My little girl

See that little girl toddling around in the ladybug bathing suit?





She's getting to be pretty definitively a little girl these days, but kissable hints of babyishness still remain; those (long!) chubby legs, the cuddly way she lays her head in my lap when she's tired, her enduring love for her "ba ba." But she can say "ba ba" now, when she wants one. That's new.

She has an all-encompassing passion for cats. She chases her cat friends around and around the house, grabbing onto their tails with a little vise grip. She has learned to make the "tsk tsk" sound to call them over to her. She greets them when she sees them: "Hi, Cat!"

She can identify every cat in every one of her books. She has also learned the sound a pig makes and tries to imitate it, making a kind of coughing sound because she doesn't know yet how to snort the way mama does. She loves books with peekaboo flaps and lifts them so enthusiastically that she accidentally tears them off and we find them stuck to our feet days later.

She waves wildly to everybody she meets and isn't content if they don't wave back. I have a secret love in my heart for everybody who does. She has learned about babies, and she loves to see them. "Bee bee!" she cries, when she sees one in its mother's arms at the splashground, or in a picture, or on TV.

She loves to watch videos of herself as a baby on the laptop. She kneels and puts her face close to the screen to watch, scrutinizing every detail, as though there is going to be a test.

She is good at giving kisses. Sometimes she will lay them on thick in a string of five or six open-mouthed busses: "A-WAH! A-WAH! A-WAH!" Sometimes she shakes her head no, smiling because she knows she's teasing and she likes being in on the joke. Some people only warrant a blown kiss, a little chubby hand that flies to her mouth and lingers there, because, yes, hands are still delicious.

She's a funny little girl, who loves to laugh, who gets angry because the ice cubes from my drink are too cold to hold but she doesn't want to put them down, who finds a soft pillow on the floor and lays down to drink her bottle in peace and comfort. She points to things that she finds novel or interesting, and the list grows longer every day. Every day she takes a few more steps on her own...but she still looks back over her should to break into a grin when she sees we're watching.

She's my little girl, and I love her so.

Homeleaving

I think the process of moving, if you were to plot it on a graph, would be as spiky up and down as the heart monitor of a tachycardia patient. You have the task of looking for a new home, which is full of peaks and valleys as you search for the right place for your family, find it, fall in love with it, and then find out it's off the market or has been whisked away for some reason or another. There's a big spike up when you finally find the right place and get it. Then you ride that wave for a couple of days, a week, as you plan out all the fabulous summer barbecues, the birthday parties, the cozy winter nights by the fire. (Your "Pin it" button gets a lot of use in these times.)

But then you start the process of packing, of actually dismantling your life in the place you're leaving, and slide down into a kind of valley. Not only because packing in itself sucks major ass, brings about the desultory realization that you have accumulated SO MUCH CRAP you don't need, but because you start to realize that despite the crappy neighbor, the lack of yard, the lack of space...you are going to miss this place, the place you have lived, the place you live now.

I will never forget the day, four years ago, that James and I visited our condo for the first time with our realtor. It was a sunny day, light streaming into the windows, and I walked around the living area, imaging our furniture in it.  I closed my eyes, and placed the couch along the long wall in the back, really seeing it. It was a perfect fit. I thought, someday I'll bring my newborn baby home from the hospital and sit with her on that couch, right here in this room. 

And it happened just like I thought it would. 

There are so many memories I will have of our first home together. Soaking in the bathtub with my Federal Courts casebook propped on the edge, turning the pages with wrinkled fingertips. So many poker nights with friends, the slap and zip of cards being shuffled, laughter filling the air. Under one of the tiles on the kitchen floor, Baby Lulu's name is written in Sharpie, along with the names (and cartoon faces) of each of the cats; we wrote her name there the day we found out she was a girl and finally decided it for certain, which just happened to coincide with a frenzied, nesting-based kitchen remodel.

And then there's the first night we brought Lu home from the NICU, when J. and I lay in the bed with her, too amped and afraid to drift off to sleep. Her first Christmas, with the tree wedged in the corner. Her first birthday party, with zig-zag banners and overflow guests sitting cross-legged on our sisal rug. And all the little quiet moments in between.

My parents moved from my first home to the house I grew up in when I was four, and I remember it, vaguely, my old house, my birth house. Laying in a slant of light in the sunroom, sitting against the olive-green refrigerator in the kitchen. Lulu's too young to remember her first place. And that makes me sad. Because for all of its paint-peelingness, too-smalledness, outgrownedness...it was a good place for us. It deserves to be remembered. There's been a lot of happiness here.


We'll have to be sure to tell her all about it. So that we don't forget, ourselves.

My momma told me

[photo credit]

The last time my mom visited, we put on makeup together in the bathroom, and I told her about a trick that she had showed me when I was younger: only put mascara on your top lashes. She didn't remember telling me. "That's common knowledge," she said. "You probably read it in a beauty magazine."

"Nope," I said. "You said it." She wanted to know how I could be sure she had. "Because what you say sticks with me," I said.

Recently I came across a list of quotations by famous writers, musicians, athletes, et cetera, talking about things their mothers had told them, and I thought it was interesting how deeply some of these quotes stuck with them, and shaped there future lives.

Here are some of my favorites from that list:

“When I was a boy and I would see scary things in the news, my mother would say to me, "Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping.” -(Mr.) Fred Rogers

"You don't have to prove anything," my mother said. "Just be ready for what God sends." -William Stafford, poet and pacifist.

"My mother said I must always be intolerant of ignorance but understanding of illiteracy. That some people, unable to go to school, were more educated and more intelligent than college professors." -Maya Angelou

“When I was 5 years old, my mother always told me that happiness was the key to life. When I went to school, they asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up. I wrote down ‘happy’. They told me I didn’t understand the assignment, and I told them they didn’t understand life.” -John Lennon

"My mother told me to be a lady. And for her, that meant be your own person, be independent. " - Ruth Bader Ginsburg

"My mother always told me, even if a song has been done a thousand times, you can still bring something of your own to it. I'd like to think I did that." -Etta James

"I hope they're still making women like my momma. She always told me to do the right thing. She always told me to have pride in myself; she said a good name is better than money."
- Joe Louis

What's something your mother told you that's stuck with you?

Little Miss Sunshine

I've suspected it for a while, but after last night, there is no denying it.

My baby has a downright sunny disposition.

People are saying it to me all the time: She's so happy! She's so delighted all the time! She never cries (a notion I could disabuse them of. Lulu does cry--copiously, at times). But she'll go to strangers with little to no prompting, no tears. She has a smile for everybody she meets. Even when I am firm with her--when she bites me while nursing, and I respond with a loud, meant-to-shock-her NO--Lulu smiles. And laughs.

(It's actually kind of annoying. Not to mention PAINFUL.)

Last night, we bundled our croupy baby up and ran her to the ER to get an attack of croup checked out. The triage area was full of babies wailing miserably, of little kids with tear-stained faces. But Lulu was laughing and waving, even while barking out those awful-sounding coughs.

The doctors and nurses commented on it, as she allowed them to examine her without a peep, as she showed off her six pearly teeth in face-splitting smiles. Did you give her anything? What, like Xanax? Um, no. Is she always like this? Well...yes. We sat and watched Lu play contentedly with the cords of her oxygen monitor, while the neighboring cubicles resounded with sounds of PURE WOE.

Totally unconcerned with the fact that somebody just stuck a q-tip down her throat.

I have a happy baby. I sort of didn't believe it could happen. James is a pleasant-enough guy, but he can be cynical and fatalistic to a fault when he feels like it. And with my struggles with depression...I thought we would pass along our worst traits to our little one.

But Lulu is happy. Even when things are bad. And she is teaching me--something else I didn't think would happen, at least not for a long while--to do the same.

They say that a mother can only be as happy as her saddest child. But that goes the other way, too: when the child is happy, that happiness is infectious.

In my unhappy moments, my sunny baby cheers me up and gives me confidence that I must be doing something right. And for that, I am so grateful.

my whirlwind girl

If I had my way, no unhappiness would ever touch her life. But if (when) it does, I will remember the happiness she brings me now, and pay it back as hard as I can.

The 4 o'clock slump

My SAHM mom friends refer to it as the "4 o'clock slump"--the last hour in the long day before their spouse comes home, when they are tiredest and the kids are at their most grumpy and trying.

In my house, it's the 7 o'clock slump. Because James and I both work at home, our day looks a little different. By 7 o'clock, we've both put in a full day at the "office." We're both exhausted. We've read stacks of books, been to the park, given baths, done a craft or activity, and the house is a mess, dinner still needs to be prepared, a forgotten load of cloth diapers is soaking in the washer, waiting to be rinsed and hung up to dry. From 7 to 8 o'clock comes the hour in which we snipe at each other over wet towels left on the floor, when we get resentful about the things in the day we planned to do but aren't going to, now, when Lu is laying on her stomach on the floor at we have no idea what to do with her because we've run out of ideas and there's still an hour to go until bedtime.

It's probably because we still aren't on a schedule, nine months into this parenting thing. WAH gives us the freedom to start our day whenever we want. We wake up when we wake up. We feed the baby when she seems hungry. We bathe her when she's dirty. We put her down for the night whenever she happens to fall asleep. My goal for 2012 is to get on a schedule, and stick to it. Hopefully, that will make things a little easier. (At least more predictable).

Most of the time, we spend our days doing wonderful things. Like taking Lulu to the National Gallery of Art for the first time.


And giving her her first taste of gelato.


She was shocked by the cold...but it didn't stop her from going back for more.

And through it all, I keep thinking of what a difference a year makes:

January 2011 versus January 2012

I hope that during tonight's 7 o'clock slump I'll think back on these happy moments and won't let the one difficult one define my day.

But I could use some tips on how to keep myself from going crazy from 7 to 8 PM every night.

What do you do to get through the slump? Any tips are appreciated.

A run of luck

This has just been an exhausting week. It seems like every water-bearing appliance in my house is conspiring against me; the condo board raised their monthly fee by $50; Lulu had a cold, which she kindly passed to me. And then my managers at work asked me today, very nicely, if I would consider working my full 20 hours next week to make deadline, despite the fact that I haven't taken one lick of PTO all year and was really looking forward to it, despite the fact that from Tuesday through Saturday, I am going to be visiting family 200 miles away from my computer.

This afternoon, I pattered around the house in desultory kind of way, folding random sweaters and seeking pairs for tiny, solitary baby socks, blinking past the aura of an impending migraine. Feeling sorry for myself. Allowing a few tears to squeeze past my eyelids and drop down onto my shirtfront.

And then I found it, at the back of a desk drawer: a Christmas present from last year that I had forgotten about, a voucher from J.D. to a local spa. I had planned to use it for some pre-baby beautifying, but then I was put on bed rest and then Lulu was born, and then in the hassle of NICU and swaddlers and leaking boobs, I forgot.

I turned it over in my hands, which were suddenly shaking with hope. Please don't be expired. Please don't be expired.

It hadn't expired. I picked up the phone then and there and called to book myself a massage, a facial, a haircut and manicure. We have a lot of packing to do, a long car ride ahead of us next week, all the tantrums and nursing strikes that go along with being in a strange place, far away from home ahead of us yet...but the week after next, I have some SERIOUS pampering to look forward to.

And there was suddenly a spring in my step that hadn't been there before.

Then my mother called. J.D. and I are driving down in a few days, but she can't wait to see Lu, and wants to drive up this weekend. If I have anything to do this weekend, she'll be willing to watch the baby and give me a few hours for myself.

Suddenly, I see a way out from underneath my mounting workload. Feeling greedy, I asked my mom if she'd be willing to babysit tomorrow night so that I can go to see J.D.'s band play a show downtown.

"Are you serious?" she said. "I'd love to."

The migraine began to lift.

And now I'm cuddled up on the couch with a steaming bowl of pho to help my stuffy nose, and some illegal episodes of Downton Abbey sent to me by a friend queued up on the TiVo.

There's a saying in these here parts: if you don't like the weather, wait five minutes.

There's a saying rattling around in my head after my run of luck: if you don't like your mood, wait half a day.


Because everything just might turn out all right.

Why I love November

A year ago today, I was just over 13 weeks pregnant with Lulu and things were looking up. We'd survived the tumultuous first trimester, which included one daily dose of Prometrium, two subchorionic hematomas, three weeks of bed rest, and no fewer than five middle-of-the-night E.R. visits.

A year ago, I was moving into the very brief sweet spot of my pregnancy, which consisted of the month of November and no more. The hematomas went away. I was let off bed rest. The nausea had abated and I felt suddenly, voraciously great. I felt so great that I tiled my kitchen. I found out at 15 weeks that I was having a girl, and J.D. and I wrote her name on the old linoleum floor before we laid the last tile, sealing her into our lives forever. We announced my pregnancy to friends and I basked in the glow of a thousand well wishes via loving Facebook comments. We rented a cabin in the Shenandoah Valley and made plans to spend Thanksgiving there--our first Thanksgiving alone, together, in seven years of marriage.

By December, it had all gone to shit again. I was diagnosed with cervical insufficiency and put on bed rest again, for the duration of my pregnancy. There was suddenly all this talk about cerclages, prematurity, birth defects, underdeveloped lungs. There was a lot of worry and heartache and stress. But man--November was awesome. I wish it could have been November for nine months straight.

Last November, I saw my baby's face for the first time. It was pretty much the awesomest November ever.


Except for this one.

One word

This weekend, we had a lot going on. Family in town, Lulu's christening, the tail end of a fall clean... On Friday, I was sorting through baby clothes to send to Adrienne when I heard it. A small voice babbling, and then the babble resolving itself into two syllables that sent a jolt of recognition through me.

Ma. Ma.

At first I thought it was a fluke, but Lulu did it again, haltingly, and then again, growing more confident each time.

Ma. Mamamama. Ma, ma.
Mama.

I don't think she knew what she was saying. I don't think she was calling out to me or anything like that. Lu was playing with her toys, totally oblivious to me standing a foot away. But still, my heart was full. I'd dreamed my whole life of hearing some small creature say that word, and from the first moment I saw Lulu's face, when they handed her to me for that brief moment before taking her down to the NICU, I'd wondered how it would sound coming out of her own particular mouth. So when I finally did hear it, my eyes brimmed.

Not because of the word she'd chosen--well, not only because of that--but because it was the first real word she'd ever said, and when she said it, I couldn't help but think of all of the other words she'll say in her life. I like this. I want that. I love you. This word was the first in an impossibly long string.

I won't be privy to all the words she'll say in her life, but I was there to hear her first word. I was there at the start.

All weekend, as I cooked and cleaned and wrapped presents and laughed with friends and family, I kept hearing it, from across the room. Mama? Mama!



Each time, just in case, I called back, "Hi, baby. Mama's here."

My first pumpkin

Last night we (I) carved Lulu's first jack-o-lantern.


J.D.: It...kind of looks like it had a stroke. Like...all lopsided.

Me: It was the last pumpkin at Trader Joe's that didn't have warts. Next year, I'll get a good one.

MIL: I like how you carved in laugh lines. I've never seen a pumpkin with wrinkles before.

Me: Those are eyelashes.

J.D.: What's up with his eye? It looks like he is leering at someone. "Hey, baby, I'll jack your lantern any time."

Me: He is not LEERING. He is WINKING. And he's a girl. Hence, the EYELASHES.

J.D.: Or like he's lost a contact lens. "Oh hey you guys do you see it? Where is it? Is it, like, on me?"

Me: I don't like how you started using a Valley Girl voice when you found out it was a lady pumpkin. That is insulting. You have a DAUGHTER. You should be above stereotypes.

J.D.: "Seriously, you guys, I, like, can't see! Omigod! Help!"

FIL, passing by: Hey, nice pumpkin! I like how he's shooting death rays from his eyes.

Me: THEY ARE EYELASHES.

With the lights off and a candle inside, it was still pretty. And that's the point, right?



Right. So suck on that, HATERS.

Snow day

When it comes to snow, J.D. and I are just big kids. We work from home--and still, we pray for snow days. Snow means Christmas, our birthdays, warm stews bubbling away on the stovetop, sledding, cookies, hot chocolate, and that holy, quiet hush that comes over the world and reminds you what it must have been like in ancient times.

Last winter, we didn't get much snow, but what little snow we got, I missed because of bed rest. The night Lulu was born last March, it snowed, and when we woke up the next morning, there was a dusting on the grass that made my heart glad.

But I missed real snow--a good, thick, soft blanket of it. So when I heard we might get an early storm this weekend, I was beside myself. At noon it started to come down, thickly. But it didn't stick. It didn't cover the grass.

And I was disappointed.

J.D. said, "Let's go find some snow." And so we bundled Lu up in her bear suit and drove west out 66, away from DC, through Fairfax and Loudon and Fauquier counties, toward the mountains.

And we found our snow.






It was everything we wanted it to be. The clean smell in the air, the white blanket covering, the quiet hush.

Now we're back home, waiting for cookies to come out of the oven.



And it's still coming down.

Little wonder: Baby's first library books

Lulu and I visit the library every week for story hour. We love flipping through the stacks of childrens' books while we're there, and today we decided to take some of our (read: my) favorites home to stay with us for a while. It was a sacrosanct moment for me, book lover I am. One day I won't remember what time Lu was born or what she got for her first Christmas, but I know I'll always remember her first library books. Blueberries for Sal, because blueberries are the favorite food right now. The Big Snow, in honor of the flurries we'll have here in D.C. tonight. And Eloise because she just rules.

Tonight we'll snuggle up and read each one of them.

Both sides now

I've always been the kind of person who functions best when there is some kind of reward at the end of things to spur me on. Throughout my adult life, I've always tried hard to find little ways to reward myself for doing things that needed to be done. I went to work today; ergo, I totally deserve this $89 pair of shoes!

Yesterday I cleaned my entire house, did three loads of laundry, pureed, steamed, and froze a huge batch of dollar-apiece locally grown organic carrots, stripped and washed and dried and stuffed cloth diapers, fed the baby carefully mashed worth-their-weight-in-gold farmer's market blueberries, cleaned blueberries off baby and floor, wrote six thank-you notes, did the grocery shop, and edited a 15-page article on glass fiber-reinforced polymer composite.

"Good job, self," I thought, tuckered out at the end of the day. "You have accomplished a lot in a little amount of time. I am so proud of you. As a special treat to honor all you've done, I will carve out a half-hour this evening so that you can PLUCK YOUR EYEBROWS."

Motherhood brings with it all sorts of adjusted expectations. This is one of them. There's less time, less opportunity to treat myself. But it's important to try to fit these things in. And so I look forward to Tuesday because it's the day the Savage Love podcast comes out, and I allow myself an hour in the middle of the day to clean the kitchen and listen to other people talk about their sex lives in amusing detail. Every Friday night, the call goes up around the house: We're changing the sheets! It's New Sheet Day! The promise of slipping into bed between those fresh, smooth sheets is almost too much excitement to bear. A Starbucks latte, once a many-times-a-day, taken-for-granted necessity, becomes a special, once-a-week treat, a genuine outing, a reason for putting on makeup, blowdrying my hair.

Trip to H&M = all expenses paid weekend in Paris

I think my pre-baby self would have thought this was a sad way to live. Post-baby me feels sorry for her. There's so much she didn't see, so many tiny joys she missed.

I know one day the harried baby stage will end and I'll have more time for myself.

I hope I remember to be grateful for it.

Bad parenting, now in HD

Dear Child Protective Services,

I am writing because I fear that by now you might have heard the rumor that I let my seven(!)-month-old child watch television. And I wanted to say a few things in my defense.

First of all, I want to say that mostly Lulu just listens to TV. She is addicted to the stupid Toddler Tunes music channel and will not do tummy time without it blaring in the background. Though I tried my hardest to encourage a preference for the classical and world music channels, my child wants RAFFI, which means that I have "The More We Get Together" running through my head 21 hours a day (English AND FRENCH. Le plus nous nous blow our brains out, ensemble, ensemble...)

And yes, while Lulu's eyes light up at the sound of Michael C. Hall's voice ("Dada!"), as the result of an intense Dexter marathon that spanned her first few months on the planet, I can safely say that she has never seen his face. Because I keep her carefully angled away from the television at all times. I figure that it must be the picture that warps the brain cells, right? Otherwise the internet would tell me to keep her away from the radio, too. (This is my logic). With her back to the TV, she should be quite safe, unless there is some harm from the TV rays that I don't know about. I...don't really know how a TV works and just realized that it may involve electromagnetism, which I know can be dangerous from a sci-fi book I read once. (I promise immediately remedy my lack of knowledge on this subject by reading Wikipedia and perusing copious messages posted to online web forums.)

Of course, my genius plan has gotten a lot harder now that Lulu has learned to do this:

Can't yet roll both ways; can, however, do a full back bend to see the screen.

I thought about tying her down to limit her movement, but if I recall correctly, your lot sort of frowns on that. I suppose I could limit my TV intake, or even (gasp!) stop watching it altogether. But you don't really expect me to do that. I mean, you guys are notoriously hardcore, but I know you can't be THAT unreasonable.

In any case, I apologize for this lapse in judgment and I assure you that I will do all I can to stunt my child's crafty, preternatural, Nadia-Comaneciesque flexibility. And in the meantime, I promise to only watch television that is instructive on important topics. Like Project Runway (art and design) or the Real Housewives of New York (scheming).

Thank you for your continued understanding in the face of my many flaws.

Until next time,

Cath

A wrinkle in time

Maybe it's that Louise's grandmother is ill and isn't expected to recover, and I've been thinking of her constantly these past few days. Maybe it was reading Darcy's post on missing her dad that did it. Maybe it's the time of year, with Day of the Dead looming. But I've been thinking of my grandparents a lot lately.

My mom's dad died when I was six, and it was the first time I had ever encountered the concept of death. I remember it as being confusing, but I don't think it affected me very deeply, to tell the truth. I just didn't get it. My dad's mom died when I was eleven and that was much, much harder, because I better understood the concepts of gone and forever. My Mammaw, my mom's mom, my best friend, died suddenly when I was 21 and that was crushing to me. I don't think I'll ever really get over it. Later that year, my dad's dad died, and that was a mixed bag, because he had been ill with Parkinson's disease for so long. It was hard to lose him, but there was some relief that he wasn't sick anymore. A hard thing to admit--that relief--and a hard knot to untangle.

I grew up with the ideal grandparent situation, I think. Both sets of my grandparents lived in my town, and I saw both many times a week. I spent heaps of time with them and there are special things I remember about each one. Eating at Art's Kitchen with Grandaddy Larry, sitting on the steps of his house as he worked on his truck. Going to the symphony with Grandaddy Gene, and the ringing of the bell in honor of the submarine veterans of WWII every year. Singing with him while he played the violin. I remember Grandma Lois leaning over me, teaching me to sew neat stitches to make a Raggedy Ann doll, helping her with the crossword, going to lunch at the club, sitting in the cart as she wheeled me around the commisary. Thousands of impromptu sleepovers with Mammaw, laying in her bed, propped up with feather pillows, playing Nintendo, watching Golden Girls, eating candy corn.

When I was pregnant and on bed rest, I passed the hours by sorting through family pictures and while doing this, I came across my grandparents' faces over and over again. There were so many things I wanted to ask them. My Mammaw had four children born prematurely. How did she handle that? Did she have to be on bed rest, too? What was it like, back in the '50s, to be the parent of a premature baby? My Grandma Lois had a twin that died at birth and I remember being obsessed with finding out the twin's name. Nobody remembered what it was, or if she even had one. Grandaddy Gene had always wanted to go to college, to study math or science or engineering, and he could have, with the G.I. Bill, after WWII ended. But instead, when he came home, he got married and started a family. Did he ever regret that choice in the middle of the night as the baby screamed in the next room? Did he wish that things could have been different, that his duties as a parent to provide for his family didn't press so heavily on him?

These are all things I didn't think to ask about when they were alive. And now I'll never know the answers.

There are so many things I want Lulu to know about her great-grandparents. I want her to know about Mammaw's laugh, her love of sweet things. Grandma Lois's whistling--her voice was damaged during surgery and she couldn't sing after that, but she learned to whistle beautifully. The way Grandaddy Gene always wore a flat cap--always. How Grandaddy Larry read a book in his reclining leather chair, an afghan draped over him.

Sometimes it hits me, though: I can tell her these things, but she won't really understand them. I love hearing stories about my great-grandparents. As a kid I used to beg to hear everything about them. What kind of food did they eat? How did she wear her hair? What was his favorite color? What was her favorite flower? My parents always answered me as best they could, but for all that, the great-grandparents never seemed really real to me. They seemed like characters in a book, people I'd read about instead of people that actually walked and talked. I didn't know their voices or the way they smelled or the way their faces looked when they were happy or tired. I didn't know the things that made them who they were.

I hate that these flesh-and-blood people I loved will seem like characters in a book for Lulu. I want them to be real to her. I want her to know them. I hate that she can't.

J.D. and I are obsessed with the idea of time travel. Not in a passionate sci-fi way, but it's something we do talk about at length on long car trips, in late-night chats. We like to discuss the logistics of it, how it would work, the ethical implications of it. J.D. has this theory that people from the future will time-travel back to the past and save our consciousnesses somehow, download us into the future after we die. He likes to expound upon it at great length.

Last month, when researchers discovered that some neutrinos may move faster than light, we talked about it again and joked about gassing up the DeLorean because it was going to happen. We talked about what time we would go back to, if we could. A time we were really interested in, to see what it was like? Or a time that we didn't really care to visit, but would, in order to issue some kind of warning? How much would it cost, to go back in time? Would it be like space travel--tons and tons of money, so that only rich people like that guy from NSYNC could make the trip?

J.D. lost his last two living grandparents about a year or so before I got pregnant with Lulu. It seems like such a raw deal, to have them only just miss meeting each other. J.D. was close to his grandfather--really close. I asked him, "Would you pay a hundred thousand dollars to go back to a time when your grandfather was alive, to have him meet Lu?"

J.D. didn't even have to think. He said yes.

"What about a million dollars?"

He said yes again, quick as before.

Of course it's easy to talk in hypotheticals that will never happen. We don't have a million dollars. There's no such thing as a time-travel machine. But if there were, I feel quite sure I'd gladly rob a bank or orchestrate a massive ponzi scheme to raise the funds to be able to make the trip. Because it's something that I wish for so often and so much--to be able to go back and have Lulu spend one day--one hour--with my grandparents. To see them kiss her chubby cheeks and love on her, if only for one tiny moment in time.

Dressing up yoga pants

Probably no article of clothing in the SAHM wardrobe is as reviled as the yoga pant. For some reason, people have complicated feelings about them. I don't really understand why. I am a longtime aficionado of the yoga pant. I work at home; I have worn yoga pants for years. I wore yoga pants on the regular, even before I ever dreamt of becoming a mom. And so I've picked up a tip or two for dressing up yoga pants, making them look less like pajamas and more like real, honest-to-goodness clothing. Today I am feeling generous, and so I will pass on these tips to you. Are you ready? OK then.

The first rule of dressing up yoga pants is that you don't dress up yoga pants.

If you do a google search for "dressing up yoga pants" you will find pages and pages of suggestions for adding things like blazers and high-heeled boots to complete the look. I caution you against doing this. You will not look hip, or chic, or like you are not wearing yoga pants. You will look like one of those kids' books, where you can flip the pages and make the doctor wear clown shoes. You will look like you are playing a game called "can anyone guess I am not wearing ACTUAL PANTS?" (HINT: we can, girl. WE ALWAYS CAN.)

The thing to do, instead, is to let the yoga pants be yoga pants, and build an outfit around them. It will not be an outfit you can wear interchangeably with other outfits. If you're going to a WOH job, or to dinner with friends, or church or a DAR meeting or a night out at a bar? FOR HEAVEN'S SAKE, wear real pants. But if you are going to spend your day running after kids and crawling around on the floor and doing school drop offs? You can still look cute and chic.

Here are my strategies for making this work.

1. Pick a non-yoga yoga pant. By which I mean: don't get one with obvious athletic details. Unless you plan to use the pant for actual athletic activity. You want your fabric to breathe. You don't want seams in weird places or a sheeny butt. You want something cotton, with stretch. Something like the slim flare yoga pants from American Eagle:


2. Wear a shirt. (Duh). But I mean: a real shirt. Not an oversized tee you yanked from your husband's drawer. Nothing with the name of an athletic sportswear manufacturer; no gigantic Nike swoops. Not anything made of running material, unless you are trying to fake the "I've just been to the gym" thing. (Or you have actually been to the gym).

The key is to treat the yoga pants the way you would your favorite pair of old, worn in jeans, the ones you had in high school and that still fit, the ones that feel like velvet from the dryer. You wouldn't wear them out to dinner with friends with a silk-chiffon blouse. You'd toss on a cute cotton tee. Preferably with some sort of detailing to keep it from being too plain.

Right now, my go-to shirt to fulfill this requirement is the pintucked burnout tee from the Gap:


There are some really cute sweatshirts out there right now, but I'd save them to wear with jeans. Pair them with yoga pants and the whole things gets very sweatsuity, very fast.

2. Wear real shoes, too. By which I mean: not running shoes. Or Uggs. When in doubt, go for ballet flats, but be careful to choose a pair that's casual (No patent leather, no sequins, no calf's hair or Tory Burch logos). This doesn't have to mean boring, though:

Chains = not boring.

Pop of yellow = also not boring.

Do you have a pair of Chuck Taylors? If not, I highly suggest investing in a pair. They come in literally every color/shade/permutation under the sun and are probably the singlemost important item to keeping yoga pants looking cute and fun instead of sad and boring.


3. Add a bold accessory. Nothing dainty or flashy. Stay away from glittery or iridescent and focus on bright, bold, primary colors. Think about something like this:


A necklace like this is an outfit maker--throw it on with a plain white t-shirt and suddenly you look like you know what you're doing. A necklace like this and mascara can make a hospital gown look like it cost $178 at Anthropologie.

Helpful hint: I like to keep a necklace hanging on the front doorknob so that I can drop it over my head on my way out to the store, the library, or playgroup.

A scarf immediately adds depth and interest and texture to an otherwise drab outfit and draws the attention toward the face in the same way a bold necklace does. I like this circle scarf from American Apparel because it doesn't have loose ends that hang down in your soup (or the baby's blowout diaper, depending on how your day is going).



Bonus points: It also looks like it would be really great for breastfeeding. Score!


4. You're going to want a cute jacket. This rough tweedy number is mine.

The Ann Taylor catalog people have dressed it up here, but trust me: it works great with a more casual look, too.

5. Wear your yoga pants with confidence. Repeat after me: There is NO SHAME in yoga pants. You are a mom: you run around all day mashing bananas, gluing macaroni to cardboard, wiping up snot and poop and puke. Nurses do some of these things, and they're allowed to wear scrubs. And orthopedic shoes. In public. And nobody bats an eyelash.

You should hold you head high. If there's one thing I've learned in my nearly 30 years on the planet, it's that you can get away with a lot if you act like you're the shit. You've followed my rules, you're wearing cute shoes. So don't mind the haters. They're just jealous of your boob scarf.


How much do you love your yoga pants? What are your tips for making them work?

Little wonders: baby kisses

Lulu has learned to give kisses. Big, open-mouthed, slobbery kisses. They are not always given in traditional kiss locations, and they can sometimes be a bit more gnaw-y than you'd expect a kiss to be. But they are sweet, nonetheless.

I love Lulu

I love that she loves it when J.D. and I pretend to eat her. "ZOM-BIE BA-BY," we say in our best zombie voices, and she cackles, so amused.

I love that when we zoom her around the air, she makes what we call her "superhero face." Mouth wide open, nose crinkled. Pure glee and crimefighting adorableness all in one compact package.

I love that she sits in her swing with one leg up in the air. Although I hope we can wean her of this habit by the time she's in high school. As my own mother would say, it's not very ladylike.

I love her enthusiasm, her burgeoning sense of independence. She's new to food, but when we feed her, she grabs at the spoon, already wants to do it herself. I have the feeling that once she can talk, I'll be hearing this a lot: "No, Mama--I do it."

I love reading to her with J.D., and the little asides we make on the stories that we reads. We love to talk about capitalist overlords when we read Mike Mulligan. "'I work faster and better when someone is watching me? WTF kind of Big Brother shit is that?'" Occupy Popperville, everybody, because Mike Mulligan and Mary Anne are the 99%!

When Lulu is tired, she rubs her eyes with her hands like a pantomime of somebody in a play, pretending to be tired. It's infinitely charming. There is something so sweetly innocent about it. When she wants our attention, though, she blows raspberries, total Bronx cabbie style, tongue sticking out, a baby sneer on her face. We can't help laughing at both.

I love the tragic relationship Lu has with the cats. She absolutely adores them and wants them to come near to her--but when they do, she gets so excited, starts windmilling her arms and legs, and the cats get freaked out and run away again. Then she is totally bereft, lip folding down, tears, the works.

I wish I could be as happy about anything in the world as Lulu is to have her diaper changed. This kid loves being naked, loves to glory in her small, pudgy, supersoft and velvety body. I hope she always, always does, that she never wishes she was shaped or assembled any differently from the way she is, because she is perfect and perfectly herself.

I love to dress her for the day. My favorite of her outfits right now is a white dress with tiny blue polkadots, a hand-me-down from Louise's littles. I pair it with a pair of black leggings with multicolored buttons on the ankles, and Lulu looks gamine and adorable and totally '50s, a tiny, roly-poly Audrey Hepburn. (An image she immediately shatters by simultaneously farting and puking. I am sure Audrey never did either one of those things.)

I love the thousand little songs we sing to our girl throughout each day, how we change the lyrics to suit her. "I loves you, Lulu," we sing, to the tune of I Loves You, Porgy. "Mrs. Lulu," we sing, to the tune of Mr. Sandman, "I lo-ove you. When you're not with me, I'm feeling so blue." We substitute words in that old song, Calendar Girl: "I love I love I love my little Lulu girl, every day, every day of the year."

I love the big girl my baby is becoming, but I love that there are signs of the tiny newborn she used to be still in her, too. Yesterday, Lu sneezed, and then sighed--something I haven't heard her do in months. It felt like a reminder, like a gift.

I love everything about this kid, all the tiny pieces that make her who she is today.


Dear God: give me the gift of memory. Don't let me forget a single thing.

By any other name

The whole science of naming is something that has fascinated me since I was a young child. I remember filling the margins of my notebooks with a list of the names that I thought were beautiful--Helen, Clover, Augusta, Beatrice, Felicity, Jessamine--and wonder which one of these I would pick for my future child, what she would be like, how her name would shape her. When they handed that blank birth certificate form to me in the hospital, all those neat little boxes waiting to hold the name we'd chosen for our daughter, I actually trembled with excitement. I couldn't believe they were going to let me name an actual person.

A lot of thought went into picking Lulu's name. Which, in the interest of full disclosure, isn't actually Lulu. I don't want to say exactly what it is because I feel hinky about giving her name on the internet. I mentioned it several times on my old book blog, but this is a blog about her life, and I don't want to share details of her life without her consent. One day, if she wants, I'll go back and do a search-and-replace on the whole thing with her real name, but until then, she's Lulu. It's her nom de guerre.

Lulu has three names, first, middle and last. Her last name is my husband's, because I am subjugated and antifeminist but mostly because my maiden name is German and hard to spell. Her middle name is for my paternal grandmother, who died when I was 11. I have 21 years' worth of memories of my mother's mom, my Mammaw, to share with Lu when she is older, but I wanted her to have something of my other grandmother, too. So we added a few letters to her name, Lois, and made a name that felt a little more fresh.

Lu's first name is short and sweet and to the point. It is the name of a character in my favorite book. It's a classic; it peaked in popularity in the U.S. in 1910 and has been sliding ever since. It's not a new oldie, one of the ubiquitous "pretty grandma" names like Violet or Alice or Eloise. It's common enough among the general population so that you won't bat an eyelash to hear it but it's not a name that you find much on women under 40, much less little babies. Think Jane. (It's not Jane. But Jane is on my list).

But on an everyday basis, we don't call Lulu by any of these carefully chosen names. Most of the time we call her stupid things like "Bicky" or "Dog-Dog" or "Pants." When we're not using these undignified monikers, we call her by a nickname. It's a foreign version of her real name, a legitimate name, not made up. It's in the top 50 or so names for girls in Holland and Belgium and France, but in the U.S., it's very rare. There is a Dutch pop star and French actress and a character in a popularish book and movie who share this name, but I have never met anybody in real life who goes by it. We like that Lulu has two names, J.D. and I, and that they are so different. We like that she could use either one of them her whole life, or that she can switch back and forth between them as her situation and identity dictate. Whether Lulu grows up to be a Supreme Court Justice or the singer in a punk rock band, she's covered.

I think something that I have always liked about names are the small--and not-so-small--ways in which they shape our lives. A child's name is so important to whom he or she will become. That's backed up by science--researchers have found that students with names starting with A or B do better in school than kids whose names start with C or D, that men named Dennis and Joe are far more likely to become dentists and plumbers than men named James or Andrew. When I meet a parent with a baby, I always ask what his or her name is, and then I try to think about how that name will shape that baby's future. Will little Atom grow up to be a physicist? Will Colton ride horses? Will Shiva backpack through India, feel an affinity for Hindu philosophies? I'm named for an aunt--my mother's sister--and we are very, very close, and so alike that it's scary. But what if my mom had named me for her other sister? Would I feel closer to her, share more of her traits?

But what I really love are the things a name says about the namer. The things I wouldn't otherwise know. When my very good friend gave her son a very Celtic name, one of the ones with a lot of consonants that don't sound how you expect them, I wanted to know what led her to choose it. It seemed like a kind of random choice. But then she told me the story of her Irish immigrant grandparents, why they left their home in Ireland, why they moved to America, their traditions. I was floored--I hadn't known my friend's ancestry was so important to her. I hadn't known she was Irish at all. And I'd known her for 10 years.

At story hour at the public library a few weeks ago, there was a mother with a four-week-old baby, and his name was Larry. "That is a marvelous name," I told her. "Most people think it sounds like a hick or an old man," she said, "But it was my dad's name." And then she told me about her dad, who had died. She gave part of his memory, and part of herself, to me, and I'd only known her for thirty seconds.

Even really common names can be more revealing than you'd think. A woman I went to elementary school with recently named her daughter Jennifer, which isn't strange, but seemed like a strange choice because of its unstrangeness. But there was a story there, too: my Filipino friend, with her Filipino name, had dreamed, when she came to this country at a young age, of being a bright and bubbly, quintessentially American Jennifer instead of the foreign-sounding Maricel. Jennifer represents countless Jennis, Jennys, Jens and Jenns to us; to her it represented a wish for her new life.

So it's surprising, given the deep, intimate, personal nature of the naming process, that people can be such TOTAL ASSHOLES about the things that other people call their children. Seriously, everybody on the planet? What is WRONG with you? People can find something negative to say about pretty much every name under the sun (as evinced by the fact that nobody liked the boy name J.D. and I picked out, which was JOHN, probably the most inoffensive name known to man). But we parents of kids with unusual names reap it harder than anybody else. Just the other day I was talking to my friend S., whose daughter is named Liesel, and she recounted to me the story of a woman who accosted her while she was in the grocery store, minding her own business, to tell her that she didn't like her daughter's name, which she had discerned from the monogrammed diaper bag hanging over my friend's shoulder.

"When people do that to me," I said. "I wish them hemorrhoids."

"When people do that to me," Liesel's mom said, "I wish that they would be somehow unfairly implicated in a heinous crime and forced to flee the long arm of the law and the grip of the one-armed man. Like in The Fugitive."

So we talked about it some more, at length, and came up with a list of dos and don'ts that everybody must follow when talking to parents about their childrens' names. Because we decree it so. And because the penalty of not doing it is hemorrhoids.

• DO call the child by the name the parents have chosen. Even if you don't really like it or you feel stupid saying it. Don't choose an alternate nickname, or make one up, or use the middle name instead.
• DON'T be afraid to ask questions. It's OK to ask how a name is spelled or pronounced. It's OK to ask more than once if you need to. Because pretty much everybody prefers that you ask multiple times rather than getting it wrong.
  
• DO let us know if you know someone else with the same name as our child. But please don't tell us if you had an evil teacher/horrible boss/person you never liked with that name.
  
• DON'T be afraid to say that you think a name is unusual. We know the name is unusual; that's usually why we chose it.
  
• DO try to chose your words carefully, though. Words like "strange" and "weird" and "odd" don't always sound the best. It's always better to say "interesting."
  
• DON'T say you dislike a name. Don't ever do that, please. Usually by the time a parent is sharing a name with you, the kid is born and here and that's his name and your opinion will only make everybody feel bad. Remember that if we all had the same taste in names as you, then your own child's name wouldn't be so special. And everyone wants their child's name to be at least a little bit special--that's why there are 50,000 nicknames for Elizabeth, and why people go so ferally batshit crazy when someone "steals" the name they've chosen.
• DO try to find something to like about the name that's being shared with you. Even names like Ethel and Edna can be charming if you think of them in the right way. For instance, Ethel Waters was a totally boss jazz singer and Edna Ferber wrote some of the most adorable books in the history of books. Accentuate the positive. And there's always a positive.
  
• Most importantly, DO ask about the story behind the name. You'll almost always learn something important or meaningful about the person who chose it.
  

If you hear me calling my kid Dog-Dog, though? I give you permission to look askance at me for that.

"One day I'll learn to talk, Pantoufle. And then I'll get my revenge."

How did you pick your child's name? What does it mean to you? Please share the story with us in the comments.

Perfect

Over the weekend, Louise posted about the times when you should put the camera down, sit back and just enjoy. But at other times, it is important to pick the camera up, and snap away.

~

I have the reputation for being a bit of a perfectionist, especially when it comes to photography. "No, no," the instructor of my Tuesday night Intro to Photography class is prone to saying. "It's really good, especially for a beginner." I hear it a lot, in all walks of my life: "You need to cut yourself slack." But I hardly ever do, especially when it comes to photography. One unfortunate shadow, the blur of an eyelid, a chopped-off hand? Delete, delete, delete.

So how is it, then, that some of the pictures I love best are some of the most imperfect?

This is our first photo with Lulu. There wasn't time to take a proper one before she was whisked down to the NICU. So we posed--my parents, my mother-in-law, my husband and me--with a cell phone photo of Lu that J.D. snapped as the nurses were wheeling her away.


It wasn't the kind of newborn photo I'd hoped to get, the kind you see over at Kelle Hampton's blog, of a soft-lighted mother and baby looking joyfully at each other in their first wondrous moments together. But still: I love it.

~

This is our first family photo, just the three of us. Taken in the NICU the next morning, the first time we were able to hold our girl. A kind nurse asked, "Would you like a family picture?" and we said, "Guh," which in stunned new-parent speak can mean "No problem" or "Is it serious?" or "We are over the moon with happiness." In this case, it meant yes, thank you. She translated, and whipped out a non-digital, 35-mm point and shoot. She printed out our picture on a printer in the corner of the nurses's station, handed to us as we left, the ink still wet, along with a lot of pamphlets on PPD and proper handwashing procedures.


The pixels are as big and square as my hand. You can't actually see the features on Lulu's face very well. There's just a baby-head-shaped red splotch that denotes her presence. But still: I love it.

~

We meant to take a picture to replace that one shortly after Lulu came home. We figured out the tripod and the self-timer on the camera. But lugging all of this stuff out, setting it up, finding a time when all of us had hair brushed and matching clothes on and no drool or pee or vomit on any part of our person was a little hard. I know that family pictures are important, and sometimes difficult, to get. So whenever I see a family with a new baby all out together, I will go right up to them and ask them, "Do you want me to take a picture of you all together?" I will pose them, snap a few shots, get their email addresses and send them copies.

But somehow, I couldn't get it together to do this for myself.

Until this weekend. We were at a pumpkin patch with friends, we were walking to the car, we passed a platform of pumpkins and I said, "Stop!" I moved things around, adjusted the exposure, handed the SLR to my friend who has never SLR-ed before. She waited for us to get in position and snapped the shot.

When I got home and opened the file in Photoshop, I saw that for all my careful adjustment, it was kind of a funky picture. The spot I'd picked was backlit by the setting sun; I had to play around a lot with levels and fill light so that we didn't look like zombies. The sky is weirdly exposed in a nuclear-fallout kind of way, and I have a strange Joan-of-Arc thing going on with my hair. It's not a perfect picture by any means.



But it is still perfect because it's us, all of us, together. And so I love it.

Little wonders: DC sunset