Random mommy babble

* An update on the tooth situation -- it's just peekin'. No actual eruption yet. And it's just one, a bottom-middle one. When it pokes a little further through, then you will get pictures.

* Isaac is running a little fever (armpit said 98.7, but maybe I didn't stick it in there far enough?) and he has a little hacky-cough. I would LIKE to attribute it to teething, but we saw how that went last time. Also, there is a minor cold running around my lab. Let us hope we escape it, with my manly, robust immune system.

* We booked our tickets to fly home to Indianapolis for the holidays. We will be arriving December 20th and leaving January 4th. Am I looking forward to flying the long stretch to and from Chicago with an 8.5-month-old baby? Heck, no. We did it with a 3.5-month-old baby, and that was fine -- he slept, or he chilled laying down in the seat. This guy will not be excited about staying in one boring place the whole time. And then there's the solid-food feeding issue, and the poop issue now that his stinks. Need I go on? It will suck, and again we will be those people with the screaming baby.

* Another dilemma: what to do about Christmas cards this year? Option 1: make up the First Annual O'Neal Christmas Letter, including ink-jet pictures of Isaac. Option 2: fork out the fat cash for a little greeting card with a big Isaac picture on it. Option 3: forgo the whole shenanigan, figuring that anyone I would send a Christmas card to knows about this blog anyway. Is it wrong that I am strangely drawn to Option 3?

* All is well with the world because Grandma Susan gave us a Starbucks gift card. Thank you, Grandma Susan.

Big boys

Sunday morning Mindy and Mr. Mindy had us all over for brunch. They had accumulated too much bacon for one family to eat, a situation we were happy to help remedy. As always, Isaac and Clayton had a blast playing around each other, and, now that Clayton is getting into this stand-up thing, too, having table-smacking contests. Here they took a break to stare at the camera. Note that Isaac is holding Clayton's hand...awwwwwwwwww.

A sleep theory

Yesterday was a bad, bad day for Dad and I. We had just about had it with the new Isaac sleep schedule:

Down at 7:30 pm
Up at 11 or 11:30 pm, fall asleep nursing
Up at 2:30 am, fall asleep nursing
Up at 3 or 3:30 am with a poo diaper/full pee diaper/random indeterminate source of discomfort, rock or pat back to sleep
Up at 5:45 am, usually up for good, but occasionally fall asleep nursing, waking up at 7:00

Whatever happened to our good little monster who only got up once a night? Dad was freaking out because he has to get sleep to finish his dissertation; I am freaking out because Dad is freaking out and asking me to do impossible things like start sleeping with the baby again. Dad's eventual solution to the problem was to impose a 9:30 bedtime for the grownups, which I stuck to last night. At 11:30, Isaac woke up. Dad, still awake, went to take care of him, but in the end we found out he wanted a boobie. He fell asleep nursing. I came back to our bedroom and Dad is so excited -- evidently tonight will be the night that Isaac will sleep like a champ! Dad can just feel it! I roll my eyes and throw him a "whatever" -- *I* know that my baby will be up again at 2:30. You can therefore imagine my panic when I awoke at 4:00 and no sounds were emanating from the monitor. "My darling baby is dead," I think. "I should go check on him," I think. And then I think the better. If my baby is asleep, and I go in and have a peek to reassure myself as such, he will smell me and wake up. Morbidly I also think, "If he really is dead, what can I do about it?" Sick, yes, but again, this is 4:00 in the morning. Eventually I go back to sleep, and Isaac, true to form, wakes up at 5:45. I go in and nurse him and he cuts himself off and starts softly babbling to me, oddly, with his eyes still shut. "Maybe I can get him to go back to sleep for a bit," thinks I. And I put him in his crib and pat his back a bit and indeed, off he goes. I sneak back in bed until 7 and am awakened by my alarm clock. Dad and I go downstairs and grind the morning coffee, but still no Isaac. I start the shower going -- still no Isaac. Dad eventually wakes him up during my shower and dresses him for daycare. It was a lovely morning.

Later, I had a thought. My baby used to "sleep through the night" quite well, meaning he woke up maybe once instead of 3 or 4 times. Then I thought, yesterday I had no caffeine except for two cups of 2/3 decaf coffee in the early morning and a sip or two of Dad's Coke from Wendy's. Usually I have a big cup of fully caffed-up coffee at work in the a.m. and a Big Gulp Dr. Pepper in the p.m. Here comes my genius thought -- maybe he slept last night because he wasn't chock-full of caffeine from the boobie. So let's experiment. Unfortunately, today was a "usually" day, so if he doesn't sleep well, then we have 2 out of 2 days conforming to my theory. Tomorrow morning I will desperately try to stay awake without much coffee, I will abstain from the Dr. P in the evening, and we will test my theory again tomorrow night.

We have toothage!

I have been checking Isaac's bottom gum with my finger daily now for the impending tooth eruption, and today it came, replete with its very own rough top surface. My little carnivore. Unfortunately, I didn't get a chance to take a picture, or even see it. I touched at it around Baby-bot bedtime, so Dad got to look at it, but he wouldn't let me bug Isaac because he was "calming down." Whatever -- this is monumental. To that end, I'm not even sure if it's one or two. More details tomorrow when I have the opportunity for dental spelunking.

Finger food fears, part 2

Tonight we tried some finger foods. Spurred on by Nicole's suggestion of "deli meat" and cheese, I tore up little bits of turkey and colby-jack and placed them on his tray for him to sample. He was skeptical about the cheese:

But he was downright disgusted by the turkey. He would accidentally grab a bit and put it in his mouth and make the awful peas-face and spit it out. Once he made the mistake of getting a stringy bit in there and he gagged (not the life-threatening choking kind, thank goodness) and coughed and retched until he threw up the peaches I had just fed him, expelling the offending turkey in the process. Poor guy. Good luck, Nicole.

Baby, it's cold outside

Jealous for many weeks of Clayton's, we finally broke down and got a bunting for Isaac:

For some reason I was under the impression that buntings had no arms and no legs, which I knew would not fly with my squirmy-pillar. But Clayton has this blue fleece bunting that he wears on our walk every day as a protective outer shell that is the greatest -- I bundle up Isaac as best I can, but there is always a treacherous little gap between the end of his pants legs and the beginning of his socks, and currently all his heavy coats are too big for him, which means that his hands linger inside the too-long sleeves with no gloves. This lovely red number has hands and feet that fold over to shield my Buster from the elements. I got it for $20 at Sierra Trading Post. Buying clothes for him is always quite difficult because of his monstrous size, so I went for the "12 month" one. The legs are just barely long enough, but some genius made the arms as long as the legs (you know, because babies are built like monkeys), so they are way too long. Oh well -- it'll work for now, and hopefully until he fits into his coats better.

Christmas for Isaac

I am having a major dilemma about what to get Isaac for Christmas. It's one thing to send a big list to the grandparents and everyone else, but it's another thing entirely to sit down and try to think about what I would like to give my first child on his first Christmas. See? It sounds so heavy, so laden with importance, like I need to get him something extremely significant. Never mind that said significance would be lost on him -- this is important, right? I am also wary of the inevitable toy/clothing avalanche that will be coming from the grandparents. There is a part of me that leans heavily towards savings bonds, or just throwing a big bunch of money in a CD or something for him. There is a funky part of me that has fallen in love with the idea of punk baby clothes. Should I crochet him a cap for our long walks outside? Ach, the dilemma.

And then there's his stocking. Dad and I bought our stockings a long time ago at Marshall's (and one for cat-brother, too) -- they are tastefully decorated, mine a bit more garish than his, without our names on them. I am really, really tempted to buy Isaac a personalized stocking from LL Bean -- at my mom & dad's, everybody has a stocking with their name on it hung around the fireplace, something I really enjoy, although I also like that Dad and I picked our stockings out ourselves. We went to Marshall's yesterday with the intent to buy a stocking for Isaac, but all they had were either sumptuous tapestry ones (those scream BABY! Not.) or goofy felt ones that would probably not make it to another Christmas. More dilemmas. What would you guys do if you were me? Can't tell that I like the informed-decision pathway, can you?

Finger food fears

I got an email from Isaac's teacher today:
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Hi Claire!

I am writing to ask that you start bringing in some finger foods for Isaac. There are lots of options for you. You could bring in some frozen peas or veggies, cut up cheese in bite size pieces, cubed meat or sliced deli meat, etc. Another really great (and easy) option is the kind of jar food that is already diced and ready to go for you. Most of the major jar food lines make jars of green beans, diced carrots, peaches, etc. I really think Isaac is ready for more self feeding and texture in his food and we just don't have enough variety to meet his needs. Please let me know if you have any more questions about this.

Thanks, Nicole
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What was most funny about this is that I had been asking all my coworkers about expanding Isaac's finger-food repertoire. He has been excruciatingly annoyed at meals lately, and I can tell that it's because he has had it with the boring mushy stuff. He is all about the Cheerios, but I know that I need to break into some new territory soon, lest that get mind-numbingly old as well. The problem is that I keep putting off feeding him real-people food because I am deathly afraid that he will choke to death on something. I have no clue what is mushy or not mushy to babies, or, for that matter, what the precise diameter of Isaac's poor little choke-hole is. Nicole above says peas, but the new-mommy bible says no peas, they are a choking hazard. Grrrrreat. And exactly what size shall I make these "bite-sized pieces", eh? I welcome advice from been-there, done-that mommies. Please help me protect my baby's airway.

Baby-jail

Also from Target, another long-overdue purchase: baby gates!

I was eagerly awaiting the gating of the top of the stairs, so Buster could freely roam about the upstairs while I did laundry, cleaned the bathroom, etc. But Dad has vetoed that -- he thinks that gating the top of the stairs means that I will be tumbling down the stairs with Isaac in hand as I try to maneuver over the gate. He said that a similar thing nearly happened to Isaac's aunt and one of her babies, and he doesn't want a repeat here. He may also be factoring in the extreme klutziness of his wife, but that is a story for another day. Anyway, for now the baby-gate will close off Isaac in his room. (And, when Dad is not looking, we will put it at the top of the stairs, taking it down when we are done with our upstairs romping. Shhhhhhh.)

Moving on from fruits and veggies?

First let me say that our baby is 100% a Gerber baby. Everything he eats either comes from the boobie or from the folks at Gerber. When he first started eating solids, I was drawn to the cereals and such from "natural" food companies, those that go out of their way to use organic grains and no pesticides or hormones, yada yada. Well, that all ended when I noticed that those hippies don't fortify their cereals with anything but iron. Gerber cereal is like most big-people cereal -- souped up with small amounts of most of the vitamins and minerals, and, because even breastfed babies need vitamin supplements from time to time, we figure this is easily the smartest way to go.

Today at Target I was intrigued by the preponderance of non-fruit, non-veggie 2nd Foods, like "Assorted Dinners" -- a four-pack of pureed meaty dishes like beef and vegetables and chicken noodles. We'll tell you how those "Baby Alpo" dishes go over. Tonight we tried out Gerber's version of Mac & Cheese, and it was not as well-received as the accompanying prunes.

But then again, it tastes verrrrrry different from what he's used to, so we will keep at it.

More movies

Back by popular demand, more Isaac-footage:
1) Crawling -- Isaac's new moves in action. You see at the end, however, how he now easily gets himself in trouble.
2) Chasing cat-brother -- Isaac uses his new maneuverability and speed to stalk poor Moses. Yet Moses manages to evade him...this time.
3) Is that a wave? -- what started out as another attempt to capture the crawling in action accidentally caught a little surprise move from Isaac. And then at the end more evidence of trouble-causing.

Matching haircuts

My recent haircut was inspired by my friend Jen, who also braved the scariness that is chopping off your long hair. I liked her haircut so much that I went to the stylist who did hers, and I brought Jen along with me as a 3D model to show what I wanted done. Here we are, posing as I am getting ready to drive her and Andy home after Thanksgiving dinner:

Not just yet, but...

Isaac is working overtime trying to figure out how to climb up the stairs.


He is not frustrated with it yet, which is great, because he easily entertains himself for 15 minutes at a time just standing up using the bottom step and bouncing up and down. Very fun and hands-off for his mom. Also an excellent escape route for cat-brother when Isaac is in hot pursuit.

Horsing around with Dad

Each morning, Baby-monster and Dad have a morning reunion time on the couch while Dad slowly devours his coffee and I get to scarf down some breakfast. Examples of this morning's exploits:


Dad-assisted baby gymnastics

"Is that your eye? Oh, sorry..."

After dinner

After the turkey was devoured, we all sat around our living room and, in the early hours, played with Isaac, who was being quite the entertainer, or, later on, talked about geology (I elected to play with my camera at that point). Here are Jen and Andy yakking it up with Dad about glaciers and whatnot:

"Read me this book, Andy!"

Buster showing off his mad standing-up skillz. Note his reflection in our *highly polished* coffee table. Because we cleaned. Oh yes. Well, mostly -- we actually didn't get a chance to vacuum -- we put it off too late, and then Jen and Andy arrived 20 minutes early because they took the bus. Perhaps I should think about vacuuming sometime soon, as opposed to hand-picking the leaf bits off the floor as Isaac finds them.

Twin geologists

We enjoyed that Jen's boyfriend, Andy, and Dad were matchies. Well, sort of.

Thanksgiving at our house

I tried (not very hard) to find Thanksgiving foods that Isaac might like. He seriously hated the mashed potatoes, made a HORRIBLE face akin to first discovering peas when I tried to spoon some in his mouth. We didn't seem to have much else that was 7.5-month-old-baby-appropriate -- cranberry sauce is full of sugar, pumpkin pie is full of spices (though other babies did seem to like it) In the end, he found something to eat on his own -- we sat him by the rolls at the table, and he kept grabbing at the basket. We finally decided to let him have one, and he spent the rest of the meal chowing down on this particularly soft number:

Our Thanksgiving table

Clockwise from front left: Aleksia (hidden), Me, Isaac, Andy (reaching for salad in our cramped little dining/blog-puter room), Jen, Ryan, and Dad is taking the picture. We ate: a 9.5 lb turkey, garlic mashed potatoes, apple stuffing, cranberry sauce, green beans, "special" gravy with a "secret ingredient" (rumor has it it's sweat socks), rolls, and wild greens salad with macadamia-encrusted goat cheese. All items were prepared by Dad except for the cranberry sauce (my specialty) and the salad, made by Jen and Andy. Extremely delicious, all -- the turkey was one of Dad's best ever. Dad would like to add that it's amazing what 2 lbs of butter can do to a turkey's flavor.

I made dessert

The night before, I made pumpkin pie, my "specialty", and a pumpkin-orange cake from Cooking Light that Dad had requested. This was the very first multi-layer cake I had ever made, and also my first attempt at frosting (it was cream cheese) from scratch.

The cake definitely turned out well, but was an altogether too complicated recipe with overly exotic ingredients, as I find most things from Cooking Light to be -- they wanted you to use egg substitute instead of egg; the topping was also supposed to include the seeds of two pomegranates, which I don't even know how to cut open; and then it called for cake flour, and we couldn't find cake flour ANYwhere, not even at professional-chef-haven Whole Foods. Instead of all these, I used a real egg, no pomegranate, and whole-wheat pastry flour (better for you anyway) -- and it still turned out great. We had a good laugh about how this cake, which required a whole stick of butter, was in Cooking Light. Dad noted that, in order to be "light", this cake was supposed to serve 14 people. He thought they should have added at the end, "Serve with a Diet Coke."

Thanksgiving with Mindy and Clayton

All the pictures from above where from Thanksgiving dinner, aka supper/evening-meal. We ALSO had Thanksgiving dinner, aka lunch/noonish-meal with Mindy and Clayton and their family. Clayton's Grandma and Grandpa (his dad's parents) came to town from Montana and were eager to meet our little family, having heard so much about us. But most amazing is that Dad prepared the turkey and stuffing for BOTH meals, a culinary feat he had never before attempted. Here he is, shoving stuffing in Mindy's 12+ lb turkey at 8:30 am:

We decided to have two Thanksgivings because we are malnourished. Just kidding! It was because Dad needed something to do. Just kidding on that one, too. Actually, we were planning originally to wrap it all into one dinner, but in the end we decided a) 10 adults + 2 babies would be a little much to fit into anybody's apartment, b) the probability of a baby getting smooshed would increase exponentially with the number of bodies put in such a limited space, and c) clear conversational lines would probably be drawn between the Montana crowd and the Geo-centric crowd just out of habit. Also, Dad and I selfishly wanted each crowd to ourselves -- we wanted to be able to converse as much as we liked with each set individually. All in all, it was an awesome day. We really enjoyed Clayton's grandparents (and of course Mindy and Mr. Mindy and Clayton). Clayton's grandma and Mindy cooked us mashed potatoes, green bean casserole, yams with marshmallows, brussel sprouts, cranberry sauce, and salad on top of Dad's turkey and stuffing. For dessert, we ladies went all out with a pie-array -- I made a pumpkin pie, Mindy made her specialty, banana-cream pie, and Grandma made pecan pie. After we gorged ourselves on this dinner, Dad and I realized the flaw in our well-orchestrated dinner preparation plans -- we had neglected the overpowering effect of a belly full of turkey. We had to slurp up the coffee to recover enough energy to host our own Thanksgiving dinner later that night (and for Dad to cook a whole 'nother turkey!).

The sleep-fighter

Isaac has cut out a nap in the day -- he is down from three to two now, one for the morning and one for the afternoon. Unfortunately, he has not cut out his sleep-fighting strategy, where he screams and kicks and makes a major fuss about lying down for a nap (or for bedtime, for that matter). His standing-up has only added another sleep-evading tool to his repertoire:

"Naps are for girly-babies!"

Dad finally bought Thanksgiving-ware

After years of moaning and groaning that we had neither a suitable gravy boat nor turkey platter for serving Thanksgiving dinner at our house, Dad finally broke down and got us these things. Luckily, they also came with a box...additional proof that the best things in life are "free".

"Can you guys just ship me to Grandma's house? I bet they already have my Christmas presents..."

Dad buys a perfectly good baby at Crate & Barrel's scratch-n-dent sale

Chunky monster and his flu booster

Isaac had a flu booster shot on Thursday afternoon -- I forgot to blog about it. Evidently, the first time you get the flu shot, regardless of how old you are, you need a booster. Everytime after that, no booster. He did fine, the same as always -- horrible wailing for 5 seconds, and then a smile for his shot-giver. We also had his ears checked out while we were at the doctors' office. He had been pulling on them quite frequently for the past two weeks, and I wanted to rule out the possibility of an ear infection, especially since Dad's early childhood was chock-full of 'em. Before they checked him out, they wanted him weighed, I suppose to make sure he was still a beefcake. BEEFCAKE! And he was. 20 lbs, 5 oz. Yikes. Oh yeah, and no ear infections -- he's healthy as a horse. A lard-butt horse, that is.

You know you're a mom when...

you get "The Mom" haircut:


The stylist took at least 5 inches off my hair. I told her to. Know why? It's so my darling son would quit ripping out fistfulls of my long Rapunzel hair. At first I was a little hesitant about it, but now I love it, for two reasons. Dad told me I look hot, which usually means it was a good choice. But perhaps equally important is that Isaac tried to grab my hair immediately upon our reunion and his pudgy little hands couldn't find enough to get a grip on. Bliss, it was.

I actually had an appointment to get this done on Friday, but, mommy-brain in full-gear, I wrote down that my appointment was at 12:30 when it was actually at 12. Someone else had recently lamented the difficulties of being a mom and getting a haircut. This is another of those things that nobody tells you about before you give birth -- that getting a haircut is next to impossible. I had to sneak mine in when I was supposed to be at work (SSSSSSHHHHHHH!!!!).

Suddenly -- BAM! -- everything happens

So much is happening with what seems to be our brand-new little person that it is difficult for even a blog addict such as myself to keep up. I wanted to jot down a few things that have been going on with Isaac in the past few days:

1) He waved to me for the first time -- I was pumping gas and trying to entertain him in his car seat. I started waving like a crazy person, and he waved right back at me.
2) He has now completely mastered "real" crawling, so much so that he cannot be trusted to stay where he is even for a second. This also means traveling amongst rooms and hallways at his leisure, and for we parental units, discovering that our house is a baby death trap. For example: Isaac recently took a trip, under constant Mom supervision, to the underside of our end table. Before Isaac did, I discovered therein a 9-volt battery to poison ourselves on, a small mouse cat-toy to choke on, and a Christmas ornament replete with hook to impale ourselves on. Great. Oh, and this also means that we are way past due in the whole gate-for-the-stairs thing. My temporary solution is to not let him leave my watchful gaze. At all. Seriously.
3) He has become rather skilled at feeding himself Cheerios. Evidently they feed him these at daycare now, too.
4) We thought for a while there that he hated green vegetables. Every time I tried to feed him peas or green beans, he would pitch a fit. Now we realize it's because, since he's suddenly such a little explorer, he is entirely bored with our eating process. Tonight he started screaming about the sweet potatoes, which he usually adores, so Dad offered to serenade him on the guitar while he ate, and he ate the whole container without a fuss.
5) He really enjoys reading. Until like two days ago, he couldn't sit still for half of a book unless he was really exhausted. Now, he loves having books read to him and will sit for TWO whole books at a time. Sometimes he even helps turn the pages. We are therefore trying to fit in at least one book per day. His new favorite, which he hated before, is The Very Hungry Caterpillar. He likes to put his fingers in the holes where the caterpillar has "eaten". Other big faves are Owl Babies and I Am A Bunny.
6) He can pull up on his crib rail, even at its "tall" position. Last night, he was up there each time I came in to get him.
7) He no longer fits in his ducky tub, and instead takes his baths in the big-people tub. Because I fear my back will fail otherwise, I get in there with him.

All this and still NO TEETH. Can you believe it?

Dad tames the savage beast

Isaac is extremely entertained by Dad's guitar-playing

Forbidden fruit

Isaac chased me all around the kitchen until I let him touch my Harry & David apple (mmmmmm -- thanks, Grandma Jane).

We are officially "those people"

We went for brunch this morning to that perenially tres chic venue, IHOP. Mommy needs her pumpkin pancakes, yo. And now that our little dude is sitting up like a champ, we figured he would be perfect for a high-chair. This is much to Dad's delight -- usually us going out = Dad holding Isaac on his lap, desperately trying to entertain Isaac long enough to shove some food in the Dad pie-hole. And just when this was getting much more complicated, here we have our sit-up boy, who can control himself well-enough to free up Dad's hands for a more enjoyable dining experience. Here's Isaac in his first restaurant high chair:


Well, a more enjoyable dining experience for *us*, anyway. IHOP was very busy, and we still got shoved to a back corner table, which we liked better anyway because it was a little more private. When we first got there, a couple slightly older than us + their mom and dad were eating in the booth next to us, and none of them could keep their delighted eyes off of our chirpy-monster. We were quite grateful for this because Isaac was, well, not loud, let's say, but also not quiet. However, these people soon left and were replaced by a 30-something couple who said things very quietly about how "noisy" it was with our occasionally screeching child. And then there was the Cheerios fandango -- I brought along some Cheerios to keep Isaac busy, and, in typical Isaac-fashion, about 3/4 of them ended up on the floor, which then became Cheerio-dust as we moved around him. We also got excited about pancakes. We heard pancakes pass the baby-finger-food test, so we tore off little pieces of our pancakes, and Dad got a great idea to roll them up into little balls so as to be easier for pudgy little fingers to pick up. While some of these found their way into Isaac's gaping maw, most joined their fallen Cheerio brothers on the floor. So the moral to the story: when we eat out, we are now "those people" with the kid -- noisy and excruciatingly messy. Watch out -- we may be coming to a restaurant near you. As long as they have high chairs.

Isaac wants the green stuff

Isaac's new hat

Isaac got this spiffy new chapeau from Grandma Carolyn. It is a "golfing"-style hat, though his noggin makes it look like a beret from certain angles. He is a total hottie in it, don't you think?

New gastronomic experiences

Two special eating-time things:

1) Now that Isaac is sitting up like a champ, they are transitioning him to eating his meals at the wee little table at his school. He sits in a munchkin chair, with help from his adult girlfriend Alicia for now, and spills stuff all over himself. He made such a mess today that he went through two outfits in the 5 hours he was there -- they sent him home in some stranger's jeans (which are really rad, by the way...do I have to give them back?).

2) He is getting better and better at feeding himself Cheerios. He can't pick them up with his thumb and forefinger yet, as you and I would, so he comes up with artful ways to coerce them into his mouth. He is particularly fond of the fist-shove, where he rakes a bunch up with his hand and then makes a fist, which might force one near the outside of his hand. If it does not, he opens his fist and bangs the Cheerios loose against his tray and tries the whole process over. If he does get one on the outside, he rubs his fist inelegantly over his whole mouth, trying to dislodge the Cheerio into his waiting pie-hole. I made a movie of him eating a Cheerio that is not the greatest, but it is a movie nonetheless. The Cheerio-eating is at the very beginning, and at the end you get to hear the new Isaac-speak and you can realize why I tell you that I am quite sure he is trying to say real words.

People are just moving jungle-gyms

Now that Isaac is pulling-up, he looks more often than not to perfect his skillz on a moving target. Especially if it is a mom or a dad. Photographic evidence captured by Dad:

Isaac and his shape-sorter bucket

One of mine and Isaac's favorite toys is his shape-sorter bucket. This bucket has twelve blocks, in four different shapes each in three different colors. A fun thing for us for a long time has been the stack-up (by Mom) and smack-down (by Baby). But now Isaac enjoys dumping the bucket over himself. Many times this is only to get at the lid, which is clearly the most interesting block of them all.

"That's right, I got the lid off myself. So check out my onesie and how it reveals my man-boobs!"

"My fingers must be star-shaped, cause they fit right in this hole"

Cuteness + blocks go hand-in-hand

Crazy Seattle bikers trying to give me a heart attack

I was driving to pick up Dad with Isaac in the backseat when we saw a horrible accident. An SUV driving a little ways in front of us turned off the main drive and onto a lane immediately next to and running parallel to the main drive. This lane exists to provide access to a small strip of businesses, like a non-Starbucks coffee shop, an upholsterers, and a dry cleaners. This lane is one-way, but is only marked with one or two nearly undetectable signs as being such. Anyway, my eyes casually wandered over to watch this SUV turn into the lane when I noticed an extremely bright light moving toward him at a very rapid pace. It took me a second to figure out that this light belongs to a bike, being piloted by a complete idiot wearing all black, who is biking the wrong way up this lane. Time sort of stood still when I heard the SUV slam on its brakes too late, and I watched the bike collide with the grill of the SUV and send its rider somersaulting head-first into the SUV's windshield. There is a second where I think that this biker may have just died.

I pulled over at the next possible drive because I 1) am a witness and 2) have a cell phone, take Isaac out of his carseat, and run over to the scene of the accident, where two additional people, a guy and a lady from the upholstery shop, are now helping the biker over onto the sidewalk. The biker is conscious (and surprisingly geriatric), but is having major trouble walking and has cuts and blood all over the place. I ask if I can help by calling an ambulance, and the lady tells me they have already done that. Another lady runs out of the upholstery shop and the first lady introduces this newcomer as a nurse. Nurse Upholsterer tells the biker that he should be lying down, and Crazy Biker complies by quickly losing consciousness, melting almost out of the arms of those trying to assist him. He wakes up 15 seconds later and is surprised to find that he is lying flat on the sidewalk.

With Crazy Biker relatively safe and secure, I turn to the SUV-Driver, a middle-aged guy with a really cute, brown-haired 2-year-old, and ask him if he's okay. The two year old assures me that they are "fine", and his dad adds, "well, physically, at least." SUV Dad puts his boy down to help Crazy Biker, and I call the kid over to me and get him to hold my hand to help him stay out of the way. This is all with Isaac on my right hip, completely sockless as I didn't anticipate that we would be leaving the warm interior of our car. I try to ask the kid his name, and he says "Cah-ahh". "Oh, Carter?" I say. "NO!. Cah-ah." "Oh, Cah-ah." His Dad laughs at me. Later, his Dad calls him Connor. Meanwhile, I ask Connor again how he is, and he says he is fine. Then we hear sirens, and I say "Look, Connor, it's a fire engine!" He is very excited to see a fire engine. Then comes an ambulance, which I also announce the arrival of; again, he is stoked. The whole time he is very quiet, but at the same time curious, appearing riveted by what is going on with Crazy Biker man. He has also been taught well by his dad -- whenever I ask him to hold my hand, he automatically sticks his out for the grabbing.

To make a long story short, Crazy Biker goes away with the ambulance conscious enough to know what his wife's name is and her phone number so that we can call her and tell her to meet him at the hospital, but it is quite clear that the poor guy probably has something broken, or at the very least has a concussion. SUV Dad's windshield is completely decimated and I give him my phone numbers, because evidently I am the only person who saw the whole thing. Dad, who was lurking at a coffee shop nearby anyway, walked up to meet us and drove us home, and we talked the whole way about crazy people, especially of the biker persuasion, and how easily it is to kill oneself on the road.

In the kitchen

Everything fun happens in the kitchen. At least according to me, because there is food there. Isaac's favorite new place to scoot around in is, of course, the food-nexxus. Here he is playing with his new toy, the dishwasher, which he finds highly entertaining because the lowered door is a great height for him to pull up on. But more often than not, he is content to just Swiffer the floor for us with his knees.

Another thing he likes to do is to make a beeline for the cat food dish. Each morning, cat-brother gets a small aliquot of "soft food". Right after Isaac started army-crawling, I made the mistake of putting cat-brother's food dish, full of fresh and juicy processed fish guts, down on the kitchen floor while Isaac lingered on the kitchen perimeter. I turned to pour myself a glass of OJ. I turned back around just in time to see Isaac tentatively place his widespread palm gingerly, cautiously, onto the surface of the kitty chum. Grrrr-ross. Needless to say, I now schedule our morning kitchen time such that cat-brother has to suffer without his soft food until Isaac and I are done in the kitchen.

A Christmas request

As Isaac hasn't seen most of the fam since he was knee-high to a tadpole, we are thinking that people may not be received too well initially when we come home at Christmas time. Interestingly, I recently came across a toy of Isaac's that we haven't used much yet -- a baby-proof photo album for babies. Meaning an album that you fill with pictures you want Isaac to look at and then chew on (but he can't actually chew on them because they are encased in plastic). This gave me an idea: it would be really great if the fam who are reading this (this means you too, Jean) could e-mail me some digital or scanned pictures of themselves. Not anything fancy, just one or two with clear shots of the face. Dad and I can print them out and stick them in this photo album, thereby pre-acquainting Isaac with his relatives. Pretty please?

Walking...and sleeping

Isaac in his stroller after our walk

Isaac is now too big for his Bjorn, so we are transitioning to the stroller. I hate it. With all the hills in our neighborhood, I am constantly afraid that I will trip or slip or something and let go of the stroller and it will go careening down a hill and into an oncoming car. But I must put up with it, because Buster is just too fat to fit in his Bjorn with his newly-necessary foul-weather gear on.

Isaac slept through the night last night, from 7:30 till 4:30. This would have been nice, except that I had a nightmare that woke me up at 2:00 and largely prevented me from going back to sleep. Here was my nightmare: Isaac and I were walking around a futuristic shopping mall with his pediatrician, Dr. Kira. For whatever reason, I decided to leave Isaac in the care of Dr. Kira while I walked around. Because this is a futuristic shopping mall, there are lots of escalators that lead to platforms that are just floating in space, and Isaac and Kira wind up on one of these platforms, presumably on their way to somewhere else. I am on a balcony nearby, but my balcony is not connected to where they are, so I can see them, but not get to them. On their platform, Kira puts Isaac down for a second, and Isaac promptly crawls over the edge of the platform and begins falling to a certain death, as they are about 100 feet above the first floor of the mall below. I can do nothing but watch in horror because I am too far away. Luckily, Kira reacts quickly and slides over to the edge, reaching out and grabbing Isaac by the ankle. I can't move because I am too horrified by what almost happened. And then I wake up. Obviously, I am quite shaken and am unable to fall back to sleep for sometime. When I did, I dreamed that I was telling people about my Isaac-falling dream.

All for you, Grandma Susan

Dad came home today and told me that Isaac's surrogate Grandma, Susan, was in desperate need of new blog material. I will blame my Sunday blog negligence on Dad, since he made me go to a party which additionally required that I bake a pumpkin pie, and then he tied me down to a chair and made me watch Shrek 2 with him after Isaac went to bed. Two thumbs way up on that movie, by the way.

Dinner party etiquette sound-off

Oh yeah, and some unnamed big-wig who was at this party, also a new father and who showed up very unfashionably late, commented on how beautiful our little girl was. I could have smacked him. First, this guy knows Dad and, while Dad isn't so chit-chatty with other academic types, I'm sure at some point this guy must have picked up on the fact that our baby is a BOY. Second, to avoid such embarassing scenarios as is set up by the gender-guessing game, I try as much as possible to color-code my child. Because EVERYone knows that Blue = Boy, yes? The only thing more masculine than blue clothing, evidently are cowboy-clothing items. At the time when this awful person misspoke, Isaac was wearing a navy long-sleeved onesie with light-blue trim, jeans, and his dino shoes. Which brings me to Third, shoes with dinosaurs on them = wearer is a boy. Is this not obvious? Grr.

Mindy and I have decided that, if you are at all in doubt about the gender of a baby, or even if you think you know, it is best to stick to the following script, which we have found is actually well-rehearsed among moms:

Gender-guesser: How old is your baby?
Claire: He is 7 months old.
Gender-guesser: Wow, what a handsome little guy!

See how it goes? A gender-neutral question, necessitating a response from the parent where the parent is expected to provide the requisite gender information to avoid all embarrassment by the inquirer whatsoever. Very simple. Please spread the word.

Incidentally, this reminds me of the millions of rude questions I was asked when I was pregnant with my darling baby. Now, I am really not a sensitive person in general, but when it comes to babies it seems that my tick-off threshold is considerably lower than usual. Some of my very favorite rude questions, which I and/or Mindy endured many, many times while pregnant:

"How much weight have you gained?"
"Don't you think you should wait until you're further along to tell people you're pregnant?"
"[upon noticing that a certain finger lacks a ring because said finger is too fat and swollen] Are you going to raise that baby yourself?"

And my all-time favorite question, which was asked of me too many times to count:
"Were you trying to get pregnant?" [implying, of course, that our baby is an "accident"]

From these, I devised a small repertoire of thoughtful and appreciated questions that will gain the seeker his or her desired insight into the pregnant woman's condition, or prompt the expectant mother to spill her beans as she pleases. These questions are: 1) "When are you due?" and 2) "How are you feeling"?

Anyway, that is my little soapbox.

The Isaac Renaissance

Just as the Renaissance came about as a sudden blossoming of minds, so has our intrepid hero acquired many new skillz almost simultaneously, which now causes him to rock our world. In the last week alone, Isaac has learned how to:
1) get into a sitting position by himself
2) really crawl (expanding from his army-crawling only repertoire)
3) say such notable syllables as "da" "tuh" "kuh" "suh", and intermingle them together
4) pull himself up on furniture or stairs and stand there
Here he is trying to climb the steps. We are actually cheating a bit -- the landing is just a hair too tall for him to swing his massive little gams up onto it, so he just flings his top half as far as he can onto it and then screams with frustration until I come and rectify the situation. But he very predictably crawls right up to it, reaches up onto it, and pulls his little self into a leaning-over standing position, or a modified stand/squat, as illustrated here.

All the physical activity is very exciting of course, but my very favorite is his babbling ability. When he does this, he actually sounds like he is trying to tell you something, or to point something out. Many times I find that I have to convince myself that he didn't just tell me "look at that crazy vacuum-cleaner," or "yes, that was my belly you made those loud farting noises on". Tonight when we picked up Dad from work, he babbled continuously along with the Beach Boys. Unfortunately, there is no "ma" kind of syllable yet in his repertoire, which is highly annoying. There is "dadadadada" all day long. What am I, chopped liver? I ONLY, oh, keep you alive with my dwindling fat reserves, you silly baby. But anyway, I find myself falling oh so deeply in love with him as he evolves into a "walking" "talking" little person. It is seriously detrimental to me getting anything done at work. I can't think about anything else but his irresistably, fascinatingly cute little personality. Is that really so wrong? If it is, I don't wanna be right. ;)

Isaac meets a girl

Well, I'm sure that he interacts with the girl-babies at his school, but I don't get to see it. Yesterday we went to a dinner party to say goodbye to a grad-student cohort of Dad's who is moving to Louisiana this week. This grad student is one of several in Dad's department who has reproduced in the past year; her baby, Abigail, is two months older than Isaac. Here they are staring intently at some fascinating big person:

We mommies entertained ourself largely by attacking anyone who came to the party late and forcing them to guess which of our babies was older. While you can't tell very well from this picture, we did this because Isaac looks like he eats Abigail-sized things for breakfast. I told her mom that Abigail looks like a supermodel, since she has legs that are about twice as long as the rest of her body, but she's as skinny as a string bean. Her mom says she is in the ~75th (?) percentile for height, but only the 14th percentile for weight. This is compared to our dear Buster, who is at the 75th percentile for both things. We think he is up around 21 lbs now (you should see my biceps -- I am totally G.L.O.W.ed out).

"Gimme those Cheerios, Woman"

A melding of bald, no, BLOND minds

Untying a stranger's shoe

Dinner party musings

Crawling in his people-pen

This is the first real social event I have attended with Isaac where I didn't know many people, and I was struck by a dichotomy at this party. The first thing Abigail's mom and I did was set up camp on one side of the room on the floor, and adoring parties formed a protective ring around the babies. This ring persisted throughout the night, and also as the babies came and went. We moms traded baby-holding with the respective Dads and with other baby-seekers in repeated, desperate attempts to stuff our faces, but mostly stayed put and entertained our little troopers. On the other side of the room was a dining table, which filled up over the course of the night with people who did not once enter the baby-ring. These people did not sit on the floor, but instead in proper chairs, ate as they pleased, and laughed and talked and drank a bottle of wine.

I thought about this obvious line-drawing several times over the course of the evening, and into today. I have to admit, I was really jealous of those babyphobic persons at the table, for several reasons.

1) Before I got pregnant, I had established the very pleasurable, classy, and heart-healthy habit of a nightly glass of red wine with dinner. For obvious reasons, I completely abstained from alcohol while carrying my darling child, and I could count on one hand the number of sips of alcoholic beverages I have had since Isaac popped out. That has been a big bummer for me. Totally doable, but still an occasional source of put-outedness.

2) Michael and I have had 1 (that's ONE) grownups-only night together since Isaac came along, for our anniversary in July. That's it. Before Isaac, we went out a lot. Now even leaving the house is a total chore, something most-times I don't have enough energy to do. I miss our mobility, but I also miss the time we had to just focus on each other, and on having grown-up conversation.

3) When the babyphobes went home, they would eventually go to sleep. And when they slept, it would be until they woke up or their alarms helped them to. When I went home, Isaac was so tired from this unusual activity that he had to be put down for a late nap at 5:45. He woke up at 6:30, and didn't go to bed until 8:30. The grownups went to bed at 10:30. Isaac woke up again for a late-night snack at 1:30, and then for good at 5:30.

So, like I said, I was jealous. Until I got home. When my baby woke up, it was time for his dinner. I turned on some dinner music for us and sang to him while I fed him, and he rehearsed his adorable babbling repertoire for me. Then I got down with him as he played on the floor, and every five minutes he would turn to me and babble or grin or something to get a smile out of me. Or he would try his hand at climbing Mt. Mom-more, his favorite object to practice his pull-ups on. My very favorite time, toward the end, was when he got too tired to crawl completely over my lap (we call that "off-roading"), and instead laid down, with his belly on my lap, turning his head to the side to lay it gently on my thigh. I will TOTALLY take that any day over whatever those crazy babyphobes went home to.

Sorting through the mail with Mom

"What'd we get in the mail for me, Mom?"

"You mean, I DIDN'T win a million dollars?"

"It says here I could save a bunch of money by switching to Geico..."

You're so vain

Isaac has a toy with a mirror on the back, and I've caught him several times just staring at himself and smiling. Here, he takes it a step further.

A new talent emerges

Having the whole sitting-up thing in the bag, Isaac has moved onto the next challenge -- the pull-up. Here's how it starts:
Pulling up on his newly converted toy-box (which used to be a magazine bin for the grown-ups)

Ta-da

Maybe we shouldn't disassemble the coffee table after all?

So there IS a limit

I had been wondering all along just how much sleep deprivation I could take. I mean, it sucks, yes, but when one is up late at night with your little bundle of joy it doesn't usually seem that bad, mainly because (again, usually) when Isaac gets up in the middle of the night, he just wants the boobie and then he falls right back to sleep. This is fine, and even enjoyable in its peacefulness sometimes. When it all REALLY starts to suck is when Isaac is perfectly happy to wake up for good at 5:00 in the morning. To the uninitiated, that doesn't really sound too horrible -- there actually are people I know who wake up at 5 every day. Unfortunately, I am not one of them. Also, these people have usually gone to sleep at a reasonable hour, unlike me, who insists on staying up wayyy past when I should to take care of mom-related business such as e-mail checking, blogging, preparing things for school the next day, housework, QT with the hubby, yada yada. Anyway, most nights I am lucky to get my butt in bed by 10, and I usually watch TV with Dad until much later than that. You know how it is -- one must have some semblance of non-baby, non-work activity to remain sane. This means that, most nights, I fall asleep at 10:30 or 11. Isaac adopts one of two nightly schedules, regardless of when he falls asleep: Schedule A is wake up at 1:00 or 1:30, then up for good at 5:00; Schedule B is wake up at 12:30, again at 3:30 or 4:00, then up for good at 5:30. This doesn't sound too bad, and it hasn't been for awhile. This is until Isaac has decided he didn't need (and therefore I also didn't get) an afternoon nap -- that he could just go from his lunchtime nap until bedtime at 7:30. Without these afternoon naps, I have succumbed to a light, but vicious caffeine cycle that, because I am breastfeeding, is probably only making his problems worse.

Today I woke up and decided I couldn't go on. I made Dad take Isaac when he was ready to go back to sleep at 6:30, and I went back to sleep until 9:00. This was not enough. I made Dad take me to Starbucks so I could try to chemically awaken myself, but then I promptly spilled the entire contents of my latte before I could drink it. At home, I got Isaac to take another nap, and I was able to sleep for an unfulfilling 20 minutes of his nap. After his nap, I showered while he sat, buckled into his rocking chair, singing with me. That went fine, until I decided using my sleep-deprived brain that after the shower he could sit unbuckled in his rocking chair for a second while I put on some deodorant. Of course he tumbled headfirst out of his chair and conked his head on the tub. Both he and I then had a good cry over how much his deadbeat mom sucks. And he is additionally sporting an angry red patch on his upper cheek and next to his eye that I will get grilled about at day care tomorrow. After we had recovered and Dad held Isaac under observation for a while to make sure he hadn't sustained any permanent damage, I took him downstairs to feed him some lunch, whereupon I promptly spilled the entire (large) contents of his pears+cereal+breastmilk meal onto the kitchen floor. To recap: I spilled 1) coffee 2) baby 3) cereal today. Not a good one, nope.

Preparing to climb Mt. Mom-more

Dad's fun games

Isaac has these soft (reversible!) nesting cups that, for whatever reason, have a hole in the bottom. Isaac chews on them with reckless abandon. I stack them on each other, hide things underneath them for him to find, and tell him about the colors and the patterns on the cups. I got nothin' on Dad. Dad made up this killer game tonight (see illustration above) where Isaac was a little fishy and Dad was the worm. Here's how the game goes: Dad puts his fist in one of the cups and pokes a finger through the hole in the bottom, wagging it gently to get Isaac's attention. Once Isaac looks, then the finger disappears! (ooh! where does it go?) After a short time, the finger slowly creeps back out and waves seductively at Isaac. Isaac reaches out to grab the mysterious finger, and if he succeeds, Dad starts barking. This drives Isaac to giggling fits.

Another popular new game Dad helps Isaac play is Catch. We have a spiky blue ball that is easy for Isaac to grab and chew on, but it also retains excellent bouncing properties. A few nights ago, we were all chillin' on the floor, and I was rolling the spiky ball back and forth between me and Buddy. Dad tells me to bounce it over to Isaac. Dad sits behind Isaac holding Isaac's arms, and when I bounce the ball to Isaac Dad brings Isaac's arms around the ball to "catch" it, eliciting shrill Mothra-baby screams of glee from Isaac. Then Dad helps Isaac to let go, "throwing" the ball back to me. I think we could have repeated this sequence into next Tuesday and Isaac would have still been awake. Anyway, we are all (especially Isaac) very impressed here with the inventiveness and baby-appeal of Dad's games.

"Teething" update

This is a little slow in the coming, but I forgot to tell you the aftermath of Isaac's fever from last Tuesday evening.

We had basically convinced ourselves that he was teething: 1) he was drooling excessively; 2) one time he didn't want to nurse unless there was Orajel involved; 3) he was pulling on his ears, but his ears didn't hurt him; 4) his chin rash had changed slightly in morphology; 5) he was having extra-special trouble sleeping; and of course 6) he was running a low-grade fever. All signs point to teething. But because of his fever, we had to stay home with Isaac last Wednesday. During the whole day he had none of these problems, and acted like his normal self. Maybe even better because he sat up on his own for the first time.

I dropped him off at daycare on Thursday a happy, healthy boy again. I told his teacher how he was doing, and that we were quite sure he was teething. She promptly tells me that she thinks he may not be -- there is a "fever going around the room" that lasts for a day and a night and then disappears the following day. Exactly what Isaac had. And to further confirm her suggestion, Clayton contracted Isaac's "teething" symptoms on Thursday, spiking a fever of over 102. So unless teething is communicable, the evidence points to Isaac's first real cold. But not to worry -- his bottom-middle gums are bulging out of control. We think it can't possibly be too long before we see some baby pearly-whites. Luckily, these don't seem to bother Isaac in the least. Perhaps after all of our "crying teething" (ala crying wolf, right?), when his teeth actually come it will be peanuts. Let's hope, shall we?

Concussion, anyone?

Isaac is lots of fun now, being the little spunky-monkey he is, but he is so much more work and SO much more worry. His very new favorite thing? Seeing just how often he can hit his head, and on how many different objects. You may remember the big shiner from the pot (was that last week?). Well, now that he is sitting up like a champ, and his balance when on all fours is much better, its like his great big cranium has its own gravitational force, pulling sharp or hard objects toward it. He tries to climb on things now that his balance on all-fours is better, and can do a lean-over-"standing" thing whenever he climbs on stuff -- his favorite objects being that evil pot and his old bouncy seat -- and this is infinitely amusing to him, so he seeks to do it often. And just as often, he bumps his head. His noggin gets it on his way up the object, and very often on the accidental way down. When he's playing in the living room, he crawls under the edge of the coffee table and then pushes his head up into the wood, presumably just for the purpose of jogging his brain. When he's crawling around the hall, he inevitably head-checks the wall-corners. But the worst is when he's in his all-fours position. He is still incredibly intrigued by the get-up-on-all-fours-and-rock shtick, which often leads to bumps when he gets himself over into the proximity of the wall.

At first I thought that all of this was because I was a deadbeat mom, putting my baby so near all these potential head-collision sites. "I can't help it!" I whimpered, "Our apartment is so cramped!" But then I realized that it wasn't just me, and I can't possibly stop him from his inexplicable desire to concuss himself. This realization came one day when I greeted him as he awoke from a nap in his crib, and there he was, on all fours, rocking back and forth and repeatedly crashing his little skull into the bars of the crib. He gave himself little red spots from doing it so much, but it didn't even faze him. Please please please tell me he isn't damaging his poor developing brain; tell me that this is what his great Klingon dome is for.

"Viva la resistance" and "Just where do you think you're going, lady?"

Okay, back to Isaac. We have two new problems with our little guy as he becomes self-aware:
1) He no longer cares to sit still for a diaper change. He used to just lay on his back and look around contentedly, even up until Thursday or so. He knew the routine. What happens on the changing table is not a surprise. And yet now he flatly refuses to stay on his back when on the changing table, and prefers to wriggle onto his side or deftly onto his stomach and try to figure out how to climb off the table or swing from the nearby window-blinds. All the while, here's me: "NO, Isaac...Will you sit still?...What is so wrong with laying on your back for Mom?...Come HERE...Get that out of your mouth...Wait, let go of those blinds." Whenever I pick him up to replace him in his back-lying position, he starts fussing at me and arches his head back, which propels his body onto his side. I am trying to become more of an expert on diapering my baby when he's on all fours, but this is extremely time-consuming and requires great manual dexterity. I have surprised myself at how patient I can be with Isaac, but when he pulls his "viva la resistance" maneuvers at the changing table, both he and I reach baby-meltdown in record time. Is there any hope for us?

2) Isaac has begun sprouting some separation anxiety. We figured it out this weekend when I would leave the room, with him in the very capable hands of Dad, and Isaac would start screaming bloody murder and continue doing so until I returned. This morning when I dropped him off at day care, we did our usual goodbye routine, which consists of me running over to him wherever he is, smothering him with kisses without picking him up, telling him 1) I love him, 2) I hope he has a good day, and 3) that I'll see him later -- today this resulted in complete Isaac panic as soon as I started for the door. I turned around, ready to go sweep him up in my arms because I didn't know any better, but his teacher had already done so and was loudly saying "Bye, Mom!" with emphatic waving (as in, get out of here, we've handled this kind of thing before). Anyway, it was heart-breaking. I hope he gets over it soon.

Victory is mine

I don't often talk about my work because, well, it's Isaac's blog. But today was a particularly fabulous day for my Ph.D. research. So indulge me.

My Ph.D. research project is on understanding the chemistry performed by cholera toxin upon our bodies when we become infected with cholera bacteria. This particular chemical reaction makes people extremely sick with diarrhea. You can literally poop, like, a gallon of water in an hour, and from this you become dehydrated and die. It is not good. Fortunately, we Americans have such luxuries as water and sewer treatment and modern plumbing and such that results in basically zero cases of cholera in the US each year. In third-world countries, they are not so lucky, and whole communities can contract this disease quite easily.

So, cholera = death by poop. But back to my Ph.D. -- I look at cholera toxin using protein crystallography. Cholera toxin is a protein, and I grow crystals of it, similarly to how you can grow crystals of salt or sugar in your kitchen from a solution full of salt or sugar. You shoot x-rays at these protein crystals, and they produce beautiful patterns because the crystals are made of a regular lattice that pings the x-rays off in predictable directions. It's all horribly complicated and I doubt I will understand it all in my lifetime, but it's fun because, before I got preggers, I got to go to national labs in Chicago and Berkeley on a regular basis with my crystals to shoot them with x-rays. I got a fat per diem, I ate well, I racked up frequent flier miles, and, oh yeah, I furthered my Ph.D. research as well. Obviously when I was pregnant with Isaac, I did not want to a) fly or b) go places that involved x-rays, so I stayed home and had other members of my lab shoot my crystals for me. A spectacularly successful example of this was when my buddy George collected a data set for me -- of some crystals I had grown of cholera toxin in complex with a human protein -- the Thursday before I had Isaac. I stayed in the lab until 10pm that night looking at my beautiful new protein structure, and my boss was so pleased that Isaac held off long enough for me to get these results.

Our lab had some more time scheduled at the lab in Chicago this past weekend, and I still got to beg off, being a nursing mother and all. So I sent my crystals in care of my darling friend Jan. Here is a picture of Jan riding a tricycle at the lab in Chicago:


I sent with Jan some crystals that I hoped would give me data that marked the 3rd and final segment of my dissertation. This segment = putting small molecules (in my case, an NAD) in the chemistry-working site of cholera toxin, something that I had tried to do many times before and failed. However, this time, and these crystals, were different. They made such beautiful spots and held their NAD so tightly for their momma so that she could see it in all its glory when she sat down at the computer screen this morning. Since 2001 I have been working on this crazy little project, and today it all came full circle and bent down and whispered in my ear "DOCTOR Claire....DOCTOR Claire..." I screamed and jumped up and down when I saw this NAD, and my boss patted me on the back. For TWENTY years, he has been waiting to see this. He was almost as happy as I.

What the x-rays did to my crystal

Jan took a picture for me of what my crystal did when he annhilated it with x-rays. Pretty neat, eh?

Updates

* I finally shot a new movie. It's called Sitting Up. It has a slow start -- a boy's search for a magical green cup -- but then a surprise twist in the end. Will he find the cup, or won't he? Will he sit up, or won't he? Oh, just watch it already and find out.

* Dad and I racked our brains for some more ideas about what to get Isaac for Christmas, now that the requests are pouring in. We updated our Christmas Lists (see below, on the links), and are now putting dates on the pages so you can see when they were updated last. Enjoy helping the economy in Isaac's name.

Changing of the guard

As you may have surmised from his 6-month weigh-in stats, Isaac's days in his first car seat were numbered. We were greatly intimidated by car seat shopping before he was born just in the sheer numbers involved, both in the vast array of potential car seats to choose from and their unbelievable prices. We lucked out in that his hospital offered a brand-new, strictly rear-facing car seat for $25. This car seat is rated until he's 22 lbs, which is impending, but he has also become uncomfortably long -- he can't straighten out his legs in the seat. He can straighten them out by placing his feet flat above the seat, making for his new favorite game: sliding his feet up and down on the backseat to make that annoying reee-rrooo noise against the fabric.

This all pointed to the fact that we needed to finally confront our crushing car-seat indecision and buy him a convertible model; one that he can ride rear-facing in until he's a year old, but that would also last him a little longer than that and ride forward-facing later on. I thought that we could avoid the whole issue by just throwing heaps of money at it, and had focused my sights on the Britax Marathon, the Cadillac of car seats. If I buy the most expensive convertible car seat on the market, then surely no harm would come to my baby in it, simply because they would be using all that extra money as protective padding around my darling firstborn. Right? This logic seemed much simpler to me than sorting through the unwieldy amount of information available about each car seat on the market. However, when I tried to convince my husband of this logic, he said, "You would think that you couldn't put a price on your baby's safety and your peace of mind. But it turns out that I can, and it is a hundred and fifty bucks." So we got this Evenflo model because we thought it looked most squishy. Kind of like an apology to Baby-Bot for not buying him a Baby Papasan. Here is a side-by-side of the old and the new:


Our new seat is supposed to last until he's 40 lbs. How long do you think that will take?