A Couple of Gourds

So I've been noticing a proliferation of "baby at the pumpkin patch" pictures on my friends' myspaces, facebooks, and blogs. Never one to miss out on a trend (that's actually the opposite of true), we jumped on that orange bandwagon. Just a few problems: 1) Costa Mesa is strangely devoid of fall gardens; I mean, at a beach where it's been a million degrees since May, who would have thought? The nearest true patch is in Irvine; by the time we drove there he would undoubtedly be asleep, or almost so. 2) Ben is three months old and, while he is pretty advanced in terms of sitting abilities, he's still pretty tipsy. And a baby laying next to a pumpkin is just not as cute as a baby sitting with one. 3) We've been ridiculously busy. So....we did the next best thing. We borrowed a neighbor's pumpkin, put it and Ben together on a blanket in the library, and took some pictures. The result? Unmitigated cuteness. Behold our progeny.

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Tummy Time with Ben

So Ben usually hates tummy time. As soon as I put him down he cries. But lately he's been more amenable to it. Today he was trying to roll over and suck his thumb at the same time. I thought it was pretty funny, so I grabbed the camera. But I got a whole other show entirely. So here's our gassy little guy.

Book Update

So teacher week at Barnes and Noble has come and gone. This year I had plenty of birthday gift cards to spend and go hog wild with my 25% off. You know how sometimes when it's time to make dinner and nothing sounds good? You're kind of hungry and you know you should eat. There are even plenty of delicious options in your pantry and fridge, but nothing appeals to you? Well, that was my experience. I even have an Amazon wish list and a little notebook where I write down book titles that I come across and want to read, just for times like these. Nothing. I went to B&N three times last week, and all I ended up getting was Ghandi's autobiography. To be fair, I own thousands of books. I have three Ikea Flarkes (like Billy only cheaper and less sturdy) in my room filled with fiction (alphabetized by author and title...no judging). I have hundreds of Jesus books, plays, poetry, Shakespeare's entire oevre (four times over, no less), a dozen literature anthologies, an entire big Billy full of young adult lit, philosophy...you name it, I have it. So maybe I've finally reached a point where I have every book I would want to read. Or maybe not. Maybe I'm just in this weird funk where I'm not my usual literary devotee. As I've mentioned before, lately whenever I go to my personal library (and make no mistake--it is as complete as an actual library), nothing sounds good. I've got a half dozen half-read books lying around. Right now I'm even invoking all of the perserverence I can muster to finish a book I hate, just because I really feel like I need to commit.

Where's nerdy Shannon? I miss her. :(

3 Months

Happy Three Months, B!

Twain vs. Kidd

I'm a reader. I have been for as long as I can remember. I'm also a book snob. My favorite book in the eighth grade was The Count of Monte Cristo. I started reading Les Miserables my freshman year of high school. I devoured Dickens, Dumas, Austen, Hemmingway, Shakespeare and Faulkner like they were oxygen. My Christmas lists were comprised of books and miscellaneous random items like tennis skirts (I don't know). I used to play school. Nerd.

And then there was Ben.

I have a half a dozen half-finished books littering my nightstand. Adam Bede and A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court stare me down every time I approach my bed. But I just can't do it. I want to--I do. When I go to the bookstore I drool over the classics display and fantasize about myself curled up on the couch with Gogol and Rushdie, savoring every delectable morsel. And then I try it. I grab that damn Yankee, crack open the deliciously yellowed pages (I'm a used book junkie), and dive in with alacrity. Two paragraphs in, I'm cranky because I don't feel like thinking that hard and I'm falling asleep. Then I toss the book on the nightstand, turn off the light, and bury my face in the pillow, exhausted and guilty, like I'm somehow forsaking my English degrees and disappointing Dr. Walter-Carney, the Rhodes scholar I studied under that helped me get into Columbia.

It's just that I'm tired. I teach middle school English and History all day and come home to a sweet and wonderfully needy three month old. All I want to do after my little peanut goes to bed is curl up in front of the TV and slip into a deep coma, passively ingesting mindless and addicting crap. McDreamy and Michael Scott do not ask me to think. Dostoyevsky does.

But I must read. I spend my days singing the praises of reading to a couple hundred apathetic twelve year olds. If I don't read I'm a hypocrite to them and a disappointment to myself. So I pick the next best thing to The Fountainhead: The Mermaid Chair.

If you know me, you know I'm all judgy about contemporary fiction. Most of it is meaningless crap written by what sounds like fifth graders. The stories are pedestrian and the writing is horrifyingly juvenile. Either the vocabulary and prose are simple (but not the good kind like Hemmingway) or the authors sit there with a thesaurus and try to pack as many lofty, superfluous phrases as they can to make the book longer and "deeper". Yet here I am, in an attempt to avoid George Elliot and Mark Twain, reading what has to be the dumbest book I've ever read (save the Left Behind series).

So here I am, begging you. Please. Give me some titles. Save me from this book. I need something that isn't going to make my brain explode, either from profound depth or sheer stupidity. I need a new A Tree Grows in Brooklyn. This week is the teacher discount week at Barnes and Noble, and I've got birthday gift cards to spend. Help!

Fight or Flight

What do you do when someone questions a pretty big part of your self? What do you do when someone asks you to think about whether or not you're sure you picked the right career?

Instinct #1: Flight. I sound the retreat and put on my sweats, curl up in bed, refuse to speak to anyone out of fear, embarrassment, and heartbreak. I question who I think I am, and I cry and cry, believing that the person I have spent a lifetime becoming isn't good enough.

Instinct #2: Fight. The defenses go up. It's unfair for her to say that. The anger wells up. I'm good at my job, and no one has any right to insinuate that I'm not.

Lather, rinse, repeat.

Happy birthday to me.

Therapist 911

If I could have a dollar for the number of times I said the phrase "Hello? Child Protective Services?" today, I could quit my job and stay at home.

Seriously.

Today there was a "Nanny 911" marathon on TV. Because I'm a good wife and mother, this is what I spent my day doing. Okay, so I did other things too, like go to church and take a nap (this was basically one of the best weekends ever). But I digress. I spent my day watching what could only be described as a domestic Chernobyl. A mother babying her pet pig and neglecting her children (who were, much of the time, eating pig food and drinking out of the cat bowl). Another mother who made her husband do everything because she was so convinced that she would fail that it became a self-fulfilling prophecy. Another mother who didn't care what happened with her kids and wouldn't let them hug her because she didn't want them "hanging all over her all day." A father who dragged his kids down the wooden staircase on a blanket--for fun--then put them all on an ATV and sped down the street. Another father who spent all of thirty minutes a day with his six kids and used church as an excuse to never be home.

And none of them thought they were doing anything wrong.

I can understand how these things happen. I don't excuse it--but I can understand. Sometimes parenting can be so overwhelming, challenging, and taxing that you are tempted to either completely check out or just lose yourself in anger and frustration. I get this--I teach middle school. I sometimes find myself at the end of the day snapping at the kids for stupid things, or being far from kind and respectful when they ask me for the ninetieth time what they're supposed to do with their quiz when they're done. And, while my son is only just turning three months old, I have found myself in that scary place before. I can see how the habits form. Ben had a phase where he would cry when I put him in his crib. He'd sleep anywhere but the one place I wanted him to sleep. And it was so tempting to just let him. But I stuck with it. It was hard, and there was a lot of crying and frustration. But now naptime is a piece of cake, and the two weeks of hard work paid off. And when I see these couples whose marriage has pretty much disintegrated because their seven, five, and four year olds still sleep in bed with them, I feel even better about the decisions I've been making thus far.

And now I can go spend time with my husband and enjoy my evening, because my son is asleep in his crib, content and loved. I will never love a pig more than him, or give him a donut when he cries because it's the only thing that will appease him, or spend every night away from home serving the church because it's easier than parenting. I will do my best do to what's best for Ben. I will make many mistakes. But in those times, I pray that God keeps people in my life that will keep me on the right track, and that he gives me the humility and wisdom to accept the help.

Adrenaline

I ran cross country and track in high school. One year during one of them, I think track, I was out running with one of my teammates. It had snowed a few days before. You know how after a few days snow gets a crusty layer on top with lighter, softer snow underneath, like a Nestle Crunch ice cream bar? Well, we were running on the ice cream bar snow, which was pretty hard, so we were staying on the crusty surface. At one point I stepped down a little hard on one patch and my foot went through. I felt no pain, of course. I didn't even look down--I just kept running. A couple of miles later, at the end of our run, we returned to the gym. Several people looked at me upon my entrance, their eyes immediately darting to my leg. A few said "gross," and many made strange faces. Curious about their reactions, I looked down at my leg. Half of my leg was covered in blood. Apparently, when my foot went through the snow's crusty top layer, the icey covering had cut a two-inch gash in my leg. And then the pain began. It started as a few sharp twinges. Soon the tears were falling and I was crying out for relief. See, I had been running on a crisp winter day. Adrenaline and the cold had prevented me from feeling the extent of my injuries.

Last Monday as I got into my car in the morning, my foot crashed through the ice. For the last week and a half I've been running. This morning the adrenaline began to wane, and the sharp twinges set in. By the time I was a block from work the tears were falling, and I was crying out for relief. I hurt all over. I love my job, I do. But I found my heart aching all day as I taught. I miss my little guy desperately. I miss playing and smiling with him. I miss cuddling and kissing him. And I hate that when I get home I'm so exhausted that half of me wishes he naps for a bit so I can rest, and the other half of me wants him to be up and ready to be my play buddy.

This gets easier, right?

Once More Unto the Breech

I find it interesting how I accept change. When I found out I was pregnant, I lay awake the entire night, staring at the wall and going back and forth between wondering if this was one of my weird "what-if" daydreams or if it was actually real. For a while it was as if I was "trying it out." I had some sort of temporary life change. No use freaking out about it--everything will be back to normal soon. The same thing happened when I had Ben. I went to a routine checkup and found out I was in labor. The whole hospital stay, at least until I started pushing, was another temporary thing. And again when we brought Ben home. Any time now the hospital would call and say "Okay, we'll go ahead and take him back now."

I find myself back in that place of seemingly temporary change. Last week going back to work seemed like a "vacation" from the stay at home mom life. And every time I came home from work, I would see Ben's sweet smiling face and know that there was no need to freak out--everything would be back to normal soon.

There is a new normal. Time to adjust.


Once more unto the breech, dear friends, once more;
Or close up the wall with our English dead.

I pick purple

Disclaimer: I typically don't do politics. In his Farewell Address, George Washington warned against the party system and foreign entanglements. Both of those, along with greed and financial irresponsibility, are tearing our nation apart right now. I think the two party system is irrational and counter-intuitive. How can millions of people fit neatly into two boxes? I also think the electoral college is redundant and superfluous. As a resident of California, my vote, at least in presidential elections, really doesn't matter. This state is the bluest of blues and probably always will be. That said, I am an avid voter. However broken the system, I have the privilege of living in a country that gives me a voice and a say in how my country is run and who runs it. I believe that if you are 18 years old and don't vote you forfeit your right to complain about the government. If you have an opinion, share it by voting. Even if you are a Republican in California. As for me--I do not adhere to a political party. Again--I think the system is lame; I therefore vote for people, not parties.

On to the rant.

Lately I have been bothered by Christians. I know, I am one. But seriously. It saddens me that somehow there developed this notion that if you are a Christian you have to be a Republican. Is it because the party is traditionally pro-life? Is it because it's conservative? Do these mandatory Republicans have opinions of their own? Do they research and review all of the information on the candidates and the issues? Or do they just blindly swallow and regurgitate whatever Dr. Dobson tells them?

If you are a Republican because you believe in what the party stands for, then you're in the right place. But if you're a Republican because there's a tacit understanding in the church that Democrats are immoral liberal sinners, then stop being lazy and think for yourself.

Footnote: This is atypical. I don't usually get into politics. But what the heck--why not?

Dear Fall

I wish you weren't a liar.

Please come soon.

Yours truly,

Shannon