Friday, March 20, 2009

I'm screwed

So far I haven't really gotten too excited about dressing this baby because I figure most people will buy him clothes as gifts rather than the stuff on our registry (that's just how buying for baby tends to go) and because I am most likely going to be on the receiving end of some super fun hand-me-downs from my nephew.

Until now.

Boden, which is a wonderful catalogue that I get that has such wonderfully yummy bright confections as these...











...just sent me a "mini Boden" catalogue. I had no idea they sold things as delicious as this...for BABY!!












Seriously, the only thing keeping me from getting out the plastic is that most of the clothes currently on the website are a bit silly for a newborn and by time our muchkin is big enough to warrant such delightful designs as these, it will be fall and we will be looking for warmer items...at least that's what I am telling myself...

Thursday, March 19, 2009

buttons and notions

A button has disappeared from my favorite spring coat so I have spent the morning looking for a replacement. Time was, I used to save those things in their cute little paper envelopes...the theory being that someday (like today) I might need one...but of course I can't seem to find where I put all those buttons.

Sigh.

While looking, however, I did come across a box I have kept over the years with various cards and buttons (of the Disney pin exchange program variety) and wedding invitations and other mementos of my life. Most of the things I saved are from when I worked at Walt Disney World in Orlando...old name tags, four calendar years of schedules (which would greatly increase my ability to figure out just how many Voyage of the Little Mermaid [VOLM] shows I have done in my life), commemorative watches and invitations to show openings.

While waxing poetic about my Disney years, the Ursula/Ariel track for Poor Unfortunate Souls started playing on my iPod...and I actually couldn't stop myself from doing the choreography.





The first track I learned at VOLM was the Flounder track. That track consisted of the Flounder puppet during the black-light number, the scroll Ariel signs her voice away with and the 'hands' that grab Ariel's voice as she sings with Ursula.

Later on, I learned the Dolphin track, which starts out in the black light number with the dolphin, then moves on to the bubble with the fish on the plate...then I think there is some action with the Sturgeon and the Ray and then finally ending up with the dolphin again. During the Ursula scene, the Dolphin track is the left hand and arm movements of Ursula as well as her head movements and eye blinks (School of Fish track is in charge of her right hand and puppeteering her mouth and there were also two techs inside her to get her to move around the stage).

Anyway, it was rather nostalgic to be looking through all those old things and realizing that almost 9 years after leaving Disney, I still remember the choreography.

Tuesday, March 17, 2009

Now I'll NEVER be a teen model!

"I am beyond excited for Cycle 13; for the first time ever, young women 5′7″ and under have a shot at becoming America’s Next Top Model! I encourage each girl to come out ready to rock the runway and show off their fiercest pose. I’m rooting for all of you!” -Tyra Banks


Not that my age (almost 34) and looks (anything but modelesque) wouldn't have kept me out of the competition anyway...but now it looks like my height (5'11") isn't even an asset.

Le sigh.

Thursday, March 12, 2009

Take a lil' tour of our crib

The crib came today from Pottery Barn Kids. It is the Skylar Crib. I searched and searched 'teh internets' for information on the crib when we were deciding whether to purchase it and found slim to no information...so bare with me while I write some boring spec type information for anyone who may have stumbled upon this site wanting information on the crib. But for all you others out there...isn't it preeeeeety?




The crib was delivered and set up by the delivery crew of four people. It took them a bit of a time to set it up because one of the bolts didn't want to cooperate. The delivery crew was very nice and clean and courteous. The crib itself is very sturdy. The drawers came put together with the two toned wood, which we prefer, on the outside...the information in the store says the drawer fronts are reversible, but since we like them this way we won't be reversing them.

Additionally, the inlaid portion of the drawers is set in a bit with a small lip which is how you open the drawer...up until seeing it, we weren't sure if they were a latch type door or if there was a pull that we just weren't seeing. The drawers are within a section of the crib that is its own separate entity from the crib itself. What I mean by that is that the crib can be adjusted up and down and it does not have any affect on the top of the drawers. Which means that the drawers have a solid top and therefore won't be getting anything inside dusty anytime soon.

Lastly, the drawers do not pull out all the way, I noticed this on our Pottery Barn Kids dresser...my guess is they don't want little ones pulling the drawers all the way out on themselves.

So there you go...everything you ever wanted (or didn't want) to know about our crib.

Tuesday, March 10, 2009

Dear baby,

I am supposed to be writing you letters, but I feel a little silly doing so. Mostly because it keys right into the whole ‘everything about having a child is magical’ mindset that I think Hallmark and conservatives would like us all to believe. The truth of the matter is I don’t really have much to say to you. We were excited the other day when you started kicking. That has helped my anxiety a lot. For a while, I was convinced that I was making the whole pregnancy thing up. Aside from a very prominently missing feminine monthly situation, there wasn’t much to substantiate your existence. But now you are kicking away, so I guess you are real. Of course, you could convince me that I left the oven on in the apartment I lived in before I moved in with your dad and I haven’t been there in three years, so go figure…guess I’m a bit neurotic. Hope you don’t get that trait.

And while we are on ‘hopes’ I really hope you get your dad’s hair…and my dimples. Obviously, most importantly I hope you ‘make it to the water’. Anne Lamott talks about how when she looked at her son when he was born she was reminded of those turtles that are all born on the beaches of California. Hundreds and hundreds of baby turtles that all have to climb through the sand to get to the water before their lives even begin. And on the way to the water, they have to survive and hope not to get plucked up by a seagull or squashed by an over-zealous pre-schooler. She says she hopes her son makes it to the water…so that’s what I say. I hope you make it to the water. But after the water, I hope you have your dad’s hair and my dimples and that you are patient like your dad and no where near as neurotic and self-defacing as your mom.

Alright, that’s all I got for now.

Love you…see you soon.

Mom

Wednesday, March 04, 2009

Weekly reading

As I have mentioned before, I am deeply indebted to the writer Anne Lamott for writing about her son’s first year in a memoir aptly titled: “Operating Instructions: A Journal of My Son’s First Year”. I had read the book prior to ever even dating my husband; mostly because it was the only thing on my sister’s bookshelf that looked even remotely interesting and that I hadn’t already read, and I loved it immediately. Since being pregnant, I am now on my fifth reading of the book and will probably keep reading and reading it for many years to come.

I love the book not only because of its very realistic account of what having a newborn is like, but because she also explores her faith and many other things within the book. I think Anne Lamott and I are cut from very similar cloth when it comes to our type of faith, our worship, our self doubts, our honesty and our humor.

There are many parts of the book that I have earmarked and underlined and called out with exclamation points, but there are two specifically that I would like to share here since they are very meaningful to me right now.

December 5

Pammy showed me a picture that someone took at the baptism of her holding Sam out toward the camera. He definitely looks like he was blown away by the proceedings, too, somehow sort of blank and surprised at the same time, like he had just that moment been plucked from a huge pie.

All these people keep waxing sentimental about how fabulously well I am doing as a mother, how competent I am, but I feel inside like when you’re first learning to put nail polish on your right hand with your left. You can do it, but it doesn’t look all that great around the cuticles. And I think that because I’m so tired all the time, people feel like I’m sort of saintly. But the shadow knows. The other night I was nursing the baby outside, underneath the redwoods, and you could see the full moon in the clearing of the treetops. Everything smelled so clean and green, and the night birds were singing, and then I started feeling a little edgy about money or the lack thereof. I started feeling sorry for myself because I’m tired and broke, kept thinking that what this family needs is a breadwinner. And pretty soon my self-esteem wasn’t very good, and I felt that maybe secretly I’m sort of a loser. So when my friend John called a few minutes later from L.A. and mentioned that a mutual friend of ours, whose first book was out (for which he had been grossly overpaid, if you ask me), had gotten a not-very-good review in Newsweek recently, all of the sudden, talking on the cordless phone and nursing my baby in the moonlights, I had a wicked, dazzling bout of schadenfreude. Schadenfreude is that wicked and shameful tickle of pleasure one feels at someone else’s misfortune. It felt like I’d gotten a little hit of something. It made me feel better about myself. “Do you have it?” I asked innocently, and he said that he didn’t think so because it was a week or so old. I then found myself clearing my throat and saying in a flat, innocently curious voice, “Why don’t you go look?” So he did, and returned to the phone with it, and I said, nice as pie, “Now read it.” And when he was done, I said, “Man, that was like Christmas for me.” Then we laughed and it was ok for a minute.

God, it was painful though, too, and the hangover was debilitating. I was deeply aware of the worm inside of me and the grim bits that I feed it. The secret envy inside me is maybe the worst thing about my life. I am the Saddam Hussein of jealousy. But the grace is that there are a couple of people I can tell it to without them staring at me as if I have fruit bats flying out of my nose, who just nod, and maybe laugh, and say, Yep, yep, I get it, I’m the same. Still, I feel like it must drive Jesus just out of his mind sometimes, that instead of loving everyone like he or she is my sibling, with a heart full of goodwill and tenderness and forgiveness, I’m secretly scheming and thinking my dark greedy thoughts. I say to him, Bear with me, dude. He does give me every single thing I need, but then I still want more, and I picture him stamping around like Danny DeVito, holding up these gnarled beseeching hands of frustration, saying, “Oy fucking veh.”


January 30

It’s great to have so many friends who had babies right around the time I did – even if it did make me bitter and resentful that they also got to have husbands and nurseries – because they all have extremely bad attitudes and sick senses of humor like me. It would be intolerable to call a friend, a new mother, when you were really feeling down and for her to say some weird aggressive shit like “Little Phil slept through the night yesterday, isn’t that marvelous since he’s only eight weeks old, and guess what, I’m already fitting back into my prepregnancy clothes.” You’d really have no choice but to hope for disaster to rain down on such a person.


Obviously there are many other points Anne makes between the December 5 and January 30 posts…about 27 pages worth, actually. But these two really speak to me these days because I am dealing with a certain person in my life that projects a certain amount of perfection and I just cannot help but let it get to me; in fact, I can barely keep it from consuming me. So it is nice to read that someone else not only feels this way too, but expresses it the way I would. It is refreshing to hear someone admit they aren’t perfect. It is validating to read that someone else struggles with the same issues that I do and it is hopeful that someone else considers it grace to have friends who “I can tell it to without them staring at me as if I have fruit bats flying out of my nose, who just nod, and maybe laugh, and say, Yep, yep, I get it, I’m the same”. Which isn’t to say that the feelings are good or moral or right; but to know that I am not the only one who believes in a God who saved me not just for the big sins but for just the sin of being human is comforting and fills those dark voids where the demons hang out with joy and peace and love.

Have you read anything lately that you really identified with?