Eggstasy

Have you ever wondered what four dozen eggs look like if you pile them all up? 

Look at the size of these packages of eggs.

My mom called me today and was like, Hey, I'm running late, so can you help me out with our contribution to the homeless shelter? I need you to pick up four dozen eggs and hard boil them for me. And my first thought was, "Goddamn, that's a lot of eggs." 

Maybe this is because I live in a European city, where most of us live in apartments and do small rounds of shopping every couple of days, but 48 eggs seems like a s***load of eggs. An absurd number to cook at once in the comfort of your home.  

But off we went to the store where, lo and behold, you can buy packages of 30 eggs! All in one box! Seriously though. Who needs 30 eggs at the same time?  It seems like a lot, especially because in the United States all eggs are washed before they're sold, which means they need to be kept very well refrigerated and are thus even more inconvenient to store. 

48! In one pot! Would you look at that.

Of course, all food seems to come in comparatively enormous containers over here. Or at least, that's my impression whenever I first arrive. Over time my perception shifts. It begins to seem normal that groceries are sold in a space that could accommodate a couple of long-haul airplanes, and normal that you can buy detergent in a box so big, you require assistance to get it into the back of your car.  

By the time I get back to Vienna I have grocery dysmorphia in the other direction. Our local grocery store, which is the size of a Texas gas station, seems positively adorable. I go around for a week thinking, "My, what cute little cans of tomatoes! I'll put them in my tiny basket next to my tiny tins of tuna, itty bitty wedges of cheese and my weeny little packages of unbelievably boring cereal. Aww, look at these wittle bitty loaves of bread!" After paying, quite often in cash, I skip back to my flat to play dry-goods tetris in the only cupboard we use for food. 

This is how much my daughter cares about the stupendous number of eggs I'm boiling. 

Anyway. Now I'm off to help bake dozens of Christmas cookies that will sit around looking forlorn until some fool, and its always the same fool, makes the poor decision to eat them all. *Sigh*. 

P.S. Look at me all updating this blog more than once every two weeks. 

Snowed In (Excuses for Being a Bad Blogger)

I have been a very bad blogger. Two weeks! All of this lazing around at my parents' house is taking its toll. I'm becoming sluggish. And there have been many fun distractions - my friend Denia was here, then my glorious Aunt C. and then scattered other good times. But what really threw me off schedule was the ice storm last weekend.  

I live in a cold country. From October to late March, temperatures in Gumpen Village Street regularly fall far below freezing. Precipitation precipitates. Water races from heaven to earth in every form it can, sometimes in two at once. Snow is merely its most aesthetic manifestation. We also do driving rain, fierce sleet, the pissing mist (a personal favourite), and marathon drizzle that soaks the bones and rots the heart. 

But while such weather puts a dark damper on the Austrian soul, it doesn't actually stop the business of doing things. The moment snow or sleet is announced, a literal army of trucks hits the streets strewing gravel. Snow is cleared as fast as it lands and shopkeepers come out to salt their sidewalks. There are, of course, exceptional blizzards that shut the city down, but for the most part workers go to work. School kids go to school. Stores open, trucks make deliveries, trams and subways go about their business, and airplanes take off and land.

So what the H-E-double-hockey-sticks, Dallas. Obviously a warm municipality cannot be expected to restore vital services quite as fast as cities up north. But still. Last weekend was a poor show. 

We woke up on Friday morning with no electricity and temperatures slowly sinking inside my parents' house. That can happen after a big storm, right? I didn't realize this was a semi-permanent state of affairs until my dad said we should get packed. Sadly for Denia, who probably expected some Texas sunshine and, you know, electricity, we weren't entirely able to deliver. She eventually got a warm roof over her head, but it wasn't ours.   

In fact we were all under a much nicer roof, provided by the lovely Hahsler family, who kindly let us play with their used baby things, gave us beds to sleep in, and allowed us to rummage through their kitchen cupboards and drink their coffee (and wine) and eat their food and scatter our bags and baby formula and snow shoes throughout their house. We were grateful and warm and happy to be off the streets, which were glazed with rock-hard ice. 

(I guess we just didn't think we'd be out of our house for three nights and four days. Yes, that is correct, three nights and four days. Come on, electricity company. Git yer self together. Jesus managed to rise up from the dead in less time than you needed to resurrect an electric pole. Denia had left and my Aunt C. had come and nearly gone again by the time power had returned to the Hunt residence.)  

But of course, we couldn't let Denia leave without putting her life in danger. So on the first night of the storm we decided to take an epic journey to Arlington, which is part of the Dallas Metroplex and ordinarily but a 30 minute jaunt from where we were staying. 

An old friend from high school, Hania, was in Arlington to attend a conference. Denia and I had made dinner plans with her before the Icepocalypse, and were not about to give them up. Perhaps sensing that his vehicle was in grave danger, and because he bathes in awesome sauce, my father offered to drive. 

When we set off at around 6 P.M. we still entertained a grand plan of picking our friend up and bringing her to a restaurant in Dallas, then driving her back before returning home ourselves. As we bumbled along at 20 miles an hour, our plans were slowly downgraded. 

First we considered taking her to a Dallas eating hole that was slightly closer to the highway than originally planned. Then we discovered that the whole stretch of highway was shut down. Oh dear. As we slipped and slid through downtown Dallas, we decided it would be best to just have dinner somewhere in Arlington, near her hotel. 

An hour later, and we still were not even close. At what felt like a dog-sled's pace we plugged past endless darkened car dealerships and strip malls and bizarrely well-visited taco places, with nothing to break up the tedium except the odd 18-wheeler doing a little heart-stopping tail waggle as it tried to change lanes ahead of us. We passed ever more vehicles abandoned by the roadside. The highways and overpasses were either deserted or backed up for miles. At some point we gave up and decided that if we ever made it to the Sheraton Conference Center we would be content to just eat there. And give my father an award for Most Awesome Dad of the Year. 

The good news is, Hania was worth it. We probably spent five hours on the road but seeing her (and spending some quality time sans baby) made up for it. Well, it was worth it for me, anyway. Thanks again, Dad! 

Wandering around the Arboretum on Dad's birthday.
Nava is wearing Mom's gloves. I love my family.

And speaking of my dad. Yesterday was his birthday. To celebrate, we had barbecue and wandered around the Arboretum in the sunshine, which returned just in time. I love you, Dad. You are the greatest. 

Down at the Pumpkin Patch

Just got back from Thanksgiving with my aunts, uncles and cousins in Houston! But before I get into all of that, I just have to share our photos of the baby at the pumpkin patch. 

Pretty much the only reason for pumpkin patches is to photograph your offspring at them, right? 

A likely-looking pumpkin patch at the Dallas Arboretum

The whole family was in one place, including Nava's Uncle Elliott, and to my knowledge none of have taken pictures at a pumpkin patch in years and years and years, because it's kind of a weird thing to do without kids, but this time we had a kid and so off we went! Or rather, my mother was working but ordered the rest of us to go. 

We had a sapphire sky and high hopes we had for pictures of adorable punkins and rosy cheeks! 

Unfortunately, it was also the very last day of the pumpkin patch season, freezing cold, the sun was setting and the baby was asleep under many layers of blankets. 

Isn't she adorable up on that bridge to nowhere? Awwww. 

Oh well. There's always next year. 

Nava, her granddad and a pumpkin

Makin' those memories to last a lifetime with Elliott

She's in there somewhere, promise.

Journey to the Land of Queso and Endless Clean Towels

Hooray, we're in Dallas! In the spirit of what-else-is-maternity-leave-for, I have come to stay with my parents for an indulgent five weeks (!!) of free baby care and endless clean towels. Sadly, Nava and I had to leave daddy behind because he has to work. Sad face. He'll join us for Christmas though! 

At DFW airport. Nava adorable as ever,
Mama Noms looking like someone smacked her
with one of those supersize packages of wine gums.

The baby is too young to make real trouble, but I was still apprehensive about the flight. And by apprehensive I mean I was terrified. 

The main reason was that I was certain we would crash. I am always certain that my plane is going to crash and certain of my certainty because I am clairvoyant. I'm only clairvoyant right before I fly, of course. I discover this talent anew every time, and it never fails to bum me out that a soothsayer like me is about to be extinguished.This time I was extra bummed because Nava was going to come crashing down with me and it was going to be all my fault. 

As usual, I considered changing flights, but again, as usual, I didn't. I've seen Final Destination. I'm not stupid. 

Secondly, if we survived take-off, I was concerned that the baby would scream and carry on to the point that our fellow passengers might just open the hatch and throw us into the Gulf Stream. For that reason, I spent several hours (no, seriously) curating the selection of toys and books that I'd take with me.  I also got a bunch of these ingratiating little goody-bags ready for the passengers in our immediate vicinity. My friend Florence saw these on Facebook somewhere and told me about it, and I'm never one to miss an opportunity to suck up to strangers.

For our wretched seat mates. Except our flight companions this time just weren't wretched enough.

Except once we boarded the flight, I didn't use them. Here's why: My dad, who bought my ticket with miles, got us a business class seat on the way to Dallas. As a faithful member of the economy class, taking an overnight flight in a seat that reclines completely was a revelation. I imagine this is how swine herders in the late Middle Ages felt when they finally hobbled out of their plague-infested hamlets and into the big city and saw, for the first time, the Gothic cathedral whose stony spire pierced the heavens and which had been constructed off their breaking, dead-by-30 backs: A combination of divine inspiration and thorough revulsion. Revulsion not because cathedrals are revolting, but because the existence of cathedrals reminds you that there is no need for your hovel to be so unnecessarily shit. 

The seat next to us was empty and the row behind us was empty. So we were ten feet from the nearest passengers, all of whom were well-dressed and good looking and started drinking gratis gin & tonics before we even took off. They were all really nice. Why wouldn't they be? 

That's when I decided these people didn't need my candy. First of all, they had an ice cream sundae bar. Secondly, they could get their own free ear plugs. Lastly, they were fortified by their own inherent superiority. Not sense of superiority. Actual superiority. Most of all, I was too busy making Nava giggle by putting our magic seat into silly configurations. Nava behaved like an angel. Who wouldn't, if they lived in a cathedral? 

So yeah. I didn't hand out the candy. When we fly back to Vienna it will be in cattle class, where everyone drinks tomato juice just to feel like they're having a special time. I'm saving my little care packages for the poor fuckers who have to cosy up next to us then. 

People who need ear plugs and candy. 

Now I'm off to try and take a nap. You know what is no good? Babies with jet lag who are unhappy to be in a strange new house. Also I drank my weight in queso last night and am feeling about like you'd expect. Blurgh. 

Hope you're having a happy hump day! 

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. 

Parenting Fail: Part 1/529224315

On Monday I took young Nava to the doctor because she had been coughing a little on the weekend and her eyes had been red and runny. This was the first time she's ever been even a little sick and I wanted someone else to tell me that she's fine. As is always the way, her symptoms evaporated completely by the time we were in the doctor's waiting room. But I'm stubborn and anyway I had nothing else scheduled, so having gotten this far I decided there was no way we were leaving without seeing the doctor about something.

Not-sick Nava. Because she can't say no,
she has to wear elephant ears and bunny boots.
This is how we incentivize learning to talk. 

Happily (I guess), there was something! The infant had developed a pretty grody rash behind her ears. It was flaky and nasty. Now, my ignorance is a silky and voluptuous creature whom I hate to discourage, so I hadn't done any research or even much thinking about this rash and had simply put it down to "some kind of cradle cap or something". Despite knowing better, I also had a slight nagging worry that it was a symptom of psoriasis, my own familiar skin condition, which I obviously hope my daughter hasn't inherited. 

And so we waited at the doctor's office. One patient was a teeny weeny baby that must have been less than a week old. His (her?) parents looked exhausted and held their little bundle in that awkward super-newborn way where you're just trying to prevent the kid's head from dribbling down your front like a wet squid. It made me realize how much old Nava has solidified in the last three-and-a-half months. 

There was also a cute toddler girl who was tinkering with toys while her mother and grandmother were intently focused on some kind of cell phone game. At one point the girl dragged this mini rocking horse out from under a table to play with, but she only pulled it out halfway, so that once she got on she inevitably smacked the back of her head against the countertop. 

The girl's mom leapt up and over me in time to prevent her child from bumping her head a second time. Then she shot me the same look that you give a turd that has failed to flush. I was sitting closer to the rocking horse than the kid's mom, and, you know, I wasn't playing with my phone, so I guess it was my job to intervene and save her toddler's skull, but I was holding a baby and also I didn't realize what was happening until it was too late. The kid didn't even notice she had banged her head. Whatever. So this other mom gave me the squint and I tried to act like a dignified turd who has better shit to worry about, so to speak. 

After that tiresome interlude in the waiting room, which I feel like doctors (and perhaps bloggers) insist on just to make a little more mountain out of what would otherwise be a negligible tad of molehill, we finally got in to the doctor. 

He instantly dismissed the suggestion that Nava was sick, so as planned I brought up the rash behind her ears. 

"Uh-oh, a rash?," said the doctor, who looks nothing like Santa but sort of talks like him sometimes. "Well, we had better take a look!" He carefully turned the baby's head from side to side to inspect behind each thumb-sized ear. 

He looked at me. "That is just dirt." 

"Oh," I said, deflated. "Just dirt?" 

Oh. 

"Yes, dirt," he said, slowly, as if explaining to a turd that it is not supposed to stick around but rather should swim away with its brothers. "One does actually have to clean the babies. I would suggest treating the ears with a washcloth and soap, and later applying almond oil. That should do it."  

Flushed, I left. 

Of Halloween and Eating Babies

Happy Halloween! More and more Austrian children and drunken young adults celebrate Halloween each year, but alas our baby is a little too young.  I secretly would like nothing more than to dress her up like she's going to an Anne Geddes photo shoot but sadly I couldn't think of a single justification. 

Babies dressed as food. (Actually I think this is
freaking adorable. Costume here.)

Anyway, because Halloween is supposed to be at least a little scary, I thought this would be a good time to bring up the eating of babies. As in, you know, eating babies. 

This is a terrible thought, right? Occasionally you read a story in the newspaper about people who killed and ate a baby and it is the absolute worst crime that there is, the most heart-wrenching:  the murder and cannibalism of a defenceless little muffin. 

A cutesy poopsie muffin that you just want to EAT. 

You see? What is wrong with us? We compare babies to food all the time - pumpkins, cookies, sugar, honey, sweet peas, nuggets, peanuts.  

We're so sick in the head, half the time it's the first thing we talk about when we meet a new baby. As we pretend to gnaw on one of their tiny feet or slurp on a mini-finger, we'll coo and say one of the following: 

"Ooh, I just want to eat that arm!" 

Also dressed as a vegetable.
Well, technically a fruit. You see what I'm saying.
This costume for sale here.

"I want to nibble on her fat little toes!"

"Look at those squishy little cheeks - yum yum." 

"I am going to eat you right up! Yes I am! Yes I am! Num num num num num." 

Where did this come from? Does every culture do this, or do we just need some kind of collective therapy? 

Anyway, this week it became clear to me how deeply ingrained is this habit of equating cute with delicious as I was talking to our niece, who is our buddy and just the sweetest little eight-year-old in the world. We were sitting with the baby between us, and the niece says to me (in German): 

"Ach, she is just so cute I want to EAT HER. You too?"

"Sometimes," I say. I smile at the baby and pretend to chew on  her foot. "Because you're so sweet and delicious, right? Hum num num." 

Um. So cute, so wrong!

The baby giggles.  

"Hahaha," laughs our niece. Then she says, "We can split her. Fifty fifty. The left half for you, the right half for me."

I look up. 

This peanut costume also kind of looks like 

something else that starts with a p that you 

would not dress your child as. Cute kid though.

The site its from has a bunch of food costumes for 

babies. Yum! 

She goes on, "And we'll have her head for breakfast, the middle for lunch, and the feet for dinner. Right? We should save the feet for last. Because they look the most delicious." 

I am horrified. 

"Dude. What are you talking about?" I say to her. "That's sick." 

The niece looks at the baby. "Oh," she says, leaning her sweet head on a fist. "Yeah, true. That is sick." 

And you know, it kind of is. Happy Halloween! 

P.S./Update: You know who probably really eats babies? Fox News. Please see this article about Halloween. It leads with "Finding a Halloween costume that doesn't terrify politically-correct college busybodies could be a challenge this year..." and goes on to quote campus organizations that raised concerns about blackface or dressing in sombreros or as geishas and so on. I actually agree with Fox that half the fun of Halloween is being a little offensive, which is why next year I think I'm going as Fox News. 

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". 

DAAHHHH!

I didn't have any time to blog last week because I was busy. What's that, busy? Me? No. But I am not going to the office and my kid can't even walk yet, can't even talk. What is it that I DO all day? Surely I am not BUSY. 

Reader, perhaps you are clever and can see I'm about to go off on a long and pitilessly boring rant. I'd like to apologize in advance, but only pro forma, because as I shall convincingly argue here, I deserve your sympathy. 

Last night I went to bed planning to blog about some fun things that happened on the weekend. But this morning I awoke to find more cat pee in the hallway and my heart was filled with the blackest rage. A dark cloud descended and I realized (how did I fail to see it before?) that I am the victim of countless horrors. 

There is a sticky spot on the living room floor of indeterminable provenance and when I look upon its tacky face I hate it. I hate it for existing, for catching lint, for making me stoop to clean it up. 

And I hate its family. The other cursed sticky spots - be GONE, you foul flat beasts - and their distant cousins, the dustballs and the dirty dishes. I hate their cnidarian immortality, the way they sprout new limbs, keep walking, always return in defiance of science and morality. 

I am Sisyphus; no, I am Prometheus - and these coffee grounds do mock my pain. 

Some old exhortation about joyful hearts flickers briefly across my mind but I stamp it out like a weak bug. Unsatisfied by my generalized fury, I set upon a hairy sock that is not mine but which belongs to my husband. That cretin. Oh God and these pants of his on the floor, doubtless a provocation. 

Is he trying to say that in addition to everything else I am now solely responsible for the laundering of his clothes, that I have nothing better to do than scrape his rags off the bedroom floor, that my time is less valuable than his time and that since I look after our child I am effectively his cleaning lady? Because I have news for him, that man, this guy, my husband. I will not be taunted into washing your pants AGAIN, sir, no! Not for me, SIR, your pants, again. Actually, I might even wash your pants for you, as a favor, because I am lovely and kind, but I will not have you mindlessly expecting washed pants. I am a feminist, for fuck's sake. 

I suddenly yearn for the kind company, virtual or physical, of those awesome and supportive Sisters, with or without kids, who say nice things and are self-deprecating and hilarious. I want to braid your hair and be like you. Briefly, the ice in my heart melts.

But not for long. As I storm about collecting the raft of waste paper that has accreted on our furniture (receipts, price tags, and magazine inserts entreating me to subscribe at a discount: to you I say DAAHHHH) I catch a glimpse of myself in the mirror and my ire takes another turn. Surely it is someone else's fault that I am still so fat. 

Actually, that's probably just my fault, which is why this is an unpleasant train of thought. But you know who sucks though? Those Other Women. Those judging harridans who are not among the handful of awesome and uplifting Sisters, but instead want you to know that whatever you are going through now, you are wrong and it gets worse. To those women who would like me to feel worse so that they can feel better, and while I'm at it, to those women who would have me believe that pacifiers breed 26-year-old thumbsuckers: F*** you. All of you. You are not helping. 

***
Glad I got that out of my system. And now, you know who's awake? My daughter. Who is also daughter of my gorgeous husband. She has this smile. 

Unfortunately for her, she also has a mother who is blatantly insane. Don't look at me though. That's someone else's fault. 

Salzburg: Ancient Home of Blond, Blue-Eyed Baby Jesus

Last weekend our little family headed out to Salzburg. Our mission was to show Nava to her great grandmother and a couple of Alex's wonderful cousins and their families, and to coo over another freshly baked baby girl named Floriana, who is an adorable porcelain princess with rosy cheeks and sweet blue eyes. 

Alex's Oma 

She is also blonde, because this is Salzburg. 

There are so many natural blonds in Salzburg that it is one of the last remaining homes of blond, blue-eyed Baby Jesus. Other places may have swapped His image for something a little less European, but Salzburg is old school like that. Blond Jesus (and his blond parents) have had their pictures carved, painted, frescoed, lacquered and cross-stitched all through the city. The traditions of Christendom are obvious in other ways - for example, I heard someone with no particularly religious leanings use "Christian" as a synonym for "civilized" (as in, "Why don't you call at a Christian time of night?"), which I've never heard in Vienna. 

Salzburg has just under 150,000 residents, and at least that many tourists wandering around day and night. The main reasons for the tourist boom are the architecture, the Mozart, and especially The Sound of Music, that great American classic, which no Austrian has ever seen but which everyone has heard of because tourists bring it up all the time. It was filmed in Salzburg. That scene where the Von Trapp family are hiding from the Nazis in a cemetery? Yeah, that's basically Alex's grandmother's backyard. 

St. Peter's Abbey. Don't let that 18th century dome fool you.
In the same century as this place was first used as a church,
Attila the Hun battled Rome, the Shaolin Monastery was founded
and Mayan civilization was enjoying its glory days. Sidenote:
The building on the right houses the oldest continuously running
restaurant in the world. "Genuine Salzburg hospitality for over 1200 years".

There is a part of Salzburg where young and dynamic people hang out, or so I'm told, but like most tourists I've never been there. I've only ever spent time in the the Altstadt, or old city, which radiates a stony coldness even on hot days. It also radiates conservatism and wealth, and many of the oldest (and most touristy) streets in town are filled with designer shops that have had a sort of Ye Olde Catholick Towne facelift. 

Alex's Oma lives in an area at the foot of an enormous rock called the Mönchsberg, atop which sits a properly medieval fortress. Around its base are chunky edifices and pathways that look like they were scraped into the mountain by monks who had nothing but wooden sporks to work with. Growing outward from the cliffside are cobblestone alleys lined with baroque-looking churches (and other buildings, but it feels like mostly churches) that hide truly antediluvian cellars in their bowels. 

Regular people in Salzburg

This city is old as they come. It was once a Celtic settlement, but in 15 B.C. the Romans took over. That city, Iuvavum, fell apart in the 5th century but was later reestablished as the bishopric of Salzburg in 696 A.D. by Saint Rupert, or so Wikipedia tells me. 

You want to know how old this place is? St. Peter's Abbey, in which Alex's grandmother resides, is the oldest known convent in the German-speaking realm and indeed it is SO OLD that when St. Rupert came through he had the place renovated. The core of the building and spire that exist today were built in the Middle Ages, but of course at that point the site had been used as a church for a good five hundred years already. Despite the sometimes kitschy renovations, there's a kind of Indiana Jones feel to Salzburg, like some crusader might have stashed the Holy Grail in what is now the basement of the local Prada. 

More regular people

And in such a place, I guess it shouldn't be THAT surprising that traditional Austrian dress is back. Alex and I were told that young, hip people across Salzburg can now be seen rocking their Dirndl and Lederhosen, like, all the time.  And to our utter amazement, it was true. In Vienna, if you wear such things others will assume you are either selling cheese at a farmer's market, attending a wedding, or have atrocious politics. (Which is too bad, really, because a good Dirndl gives every woman--flat, fat or otherwise--a lovely hourglass figure.) 


Anyway, in Salzburg wearing your Tracht (national dress) these days doesn't mean anything! It just means you're wearing clothes! I wish I had gotten a picture of the one guy who was wearing Lederhosen with a V-neck sweater and a slouchy beanie over his dreads, but you'll just have to take my word for it. However, I did manage to take photos of these other perfectly regular people wandering around in their Dirndl and Lederhosen without goose-stepping, getting married or carrying wheels of cheese. 

Sadly we had to leave Salt Castle after only one night. 

Spot the Austrian detailing at this crosswalk!
(I see one hat and at least two pairs of Lederhosen.)

And thus we abruptly find ourselves at home on the Gumpendorfer Strasse of the 21st century, where the Volk have assiduously hip tattoos, do hot yoga, drink gin, and dress like the Amish. It's good to be back around normal people. 

Pennsylvania Dutch Country or Gumpendorferstrasse? This photo shamelessly plundered
from this website: http://www.theinquiringmind.net/2008/10/peoples-of-america-amish.html

Nava Gets a Gift

Hooray! My good old friend Denia is in town. I don't get to see her much because she lives in California where she does brilliant nuclear stuff and where I assume she and her colleagues gossip about quarks and Snapchat with Nobel Prize winners. 

Anyway, because Denia is lovely and still condescends to speak to the likes of me, we had a great time chit chatting and playing with the baby, and then Denia and I went out for a walk (and by walk I mean she waited with me at my gynaecologist's office, because that's the kind of stellar feminist friend she is). We talked about literature, meditation, iron-rich vegetables and the recent work of a transgendered Stanford professor of neurobiology. Actually, she talked about those things. I talked about baby poop and my episiotomy. 

Unfortunately, however, Denia was generous enough to bring young Nava a lovely baby book as a gift. Predictably, it is about rainbows. It opens with the sentence: "Little Rabbit and his mother were sitting under a big, red flower petal." You see, that's where they were waiting for the rain to stop. 

Denia and Nava. Looks like Nava just finished reading her new book!

The book is about what rainbows are made of. I always thought rainbows were made of light refracted through tiny water drops suspended in the atmosphere, but apparently that's wrong. It turns out rainbows are made out of RED, ORANGE, YELLOW, GREEN, BLUE and PURPLE.

Thanks a lot for this super educational book, Denia. I thought you were a scientist. 

Okay, actually the book is really cute and has this whole thing with pop-out ribbons that build into a rainbow. And Denia is a wonderful person whom I love. Thanks so much for visiting, Denia, and thank you very much for the book. 

This is What Constitutes a Major Achievement in My Life These Days

Because Alex and I are adherents of the Path of Least Resistance School of Interior Design, we decided to conveniently locate Nava's diaper changing table in our living room. For the same reason, and because we are almost entirely innocent of either good taste or disposable income, our living room is basically monochromatic: everything is either black or white or a shade of gray. 

But the changing table was made of wood stained a fairly deep yellow, which didn't match, and it was missing an attachment that would have made it deep enough to fit a baby (we'd been laying her sideways). 

So last weekend, we built an attachment and painted it white!

BOOM. White changing table. Shot from below to add majesty.

Um, and that's it. 

Gosh. I was hoping this would be more of a blog post. It seemed like a serious achievement at the time. It involved planning the table extension, dismantling parts of the table, going to the hardware store, having wood cut, sanding the whole thing, nailing new bits together and painting everything twice. All on a Saturday. OH, oh, AND blogging about it. WITH a baby! I think we should get extra points for doing it with a baby. 

Not that our baby can talk or propel herself, or anything, but she does squall* loudly and for no reason for a couple hours every evening, and that made it pretty hard to concentrate. On the plus side, it made it totally irrelevant that Alex could have woken the dead when he was nailing pieces of wood together (at that point I was making futile efforts to calm our hysterical and inconsolable bairn, who was not hungry or in pain but was having her usual 6 pm bout of what I imagine is Creeping Existential Dread). 

Whatever. Fixing up the table was really hard and we are proud of ourselves. 

Here's a picture of our baby. She continues to be by far the best thing we've made. Didn't even have to go to the hardware store. 

P.S. Shana Tova, to those who celebrate it 

* By the way, the expression "a squalling infant" was a cliche I'd often read, but I feel like now I really understand. And we're lucky enough to have what they call an easy baby (knock on wood, salt over left shoulder, etc)! 

My First Baby Book

Baby books depicted are not necessarily terrible

Look!
I am a baby book.
Read!
I am about the letters A to Z.   

Your baby needs a good head start.
So you will read me to your baby 
but your baby will not give a fart.

She will not care on your couch.
She will not care on a chair.
She will not care in your arms.
She will not care anywhere.

She will stare
past your shoulder in the air
and you will wonder why 
you have not written a baby book yourself
because frankly
baby books are dumb. 
They make your soul numb. 

They have a rhythm and a rhyme
but only sort of and only sometimes.

This one cost fifteen euros
that you could have spent
elsewhere
and your baby would still stare
past your shoulder into nowhere. 

P.S. Really looking forward to books for slightly bigger children, which are better suited for reading than chewing. 

One Month!

Last Monday young Nava turned one month old. I wanted to write this then, but life. Also still no computer of my own. Anyway. She has not been eaten by the cats and the only injuries she has sustained were self-inflicted and nonlethal (various punches to the noggin near meal times, a couple scratches courtesy of the fastest growing mini fingernails in the world), and she continues to grow and gain weight. Hooray us! 

She is certainly doing better than our worthless, worthless cats, who now do lavish pees and poos anywhere they please at all times of the night or day. If Nava's first word is m******f***** it's not my fault. 

My mom can make me wear anything and I am totally defenseless. It makes me want to punch my own adorable little face!

Anyway, for the record, here are some of Nava's major achievements so far: 

1. Crusty umbilical cord replaced by 100% cute belly button.
2. Very smallest onesies officially outgrown, and the next size diaper is waiting in the wings
3. Can bring fist/fingers to mouth within three tries
4. Poops without weeping most of the time
5. Almost never crosses her eyes
6. Occasionally unclenches fists and uses those tweeny little starfish to grab things
7. To my dismay, sometimes she keeps her legs straightened even when sleeping. Less and less froggy. 

Her goals for next month include losing the black fuzz on her ears and learning not to eat while crying or cry while eating! 



 

Quickly blog faster! About women

Holy beans, I have access to a computer and the baby is sleeping. Quickly blog faster! I only have a few minutes so I'll keep this post narrow: Women are insane. To be more specific (and, like, fair), what I mean is that some women really lose it around babies.

I've really noticed it walking through the wilds of Gumpendorfer Strasse with the Mouse.
Complete strangers will surreptitiously cross traffic so that they can walk near the baby and peep at her feet. Old ladies rise from their bus seats like Lazarus to peer into the carriage, and young girls come bounding out of the shops where they work to coo and sigh. 

There is much squealing.  It goes like this. Someone will come up and say, "Mei das Putzi ist ja GANZ ein neues, so ein KLEINES *indecipherable cooing*" Still smiling like madonna, they ask, "Und? Wie alt?" (Loose translation: "What a wittle snooky wooky wookems woo. How old is she?")

And I say: "Fast ein Monat." (A month, or whatever). And they squee and clutch their hearts. When I told one woman on the bus that Nava was only six days old the woman actually shrieked and had to clap her hands over her mouth and sit down. Other times real tears come into these ladies' eyes. 

One person I have only met once for five minutes walked right up to us in the street, apologised briefly ("Sorry, ich muss das jetzt sehen -- so SÜSS!"), pulled the child's sock off and then just stood there holding her foot. Another girl was gazing into the carriage when, with no forewarning, she reached in, pulled the sleeping baby's dress up and placed a single finger on her teeny weeny belly button. Then she literally stood there until it started to rain. 

Ickle wickle baby toesies!

It's insane. Worse, I'm almost certain that I'm going to become these women - I, too, am grievously addicted to the smell of fresh baby and the sight of wittle pink toes. 

However. Despite the crazy, its exactly those hormones that make us ladies into sensitive fertility goddesses. 

Now, I'm not saying breeding is our best feature. Women don't need to have kids. Even if they do have kids I suspect that raising those kids is a whole lot more challenging than just bringing them into the world. There are many parts of women that are brilliantly designed to do all kinds of other things, like sneezing and calculus. And we should do them. It is great news for the world that ever more women are shaping religion, politics, science, engineering and other fields previously monopolized by the boys (who did a lovely job most of the time, but also brought us, respectively, holy war, regular war, social darwinism and the bomb). 

Our worthy minds aside, though, girls' bodies are amazing on an esoteric level, and that is especially obvious when it comes to perpetuating the species. Not to brag or anything, but my body isn't just some abstract temple: it's a serious, life-building factory. My magic womb knit an entire person together while the rest of me ate Ben & Jerry's and sobbed at vapid Dove commercials. (By the by, pregnancy really solidified my belief that any person who thinks I shouldn't be the boss of my body can go hump a scroll.) 

Every part of the female organism is linked to every other part, and to the baby, like that jellyfish tree in Avatar. The baby bleats once and you're awake; if you think about the way she smells your breasts leak. When she nurses, your uterus contracts ever closer to its pre-pregnancy size. Many aspects of childbirth and care would physically hurt more but you're flooded with love chemicals. I imagine there is a mixing board in our wombs and before it sits a great mother DJ with her incantations and ivory chopsticks, tweaking our cycles and sleep, our blood and milk. 

The whole system is enough to make you believe in rain dances. Women are fucking awesome. 

So, you know, I guess its okay that strangers come and try to smell my kid's head. It's a side effect of their feminine awesomeness. And anyway, they can usually be scared off with that other essential womanly skill: bitchy resting face.