Rituals and Poop

After a crazy couple of weeks worrying about work-related stuff I can finally concentrate on really important things again, like making sure I take enough videos of my kids. This is key because they are pretty cute these days. 

The basic dynamic is that the Noodle descends closely upon the baby like a swarm of giggling locusts, cooing and patting and poking her in the face. Because she is still just a tube-monkey, the baby's only natural defense in the face of obvious danger is to be adorable. Thus just as the horned toad squirts blood into the eyes of desert badgers (we don't employ fact-checkers around here), the Mini Muffin, unable to roll over or accurately manoeuvre her tiny, balled-up hands, frantically smiles at her sister. It usually works in the sense that she is still alive.

The Noodle (having turned all her angst against her increasingly desperate parents) loves the baby, but it's not a problem because babies are remarkably resilient. I was sure you couldn't bend such tiny arms that way without causing lasting harm, but apparently its fine. Also you can give a newborn an "indian burn" of love (in typing this I just realized that I spent my whole childhood saying this vaguely racist thing...what do the kids these days call it?) and she'll just spit up. 

But Noodle's very favourite part about the baby, it seems, is watching me change her diaper. It combines her two favourite things: rituals and poop. 

This morning, for example. (By the way, these days Noodle usually uses just one modal verb of her own invention, "moo-de", regardless of language, meaning or tense. It comes from the German "muss" but really applies everywhere, I moo-de tell you.) 

"Noodle, get your boots on while I get your sister dressed. We have to go," I said, laying the baby down on the changing table. 

"I'm coming, baby!" said the Noodle. There are shuffling sounds in the other room. She rounds the corner somehow holding a piece of paper, a key chain, a toy stethoscope, a stuffed animal and a tangerine. No shoes. 

"Noodle, no more playing. You have to get to kindergarten. St. Nicholas is coming today! Get your shoes on please while I change the baby's diaper..."

Sharp, exaggerated, excited intake of breath. A dropping of many objects at the same time. "Diaper?" says the Noodle. "I moo-de see the diaper!" 

"But your shoes..." I say, helplessly, as the Noodle drags her little chair across the living room and next to the changing table. 

"I want to see the kaka," says Noodle, climbing up beside me. "A really BIG one." 

"No, you need to..." I start to say, again. Then I remember my parenting mantra ("Do you really care?"), rub my face with my hands and give up. 

"Do you think it will be REALLY BIG?" I ask. "Like, SO big?" 

Noodle's eyes widen. "Let's check," she says conspiratorially as I peel away the baby's diaper. 

Which does not disappoint. 

"Mommy it is blueberries and blackberries and blueberries and haha!" says Noodle. I have no idea what the hell she is talking about. 

"Hee hee," says Noodle. She doesn't laugh; she says "hee hee." Then she says, "Hee hee poo poo...and the blackberries and the strawberries and the blue ones." 

What. 

"You're so calm," I say to the baby, cleaning her up as quickly as possible. "I like it! Let's get a fresh diaper on you." 

"Glulck," says the baby, sucking her fist. 

"A fresh diiiiiaper, baby?" says the Noodle, who is, perhaps, just a tad frightening. "For the poo poo, mommy? The poo poo kaka? And the pee pee? Hee hee hee hee."

I fold up the used diaper and throw it away.  

"No!" says Noodle. "I want to see it! I moo-de see the kaka. The really BIG one the...the blueberries blackberries and the, and the...I need to go buy fruits and vegetables! From the supermarket, mommy." 

"You do?" I ask. 

"Oh yes. One minute, mommy, I moo-de buy the...we moo-de...And the big one. And the big one from the supermarket. Yes, mommy? Not the kaka diapers. The other one. The really BIG one."

If a two year-old lost her mind, how would you know?

"...And the blueberries and blackberries and a...a mango. I want a mango, mommy. A mango. And rice crackers. Now, mommy. Please mommy. Mango, mommy. Cheese, mommy. Not diapers, Tali. Don't worry baby. Rice crackers. Bread. Bread, mommy. Bread. Please. With marmelade. A big one. A REALLY BIG ONE." 

I'm beginning to get the picture. "Um, are you hungry?"

"YES, Mommy," she says, suddenly looking very pitiful indeed. "I SO HUNGRY MOMMY. I want bread."  

"Well, your breakfast is waiting at kindergarten so get your boots on and I will get you some bread for the way." 

"Hooray! Don't worry, Tali, there is breakfast at kindergarten! I moo-de GO!"

"Glulck," says the baby. 

And off we go, because we moo-de.  

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! 

No But Really. Ten Things I Actually Wish I Had Known Before I Had a Baby.

There are a lot of lists on the interwebs of things new mommies wish they had known before they had a baby, and I have read and liked (and "liked") many of them. They are all full of truths, practical advice, encouragement, and hilarious observations. However, I do feel a little bit like these are all actually things I did know about having a baby before I had a baby because before I had a baby I read a lot of lists about things one wishes one would have known before one had a baby. You dig? 

Back when I read a lot of books about babies.

Unless your pre-birth reading is confined to a certain well-loved tome that rhymes with Schmut to Schmexschmect When You're Schmexschmecting (which I read cover-to-cover, obviously), you'll already have been told to just effing relax and schmexschmect the unexschmected. 

Therefore, here is my contribution to the genre. Behold. Ten things I actually wish I had known before I had baby. 

1. Relax. Babies are ignorant as s***. Your average newborn has the face of yoda, the unfocused middle-distance gaze of a sage, and the eye motions of an ancient land tortoise. This may give the false impression that your young hatchling is yet imbued with supernatural wisdom, a residue of a past existence that dissipates as we grow into clunking, hormone-driven adults. 

Actually, babies don't know anything about anything. That gaze is a result of their terrible vision, and the strange stillness is because their wimpy limbs are no match for gravity. I'm not saying they're dumb. They're as smart as any of us. But their ignorance is an oceanic thing, guys. In fact, it is astonishing how quickly they actually manage to learn, you know, absolutely everything. "This is a red cup," I say, holding up a red cup. Think about all of things they have to learn before they can even understand that sentence, and that's assuming their color vision has already kicked in. 

So much wisdom.

What does this ignorance mean for you in practical terms? Well, first and foremost, it means you should be impressed as hell when your kid stands up ten months later, picks up a tiny piece of crud off the coffee table, holds it up to you, and says, "Ba ba dis dis?" and then gives it to you. And then makes the baby sign for milk. I mean, for gof's sake, it's amazing. But secondly, it also means that if you occasionally stub your toe and let loose a string of sailor-like invective in front of your two month-old, it really doesn't matter. And it also doesn't matter if, in those first three wonderful and lonely and awe-inspiring and sad months, you sometimes need to start crying and then while away the long long hours by watching Judge Judy with your snoozing child on your chest. 

Seriously, it doesn't matter at all. You don't need to read her The Economist out loud every night, even though you totally can, because she does not care. Well, not yet. Later it gets tricky. 


2. Be prepared with some baby stuff, but rein it in, Imelda. Look, you are obviously going to buy some baby stuff before the kid arrives. For one thing, you will actually need some things immediately. Moreover, that late pregnancy urge to nest and feel prepared is totally overwhelming and must be sated. But for gof's sake, if at all possible, don't overdo it. Get the baby furniture, get a buggy and a car seat, buy some cute room decorations if you must, get one (1!) package of diapers and a set of bottles, have a couple outfits and a ton of cloth diapers for wiping up drool, and then, if you can, buy nothing. Nothing, I say. There are two major reasons: 

Noodle and her daddy, surrounded by some of our
many many many baby-related possessions

One: You will need stuff that is not the stuff you think you need. Par example, I bought about a month's worth of perversely expensive, organic, argan-oil soaked baby butt wipes in a fit of lunacy during my last trimester. And then lo and behold I was told that newborns should have their buns wiped with warm water-soaked cotton pads. I purchased a fancy baby-wearing cloth, which I used precisely three times before realizing I am not nearly devoted enough for this crap and vastly preferred the convenience of a Baby Björn. As it turns out, I was just as lazy as a new mom as I was before (see next point). Plus, until I actually had the baby in hand, as it were, I didn't really know what features to look for when baby shopping. (Pro tips: Too many buttons suck. Buttons down the baby's back suck. Materials other than cotton or wool suck. Baby clothes that require hand-washing, no matter how cute, should be banned.) 

Our generous relatives gave us so many baby clothes. 

Two: Having baby stuff to shop for will give you something to do. Don't ruin the fun beforehand! When you are quietly losing your mind in the first couple months after the child is born, and desperately trying to think of reasons to leave the house (newborns are pretty useless at the playground, ski slope, swimming pool or local bar), shopping for baby stuff presents a magical opportunity for an excursion. It checks so many boxes. You get to indulge in a little shopping therapy even though your own body still looks like one of those deep sea creatures after it's been dredged to the surface. Plus, if you haven't already purchased every damn thing your kid could possibly need for the next three years, it's necessary! You need these little outfits and crib liners and baby-wearing devices! Trust me, it's way more satisfying to stroll around the fun stores with your slumbering wiener than it is to stroll to the grocery store (again) for yet another package of diapers and Q-tips. 

3. You are still going to be you. All your wonderful and terrible qualities will remain with you. You'll try to exert more control over them, you will work on being more patient, you will try to be less messy and more organized, but ultimately you're still just YOU. Your existential fears and doubts, your penchant for gin and cake, your desire to be pretty. So will your sense of humour, your smile, your intelligence and your ambition. I found that my baby gives me a lot more motivation to be a better version of myself, but she certainly doesn't make it any easier to get there. 

4. Your areolas will return to their previous shape and scope. Y'all know what I'm talking about. Give it a few months.

4. In fact, ALL your bits will return to their previous shape and scope. Well, my belly still hasn't. But you know what I'm really talking about here. Give it more time than you'd hoped. 

5. Your baby politics may change, and that's fine. If you were previously against public breastfeeding, for instance, feel totally free to change your mind. My attitude prior to breastfeeding was that women should be able to breastfeed in most public places, if they do it discreetly and bear in mind that there are some spaces where it is simply not appropriate. My attitude once I was actually breastfeeding was that everyone can kiss my butt, this baby's hungry now and I'm not going to make her eat her dinner in the toilet. What, you've never seen a boob before? 

Another example: I used to think that the reason I would want to go back to work was because I would be bored at home. God, I was a snob. It can be boring sometimes (a lot?), but mostly it is a freaking slog. Hello? Coming up with stimulating things to do with your baby(ies) all day long while creating nutritious meals and handling the unreasonable expectation that you'll do all the household shopping and chores because you have "nothing else to do?" Yeah. No. Super drag. I'm stoked to go back to work soon because any environment where you can tune out for five minutes, earn money by speaking to adults, and have a regular sense of achievement sounds like a little bit of a relief. Obviously, working can also be a patience-testing slog, but at least if you're having a bit of a bad morning you don't have to feel so guilty about it. I now believe that women who work and women who stay home have it rough, because we so often get saddled (no matter what we do) with more than our fair share of shopping, cooking and cleaning--and this seems to happen even when the intention is to split that stuff fifty-fifty. Feminism hasn't won yet. 

6. Time flies, but also it doesn't. Everyone tells you that the first year goes so fast, so take a lot of pictures, keep a diary, and cherish every moment. Etc. Predictably, that is true. Actually, I found myself thinking a lot about time in general after the Noodle was born. And by time, I mean life, by which I actually mean death--my own, my husband's, everyone's. Including my daughter's. The impossibility and total certainty of it. You know. The beauty and horror of everything. Rainbow of the salt sand-wave and all that. That type of thought. Does that sound morbid? But it's true. I thought about those things a lot in the first few weeks, in particular. As a friend recently told me on his birthday, "Ah, the inexorable march toward death. I'm with the Buddhists on this one. Don't get too attached to life, because boom." Life is short--take a lot of pictures; post them on Facebook; maintain a sense of dark humour about the castles we build in the sand. 

This seems SO long ago.

On the other hand. Be prepared for some days to draaaaag on. I mean, wow. It's an almost nutritious kind of boredom, the kind that spurs creativity and insanity, dog-days-of-childhood-summer-boredom, the kind you rarely enjoy after the age of, like, twelve. One second plodding after the other. As your baby breastfeeds you sing yourself a song of sixpence, run through your mental grocery list, daydream about something or another, come back, and only three minutes have passed. It's insane. Just to clarify, though: you're still going to accomplish mighty few of those DIY and crafting projects you planned. 

7. You should start believing in vibes. Because your baby can feel them, and will react accordingly. Not just the vibes you think you're sending just by acting calm and breathing deeply, but the ones you are really sending. Unlike adults, they cannot be fooled, so it's time to get esoteric with your inner self, man. That sounds stupid, and certainly I used to think it was, but I swear. Emotional energy, vibes, all that nonsense. When it comes to baby-whispering, it's so real. 



8. Louis C.K. gets funnier. Maybe this is just me, but I used to think he was kind of gross, and I didn't much like that he called his kids assholes just to get a few laughs. Now I think he's hilarious. I mean, he's still a jerk. But while his kids are probably not going to appreciate any of it, they should know that their daddy is super funny.

9. You may give in to electronics and noisy toys. I don't care if you live in a hut under a rock in Siberia and ply her with a steady diet of hand-crafted wooden blocks and fabric books. Show that kid a cell phone one time and she will be hooked for life. And you will love it. Writing emails and the tyke is underfoot? Pass that baby a cell phone and buy yourself fifteen solid minutes. Also, do yourself a favor and buy some of those blinking, beeping, totally obnoxious toys. On a long car ride, you can tune out the circus sounds. A screaming baby is so much worse. 

10. The only desire that having a baby fulfils is the desire to have a baby. A professor at Boston University told me this (or something like it), and of course it is something I knew before I had the baby--but now I have one I feel the full force of this truth. Being a mother is something I have always wanted. It is an ambition I always had. And now that I get to be this perfect baby's mom, I am filled with new purpose, my life feels layered with new meaning, and there is nothing that brings me greater joy. 

However. It has not supplanted to any degree any of my other ambitions or interests. I still want to see my professional life go further. I still love to read and write and craft and cook and drink beer with my friends and talk about politics. I still want to learn how to keep plants without killing them. I would like to travel more. I want to understand many branches of science better. I want to stay on top of technological innovations. I want to write this blog. I want to be healthy; I want to be pretty. I want to be able to dress well when the situation demands it. And so on.  

Having a baby just makes it harder to do all of these things. Obviously there is less time and money for each of them. If we have more kids, it'll be even harder. Alex and I just don't have space or time any more to do some of the things we used to like, like nerding out on weekends with kilos of pottery clay or working on soapstone carvings. But being parents, I think, makes it more important to try to do what we can. I want to show my daughter that you can be a mom and have a job but also have good friends and pursue your interests and be fabulous all at the same time. Okay, that makes it sound like I'm accomplishing the above, which would be a lie. I'm sitting here in boxer shorts in an apartment that looks like Dresden in 1945. But the point is to strive for all those things, right? 

Before I had a baby, I thought it would be noble of me to relinquish some of my hobbies for the kiddo. Now I feel exactly the opposite. No one (dads or moms) should let anyone tell them that being a parent means it would be selfish to maintain their other interests. I don't want to pursue my own interests to the detriment of being a good parent, but it's hardly a zero sum decision. And I think giving up my other interests entirely would make me a pretty terrible role model. Right?

At one point I would have found everything happening
in this photo alarming. Not anymore!

11. You will eventually stop googling striking baby behaviours all the time. And stop worrying about whether you are going to break your child. Eventually. Or am I just more neurotic than most people? I read so many books while I was pregnant, and for the first few months after her birth I was constantly on the interwebs doing searches like: "3 wk baby punches self in face ok?" or "2 mo baby burping normal range day" or "4 mo baby fed cake frosting likelihood death adult obesity". Also I'd go check on her milestones. Like, I wasn't concerned if she hadn't achieved them, but I needed to know. 

Now I don't even look unless it really does seem like an emergency. For instance, the internets would probably say that the Noodle's lack of teeth at her age is totally weird, but I am now calm in the knowledge that she probably has milk teeth and that they will eventually emerge. Well, let's hope so, anyway. 

For any parents out there, what do you wish you'd known before having a baby? 

UPDATE: And by ten, apparently I meant eleven. My ability to count has also failed to improve with motherhood, more's the pity. 

TBHPTBHTH!

Some people teach their kids to say amusing things, like "I'm precocious!" (Okay, I just made that up and now secretly I'm all, ehramagerd I have to do that! Which says a lot about me, none of which is very good). Others work on teaching their babies to walk or do the splits. Me, I like to focus on blowing raspberries. 

Behold this video from this evening. We were goofing around in front of Photo Booth in an uninspired attempt to pass the last 20 minutes before Puffy's bedtime (we'd already read/eaten/attempted to destroy several fine books). 

I think she's got it! 

Goodnight, y'all. Oh and thanks, Bill Watterson, for a thousand things, one of which was teaching me how to spell TBHTHTPTHTH! 

Neglected Blog Returns After Hiatus

This is just a post to say that following a month-long blogging hiatus in which we were tremendously busy working and also going on vacation, I've resolved to get back on track. 

"You are not the only fatface in the world. There are many others!
 But you are my favourite one." - Alex, some time last month.

Here are the top five things that happened in the last month:

1. We went to Italy and looked at very beautiful scenery and ate ourselves stoopid. McNoodle likes truffles! That's our girl.

2. While on vacation, Alex got a tick in the usual unfortunate area. He is totally unfazed by such things but they fill me with deep horror and the need to go check myself every 15 minutes, even if, for example, I haven't sat in any grass for the last three days. Note to self: Get everyone shots. 

3. We finally installed a baby jail structured play space in our living room so that I can actually go do things while the child is awake.  Sadly, she often sits clutching the bars exterior boundary and screeching at the top of her surprisingly sturdy lungs crying while I slice apples or whatever. In terms of nerve-wrackingness this is only a marginal improvement to overturning the cats' water bowl (again! and effing again!), emptying bookshelves full of looseleaf paper, and chewing on cables. 

4. McNoodle outgrew everything. I swear, the kid doubled in size overnight. Everything in size 74 (6-9 months) is now just a little too small for her. However, we refuse to accept this expensive new reality and so half the time she just crawls around with a diaper wedgie. 

5. McNoodle's doctor informed me that I'm rubbish as a parent. Actually, he said that the baby is in perfect health, but noted (I did ask) that her eating habits are all wrong. Apparently she was getting double the amount of formula she's supposed to (like, when did that change and was I supposed to get some kind of memo?), and also I should not feed her vegetables at night. Because gas. And somehow also because, he doesn't know about other places, but here in Austria we eat a meal with meat at lunch and we do not eat vegetables at night. 

"What? We do so," I said. 

He looked momentarily troubled. Perhaps because one does, in fact, eat vegetables for dinner in Austria, if not gigantic schnitzels that overhang the plate all the way around. 

These are not vegetables, but this was not Austria.

"Ja, gut," he said. "But she should just have porridge. It will help her sleep through the night." He sat back down in his swivel chair and was typing up his notes, which meant our little meeting was over. 

"She already sleeps through the night," I said, perhaps a tad confrontationally. 

He gave me a slightly distant look, as if he was remembering what it had been like back when I was still standing in his office, and swivelled gently. And won, that bastard. 

"Okay, so porridge at night," I said. "Right. Thanks a lot. See you soon."

"Come back in two months," he said. We were dismissed.  

I left very confused about what the good doctor generally has for dinner and what time of day the baby is, in fact, supposed to eat vegetables (as snacks?). But I also decided that my doctor doesn't know very much about vegetables, or Austrian eating habits, and so I resolved not to ask him dietary questions any more because they undermine his authority. Am I truly supposed to take the no-veg-at-night rule as seriously as I would take his instructions on, for example, the frequency and dosage of baby medication? Of course not. He might be a doctor and all, but he's also twice as old as me, which means he has had twice as long to forget what it's like to even BE a baby, so, you know, I'm pretty sure we're both right. 

Anyway, I digress. Porridge at night. Except for when I give her vegetables. Which is often. The End. 

P.S. I actually really like this doctor, because he is kindly and loves kids and is not prone to overmedication. We just do a terrible job communicating with each other. For my benefit he sometimes speaks English, except he only says the really easy things in (worse-than-my-German) English, so the things that I might actually misunderstand remain in German. It's an awesome system. 

P.P.S.: ToothWatch: Keep watching. 

P.P.P.S: It's Noodle's nine month birthday! HOORAY!

Where There's Smoke

The unacquainted often mistakenly believe that bibs are for catching dribbles of milk and food. A reasonable assumption, but sadly incorrect. In fact, they are mostly for drool. Newborns drool a lot because they haven't gotten the whole swallowing thing worked out yet. 

The end of the drool is a sign that they're ready for solid food. (Also babies will stare at each forkful on its way into your mouth, smack their lips and generally act the way polite dogs should not). 

No teeth anywhere.

The resumption of the drool is a sign that baby teeth are on their way. We've brought back all our little cloth bibs with their pro-Grandma messaging ("Take me to Grandma's!", "Grandma's Little Blessing", "I love Grandma!") and are waiting anxiously for teeth to arrive.

Except, so, like, where the hell are they? 

The signs of impending teeth have been there for at least three months. For those not in the know, other signs include chewing on fingers, gnawing on corners and toys and cables, chewing on thin air, and desiring to be held and cuddled and chew on Mommy's necklaces and wedding ring. And let us not forget the grumpiness. 

This is what all babies do: They will try to stick a rattle the size of an egg into their preposterously small mouths, will sort of dislocate their jaws, and then hurl the rattle onto the ground with a scream of frustration. 

The teething baby, however, is not just frustrated, but utterly defeated. These little setbacks make her very sad. Her lower lip trembles. A tear gathers in one eye. She will look at me, arms raised, beseeching. When I pick her up, she'll bury her face in my shoulder and wipe her snotty nose on my shirt and rub her eyes and say, "Meeeeeh," and sigh dramatically all the while.

Obviously, this is adorable. But also, I feel terrible for her. She appears to be in pain some of the time, but also this suffering has not resulted in a single tooth. Not a one. 

Little eyes on the prize. ToothWatch

All our other baby friends have at least two little punctuation-sized protrusions in their lower gums, the better to scrape at steamed fruit with or gnaw on overcooked rice. But not our poor, gummy Noodle. Oh woe.  

We'll keep you posted. 

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. 

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. 

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.