So, apparently, in Austria, fireworks are either legal, or not illegal enough to dissuade people from setting them off. For the holidays, of course. Every five seconds. All night. But also - and this is the freaky part - all day. There is no light associated with them, no flash, nothing pretty, just pop-pop-pop all the freaking time, night, sunset, midmorning, two in the afternoon. It's gotten so bad, the dogs are refusing to go outside, which means they aren't pooing regularly, and i think dog no. 1 is getting a butt infection from disuse. Also they're both hiding under the futon blanket in E's room for nearly the entire day, and convincing them to come out and eat is no small task. And, um, maybe it's just because i'm too much of a girl and don't just like explosions for explosions, but why is it fun if there's just a big annoying bang? i hope this ends soon. but it's been going since before christmas, so i'm not entirely sure it'll stop until epiphany.

edit - 6 pm NYE: jesus fucking christ, i thought the texans liked fireworks. Austria is fucking crazy.

edit - 11 pm NYE: Indoor air quality is starting to suffer. Dog no. 1 might be having a panic attack, and there ain't nothing we can do about it. Gave her a couple dog-towel blankies.

edit - 1 am 2008: This is getting ridiculous.

edit - 2 am 2008: Okay. Stop. Please. I'm tired. Clearly i can never go to Baghdad. Or Jerusalem. Other war zones. kk. No big. But stop. Now.

edit - 6 am 2008: The dogs are sad. And shell shocked. And may have PTSD.

edit - 11 am 2008: How do people still have leftover fireworks? How are there ANY FIREWORKS LEFT after that awful bangedy concerto?

Labels: festivities

You've decided standing up is your favorite thing ever. Ever. Standing up, and also chewing on both fists at once. At the same time, if possible. So at the last doctors' appointment you were a higher percentile for weight than for length (do we call it height, yet, when you can't stand up on your own? At what point do your dimensions change?) i think there's some muscle in there under the delicious little jelly rolls, because while you're at the upper limit of what it says on the diaper cover, kilograms-wise, you're only on the middle snap. So apparently your legs are skinnier than they look? (You just wiggled your finger. That's wonderful!)

But you have this great gaping toothless grin, it takes up your entire little head like Pac-man - and it comes on when we stand you up, and you have a hoarse sort of bark of laughter, or maybe a caw. It's very staccato and sounds almost like you're crying, except that you're happy. Incongruous. Baby P, your one-year-old friend, has a similar sort of noise come out of him - he sounds like he's already well past puberty, this deep, deep baritone. It's funny hearing him cry, and his few words, because this noise can't be coming from that pretty little boy with the angel hair - but there it is. And your laughing squall, well. (They're so perky, I love that.)

And you watch us when we do stuff, and you like being in your little blue kicky chair. A few times, you even took a nap in it. You're getting better at grabbing stuff and bringing it, not always to your mouth, but towards your face. You chew on your bottom lip, and when you cough, you stick out your tongue, long and pointy, like Gene Simmons. And, here, i'll take dictation: gah nnnngggg meh. nuuuuu ah ah ah um humm niiiii weh. moooooh. But every time we turn on the video camera you go all silent and staring. (Hello, lady.)

We're doing pretty well with the crib, too, on the whole. Last night you slept for an astonishingly long amount of time that i'm a little ashamed to post, as if it'll jinx it. You went to sleep (finally, after much coaxing) around eleven or maybe a little before - you do take forever to go to sleep. But then M took the dogs out in the morning and you hadn't woken up, and when he came back, you hadn't woken up, and quite a bit later, you did, finally. It was lovely, even if you were completely soaked through two diapers and one cover and the overalls and the sleep sack, we needed to do laundry today anyway. Nine. You woke up a bit after nine. Twelve weeks old and sleeping for ten hours straight. I am the luckiest mama in the world. But in a month there is Moxie's Four Month Sleep Shakeup: so i'm just going to appreciate this for now, since it probably won't last. (Good night, mama. Good work. Sleep well. I'll most likely kill you in the morning.)

You're also wearing, right now, size six-month fleecey off-white pants. Fairly warm. Nice and soft. And we're almost out of onesies, apparently: when you grow out of these you're all done, so you've only got another month or two, max. Unless, i suppose, you take up figure skating or gymnastics - but don't get your heart set on gymnastics, honey, you haven't got the genes for it. Gymnastics is for small, flat-chested people, and the likelihood of that being your future is something I guess you'll have to take your own chances on. You make eye contact, and smile, and coo, and they say if you can do that before you're three months old - a deadline you're well under - you can grow up and do anything. So, sweetheart, you can be whatever you want when you grow up. (Have fun storming the castle.)

The sleep sacks have labels that suggest they will fit up to a nine month old baby. But they are wrong: your little toes already reach the bottom. They will fit you, i think, i hope, through the end of winter, and then you won't need them until it gets cold again. At which point you can have a proper blanket, i think. (As you wish.)

Labels: baby, milestones

since everybody is so far away and we are seeing family in spring and M and i aren't very christmassy and E doesn't know any better yet, we have no tree or decorations and no inter-familial gift exchange. Though i did buy, um, a goose. Or part of a goose. Should be yummy. But. So instead we found a big pile of money in our savings account (which is, sadly, in dollars) and gave it to these people.

Sustainable Harvest International is a small-to-middling organization working in Central America, in villages and with farmers and families, to stop cutting down the rainforest and plant trees and sustainable farms that can maintain farmers' income without slash-and-burning. They also build schools and have a microloan program. And they have four stars on Charity Navigator, the highest rating. I like giving money towards food (it's a basic need! and one that i feel very strongly about: i like food) and M is convinced the world is going to end, so he wanted something environmental. And i think i read that it makes the most sense (and the most difference) if all your donation goes to one place. (also hahahaha, M watched the Muppet Christmas Carol and decided giving money to the public radio station wasn't going to do anything for Tiny Kermit. Priorities, M. Priorities. I win! Thanks, Michael Caine and Jacob and Robert Marley.)

They also sell fair trade, sustainable, friendly chocolate sauce. For those interested, Janice was always my favorite Muppet (with Animal a very close second, and switching off sometimes - see also, i like food) and i was disappointed when she wasn't, oh, the Ghost of Christmas Awesome, or something. And, the reason i like the craptastic movie A Knight's Tale (showing later on austrian TV, they've been advertising for weeks) is named Alan Tudyk, because he was in Firefly.



Seasons' greetings all! Eat good. :)

Labels: emptor, festivities

have i mentioned how i love being in a country with proper health care? I love it. I was ridiculously excited before we came, and remain so, that I get to pay into this system, where everybody can see a doctor when they need to and the prices of prescriptions are so low. LOVE IT. We have had nothing but positive experiences in the universal-health-care model, the government-provided, the socialist, the single-payer gorgeousness. If we were in the States, working, we'd have perfectly acceptable health care, for us, being solidly in the middle class (if not better, depending on your definitions) of wage-earning; the cost to us would be roughly equivalent, with all the copays you have to pay in the US being probably about the same in the end as the higher tax rate here; but there, it would be stinky and exclusive and mean and nasty and profit-oriented-bastardy. Whereas here we get, for pretty much the same price, decent health care for us, and also decent health care for everybody else, and it is awesome.

I am a little bit smug about it. Sorry.

Labels: health, vienna

he would get along so well with My Rhinoceros! Dear Internet, you are a failure sometimes: where is the auto ride verse? And what is this with the dancing and lazy verses? so. The Slightly More Definitive My Rhinoceros:

(apparently, by Edward Lipton)

chorus:

My rhinoceros, my rhinoceros,
He has such a beautiful smile
My rhinoceros, my rhinoceros,
but he smiles only once in a while

verses i remember:

My rhinoceros loves doughnuts,
he eats them night and morn
but he does't have any pockets,
so he carries them on his horn

My rhinoceros is silly
When we go for an auto ride
if he doesn't want to go with us
he runs to his room and he hides.

My rhinoceros gets dirty
and we have to tell him to scrub
But there is no room for the water
when he gets into the tub

My rhinoceros gets tired
and has to lie down for a nap
But you have to tell him a story
and let him sit on your lap

More verses i never knew:

My rhinoceros is Lazy
He wont clean up his room,
My mother says to tell him
that he better do it soon

My rhinoceros is is happy
he loves to dance all day
when he's dancing in my room
I stay out of his way

edit:more:extras

My Rhinoceros gets lazy; it can happen most anywheres,
But often it's at bedtime, till we carry her up all the stairs.

My Rhinoceros hates yard work; she shunned it since she was born,
Except for just one type of chore: plowing up weeds with her horn.

My Rhinoceros loved TV, especially the "Zoo Parade,"
But now she runs to the radio and tunes to Lake Wobegon's charade.

My Rhinoceros hates school work; she can't even stand the joint.
In spite of deep explanations, she never quite gets the point.

My Rhinoceros loves cooking. She loves to create a soufflé.
She serves it on beautiful China, then dances 'round shouting "Ole!"

My Rhinoceros is playful, loves wrestling and clowning and stuff.
She loves to scare all the neighbors by putting on her boxing gloves.

My Rhinoceros loves opera; Puccini and Wagner and such.
She's such a substantial Brunhilde, but she sings the libretto in Dutch!

My Rhinoceros loves swimming and diving is her great forte,*
But when she jumps in from the platform, the water all splashes away.

My Rhinoceros does Yoga, the lotus position and all.
It's impressive when she does a head stand,
but get out of the way when she falls!

My Rhinoceros loves children; she's into Tae Kwan Do and mime;
When she starts into her juggling, She can levitate three at a time.

My Rhinoceros loves politics, thinks taxes and war are unfair.
One day she'll be throwing her weight around and running for office somewhere.

My Rhinoceros went camping; she needed no coaxing or push,
But then she tried hiding from foxes behind a small mulberry bush.

My Rhinoceros loves CNN; she wants to keep up with the news.
One day I saw her on "Larry King" discussing the films of Tom Cruise.

Labels: internet, media

Over the weekend, starting Friday, we transitioned you relatively painlessly to your crib, in your own room, as you were starting to outgrow the Moses basket, stacked as it was on two chairs at the side of the bed. I say relatively painlessly, because one hears stories about what happens when you mess with sleep, about changes. And you were fine: you don't like going to sleep, no, and we sing and nurse and walk and rock and turn off all the lights and surreptitiously check the eye status in the mirror. Are they shut, half open, fluttering, big and shiny? Opening lids, up and down on the angle, like the dolls i'm sure you'll acquire? Singing, whispering the low notes, softer and quiet, over and over, the same two or three verses until they lose all meaning. But you're just the cuddliest, sweetest, prettiest sack of potatoes ever. Once you are asleep, on a normal day, you sleep right on through until around six.

Except you have been hitting the growth spurts early, and we are heading into the big twelve week one. It's almost legendary. So last night you woke up at four, and drained momma, and slept again. I know when you're in a growth spurt not only because you're eating more often, but because i can't get anything out with the pump. And they say babies grow best while they're sleeping - which kind of might make sense in your case, as you spent most of yesterday passed out, and are now crashed out over one arm. Makes typing hard. But we had to move you to the crib before the growth spurt, because then you really wouldn't have fit in the basket.

Of course, you not being in the Moses basket any more gave us a perfect empty spot to pile all the things you've already grown out of, except that they don't all fit. I think it's the socks. You have Momma's big feet.

Very soon it will be your first Christmas. But you don't know any better yet, so we're not really doing anything in particular. We've been to the Christkindlmarkts, we got some of the little white cookies - they make them with hazelnuts here, not almonds, not walnuts. Far from Mexico, i guess, but the same cookies, everywhere. And you're far too small for your own laptop, but i still want to get you one of these. (M keeps saying we need a new computer.) We could get you one and donate three or four - i haven't found a local food bank, here, though i'm sure there is one, and it's Christmas and doesn't that mean you're supposed to find somebody less fortunate and help out? Oooh, that's what i want for christmas: a water buffalo. Ducks. Bunny rabbits. A llama! Ducks go quack. Bunny rabbits say woffle woffle with their little rabbit noses. A llama is like a funny bumpy goat with long fuzzy hair that lives in South America. Llamas say om om om: very appropriate.

Labels: baby, mamadom, milestones

there is totally a secret international brotherhood of babywearers. There's no handshake but there's a sort of a nod, a selfconscious grin. Instead of a handshake you squeeze your own partner's hand and you sort of all glow at each other, even when it's dark night and freezing sleety cold and your gluhwein has gone chill. Or, in M's case, your elderberry punch.

Labels: mamadom

good times.

Labels: people

asl dictionary & alphabet. signs i can remember, so far: wet, dog, change, flower, mommy and daddy, baby, milk. Question - is the sign for associated different meanings of the same word, the same sign? Like nurse, the person, which makes sense with the sign in the linked dictionary, versus nurse, the milk-eating activity, which has confusingly little to do with taking a pulse? (The sign for milk doesn't differentiate bottle (ooh, i can remember bottle - but, oh hell, the sign for bottle in the book is different from the sign in the dictionary) from mommy (and, again, the sign in the book is different from the sign in the dictionary. Crap). Mommy-milk?)

is it okay if i name erica E-flower? there isn't a sign for rosebud that i've found, and i'm not sure how little can be done with one hand. M and i don't need them, mommy and daddy will work fine - but - and should we name the dogs, since there are two of them? Probably not necessary. Maybe E-dawg and D-dawg. Meh, maybe not.

Labels: baby

and, you poor sad thing, for your ten-week birthday present we vaccinated you against eight different things. And you screamed and screamed and screamed and ran a fever and i had to shove a little waxy Tylenol in a place where i have never put a Tylenol of any kind before. (In related news, the Tylenol website is so perfect and helpful that i am thinking of not buying generic any more.) And with the horrible sad pointy shots, you got two bandaids, and i tried - i tried! - i tried taking them off slowly and gently, and that didn't work. I tried taking the second half of the first one off faster, and that didn't work either: so you're going to be like me, a slow bandaid-picker, rather than one of those people who rips them off. But you have this one particular rabbit scream for when you're hurting and now i think i can recognize that one, at least. Probably important.

You have another cry that is apparently nothing like a howler monkey, but what one might picture as sounding like one if one hadn't just read the howler monkey Wikipedia entry that clearly states they grunt and roar. It's like a little hoot. You can make many different vowel sounds now and ooooooo is one of them. Sometimes you moo accidentally, too. gnuuuuuuuu. Does that count as a first word?

The vaccines have made you sleepy, too, which is one of the side effects they can have. Sleepy is better than fever by a long shot. Except you still want to sleep on somebody, and you've now started launching yourself out into space, pushing off our chest in an attempt at a Chinese acrobat faceplant. You have not yet succeeded in the faceplant, but there is more and more Ergoing, in which you're strapped on and secure, rather than freeform lie-on-mommy. But if you're not secure than it's sort of always in question - since you'd probably wake up if i put you in the baby backpack, but then i'd have two worry-free hands, but then you'd be awake? Worth it? Hmm.

When you're awake you can pretty reliably locate your hands and get them into your mouth. Pretty reliably. You can get a fist about halfway in to suck on an chew on and if we put a finger of ours in, then you definitely chew on it. (That is called biting and it hurts mama.) The doctor said it was early still to be teething, not impossible, but early, but the teeth can be moving, so you're technically teething, but the teeth are already all in there, and solid, so one can feel them with a finger, but they can take ages and ages to emerge. So you could be teething for ages with no visible progress: but we'll know it's teething for sure if a tooth comes out. It's partly trial and error, though - if we put numby-chamomile teething stuff on your gums and it makes you stop crying when nothing else will, then isn't that teething? Or do you just like the taste of chamomile? (Ick. That'd be you taking after daddy - he likes pickles, too.)

Drooling is just something that happens when you are a baby: the books say that you're of the age, now, at which you are producing large quantities of drool (whether or not you're teething, interestingly) but aren't able/willing enough to swallow it all. So there are wet spots on my shirts most of the time. I should really get that milk-colored dupont fabric project started. There is a long-term market out there waiting for me. Why has nobody done this? Can one not buy coolmax by the yard? There's nothing on etsy, even. But my sewing machine has an american plug and is in Florida.

Dear Other People With Sewing Machines, and fashion gods,

Help a mama out. Stupid men in the fashion world - why does this not already exist? i want this in a dry camo, with a couple more buttons.

love, liz

PS. Are you there gods? It's me, Nursing Parent. Please don't make the boobs any bigger. And i still need a nice warm coat.

Also, apparently, if i put the Willie Nelson cover of What a Wonderful World on continuous repeat, you will happily sleep. Which is nice, because it's not a horrible tune, but we'll have to wait and see if it works more than once.

Labels: baby, milestones

"If you don't like someone, the way he holds his spoon will make you furious; if you do like him, he can turn his plate over into your lap and you won't mind."

Labels: people

time flies. Hoo boy, does it ever.

you are so smiley and chatty now - and very cheerful when you're not sick (you had M's sniffles over the weekend, i think, because the two of you were sick and i was lucky enough to not be. Two big babies, great). you watch us across the room, sometimes, when you feel like watching a person instead of having a conversation with the Blue Suitcase Above the Wardrobe. At least i think that's what you're looking at. It's a very bright blue, and a very nice suitcase, but you're far too small to appreciate the multitude of zippers and the pocket organizativeness and the big, comfy, just-the-right-height handle. You have no idea how much easier it is to identify a bright blue suitcase in a sea of black on an airport conveyor belt, yet, either.

Today you are refusing to sleep unless you are being held; but you are just becoming big enough and having proper head control to wear you in the Ergo without the newborn insert - a feat i have now completed twice. I think you like it better - it's a lot cooler, certainly, and you object to being too hot. Loudly. Except mommy's pants don't fit, and while it's nice that they are so low riding that i can access the pockets while Ergoing you, they are also so low riding that they slide straight off my ass every five minutes, whether or not i'm moving around.

You've now got hair all over your head; but you are also getting cradle cap on the very top. It doesn't seem to bother you at all, but i tried brushing it off (is this why the baby health care kit came with a brush and comb? Because i thought that was really weird) and it didn't come off so easily. We might try the baby oil thing before your next bath, but that probably won't be for a few days. You get a bath more than once a week, usually, sometimes in your baby bathtub, or sometimes with me, because i like baths too. And when you take a bath with me, i can support just your head, carefully, and the rest of you can float! You always look so amazed. I think you quite like it, though, as you'd scream if you didn't. And you kick your little feet and wave your arms around and open your eyes as wide as they can possibly go. I bet you pee in my bath water though.

We've temporarily given up trying to actively feed you with the bottle. And also given up pacifying you with the pacifier. Or M's finger. Instead when you are happy and fed and dry, we put a little milk in the bottle and let you play with it. You chew on it a whole bunch, usually, which also leads one to believe that you are in fact teething, and sometimes you sort of accidentally suck on it once or twice and then spit it out. And the bottle leaks a bit of milk automatically when we tip it towards you - it's a Dr Browns - so i think you're learning that it's okay, and that there's milk in it. Or i hope so.

While you were sniffly you stopped sleeping through the night, going only two or three hours at a stretch, and that was hard. That was hard. And lucky M slept right on through it, fevering up our bed and making it too hot for me to sleep anyway. I feel like i'm surviving on a lot less sleep than i used to get, and oddly i don't miss it - i don't sleep a whole lot more hours, and i know i'm getting woken up, but it's somehow okay. I guess we go to bed a little earlier, still - for a while we were going to bed at, like, eight, which was really early for us - but it's been getting pushed back. So now i could finish an episode of House that starts at nine-fifteen.

Um, i've been watching a lot of crappy television, because it's hard playing video games when you only have one hand (because one hand is holding the baby) or no hands (because one hand is holding the baby, and one hand is having its pinky finger being sucked on). BBC shows - Big Cat Diary and What Not To Wear and that detective show with Meriadoc Brandybuck on it, before he was Meriadoc Brandybuck, and he's all cute and teenagery and small. Other nature shows - the Berlin zoo, however decent of a zoo it is in real life, has about twelve spinoff shows: Lions and Penguins, Elephants and Tigers, Bears and More Bears, Koalas and Lizards, Cheetahs and Polar Bears, Parrots and Monkeys, Chimps and ... sometimes it's like Law and Order was, that there's three different episodes of three different Berlin zoo shows on three different channels at the same time. We like the cat parts and the monkey parts, though it's hard flipping channels in German and keeping track of what's going on. I have to say the bears are my favorite, because they narrate for the bears: "Is there honey in this barrel? I think there might be. Maybe if i turn it and thump on it a bit with my nose. Or if i roll it along this ledge here." It's a good way to learn another language, bears.

Another good way to learn another language: being complimented every time i venture outside on how beautiful and sweet my baby is. Today it was the African expat selling Augustin magazines outside the U3 (he's complimented you before - he's always in the exact same place - i wonder if there are territories for selling magazines like there are on the Big Cat Diary show) and the lady in line at the city health insurance office. And while M doesn't like it if i say what a perfect little rosebud you are (he thinks i'm [spoiler alert] calling you a sled [end spoiler alert] - silly Daddy) - well, you're a perfect little rosebud all the same.

Labels: baby, mamadom, milestones

if i just get everyone else all the books i want to read for christmas - that works, right? Or would that be weird? Except amazon.com doesn't have all my stuff in stock. Silly amazon.

Also (well, of course) amazon has many, many things that i'm not even remotely interested in that other people might yet be. And of course being thoughtful would probably be a good thing.

Labels: emptor

*not very factual on motorcycles either

:anmut: :annika: :chin: :dooce: :ewok mama: :food: :little frog school: :lj: :longform: :low odysseys: :natalya: :rich: :salon: :slate: :this is how: :unique yn:



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