Getting Our Fruitful On

It's raining little girls around here, or so the doc tells us. It is officially official - the Noodle is expecting a sister in October. Actually, the chances are "eighty to ninety percent" that it's a girl but extremely good that it will be our new darling baby. 

I'm fifteen weeks along. According to the internet, I'll have gained five pounds (so cute! try eight) and may have "rhinitis" which is fancy talk for a stuffed nose. Check. Also, I'm a total jerk. They don't tell you about that on the internet, but just ask my husband. Around this time my last pregnancy around he told me that he loved me but that I used to be a nice person and now I'm not. This time around he just rolls his eyes and walks away. 

Black and white photo of forthcoming daughter. Maybe this one will look like me.

Also according to the internet, our dear proto-baby is now the size of an apple. It can sense light, it's legs are longer than it's arms, and apparently this is a great week to start bonding with her (him?) by "narrating your activities," reading to it, or sharing "your secret wishes" for your child. 

My secret wish for my child is that she is healthy and grows up to be happy and surrounded by love. My more immediate concern is that she survives this pregnancy without being stomped on by her elder sibling, who is sweetly oblivious to the fragile assembly of sparrow bones and mist that is trying to become a person in her mommy's quickly expanding belly. 

Everyone has asked me whether we've tried to explain the situation to Miss Noodle. Well, sort of. Maybe once the belly is more obviously abnormal. And I'll order a few kids books soon, the kinds with titles like "Being a Big Sister is Great!" and "Betty's New Baby Brother is Great!" and "Sharing is Great!" and "Babies are Just So Great!". But for now, it's basically hopeless. 

When I got the first good womb shots we tried. We got the Noodle all set up with a bottle of milk. 

Black and white picture of our what is currently our only child. Enjoy, my sweet.

"Look at this picture, Sweetheart. What do you see?"

"Meine picture. Mine."

"Is this a baby?"

"This Noodle's* milk. Noodle's milk."

"This is a picture of a little baby."

Noodle considered. She pointed at the picture. "Me!"

"No, it's not you. It's a baby."

"Baby!" she said. 

"Yes! It's a baby! It's going to be your new brother or sister. Do you know what a sister is?"

"Noodle's milk. This Noodle's foot. Noodle's."

"This baby is inside Mommy's tummy."

Noodle slapped my belly. "Belly!"

"Yes! The baby is inside Mommy's belly."

"Ja. Nava's mommy. Mommy's belly. Nava's milk. Look, cat!"

"Are you going to be a good sister?"

"Yeah. Uh-huh. Katzi!"

"Are you going to be a terrible sister?"

"Mm-hmm. Yeah."

"Do you love babies?"

"Mm-hm. Yeah!"

"Do you hate babies?"

"Yeah!"

So we shelved this conversation for another day. I'm sure Miss Noodle would be totally stoked if she could conceive of the idea of pregnancy, new babies, or having to share everything she owns for the rest of her young life. 

As for me and Alex, we can't wait to meet the young 'un, and we can't wait to be the four of us. Well, the four of us plus also two cats, those wh*res. (This is just an aside, but I roasted char siu pork on Sunday and ran out to meet friends and then got a text from Alex who informed me that the cats had dragged this pork loin out from under the bowl, across the kitchen and living room, and had decimated it on the couch. Greedy and sticky, those little s**ts. Obviously, this morning there was porky cat puke all over the place. Greedy, sticky, ungrateful AND they can't hold their pig. Honestly, I don't want to give them away, I don't want them to die, but I do wish they'd just disappear. Not in a punitive way, just in a convenient way. I don't want them to suffer. I just want them to be Elsewhere. Like I wish the cats would just walk with God, like Abraham did in the Bible. Lord knows they've lived long enough. Though Abraham, being blameless, would probably never have stolen anything, much less roasted pork. But I fear I digress.)

So yes. We can't wait to be the four of us! And until then, we'll prepare in our own little ways. The Noodle will continue to plough along oblivious to the silver linings on the horizon, I'll read a bunch of parenting books that say soothing things, Alex will try not to think about it and we can all just pray we'll be ready. 

P.S. Thanks to Alex for this remarkably effing awesome video, featuring one of our two revolting animals. 
P.P.S. I would never actually want tiny space fighters to descend from the sky and blow up our cat, not even if she stole another char siu pork roast. Right? Right. 

*She doesn't actually call herself Noodle. But she finally learned her name and it's been her favorite word ever since. Well, that and "meine" (mine). 

Happy New Year! The Flight Home

I have some serious amounts of back-posting to do, but it's January 3rd so let's start with a beginning: 

Happy New Year! 

Nava and I spent the 31st flying from Dallas to Vienna via London, while Alex flew on a separate itinerary via Frankfurt. Our airplane was packed nearly as tightly as our suitcases full of Christmas largesse. I had a little cold but Nava, with her babyish immune system, was sick as a dog: ripe cough, runny red eyes, perpetually dribbling nose. So it's to her endless credit that Miss Nava did not cry at all the entire flight to London.

Anyway there were about five other babies who were hogging the mic, so to speak. For my part, I stopped feeling sorry for myself at boarding when I saw a lone lady flying with very tiny twin babies, who (like us) had neither a bassinet nor an extra seat. She sat a few rows ahead - in the middle of the middle row in coach - with a suckling babe in each arm. They would take turns crying all night. 

Row 32 Seat F

We passed her - let us call her Mary - on a trip to the bathroom. There she sat with her babes finally both sleeping, her eyes open and staring straight ahead, face expressionless, the three of them illuminated like a memorial to maternal discomfort under their neighbour's yellow reading light. 

Now there, I thought, is a woman who is reaching very deeply into her happy place. Perhaps she was thinking about how as a child she would hang from the monkey bars for as long as possible, trying to squeeze all the blood out of her fingers. Foolish, foolish. Or perhaps she was revisiting those many times, now merged into a single, shimmering memory, when she had sat in her living room, a book open in her left hand, a turkey sandwich in the right. How breezily she had scratched her elbow, turned a page, pulled a strand of hair from her eyes, perhaps even twiddled a pen between her feckless fingers. Gone, all gone. I wished her well and hoped that one day in her dotage her boys would install her on a richly outfitted Mediterranean yacht. Women are so awesome. 

As for young Nava, she kept it together beautifully until midway through the second leg of our journey, just two hours from Vienna. Enough was enough. She threw down the fabric book she had patiently slobbered on for the past twelve hours, furrowed her brow, looked me in the eyes and did not cry. 

"Meeeh!," she said. "Meh, meh, meh. Baaooo! Eek!" 

And I was like, Holy smokes, my baby is bitching at me. I said, "I hear you, kid."

"Baah. Meh. MEEEEH!" said Nava, repeatedly slapping the very nice man sitting to our right. "Meh meh meh meh meh meh MEH."

Sadly, I forgot to take a picture of our misery, but let's just say that when we deplaned we looked a little like this: 

We got to Vienna at 5.30pm on the 31st of December 2013. And that was just the beginning. 

Try a Little Tenderness

You know that Otis Redding song "Try a Little Tenderness"? It's the one about being nice to a young girl who is "tired of wearing that same old shaggy dress". Well, like every other song that was ever written, if you just change one or two words around it applies perfectly to babies.

This is a (long) aside, but did anyone else have this phase in their early adolescence when they first became aware that the world is full of sex references? You start hearing about mysterious things like foreplay and fetishes and positions (for or against?), and realize that you can often take things two ways (*snigger*). And once you start to crack the code, you realise that popular culture is a 24/7 industrial-grade firehose of sex.  

My parents and teachers appeared totally oblivious but we who were in the know were privy to a non-stop barrage of sex on the radio, TV, movies, poetry, novels, comics, paintings... It turned out that sex was the basis of modern civilisation and all commercial enterprise. Once the veil was lifted, it seemed to me that Pop! Goes the Weasel was the only non-church song I knew that didn't have a sex reference, and even there if you snickered properly you could make it sound vaguely filthy.   

I think until I was 12 or 13 I just thought all those radio songs were about kissing. Which is astonishing considering that ubiquitous hits at the time included, for example, I'll Make Love to You (I mean, HELLO), Freak Me (opening lyric: "Let me lick you up and down")  and this song, which is basically like singing: "Hooray for your body/ let us have imaginative sex/ but no need to improvise/ I'll spell it out in the hook". 

I specifically remember hearing this song on the radio: "Mary Moooooon, she's a vegetarian/ *incomprehensible*/ She loves me so/ She hates to be alone/ She don't eat meat but she sure like the bone.".. and thinking, Ya. I know what THAT means, New Age Girl. And ohmygosh, the band is called Deadeye Dick. Subversive.

Anyway, I bring it up because since the baby came (not yet four months ago... but was there ever a time when she didn't exist?) every romantic song now seems like it was written about babies, for babies, with babies in mind. It's all so innocent now. All those kisses become sweet little baby smooches. Enchanting smiles are those priceless fleeting ones accompanied by drool and dimples.The dreams they are talking about are baby dreams, full of fluffy sheep and smiling stars. At Last. My Funny Valentine. I could go on. Having a baby is the great total de-sexualization of how I understand love songs. 

(Okay, that doesn't actually apply to "Freak Me" and "Stroke Me Up", but those only count as love songs in the grossest sense and even then it's a little iffy. Also, now that I am 30 and officially a mother I must point out that those songs are derogatory, vulgar and infinitely stupid. If songs about sex were cocktails, listening to them would be the equivalent of downing orange squash mixed with antifreeze when you could be getting down like scotch neat or something off the grapevine or perhaps a refreshing Hendricks and tonic. 

Anyway, to bring it back to the beginning of this post, "Try a Little Tenderness" is one of the songs I play for my baby to amuse myself, except our version is about young girls who grow weary of the same old diaper. It helps to remind me in my more aggravated moments that rather than joining the baby in a flood of frustration I should just try a little tenderness. 

Cute, right? But forget all that. I was wrong. What nonsense. The thing to try is a little BABY FORMULA. 

Until now I have been an exclusive breast feeder. But the other night I was going somewhere and was not able to pump, and so for the first time ever our sprout got fed a solid 200mL of formula. I felt so guilty, even though I am actually still breastfeeding. Whatever. The point is, she slurped that ish right up, slept for eight hours solid and was a warm dumpling of satiated joy all morning afterwards. The transformation was total, like a desert traveller who survived three months on bitter sips of mud before being given a whole goatskin of Evian. Redemption. Inner light. It was so awesome. Love and peace reigned for hours on end. So yes. Forget tenderness. Try a little formula instead. 

P.S. I just can't end this without noting that I am still breastfeeding so please do not yell at me. I'm not sure who I'm addressing this to other than my inner demons, who wear soft hair and natural fabrics and look surprisingly like members of the La Leche League. 

Boob: Once More, With Feeling!

Some time in the last two weeks our sprout hit a major developmental milestone when she parted her precious lips and, instead of crying, said, "Goo?" 

Her first sounds sounded vaguely like "hello" ("egh'looooo"), which was cute, and like "boob", which is even better. When she's upset she'll stick out her tiny little lower lip, say "booboobooboob," and drool. From a evolutionary perspective this adorableness is a pretty effective strategy, I have to say. 

Anyway, now we're trying to teach her that the sound "boob" has an actual meaning. 

"Boob?" I'll ask, encouragingly. "Are you hungry?" 

Alex says, "Is it time for a boob party*? Booooobies?" He points. 

I do a suggestive little shimmy. "Booooobs." 

Nava says "boobooboob." 

The cats pee on the floor. 

On one hand she doesn't really get it (it'll be months before she says a real first word and a few more after that before she really means anything she says). On the other hand, when she is unhappy, boob is always the answer so maybe she'll eventually put it together. 

I tried to film her saying "boob," but obviously as soon as I had my phone out she stopped. So here we have a video of me trying to coax her into saying boob, but with no success. The good news is that she makes other cute noises. 

I've read that kids don't remember anything that happens before they can talk (which will make that a dangerous little milestone). That had better be true, because her father and I are basically twelve-year-olds who are allowed to drive and buy candy whenever we want. Oh, and have children. (I'm beginning to realize why the world is in such a state.) Also, in two years Nava is going to walk up to some lady, point and say "BOOBS" and that will be our just deserts. 

____________

* Around here we refer to breastfeeding as "having a boob party," because infantile. When Nava was just a couple of weeks old we went down to the Lainzer Tiergarten for a walk. If you don't know (and if you don't live in Vienna, why would you), it's an enormous (really enormous) park with miles and miles of trail through woods and across meadows. If you like, as we did, you can pretend to enjoy some memorably bland gray food at the Rohrhaus. (Pro Tip: Bring a sandwich). Anyway, while we were there we spent some time eating ice cream on a scenic meadow that was riddled with a whole biology lesson's worth of animal poops. We sat in the sunshine, and confronted for the first time ever with sunshine, Nava freaked out. She continued to freak out all the back across several kilometres of trail and into the car, where she freaked out all the way home. During this time we pleaded and begged with her to relax because a "boob party" was just around the corner ("Think about it logically," as Alex likes to tell her when she is truly falling apart. "Let's analyze this situation together."). And so now we say "boob party". 

Abandoned!

In the wee hours of yesterday, my mom left town. She, my dad and my brother were all here for the last three weeks visiting the baby. My sainted parents were tremendous. They worked magic when we were not looking. A microwave materialized, our slightly askew dining table seemed to right itself (and we had been prepared to just live with off-kilter bowls of soup for the rest of our lives), groceries appeared, clothes and rooms were cleaned, and they played with the baby so that mommy could shower and nap... It was great. 

And now they have gone and it's all up to me to not destroy this child while her father is at work.  

AHHH! 

Munch-ing on hot air. HAHAHAHAHA! Ha. I'm very tired. 

Speaking of screams, this is a picture of our window. The hole in the middle of this little homage is our air conditioning vent. One of my dad's projects was to construct an airtight(ish) styrofoam pane to surround it. Ripping of Edvard Munch was his idea, too (although I drew it). It's obviously an ironic commentary on climate change and the futility of exercising our human agency. Ain't it grand? It keeps cold air in and blows hot air out on so many levels. 

**On a side note, I swear we only bought the a/c because I was nine months pregnant and it was hot as balls and I promise we only use it when it's above 35 degrees and I'm so sorry. Kind of. Although not sorry enough to get rid of it.**

This might look like a tremendous eyesore for our neighbors and passers-by below, but consider that previously Alex and I just dangled the hose out the window and filled in all the gaps with garbage bags and masking tape. This is an improvement. 

And this here is an Aperol Spritz, sitting in front of my man and his beer.  I got to soak in all of these on Sunday courtesy of a breast pump and my fine mother who is also good-looking and skinny. Thank you, mom and dad! 

YUM.