20 Thoughts in 20 Minutes

I am not much in the mood to post lately but if I don't write something soon we will be on our Christmas vacation, so here are 20 random things I have been thinking about. I am giving myself 20 minutes to write it, because Amelia is napping and there is other stuff I want to do.

1. With the simple adjustment of Amelia's bedtime, all of our sleep problems have been solved! Oops, not really. After that one post about the early bedtime, Amelia started waking up, babbling and sounding fairly happy, at 4:45 am or earlier. So we moved the bedtime later. After 4 days, it was still happening, so we moved it back up to the earlier time. Now she's waking between 5:30 and 6.

2. I am so sick of thinking about sleep I could scream. Yet I still really, really want to sleep better.

3. I am confused about weaning. Sometimes Amelia seems to be self-weaning, other times she is a nursing fool.

4. I am disgruntled at the mixed messages I perceive about breastfeeding. When women are pregnant and have very new babies, the message seems to be "breastfeed or else!," a message that is more harmful than helpful. Then once the baby reaches a certain age--maybe 9 months or so--it's "hurry up and wean." Is this just in my own head?

5. Amelia has a new friend who is a hitter. What do you do when your baby hits other babies? And what are you supposed to do when your baby has a temper tantrum?

6. I miss my family. You know who you are. Come visit us.

7. Actually I have been very, very sad that we love so far away from our families. If we lived close to family Dean and I could leave Amelia with people who love her and desperately want to see her while we--gasp--saw a movie or something. What were we thinking?

8. That said there are a lot of things I love about my life here. I have a lot of friends. I love our house. Denver is amazingly interesting and easy to navigate. And

9. despite what you may think after reading my grouchy blog posts lately I am so, so glad that Dean has a job that allows me to stay home with Amelia while she is a baby.

10.* In a perfect life, I would go to a yoga class every day, get a massage every week, and write for 2 hours every morning.

11. I have been writing some. I am taking a "master class" that requires a "manuscript." So I have been reworking my manuscript. It's getting shorter instead of longer.

12. I wrote this series of poems that was 40 words each, 4 words per line for 10 lines. Now I don't like it and I am making the lines twice as long. But some of the poems want to be 5 lines and some want to be 6.

13. It was supposed to snow 6 inches here last night and not a drop. Denver has negative humidity, I swear. But after a week or so of unseasonable warm weather, now it is very cold.

14. Amelia is starting to say "no." Sometimes for no apparent reason. It often sounds more like she is just making the sound for the letter n.

15. Teething, you will be the death of me. I am attributing all of Amelia's weird sleep and fussiness to teething. The upper molars are breaking through at approximately 1/16 of a millimeter per day. Sometimes, out of the blue, poor Amelia starts wailing and gnawing on her fingers. We are making liberal use of Ibuprofen, Baby Orajel, and cold teethers.

16. I am still wearing my pajamas. If you want gift ideas for me, think warm pajamas.

17. Also: warm slippers, the ingredients for margaritas, those wrist warmers that are like gloves without the fingers, and gift certificates for yoga classes and massages. And could you come here and watch Amelia while I go to the yoga classes and get the massages?

18. If you asked me what I wanted to Christmas in the past couple of weeks and I said I didn't know or nothing, sorry. I just thought of that list as I wrote it.

19. I also like Anthropogie gift cards.

20. But what I really want more than anything is for all of our family to come visit us a lot. All of you. Everyone. And if you are Gano, we are serious when we say we want you to live next door.

*In rereading number 10--and the rest of this post, for that matter--it occurred to me that am a very spoiled person. I already have what tons of people would consider a very perfect life. I really do love my life, even if it's not perfect. Winter is making me grouchy. And underneath a lot of these superficial worries are more substantial ones, like how Amelia is going to grow up in a world filled with poison and melting polar ice caps and war and a Congress full of politicians who overuse the phrase "the American people" and can't get anything done. But my 20 minutes are up. So let me just add one more thought:

21.** What I really, really want more than anything is for everyone on earth, to be able to have the space to breathe, to consider the kind of world they would want to leave for the people who will come after them, and to be able to, with love in their hearts and in ways big or small, make the world that kind of place.

**Now I feel like a contestant in a beauty pageant. But it's been over half an hour and the clock is ticking. Peace.

Untitled

It is winter here. We woke up this morning (at 4:30, but I don't even want to talk about that) to a very lightly snow-coated world. Under the full moon, it was pretty and peaceful and I baked a pumpkin pie, but now the sun is out and it is windy and bright and terrible. Snow sparkle in the wind so you can see where the wind is going. And the wind is swirling.

I dislike winter. I think I have reptilian roots somewhere and part of my soul freezes when it is cold outside. I am vaguely but constantly itchy and grouchy. Baking, putting up Christmas trees, and drinking hot chocolate help, as does yoga and wearing my bathrobe all day long. Or big sweaters. As long as they don't itch.

I have been writing this morning so that explains some of the weirdness of my opening paragraphs. I am writing about dreams and from the voice of Ryan in Teen Mom, so I am bit out of my normal speaking voice.

We got the results about the lead. Turns out there is a little lead in the dust in several places in our house. We had some work done on the porch that exposed some old paint and some unseen chipped paint inside. So now the outside is cleaned and the inside has been touched up and I am doing to try to mop every other day. Hopefully that will solve the problem. Amelia will be retested in two more months.

I feel guilty for buying an old house and for not mopping it enough. You read all these articles and things that encourage moms to let the housework go a little--and then you find out there is lead in the dust on your floor. The irony is I sweep twice or even three times a day some days. But that just sweeps the lead dust around. Horrifying.

Something about winter is making it very clear to me that we have actually MOVED to Colorado and are not just here on an extended visit. I feel a little shocked. It also has to do with our first experience here that made me realize that we are essentially all alone. We had norovirus. (This was not actually diagnosed by a doctor but it was some sort of terrible stomach virus so I am calling it norovirus.) Amelia had mild symptoms last Saturday, the night before we were leaving for Santa Fe for a week (Dean had a conference for work). Saturday night, I also had symptoms, much less mild than Amelia's. All night. It was terrible. So at about 5:30 Sunday morning, I faced a dilemma. Option 1: In the aftermath of a terrible stomach virus, with a baby who also might still have a stomach virus, get on a plane. Option 2: Stay home, alone, with a stomach virus, and take care of a baby who might still have a stomach virus. Alone.

I have some very nice friends here, but they have babies too. And it takes a special friend to come over and take care of your baby and be exposed to your stomach virus so they can take said virus home to their babies. Pretty much the only person you can ask to do that is your mom. And all moms in my life are about 1500 miles away.

So I decided that if I could keep down some crackers and ginger ale, and if Amelia was okay, I would go. I did and she was, so we went.

We had a nice time in Santa Fe after about Tuesday. (Dean spent Monday battling the norovirus. To any Federal Public Defenders who find themselves feeling a bit under the weather this week, we offer our deepest apologies.) However, Amelia was oddly whiny for most of the week. I don't know if she missed her crib and her Gee and her high chair and her nightly YoBaby Yogurt Drink or if she was perplexed that we had apparently moved to a hotel room or what. But she was whiny. It got old. Also, she slept great in the hotel till the last night, when she woke up 3 times. And she has been making up 2-3 times a night since we got home Sunday.

We are still nursing. I am perplexed. Sometimes I want to quit and sometimes I don't want it to end. Before we left Amelia had pretty much weaned herself to 3 nursing sessions a day but traveling always makes her revert to the breastfeeding habits of a newborn and now it's like every time she sees me she dives for the boobs.

Who knows. Maybe after Christmas we will go cold turkey. We leave for NC again in about 3 and half weeks and I don't see the point in making any huge changes before then. I think after that we are going to swear off all travel till the spring.

This is not the cheerful Amelia Update I had intended to write. But now Amelia is awake. Until we meet again, my friends, drink a cup of hot chocolate for me.

Happy Hour

On Fridays I've been going to a class called "Happy Hour Yoga," so called because of the time it's held, from 5-6:15 PM. This class really does coincide with the many happy hours being held at the bars along Pennsylvania Ave, near the yoga studio. Now that it's warm, these happy hours have spilled into the outside seating, so when I go into yoga and when I come out, I walk past a block full of people happily sipping lovely glasses of white wine, with the sunlight shining though the liquid, and tall, dewy pints of cold beer.



I really miss white wine. I really miss beer.



P.S. I did have a delicious virgin pina colada at dinner last night--fresh coconut and pineapple juice. Although I DID note the irony of being pregnant and having to order the "virgin" anything. Ha. (Just as I noted the irony, last night as I was telling Meg about my yoga class, of me saying that I wanted the other women in the class to pay more attention to my pregnancy. It's not a prenatal class, and I am the only pregnant woman who goes. I secretly (well, not so secretly anymore) want them to ask me lots of questions, look admiringly at my belly, and such. I said, "They must be very self-centered.")