Hazel’s new toy – baby Duncan

I’m still full of turkey and sweet potato casserole. But I could use another slice of lemon meringue pie.

Thanksgiving was good.

Duncan got to meet his cousin, Hazel. She’s just over 2 months older than him, so she can do lots of cool things he hasn’t mastered yet. Like grab. And roll over. And “crawl” backwards on the floor.

This is a photo of their first meeting. Really, they liked each other and got along great. They’re both pretty mellow, fun babies. I just thought this photo, with Duncan appearing to try and get away and Hazel appearing to be doing a gimme-that-baby-toy, is quite funny.

And, of course, of the two babies, who was bigger? Hazel outweighed Duncan by a couple of ounces at birth. But at 4 months, he’s outweighing her by a few pounds. Go figure. I swear I’m not feeding him growth hormones.

No Thanksgiving celebration with babies would be complete without posing the babies next to the turkey. Apparently, this was also done with Kevin’s cousin Tim 20-something years ago. His Nanna insisted.

We thought putting the babies in a roasting pan next to the turkey would be a nice touch, but, alas, there were no spare pans big enough. So sitting on the counter top, side-by-side with the turkey had to suffice.

In the shot after this one, Duncan reached over (a trick learned from Hazel in just one afternoon) and grabbed for the turkey, managing to smear yummy juices all over his hand.

It was a fun time. The babies were enjoyed by all. As was the turkey. And on Friday we had pie for breakfast.

Best of Rochester

OK, so not enough of you guys voted for me as best Rochester blog! But somehow, mysteriously, there are a couple of things related to me that did make it in City Newspaper’s Best of Rochester.

Plymouth Spiritualist Church came in second as Best Church Dinner (and who cooks those church meals, huh? Who got pancake breakfasts going every month? And put fruit in them?)

And, I think that the last comment under “Evidence we’re all going to hell” is mine: We’re not going to hell, that’s not very positive. Think positively!

The comment directly below for “Best way to lure people to the area: alcohol” also looks very familiar…I think that was Kevin’s (and probably some other people’s too).

So, 2 blog posts in 1 day and both about living in Rochester.

I’m not from Rochester

I just live here. Apparently, I’ve lived here long enough to find many of these “You know you’re from Rochester when…” things pretty funny.

My favorites:
You thought that you had figured out that alternate-parking thing, but wind up with a ticket anyway.

Your baby’s first word is “Wegmans.” (In my case, he’ll probably start asking when we’re going to go and see “Danny” again.)

Your low-fat diet is never low enough to exclude an Abbott’s custard. (Not that I believe in low-fat diets.)

In winter if the temperature hits 45 degrees and the sun comes out, people walk around downtown wearing shades and no jackets.

The holiday after next

I’m not ready to celebrate Christmas.

I’m ready for Thanksgiving. Well, not even. Just in my head I’m ready to eat turkey and sweet potatoe casserole. I hope there’s sweet potato casserole. I love that stuff. With the crunchy, sweet stuff on top. Mmmm.

Duncan likes sweet potatoes too. So far he’s devoured his way through 3 jars of applesauce, a jar of sweet potatoes and a jar of sweet potatoes and apples. Along with rice and oat cereal. We tried chicken for a couple of days, but I don’t think that felt too good after it went down.

So. Christmas. Another round of cards to write, sign, stamp and mail. I don’t know if I can take any more card sending this year. I still have a few thank you cards to send. (To those people I owe baby gift thank you cards to – THANK YOU. I’m getting to them, honest, and we love what you sent. You’re very kind and generous and we’re blessed to know you and/or be related to you. I mean that. I’m just exhausted working and being a mummy and student ministering and making plans for the future. I will get to them. Maybe with the Christmas cards…)

I just don’t feel up for it this year. The shopping. The crowds. The organization. Usually I come up with some kind of hand crafted goody for people – soap, gingerbread men, fudge, jam, crocheted slippers and hats, knitted furry scarves.

I’d like to do it again this year. But I don’t know what to make. It needs to be fairly easy and not to expensive or time consuming. Maybe fudge. Anyone for Christmas fudge? I guess I shouldn’t give the secret away on the blog on what I’m making this year (if anything).

If you don’t get any, er…just presume I didn’t make any…

So I’m not ready to shop yet, or write my Christmas letter, or buy and send Christmas cards or any of that. We’re not doing a Christmas tree or putting up any lights this year. I know, I know, we have a baby now. Aren’t we obligated to go overboard just for his benefit? Nope. Rather, now that we have a baby, I have better things to do with my limited “free” time (free only in that no one is paying me to do work during that time). And he’ll be 5 months old. He doesn’t care. He won’t remember. And I really don’t want him growing up with Christmas as a big deal.

We’ll go to Grandma’s. It can be a big deal there. But not at home. That way I can put off thinking about it for as long as possible. Preferably until sometime in mid-December. You know, right when the Christmas season SHOULD start. Not before Thanksgiving.

Now pass me some turkey and sweet potato casserole.

The OTHER blog

I did it. It took me a few days to finally get it up and running, but I did it.

I created another blog.

A professional blog. A serious blog. A blog where I’ll have important things to say. Ha. Sure. Something like that.

Only a few people will get it’s name, Deliberate creation. But it makes me happy. I am deliberately creating my future, after all. And I’ve had a few questions about the domain, aradnalis.com and my business, Aradnalis Productions. Think Oprah and Harpo Productions.

So. That’s the new blog update.

In Duncan news, he’s 4 months old today. He polished off almost a whole jar of organic applesauce and sweet potatoes at dinner. He’s actually enjoying tummy time now. He remains a wonderful, sweet and intelligent baby boy. And I feel so blessed to have him. We stared at each other for quite a while during his bath tonight. It was a wonderful moment or two of connecting with him.

I managed to rearrange the dining room a bit today, as well as finish up another MPI lesson. Four more to go and I’m done with that part. Then there’s some essay writing and testing and other stuff to do, but at least no more lessons.

And now I’m going to bed.

Baby Modeling

Like I need the encouragement…

People regularly tell me that Duncan could be a baby model. Yeah, every baby is a Gerber baby. I know. And mine is the cutest baby EVER! Sure. I’m not biased at all.

But, what the hey, it’s worth a Google search, right? I’m just supposed to be doing other things with my evening while Duncan is sleeping before I need to go to bed myself.

(It’s a bittersweet thing, this time to myself in the evening. I miss him so much during the day, our 2 hours together before his bed time is so short, and then I sit around on the computer or doing chores until I go to bed myself. I want to wake him up and play with him! But he needs the sleep and I need time to get things done at home.)

So. Baby modelling. Here’s what I’ve found out:

I live in the wrong city. I should be in New York. Or Miami. Or any large metropolitan area. Not Rochester.

And it doesn’t make a ton of money.

That’s pretty much it.

But if you’re interested in reading about it yourself, here’s the scoop in a couple of Parent’s Magazine articles:
Mini models and My baby is a model.

So I guess we’ll stick with home snap shots and sticking them up on the blog.

Here’s a couple more of the cutie-pie. The first is from this weekend sitting in our new favorite local diner and the second is from a play date on Wednesday with some baby (and mummy) friends. Left to right they are Duncan, Tyler, Brynn and Brian — all born this summer within a few weeks of each other. Duncan is the biggest, but he’s also the oldest.

Writing wherever life takes me

I think I’m going to start another blog. This occurred to me last night.

I’ll keep posting to this blog – you know, the stuff I want to share with friends and family. But it’s been taken over completely by baby-itis and I don’t know when or if or how it’ll ever find a cure. Or even that it should.

I read stuff about blogging, about the Web, about podcasting, trends, technology, writing, politics, whatever, that I want to comment on. But this doesn’t seem like the appropriate place. One day a post about the state of … I don’t know, something profound. The next day an update about Duncan finishing his first jar of applesauce. I think it might be a bit too incongruous.

I am a mother and a tech head, that’s true. And I blend the worlds as much as I can, as I don’t think I can happily live without either. But I think they might be mutually exclusive worlds in the blogosphere.

So. I don’t know what the blog will be called. I don’t know where I’m going to host it. I don’t even know what domain name I’ll put it under. And I’m still mulling over what, exactly, I’ll write about. Writing? Marketing? Blogging? Actual ways you can make money online? Any and all of my side projects? I don’t know. All of the above, perhaps.

I didn’t know what I was going to write about on this blog. That’s why it’s called “musings” and whatever else of a writer and folk-rock musician (or something like that). I used to write about…what did I write about? Dyeing my hair and playing gigs? Now it’s all baby this and baby that. It’s wherever life takes me. Maybe I should change its name to that…

Photos from the weekend

It’s been a weird few days in many ways. Change is in the air — which is a good thing as the only constant is change. But sometimes it feels rather unsettling.

I chickened out on taking Duncan to the rest of the conference with me and talked Kevin into looking after him. It just seemed easier that way.

Mum came to visit this weekend, arriving on Thursday. I just took her back to the airport a couple of hours ago.

Here are some photos from the weekend, starting with a cuddle on the couch with Daddy. Hobbes, apparently, had just finished her nap.

Then we have the big boy in his travel crib. He almost fills the whole thing up. We’ll have to lay him in it diagonally soon.

He’s still just a baby, I know. A week shy of 4 months. But he looks like such a little boy sometimes. You know, a boy, rather than a baby. It makes sense to me.

We went on a long walk through a nearby park today and paused to take a few pictures. Duncan, however, was more intent on studying his hands. They’re his latest, greatest toy, those hands. They do amazing things. Like move.

Finally, we had a little photo session on the bed after changing him out of his morning outfit after a massive poop. I think it had been a week since the last one, so he made a really good go of it.

I’m back at work tomorrow, Duncan needs to wake up from his nap and have some dinner (as do I), and there’s always more laundry to do, so no time to write more.

Working mummy

I don’t know where I want to go with this post. Here’s a summary of this week’s happenings:

I’m back to work 4 full days a week. I’m also at a conference (in town) for 3 days this week. So I didn’t drive home at lunch on Monday and let Kevin take Duncan to the babysitter’s at lunch. He didn’t eat for 9 hours (I’m not assigning any blame. He just refused all food from anything other than mummy). 9 hours! I’d pass out without food.

And it occurred to me last night that while he’s certainly not shrinking and wasn’t terribly unhappy by all reports, not drinking anything for 9 hours maybe isn’t so good. While well-meaning people like to tell me that “he’ll eat when he’s hungry enough,” apparently he won’t. The data proves that 7-9 hours isn’t hungry enough and I’m not willing to wait and see just how hungry “enough” is. Plus, not eating all day has the downside that, even after feeding him every hour in the evening, he wakes up every 3 hours at night. Which means I wake up. Which means I don’t get enough sleep. Which means…well, you get the idea. Sleep deprivation is never pretty.

Today was his first full day at the other babysitter (yes, we’re exposing the child to a wide variety of people. Either he’ll be completely adaptable or traumatized. It’s too early to tell). Again, I didn’t go and visit at lunch. And he ate!

It’s amazing how little things like your baby eating when you’re not there make you happy. He ate twice! And he ate cereal. So that makes me feel better about the whole abandoning-my-child-with-people-I-pay-25%-of-my-income-to-so-I-can-go-to-work thing. Just a little better. Not better enough to want to keep doing it, mind you.

This evening, we had a dinner excursion at the George Eastman House. Kevin has class tonight and would otherwise be sleeping before work anyway. So I brought the baby.

I’d like to state that I asked permission first. And that it was given.

It was an interesting experience. People were, for the most part, curious and accepting. There were a few hard core programmer types who seemed unnerved by the site of a small human snuggled up in a sling on his mother. I got several, “Is that a baby in there?” questions. I got a few questions about where I got the sling (hey, at least they knew what it was!). One guy told me his wife has her own home-based business making them. That was pretty cool.

I read Working Mother, Nursing Mother right before I went back to work. It was a really useful read, with some good advice on pumping at work (I’ve also been pumping in a bathroom for the last 2 days…that’s been an experience in an of itself) and how to adjust to working as a new mother.

It also had some really powerful insight on what it’s like to be a working and nursing mum. It talked about how our society separates a mother’s life into two parts — her work life and her home life — and how we’re supposed to not blend them together too much. Seems like it’s mostly for the comfort of the people around us, rather than for our own good.

I can’t separate those two things.

I’m a nursing mother of a 3 1/2-month old pumping milk in breaks between conference sessions. There’s nowhere good for me to do this. The bathroom stall? I don’t think so. I don’t eat in the rest room. Why should my child?

Sitting in a chair in foyer to the ladies bathroom right off the hotel lobby? That’s better at least. I turned my back to everyone and hoped they couldn’t see too much in the mirror hanging right in front of me! It was certainly a better atmosphere than a bathroom stall.

But I was still so aware of how it made other women uncomfortable when they walked in and out. Just like I was aware how it rubbed people the wrong way to bring a sleeping baby to an evening networking/dinner/mingle. At least it pushed a few unexpected buttons, I think, even if it didn’t offend.

What surprised me most were the young women who looked a bit put out or uncomfortable. I wonder how I would have reacted at least year’s conference if I saw someone a couple of years older than me casually wandering around with a baby swaddled up in a sling. Or sitting in a quiet corner breast feeding.

Am I pushing the envelope? Should I have stayed home? I don’t know. I know I absolutely wouldn’t have left him with a sitter (if I had one available) after being apart from him all day. I know that I loved how I could take him everywhere with me while I was pregnant, but now it feels like there are some places he’s not supposed to go.

I also know that I’m taking him to the conference with me tomorrow morning. There are a couple more sessions to attend and it’s my normal day off, so I don’t have anyone to take care of him. And I have permission. We’ll see how it goes, but at least I won’t have to deal with the blessed pump.

I’ll take a separate bed, please

Co-sleeping seemed like such a good idea at 3:40 a.m. We could just drift off to sleep together and have some cuddle time.

Or Duncan could squirm and headbut me in the back for three hours until I finally put him in his crib and turned on the mobile so I could get a few minutes rest by myself.

The best advice I’ve read or received about parenting is to do what works for you, what feels right for you, what rings true.

The best stuff I’ve read about sleeping – either with your baby or not – emphasizes that different things work best for different families. Some mums and babies sleep better when they sleep together. Some don’t.

Guess which group we fall into?