1,275,930... 1,275,931... 1,275,932...

I'm counting my blessings. It seems like there is a lot of pain in the universe -- it's been practically palpable to me lately. At home I have this healthy, happy, delicious, Ruby-red dumpling to love on everyday, but there are so many parents who's children are suffering and I just don't know how to wrap my head around being so happy but feeling so much pain for others. It's like having one hand in cold water and one in hot water at the same time. The brain gets a little scrambled.

Things on my mind:

A family that I've never met -- acquaintances of a good friend -- recently found out that their two children have a rare disease that means their kids will not live past their teens. Their blog is here.

This picture.

The worldwide food shortage, which means mothers watch their children go hungry and do not get enough nutrition themselves.

That insane story about the evil, evil man who imprisoned his daughter, raped her, and fathered SEVEN children by her. Gross and sad, sad, sad on a million levels.

It's so trite and lame, but I never felt so deeply when it came to children until I had one. You get these amazing, vulnerable creatures, and all they can do is trust you to protect them and all you want to do is provide them with the very best of everything that is important -- love, touch, water, light, air, food, shelter, health. And I want to kill (or maim, or permanently injure) those parents who violate that trust and choose not to do those things. And my heart breaks for parents who want to do that but can't.

So I count my blessings.

First blooms in the backyard.

Every spring around this time, the jasmine bush in my backyard blooms. Here are the first blooms. The bush is in the background.


Here's the whole bush (the blooms from up above are on the far left). Can you imagine the smell when the entire thing is in flower? It's a little overwhelming, actually.

Spring. It's the darnedest thing.

10 months and counting.

For my own personal (and random, periodically intense) need for documentation, and because it's been FOREVER since I've done this, this... is Ruby's 10 month check-in.

• Probably most notable, she is crawling all over the damn place. I will say this now, but it goes for each subsequent bullet point: this is the cutest thing in the world. Like, if I uploaded video of it to Cute Overload, their website might devolve into slurry of rainbows and puppy paws. She is very determined and will take advantage of her new found mobility
  
• "Uh oh" is officially her first word, but "Mama" and "Dada" are also up there (actually it's more of a "mamamama" and "dadaDIda"). Mama applies to me for sure, but also to the dog, the cat, my mom, the swing at the park -- basically, anything she likes is "Mama." Dada is a bit more exclusive to Wade.

She is also...

• Playing on her knees.
• Pulling to standing (this is terrifying).
  
• Screaming (I love this and totally encourage her to express myself; my mom hates it and tells me that I am crazy and that I'll get tired of it. Not yet though!).
  
• Playing with her musical instruments (namely her maracas and bell-thingy we just brought back from Meh-hee-co).
  
• Dancing and bobbing head to music (frequently looks like she can hear heavy metal music no one else can).
  
• Loads of babbling and chewing on her tongue.
• Signing a tiny bit. She has signed "milk" once or twice and seems to totally understand the others like "food" (the thing is, I think I feed her before she realizes she's hungry, so usually, signing is unnecessary).
• Feeding herself Cheerios (actually, the Whole Foods equivalent, Perky-Os), sweet potato fries, whatever she can pick up in her chubby little fists.
  
• Loving being read to -- in fact, she threw her very first temper tantrum when I wouldn't read an extra book to her before her nap the other day.
  
• Throwing fits when you try and change her diaper. Like a full on tantrum. All she wants to do is crawl away and pull up on things. That is reason for living, her sun, her moon, her stars right now.

All in all, she's just a total baby right now. Just a cute, little, runny nosed, roly poly baby doll.

¿Qué tal las vacaciones?

We went to Cabo a few weeks ago! In attendance were me, Wade, Ruby, Nonnie Pat, Big Daddy Jackers, Jennifer, Jason, Baz, Isabella, and our benefactor hostess, Kathy. (Quite the full house -- and such a lovely house it was too!) The following pictures are in absolutely no order -- I could barely figure out how to get these picture up here; reordering them would require brain power that I simply do not possess right now.

Ruby played in the pool almost everyday. I thought she'd go bonkers over it, but she was kind of "Meh" the whole time. This is one picture where she's smiling.

The view from outside our room -- in one direction.

The view in the other direction. Not bad, eh?

Ruby looking very festive in native Mexican garb.

No really, all the locals go around wearing sombreros that have the name of their town on them.

"Why do you people insist on making me wear these damn things?" [Please note the wayward baby boob coming out from her top. I'm not really sure why they make baby bikinis other than the cuteness factor.]

"No really. That wasn't a rhetorical question. Why? Because you know what? I. Hate. Sunglasses."

Two babies enter! One baby leaves!

A very intense feeding session...

...culminating in even more intense nose grabbing.

Ruby and Isabella appreciating the fine talents of nanny Marcella. One time when we came back from being out, Marcella told me, "Ruby tiene gusto de música mexicana," and showed me how Rubes would kick her legs and bounce her head to the music. Marcella and Vivianna called Ruby "conejito" -- little bunny rabbit -- because she likes to scrunch up her nose and snuffle.

Making faces at Mommy.

Making a fussy face, but damn, those ruffles are cute, right?!

Baby cheesecake shot (and a smile too!). A side note: Ruby did not actually like the beach that much. She was due for a nap, we wouldn't let her eat the sand, and at one point when Nonnie Pat was sitting in the sand holding her, a giant wave washed up and Nonnie was forced to suddenly put Ruby over her head, inadvertently upside-down. Tears ensued.

Splashtown, USA (or Splashtown, Mexico, I guess).

Wade pushing her around like a tugboat. One of those naked tugboats.

This picture rather evokes this image, no?

"It's a circle of liiiiiiiiiiiife...."


Ruby fell in love on vacation. With maracas.

This pair came home with her, and she's pretty much played with them non-stop for the last two weeks.

Me and Baz. The Pacific Ocean in Cabo has a very strong riptide, so they recommend not even walking in the water. They neglect to mention that you also shouldn't walk in the water because there are some friggin big waves that will come up and knock over a three-year-old and make your white shorts all see-thru.

Jack, Wade, and Jason being badasses, riding ATVs.

And finally: a civilized picture of a mom and her little one.

Baby's first jinx.

Ruby's been working on a few words, but I think one in particular can be solidly classified as her first.

The other day, I was feeding her at her high chair when she dropped the spoon she was holding. We both looked down. She looked at me. I looked at her. And at the exact same moment, we both raised our eyebrows and said, "Uh oh."

She may only be a baby, but she owes me a coke. Those are the rules of jinx, and they are unflinchingly rigid.

Because I haven't posted any in (quite a) while...

The camera had run away from home and holed up at my grandmother's house, but we finally convinced it to come home (promises of more frequent battery charges turned the tide during negotiations). Aaaaaanyways, here are some recent Ruby pictures. She's 9 1/2 months now, dear god! Please to enjoy.

Naked day around the casa.


Fun with sleeping positions.

Visiting Great-Grammi.

They do like playing horsey together. Check out six months ago (!).

Playing with mommy's relatives on a sunny Sunday.

Couldn't you just slap my mom for being so gorgeous? Seriously, the woman is (don't kill me, Mama) 61, and she looks better than I do. Please, for my, Nik, and Ruby's sake, let this be hereditary.

Is LA not ridiculously pretty? And, um, Ruby and my cousin Saf -- they're pretty too.

And finally: Teething biscuit, the aftermath.

Wherein, as they say in the old-timey parlance, I pull a boner.

[For those of you who know me well, the following story might not be that surprising.]

Friday started as a great day. Ruby napped early and solid, I squeezed in a workout, Wade finally got his Radiohead tickets (for both nights they're in town), we had music class that R woke up perfectly in time for, we were going to meet Wade afterwards for the best damn veggie burger this side of DC... I really had my shit together.

Usually when I'm in this go-go-go sort of mindset, I get in a car wreck.

But I know this, so I kept reminding myself to slow down, take it easy, don't be distracted -- especially when driving for god's sake. So this "calm down, focus" chant is in my head as I'm getting in the car after Ruby's music class, as I'm backing it out, as I'm pulling up to the exit, as I stop at the stop sign, as I sort of register that the stop sign has some other words beneath it (but I did stop, so the rest of the words couldn't have been that important, right?), as I pull out in to the street... and as I simultaneously hear two guys yelling at me and pop, pop, pop, pop, hissssssssssss.

Yup, I had calmed down and focused so much that I had driven the wrong way out of the parking lot and right across the spike strip.

Really, this was more embarrassing than anything else. And annoying. And driving home in our ancient Civic with Ruby strapped in to the front seat with me was scary as hell. And I had really been looking forward to that veggie burger (seriously, y'all, they're ridiculous). But, on the other hand, it did give me a chance to try out our new environmentally friendly auto club (they took a little while, but they were alright). And, even though I clearly heard four pops and even though I don't understand how this happened, only the front, right tire actually was punctured and deflated, so it wasn't nearly as expensive as I thought it would be.

My mom has a friend who says that things like this -- weird, bad, but mostly just annoying things -- are actually the universe's way of clearing out some bad juju, so to speak. Like this one time at Thanksgiving, my dad accidentally turned on the wrong burner on the stove and instead of cooking the green beans, an empty Pyrex casserole dish heated up instead. I looked over at it a minute later, saw that it was glowing red underneath, touched the glass and, of course, burned myself (why do I do these things?), and then turned around to run cold water on my finger. Literally two seconds after I had turned around and crossed the kitchen, the casserole dish EXPLODED and glass shards went everywhere. But no one (thankfully, surprisingly) was hurt, so really it was just a scary, startling annoyance. It got rid of all the bad vibes in the air so that nothing worse happened later. Like, if I hadn't popped a tire on Friday, who knows? Maybe I really would have gotten in a wreck.

So really, I'm happy to have been inconvenienced and to have had to postpone my yummy lunch with my two boos. It was (yet again) a good reminder to harness my chi and not be such a flibertygibbert all the time. And we can go get veggie burgers another day.

Boobjuice 101.

For my friend, Ms. X, who just found out she was preggers (though it must be said that Ms. X dwells in a much more together state-of-mind than my metaphysical La La Land). She asked me a question about nursing bras the other day, and that got me thinking about breastfeeding in general. I thought I'd enlighten her (and my other preggie friend, Jessica, and now you) on what I've learned about breastfeeding... in the form of a sensory poem, inspired by Mrs. Glascock's class at Boonsboro Elementary School.


Breastfeeding Senses

Breastfeeding sounds like slurp, slurp... burp.

Breastfeeding tastes like cantaloupe juice (I heard that on "Friends" once, and it's totally true).

Breastfeeding feels like Corduroy pulling on the button on the mattress. In this analogy, of course, the mattress is your boob, the button is your nipple, and the baby is Corduroy. Breastfeeding also feels... sticky when the milk gets everywhere... heavy if you haven't done it in a while... tingly when the milk lets down... relaxing once you get the hang of it (especially if you do it lying down -- divine).

Breastfeeding looks like a piglet rooting around (or that just might be Ruby).

Breastfeeding smells like not much of anything. The babies smell nice. The spit-up smells gross (and is my least favorite part of parenthood, bar none). But breastfeeding... doesn't smell like much at all.

By: Michelle


There you go Ms. X. Congratulations again to you and Mr. X. I'm so happy for you guys!

From the foreign office: nothing is happening.

We're in San Antonio for a little R&R (I think everyone but me might actually be napping right now), and I thought it was a good time to play catch up. So... what's going on in La La Land?

A whole lot of nothing and I prefer to keep it that way thankyouverymuch.

Actually, that's not true. Ruby crawled (!) for the first time on Thursday, which made me happy and confident that someday she may actually walk too. (A note on crawling and the like: I thought surely when she finally did it, she'd turn around and look at me like, "...the hell? What just happened?" But she was totally unfazed by mobility. Babies are weird.) She's eating like a champ, babbling away, and generally enjoying being her fat, happy self. (I actually have some great naked pictures of her, but alas and alack, I did not bring the camera to upload and post those. Nudity will just have to wait.)

Everything is pretty much normal -- or rather, a new normal has been achieved, and we're just chilling here until something changes, life gets turned upside down and "normal" means something else. But for now... yay boring!