Question Air

The Potty Train

2012-01-30T06:02:00.003-07:00

According to my post labels, I have only written about potty training once. That can't be right, but I know I've been kind of slack on recording the details of the process, so here goes.

To start at present and go backwards, I guess Amelia is pretty much potty trained. Yesterday, she was in her carseat without a diaper, and she said, with alarm, "I'm peeing!"

"Okay!" I said. "Can you try to stop and you can get out and pee in your travel potty?"

Dean pulled the car over and I rushed out to get Amelia. Her underwear were a little wet and she peed all over her pants trying to squat behind the car (she refused to sit on the travel potty: "Pee on the dirt!") but her car seat was dry. Score! In retrospect I realize I should have just removed her pants but we were in a hurry.

Amelia has been using the potty at home now for quite some time. As long as she is not wearing a diaper, she will generally ask to go when she needs to go. There have been several pee-on-the-floor incidents when, I guess, she has been too busy to stop and go. After one of these times I try to remember to ask her if she has to go, but overall she has pretty much been in charge of asking for herself. We were still doing diapers for outings until one day a week or two ago when I just forgot to put a diaper on her and she asked to go to the potty while we were out. Close call but no accident. After that I figured I should try to take the whole affair outside of the house more often. This takes more work on my part than Amelia's in that I have to remember to get her to try to use the bathroom before we leave, and remember to ask her use it while we are out and there is a bathroom available. This is one of the things that makes diapers much easier than being potty trained. It can be hard enough to get Amelia out the door and from place to place while we are out without adding a trip to the bathroom into the mix. But overall things have gone pretty smoothly. So far she has not peed on the floor of a public place and I hope this continues to be the case.

This travel potty has been key to the process. It works in two ways, as a child-size potty seat to use on adult-size toilets and as its own little potty seat complete with absorbent plastic bags you can set up and use anywhere. We mostly use it as a travel potty seat since Amelia is afraid to sit on a big toilet, even if I hold her on it. We have used it with the plastic bags once or twice and Amelia thought that was great fun. I keep it in a plastic bag in the diaper bag along with some Lysol wipes for public toilets and cleaning it after use in public places.

Overall, if someone were to ask me for advice about the process, I would say these three things. First, read a lot about potty training. I checked out about ten books from the library on potty training and there are a LOT of different methods and ideas out there. For example, I decided against any sort of reward system like star charts or M&Ms but I know people who have used them with success. Reading a lot about the process helped me pick the methods that I thought would work best with us.

Second, if you can, take your time. One of the first things I read about potty training was from a book that defined potty training as a very long process that begins when your child first becomes aware of potties and what they are for and ends when she can consistently use the bathroom completely independently. Obviously that is going to take a LONG time--I imagine it will be a year or two before Amelia is totally out of diapers and doesn't need me to help her on the potty and pull up and down her pants and wash her hands and sit there and play "bath toy animals pee" for half an hour every time she goes. We have had the luxury of not being in any rush at all--no deadline for any sort of program that required potty training, no feeling in my mind (and I had to fight against this for awhile) that Amelia needed to be potty trained by any certain date. This allowed me to follow the advice of several friends with older kids not to make potty training a power struggle or push it too early, which can backfire. It also allowed us to kind of ebb and flow (no pun intended)--some days we used diapers, some days not so much. If Amelia ever asked for a diaper, I just put one on her, and there were definitely some days or weeks that she just didn't want to use the potty.

The third thing I would advise, and this is connected to the second, is not to make having your child being potty trained some kind of marker on how good or not good a parent you are. This sounds obvious, but it is surprising how tempting it can be to feel good and happy when your child uses the potty, and to feel bad and upset when she doesn't. I have tried (and still do) to let this be about Amelia and not about me, and to not be in a rush.

HIJK MNOP

2012-01-13T06:53:00.004-07:00

Amelia's dropping of the letter "L" results in some funny moments. We have long enjoyed her versions of "Luli" (who might have picked a different grandmother name if she had known she was going to be Ew and now Udi), but here are a couple more. I will let you add the appropriate l's for yourself.

---

Amelia: Where are we going next?

Me: We have to stop by the liquor store.

Amelia: I want a aheepop!

Me: A what?

Amelia: A aheepop! A aheepop from the ickor store!

---

Me: (reading a book about sheep) Woolly sheep, shorn!

Amelia: What's that sheep saying?

Me: What do you think he's saying?

Amelia: He's saying, what happened to my woo?

Me: (laughing)

Amelia: (looking at another page) And these itte sheeps have a itte bit of woo!

---

Amelia: I want some juice!

Me: (getting the juice) (and probably saying, "What's the polite way to ask?")

Amelia: Can I have some juice pease Mama? I want do do the id!

Me: The id?

Amelia: I want to put the id on by myself!

---

Oh, yes, we have a lot of id around here.

What We're Up To

2012-01-08T12:13:00.003-07:00

All I can seem to compose for this blog lately is a collection of random moments, and this post will be no different. In no particular order, here's what's going on with us these days.

I finished my application for the PhD program and it is sent away. I am glad to be done with it, hoping very much to get in, but once I actually finished and submitted the application I became much less anxious about the outcome. I feel like I did my best with the time that I had and the rest is simply out of my power. I have enough self-confidence (Meg called it "maturity" and I appreciate that) to assume that if I don't get it, it's simply because my writing isn't a good fit for the program and that's that. At the same time I have fallen pretty deeply in love with the idea of going back to school so I know I will be disappointed if I don't get in. My backup plans for the rest of my life are fairly nebulous at this point. I would like to try becoming more involved with the Denver writing community and freelance writing. We shall see.

The not knowing is making January feel even more stagnant than it always does. We had a couple of nice days and they were wonderful. One of my friends said she felt like she was in love and I thought that was perfect. But then yesterday it snowed again. It was pretty falling but then I realized Suki was out in it. Long story short, she found somewhere to hide and spent her first night out of the house, ever. Dean found her on our kitchen windowsill this morning and we were very happy she came back.

Amelia continues to not nap. She loves her bed and the new train set she got for Christmas. She takes her trains in a basket to her bed and plays for her whole naptime. I leave her in there about and hour and a half and she is happy the whole time. It is not nearly as relaxing for me--knowing exactly how long of a break I have plus feeling like I have to keep ear out for her makes her "naptime" much less of a break. But there is not much I can do about it. If it were warmer I would like it much better because we could spend the whole afternoon at the park. As it goes now there is only so much time one mother can play the same game with a train set in one day, and I have reached that limit by noon.

The game is that she likes to pile up Matchbox cars on the train track bridge and then have me "chug" the trains up the hill to the pileup. Then I have to say, "Danger! Danger! There are cars on the track! Who is going to help move them?" And Amelia looks smug until she decides to move the cars. The the trains chug down the hill and we do it "Again, again." (If you are a certain grandmother, you will recognize this game as one you created--we can't wait till you are here to play it!)

Another game she likes, and this one I can blame on Dean, is to have some of her animals get her ice cream. They ask her what kind she likes and how many scoops, then they trot off to get it and she pretends to eat it. I think she would do this for HOURS if she had a willing audience. She likes to make up words for ice cream flavors. She also likes for the store to run out of a flavor and for the animals to act really surprised and tell her, "They're all out! Shoot!"

Amelia says "got-for" for forgot. "We got-for my coat!"

What else? I am trying to think of baby development things I need to record for posterity. on the toddler behavior front, we have had our share of run-ins with the terrible twos. Tantrums, whining and extreme bossiness are the main challenges. These are better or worse depending on the day or time of day. Two helpful books are The Happiest Toddler on the Block and Love and Logic for Early Years. The whole thing is so exhausting I can't even write about it. Another time. We visited a preschool for next year and I loved it. It is "yoga based" and the teachers were very kind and warm and the school is in an old house that feels, as you would expect, extremely homey. Amelia's night sleep is still excellent. When she doesn't nap she is a giant mess by late afternoon so her bedtime is close to 7. Her eating is still pretty good. She went thought an obsession with orange juice but the she got a stomach virus during which I could only convince her that she really couldn't have a snack by saying that her doctor said too much eating would hurt her tummy. Then it occurred to me I could say that about the juice. It has worked to break the habit. It's not that I am against orange juice but it was starting to feel like she drank so much she was not eating any real food.

In short, all is well. We are looking forward to spring.

Stories and Songs

2012-01-02T14:21:00.003-07:00

Amelia was painting and suddenly began to tell me the story of Goldilocks and the Three Bears. I grabbed the camera and tried to record it, but of course as soon as I started recording she changed the story a bit. Still, what I captured is pretty entertaining.

A Pilgrimage, An Offering

2011-12-16T06:25:00.008-07:00

Amelia and I made a trek to The Children's Hospital on Wednesday to drop off some toys as a Christmas donation. Instead of exchanging gifts, our (very generous and wonderful) playgroup donated gifts for the hospital at a little playgroup holiday party Amelia and I hosted on Tuesday. We ended up with four big bags of toys, books, art supplies, DVDs and even a mini-DVD player to donate. While we were there, I also wanted to buy some Wagon Blend coffee to give as gifts this year.

I was a little worried about returning to Children's. If you don't know the story of our experience there, you can read about it here (scroll down to "Hospital Story Part 1 to start from the beginning). I woke up at 4:30 in the morning on Wednesday reliving a lot of the experience; then I wondered why I had it on my mind--funny. I was thinking it was kind of crazy to voluntarily return to the hospital. But I wanted to make an offering, however small, to the hospital for Christmas, in honor of all the great care Amelia received while she was there.

Amelia on her last day in the hospital

Amelia and I loaded up and left for Aurora around noon. She happily ate a special treat--a Wendy's Kids meal--on the way. The girl loves her hamburgers. When we arrived, we parked and walked into the lobby.

It's hard to describe how I felt. I did of course remember being in that lobby was a worried parent, and I could see the worry (and exhaustion) in several other parents' faces as soon as I walked in. But mainly I felt like what I was--a visitor. Amelia and I found the room where there were collecting donations, then found a little red wagon to take back out to the car and return with the rest of the gifts. Amelia enjoyed the wagon ride, the sticker she got, and the little toys they have in the lobby. After we dropped off the toys, we took the elevator to the 9th floor with a basket of chocolates and candy for the wonderful nurses who took care of Amelia. As I had expected, we didn't get to see any of them, but we left it in the hands of a kind hospital worker who promised to find the right people. On the way off the elevator, Amelia got her fingers caught and smooshed in the opening door. As she cried (mostly with rage) and I comforted her, it really hit me how much of a visitor to the hospital I really was. My perfectly healthy and stubborn child, who tried again to touch the elevator doors the very next time we got on the elevator, is just that--wonderfully, blessedly, healthy. And the primary emotion I felt throughout our pilgrimage to the hospital was gratitude. I feel so incredibly lucky that my and Dean's experience with a very sick child was so short. I am infinitely grateful for Amelia's health and infinitely grateful for Amelia.

Our happy, healthy 2-year-old

There is something that happened while we were in the hospital that I have not mentioned to many people, and never to anyone in full. It's a very small moment but also a very big one. While we where there, they were doing one of those radio fundraisers for the hospital. The lobby was often full of DJs and music and parents and patients telling their stories on the air. Once when I was leaving the hospital for some reason, a mother was with talking to the DJ. She was telling the story of her child's illness. It was an illness her child did not recover from, and she was describing the moment the doctor's told her that there was nothing more they could do for the child. I can't tell the whole story because I pretty much ran from the lobby in tears, but what I remember, what was hard to comprehend at the time and honestly, still is, is that she was speaking about how grateful she was--for all that the doctors and nurses did do for her child, for the time she had left with her child, and for the person her child still was. I am sorry to be writing about this stuff--it's brutal. But I will always remember that mother's voice, and her gratitude.

One of the scariest things to me about parenthood--and life--is that we don't know what's going to happen next. For now, I have a beautiful, healthy, vibrant, fun-loving daughter. Having her is the most challenging, the most interesting, the most wonder-full thing I have ever experienced. This Christmas season, I offer a heart filled with love and gratitude to all of the other wonderful people my life, to the friends and family and neighbors who make my rich life even better. I love you all, and I hope your holiday season and new year are as filled with blessings as my own life has been so far.

Merry Christmas from all of us

Some Pictures

2011-12-08T19:24:00.003-07:00

Amelia's new bed!

Her duvet cover has little vegetables on it, and she got this stuffed broccoli pillow toy to match.

The Artist

The artist made a mess. (We made our own clay from flour and salt. We may never do it again.)

The artist, who did not nap AGAIN today, is very tired.

4 Fun Facts About Amelia

2011-12-07T14:52:00.002-07:00

4. She has moved to a big girl bed! It's a twin mattress on the floor (with a bed rain to hold her in plus a baby gate at her doorway). I was very nervous about the change, but it's gone well, even seamlessly. We decided to make the switch because she was getting very angry about being put down for naps and sort of thrusting her upper body over the crib rail. It didn't seem like a good idea to let that continue. From the first night on, she has been sleeping like a baby.

3. She seems to be dropping her nap. I don't think it's because of the bed, but she does love the new bed, so she spends I'd say 3 out of 4 nap times playing in there. It's interesting because as far as I know she stays in the bed the whole "naptime," even when she's awake. If she doesn't fall asleep I leave her in her room to play for an hour or so. When she does fall asleep, it is often for a very long nap.

2. She did not fall asleep today, so the pictures of the new bed, which I had planned as the number one "fact" spot, will have to wait. Instead I will say

1. Dropping her nap? Really??? Heaven help me.

Seven Shorts

2011-11-13T14:39:00.005-07:00

What I've Been Doing

Studying for the GRE--because I have decided to apply to the University of Denver's PhD in Creative Writing for the fall. !!! After looking into part-time teaching for this year, I decided again to stay with Amelia full time, but by next fall, I think both of us will be ready for a change of pace. My hope is that, if I do get into the program (which in several ways is a bit of a long shot), it will be a win-win situation. If you are admitted to the program, you automatically get a Teaching Assistantship. In my dream world, the TA-ship would pay for Amelia to go to preschool part time, and I would be able to arrange her school schedule with mine, and we would both live happily ever after, still spending a lot of time with each other but both venturing out on new scholastic adventures. We shall see. Anyway, I decided earlier in the fall to apply and see what happened, and then I found out I needed to retake the general GREs, since my scores were too old, AND take the Literature Subject Test. Studying ensured. The lit test was yesterday; I am very, VERY glad it's over. Go ahead, ask me what the Pardoner's Tale is about. Ask me to name Milton's major works. Ask me what an alexandrine is. I can answer. Now that the test is over, I need to write my application statement of purpose. The application is due January 1. Cross your fingers!

The Potty Train

This is what Amelia calls potty training. She is in the process. She had been wearing no diaper (and no underwear either, just pants, to avoid constant transitions between diapers and underwear) when we were hanging around the house for several weeks, and she had been doing really well with letting us know when she needs to go, so I decided to take the plunge and give real potty training a shot. Amelia had her first major outing without diapers last Sunday. Well, the first non-accidental one--I took her to the dinosaur bones museum a few weeks ago without a diaper, and luckily caught it before any mess was made. Most of the diaperless outings have gone well. There was one peeing incident at the playground, and she has had 2 or 3 accidents here at the house in the last few days, but overall it's going pretty smoothly. I got this little travel potty, which so far I have only used as a seat on large toilets when we are away from the house, but it looks good for emergencies. I am excited about the thought of Amelia being potty trained, but the stage we are in right now is still a lot of work (dropping everything to run to the potty; sitting there a LONG time; trying to teach Amelia it is not necessary to put half a roll of toilet paper in the toilet just for fun; distinguishing the art of hand-washing from the art of playtime in the sink; etc). But Amelia was definitely showing signs of readiness, so here we are. Again, we shall see.

Mangoroo

Amelia's word for flamingo.

Exchange

Daddy: What is Amelia eating?

Amelia: Strawberries!

Daddy: Where are those strawberries from?

Amelia: From Momma!

Daddy: Where did Momma get them?

Amelia: From a box with a rubber band on it!

Daddy: (laughing) And where did the box come from?

Amelia: From the fridge!

Daddy: (laughing)

Amelia: And from the car, and the grocery store!

Sleepy Bear

Amelia, for the record, has been sleeping GREAT at night since we weaned. There have been maybe 2 or 3 nights she has woken up from what we guess are bad dreams, and one night she was up with a bad cough. Other than that, EXCELLENT SLEEP. Hallelujiah. Naps are still variable, but seem to be shortening. Today, only an hour. Yikes. She has been going down for naps at 1:30 for a month or two. She dislikes the idea of a nap very much (she goes down, but with a fight--the opposite of bedtime, which is now quite peaceful) but I feel like she still needs them; she is definitely yawning and grumpy by naptime. Still, I am not sure how much longer we have with them. Oh, and also for the record, Amelia was sleeping from 8pm-7 am. Then the time changed (I am pretty sure only people without young children like "falling back") and she has been waking up earlier, but still till 6:30 or 6:45. It's so humane! I am deeply grateful to finally be the parent of a "good sleeper." I feel like my time has come.

Amelia's Favorite Games

Amelia is getting very good at entertaining herself. She likes to push her grocery cart around; sing Happy Birthday to You while you hold a plastic cupcake, and then give you an imaginary "special bag" (a favor bag with "ittle fogs in it"); look at books by herself in our gray chair; read books with me and Dean ("Again! Again!"), play with her farm set while sitting on the heating vent; and generally boss around her dolls and animals, including having them kick or hit each other and then gravely admonishing the misbehaving animal and getting the abused animal a toy. She also likes to put her animals to sleep and wake them up. It is really neat to see her imagination develop. Lots of fun.

Twinkle, Twinkle

Amelia was a star for Halloween. Udi made her costume, which got many, many compliments, because it very was adorable. Halloween was great. Although this was, tehnically, Amelia's third Halloween, it felt like her first. She understood the basics of dressing up and trick or treating, and when the time came, she LOVED it. We trick-or-treated for about an hour, just around our block and a street or two over, and Amelia was giggling with delight almost the whole time, clutching her treats (even after the pumpkin got very heavy). After the first couple of houses we tried didn't answer their doors (despite having porch lights on) and we told her they weren't ready, she would pause in front of each and ask us "Is this house ready?" Dean and I took turns accompanying her to ring doorbells and saying trick-or-treat. I had a lot of fun too. I grew up in a place where trick or treating involved driving for miles between houses, so it was really fun to be in a neighborhood, my neighborhood. And it was a really nice night, warm, with a crescent moon in the sky. It made me deeply, deeply glad we had Amelia to go trick-or-treating with. So much fun!

Birthday Party

2011-10-24T15:43:00.005-06:00

I realized I never actually put up shots of Amelia's second birthday party! It was a fun morning. We had planned to have the party at a nearby park, but what turned out to be the only cold and rainy day in a span of many weekends made us decide to have it at home. We had bagels, coffee, fruit and cupcakes. Amelia had a slightly runny nose the morning of the party, so I texted all of my mom friends a heads up. Bravely, everyone came, and as far as I know, no one else caught a cold. Amelia had a good time playing with friends, opening presents and, of course, eating cupcakes, although I think she was at times overwhelmed by the crowd and attention. It was a good party!

Birthday girl in her party dress

Cupcakes!

Make a wish!

Opening presents

Doll from Gano and Susan

Post-party, holding birthday balloons (you can see her little red nose!)

Friendship: A Story in Pictures

2011-10-24T15:28:00.003-06:00

Are You Ready?

2011-10-24T15:11:00.003-06:00

Another birthday present (with great thanks to Uncle Jes and Aunt Kim--and cousin Micah, of course)! She loves this, and by now has even figured out how to ride on it herself.

Presents and more presents

2011-10-08T06:02:00.004-06:00

Guitar from Nanny

Dollhouse from Grand-Aunt Linda

Sandbox, built by Guru on Amelia's birthday!

Birthday Presents!

2011-10-05T19:28:00.004-06:00

Amelia started receiving presents in the mail early this week. She opened a few of them early, and yesterday she opened several more. She still has a few to open, and considering that we are having a little party for her on Saturday, she is truly having a "birthweek" instead of a birthday. Since so many presents are from family and friends far away, I am trying to video her opening them or playing with them, so you can all share in the fun. I will be posting lots of videos over the next couple of days, so stay tuned!

First, here is Amelia opening a gift from her Poppa!

Letter to my Daughter

2011-10-05T06:34:00.002-06:00

Dear Amelia,

Today you are two!

Whew.

Two years ago today, I woke up early, thinking of you. Late that evening, you joined us in the world.

A dear friend of mine just had her first baby. When I look at pictures of them, I see the awe in my friend's face, the way she cradles her daughter's head, holds her tiny fingers, touches her soft face. It is clear: she is in love.

When I first saw these pictures a few weeks ago, I was a little sad, because I don't remember feeling that way when you were a newborn. To be clear, I loved you fiercely. I was deeply happy you were with us, and I would have done anything--thrown myself in front of a bus, fought with a lion--to protect you, with no fear or qualms. Your life immediately became the most important thing in mine. But I was so very tired. I was overwhelmed, and very, very tired. I was worried about how motherhood would affect other parts of my life, specifically my writing. And did I mention I was very, very tired?

But a few weeks ago, watching you play, I realized--this is what it is to be in love with your child. At some point, maybe not when you were born or when you were a newborn, but at some point--I truly fell in love with you. Looking at you now, I love your little hands, your long, funny toes, your eyelashes, your belly with its scar. I love the way you play, bossing and tricking and soothing your animals. I love the way you sing and dance. I love the way you climb up the slide. I love your spirit and your voice and the way you chew with your mouth open, the sound it makes. I love you!

On your second birthday, I wanted to share a few things I have learned over the past two years. These are things, Amelia, that you taught me, that I don't think I would have learned without you.

First, you are never finished. With lists, with chores, with playtime and resting, things are never really "complete." Before you were born, and for a long time after, this fact of life was very stressful to me. I felt like I needed to "finish" everything before I could rest or relax. But now, I have learned to calm down, to ignore the mess sometimes, to allow myself more down time and rest time. I have gradually learned that the fact that every day brings a new mess and new challenges is a blessing. It keeps life full and interesting. Life is here for us to live, not to finish.

You have taught me the meaning behind the phrase "This too shall pass." The bad stuff--teething, tantrums, exhaustion, and if you are lucky like we were this year, illnesses--passes, and the good stuff passes too. There have been many times during the past two years at which your Dad and I have wanted to freeze time, because you were so cute and charming and lovely, we would keep you that way if we could. Having you has taught me to live more in the moment, to smile or breathe through the hard stuff and to be still and treasure the good.

And you have taught me that there is so much love in the world. There are so very many people who love you, Amelia: me and your Dad, your Nanny and Poppa and Luli and Guru, your aunts and uncles and Grand-aunts and Grand-uncles, your Gano and Poppa Brown, and your big "the family" and too many other people to name. And you have brought a lot of friendship into my life too--yesterday we hosted a birthday party for one of your friends, and I was looking at all the people, other moms and dads and toddlers and babies, in my house, thinking that I never would have met these people if it weren't for you. You have caused me to make new friends and reconnect with old ones. You have made me a more outgoing, more community- and family-minded person, and you have brought a lot of joy into my life.

Finally, Amelia, you are so much fun! At two, you are a fabulous talker, and you have a lot to say. You seem to charm everyone you meet. You are earnest, funny, and kind. You try hard to share even when you don't want to. You love to help. You love to read, collect rocks and leaves, and play with your many animal friends. You make every day an adventure, and I am so glad you are here.

There is more I could say, but you are awake, so I will join you to greet another lovely autumn day. Happy birthday, Amelia. You are wonderful.

Love,

Your Momma

In Honor of Months

2011-10-04T06:34:00.004-06:00

For the first 12 weeks of your baby's life, you count her age in weeks. Around 12 weeks, most people move to counting in months and count that way for almost 2 years. After 24 months, it's more rare to hear kids' ages being given in months, although many parents still keep track (and I have definitely heard my share of moms discussing their "28-month-old" or even "34-month-old." In any case, on her last day as a 23-month-old, here is a journey back through the months of Amelia's life, so far.

Birth

Newborn, a few days old

1 Month

2 Months

3 Months

4 Months

5 Months

6 Months

7 Months

8 Months

9 Months

10 Months

11 Months

12 Months

13 Months

14 Months

15 Months

16 Months

17 Months

18 Months

19 Months

20 Months

21 Months

22 Months

23 Months

Amelia at Almost 2...

2011-10-03T06:37:00.005-06:00

loves shoes,

is a playground daredevil,

stays busy with zookeeping duties,

is a seasoned traveler.

might be a hippie,

just got her first braid,

and eats ice cream cones from both ends.

Two Years Ago Today

2011-10-02T08:54:00.002-06:00

Clean Fish Dishes at Campsite

2011-09-18T13:30:00.010-06:00

(Poll for this post has been removed)

My original title for this post was going to be "New and News." So before I explain the current title, here's what's new with us.

Amelia's "brain on toddlerhood" episode passed, leaving us with a sunnier, less tantrum-y almost-2-year-old, albeit one that talks ALL THE TIME. It's a pretty regular occasion for her to surprise someone with her long sentences. She is also apparently practicing for Jeopardy and has taken to stating her answers in the form a question. "Does Amia want a cookie?" "Does that girl want to share her toys with Amia?" Then, when you answer her ("Do you want a cookie?") she will agree, amicably and mildly, as though it was your idea ("Okay"). Not to say that she still doesn't have the occasional tantrum, but the period where I felt like I was walking on toddler-transition eggshells, thankfully, has passed. One thing that seemed to help was for me to talk a lot about how Amelia was saying things, telling her to use her "big girl voice" and not a yelling or a whiny voice. This must have gotten through because the other day I overheard her telling one of her animals "Momma doesn't like that whiny voice." Hmm.

Amelia is also asking us real questions. For example, when we are eating, she will say, "Is it good, Daddy?" "Is it good, Momma?" It is funny and cute. Overall, I like her age and hanging out with her at this age more and more every day. We have a lot of fun.

In other news, Amelia has a babysitter, a very sweet college student who has been sitting a few hours a week. I had thought about enrolling Amelia in a Parents' Day Out program, but I felt like neither of us was really ready for that. I decided to find a babysitter who could come fairly regularly, both so I could have a little time to write and so Amelia could get used to the idea of being away from me every now and then. After I interviewed sitters and hired one, she came over almost every other day for 3 weeks or so just to spend time with me and Amelia together, so that we could both get to know her. Gradually I spent less time actually in the same room with them, cleaning or writing nearby so I could still hear what was going on. I liked the babysitter, who I will call M in case she doesn't care to have her actual name on the Internet, a lot at first, and I like her more and more as time goes on. She is patient, funny, and loving, and she seems to like Amelia a lot (but who wouldn't?). For the last several visits, she has taken Amelia to the park for awhile while I write. The first time, it was hard, both for Amelia, who cried for the first 5 minutes she left me, and for me, who knows for a fact it was 5 minutes because I followed M and Amelia to the park after they left and watched them from behind a tree until Amelia stopped crying. (It's really nice to live so close to a park, for a lot of reasons). But now Amelia is actually excited when M comes, and I am enjoying having a bit more time to write, and am even spending most of that time writing, instead of spying.

Speaking of writing, a poem of mine got accepted by the online journal storySouth. I was going to say that it is not up yet, but it actually is! So you can go read it.

Finally, as you may have inferred from the post title and poll, we recently went camping. We went with Jim and Luli and Jes, Kim and Micah, and we all had a great time. Pictures:

However, a certain incident during the trip had me questioning my entire poetry-writing career.

I should say first that, since Amelia was born (and maybe before), Dean has joked about me not reading things carefully, mostly at the grocery store. I might, for example, come home with a can of black soybeans instead of black beans--the cans look remarkably similar, especially if you don't actually read the labels. I think these mistakes have to do with the feeling of always being behind on things, and so always being in a rush to get things done. To combat this feeling of being rushed, I have been repeating a little mantra to myself lately, "Do what you're doing." It helps me actually enjoy what I am doing instead of thinking about what else needs to get done. Also, I think it makes me a little more careful and mindful. Usually. But the day before the camping trip, two things happened.

The first was while I was driving. I was on a one way street, making a left turn. The two far left lanes were allowed to make the turn, and I was in the lane more toward the middle. As I began to turn, I saw someone crossing the street, so I stopped. Then, a car to my left, in the far left lane, sped past me going straight. As I drew in a breath to call them a crazy driver, I realized I was about to turn the wrong way onto another one way street. I had not yet reached the intersection where I needed to turn--it was just ahead of me--and I had almost turned left into the oncoming traffic to my left. I was reading the turning lanes signs for the next intersection, not the one I was at. If it hadn't been for the pedistrian, I probably would have caused a pretty bad crash, and likely been hurt.

I was pretty shaky about it, mad at myself for being so spacey. It was scary. Then, I sent an email with a pretty dumb and very obvious typo. It was kind of an important email--and the person I sent it pointed the mistake out to me when they wrote back. Again, I was upset at myself. Not very mindful. So--keep all this in the back of your head.

Back to camping. On our recent trip, we stayed at the same campsite Dean, Amelia and I stayed at earlier in the summer. During that trip, I noticed a sign at one of the water faucets, which is basically a pipe with a handle sticking out of the ground. "Wash Fish Dishes at Campsite," the sign advised. Back at our campsite, I asked Dean the same question the poll asks (vote now, if you haven't already!).

"Does it mean you are supposed to wash your the dishes you use to eat fish at your campsite, but other dishes are okay?" I asked.

Dean shrugged.

This was the 4th of July weekend, and there were a lot of people at the campground. Most of them seemed to be washing their dishes at the water faucets, so I did too. It seemed to make sense. Fish dishes would be especially yucky and stinky, right?

So the Saturday morning of out trip, I was hanging out with Amelia alone for awhile. She wanted to go for a ride in Micah's stroller, so I decided to take the few dishes from breakfast down to the faucets to wash them, mostly just to have somewhere to stroll. As I knelt down to fill the first cup with water, I heard someone running toward me. I looked up, and the campground manager yelled, "You can't wash dishes here!"

I got up and apologized. I said, "I saw the sign about the fish, but it seemed like everyone else was washing dishes here." He said again, still running, "You can't wash dishes here!" And ran right past me.

It turns out he was running toward someone using a chainsaw (which is something else you can't do at a campground). I was a little frazzled, but I just took the dishes back up to our campsite, thinking I would see him later and explain how I had read the sign. And perhaps point out that they should consider getting a clearer sign, maybe adding, oh, a comma or a conjunction.

So we washed our dishes at the campsite and played some more. Amelia wanted to go on another stroller ride, so we went down a different path. As we walked, we passed another water faucet, this one with a sign that read "Clean Fish and Dishes at Campsite."

My heart sunk. Remembering my recent lapses in careful reading, I realized I had been misreading the signs, overlooking the "and." Amelia and I strolled back to the campsite, where she happily collected rocks and I spent half an hour questioning my entire career as a poet. I don't read traffic signs carefully, I send emails with typos, and I can't even pay carefully attention to a sign about washing fish and dishes. I shouldn't be writing poems.

Finally, I heard the campground manager at the campsite down the hill from us. I decided to at least go explain my mistake. I did, and he was very kind. "We should make bigger signs," he said. I felt better. Amelia and I said good-bye, and walked back to our campsite. Past the faucet I had been at when the campground manager scolded me. And past its sign, which I read carefully:

"Clean Fish Dishes At Campsite."

I can still write poems. Whew.

This Is Your Brain on Toddlerhood

2011-08-23T05:59:00.009-06:00

There have been a couple of times in Amelia's life that I have felt I could almost see her brain developing. The past week or two has been one of those times. From the moment she wakes up, she goes a mile a minute, talking, playing, reading, singing, moving toys and pens and buttons and who knows what all to the places they clearly need to be, and generally directing things around the house.

Her language development has been the most obvious--when she isn't cruise directing, she has been stating or describing what she is doing or what is happening around her in alarmingly complex sentences. I have been calling her "the narrator." When you go in her bedroom to get her when she wakes up, she will inform you "Mia sanding in her cib." In fact, now she might also say "I sanding in my cib"--she is getting more and more pronouns right. She says things like "Mia go with Daddy to pick tomatoes," or last night at dinner when she happened to glance up and out the window, "I'm looking out the window." Sometimes when she speaks she falls into a kind of "uh, uh, uh" noise and you can tell the wheels are turning in her mind as she looks for the right word or maybe the sentence structure, but more and more she just talks. She talks all day long. And she still prefers that you repeat back what she says. I don't miss not the quiet, exactly, but our days our... full.

Another reason our days are full, and this is perhaps related to the brain development spurt, is that Amelia's naps have suddenly and substantially shortened themselves. She was napping from around 12-2, and now she doesn't seem ready to go down for a nap till 1 or 1:30, if then. Then, she naps for about 45 minutes. She has a hard time settling down, and when she wakes up, after a period of initial fussiness, she is ready to go for the afternoon. She has been sleeping at night, though, for 11-12 hour stretches, from 7:30 or 8 to around 7 in the morning, so I am thinking since she is sleeping so long at night she just doesn't need a long nap. It's not the best news for me, break-wise, but it's not terrible. I am trying to take advantage of being able to have longer morning outings, and drastically decrease the number of things I try to do during her nap. (In fact, one of the things I have been doing during her nap is sitting down and watching "Friends," which conveniently reruns every day at 2:00.) Since I have less time during the day and more time during the mornings, I have been trying to get up a little earlier and enjoy the quiet. The early mornings have always been the best poem-writing times for me anyway, so maybe this is a good development for me, writing-wise.

Another note about toddlerhood--Amelia has had some real live tantrums lately. These are sometimes times when she is tired or maybe related to not feeling well, with the cold, for example, or last week she also tested positive for strep--one of the best tips I got about toddler behavior is that when they are acting SUPER terrible, they are probably sick. But there have been a couple of tantrums that seem mostly just about Amelia not getting what she wants, which I suppose is normal for almost two. Last week, we stopped by the "dinosaur bone museum" to play for awhile, and when we were leaving, not feeling well myself, I forgot to do my usual "in a few minutes, we have to say bye-bye to the museum" thing to prep Amelia for our departure (which usually works really well). We were walking toward the door, and Amelia seemed to realize we were leaving, and she just lost it. She was crouching and clenching her fists and screaming "dinosaur bones!" She was in fact standing directly underneath dinosaur bones, but no attempt of mine to point that out to her, or to calm her down in any way other way, worked, so I finally had to pick her up and carry her screaming to the car. She cried most of the 20-minute drive home, and what finally made her stop was a tip I read in The Happiest Toddler on the Block: "gossip." The author recommends that you "gossip" with your toddler's stuffed animals (or other family members, if they are around), both to discuss bad behavior and praise good behavior. The idea is that toddlers like to overhear stuff and sometimes you can get more across if they think you are not talking to them. So I talked to Elmo, who Amelia had carried around the museum all morning. "Hey Elmo! Listen! Amelia had a tantrum at the museum, and Amelia is so angry! Amelia wanted to stay at the dinosaur bones! But Momma doesn't understand tantrums. Momma understands big girl words! And Amelia is so good at big girl words!" And etc. Every time Amelia would start crying again I would say "Hey, Elmo! Listen!" And she would listen. By the time we got home, she was calm. I had asked Elmo if he thought Amelia would rather play with buttons or bracelets when she got home, and as we pulled into the garage, I heard a tiny, tired voice: "buttons."

We played with buttons, then had lunch. Toddlers are tiring. Lovable, but tiring.

The interesting thing is that Amelia still remembers this vividly. "Mia cied at the dinosaur bones. Elmo had to listen! Momma doesn't unersand tanums."

On a side note, with all these sicknesses and tantrums, sometimes I really miss breastfeeding. I just know it would calm her down so easily. I can pick Amelia up and snuggle her, and carry her around, and goodness knows I do, but it's not the same. Just saying, for the record: I don't regret weaning when we did, but I do miss the closeness, the calming nature of breastfeeding.

What else? We went to the zoo, and it was one of the first times Amelia was actually excited about the animals. She liked the elephants and hippos the best

and enjoyed peering over the wall at "Monkey Island."

She also fed some lorakeets

and rode the train with her friend Pigit,

and on another visit to the zoo with (L)u(l)i, she rode the merry-go-round.

We canceled a camping trip we had planned for this weekend because we all got colds, but we did go to a baseball game Sunday afternoon. The Rockies have a section called "The Rockpile" that features $4.50 bleacher seats, a good price for people who might only last a few innings. This was our view from our seats

and Amelia and Dean watching the game.

We had a good time--the day worked out well, since Amelia napped early and the sun went behind the clouds just time for the game. Amelia liked watching the people and even some of the game ("That man running!") She danced when music played and clapped when the other fans clapped, and the enjoyed her first experience with Dippin' Dots (which cost the same price as our seats). We lasted until about the 6th inning.

Our garden is thriving in the summer heat. We have piles of tomatoes, squash and zucchini, so much that I have just been planning our meals about what could include those things. We have a good amount of peppers, tomatillos, and cucumbers, too, and just picked some very pretty tri-color corn. This is our garden a couple of weeks ago; things are even taller and bushier now.

Finally, we are battling out an attempt to grow out Amelia's bangs. I really want to grow them out, since they grow fast and they are hard to trim, and our favorite hairdresser lives really far away. But Amelia is not a fan of hairclips ("Cips out!) so she looks pretty shaggy a lot of the time. Here is a picture of her with cips, just to prove she doesn't always look like a sheep dog.

We had some success with using a rubber band for a "ponytail" yesterday, and I made a big deal about how "now you can see!" So we'll see.

22 Months and counting

2011-08-05T21:18:00.005-06:00

Whenever I have a birthday, Dean always tells me what I am divisible by. (This is someone who was "doing takeaways" when he was 3 years old, maybe earlier.) Today is Amelia's 22-month "birthday." At 22 months, Amelia is divisible by 1, 2, 11, and 22.

So...

here is Amelia at one month

and two months,

at 11 months,

and today, 22 months old.

The 22 month picture is blurry because Amelia at 22 months is rarely still. And I only had a cell phone camera. She is holding a Rice Krispie Treat-covered spoon.

As an added bonus, even though it doesn't fit mathematically, here is Amelia almost exactly 2 years ago today:

And this is what she looked like a few weeks later when she wasn't hidden by shower presents. Yikes.

Happy 22 months, Amelia! It's hard to believe our month-counting days will soon be coming to an end.

Lists, lists, oh lists

2011-08-03T13:59:00.005-06:00

If the title of this post seems oddly familiar to you, you may be, or may have been in the past, a high school English teacher.*

Time for the final update on my July list: I didn't get everything done.

But, here are the items on the list I did accomplish:
cleaned out and organized my closet
cleaned off my upstairs writing desk
started running 3 times a week (for the past 3 weeks only, but hey)
learned all about potty training (really--ask me anything)
redesigned, multiple times, this blog
went to yoga 2-3 times a week

And, I did a ton of stuff not on the list, such as:
research preschools and Parents Day Out programs
put up an ad for a babysitter
reorganize the pantry and kitchen cabinets
start a book club
brainstorm ideas for a cookbook

The main things I did not do, however, might be the most important ones for any sort of academic career I might eventually ever have (although that idea seems less plausible the longer I am away from the academic world). I did NOT do any kind of work for the two baby ideas I had for non-poetry writing projects, something having to do with Southern Lit and something having to do with what I am calling "Motherhood Lit." I just don't have the gumption, the energy, or the motivation for these projects. I know a lot of writing opportunities come out of simply having written something, but I have a hard time starting big projects without some kind of outside pressure for doing so. Like a job. Or being in school. Amelia is a tough boss, but she doesn't require much in the way of written material. So I am slacking there.

I have been feeling kind of bad about it. I didn't even want to blog about it, and I have in fact been sitting in front of the computer for an hour NOT blogging about it, but this seems to be one of Amelia's longer nap days. I keep arguing with myself about the situation--see below.

Kim 1: Of course I am not writing much or working on anything all that serious. I am a Stay At Home Mom. My job is to raise Amelia. By the end of a day of playing, coloring, singing, talking about colors, repeating things one million times, getting in and out of the car seat, running errands, preparing wholesome meals and snacks, cleaning up bits and pieces of said meals and snacks from all corners of the house, patiently waiting for a toddler to put on her shoes "self," strap herself into her carseat "self", go up and down stairs "self," and who knows what all else, how could I even expect myself to create serious and insightful work on a realm of the world (i.e. literature) that truly has nothing to do with my life right now.

Kim 2: But you are a writer. And you want to be a writer. And writers read stuff. And also write.

Kim 1: (asleep by 8:30 pm)

So I am really not getting anywhere.

On the one hand, I love Amelia and Amelia is wonderful, and I really do love spending the days with her now. Although I have been so grateful since I stopped working that I am able to be with her so much, "I really do love spending the days with her" is not something I would have written a year ago. I found the baby months--sleepless nights, unpredictable days-- really hard. And now, things are still challenging, and I am certainly tired at the end of the day, but overall I am having a lot of fun. That's why I stopped looking for teaching jobs for the fall, and chose to stay with Amelia for another year.

On the other hand, part of me feels very isolated. When I think about it, which isn't often, I miss school, both taking classes and teaching them, very much. Long term, I would like to be part of the larger writing world again, but I have a lot of fears and worries about ever getting there. I am afraid of being lazy now and missing my chance. I am afraid I can no longer write a good poem. I am afraid I will never have the discipline to read all the stuff I need to read to be a good poet. I am afraid I will never find a teaching job.

And I am afraid no one is all that interested in what I have to say. Awhile ago, I mentioned the fact that I wanted my blog to be more than a "mommy blog." I had come across a piece of academic writing on "mommy blogs" that really annoyed me, but I couldn't quite figure out why. It wasn't particularly insulting, just a kind of study and description of "mommy blogs," but it really not on my nerves. Then I came across this article on the words "mom" and "mommy", and two and two came together. As the Orlean article points out, "mommy" as an adjective comes across as infantile, silly, even trivial. It annoys me to have a whole segment of writing women, most if not all of whom provide each other (and the whole cyberworld) not only with a mothering community but also with invaluable insights on both parenting and writing, labeled as "mommy bloggers." And it both offends and scares me to have most of my writing labeled as such. Offends me because I don't think most of what I write is trivial, even if much of what I write is primarily about Amelia. And scares me because maybe, in the eyes of the larger writing world, it is.

Of course if I really believed that, I'd shut down the whole operation, and here we are. I know these feelings are not new to women or to mothers or to artists in general. And I know how lucky I am, how hugely lucky, that my challenge is balancing mothering and writing, and not working and spending time with my child, or trying to put food on my table, or dealing with war or poverty or fear for my family's physical safety or innumerable other terrible things. I try to remember to be grateful for my life daily, even hourly. And I am very grateful.

Still, I know that part of me is meant to write, wants to write, and it waiting to do so. In the ongoing brave new world of motherhood, a different world every day, I think my upcoming lists are going to look for ways to be more of a writer too.

*It's from Hamlet, a play I read too many times with a great deal of teenagers who were uninterested in, if not downright hostile toward, Shakespeare. The ghost says it (or rather, "list, list, o list!") to get Hamlet to listen. I'd say it to get my students to listen. I was such a cool teacher.

B-I-N-G-O

2011-08-03T09:43:00.002-06:00

On a recent and very long car trip, Luli, Dean and I sang "Bingo" to Amelia approximately 10,000 times. Amelia loves to hear songs, and sometimes she will watch whoever is singing very carefully and try to mouth the words with the song. On Monday, I sang "Bingo" to Amelia while we were driving to the grocery store, and she said, "Mia sing it!" And she did.

These are my attempts to catch her on tape.

What's Amia doin'?

2011-07-26T13:52:00.004-06:00

Amelia is talking. A lot. Amelia repeats almost everything we say, including, once, "Damn it, Suki!" as Suki escaped outside through a closing door. Amelia somehow got a southern accent, or at least a southern way of sayin' lots of words. She drops her g's. She called her (L)u(l)i and Guwu's cat Maude "Mawwwd." Could she have picked up this drawl from her mother? You be the judge.

Amelia also drops l's. Hence the (L)u(l)i and the "Amia." Or often she just calls herself "Mia." Mia was listed as a nickname for Amelia in the baby name book I used, and now I see why.

For yes, Amelia says "okay." For no, she says "no okay." All in one phrase. (Are you ready to take a rest? No okay. I am learning to tell, not ask, certain things.)

Amelia is asking a lot of questions, or rather, the same few questions over and over. What's Amia doin'? What's Daddy doin'? What's Momma doin'? What's Suki doin'? (I remember my mom telling me how many times I used to say "Ronna... What doin', huh?")

Amelia assigns dialogue. She likes me to talk for her dolls and stuffed animals. Usually they want to eat something or do whatever Amelia is doing. Then she will tell them, gravely, "Mia's turn." She also likes for me to ask to do what she is doing and then say no. This might worry me but I read in The Happiest Toddler on the Block (which I highly recommend, along with The Girlfriend's Guide to Toddlers) that it's actually good to let toddlers be the boss and deny you of things sometimes for play, because they have so little power in other things.

Amelia takes her time. I am tested many times a day on my resolve, so long ago, to be patient when Amelia became a toddler. Walking 50 feet can take half an hour. Going up or down the stairs can take half the morning. I try to remind myself that what feels like a sidetrack to me is a learning experience and a experiment in independence for Amelia, and save the times I ask her to hurry for when it really matters.

Amelia wants to do it "self." In other words, "Mia do it." Putting on her shoes, buckling into her carseat, putting on her pants: these are all thing Amelia really wants to do by herself and can't quite, yet. But she tries, sometimes calmly and sometimes with great frustrations. If only patience came in a bottle. For both of us. These have been moments when I have had to literally chant aloud to myself "Patience, patience!" (It helps.)

Amelia likes to collect. One of the things she is repeating is "A-nuh-nuh ____?" For example, she has these little plastic animal toys she calls hippos that have holes on one side and a point on the other end so they can snap into each other. They are all pulled apart and scattered everywhere because she likes to put them on her fingers. If we happen to see one she says, "A-nuh-nuh hippo?" (That's "another.") Basically, anything she finds or likes, she asks for another. A-nuh-nuh haircip? A-nuh-nuh bracet? A-nuh-nuh bear? And etc. Etc. All day long.

Amelia has been sleeping beautifully. 10-12 hours a night, 2 or so hours for naps. Did this coincide with weaning? Yes. Well, the night sleep did anyway. Could be a coincidence, but just for the record. The naps got easier when I started being consistent about a nap routine: home from morning outing around 11, lunch, playtime, stories, in the crib between 12 and 12:30 for 3 songs, the end. She usually cries for a few minutes before she falls asleep, but sometimes she just talks to her animals. Again for the record, her current bedtime is between 7 and 8, depending on how tired she is.

And finally, Amelia is wonderful. She is fun, funny, and fascinating. She changes so quickly and is becoming her own little self with alarming speed. Although I am sometimes tired and impatient, I am truly and deeply thankful that I get to spend so much time with her.

Mid-July (And poop!)

2011-07-11T13:26:00.004-06:00

Since July is quickly slipping by, I got out my big summer checklist today to see how much I have accomplished. If I were grading myself, I'd get a B. I'm doing okay.

One thing I would get an A+ on is my goal to learn more about potty training and make a plan (or not) for potty training Amelia. When I made the list she was showing some interest in the potty so I wanted to see what the experts had to say about the matter, as well as people who often know more than experts, parents with kids older than Amelia. Based on what I learned, Amelia was showing many signs of potty training readiness: interest in the potty, ability to communicate reasonably well, ability to tell me when she was going to the bathroom, that sort of thing. There were some she wasn't showing, though, especially the desire to have her diaper changed when it was dirty. Still, because she was interested and having so many "naken minutes," we spent a lot of time siting on the potty and talking about what it was for. Pretty soon after we started, she peed in the potty. We worked on it a few days, and I sent out a call for parent advice on Facebook. After reading the responses, I decided to take my time on the potty issue. I have heard from a LOT of people how their kids trained early, then backtracked later. After reading the books, it seems like some backtracking is common for most kids, so common it is probably just part of the process. But since A was only 20 months and because I did not want to spend our entire summer in the bathroom, for the last couple of weeks I have just been encouraging A to sit on the potty when we are home and she is running around naked (which is pretty much most of the time we are at home).

It clicked for her, mostly--when she needed to pee, she would run to the bathroom, sit down, pee, and say, "Yay!" She loves the process of the whole thing, especially picking up the potty, pouring the pee in the big toilet, flushing, closing the lid, and rinsing the little potty. She also loves to stand on the little potty (lid closed) and use it as a stool to wash her hands. There was still a good deal of pee on the floor from when she would run in the bathroom without me realizing it, then bring the potty to me to see, but overall, smooth going. I was proud and happy but mostly trying not to push things and go with the flow, no pun intended.

Poop was a different story. When she needed to poop, she would ask for a diaper, then go hide behind a chair or something to squat and do her thing. Until--today! The last couple of days, Amelia has been telling me "poop in there" every time she poops, and being pretty agreeable when I try to change it right away. I could tell it was beginning to make her uncomfortable. So this morning while I was changing her diaper, I told her that just like she was been peeing in the potty, she could poop in the potty too. And after lunch today (during a naken minute, of course) she did! She was proud. Yays abounded. Exciting times! We'll see what happens next.

The potty training plan is the only section of my list with everything checked off. The "running" section has the least, but I revised my plan and got back on track this morning. I really want to do something to battle the leftover baby belly, which actually has gotten bigger since immediately post-baby. I am the last person the world to count calories or not eat the chocolate cake I want, so running seems to be my only option. Plus I read this NYT article in March.

Yoga-wise, I have mostly settled into a two-day-a-week pattern. Although I would love more, I feel good with twice a week. I have devoted more time to reading, although I need to find a good time to consistently read the news, but I have not worked at all on my two seeds for writing projects. In the next two weeks, I am going to see how much I can check off. I don't think I'll get it all done, but I might get close!

Question Air Returns

2011-07-01T09:29:00.003-06:00

Due to some problems with the new web address I was using and other issues,
Question Air is returning! You can find us here at the old address, questionair.blogspot.com. Stay tuned for more changes to the format, as well as a separate site for my writing information.

Numbers

2011-06-30T13:46:00.002-06:00

2: Number of bizarre poopy diapers I changed today (teething???)

4: Number of times Amelia said "eye, eye!" after I got sand in her eye changing one of the above diapers. (Park. Sand toys. Jelly shoes. Lifted up her feet to take off the yucky diaper, and it was a sandfall.)

45: Number of minutes we have spent going up and down stairs so far today.

1 and 1/2: Number of hours I have spent today preparing to go camping this weekend.

1 and 1/2: Number of hours of A's nap so far.

1,000,000: Number of stinky grains of pollen blown into our yard and onto our porch by a strange storm we are having.

0: Number of raindrops from the storm.

6 years ago today,

2011-06-25T13:30:00.005-06:00

on a beautiful June afternoon,

surrounded by people we love,

I married my best friend.

What We've Been Up To

2011-06-20T12:51:00.005-06:00

So I can't post every day. It was a fun experiment, but I really don't have something interesting to say every single day. I have enjoyed posting more often, though, and I will try to keep it up.

In the meantime, Amelia and I have been having a lot of summer fun.

We have a membership at the Denver Botanic Gardens and go there at least once a week. They have a wonderful children's garden with paths to follow, plants at kid-level, and garden-related toys to play with.

They also have a stream for kids to play in. So much fun! The gardens are only about 10 minutes from our house so this is a fun place to cool off on hot afternoons.

Here's Amelia at home later with her two Popsicles.

We've also been going to Book Babies downtown at Denver's Central Library. This is a different library than we went to for Book Babies last summer.

The library is at the edge of downtown, within walking distance, or we can take a bus (or drive, but it can be hard to park). We've been going early to hang out outside at the Denver Art Museum, which is across the street from the library.
A couple of weeks ago Amelia discovered this piece of art.

After a closer look she kept saying something, which I finally discerned to be "blocks in it!"

Dice. Part of the art, I figured (very thought-provoking).

Amelia added to the piece by dropping this strawberry into the water. She was pretty upset about it till I fished it out and we threw it away.

Last Friday, we went back and the dice were gone! But Amelia found a flower

which she gave to the man.

And today at the Denver Museum of Nature and Science, she met a pirate.

As you can see, we've been pretty busy, but having lots of fun.

Don't Read These Books to Your Kids

2011-06-16T12:23:00.001-06:00

Liz of AD sent me this link just when I needed a laugh!

June and a Half

2011-06-14T13:07:00.005-06:00

A dear college friend of mine, Erin Wunker, wrote an excellent post about reaching and setting goals yesterday on Hook & Eye. Although her post is targeted toward academic professionals, her words hit home to me too. Summer doesn't mean the same things to a stay-at-home-mom/writer/former-future teacher as it does to a current academic professional, but there are similarities. Both situations lack immediate pressure to actually accomplish anything, as well as immediate consequences for not accomplishing anything. Hey--you could even say SAHMs are on summer break year-round--although I doubt most of my SAHM friends would describe it that way. In any case, summer doesn't promise the juicy break it did when I was teaching, but since I finished my manuscript and sent it off I have felt as though I am on (a well-deserved) vacation from writing poetry for awhile. But as I posted at the beginning of June, there are things I want to do this summer.

I decided to follow Erin's advice to take the next step from posting about my goals and plans for the rest of the summer and actually write them down. All of them.

The list isn't terribly legible but I defined "summer" as today until the end of July. I included things I want to do between now and then under different headings: Amelia (learn about potty training); Writing (find books and brainstorm ideas for two writing projects I have been daydreaming about); Blog; Home; and Health. My favorite thing about the list is that it actually includes boxes to check. I think the idea of tracking progress for summer goals, or any goals that lack much outside pressure for completion, is a fabulous idea. It's easy to do but (hopefully) incredibly effective.

Although I just made the list today, my June plans have been progressing pretty well. I have been running and going to yoga about 2 times a week so I would like to up that a bit. I have posted every day of June except one. I have been reading a couple of times a week, not as much as I wanted but more than I was reading before. And I have not been cleaning! Much. The house is messier but not that bad. I am pleased with my June so far, and glad to have found an idea to help me get more specific with my goals for the rest of the summer.

Mount Sniktau

2011-06-13T14:21:00.007-06:00

Dean and I went on our first Amelia-free hike yesterday! It was probably the longest period we have spent together away from her since she was born.

We climbed Mount Sniktau. It was a morning of false starts. We had planned to go on another hike, one that involved driving up to Guanella Pass, a pass that just reopened after being closed for over a year due to an avalanche. Yikes. But when we got to the road for the pass, there was a sign that said it was closed from 8-11 and 1-3. This was about 7:30 am, and we knew we would have to be back to the car by around 12:30 to avoid being stuck there till 3. We decided to go to Sniktau so we wouldn't have to be rushed.

It was a good choice. First we spent about half an hour hiking on the wrong trail, and then we started out hike on the correct trail, up a steep "hill." A very steep "hill."

This picture does not capture the steepness.

If you read the description of the hike on the link above, it sounds pretty easy. But it's Rocky Mountain easy, which to people like me means it's still pretty hard. I had a difficult time on the beginning of the hike. Even though it's "only" 13,234 feet high (really, website author? "Only"?) I got out of breath pretty quickly. It's a crazy out of breath feeling, too, not like you have been running too long, just like you took about 5 steps and you can't catch your breath. But Dean was patient and we finally made through the first section of the climb, up to a point at about 12,500 feet of elevation. We hid from the wind behind some rocks, had a snack and enjoyed the view.

Then we got started on the second leg of the trip, to "point 13,152."

It was cold! And very windy.

We climbed along this ridge. It reminded me of a black and white cookie, which should give you a clue about how many times we stopped to eat a snack.

After the initial climb, the hike was much easier, even though we still had a climb. I think the beginning was so hard because I wasn't used to it. Once I got through the first climb I was more in the hiking zone.

These mountains are a winterscape. This is Torrys Peak, a 14er.

This is another shot of our trail along the ridge.

This is a view of interstate 70 from the summit. You can see the Eisenhower Tunnel, tiny from this view.

After another snack and rest at the summit, we made our way back down the rocky trail. On our return trip, we noticed tiny patches of wildflowers. Such a harsh place to live!

We got back to the car around noon, so we drove through the town of Dillon to eat lunch (delicious portabella and pepper cheese"steaks" and fries!). It's a lovely little town beside a lake, much warmer than the mountains so close by. See the avalanche paths on the mountain in this picture?

Despite the challenges, or maybe even because of them, it was a really nice day. It was great to hike with Dean without worrying about Amelia or listening to her make her Marge Simpson "get me out of this backpack" noise. (And this hike was definitely too cold and windy for her--plus she had a fabulous time with her Ewee and Inna). I couldn't post yesterday about the hike because I had what I deemed exposure exhaustion. The sun, wind, cold and elevation really take something out of you. But the feeling of being at the top of a mountain after a long climb is like nothing else. It's a kind of freedom. I am glad I have a partner whose idea of fun is climbing tall mountains, because otherwise I might not do it, and I would be missing out on something incredibly beautiful.

Today's Post

2011-06-11T20:06:00.002-06:00

Rearranging elements on the blog counts as posting, right...?

Not really. But one thing trying to post every day has taught me is that I really don't have something to say every single day.

On the bright side of that is that I have been reconsidering what I do have to say and how I want to say it. Hence the sudden changes in the blog, changes I have been considering for some time.

A couple of months ago I read an article about "mommy blogs," and it really upset me. More on why I was upset later, but for now, I will say I am trying to reconfigure this blog and webpage to better reflect myself--as a writer, a person, and, yes, even a mommy too.

Thoughts?

Changes

2011-06-10T13:58:00.005-06:00

I am making some changes to my blog. You can probably find some already!

One of them is the web address. Over the next few days the url for my blog will be kimberlyoconnorwriting.com. You will still be able to find me through questionair.blogspot.com, but I don't know how long that will last, so make note of the change.

Also, I am going to try out some different templates and designs. If you particularly like or dislike something, please let me know in the comments!

Overheard in a Yoga Class

2011-06-09T13:43:00.001-06:00

Let each day be a balance between being and doing, filled with love.

Food and Drink

2011-06-08T13:02:00.003-06:00

It's been one month since Amelia was weaned, and over two weeks since she last asked about milk. We really are done!

The whole thing went much more easily than I thought it would. The hardest part was definitely making up my mind to do it. I had anticipated fits and tears from Amelia, but overall she handled it pretty well. She probably drank more chocolate milk and orange juice than most doctors would recommend for awhile, but oh well. Maybe she still does. She loves both. But if those are the worst things she eats, we're doing pretty well...

sadly, they're not the worst things she eats, though. I bought her some Oreos today in Walgreens to distract her from "sitting a minute" in the car when we got home. It worked and for lunch she had three Oreos and two pieces of roasted tofu. Small pieces. Oh well. I try to have a fairly relaxed attitude about junk food. Sugar doesn't seem to make Amelia crazy and I grew up being able to have small treats fairly regularly. I think it made me less obsessed with candy than some of my friends whose parents were super strict.

Amelia's eating is still unpredictable. One day she will eat one or two or even three healthy, well-balanced meals, including lots of friuts and veggies, and another day she will eat only rice. Or only crackers. Or only nothing. Last night for dinner she had a sippy cup of orange juice. She chugged the juice, then picked at the lovely plate of food I made for her (rice, beans, cabbage, grapes, cheese--all things she loves (even the cabbage, weird, huh)), and then she proceeded to sit on my lap the rest of dinner time reading the same two board books over and over. Well, I read them. With help.

Another thing I tend to be relaxed about is when and where Amelia eats. I love the idea of the whole family sitting down to eat together at the same time, and we will definitely do that when A is older, but it does not work for us right now. For one thing, Amelia sometimes eats more when she is allowed to wander. I often put her food out on a low shelf in the kitchen, where she can reach it, and she has what I call "Amelia's traveling buffet." Probably not the safest thing to do choking wise, but we stay with her and watch her, and she doesn't run around, just kind of wanders. And no forks. Also, Amelia gets hungry between 4:45 and 6:00, and sometimes she eats dinner before Dean even gets home. It is fairly easy to put together a healthy meal for Amelia to eat that early, but I couldn't make something for all of to eat then, plus Dean and I aren't really hungry that early. And eating with Amelia is stressful. It makes my stomach hurt. Dean and I are hanging on to our peaceful dinners for two for now. While we can.

2011 Garden

2011-06-07T13:12:00.007-06:00

"Garden" is one of the words in the description of this blog, but I have posted almost nothing about our garden this year. It's not for lack of garden work being done, although most of the work has not been done by me. Dean started plotting and planning the garden back in the fall. Since then, he has dug up a yard full of grass and stones, designed and laid a stone pathway, built brick and wooden beds for plants, built trellises for peas and beans, started seeds of all kinds, ordered and planted flowers, given tender loving care to seedlings, arranged approximately 500 soaker hoses and made approximately 10,000 trips to Lowes and Ace Hardware.

This weekend, he planted the last of the seeds of the season, corn, beans and squash: "the garden is officially planted."

Our little Denver yards have been turned into an impressive city garden, if I do say so myself. In the backyard, we have peas, radishes, beets, strawberries, blueberries, asparagus, and lots of flowers. In the front, we have broccoli, corn, tomatoes, peppers, squash and corn, plus some flowers and cactuses (cacti?) on the porch.

Here is a little walking tour of our garden, with "before" pictures from April and "after" pictures from today.

Here are the baby peas in April:

and here is a picture of the newly-planted flowers and peas from today. It's safe to say that the peas have grown.

On the other side of the path from the flowers are the strawberries. Here they are in April (they have grown and overcome a strange outbreak of brown spots but still look pretty much the same):

Against the fence and beside the strawberries are blueberries and asparagus. No pictures of those today, as both still are very small.

Moving to the front yard, here are the baby broccolis, right after they were moved to pots:

and here are the front beds in April, just after they were built:

Now here is the front yard today:

You can see how much the broccolis have grown. In the front beds are peppers, tomatoes, tomatillos, and corn.

Here is a view of the other side of the yard from the sidewalk. As Dean said, our yard looks weird. The teepees are for beans to grow up, and the metal trellis is for cucumbers. Behind the beans and cucumbers will be squash.

Finally, here is something very cool:

my hanging cactus flowered!

Now, fingers crossed against wilts, droughts, bugs, and mysterious plant diseases of all kinds.

Twenty Months and a Day

2011-06-06T13:27:00.004-06:00

Monday update:

Amelia slept from 7:30 last night till 6:30 this morning without a peep. I told my mom about it, and she replied, "That's toddler sleep." I'll take it! I am hoping this is a new trend.

It's hot in Denver and very humid. It is a southern heat. I could barely run at the park this morning, and we couldn't stay long at the playground either. I have had success getting Amelia to leave places pretty easily by first telling her that we are going to say "bye-bye to [whatever it is] in a few minutes," and then pretty quickly picking her up and getting her to say bye-bye. Consequently she can now say "few minutes" and says it a lot when she wants to do something. One of the most trying of these is sitting in the car. She loves to sit out of her carseat in the car, and she obviously can't do that while we are driving, so we spend a lot of time these days sitting in the parked car in the garage. She likes to press the buttons on the radio and pretend to turn the steering wheel (from my lap). I am sure to pull up the emergency break and I stay right with her, keys in my pocket, so this is not unsafe, right? It feels sort of like one of those "don't"s in a list of toddler rules, but it's not like I'm leaving her in there alone. Another funny thing she says is "back yard" and by this she means the very back of the car, behind the back seat. (We have a Rav-4. We traded in Dean's Camry back in the fall when he realized he needed 4-wheel drive to get to many of the trailheads he wanted to get to. Plus we ended up needing it to drive on snow. Denver doesn't really plow its roads.)

We got out garden planted this weekend and are just waiting for it to grow. Expect a garden post as soon as I get some current pictures taken.

And, finally, I got an email this morning saying that the journal that accepted one of my poems will be out soon! You can see my name on the table of contents here.

20 Pictures for 20 Months

2011-06-05T14:42:00.007-06:00

Dream Away

2011-06-04T06:12:00.001-06:00

I told Dean this morning that he will need to arrange child care for late August. I am going on this trip.

Faith and Annie!

2011-06-03T13:25:00.005-06:00

I am very, very late in posting pictures from Debra, Faith and Annie's visit back in April.

As you can see, the girls wore matching pants.

They had a lot of fun going to the park, having lunch, and playing in the backyard while Debra and I caught up.

Annie is a fabulous baby, the kind that tries to trick you into thinking it wouldn't be that hard to have a second child.

And Faith is a wonderful big sister. Amelia loved playing with a big girl.

We are hoping to see our friends from "The Springs" again soon!

Nonticketed Lap Child: Tips for Traveling with Someone Under Two

2011-06-02T12:29:00.006-06:00

Since Amelia and I just completed our one millionth airplane trip together, I thought I would share what I have learned about entertaining a toddler on a planes.

1. New, new, new
Probably the most important thing I've learned about traveling with Amelia is to bring a wide variety of things to play with, and to bring as many "new" things along as I can. These things don't have to be brand new--although I sometimes do buy one or two things to take along--just things she hasn't seen in awhile. About a week before we travel, I look over her toys for anything that might be plane-appropriate (see below) and stash it away in her closet. Then I can pack it, and when I reintroduce it on the plane, it's a little surprise! Another way to get "new" things without spending money is to borrow toys from friends. Ask fellow parents if they have any plane-appropriate toys you can take on your trip. Some of the best toys we've traveled with have been toys of Amelia's friends.

2. Dole It Out
Once you've chosen what to bring and packed your bag, be the bag-master. A and I usually travel alone, so we just have a single bag. If I let her see the bag she'd be done with it in 10 minutes, so as we travel, I bring out one toy or activity at a time. I try to think ahead about the best times to do so. For example, if the flight attendant is about to bring drinks, I wait until after that to offer a new activity, because we've learned that ice in a cup is a fine plane toy. (In fact, when Amelia sees the flight attendants, she starts saying "Rice! Rice!")

3. Plane-Appropriate
What are the best toys for the plane? A lot of it depends on the child's age, but here are a few things I've learned. Anything too big is out, for obvious reasons, as is anything too messy. Keep in mind that no matter what you do, a lot of what you bring is going to end up on the floor. Will it be fairly easy to retrieve? Balls and things that roll away too easily are probably best avoided. Also avoid toys that make extremely loud noises--see below re not being annoying. No one wants to sit near a baby and Talking Elmo. Books are good, if they're not too heavy or bulky, but if I bring books I try to make sure they are ones Amelia likes--otherwise they are a waste of space.

Before a trip, I always try to think about what most entertains Amelia at that stage in her life and figure out how to best replicate that on the plane. So when she was under 6 months, her main airplane "entertainment" was nursing, being walked up and down the aisle, and, during one memorable trip, being whisked from my arms by a well-meaning flight attendant. But by 9 or 10 months, I could just bring a bag of stuff she'd never seen before--measuring cups, ribbons, My Little Ponies, whatever, and that worked pretty well. For this last trip, we let her bring crayons for the first time, since she is finally not just eating them, and they entertained her for awhile. (But they do roll away pretty easily). As with anything child-related, what will work best for you is probably unique to your child.

4. Top Toys So Far
That said, we have had some luck with particular toys. As I mentioned above, books can be good. Amelia likes any kind of picture dictionary type book, peek-a-boo books, and touch and feel books. One of her favorites has been a foam puzzle book loaned to us by a friend. It is lighter and more manageable than a real puzzle, and it took up at least an hour (in various 15-minute increments) on the trip we took before this last one.

She also likes flash cards, and we can take a lot of time handing her 3 or 4 cards, one at a time, and then getting her to hand them back. Stickers have worked well for us for awhile. You can stick them on each other, all 10 fingers, your boarding pass, every dog you can find in the Sky Mall book, and if you are desperate, your tray table. Another friend of ours recommended painter's tape--same idea. And still another friend loaned us a doodle board sort of like this one--Amelia had a great time scribbling and making the picture "all gone."

As I mentioned above, art activities might work, if they are not too rolly or messy. I am looking forward to when a coloring book and crayons might actually entertain Amelia. This time, we brought crayons in a fold-up pouch like this one (photos at the bottoms on the page). I did not make ours; it was a gift from Aunt Susan at Christmas (thank you Susan!). Amelia had more fun taking the crayons in and out of the pockets than actually coloring, but whatever. We also took these markers that only write on special paper. We learned that they do in fact leave an odd, wet-looking mark on airplane tray tables, but that comes off easily with a baby wipe. (Another random tip: bring a lot of baby wipes.) Amelia again had a better time putting the lids of the markers on her fingers than coloring, but again, oh well.

I thought I would wrap up the toy section by giving an example of what I meant by trying to replicate on planes what entertains Amelia in general. I bought two new things for the trip home from NC: toys rings and a bag of small farm animals. Both of these I found at a random NC drugstore for under $5. Since Amelia had such putting marker lids on her fingers on the way to NC, I thought she would enjoy the rings. And at her Luli and Guru's house, Amelia had a great time playing with dollhouse furniture and a bucket of seashells. I thought the farm animals were kind of similar. Both of these toys worked very well on the plane--but they wouldn't have a couple of months ago, when they would have gone straight in the mouth.

5. Snacks, snacks, and more snacks.
In my opinion, one of the most important things you can bring on the plane is food, for yourself and your child. Bring stuff you know you both like. Don't be too concerned about being healthy. Amelia's current favorites are salty snacks, so I brought Ziplocks of pretzels, crackers, Veggie Straws, etc. As with toys, it helps to have a lot of different options you can dole out as needed. My own favorites are Luna bars and the Veggie Straws. To simplify things during security, I usually don't bring babyfood (although Amelia is currently obsessed with those squeezey applesauce things, so this time it might have been worth it). I do bring an empty sippy cup I can fill along the way, after security.

6. On Sleep
My experience is that sleep during air travel is pretty hit or miss. Amelia used to nurse herself to sleep, and on this trip her biggest fit was on the way there, crying for "mik." (That was actually the last time she cried for milk, too.) On the way back, she let me rock her to sleep, to the extent that you can rock someone to sleep in an airplane seat, and sing to her. But she never sleeps long. Invariably a flight attendant will park the drink cart right next to us, or the pilot will make an announcement, or I will have to move my arm or leg, and she will wake up. So I try to save sleep for when I know she is really tired and we will be sitting still for awhile. And hope for the best.

7. On Not Being (Too) Annoying
When I first started traveling with Amelia, what I hated most was worrying about annoying other people. Now I am not nearly as concerned about them, but there are a few things I try to keep in mind. I try not to bring anything too loud along, as I mentioned above, and I try not to let her engage in truly intrusive behavior, like repeatedly kicking the back of the seat. If the behavior is borderline--Amelia loves to stand up and play peek-a-boo with the people in the sear behind us--I try to feel out the fellow travelers. Sometimes you get lucky and sit near a grandparent. (Actually that is my number one tip--try to sit near a grandparent.) But, annoyance-wise, there are some things you can't do anything about. If Amelia has a fit, I just try to stay calm. And if someone is being annoyed for no real reason, like the man who turned around and glared at us when Amelia was singing to herself, I just glare back at them.

8. Emergency Stash
Take something you know will distract your child if all else fails and save it for an emergency. We brought out a bag of M&M's 15 minutes before landing in NC, when Amelia was exhausted and just wanted to be free, and it saved the day.

9. Take Care of Yourself
For me, this means drink water. Bring chapstick and lotion. Take a bathroom break. Eat something.

10. On Having Fun
As long-time readers of this blog may know, I am not a natural traveler. But I try to remember that traveling can be fun. Especially when Dean and I travel together, we try to make it a nice day, taking turns reading and entertaining Amelia. Even when I am by myself, I often buy a People magazine or something I wouldn't normally buy to read while Amelia sleeps. And if there a layover that is long enough, I have a mojito, a drink I am pretty sure I have only ever tried in airports.

I hope these tips are helpful. If anyone has something to add, please leave a comment! And happy travels!

Rejection

2011-06-01T12:09:00.005-06:00

Through an odd series of connections, I recently came across the poet Sarah Vap. I have just begun to read her poems but I like them very much, and I also like her essays.

I was reading this interview with Sarah Vap from The Southeast Review and I was struck by one of the questions:

Q: What is your relationship with rejection like?

And her answer:

A: Warm. Tender. Long.

I thought this was such a strange question until I remembered that a writer was asking the questions and another writer was answering--they were speaking about writing being rejected. These questions and answers came to mind yesterday when we returned from our trip to NC to a large stack of mail. One of the envelopes was a self-addressed, stamped envelope.

When you send off your poems to journals, you include a self-addressed stamped envelope. This allows the journal to reply to you efficiently and at no cost to them. Until I actually had a poem accepted somewhere, I figured if your poem was taken, they would write to you with a real envelope. But no, they still just use the one you sent. So when you see an SASE in the mail, if you're me, you know you've gotten an answer about your poems.

I sent off a bunch of poems in October. That's October 2010, eight months ago. Until yesterday, I hadn't heard from two journals from that round of submissions. Well, that's not quite true--I had heard from both that I had reached a second round of selections. So I had hopes that my poems might be taken. Then I came home to this SASE.

As I opened the envelope, I could tell the letter inside was long. So my hopes rose higher. But then my eyes fell on the letter's second sentence:

"Although we are unable to use your work..."

It's a very nice rejection letter. It explains the journal's (it was Calyx, if anyone's interested) editorial process, mentioning that the journal is only able to publish 2-3% of the 1000+ submissions it receives each year. And one of the editors took time to write a personal note at the bottom. She said they really liked my poems, one in particular. "Keep working on the ending," she wrote. "It didn't quite work for us."

It was funny reading that. I really appreciate that this editor took the time to write a personal note. It struck me as a bit workshoppish to say that that the ending "didn't work" for them, but I am glad for an honest response. The irony is that the ending of the poem she was talking about never quite worked for me either. I changed it during the manuscript class I took. It's different now.

Oh well. It was a bummer and I was/am disappointed. But I remembered Sarah Vap's answer about her relationship to rejection: warm, tender, long. As a writer, I certainly expect to have a long relationship with rejection, but it's interesting to think of having a warm and tender one. I was thinking this morning about what she meant by that answer. To me, it must mean to love the process of writing and sharing regardless of the response you receive, and to love your readers regardless of their responses. And maybe above all to love your writing and your writing self regardless of whether your work is "accepted" on any number of levels, literary or otherwise.

Good food for thought for any artist. And as someone who just sent off a manuscript to some very slim-chance contests, I should keep all of this in mind.

June

2011-05-30T10:36:00.003-06:00

On New Year's Day, I took a yoga/art workshop dedicated to setting intentions for the new year. After a yoga flow session, students made collages that depicted goals or hopes for 2011.

Each participant was given a square of poster paper. There were plenty of magazines, markers, crayons, pastels, glue, glitter, feathers, old calendars, postcards, and who knows what else to go around. The room had the feel of an elementary school art classroom, happy with chatter and creation. I, however, had a hard time getting started.

For one thing, I went through a collage phase in college (ha! no near pun intended) and I wasn't in the mood to cut and paste. I had, though, come to the workshop with some vague intentions in mind, as well as a deep belief in the power of setting intentions. In 2009, I went to a similar New Year's Day workshop in DC. In that one, we wrote letters to ourselves, to be mailed to us by the instructor in 6 months, that described our lives 6 months later. The idea was to describe in present tense the life that you wanted to be living 6 months later. That year, Dean and I had just decided to have a baby and I was sending off poems to journals, but so far had only received rejections. In my letter to myself, I was pregnant and holding the journal that held my first published poem. When I found the letter in my mailbox in late June, I was 5 months pregnant. The journal that contained my first published poem was on my bookshelf, within easy reach.

Because of one of 2009's attained set intentions--guess which one--I couldn't make it to a New Year's Day workshop in 2010. But I did in 2011, and I knew I wanted a year of change. First and foremost, I wanted more sleep. I wanted more time for yoga, more time for writing, and more time for myself in general. I knew I was going to wean sometime in 2011, and I knew I was going to think about looking for work in the fall. In general, I was hoping that 2011 would be a year of finding footing in the world of motherhood, of making room in my life for the things that had defined me before Amelia came along and became the center of my universe.

In the weeks before the 2011 workshop, I had been writing a prose poem about Amelia's birth. Some lines from the poem were floating through my head. I decided to write/rewrite the poem on my poster paper. First I cut into into a more oval shape. Think O'Keefe flowers--I was writing about birth here. And then I wrote the poem in the same oval shape. On top of it all, I wrote the a word in large block letters. I colored in some of the letters and pasted paper over others. The word was EVOLVE.

June is a rich month, sun and flowers and early summer harvest. It is the month I was married. It is the sixth month of the year, a halfway point, the perfect time to pause and consider or reconsider intentions for the year.

My plan for June is to write one blog post a day. I don't have any particular theme in mind for the posts--I won't always be writing about setting intentions, although this did seem like a good place to start--it's just that I have finished up some fairly major projects in May, not least of which was finishing my poetry manuscript and sending it off to several contests, and I would like to get back to the blog for awhile.

I have some other goals in mind too. In June, I want to

1. Drink more water. I realized I go through the day feeling thirsty a lot. (A note to Mom: I don't think it's diabetes.) I think I'm just thirsty. Denver is dry and I am busy.

2. Read more. My plan for Amelia's naptimes in June are to write on the blog and then read. I want to read both poetry and fiction. I started a Goodreads account a couple of years ago I would like to get back to too.

3. And with #2 in mind, I am setting a cleaning limit for myself in June. I have been feeling like I fritter away too much time straightening the house. It becomes a creative block, almost, a way for me to avoid sitting down to write. So in June, I am allowed to straighten up after breakfast and to do whatever chores seem most urgent for 10 minutes, and only 10 minutes, after Amelia goes down for her nap. I am going to set the timer. If Amelia happens to be entertaining herself throughout the day, I can do small things then too, but that's pretty hit or miss.

And forth, I would like to exercise more. I have been going to yoga much more often and even running, although that's more sporadic. In June I am going to try to do one or the other every day.

It will be interesting to see how this goes, since I often don't feel like writing until everything is neat. And the truth is I really hate running. On top of all that, we are spending most of June 1st on a plane. So we'll see.

In the manuscript class I just finished, the instructor talked a lot about closure, about the importance of finishing a project, even if it wasn't as perfect as you'd hoped. The great thing about letting something go, he said, is that you get to see what you're going to do next. The month of May was for me a definite time of closure--I sent the manuscript off, I weaned Amelia--so I feel that this summer is a kind of beginning. All this reminds of some lines from a poem by T.S. Eliot:

What we call the beginning is often the end
And to make an end is to make a beginning.
The end is where we start from.

Beginning or end, I am excited to see what happens next.

19 Facts for 19 Months

2011-05-20T13:31:00.010-06:00

1. 19 months has been a lot of fun! I somehow never imagined Amelia being older than 18 months. 18 months was a big milestone in my mind, a sort of "I've made it this far so I think I'm gonna make it!" I remember holding 3- or 4-month old Baby A, enviously staring at parents with 18-month-olds. So when Amelia turned 19 months old, it was kind of a shock: it keeps going after this? Maybe because I truly had no expectations, I have been pleasantly surprised.

Part of that is because 2. Amelia is talking more and more. With talking comes communicating, so it's easier to figure out what she wants and doesn't want. Also, it's hilarious. She repeats tons of what we say, including, this morning, "suck it." In context, it was fine--she found one of those mesh baby teether things and I was telling her what to do with it: "You suck it." She spent the next hour saying, "Suck it! Suck it!" Then she stopped. I am hoping she has forgotten it.

3. Other, less disturbing things she says:
"Momma Epyoo" (Momma help you.) She says this when she wants me to help her.
"Naken" (Naked). She loves to be naked. She needs Momma Epyoo to undress, though.
"Peekaboo!" It's adorable. She actually memorized a little peekaboo book, Peek-a-who, from the library. She has also done a few short sentences: "Momma comin'?" "Daddy doin'?" She makes it clear to us that we drop our "g's."

4. Amelia loves her extended family, and talks about them all the time. If we talk about what we are doing, she lists all of her family members and we have to say what they are all doing at that moment.

5. Amelia loves to sing. We also have to include all family members' names in one of her favorites songs, Raffi's Willougby Wallaby Woo. Other favorites songs include Raffi's song about going to the zoo, the ABCs, Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, and Old MacDonald.

6. We really are weaned. It really is done. Overall, it has been easier than I thought. Amelia asks for "mik" fewer times each day, and yesterday she seemed to do it almost as a joke. She drinks a lot more other liquids, which makes sense. She likes juice of all kinds, regular milk, and "chocate mik" (which is really chocolate soymilk, mostly for the sake of variety).

7. Amelia still snuggles! She likes to hug, to sit in my lap, or to play a games where she pushes me over and falls on me. And the last couple of naps, she has let me rock her to sleep! This is a huge improvement over crying for 10 minutes each and every naptime. I do think sometimes kids just have to cry themselves to sleep--or Amelia does anyway--but I just cannot take it at naptime.

8. These days Amelia is napping around 12-2, give or take 15-20 minutes on either side. It's predictable, for now, which probably adds to my general enjoyment of the days.

9. And we have a pretty set little routine, something I also enjoy. Amelia wakes up between 5 and 6 (sometimes before 5, yikes, but less and less). She likes to play upstairs for a while, then come down and have something to eat and drink. If it's cool and the heat is on, she likes to sit on the big heating vent in our living room and eat her snack. There are fairly large holes in the vent. Sometimes, from the kitchen, I can hear her muttering "too big, too big" or calling "Uh oh!" I have removed a wide variety of items from the vent, but luckily there is a flat place under the vent to catch anything that happens to fall. This is not the best toddler habit but I have decided that for now it is not a battle I want to fight. And it buys me time to clean up the kitchen.

After Dean leaves for work, Amelia and I play downstairs for awhile and read some books. Then we go upstairs and I take a shower while she plays in the bathroom. I take some toys in there to entertain her or she looks at the toiletries in the various baskets I have. (All babyproofed.) This week, she discovered a drawer that contained tampons and has been having a great time dissecting them. Again: it buys some time.

Then we get dressed, a long process, since sometime in the morning Amelia usually become naken. I try to brush her teeth, and once we are ready, we leave the house. On Mondays we go to the grocery store, and other days we go to the Children's Museum or some other fun place, or run other errands, or if it's nice, go to the park. I try to have her home by 11, and we have lunch. Then she messes around till noon while I half play with her, half straighten up. We read some more books, then nap.

After her nap she likes to play with animals in her crib for awhile, and then we usually try to get out of the house again. Amelia is much more grouchy about being in her car seat in the afternoons, so I don't like to go anywhere too far. My favorite thing is to just spend the afternoon in the park, but we haven't been able to do that much lately. Apparently of the 65 non-sunny days a year Denver supposedly has, 31 are in May. So afternoons this week have been challenging.

Anyway, Dean gets home around 5:15, and we all play/work in the yard, or I go to yoga (!; see below). Amelia tends to be hungry for dinner early, between 4:45 and 5:30. We feed her, then she plays till bathtime and goes to bed between 7 and 7:30.

The days are mostly very good.

10. One of my Mother's Day presents was an unlimited summer yoga pass. I picked it out myself. It lasts through July and I have been going to yoga as much as I can. I go in the evenings to a 6-7:15 class. It gives Dean and Amelia time to play and do the bath-bed routine. We have found that when I am in the house, she is much fussier about having me be right with her. If I go to "cass," she might be a little upset when I leave but quickly gets over it and everyone has a pleasant evening, especially Momma. I love going to yoga. May has been a bit more sporadic than I planned, but I have made it to at least 2 classes a week. I am hoping to go more even more often in June.

11. Teething: Amelia is getting her canine teeth. This has truly seemed to last forever, and they seem to bother her a lot more than most of her other teeth. She has drooled, run a low fever, and gnawed on her fingers a lot over the past two months at least. It has gotten so that when she gets too fussy, I just get out the Orajel. I will be glad when the teeth are finally in.

12. In other toddler behavior news, I should touch on eating and sleeping if only for the record. Amelia's eating remains very toddler-esque: she will eat like a horse for a few days, making her mother very happy, and then seem to eat almost nothing for a day or two or more. Highlights of the eating times have been berries of all types, a return to chickpeas, and tiny broccoli florets--raw. Discovering that she liked broccoli was an accident. I gave her a crown of broccoli to hold in the grocery store and she started chewing on it. She is definitely a grazer. Her favorite snacks are salty, crunchy ones like pretzels, crackers and Veggie Straws.

13. My most hated baby-related chore--and I have thought this through--is changing crib sheets. It's terrible! The sheets are super tight and they get caught up in the bumper pad and it takes forever and I think I pull a muscle every time I do it, which is often because Amelia spends so much time lolling in the sand in the park.

14. We are not exactly potty training, but we now own 2 training potties, one that sits on the floor and one that sits on the big potty. Amelia likes to take apart or fill with toys the one on the floor but other than that has no interest in using them. But since she is naken so much she is becoming more aware of when she needs to use the bathroom. She says "pee-pee" for both pee and poop, then proceeds to go on the floor. It seems to upset her so I try to be very upbeat and encouraging about it:

Me: Pee on the floor! That's great! Let's get a towel!
Amelia: (standing naked in a pool pf pee, looking upset) Momma epyoo! Towel!

15. Our garden is planted and growing. I owe you an entire garden-related post, but we (and by we I mean Dean) have planted tomatoes, peppers, strawberries, blueberries, asparagus, peas, radishes, and flowers, and squash and beans will be planted soon. Our fingers are crossed.

16. I love my Denver friends. The playgroup has really gelled, and I spend a lot of time with my neighbor and her daughter. It makes living here so much easier.

17. I still clean too much. I am trying to cut back, I swear.

18. How many ambulance rides have you taken in your life? Because Amelia has now had two. Last week, she fell out of her wagon and hit her head. She cried inconsolably for over 10 minutes, then got sleepy, so Dean called 911. Luckily, by the time the paramedics got here, she was much better. They took her to the ER just in case. The doctors all thought she was fine but watched her for 2 hours (in hospital time, if was just over 3). We were super relieved. It was terrifying while it lasted--one of those times that reveals to you the fact that your child is your entire world--but I think it says something that I just thought of it here at the end of the post. Um, welcome to parenthood? Just as I felt when she got through the appendix episode, I am deeply thankful that she is all right, still her sunny, funny, lovely self. I would think that Amelia could be finished with ambulance rides now, though. Seriously.

19. This is my 350th post. I am glad blogging is still part of my life. I had a community of blog "friends" long before I had very many real mom friends. I love the blogs I read (and I should say I stole this idea of a listed post from Liz's birthday post on BC), and I love writing posts too. This is the only baby journal I keep, and it is so nice to share Amelia with so many others.

It's Done

2011-05-08T13:23:00.004-06:00

You may have been wondering how my plan for weaning has been going.

Like many things that have to do with babies, for awhile it was one step forward, two steps back. I actually got Amelia down to nursing four times (not "sessions," as I had named her constant nursing in my last post on this subject) a day: first thing in the morning, before nap, after nap, and around 5. If she asked or tried to nurse at a different time, I could distract her pretty easily with a snack (dill pickles have been a favorite, if strange, substitute) or drink (chocolate milk, a juice box). Or I could just tell her no. In the afternoon, I would say "Not till 5:00!" It got to where almost any time I held her off, she would agreeably say, "Five!"

But once I got there, I decided to stay for awhile. It was easy, comfortable, and convenient. I knew we had a trip to NC coming up in which I would be alone with Amelia on planes and putting her to bed without Dean. The nursing, now that I knew its days really were numbered, was something special rather that something that drove me crazy.

Until.

For whatever reason, Amelia started waking up at least once every night and early, early in the mornings. I was nursing her at night if she woke and early in the mornings to try to get her to go back to sleep. It's like she was sneaking in another nursing session. I was going with it. It didn't bother me. Amelia woke up Friday morning at 3 AM, and I went in to nurse her. I sat in the glider thinking, I really should stop this. But I didn't feel ready. I figured I would know when it was time.

Three hours later, Amelia woke up again. I was very tired because it had taken me a long time to go back to sleep. Dean tried to get up with her but she kept crying "Momma, Momma!" "Milk, milk"! (Actually it sounds more like "Mik! Mik!") He brought her to me and she was doing this very strange thing with her teeth that was sort of painful. (I think she's teething.) And she kept latching off and latching back on. Then she put her Giraffe lovey up to my boob and said, "Num num num." And I thought, "It's time."

I didn't nurse her at all the rest of Friday. For nap time (oh yeah, since NC I was nursing her to sleep at nap time again because oh, it was so wonderfully EASY) I put her in the crib and sang and rubbed her belly till she fell asleep. When she asked for "mik" I told her that we were going to be saying bye-bye to milk. She would look skeptical and say, "Five?"

Yesterday morning, Saturday, I nursed Amelia for the last time.

I felt like I was saying bye-bye not only to mik but also to my baby. Toddlers are not known for sitting still and snuggling, which is another reason I was holding on to breastfeeding. Amelia curled around me,totally relaxed, her head nestled in the crook of my arm. She was calm and peaceful, nursing rather slowly. She let me rub her little tummy and touch all of her fingers. I think she might have known it was the last time too. She lingered.

And then, all of a sudden, it was over. Dean was getting out of the shower, and Amelia heard the water go off. She jumped up and said "Towel!" (She likes to hand us our towels.) She got down from the bed by herself ("Self! Self!") and she was gone.

I have to admit, I cried, but just a little. It really is time.

I have a gmail account that I got when I started this blog, but I really don't use it. It's somehow connected to my phone, though, and I had to get my phone reset because it wasn't working. They told me I might need to get my saved phone numbers and pictures through my gmail account. When I signed in, I saw that I had 1,443 unread messages. They are all from astrology.com. Apparently, about 1443 days ago I signed up for a daily horoscope and used the gmail address. When I saw all the messages, I thought that surely 1443 unread horoscopes would make a good subject for a poem. This morning, I remembered them and opened the message for today:

Forget caution, discretion, and waiting for the best time to act. You're all done, and it's time to let that fact be known.

Bye-bye, mik. I am deeply thankful you could serve us so well.

Easter!

2011-05-07T07:24:00.007-06:00

Finally.

We spent Easter with Jes, Kim and Micah.

The Easter bunny delivered these fine baskets and adorable bear-bunnies. We had a fun morning exploring the baskets and sharing--sort of-- the goodies inside.

It was great to spend a holiday with family.

History and Influences Part 4a: The Romantics and Me

2011-05-05T11:57:00.011-06:00

Note: this is a long post with a lot of links. Just FYI.

All right, here we go. I have been avoiding this post like the plague. It's because I don't feel like I know enough to write about. But hey, a history of A's in English classes (okay, some B+'s, a lot of A-'s) says otherwise, right?

As I have been considering my main poetic influences, I came to the conclusion that my poems have been impacted by two particular literary movements, Romanticism and the Modernism. A little focused reading on both of those movements led me to what now seems like the obvious realization that almost all contemporary American poetry was influenced by the Romantics and the Modernists. That made me want to write this post even less, because there is no way I will say anything new or anything comprehensive. But, my point here is to write this all out for myself, and also for all my readers, who are kind to read it but mostly just want a picture of Amelia.

Here is one with Micah, at Easter.

We put ears on them.

Okay, focus. So I decided to tackle the Romantics first. Let's begin with

The Question Air Guide to the Romantics in 100 Words or Less:

Romanticism was an artistic movement, not just a literary one, that flourished from the late 1700s to the early or mid 1800’s, although the exact dates are hard to pin down. The English poets Wordsworth, Coleridge, Shelly and Keats are generally credited with beginning or least advancing the movement in literature; Walt Whitman is the poster-poet for American Romanticism. In a break with poetry of the past, Romantics poets declared themselves as individuals and created works that featured a great deal of personal history, personal viewpoints and personal meditation. Romantic poetry also often focuses attention on both the natural world and the supernatural.

That's actually 103 words, but I felt it was important to repeat "personal" several times. If you want to read more, here is a short guide to Romanticism, and here is another really nice summary of the movement, a little longer but more informative than the first.

I will go out on a limb and say that almost all contemporary American poetry is influenced to some degree by the tenets of the Romantic Movement. Even the experimental poets like LANGUAGE poets are reacting against it (here is another interesting example of experimental poetry); even the more political poets are probably using a somewhat personal lens. In my case, more contemporary poems were models for me than poems by the Romantics, but those contemporary poems were in some way influenced by the Romantics, or were influenced by poems that were.

(I always thought an interesting project would be to create a web of poets. I would pick a poet I like and try to figure out what past writers might have influenced her. For example, a web of Mary Oliver would have to include Walt Whitman. Also probably Thoreau. This is another huge project. I will put it on my list.)

But Romanticism has more than just a tangential influence on my writing. My own poems actually feature some of what the CUNY website I linked above calls the three "major precepts" of Romanticism: imagination, nature, and symbolism and myth. I am definitely interested in those three things.

For example, the poem that begins my manuscript in its current form is called "The Fortune Telling Book of Dreams." I actually got that title from a book I saw in a shop with my friend Laura. I didn't look much at the book, but the title fascinated me. I thought it would fun to write a poem that could be an exceprt from the book. It was the first poem I totally made up, if that makes sense. In other words, I wasn't trying to record a particular expereince or capture a memory, as I do in a lot of other poems. I was just making up my own dream symbols. The poems begins

A dream containing dogwood blossoms means
you are questioning your religion. A dream
in which you drive a Volkswagon Jetta up a river...

I had a lot of fun writing that poem. It felt very free. I did actually dream once about driving a VW Jetta (which was my first car) up a river. But must dreams, and their "meanings," I just made up.

As for nature and "symbolism and myth," one of the most interesting things for me as a writer is finding ways to combine the two. I think that was true of some Romantics as well. I wrote a long poem called "Antler" that alternated two stories in 6-line stanzas. One was the story of this walk I took with my mom where we came across all these dead, decaying cows in a field. The other was about a trip to an art museum in DC. It featured this piece of art.

I was actually writing two poems, one about each experience, and I realized that two somehow were similar. I thought that putting them together would let the natural objects from the walk resonate against the made objects from the museum in interesting ways.

You know what? I generally don't put my own poems on my blog, because I am sending them out to journals to be published and some journals view any kind of web publication as "previous publication." So to keep everything simple I just don't put poems here. But this poem has been rejected by exactly seven literary journals, and it's not out anywhere now, so I am putting it up. I will leave it for a little while and then take it down. Consider it a sneak peak. Beware, it's kind of long.

[poem deleted Aug. 9 2011]

Is this a hard poem to read? Some people who have read it seem to find it confusing. It was a hard poem to write but also very fun. I was very excited when the two stories came together in the middle. It was not something I planned. That's one of the best things about writing, how even when you set out to write something in particular you don't know what's going to happen.

Anyway, there you have it. I don't want to analyze my own poem, but maybe you can see the Romantic influences. If you are an literature person and reading this, I would love to hear comments. I feel a bit at a loss writing about this stuff, but it something I want to tackle more often.

Last Day of April

2011-04-30T09:46:00.004-06:00

At my class meeting last week, the instructor, when asked about his appearance on a Colorado Public Radio program to talk about poetry, said he really didn't like National Poetry Month. "We should celebrate poetry and the arts all year," he said.

I agree. That's the problem with delegating a month or week or day to anything. Earth DAY? We live on the earth. We should think about it every day. Ideally, poetry would be more a part of people's lives throughout the year. Part of my goal for the blog this month was to allow readers to think and write about poetry on their own terms, in the hopes that more poetry would begin to permiate their lives.

I think that all of the guest posts allowed us to do just that. We considered poetry as a place of refuge and poetry as a guilty pleasure. We saw how poetry can connect friends throughout the years or... in my lucky case... be a catalyst for a new and lasting relationship. We read original poetry, saw connections between poetry and music, and considered the source of poetic inspiration.

As you can see by the relatively small number of posts by me over the past 30 days, I could have never have celebrated National Poetry Month alone. I actually did a lot of poetry-related work this month, for my class and on my manuscript, but sadly not as much as I wanted was for the blog. So, as April turns to May, I want to extend my invitation for guest bloggers. I can think of at least three people who had hoped to write guest posts, but like me, were too busy to get to it in April. If you would like to help me in extending the spirit of National Poetry Month throughout the rest of the year, I would still love to hear from you. And I, as much as I am avoiding it, still have to finish my "History and Influences" series. In fact I think I am going to vow that part 4 of it will be this next post on this blog. And I have a lot of cute Easter pictures and a list of new Amelia words to post. So maybe that will help hurry me along.

On this last day of April, though, I will leave you with a few more poetry-related links.

This is the radio program that featured my instructor mentioned above, Chris Ransick.

And finally, one of my favorite poets, Kay Ryan, won this year's Pulitzer Prize for poetry. You can read about her life and see some of her poems here. Her poems are like tiny, dense universes. Read them twice, aloud, for wonderful surprises in sound and subject.

And until the next time, happy poetry.

Special Guest Post-

2011-04-27T16:16:00.009-06:00

All of the guest posts have been special to me, but this one was written by someone whose writing--be it an email, a legal brief, a note on a birthday card, or what's below--always makes me fall for him a little harder.

Until I got to college, I saw poetry as I suppose many teenagers do -- an outlet
for emotion and pent-up angst. My first poetry class, one on 20th century poetry, changed all that. For the most part, I couldn't understand the poetry we read on my own. But the instructor -- Dr. Lensing, for those who took English classes at UNC -- was very good at explaining them, not just what they meant, but the subtle beauties in sound, texture, and rhythm. I liked virtually everything we studied, but I was particularly drawn to the likes of Philip Larkin, e.e. cummings, Elizabeth Bishop, and Robert Frost. I suppose these poets are very different from one another, but one thing they have in common -- and probably what drew me to each of them -- is their relative straightforwardness. They all write beautifully precise poems using simple language and form. No need for a dictionary or a scholar's command of literature. By now I've realized that, like Liz Self, I like poetry I don't have to work too hard at.

Which brings me to the real subject of this post. I met Kim in college. There were a lot of things I fell in love with about her, but a main one was her writing. I bragged to my roomates about it and made them read her poems. (None were poetry-reading types, but they were patient.) Kim wrote (and writes) like all the poets I like write. Her poems are direct, precise, and uncluttered by allusions I don't understand. There is nothing pretentious about them. Since this is for her blog, I won't go on and on, but I love her writing. These days I don't read much poetry on my own. But I read all of Kim's poems, at least once she's ready for me to see them, and I'm proud to think of myself as something like an editor or at least someone who can make reasonably intelligent comments and suggestions. I suppose all this is to say that, for me, poetry is intertwined with my life with Kim. It was one of the first things I loved about her and remains so.

Guest Post: On subjectivity or just a rant really

2011-04-26T05:53:00.002-06:00

Today's post was created by an old high school friend of mine, Chad Edwards. Chad, a musician, created a piece of music to accompany a poem by Emily Dickinson. Listen to the song and read the poem below. You can hear more of Chad's work on his blog, There's A Lot to Hear, which is now included on my blog list. Thanks, Chad, for this great multi-media post!

Emily Dickinson's I Felt a Funeral, in my Brain

I'll make a very subjective statement about subjectivity now: all is within the domain of subjectivity. Yes... everything period. Is that an oxymoron? Yeah, probably, but oh well, welcome to life! Right now you could easily and correctly be saying to yourself, you're full of it,
because breathing air is not subjective, my friend! All right, I won't deny you your subjective opinion so we'll just move on.

Why would I be talking about subjectivity when Kim's blog topic is poetry since it's National Poetry Month? Well, when it comes to the perception of poetry/art, subjectivity to me is the alpha and the omega, so to speak (well all perception in general but I'm struggling not to derail this sucker here). Without this subjectivity all art would have a correct/incorrect way or be either good or bad, right or wrong, black or white, and so on. Though I don't see much usefulness coming from that sort of situation.

While thinking about what to write about for the blog, I was looking into the poem I chose for the song: "I felt a funeral in my brain," by Emily Dickinson. I noticed the many interpretations of the meaning of the poem itself. Now there is nothing inherently wrong with trying to discover the meaning behind things...in fact, I'd venture a guess and say that this searching could very well be a big part of our existence! But many times I worry that people seem to think there is an exact way to interpret a poem or any art form. In my opinion, no interpretation is correct, or incorrect.

The real beauty behind art is that we are always both creating and participating within and with the art form itself. Something interesting I've found over time is the malleability of meaning behind art and how your personal interpretations can change even from moment to moment. At one point in your life you can get something profound from a piece of art, and later that same piece could cause an entirely different reaction, or none at all. While working on the song, I had to think about the poem, the many ways I could interpret it, and how the friend I wrote the song for would as well. I created sounds to go with each section, adding yet another layer of subjectivity to what was there in the text combined with both my feelings at the moment and my interpretion of hers. This subjectivity in art is what makes it a blast for me both to participate in and ponder upon. Everyone is held together by the structure of the form yet each person is having their own unique experience.

Well I guess in the end the point being just simply that beauty is in the eye of the beholder... and I guess I could have saved a whole lot of everyone's time by just posting that, huh? But hey, isn't that what blogs were created for?

2011-04-22T06:22:00.004-06:00

Since Amelia is shocking the nation by sleeping past 5 am, here are some pictures and a quick update.

This is her adorable strawberry/watermelon dress (I say watermelon; everyone else seems to think it's a strawberry). She loves breakfast and is learning to eat with a fork and spoon. Sometimes she delicately puts the fork or spoon near her eye and says, as a joke, "Eye?" Then I say "Not your eye, your mouth!" and she grins and puts the utinsel in her mouth. It is scary game for mommy, who does not want her child to blind herself, so I am hoping she gets tired of it soon.

Speaking of saying things, Amelia is talking more and more. Too many new words to remember or list, but she repeats so many things now! Here are a few:

Both
Silly
Suki (no more Gee; we are sad)
Back! (As in, when Suki tries to slip out of the door to the yard, "Suki, back!")
Work ("Daddy work")
Silly

And she likes to play repetition games with words. If I say "You're silly!" She says, "Momma?" and I have to say "Momma's silly!" Then, "Daddy?" and I say "Daddy's silly! Then Suki, Nanny, Poppa, Guru, Ew, Heather, Micah...

Playing in the tub

I couldn't resist this...

or this.

Special Guest Post!

2011-04-21T12:48:00.003-06:00

Today's lovely poem and post are brought to you by Gano, also known as Mary Sanderford, Amelia's great-grandmother.

This poem spoke to me, especially the first two lines, after I had the opportunity to visit my childhood friend, now in a nursing home.

I had not seen her in probably twenty-five years--what fun we had talking of our childhood experiences, things none of my present friends would even know about.

There seem to be people and friends for all seasons of our lives--and I thank God for that.

A Friend

by Oliver Wendell Holmes

There is no friend like an old friend
Who has shared our morning days,
No greeting like his welcome,
No homage like his praise.

Fame is the scentless flower
With gaudy crowns of gold,
Bur friendship is the breathing rose
With sweets in every fold.

History and Influences, Part 2

2011-04-14T13:27:00.001-06:00

As I have mentally traced my poetic "career," I have realized that my falling in love with poetry has been a falling in love with writing. As in, with my own writing--not that I have loved everything I have written (I certainly have not) but with being able to write. After the childhood experience of reading "The Listeners," I didn't really read poems for a long time. I had some great teachers, including Chuck Sullivan at NC Governor's School, who explained poems to me in a way that made me love them, but I wasn't exactly discovering or reading any poetry on my own. In college, I was lucky enough to have a roommate/best friend who was interested in creative writing. I decided to take a fiction class, but, as chance would have it, that class was full. Introduction to Poetry was open, so I took that instead. Ever since my first assignment from Alan Shapiro to write ten rhyming couplets describing a view through a window, I have been hooked on writing poems.

Typing that out, it seems pretty obvious, and I am sure I am not alone. I remember starting the poetry classes I taught by asking the students, "What is poetry?" Almost everyone included in their answer the idea of self-expression. Perhaps stereotypically, that answer always made me think of an angst-ridden teen scribbling sad or angry poems in a notebook, but it's true. Even if you are not a writer, you have probably written a poem. And if you have ever written a poem, think back--it was probably sparked by some deep emotion or vivid experience, something you had to flesh out for yourself, in your own words.

I say all of that to explain my realization that the poets who have most influenced me have been the poets who have said things I want to say. Whatever their style or specific subject matter, their words, at some point in my life, rang so true to me that when I read them, it was as if I had said them myself (or so I wished, anyway).

Today's post (which took 5 days to write) is about two of those poets: Sylvia Plath and Mary Oliver. These two poets have a lot of differences, but, in my mind anyway, they also have a lot in common. They are both poets I discovered outside of any classroom, and their heightened attention to their subject matter, different though it is, created poems that were exactly what I needed to read at two particular points in my life.

First, Sylvia Plath. It's very unoriginal for a young white woman who writes poems to say she was influenced by Sylvia Plath, but there you have it. I was reading Plath during my second year of college, a time in my life when, for whatever reason (being far away from home; subsisting exclusively on glazed donuts and plain bagels; new-found feminist rage; a long, rainy winter; unrequited love) I was sad a lot. Sometimes I was deeply, deeply sad, and sometimes I was angry. I had a group of girlfriends who were going through a similar time, and we read Sylvia Plath.

Why Plath? I also read a lot of Anne Sexton and Adrienne Rich, but Plath particularly stands out to me as an influence. Part of it has to be her biography. She was pretty and smart; she had a rocky love life with another famous poet; she killed herself by putting her head in a gas oven. That shouldn't be glamorous, but it was to me at the time I most loved Plath, and I know I am not alone. There is even a a movie about Plath's life. Perhaps it was the shock value of her life that attracted me to her at first. But what held my attention was her poetry.

My favorite Plath poem is "Elm." You can read the poem here.

I don't really want to explicate the poem, but I will say that I came across the fact that the poem was first published under the title "Elm Speaks" or "The Elm Speaks." Maybe I am slow, but I never thought of an elm speaking until I read that. Rereading the poem with the idea that the elm is speaking kind of clears things up a bit. To me, before I thought of that, I just had the idea that the speaker was like the elm.

And at the time I discovered this poem, I was like the elm too. The end of this poem especially seemed to speak to me:

I am inhabited by a cry.
Nightly it flaps out
Looking, with its hooks, for something to love.

I am terrified by this dark thing
That sleeps in me;
All day I feel its soft, feathery turnings, its malignity.

Clouds pass and disperse.
Are those the faces of love, those pale irretrievables?
Is it for such I agitate my heart?

I am incapable of more knowledge.
What is this, this face
So murderous in its strangle of branches?——

Its snaky acids kiss.
It petrifies the will. These are the isolate, slow faults
That kill, that kill, that kill.

If we want to be literal about the speaker being an elm, the "dark thing that sleeps in me" is an owl. But to a depressed and confused 20-year-old, the dark thing is/was the depression and confusion. And sometimes, in college, learning for the first time about feminism and colonialism and environmental destruction and the world's history of wars and who knows what else (liberal arts college, anyone?) I often felt "incapable of any more knowledge."

But besides the poem's subject matter, what struck me about this poem was the way it sounds. Plath's use of alliteration, rhyme, and repetition create these awesome, knife-like lines at just the right moments in the poems. Rhyming "that thing in me" with "malignity" is amazing. (Several of my teachers have commented on Plath as a champion rhymer; I am pretty sure one of them called her one of the best rhymers of the 20th century.) And that last stanza is, like a nightmarish nursery rhyme, is simply haunting:

these are the isolate, slow faults that kill, that kill, that kill.

When I was 20, those lines were in my head for months.

Then. Something happened.

Maybe the lines rang even truer? I fell in love with sadness for awhile. It fell in love with it because it was real, but paradoxically, that made it false, a kind of mask. A fault that could, in fact, kill. Like the myth of the crazy artist, it was dangerous.

I didn't want to be sad anymore, but my art was rooted in sadness. Then I discovered Mary Oliver.

Actually, Dean discovered Mary Oliver. And he gave me her book Dream Work. And then I married him.

This is Mary Oliver's "The Summer Day," which I already posted a few days ago. "Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?" Not end it by putting my head in an oven, thank you all the same.

I want to make it very clear, though, that I am not blaming Sylvia Plath for her sadness, nor am I intending to trivialize her death. Mental illness and depression are very real things. And Plath's depression and despair were real, and her death was tragic. But I don't think it was depression and tragedy that made her an artist. In fact, I think remembering Plath's suicide over her poetry cheapens her art and her life.

For me, I had reached a point at which I was in danger of wearing depression as an artistic mask. Just as Plath's poetry gave me words to name my sadness, even rage, Oliver's poetry gave me words to answer it. (In fact, in her poem "Members of the Tribe," which is not online, she does something similar, if not just that.)

Here are some poems by Mary Oliver that are online. Scroll down and read "The Journey."

Now read the first poem, "Wild Geese."

These poems are still, in my mind, tinged with a certain sadness. They are not the stuff of greeting cards. There is "despair," even "terrible melancholy." But, almost like an ars poetica, these poems allow a way out of the sadness. The way is living, choosing to live in the physical world, and if you are a writer, it is writing.

Overall, I don't find Oliver as technically exhilarating as Plath, but in my favorites of her works, the rich, almost photographically-precise images build with a measured, straightforward voice to create poems with just as much power as Plath's. Obviously, the voices are very different. But both are honest and direct. They are real. Those are certainly three qualities I hope for in my own poetry.

So thank you, Sylvia and Mary, for creating your poems.

Whew. Stay tuned for part 3, when I tackle either the Romantics or the Modernists. Or maybe both?

It's not poetry, but...

2011-04-13T11:36:00.001-06:00

it IS fantastic! I always wanted to create a Peep diorama when I lived in DC. In honor of the pure fun of creativity, enjoy this slideshow!

Today's Post, now with part two!

2011-04-12T07:04:00.005-06:00

As of 1:20 GMT, this post is now complete with part two.

I woke up to an email from Luli, aka "Ew," who is home from a week-long visit to Colorado. (We miss her and "Goo" terribly already.) She sent me a link to artist Austin Kleon's article, How to Steal Like an Artist. It's great. Read it.

After I posted the link to the article this morning, I decided to try Kleon's idea of newspaper blackout. You can see examples of Kleon's blackouts here. (I found this site through http://www.austinkleon.com/.) Basically, Kleon takes a page from a newspaper and blacks out many of the words. The remaining words make a poem. This idea of blacking out has always intrigued me. The poet Mary Ruefle did something similar in her book A Little White Shadow, using a 19th century book with the same title and blacking out text to make a new book of poems. And I haven't seen it, but the poet Ronald Johnson did the same thing with Paradise Lost. You can read a review of both of those here.

All of this is a kind of "found poetry," which is simply poems found in the world. My students loved found poetry. I used to do a lesson in which students cut out words from newspapers and magazines and glued them together to make poems. Another fun thing is to sit around and eavesdrop, writing down words you overhear, and make a poem out of them.

Since I conveniently had Sunday's Denver Post scattered all over my kitchen table, I decided to try a blackout poem this morning with Amelia.

You can see my poem on the right and hers on the left. She did a greenout poem.

After about 5 minutes Amelia was done with blackout poems and had moved on to something more interesting

so I had to stop. I was going to publish the text of my poem but, sadly, it was lost when someone spilled milk on the newspapers. It wasn't that great, anyway, although it was fun to make. Even though the technique is simple, it takes some effort to create a good blackout poem. You need to read the text and have an idea. Or maybe not. Maybe I am taking the fun out of it. I would like to find an old book and black it out a la A Little White Shadow. I'll put in on my list of poem projects.

Switching gears, today is Poem in Your Pocket day. I had planned to really celebrate this day by sending out poems to everyone I knew, but it snuck up on me. So please take a minute to download your own pocket poem here. You click on a pocket with whatever word intrigues you most. I already read "moo" and "glass."

Finally, in non-poetry news, we visited Jes, Kim and Micah for Jes's 30th birthday last weekend. Micah remains super cute and he got a new hat:

Here are Amelia and Micah sizing each other up.

And, in conclusion, here is Amelia wearing a lot of bibs.

Sylvia Plath's "Black Rook in Rainy Weather"

2011-04-11T12:39:00.004-06:00

Today's post on one of my favorite poems, Sylvia Plath's "Black Rook in Rainy Weather", is by Tyler Mills, a poet and former UMD classmate of mine who is so cool she has her own website. You can read the poem at the link above or at the end of Tyler's post.

This poem is maybe a little trickier to follow that some of the ones I have recently posted, so I will enter teacher mode for a moment to get you started, and tell you that a rook is a bird (according to my dictionary, it's "a gregarious Eurasian crow with black plumage and a bare face"). If you find yourself getting lost in the poem, try reading straight through the line breaks until the end of each sentence. Thanks, Tyler, for this great post!

This day in the second week of April, a cold rain has been soaking into the concrete of the walkways that lead to the looming buildings of my city university. It is the kind of morning when rusty drips find your scalp through the cracks in the platform overhang, the train is late, and people crush you against a metal bar with their damp coats. Later, the fluorescent lights of your composition classroom show rows of pale, tired students sitting in front of the crinkled pages of their homework.

I pull out a huge pink costume scarf from my backpack like a magician, but instead of it transforming into a long knotted rope to lead us out the window, I fold the fabric in half and wear it. A few students smile.

Whimsy. I’ll take it!

For those of us in a semester cycle (or those who experience spring’s seasonal tax-season stress), National Poetry Month occurs at a time when one’s own creative projects become buried under laundry, library books, and unopened junk mail. “April is the cruelest month,” writes T.S. Eliot in “The Waste Land.” Crocuses spike from the mud along a chain link fence, but we can’t help but smell the dirt and think of its duality—life and death—and the rain that makes this duality even more present to us. The earth is being creative, but even as we comment on its changes, our own struggle for creativity seems wan in comparison.

More bedraggled students wander into my classroom, and I point out that when they go outside, they will be able to see tiny yellow buds appearing on the bushes outside the building. A few more smile. The classroom is thawing slowly, but thawing.

In this second week of National Poetry Month, I keep returning to Sylvia Plath’s “Black Rook in Rainy Weather” and what we—poets and non-poets alike—can expect from inspiration at a time when inspiration can seem just out of reach or absolutely absent. Plath’s poem begins this way:

On the stiff twig up there
Hunches a wet black rook
Arranging and rearranging its feathers in the rain.
I do not expect a miracle
Or an accident

To set the sight on fire
In my eye,

The black rook “[a]rranging and rearranging its feathers in the rain” promises design. The act of arrangement seems like a mind dealing with the problem of mood and deciding what to do with it. I love how the beginning of this poem acknowledges the speaker’s search for inspiration, especially in the way the stanzas break on “accident” after the speaker confesses, “I do not expect a miracle.” But “an accident”—enjambed, hanging out in the white space of the poem’s weather—throws us into even more uncertainty. Chance cannot even “set the sign on fire/ In my eye”.

What then?

If the mood of the weather cannot give us the bird, or even some abstract “accident” inspiration, what hope is there for us in the month of April? The speaker wants “some backtalk/ from the mute sky,” but the sky remains “mute.” Yet what I love about “Black Rook in Rainy Weather” is the poem’s turn that happens next:

I can’t honestly complain:
A certain minor light may still
Lean incandescent

Out of kitchen table or chair
As if a celestial burning took
Possession of the most obtuse objects now and then—

The speaker “can’t honestly complain”? (And, we can read some word play in “honestly.” Is the speaker being conversational, or is she saying that complaining would be dishonest?) One reason that the poem gives us is the presence of “minor light” that she finds in the gloom: playing off of the domestic space of the “kitchen table or chair” and created perhaps by the speaker’s own will (by the word “incandescent,” suggesting a bulb switched on). April might be “mute” to us. But,
With luck,
Trekking stubborn through this season
Of fatigue, I shall
Patch together a content

Of sorts. Miracles occur,
If you care to call those spasmodic
Tricks of radiance miracles.

The speaker’s voice is hesitant, self-correcting, and critical. But, honest. And, poetry at its best.

You can read the entire poem on the Poetry Foundation’s website: http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/178972 .

Three Poems

2011-04-09T11:58:00.004-06:00

by my sister, Heather! These are about our grandparents and great-grandmother. Thank you, Heather, for these beautiful poems.

Poem About Granny

She was strong as strong as can be,
and now here stands a willow tree.
It represents her standing tall,
I remember it from when I was small.
We planted it when she was here,
when I look at it, it brings me tears.
Tears of laughter, shrieks, and joys,
from all the young girls and boys,
for these are her grandchildren children can't you see,
playing in the willow tree.

Nanny's Cooking

The kitchen was filled with good smells and love,
we miss her great meals, she is now up above.
Cooking was her favorite thing,
I bet Papa felt like a king.
Everyone would clear their plates,
nobody could resist the wait.
Over the last helping we would fight,
each and every single night.

Papa Brown

Papa Brown is always working,
always up to something, always smirking.
Practical joker, you better watch out...
For his mongoose is out and about!
Walk up to the cage if you dare,
but be sure to take extra care.
"That thing is wild!" he'd always say,
and it would always make his day,
to throw that animal high in the air,
for it was just a teddy bear.

From Poetry 180

2011-04-06T15:10:00.003-06:00

Poetry 180 is/was a project whose goal was to expose high school kids to one poem a day (the 180 being the 180 days of the school year). The idea was that the poem was simply supposed to be read aloud. No analysis, no discussion. Just read and heard. Some of the poems from poetry 180 were collected in a physical book, and it was one of my favorites when I was teaching. Overall, the poems in it are what Liz called guilty pleasures: not simple poems, but poems that you can "get" on a first read. And I agree with Liz that that is a good thing. It's what I hope my poems are. Sure, there are elements of my own poems (I hope) that become more apparent on a rereading, and technical aspects that only those who have recently studied literary terms might be able to name. But I still hope that anyone, scholar or not, poetry-lover or not, would be able to pick up one of my poems and get something out of it on a first read.

In the spirit of guilty pleasures, I will offer today some of my favorite poems from the Poetry 180 project. Read them once, maybe aloud! Enjoy.

This one is a perfect one to start with, considering our conversation about analyzing poems, or not:

"Introduction to Poetry" by Billy Collins

I always liked this one because it is about numbers:

"Numbers" by Mary Cornish

A nice short one:

"Driving to Town Late to Mail a Letter" by Robert Bly

I love the end of this one:

"The End of April" by Phylis Levin

And this is one of my favorite poems of all time. Luli made the last sentence of this poem into a poster for my high school classroom.

"The Summer Day" by Mary Oliver

18 Months

2011-04-05T10:09:00.005-06:00

Amelia is 18 months old today. I remember holding her as a 3- or 4-month-old at the park, watching a mom with an 18-month-old. I thought we would never make it that far, and how great it would be when we did.

We did, and it is.

Breakfast

Wait--there's something on my hand!

She didn't want to wear this tutu, but we got it on her for a few minutes.

Happy 18 months, Amelia.

On Bakhtin, poetry, and country music

2011-04-05T08:31:00.004-06:00

Today's post is brought to you by Liz Self. Liz, a PhD student, teacher, mother of two, and my dear friend, is also the author of the blogs AD and BD. I love this post and found myself nodding in agreement as I read. Thank you Liz!

I am not a poet. I know that every English teacher likes to think that they can have their kids read and write some poems and call them poets (in the hopes of making them like poetry and authentic writers), but I am not a poet. There’s something about poetry and being a poet that is at odds with my nonfiction reading and writing self.

I like poetry, some poetry. But I mostly like poetry I don’t have to think too hard about. I’ll analyze the theme of some fiction, critique the author’s tone in some nonfiction, even get into a little drama (Cyrano de Bergerac really saved drama for me; ironic since he is, in the play, a poet). But I don’t want to have to think too hard about poetry. I like my poetry like I like my country songs* – it just has to sound good and be a little fun or say a little something about life. I don’t want to get too deep. I know there’s a lot of poems I’ve heard and thought, “Ooh, I like that,” and there’s way more to it than I even realize. But I don’t want to know all that. I just want to like my poems.

I recently read some Bakhtin for my sociocultural theories class, and he talks about the role of different genres. He writes, “Each genre is only able to control certain aspects of reality. Each genre possesses definite principles of selection, definite forms for seeing and conceptualizing reality, and a definite scope and depth of penetration.” He continues later, “The artist must learn to see reality with the eyes of the genre. A particular aspect of reality can only be understood in connection with the particular means of representing it.” I know it is a favorite assignment for English teachers to have students transpose texts into different genres – turn a dialogue in some fiction into a drama piece or a newspaper article into a poem. I’m not sure Bakhtin would like that. I think poetry has a place, and it’s not something that can be interchanged with other genres.

One of my favorite poems of all times – and the poem I always started every poetry unit with (yes, former English teacher here, too) – is Marianne Moore’s “Poetry.” Most people know it from the first few lines (or even words: “I, too, dislike it…”). The full poem, though, goes on to make several important points. First, it talks about getting to read poetry with contempt for it. That appealed to me. Second, it talks about “the genuine” in poetry, and that resonated with me, too. And it made me think about, with respect to Bakhtin, poetry’s place in the world (both literary and otherwise). Poetry for me is something that I want to connect with. I can read fiction and nonfiction and drama about all kinds of things that baffle and confuse and frustrate me. But poetry – I just want to like it. I want to go, “Hey, that makes sense to me.” Moore writes, “We do not admire what/we cannot understand.” I can understand a complicated poem – my AP scores from high school attest to that – but I don’t want to work that hard if I want to like it. And I’m not saying that poems that are easy for me to understand aren’t deep poems or are “light” literature. I’m saying that for me, poetry’s place is simply to resonate with me, to make me feel something – not so much to make me think. I go to my fiction and nonfiction for that. My sense is that it’s different for others, though. Poetry might be just the place for others to go to get a mental workout. For me, I want it to be more like People magazine – something light and fun and just enjoyable. A guilty secret, perhaps.

So what are my guilty pleasures? Most of them are African American poets. There is universally among them a freshness and directness that belies the depth (both literary and experiential) beneath. I read and learned about these poets while teaching my predominantly African American students (at an all-girls school) and fell in love with the themes and styles. I like a variety – almost anything by Nikki Giovanni (love “Kidnap Poem”), Paul Laurence Dunbar’s “We Wear the Mask” (read it and then look at this photo of Chris Rock, taken by Annie Leibovitz), “Incident” by Countee Cullen, Alice Walker’s “I Said to Poetry.” Maya Angelou is a given – the woman is genius. On and on, I could go. But one of my absolute favorites is Lucille Clifton. This woman knew how to capture a perspective, a life experience, womanhood, African American womanhood, in poetry. Who else could write “homage to my hips” and “to my last period.” The one I loved to teach: “i am accused of tending to the past.” There’s a depth to these poems that reveals the African American experience and a breadth to them that makes their message universal to any reader while retaining their roots. Some are for fun; some are very serious. But all of these poems are about the genuine.

These are not simple poems. These are not poems written to be someone’s guilty pleasure. But that’s how I enjoy them – the sound, the feel, the movement, the first read. I know there’s more there, and perhaps one day I’ll read more into it. But for now – I’m gonna do what real poets do and just feel it. (Insert the sound of snapping fingers here.)

*Interestingly, one of the earliest poems I remember reading and totally missing the point on was John Donne’s “The Flea.” the thing over and over and never realized it had anything to do with sex. I think my literary analysis professor (a frightening Russian man with bushy beard who was suspect of my German last name) thought I was an idiot. He may be right. But then a few months ago I heard Brad Paisley’s song, “Ticks,” and this time I did know it was about sex. So evidently I can be taught. And furthermore, this really makes my point about the relationship between poetry and country music.

History and Influences

2011-04-04T12:34:00.004-06:00

My poetic past (ha) is littered with huge projects I was going to complete. The title of this post is/was the title of one of those big projects. I was going to reread (or, to be more truthful, read in full for the first time) the entire Norton Anthology of Poetry. And, on this long, long roll of paper I had purchased, I was going to illustrate a timeline of my poetic influences, including excerpts from my favorite poems.

First I was going to complete this project before Amelia was born. Then during her first year. I did get started, beautifully illustrating (if I do say so myself) some Anglo-Saxon riddles. For those of you who don't have the Norton Anthology of Poetry in front of you at the moment, that got me through maybe the first 4 millimeters of the giant book. When we moved to Denver, I just decided to throw the whole project out, both figuratively and literally.

Anyway, every time I have tried to decide what I am going to post about poetry during this month, I kept going back to that project. Apparently it is something I need to do. So I thought I could try a version of it here, writing a series of posts about some of my more memorable poetic influences. Today's post will be the first of that series.

My life as a poet began when I read a poem I loved. It was in an elementary school literature text book--I don't remember what grade I was in, maybe 5th. Before I read this poem (and, to be honest, for a long time after) I was more of a fiction fan. I loved reading stories but I found poems rather tiring. That day, however, I was bored in class and I had probably already secretly read all of the stories in the book. So I decided to tackle a poem. I choose one with an intriguing illustration of a man on horseback in a mysterious looking forest, one with a compelling first line.

"Is there anybody there?" said the Traveler--

It was Walter de la Mare's "The Listeners," and it was the first poem I ever really read, on my own, in full. I think part of my problem with reading poetry, both then and now, was the way I read. I am not sure how to describe it but when I read prose my eyes or brain seem to take in chunks of text at once. It let (and still lets) me be a fast reader, but it's a sloppy way to read. It made me good at reading a lot of stories in a short amount of time, but impatient with reading poetry, probably because it is a terrible way to read poetry. (And I'm not saying it's a great way to read anything.) When you read poems too fast, you miss the whole point of reading a poem in the first place.

So when I decided to really read, not just absorb, this unknown poem in my literature book, I made myself be patient and read it slowly, line by line, word by word.

You can do the same now and read the poem here.

There, in whatever little classroom I was sitting in, secretly reading a poem while the teacher taught math or something, I was enthralled. It probably helped that it was narrative--it had a story--but what drew me in was more than that. It was the sound of things, the rhythm of the language, and the mystery.

I love the poem's rhythms. If I were teaching, I would point out all the anapests, which create a feeling of movement or motion in the poem.

Uh oh, now I have to be a teacher for a minute:

A "foot" in poetry means a metrical unit. Usually it is a group of two or three syllables. We (by we I mean teachers and poets, mostly) talk about the two or three syllables in a foot in terms of stressed and unstressed syllables. For example, the stressed syllable in Amelia is the second one: AMELia. The stressed syllable in Kimberly is the fisrt: KIMberly.

An anapest is a foot of poetry that contains two unstressed syllable followed by a stressed foot.

So the line

And his horse in the silence champed the grasses

kind of sounds like this if you read it aloud

And his HORSE/ in the SIL/ ence CHAMPED/ the GRASS/ es

The last two feet up there--I have divided the feet by the slash marks /-- are called iambs. They are one unstressed syllable followed by a stressed syllable. Some say they sound like a heartbeat: da DUM, da DUM. Iambs are considered the norm as far as meter in poetry. In other words, it is argued, and I think it is true, that English as a language contains a lot of iambs, so we tend to hear them as a norm or a base line for rhythm.

When you start to vary from iambs, you can create different feelings or moods through sound. The first two feet up there are the anapests, and they are quicker than the iambs because they pack an extra syllable into the foot: da da DUM. It kind of sounds like a horse galloping, which fits this poem well, doesn't it?

"The Listeners" tends to vary between anapests and iambs, which creates an interesting soundscape. I couldn't have explained any of this at the time, but looking back, the poem's meter definitely had a lot to do with my enchantment.

Okay, I think my teacher moment is over. The test will be next week; I hope you took notes.

Besides all rhythm, the poem contains a lot of nice alliteration (which is repetition of the same consonant sounds):

And his horse in the silence champed the grasses
of the forest's ferny floor

Hear all the "s" sounds? Not just at the beginning but also within many of the words. And the "f" sounds?

That kind of thing is all through the poem. Plus, it rhymes.

And, besides all that, it is a poem you can make sense, of, story-wise, which I, for one, enjoy. This traveler is here, fulfilling some kind of promise. But no one is in the house.

Or are they?

During a web search for the poem I came across a snippet of an essay arguing that the readers of the poem are the listeners. Interesting. But I had never thought of that before today, and I don't think that kind of analysis is necessary in enjoying the poem. It's a mystery, a paradox even, these listeners. And that's part of what makes it a poem.

Guest Post: On Rod McKuen

2011-04-03T11:05:00.003-06:00

Today's post is brought to you by my mom!!!

I think you are right that poetry is misunderstood as to hard. I wish I had had a teacher who knew how to teach it. Any teacher I had taught that poetry had to rhyme. I don't think that is true.

I think I must have been a poet at heart because I have attempted to write a lot but I always slam dunked it in the trash can after I read what I wrote. I missed the chance to see a famous poet when I was in high school. He came to our school in honor of a student who had been struck and killed by a car as he was walking. The student's name was Jeff Hefner and the poet was Rod McKuen. They must have met earlier. I was sick that day so I missed the experience but I bought a few of his books, which are no longer in my possession. I liked his poetry. One of my favorites is "Thirty-Six."

Note: I also found this Rod McKuen site that discusses the last words of the poem and posts the poem in a slightly different version. Also, I think I might have to steal the idea of missing hearing the poet speak for a poem. Hmm. Thanks, Mom!

Guest Post: How poetry made me feel smart

2011-04-02T07:32:00.002-06:00

On the second day of NPM, our first guest post! Although many people might say poetry makes them feel anything but smart, this hilarious essay by my dear friend Corrie shows how poetry can be a place of solace. After six years of being an awesome high school teacher, Corrie now works as a private tutor to her beautiful baby boy. Enjoy!

I remember an oversized Mother Goose’s Nursery Rhymes on our bookshelf in the basement. In my best teacher voice I would recite “Little Miss Muffet Sat on a Tuffet” to all my imaginary students. It was a very good thing that the little poems rhymed and that I had memorized the illustrations because being 4 or 5 I couldn’t properly read yet. These facts were ignored by my parents who claimed to friends and family members that I could already “read as good as any grown up.” I also loved Dr. Seuss and Shel Sliverstein --who taught me that if you write poetry, you can be a man with a very odd name. I remember the weight of Where the Sidewalk Ends hunkering me down as I lumbered off the school bus.

In middle-school I had several brief love affairs with boys who wrote me sonnets and odes. Of course none of us knew what either of these poetry titles meant. But they sounded classy right? Your odds of getting to first base were particularly good if you composed a sonnet entitled “Ode to Corrie.” Also, if you could rhyme anything with Corrie besides “hunkie dorie” you might get to hold my hand.

In the dark days of high school, I tried to counterweight my cheerleading uniform with copies of Longfellow and Dickinson. After Friday’s game of chanting “Hit ‘em again, Hit ‘em again, Harder, Har, DER!” to my quarterback boyfriend, I appeased the part of my brain that called me a stereotyped airhead by staying up late and memorizing “The Day is Done” or Poe’s “Annabel Lee.” I then told myself that I was really moving up in the world by dumping the quarterback for a soulful dreamer I met on the beach, doing what? You guessed it, writing his own poetry.

In college I had Maya Angelou’s “Phenomenal Woman” taped to my dorm room door. Between classes I would sit on walls or on patches of grass smoking and writing in journals—sometimes poems, sometimes pieces of nothing that someone maybe somewhere might call poetry. Both the smoking and the writing and Maya Angelou’s poem taped to my dorm room door made me feel capable of getting through four years without my family. I was mature. I was smart. I read and wrote poetry, had gotten into Carolina and was taking classes where they asked me to read very old guy’s work –Keats, Shelley, Shakespeare. I found out that as long as I raised my hand to answer some open ended question thereby breaking the horrific silence in the room, the professor gratefully agreed with me.

My total and complete failure of attempts to teach poetry to high school students somehow continued to make me feel smart. I could see them thinking I knew what e.e cummings’ “1(a…(a leaf falls on loneliness” was about, and they were pissed that I wouldn’t just tell them. They really wanted things to rhyme. I abandoned all hope of ever teaching Elliot while reading Gatsby. I found the titillation of Burn’s titled poem in Catcher in the Rye always got good reviews.

The first time I sang “Row row row your boat, gently down the stream, merrily, merrily, merrily, life is but a dream” to my nine month old, he squealed like a pig and looked up at me with eyes that said “Awesome!” And I felt, brilliant.

The Cruelest Month*

2011-04-01T12:48:00.009-06:00

I woke up this morning full of thoughts and ready to write. By (Amelia's) naptime I am worn out. I have lost all of my energy. She has been on full speed since the moment she woke up. We heard her in her crib yelling "No! No!" As soon as she got out of bed she wanted to "See! See!" everything in her path. We spent at least 5 full minutes naming all the items on a high bathroom shelf. The moment she came downstairs she was off and running. It took about five more minutes for the floor to be covered with Cheerios, baby dolls, and crayons.

Anyway. It was a good morning, just nonstop.

Oh and on the weaning front I decided it was better to cut back a little more quickly than I originally planned. Yesterday Amelia nursed only 4 times, remarkable since we went to toddler yoga--the last time we went, she nursed about 150 times in 45 minutes. Today she has nursed only twice, one long session right when she woke up and a short session when we came downstairs. If I stay on track from yesterday she will only nurse one more time, around 5:00 pm.

SOOO--seamless transition between breastfeeding and poetry--it's officially National Poetry Month. I am sure celebrations are abounding. I have been having a hard time deciding what to write about for my first post. I thought I might start with why I wanted to mark this month on my blog. For one, I don't think poetry gets enough attention. I think it is misunderstood as too hard, something mysterious and inscrutable. And to be honest--some of it is. But I think I also have been trying to figure out how to integrate more poetry into my own life, in which I exist primarily as a Mom, aka Homemaker. For pretty much all of my previous life, at least since late high school, literature in general and poetry in particular have been my main focuses, something I spend much if not most of my time reading, thinking about, studying, and teaching. But now... not so much. And, despite the fact that I have a graduate degree related to poetry, sometimes I feel lost answering people's basic questions about poetry in my life. These are questions like what kind of poetry I write, who are my main influences, even who are my favorite poets. So I guess I want to explore some of those questions here too.

Today, though, let's read some poems. Poets.org, which is a website I love, has collected a group of poems about poetry. A good place to start, I think. I am going to link to a few of them, and use these examples to explain some of the reasons I love poetry.(Note: any time the text is a different color, you can click on it to see the website I am linking to.)

I love poetry because it so often lets you connect seemingly unconnected things in a way that is often magical. In this poem by Sharon Olds, "Take The I Out," the title alludes to the idea that the personal self, or "I", doesn't belong in poetry. But in the poem, the I quickly becomes something else (while also remaining the first thing). And the end it becomes something else again.

I love poetry because it can let you create an entirely new universe. In this poem by John Brehm, "The Poems I Have Not Written," the title launches the poem into a world of hypothetical, of "ifs" and "mights" that lets the speakers live, for the space of the poem, somewhere else. Plus, it's funny.

And, despite what I said before, I love poetry because sometimes it IS mysterious and hard to figure out. The sad thing is that poetry tends to be taught in a very analytical way, as though poems had one right answer. As a (former?) teacher myself, I see the value in helping students learn to puzzle through poems, and one important way of doing that is helping them find in poems what others have found before them. However, an equally important skill is imaginative thinking. Let this poem, "And It Came to Pass" by C.D. Wright (who is one of my favorite poets for mysterious images and sentence fragments) mean whatever it means to you. And if parts of it don't make sense, let it not make sense. Read it--maybe read it aloud. And let it be.

If you have more time, read some more of these poems about poetry. And there is still time to send ideas for guest posts! Until tomorrow... happy NPM.

*A note on the title: if you have a couple of hours and a good tolerance for migraines, see this webpage. I'm sorry, I just couldn't resist the allusion.

When she was good, she was very very good..

2011-03-31T19:32:00.003-06:00

Do you know that rhyme? Amelia has no curls, but I just wanted to write a quick post about the fact that when Amelia and I have a good day, it is a very good day!

I spent most of yesterday in a state of worry about some new and mystifying toddler behavior from Amelia. Tantrums, fits, etc. Somehow it seems like every time I think I've gotten the hang of this motherhood thing, something changes.

Anyway, after a nice talk with my mom, lunch with Dean, and the afternoon at the Children's Museum, yesterday turned out fine. And today was great! It was sunny (albeit terribly windy) and Amelia slept till (gasp) 7:15. We had breakfast--Amelia ate 2 scrambled eggs--and went on a walk, then a wagon ride, then to toddler yoga. We came home, spent an hour pushing the baby stroller and grocery cart, then Amelia napped. We spent the afternoon at the park, and the evening Skyping with grandparents. Bathtime was pleasant and bedtime was super smooth! No real crying at all. Now Dean is picking up Thai takeout and I am having a glass of wine, enjoying the peace.

Tomorrow

2011-03-31T13:15:00.003-06:00

is the first day of National Poetry Month! I spent the wee hours of the morning planning my post and came to no decisions.

Anyway, I found 30 Ways to Celebrate on Poets.org. Start planning!

If anyone is still considering being a guest blogger, please let me know! I received a comment with a good question about whether favorite poems can be published on the blog. If they are your poems (as in, you wrote them), and they haven't been published anywhere else, sure! But otherwise, any poems you want to include need to be included through a link. In other words, if you can find them elsewhere on the Internet, we can link to them. But because of possible copyright issues, I don't want to just copy down poems word for word on the blog. If the poem can't be found on the Internet, you can provide title and author information, and of course can cite lines of poems as you would in an essay.

Just a reminder, if you want to write a post, you need to submit a comment with your idea and your email address so I can contact you. I promise not to publish your email address for the whole Internet to see.

In the meantime, happy planning! I am going to spend the rest of Amelia's nap reading some of the 8 books about toddlers I got from the library yesterday. I think I just wrote last week that having a toddler was easier than having a baby... the universe is chuckling at me now.

A Tisket, A Tasket...(again)

2011-03-31T06:35:00.002-06:00

This was Amelia almost exactly a year ago:

And this was Amelia yesterday.

National Poetry Month: A Call for Writers

2011-03-29T12:37:00.003-06:00

April is National Poetry Month. A couple of weeks ago, I had this great idea. I was going to write a poetry-post a day, one every day in April. I planned to write about poems and poets I love, poems and poets that have influenced me as a writer. I even made a spreadsheet with dates and ideas.

But. If you have read this blog long enough, you will remember other great ideas I have had where I was going to a a certain number of posts about certain things. And most of those posts did not happen. (I blame Amelia.) So I came down to earth a little bit. I will simply say this: during April, National Poetry Month, I will write some posts about poetry.

I want there to be as many posts as possible, though, so I want to invite you to write a post of your own. Yes, you, reading this blog right now. Will you be a guest blogger? Will you write a post about poetry for National Poetry Month?

Maybe there is one poem you always remember, one that sticks with you. You could write about that poem and why it means so much. Maybe there is a teacher who introduced you to poetry you could celebrate. Maybe you have taught poetry or read poetry to kids and want to share that experience. Maybe you write poems of your own. You could share the poems here, or write about how or why you write. Maybe you study poetry and have something specific you would like to share with a wider audience. Heck, maybe you hate poetry and want to say why. I would like to invite any and all readers to share any and all thoughts about poetry here during National Poetry Month.

If you are willing go be a guest blogger, let me know. If you know me, you can email me or call. If you don't, leave a comment here with your email address, what you would like to write, and what week in April (the first, second, third, or fourth) you would like to send me your post. I won't publish these comments, but I will get back to you to confirm your post date and answer any questions you might have.

I am excited to spend a month thinking more about poetry, and I hope you can help!

The Plan

2011-03-28T13:01:00.005-06:00

I have decided to wean. I even have a plan.

I am not sure what made me finally make this decision. I guess it's a combination of things. First, Amelia has a lot more teeth these days. Enough said there. Also, she is in stage of huge attachment to me. Sometimes I think she is more clingy and whiny just because I am around. I am starting to feel like nursing is just a habit for her, and one that is not always serving her well. And she is almost 18 months old, which is how old both I and my sister were when my mom weaned us, so 18 months has always seemed like a good age to wean to me because of that.

Not to say I am not conflicted. A couple of weeks ago, I checked out a bunch of books from the library with titles like Mothering Your Nursing Toddler and How Weaning Happens. Turns out all of the books were published by La Leche League. They did offer some good tips-- ways to distract a child from nursing, for example, and the fact that if you're not going to nurse, you are going to need to pay a lot of extra attention to your child--but overall the message from the books is that kids wean themselves when they are ready. Usually by age 4 at the latest. As in four. Years. Old.

Part of me--the part that really wanted to do yoga during labor, to give birth at home, to fire my male OB for a bescarved and tattooed midwife--still really wants to let Amelia wean herself. However, the part of that decided to stick with the male OB and give birth at a hospital strongly suspects that Amelia is one of those kids who would happily breastfeed till she is 4. Or 5. Or older. And that part of me has no interest in breastfeeding that long.

My plan is this. Yesterday, I cut off the nursing during naptime (again). I figure this would be hard but still maybe one of the easiest times to cut out because if Amelia is sleepy, she will eventually go to sleep. I told Amelia that we weren't going to have milk at naptime. She understood. She even said "no mama" as I was changing her diaper. I said, "Yes, you still have mama, just no milk!" and tickled her. She laughed. I kept doing that for a minute. It was funny. When it was time to put her down, we put some dolls and stuffed animals in her crib in case she was not sleepy right away. She looked interested. Then I sat in the glider and rocked her and sang. She snuggled and listened for about 2 seconds and then tried to nurse. "No milk at naptime," I said. I offered her water. She refused it. She cried. Angrily. I tried to rock her and sing, but she was having none of it. So I put her in the crib with the water.

She cried. Loudly and angrily.

Since Dean was home, he went up to sing to her like he does at bedtime. She cried. She was mad. But as soon as he left the room she went to sleep.

I, however, cried for quite awhile. In the meantime I was reading _Unbuttoned_, and in one essay about weaning, the author mentioned a study somewhere that asked older children who nursed about breastmilk. They said it was better than ice cream, better than cookies. Something about that made me cry and cry. I want Amelia to be happy and healthy. What if weaning is traumatic for her?

But, she woke up. She was fine. She ate Veggie Straws while sitting on my lap--actually, that could be called the first nursing session to go, the post-nap session, since the day I got some Veggie Straws for myself to eat while Amelia nursed after her nap. She snuggled in to nurse, looked at my snack, then sat up and took my bowl. And today at naptime, she only cried for about 3 minutes, then went to sleep. She is still sleeping.

To get back to the plan: although Amelia has never had an exact number of feedings a day, I have divided the day by feeding "sessions". There is first thing in the morning. The rest of the morning. Pre-nap (that's the one that's out this week). Afternoon. And evening. Each week, I will just say there is no milk right now for one of those sessions. So, if all goes according to plan, we'll be done in... 4 more weeks after this. Maybe sooner. She doesn't always do the evening. I am sure things won't go exactly as I plan. But at least I have a plan.

In my book, I came across another passage that stuck with me. It's in an essay called "Wean" by Catherine Newman. In it, she describes "accidentally" nursing her baby (who is 2 years old) a few weeks after she has weaned. It sums up how I am feeling these days:

I have loved nursing, but I have not cherished every moment of it because, frankly, there has just been too much of it. I savor these last few moments with the baby, the baby who is disappearing even as I hold her.

Hurricane

2011-03-28T11:43:00.005-06:00

It has been quite a morning. Amelia woke up too early and has been a grouch. Plus she has played with Crispix, Play Dough, all of her toys, and helped me unpack groceries, an activity that entailed pulling everything out of the both the freezer and one cabinet, sampling several of the new items (grapes, cheese, oranges), and taking at least three breaks to read stories.

This is what my house looks like.

Is it just me? Do other people have days like these? Sometimes I wonder what I am doing wrong.

Speaking of weathering storms, we have all survived Amelia's first post-hospital sickness. She got a fever Thursday, first one so low I assumed it was teething and forgot about it, but later in the afternoon, it was around 102. She had no other symptoms so of course I immediately assumed she was at the beginning of another terrible illness. To make a long story short--really, I don't want to relive all the worry--I took her to the doctor Friday. Her doctor, who was never as convinced as the surgeons that Amelia's earlier problems originated with her appendix, drew blood. She wanted to be sure there was not some weird bacterial infection going on. After 4 tense hours waiting for the results, we got them: virus, possible mono. Amelia has had maybe one mild cold all winter, but she is certainly getting her share of Diseases You Didn't Think Toddlers Can Get. However, her pediatrician said that most 5-year-olds have antibodies for mono, meaning they already had it as babies or toddlers but it was never diagnosed. Apparently in younger kids mono passes quickly and is not nearly the problem it is in teens and adults. You can read more about that here. Anyway, they wouldn't know for sure it was mono with more tests, which the doctor said wasn't worth it. Whatever it was, Amelia's fever went away yesterday morning and she seems fine now.

I guess I should spend the rest of her naptime cleaning the house.

Some people like coffee...

2011-03-28T11:38:00.002-06:00

Yesterday morning Amelia wanted to see in the refrigerator. After surveying her options, she chose a jar of mustard. While I was getting her some cereal, she opened the mustard and licked some off the lid. She then paused and said, "More, more."

Thinking she liked the strong flavor but not wanting to squirt mustanrd in a cup for her, I asked her if she wanted a pickle.

Her eyes lit up. She said, "Two!"

What's Going On

2011-03-24T11:44:00.004-06:00

Time for a good, old-fashioned Amelia update. I'll sprinkle in a few pictures I just downloaded from my cell phone.

She is talking up a storm. She tries to repeat a lot of what we say, so I am trying even harder to eliminate the surprisingly high number of things I say that I would not want her to say. (I am not sure where I picked up such bad language. I'll blame my past students.)

Here are some of Amelia's new words:

fish
fall
up
down
apple
pear
pizza
crackers
two (as in, I want two crackers, two apples, etc. She wants one for each hand.)
Nanny
Luli
Poppa
Guru
Jes
Hea (for Heather) (She says these family names pointing at pictures; don't worry, we are working on the rest of the family but we need to put up more pictures!)
Momma
Daddy
shoes
boots
phone
pla (plate)
bowl
cup
fork
spoo (spoon)
slide
car
wa (wagon)
ride
dough (as in play dough)
star
moon
ca (helicopter)
Suki (or at least Su, she hardly ever says Gee anymore)
gaffe (giraffe)
no (She says no a lot.)
na (This is what it sounds like when she tries to say "another one" or "the other one" when there are two of things and she wants them; for example "put on my other shoe" or "where is the other baby.")
My mom just taught her yes ("ses") and, in relation to dirty diapers and things you should not put in your mouth, "nasty," which she says extremely clearly.

It's a fun time hearing her say new things. Oh, she also says "new." She loves "new" things. For example, she loves her new wagon, and she wants to ride in it every time she sees it. She also likes climbing on these little bouncy cars they have at the park, and she is proud because she can climb up on them all by herself--mostly. She has been climbing more and more--she can get up on the coffee table, and from there the couch. Scary. She likes to play with her farm animals, and her baby dolls, and her stuffed animals. She likes playing with play dough, but still pretty much just wants to chew on crayons. She can stack a couple of blocks without them falling, although she loves knocking down tall towers built by someone else. She is getting really good at putting small lids on things and has successfully sorted a few different shapes (star, circle, etc) in the sorting toy she has. She has started giving kisses, and will sometimes go through the room kissing all the animals and bringing them to whoever else is in the room so we can also kiss them. She also likes to feed things, making a little chewing sound as she does.

On the eating front, she is still nursing a few times a day, not nearly as much as when she came home from the hospital. She is not eating as much as she was when she came home from the hospital either, but that makes sense. She is falling back in what seems to be a more normal toddler pattern, eating a lot sometimes and hardly anything other times. she still loves noddles and rice and spinach and cheese, and she will usually eat a couple of servings of cut-up fruit a day, and she likes those tubes of yogurt for kids. Overall I feel happy with the amount she is eating and what she eats, which is a good feeling.

A note on teething--I feel like Amelia has been teething constantly since about 13 months. She keeps getting new teeth. Sometimes her gums seem to bother her, sometimes not. I have gotten better at recognizing teething signs like drooling, diaper rash, and gnawing on things, and Amelia realized that she loves Orajel, so it's not too bad. I do wonder if she is teething a lot today. She has a low fever.

Amelia seems to be almost totally over the stranger and new-place anxiety she had after the hospital. For quite awhile--and this partly explains the lack of recent posts, as I was too tired or too discouraged to write--she was not sleeping well. First she was waking up multiple times a night, sometimes screaming, a scared scream, not just a tired fuss. We really think she was having nightmares. Then that slowly faded, and she was sleeping through the night--until between 4 and 5 AM, when she was up for the day. But still tired. It would be one thing to rise at 4 each morning with a sunny, bright-eyed toddler, but this was coming downstairs and facing an immediate tantrum because you wouldn't let Amelia fling ground coffee all over the kitchen. So we started trying things. We tried earlier bedtimes. We tried later bedtimes. We tried leaving her in the crib for a long time, and then going to her right away. I tried nursing her back to sleep. We tried getting her to back to sleep in our bed. We tried early naps. Late naps. One nap, two naps. There were really no clear patterns to what worked and what didn't. One morning--I think it was last Sunday--she woke up at 5, Dean went to check on her and said night, night, and she was quiet. Then she fussed. Then she was quiet. And so on. About 30 minutes later, I gave up and went to her, but she wanted to nurse, and she fell asleep and slept for almost 2 more hours. (Of course Dean and I were wide awake, but whatever.) That return to morning sleep seemed to break the pattern, and she has been sleeping later, waking between 5:45 and 6:30, all week since then. We have been putting her down a littler later too, between 7 and 7:30. I also think, on a nap note, that it has helped to keep her up till at least 11 AM or noon even if she is sleepy earlier. She is definitely taking longer naps in the middle of the day, usually between 1 and a half and two hours, although they have been as short as an hour, and as long as, once last week, three hours and 15 minutes. That is an all time Amelia-nap record.

(In the interest of full disclosure, and for the record, I will note that I have been nursing her to sleep at naps. This started post-hospital and it has been so peaceful, so easy, so much better than the 10-20 minutes of pre-nap crying that went on every nap for the 5 weeks we tried not nursing at naps, that I have kept doing it. I know that it could have something to do with the bedtime problem, but... not willing to give it up yet.)

The one thing Amelia is still doing that seems related to hospital anxiety is having these horrible bedtime-related fits. They seem to be related to separation anxiety from me. She was crying a lot a bath time, so I started going into the bathroom with her, and now she cries when she is put in the crib. She can be perfectly happy, snuggling with Dean and reading stories, and then when it is time to actually go to bed, she just cries and cries. It is very stressful, and sad too because bath and bedtime had been such a peaceful and happy daddy-daughter time. But we are just hanging in there because one thing that seems true about raising a child is that nothing lasts, not the stuff you love but, luckily, also not the stuff you hate. It is just endlessly replaced with new stuff to hate--and luckily, new stuff to love.

Blue

2011-03-24T11:19:00.003-06:00

In a perfect world, everyone I love would live in the same neighborhood. Amelia's grandparents would live across the street. The rest of our family would live close by. My friends would all live on the same block. Everyone would share child care and dinners and milestones and holidays.

In the real world, we live at least several hundred, if not a couple of thousand, miles from the people we love. My mom just left after a short visit, and I am blue.

Believe it or not, it's not about the baby care. Although I had a great time going to yoga and the mall and getting groceries all by myself while my mom was here, for the most part I really enjoy day to day life hanging out with Amelia. It's much easier, in my opinion, to take care of a toddler than a baby. Maybe it's just because it's more varied--it's certainly not because it's problem-free--but anyway, I am not sad because I miss having time to myself. I am sad because it's so clear how much Amelia loves my mom, and my mom loves Amelia, and they miss each other. The same is true for Dean's mom, and our dads, and our siblings, and our grandparents and aunts and cousins.

When Dean and I were deciding to leave DC not for NC but for Colorado, I made a list titled "Why I'm Moving to Denver." I kept it in my jewelry box and came across it, oddly, just this morning. Everything on the list holds true. Once upon a time, two people decided to have a baby without planning--at all--how they were actually going to live life with a baby, and Denver and the great job it offered to Dean has allowed us, overall, to have excellent lives. We like the city, its vibrancy and lack of crippling traffic, its laid-back, friendly citizens and all the fun it offers. We love our house. I love all of the friends I have made here. I love the fact that I can stay home and raise my daughter without worrying too much about money. But I still sometimes wish that Denver--and the Rocky Mountains, so Dean wouldn't be too sad--could magically be transported about 1,500 miles east. Or that our families would move west. Hint, hint.

On the bright side, we have two visits to NC planned soon. And more family visits to Denver are in the works. The good thing about living so far away is that family visits are special and tend to be very happy. Amelia learns so much every time she spends time with my parents and Dean's; it's like she blossoms. And today, as I was talking to a Denver friend whose parents live a 4-hour drive away, I realized that Amelia had seen both sets of her grandparents more times throughout the last year than my friend's son had seen his. So while it's not my perfect world, we make it work.

Little Red Wagon: A Story in Pictures

2011-03-14T12:11:00.006-06:00

How We Are

2011-03-02T14:04:00.011-07:00

Eight days post-hospital, we are doing very well.

I am sure this is not what is on the forefront of everyone's minds, but I have had terrific writing week. Amelia has been sleeping for almost 2 hours every day so I have been able to do almost everything I wanted to do. I finished a poem that I think-- and hope!--will be the title poem of my manuscript. It's hard to say. I was totally enthralled when I wrote it, and I still like it a lot, but sometimes that first love fades as you realize the poem, in fact, is terrible. It's one I only started last week, so it could be too good to be true.

I am also working on rearranging my manuscript.

Lovely.

In other writing-related news, just before Amelia was in the hospital, I got an email from the editor of a journal who wants to publish one of my poems! This is from the round I sent out in October, and other than this good news, and one journal who told me that my poems have moved to a "second round of readings," it has been rejection city. I got one rejection email in three days. So it was encouraging to get an acceptance. And, I am in a poetry reading tomorrow! Read about it here. If you want to make a last minute trip to Denver... it'll be totally worth it.

Now, on to what you really what to know, which is how Amelia is doing. She is doing really well. She eats like a horse. Well, a small horse. Seriously, she has been starting her day with Cheerios, two scrambled eggs, some fruit and maybe some soy sausage or bacon, and going on from there. A snack like an hour later, then another snack, then lunch. After her nap a substantial snack and an early and large dinner. She has also been eating a wide variety of things, as long as they are first stabbed with a fork. It's a relief, since she basically didn't eat for the 3 weeks before and during her hospital stay.

Amelia is moving around well too, almost totally back to normal. For awhile you could tell it hurt her when she squatted and then stood back up but that seems to have gone away. She is very happy at home, but when we go out she is still wary of other people. She cried when we went to the library today. I think she thought it was too much like a hospital. But then when she saw we were just at Book Babies (we were at a library we had never been to before) she relaxed and sang and clapped and danced. She wasn't quite as mobile as she used to be, but it has been about 2 months since we have even been to Book Babies, and honestly, it was nice not to have to chase after her the whole time.

She has been spending a fair amount of time playing by herself since the sad departure of both of her grandmothers. The other day I was loading the dishwasher and realized it was quiet... too quiet...

Suki's water bowl has been moved farther down the stairs.

Back to normal... toddler-style.

Hospital Story, Part 2

2011-02-25T06:57:00.005-07:00

So Dean and I left Amelia with the surgeons. We walked back up to our room where Dean's parents were waiting with dinner. It was hard to leave Amelia and I was scared but I also knew that she definitely was not going to get better without surgery. And we felt very good about the care she was getting at The Children's Hospital.

On yet another side note I want to say how amazing this hospital is. You should take some time to look at their virtual tour. It is a beautiful place and remarkably cheerful considering the fact that it is filled with sick kids. Every detail seems designed to engage children. It is filled with toys and sculptures and aquariums to play with and look at. Even the floors are beautiful--the main lobby floor is a collage of colorful birds and butterflies, and the floors in the elevator are studded with beads and glittery squiggles. And they have all these little red wagons for the kids to ride around in. There are playrooms and a library. There is a free daycare for siblings. There is a fabulous omelet bar in the cafeteria, and they make great pancakes too.

We had left Amelia for surgery at 6:20 PM, and the nurse said she would give us a call at 7:30 to let us know how things were going. As 7:30 approached and then passed, I got that nervous, faint-y feeling again. On the one hand, as I mentioned before, hospital time is not like real time. On the other hand, she had said "at" 7:30, not "around" or "close to" or something like that. She had said she would call us on the surgery waiting room phone if she couldn't reach Dean's cell, so I left Dean and his parents in the room and went back down to the waiting room. Then I was even more nervous there, so I called Luli and the nurse had just called Dean. When I got back up Dean relayed the nurse's report that Dr. Bruny had done everything she wanted to do, and we could meet the surgeons down in the waiting room in about twenty minutes.

So we went down and waited. When Dr. Bruny came out she said the surgery had gone well. Amelia's bowels had kind of rearranged themselves to block in her abscess so they were able to find and clean out the infection pretty easily, and they found and removed her appendix too. The only strange thing was that her appendix did not actually look perforated (aka burst). So they were not sure, if the appendix was in good shape, what would have caused the infection. But the doctor didn't seem concerned about it. I, however, immediately wondered if there was some sort of mystery disease Amelia could have that caused random weird infection in her body. But the doctor, again, didn't seem concerned. She said sometimes the appendix is perforated and you just can't see it, and sometimes you just never know what caused the problem.

I am going to fast forward here and say that we still really don't know what caused all this. Dr. Staetz told us that the germ that caused the abscess was a strep germ that usually abscesses in the brain, but the a surgeon told us it lived in the gut. (In any case it was not the same as the strep throat I was to get the following day.) The pathology report on Amelia's appendix showed that everything was consistent with appendicitis, although the pathologists did not see a perforation either. Picture a team of surgeons shrugging their shoulders here. Anyway, they fixed it.

So. Amelia was out of surgery and on morphine for pain and some other meds (an antibiotic, an anti-nausea drug, and maybe one more). The next day she mostly slept and was still very out of it. We were waiting and hoping for her to talk. But she still had this NG tube in (it goes from nose to belly and releases fluid and gas from the stomach), and she had to have these long braces on her arms so she wouldn't pull it out, so overall it was best that she was kind of in a morphine haze. The following day, Friday, I woke up feeling terrible, even for someone who had slept maybe 7 hours in the last 3 days. My throat was killing me and I thought I was going to collapse. The nurse checked my temperature and I had a fever, so Jim drove me home to rest for awhile. We got back to the hospital around 5 PM, and honestly I don't remember Amelia's state exactly. I know had already removed the NG tube and that we were waiting for her to start passing gas to relieve her swollen belly so they would not have to put the tube back in. I think sometime that day she started saying a few words and saying her animal sounds. Overall she was improving and already in much better shape.

Friday night was fairly peaceful for Amelia but horrible for me because of my sore throat. An angelic nurse gave me her own personal numbing cough drops, which go me through the night. First thing Saturday morning I drove to a nearby Urgent Care center and got a strep test, which was positive, so I got some penicillin. After I got that in my system, I started feeling better pretty quickly. However we were still worried about Amelia's distended belly. The doctors were saying that if she didn't start passing gas soon they would have to put back in the NG tube. Since Amelia was very aware of what was going on at this point, we all really wanted to avoid that. It would have made her totally miserable. She can't stand it when something is touching her face or stuck to her hands. She doesn't even like to wear a hat. So a tube taped to her face and itching her throat and nose would have been quite a trial. Plus putting the thing in is no picnic and having witnessed it once I was planning on being very vocal about not wanting the tube unless it was totally dire. Luckily, Amelia gradually got gassy. We were infinitely relieved.

Sunday was a day of waiting for poop. She was allowed to breastfeed again, and she was very happy about that. (I had requested a hospital pump and was pumping for maybe 5 minutes a night. I was too tired to do any more. Honestly I had come to terms with the idea that this might be the end of breastfeeding, but it all worked out okay.) Once Amelia had some milk, she started having more bowel sounds and finally some poop. Monday she ate some solid foods--Cheerios, rice and noodles Luli made and brought, some crackers. We had high hopes for going home on Tuesday. However, it was not to be. A blood test Tuesday morning showed that Amelia's white blood cell count was still slightly too high for the doctors' comfort. Dean and I were very frustrated because they told us that to go home, Amelia needed to be eating and pooping, and she was doing that. After several conversations with the surgeons we got the message that their decision might have more to do with medical liability than Amelia herself. Dean and I were frustrated because not only were we both tired of living in the hospital, we could tell that Amelia was just getting worn out. It was very hard for her to get much rest with nurses and doctors and who knows who else coming in and out of her room all the time. She looked exhausted and when we brought her back to our floor from a wagon ride, she would whimper when she saw where we were. And at lunch, when Amelia was sitting in my lap holding chicken finger in one hand and a cheese quesadilla in the other, it seemed plain silly to be in the hospital. But we made ourselves get over the frustration and tell ourselves that if out biggest problem with Amelia's doctors was that they were too careful, we were in good shape. (It turns out you can be frustrated and grateful at the same time. It was a spiritually interesting moment for me to realize that.)

Tuesday night was happy in that we had high hopes for getting out of the hospital the next day, and I even had hopes for a good night because the doctors had agreed that Amelia did not have to have her vitals checked while she was sleeping. Dean brought Thai food and the gratefulness in us had overcome the frustration. I have always tried to be grateful about Amelia's health, reminding myself when I am tired or frustrated how lucky I am to have a healthy baby. But I don't think I ever really appreciated it until we went through this. The truth is that what we went through, while obviously stressful, is nothing compared to what so many of the kids and parents in that hospital were and are going through. What was wrong with Amelia was not chronic and it is fixable. It is fixed. We are so grateful that she does not have cancer or a million other things that she just as easily could have. I still am thinking about those parents and kids many times a day, wishing them peace and strength. We are so, so lucky.

And I also want to thank everyone out there who sent us thoughts of healing and of love, who prayed for Amelia, who offered to help us with anything we needed, who called and texted and brought food and magazines and sent Amelia toys and crayons and balloons and cards. Each of those things really was so helpful. I knew I had good friends in Denver, but I didn't know how good they were until this! And we were especially lucky to have Dean's parents around. It will not go down as their best vacation ever, but their presence made it so much easier for Dean and me to get through the week. And even with so many of our friends and family members so far away, it was so helpful for me just to know how many people were thinking about Amelia, sending her support.

Wednesday morning, I woke up to a surgeon entering the room. He walked over to my air mattress and said, "Do you feel like going home today?"

Yes! And, although I was prepared to wait around most of the day for the discharge ball to get rolling, we ended up getting out of there pretty quickly because the hospital was totally full and they needed our room. Amelia got her last tube removed (note to surgeon: quietly singing "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star" while removing a main line from a screaming child is more sinister than comforting) and we got our instructions and off we went.

So we have been home two nights now. Amelia is getting better and better. She was wary at first, kind of looking around wondering where we had been for so long. You can tell her incision hurts when she squats down and tries to stand back up, and she is definitely not as agile or quick as she was before the surgery, but she already moving more and seems to be in less pain. Also, she is still a little overly poopy from her antibiotics. However, I just talked to a nurse and she said the poop sounds like a normal side effect. So I think we are in good shape.

I am very glad to have told this story and put it behind us. Look for some Amelia pictures to be posted soon--live from Denver, now appendix-free.

Hospital Story, Part One

2011-02-20T10:41:00.008-07:00

As you may or may not know, Amelia was in the hospital from Tuesday, February 15, through yesterday (Wednesday, February 23). A lot of friends and family have gotten the story in bits and pieces through texts and interrupted phone calls, or not at all, so this post should fill you in. Plus I am hoping it will be therapeutic to write this down.

Amelia was sick with a cold at the end of January and then with what we thought was a stomach virus after that. You can read about the "stomach virus" below. Last Monday afternoon and evening, Amelia felt very bad and spent about 3 hours just dozing my my arms. When Dean came home, we noticed that Amelia's stomach was distended, so I called the pediatrician on call (for the 6th or 7th time). She said that that could be part of the diarrhea but to call if it was stil going on on Wednesday. Monday night was rough; Amelia was waking up at a lot with a fever and diarrhea. Tuesday morning, she seemed a little better. Her fever was lower, and when she saw our leftover pasta in the frig, she said, "num num num" and "nooo-dle".

She ate some nooo-dles and some toast. Then she slept and we played a bit. The diarrhea stopped for awhile. But then she started fussing again, so I soothed her to sleep in my arms on our bed. When she woke up, she was kind of whimpering and her fever was a little higher, so I called the doctor. I had just decided I could not go through any more time not having her checked out, and if they told me it was a stomach virus and to come back tomorrow, so be it.

Amelia's pediatrician, Dr. Staerz, is a great doctor who has a solo practice. She shares calls with another doctor a little farther away from us, and sometimes their patients go to the other's office. We ended up going to the partner's office because they had an earlier appointment. On the way, Amelia was talking to herself and had perked up.

However, when we got to the doctor's office, Amelia took another turn for the worse. She began vomit ting while we were trying to get a urine sample. Both of us were covered in partially digested penne. Luckily had I had some extra clothes for Amelia, but not for myself. The doctor decided to draw some blood to run some tests, but when her nurse tried to find a vein, she was nervous that Amelia was too dehydrated and asked me if I would mind going to Dr. Staerz's office so that she could do it. I did not mind because I wanted Dr. Staerz to see Amelia anyway, so we packed up and headed to the other office.

In the meantime, the nagging worry I had felt all week had become acute. I was just starting to feel like something was very very wrong. Amelia slept on the way to the second doctor's office, and she slept in my arms while we waited for her blood to be drawn. She woke up and started vomiting again, so I rushed her to the bathroom. Most of it got on me. At that point I was pretty much in for a penny, in for a pound vomit-wise. When Dr. Staerx saw Amelia, she said, "She isn't well." Indeed. She drew the blood, and then told me that she wanted to me to stay and have Amelia sip some melted Popsicle or Pedialyte. If she couldn't keep in down, she wanted to me to take Amelia to an emergency room for fluids.

It was almost a relief to hear that, because I just wanted Amelia to be better. We got some melted green Popsicle down Amelia by giving it to her with a syringe, but she threw it back up. So with the doctor called the local ER to let them know we were on the way, and I called Dean, and off we went.

Amelia again slept on the way to the ER. There was valet parking so I could take her right in, and it was very calm when we got there, so we were taken right back to a room. While I was talking to the ER pediatrician, Dean and his mom arrived. (Dean's parents has just arrived for a week's visit. Great timing.)

Then began the process of getting an IV in Amelia's tiny veins. She was much more dehydrated than we had realized, and it took the doctors and nurses at least 10 or 12 tries before they got one in (in her foot). It was awful. Amelia was scared and in pain and being stuck repeatedly with a needle. Plus every so often she would throw up, and her vomit was taking on a rusty color, looking more and more bloody each time. All I could think was "something is very wrong," but I kept trying to soothe Amelia and tell her everything was okay.

Just a side note to say I almost feel like I somehow became a real mother sometime during our experience in that emergency room. Despite all that was still to come, I think our time in the first ER was the worst part of this whole experience because Amelia was in so much pain and we had no idea what was wrong. She was so upset and we were so scared. It was truly the worst part of the worst night of the worst week of my life. I felt like I was going to faint. All I wanted to do when they were trying to get the IV in her, and later when they were drawing spinal fluid to test for meningitis, was to leave the room so I didn't have to watch these things happen to my baby. But I couldn't. And there was no way I actually would have. I realized that my job was to stand there and tell Amelia that she was brave and strong and that everything was going to be okay. And for that to happen I could not be upset. I had to be calm and strong myself. And so I was--or I tried very hard to be.

Anyway they finally got the IV in. They did the spinal tap. (Random memory--after the procedure the ER doctor was taking the tape off Amelia's back and he said, "I think getting the tape off is the worst part." Um, no, I think the part where you stuck a huge long needle into my baby's spine was the worst part.)

It's hard to remember the timing of things after that but we got the good news that Amelia did not have meningitis and then they told us that they had gotten the results from her earlier blood tests. Her white cell count was very very high. The ER doctor told us Dr. Staerz wanted up to go to the nearby Children's Hospital so they could do more evaluation. Then he told us one of the things that they would be looking into was leukemia.

That might have in fact been the worst moment in all of this. It was the most terrifying thing I have ever heard. The ER doctor kind of wound his speech back around to saying that odds were she had a stomach virus, but it was too late for that kind of talk. We were in a black hole of terror and Amelia was still throwing up blood.

We must have waited quite awhile for a team of ambulance people to come move Amelia. In the meantime the ER doctor had talked to an oncologist at Children's, who told him that based on what she could see of the blood test and what we were describing, it was likely not leukemia. So that was reassuring but in the way that pouring a teaspoon of hot water into an icy bathtub might be warming. Finally the ambulance people arrived, got Amelia strapped into to a stretcher, and off we went.

I rode in the ambulance with Amelia while Dean drove the car. When we got to Children's Hospital they had a room in the ER waiting for us. A doctor came right in and the first thing he said was, "So what did you hear at [the first hospital]? A lot of people come in from there freaked out."

I said we were had heard leukemia as well as some other horrible-sounding diseases. After telling us that leukemia was a scary word but that the survival rate for it was over 95% these days, he went over the reasons he did not think that Amelia had it. He did the same for the other diseases they had thrown out at the other hospital. He also drew some more blood so that he could have a very good hematologist there take a look at the blood just to be sure.

Another side note--this experience has shown us how subjective a lot of medicine is. For example different doctors might read a high count of white blood cells in different ways depending on how the cells look and how old they are. Dean and I both realized we tended to think of medical diagnoses and treatment as very exact and scientific but that is not always the case. It underscored in my mind how hard it must be to be a doctor. I am a million times more impressed with doctors than I already was.

Again, I can't remember the timing, but we were in the Children's ER from about midnight to 6AM. A kind nurse brought in a cot for Dean and me to share. I also spent some time lying with Amelia on her bed. Every now and then she was still waking up, looking miserable, and throwing up blood. Her little lips were parched and rimmed with red. The hematologist came in and confirmed that Amelia's blood looked nothing like leukemia. The ER doctors kept coming in and checking. Finally he told us he wanted to admit her but he was not sure whether to send her to a room or to get a CT scan. He eventually decided that because her symptoms where not really in line with appendicitis and because it is so very rare for such a young child to get it, he would send us up to a room to let the hospital doctors continue to evaluate Amelia. Dean and I agreed that that seemed like the best thing to do at that point.

As we were wheeled up the our room, the sun was rising. It was the first time ever that I have stayed awake all night.

When we got to our room, we were greeted my our kind nurse Leesa, who would actually be our nurse for 5 of the 7 nights we would be there. Again, my memory is fuzzy at this point. Doctors came in and out. Amelia kept throwing up. The took a stool sample. Everyone was still leaning toward virus at this point. Apparently Dr. Staerz called around 8 or 9 AM and ordered an x-ray, and that's when things began to move along.

The x-ray showed that there were some issues with Amelia's bowels being blocked and I think they also showed that she had an infection in her abdomen as well. We were told the surgeons would come up and look at Amelia and either order a CT scan or do surgery right away. The surgeons came up. They said it was not a case in which we needed to rush to do surgery and ordered the CT scan. We got the CT scan. It confirmed what the x-rays showed: obstructed bowel, infection, possible ruptured appendix. She was going to need surgery to fix it.

By the time all this happened it was maybe 1 or 2 in the afternoon. Amelia was clearly in pain. We fully expected her surgery to happen very soon, but at that point the doctors began to speak of putting in a catheter and seeing how she did. I began to be suspicious that they were thinking of not doing the surgery that day. The doctor we were talking to, who was not a surgeon, was being vague on what the plans actually were. The fact that some emergency surgeries had come up was mentioned. At this point, trying hard not to be tearful, I made it very clear to everyone that I wanted Amelia's surgery to be done that day. Maybe she wasn't a life-threatening emergency, but she was in pain and we had already spend more than half the day waiting for decisions and test results and doctors to arrive and etc. Hospital time is very slow.

After that things started to move along. A surgeon came up to tell us she was scheduled for 6 PM. He talked about the surgery, the procedure, benefits and risks. We signed some papers.

We were still scared but relieved that things were moving in the right direction as far as fixing poor Amelia. I really don't know what we did all afternoon, but at 5 PM, a nurse came and told us they were ready for Amelia. Some people came and wheeled her crib to the surgery floor. We waited awhile and then talked to some anesthesiologists, then to Amelia's surgeon, Dr. Bruny. She was extremely reassuring. She seemed very calm, cool and collected, which was the case with most of the surgeons we spoke too, but she was also plain nice. Not that the other surgeons were mean--they were just direct to the point of being curt. I am not criticizing them--they have a very intense job. But Dr. Bruny made us feel very good. She told us her plan was to do the incision, clear out the infection and then remove the appendix. She answered our questions, and then wet to get ready for the surgery. They gave Amelia the first medicine that would put her to sleep, we kissed and told her we loved her, and the nurses, while playing with the stuffed animals in Amelia's crib, wheeled her away.

Whew. That's all I can do at this point. Spoiler alert: Amelia is home now, happy and playing, so don't worry about the ending. But I will have to write about the surgery and the days after ASAP.

In Sickness and in... Sickness

2011-02-14T10:05:00.005-07:00

You may have have noticed the labels for posts to the right of this web page, just under my list of links. I like my label word cloud--if you don't know how it works, the label sizes correspond to how many posts have that label, so the label "Amelia" is 164 point font and a label I've only used once, like "labor and delivery," is very small. Until my last post, the label "sickness" had never appeared at all.

Until the end of January Amelia really had not been sick very much; she has certainly had a few colds and I think I have mentioned them on this blog, but never enough to give them a label. However, since the end of January our household has not been the picture of health. First I got a bad cold, and then Amelia got it. She was sniffly, fussy, and slightly feverish for the very very cold snap that we had a couple of weeks ago. Even though by doctor's definition she was better--no fever and not contagious--it seemed to take her forever to really get well. Finally, at the beginning of last week, she was her old self again, happy and bright eyed and runny-nose free.

It lasted two days.

Thursday morning, Amelia and I were leaving for a playdate, and she seemed... off. She was fussy but not about anything in particular. Then, on the way out the door, she laid her head on my shoulder. This is very much unlike Amelia, the anti-nap baby. I considered staying home and putting her to bed, but morning naps haven't been going well around here these days, so I just decided to let her fall asleep in the far if she needed to, so we could try for a longer afternoon nap later. She did fall asleep in the car. An hour or so later, she had a low fever, 99.7.

So we came home. On the way, I called the doctor and made an appointment for that afternoon. Since Amelia had been sick so recently I wanted to her checked out. But during lunch, her fever went away and she was her old self. She ate a huge lunch and happily played for a couple of hours. Not wanting to drag her into a germy doctor's office unnecessarily, I canceled the appointment.

Then she took a nap. When she woke up, she was feverish. The thermometer read 101.5. Twenty minutes later, it was 103.9.

So, holding a hot fussy baby, I called the doctor's office again. They counseled me in basic fever management (for a very high fever, you can alternate Tylenol and ibuprofen every 3 hours) and I made another appointment for the next day. I was very upset at myself for canceling the afternoon appointment. I was also scared because Amelia has never had such a high fever. Nor has she ever wanted to just sit in my arms, doing nothing, not even nursing. My poor baby was very sick.

Thursday night was kind of rough, with Amelia waking every so often with her fever. Friday morning, we headed to the doctor. She quickly determined that Amelia did not have an ear infection, strep, of the flu. So she decided to try to get a urine sample to see if it could be a urinary tract infection.

Getting a urine sample from a baby who's too young to pee in a cup is a little tricky. Basically there is this plastic bag they they taped to Amelia's... area. She was not a huge fan. We sat in the doctor's office and waited for Amelia to pee.

And waited, and waited, and waited.

We read all the books in the examining room, looked at all the diagrams (Amelia was particularly interested in the skeletal system), shared water from a Nalgene, and made up stories about the pictures on the walls. Amelia nursed and then slept. I took her to the bathroom and let her play with running water from the faucet. We went back to the examining room, reread all the books...

Two hours later, still no pee.

So I decided to take her home and bring the sample back later. When we got home, no pee. After lunch...

a very dirty diaper, and a little pee. I'll spare the details, but this was not ideal. The bag was very dirty. I did what I could to collect the urine sample (they gave me a little cup to pour it into) and taped on the second bag, which they had given me in the event that what had just happened happened.

After her nap, we had two more dirty diapers and no more pee. So I took what I had collected into the office and explained what was going on. The nurses consulted with the doctors, and that's when we heard the dreaded two words of the previous post.

And this is not your average 24 hour stomach bug. This is one that can last up to... 10 days. With very high fevers. (Did you notice the shared Nalgene above? I am still dreading that I might get this too. So far so good). Friday night, Amelia's fever spiked up above 104. We got it down quickly with medicine and a lukewarm bath, but it was scary. The same thing happened the next morning, and I was holding her. Her fever went up so fast I didn't realize what was happening.

Now, on Monday, Amelia Valentine is still sick. It's sad to see her feeling so badly and to know there is so little we can do to help. She mostly just wants to be held by me. Every now and then she will perk up and play, but soon after she gets a stomach cramp and starts to whimper, then cry. She has eaten only a few bites of rice and pretzels in the past couple of days. She will drink a little Gatorade and water, but not much else. She scorns the BRAT diet and Pedialyte in any form, including popsicle. The good news is that last night and this morning, we have weaned her off the three hour cycle of medicine without any more fever spikes so far. And, thankfully, she is not weaned from breastfeeding, so she is getting a some liquid and nutrients from that. She is sleeping a lot this morning, and I hope she that soon she will be on the mend. And that the label "sickness" stays very, very small.

Two Words No Parent Ever Wants to Hear:

2011-02-12T13:48:00.002-07:00

stomach virus.

Seven Steps to Lead Reduction

2011-02-08T13:01:00.004-07:00

I don't think I ever remembered to post here that Amelia's lead leave was checked at her 15 month appointment and it was down to 4. So this is less than half of what it had been at 12 months (which was 9) and the doctor felt good about it. My understanding is that for it to drop that much in 3 months means that there was not that much lead in her system in the first place and that we are doing a good job of preventing her from more lead exposure. For the record here is what we have done:

1. Sweep a lot, mop a lot. For awhile we were mopping maybe every other or every 3rd day. Now it's once a week, but we are keeping up with it that often.

2. Be really strict about not letting Amelia eat anything that fell on the floor. (Since at least 75% of what we offer her gets tossed at some point during a meal, this is a lot harder than it sounds.)

3. Take our shoes off when we come into the house.

4. Touch up all the tiny sections of chipped paint on the walls.

5. Not let Amelia play in the front yard, where lots of old paint was stripped off on the exact day of Amelia's 12 months appointment. (I am still not sure this caused the problem, though, because the paint was being stripped while we were at the doctor's office.)

6. Teach Amelia to walk. (Ha! Not really. But she definitely gets less dirt on her hands, and is less obsessed with every little speck of anything on the ground, now that she is walking.)

7. Not let her eat so much sand in the park. Again, easier said than done.

So, Amelia will get another lead test when she is two. Until then, no eating off the floor. (After that... we'll see.)