Baby Life Begins

Nearly three weeks have gone by in a sweet, molasses-like moment. Already my dear mother has left us again 8come baaaack!!) and we have settled into something resembling a routine. Or rather, we are better able to predict which bits of the day are going to be total chaos, and brace ourselves. 

I feel great though I look like I've been beaten over the head with a jumbo pack of diapers and probably will for the rest of my life. 

Alex is a rock star. I love him.

Most importantly, our beloved second born is thriving--by which I mean she is steadily gaining weight and has so far been (knock on wood) just a laid back, groovy baby. 


When she's awake her dark eyes are bright and alert. She keeps very still and looks steadily at one thing after another. This is the case for about 20 minutes a day. The rest of our sweet caterpillar's day is evenly divided between sleep and breastfeeding, with breaks for elaborate newborn poops, the noisy exuberance of which I had forgotten. 

Being a round-the-clock milk cow is a minor drag, but I must say that the entire newborn-having experience is much more pleasant the second time around. 

Turns out that when you are not sidetracked by existential angst or the terror of accidentally breaking your offspring, hanging out with a cream-and-crystal infant all day is pretty enjoyable. You just have to resign yourself to not accomplishing anything on a schedule. 

The best part, of course, is watching Noodle love her little sister. Even at moments that are obviously hard, like when I can't put the baby down for three hours straight in the evening because it's the witching hour and I am in full dairy mode, Noodle takes deep breaths and pats her sister's hand and tells her not to worry and gives her little kisses. 

Okay, sometimes she also goes into gremlin mode and screams until I think her head might actually explode into angry toddler confetti, but hey. We're working on it.  And I just spent several months in gremlin mode myself, so I can relate. 

And in any case, our family of four is still brand new. Things are falling into a new groove. Everyone is figuring out how they can spend enough time with everyone else, and by themselves. That last one is pretty important. Finally, as of a couple days ago there's enough time between feedings for me to put on clothes -- and update this blog. Hallelujah. 

Baby life, here we go! 

Baby Smooches

Extra! Extra! Miss Noodle got a smooch from Sir E., probably her oldest friend (see here and here), who is only two weeks older (and whose birth date was only three days after Noodle's...they're really the same age). Cuteness ensued. At least I think it is cute and am shamelessly subjecting you to the video.  

Sir E. and his Mama joined Alex, Noodle and me for an extremely cold walk at the Jesuitenwiese yesterday. After plenty of frickin' freezing fresh air, we found a little restaurant to warm up in. The kiddos amused themselves by screeching and bouncing and waving at the people leaving the restaurant (this video was made shortly before we paid and ran away so as to stop bothering the other guests). 

We may or may not have instructed them to give each other a "Bussi" (little kiss), something we've basically been trying to do since they were born. And this time, IT WORKED. 

Are we exploiting them for adorbsness? YES. 

The Superior Parent

My fellow parent has many excellent qualities. Yet it has always been clear to me that I am the superior. Evidence? Please. It is evident. I mean, just look at me. I'm GREAT. 

Heading south. I think we were over Egypt.

So imagine my dismay when I returned on Wednesday from a week-long work trip to Nairobi and the homestead was in perfect order and our child SEEMED both happy and throughly kempt. The kid barely noticed I was gone. At first I was perplexed, but looking back over the evidence of the week, I have an explanation. Gross corruption. 

My daughter has been bribed. 

Exhibit 1: Vegetables (lack thereof). One evening I Skyped in to my wee, dear family to find that my one year-old was merrily dining on take-out from the local cheap Chinese place. The child clutched a gyoza and was smeared in pork fat, soy sauce and jollity. A transparent effort to buy her chubby little heart. 

Exhibit 2: Bedtime. Last night at dinner, Alex's sister asked when the Noodle usually goes to bed. "At eight," I answered promptly. "Between seven and eight...well, nine," said Alex, just as promptly. He said, "I mean, it would be seven fifteen every night if I had my way. Ha! Hahaha! HA!" We looked at each other. I raised an eyebrow.  

Corrupted.

Exhibit 3: Television. Also last night, while dining at Alex's sister's home, our daughter kept picking up the remote control for the TV and pointing it at the screen and pushing random buttons in what can only be described as a well-practiced motion. When the TV finally came on she was utterly transfixed. "Wow, look how fascinated she is," I said. "We almost never watch TV when she is around at home." I looked at Alex. He looked away. 

Exhibit 4: Cookies. Again last night at dinner, Noodle was given a piece of cookie for dessert. Then she wanted another one, which I was inclined to let her have. "She never eats this stuff, so it's fine," I said. At the same moment, Alex said, "No more! Noodle, I think you have had more than enough cookies lately." 

Daddy and daughter.

"Wait, when was that?" I asked. 

"Psh," he said, holding up his thumb to start counting. "Just this afternoon she had one, two...plenty," he said. 

I looked at him, and had a sudden vision of the dozens of cookies that had disappeared down that delicate toddler gullet over the last seven days. My husband shrugged.  

I rest my case. 

But also, I would like to reiterate my thanks to my darling husband for making it possible for me to go gallivanting halfway across the world to do my job, indeed to enjoy my job, without worrying for a minute whether my baby is being taken care of. 

Of course she is. She has the loveliest Daddy in the world, and we both love him very, very much. 

Three big loves. 

Remember Those Tadpoles?

Remember how we saved a bunch of tadpoles and took them home? Well, weeks and weeks later, we finally have at least one teeny weeny frog. Yesterday we also had one, which I picked up and put down a couple of times, only to learn that wittle bitty fwoggies do not like that. It died minutes later. This morning, yet another wee polliwog became a frog--apparently ingesting his tail overnight. I feel terrible about the one I man-handled and have decided it's definitely time to release all of them--I don't have the skills or equipment to care for these incy wincy amphibians any longer. 

TA-DAAPOOOLE!

Of the original flock cloud, only around eight remain*. All the rest went in one of two major die-offs. I don't know what happened the first time, which was about two weeks after we'd first installed the tadpoles in our home. Suddenly the water was a murky mess and half the critters were floating around looking grey and hollow. The second massive die-off was entirely my fault: I had run out of boiled lettuce and cheated by dropping in just a tiny bit of, um, bread. Fail.

Almost frogs (or toads?)

For anyone who cares to know, here are my major tips and tricks for the successful raising of tadpoles. Assuming you consider eight almost-frogs out of 30 tadpoles a "success": 

1. Change their water every few days. The new water should be de-chlorinated. I put tap water in a big glass jar in the sunshine for a few days, which seemed to work. Sometimes I also added a little fresh tap water, but I guess in Vienna the chlorine levels are so low it didn't hurt anybody. I reckon in many other cities tap water would basically be an amphibian death sentence. 

Also, not changing the water is very bad--I'm pretty sure that's what was behind mass extinction one. The water should not get even a little bit cloudy - not at ALL. You'd think that was fine, since tadpoles live in filthy puddles, but it is not. I'm sorry, duders. I drowned you in your own goop. 

How do you go about changing tadpole water? What you do not do is try to individually spoon the tadpoles out, because you have better things to do, like change your actual human tadpole and make lunch or whatever. What you do is take out all your decorative rocks, pour the whole mess of water and tadpoles through a fine sieve (poop<"fine"<tadpoles), and dump the tadpoles into a bowl of clean, de-chlorinated water. Tap tap tap your sieve! Those suckers can be sticky. Put your rocks and your tadpoles back in their aquarium, i.e. their big glass tupperware with no lid, which is what we used. Add water as necessary. 

How the Noodle looks to a tadpole.

2. Direct sunshine murders frogspawn. We put our container on a table next to a big plant whose (non-toxic) leaves sort of gave it some shade, and anyway it was not in direct sunlight. Also, somewhere on the internet it says that mint and some other herbs and plants are toxic for fwoggy woggies, so beware. I'd be more specific but I can't really remember and also there is Google. 

3. Boiled lettuce. Feed them lettuce boiled down into nothingness, which you then chop. You can freeze little chunks in an ice-cube tray (a whole ice-cube would be, like, five times too much for one feeding of 20 tadpoles, though) and drop them in every two or three days. Do not feed them bread. I'm sorry, little guys. I didn't know. 

4. Don't touch them. They die. I'M SO SORRY, little frog from yesterday. 

Have fun growing froglets! 

----

*A flock? A pride? A murder? A group? According to the internet, the author of one book about clusters of animals says it's cloud, but scientists use school or shoal. Let's go with cloud. 

Floor Swimming

So what have I been up to lately, you ask?

A little work, a little play, but the short answer is that I've been up to nothing. Yet I've been oddly busy. Not in a bad way, just a busy way. 

Have you ever had one of those weeks where you feel like you did the army crawl through a mud-drenched obstacle course and then, at the very end, you got hosed down with elephant dung? This wasn't one of them. This was just one of those weeks on the hamster wheel, where you do one little thing you have to do and then another and then another and the next thing you know, you're a week closer to death and no more fulfilled than you were last Monday, and you still haven't done the things you really meant to do. And now it's Tuesday and I've caught the sniffles. 

The good news is that while I was busy chasing my tail, young Noodle was moving in better circles, namely floor circles. For a couple weeks now she's been wheeling around on her belly like a top*. Progress was marginal until yesterday morning's nap. When she awoke she could propel herself forwards with her fingertips and tippy toes. Ladies and gentleman, McNoodle has achieved locomotion. Crawling ahoy! 

Hope you're achieving great things this week. And I'll be cheerier tomorrow. *Sniff*

* I haven't seen anyone playing with a top in years and in all my recent visits to diverse toy stores I have not seen a single top. I haven't even thought about toy tops (or semi-professional tops, for that matter) in years. Do they even do tops any more? 

Booting Out Baby

In the oceanic dusk of four a.m., a voice rings out. It rolls across the hills and valleys of our bed, ever more insistent, like the refrain of a lonely humpback whale. 

"Awawawaoooooooooooooh," she sings. "AwaaaawaahahahaOOOoooWAHHHHHhhhooo."

Fast asleep, leg still in hand, by 9 a.m.

"Please, no," says a different, hoarse voice. It might be mine. "Please. Just ten more minutes." 

And so it has come to pass that we are throwing our daughter out. It's time for her to have her own room. A room far, far away where we can supervise her via a creepy spy cam and--crucially--turn off the volume in the event of a non-emergency. 

The good news is that we have two bedrooms. The bad news is that since we were co-sleeping anyway, our so-called "nursery" has never been anything more than a disgusting hoarder's paradise. It's where we hang our laundry. It's where we keep tools and our tent. It's also where we keep stuff that we're just not that into. Like, you know, stuff we just use but that we don't like to talk about with other people. Towels that are clean but discolored. My orange shopping trolley. Swiffers. Stuff with a good personality.

No one show my mother this photo.  

About a month ago we realized it was time to take action. It was time for a clean break. So obviously, instead of doing that, we took out what will soon be the babe's crib and painted it white, and then re-inserted it among the jumble. 

Pro Crastinating. 

Then it was really time to start sorting through the nonsense, so the next weekend we went out to the hardware store for supplies, came home and constructed little pinewood feet with which to elevate the crib and the pull-out sofa. 

Then we really were going to clean that room up, but first we needed to put the little feet under the furniture so we could stow our suitcases, but this was a chicken-and-egg dilemma that would involve real commitment, so we just ignored it completely for another week.

Dude, it's hard to break up with some stuff. But eventually, we did. Okay, actually we just hid it better, but that's basically the same thing. 

And voila! We now have a plain and empty bedroom. So what if all the furniture hovers two-and-a-half feet over the floor, as if a baby giant is about to move in. It's stuff-free and we're ready for the fun part: decorating!

Floating furniture. And yes, that's our laundry.
Look, it has to go somewhere.

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. 

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.

At Last

"You smiled, you smiled

oh and then the spell was cast

and here we are in heaven

for you are mine at last" 

After 41 weeks of totally patient waiting (ahem), she arrived! Nava Sophie joined us in the madness and glory on July 29 at 11.08 am in the morning, weighing a proud 4125 g (9 lbs) and measuring 56 cm (22 inches). 

We are utterly besotted and have spent the week hypnotized by the way she moves her mouth, the way her chest lifts when she breathes, the way she sleeps with her feet curled up like a frog. 

It's taken us a few days to get permission to leave the (wonderful) hospital but we finally got out last night, just in time to spend the weekend with my parents and my brother in our own home. Hallelujah and at last! She was definitely worth the wait.