22 Months
The Beaner turned 22 months old yesterday. Honestly, he feels so much like he's two already that by the time his actual birthday rolls around, it'll probably be greeted with a shrug. He's still pointing out cars like he's on a mission, and he's describing them in more detail ("gray Mini, blue Mini. Two Minis!", "wet Lolota, wet Baab, wet Mitsubishi. It's raining!", "oh Mommy, look, anunna VW!"). He asks to "go walking and looking more Baabs, more Jeeps" on a daily (and sometimes hourly) basis. He tells us what he wants to eat ("more pee-each [two syllables]"), what he wants to wear ("no blue jekit, unge jekit!"), when his shoes are untied (I've noticed that he checks them regularly, and he reports "tie shoes on!" when a lace becomes loose), and who the people in his family are ("Mommy, Aw-ten, Daddy").
He's still huge, and growing more so; we took him to the pediatrician last Friday before we went apple picking, and he weighed in at 30 lbs. 12 oz. (slightly over the over/under of 30.5 lbs.) and measured 2' 10.37" (almost 34.5"). The doctor reported that this put him in the 75th percentile for height and the 90th for weight, but when I went to the CDC website to verify that she didn't have the numbers flipped, it looked to me like he's in the 50th percentile for height and the 75th for weight. Either way, he's solid for his height. I asked the doctor if we should change what we feed him, and she said no, he's doing great. This makes sense, I guess; he's still within normal limits all the way around, he's healthy, and he's very active. He watches a good deal of Sesame Street, but he's hardly a couch potato—with Hannah as a nanny, how could he be?
Speaking of Hannah, she'll be going part time with us starting this week, and The Beaner will be going to M's house for sharecare two days a week. We'll lose Hannah for good at the end of December, which, although not a surprising development, considering that we assumed when we hired her full-time back in January that she'd want to go back to school in September, is nonetheless a sad one. I'm both sad that The Beaner will be losing Hannah's company, energy, enthusiasm—in short, everything she brings to the door every morning at 9am—and sad that we'll need to find a new nanny. That's never easy to do, and it's especially difficult for someone like me who doesn't have much interest in meeting new people. My first reaction when we learned of Hannah's plans was to think, "oh, no, I'll never be able to find another nanny, and I'll have to quit my job." Then, of course, I realized how stupid I was being. One thing I should be clear about, if nothing else: I can no longer cut it as a stay-at-home mom, so quitting my job to watch The Beaner is simply not an option. (Plus, I love my job.) So we are now officially looking for a new nanny. The good news is that we have until January to find one, with some flexibility to hire someone sooner if the right person comes along; and we also have the option of hiring someone for three days a week (for example, a grad student who only has classes two days a week), since the sharecare arrangement should be available to us through July. I know we're incredibly lucky to be in this position, with an awesome sharecare *and* an awesome nanny, but I'm already mourning the impending loss of Hannah.
OK, I'll stop wallowing and return to the well-baby visit to the doctor. She was suitably impressed by his language development ("it definitely looks like he has at least 8 words!" — and The Beaner was even being rather shy, so she didn't get to hear "painting", "shopping", "apple picking", "football", "running", "stop sign", "funny", or "scone"). The only real questions we had were when we should take him to the dentist (at one year, or whenever he gets teeth, so we're way behind there), and whether he'll need an eye exam (Al had a lazy eye as a child, so he's a little worried about it happening to The Beaner. Beanboy's eyesight seems really strong, though, so I'm less concerned). We'll go back for a flu shot in a couple weeks, and then we won't see the doctor again for about 6 months.
We talked at our last visit about all the ways he's been testing us, so we didn't bring it up again. These days he's doing things he KNOWS he's not supposed to do so often that we're starting to run out of ways to express our disappointment (and to disguise our annoyance). Al calls the stage we've entered the Testing Twos, and I think he's about right . The Beaner's certainly testing the limits of our patience (and probably our love); I'd say he's finding that I have no patience whatsoever, Al has quite a bit more, and that there's almost nothing he can do that will make us stay mad at him for very long. (So far my limit of being angry is about 2 hours.) I think the thing that's most annoying is when we yell "NO!" and "STOP!", and then he mimicks us, yelling "stop!" and laughing. It seems we have very little authority and even less credibility as parents. We are firmly in the "nip it in the bud" camp, though, so we plan to persist. We're going to have a well-behaved child if it kills us. (Hopefully it won't, because we want to live long enough to see this beautiful child grow up.)
Good News, Bad News, and Getting Organized
The Good News: My MOO cards came yesterday, and they're SPECTACULAR. For some reason my Flickr buddy icon didn't print as requested, but most of the photos came out great. (See below for the details.) The cards are made of that wonderful plastic-coated pearl-finish paper that's used for trade paperback book covers these days (though these feel even thicker than a book cover), and they're positively divine to rub between your fingers. I can't wait to stick a few in my pocket when I go out shooting next—I've been dying to print up little calling cards with my Flickr URL on them so I could give them to the people I photograph, and these are absolutely perfect for that (especially since they have my photos right on them!).
One tip when you're choosing photos to go on the cards: The cropping tool that lets you figure out what part of the image you want to appear on the little rectangular cards is a bit off. If your image would not look as good with slightly more cropping than shown, choose another. I chose 22 different images, and two didn't work at all with the slight bit of extra cropping. Another six images didn't translate as well to the rectangular format as I'd hoped, 11 were so fabulous I ordered another set with just those right away, and 3 more were very nice, but not worth getting extra copies. Here are two photos of the ones I liked best (click to see larger versions on Flickr):
The Bad News: I was supposed to have my first (their second) practice with a new hockey team last night, and despite having looked forward to it for four days, I totally flaked and missed it. I think part of the problem was the new childcare arrangement we started yesterday, which meant that Hannah wasn't here for me to regale with tales of HOCKEY, HOCKEY, HOCKEY all day, and part of the problem is that I was just overwhelmed with an endless work/personal finance/travel planning to-do list. Al, Jess, and The Beaner all came in the door at once last night while I was desperately trying to finish fixing a bug, and hockey went right out of my head. I didn't realize until 9:30pm, after we'd gone for a walk, bathed The Beaner, and put him to bed, that I'd missed the practice (which ran from 7:15-8:45). When I realized it, I cried for over an hour. (Sadly, I am not exaggerating. I really, truly, cried for over an hour... as much because missing hockey was a symptom of my overloaded, overwhelmed state of mind right now as because I MISSED HOCKEY.)
This morning, in an effort to try to get organized and prioritize my to-do list properly, I'm trying Al's method of using the Outlook Task List. (I also set up an Outlook reminder about hockey practice that's set to go off at 5:45pm every Monday night.) Up til now, my to-do list consisted of a bunch of pieces of paper—notebook paper, sticky notes, bills, statements, prescriptions, brochures—and browser tabs open to various maps, blogs, articles, bug reports, Perforce diffs, recipes, and shopping sites. I'm not sure if it's going to work for me, but at least I can put my ENTIRE to-do list—the one that includes personal, home finance, and work items—in one place. I've been reluctant to mix personal and work stuff, which is why I'm constantly switching back and forth between two laptops (three, if you count my work Mac), but I'm realizing that a small concession can (and perhaps must) be made in the interest of staying organized. The details (e-mail, blogs) can stay on my personal machine, but the synopses should go in my Task List if I am ever to prioritize everything properly—and, more importantly, get it done.
I'm excited at the prospect of possibly becoming more efficient and productive. I'm also still sad as hell that I won't be able to play hockey for another two weeks. Hopefully, I'll get over that soon.
Failed Experiment #37
Trying to push a side-by-side double stroller with one hand while carrying a hot coffee in the other.
A Weekend in Napa
Al, The Beaner, and I had a lovely weekend in California... and I'm still a bit heart-heavy about it. Truly, we had a wonderful, wonderful time: We got to see friends we don't see often, The Beaner got to play with new friends P and S, the weather was wonderful, my dress worked out great, The Beaner was more talkative than ever and used several new phrases, we got to eat great food, a good friend finally met and married the perfect woman for him, the plane rides went smoothly, and we all enjoyed each other's company immensely. The problem is, I'm now homesick.
I love our life here in Philadelphia. We have a GREAT house, a great neighborhood, two wonderful nannies, a city lifestyle, excellent working conditions, and we're living within our means. But oh, how I miss the Bay Area. I was suprised to find that my nostalgia and heartache were greatest when we were on the Peninsula, in Sunnyvale and Mountain View. I've always preferred the city, and when we lived in Mountain View I needed to go house-hunting in Palo Alto and San Francisco to cheer me up, to give me hope that we'd move out of the suburbs and into a college-town-near-a-big-city or into the big city itself. But here I was in the south-Peninsula 'burbs, feeling homesick. I knew the streets so well, I felt like we were just out running errands, and we'd be returning to Whitney Drive any moment.
I'm sure I'll get over it once I've been back here in Philadelphia for a few days, and I've had time to consider what a move back to the Bay Area would cost us (at least double what we paid for this house, for one thing). In the meantime, allow me to review some of my favorite things about this past weekend:
Spending time with my husband on our wedding anniversary (it was 4 years on 10.06.06). To celebrate, we staged a re-creation of our wedding night by having a picnic dinner in a hotel room. This time the food was from the Oakville Grocery in St. Helena (I highly recommend the tamales and the orzo pasta salad) instead of from our wedding buffet, and I refrained from eating any cake (Al got a cookie); also, the Beaner was around to join us, so we were three instead of two. Somehow, that made it even more fun.
The wedding, seeing Craig & Nico and Tony & Maria, and meeting P. It was so lovely to be among friends, to see Ken & Corinne get married, and for The Beaner to find a playmate (he really, really enjoyed hanging out with P and has been talking about him since we returned). There's a funny story about how The Beaner went looking for P while repeating the phrase "P____ new diaper" over and over with various inflections, but it really needs to be told out loud. Suffice to say that when The Beaner denies that he needs a diaper change, all we need to do to get him to submit is remind him that P got a new diaper. "P____ new diaper?" he'll say. "[Beaner] new diaper!"
see the whole wedding set as a slideshow
Grapes! There was something so pleasant about driving by row upon row of grape vines. Everywhere, there were grapes—including at the wedding, which was held at a small organic vineyard. The Beaner and P helped themselves, which made for another of my favorite moments.
Fred reaching into the pool to retrieve The Beaner's toy Saab and coming up with his face dripping water. I really wish I'd gotten a photo of this, but I was so in awe of Fred's gallantry that I didn't reach for the camera. (This incident happened between the wedding ceremony and the reception, when we were all having cocktails around the pool. I'd been a bit paranoid that The Beaner or P would fall in, but in the end it was only the Saab—and Fred—that got wet.)
Hearing The Beaner say "excuse me." We've been trying to teach The Beaner to say "excuse me" when he wants someone to move and when he wants to interrupt a conversation, and although he's repeated the words back to us, he's never seemed to understand when it was appropriate to use them. We were in a cool downtown Napa toy store when he finally got the hang of it. We'd gone to the back of the store to play with the train tables, which were set up close to the Thomas and Brio displays (of course). The Beaner was moving around a table working the trains, and I was browsing through the Thomas paraphenalia when he suddenly needed to get by me, and couldn't. He pushed on my leg for a little bit, and I ignored him (not intentionally; it's more that because he's always hanging about my legs, I don't notice right away when he's actively trying to get my attention). Finally he said, "excuse me!", which got my attention right away. I moved, of course... and laughed delightedly.
One of the other things The Beaner said while around the train table was "Percy!", referring to the little green engine. I'm not sure whether he learned Percy's name from one of the other kids who came to play around the table (one little boy in particular named *all* the engines for me) or from a Thomas book we got for him at the bookstore recently (I think the latter's more likely, since Percy figures prominently in the story), but he said it so clearly that we couldn't help but buy him a Percy. We're suckers, I know. The day before, we'd bought him a little toy pickup truck when he correctly identified it as a Dodge.
Visiting John & Kathy down in Sunnyvale. Here's were the nostalgia really kicked in, since we were driving around our old haunts on the way down as well as when we went out to dinner. Plus, talking to John & Kathy was something I could have done for days... so many interesting topics, from parenting to sports to television to finance & budgeting and tons of other things that we only managed to touch on briefly. I had this moment after talking with Kathy where I thought, "hey, maybe I could stay home with The Beaner full-time...", but then I realized, as I talked it out with Al, that it really wouldn't work for me with our current setup. If Kathy and I lived in the same neighborhood, though, I think I'd be willing to try it. She's so wonderful with S, and it's obvious he's thriving in the glow of her love and enthusiasm. I think I would, too. :) I can't wait for them to come visit us in Philly, so we can continue the conversation.
Edited to add: Visiting the BCBGMaxAzaria outlet in Napa. The dress I wore to the wedding was by BCBGMaxAzaria, and the cargo pants I got a couple months ago and love are too, so when we popped over to the Napa Premium Outlets to see if there were any kids' shops there and I spotted the BCBG store, I begged to go in for a few minutes. I left with two pairs of pants that fit incredibly well, feel like butter, and make my butt look great. Like all of BCBG's pants, they run a little long, but having to buy a new pair of boots to keep them from dragging seems like a small price to pay to make me feel like I have a normal body. Just about every other brand out there makes me feel like a mutant, while BCBG clothes feel like they were made just for me. Yay! Oh, and the Gymboree outlet turned out to be next door, so we were able to get a couple cute things for fall for The Beaner and S, too.
The Return of the Pink
Ugh, it's that time of year again: The time when every building and fountain in Philadephia is lit up with pink. Stores sell bears in pink t-shirts (with a whole $4.50 from your purchase going toward breast cancer charities!) and tea with pink ribbons on the cannister and pink-enameled kitchen appliances. We're urged to buy! buy! buy! in the name of breast cancer.
Here's an idea: If you don't need the teddy bear or the pedicure slippers or the boxing gloves (!), why not make a direct donation to a breast cancer charity? (Link goes to a list of well-run breast cancer charities, as ranked by Charity Navigator.) Even if you give a tiny amount—say, $10 or $20—you're still giving more than you would be by buying most pink-ribbon products. Instead of mailing four pink yogurt lids in to Yoplait (you'd be spending 39 cents on the stamp to give 40 cents to the Susan G. Komen foundation), mail $5 directly to Komen... if Komen is the organization you want to support.
If you really would rather buy a breast health-related product than send money directly to a charity, please consider buying something that doesn't pander with pink. A sepia-toned calendar produced by Breast of Canada is one option. Not a whit of pink in sight, and real, actual breasts on every page. (You'd be surprised how shocking it is to see REAL breasts, after what we're used to seeing in advertisements, on television, and in movies. Seriously: it's shocking. Sue Richards gave me a sample calendar when I met her at BlogHer, so I've seen all the images. This article on the Breast of Canada website gives a good sense of how different this calendar is from the traditional pinup version you'd see in a gas station repair bay.) If nothing else, the calendar will make you appreciate the healthy breasts you have, and help you keep them healthy with reminders and instructions on how to do breast self-exams.
If all this pink makes you angry, as it does me; if all the sweetness and light and positive pinkness seems incongruous with the vomit-inducing toxicity of current cancer treatments; if you find it disconcerting that many breast cancer organizations are sponsored by chemical and pharmaceutical companies; if you want to find out what's CAUSING breast cancer and work to PREVENT it, not just detect and treat it, start by educating yourself, and then take action. Give yourself a breast exam. Eliminate harmful chemicals from your household, and lobby for a cleaner environment for yourself and your children. Whatever you do, don't just shop.
Valerie on the Violin
I just visited my friend Valerie's site, where she talked about getting together with some friends to record a piece of music.
After we were done, I was sitting on the couch noodling around on my solo version of Air on the G String and talking to L., not realizing that Mi. had turned the mic on and was recording. Here's the result. It's fun to listen to it, despite the intonation bloopers.
Listen yourself and see if you don't cry, too.
MAXed Out
Gah, I have SO MUCH to blog about, and no time to do it—maybe on the plane tomorrow. I'm leaving for Adobe MAX in Las Vegas tomorrow morning, and I'll be gone until late, late Thursday night (yes, I'll be spending half my birthday at a conference, and the other half on a plane). I want to write about the little point-and-shoot camera I just got (a Finepix F30) this morning so I could have something to carry around in my purse (and also something I could bring to events like MAX, where I don't want to lug around the 10D in addition to two laptops). I want to write about our TWO recent apple-picking outings. I have two hockey games to write about, plus a practice tonight.
Oh, and somewhere in there I need to pack... and work. Yikes!
Happy Birthday to Me
I'm still at MAX, dashing around trying to get to sessions and worrying about whether I'll be able to get my suitcase out of check in time to catch a cab to the airport in time for a 4pm flight, so I keep forgetting it's my birthday. I'm 38 today! Happy birthday also to my former colleague Victor Grigorieff, and to Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton.
3 Days
I left for MAX2006 in Las Vegas early Tuesday morning, before The Beaner woke up, and returned last night a little before midnight, long after he went to bed. While at the conference, I attended a few CSS sessions; talked to a lot of customers (something I realized I hadn't done—face-to-face, anyway—in three or four years); took lots of notes and filed a few bugs based on what I saw and heard; battled a cold, dehydration, and noxious clouds of cigarette smoke; saw the feature I've been working on get sneaked to a crowd of about 3500; danced the night (or at least the evening) away at the Palms; got to wear the new shirt I spent a fortune on (because Al convinced me that I needed one good shirt, and damned if he wasn't right—the thing fit really well and made me feel great); walked to the Bellagio to see all the Chihuly glass and to Walgreen's to buy Airborne (both walks took waaaaay longer than I'd anticipated, due to map scale being nothing like reality and sidewalks being clogged with shuffling tourists); and got to see many old friends, many of whom I didn't realize would be at the conference. (I wish I had more photos of all the old friends and cool customers I met, but I was so busy talking to them I kept forgetting to whip out the camera.)
Meanwhile, at home, The Beaner was changing. When I called from the cab to the airport yesterday, he didn't want to sing the Happy Birthday song he'd been rehearsing with Hannah all day, but he was more than happy to tell me, "I painted choochoo train!" and "Bye bye, Mommy! I love you, Mommy!"
When I went to get him from his crib this morning (at 8:02am), he felt skinnier, and longer. He was even more talkative than when I left, and his enunciation had improved. "What happened to Baab?" he asked me when I brought him downstairs. "What happened to Buick?" I said I didn't know, I'd been away. "Here ya go, mommy. It's Big Bird," he replied, handing me his Big Bird doll, perhaps as a welcome home gift.
He laughed and made little jokey references to a new book he and Hannah got at the library while I was gone (it involves sound effects, and he'd try one out and then smile slyly, waiting to see if we noticed and could identify it). He counted his shoes for me. He yelled, "yaaay! chocolate!" when I unwrapped the 88% cacao chocolate bar that Hannah got me for my birthday (she also got me a cool mug with caricatures of women authors—including Jane Austen—on it, and some decaf Kona coffee beans). He kissed me and said, "bye, Mommy" when I left at 9am for a massage, and he gave me hugs and asked to be picked up whenever I came down to the kitchen throughout the day, seemingly more to make sure that I knew he loved me than the other way around.
It's been an amazing three days. It's good to be home.
The Beaner is 23 Months Old Today
...And hopefully there will be an update on all the cool stuff he's doing now that he wasn't doing a month ago tomorrow. There will be apple picking photos and complete sentences and singing. And possibly video, if I can figure out how to upload it.