Friday, March 30, 2007

Eight months old

Young Master A has been around for eight months. Amazing, no?

This has been a long hard week of teething. We got one night of good sleep in the middle and then poof, no sleep the rest of the week. Last night wasn't too bad. We've been dosing him with Tylenol, which he likes, happily.

Monday we had swim class, where A did super, as always. He likes to drink the pool water (bad) but he is starting to close his mouth when we cue him that he's going into the water (great). There's no class next week for spring break.

Also on Monday, A decided he knew how to scale things. One day, he's completely horizontal and the next day, poof, he's vertical. He's moving somewhat from side to side, but he's now looking to get over things, like the side of the crib or the bins I set up as barricades. I'm trying to teach him how to get off the couch safely (feet first) but he still wants to go head first. All the other babies we hang out with do that too; I don't know why.

He decided he knew how to crawl. After months and months of crawling with the one, two, inchworm rhythm, he started cross-crawling on Monday. Now he's wicked fast. We need some baby gates.

We had a baby playdate yesterday. Half the moms I know are moving within the next year or two. That's sad for me; I really like them. Hopefully, we'll all keep in touch. It's been fun to watch the babies grow in all their different ways together.

Now if A could get those teeth through so we can all get some sleep...

Monday, March 26, 2007

Writing Class, Workshop Style

Writing class means every week we read one or two people's work (the euphemism for "don't know what the hell it is yet but I had to have some text to come to class") and then we talk about some other aspect of writing, like character development or plot or style or dialogue.

This class is a "breaking into fiction" class. It's for people who haven't written much before. I am not sure that I am the target audience for this class, but it's also good for me to be able to moderate the level of the challenge for class myself. Like this week, we're supposed to write a scene in the style of our favorite author. First, I have a hard time picking a favorite author, so I'll just pick from the ones I like the most. I could do Roald Dahl pretty easily, but I've opted to try Wodehouse instead. I'm not worthy of attempting, say, Toni Morrison. See? Self-moderated challenge. (By the way, the Wodehouse went okay but not great. Wodehouse is hard. Funny is hard.)

My fiction class has the same old people who are in everyone's fiction class. We've got the people who are weathered and grizzly and taking this class to write about their own lives. We've got the fan girl who follows this teacher from class to class. We've got the girl from the Peace Corps who has many interesting stories to tell and wants to tell them. We have the mommy who's taking the class to have something adult to do (that's me). And we have the prat.

In my past life, I ended up becoming a pretty decent (and harsh) copyeditor. I hack and slash with the best of them. I didn't realize how technical I had become about good writing until I started doing serious editing. But what I learned is that nobody (except the serious writers) wants every detail the editor has to offer. It's too much for most people.

I turn off my copyeditor brain when I read stories for class. I'm not talking about punctuation or typos, although I do mark the random typo from time to time. I'm talking about basic Elements of Style stuff. Why? Because Elements of Style is so simple that nobody does it all well, at least not in a "Breaking into Fiction" class.

This gets us back to the prat. The prat is the person who introduced himself at the first class as "specializing in sci-fi/fantasy, currently shopping my novel around to agents." Whoop de freaking do, sir. Get back to me when you sell the damn thing. The prat, having a novel that he's "marketing," feels the need to comment on all the Elementsof Style stuff, plus typos, plus ripping whatever story is there to shreds because, hey, that's how you learn, right?

I think it's crappy, especially when I don't see any signs of brilliance in his edits. Being a good writer does not make you a good editor.

Anyway, I submitted a short story (but only five pages, since, you know, people don't have time to read 15 pages) and I didn't get much feedback at all, which I don't know if that's a good sign. It was raining and I believe most people in SoCal turn their brains off when it's raining and they have to drive; maybe they didn't turn their brains back on. Maybe they didn't have any places for hack-and-slash improvement. I don't know. I used the word "genitalia" at one point in the story and someone commented that I shouldn't use the euphemism, which just made me laugh. I think anyone who knows me would have a hard time accusing me of holding back on a vulgar or obscene word out of shyness or prissiness.

There you go. Taking the class makes me think I need to do something to keep my editorial brain primed. We've got one left this week and that will be it. I'm not seeing anything that I'm terribly interested in for the next round (at least, not that I won't miss significant sections of for Bella Italia), but I'll definitely try a class again on some other level. Maybe not so much the workshopping.

Sunday, March 25, 2007

The TV Experiment

As some of you may or may not know, due to interpretation of a pain-in-the-ass HOA as a possible sign from the greater things on heaven and earth that we may dream of, we jettisoned our TV service at the beginning of this month No, we're not going to carve a sofa out of wood or start making our own clothes out of hemp. Yes, I know all HOAs are a pain in the ass.

I was really worried that I would be jonesing for a TV fix, if not Heroes or House (sigh, House), then at least an Oprah snack every once in a while. But it's been surprisingly easy to live without TV. It feels like we have much more time. We're getting Netflix movies and we watch those from time to time; I've been watching our West Wing collection while A and I go to recuperative nurse/nap mode. I've read about three times the number of books I normally do in a week. So far, the experiment's going well.

I have three blog entires going...

...and I'm going to ignore them all and start this one.

We haven't fallen off the face of the earth. A has been teething, a fact confirmed this week when C and I noticed at least one and possibly two teeth making their way through A's upper gum. He has been cranky and not sleeping well. The teething has been making A's gums hurt, which then makes him latch funny during breastfeeding, which means we've all been cranky here. There was a day last week when I heard myself say, "Oh, you're going to be weaned today if this keeps up." He's been nursing back on the 2-3 hour schedule for most of this week, which makes me cranky (and sore, right now--I had to dig out my tube of lanolin in your TMI moment of the blog).

We've been cranky, but still going through our normal routines. Swim class is super; A is really enjoying it. We've spent a lot of time walking through both the Zoo and Balboa Park in anticipation of our upcoming trip to Italy. I must look like a raving lunatic since I'm talking to myself with my Italian lessons in my ear. "D'ove il museo nazionale? E veccino? No, e ladro." (They are tapes, people, not books, so the Italian is completely as I hear it and wrong. Wrong wrong wrong.)

We've had playdates, one at Miss M's and one here. Of course, we vacuumed and prepared upstairs and everyone wanted to be downstairs. Why? I have no idea. I need to ask someone if the litter box really drove them out. We try not to be the "oh, you have cats" people but the cats do need to go.

A played with his first flashlight this week (part of mommy babyproofing the computer) and has started standing up next to things. His crawl isn't more than it ever was; I'm wondering if he's going to move straight to walking.

For those of you concerned about the state of the Mommy, I've been having grown-up time: my first pedicure since A made his appearance (lovely, going back there in two weeks), writing class (another blog entry, languishing in the draft box), and the plumeria society (which is having a cutting sale in another two weeks). The Daddy had a great review (he's modest, but I'm going to check my sources to confirm that he's understating the coolness of his review) at his kick-ass job and if he gets some sleep he'll be doing great.

Wednesday, March 14, 2007

Development of Mischieviousness

I was in my office looking for tax paperwork while I watched A crawl around the floor. He crawled out of the office and into the hallway, then into the storage room. I came around the corner to pick him up (knowing he can't go far) and he is laughing. He's delighted to be somewhere he's never been before.

Tuesday, March 13, 2007

So much time, so little blogging

Lots has happened. We've had our new swim class session start, a visit from A's grandparents (who left today, sniff), meals with friends from CO and our Navy pilot (aviator, I am told), and a trip to the post office to get A's passport. It's busy busy busy here. We spent a full day at the Zoo with the grandparents. That was a lot of fun. We saw a panda and a koala eating, which was amazing since those two animals usually sit like lumps.

A spent most of the 'rents' visit fighting sleep so he could be doted upon royally, but he did sleep for something like ten hours last night and he's gone to sleep at a more normal bedtime tonight, so life is returning to normal. Grandpa can make him laugh and Grandma can sing him to sleep. We spent a lot of time driving around in the car because A was napping and we didn't want to wake him up. Grandma and Grandpa got to go to swim class, very exciting, and see my sorry attempts at submerging A. But they did see what a super swimmer A is. I was amazed by how much that boy can fight sleep. He needed a lot more sleep than he had.

This is a sad attempt at a blog update, but I will work on it more in the coming days as life returns more to normal. Really!

Wednesday, March 07, 2007

Development of Humor

Today is a watermark day, people. Today's the day A first found something funny on his own, without prompting.

Our sweet white cat Niles has been neglected recently, so we've been making an effort to play with him more often. This morning I found one of his cat toys and starting throwing it up in the air to Niles. Niles would jump up and catch it in both paws. (He's brilliant, this cat.) I had A standing up against me, looking away from me towards Niles. All I'm saying throughout this is, "Niles, ready? Go get it!"

After two tosses, once Niles started getting really into it and jumping higher, A started laughing, fully belly laughs. There wasn't anything else going on, so I tossed the toy to Niles again and once Niles caught it, A laughed. Every time Niles caught the toy, A laughed. He laughs when we tickle him, make faces, or talk silly to him and laugh with him, but this is the first time he's spontaneously burst into laughter on his own cognition. It's pretty amazing.

Of course, Niles was nonplussed by the drooling unpredictable flesh lump making loud laughing noises at him, so he stopped once A got really revved up. But I'm sure he'll adapt.

Other news: A has figured out how to blow raspberries, so everything's now misted in baby spit.

Whirlwind tours

Time flies like an arrow; fruit flies like a banana. We had a whirlwind visit to CO last week to the lovely Casa de Bump. I must say, visiting friends or family makes me remember that people's homes can be beautiful places. This is not an ideal we're chasing here in the rental. We didn't do much of anything (aside from an art show--it's amazing when poof, one of your friends is an artist and a good one to boot) but we had a grand time. Colorado is cold compared to SD right now. It was just a day trip but so nice and felt so much longer than that, really.

How did our boy do? He's a champ. We had four flights (SD to Vegas, Vegas to Denver with no change in planes, then Denver to Vegas with a plane change). A cried from the time he was buckled into the seat until the plane began moving on the first flight and didn't wake up until Denver. The second set of flights was more harried, but that was not A's fault.

We met those people: mom who looked like Barbie in her skin-tight Lucky brand jeans and blue suede and shearling knee-high boots, dad who was dragged along against his will and spent most of the time playing with his phone, and their two screaming children, maybe six and ten (?), a girl and a boy. Mom left the boy in the gift shop by himself, the girl ran around taking off her shirt, and dad claimed "he couldn't watch both the bags and her [the girl]." These children did not look 5 and under, but they pre-boarded and sat right behind us.

So the girl is screaming for most of the flight, the boy is yelling about how he wants to sit next to a window and sit next to mom, and dad is pretending he doesn't know them. Mom is delaying the flight by getting the girl her Garfield book during taxiing. There was so much movement and noise from between the seats behind us (which A is facing in his car seat) that he didn't sleep until I threw a blanket over our seats to hide the horrible family. Then he slept the whole way.

On descent, the flight attendants say to C and me, "How old is your baby?" Seven months. "I haven't heard a peep out of him the whole flight." No, he's a good traveler. "I bet you guys are thinking, 'Never, never, never." This was a flat-out reference to the horrible family behind us. I said that saying 'Never' is the best way to ensure that's what you get, and they laughed, but they complimented us again on how super A is.

A slept through descent, disembarking, and the whole next flight. Our connection in Vegas was cut short because the plane arrived early, which meant I left a sleeping A and all our bags in the watch of a woman in a wheelchair and her family while I went sprinting to Burger King to get C so we could board the plane. C and I decided we really need to have a plane with seat assignments; it wasn't bad with a baby to pre-board (bulkhead 3 out of 4 flights) but it just wigs us out to find seats on the plane. But they certainly load those planes quickly.

Anyway, this trip was a good test of our travel abilities and new gear:
  • Travel crib - okay, but we need to spend more time getting A comfy in it. Quite light and inflates quickly.
  • New backpack-converting carry-on bag - great! C had nothing but good things to say about the design of the bag and pronounced it "well-engineered," which is high praise. We need to figure out how to pack a soft-sided bag again.
  • Vacuum-packing bags that suck all the air out of your clothes and compress them - very cool, although they seemed to do the best with Polarfleece.
  • 3 ounce bag rule - Fine except for contact lens solution, which stupid manufacturers aren't making in 3 ounce sizes I've seen yet. Nobody made me throw out my (gasp) 4 ounce bottle on the way back, however.
  • Freebie tote bag - still not great for much other than our swim class bag. We need a different lightweight tote.