So, So Bad at Blogging: All of July!

I haven't posted anything here for nearly a month, which must be some kind of sad record. Lame! In my defence, it is summer and my parents were in town and we've been spending as much time as possible outdoors, catching the odd breeze, swimming in the Danube, and generally trying not to melt away. The weather has turned a little cooler, and as it's now bearable indoors let me try and recall all of the things we were up to: 

Late last month we went to the beautiful wedding of our friends Jenny and Markus. It was a garden party and Noodle, like everyone else, had a blast. There were many other, bigger kids there who were all sweet to her, as were the grownups. She even ate some grownup food--vegetarian lasagna--except by "eat" I mean she sucked off all the bechamel sauce and spat the veggies out. That's my girl.  

Dad keeping an eye on our stuff as we took a playground
break after a long walk in the Lainzer Tiergarten.

My parents were here! As usual, they filled our lives with extra happiness for two whole weeks. The Noodle was delighted to be the center of attention. Unlike when she is stuck with boring old Mommy, who has to interrupt playtime to do the dishes and work and fold laundry and cook, when Grandma and Granddad are around every day is an endless party. 

Grandma and the Bubble

The grandparents also arrived, as is their habit, with suitcases stuffed full of books and toys and gorgeous gently-used hand-me-downs from the gorgeous and slightly older daughter of an old school friend, whom her parents sometimes call the Squish. Squishy, we are grateful. Your parents (and grandparents) have excellent taste and are supremely generous to boot. Thank you! 

But all this largesse was added into an apartment so stuffed that the walls seem to be creeping toward each other--but my parents, ever vigilant and willing to spoil their adult children rotten--were totally awesome and bought us another closet. They are amazing. 

Indeed they are so amazing that in the middle of their visit, Alex and I left them with our kiddo and went off for our first post-baby weekend alone. 

At the Villa Borghese

All hail the Pantheon, which
would be a wonder even if it
was built yesterday.

We flew off to Rome on a Friday afternoon, drank a lot of gin, ate a lot of pasta and saw an absurd number of impossibly perfect and impossibly ancient buildings. 

We took one incredibly crappy 10-minute tour of the Colosseum (Never ever pay Follow Me tours anything. Ever.) that was followed by an awesome tour of the Roman Forum and Palatine Hill by a guy who is usually an actor but is a licensed guide on the side. 

If you're thinking of going to Rome I wouldn't bother...

...the place is just falling apart. 

Our guide was so engaging that we signed up for another two hour walk with him in the evening, after which we were totally wrecked but pleased by the vast amount of information we'd absorbed in the span of one day. I'm going to glue his business card into our Rome guidebook for our next trip, which needs to be soon and last longer.

We were trapped by this tiny gladiator, who later insisted
that we pay him five euros for the pleasure of having been
physically coerced into taking pictures. Five each, that is.
We gave him two, total, received a hearty
vaffanculo and were sent on our way.

On Sunday evening we returned home, fatter and happier. 

Our daughter, we noted, was also fatter and happier upon our return. Apparently my mom spent the whole weekend singing this kid nursery rhymes, letting Noodle strum her guitar, practicing walking and generally feeding this baby something every five minutes all day long. My dad, who had cabin fever, undertook numerous household repairs that wouldn't even have occurred to us but which make our lives better. He even...and this is actually just embarrassing...cleaned our bedroom. True story. My father cleaned my bedroom. I am 31 years old. I am married. WTF. I love my parents. 

Now my parents have gone and we're back to our usual routine. Weekends we've spent down by the Danube with friends and every week day that isn't rainy we spend a couple of hours at one of the nearby playgrounds. 

This is on a constitutional with my parents. We are led by my father, who ends up using his cell phone's GPS to chart a course along an invisible pig trail to nowhere that forces us straight through a waist-high embankment of brambles and hog shit. Everyone ends up either bleeding or having probably contracted some swine-borne disease that won't manifest for six months, when it will be too late. A good day out. 

The Noodle has changed so much in the last month. She's right in between being a baby and a toddler. Her lovely pumpkin visage is becoming a little more butternut-squash, by which I mean thinner, and her little arms and legs are just a little less chunky. Her hair is starting to look like real hair. She pulls herself up on everything and cruises around the room at great speed, although so far no apparent ambition to stand or walk without support. She's much more interested in other children, and in the sandbox she'll sometimes crawl over and annoy the great big toddlers who are baking their sand cakes and digging pointlessly elaborate holes. 

My pookies.

Noodle babbles all the time, tries very hard to sing whenever music is playing ("DAAAAAAAH"), does the classic baby dance (bouncing on her knees, pushing her tummy forwards and backwards and saying "yeahyeahyeahyeah"), and is starting to use a couple words. In addition to using the baby signs for "milk" and "more," she can definitely say no, either by shaking her heard or babbling "neineineineinen" ("nein" is no in German), and she says "das," "this" and "that," which often sound like "dis" or "dat". 

"That?" she points. 
"That is the cat," I say. "Shiva the cat. Cat."
"Ngat. Daaat," she says. "Dis. Das. That." And then she laughs with amazement at her own brilliance.
It's pretty cute. And of course, I think she is kind of brilliant. 

Lastly, and this is a big one: WE HAVE TEETH. Two of 'em. Okay, at the moment they're only a third of the way out--but they are proof of concept. The teeth really do exist. To go with the teeth we have purchased a baby toothbrush and some baby toothpaste, and have taken up the habit of brushing those narrow slivers morning and night. It's a two second job, which may be why she doesn't seem to mind much. I have no idea how you are supposed to get a baby to rinse and spit, though. Our current method is to brush and then spill water down the front of her pyjamas. It's a good system, but we'd take any advice you might have. 

Our current all-time favorite photo, thanks to Jenny's wedding photographer.

OKAY. And I herewith declare this blog updated! 

Our 50th Percentile Baby

Ten thirty a.m., we're at the doctor's office for a routine check-up and meningitis vaccine. 

The nurse and I put the Noodle on the scale. She's 9.1 kg (that's 20 lbs). The nurse measured her from top to toe (74 cm), and all around her head (47 cm). 

Our conversation, though we held it in German, went more or less like this: 

"Okay, that's it." the nurse said, after she'd entered the last measurement into the computer. "The doctor will be right in." She got up to leave. 

"So, she's normal?" I asked. 

"Hm? Oh yes. Everything's fine," the nurse said. 

"But is she normal but kind of big? Or normal but kind of small?" I asked. 

"She's perfectly healthy. Everything's fine," said the nurse. She took a step toward the door. 

Alles im grünen Bereich.
(Danke Mary fürs Foto :))

"Like, healthy but a little big, or okay but kind of small?" I asked. 

"Totally healthy," she said with a warm smile. 

"Oh, that's good," I said. "Thank you."

The nurse turned to go.

"So she's perfectly normal?" I can only wonder what my stupid face looked like. 

Without rolling her eyes even once, the nurse went back to the computer. "Okay," she said. She sat down. She did not sigh. She put on her glasses and peered into the screen. "Your daughter's weight is in the 40th percentile for her age," said the nurse."Her height is in the 50th percentile. So. Pretty average."

"Wow," said I. "It really doesn't get averager than that." 

The nurse stood up and smiled warmly. Again. "Well then, do you have any more questions?" She didn't even flinch when I started talking again. 

"Um. It's just that I'm kind of big, and my husband's really tall, so do you think that maybe she's too small considering? I mean, I know it's probably nothing, but I'm not feeding her wrong or anything, right? Did she grow enough since last time? She was born so big. Is it normal for her to be so average now?" I asked. 

"It really can be very different every time," she said. "Babies all grow at different paces. And don't worry about her diet. I'm sure if she was hungry she would let you know! The babies won't let you forget to feed them!" She laughed, to let me laugh. 

"Ha ha," I said. "Of course. Ha...So she's not too little. Or too big." 

"Not at all," said the nurse. "She's just right." And then she ran away. 

And if that wonderful nurse breathed a sigh of relief when she left the room, I didn't hear it. What a hero. May she get a raise every six months forever. 

P.S. The Noodle hasn't been to the doctor's since April but amazingly seems to remember that he pokes her with needles whenever she sees him and reacted accordingly, i.e. with deep suspicion and horror. You should have seen her little face wrinkle up when he came at her with a stethoscope. It was adorable. Who knew she has that kind of memory span already? 

P.P.S. Obviously, she's totally fine. And normal. Abnormally normal, I tell you. And of course, we are deeply grateful for our healthy baby and I am grateful for our extraordinarily patient nurse. 

P.P.P.S. Still no teeth - but we can see 'em. THISCLOSE. 

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. 

Beached Noodle: Bubble's First Seaside Adventure

Lignano, like any really popular tourist destination, is in many ways just awful. Located in very northern Italy, Lignano has Austria's closest beach. As a result, the place both feeds on and is totally ruined by hordes and hordes of pink, German-speaking mountain people seeking a plunge in the sea.

Sand mouse.

It is filled with gaggles of drunk teenagers on spring-break type trips. The beach is packed with endless rows and depressingly deep columns of umbrellas and deckchairs, all of which are strewn with low-maintenance holiday-makers and their noisy offspring (like us). Long-suffering immigrants march the beach doing the hard sell on shitty trinkets. Miles and miles and miles of beachfront property are filled with medium-sized hotels that range from soulless to cheesy. 

From the neck up, baby.

But the good outweighs the bad: you can always find a room and an umbrella, there are arcades and amusement parks (never been myself, but Gulliverlandia sounds intriguing), they sell ice cream and sunscreen every ten feet, and you have to walk about 100 meters from the tideline into the placid sea before the water gets up to your waist. It's like going to the pool, only safer. The beach is soft and sandy and devoid of all life besides the very occasional mollusk, bait-size fish or crab. And despite the fact that it's 90% Austrians roaming about, you are actually in Italy, and so the fruit and veg, restaurants and coffee are all great. 

I've been there with friends several times over the last ten years or so, and have usually stayed in the same hotel, where you have bring your own sheets and towels and toilet paper and pay extra if you're not going to personally scrub the room clean afterwards (which I'm not, thanks). The mattresses and pillows are salty and lumpy. But every room has a kitchen and a balcony with a table and plenty of chairs, and it's directly on the shore, and in general feels like a home. I kind of love it.

Destruction.

On this trip I asked Clemens, who is responsible for making arrangements (because he speaks Italian and his family have been staying in this hotel since time immemorial) what the rooms would cost if we used booking.com. He looked at me like I was insane. 

"Have you seen Frau Kohlrabi's book?," he asked. (Everyone calls her Mrs Turnip. Apparently her actual name sounds a bit like "Kohlrabi," and she looks like one, too.) He explained that paying up involves a ten-minute wait while the Turnip licks her fingers and flips back and forth through the pages, making notes and erasing numbers with a stubby pencil. "I have no idea what she's doing in there," said Clemens. "Maybe she's just acting important." 

Bubbles helping to dismantle a castle.

We spent the evenings with our friends, drinking vino on a balcony next to the baby monitor. Ten years ago we'd be up all night at one of the truly terrible discos and would sleep it off on the beach. Now we pushed the sleeping baby down past the bars at nine p.m., shaking our heads at the sight of shirtless boys and glittery girls drinking vodka out of hollow watermelons. They were hopping around to commercial techno, showing off their boring tattoos and their very nice bodies, getting it on with randoms, and ultimately vomiting on everything nice. It's actually quite heart-warming. There is nothing more feral and human than a bunch of drunk youths. 

In the early morning Alex, the Noodle and I would go stroll around the mostly-empty main strip. A smashed watermelon, lost hair decorations, broken glass. In some cases you could almost picture exactly what had happened where. 

I should never have let her taste ice cream. She's a machine.

For instance, I tried to withdraw some money from an ATM and realized only after several minutes of pushing diverse buttons (I speak zero Italian) that it was empty and wasn't going to work. Then I noticed that the wall and floor all around the cash machine were covered in big, wet stains. Elementary, my dear Watson, I deduced. The machine must have stopped working some time last night. And then I thought, I should probably wash my hands. 

What has not changed over the years is my deep affection for building sand castles. If Alex and I have one thing in common, it's the fact that we can both really get into crafting something tedious. This year we had the added benefit of the Noodle, who was our personal Godzilla. Her presence also seemed to justify buying all the fancy plastic tools we wanted. Well, her and the fact that we no longer calculate the opportunity cost of beach toys in terms of vodka-filled melons. 



This year, with six of us working to pile sand, hold passers-by at bay and keep each other well-moistened with light white wine spritzers, we managed to do quite the project--a larger-than-life sand mermaid lying around on the beach. Lots of little kids and their parents came by to take pictures and help donate seaweed, shells and blobs of sand. (You know you're in Europe when no one gives a hoot that you've built sand hooters.) 

Noodle, for her part, had a blast at the beach. She was either laughing hysterically at the waves, the sand, the muck and the algae, or she was fast asleep. Needless to say, this was also awesome for her parents. 

First baby beach trip was a great success. Can we go back yet? 

Family selfie!

The youthful hordes I was talking about? They liked the mermaid too.

Look on our works, ye mighty, and despair!

A Reason for Tadpoles

People keep telling me that kids just get more and more difficult as they get older. 

Sure, the story goes, newborns are hard. But after this initial hurdle, your average four-month old is an immobile blob of placid joy. It's all downhill from there, they say. First you have to start cooking for them, then they start crawling around and destroying your home (fact), then they start walking and drawing on the walls and running into traffic, and then, once they start talking, they just don't stop. The questions ("But why?") start coming, and then the opinions ("NO"). And the questions become harder and the opinions more and more obnoxious until they finally move out, at which point the child, now an adult, becomes merely expensive and disappointing. 

Bundle of Joy.

Obviously, none of this applies to me. MY kid is going to be angelic, friendly, successful and emotionally stable even through her teenage years. Just like her mother was (HAHAHHahhahahaha...HA!) 

Ruh-roh.

But there is one thing about her impending childhood that I'm really looking forward to, and that is Doing Experiments. 

It was my favorite, favorite thing as a kid. Kitchen science (volcano, anyone?). Investigating bugs under a magnifying glass, and perhaps accidentally frying a limb off in the process, thus Learning an Important Lesson both about the relationship between heat and light and also the fact that with great power comes great responsibility. Making oobleck (by the way, when I lived in Malaysia we had nothing like the oobleck they're doing there these days).  Playing with prisms and colored lights. Toying with magnets. Hunting for treasure with a crappy metal detector. You know. The good stuff. 

Project!

So far the Noodle is, of course, not yet interested in any of nature's unexpected delights, since she's still coming to grips with the banal. Gravity, for a start, is something she battles daily now that she is learning to stand (my money's still on gravity, generally). And then there is everything else we take for granted by the time we're five years old. 

I point out an unusual-looking dog; she is closely inspecting a tiny piece of floor crud. We got stuck in a massive rainstorm with my friend James and she couldn't stop staring at the rain where it hit the ground and bounced back up. I showed her a little inchworm in the park; she tried to eat it. 

But anyway, her interests aside, I now have a great excuse for indulging MY interests and therefore we have now got TADPOLES. Yay!

These were "rescued" from near certain survival in the rain-cover over our friend Gustav's mother's swimming pool. We had gone over to help (okay, watch) them pump out said water and fill up the pool for the summer, but the pump was broken, so instead we spent the afternoon grilling ribs and watching zillions of tadpoles slither around in the muck. 

My little frog puppies.

And now about 20 of them are slithering around in a container in our living room, to my endless joy. I've been feeding them tiny pieces of boiled-to-death green beans and cucumber, and they appear to be doing well. My dear husband is utterly disinterested, as are the cats, who appear not to have noticed that there is a container of swimming treats by the windowsill. The Noodle is only interested in splashing the water, so she is no longer invited to assist in their upkeep.

If they make it to young adulthood (after they grow legs but before they get jumpy) they shall be released into the pond of a local park. I saw some heron-looking birds there yesterday, so I'm certain they won't be bored. Wish us luck! 

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! 

AND SQUEEEEZE YOU FOREVER!

The weather has been nice and so I've been spending more time in the sunshine and less in front of the laptop. In fact, we're off to the Danube right now--but before we go, a quick post. 

This morning Alex was dressing Nava and said, "I am going to hug you and love you..."

and I added, "and squeeeeze you forever!"

We hadn't thought about Looney Tunes in YEARS, but I guess babies bring out everyone's inner Elmyra. 

P.S. Why is Looney Tunes spelled with an "e"? Weird.