The Public, the Private and Everything In Between

It’s 3:12 p.m., EST, and my baby has been sleeping for almost three hours.  How this amazing nap came to be, for a child who mostly only takes a morning nap and then remains awake, despite her own best interests, until bedtime, was a complete accident.  Dinner time is a difficult time for E. – close to bedtime but not quite there – and we’ve found she won’t cry if she sits on one of our laps while we eat.  She quite enjoys this, and will laugh and talk during the meal, but the second we put her down – well, she WAILS. Like we are murdering her.  And so, we hold her on our lap and one of us cuts the other’s food up and so it goes or, so it went, until a couple of days ago when S. decided to experiment and placed E in her car seat and sat her around the table with us.  It worked, beautifully. E could still remain part of our conversation but we could use both hands to eat. She chattered, we chattered – everyone was happy.  Today, in between a marathon of feeding her thanks to a growth spurt, light-headed and desperate, I tried this technique so I could eat some lunch. As I desperately shoveled tuna salad on crackers and peeled an orange, she fell asleep and has remained so now for nearly three hours.

At first, I didn’t trust the nap.  I read a couple blogs, searched the Anne Taylor website for new work clothes, read a couple parenting websites.  Then, deciding to risk moving her, I took the car seat from the kitchen to the living room and laid down on the couch. I napped for an hour and woke up to find E still decidedly asleep, which brings me here, to my blog.  E is still asleep and now more than ever I appreciate the advice I read somewhere ( I can’t remember where I read it but if it was your blog, don’t hesitate to say so!)  – as a new mom, the best thing you can do, and I have (mostly) done, is put yourself on baby time. Baby time means accepting that, while you can give your child the loose idea of a schedule, essentially he or she isn’t going to be ready to have a schedule for several months.  For instance, conventional wisdom says that babies should eat every three hours around two/three months of age. E, though, from the beginning, has been a cluster eater and a cluster sleeper, so this morning I fed her every hour for four hours straight (here I should note that E is breast fed – I don ‘t think this would be doable with a formula fed baby?) but, in return, she has always slept in relatively decent stretches at night, first in sets of 3 hours, then 2 more, having since worked herself for now into sleeping a solid seven hours, waking and eating, and sleeping two more.  In exchange for night after night of this kind of amazing sleep I get, I feed her at least every two hours but sometimes more often. Our pediatrician is happy with this arrangement and proclaims us very, very lucky. We agree.

Conventional wisdom also seems to state that babies should eat right after waking, but upon waking is when E most wants to play, and is most agreeable to spending time on her tummy.  It is after a nap that she first rolled over, and it is after nap when she first giggled. So she gets a little bit of play time before eating, every day.

In my head, I liken living on baby time to the idea of island time, first introduced to me while on vacation in Jamaica, except living on baby time means being prepared at any time, really to feed, to change a diaper, to play – what I have tried to do, and what I hope to be able to continue to do even when I return to work – is allow E the opportunity for whatever she might need – sleep, food, play – without worrying about exactly when we do these things. So far it has worked pretty well for us, although I will admit to some inherent laziness on my part. I know new moms who are taking their babies to the zoo, to the museum, to the local parks – moms who shop and go to starbucks and run errands with their babies.  I, for the most part, make sure she and I get out once a day, and other than that we hang around the house, nursing, reading, watching tv, playing, cleaning, cooking – some of the above or none of the above, depending on what kind of day we are having.  In other words, I haven’t pushed either of us too hard during my maternity leave.  I keep thinking I should make more of an effort – challenge the two of us with trips to the mall or Costco – but instead I just put her on a blanket on the floor with her favorite talking elephant doll, lay down beside her, and give myself over, once again, to living on baby time.

The first dinner I actually managed to get on the table since giving birth to Evangeline comes courtesy of Nigellla Lawson’s fabulous cookbook Nigella Express. We’ve come a long way since those first few days with E, when we survived on plates of salami, cheese and apples, eaten haphazardly, whenever time allowed – we manage a fairly well-balanced combination of ordering food in and cooking, but for the most part it is S who accomplishes the actual cooking and cleaning up while I handle nursing and bedtime.

Now, though, a mere seven weeks later, E can be counted on reliably for two things: a pretty serious morning nap and a hatred deep and true for tummy time.  The rest of her day can vary greatly but a solid nap after her first feed of the day is, currently, a fact of her existence and woe is the person who interrupts it.  I use this time to catch up on email, read blogs, pick up the house and, two days ago, begin preparing meals that  can be made in the morning and popped in the oven hours later.  Currently, I am working my way through the recipes in Lawson’s cookbook that can be prepared ahead of time and the first recipe I tried was a tremendous hit in our household.  I can’t recommend highly enough, for ease of preparation and deliciousness, The Croque Monsieur Bake. S. had three helpings – a rarity for him.

Ingredients:

6 slices ready-sliced multigrain brown bread

1/3 cup dijon mustard

4 oz Gruyere cheese (note: I used cheddar)

3 slices ham

6 eggs

1/2 teaspoon salt

1/3 cup whole milk

4 tablespoons grated cheddar

good sprinkling of worcestershire sauce

Directions:

1. Spread the mustard on the bread slices and make sandwiches with the fine slices of cheese and ham.  Put each slice of cheese against the mustardy bread, and the ham between them.  Make the sandwich and cut each one in half, making two triangles.

2. Squish the sandwiches into a baking dish approximately 1 1/2 by 8 1/4 inches and 2 1/4 inches deep.

3. Beat together eggs, salt and milk and then pour this over the sandwiches tightly packed in the dish.

4. Cover the dish with plastic wrap and leave in the fridge overnight.

5. Next morning, preheat the oven to 400 F and take the dish out of the fridge, removing the plastic wrap.

6. Sprinkle over the grated cheese and Worcestershire sauce and bake in the oven for 25 minutes.

*This recipe is considered a brunch recipe but I found it made a perfectly acceptable and delicious dinner!

So, it’s been a little busy around here.  Evangeline Grace was born at 4:51 on Friday, February 11 and ever since both S. and I have had a pretty significant learning curve to adapt to.  It’s been the most lovely, exhausting, hilarious, interesting and challenging month of my life.

I’m sure over the days and months to come I’ll have much to share about her, and parenting, but today I consider it an accomplishment to simply update the blog.

Here are a few things we know so far, though: Evangeline was 22 inches long at birth – her pediatrician anticipates her growing to at least 5’10 or 5’11. She is a pretty good sleeper but resistant to naps during the day – and yet they are essential to keeping her happy. She sleeps in 2-3 hour stretches over night.  Half the time when she is fussy the situation is easily solved by putting her on her back so she can stretch out, which seems as comforting as being held, sometimes.   She loves to eat, and missing a feeding guarantees a meltdown so, we don’t miss feedings.  If she is full, she is content.  If I can predict anything from the first month of her life, it is that she will be of strong willed and talkative character as she grows. She isn’t a mellow baby like some I’ve met but nor is she impossibly fussy. Of course, we love her, so terribly much.

Last year, I sort of combined two different reading challenges  – one from Emily, encouraging us to read through several select books  from our to be read piles and one from Andi, called the Reading in Order challenge, which encouraged us to order our to be read piles in such a way as to just start tackling them, whether it was by bookshelf, by room, by nightstand…anyway, I brought these two challenges together, referred to them as my From the Stacks Challenge, and commenced reading.  I didn’t spend the year solely reading from my own stacks…I alternated between the challenge, checking out books from the library and purchasing new books but even with that approach, I managed to make a sizable dent in my to be read pile and decided to continue the challenge this year, which brings me to Year of Wonders by Geraldine Brooks.

I know I ordered this book some time ago based on a book blogger’s review – sadly, I can’t remember which blogger recommended it (if it was you, please take credit)! I have to admit, when it came time for me to tackle Year of Wonders I found myself a bit nervous…I had already quit one book this year (more on that, later) and I somehow managed to convince myself that Brook’s novel would be dull and fail to keep my admittedly (these days) scattered attention. Still, in the interest of fairness to the challenge, I cracked the cover, and I am so glad I did. I can’t recommend Year of Wonders highly enough.

The idea for the book is inspired by the true story of Eyam, a village in England, that was decimated in 1666 by the plague. The story is narrated by the character Anna, who tells the story of the plague year as her fellow villagers, convinced by their town minister, elect to quarantine themselves within the village boundaries to arrest the spread of the disease.   Anna works in the rectory, waiting on the minister and his wife, Elinor, and as the plague moves through the village she narrates the events and the reactions of her townspeople even as her own character strengthens and grows in the face of  overwhelming tragedy. 

With its evocation of Puritan times and threads of witch craft woven throughout, this book reminded me ever-so-slightly of Arthur Miller’s The Crucible, one of my favorite plays of all time (I once played Elizabeth Proctor – one of my favorite parts of all time, too).  I thought the evolution of Anna’s character was exceptionally well done, and I was especially impressed with how well-drawn her relationship to the minister and his wife was – Brooks did a wonderful job of describing the intimacies, jealousies and other complexities that can crop up in friendships. I don’t want to give the ending away but for me it was particularly wonderful, a magical-but-believable conclusion to a year of wonders.

Here is a short excerpt from the book  – I have a question about one of the upcoming books in my From the Stacks challenge that I will pose at the conclusion of this post.

I was used to being shocked by Anys, but this time she had managed to outdo even herself, delivering t wo scandalizing thoughts in a single utterance.  The first shock was her frank blasphemy. The second was the familiarity with which she referred to Mr. Viccars, whom I had never yet called by his first name.  On what terms of intimacy had they been, that she should call him so? My suspicions were only heightneend when, after rummaging through the whisket in which he kept his work, we foudn the dress he made for her. For all the years of my childhood, when the Puritans held sway here, we wore for our outer garments only what they called the Sadd Colors – black for preference, or the dark brown called dying Leaf.  Since the return of the the king, brighter hues had crept back to most wardrobes, but long habit still constrained the choices of most of us. Not Anys.  She had bespoke a gown of a scarlet so vivid it almost hurt my eyes…

“Mr. Viccars told me to burn his work for fear of spreading his contagion,” I said, swallong hard to ease the tightness in my throat.

“You shall do no such thing!” she exclaimed, and I f oresaw in her dismay the difficulty I would have with his clients.

And now for my question…I generally have trouble getting excited about the books in my TBR piles – I am guessing this is because they don’t seem as shinyand new as books I could purchase or check out from the library…instead of being “whim” readings they just hang around, reminders of old inspiration or desire.  One of the books that is coming up fairly quickly is The French Lieutenant’s Woman…I bought it at a library sale in my hometown YEARS ago upon the advice of an old history teacher who I ran into at the sale.  I probably should have just started it without reading anything about it but now that I have read some about it, well…I find it daunting. Anyone with any experience with this book? Is it a must-read? Or should I skip it and donate it to one of the many books sales we have in my work place? The whole idea of the author interrupting his own work has me put off, I must admit…thoughts?

A few months ago, my dad became exceedingly angry at my brother over what my brother considered a rather innocent remark. S. bore witness to the scene and sided with my brother, agreeing that my father’s anger was completely disproportionate to the comment.  The three of them, along with my uncle, were at deer camp, and after a couple of evenings of tolerating my dad’s addiction to cable news,  my brother wanted to change the channel to something on the travel network.  My dad took umbrage at the suggestion and D., by all accounts with humor, said “We don’t all want to continue listening to you yell at the tv for days, dad.”  This was all it took for my dad to storm out of the cabin and stew for hours until finally at some point a peace gesture was made and he decided spending the last few days at camp with his son, son-in-law and brother-in-law were better spent companionably.

This was not the end of the argument, though.

Several weeks later my parents came down to visit me and my dad recounted the story, which I had already heard from D. and S., but I acted as though I knew nothing about.  As he grew more and more angry over the comment, he turned to my mother  and basically accused her of telling my brother than he yelled at the tv, thus talking about him behind his back, because why else would anyone think he yelled at the television?

Now, my father has spent a good portion of his life hollering back at the t.v., and anyone who has spent an hour with him knows this. From cable news shows to college and professional sports to television programming with frustrating plots, my dad makes his opinion known, loudly and with emphasis.  It is simply part of what makes him who he is, and I often believe this outlet, along with a life-long dedication to exercise and regular cocktail hours, has kept him as healthy and alive as he is. The shocking thing to me isn’t that he was upset when D. pointed out this habit to him  – no, what’s most surprising and has only come to light recently is the fact my dad really and truly believes he doesn’t, ever, do the thing of which he was accused.  He believes truly, in his core, that he not someone who yells at the tv and so this impression D. holds couldn’t have come from years of bearing witness – it had to come from my mom, talking behind his back.

As members of his family, and I am sure many of his close friends can attest, we have seen my father argue with newscasters and those they interview, swear at Tea Party members, coach football, basketball and baseball with confidence and gusto, and drive himself crazy over the “lack of plot” in “Brothers and Sisters.” There is a huge disparity in how my father behaves and how he sees himself, and this makes it an impossible argument to solve: my mother will never be able to properly defend herself against my father’s accusation, my father will never believe he engages in arguments with the television and my brother will never be able to believe that my father doesn’t recognize this behavior in himself. Everyone has mostly moved on from this discussion although references to it crop up every once in a while.

Like most people, I like to think I have a strong sense of self, or at the very least a good grasp on the kind of person I am.  I don’t go around claiming, like many women I know, to be the kind of person who “just needs to be on the go”, I don’t call myself a control freak and if I did, it wouldn’t be with pride, I think I am particularly good at taking care of myself and those around me but perhaps not as motivated as I should be, some of the time – I am not overly task-oriented.

At least, this is what I thought until recently, when, at eight months pregnant, I broke the metatarsal bone in my left foot and after two visits to the doctor was ordered on strict rest if I wanted it to do anything remotely like heal by the time I go into labor. “No grocery shopping. No driving. No running last minute errands for the baby. Work from home or take time off if you need to, but we can’t do anything for you as pregnant as you are and so the only way it will heal is if you stay off it,” my doctor said. “By the way, we should schedule you for a cholesterol test a couple of months after you have the baby – pregnancy can change your cholesterol.”

She’s so annoying.

I am following the doctor’s orders to the best of my ability but this means (what I consider to be) an unfair amount of work has fallen to S. in this last month. To be fair, we have turned down offers from my parents to come move in and help us out, as well as offers from friends for extra assistance, not because we couldn’t use the help but because at this point the offers seem like they would be more work for us than actual relief.

So S. is in charge, not only of working his day job and getting dinner on the table, but of doing the laundry, changing sheets, walking the dog and taking care of the last minute items I had planned on doing for our daughter’s arrival, like having the car seat installed and putting the finishing touches on the nursery, all because I played one rogue game of fetch with our dog.  I thought, I truly did, that I could be the kind of person who embraces such orders from my doctor – that I am the type of person who puts healing before things like household chores and work, but I am here to tell you, this is not so. Or, at the very least, it is incredibly hard to do.

Relying on S. is frustrating, and he is probably one of the best husbands in the world on which to rely.  I could ask him for anything…more dvds from Blockbuster, a book or two from the library, a chocolate milk shake – and he would drop what he is doing to take care of my request. But I don’t ask these things of him because his workload is already so significant and while I  believe truly in our vows of taking care of each other through sickness and health, I don’t believe in abusing that promise.

And yet, it’s so hard to let go of the expectations I had for this last month of pregnancy, even though S. says that is exactly what we both need to do in order to joyfully welcome our child into our home. I was so certain the nursery would be perfectly appointed, the kitchen rearranged, the bathroom stocked with baby bath supplies – I had in my mind a place for every piece of baby-equipment we received. My workload at the office would be complete and perfectly squared away with absolutely no projects left unfinished and I would, of course, still be walking around the park every day, at least two or three laps – the exercise combined with my working life more than enough to keep my pregnancy weight gain modest.

You know what they say about making plans and God laughing…

I truly saw myself as someone who might relish being taken care of for a few weeks – certainly, at the beginning of the pregnancy, I fantisized about this kind of situation.  As it turns out, I’ve had to allow myself, on more than one occasion, the luxury of crying.  I spent yesterday organizing and categorizing baby clothes, and took a few too many trips down the stairs, which in turn pushed my pain back to near day-one levels. I have done things for myself I should have let S. do, and even as I type this I feel my anxiety rising over the fact that S. will be doing the grocery shopping today, not me. I mean, this is a man who graduated law school after serving on both moot court and law review and continuously finds himself promoted at work, and yet I don’t feel confident putting the kind of cereal I want on the grocery list because I don’t think he’ll be able to find it. I would laugh at the absurdity if I wasn’t so earnest in this belief. 

It turns out, who I think I am, versus who I actually am when push comes to proverbial shove, are two very different people, too. Not only do I want control, I enjoy it when I have it, and every time I sacrifice a bit of it to S. or to a co-worker,  I find myself in a minor state of mourning. All of my laid-back, take-things as they come theories fly right out the window when I actually am required to lay back, take things as they come and allow myself to heal.

All of this does make me wonder, though, about the claims we make about ourselves versus who we really are on the inside. Verbal declarations about  perfectionism, or lack thereof; deeply held beliefs about how we do or don’t behave; whether we are moody or high-spiritied or free-spirits - I think more often than not we give voice to the kind of person we want  to be, which is most often not who we are, at all.  S. and I always joke that if, during a job interview the person who will be your boss claims to not “micromanage” he or she will end up doing just that, more than you can ever imagine.

For now, I’m willing to admit I want more control than I ever realized, and letting go of certain ”perfect” standards in order to embrace the here and now is so much harder than I ever would have imagined.

as dead as a doornail.

it passed away peacefully sometime last night, after a long and helfpul life.

The tragedy of its loss is tempered somewhat by the survival of its faithful companion, External Hard drive.

The timing, of course, is not ideal, what with putting all of our extra $$ toward maternity leave as well as Christmas.

I am sure I will be back to blogging sooner rather than later, although I may use this time to “reinvent” the blog a bit…we shall see. I am not currently sure, with some of our other financial commitments, where this rests in terms of priorities right now.  In the mean time, I will continue to read your blogs on my lunch breaks and I promise to be back writing on the internet sometime in 2011.

C

I didn’t manage to catch many movies this year, and most of those I did see I saw with my co-worker, M. We combine our movie going with with some fabulous dinner beforehand and snacks during the movie and that makes her, like, the perfect movie-going companion as far as I’m concerned. I’m not sure why, though, the list of movies I have seen this year is so limited, except I guess that there is only so much time in one’s life and hey, I read The Lacuna this year. I’d like to say there will be more time for movies next year but I am not exactly confident that will be the case, what with a newborn and all.  Anyway, here are some movies I watched this year, as well as some television shows thrown in for good measure. (edited to say: I left out the television shows because this post grew quite long – tv will be added in at a different date)

Movie In Which I Wanted to Wear All the Clothes and Sleep with the Hero, even though I would look Terrible Doing Both: Eat, Pray, Love – Wow, did this movie (and thus, the resurgence of the book) bring out the haters. Wow.  I read the book a few years ago and I remember really enjoying it – I guess it became such a mainstream thing that a lot of people felt the need to tear Elizabeth Gilbert down. Ah, well – I thought the movie version was fantastic – the disparities between Elizabeth and her husband came through well, the food scenes in Italy were everything you could ask for, and I am finally no longer terrified of Javier Bardem, whose performance in No Country for Old Men actually haunted my dreams for a year or so.

Favorite Movie of the Year: The Social Network – I found this movie really incredibly both in terms of the writing and the acting.  Despite already knowing (for the most part) the drama behind the creation of facebook, I was impressed with how much intrigue and suspense the movie created, and how much it humanized Mark Zuckerberg – I really didn’t think it made him look as terrible as was reported. I found myself sympathizing quite a bit with him. In addition, Justin Timberlake still basically rocks.

Best Adaptation from a Book: Shutter Island – I found this stylized, 1950′s inspired version of Dennis Lehane’s novel incredibly well-done. I willingly content that Leonardo DiCaprio is one of the very best actors working today, and I argue the same for Michelle Williams.  No matter what else, I will remember this movie because I went with my mom, dad and brother last February and we all realized it was the first time we had all been to a movie together. Certainly, we’d been to the movies in every other possible familial combination, but all four of us had never been to a movie together until this year.

Most Surprisingly Enjoyable Movie: Adventureland. I didn’t really know what to expect – I knew the movie was filmed in Pittsburgh at our local amusement park, Kennywood – but had no real concept of the plot.  I found this movie a great coming-of-age story with the perfect combination of levity and humor and sweetness.

Movie that proves my point that Drew Barrymore is one of the most talented actresses working today: Grey Gardens – I believe this was made for HBO originally – I received it via my blockbuster queue. I found this movie absolutely mesmerizing, thanks to the performances of both Drew Barrymore and Jessica Lange. It’s a somewhat fictional depiction of the lives of Little Edie and Big Edie Bouvier, relatives of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis. I still need to watch the original documentary by the same name but this movie really does a fantastic job of drawing you into the eccentric, creepy world of these two women.

Stupid-ass dude movie I really shouldn’t have enjoyed but am forced to admit I did, thoroughly: The Hangover. Enough said.

Movie I just loved, for the actors, the story, the kindness behind it: Funny People – another movie I can’t recommend highly enough – the relationship between Adam Sandler and Seth Rogen is so honest, it took my breath away. Even if this means a disturbing trend in my fondness for Judd Apatow movies, I guess I don’t care – I think he does a really great job of grasping the truth of human relationships, even if that truth isn’t pretty or politically correct.

Movie that caused baby E. to dance on my bladder through the whole darn thing: Inception – I saw this with my brother and I don’t know if it was the spicy thai food we ate beforehand or the candy during the movie or the loud noises or an overall objection to the overly complicated plot or confusing conclusion, but my baby moved more in those two + hours than she has before or since.  I found it hilarious. And also, uncomfortable.

I very recently, as of today, actually, had to put myself on a no-activities  after work rule due to some extreme exhaustion cropping up with baby E., so I won’t be seeing any movies after work with my brother or M. for quite some time.  There are a few movies I am looking forward to that I hope to see on weekends, including Black Swan and The Fighter – I hope to fit in a few movies over the next several weekends when I can find the time.  I am sort of playing around with the idea of adding some more reviews and critiques to this site in the new year, including books and movies – possibly some plays. I’m not sure yet if this will happen or not – I do know I want to take this blog in a bit of a different direction for 2011, but have yet to fully determine what that is.

For now, though, these are some of the movies I watched in 2010 and I hope you had a satisfying movie year, whether you saw one movie or a hundred.