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[13 May 2012|10:14am] |
Last night I left a sippy cup of juice in the fridge as tribute, hoping the apartment might be spared its usual half-gallon of milk on the carpet this time.
It worked. Remy drank the juice upon waking up, put the empty cup in the sink, and then poured himself a full cup of soymilk without spilling a drop.
I'm going to interpret that as having learned overnight to pour milk properly, because I don't like the alternative. But I might still, you know, leave some juice in the future.
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| A taste of a different sort of downward spiral |
[09 May 2012|10:14pm] |
More and more mornings I seem to be waking up to a Surprise. It puts me in mind of waking up on the side of a highway in full elephant regalia, with a chopped-off ponytail that's not mine and a note reminding myself I'll recognize the monopole in good time. Not that that's a mindset I would know, but maybe the universe wanted to make up for the limited experience.
This morning, after some earlier wakings to nurse and later to have a cup of water spilled on my head, there was a pathetic cry: Mama, get it OUT of my eyes! It hurts in my eyes!
After a sleepy consideration of all the benign situations that could lead to this sort of cry (none), I stumbled out of the bed. He turned out to be standing on the kitchen counter (taller than he is, no support for climbing in sight) with the cabinets open, wearing a very thick layer of dish soap all over his face and rubbing it into his eyes.
These are the times I wish he were just a little less resilient, or that he would remember the negative parts of this experience. His recollection involves the following: SPANKING (for the water cup on my head), BUBBLE SOAP, a BUBBLE BATH. Nothing about eyes.
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| On washing of children |
[13 Apr 2012|10:26pm] |
I think I can understand about washing a baby in general. They smell like baby soap afterwards, and you feel like a really responsible parent, and hey, it's more fun than lots of other things you can do with a baby.
What I do not understand is feeling driven to wash a baby. Especially right away. Do you see evidence of dirt on the baby? Does it smell weird, in ways you think a bath would fix?
Admittedly, I was bewildered by a great many things when Remy was born. The hospital staff were on me, for instance, to shower. (But don't leave a baby alone in the hospital room, what were you THINKING?)
They also lobbied hard to put Remy in a carseat for an hour before I took him home, so they could watch and see if he'd stop breathing. I kid you not.
But they were quite concerned with explaining that I should not think of immersing that baby for at least a few weeks: only sponge baths. I have no intention of washing it, I wanted to tell them. Why would I want to wash it. It's a baby. But I did not particularly want to see the social worker again, so I figured I could look this up later.
I read then, and have just checked that I wasn't missing anything obvious, a great many articles about bathing one's baby. And they all presume that one has this drive to wash. The universal answer to "how often does a baby need a bath" is not more than two or three times a week. Apparently the lower bound goes without saying.
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| Oh dear. |
[10 Apr 2012|10:37pm] |
"I wanna feed that wine to Mama," Remy tells me. He has developed a fascination with feeding me things, especially when he does not have the option of eating them himself.
"It's actually beer," I tell him, "but it's empty. Could you put it in the recycling for me?" For some reason I feel guilty about requests like these that actually save me some work, even when I'd happily request far more of his time at no personal benefit. Maybe especially about requests that I know I cannot transcribe without evoking... well, a young single mother making her toddler clean up beer bottles.
"I could DO THAT! I could PUT that wine in the recycles... for Mama." He gets about two steps away before tipping the bottle all the way back into his mouth.
"I told you, it's empty. In the recycling, please."
He does a huge grin. "Did you take a SMALL sip?"
Waste not, want not. Good for you, kid. Kind of.
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| On a visit to the B-C-S BUILDING! |
[22 Mar 2012|09:05pm] |
WHAT is THAT?
That's a tree.
He tries to eat it. Ah, the power of language over observation.
Not a treat, Remy. A tree.
Ohh. I can climb it!
No, you can't. I am tired. He is made of albuterol energy at the moment, from our well-meaning efforts at the nebulizer.
It doesn't have any low branches.
Also it is indoors and too small and in a pot, Remy.
I could NOT climb it. ...But I could TRY.
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| the concept of family |
[22 Mar 2012|09:02pm] |
Remy knows about "baby and mama" of all sorts of animals, although to be fair he also knows about baby and mama train and paper and cup. He accepts that I am his mama and make his rules, whereas robins' mamas make their rules and we should not scold the robin for hopping into the spiky bush.
Maybe he has some idea of what this means:
When you were born you came OUT of Mama's tummy!
(He has a little trouble with first- and second-person pronouns, still.) I assumed this was almost entirely a recitation until he tried to climb back in by sticking his feet into my belly-button.
No, you can't go back, I told him.
You have to put on SHOES, he elaborated.
He recites that Mama has ONE child and Namma has THREE children.
I ask who is Mama's mama.
MAMA!
He is actually pretty consistent on this one:
When Mama was born she came OUT of her tummy!
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| 25-26 months |
[18 Feb 2012|06:59pm] |
Today Remy provided his first nontrivial insight into his subjective experience: after some time spinning around, he insisted that "the whole house is spinning!"
As a side effect of his enthusiasm for books, he's also started narrating dialogue as well as events. E.g., "'Would you like to put on your coat?', said Mama." Or "'Would you like to play trains?' said the traffic light." Occasionally he helps out by telling me to say something, and then telling me I said it.
I have accidentally passed on the "I need you to" form of the imperative, so I now get a lot of "I need you to stop wiping my bottom" and "I need you to not sing that. I need you to just READ that" or, embarrassingly, "I need Mama to get down off her spinny chair and read that."
This evening when my parents arrived, Remy announced he had a question. Over and over: "I have a question." Upon prompting from my dad, Remy finally asked his question: "What does Grampa have in his nose? GRASS? He have grass sticking out!"
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| impulse response |
[19 Jan 2012|11:54am] |
>> Who's coming to visit today, Remy? [end my contribution to this discussion]
Namma!* And Becky and Cousin Norah and Becky. Aunt Becky. Gampa? ...
Now he's a Namma duck! They're going to be... that is... now he, now he's a Namma duck!** Namma and Gampa love you, and Becky love you, and Cousin Norah love you!
I'm gonna tell this gate is open. Gate is tell you can go through this gate. You can go through that gate. You can go through these gates. I can't go through these gates. I'm waiting traffic to change green. I'm waiting the traffic to change green.
Monkey love to visit that Mama. He's sitting, I'm waiting the traffic, he's sitting right-a next green light. Alligator is green, other monkey STOP and go--other monkey--I stop stop stop at that--that--that--that--light.
I know how--how to build a stop light. I know how a build a train. Mama like this train. Flashing lights are flashing! Flashing lights stop FLASH. ... We saw a train with Namma! And the gates were up. How many gates we saw with Namma? How many gates we saw with Namma? How many gates we saw with Namma? How many gates we saw with Namma? We saw TWO GATES with Namma!
And the cars get out of the way there's emergency, there's emergency, there's emergency, there's emergency... emergency... what inside? what inside the five little ducks? A book inside, five little ducks, inside, five little ducks. Sad mother duck went out one day, over the hills and far away. Mother duck said quack quack quack... Sad mother duck went out one day, over the hills and far away. Mother duck said quack quack quack... and all of the five little ducks came back! Now he's so happy to see those baby ducks! he's so happy to see those baby ducks! He's so happy to see those baby ducks. Now he's a namma duck! Now he's a namma duck! Now he's a namma duck!
* Grandma
** Regarding "Five Little Ducks," in which the five little ducks come back with their own children at the end, making Mama Duck into a grandmother.
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| What can I say? We're headed for hell anyway. |
[16 Jan 2012|09:09pm] |
I have been endeavoring, on some grounds composed of my own interest and my own interest in my boyfriend's parents liking me, to bring Remy to church.
I do not really think that bringing him to church is the important part of trying to figure out what I want to believe, what I can actually get myself to believe, and to what extent it is acceptable to let the former influence the latter. But what else are we going to get up to on Sunday mornings? We're not allowed to buy alcohol.*
Besides, a Catholic church is supposed to be enthusiastic about kids, right? I mean, maybe not quite this heathen bastard who licks the floor**, but they should still be up for saving him. And, jokes and politics both aside, it is actually kind of refreshing to deal with people who see children as literally a blessing, and who do not think I am crazy for having decided to have Remy in my situation.
Remy dealing primarily with my own mother and with my childless friends, however, has left me somewhat unaware of how unusually verbal he is. As he talks through the service ("I NEED TO BE QUIET!" he states proudly at full volume), several older girls who can't weigh more than two-thirds what he does stare at him wide-eyed and silent. Remy discusses the BABY AND MAMA CROSSES in the handout, the CANDLES IN THE SKY, the NOISY BELL. He also dances to each hymn, much to the dismay of a lady behind us. For once I feel pretty clearly in the right about letting him be a kid, because the dancing is quiet and very joyful and really not that distracting if you don't look.
And then he farts. Quietly--the only quiet thing so far. And, also quietly, he tilts his head: "Remy made a fart?"
"Shhh. You did."
Then he grins--a huge grin with the eyebrows up. "MAMA DID A FART!" he proclaims. "MAMA DID A FART! MAMA DID A FART! MAMA DID A FART!"
I have to hope that the people around us have dealt with kids before and secretly find this as hilarious as I do, coming at a quiet point in the sermon. "MAMA DID A STINKY FARRRRRT!"
His diction is not such a blessing now. I have a suspicion that with most two-year-olds Mama could get away with a puzzled look and a stage-whisper "Mama didn't move the car..." But it is absolutely clear what Remy is saying. I can't defend myself, I don't really want to carry him out yelling that I farted...
"Remy," I whisper, "want some Mama-milk?"
"I WOULD!" he responds. "I like Mama-milk. GUESS WHAT I GONNA DRINK!"
But I am quick enough with the blouse that he does not get a chance to shout about boobies in the same sermon. We need to have something to look forward to next week, after all.
* Only partially in jest. I prefer to go grocery shopping only once a week, in the morning because of Remy, and I do drink alcohol on a regular basis. So Sundays are not a good option for us.
** As you will see, this actually has some merit as a QUIET activity.
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| Even in Australia |
[25 Sep 2011|04:37pm] |
Some time ago, I managed to set off the smoke detector by leaving nipple wax on the radiator to soften.
Sometimes that sums up how things are going with this whole motherhood idea.
Today Remy got soaking wet twice. The first time he went swimming in a mud-puddle. The second he told me he was going potty, then flushed an entire roll of toilet paper and kept on flushing. THEN he went swimming.
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[10 Sep 2011|08:19pm] |
The palms of my feet are together in monkeyprayer and the wind rubs my back through the window. Remy has long stopped nursing and breathes peacefully a full inch from the teat.
Too, I have merged all of the timespans over ten minutes with infinity. When did I last focus fully on a problem, on a conversation, on a sensation? Is the breadth of my attention lacking that I feel its splitting so keenly, am I just more sensitive to the depletion, or do most of us lie to ourselves who claim to be able to do just what we did before children. (And more. Unicorn grooming! Puppy dissection!)
Ben was over today. Remy has, to his knowledge, to my great confidence, never seen him before, and was inconsolable when he left. It was the usual disconcertingly honest objection: I /wanted/ that. If I still thought the universe were listening, I'd be screaming the same. That came out wrong.
The moon is nearly full and there are paint-by-number clouds around it. (I promise you would agree if you saw them.) I figure that there is nothing that can make this worse than the best possible time to find peace in my mind and resolve to be for a minute. Did I offer Ben a drink when he came to the apartment? Do I ever offer anyone a drink? Do I ever censor the alcohol before noon? Why does it matter to me whether I am self-conscious about dancing in a club? Why am I not looking at the moon? This is not a quiet mind at all. Maybe it is the kind of peaceful that is loud, like a big family. That wasn't the thought for a peaceful mind at all.
Remy sleeps now in my lap as I type from bed looking over the Charles and more lights than even five, seven, aaae can count. In my lap is a generous term. I sit in a butterfly position with one leg over his belly, bent nose-to-toes so he can nurse. It does not feel remotely unreasonable until I try to describe it. Tomorrow, God willing, he will wake and present to me his most successful sentences, namely: Is hard to press the button. Batu'n'Lela far way. Ravis far away. I want to ride the bus. Bus to Batu'n'Lela's far away?
(That's right, kid. I want that too.)
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[16 Aug 2011|07:30pm] |
On the way home from the park today, Remy was making his usual monster feet and exclamations about water.
We encountered a stylish young woman of about 25 years. Perhaps it is important to the story that she had dark hair and vaguely Mediterranean features, but I'm not so sure.
"He's so cute! Is he Jewish?" was her greeting.
"No... uh... sorry," I stammered. I have gotten this question myself as a greeting too, and always feel like I have failed a test before even getting to say hello.
She watched him do a dance about the sprinkler on someone's yard. "Huh. Is he a mix?"
My mind jumped to dog-breeding. "Uh, a mix of what?"
"You know, French, Italian..."
I don't even know, honestly, at that level of detail. "Well, he's part black, that's where the hair is from."
"Oh!" Her face lit up in understanding. "Are you the babysitter?"
I have learned to take this as a compliment about my Youthful Nature and Lack of Mom Jeans. "No, I'm his mom. Other side of the family," I said with an attempt at finality and a vague gesture at my own light skin. She looked confused again.
"He's so cute! So, is he adopted?"
I realize that people with mixed-race kids get this all the time, but... well, I don't think Remy looks like he's nonwhite, let alone not biologically mine.
I do, however, admire this woman's perseverance on her apparently difficult quest to understand the world around her.
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[07 Jun 2011|10:21pm] |
Life has recently been a blur of three jobs and moving arrangements. The former are (a) writing a paper on evaluation of recording quality from some new 64-channel probes, (b) doing partial differential equations for Cramster, aka getting paid to learn ACM95 properly, and (c) organizing a neuroscience course for high-school students this summer. The latter involve (a) packing up some stuff to make room for Travis, who's moving in Friday, (b) figuring out childcare arrangements in Cambridge, and (c) alternating between being excited and nervous about the road trip to MIT.
Remy played peek-a-boo with the moon today. He also has fairly involved conversations with his shadow. I am pleased. The set of things he thinks are apples is a superset of apples (e.g. it includes nectarines, very adamantly), but he gets some pretty tricky cases like
- empty applesauce jars
- the Apple logo, uncolored
- pictures of apples on baby-food jars that do not have an apple flavor
so it is probably pretty well-optimized. Oh, and he's never eaten an apple. I have tried. He really, really, really likes ducks: Five Little Ducks, Make Way for Ducklings, the duck picture in Lisa's room in Corduroy, the ducks in Click Clack Moo, the ducks at the turtle pond, the ducks in Old MacDonald, pigeons, etc. To all of them he holds his hand up to his mouth to make a beak gesture as he says "wack wack!" Animal sounds as a first serious focus in learning associations mystifies me, but it seems to be firmly engrained. That, or he was very intrigued by how cute I found the first instances of "Ditty! Maaaao?"
Getting a housemate makes me nervous about becoming very self-conscious and stressed out, but there's only one way to find out. Ideally, it'll both make the place affordable and make it feel more like home to have another person here. Financially I should have found someone to live upstairs as soon as I realized how little sense the amount of space made for just Remy and me, but I guess I expected it to be trickier to find someone who was up for living with a baby. And to be fair, we were disgustingly sick for several months straight.
There are a lot of little decisions involved in moving that I struggle to make rational. Mostly they are of the form "Should I bring this along?" In the context of moving, the relevant question feels like "Would I end up replacing it for more than the value of the postage at some point?" (For simplicity, let's assume it's something I couldn't profitably sell.) That's a pretty long-term view. In contrast, "If I had lost everything I owned in a natural disaster, is this something I would buy for my future apartment for $1/pound at a limited-time sale?" leads to a much more conservative stance--even though it ought to be an equivalent question. I imagine the second question leads me in particular to a less rational conclusion because it taps into defenses against spending money at all, finely honed through Scottishness to counter any natural "but hey, this is a really good price and it'll definitely be useful at some point!" instincts. Because these are things I already own they are likely to be much better choices than things in a shop, so the defenses are overkill.
And being able to reason through this still does not give me a clear answer on the hole-punch.
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| Remy goes to the food store |
[17 May 2011|10:11pm] |
Remy and I had had a full day, with a bicycle ("Bible!") ride, plenty of time to chase our shadows, and a nice bath. Every two weeks whether you need it or not, kid. I mean it. But we still didn't have food to eat for the coming week, so I figured it was time to reinstate our old tradition: the bedtime errand walk.
Remy happily "read" a "book about animals" (read: he roared at the lion continuously) in the stroller until we arrived at the food store. And then, among several other Adventures with People, we picked out a yellow squash.
"Na-na!" Remy greeted it enthusiastically. "Nana, nana, nana!"
"No," I told him, "it is not a banana. It is a squash. They do look alike."
"Nana!"
"No, it is a squash. I know we do not like to discriminate on shape, but the truth is bananas do not come in ALL shapes and sizes. They have a characteristic shape and texture, and that is how we can distinguish them."
"Nana!"
"It is NOT a banana. Look, here is a banana. A banana is smoother and shaped like the moon."
"Moo!"
"Yes, shaped like the moon. And the banana has a stem, and a more uniform thickness."
"Nana!"
"Yes, that is a banana. But we are leaving the bananas, because you don't eat them. You beg for a banana, and then every time you spit it out."
"Nana!" he said, grabbing the squash. I let him carry it for a while. He tried to bite into it.
"No, it is not a banana. A banana is a fruit we can eat right away. Squash is a vegetable we have to cook. This is a squash."
"NANA NANA NANA!"
"No, it is not a banana. It is a squash. Oh. Whoops. Yes, there is a display of bananas over there. I don't understand why they try to get people to impulse-buy bananas."
("Ha! You were wrong!" said a lady passing by, not unkindly.)
"Nana!"
"I think this is having about as much effect as telling you I'm not a crook, darling. Squash. It is a SQUASH."
"Nana!"
"Yes, we have no bananas..."
This went on twenty minutes.
Then (embarrassingly enough, in the beer aisle) an employee rushed over with a banana. "I thought he might like a banana," she told me. I was bewildered. We were both in a food store. She gave me the receipt so we wouldn't have to worry about getting in trouble, and peeled it and offered it to him.
And just this once, he gobbled it down with no mess whatsoever. As if he'd been broadcasting his one greatest desire--NANA!--as far as his lungs could take it, since Mama wasn't going to spend the 24 cents to feed him.
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[30 Apr 2011|10:59pm] |
Remy greeted a helicopter this morning by waving and saying "ello!" to the ceiling.
In some sort of reverse hibernation, we have moved downstairs for the summer. It was too hard to cool the upstairs by bedtime, and I actually greatly prefer the smaller space. It's more manageable, and I'm not constantly reassuring Remy that I'll be right back after fetching socks.
That's the royal "we," in that I moved everything myself Thursday morning. I was quite pleased with myself and with the fact that the dresser didn't fall on me.
Friday brought more interaction than usual in the lab, as a postdoc in the lab had just returned from a trip. Here is a snippet:
postdoc A: *grumble grumble grumble* cocksucker.
postdoc B, whom I work for: Hey! Watch your language.
postdoc A: Oh, sorry. [beat] Is Kim there?
postdoc B: Yes.
postdoc A: Sorry.
Me: Is this actually a thing? You don't swear when I'm here?
Both, immediately: Yes.
You may be proud to note that I said none of the things I was actually thinking. I certainly am.
This morning brought a bicycle trip to Huntington to visit Carlos & Gin and their daughter. That's not my story to tell, but Remy was quite jealous of the newborn's bottle. And fascinated by the buttons on the bed.
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[28 Mar 2011|01:33pm] |
By 9 this morning we were home. Remy had gone for his surgery and we'd been grocery shopping and to the pharmacy for his ear drops.
Aside from some fussing as the anaesthesia wore off, he has been happy the whole time. That includes leaving at 6 with no breakfast (not even some mama-milk).
Now for the days of "am I seeing what I hope to see, or is he a whole lot happier?" They did drain the fluid from his ears, so it's not crazy to imagine that his unusually contented play this morning while I cooked was related.
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[19 Feb 2011|10:00pm] |
While I attempted to take a nap today, Remy climbed onto the couch to do the following at the computer:
a) Opened several help tabs in Firefox
b) Made desktop shortcuts to the control panel and network
c) Rotated the monitor display 180 degrees
Surprisingly, there was no damage to the hardware.
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| in the past few weeks |
[07 Feb 2011|09:31pm] |
- fed Remy asparagus, roasted parsnips, all sorts of beans. Discovered upon bringing him to daycare with his favorite peanut-eggplant soup that no traces of peanut foods are allowed in the children's lunches--not an unreasonable policy, but not such an obvious one it ought to go unstated!
- biked out to north Pasadena for 93 jars of free baby foods from a fellow freecycler who's moving soon. Learned that the expiration dates are really just taste suggestions. Or may have begun poisoning firstborn.
- performed a salsa dance routine in a completely-full wedding cake building.
- actually went out dancing. Actually danced and did not feel terribly out-of-place, despite managing to twirl into another couple without being led there. (My partner just smiled and promised to catch me every time from then on. And did!)
- still haven't figured out what to say to "but you look so young!" in response to the realization that I have a kid. I am starting to think "I am so young" is a perfectly valid response, regardless of how young, because doesn't the rudeness sort of scale with what they meant?
- got sick. kind of got better. got sick some more. brought Remy in for his checkup after a failed attempt in which the little nubby washer for the bike trailer vanished.
- finally got carded. After he saw my ID I mentioned that I hadn't been before, and said something about "maybe because of the baby." The new cashier looked at me funny. "It's not the baby, ma'am, it's you. You look quite young."
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| even in australia |
[24 Jan 2011|04:51pm] |
- fourth consecutive ear infection for remy
- sinus infection for me
- shortstaffed daycare (5 --> 2 or 3) letting the babies just sit and cry
- bringing baby to lab to "help" explain matlab not actually a viable solution, but tried it 4 hours
- month-late rec letter to berkeley due to prof not pressing 'submit', committee meeting today
- if you don't get the idea of a function taking arguments after six months...
- all typed onehanded
- still can't tell difference between flirting and mexican (single instance)
- why did i pick today for learning to walk in heels
- when was my last shower
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[17 Oct 2010|11:17pm] |
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The dreams that Remy casually reveals he can talk have not quite stopped, but now more experience is coming into play. In the most recent, his hand is accidentally cut off in the course of playing at home. I put the severed hand in the fridge, but otherwise treat the injury as I do his little head-bumps and bruises--with kisses and milk. After he plays a few minutes without it I consider that he will probably want that hand once he's in school and call 911 to explain the situation. The window of opportunity to reattach the hand is an hour or so. After about half an hour of insisting that we really do have insurance, that I will pay out of pocket if necessary, that I would rather finish these negotiations later, an ambulance is sent. We go to the hospital and he is taken away. No one believes I am his mother. I do not think to show the linea nigra still on my belly. The hand has been forgotten in the fridge at home.
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