Temple Turnover

Temple wants to be on the move.  She gets crabby sitting in her chair, and is constantly marching her feet in place, like she's doing abs.  I went to step class last night, and the instructor made us do flutter kicks with weights for abs, and I wanted to kill her.  She made one girl cry.  Temple cries sometimes when she's doing abs.  She is also getting pretty good at picking her head up when she is on her tummy.  I went to yoga on Sunday, and we did some tummy time there, too.  The instructor made us do the thing where you lay on your belly and lift your head, arms, and legs.  It works your back.  I couldn't do it for very long.  Me and Temple are at about the same fitness level right now.  

Our pediatrician told us at her 2 month appointment that she will be more mobile in the next few months, and that means she is more susceptible to injury, particularly falls and burns.  He gave us a list of development items to look forward to between now and her 4 month appointment.  She will be making faces more and more, and she will react more to people other than her mother.  This is because she is noticing new things, and my face isn't new.  I'm thinking about shaving my eyebrows, just to see if I can get a reaction out of her.  Or maybe I'll get a mask.    

Solstice

Temple is asleep.  She has been sleeping all day, getting up only every two hours to eat.  The last two weeks, she has spent each day grazing, barely sleeping more than ten minutes at a stretch.  I guess she is catching up.  I hope this doesn't affect her night routine.  Once again, I failed to follow the advice, "sleep when the baby sleeps."  What did I do with all my free time?  Maybe I started reading a new book, since I finally finished "Let The Right One In," (it was gruesome and good), or maybe I cooked some chicken to keep in the fridge, so I would always have chicken when I wanted chicken.  Maybe I took out the recycling (funny story, I finally took the diaper garbage bag out, but I didn't put the can on the street in time for the garbage men, so that bag of poo will sit in the can in the heat until Friday.  Happy Friday, garbage men.  I appreciate your service.  Enjoy the stank.), or maybe I did my postpartum yoga DVD.  Or maybe I ate peanut butter and jelly with a spoon and watched The Real Housewives of New Jersey marathon.
Also, Temple is almost big and strong enough for me to perch her on one of my ample hips.  I'm this close to being able to hold the baby and eat a burrito at the same time.  That will be a happy day.  Maybe I'll get a burrito to celebrate it.

Entertainment

When Temple isn't busy pooping through her clothes, she digs her Infant-Stim Mobile.  It has high contrast, exchangeable cards, and adjustable heights, so it will amuse her for months to come.  She seems to enjoy it.  It is sort of like a Top Chef Marathon, but for babies.

Clementine's Korner

And You Shall Know Me By The Trail of Bloody Paw Prints

- a very short story, by Princess Bumfoot

"I hurt my foot.  See?"

"I broke the toenail right off.  It's like the third time I did this.  The last time, they had just fixed the screen door, and I didn't know they had fixed the screen door, so I walked into the screen door, and I scratched my eyeball.  Then, that night, I couldn't see out of that eyeball, so I fell down the stairs.  Yes, the stairs to the bed that they got me after I broke my neck and had to learn to walk again."

Chair sleeper

  

Temple falls asleep in her bottle feeding chair.  Like a drunk on a Lazy Boy, the sated T dozes in her Maclaren.  You should see the empty bottles of breast milk strewn around her.  I think she needs meetings.  This type of thing is hereditary; Temple comes from a long line of chair sleepers. 

Feast or Famine

Matt's parents were here from Sunday to Thursday morning.  Josh, a prospective Naval Academy student, was here from Thursday to Saturday.  Tomorrow, Temple goes to her maternal grandparents' house for the first time.  All very exciting.  Sunday night, Matt leaves, not to return until Thursday afternoon. It's back to just T and me. Sorry, Temple. We are not watching soccer. It's America's Next Top Model marathons until Thursday.

Asleep at the wheel

"Wah, I'm so hungry!  Feed me!  Wah!  [suck suck suck] Noms.  [Snore]."

Clementine's Korner

"In the past six weeks, they have been getting up several times a night, just to sit on the couch for forty minutes.  I didn't understand it, but I would get up with them, because I also like to sit on the couch, as long as someone picks me up when I say and puts me back on the floor when I say.  Then, all of a sudden, those lazy buttholes stopped waking up when they were supposed to.  I believe, as chief in charge of household affairs, that it is my responsibility to keep everyone on schedule.  That's what I had to wake everyone up the last 4 nights in a row.  This laziness will not stand.

Also, our neighbors were outside talking quietly, and that freaked me out.  That's also why I was barking.  

Also, the wind was blowing.  Also, I had gas."

Pugs: can't live with them.

On Friday, June 11, Temple slept from about 10 pm until 2:00 am, ate for 40 minute or so, slept until 5:30 am, ate for about 40 minutes, and then stayed up, eating and sleeping on and off all day.  This had been her routine for about 4 weeks.  On Saturday night, she dozed off around 8:00 pm, and wasn't interested in being woken up for a 9:30 pm feeding like she usually is.  We expected her to wake us up just as we were drifting off to dreamland around 11:00 pm.  What did wake us up, around 12:30 am, was Clementine.  She barked for nearly an hour for no reason.  Temple, however, slept until 4:00 am.  Temple has slept for about 6 hours at a time at night since Saturday night, and Clementine has woken us up every one of those nights barking around 12:30 or 1:00 am.  Clementine sucks.  

3 Facts About Mr. Rogers

I watched a biography channel biography of Mr. Rogers.  Three touching facts:

1.  Koko, the sign language gorilla, would watch Mr. Rogers everyday.  when she met him, she took off his shoes.

2.  In 1980, Joan Rivers guest hosted The Tonight Show, and Mr. Rogers was a guest.  Joan Rivers was pissed, thinking that a saccharine children's show host had no place on late night television.  When she interviewed him on the show, she was so charmed by his sincerity that she cried when he sang "I like you."

3.  Mr. Rogers did not want to make a big deal out of the final episode of his show.  He wanted there to be a catalogue of episodes teaching lessons to children, and wanted his last episode to be just another show.  So, there is nothing special about the final episode of the show, except for this:  during the episode, Mr. McFeely, the mailman, did something he had never done before.  Before he left, he shook Mr. Rogers' hand.

In cartoons and gum commercials, a bright smile sparkles and makes that *ding* sound with a shiny asterisk.  There is a brief moment when the suns shines just right through the trees onto a piece of rock, and the rock glows for a moment.  There are those beautiful moments in time and in life, too.  These ones with Mr. Rogers are some of them.

Separated at birth

At left, Temple Virginia Sermon, 6 week old baby.

At right, Matthew Barney, modern American artist, best known for his series of five films, The Cremaster Cycle, which explores creation through allusions to the human reproductive anatomy's process of differentiation. 

Go Strasburg!

Things may be looking up for Temple's sports heart.  The Redskins still suck, but the Nationals' new pitching prodigy just struck out 14 (a Nationals' record) in his MLB debut.  

Premonitory dreams

I might be psychic, or maybe a prophet.  I have dreams that predict the future.
In college, I dreamed who the new director of the student run coffee shop would be before anyone told me.  I actually dreamed that Adam, one of the people who would chose the new director, told me who they had selected.
In 2006, I dreamed that Joe's wife was 7 weeks pregnant, and she really was.
In December, I dreamed that I had a c-section, and that they had to use general anethesia, and I slept for 3 days and never got to meet the baby.
I did get to meet my baby; in fact, I see her all the time.  But, as I have written about before, I did have a c-section, they almost had to give me general anesthesia, and I was in a fog for my whole stay in the hospital.  During the handful of moments I have had alone since T was born, my mind has consistently wandered back to her birth, and how difficult it was.  It didn't go as I imagined it would.  I thought I would deliver in a bed, sitting up, intensely but quietly pushing and breathing, an angelic glow on my cheeks, a crystal tear running down my temple, and she would be born and we would look each other in the eyes and instantly know that we were meant to be.  Then the violins would start up.  Then, the birth went the exact opposite way than I expected.  I had surgery, which was the very last thing I wanted to do, I didn't get to hold her for almost an hour, I was drugged up, sick, in pain, exhausted, I had trouble nursing, I cried for 3 days, and so on and so on.  I said I was prepared for it to go other than I imagined it, but based on my reactions after the fact, I clearly wasn't.  I didn't think I was the type to have rigid expectations for birth, but I was, and now I know that about myself.  I should pay more attention to my dreams.  Although, these days, my dreams are mostly about nursing.  No symbols, no metaphor, just reliving the events of the day.  They are the dreams of a dog.  Or a cow.

Exchange

[Matt and Krista arrive home from lunch to find that Santa (the Fed Ex man) has delivered the Snap n' Go Infant Car Seat Stroller has arrived.]

Krista

Baby, could you bring that package in whenever?

Matt

By "whenever," do you mean, "right away, or else I'm going to get pissed and do it myself?"

Krista

Yes.

[and scene.]

The first act of vengeance

"I shall have my revenge.  For all your sins, I shall have my revenge.  My first plague: I have stolen the word 'walk' from your vocabulary!  Henceforth, neither Matt nor Krista shall speak the word 'walk' in this house, unless they wish a rash of barking dogs scratching and barking at the front door and gnashing our teeth.  And that isn't all!  They shall be so conditioned, they shan't even speak the word when the dogs aren't there!  Diminished to speaking in euphemisms!  Delicious vengeance!"

Gifted

Kat Rice braved thunderstorms and our lack of cable and internet to come meet Temple.  Kat acknowledged how alert Temple is, and noted that she must be very advanced.  Kat would know: she herself is also very advanced. 

Ingredients

    

+
    

+

_______________________________________________________________

Tummy Time

Temple is making progress on the lamb.  She is getting more confident picking her head up, and she doesn't cry in frustration as much.  So, she's basically all set.     

Matt's Desktop

Flying Buddha in Repose

Temple is one month old today.

Breastfeeding Chic

I'm slouching on the couch, rocking my daughter with my gnarled, unpainted toe, dipping sugar cookies in jam frosting, watching daytime television, when, from the cool darkness of the bedroom, the dogs howl, and scramble down the doggy stairs from the bed to the front door, skidding across the unswept wood floor, and their deafening barks tell me that the moment I've waited for for days has come: the Fed Ex man is here.  Christmas in June.  

Since I can shop online from my phone while breastfeeding, the Fed Ex man has been stopping by nearly every day.  I bought my nursing camisoles using one click shopping on my Amazon iPhone app, and I had been wearing one or the other of them almost exclusively.  They are very convenient, but last week it occurred to me that they shouldn't really be considered clothing.  A camisole is more of an undergarment.  I decided I should start, you know, getting dressed in the morning again.  But, if I'm not just wearing a nursing cami, must I then remove my shirt every 2 hours to sit around in a bra for 45 minutes (yes, between nursing and pumping, it takes 45 minutes.).  The solution found me in one of my breastfeeding support groups: button down shirts.  I bought 2 from ModCloth.com.  This one fits now:  

And this one will fit when I lose another 5 pounds:

I also bought a pair of Nike Frees.  They are running shoes designed to feel like you are wearing no shoes at all.  So, why don't I just run in bare feet for free?  Because I'm dumb.  Please see post below.

Dumb

Apparently, it has been record hot out the past few weeks.  I wouldn't know, since I rarely leave the house. However, this morning, I was curious about the weather.  I sat at my computer, and went to weather.com to check the temps in my area.  My computer is literally right next to the door to the backyard.  It didn't occur to me to open the door and step outside.  I'm dumb.

Daily Fact

In 1961, Jim and Marceline Jones were the first white couple to adopt a black child in Indiana.  They adopted several children who were not caucasian.  An essential tenet of The People's Temple was racial integration.