Full Employment for the Under-Fives

Leo's office has moved.*  He now works a mere 7 minutes from our house.  Or 8 minutes.  We're still trying to figure out the best commuting route.

On Saturday, we went up to the new office to do some decorating.  M was invaluable; she squawked once for yes, twice for no.  We moved the furniture around, and decided that the first arrangement was the best anyway.

And then M helped Leo with work.

And then got bored and punched him.

*To be perfectly fair, Leo has moved, along with his firm.  No buildings have become spontaneously migratory.  In fact, no buildings have become migratory with any amount of planning.

Political Incorrectness

M was fussy this afternoon.  (She did have four shots this morning, so it's not surprising.  Or I wasn't being entertaining enough, which is also a possibility.  Also, the vital statistics for this checkup are 15 lbs 8 oz and 24 inches long.  She's the weight of an average 7-month-old.  And the height of an average 4-month-old).   I was singing to her, as I've discovered over the last few days that this now calms her.  I've been trying out various songs in my repertoire, and discovered that she absolutely adores a song about spousal abuse.*  It's called "The Wee Cooper O' Fife" (lyrics here) and the narrative is that the cooper's wife is too proud to do housework, he beats her, and her pride evaporates.**




M responded to this by smiling and making her happy noises and kicking her legs.

So I posed a picture.

And in close-up:

I'm not sure she gets the implications of the song she's laughing at and the place she's lying, but on the other hand, her position at the top of the growth curve may make her feel that she's more than a match for any wee cooper, no matter where he comes from.

*To be fair, I loved it as a child too.  It's got a catchy tune, and . . . well, there's really no excuse for it.

**The relevant verses for this post are

The Cooper has gane to his woo' pack,
Nickety, Nackety, noo, noo, noo,
And he's laid a sheep's skin on his wife's ba'ck,
Hey Willy Wallacky, hoo John Dougal,
A lane, quo'Rushity, roue, roue, roue.

It's I'll no thrash ye for your gentle kin,
Nickety, Nackety, noo, noo, noo,
But I will thrash my ain sheep's skin,
Hey Willy Wallacky, hoo John Dougal,
A lane, quo'Rushity, roue, roue, roue.

Easter

Or a moment of failure as a mother.  M had an Easter dress, and we went to church (where she behaved beautifully, except for a moment of fussiness when the priest poked her),* and then we went and had lunch with Leo's family.  Did I take any pictures?  No.

So I'm posing one of her with a rabbit that in general she's not allowed to have because she will almost certainly ram it down her throat and commit suicide with it.  I wonder about a world where we worry about infant suicide by stuffed bunny.**

(So I wrote this post before I took the pictures, and when I did take them, I got a nice progression of pictures that shows burgeoning leporiphobia.)****

First (Just woken up): Hey, a rabbit.  Cool.

Second (a bit more alert): Wait a second - a rabbit?!?

Third: Hey, how did its arm get up there?  I don't think I like this.

Fourth: Oh, I moved the arm over my mouth with my arm, because I am a suicidal baby.

*Poked her a little while blessing her, not poked her like a gorilla.***  Though I'm not sure that she will ever wear her dress again, since dresses on babies are not particularly useful as clothing.  But if she goes to any garden parties . . .

**Of course, if it looked like my childhood stuffed bunny, all yellow fur and demonic red eyes, one could imagine that it would induce thoughts of suicide.  But it doesn't look like that at all.  It's a very nice rabbit (thanks Lori and Jane!), and as soon as she's allowed to have it, I'm sure she'll become incredibly attached to it and I will have to pry it from her grubby hands at night to wash it.

***I'm footnoting my footnotes.  This is not good.  For those of you who are unaware of the minutiae of my past, I had a traumatic experience at about age 2 with a man dressed as a gorilla who poked me.  I refused to wear the jacket I was wearing at the time ever again, which is a shame, as it was a rather cute little green jacket.

****Not to be confused with leperiphobia, which would be something quite different.

My Nieces Are Better Than Your Nieces

(Unless you are Jana, Stephen, Chris, Ron, Eric, Melissa, Leo, Russ, Leilani, Jo, Janae, Roger, or the spouses of the latter five, whose names I can remember only intermittently.  If you are one of those people, then our nieces are, in this instance, the same.  But for the great mass of humanity, my comment stands).

While I was in Port Angeles, Emily and Alynn organized a surprise party for M and me.  People, duly frightened by my comments on clothing, gave us VERY neutral gifts (M got some shirts with cowboy paraphernalia to wear while horseback riding).

The table had cups of m&ms, which I thought was a nice touch.

But by far the most impressive thing was the cake Alynn made.

And the back view.

And the alphabet blocks.

I'm amazed that I have such a talented niece (who was the same age as M just yesterday, it seems).

She's also rather beautiful herself! 

My Own Backyard

We discovered this evening that we bore M quite literally to tears.  She was fussing this evening, and it turned out that instead of food or cuddles or walking about, she wanted to be outside enjoying the beautiful weather (if this keeps up, I'm hoping I can arrange for her first word to be "salubrious.")

So we laid her down on a blanket.

And Leo played with her toes.*

We also showered her with blossoms. 

She wouldn't hold them in her hand very well, but Leo threaded some through her toes.

I stuck one behind her ear.

Leo went in to make supper, and I lay down with her.

And the cat came to see what the fuss was about.

Being discouraged from eating her toes, he took himself off in high dudgeon.

And then the police came by to chat about the seemingly abandoned house next door.

All in all, a lovely evening.

* I also was there playing with her toes.

See?  There are my toes as evidence of my presence.  I'm sure that when M reads this in later life, I will give her two sets of issues, one to do with body image, and the other to do with abandonment.  The reason there are so few pictures of us together, M, is a) your father doesn't think to take pictures of us and b) a lot of the time I'm with you, I'm indecent.

An Addendum

It has come to my attention that my rant about gendered clothing has made people frightened when they buy gifts for M.  It is true that I would prefer her clothes not to say "Princess" or "Ballerina" but I have no objection to pink.  She looks really good in pink, as it happens, and since I have come to a place where I can wear pink myself in moderation, I have no objection to her wearing it.  Nor do I have an objection to hearts and flowers. 

See?  Pink hearts to the left of her, blue hearts to the right of her, green hearts down the middle.

My objection is more to the lack of both gender-neutral clothing, and girls' clothing that doesn't have pink on it.  Boys' clothes are covered in zoo animals, which ought to be neutral.  I guess my objection is to the automatic assumption that in order to be feminine, clothing must have pink on it (and the concomitant belief that a baby who is not clothed in head to toe pink must then be a boy.  Seriously, M was wearing blue pants yesterday with that shirt - the pants matched the blue hearts - and 3 people mistook her for a boy and then said that it was because of the pants).  I also think that for babies, clothing does not always need to signify gender, so I want there to be more neutrality.  And my complaints are directed at the clothing industry, not at the people who have been generous with presents for M.

Spring Is Here

I thought that was probably a better title than "Poisoning Pigeons In The Park."

And had the added value of being true and having some reference to what we were doing, particularly in light of the fact that most of the pictures are of Leo feeding M, and it seems to me that it would be jarring for people to have poisoning in their minds and then see a picture of Leo feeding the baby.

Anyway, yesterday was beautiful.  It was sunny and pleasant and not too hot, so we thought that it would be nice to have a picnic.*  I picked Leo up from his new office (9 minute morning commute!  Excitement!) and we went to the park adjacent to it, and which he has a nice view of from his office window.  M seemed a little bemused by the wind whipping over her head (the car seat sheltered her face, but her tuft of hair was getting battered about quite a bit, which she seemed to find interesting).

When we got to our picnic table, Leo fed her - her first open air feeding, and it didn't seem to phase her at all.  Of course, I don't know that a herd of stampeding elephants would phase her when there was food in the offing, but since I'm usually a necessary adjunct to the offing of food, I would prefer not to test my theory.  For one thing, it's quite hard to find a herd of stampeding elephants in suburban St. Louis, and even if we did find them, I think I would find it somewhat unnerving to have them lumbering past me while I fed her just to see if it put her off her feed.  

 After her immediate dietary needs had been met, we put in her pacifier.  (Though you can see neither the top of the pacifier nor the other side of her shirt this picture, I would like to draw attention to the extreme coordination between her outfit and her pacifier - the pink hearts match perfectly.  You'll just have to trust me, or look at the evidence of the other pictures in the series.  I admit that it's not much, but in my pocket I had two pacifiers, one with hearts and one with flowers, and I made a conscious decision to give her the one with hearts to match her shirt.  I feel that for me, this is progress).

After this, we put her back in the stroller, and she was very tolerant of our desire to eat our dinners, spending much of the time dozing.

*I called Leo to suggest this at the very moment that he was reading yesterday's post in which I suggest that M is going to be a picnic when she gets older.  He found it somewhat disturbing.