Turkeys

Among the many, many things we have to be thankful for this year are the huge things--the birth of our daughter, and her escape from any consequences of her early illness--and some small ones.  

Three really tiny ones, to be precise: Allison Clare came forth with not-one-but-three new teeth on Thanksgiving morning.  We'd been waiting for one of the teeth for almost six weeks: every morning, we'd peer into her mouth at the little squiggle of tooth apparent just beneath the gum, but every night, it was still there, stubbornly unmoved. During that whole time, Allison Clare had been drooling to beat a pack of St. Bernards, and I'd been getting up with her multiple times some nights to administer what felt like quarts of Baby Tylenol.  The night before Thanksgiving, she woke up four times between 4 a.m. and 6 a.m., crying and holding her mouth--but then in the morning, there it was, miraculous and triumphant.  Like a little present.  And accompanied by two other stealth wingmen teeth.

My parents were in town, which meant they also got to admire the teeth and help out with the cooking.  My mom even did a lot of the cooking on Wednesday while Sam and I escaped for a rare afternoon out alone together (Olive Garden, Best Buy, and Barnes & Noble . . . conventional suburban life has become an oasis of pleasure).  Thursday we passed the baby around and roasted a huge turkey, and having my parents here made it a holiday and a celebration, instead of just a lot of food.

Allison Clare seemed to know it was a special day: she ate with us at the dining room table and seemed excited that everyone was there, since usually we feed her in her high chair in the kitchen.  She gobbled down the mashed and sweet potatoes I gave her, then had her evening bowl of cereal and fruit, and then demanded even more by making her little hungry sound ("Amamama" . . .  Sam claims she is trying to say "Daddy."). So Sam gave her a whole extra container of baby food with some more cereal mixed in, with the end result that she ended up eating twice her customary amount. It was hilarious--it was as if she sensed what Thanksgiving involves.  To cap it off, she slept in late on Friday, like she was sleeping off the huge meal.  What a girl.

Today was a nice, bright day, and we walked a couple of blocks down to the park so that Allison Clare could visit the baby swing (in her cap and booties from Aunt Anjuli--thanks!):

And then we came home and watched Daddy work:

(Yes, I am a slacker.  If you look closely, you might even see the reflection of the television, which I was watching from the couch while my husband ran the leafblower.  But hey, I had dinner on the table an hour later, so it all comes around . . .)

Meal Plans

My husband is a dear, willing fellow, but it is in everybody's best interest that at our house, I do the cooking. For him, cooking involves "driving thru," dialing, or on special occasions, heating up the oven and tossing in a handful of pizza rolls.

One would think that a person so disposed must have few preferences about food. One would be wrong. My husband is one of those rare individuals with epicurean tastes and (before we married, and during one low point in our house renovations) fast-food habits. What he likes about fast food is its absolute predictability: your fries might be a little crispier or soggier, but a Big Mac is a Big Mac is a Big Mac. Other food choices involve daring calculations of risk; he seriously can taste the differences between two seemingly identical brands of grated parmesan cheese, or olive oil from different kinds of olives. This is, of course, impressive, but makes him high maintenance as an audience for dinner.

On the other hand is his general affability and appreciativeness. He is overjoyed to have meals prepared for him; while I'm cooking, he comes down from his office to lie on the couch for his first calm minutes of the day and watch the news, his feet shuffling with barely contained happiness and anticipation of the meal. This incites my wifely devotion, so I want to make him good meals.

With the threat of fast food hanging over my head (I personally love McDonald's, but would be ashamed if my husband had to resort to it because I had failed to provide for him), I always feel that I need to have a meal plan in place. It's the planning and shopping that determine my success or failure in a given week. I recently purchased a pad of paper with the days of the week on it to put out in the kitchen, and have tried to plan meals based on a complex algorithm involving 1) ingredients we have fresh or left over, 2) time I leave in the morning (can I set up the slow cooker, and maybe start it going at lunch?), 3) when we both get home from work, 4) whether it's a Bath Night (bathtime extends bedtime back into dinnertime), 5) health (not too much red meat, even though I honestly love cooking with it), 6) what we are likely to have had for lunch, and 7) variety.

All of this strategizing might sound like a hassle, but I have to admit that my inner housewife enjoys it a lot. I use the slow cooker and breadmaker a lot, and I make a lot of double and triple batches of things that I then freeze for quick meals in the future. Some of them aren't quite as good after having been frozen, but others, like a hearty vegetable beef soup or chili, are really just as good, and all I have to do is drop a frozen container full into the pot on the stove. Because Sam doesn't like to eat the same thing soon again (a weird psychological hang-up, sort of like when you can't eat the same thing after you've gotten sick on it once--he has had a series of unfortunate experiences with leftovers), I also freeze ingredients, so if we have roast chicken one night, I pick the rest of the meat, freeze it, and we have the makings of quick chicken pot-pie for another night.

So, based on Yolanda's blog with her recent weekly menu (which sounded totally yummy), I'm interested in what meal ideas people have. What do you like to cook, especially when short on time, and how do you manage it? Recipes, please!

Joy of Church Fellowship, Rightly Attended*

*apologies to Edward Taylor

When I was growing up, we went to church most Sundays, unless there was a reason (some other activity, or a busy weekend). And we didn't go during the summer, I guess because the other six days were pretty demanding on the blueberry farm.  But as an adult, once I found churches that I really loved, I never wanted to miss the service.  The experience of worship was joyful and meaningful, or healing and strengthening--and it was also one of my favorite social hours, when I'd get to see my really good friends, catch up, etc.  

Since we've had Allison Clare, our church attendance has been the lowest in my life since the old blueberry-picking days.  She cries loudly enough in the nursery that the trained ear can hear her in the service, so we had been keeping her with us until she recently developed a new habit of shrieking randomly, whether out of joy, pain, existential angst, or some eureka moment known only to herself.  We take turns walking her, out in the lobby where she's quieter and we can still hear the sermon, but it does take away from the whole experience in that one feels like a spectator--barely.  And I've always felt that what's important about the sermon is not the information presented (after 34 years in church, it's rarely something completely novel), but rather the way the speaker makes that information salient, and the way that I can give myself over to absorbing its truths into my life.  That's hard to do while shushing a squirmy baby in the lobby.

Further complicating matters, Allison Clare naps at 10 every morning for about an hour and ten minutes and the service is exactly then.  She can be coaxed to drop off for a few minutes in the service, but there's always occasional applause as announcements are made, songs or video, etc., that wakes her up within a few minutes. I really don't like making her skip naps because I've become persuaded that they are a biological need (in the same way that I wouldn't make her skip a meal). This morning, she woke up early and was very tired as I was getting ready for church, and I ended up deciding not to go because I wanted her to have a good nap. She slept for over two hours, and I have to admit, I was glad that I let her sleep, even though I was sorry to miss church.

So, the long and short of it is that I'm really not sure what to do.  It's not just a practical question, but a spiritual one too.  I feel that having Allison Clare, it's all the more urgent that my life be centered around the worship of Christ, and that I be attuned to how he might be leading me, because I have a little one to lead in turn (it was equally important before I think, but I feel that spiritual responsibility very strongly now, which I think is a good thing).  I'm okay with sitting out of more church services than I'm used to if I should in order to take good care of my baby, but I also don't want to be unwise about it . . . I do believe that our closeness with God is always either waxing or waning, and while that doesn't mean it always looks the same, it does mean, to me, that we should safeguard it with a bit of fear and trembling . . . because it's precious.  

I'd be interested in hearing from any of you out there on this, especially (but not exclusively, since a broader perspective can help too) those who have had little ones in church.  Thanks!

Updates

Update 1:

Also while Sam was on Mancation, I successfully re-sleep trained AC, and I'm feeling stupidly proud of it (after all, she's 8 months old, so it's not such an achievement).  But the last couple of months had gotten pretty hard, with her return to two awakenings a night prior to our consult with the pediatrician.  I think the recent increase in rations coincided with a growth spurt: for about a week, she ate huge bowls of food at every opportunity, and then for another week, she slowed down quite a bit.  Then one night, finally, she didn't take much at her night feedings, and the next night (Mancation Night 1), I decided not to go in to her unless her cries got progressively more urgent, as they had when she was waking from hunger. She woke up twice, but put herself back to sleep both times without me.  The next night (Mancation Night 2), she slept all the way through from 7:00 p.m. until just before 6:00 a.m.  Let me say it again: ahhhh . . .

Update 2, rated F for female audiences:

She'll be nine months old in a few weeks, and I'm reminded of the "nine months on, nine months off" adage about pregnancy weight gain.  I still could definitely use some toning, but I dropped my Pilates routine from the summer after just a couple of weeks because it was just sooo boring to do by myself, and I had much more enticing things to do during AC's naptimes.  Sigh.  Is this what they mean when they say, "She's let herself go"?  Meanwhile, I really think my bottom is getting flatter, which is not a good thing for an Asian woman; I've had to buy a belt to keep my pants up because even though I had bought new jeans a size smaller, I found I could pull them down to my knees without unbuttoning them.  This might sound like a good thing, but again, not for an Asian woman and especially not when coupled with the squishy midriff--I'm basically becoming ovoid.

Turns Out, You CAN Get Good Help These Days

When April, our babysitter, arrived today, I greeted her at the door with Allison Clare on my hip, and that little heartbreaker of mine smiled and reached out for the babysitter.  Whom I think I'll now have to fire. ;)

Or, I'll just stand over the crib at 3:00 a.m., and look down at my hungry babe and say, "Where is April now that you need her, huh? Bet she's sleeping in her nice, warm bed!"

Mancation 2008

This weekend is Sam's annual "mancation" event, the activities made all the more unspeakably masculine by the addition of a deep-fryer and the vow to consume only deep-fried foods over their three days together.  When mancation happened last year, I flew to Nashville and lived it up with Clare (oh yeah, we hit all the biggies--Target, Starbucks . . .).  This year, I've got my little buddy in tow, and though I was sorely tempted to get us up to Connecticut to see little Sinjin--who is tied with my new nephew Dominic for cutest boy baby ever--Allison Clare's travel etiquette being what it is these days, we stayed at home.

It's been nice, actually.  Yesterday was a little happy-hour style event on campus, and I toted AC along in her sling. She really loved it--she was bouncing up and down with excitement at seeing everyone.  She's getting more active--and defying my expectations, she appears to be about to crawl after all (she had shown so little interest that I'd expected her to just take off walking one day, since she much prefers standing to tummy time).  In fact, I purposely didn't put her down much for crawling practice today because if she managed it for the first time while he was away, Sam would be so disappointed.  Today we got a ton of errands and chores done in record time, and then went out to get dinner with another friend and her sons, as her husband happens to be on a mancation of his own.

So it's been quiet and productive and relaxing--perfect, and yet it's shown me how accustomed I've become to having Sam around.  Maybe that's totally unremarkable to those of you who have been married for a while, but to me, the process of habituation seems funny.  I'm doing things I would ordinarily consider to be a treat, like pushing all the war movies down the Netflix queue, and ordering all Grey's Anatomy for the weekend.  And making decaf in the coffee pot, and cooking huge amounts of spaghetti (Sam likes a variety of foods, while I would happily eat Italian food every single day), and not finding the sink periodically full of glasses.  And Allison Clare has been very easy these two days, so it hasn't been hard to take care of her. 

But I still miss Sam.  After AC went to bed, it felt weird to have the television all to myself, and not have to sit through the Daily Show and the Colbert Report and the actual news before getting to watch something soap-operatic like Brothers & Sisters.  Even though Sam is often upstairs working while I'm downstairs grading or reading for class or watching TV, just knowing that he wasn't there, the whole house felt so empty and quiet and sort of adrift somehow.  Having a husband is a lot of extra work, but it also makes all of the work worthwhile.

Sojourns

Last weekend, we traveled to Ohio for a reception honoring Sam's mentor from OSU, and a visit to the Hamil-tucky relations (Hamilton, Ohio, being populated densely by emigrants from nearby Kintuck).  Sam had contributed an essay to a collection published in honor of his professor, and he was one of the former students speaking at the reception. 

With all the pomp and circumstance, it didn't sound like an event for babies.  So instead, Allison Clare and I had our own little adventure at Easton Town Center, one of those new shopping/restaurant districts.  It's set up like a city, and it's big enough for multiple Starbucks and even other retailers in duplicates.  I made a pilgrimage to the Cheesecake Factory for the shrimp and bacon club with special sauce (purports to be grilled, but has got to be practically deep-fried in butter), where AC sat in the booth corner cuddled next to me, cheerily amusing herself with the spoon the entire time.

All of that angelic behavior was maybe to throw us off the track of her plans for what will surely go down as one of the most harrowing nights of her infant year.   We had rented a hotel room right there in the middle of the "town," so we had a place to crash at AC's early bedtime (thanks, Yolanda, for your blog post on traveling with Lydia--based on your experience, we made sure to get a room with a bedroom door that closed and a separate sitting area).  After she was in bed, we ordered really good Chinese food and enjoyed the evening talking, reading magazines, and working on Sam's sabbatical proposal.

At about 9:30, she started wailing.  We were able to settle her down, but it happened again--she seemed to be scared and upset waking up in a new place. So eventually, when we went to bed, we pulled all the pillows off and brought her to bed with us, something we could never bring ourselves to do when she was smaller (I don't know if I would have rolled over on her, but I could easily have seen myself pulling a blanket over her head or something).  

She was so excited at this treat that she giggled and rolled around between us, pulling Sam's hair and reaching for my face while we tried to sleep.  Finally, Sam gave up and got up, and I continued trying to get her to sleep. She would start to fall asleep, then wake up with a shriek . . . it happened over and over again, every 10 minutes or so, until about 1:30.  I was almost unbearably stressed by the end because I was so worried about her keeping other people awake, if there was anyone next door.  We had frantic, hushed negotiations--should we take her out in the car? drive home? wake his parents and drive down to Hamilton?  She finally fell asleep for a few hours, and when she awoke after that I'd manage to quiet her down before she made any loud sounds.  

Naturally, in the morning, she was her cheery self, and her two zombie-like parents escorted her down to Hamilton, where she charmed her grandparents, aunt and uncle, and cousins. 

It's stories like this that make me want to respond (when people say, "And how's the baby?"), "She is great!  Her life is easy!  It's our lives that have gotten ridiculous."  ;)

Tricks and Treats

Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you--

The world's angriest pumpkin.

As you can see, Allison Clare at first appeared disinclined to be a pumpkin.  However, she quickly developed a (contagious?) zest for the role.

She helped us hand out grins and candy to the first of our 200 trick-or-treaters before anticlimactically drooping off to sleep about 15 minutes in, and being carried up to bed.