Baby-proofing: Push and Twist

Elle is four plus months old and trying so hard to start motoring on her own. As she planks and flops her arms up and down I can’t help but laugh. I know I shouldn’t but it’s better than fretting about how un-baby friendly our house is.

Mr. Pirate and I are not house keepers. Things land where it’s convenient and our filing system is pretty much non existent. We try to keep things organized (sort of) but for the most part our house is basically a lost cause.

Worried about baby smacking her head on the hearth? Not me, she can’t even get to the hearth. Heck. I can’t even get to it and I can step over the piles.

Even though we spend most of our time on the main floor, we’ve installed a baby gate at the top of the stairs since that’s where our bedrooms are. The cats, however, are not amused. Last night Harley sat on the other side of the gate and yowled piteously. They have not figured out how to jump over the gate and they’re both too wide to fit through it.

The one major safety thing that we don’t have to worry about at all, are our electrical outlets. When we had an electrician update our wiring, we also went ahead and spent a little extra money to have kid-proof outlets installed. Like an inverted version of the plug-in variety of outlet covers, these have the protection built in. Pretty cool and pretty much Manda-proof too. It’s fairly normal for Mr. Pirate to come into the kitchen and find me struggling to plug in appliances. There’s a trick to it, he tells me. And yet even after two years I still haven’t figured it out. Maybe that’s secretly why people like me have kids, so that at least someone in the house can open up the aspirin bottle.

~*La!

Well Here We Are Again

Wow. I’ve been quiet. Sorry about that.

Elle made her familial debut in July and we spent all but four days either traveling to visit or hosting family and friends. Good times, but I feel like I need to hide under a rock and recharge my internal batteries. 

Except that I won’t do that. My maternity leave is over so it’s time to find our new normal. My plan is to make time to write daily. Period. No excuses, just sit myself down and write either here or work on my latest novel-ish endeavor. Also, I think I am going to stick to using a pen name for the blog. I rather like that idea.

But for now, Elle and I are enjoying some quality cuddle time. Weeding and dishes and grocery shopping and behaving like a responsible adult can happen later.

~*La!

Suburban Warfare

Little by little we have begun to wage war on our weed-choked yard.

Daily, Elle and I go out to the front lines and I pull weeds while she supervises from her picnic blanket. On weekends, Mr. Pirate and I both tackle one part or another of our unsightly little postage stamp.

Like the house, our yard basically has good bones. At some point, one of our home’s two previous owners cared about our curb appeal. There are wild hedges out front and evidence of a couple of flower beds in the back. Given the amount of overgrowth though, the last time anyone bothered weeding was probably sometime in the early 90s.

The weeds that make up our lawn have thick and twisted roots systems like something out of Lovecraft. There are roses in the backyard, but as a friend pointed out even a rose is a weed if it’s growing somewhere you don’t want it to.

We’ve had allies in our struggle to reclaim our yard.

Up until last summer, stringy elms clustered up against the back of the house threatening the foundation and blocking the natural light from the east-facing windows. Then Mr. Pirate’s parents visited and hacked them all down.

Last month my folks came out to see Elle and my dad helped me reclaim the clothesline from the monstrous villain that is our grapevine. It yields sweet Concord grapes, but the years of growing out of control had left it a grapevine rampant.

Since we moved in I’ve just taken the attitude that at least the weeds are green. However, having a new little person in our lives is something of a game changer in all things.

We’d both like for Elle to have a good place to play. Good place for me means grass appropriate for our arid climate so that she can develop a love of walking around barefoot. For Mr. Pirate that means excellent climbing trees.

She is not yet mobile so I figure we have at least the rest of this summer and fall to truly become weekend warriors. We aren’t yet on first-name basis with the folks at the garden center. But we’ll get there.

~*La!

Mother’s Day and Leftover Pie

Mr. Pirate asked the other night what I would like for Mother’s Day this year.

Flowers. Just a little hanging basket of petunias to put out in the yard and attempt to not kill.

It’s my first Mother’s Day as a mom and although growing up my family always had the attitude that you didn’t wait for a holiday to tell someone they are important to you, it’s still kind of nice to have time set aside to say these things out loud.

My mom has always made finding gifts for her at birthdays and holidays difficult. She doesn’t like chocolate all that much. She’s a minimalist when it comes to accessorizing. She just doesn’t really go in for stuff.

She’s an actions speak louder than words kind of lady.

I remember being 8 or 9 and wanting to make my mom breakfast in bed as a special treat.

Never mind that she eats her breakfast standing up at the kitchen counter. Totally disregard the fact that the breakfast I prepared was my idea of the perfect breakfast: buttered toast with cinnamon and sugar with a side of cold cereal.

Mum’s daily breakfast? Yogurt or maybe hot cereal in the winter.

I didn’t have the diligence as a kid to actually get up before my parents on weekends, so I probably coerced her to get back in bed so that I could bring her a tray with breakfast.

I wanted to make her feel special. Even though I had a very limited skill set in the kitchen I wanted to thank her for all of the daily things that she did to make me feel special.

Things like, singing me to bed every night until I was in middle school (I secretly missed it when she stopped but was too much of a teenager to say so).

Or letting me hold our dog’s leash when we went for walks. It’s silly, but that made me feel like she trusted me. Even when our schipperke would dash ahead and nearly tug the leash out of my hand. Mum let me know that I was capable of handling responsibility and stout energetic dogs.

Had my younger self really wanted to surprise my mom, I’d have prepared for her the ultimate breakfast, leftover pie. The joy of leftover dessert as breakfast is another thing I learned from my mom.

The day after a holiday meant that anything was fair game for breakfast. Even pie.

My parents are visiting from out-of-state this weekend to visit Elle for the first time. This afternoon I’m going to make her a Be-bop a Rhee-bop Rhubarb Pie. It won’t be leftover pie for breakfast today, but it will be ready for tomorrow which ought to do the trick.

Maybe the sentiment on Mother’s Day is sappy, but I still think it’s worthwhile to take the time to show someone what they mean to you. Even if it is just a drop in the bucket in comparison to raising someone.

~*La!

The Unexpected Benefit of Outdated Windows

We brought our new little Elle home a week ago from the hospital with a bit of jaundice and a healthy holler. Since she started life with a bit of fluid in her lungs, the latter is a good thing while the former has left me reeling just a bit.

The logical part of my brain understands that jaundice isn’t a big deal. Plenty of kids have just a touch of jaundice at birth and once it gets cleared up, everything is fine.

The emotional part of my brain, however, has had a great deal of difficulty with it. I have long equated the word jaundice with my cousin Sara’s death. I know now that jaundice did not cause her death. Sara had other health problems. But the word itself that describes the yellowing of the skin has always come with the weight of a grief that I was too young to fully experience but that has spiraled around me ever since like pinwheels in the breeze.

The upshot of all of this baggage is that I had a valid reason to verify an old wives’ tale about jaundice. I had always heard that putting a baby in the sunlight can help improve a jaundice complexion. I asked one of Elle’s nurses about that and she said, well. Yes and No.

• Yes, in that in instances where a Bili light is unavailable for use in phototherapy, that sun exposure is the next best thing.

• No, in that most modern homes with energy-efficient windows that block and/or absorb sunlight do not allow enough light to come in to do much good.

Score one more for the Jade House.

The Jade House still has its original aluminum frame, single pane windows. Some rooms have storm windows on them. Fewer still have screens. It’s pretty pathetic actually.

Whenever window solicitors come through our neighborhood, we are always hit up for the pitch of updating our windows. We know that we need to. We’ve even sought out quotes from reputable sources and window replacement is in our budget for later this fall or even early winter.

But for now, depending on the time of day, our old windows make for mighty fine Bili lights in every room.

~*La!

 

Five Things Not to Say to a Pregnant Woman

We are a week away from our anticipated delivery date and I’ve started to turn introspective. I’m mentally circling the wagons and taking stock of what needs to happen.

• The kiddo’s future room is basically done.
• I worked my last day at work yesterday.
• The car seat, grab and go bag, and big birthing exercise ball are all in the car.

At this point, I just need to have this baby.

As a result of all of this mental preparation and gazing at my non-existent navel (seriously, where did it go?) I’ve spent some time compiling a list of things you shouldn’t tell a pregnant woman.

Other than the whole crazy-wonderful process of being an incubator for a new person I think the other thing I was most unprepared for, was the way that people talk to pregnant women and the things that others suddenly feel are acceptable to say.

So this is my personal top five of things you shouldn’t say to a pregnant woman.

1.  “You don’t look that pregnant.”

I get this one a lot. From cashiers at the grocery store to peripheral co-workers, folks seem to have an assessment of what 25 weeks pregnant looks like, versus 35 weeks pregnant. Of course they mean no harm. In fact, it’s probably intended as a compliment about how your body really hasn’t changed that much at all. But unless you personally know that woman and her own pregnancy adventure, just don’t say it out loud.

What if this was my first successful pregnancy? What if I’d miscarried previously and being “this pregnant” was the most pregnant I’ve ever been? In any of those circumstances, looking “this pregnant” would be something I wouldn’t take for granted and idle comments about my size would be hurtful.

2.  “Do X while you still can.”

Replace X with any of the following:

• • Sleep
  • Travel
  • Go out and have a good time.
  • Enjoy one another’s company.

To which I feel it necessary to point out:

• Physically, sleep is uncomfortable when you can only comfortably lie on your left side.
• Traveling will be more difficult but not impossible with a little person in tow.
• Our idea of going out is walking to the library on the weekend so baby really won’t be such a game changer there.
• It makes me sad to think that partners can’t enjoy being together when there’s a little person involved too.

This quip often comes from people who have children and they seem to think they are dispensing useful advice. A more helpful thing to say would be to share how you both juggled being married and having a new little person. Or, to the single parent, suggestions on how to build their tribe of trusted people in order to help that strong individual who does not have live-in help.

3.  “Your husband probably wants a boy, doesn’t he?”

Mr. Pirate was really upset when I told him about this one. We opted not to find out baby’s sex because for us, it doesn’t matter. No matter what color we paint the baby’s room, we both want this little person in our lives.  I’m the mechanic with the pink toolbox for pity’s sake. If Mr. Pirate were the sort of man who wanted his first child to be male so that he could better relate to him, I don’t think he’d be the sort of man who I would have wanted to marry.

I respect other people’s decision for wanting to know baby’s sex, and I will admit it has made shopping for clothing a bit of a challenge since so much of what’s out there is gendered, but that’s it. You can’t put it back if we don’t like it, so you might as well accept that fact early and overcome any prejudices you have about one sex or the other.

4.  [Insert pregnancy/labor/birth/random horror story here]

Oh look! You have a belly! Let me tell you about the time that my wife’s cousin’s sister’s third-best friend had a really difficult delivery and nearly died.

No. Just no.

That is not how you make conversation. You do not approach a war veteran who lost their leg below the knee and make jokes about how much they must save on shoes now. Likewise, you don’t relate to someone who is pregnant by telling her about the absolute worst possible thing that could happen. Trust me. She’s already thought about it. A lot.

5.  “Oh, you won’t want to go back to work.”

I am extremely fortunate in the fact that my supervisor was able to work with me and find ways of adjusting my workload so that I could continue to be a part of his team throughout my pregnancy. I really like where I work and I take a great deal of pride in what I do. Having a baby doesn’t change that.

I’ll take as much of my maternity leave as I feel I need and then we’ll find a daycare solution and we’ll make it work for our family. The sad part about this one is that no one seems to care that Mr. Pirate only has one week of paternity leave available to him. An extra one if he takes vacation too.

Dads receive a fair bit of public criticism for not being present in their children’s lives, and as a society, we’re not helping. He will have just as much of an adjustment to make with a new little person in his life as I will. He just won’t have after-birth pains to deal with.

Now I’m curious though. What are some things that other women were told while pregnant that they found unpleasant or completely bizarre?

~*La!

Playing House

I remember playing house a lot when I was little. Not so much with my friends, but when I played alone.

We had this little miniature cardboard kitchen with a red sink and a window that looked out onto a backyard with a tree. I would prepare brightly-colored plastic meals for my Cabbage Patch kids and would talk to them as if we were a family. I folded and refolded their clothes  — infant onesies leftover from when my sister and I were tiny — and mimicked chores my mom did around the house.

I never imagined what this house actually looked like. Everything revolved around the kitchen though. The doll bunk beds were in the kitchen. We drove to the store in the kitchen. The kitchen was basically the only room in that world of pretend.

Maybe my earliest imaginings about a home are why Mr. Pirate and I do not have a deadline for fixing up the Jade House. Perhaps, I am still not yet sure what this house looks like either.

That’s why I drool a little bit when I read articles in the newspaper like this one about a family who built their dream home with repurposed materials. Their home seems so funky and thought out. They knew what they wanted and they made it happen with hard work and dedication.

Here at the Jade House, we have moments of inspired progress. This winter we worked on the baby’s room in large part because with three weeks left, the baby’s room just needed to happen. The walls are still a little bare, but all the furniture is in place. Or at least, in place until we figure out how this space is going to be used and we end up rearranging to make it better.

There are even fewer rules with your own house than there are with the pretend house of my childhood games. I feel embarrassed at times by the clutter and overall state of work-in-progress-affairs. And then my cousin just randomly stops by and we stand around in the kitchen and talk about books and life in general and it’s all good.

There’s no stress about making our home neat and tidy in that moment. Just laughter and an overall moment of peace.

When you get right down to it, I think that’s the home that I want the Jade House to be. That’s the house I want this little person to grow up in.

~*La!

Living Women’s History

We never made a big deal out of Women’s History Month in grade school.

Black History Month was a chance to learn about men like George Washington Carver and the Tuskegee Airmen and women like Harriet Tubman and Sojourner Truth.  And for the longest time that was it. Then in Georgia I interviewed the co-owners of the funeral home that assisted in the preparations for Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s funeral as part of our paper’s month-long series on notable black people in our local community. And that made me reassess the way we Americans celebrate our history.

Basically, I think, we ignore it. That is, until it’s convenient to remember because of a month celebrating where we’ve come from.

We overlook your Average Joes — people like H.E. and Evelyn Shelton of Hanley-Shelton funeral home — who left their own little mark on history. We neglect to remember that no matter how insignificant, everyone has a story. Even people whose distinction is that they were the only civilian to die at the Battle of Gettysburg.

So today’s post is a little tribute to all the things that other women have done to let me be who I am. This is my own celebration of Women’s History.

I am, however, also forever grateful to three dynamic, everyday women:

• My mom, who hasn’t yet given up on me. She instilled in me one-third of my work ethic (Dad’s responsible for one of the other thirds, but that’s another post) and taught me that you can go off on completely random adventures with no more preparation than, “Hey! That looks like fun. Let’s go ride go-karts in our wedding clothes.” She’s also the one who had to personally deal with my rear-first entry into the world which has forever become one of my very best stories for why being stubborn isn’t a bad thing. It’s just part of who I am.

• My big sister. I fly my nerd flag high and proud because of her. She exposed me to sci-fi and fantasy. To video games and to fencing. My alma mater is her alma mater because by the time she graduated from college, there was nowhere else I wanted to go. She is unbelievably awesome and my idea of a true Wonder Woman.

• Mlle. Holt, English and French teacher extraordinaire … wherever she is. Her wit and defiance to curriculum conventions provided me with the role model I needed in high school. There was no fence-sitting in Ms. Holt’s class. She encouraged us to have opinions and to defend them. Even if it was only that Romeo was a milquetoast and not actually a character worth dying for. She also always had time for her students which counted for more than she may have ever imagined. Should I ever teach, I want to be my own version of her.

That is all.

~*La!

Editor’s Note and attribution:

soomo publishing also does a really great video on the Declaration of Independence. They’re working on rethinking how materials are presented to students by integrating technology with learning. I think they’re seriously on to something.

RSVP Dad On That Baby Shower

Recently, my male coworkers threw me a baby shower.

It was coupled with our monthly staff meeting so it wasn’t any big to-do. Just cake, pizza, me awkwardly being the center of attention, and then back to work. Baby is still 10 weeks away from go-time, but it is nice knowing that they too want to celebrate this new beginning that Mr. Pirate and I are about to embark on.

When I thanked my supervisor for the shindig he commented that I’ve started a new tradition. From now on, he said, we’ll have baby showers for all of the garage babies. Score one more for gender equality y’all.

As a lady mechanic I work in a male-dominated field. I am beyond fortunate that my fellow co-workers don’t treat me as inferior or less capable. My toolbox is pink, but beyond that, I’m just one of the guys.

The fact that my pregnant self has provoked a new tradition regarding celebrating life events is somewhat bittersweet though. We send around an envelope for weddings, retirements and funerals, but this was the first time that any of them had the opportunity to plan a baby shower. Our female administrative assistant confided later that the guys had no idea where to start or what you actually do at a baby shower. The sad part is compounded by the fact that the youngest garage baby (as in, person born while his or her dad was employed at our garage as a mechanic) is 14 months old and the oldest was married last summer.

As a society we want dads to be involved in their children’s lives.

And yet, there is this tendency to push dads to the sidelines when it comes to birth and babies. Products are marketed largely toward the female consumer. Very few restaurants feature a diaper changing station in the men’s room whereas it is a standard item in public women’s bathrooms.

Common workplace practices even shunt dads to the side. I get 12 weeks of maternity leave. Mr. Pirate gets one. As though one week is enough time for him to get acclimated to the presence of a new person in his life.

It isn’t fair.

Hands down I support gender equality. I want to go back to work after kiddo is born in large part because I want to demonstrate to my son or daughter that they really can be whatever they want to be. Male stylist. Lady plumber. Gentleman nurse. Female president. Gender should not dictate what a person can or cannot do.

But gender equality is not a one-way street. I don’t want to advocate for more professional opportunities for women and tell my husband he doesn’t know a thing about babies. For Pete’s sake — I don’t know a thing about babies.

Caring for infants is not some ingrained, natural part of my wiring exclusive to me being the one incubating this child. There are some things I’m apparently just going to know how to do (like the whole pushing thing), but there are other things — such as changing a tiny 8-ish pound baby’s diaper — I am going to have to practice. The same goes for my mister.

So maybe a good place to start when it comes to encouraging gender equality is to include men in the lives of these new people from the get-go. Invite men to baby showers. Advocate for dads to have actual paternity leave. Even, and maybe this is a little too new-age, treat men as though they are an important part of the family equation instead of pretending that their work is done once the bun is in the oven.

It’s just a thought.
~*La!

Things That Go Bump In The Night (Also In The Morning)

On the weekends I enjoy just tuning off the humidifier and relishing the silence of the house before our day begins.

But wait.

Listen.

There. If you don’t sneeze you can hear the pitter-patter of little feet.

Not kidlet feet. At 26 weeks it’s still chilling in my belly.

It’s not little cat feet either. Harley is on my lap and I can see Antigone curled up on the couch in the front room.

There’s a scuttling in the ceiling above our dining room and I am pretty confident at this point that we have a bit of a rodent problem.

We have not spotted any signs of droppings and there are no visible holes in the walls (minus the gappy floorboard vent in the upstairs hallway and the hole in the kitchen ceiling). But we did find two dead mice when we moved in and there were mouse traps in the garage.

Maybe this is the third blind mouse?

Maybe it’s like the corrupted toys from “Toy Story,” like the Erector Set spider baby which then makes me think of Jonathan Coulton’s song “Creepy Doll.”

At this point though, we suspect that the sound is coming from the floor joists, between the second and first floors, where the bees had their hive over the summer. It is possible that whatever residue is leftover is sustaining the skittery critter.

And it needs to die.

I usually don’t feel that violent toward small creatures. Cockroaches, yes. But not fuzzy things. However, with April just a few months away, I don’t feel as though we have time to coax the little furball out from our floors. Listen, Jade House, we have other things that need to get done.

Monday or Tuesday someone is coming and they will fix this problem. We looked on Angie’s List and contacted a few pest removal outfits. Only one has returned our request … which is a problem I have found with Angie’s List that I find somewhat frustrating. There are only two major problems with this whole scenario.

1. If it not a mouse or rat, they don’t have the certifications to deal with anything bigger (like a squirrel).
2. It’s in the freaking floor boards.

I guess this is what we get for living in a neighborhood that prior to 1969 really was just farmland. The ecosystem really doesn’t care that we’re trying to build a life here and that we have two cats who should be perfectly capable of handling mouse-shaped noms. They certainly take care of all of the spiders in Ravenholm for us.

We’re laying down baseboards in the kidlet’s room this weekend and maybe we’ll also excavate the library and just verify that there aren’t any obvious signs of rodent habitation. You know, just in case there is a creepy doll hiding up there or something.

~*La!