teenage politics.

The Ramona baby and I had an adventure this weekend.

We went to Seattle! By ourselves! (well, sans dad. Grammi and Auntie Lindsay went with us, and were fabulous).

Here are the highlights:

Ramona finally starting to show her teeth when she smiles.

Ramona crying when shown this video.

Ramona being back to her shrieking, babbling self.

Ramona kicking her legs for joy at the wonders of Pike Place Market (she especially liked the flowers).

Ramona getting to hang out with various second cousins and great aunts and uncles and being adored.

The lowlights (is that a word?):

Ramona having the poop blowout of the century not 30 minutes into our journey (on her clothes, the carseat–everywhere!).

Ramona being awake and ready to play from 12-2am. and at 5am. and at 7am.

And that’s it, really. So the trip really did skew to the good. In non-baby related news me and Lindsay got to go see a reunion show by MxPx, which was a surreal trip down memory lane. I was expecting a bunch of aging hipsters in carefully disgruntled American Apparel attire reliving their punk youths, but instead everyone pretty much looked like I did when I was 16–lot’s of band t-shirts, terrible tattoos, pseudo rockabilly hairstyles.

The band itself was great, and they played the album “Life in General” in its entirety, and the sister and I sang along to every word.

It really was like no time had changed at all . . . except that it had. There was a delicious baby waiting at home for me. I didn’t have a desperate crush on the bass player. I didn’t find solidarity be screaming along to lyrics about time being the enemy.

Instead, I just felt a wave of relief that I wasn’t 16 anymore. That the years of Big Emotions (it seems to happen around ages 2-3 and again at 13-16) are over, that I did grow up and have already experienced a wide range of people and places and have a lot more to do.

I am glad I am a grown up.

teef

oh my gosh ramona has two teeth now, which came out of nowhere.

just like my emotions surrounding said teeth.

you guys, i actually got all misty about it! and thought (and said aloud) “she is never going to have a perfectly gummy smile anymore!” and i was sad, really. my baby is growing up.

and then krispin looked at me like i was crazy and reminded me about how i always talk about how excited i am for ramona to be a toddler.

it’s true, i am crazy. but i did not expect the emotions about the milestones. that doesn’t seem like my thing at all, kind of how i never felt any crazy baby urges or biological clocks ticking away or an overwhelming sense of purpose and fulfillment whilst up to my arms in baby poo. but two tiny (and razor sharp) teeth have me all blubbery.

poor krispin. he is on this crazy train for good.

My Empire of Dirt

Ok, I am jumping on a bandwagon here.

The bandwagon of simplifying my life.

Sometimes it feels like all I do is organize and clean all the stuff I have. Even though we have a tiny apartment, even though we have a tiny budget, even though we don’t like to buy things that aren’t secondhand–it seems like our place is bursting with superfluous stuff.

So, time to edit our lives.

This site laid down a gauntlet for the next 5 weeks, and I am gonna go for it. This week? The closet. Taking a good, hard look at what you wear (those 10 things you always reach for) and getting rid of the rest. This was rather hard for me to do, as I find myself in that strange place of “I just had a baby 7 months ago”, where I am fatter than usual but not fat enough for the fat clothes. I know, right?

But beyond that, I need to assess why I feel like holding on to ripped bridesmaid dresses and ill-fitting sweaters. And I can’t find a single good reason. So, out they go.

And without further ado, here are the pictures:

Our closet, before:

Ramona’s wardrobe (one of 2, I might add. plus she has a closet. that girl is swimming in clothes) before:

Our closet, after (please note the leopard print snuggie, which made the judicious cut):

Ramona’s wardrobe, after:

Ooh, that felt good. And don’t worry, I didn’t throw anything away. My mom recently started a clothing closet for low-income individuals in Parkrose, which is where all of our surplus will be going (check it out here). The only thing I can’t figure out what to do with are certain, oh how do you say, unmentionables, that a certain husband bought for a certain wife that are hilariously garish. I really don’t think we should donate those.

All in all, it feels good to be actively relinquishing the hold of materialism. The desire for more is the type of sickness that creeps up on me slowly, and is hard to put out for good. Short of moving to south Sudan (which would actually be awesome), I have to prepare myself to fight the soul-crushing tide of advertisements and billboards. And it really is a fight, and one we all should take rather seriously, as our spending habits are responsible for many of the wars and other atrocities (sex trafficking, sweatshops). Oh but look at me, rambling on again. Let’s move on to what you really came here for:

A picture of a cute baby! Ok, having stood on my stool and judged the world, I actually bought something for the Ramona baby the other day. At babyGAP. I am obviously a sinner in need of redemption. But here’s the thing: they were selling discounted sunglasses, the kind that make you look like a grandma from the 1970s, no matter how old you really are. I couldn’t resist the empire on this one, folks. But it turns out the joke was on me, for the Ramona baby didn’t look like the hipster child I envisioned but was instead the spitting image of Elton John. And with that, I will leave you:

tiny dancer.

cry baby

 

now, i will probably regret putting this out for the internet to read, but i honestly think only my mom and a couple other crazies read this blog anyways. but be warned: judgemental issue coming up.

ramona got her first cold last week and we were all miserable. while teaching my friday night class i almost passed out from exhaustion. literally. i narrowly missed the whiteboard. my body loves sleep, what can i say.

after the initial terribleness of her sickness (in which she couldn’t sleep unless being rocked upright by one of us) it became clear that there was not a whole lot we could do to comfort her. she didn’t want to be held, rocked, suck on a pacifier, swaddled, jiggled–nothing helped her. so, in one of those moments of desperation we had an epiphany. or just an accident really. krispin put her down in her crib and went to make a bottle, and when he came back she was sound asleep.

huh.

since then we have let her cry herself to sleep and haven’t looked back since.

well, not really. i mean, the first part is true. in mom-land, the cry-it-out method (CIO) is a contentious subject. i had had people on both sides tell me what works best and i should try doing it RIGHT NOW and all that jazz. but really, i didn’t feel psychologically ready. and i didn’t want to hurt my baby. and i don’t mind soothing her to sleep. and i have a bit of ptsd when it comes to crying (hellooooooo, 3 months of colic), so i go into panic mode and just want to make it stop as soon as possible. so CIO wasn’t an option for me.

but then the sickness and the sleep deprivation and the baby who suddenly wasn’t soothed by me. so we tried it, the evil method, and it was just like everybody said: 10-15 minutes for the first 2 nights, 5 on the 3rd, 1 min last night. and ohmylanta, that baby now sleeps from 6:30pm-5:30am, eats a bunch, and then goes back to bed until 8:30. i am not holding my breath, but 3 nights in a row like this and i feel like a million bucks. or at least i don’t feel like passing out any time soon.

all this goes to say you have to do what’s right by you and yours. oh, and you should read this book.

i will say that i realized yesterday that i no longer get to rock my baby to sleep, which is sad (it is scream city if i even try). but i am trying to make lemonade out of the proverbial lemons. here are a few other examples:

new sleep schedule of going to bed at 6:30? instead of viewing it as another crushing example of how we can’t have a social life, i am going to choose to view this as a time to read books, work on subversive cross-stitching, and hang out with the hubs.

price of gasoline so high and naps being a vital part project-happy-well-rested-baby? instead of feeling trapped at my apartment/se neighborhood, i am viewing it as a chance to hang out with my neighbors more (intentional community, right?) and walking is good for the soul. or at least the muffin top.

ok, so i only have 2 examples. but i am trying.

oh, and stay tuned for friday, when i am going to post pictures of me cleaning out my closet. i know, right? i can’t wait either!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

the plague

so ramona is sick for the first time in her short life, and i am proud we made it to the 28 week mark without experiencing this.

not bad for a compromised immune system, eh?

but still, having a sick baby really sucks. even though it is just a cold (no fever), she is miserable. snuffly, coughing, rubbing her eyes (oh, and she is teething too). also, she has what some nice pediatricians call a persistant personality, which means that while some babies simply slow down when they get sick, the entire world stops for the ramona baby.

so, 2 nights now of little to no sleep. it’s like we are back in preemie land again, rocking away our days and nights just to get our baby to get a little bit of the precious sleep she needs to get better.

and as of this morning huckleberry (the cat) decided to get in on the action and has already barfed 3 times. a bleary me with no sleep+cat barf piles on the floor=disaster.

i am mentally preparing myself for tonight, when krispin is in school and it is just me and the sick one.

anyone want to come over and help rock? i will make you tea and we can watch anthony bourdain.

tuppence a bag

yes, today we are going to talk about feeding babies. not birds. excuse the title, i have just had that song stuck in my head all morning.

ramona is halfway into her six month, and we are eating real people food around here! well, not really. rice cereal doesn’t seem like anything i have ever eaten. and that one day with the mashed up yams was met with mixed results. but we are trying!

i put off feeding ramona for a long time. firstly, because she is still behind developmentally (still has a wobbly neck and all that) and secondly because it seemed so overwhelming. in the exhausting haze of new motherhood i read everything i could get my hands on about newborns (i was supposed to read about babies during the last 2 months of my pregnancy. oops. learn from me all you preggos: don’t wait to prepare!). and now i am just starting to realize ramona ain’t going to be a newborn all her life. now what? i guess i have to re-check out all of those books from the library.

anyways, the food thing seems overwhelming. because you know what? the food system in america is overwhelming. i have watched all of those movies talking about production, sourcing, agriculture, corn syrup, gmo’s, rice farmers in india, etc etc and it makes my brain hurt. and for many, many years i was content to put whatever was cheap and delicious in my mouth.

now, i am a rather haphazard eater. we made a commitment to go organic on the meat and dairy products last year, but we have slipped a few times. we go for the free range eggs, and organic fruits and veggies if they are on sale. but it all changes when you have a baby, right?

or does it?

we are on WIC (Women, Infant, Children) which is a program that provides low-income families with vouchers for certain foods–milk, eggs, juice, some fruits and veggies, formula–and up until now i have been more grateful than anything for what WIC provides (the formula vouchers alone save us $150 a month). but now that we are starting ramona on solid foods, WIC only gives us 3 options for baby food, none of which are organic.

i honestly didn’t think it would be that big a deal for me–hey, practically a whole generation was raised on gerber–but it is starting to become an issue.

for starters, it really isn’t that hard for me to find some organic veggies to cook and mash. and it isn’t that expensive, either. but there is the other part of me, the cheap part of me (i have always considered myself cheap instead of frugal, which can get me into trouble) that has these vouchers from WIC wasting away on my dresser. I need to get 17 jars of baby food, darn it!

which leads me to an interesting dilemma. in my mind, here are my choices:

1. use the vouchers and feed my baby the WIC food.

2. use the vouchers but only use a couple to feed my baby. donate the rest to a shelter.

3. don’t use the vouchers.

ok. here are the arguments that my brain makes:

1. of the three choices available to me, all are owned by evil corporations. gerber=nestle (see my post here for more on my feelings about nestle). beech nut=some swiss company. and i can’t find any information about the other company. i am sure they are evil too. what i do know is that i can’t trust people who can’t even tell me where or how the veggies/fruits/meat are grown. gross.

2. i could always use the evil corporate food for emergencies, or traveling, or when i am too sick/busy to make my own food. and then i could donate the rest to help out other people. but here is the rub: if i don’t think that this food is good for my baby, why would i want to give it to another? that brings up all sorts of icky ideas regarding who should get good food and whatnot, and makes me rather mad at WIC in general. would it kill the government to spend an extra couple of quarters so poor people could give their babies organic, local food?

3. i could be really principled and not cash in the government’s money for something i see as not only sub par, but part of a larger, more corrupt, system. the activist in my likes this one, but then my brain is all like: the government doesn’t care. which is true.

so anyways, what would you do? what have you done? i am not one of those moms who is super self-assured and knows what is going on all the time. we let ramona watch an episode of House M.D. the other day and she only owns about 2 organic shirts. so.

let’s end this on a high note, shall we? pictures of the Great Yam Experience, 2011.

so excited about yams.

 

meh.

i would post more pictures but my computer is being stupid. which kind of describes how i look in the first picture. also, god told me it was ok not to clean my apartment. so don’t be judgin’.

workin girl

the other day, my brother-in-law looked at me and said something to the effect of “wow, here you are–a master’s educated woman–and yet you spend the majority of your time doing stupid stuff to make your baby laugh”.

yeah, pretty much.

i mean, wouldn’t you?

but seriously, having a baby does open up a whole can of worms when it comes to being an educated female. and as much as i loathe certain aspects of feminism, i do believe that men and women are both created equal in the image of God. and i believe the church has erred more often than not on stressing parts of scripture that focus on “headship” and “leadership” which has led to many abuses, both big and small, of women.

that is a different rant for a different day, however.

what i want to think about today is the whole stay-at-home mom vs. the working mom debate. i find myself in a strange and wonderful place: the middle. i only work one day a week (for now, i would love to get maybe one more 6 hour a week class), which makes me feel validated for the thousands and thousands of dollars i shelled out (not to mention all the homework, boring classes, teaching internships, insufferable group projects and the like that i suffered through), and it also confirms that i have skills and assets to offer the wider world.

but one day a week is enough to make me miss the ramona baby and all the busy monotony of being the mom of an infant. and so for the rest of the six days a week i feel grateful for the chance to stay home.

i don’t know too many other people in this situation, and right now especially i seem to be surrounded by a sea of people who seem content to be stay-at-home moms. and to them i say wholeheartedly: good for you. to be a SAHM (going for the abbreviation here) takes a certain amount of financial budgeting and do-without-ness that i think is admirable and a great foundation for boycotting the general ideology of the american dream.

but i also respect women (although i don’t seem to know as many) who choose to go back to work because they know they are valuable and have skills that can help change the world. i think this scenario has benefits for allowing the husband to become a more involved parent, and speaks to a more cross-cultural ideology that it truly takes a village (or lots of grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins and neighbors) to raise a baby. the current demands on a SAHM are ludicrous (keep a perfect house, cook amazing organic meals, do all the errands, please your husband, and raise a smart and polite kid), and underneath it all is the notion that a SAHM doesn’t need any help. what an isolating, frustrating assumption.

i was listening to fresh air the other day and it was talking about the cultural implications of The Feminine Mystique and i thought it was fascinating. i myself haven’t read the book, but i appreciated listening to the thoughts of women who read it in the 1960s and were profoundly changed by the message. many, many women resonated with the ideas in the books regarding their own sense of unfulfilment. these women had bought into the idea that marriage, a large house in the suburbs, and healthy kids is a guarantee of happiness. in reality, these first desperate housewives (most of them women who through marriage and the aftermath of WWII found themselves in the middle class for the first time) found themselves deeply unhappy. For many, this unhappiness seemed to be a result of not being a member of the productive working class. This eventually led to a boom in women returning to the workforce and led to many breakthroughs, including women asking to receive equal rights and pay.

i also thought the critiques of the book were interesting. many people have pointed out that Friedan (the author) only focused on the troubles of wealthy white women. Fresh Air pointed out that many African-American and immigrant women have a proud history of working and raising a family at the same time. it is only in recent history that many women have even had a choice of whether they could be a SAHM or not.

i know this is a rambly post, and i don’t have a real conclusion. it does help me to know that when i am fresh out of silly songs or weird facial expression to please the ramona baby, that i have fridays to look forward to (although, in reality, i teach literacy for ESOL students, which does involve a lot of pantomiming, singing the ABC song, and making weird facial gestures to help letter-sound awareness and pronunciation).

this is the balance i have right now, and i am loving it.

what about you?

I’ve been rapping for about 17 years

ok, this post isn’t about rapping at all. more about raising a baby. for about 6 months exactly. crazy!

on this momentous occasion, i thought it would be interesting to look back at the events leading up to ramona’s birth.

also, to prove that i don’t have a shred of vanity, i am going to post The Worst Ever Picture Of Me, taken exactly 6 months ago:

 

plumpy

i hope you all enjoy that. i know krispin did (he thought it was funny when i texted it to him. he didn’t think it was so funny when he got a call from the hospital several hours later). i woke up one morning 6 months ago and could hardly open my eyes, they were so swollen. and i couldn’t smile. everyone had been repeatedly assuring me that a little swelling was normal, that everything was fine, but this was just so ridiculous.

in retrospect, everybody really did think i looked terrible. my good friend jenni, who was due one day before me, literally saw me balloon in front of her eyes as we led a somali basketball camp together. in three weeks i went from hardly showing to looking like danielle the cautionary whale. i guess i was friends with people who were too nice to say, “wow, your face looks really fat”. except for, of course, my darling friends from other cultures. the bhutanese refugees i hang out with looked panicked whenever i lumbered near them, forcing me to sit down and having hushed and urgent conversations that centered around the momentous size of my ankles.

anyways, krispin shouldn’t have laughed. my mom didn’t when she came to pick me up to go garage saling, but she didn’t think it was urgent enough to hit up at least one sale on the way to the hospital for a pre-emptive blood pressure check.

the blood pressure check was high, so they kept me for an hour. then it got higher, so they had me stay for 3. then it got higher still, and they told me i probably would need to stay overnight for observation. i hadn’t packed anything, and didn’t think i would be staying long. i never changed into scrubs but stayed in my tank top and shorts. pretty soon i had an i.v. in and was being pumped full of anti-seizure meds that made me feel like death and my blood was being drawn every 3 hours, my blood pressure taken every 20 min. krispin finally showed up.

and i know i have written about this before. the rest kindof blurs out, the next day spent waiting without hope that i would get better. the triple whammy of realizing i was very, very ill, that we were going to have a baby (!) much sooner than we thought, and that said baby was going to be 7 weeks premature and need care that the hospital we were at could possibly not provide. by the time we realized this i was too sick to transport.

so we had a baby, not the old-fashioned way. a surgical procedure, and then miles of i.v.’s and tape and lights and beeping monitors coming from all angles, and the nicest nurses in the world helping me and my baby get better at the same time. we were there for 2 weeks, but it felt like years.

we were eased into the baby thing by a preemie who looked like a gnome and who slept all the time, who barely paid any attention to us except to furrow her brow in consternation. and then she turned into the colicky whirling dervish of a baby, one that had us tethered to our apartment (although her shaky immune system had done that to us already), fervently shushing and rocking and jiggling and swaddling 3 months away.

and then the dawn broke, and she became a baby. still not like a sitcom baby, the one who is just there for the little jokes and smiles and coos (i am thinking of you, lily-the-cute-asian-baby-wh0-never-cries from Modern Family). but like a real baby that i had prepared myself for: one that laughs when you do stupid stuff, a baby that i can sing my painfully earnest renditions of “peace train” and “hakuna matata” too, a baby that grabs at my hair and shrieks in delight.

ramona’s arrival stopped our life right in its tracks. and i feel like it has taken a good 6 months for it all to start feeling even semi-normal.

but here we are, living life together. today i taught an esl class with six students (!) and the ramona baby front and center. it is becoming so much more fun, and so much more rewarding.

i told you my face wasn't normally that fat

and now here is the requisite so-cute-it-makes-your-head-explode pic:

kaboom!

ah, here’s to never being a newborn again. i mean, here’s to getting older and discovering things like cupcakes (only for special occasions, ok?) and legos and disneyland (but not the princess thing) and all the wonderful plans that god has for you, my little ramona baby.

baby-wearing fool

hey-yo! new outlook on life, new blog theme. or something like that.

today, we put our money where our mouths were.

today, i taught an esl class whilst wearing the ramona baby.

it actually went ok, maybe because only 3 students showed up. we are trying a mom’s esl class that meets in the morning while the older kids are in school and the 3-4 year olds are in preschool. i am fully prepared for this class to be chaos, but hopefully it will be the good kind. between the students and volunteers the under 3 set outnumbered the grown-ups. awesome.

sometimes its hard to be a mom, and every day i am trying to push myself past this odd anxiety i get about going anywhere or doing anything.

ramona certainly isn’t the easy-going piece of designer baby luggage that i naively thought she would be. i have had to make adjustments and sacrifices in my life, and i have come to grips with that. but sometimes i am afraid i am swinging too far to the opposite side, structuring my life around nap-times like the world will end if we aren’t back by 2.

and yeah, the esl class is a bit more complicated with a yeowling baby strapped to my front. but it’s actually a lot more fun.

deprived.

so, after a month and a half of sleeping 8-12 hours in a row, ramona now wakes up 2-3 times a night.

after tasting sound sleep, it is hard to go back to zombie land.

and i even have a very helpful husband who gets up and helps but i seem to have been cursed with the inability to fall quickly back asleep. every little cry jolts me awake and it takes a good hour to get back asleep . times that by 3 and i am looking at a whole lot of time to lay in bed and fret about how i am not sleeping.

so, lack of sleep has made me a little grumpy for the past week or so. and tiredness affects me in other ways, too. i walked past one of those creepy, overgrown, always-in-the-shade portland houses the other day–you know, the kind with 20 years of stuff piled up on the porch, smelling faintly of must and mold and ferns–and i thought to myself that is what my house is going to look like. never mind that i live in an apartment, i just suddenly empathized with people who were overwhelmed with life and therefore unable to emulate the clean, bright, spacious and tidy look of magazine homes. while we aren’t quite at hoarders status yet, i tend to let stuff get to the i-can’t-see-the-carpet status in my own room. who can be bothered to clean?

also, i have been feeling a little miffed that ramona likes krispin so much more than me. do any other moms experience this? i am the one with her day in and out, but she seems to regard me with only a mild affection at best, a murderous rage at worst (nap time? i’ll cut you!). but the second krispin walks in the door she is all smiles and giggles. if he tries to get her to sleep for the night he has a hard time because she will just spit out her binky and smile at him. yes, she won’t go to sleep because she is smiling too much.

the one thing i cling to is the idea that since ramona is around me all the time, she feels comfortable being cranky with me (thanks catherine for this idea!). and it’s true. when i put her down for the night she either heaves a few sobs or makes the world’s cutest frowny face and then collapses into sleep in my arms. no smiling, but lot’s of sleeping. ramona feels no need to flirt with me, because i am always there. old hat, as they say. i’m the mom.

on that cheerful note, i will leave you with photographic evidence of the favored parent:

 

i blame the beard.