliver between 40-42 weeks (Due dates clock in at 40 weeks sharp). 10% go BEYOND 42 weeks.
10% don't make it to the due date.

40 weeks, 5 days, and still waiting.