Halloween Squidthoughts

There is really nothing cuter than a breastfeeding pumpkin.

Squidbits

The Squid is eight months old now, for those of you playing along at home, and so much has changed this month it's almost shocking. It's been a real developmental Great Leap Forward, without, you know, an associated cultural revolution, purges of the intelligentsia, or ill-advised backyard steel mills. There's more of everything we had before - more babble, more rolling, more jumping up and down, etc. But there are several new-new things as well.

He has fangs - two of them, and sharp little suckers they are, too. Lower front teeth, like a wee orc or something. The "no biting" training part of breastfeeding is suddenly much more urgent. Much. Ow. I didn't particularly notice teething fussiness as markedly separate from other fussiness, and he still doesn't sleep through the night regularly (one wakeup, on average, sometimes two) so there weren't wild sleep fluctuations either - unless the weirdness I was ascribing to vacation was actually explicable by teeth. Whatever, he has them now. Rarrr! Drooling continues apace, so I imagine a few more will sprout in short order. I just read the piece in the National Geographic about the Dikika child, and they had a photo that shows where adult teeth start out before they migrate up - they're waaay down in the jaw. Wow. He'll be teething forever, I guess.

He's finally reached the tipping point of the Paul Bunyan fallacy, too. The legend goes that Paul Bunyan got as strong as he was by lifting Babe, his great blue ox, every day as he grew, and as the ox grew larger, Paul grew stronger. Well. The Squid is now officially larger than I am stronger, and getting more so daily. Ooof. Toting him around all the time is a real workout - and I am toting him around a lot, as separation anxiety has kicked in, and Only Mama Will Do much of the time. While I suppose this ought to be gratifying, as a symbol of my centrality and desirability in his life, in practice it feels like every time he sees me he bursts into tears. The misery can be stopped more or less instantly by picking the wee monster up, but that gets exhausting - see above re: Paul Bunyan fallacy.


My friend A snapped this in a grumpy squidmoment - she says he's saying "It sucks out here! Lemme back in!"

He can sit up on his own almost all the time now - in another week or so I think I'll be comfortable leaving him without soft padding behind him in case he whonks over. This is excellent, as it makes him much more portable in places like the bathroom or the bedroom, where there are no baby seats or other containers but one has to put the baby down occasionally nonetheless. His grip is much more directed and sure, and he pursues Desirable Objects (hair, earrings, cell phones, etc.) with determination and focus. No longer will he play with the toys he is given - now he wants our toys, and I feel that my interaction with him is devolving rapidly into the pre-toddler litany of "not for babies...not for babies...not for babies..." which I hear eventually shortens to "no," and then to "No!" and then to "NO!!" and then to a long hopeless wail of "Noooooooooo!" with fists shaken in impotent frustration at an unhearing sky.

Everything still goes into the drooling maw once captured, natch, but the capturing process has accelerated mightily! He also can hold solid food (apple slices, carrot sticks, pretzels, and - most messily - fruit leather) while he gums it - he can't yet break off pieces, but I'm sure that too is just a matter of time. Thus far, any solid food that is not mush has been spit out with accompanying yukface, but he's a good eater. It will all go down the hatch eventually/soon.



This was a fun and exhausting month for parenting. Himself was gone for eight days in Germany, I drove to LA for four with the Squid, we flew to Hawaii for six, there was a wedding and a retirement party and I had a few people over and my Grammy came to visit and I applied for more jobs (and got a phone call for my dream job, so cross your fingers that they get the grant and want me on the team) and worked and generally flailed through my very full days.

Traveling with the Squid is not as easy as it was when he was just a little lump of sleep and howl. Now he is alert, and he is interested, and he wants to stay up and party if there is party to be had. His job as a squidlet is to see and taste and observe and explore new things and have new experiences. Therefore, vacation days for baby are like crazy days at work for me - he's got so much to do! He can't possibly sleep, and he forgets to eat, and...you can see where this is going, can't you? Getting him down for naps was a fight almost every day we traveled (on the way to Hawaii he slept a grand total of maybe 2 hours between 4:30 a.m. and 10:00 p.m. California time) and his nighttime sleep didn't expand to take up the slack, either. He ate about half of what he normally eats at home - too distracted! - and fought bedtime like a mad thing almost every night, requiring a dark, quiet room to himself or a long car ride to crash at all. Sleep on airplanes was just wishful parental thinking; he dozed a bit once or twice, but the slightest movement or noise had those eyes popping wide open again.

But it was fun to see him discover grass, and sand, and pigeons, and the ocean, and to go places with him and meet New Scary People (some of whom he met and liked just fine a few months ago, before facial recognition and separation anxiety kicked in, but he was having none of them this time around.) He met dogs that were not our dogs, and his first cats, and got bitten by my Uncle F's spoiled teenage parrot when they both wanted the same toy - luckily, it didn't break skin, but we had some howling. I got some good time in with friends chatting in between diapers and feedings and entertaining the baby, and I think I'm almost caught back up on my sleep, too, now that we've been home from Hawaii for almost a week. But I was seriously wrung out for a while there, and as my last post shows, that puts a major dent in my coping ability.



Still, difficulty won't stop us from continuing to do stuff. The Squid and I went to a pumpkin carving event yesterday at friend C's, and it seems more important than ever to so things like that - meet new people, get out of the house, socialize. He has an easier time of it at home, it's true, but eventually it makes me nutso staying in and doing the same thing over and over, and he needs new stimulation and experiences at this age too. No matter how many new toys he acquires at home (latest monstrosity: a primary-colored plastic-and-nylon doorway bungee seat, for jumping about) there's nothing quite like getting out in the world and doing new things to expand wee horizons.

Besides, at home he's started to orient toward the television, and so my previous entertainment (the Squid is awesome, but I don't find having him jump up and down on my lap and suck on my fingers as overwhelmingly mentally engaging as he does) is soon to be out. I'd rather he didn't watch any television at all until he is two, but I know they let him at daycare. I cringe, but since he loves them and they love him (they miss him when he goes on vacation!) I wouldn't dream of moving him. In any case, we now need to find things to do that don't involve the TV in the evenings, at least before his bedtime.

Actually, though, this is one area where media fandom has really taught me a lot. I used to be a real book snob, of the "my child will never watch television, idiot box, yadda yadda, reading is so much better" absolutist bent - it's how I was raised, and I love the books and radio programmes and music that were part of my childhood instead. And I do still think it's very possible to watch TV passively, and that TV advertising is evil (no ads in books!), and that a lot of programming is crap (Sturgeon's law, magnified rather than ameliorated by the marketplace).

But television is a text, and so it's perfectly possible (as with films or books or comics or anything else) to interpret it actively and creatively, to use it as a stepping stone for exploration. I see media fans do it every day, and it's exciting stuff. Why not help our kids to "read" TV the way we help them to read books? Early studies of Sesame Street showed that merely watching the show itself did not correlate to any significant learning gains at all. A minor positive effect, however, appeared when children watched with an adult in the room - just in the room, not doing anything. I bet if that adult had been reinforcing the material through direct interaction, you'd suddenly see serious gains, though you'd need a control group of adults doing identical verbal interaction without the television, which would be hard to create. But I digress. All I mean to say is, when he's a little older, maybe we'll watch a little kid-appropriate TV together, and I'll help him "read" it the way I would a book. "Do you see the ducky? What's he doing? Is he talking to the cow? That's right! Why is he doing that?"



In a few days I will be off to a professional conference (hey, if I go to a professional conference at which I am not presenting, while job hunting, what's the suggested attire? Can I get away with nice pants, a casual nice sweater/leather jacket, and a dressy long-sleeve t-shirt? Or do I need heels and a button-down/twinset, or - god forbid - a suit? Anyone have advice? It will be chilly and likely rainy, and I have still not decided if I will get a rental car -probably, I'm lazy like that.) Himself and the Squid are going to solo for five whole days, and I will miss them horribly and also try very hard to get a ton of sleep and take care of myself instead of running around nonstop seeing friends, which is the temptation of all Portland visits. I'm planning to get a hotel for the last two nights, and go to ground relatively early, and even remember to stay hydrated and everything. With luck and care, this should be a trip that recharges rather than depletes me, and hopefully also one that helps with my job search. A healthy mama who likes her work makes a happy, playful mama at home, so I'm doing my best to move forward on those fronts, even if it means doing a little less in other areas.

And then, on to the holidays. I mean, sure, Halloween is tomorrow night, but I can't find his pumpkin hat, and he's too little to remember it anyway - we're just going to stay home and probably put the candy in a bowl on the porch after he goes to bed so that nobody rings the doorbell and wakes him up. But for Thanksgiving, we're going to Santa Cruz, for the crazy feast our dear friends T & MK put on, and then for Christmas we'll have our very own tree (my first!) and baking and carols and present wrapping. I love this time of year, and the grey tinge to the sky and the crisp chill in the air only serve to make me anticipate warm drinks and cards from friends and the smell of pine trees all the more. I can't wait to share it all with him.

Bitchface McWhinypants

And in the whiplash style that has characterized so much of my life lately, we are back to argh. Despite the fact that I have not one, but two health insurance policies, my last ($190! You have the flu! It should go away eventually! Bye!) doctor's visit was not covered by either of them, due to bureaucratic bullshit. Stanford didn't cash the check I sent them a month ago, so I have to scramble to cover it now, and on top of that they want me to pay $656 more dollars for...health insurance. More paperwork required to wiggle out of that one. My project was suddenly found to be >$25K over budget for this year, and egg landed on my face about it, despite the fact that I've been telling people something was wrong with our billing for ages and getting the bureaucratic equivalent of philosophical shrugs about it.

Philosophical shrugs are not in large supply around here, these days. Even though I feel relatively happy with my life overall, every minor bullshit problem instantly makes me want to rage or cry. A spilled drink or dead lightbulb or mistaken food order can suddenly, abruptly throw me into a frustrated, irritable funk. I had a yelling tantrum this morning when we found out about the insurance non-payment and whacked my fist into our marble counter hard enough to bruise it. And apparently I've been snapping and snarling so much at Himself that he doesn't really want to be around me anymore. Which, you know, I can see that I've been doing it. I just don't know how to stop.

I'm going to try taking all day tomorrow to just tie up the mental loose ends I have lying around. To pay all the damn bills, put things away, deal. I think part of the problem is that whole "woman's work is never done" thing. All the shit that is mostly my responsibility around the house is ongoing and cyclical - cooking makes dirty dishes makes dishwasher loading and unloading and then I cook again. Cooking depletes groceries which requires shopping which makes putting away shopping and then I eat again. Laundry requires drying requires folding requires putting away and then we wear clothes again. Baby requires feeding and changing and then bottles need washed and diapers need restocking and laundry needs doing and then baby is hungry/dirty again. There is never a time when it is all done and stays done, despite my almost obsessive multitasking.

And part of the problem is that I am doing a pretty good job. I am staying on top of it all. Which doesn't sound problematic, and it's not really, it's just that I somehow feel that this should entitle me to nothing going wrong. In the past, when things have gone wrong, it was usually because I had not tried hard enough, read the fine print, made the extra effort, organized my time, or kept careful track. But I have gotten so very much better at all of that. And things are still going wrong, in ways both large and small. I am good at admitting it when things are my fault - so good, in fact, that I often have to be stopped from taking responsibility for problems to which I was only tangential. But most of this crap is really not my fault. Really. So I am getting very poor-me/why-me about it all. Logically, I know that entitlement is bullshit and I'm just grateful that we're well-off enough that these stupid things won't break us and we can afford to hire help with the house and everything. But emotionally, I'm not there. I'm trying so hard! I don't deserve bad things! Waaah!

If I can't get over this problem soon, I swear I am going to try to find a therapist again, even though I hate looking for a decent therapist the way many people hate therapy itself. Because I can't be snapping at my loved ones and losing my shit over minor things like this. it's not right, and it's not healthy. I'm going to a 4-day work-related conference at the beginning of next month, while Himself takes the Squid, and I've tacked on a day at the end for decompression. Maybe a good hard re-set is all I need. I sure hope so.

Vacation notes, and a poem

Things to remember for next time:

• Most hotels/vacation rentals can supply a portable crib. Ask before hauling own heavy-ass equipment halfway across globe.
  
• Ditto car rental places and car seats.
  
• Schedule at least one day post-vacation to recover from vacation, unpack, nap, gird loins for the resumption of work, etc.
  
• Figure out all ramifications of the time change beforehand and do not schedule anything across baby's naps/bedtime on "home time."

That said, it was a nice vacation. R and K were safely married off in a touching ceremony, the food was excellent (both at the wedding and all over the island), we got to the beach at least once, and Himself and I got to spend some time together, something we don't always remember to do at home.

The Squid was on his usual schedule, just with less napping and less eating, so we woke up between 3:00 and 4:30 local time each day and went to ground by 4:30 or 5:00. This gave us a lot of time for hanging out by ourselves, and some nice quiet evenings, but meant that our excursion ability was pretty curtailed; between Squidnaps and wedding-related events, we made it to the beach for a few windy hours (baby disapproves of the ocean - too cold! too wet! too big!), into Waikiki once for a trolley ride, and out to breakfast once or twice, but failed to snorkel, see the aquarium, hang out with my Uncle J and his wife, or visit the campus where my parents used to teach. Ah, well. Such is travel with a 7.5-month old. There were still some lovely quiet moments, and I re-read some favorite mystery novels that I found in the vacation rental's wee lending library.

R managed to find us childcare for the wedding (bless her heart) - none of the other parents of small children needed it, but the Squid was the youngest there by at least six months, and it made a big difference. Sadly, we were overanxious and kept interfering and taking over - much to the chagrin of the capable young caretaker, who insisted that she could do it, really - and ended up leaving early anyway. I think it was more guilt at enjoying myself while someone else endured my offspring in full meltdown than any micromanaging mama thing; if I'd been working instead of playing I might have left her to cope with his fusstasticness more. But still, having childcare let us stay for the reception, and eat poké and pork and salad rolls, and make a toast, and take more photos, and generally enjoy our friends' happiness.

Uncle J sent me the following poem, which I found in my email on our return:

Landscape

Isn't it plain the sheets of moss, except that
they have no tongues, could lecture
all day if they wanted about

spiritual patience? Isn't it clear
the black oaks along the path are standing
as though they were the most fragile of flowers?

Every morning I walk like this around
the pond, thinking: if the doors of my heart
ever close, I am as good as dead.

Every morning, so far, I'm alive. And now
the crows break off from the rest of the darkness
and burst up into the sky, as though

all night they had thought of what they would like
their lives to be, and imagined
their strong, thick wings.

        - Mary Oliver

Blessing, Katrina, tithing

My life veers from frustration to joy and back, but if you ask me any day, even the worst of days, I will tell you straight up: my life is a blessing. I'm telling you: my grandmother is alive and well due to what I can only call a miracle, and I went to see her last week. My wonderful mother has finally retired, and friends and family turned out in style to help celebrate earlier this month. My brother has an excellent girlfriend and (finally) a job, I've gotten to visit with so many friends in the last few weeks that my cup runneth over, and I'm leaving for Hawaii tomorrow to see my oldest friend get married. I got a preliminary call for my dream job on Monday that I thought went quite well, and I love and am loved by my family and friends. Life is good.

Life isn't so good for everyone, and don't I know that too. Photographer Clayton Cubitt's blog Operation Eden is a beautiful and heartwrenching chronicle of life after Katrina. Today he profiled Pearlington, Mississippi, a small community that received almost no government assistance, and which is being rebuilt primarily by volunteer organizations. The entry is beautiful, and the whole blog makes for thoughtful and emotionally compelling reading.

I donated a bit to Habitat for Humanity when Katrina first happened, but I was in a pretty deep depression then, and by the time I felt better, I wasn't sure what else I could do. I never did as much as I wanted to for Katrina survivors. Clayton reminds us that it's not too late - there's still need, and there are still ways to donate that reach those most affected by the disaster. He posted a link to One House At A Time, an organization building houses in Pearlington; if you look at their site, you can see the houses in progress right now, and read a little about the families they're being built for.

I just sent them a bit of money, and I was reminded of my resolution for the New Year: I'm going to tithe. Not to the church, but to various charities. In 2007, I'm going to try to push my giving up to 5% of my income. It's not as much as I'd like to be giving, and it's not the traditional 10%, but it's more than I've totalled in previous years, so it will be a start. Blessings are meant to be shared and multiplied, after all.

Physics lessons I learned on my vacation

If you heat water in a microwave, it is possible to overheat, or "superheat" it, in such a way that it goes past its boiling point. The water will appear innocently flat to the eye, but the introduction of a cooler substance or object (say, a baby's bottle) will trigger a "flash boil". The boiling water will then explode out of the container in a rain of scalding liquid. Quite spectacular, really.

This would be why I am missing a patch of skin on the back of my thumb right now. Ow. But hey, at least the baby didn't get hurt; he just cried because my screaming startled him.

How to Apologize

This post has been percolating in my head for yonks, but several tales of botched and ineffective apologies lately have led me to finish it up.

Social behavior is not intuitive - we all know that it's learned, so what surprises me is how rarely it is consciously taught. Unlike many people, I had the benefit in my youth of several honest-to-god courses and workshops in life skills and communication, instead of just trying to intuit this stuff from context. Sure, it felt a little cheesy at the time, but the skills I learned that way have been invaluable to me.

One of the ones I have needed most as an adult is how to apologize effectively. Easy, right? You say, "I'm sorry." You mean it. What else is there? Well, that's an apology, true. A good one for, say, bumping into someone with your shopping cart and making them drop something, or forgetting someone's name in a social situation. But what I'm talking about is how to apologize effectively about more complex things, so that the other person really hears your regret and you can both do your best to move on.

1. Take responsibility. If you're apologizing and you don't mean it, everyone can tell. Effective apologizing is not a "trick" you can use to spin your actions and win forgiveness without remorse. You have to mean it.
   • Know what, exactly, your transgression is. Not what you feel most sorry about, but what hurt the other person or people involved the most. "I'm sorry I forgot to call and say I'd be late" is a much less effective apology than "I'm sorry I wasn't respectful of your time."
     
   • Don't make excuses. If you did it, own it. "I read your personal correspondence, and I never should have done that." Even if there are real mitigating reasons or circumstances, now is probably not the time to bring them up, or if you have to, you should then return to what you did and reiterate your responsibility. "...but I still should have checked with you to see if it was all right."
     
   • Focus on the things you can control. Apologies should never, ever take the form of "I'm sorry you aren't happy with me" or "I'm sorry you're mad about this." Those statements are implicit denials of responsibility. You can only apologize for yourself and for what you have done or failed to do.
2. Acknowledge the consequences of your actions. Even if you don't think your actions "should" provoke the reactions they do, this is an important step.
   • Emotional consequences. "I know you get frustrated with me." "I didn't mean to make you worry." "I can tell you're really angry at me right now."
     
   • Other consequences. "This means that the budget is going to come up short by several thousand dollars this quarter." "I know you needed this data to write your report, and that this puts you in a crunch." "I know that pissed her off and she took it out on you." "I know you were waiting."
3. Make it better. Clearly, this is easier for some transgressions than others. Some things you can, in fact, fix after the fact, and then the apology serves only to address the fact that they happened in the first place. Some things you can never, ever fix. What is important is that you do your best to try. A focus on preventing your mistake from happening in future is frequently helpful, in addition to other fix-it efforts.
   • Start with what you've done or can do. "I've paid the late fee and set up automatic withdrawals." "I can call her and tell her I misunderstood and re-schedule." "I re-did the spreadsheet so that the error won't happen again, and drew up a plan for making up the lost revenue." "I've thought of several options that would go part-way toward fixing the situation, and here they are."
     
   • Ask what (else) you can do. "What can I do to help regain your trust?" "Can you think of something I can do to make sure this doesn't happen again?" "What would make you feel better about this whole situation?" "Was there a better way I could have said that?" (NB: The phrase, "What do you want me to do [about it] [now]?" is not a good one to use here.)

Those are the three most basic steps. Once you've got those, you can improvise a bit more, and negotiate, explain, or dialogue in addition to your apology, using the same basic structure.

• "I know you feel terrible when I do this, and I don't want to make you feel terrible. But this is really important to me. How can we compromise?"
• "I'm sorry I've made such a mess of this. I can see that it's making you miserable, but when I made my choices I wasn't aware of some really important facts. Now that I know, I can make better choices; let's work on our communication to make sure it doesn't happen again."
• "I'm sorry I did that. I didn't know it would make you so angry, and I apologize. But I'm not sure I understand why you are so angry. Can we talk about this a little more so I can keep from doing that inadvertently in future?"

As long as you're still taking responsibility, acknowledging the consequences of your actions, and trying to make it better, you should still be able to craft an effective apology.

Of course, there are people who are harder to talk to than others; even the best apology doesn't reach some people, and never will. There are things people can't forgive (which doesn't mean you shouldn't apologize for them, just that it might be a dead end anyway). There are times when you will have to apologize when you don't mean it, in which case I suggest sticking with the good old, "I'm really sorry," and leaving it at that. There's no magic fixit for mistakes, and until they invent one, we're all just going to have to bumble through as best we can. This is the best way I know how.

"Sweetness," by Stephen Dunn

Here, have a perfect poem for these troubling times. It seems that each week, sometimes each day, someone I know is losing someone, something important. I can't read the news the past few weeks, I just can't; I'm numb and in denial about it all. I have not yet begun to assimilate, to mourn. But there are other things than loss to life, of course, even if it is hard to see it some days. Stephen Dunn is absolutely one of my favorite poets, and this is why:

Sweetness

Just when it has seemed I couldn't bear
    one more friend
waking with a tumor, one more maniac

with a perfect reason, often a sweetness
    has come
and changed nothing in the world

except the way I stumbled through it,
    for a while lost
in the ignorance of loving

someone or something, the world shrunk
    to mouth-size,
hand-size, and never seeming small.

I acknowledge there is no sweetness
    that doesn't leave a stain,
no sweetness that's ever sufficiently sweet...

Tonight a friend called to say his lover
    was killed in a car
he was driving. His voice was low

and guttural, he repeated what he needed
    to repeat, and I repeated
the one or two words we have for such grief

until we were speaking only in tones.
    Often a sweetness comes
as if on loan, stays just long enough

to make sense of what it means to be alive,
    then returns to its dark
source. As for me, I don't care

where it's been, or what bitter road
    it's traveled
to come so far, to taste so good.

Idea: USPS employees take note!

I want stamps that say "You bastards are bleeding me dry," or "I resent giving you my money." I would use them so much more than most stamps! Or maybe just stamps with pictures of vampires and toe fungus and those scary deepwater fish with fangs and things on them. I liked the carnivorous plant series a lot, but that was $.03 ago.

I could make my own with photostamps.com, but paying extra to do it sort of defeats the purpose, you know?