Buh, buh, buh; puh, puh, puh; muh, muh, muh

Today A had speech and he was the only one there--lucky! His teacher dotes on him (and really, who doesn't?). She's working on the bilabial sounds with him: B, M, P. So they colored in baby birds and momma birds and then played crash with the buses and trucks and blew bubbles. He said bubbles, beep-beep, and pop. I haven't heard pop at home, so that's good.

She invited me to a parenting class that starts tomorrow on how to help A speak, so I ran over and got the kindly old lady next door signed up to watch A for the next few Friday mornings and we will be in class.

A has a flu shot today. This will not help the doctor rehabilitation program.

Swimming blahs

Today's make-up swim class wasn't great. We had a sub since our regular teacher is on vacation (thank God, because I thought she'd never get one) and the sub didn't really know how class went and winged it. So A was a little confused but game. He did okay except for when she moved him around without really watching where he was and he ended up a little submerged and drank some water. That wasn't cool. She normally teaches the three- and four-year-olds so I'm guessing she just had issues adjusting to the babies. (One of the things she wanted them to do was shout, "Hooray!" They don't shout on cue yet, lady.)

But A grinned and grinned when he saw the pool so that's good.

A has had some nasty diaper rash going that's made him now wiggle and squirm like, oh, an electrocuted puppy every time I try to change him. On the last change, I apparently twisted something in my back by my left clavicle and now it's difficult to turn. Hmmm. Parenting is a full-contact sport.

Ladies first

My read-and-critique update comes first so the boy update will be at the top of the page.

I had critique group last night. We had a new member, someone whose baby is one day older than Young Master L, which means he's right around A's ago. She was pleasant enough if only looking not at all like she'd had a baby.

I am back to calling the prat the prat. He's a horrible writer but doesn't know it, which is the worst kind of horrible writer. His women are stereotypically "dark" in an Orientalist way that skeeves my little historian's heart and "hot" in a fifteen-year-old writing fan fiction based on Buffy or Babylon 5 way. He's having something published online this month, and that apparently gave him the confidence to nitpick everyone else's work.

One of the writers brought the same piece she'd written before because there's an anthology at the end of the month she's submitting it to and she wanted a last look-over from the group. He looked at it briefly, made the same complaints he made before, then lectured her on letting go over pieces and getting on to the next thing. "I have started something else; I'm just submitting this at the end of the month so I wanted a last opinion," she said. Never mind; he's still going to lecture her on the importance of not working a piece to death. Then he got up and left the table and paced around the restaurant, thank God.

He wanted to have an argument about whether or not "that" was needed in a sentence. Just for those of you playing along at home, current writing trends are to cut words, not add them, and most of the "that"s in the universe can be excised. The prat likes to add "that"s. He wanted to add one where it wasn't needed. I said, no, that's not needed. He ignored me and told the writer to go check with a picky grammar person. She said, "I am a picky grammar person." I said, "So am I, and you don't need it." So he was a little put out. I think he's working in Best Writer In The Room mode, and I don't have the heart to tell him that I've spent the last ten years writing and the last two years copyediting. That'll be my secret.

He had an POV (that's point of view) argument with me about whether or not the POV in my story switches. The story is first-person (just like this here blog), and his argument that it was a POV switch was because of a sentence like this: Now Jake has a toy mouse. See? Did that throw you? I, Miss Kim, writer of the blog, am making a statement about something my cat possesses even though I am not my cat. Did you suddenly feel like I went all omniscient and God-like there? Did it throw you that I didn't say, "I see that now Jake has a toy mouse"? No? Then you're three steps ahead of the prat.

The rest of the group is lovely. I was happy because I got to hear some interesting ideas from other people and spend some hedonistic little time talking about how to make my writing better. It's nice to be with people who are struggling along in their own causes. I have been consuming Miss Snark's blog, but I think it would be better if I didn't read her vorpal wit before read-and-critique group. I felt like my already pretty sharp knives were honed and poker-hot.

Classes and drywall and more

I know we're on the verge of a holiday (how can it be July?).

Saturday I went to part 2 of a "how to get published" class so now I'm raring to go. Need to write, need to get things done, yup. I've got one story to polish and send out as soon as the latest Writer's Market gets here and two more stories to finish and send out. And then there's that damned novel that probably needs the first six chapters chopped off, but I have to gear myself up for that.

Sigh.

While I was at class, A and C went to swim class. C learned to submerge A, which is great, and A had a good time but looked for his mom, which warmed my little mommy heart.

I realize I haven't given a food update in a while. This is what he eats now: apples, apricots, bananas, carrots, sweet potatoes, peas, peaches, winter squash, plums, chicken, turkey (although the turkey veggie dinner is not his favorite), avocado, rice noodles, rice, lentils, O cereal, oatmeal, barley, raisins, yogurt, pears, and the latest, mozzarella cheese. He now claps after we introduce a food that he likes.

We think he can say "Mom" and "more" and I'm pretty sure he's added "banana" to his signing vocabulary. He just refuses to do any of it on cue so we could jump up and down and say, "Yay, he's doing it."

Drywall: the drywall is a mess. You can see the seams and the space behind the wall through the tape in one place. The drywall guy is supposedly coming to fix it today between 9:30 and 10AM...yes, it's about twenty minutes after that. At least it's not our house or our money that's paying for this crap.

Swimming update

For the first time today, A floated on his own. This is a huge deal. The other babies in class can't stand to back float, but A always has a fine old time. Our instructor took her hand away and for maybe 15-30 seconds, he floated on his own. Then he wriggled and started to go under, so she put her hand under his head again.

So he floated. Wow.

Critique vs. criticism

I've got a boy in my lap who's tired but happy to be held, so we'll try typing around him and see what happens.

In my past life as a technical writer, I was subjected to criticism on my work, well, daily. I realized this week that it's inoculated me against criticism masquerading as critique. Critique is specific, kind, and meant to help. Criticism is vague and not helpful.

There's a writer in our group who I referred to earlier in this blog as a prat. After I read my story, he began his comments with, "Well, this first paragraph needs a lot of work." He said it with the tone of a contractor surveying fire damage, so sorry to tell you, it's worse than you think and it will cost a bundle. Weaker souls than me would have cried.

On reading the paragraph aloud, I realized I had an ambivalent pronoun (that other people in the group had already discussed), but as far as paragraphs go, the paragraph was pretty tight. My writing (not on a blog) is terse.

I turned to him and asked: "Could you be more specific?"

He hemmed and hawed. "Well, no, sorry. You've got four characters introduced here, and well, okay, four sentences, and this pronoun's confusing..." The other people in the group had a problem with the last sentence since it was delicately worded and had to read it twice, but I'm okay with that. The writers I love often make me read a sentence twice to figure it out and I'm happy to be in their company, or in their anteroom, anyway.

I looked at him, and not with my evil glare of death. This was my editorial, I'm happy to do anything you ask but if you can't ask I can't possibly help you look. It's pretty friendly. "Anything else?"

Nope. "Alrighty then." Then he went through a laundry list of things, one of which was actually good and the rest were kind of blah. And I realized: there is serious power in being able to say, is that all? Anything else? You've offered your harshest criticism and I'm not even blinking, in fact, I want more details about how much I suck and why. No? Okay, who else wants a go at me?

Anyway, after he read his story, I realized he's probably a sci-fi computer geek like many others I know who doesn't have social graces and is used to being the best writer in the room. I think he's only used to sharing his stories with adoring audiences. I have my own adoring audience too, but I also know they're not necessarily good for the unvarnished truth.

There were many aspects of his story that we asked clarifying questions about that he would answer with, "Do you want me to tell you or do you just want to read the story?" This is a response I've had, but I think he used it because he didn't fully understand what we were asking some of the time. There are questions about story and questions about technique, and sometimes you can answer a technique question with a story answer, but that doesn't help identify the technique issue.

He sent the story last night. Full disclosure: I read very little sci-fi on my own. I'll read anything that comes into this house, but past Dune and the Orwell/Huxley dystopia canon, there's not a lot of sci-fi on my own shelves. So maybe I'm not the audience. But the story doesn't actually seem to have a story. There's no character arc, the conflict was unbelievable and not that bad in terms of conflict, the "redemption" of who I can only guess is the protagonist is really silly, there's no come-uppance for the "villain" who I identified most with in the end anyway. Add in so many, many cliches and I don't know how to comment on this story.

Now I struggle with what to say in an email. He requested general feedback and no "pickys" whatever the hell a picky is. A typo, maybe? I read it again this morning to see if it made more sense and it didn't. I might call in a consult with my in-house sci-fi expert.

But the rest of the group was fabulous, supportive but insightful and kind. I'm looking at this email as part of training the sci-fi guy to be less "I am super writer, tremble before my insights!" and more like someone who gives good critique.

I am a super writer.

Right now, I think the biggest compliment you can get in a read and critique group is that they forgot they were supposed to be critiquing and were just waiting to see what happened next. But this might be because this was the compliment I got tonight at read and critique group.

It's so nice to eat a tart without having to make sure my wee little one is amused, or watching to make sure he doesn't choke, or trying to make sure he's not eating something disgusting like the grime-covered high chair strap or the edge of the table. Relaxing used to be the spa in Hawaii. Now it's eating a tart.

Eating and learning

That's what we're doing here. A is up to three meals a day and boy howdy does he like O cereal. He's cruising around everywhere but hasn't gotten to the standing alone stage yet.

What have we done? We got a baby gate installed at the top of the stairs, which makes everyone feel better. We hosted playdate here last week and everyone admired the baby gate. All the babies want to hang on the bars of the baby gate, which makes everyone nervous. A and I were noticed for signing; I made the "nurse" sign at him from across the room and he came to me to eat. I didn't think this was that big a deal, but the other mommies noticed so it must be.

We had swimming on Friday. A rocks. We practiced backfloating and he is the king of the back float. He's getting really good at paddling and kicking. We got to meet our swim class instructor's mother, which was nice since our instructor's so sweet. "She's been like that since preschool. She met everyone at the door and greeted everyone as they came in."

Now if we could get him to stop grinding his teeth together...

Swimming breakthrough

In swim class, we give the kids a one-two-three count before we do anything like jumping in the pool or going under water. Today, I was jumping A off the "island" in the middle of the pool back into the water. On three, he lit up and splashed his hands and kicked. He knew he was going back into the water and he was happy about it. (And maybe, just maybe, he understood that he needed to paddle his hands and kick?)

He was great at kicking and paddling today. He floats on his back really well; I'm holding him up with three fingers behind his head. I tried to take my fingers away today (gently, tentatively, under the instructor's supervision with big eyes) and his head sunk. So he's not quite ready to solo back float, but he's not crying like the other babies.

Peas and swimming

Well, our food loving ways stopped with peas. Yup, peas. A was game for a couple bites, then tried to scrape off his tongue. So we went back to sweet potatoes, bananas, and pears.

The kid doesn't like green veggies. He is my boy, that's for sure.

We're not force-feeding him, learning from my in-laws who force-fed C when he was a wee thing and then C threw up in his dad's bucket seat.

We went to our new swim class, which only has one other person, an 18-month-old named Rachel. Rachel is (obviously) walking and waving and things like that, but in terms of actual swimming prowess, she's not doing much more than A. She's jumping in the pool, sometimes not when she's supposed to jump in the pool. So I was relieved that A suddenly wasn't going to be in a class where he's completely outpaced by someone 9 months older. He did not have a rockin' time, though; less kids means more submersions and he was unprepared for all the submersions. But he did well.

Oh, and it rained in our downstairs bathroom yesterday. Yes, in the bathroom.

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.

Swimming, the grand finale

This was the last of our swimming classes for the first session, so it was super. The instructor got to class early to allow us to ask questions about our children's progress. A is doing super. The next major milestone in swimming we'll be working on is holding his breath. I submerged him today; I was reminded of dog training that's really owner training. It's scary; A is big and long and I'm small and not quite so buff. But I did it twice.

We're signed up for another series of sessions and I even remembered to tell the woman at the front desk we'd be missing some in the middle for vacation. This week's quickly becoming action-packed. Tomorrow we've got our flu shot (sigh) and time in Balboa Park; Wednesday we have an invite to practice baby signing, and Thursday's our weekly play date. Woo.

Oscar night and grown-up updates

TiVo makes the Oscars palatable, especially when they're running 40,000 commercials during the program. Ellen is not nearly the cupcake Jon Stewart is, though she is funny.

This weekend, C's brother came to town to see our Navy boy, so we got to see both him and the Navy boy this weekend, which was lovely. C and K (his brother, not me) got an up-close and personal tour of the helicopters, which impressed the hell out of C. (I had a protective mommy moment where I thought the noise level on a military helicopter base would be a little much for my little darling A, so he'll have to take a tour later when he can appreciate the hearing loss.) Then we tried desperately to find a place open for lunch at 3PM on a Saturday in SD which turned out to be harder than we thought; found ourselves a burger joint and topped it off with IKEA. All the Coloradoans need to make the IKEA pilgrimage when they visit. Anyway, good to see him on his eye-blink of a visit.

I had grown-up time this week, so you're going to be lacking boy updates, although he is still cute and adorable and all that. First of all, I joined a writing class, which I promised Miss Julie I will blog about but I'm going to give it one more class (so it'll have to wait until next week) before I tear it to shredded crunchy bits on the blog. No matter; it's still good for me. I did have the completely gross moment of introducing myself as, "I have an almost-seven-month-old at home and I need some adult time." You'll just have to wait for my startlingly amazing blog entry about writing class.

Also for grown-ups, today I joined the plumeria society. It's so dorky but I had such a good time. I am sure the plumeria society falls below the AV club in geekdom. There were probably 200 people there, so I'm not alone in adoration of the plumeria or geekdom. No, they weren't all blue hairs, either; I was surprised. They had two speakers, one of whom gave me hope that my plumeria isn't completely dead from frost. The other gave such a reassuring overview of plumeria care that I think I won't kill another one if I get one. They had a raffle and enough prizes that at the end they said, "Anyone who hasn't gotten a prize, come up and get one item off the table." I got a book on Gertrude Jekyll, plus I had to buy their starter guide to plumeria cultivation in San Diego. Now if I join the camellia society, I can have garden club meetings (and flowers!) year round. I met some lovely people who talked with great enthusiasm about their frost damage and what new plants they wanted to try and who was bringing cuttings of what to the sale in April--and most of your eyes are rolling into your heads, but to someone garden-deprived like me, it was wonderfully refreshing. It's nice when you encounter members of your tribe, you know?

Irony of the day: the plumeria society meeting usually scheduled for the fourth Sunday of the month is re-scheduled in April because the Balboa Park commissioners decided as a policy to cancel all garden club meetings that fall on Earth Day.

Swimming, Week...3?

I think it's week three. We skipped a week and that shot all my record keeping to hell.

We had a fun time today in swimming except for submersion. Boy do we hate that. A cried angrily. It's so rare to see him angry like that; it wigs me out. I know he's supposed to learn and blah blah blah but I'm his mom and I hate seeing him mad and crying. The instructor gave him a toy to chew on to cope. He got over it pretty quickly; one of the other babies was having a sad day at the pool.

So let's dwell on the amazing A and his swimming abilities. He kicks and splashes like a pro. He's enjoying swimming. Today I let him float on his back only supporting him with one hand under his head, so he's getting the concept of buoyancy. He really likes the pool, just not going under water. He likes the songs, the splashing, and standing on the ledge of the island in the pool where he can support himself with his hands. He loves that. I discovered this week he was a big fan of "The Itsy-Bitsy Spider" and we sang that today in class. Hot diggity dog, he was thrilled. Alas, the instructor only sang it once where I will indulge him twice or more, so he was irritated when we went on to "When you're happy and you know it."

Random baby-weight angst: I don't know if I've introduced the concept here on the blog that the other mommies in my class are drop-dead gorgeous and don't look like they had a cookie in their lives, let alone a baby. C disagrees with me but he doesn't go into the locker room with them. Anyway, I found out today that the most-rail-thin intimidating of them all actually wrote a (published) book on body image, which explains why the heck she's walking around nude so darn casually in the locker room (aside from being rail-thin--if I was that skinny, I might be walking around my neighborhood nude, I'd be so happy). In locker rooms, I try to minimize the amount of time I'm stark naked. This woman walks in, strips down, wanders around, plays a hand of poker--not quite, but you get my drift. She's nice; she's just extremely comfortable with her naked self in the odd public/private place a locker room is. Now I can be intimidated by the fact that she's both happy naked and a published writer (at least it wasn't fiction. I may have cried).

Too much mommy-pudge-angst, back to happy baby news: I think we're going to have teeth pretty soon. I'm going to take him for his six-month picture tomorrow (hopefully) because I think I see and feel something coming through soon in his bottom gum.

And crawling. We're still rocking and army-crawling around, but no actual crawling. A can do a single crawling step and then can't replicate on the other side. He also props himself into a sitting position mid-crawl, which gets distracting for him. But he wants to crawl. I don't know when he'll be crawling, but it's on the horizon.

No swimming, sigh

No swimming this week. A boiler valve broke over the weekend. The pool was only up to 80°F at one hour before class, so they canceled our class to prevent cold babies. All that's officially on the agenda for the week now is our six-month check-up on Friday.

One of the other babies from birth class (a month older than A) is crawling. We're going to need to babyproof pronto.

Swimming lessons!

Master A is going to be a pro swimmer. Bask in the cuteness that is A in a baby wetsuit. My boy will be burning up the lanes at the 2024 and 2028 Olympics, so get your tickets now. I'm not just saying that in the proud mama way; his father also thinks he's a super swimmer.

Mistah C had the day off yesterday, so he accompanied us to the palace of youth culture for lessons. A got in the water and started splashing. The other kids in class weren't quite into kicking and splashing, but he was. He had a jolly old time until we got to the submersion part of the class. Then he looked outright insulted and started to cry (at which point I realized how little he cries since it's very rare to see his absolutely upset pouting crying face), but he calmed down quickly. We've got another six weeks of swim lessons, so we'll see how this goes.

What other news? We got an exersaucer thingie this weekend at the resale shop. It gives me a minute to go to the bathroom, heat up lunch, etc. It bounces up and down which he seems to like.

Oh, and he finally slept last night with the long part of his sleep from 1AM-6AM, which made us so happy to not be awake at 4AM. I can't say how happy we were about that. Maybe it's the exercise?

Wow, long time, no update

Random notes here before I fill out my absentee ballot and vote. I took a quiz to tell me what kind of accent I have and yes, I am from the Northeast.

What American accent do you have? Your Result: The Northeast Judging by how you talk you are probably from north Jersey, New York City, Connecticut or Rhode Island. Chances are, if you are from New York City (and not those other places) people would probably be able to tell if they actually heard you speak.
Philadelphia
The Inland North
The Midland
Boston

We had no trick or treaters for Halloween. We had a boy in a cute tiger costume but it was too hot for him to wear all evening. I may still take him for professional pictures in his costume for his three month picture.

Master A is at 15 pounds and change at the last weigh-in (Friday), not bad for three months. He is huge. Huge! I'm glad we finally got the crib set up. He likes it a lot more than the basinette, probably because we don't have a bumper on it so he can see out of the crib easily. The mobile is interesting to him, as are the various toys we've got in the crib for him to look at. He's getting more self-amusing, which is good.

We had our Bradley class reunion Friday night. It was fun to see everyone and all the babies. I don't think any of them were as cute as our own, but I've been told he's extraordinarily beautiful. Oh, and I'm biased. Mistah A slept through the group baby pictures, probably so as not to blind the other parents with his gorgeous blue eyes (still no sign of changing, btw). He's so sweet that way.

Chocolate fountains are not good potluck food, just in case anyone wants my opinion.

Can I let the baby smoke every day or just on holidays?

It's a bad moment during baby care class when one of your classmates reports being dropped on her head as a child and you have to stifle a laugh because you had already guessed something had happened to her.

We went to baby care class Tuesday night. If you have an IQ above a carrot's and are considering a baby care class by these people, get a book and read it. Then take the extra $ leftover from the $20 you would have spent on a baby care class and go to In-n-Out. Have a shake and some good fries.

The directions to the class location were so poor that we walked all the way around the hospital. We found four other couples who were also lost. Finally, a nice hospital educator adopted our pack of preggos (I reminded her of an RN friend of hers) and walked us back to where Mistah C and I parked and said, "That building there." It's called the Administration Building on the directions, but everyone onsite calls it the Orcutt Building. This seems like a minor thing, but when you're asking everyone and their dog for directions to the Administration Building, it's critical. All of us are 15 minutes late.

The instructor greets us at the door with a very friendly, "But I already have everyone on my list, and I don't have enough babies or handouts for you all. And some of you are going to have to stand." None of the women I'm with are in the early stages of pregnancy, so the standing news goes over well. Mistah C and I have been signed up for this class since March. My keen sense of customer service tells me I'm in the hands of a master.

We find places around the corners of the room; thankfully, all the preggos get a seat, although one of the dads is still standing when the dust settles. The instructor (wearing a big oaktag circle that says Sharon) is extremely distressed at having to hand over her example baby doll to a preggo woman. Sharon is about 200 years old and has been teaching this class since before there were babies.

The class consists of watching video tapes from the 80s. They are warped to the point of being almost incomprehensible; the sound is ear-splitting. The one in progress when we enter is about bathing the baby. Some of the advice given in the film is wrong, like swabbing around the base of the cord with rubbing alcohol every time you diaper the baby. All the instructor is there for is to tell us when the film's advice had become outdated.

There's a break not long after we arrive. I get the last packet of info. It's all put together by sponsors - Johnson & Johnson, Kaiser Permanente, etc. It's not anything I haven't seen before. We also get a copy of "San Diego Parents" magazine, which is filled with ads for bounce houses and princess parties for our darling child's birthday. During the break, we're supposedly going to "rearrange the room so everyone can fit." Not so much. Mistah C and I spend the rest of the class along the wall under the TV sets. There are 16 couples in the room; each paying $20 a couple. You'd think they could have had enough chairs.

All controversial issues were glossed over or not mentioned. When we got to the "how should baby sleep?" moment, there wasn't even a mention of co-sleeping (or the controversy about co-sleeping). There are no discussions on how used cribs and mattresses are linked to SIDS. When discussing meconium, Sharon says, "They're messy; you might want to let the nurses in the hospital take care of those."

I knew Mistah C was getting a lot out of the class when he put the baby doll's diaper on its head. Then we discussed abandoning the baby for In-n-Out. The Q&A portion of class was insane. People were asking questions like, "If my baby is circumsized, should I use a Brillo pad to clean it?" "If the house is on fire, should I take the baby out first or should I take the baby's crib out first so the baby has a safe place to sleep while the house burns down?"

We were guessing we were among the oldest people in the room and that most of the parents were in their early twenties. Mistah C and I found out 1) where all the stupid people were and 2) that we already knew as much as we were going to know about how to take care of a baby before having one. Edumacated people of America, skip the baby care class for In-n-Out. You will thank me for it.

Everyone Else in Birth Class Gave Birth

One couple moved up a week from their due date and had their baby on the 4th; the other couple with the original due date of the 4th gave birth yesterday. Both were girls. That's three girls and one boy for our class so far.

Now it's just Mistah C and me waiting. I will roll 37 weeks tomorrow or Saturday, depending on whose math you're using. Then I will enjoy the "we made it to full term" sigh of relief and celebratory Ben and Jerry's.

I'm not at the fabled "I'm so sick of being pregnant" point, although it will be lovely to roll over in bed in the middle of the night without feeling like I need a crane to assist me. I keep telling this kid to stay in until it's done, which in my mind is at least 40 weeks but I won't quibble on timelines between 37 and 40 (or 42) weeks. It's just been a surprisingly easy pregnancy.

Week 12: The Very Last Birth Class

Two happy surprises in yesterday's birth class: both couples who have had their babies showed up (one gave birth a week ago yesterday, one gave birth Saturday night). I was so pleased to see them. We got to hear all about their births, which were both unmedicated. The couple that gave birth Saturday had tiny baby with them (the other couple's little girl is still in the NICU but doing great and we got to see pics of the cutie). I've got not enough time and too much sense to invade their privacy by trying to repeat their stories here, but if they end up putting theirs online somewhere, I'll post a link.

A lactaction consultant was also in attendance, and boy howdy would she not shut up. After the birth stories, she began peppering the moms with questions about their techniques. It was like being at a lecture you never asked to attend. I appreciate that she was trying to help, especially the couple with the preemie, but most of what she said, the mom said, "Yes, I'm doing that," or "Yes, I'm doing this."

The consultant put in a movie by an Australian consultant about breastfeeding which could have been, oh, a quarter of the length long. It was extremely repetitive. Halfway through the movie, the couple with the baby in NICU had to go visit the kid, and instead of stopping the movie like a sane and rational person to allow us to say goodbye, the instructor kept the film rolling and the consultant kept pointing out the same damn points that had already been made ad nauseum. I so would have rather said goodbye properly to the other couple; I was so glad to hear that they were all doing so well.

Anyway, part way through class, the baby looks like he needs fed. The lactaction consultant pretty much sacrifices the mom to the God of Education by making her the Vanna White of Breastfeeding for the remainder of class. While the consultant was helping them get settled, I think people tried to give them a modicum of privacy. Once the kid was latched on, this woman invited the entire class to come stare at this woman's breasts to observe the latch.

I don't care who the hell you are. Don't invite people to look at breasts that aren't yours. I asked the mom, "Is this okay with you? You don't have to be the class guinea pig just because you're here." She said it was; otherwise, I wouldn't have looked. I'm not sure what I was supposed to get out of looking; I probably didn't get what I was supposed to because I was so ticked off at this woman's assumptions of my classmate's comfort level as a new mom. I mean, we're all nice people and the new mom is capable of saying no, but she's also in an incredibly vulnerable position right now as a new mom and I wanted to respect that.

Anyway, the consultant kind of soured the rest of the class for me. She started talking about how we should be only wearing our pajamas for the first two weeks to send a signal to guests that we are not entertaining. Then she said something like, "There are some people you have to let in, like the grandparents," and this is where (yes, where was my emotional baggage again, ah yes, HERE are my 18 steamer trunks) I said, "Hell no," in my outside voice. The consultant tried to argue with me, but I wasn't having it. Nope. She may be a grandmother, but I am a woman with a backbone.

There is nobody who gets an automatic free pass to the house in the first couple weeks after birth (if you're not on the lease - and the baby and the cats already are, smarty-asses) and there is no tie of kinship nor cute little babydom that negates that. Sorry! I love you folks out there in blogland, but you had better damn well ask if it's okay for you to visit, especially if your visit requires luggage. It may be fine for you to visit if you're staying at the lovely Embassy Suites but not fine here in the tiny apartment of too much stuff.

Grumble grumble. Mistah C said I was not rude. Other people in class were laughing at whatever I said, so at least there's that.

I have to eat breakfast now so I can get to jury duty on time. Wow, jury duty. But that was class in a nutshell. I really hope we can stay in touch with our classmates; they're just cool people.