Bec's Happybox

Spring is Coming

It's not quite February, and things are already happening in my garden. Yesterday was a gorgeous day, and I spent some time taking pictures of the emerging beauty.

Of course, there are tonnes of crocus popping up everywhere. I planted about half of them, and the rest were done by previous owners of the house. I prefer the ones that I'm not expecting.

This is Sahsez' fairy door , with a little stone path. She got the fairy door for Christmas 2004, along with a window. Tobias installed the door in this stump last year, but we still haven't gotten around to installing the window. The poor little people who live in the stump have a dark, dark life.

The section circled in black is blown up in the next photo:

Sahsez planted a flower garden of Goldilocks crocus for her little people.

And if you're wondering what these little people look like, here's one:

Oh, I'm just remembering now that the Goldilocks crocus bulbs were part of the congratulations present my mom gave me when we finished the film. Going to San Diego to present the film was one of the most stressful things I have ever done, and it was great to return home to a bag full of bulbs to help me change gears back into domestic mode. She wrote on the card "Now you have time for your other gardens." This only makes sense when you know that we used the metaphor of open source systems code as a garden in the film.

These narcissus are pretty close to opening! I think my mom planted these in fall of 2004.

Daylily, planted by me last summer.

I know this looks like just a clump of grass, but it is, in fact, a clump of bluebells (hyacinth). Soon, they will look like this.



Future gardener? I hope so. His sister is pretty enthusiastic, although you can't tell by her expression here:

And rounding out my gardening squad is Blackberry, who, rather than taking the stairs, often climbs up the wisteria to get on the porch. She mostly just provides moral support, although if you're looking for someone to poo in your flower neds, I'm sure she'd be happy to help.

The next two photos are a little embarrassing, since they show how little weeding I've done all winter. I was not keen on bending over in my third trimester.


Daffodils with weeds

Tulips with weeds

This rosemary bush would like to eat Manhattan, but Tobias keeps it at bay with his deadly pruners.



She is beautiful AND delicious, that rosemary.

Today Sahsez and I were sitting in the car, waiting while Tobias popped into La Collina for coffee. I told her that I was going to tell her something important that I didn't know as a child, but wish I had known. What I told her was that when you're an adult you feel the same as you did when you were a child. You feel like the same person. You remember being a kid and what that felt like and you feel like the same person inside. At least that's my experience. I know a lot of people in their twenties say "I don't feel like an adult," but that's not what I mean. I do feel like an adult. But an adult that remembers what it was like to be a kid.

Anyway, that's a pretty clumsy rendition of what I was trying to get across but it doesn't matter. What I liked was her response. She thought about that for a bit, then..."Mummy, can I ask you a question?" Yes. "What can you see up there?"

I loved that question. Now that I have a teeny little baby, I tend to think of Sahsez as being extremely sophisticated and mature. It's good to remember that she's just an innocent too. A teeny little six-year-old who wonders how the world looks when you're two feet taller.

New Recipe Number 3: Mushroom Risotto

Man, I am never going to get anywhere near 100 at this rate. But I have excuses this week: two birthday dinners, one heartbreak-soothing Chinese takeout and one girls' night frozen pizza (which yes, I realize, I could have made myself, but then I would have missed part of The Princess Diaries 2. Perish the thought!)

The one new thing I did make was mushroom risotto. I consulted both the All-New Joy of Cooking and How to Eat by Nigella Lawson. I didn't strictly follow either of them, but I guess I used the Lawson more than the Becker.

I've made risotto many, many times, but I have rarely put anything in it, since I usually make it as a side dish to meat. I don't know that it really adds much, actually. It was sort of eh.

I mistakenly grabbed dried portabellos instead of porcini from the grocery store, so it's possible that I made a terrible error that changed the whole meaning of the dish, but I sort of doubt it. However, if I had used the cepes de Bordeaux that used to grow wild on the grounds of the chateau where I lived for a month in 2003, that probably would have completely revitalized the dish.

I guess the lesson is, don't bother putting stuff into risotto unless the something is really excellent. I still haven't tried white truffles, for example. They are excellent, apparently. Someone let me know if any shops in Victoria ever get some in.

---

We went for two hikes this weekend. A few years ago, this would have been a pretty common occurence, but lately it seems we hardly ever get out into the woods. I guess we tapered off when Sahsez got to that awkward too-big-for-the-stroller-but-too-small-to-walk-herself stage. She seems to be over it, or maybe she has been over it for a long time and we just haven't been going hiking for a whole host of other reasons.

Anyway, we went today and yesterday and it was wonderful. Sahsez had a great attitude and easily handled the pace and length (adult walking speed and approximately 2 hours). I think today we reaped a little of what we sowed back when she was small in terms of a love of the outdoors and an enjoyment of long walks.

As for M'hijo, well, he's happy so long as The Boobs are nearby. He loves The Boobs more than life. Today he even fondled my sister's lovingly, despite their being devoid of food.

---

Reading: Still Vernon God Little by DBC Pierre. This was farheenhaq.com's choice for our book club. I have had two negative reports from other members, but so far, I like it. It is sort of eerie how similar it is to the Toews I just finished. Both are about teenagers who feel isolated by the weird cultures of their small, dusty towns. At least I think that's what Vernon God Little is about. I'm only about fifty pages in.

Listening to: Franz Ferdinand and Jesse Dangerously

Eating: This afternoon my mom gave me a birthday lupper (I think this is common slang, but just in case, lupper = lunch/supper just like brunch = breakfast/lunch). It was going to be a dinner last night, but we had to reschedule because we got invited to a surprise birthday party for my old best friend (which we never ended up getting to, because of a miscommunication about the time of the event. This disappointment precipitated the aforementioned heartbreak-soothing Chinese takeout) and my mom couldn't do dinner because she had a 6pm kayak lesson, so lupper it was!

I had requested tamales and refried beans and she made these and more: spanish rice, chiles rellenos, veggies, and sweet tamales. Everything was delicious but my favourite had to be the beans, just because I so rarely eat frijoles made from scratch and none of the canned varieties you can get here are tasty enough. It's the lack of pork products that makes them blander than the ones we used to be able to get in California, I think.

I don't think I am as sleep-deprived as most mothers of newborns. People keep asking me how I'm sleeping, how he's sleeping, and I always just say "Not bad." I think it can be much worse. I assume it could also be a little better.

A big difference between Sahsez and M'hijo is that she spent the first week of her life in the special care nursery at the hospital. They put her on a schedule where I would come in and feed her every four hours: 12, 4 and 8, 12, 4 and 8. With M'hijo, we were only in the hospital for 2.5 hours start to finish. So it was up to me to set his schedule. Or not. I opted for not, since I'm a breastfeeding-on-demand sort of parent.

So I now have an infant that feeds a little more often than his sister did. But I'm actually getting more sleep than I did with Sahsez. This is because (don't tell the authorities) M'hijo and I are sharing a bed. After talking to many well-rested new mamas we opted for a temporary bed-sharing arrangement. So M'hijo and I are sleeping in Sahsez' bed and Sahsez and Tobias are sleeping in our bed.

There are a few disadvantages, but they are small: Sahsez will have to eventually sleep alone again, and that transition might be difficult, M'hijo will eventually sleep alone, and that transition might be difficult, and I miss Tobias.

There is only one advantage, but it's a biggie: every time he gets up hungry in the night, all I have to do is pop a boob in his mouth and go back to sleep. I am usually awake for all of five minutes.

Sometimes he also needs to be changed. Sometimes I change him and sometimes I don't. He'll fall back asleep regardless.

Sometimes he wants to stay awake for a while and have a chat. Sometimes I give in to his masculine wiles and stay up with him and chat and sometimes I don't. He'll stare and pump his legs and make little grunting sounds for a while and then go back to sleep again.

When you add up all our nocturnal activities, and given that I am usually abed from 10-7 each night, I'm probably getting 7-8 hours of sleep a night, albeit interrupted. This is okay by me. I don't feel exhausted most days. If I get foggy or dizzy, I try to take a nap. I'm not as good at daytime sleeping as I am at nighttime sleeping but I can usually sleep for 45 minutes and this does the trick.

That said, the most striking part of last night's episode of Lost was, for me, the part where Jack gets into bed after a long shift at the hospital. It's supposed to be a sad moment, because his wife gets out of bed, all pissed at him, just as he's getting into bed, and their marriage is falling apart and everything but MAN, all I could think about was how sweet it would be to get into a nice cozy warm bed ALONE to sleep for AS LONG AS I WANTED. Mmmm, heaven.

---

Reading: Vernon Godlittle by DBC Pierre. I finished the Toews. It was good, but she did trick me a little, lured me in with the funny and then filled the whole second half of the book with the heartrending. It had a good ending.

Listening to: Whatever it is, it's on my new iPod!

Eating: Leftover lasagne from my birthday dinner last night. I turned 29 yesterday. It was a fairly low-key celebration aside from the thrill of getting a new iPod. Marg made me a lovely dinner, and tonight I am going shopping for cosmetics with Randal. The highlight of the day yesterday was the rain stopping long enough for me to take a walk and listen to the iPod and get a latte. What more could a 29-year-old want? Don't answer that.

Actually, I'm of the mind that 29 is the new 19. It only APPEARS that 29 is the new 39. Wait till M'hijo is a bit more independent. Then you'll see me ripping it up! I hope.

100 new recipes

So last year Jessie did this cool thing where she tried to make 100 new things to eat and keep track of them. And oh, she got so close!. Way closer than I am going to get this year.

I am going to go for it, but I think I will probably only get to like 50, maybe. For one thing, innovation is not really a part of my personal culinary mandate for 2006. At this stage in my home-cooking career, I'm more about honing particularly skills, like making pot-roasted chicken without tearing the skin when I flip it over, and perfecting my balsamic vinaigrette (Tobias is the current household vinaigrette champion, but not for long!), and, most exciting, learning how to use my new grill pan to great effect. So always trying to make something I've never tried before doesn't really fit in with these goals.

However, 2005 was a bit of a weak year for soups and salads in my kitchen, and some innovation in this department would be good, especially since Sahsez is so picky about soups. Also, I remember that the first year of a baby's life can sometimes be a bit demoralizing for Mum, because everything can seem so ho-hum, nothing happening, nothing exciting, nothing new. For these reasons, I'm going to go ahead and attempt the 100 new recipes.

New Recipe Number 1: Caldo Verde (Portuguese Greens Soup)

This is from the All-New Joy of Cooking. I used to just call it the Joy of Cooking until last month when I inherited an older edition of that blessed tome. So now I must distinguish between my JoC and my A-NJoC.

It's a pretty good soup, full of kale, chorizo, and potatoes. Sahsez said "I love it!" which was shocking. However, I don't think I'll make it again. It's just not as good as the A-NJoC minestrone. I love that minestrone. The only problem with the minestrone is that Tobias won't eat it. He likes it fine, but he won't eat it. Why? Good question. It's because years ago, in Waterloo, he came home after a night of carousing and had some leftover minestrone as a bedtime snack. Then, in the middle of the night when his carousing caught up with him, it was the minestrone that he vomited up. So he's a little turned off it. I don't blame him. I didn't eat avocados for a whole year after getting Montezuma's Revenge in Creel. Avocados, which I love more than life. So it's understandable.

New Recipe Number 2: Roasted Fennel

This feels a bit like cheating. Like, does it really count as a new dish just because you chop up a veg, coat it in oil and toss it in the oven? I'm going to say yes, just to boost my numbers. And I did actually use a recipe, also from the A-NJoC, so it was technically a new recipe. And it was really good. And I will make it all the time. The lemon juice, pepper and parmesan cheese added after the fact were key.

Travel Fantasies

About a year ago, I found an old notebook in the basement and in it, there were two pages with writing. One page was in my hand, with my signature at the bottom, and one was in Tobias' hand, with his signature at the bottom. The pages were written in 1999, when I was pregnant with Sahsez, and we were both in a state of shock and awe about what was happening to us, and trying to find ways to cope.

Basically, all of our hopes and dreams for life seemed to have shattered and we were trying to build new ones to match our new circumstances. We were also trying to find a way that both of us could be happy being married to each other, given that we only decided to get married because of the pregnancy.

So, what we had written down were our goals for life. I'm pretty sure I was the one that insisted on writing them down, since I think I was the most afraid of completely forgetting what I wanted from life, of losing sense of who I was, and blah blah blah.

The interesting thing about reading these lists of goals was how we couldn't really relate to them anymore. I mean, I guess the whole reason we wrote them is so that we could remind ourselves of what each of us really wanted. But the weird thing was not that our 2005 selves didn't want the same things as our 1999 selves, but that 2005 Tobias wanted the 1999 Rebeca things and the 2005 Rebeca wanted the 1999 Tobias things! That was funny.

I won't go into the boring details of the lists, but the gist is this: in 1999, Tobias was all about STABILITY and ACCUMULATION and I was all about EXPERIENCES and ADVENTURE. In 2005, the roles were reversed. And before you say, oh but it you were pregnant, that's natural, let me assure you it wasn't just the pregnancy talking. I really am more into things like my home and my garden and keeping Sahsez at the same school rather than moving her around and boring things like that. In fact, the whole Europe trip this summer was a bargaining chip. I wanted to have a baby, and Tobias said okay, as long as we go to Europe first, and I said okay, even though I didn't really feel like going. This would have boggled the mind of 1999 Rebeca, let me tell you.

ANYWAY. The point of all this lead up is to say that since the baby was born, I have started to swing back the other way, in the sense that I have been fantasizing about going places, something I haven't done in a while. I want to show Tobias New York City, I want to go trekking in the Himalayas, I want to spend a year in Amsterdam, I want to dance all night in Havana.

Of course, I won't be doing any of those things any time soon, but it doesn't matter. What makes me happy is that I actually want to do them again. There's something so freeing about having your last child. I mean, it's sort of sad, because I think "Oh I'll never have a ten-day-old again, I'll never give birth again, I'll never be pregnant again, etc." but there's also this amazing sense of now being the beginning of the rest of my life. It's exciting.

So today I am thinking about what we will do for our vacation this year. I think we might have a month-long RV trip, either north to Alaska and the territories or south to the American Southwest. Then, the year after that, if M'hijo is weaned, an adults-only trip to NYC, followed by a whole family trip to Norway, with Tobias' mom and step-dad, to see Grandma's birthplace.

Dreaming about it is almost as good (possibly better) than actually going.

---

Reading: A Complicated Kindness by Miriam Toevs. My dad's partner, Pink, lent this to me a couple of months ago, but I had been dragging my heels on starting it. I mean, everyone says it is excellent, and it got the Governor General's award and all that, but do I really want to understand my Mennonite heritage better? Not particularly. The title sort of put me off too. Sounds too much like a touching, heartrending read of the Oprah's Book Club variety, you know?

Also, my Mennonite heritage has had so little effect on my life -- THANKS MOM, SERIOUSLY! -- it's not like I feel that I need to read this book in order to come to terms with anything.

But last week, the photographer who came to shoot M'hijo said something that no one else who has told me I HAVE to read this book has said. She said it was hilarious, and anyone with a Mennonite background will appreciate the humour. I didn't know this! I started reading it, and she was right, it's a laugh riot. So I told my mother, oh I'm reading the Toevs finally, you should read it. And she hummed and hawed "Oh a book about Mennonites? No thanks, I've had enough of that in my lifetime." And I said "No, it's really FUNNY." And she said "Oh, does it MOCK Mennonites?" And I said "YES! It MOCKS them!" And so now she wants to read it right after me.

Some Firsts

Every day brings new firsts. These are really insignificant, mundane events, made somehow magical by virtue of being the first time that M'hijo has been involved with them.

On Friday, after picking Sahsez up from school, we went down to the Village. This was M'hijo's First Trip to the Village and My First Time Taking Both Kids Somewhere (other than school) By Myself.

We bought cat food at Pepper's, then went to Starbucks for Sahsez's favourite treat: a kids' steamed milk. Sahsez picked out a table tucked into the back corner which she said was "nice and cozy". A couple of minutes later, two ladies of a certain age wandered back to our section and set their things down on a nearby table. One said "Now this is a bit quieter" and the other one responded "Yes, it's quiet NOW" with a pointed look at me and my offspring. Had I been feeling combative I would have said "Well, WE won't be making any noise! Will you?" but I held back and smiled sweetly. I've never had anyone imply that my children are capable of misbehaving in public! Another first! (For the record, neither of them were making the smallest peep, and if M'hijo had started squawking, we would have moved to an outside table, or left the coffee shop altogether.)

After Starbucks, I couldn't resist the siren song of The Sheiling, the overpriced yuppie card shop next door. Sahsez got a sale-priced Christmas ornament and I bought some more thank you cards. I go through these rather quickly recently.

When we arrived home, M'hijo was still in the same state he was 90 minutes earlier when I had left the house to walk down to the school: dead to the world. What a charming child.

Yesterday morning was M'hijo's First Time at Church. He and I, and Sahsez and Abu got to go up to the front and be cheered. This is the first time people have congratulated me on the delivery by applauding and cheering. This is completely appropriate! If I ever have another child, I will hire some cheerers to come in at the moment of the birth to give me my due.

After church, it was time for My First Full Day of Taking Care of Both Children By Myself, since Tobias had to go in to the office to take care of some stuff. Now, I could have approached this day like any other, and tried to be industrious, organizing the baby clothes, folding laundry, spreading topsoil, vacuuming, etc, but it was Sunday, after all, so I decided it was time for a little ...

Downtime in the Junkhouse!

  photo by Sahsez

First of all we spent about an hour eating and chatting at the kitchen table with Abu. Spending too much time preparing food is verboten during DitJ so we had to get by on coffee, smoothies, fried egg sandwiches and leftover soft tacos. While we were sitting there, Abu glanced out the window and said "That is a big bird!" I looked, and sitting on a branch of our birch tree, right at eye-level, was a Cooper's Hawk. In an embarrassing display of just how uncalm and unskilled a birder I am, I freaked out, shrieked and ran into the living room to get my camera. OF COURSE, by the time I got back, she had flown off. But according to the website I linked to, if you have birdfeeders in your yard, Cooper's Hawks will come to hunt the sparrows that visit them. As perhaps another indication that I am a bad birder, I think luring hawks to my yard using sparrows is a great idea, and I am going to re-butter all of the birdfeeders (peanut-butter and seed-covered pinecones) that Abu and Sahsez put up on the day I was in labour.

Once Abu left, M'hijo was sleeping, so Sahsez and I got some Womantime in the Junkhouse! which we spent sticking stickers into the Insect Spotter's Handbook she got for Christmas. I love any activity I can do with her without using my imagination (my least favourite game is Pretend) and I love any activity with a naturalist bent.

When M'hijo woke up, it was time for Airtime in the Junkhouse! Airtime is what I call any period where the baby gets to lounge around sans diaper. For Sahsez, airtime was crucial in avoiding diaper rash. For M'hijo, who gets a smear of expensive, rosemary-scented diaper ointment with every change, this is less necessary, but still fun.

AitJ goes like this: We put down some blankets in front of the fireplace (including at least one receiving blanket on top, in case of accidents), turn on the fire, and plop his warm little naked body on top. Then, Sahsez and I rub expensive, apricot-scented massage oil into his arms and legs and back and belly, and he gets even warmer and floppier. Then he just lies there, staring, for a good long while, until he's bored and we dress and swaddle him and he falls back asleep again.

We continued in this vein until four o'clock, when Tobias came home and I scurried off for some Naptime in the Junkhouse!, waking up 90 minutes later to feed first the baby, then the husband and the self (the husband made the grilled cheese for the big child).

---

Glossary

The Village is the name given to the block-long retail area that's just around the corner from our house. It consists of mostly overpriced, yuppie-type establishments (orchid store! gourmet pet food store! The Sheiling!) but it also has a good wine and grocery stores, a bulk food store that I love, a bookshop that has provided many a birthday gift for Sassy's friends, and a very good pharmacy. More importantly, it is the social hub for the neighbourhood and provides a real sense of community to this area.

Downtime in the Junkhouse is my version of a phrase I saw in The East Village Inky issue from February 2005. In it, Ayun Halliday's son Milo says that he and his dad are going to have some "Mantime in the Junkhouse!" when his mom and sister are out of town. That struck me as totally hilarious, especially coming from a four-year-old and I can't stop describing everything as "X-time in the Junkhouse" (examples: Dinnertime in the junkhouse, Breastfeedingtime in the junkhouse, Abutime in the junkhouse). So Downtime in the Junkhouse means hanging out at home and doing not much.

Reading: The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion

Eating: Lamb chops grilled on my new Le Creuset grill pan, a belated convocation gift from Abu

Listening to: M'hijo's little squeaky hinge noises

Baby's first Photo Shoot

I'm short on time today, so part II of the Final Analysis will have to wait a day or two. Why am I short on time? Because M'hijo had his first ever professional photoshoot! The photographer came over for about an hour and a quarter and he was awake(ish) and happy the whole time. At the end, he started to fuss, and I just swaddled him and he fell asleep immediately. Merci beaucoup, Dr. Karp.

The photoshoot came about because yesterday I was out and I ran into the photographer who took some family photos for us two years ago. She didn't know that we were expecting and was surprised to see M'hijo. Actually, I was with my dad, and he was holding him, and I think she got freaked out a little. It wasn't the first time someone had thought that my dad was the father of one of my children, rather than the grandfather.

So I said, yes, we have an addition to our family and we are planning on calling you in the spring to take some new pictures. And she said, oh, but, what about now? Can I take pictures of him now?

Seems she wants to break into the baby photo market and could use some shots of newborns for her portfolio. The idea of my children as models icks me out in general, but I really like this photographer, and we let Sahsez sit for her when she was about 11 months and it was great, so I said yes. The benefit to us is that we can get a few free prints and buy more if we want, but we don't pay her base shoot fee, which I think is around 300 bucks.

The best part of the shoot was when I was holding him very close to my face and giving him little kisses and he thought there was maybe a breast in the vicinity and latched on to my upper lip. He sucked it for about a minute, and while it hurt like hell, it was very cute and the photographer must have snapped about a dozen shots of just that. He never did manage to get any milk out of my lip, though, much to his chagrin.

So that's what me and the baby were up to this afternoon. I was intending to take pictures of her taking pictures of him, to post here, but I ended up holding him most of the time, so no dice.

And now I must run to pick up Sahsez at school. I'm glad it's not raining.

The Midwife vs The Obstetrician: Part I of the Final Analysis

Seven years ago, when I was just two weeks away from turning 22, I shopped around for an obstetrician to deliver the baby I was expecting in July. The one I got was/is widely considered one of the best in Victoria. I'll call her Miranda. She was pretty good, as docs go. One thing for which I will be forever grateful was her bulldog approach to my staying in the hospital after Sahsez was born. What happened was, the paediatrician decided right after she was born that she was at high-risk for infection. She was in distress at the end of the labour, her APGAR score was low (I think it was 2/10), and there was an eighteen-hour period from when my waters broke till when she was born. So I got to hold her for about 20 seconds, after which she was whisked away to the special-care nursery and I didn't see her for twelve hours.

The paediatrician wanted to run tests, observe her, give her oxygen, and put her on a six-day course of intravenous antibiotics. Okay, we said. As if Tobias and I, first-time parents at 22 were going to question the paediatrician's decision. It was inconceivable that we would do so.

So that sort of sucked, but two normal side effects of this which suck even more were that a) babies are given formula in special care, regardless of their size or whether their mothers are breastfeeding them and b) just because your baby has to stay in the hospital, doesn't mean you get to -- mothers are normally sent home and if you want to see the baby, breastfeed the baby, you need to drive up to the hospital every four hours, park, go up to the nursery, do your thing, then go home again. You will probably be able to convince the nurses to set up a cot for you in the parent room for during the night, but you won't be able to keep your spot in the mother/babe unit, not if you yourself are healthy enough to go home.

However, in my case, my doc insisted that neither a nor b occur. I got to keep my spot in mother/babe for the duration of Sahsez' stay in special care and the nurses stopped giving her formula and I fed her every four hours. I wondered how Miranda managed to swing this and I have since found out that she holds a lot of sway at Vic General. A friend who once worked with her (she is a family doc) says "Oh yes, I can't imagine anyone in that hospital saying no to Miranda. They wouldn't dare."

So I am pretty grateful to Miranda the Obstetrician for making Sahsez' first week less bad than it needed to be.

Nevertheless, nine months ago, I didn't even consider calling Miranda when I was looking for prenatal care for my second child. Instead, I asked around for midwife recommendations. Here is an incomplete list of things that I wanted to be different this time around:

• 7-minute appointments for which I waited up to an hour
• very little dissemination of information -- I always felt like everything about what was happening to me and the baby was sort of a mystery
• dreading my appointments -- I just hate medical and dental appointments and there doesn't seem to be anything I can do about it. I just hate them!
• and the kicker: 50-hour horrible, slow-progressing back labour including a failed, two-hour pushing period, followed by an absolutely horrific vacuum extraction, followed by a week of my baby on antibiotics which it was determined that she didn't actually need

More tomorrow.

How Sassy's Coping

Aside from how big was he, what's his name, how was the labour, and how does he sleep, the question I get asked most these days is "How is Sahsez coping?" The answer is, really well. She really likes her brother a lot and whereas the adults of the family admit that he's pretty boring overall (not that we don't just love staring at him for no reason, but he doesn't really DO much) she is frankly fascinated by him. Quote: "I find him fascinating!"

According to my midwife, it's typical for older children (Sahsez is 6 and a half) to love the baby but be angry at the parents. This hasn't been the case with Sahsez either. She has been pretty normal with us. A couple of times I have noticed her being a little bit too seeking of my approval, saying things like "I'm very helpful, aren't I, Mummy?" which is very sweet and everything, but I am concerned that she not begin to define herself in terms of being a good help, or being the responsible one who can be depended on. (The Drama of the Gifted Child is like the scariest book I have ever read. On the other hand, had I not read it, I feel like I could have easily made some serious errors with my parenting of Sahsez, due to my own borderline narcissism.)

It was actually a bit of a relief when she was acting up a bit at dinner the other night. If she was too afraid to misbehave, I would worry that she doesn't feel her position in the family is secure. If she misbehaves a little, I feel like she feels safe.

On the other hand, she is more sensitive than usual to harsh words from me or Tobias. This morning she tracked mud all over the floor in her boots and my "Sahsez! Look what you did to the floor!" almost had her in tears. So I am trying to discipline very gently right now.

By chance, two days after the baby was born happened to be the date that Sahsez was scheduled to test for her new belt in Tae Kwon Do. She wasn't keen on leaving the baby's side to go to the test, but she did so well in the test, and enjoyed herself so much and got so much praise from the club members that it turned out to be the best possible thing for her at that time.

We celebrated her promotion with an ice cream cake, which she ate even though she dislikes both cake and ice cream. So thank you, TKD club, for eliminating sibling rivalry in our household!

Then, on Friday, she went skating with Grandpa and for a sleepover afterward. Yesterday, she went back to school, I taught her how to play "Happy Birthday" on the piano (for the upcoming slew of birthdays in our family) and she got to break her first board at TKD (not the normal thickness that the adults break, but about one-third thickness). So I think she's pretty happy, and views M'hijo as a welcome addition to her own life, rather than something that is going to take something away from her.

Last night she read some Shel Silverstein poems to him in bed while Tobias and I watched a documentary about Stanley Kubrick.

I originally thought that such a big gap between my children was nothing but a negative thing, but I am beginning to see that it might be exactly right for our family. I don't think I could have let a three-year-old Sahsez have her week-old brother in bed with her for half an hour unsupervised. He would have been on the floor in 5 seconds flat.

---

Reading: very slowly getting through Lucky Jim by Kingsley Amis. While I do laugh out loud occasionally, I don't think I really get this book. Why is it considered one of the top English novels since 1923?

Also eating up some back issues of The East Village Inky, which arrived in my mailbox one day after the baby was born, just in time for breastfeeding!

Eating: A tourtiere (Quebecois pork pie traditionally eaten at Christmastime) that I bought at the butcher before Christmas, intending to have it on Christmas Eve or New Year's Day or something. I figured Day One was enough of a special occasion to whip it out, along with the bottle of Silver Spur 2002 Pinot Noir that Tobias had bought me for M'hijo's birthday (along with six beautiful crystal Bordeaux glasses ---SWOON). It's been a long time since I sipped something so wonderful. I actually moaned.

Listening to: the baby likes Bjork!

Day One

M'hijo Twizzleton-Fyfe, who looks exactly like his sister did at one week, except for his dark hair, eyes, and skin (she is fair with blonde hair and blue eyes)

Today I begin my new life.

I guess you could say the new thing really began a week ago, on December 27, when the newest Twizzleton-Fyfe, codename M'hijo, entered the world (7:50 pm, 12 hours, 35 minutes of labour, 8 pounds, 9 ounces, a boy) but I am counting from today because we've been on vacation all week. Tobias has been doing all the housework and Sahsez has been off school. So it wasn't normal life. Today, I begin being responsible for not just the baby, but the house, the yard, Sahsez, and the meals.

So far, it's been easy, mostly because I am not really jumping into the housework with both feet. More like testing the waters with one toe. I folded some laundry! I got Sahsez dressed and made her lunch and got her to school before the early bell! I washed some cups! I only watched The Young and the Restless because the baby was nursing anyway so it's not like I could have done anything productive during that time anyway! I chatted with the midwife! I fed the cat! I think that is an admirable start.



And now I will take a nap.

My reward for all the grueling housework is this great view while I'm walking around the neighbourhood