A man - why is it always a man? Is it that blatantly obvious to everyone that of course a woman would take a boat? Are we less stubborn, less faithful, more open-minded about being saved by knights in dirty wet clothes? But, nevertheless, a man - is in his house and he hears that there is going to be a flood, and he needs to leave, soon, and of course he can't swim. He thinks, no i don't have to, God will take care of me. The flood starts to rise and a fireman or a sheriff or a cop or a slightly more fucking responsible neighbor, somebody, anybody, maybe a lifeguard comes by and offers to teach him to swim, somebody comes by and says, Go. Leave. Your house will flood. And he says no i don't have to, God will take care of me. And the water gets higher and he goes on his roof and a canoe or a boat or two guys on a log show up and they say, It is dangerous. The water is swift. Come with us. We have room for one more. And he says, no i don't have to, God will take care of me. And then a helicopter comes to get him - it always finishes with a helicopter - and everyone else is gone, they've left, they listened, and he is balancing on his roofline with the water up to his neck, and they lower their helicopter ladder and say Come, Now, Please. And he says, no i don't have to, God will take care of me. And he drowns, because there is high rushing water and he can't swim. And he says to God, why didn't you take care of me? And God says, Get out, you fucking jackass. Out!

Labels: politics

it was 3-2 deutschland and the last fifteen minutes was FANTASTIC and the Turks were up at the German end lining up their offensive to even it up for the third awesome time (which they would go on to, um, not do) and there was this huge knot of fouls, it was like watching football-football with people flat out tackling each other, and the ball went on in its little straight line with the teams flying at each other and players falling all over the place and maybe it's because i don't watch sports often enough but it looked exactly like Karman vortex shedding. Did i say how i was a huge nerd?

Labels: random

books i have read over and over and over and would wholeheartedly recommend to anybody:
One Hundred Years of Solitude, Gabriel Garcia Marquez;

books i have read over and over and over and would wholeheartedly recommend, but not to just anybody:
The Sound and the Fury, William Faulkner; Ulysses, James Joyce;

books i have read over and over and over, because i was going through a phase: Catcher in the Rye; The Chronicles of Narnia; Stranger in a Strange Land; Winnie the Pooh;

books i have read and would recommend:
Catch-22; A Clockwork Orange (including the last edited-out chapter); Collapse; The Count of Monte Cristo; Dracula; Dune; Freakonomics; The Historian; The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy; Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell; Pride and Prejudice (is there a decent movie of this i should know about?); Slaughterhouse-five; Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance;

books i have read and actively disliked:
Angels & Demons; The Fountainhead; The Great Gatsby (i was expecting it to be much better); Lord of the Flies (which i read when i was ten or eleven and had nightmares for weeks); Wicked (though i can see how it would be a good musical);

books i have read:
1984; The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes; The Aeneid; Alice in Wonderland; Animal Farm; Anne of Green Gables; Beloved; The Bible (which i didn't finish); The Blind Assassin; Brave New World; Charlie and the Chocolate Factory; Charlotte’s Web; A Christmas Carol; The Color Purple; A Confederacy of Dunces; The Da Vinci Code; Mrs. Dalloway; Emma; Frankenstein; Guns, Germs, and Steel; Hamlet; The Handmaid’s Tale; Harry Potter; Heart of Darkness; The Hobbit; The Iliad; Jane Eyre; The Little Prince; Little Women; The Lord of the Rings; Love in the Time of Cholera; The Lovely Bones; The Mists of Avalon; The Name of the Rose; The Odyssey; Oliver Twist; On the Road; Persuasion; The Picture of Dorian Gray; The Poisonwood Bible; A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man; The Prince; The Secret Garden; Sense and Sensibility; The Silmarillion; Tess of the D’Urbervilles; To the Lighthouse; Treasure Island; The Wind in the Willows; Wuthering Heights;

books i have not read, but plan on reading in the very near future as i have copies on deck:
One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest; The Time Traveler's Wife;

books i have not read, but vaguely plan on reading at some point and may as well have a list:
American Gods; Atonement; The Brothers Karamazov; Crime and Punishment; Dubliners; The Grapes of Wrath; Gravity’s Rainbow; A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius; His Dark Materials; The Kite Runner; Les Miserables; Reading Lolita in Tehran; The Three Musketeers; To Kill a Mockingbird; Vanity Fair; War and Peace; Watership Down;

books i have not read, and do not specifically plan to:
Anansi Boys; Angela’s Ashes; Anna Karenina; The Bell Jar; Birdsong; Bleak House; Brideshead Revisited; Bridget Jones’s Diary; The Canterbury Tales; Captain Corelli’s Mandolin; Cloud Atlas; Cold Comfort Farm; The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time; David Copperfield; Don Quixote; Far From The Madding Crowd; Foucault’s Pendulum; The God of Small Things; Gone With The Wind; Great Expectations; The Hunchback of Notre Dame; The Life of Pi; Lolita; Madame Bovary; Mansfield Park; Memoirs of a Geisha; Middlemarch; Middlesex; Moby Dick; Of Mice and Men; The Once and Future King; Possession; A Prayer for Owen Meaney; Quicksilver; Rebecca; The Remains of the Day; The Satanic Verses; The Scarlet Letter; A Tale of Two Cities; The Unbearable Lightness of Being;

books i specifically want to avoid:
Atlas Shrugged; The Five People You Meet In Heaven; Eats, Shoots & Leaves;

books i have never heard of, why are they on this list?:
The Confusion; Cryptonomicon; In Cold Blood; The Faraway Tree Collection; A Fine Balance; Germinal; Inferno; Jude the Obscure; Midnight’s Children; Neverwhere; Notes From A Small Island; Northanger Abbey; Oryx and Crake; A People’s History of the United States : 1492-present; The Secret History; The Shadow of the Wind; A Short History of Nearly Everything; A Suitable Boy; Swallows and Amazons; A Town Like Alice; The Wasp Factory; White Teeth; The Woman in White;

PS. I hit 51/100 on the Annika Meme. The others had no particular scores or percentage points and i'm too lazy to count. But if i wasn't too lazy, i'd say Ulysses counted for two. And also after i finish the two i've got, and possibly also read Catch-22 again, i think next i should read the Lord of the Rings, but in German. I know it well enough and it seems like German ought to go well with dwarves. We were at an Irish pub on Fathers' Day and guess what - it comes in pints! (Instead of half liters, see?) I am a huge nerd.

Labels: media, tests

but i didn't and i should have, i should have, except my German is not good enough to curse out a construction worker. Nowhere near. And if they were talking to me i could just ignore it anyway, like i always do, even though i should probably say something every single time, assholes, and honestly if i even noticed it any more i would? Is it sad that i am so used to being catcalled that i don't even notice? Fucked up fucking patriarchy, eh? But now you know the Turks have just scored over the Germans - with half the red team missing and the other half hurt - and thinking about it i kind of want them to win. Now. Because walking into work this morning i happened to arrive at the same time as one of the IT guys and he's kind of dark skinned, i think he's Indian or something, and by Indian, i mean subcontinent, with an elegant and many-syllabled name, so, yeah, fairly dark skinned. And they're building a new building at work and they're out paving the patio or some goddamned thing and one of the construction workers yelled at him and his face went dark and he walked faster in and i should have said something. I know which one it was. I think. It probably ruined his day (if, well, he's anything like me) and he's not even Turkish (on top of which, he's quite a nice guy and very helpful with all the IT things, especially for being new). And it might be just because the construction worker is some Aryan douchebag and the Turks are playing Germany tonight (Germany's tied it up, it'll be a decent game then) but i should have said something. And with the surprise and the lack of German skillz it was immediately too late. And what can i say? Du racist fucking schwein, how ... really ... what do you say? I know what i am going to say the next time someone catcalls me: My dog died this morning, Mein Hund ist heute Morgen tod. Immediately humanizing, completely depressing, will make anybody feel like the utter worthless heap of shit they ought to. And maybe i think it is perfect just because there was so much damn country music in Texas and i need something shorter and possibly less, well, snotty than i was drunk the day my Ma got out of prison. But i can't say that for someone else. And, um, when i do notice myself being catcalled, i forget it entirely in that angry red dark. Because i am angry. I want to hurt him. And while i like to think of myself as being nonviolent, there is not a lot of graffiti in Vienna, but a good percentage of what there is is "Kill All Racists" and "Nazis Must Die" and it kind of doesn't offend me at all. Advocating blood like that probably ought to, but nope. That graffiti is earned.

haHa! Apparently one says, greizbiereinbaumholerstein, though i'm spelling it wrong, which means, approximately, or as far as i can make it out, go fuck a hole in a dead tree. Awesome!

Labels: vienna

You like peaches. You like them with their skins on because they are easier to grip that way and not so slippery, so they don't run all over the floor, but then if you get a mouthful of peach skin it takes you about twenty minutes to either chew it all up and finally, finally swallow it, or spit it out, or somehow eventually i can get it sometimes out of your mouth. You hate it when i take peach skins out of your mouth, but Daddy is ruthless and can get them with just one try. I was giving you a bath and he gave you a nectarine and then left, and i had to try for ages to get it out of you because you weren't swallowing the skin, you can't really chew it yet, sweetie, and then he came back in and just like that it was out. Aargh. So mostly i give them to you with their skins off, all juicy and slippery and sticky, and then, well, now i really have to mop the floor. And they stain your clothes yellow. But it's really fun to watch. You also like fish, pineapple (in babyfood form), potatoes (in potato form), pasta - you love pasta because it's so easy to grab and we always get nice pasta, spirals or ribbedy ziti, and so of course they're easy to grab because spaghetti as spaghetti is stupid, spaghetti bolognese (in babyfood form), cheese, cucumber, yogurt, plain yogurt or strawberry or vanilla yogurt, oh, anything. And today, tonight, you ate more solid food in one sitting than i have ever seen. First you ate babyfood chickenandpotatoesandcorn, and then you ate babyfood strawberries, and then you ate half a rice cake and some babyfood pineapple, and then you ate a few handfuls of cheerios, and then you ate a big old pile of pasta spirals. And you drank a good bit of your water and then afterwards M gave you a big bite of nectarine and then after that you nursed. Hungry!

Um, i think you are having a growth spurt.

Thrush is slowly getting better. I read somewhere about sunshine and i think that is what is making it better. I have a new theory every day, i think. But the first day i sat myself in the sun for a gooood looooong time, it made a huge difference. And now i am attempting to sit in the sun every day (and it helps that it is, now, ACTUALLY SUNNY, where before i couldn't even attempt to take that advice because it was cloudy in the mornings and the mornings is when the sun hits our windows, and our apartment, at all, after about ten we're done, because i know the Europeans sunbathe topless in the park, right by all the cars driving by, but i don't think i am quite that European yet. Also how would i sunbathe? You don't sleep in the stroller if it's not moving, and keeping you out of the sun and me in it, especially for half an hour or more, that would be a lot of complication).

With it being finally sunny and warm and hot high summer here, though, and with the going to the park and going swimming and going out and having fun that you do with the tagesmutter, there's not really a way to keep a jar of milk properly cold for eight hours while you're outside having fun. And especially since i have the excess lipase and have to scald it all, it gets lumpy fast without the stupid soapy surfactant, and all the antibacterial properties are of course gone with the scalding as well. So you're on formula, for eight hours, two days a week.

I only have maybe a week or week and a half stash left in the freezer, but it's still kind of a bummer. And i'm pretty sure that with the being old and frozen and with the lipase and with the entirely wrong storage - um, we've been reusing glass yogurt jars, writing the dates on the top in Sharpie - and with the i only have about, what, forty or fifty ounces. Maybe. It's worth a shot. I can go ask about donating it on thursday (Eltern-Kind Zentrum: 3., Hagenmüllergasse 20: Donnerstag 13.30 bis 15.30 Uhr; 4., Favoritenstraße 18: 502 34-04890; Freitag 8.30 bis 10.30 Uhr) Worth a shot. And i can walk to the one on Favoriten. The first milk bank ever was in Vienna. They can tell me if they want it or not. Right?

Still three teeth. Big purple bruisey looking spot next to the top one, where we expect the next tooth to come out, but nothing white or sharp that i can feel with my finger. I bet you can feel it, though. Still not crawling-crawling, but ever faster. And you're thinking about it. I keep thinking you're gonna. And you've almost figured out how to get from sitting to crawling.

You're talking, though, you're so talking, you go dadadada dadadadada da dada mostly when you are happy. And there are many other syllables too - but usually you pick one for the day and do that one over and over again. Boobooo booooboooboo. Tistististis. Zazaza zaza zaza. Yeahyeah. Hi!. I think you might know what Hi! means. Because sometimes you say it at very appropriate times. (Or you did, well, once.) Total genius baby. But you are so uninterested in signing. You would rather be grabbing or pointing or doing something else with your hands, they are so useful. Sigh. Maybe later? I haven't been adding any new signs, but i'm not really entirely giving up either.

We went hiking on the weekend and it was miserably hot and so you, too, were miserably hot and the dog was miserably hot and i was miserably hot and M was miserably hot and then we got home and it was far too fucking hot to cook and i was too tired anyway and so we ordered pizza (you can eat pizza crust) and you got some potato salad at the top of the Kahlenberg, too. Potato salad is yummy. But we took the Ergo up and sometimes you were so miserably hot being held so close to somebody you just wanted to be taken out and held up and away and alone. And i'm awful sorry it was so hot, honey, your poor sweaty self. And you had to wear a sunhat and you kept taking it off. But you have to wear a sunhat. Then, though, then you slept so well afterwards! Well, we all did. But you go to sleep - we do have a proper routine, now, and it's sort of - well - you don't always cry, any more. You didn't cry at all tonight. For instance. We have dinner and then we brush teeth and have a bath and then we get neugewickelt and pajamaed and then there is a story and then there is a song and if i am the one putting you down then there is nursing during the song, and if M is the one putting you down then nursing happens between dinner and toothbrushing. And during the song, between each verse, one says that was four verses, now there are only six more, and then i'll put you down and you'll close your eyes and you'll sleep all night and then you do it. Amazingly. You are the best baby ever.

I have to learn more lullabies, though.

Labels: baby, food, milestones

Aus einem Totenhaus 1.8.2008

La fille du régiment 2.8.2008

Leonard Bernstein dirigiert Bernstein, Gershwin, Sousa, Copland 3.8.2008

Herbert von Karajan: Falstaff 4.8.2008

Giuditta 5.8.2008

Joe Zawinul und Weather Update 6.8.2008

Symphonic Django 6.8.2008

Die Zauberflöte für Kinder 7.8.2008 (das ist meine lieblingest! aber, zu spät)

Labels: festivities, vienna

You officially have three teeth: the one on the top left came in. I'm expecting its neighbor shortly.

Momma continues to have thrush on one side. But i'm following now the very very extra extra traditional traditional advice of a local lactation consultant (which, yes, i found from la leche liga's website, and also, yes, i had to talk to her entirely auf deutsch und so ich glaube das that is a great accomplischment fur mich): application of topfen, for half an hour to an hour, three times a day. Topfen is extra-super-duper-traditional as being the Austrian variety of cottage cheese: so this is, like, the weirdest thing i have ever done. To give him credit, the previous doctor (who we're still not going back to) said the same thing, but only once a day for twenty minutes. Clearly incompetent, right? Twenty minutes, pah. Anyway, if twenty minutes was helping a little, i really really hope three hours helps a lot.

The UEFA cup is helpful, because i can put it on and then watch half a soccer match and they do the timing for me. But Les Bleus are losing and one man down - they're booking people like it's the Kentucky Derby - and Ribery is hurt!

You are crawling faster and faster and i feel like i say that a lot, but you keep getting faster and more efficient - you're now, sometimes, really pushing a bit with your toes as well and while you're still not doing the "standard" crawl you are now picking up your belly a bit and watching you learn is so small and incremental and basic but it's also like watching the space shuttle take off (seriously, you kick off clouds of dog hair behind you), and you're doing this all on your own, with no team back in Houston to catch you, my little genius girl, and every time you crash and burn and topple and bonk your head or get stuck halfway over a pillow and wail for help you learn, you are such a fierce little learning machine, and you never make the same mistake twice.

In Thank You, Captain Obvious land, you also like raspberries. (Though i only give you the good ones. But, honey, if there was only one raspberry, i'd let you eat it, because you'd still tongue-thrust it halfway back out and i could lick it off your chin all the same.) You make this face when you eat tarty fruits - the squinty deliciousness, and you shake your head and go all pointy looking - and then you open your mouth wide for more. When you eat potatoes you always get too excited and try to swallow before you're really ready. And you keep trying to chew the purees - which, honestly, i just bought all those jars of baby food, one jar of each thing, to try and keep track of the things you've eaten and try and make sure you start out with a pretty good variety, a relatively balanced diet, over the course of a week or something, so i went and bought one jar of every kind of baby food for your age level. To make sure that you get some peaches and some spinach and some carrots and some beef and some pears, because left to my own devices would i ever buy pears in, you know, pear form? Probably not. And if you're allergic to anything common, well, we want to know that, but i'd totally forget to feed you blueberries because a whole blueberry is probably still a choking hazard and we haven't got a blender (or room for one) and so the baby food blueberries are the only choice. Besides, in the meantime, you eat a lot of bread and some bits of pasta and you had cucumber yesterday and it sure seemed like you liked it - i took the skin off for you - but what does a cucumber taste like to not like? You like things that are crunchy but that disintegrate. Rice cakes. Feta cheese. Cheerios. We keep a Tupperware full of Cheerios now in the living room on the (new!) computer desk. The dog has either not found it yet or has decided that it's too much of a pain to obtain. Lucky us. Things that are not crunchy are not so interesting: rice as rice, pancake (which has cooked egg in it, and you were fine!), white sliced sandwich bread. Also not your favorites are things that don't disintegrate: bell peppers, quesadilla, lettuce. Tomatoes i read somewhere that you shouldn't have until you're one (i think they were acidic, or something? Really i don't remember) but we have a jar of four-months-plus baby-food spaghetti bolognese and i think when you're done with the - what are we on now? - erdbeeren, we'll crack that one, because i cook with a lot of tomatoes, and as soon as you can eat tomatoes we can feed you (for instance) tomato-chickpea soup, or nice curries, or, well, pasta, because also if left to my own devices we would eat a heck of a lot of pasta, so that will be a big day. Must remember to feed you mushrooms before then. So: it's eierschwammerlwochen already downstairs. mmm.

Labels: baby, breastfeeding, milestones

it's not the end of the world if baby gets a bottle of formula a couple times a week. She's eight and a half months. Inflated milky-ego to replace the engorgedness? Bleah. Stupid thrush. Stupid pump. Stupid me swallowing things hook, line, and sinker - god, could i have internalized the whole 'breast is really, really, really best' thing any more?

also, interestingly: this country spawned Freud, and the doctor i went to last week said that it was fine and if it didn't go away he'd give me antibiotics (um, yeah, we're not going back to him: he wanted to give me amoxicillin, which destroys bacteria, and which also i'm allergic to, so i couldn't have that one anyway, but one of the side effects of standard amoxicillin and similar anti-bacterial antibiotics is that the cause yeast infections, which is what candidiasis and thrush both are, so if i ate that, it'd get worse, mmkay, mmmoron) but that if he gave me antibiotics i'd have to wean, because if i weaned too late then the baby would like me too much. Thrush getting steadily less awful, though, so there's that.

Labels: breastfeeding

of course i will eat moldy raspberries - and i will eat them so fast you'd think it was a race. A race that i have to stuff my face so very full and quick to win against tiny, weak, slow-moving-on-surfaces (though fast-growing) spores.

I will also eat raspberries with bugs in them (though these are not my favorite; they're crunchy then). Raspberries that have fallen on the floor. Raspberries that may or may not have very toxic chemical pesticides. I will eat them if they are overripe and mushy or underripe and hard. So not picky.

I do (usually) rinse them off first.

Labels: food

• the Nutella goes all melty
• the computer keeps turning itself off
• And then you leave it off because damn it, it makes heat
• you have to serve Brie in a bowl
• you wake up in the middle of the night to find that your partner has shoved all the blankets on YOUR side
• paint dries really, really fast
• you can think of sixteen different ways to make dinner without turning on the stove
• And then you order pizza because the kitchen has no breeze in it and you refuse to go in
• you know how cold your cold water showers can get
• when you walk your dog, she falls asleep in under a tree in the park. And then gives you a dirty look
• you wonder if it is okay to have your curtains open at night and be naked, or if not, which would be hotter?

Labels: house

And you are teething, and teething, and teething, the top two, and you are needy and screamy and wanting to nurse all the time, and mommy still has thrush so mommy doesn't really like that, and you have that awful cherry-tomato-firetruck-Ferrari-red red red teething diaper rash i've heard about, and oh god, your poor little butt hurts too, and your two ends are still so close together that having them both hurt is like having your whole little self hurt, and mommy just feels awful about that. Mommy is going to try really really hard to make it all as much better as i possibly can.

In other news, you don't need any silly rice cereal because you can eat rice! Though you are not so good with the forks, yet. And mommy has to feed it to you because you also can't quite pick it up - it's slippery and sticky but apparently in the wrong combination and just barely too small. You like playing with it, though. Also we fed you an ice cube earlier for the teething thing and while you liked it you had some big problems picking it up between just two fingers. Eventually (you're a total genius) you got it into your mouth and were happy.

And you can make it over the inch-and-a-half lip into the hallway from the, um, other hallway. You can't quite make it on to the futon but can maneuver your way off with multiple head-bonking-safe techniques. You are starting to kind of get your toes helping with the crawl; you may be a classic Vierbeiner yet ...

Oh, honey. I'm gonna go hug you. I'm so sorry about your teeth and your bum.

Labels: baby, milestones

and i still have it and i went to the apotheke and they gave me this weird magickal stuff that combats biofilms and has aloe in it and it made me feel better, yeah, but the thrush didn't really go away, and now i'm all out of anti-biofilm magick, it was some "galactoarabinan polyglucoronic acid crosspolymer" and aloe, so hooray for better living through any kind of desperate chemistry, anyway, better, didn't get rid of it, gone, so this morning i'm skipping work and going to the doctor (nicely, there's a doctor on the next street who is not only on our insurance (though nearly all the doctors in vienna are on the vienna city insurance) and also reportedly speaks english, and while i could have gone to the nice egyptian doctor in texas and stripped for him and not batted an eye, i don't know how it will be showing my nipple to the austrian man - weird weird weird, and why are there no women doctors in my district? What the hell?) but first i googled it once more, just to see, and i come across an Australian website and it says to do all the normal things, air, sunlight, washing, and to avoid sugar and alcohol, and then it also says to avoid -

Vegemite.

Yes. When one has thrush vegemite might be a thing to not go anywhere vaguely near. i wonder if australians with thrush still find vegemite appetizing? Hee.

Labels: breastfeeding, health

i'm too much of a democrat

(ask me why)

Because i keep thinking i want the blue shirts to win

Labels: random

Unsere neuen Computer ist gekommen. Wir haben (M hat) schon Windows aufgesetzt.

Unsere neuen Computertisch wird in der nachste Woche auch kommen.

Und dann haben wir Skype mit Video, und auch das dvd-Kamera woll in Ordnung sein ...

Aber das neuen Computer hat eine blod deutsche Tastatur.

Auch ich habe ein neues Wort gelernt. QWERTZ-Tastatur. Blod.

Labels: house

You are two-thirds of a year old - and time has never gone so quickly. Soon people we know are going to start having first birthday parties.

You can slide over minor obstacles now: the edge of the futon, a pillow, Daddy. Still not crawling with your belly off the floor, though you get up and rock back and forth like you're just about to - and that's how you launch yourself over things from a sit, as well, rocking and rocking until you're ready and then slingshotting past your knees. This is rather uncomfortable on the floor, i think, as you don't always catch yourself before you faceplant, but it works well on the futon and bed. The poor dog keeps getting up and moving as you approach, but never far enough, and she hasn't quite learned yet that the couch is (for now) a completely insulated place, up, off the floor. You can't climb, yet - some of the other babies are climbers already. Already! Two of them can walk. Not far, and they're the oldest ones, but still.

We've been going swimming at the kinderfreibad nearby - it's nice that it's so close, just a block away, because it's sort of a silly place with the hordes of kids. It looks like a beehive, swarming with little squirming screaming browning bodies. But it's a nice pool all the same. Cold water in the mornings, so it takes you a long time to get used to it; and you like going in the afternoons because then you can watch the thousand other kids in the tiny pool, rushing all over with giant blow-up toys and big orange arm-bands (why are they always orange?) and in real swim-suits, some of them, or swim bottoms anyway, only you still have a swim diaper. And sometimes you are the smallest person there, but sometimes not. But then in the afternoons there are so many other kids doing so many other things and most of them splash you, which you very much object to, even though they're trying to splash each other or it's entirely accidental, except once a toddler who was barely larger than you (but could walk) came over with a watering can and watered you and that was really cute, and you didn't scream. You try to climb on top of my head, if you think the water is too cold, but you don't scream. Mornings are nicer: less busy, less splashing, even if the water is not quite so warm. And on the weekend we went swimming with Daddy too: and that was great fun, we could pass you back and forth and you went kick-kick-kick in the water. Daddy hadn't gone swimming with you before. And even though i am trying very hard to avoid it, i put sun-tan lotion all over you, every time, even on your fine little scalp, you're getting a tan. SPF Forty, and you're getting a tan. We live in the freaking Alps, far, far north in the world, and we're going to be all brown and smooth by the end of summer.

Also on your scalp: some small amount of hair, and still cradle cap. Mimi scrubbed your little head with baby oil and most of the cradle cap came off, credit where it's due, but i said it would come back, and since then it has been slowly coming back, and it's still there, a little bit, just getting harder and harder to see under the hair. The hair is very fine, very fine, and light brown. Probably will be blond, too, by the end of summer, if M and i are any example. And i expect we are.

You can eat twenty Cheerios in one sitting now, without dropping very many at all - this morning you got a whole handful, with only three around the safety-belt in the high chair afterwards. You are all over the feeding yourself, bread, schnitzel, more bread. Cheese. Mommy needs to go to the Billa and pick up some (or, rather, a very large quantity of) yogurt, too, and plain, again, at that, even though you like the fruity stuff or the vanilla stuff (which was this morning, vanilla) - because -

we have thrush. Or i have thrush. And it fucking hurts and i'm all shiny and pink and flaking, a bit, and i don't think it's ductal and it hurts a good bit less than yesterday already (also quite a bit less shiny and flaking than yesterday, which is a good sign - oy, it was nasty looking, and then i was doing my best to be airing it out all day) but at least you haven't got the candida diaper rash that apparently goes with it fairly often. Somebody said that grapefruit seed extract was antifungal and helpful - and so, instead, yesterday i ate, um, a grapefruit, but i ate the seeds too. Except for the big ones, but i ate all the little ones, and crunched them a bit. Meh. That or the air. People at the swimming pool sunbathe topless sometimes: i could (gulp) try that. When in Rome, what what.

Also: we are among the last few in the moms' group still breastfeeding. The Japanese mom is going to go until her baby is one year, in September. A lot of the English ones have quit entirely, or kept only the bedtime feed; quite a few of them are Gina Babies and kept on schedules, three tablespoons of porridge at seven, hour-long nap at nine, two tablespoon snack at ten-thirty, et c. And they are contented babies and there is nothing wrong with them and it is only fair to point that out, that the British-scheduled-weaned-Gina Babies are perfectly happy and healthy. But it's odd all the same - you're still so little! All of them are still so little. Any which way we now have direct, personal experience of breastfeeding rates in the UK being just barely above rock bottom, and of how horribly weird it would feel to live there and be trying to do this. Especially when it actively hurts, at the moment. And when you continue to be on the big side for your age. But i will nurse wherever i happen to be, anywhere that i can sit down: in the zoo, in the park, in the train station, whatevs. I do prefer benches to the ground, and not in moving vehicles as that couldn't possibly be safe, and somehow i think it's rude to feed you in a restaurant if i haven't ordered anything to eat ... somehow ... We'd have done it at the German rap concert yesterday if it hadn't started hailing. (Um, we'd also have stayed at the German rap concert much longer if it hadn't started hailing. But we had a long way to go to get home, and there was hail, so ... ) So i kind of - it would be so weird, then, to be breastfeeding a big happy eight month old baby, whenever she wanted, in, say, Kew. I think there would be many dirty looks, and people might even come up and say things, where here people mostly sort of look at you wistfully. Here breastfeeding you is not a political act in the slightest, nothing to even blink at, or look towards or away from. (Because, also, at the pool? Men, women, kids, everybody, they don't just sunbathe topless, they change right out in the open. Entirely. Yep. So there couldn't possibly be anything obscene about a little person having a snack.) And i like the stress-free-ness of it, that i don't have to worry about people being rude, but it's hard to be a lactivist if there's nothing to lagitate against. Right - because Momma needs more reasons to be Angry Militant Woman. Uh huh ...

Yeah, though, thrush, not pleasant. Also i am going to pieces obviously because i'm also getting a repeat performance of the cold sore on my lip - it never entirely went away. And what with the Sex and the City party i had a gigantic blister under my big toe. Some days, honey, some days you won't nap and you holler if i put you down and give you toys and if i am expecting M to be available and he's somehow not and if i just want ten minutes to have a cup of coffee while it's still warm, maybe i could take a shower, or maybe if i had a minute i could, god forbid, actually fix something to eat, and then i'd have eaten and imagine - just imagine how much less grouchy i'd be, if i could sit still and breathe for a moment. A moment. Please God can i just pause it all, and not have to schedule a dentist appointment or three, and not have to sign for the new computer delivery, and not have to clean up after the shedding-like-a-mad-thing dog, and not having thrush would be REALLY FUCKING NICE (even if, let's be honest, this is about as mild as thrush can possibly be and still be thrush, and i think it's almost over already), and actually now i'm at work and screw it all, i'm going to go have a cup of coffee and not do anything for a little while.

Labels: baby, mamadom, milestones

*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:



archived: labels
09.03 10.03 11.03 12.03 01.04 02.04 03.04 04.04 05.04 06.04 07.04 08.04 09.04 10.04 11.04 12.04 01.05 02.05 03.05 04.05 05.05 06.05 07.05 08.05 09.05 10.05 11.05 12.05 01.06 02.06 03.06 04.06 05.06 06.06 07.06 08.06 09.06 10.06 11.06 12.06 01.07 02.07 03.07 04.07 05.07 06.07 07.07 08.07 09.07 10.07 11.07 12.07 01.08 02.08 03.08 04.08 05.08 06.08 07.08 08.08 09.08 10.08 11.08 12.08 01.09 02.09 03.09 04.09 05.09 06.09 07.09 08.09 09.09 10.09 11.09 12.09 01.10 02.10 03.10 04.10 05.10 06.10 07.10 08.10 09.10 10.10 11.10 12.10 01.11 02.11 03.11 04.11 05.11 06.11 07.11 08.11 09.11 10.11 11.11 12.11 01.12 02.12 03.12 04.12 05.12 06.12 07.12 08.12 09.12 10.12 11.12 12.12 01.13 02.13 03.13 04.13 05.13 06.13 07.13 08.13 09.13 10.13 11.13 12.13 01.14 02.14 03.14 04.14 05.14 06.14 07.14 08.14 09.14 10.14 11.14 12.14 01.15 02.15 03.15 04.15  







5821321