I had something to say

I'm at a stage of sleep deprivation where the train of my thought will frequently skip the tracks, and I utterly forget what I was thinking about, what I wanted to say, who I wanted to share the thought with, everything. This has happened just now.

Instead of my no doubt important musings on the Democrats in Denver, or the shocking state of the roads in Annapolis, I'll relate a strange story about kid #1.

Now that he is a big kid and has a demanding demon-seed of a little sister, kid #1 has been tasked to clean his body and brush his teeth without supervision. So tonight after dinner, as the demon seed is wailing and the man has escaped outside to take out the trash (strange how such zeal for chores has taken over, when they are outside chores that are out of earshot of the seed), I asked him to get ready for bed. I'm usually pretty specific so steps don't get skipped, so the instructions go like this: go upstairs and take off your clothes, turn on the shower and get in, wash your body until it is clean, then dry off and put on your pajamas. But tonight I just told him to go take a shower and brush his teeth.

He went upstairs, and I managed to get the seed to quiet down so I could listen to what he was doing and watch Jim Lehrer at the same time. I heard water running, and assumed it was for teeth. Then I heard the shower and was sure all tasks were accomplished. He came back downstairs dressed for bed and assured me he had taken a shower when I asked him. At this point, a memory from childhood intruded. Time was, I hated to get clean. I would go when told and turn on the shower, but I wouldn't get in. Something about getting wet skeeved me out. My relatives eventually got hip to this (perhaps the stink? or the very dirty feet?), and would start touching my hair or asking really detailed questions about what I had done in the bathroom. Is your washcloth wet? Is your hair wet? Is the bar of soap wet? So in self-defense, I would wet the washcloth, run wet hands through my hair, and make sure some water touched the soap. It got to the point where my showers were supervised to make sure that the majority of my body actually came into contact with soap and water. The final evolution of this ridiculousness was the dry wash, when I would scrub my body with a wet washcloth and soap while standing at the sink, with the shower running so they could hear. That way I could answer all of their questions honestly, without having to submit to the horror of getting into the shower.

So of course tonight, when kid #1 assured me he was clean, some little warning bell in the back of my mind rang. Perhaps it was the shifty look in his eyes, or the disgusting crescents of dirt under every finger and toe nail, but I suspected he hadn't actually gotten into the shower. His hair was dry. His skin was dry. There was no fresh scent. I asked him again, and the kid had the temerity to tell me he had taken the shower. This is serious nerve. I had to explain to him that if his flesh is dry and dirty, and his washcloth and towel are bone dry, then the odds are that he didn't get into the shower. So for attempt number 2, I watched him get in and start scrubbing (with soap that I applied to the washcloth).

This is a very happy day for me. To all appearances, this child belongs to his father. My stamp doesn't appear in his face, except for tint. To find now that he may have inherited something from me after all is incredibly exciting. Maybe next I'll find him lost in a good book (every hour, every day), aggressively hogging the chocolate, or developing new stragems for keeping the change. I eagerly await developments tomorrow, when I'm hoping that he remembers to get the washcloth wet before coming downstairs to lie about getting clean. It would be entertaining if he thought up some new twists in this game.

What's in a Name

In keeping with a family tradition of gender ambiguous and uncommon names, we recently dubbed the new kid Schuyler Rosemary. This has been amusing in many ways, not least that her beloved Papa misspelled her name in one of his emails to friends and family, compounding the expected confusion over pronunciation.

There wasn't a lot of discussion over this one. He proposed it, I liked it, and we were done. It may be that the man put a lot of research and thought into it, but I suspect he just liked the sound and the nautical reference. The funny thing is that according to the Social Security database, the name Schuyler has not been in the top 1000 for females in this country, ever. That's great as far as avoiding a ubiquitous (this is where you are impressed at my ability to spell big words only a week after giving birth) (here is where you wonder if I should have used "an" instead of "a" in front of it) name. Turns out though, that it shows up regularly on the boys list: without even intending to, we may have graced our little spark with a little ambiguity.

So the point of this post, the whole raison d'etre as it were (more great vocab! The mind is not totally mushy), besides the need to sit and watch as someone tries to impress me with his prowess on www.hotwheels.com, is that there is a little history behind the name, and you can find it here. In one little package, we get American history, maritime history, hospitals, prisons, and to top it off, it means "scholar" in Dutch. Perfect.

Too Tired for Outrage

Mostly, that is. I've been told to get back to blogging, mostly by those who view me as an entertainment monkey, tirelessly grinding my organ (so to speak). However, childbirth has the unfortunate effect of draining my energy, and distorting my sense of time, so that I can happily gaze at the wall for two hours or more and feel fully occupied while doing so. I have noticed one thing in the first week of the new kid's life: feeding her is expensive.

I'm going natural at the moment, which is a bit of a high-wire act since nursing takes a lot of time I normally don't have, can be a little frustrating, and is generally perceived negatively by the viewing public. One wonders why that is, since I've heard for a lifetime that men (and some women) want nothing more than to see my naked chest. Now that I'm ready to let random strangers catch an occasional glimpse of my rather stupendous (at the moment) assets, no one is interested. Typical. Anyway, the point here is that I have found it surprisingly difficult to obtain the necessary accessories- mostly foundation garments* and shirts. My favored brands for normal lingerie don't even produce nursing wear, which is a bit of a statement, I think. Funny that they make the sexy little things for the young and the seriously structured intimidators for the gravity stricken, but the mother of the maiden/mother/crone trio has been kicked to the curb. So apart from the offensively ill-made products at the local maternity rip-off store, the only option is mail-order. The current tally for garments to contain my aforementioned stupendities is:

2 x $15, nightwear only, just good enough to keep me from hurting someone if I roll over in bed;
1 x $49, good enough to walk around in without looking freakish;
1x $50, intimidator, professionally fitted by a little old lady who took really unwarranted liberties.

That's $129 for a little bit of material. This is just the foundation, we aren't talking about auxiliary machinery, parts, bits and pieces. Then the current bill is inching toward $300. This is a lot of money to tap a free source of infant food.

I've been comparing this to the price of formula to convince myself that I am saving money. In the long term, I obviously will- formula costs about $1 per powdered ounce, and a kid can use more than 16 oz a day when they are at full strength. For now though, my costs equal 12 cans of formula, which would translate into a lot less time for me to sit around and watch the walls.

Good thing for this kid that I am just granola enough to grit my teeth and stick with this exercise. Eventually, my native thriftiness will come through and keep me going a while longer. At some point though, the health and wealth benefits line is going to intersect the line of my convenience and desire to graduate, and a certain little princess is going to come to earth in a bit of a powdery cloud.

*forgot the postscript: my mother is here helping with the baby, and I find myself incapable of using plain language when writing about my underwear on the internet, given that she would undoubtedly tell me to stop writing about such a thing in any terms, even the mealy mouthed ones I've used here.

**also, forgive the run-on sentence. Grammar has taken a vacay around here.