Thanks to Daniel the Tiger, my child decided suddenly she just plain had to make a storybook.

So we did.

All text is precisely as she specified it (along with her titles on the cover page); all drawings are hers. I did the paper cutouts to her request and specification. Shared largely without editorial comment; I'll transcribe the text below each image in case it's hard to make out. A couple of explanatory notes at the end.

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I think it's getting to the point where I can declare the newest addendum to our bedroom routine a 'win'.

Previous routine: As close to 7:30PM as can be managed (so, sometimes 8:45 ...), kid gets told, "Tooth time!" In an ideal universe, she then goes into the bathroom, uses it, gets her final Toilet Candy of the night (if applicable), then we brush her teeth. Well, she picks a toothpaste and shoves the brush around and then one parent brushes her teeth for her. Then there's a shift-change and the other parent superintends changing from undies to diaper, putting on of sleepers, picking of Lap Story and Bed Story, and read-alouds from same books.

Then the Story Parent leaves and the kid goes to sleep. In theory. She would regularly sit up and make noise and read and play with toys and try to turn her room's light on, etc, meaning not ACTUALLY asleep till after 10PM, regularly, even if the Story Parent got to leave before 9.

Then, a month or so ago, she started having a lot of really emotional brain-growing, and started freaking out about being in her room alone. However, a parent sitting with her after conclusion of Bed Story led to her being awake and trying to talk and play with said parent.

We have implemented two new policies that seem to be making all the difference in terms of getting her down and actually ASLEEP in a reasonable amount of time, without one parent having to spend literal hours soothing her.

First up: The Glowy Bracelet Award for Good Bedtime Helping. We have always used the ability to take away stories as a threatened stick to head off bedtime-related faffing about, but now there's a carrot: If we make it through the entire bedtime routine straight through to picking stories without either parent having had to resort to counting (we do a 5->1 countdown as a warning measure that a Consequence is about to ensue if the oppositional behavior is not quashed) AT ALL, then Beka gets a glowy goth-bracelet ($1/15 at Michael's) to keep with her all night. Any time Faffing About is initiated, I stop her, ask her to look at me with her listening ears on, and remind her that if there is a GOOD bedtime with NO COUNTING, she will get a glowy bracelet, but that to get it, she has to HELP us all bedtime and no fighting.

This has cut short the amount of oppositional annoyance we have to deal with at bedtime significantly; she's getting a bracelet 3 nights out of 5, on average. We used to offer a sticker on a sticker-chart in the morning, but having the bracelet with her in bed seems to work better.

Second: a modified 'sit with' policy. At conclusion of Bed Story, she almost instantly asks for "Papa to staaaaaay a little while." Our new response is, "I will set the timer. If you can be flat and quiet until the timer goes beep-beep, I will come back in and stay with you for a little while." If she's noisy, the timer's interval (somewhere between 20 and 35min, depending on the night) is reset to full length. When we get to the beep with a full quiet interval, about 1/3 of the time she's already asleep. if still awake, I poke my head in and say, "Flat and quiet?" and she lies down and grins. Then I come sit at her bedside quietly. If she wants to talk or sit up, I say, "If you're not flat and quiet I can't stay, sweetie," which usually solves it. If not, I do leave (sometimes re-initiating a timer for my return).

So far I haven't had to sit for longer than 40min, which is far better than the previous sometimes-2hr interval. She gets quieter, and stays quieter, and seems more willing to genuinely relax into sleep.

Win!

So after our last set of 'put offers on houses' activity crashed and burned in spectacular, weeks-long slow motion (short answer: none of those sellers would take FHA loans, and nobody wants to make us a conventional), we kind of burned out on the entire concept for months.

However, as of this week, I've seen four houses, brought John to two, and we've put an offer out on one. :-> Yes, we work fast, but (as I hope to be able to show you once it's ours) it's really an amazing house, right down the center of what we want in a house.

Also, in Chicago. In Albany Park, by some people's estimation, though others draw the neighborhood boundaries differently. Near Montrose and Pulaski, at least. Convenient to two different CTA trains, very up near several people I know and would love to visit more often. Huge house with a lot of original windows, decorative features, etc. ENORMOUS kitchen. Perfect for hosting housefilks and other gatherings.

Which doesn't mean I've quit window-shopping other listings online; I won't ask our realtor to schedule showings on any of them until we've given this offer a little while to marinate and see if they snap it up.

So, very long frustrating story (that I will not tell now), but we didn't get that house we had an offer out on. Because of this, I've been seeing more houses. Joy.

One of the ones I saw last week was promising enough I wanted John to see it; and since I had a slate of stuff to see today, he took the morning off and we saw them all together. Herewith below are the (very positive!) results.

tl:dr version of this post: we have several solid Oak Park prospects and will probably be signing yet more offer paperwork this weekend.

I could actually be very happy (all other things being equal) living for years in any of the four ones we quite liked, it's just a matter of finances, home-inspectiony details I'm not qualified to determine, and whether they'll take what we can offer ($150K max).

The differences between our four prospects are basically all a matter of swings and roundabouts, and the ranking I've chosen is at heart a little arbitrary. If I HAD to pick an order, it's the one I'd pick, but they're all between pretty good and awesome.

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I was commenting online in a different forum that since early days we've read big honking popsci and other adult nonfiction books to Beka, and she has enjoyed them. Mostly we read them because they keep us interested, and when we're not bored out of our minds we're better parents. Let's face it, there are only so many times you can read Dr. Seuss' Foot Book aloud in a row before starting to gibber incoherently. Another parent on the group interjected that her kid isn't always in the mood for anything longer-attention-span than picture books, and I (agreeing, of course) thought it through and came up with a list of categories the books we read our kid fall into. These are nonexclusive; individual works can be members of multiple groups simultaneously.

Group 1: Durable Books. These are for the kid to play with primarily on their own, though grownups may 'help' with them or read them aloud as well. Unrippables, or damage resistant (she's managed to shred some board books impressively), often with good pictures -- or books you don't CARE if they destroy. We had a couple of old cellphone manuals, out-of-date Zagat guides, and Angie's List spam leaflet/magazines that we let her use for 'real page' books early on, and she enjoyed them greatly. Sometimes if you give the kid a Durable Book to play with in their hands while you read something else, it can forestall grabbing/ripping behaviors. Or not. Depends.

Group 2: Colorful Pictures. The primary attraction of these books is visual, though of course they may have words in them.

Group 3: Participatory Books. These books aren't really all that "read-aloudable" -- they're point-at-the-pictures books. At first, baby points and parent names or describes; later, the parent can point to elicit vocabulary practice from the kid. We call these 'noun books' around here, and some books that the publishers intended to be further down my list of categories, we only use as 'noun books' because we think the text is insipid or ideologically incorrect -- but they have great pictures and/or a good variety of nouns depicted. Touch-and-feel books are usually in this group, even if they attempt to have a 'story', as are a lot of counting-demonstration books and illustrated abecedaria.

Group 4: Bouncy Verse. The fun of these books is the short sentences and frequent rhymes. Now that she's getting pretty good at this language stuff, we often stop short of the final word or phrase of a line to prompt her to recite it, proving that she's got a good number of them at least partially memorized, which is impressive.

Group 5: Narrative Books. These books (which may also have bouncy verse, good pictures, or nouns to point at, of course) have a through-story that actually goes somewhere, and the kid learns to enjoy that flow to an anticipated denouement.

Group 6: Longer Stories. These books are significantly longer than, say, Goodnight Moon or Boynton's Going To Bed Book. They take 5+ minutes to read, and are usually prose rather than verse. These are the books our kid asks for when she wants to lie down and hear our voices in her final spiraling-the-drain steps towards sleep. Everything from Beatrix Potter's works or the Velveteen Rabbit on up to adult nonfiction doorstops are in this category. Some also have good pictures, and are therefore additionally suited to 'sit kid in lap and read while showing pictures', in those in-lap sessions where the kid is patient enough not to be turning the pages before we're finished reading 'em. :->

Now, each of those groups of books is a different craving, for our daughter. And each category includes books that make us cringe and ones we actively enjoy reading. For obvious reasons, ones we enjoy reading motivate us more strongly to read them to her, so we try to bias our collections that way while still being mindful of the reasons SHE wants us to read them.

For the curious, some adult nonfiction we have successfully read, or are reading, to her at length (a chapter or half-chapter at a time until the book is finished) include:

• The Scientist in the Crib, by Alison Gopnik et al. [the "baby book"]
• Fruitless Fall, by Rowan Jacobsen [the "bee book"]
• The Map that Changed the World, by Simon Winchester [the "rock book"]
• Chocolate Wars, by Deborah Cadbury [the "chocolate book"]

Not that we're planning on still living here NEXT spring, but I haven't done a what-my-garden-looks-like post in a really long time, and I just got a new awesome camera for my birthday, so last week I went and took photos of everything that's actually trying to pop its head out and grow already this spring.

Herewith, a census. The tl:dr version for those of you who don't want to load the photos: apple trees have fuzzy swollen buds but no leaves yet; the bulb bed is gamely green (with bits of yellow or purple from the crocuses); the columbines are sprouting vigorously and doing their best cloverleaf impressions; the violets are NOT sprouting, but I took a photo of their disturbing pokey alien-plant-looking-nesses; the butterfly sage is coming up in the back; we have lots of moss; and gratuitous robin.

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I'm going to do these chronologically, for lack of any better organizing principle.

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Sunday Beka catapulted headfirst into the realm of playing pretend with great verve and enthusiasm.

For about a week now, she's been very interested in lampshading for us when someone/thing (or a picture of same) is sleeping. She'll point and then do her 'sleeping sign: her palm clapped to her cheek, and then her head tilted over on its side that way. "Yes," I'll agree, "Boston/Daddy/that baby is sleeping." Diaper-wipe boxes, for no reason clear to me, have sleeping-baby pictures on them, so we get that one a lot.

Then on Sunday during lunch, Beka signed 'sleeping'. "Are YOU sleepy?" I asked her, getting a vigorous negative. She pointed, signed 'sleeping', and so on, until it became clear to me that what she was saying (if I may paraphrase) was, "Look! My slice of banana is sleeping!" I played along once I figured it out, sharing a ssssssh with her, and giving it a tiny cheese-slice blankie, which she approved greatly. Then her cornbread was sleeping.

Then she wanted to play with a tiny jingly toy rabbit we have (whose name, for historical reasons, is Diaper Bunny). Diaper Bunny was sleepy, so he got to take a little nap. Then Diaper Bunny needed some nursing, so I obliged; then she insisted Diaper Bunny needed his diaper changed, which took some ingenuity on my part, but was also accomplished.

We played her favorite clap-and-dance game, which they do at her preschool, and which my brain insists is basically a baby-sized breakdance circle: each kid gets a turn to wiggle, dance, turn around, and then sit down (ending the turn), with their name included in the clap-song. So I was clap-songing for her, and then she pointed at Ajax, so Ajax got a turn. Then Diaper Bunny got a turn. Then her cornbread got a turn ... yeah.

So I think she's definitely into playing pretend. :-> Her food and toys might have a wider range of intended activities; she only has a limited number of action words at the moment. It was an exciting day, though. Daddy and I have prompted her to attribute emotions to her toys before, and she thought it was funny, but Sunday was the first time she (a) initiated it and (b) really kept with it for an extended period.

Now if only she can actually start cuddling and carrying around a teddy or a doll instead of *her cup of water*, we'll be much easier to explain to outsiders. :-> Srsly, when leaving the house or going down for a nap, she HAS to have a cup of water to hug or she melts DOWN. We call it 'the teddy water'. Luckily it's not any particular cup, just a cup with water and enough ice in it.

I enjoy gardening, both in the 'ecological engineering' variety and for food and flower crops, but ever since Beka was first anticipated, I realized that until she was old enough to help out, I wasn't going to be able to spend much time out there weeding, planting, rearranging, and generally meddling with the yard. "Oh, well," I thought. "Plenty of time to make up for it later. At least what's in the ground now is reasonably drought-tolerant and weed-resistant."

Our planter of raspberries still produced sporadic fruit this spring despite being completely ignored (and desperately needing a repot, or a transfer into the dirt) and not even watered through our recent heat wave; we'll see if it sets a second crop at summer's end as it has in past years.

The apple seedlings we planted in Spring 2008 did precociously try to bloom and set fruit this spring (or at least two plants of the six did -- one with a dozen and a half flower clusters and another with just one exuberant pink floof); one of them actually succeeded in getting pollinated. I will admit, John and I put our finger on the scales and, late in the game, stole a flower off the one in the back to rub stamens on flowers in the front yard. From that effort, there are currently two fat green apples ripening on our Smokehouse tree out front.

Also in Spring 2008, I attempted to grow acorn squash in planters, with only faint success. However, about a month ago, John went out into the backyard planning to cut down and tear out what looked (from the porch) like a massive burdock plant taking over the gap between our parking pad and fence out at the back of our lot. But it's not a burdock. It's an enormous, vigorous, exceptionally healthy volunteer acorn squash, with at least a dozen potential squashlets happily plumping in the sun. The plant is easily 8 feet in diameter, and nearly taller than I am, with big broad happy (prickly) leaves held sturdy and proud on fat stems.

If we succeed in moving and selling this house before all of this bounty is ripe, I hope the new owners appreciate it. :-> It would be kind of depressing to drive past in a couple of years and see that they dug out the apples, but I guess it'll be their house, and their choices.

Sort of a choose-your-own-adventure anecdote.

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Separated at birth?

Well, yes, actually, but not because we're twins!

One of these is me, and one is my daughter, at approximately the same age. Likeness is uncanny. Her fingers are definitely longer, though.


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Hi there, Chicago-area peeps. If you wanted to go somewhere cool/do something cool at the same time I do it, here's two upcoming events you might want to know about:

Tots on Tuesdays at the Shedd Aquarium -- Any Tuesday (suggest a Tuesday that's good for you)
1200 S. Lake Shore Drive, Chicago, IL
-- Apparently on Tuesdays they have a whole slate of activities for preschoolers, touchy-feely stuff, stories, interactive exhibits, etc. A fannish mother-of-a-preschooler friend of mine invited me to accompany her and her brood, and it sounds like fun. Beka, of course, gets in free (since she's under 3 years old); I get a 25%-off discount because I live in the City of Chicago itself. Not sure yet just when in-the-day I'll be arriving; probably morning. Will edit to add info when I have it.

Enter the Haggis at Fitzgerald's -- Sat, Mar 28, 9PM
6615 Roosevelt Road, Berwyn, IL
-- A fun Toronto bar-band of my acquaintance is playing in Berwyn. And since my father-in-law (a) will be in town and (b) has VOLUNTEERED to be abandoned with the baby for several hours, looks like I'm totally free-and-clear to go. Yay!

... and man, am I impressed. It's a striking movie, and also -- to my recollection; I've not read it in years, though I intend to again soon -- incredibly faithful to the source material. Especially for an Alan Moore movie (most of which seem, to put it mildly, cursed).

It was also the most grown-up movie I can remember Hollywood making in the last several years. Its morals and quandaries are so far from black and white they're basically chartreuse with turquoise polka-dots. It trusted the audience to make connections without hitting them over the head with clues.

It was also extremely gore-filled: do NOT take children to this movie. For more reasons than just the gore, but that's a big one. However, the gore was, well, true to the book, and to the book's themes. Also, there are perhaps two actually 'nice' characters in the entire thing. And even those two don't flinch at messily killing a bunch of street thugs, without mercy or second thoughts. That's true to the book, too. Reviewers bitching because the film is dark, oppressive, fascist, or largely antifeminist (with a few exceptions, noted below the fold where spoilers lurk), are missing the point. And clearly never read the book.

That said, I *think* it'd make sense even to people who haven't read the book, though it rewards people who have.

It was visually stunning, in a weird off-colors-80s-comic-books-cheap-printing way. The fight choreography was superhuman, but not ridiculously over-the-top like the X-Men and Spidey stuff.

It was very un-Hollywood in general. It was, in fact, practically an art flick. Only with a budget and a marketing push.

I think whoever did the costumes deserves an Oscar nomination, and not for the superhero costumes: for the 80s period pieces. I only noted one major out-of-time mismatch (it involved the Comedian's television), and many more carefully-done, subtle 'rightnesses' of time and world. This is a film that will reward freeze-framing and careful study of the backgrounds of most shots.

I really, really liked the opening montage (which collapsed 20-30 years of alternate-timeline history into graphic short-takes to inclue the audience that THIS IS NOT OUR WORLD, as well as set up things for later -- I'm betting this has been posted to YouTube already, for those curious but not tolerant of gore [edited to add, and here]).

I was impressed at the post-911 resonances they found in the original; it hadn't occurred to me that they'd feel like that, filmed, and shown now.



And that's about as much as I can say about it without getting seriously into ( spoilers, which lie within. And probably also in the comments.Collapse )

Playing at 9PM at Fitzgerald's in Berwyn is a wonderfully eclectic Toronto bar-band called Enter the Haggis ($12 bought ahead; $15 at the door). I strongly recommend them. In fact, I'd really, really love to go, if it can be made to work with Beka's needs.

Anyone want to go with? I've been stealing songs from their repertoire (Bagpipes on Mars, Ride My Monster, The Ballad of Jose McGregor the Mexican Scotsman, et al.) to sing in filkcircles for years.

... I've been busy. :->

John and I are proud to announce the arrival, vigorously yowling, of our firstborn daughter.

The statistics, because we're all geeks here:

• Name: Rebekah Miranda Mason (Beka or Beka Mira for short)


• Date and Time: February 17th, 2009; 3:56 AM


• Birth Weight: 8lbs 9oz (3895g)


• Discharge Weight: 8lbs 1oz


• Height: 20.87in (53cm)


• Apgar Score: 9 at birth; 9 at 5 minutes of life


• Poopy diapers: 2 so far


• Feedings: 4 on 2/17, 8 on 2/18, 5 on 2/19 so far

We're leaving the hospital soon. More details (including probably a long rambling birth story), um, later sometime.

Short version: All is going Very Well, on all fronts.

ashnistrike and her wife Nameseeker are HEROES OF THE REVOLUTION.

Omg.

They arrived sometime around 2PMish, ostensibly to 'help me tidy up' and get somewhere on my to-do list for the week, and between then and when they left (having fed us dinner, too, while they were at it) we got about SIX DAYS' WORTH of cleaning done, on even the scale of "John and I being very productive" cleaning days.

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Yup, those would definitely be Braxton-Hicks. Interesting. Not painful, exactly, but sore-ish ...


30+-week symptom post coming someday, honest.

Inspired by quite a few hours of jigsaw-puzzling on my and John's part lately -- they feed my need to be compulsively patternmatchy about something, they give us social couple-time, and we both know that as soon as Beka's old enough to grab things and stick them in her mouth, we won't get a chance to do one for years. :->

Sung to the tune of "What do you do with a drunken sailor?":

Chorus:
What d'ye do with the unmatched pieces (x3)
In your jigsaw puzzle?

Verses:
First ye sort out all the edges ...
Then ye separate by color ...
Put together all the people ...
I like to do the bonny buildings ...
Find a red head with a yellow shoulder ...
Piece the line 'twixt sun and shadow ...
Dig them from beneath the sofa ...
Stare at the box until you're cross-eyed ...
Throw 'em on the floor for the dogs to chew on ...
Take it apart and try next Christmas ...

Feel free to share all your own favorite tips in the comments, preferably in meter. :->

I still owe a symptom-update post, but this isn't it.

I'm breaking it out as worthy of its own, because now Rebekah is moving palpably enough that the things SHE has learned to do each week are nearly as numerous as the quirky things my body's decided to do to cope with her gestation. Therefore, we're going to split them out from now on.

I'd also like to solicit some input from the peanut gallery. I know you guys are often pretty linguistically-playful, and I'm looking for a word to use. When I observe the behavior of my dogs and impute motives and narratives to them based on those observations, it's called 'anthropomorphizing' them. What do I call it when I do it to my baby? I fully know it's entirely my own storymaking instincts, patternmatching, and assumptions at work, not any objective reality of what SHE thinks, but as she's already an anthropos, strictly speaking, I don't think the word really fits.

Anyway. On to the behavioral diaries. I feel so Goodall-ish. :->

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So a lot of stuff has been happening, all at once. The good news is, after I get through the first half of this upcoming week, my schedule is MUCH CLEARER (until it suddenly becomes consumed entirely with Baby Things, of course).

Some topics I should at least name-check here, in case I don't get back to them later:

• Saw Bolt in the theaters Friday. OMG this movie is completely amazing. It may well be the best Lasseter-touched film yet, in terms of narrative complexity and emotional depth: it's a Talking Animals CGI movie with metanarrative and genre subversion. And did I mention amazing levels of cuteness? And all the animals *act like their species*, instead of being Bambi-ish 'people with fur who all just have different shapes of ears'? And nobody in the plot has to be an idiot for it to work? Right. See it. Well worth the theatrical price, IMHO. And I haven't said that about a movie in years.
  
  
• I need to make another baby-symptoms post like whoa.
  
  
• I need to actually edit and post some of the continuing sequence of 'belly shots' I've been taking. Potentially as an animated usericon of some sort. :->
  
  
• Once my schedule opens up I can work on all the volunteer/freelance projects that have been creatively mugging me in an attempt to distract me from the papers I *had* to write. which means of course they'll probably go away, but hey.
  
  
• I've been reading a lot of books. No, really, a lot-lot -- more than last year. More than any year since I've started keeping track. 188 as of Nov 30. Yeah, a lot. And I'm working on a digested 'if you like A, you may well like B' list of recommendations and short reviews to come out of all that grist my mill's been generating; no eta for that post, though.
  
  
• Staying reasonably on top of household chores, go me.
  
  
• Need to compile list of questions to ask potential pediatricians before we commit to one.
  
  
• Need to do several small but time-consuming 'go to the office, stand and wait, ask questions' tasks at school along the lines of making sure I know all the steps involved in taking a semester off without having to reapply when I want to come back. Including requesting a hiatus in my full-ride grades-based scholarship.
  
  
• Wii Fit is (a) a lot of fun, (b) surprisingly good exercise, even at the low levels, and (c) quite possibly not something I'd play if I were home alone. It works amazingly well as a party game, with the "Ooh, ooh, my turn, I know *I* can beat that level!" reflexes stimulated by the social situation. Also, to get one I'd have to buy a Wii. Which is really a lot more expensive than I feel like spending. It does amuse me to imagine the dogs' responses to me playing it, though -- they REALLY don't understand Dance Dance Revolution at ALL, most especially how it makes me have no lap for them to use for twenty or thirty minutes at a time.
  
  
• Kittens are awesome.
  
  
• My daughter demonstrably likes some music better than other music. Details and track lists to follow, along with definition of 'likes'.
  
  
• 'Eureka' is an awesome TV series, which we are watching through the magic of borrowed DVDs, since we don't have cable.

My cinema-studies class that day is an 'open' class, because the school is doing a one-day Humanities fest and throwing open the doors to show off how utterly cool our humanities department is. :->

So if you want to watch the Persepolis film and hang out, you're invited. Class is from 12:30 to 3-something Monday afternoon at 30 E Lake St, 60601. The room may change, so drop me a line here or text me or something. Or we could meet for lunch between my previous class (lets out about 11:45) and it.

I know most of you work afternoons, but hey, if I hadn't shared the info, there's no way any of you could say yes, right? :->

John and I were batting around names, attempting to (a) firm up a middle name for our daughter, and (b) choose a just-in-case backup name, in case she's a son.

Me: "You know why Paris Hilton was named that? Because she was conceived there."

Long pause.

John: "Ok, this naming session is OFFICIALLY over."

Me: "Why? Because you're afraid we're going to name our son 'Austin'?" [the official neighborhood-name of where we live]

John: "No. Because my brain just went from Paris to Parasect to Bulbasaur. We are DONE."

Tonight at 11: Brainstorming Gone Mad!

Why, yes, we *are* geeks ...

I was listing off a bunch of things that I think Any Household With Kids should have * to John, asking him to put them on our baby registry. He objected on the grounds that those aren't really baby-registry items, since you don't need them before the kid arrives.

"Once we pick a name we can get her her own Amazon wishlist and put them there," he then pointed out, sensibly. I fishmouthed a little, and he went on, "Hey, it's not as bad as registering her own domain before her birthday," which apparently one of his friends just did for an offspring.

I love my geeky husband. This is the geekiest couple-hivemind moment we've had since the year he got me a Playstation for Christmas and we spent a week doing nothing but eating, playing Katamari Damacy and Guitar Hero, and sleeping. :->

Now to nail down a day for our date-night to go to the Field Museum and see the Disasters Unleashed exhibit ...

* -- like everything Dr. Seuss ever wrote (in nice clean brand-new copies instead of my beat-up ones), the complete Muppet Show, the complete Rocky & Bullwinkle ...

Today I had my 'level 2' ultrasound, sometimes known as 'the anatomy scan,' or on pregnancy communities, 'the big ultrasound' (because it's the one where you find out the gender, generally).

I'm about to wax emotional and geeky in about equal measure, because that's just how we roll, here at Maison Mason. So don't say I didn't warn you. There may even be ... schmoopiness. Don't worry, it's all good news.

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Herewith, a fairly-terse list of Very Fun Things I have done or participated in since mid-May [1] this year ...

• I attended Be-All 2008 (one of only a handful of folks going MY direction down Trans Avenue to do so), and it was amazing. I hope to go again next year.
  
• I attended Duckon, a whole other collection of neat people and fun things to do.
  
• I marched in Chicago's Gay Pride Parade, which was fascinating and cool, but also tiring and weird. Our float had the best music in the parade, the traffic aides said. :->
  
• John surprised me with tickets to see Cirque du Soleil Kooza. Down in front. No, seriously, second ROW down in front. It was made of hot, buttered awesome, as every previous CduS show I've attended has been.
  
• John and I saw Wall-E in the theater and then had ice cream. It was good ice cream. The movie was pretty. The end credits are particularly pretty. I need a toy Eva, I think.
  
• I went to Worldcon in Denver. I met many nice people, ate a lot of good food, and exhausted myself. I have a Cunning Plan (of the Bullwinkle-esque 'It Just Might Work!' crackpot variety) to perchance get me to next year's in Montreal, but don't hold your breath yet.
  
• The in-laws took John and I to Wicked [2] for his birthday. It was made of thrill, though bits of it reminded me of some horribly triggery bits of my childhood (the scene in which the song 'Popular' occurs, for instance). I love that the choreography is plotful. I noticed where they changed it from the book, and decided I didn't particularly mind.

---

1. since mid-May There is a significance to this vague date. No, I'm not telling you yet. Yes, I probably will at some point. Those of you I haven't told already, that is. You know who you are. :->
   
2. Wicked Yes, I'm a bad, bad musical-theatre lover to have lived in the same town as a permanent production of this and never seen it till now, I know.

Ok, so I'm a little late (this week is officially #15), but between Worldcon, a week spent largely sleeping to recover from Worldcon, and a long weekend with in-laws in town, I figure I can cut myself some slack. :->

All continues to go Very Well. Let me get that out there first so nobody's worried. All symptoms I bitch about below are extremely mild (especially when measured on the scale of 'ow' my period used to get up to), and at most are annoyances.

We have begun deriving The Laws of Pregancy (or, rather, John started, and when he drew my attention to it I continued to do so).

The First Law of Pregnancy: under no circumstances should you obstruct a pregnant woman's path to the nearest toilet (also summarized as 'Pee Happens').

The Second Law of Pregnancy: once Mr. Embryo implants in Ms. Uterine Lining, food is no longer your friend. Specifically, your body's appetite signals are going to go ALL out of whack from anything you remember about what it felt like pre-pregnancy. Increase, decrease, total shift of emphasis, whatever -- that's idiosyncratic to the individual gestator, but I'm pretty sure the law holds true across most of the class.

The Second Law was observed to be in full force these last two weeks. I haven't gotten any cravings, per se, but I definitely get strong and fleeting food aversions. Also, my OB warned me about something that I discounted, somewhat, at my last appointment, because it hadn't happened yet ... and then it happened and I suddenly knew what she was talking about.

She suggested that instead of aiming to eat three meals a day, I should instead plan to eat a little something every two hours, throughout my diurnal cycle, "to even out blood sugar spikes and crashes." Hah, thought I, I'm in tune with my body, I have no history of weird blood sugar stuff; I'll eat when I'm hungry and that'll be fine.

Ha, let me say, and further ha, aimed at my past self, who knew not whereof the OB was speaking.

Because yesterday, John, his sister corvicula1979, and I went up to Woodfield to do some shopping. I was feeling kind of bleh before we left; I read in the car, and got progressively more bleh. "Great," think I, "this is a bad brain chemistry day." And it certainly felt like one. I've had them before. The only way I know how to get through them is to make sure I'm around people and let it pass on its own, so I set out to do that. Meanwhile, I was irrationally grumpy, irritated with everything, and didn't feel like doing anything at all but curling up in a ball with my eyes shut.

John suggested lunch. I said we could do some shopping first. He insisted. We then spent about fifteen minutes trying to find any restaurant in Woodfield the thought of whose cuisine didn't make me feel nauseous (the main reason I was objecting to lunch; I didn't want to be a wet blanket). We settle on one, and go get food. I try not to glower and grump too hard, address myself to my food, and choke it down.

Lo and behold, presto-chango like magic, about 20 minutes after we had lunch, suddenly it was no longer 'a bad brain chemistry day,' I no longer felt depressive: I was instead perky, cheerful, and ready to dash up stairs and through stores with the sunniest of dispositions.

So if you're ever hanging out with me in person and I start glowering and bitching about everything, do us both a favor and remind me to eat? Since apparently that's the trick of it.

Strange Realization of the Week: I haven't had a major depressive day/episode/event since I conceived. This is staggering to me, if I let myself think about it. GO BABY!!

Bodily twinges and discomforts: minimal, mostly confined to gut-rumbles and the occasional itchy down below.

Bump Update: I can see that I have one, and so can people really familiar with what early-preg bellies look like, but it's not obvious (especially in baggy pants). Everything is very ... firm, down there. Pushing on it gets about the same resistance now when I'm relaxed as it used to when I clenched all my abs hard. There is now very little 'squidgyness' to my tumtum; the fat layer is thin and basically just subcutaneous, and all the rest is now full of organs and stuff. When I'm laying flat on my back, I'm pretty much a flush smooth straightish line from ribs on down -- no visible altitude gain. Of course, it used to be concave there, so I can tell it's grown, but people who spend less time staring at my abdomen than I do, might not notice.

I've taken to greasing myself a couple of times a week with a Lush bar with a high cocoa-butter content, just to encourage any skin that was considering stretching to feel itself supported and nourished in its desire to do so. :->

Parental Consumerism Update: We went to several babystores to try on and fondle various assistive devices aimed at child-transportation, but haven't bought anything. John wants to do serious comparison-shopping on car seats, and is very picky about how they attach and other such technical details. John and I are at least agreed on criteria to be used to choose strollers (folds up in both dimensions to a tolerably small, light bundle; maneuvers well on its wheels; capable of having whatever carseat we buy securely wedged into it for infant transport), though we're far from even brand-level decisions. For the record, there are some RIDICULOUS strollers out there, which seem to assume one has an enormous McMansion in Kendall county with a separate garage for storing your stroller when not in use (and upwards of $1000 to spend on just PARTS of a 'stroller system').

Further rearrangement of The Nursery must occur before we can get more detailedly serious about changing tables, cribs, and other suchlike furniture decisions, either.

John's brother sent us a Baby Bjorn, which is adorable, and I also am strongly attracted to products along the line of the Moby Wrap. We're definitely going to be babywearers (wiki), John and I.

I need a preggers icon of some description or other ... hrm. Thinky thinky.

In other words, a fairly eventful day, by recent standards.

We saw three raptory birds whirling, soaring, and chasing each other on the thermals put up by our alley and the next street down, so we whipped out the binocs, and then my camera, and now I can say they're definitely American kestrels (Falco sparverius). Pics will be uploaded for your amusement once I get them off the camera; they're tiny, as the birds were QUITE far away, but I believe diagnostic.

Later in the day, while downtown before a medical appointment (about which more later ... perhaps much later. Don't worry, I'm fine), I went to school and talked to the financial aid people about exactly how my scholarship-that-takes-effect-this-fall works, and then registered for classes. So yay, that's done, and now I can go from school freakouts to Worldcon-unpreparedness freakouts. Progress! :->

We have quite a varied ecosystem in our backyard and neighborhood ... for the heart of Chicago. We have a wide range of birds that come to our feeder (sparrows to redwings to parrots to bluejays and beyond). There are two species of squirrel. But the land-dwelling predator niche is pretty much entirely owned by feral cats and dogs.

Today we got our first hint that there might be active aerial predators.

While sitting on the porch this morning, John and I heard a THUMP on the roof of the garage next door (where the sparrows like to congregate to work on eating peanuts too big for them to get down in one gulp on the feeder). We both glanced around too late to see quite what'd happened, but in time to see a definite small-raptor silhouette pulling out and around and zooming off towards our street.

My best guess based on the glance is female kestrel -- it was uniformly brownish, and not terribly large (probably couldn't carry off a grackle), and the wings looked nowhere near pointy enough for peregrines. I'm pretty sure kestrels and peregrines are the extent of potential raptors, in our area.

I hope it comes back. Sparrows are the Pringles of our yard: crunch all you want, we'll have plenty more. :->

So it turns out today is not Day 46 of a very late period ... it is in fact instead Week 6 of my first pregnancy. :->

This is not entirely unexpected, as we've been trying for a while (and using a fertility monitor for two cycles), but it WAS entirely unexpected for it all to work so soon, so I'm happy, startled, happy, excited, happy, worried out of my mind, happy, and freaking out.

John and I were going to not tell anyone until further along, to avoid 'jinxing' it, or whatever, but then neither of us was able to keep our big yaps shut, so last weekend we called all the family members and outed ourselves.

And now i'm telling you guys. I've made a filter (this one) to talk about the nitpicky, terrifying, potentially-gross, and otherwise detailed aspects of this whole process. I made guesses about who'd want to be on it; if I put you here and you're not into it, just let me know and I'll take you off.

I'm still not quite ready to put all this stuff loose in my regular journal; it's not a state secret, but I'm not going to be posted about it unlocked for several weeks at least.

Confirmed symptoms I can blame on my new tenant:

• Sleeping ALL THE TIME. Like, an hour or so of alert awakeness between bouts of drowsy/napping. I hope this passes fast. But at least I'd rather be sleeping than puking.
• Sore boobs. Like, stuff touching them (e.g. my shirt) is vaguely ouchy and crabby-making.
• Peeing. A lot. And in very small volumes, too.

To Do: [and what I've done]

• Make shortlist of ob/gyns covered by our insurance who have offices in convenient places to get to.
• Pursuant to the former: find out if midwifery is covered by our insurance. Then decide if we want to go with midwifery or a standard ob/gyn thing.
• Cut out most high-fructose corn syrup and caffeine from my diet [already begun].
• Drop my spanish course, as I was having trouble staying on top of spanish homework AND physics homework BEFORE I was sleeping 18 hours a day ... and physics is more necessary for my degree.
• Start aggressively planning to train someone at the school newspaper to do layout, because there's no way in hell I'll be doing the March and April issues, and probably not February or May either. :->
• Reexamine furniture layouts to facilitate nesting and sitting in positions that will be less uncomfortable in future [already purchased a Swiss ball, for exercise purposes]. Change the sheets on the upstairs spare bed, as that is clearly now my 'midday nap with doggies' spot.
• Start looking into learning Baby Sign well ahead of D-day, so it already feels natural by then [assembling URLs].
• See if my Big Winter Coat is enormously voluminous enough to be likely to cover a full-term bump.

I'm tempted to start taking every-week belly pictures, but am half convinced that's just obsessive of me. :->

All hail mon462 for noodging me into registering for guitar classes at the Old Town School once more, after a multiyear hiatus where I only seldom touched my instrument, and then only to whizz through very basic accompaniments for songs I already knew how to play. All hail!

So yesterday was the first class of the new session, and I'm taking Guitar Ensemble Skills and Guitar 2-Repertoire (a techniques class). When last I was enrolled, I'd made it as far as 3-Rep, but my hiatus and general rustiness encouraged me to drop back down a level for this first toe-dabbling exercise, and I'm glad I did. I am (reasonably so) rather farther advanced than my classmates who just came out of 2, but I can see that the skills we're going to work this semester are precisely the ones that are scariest/weakest for me: treating my left hand's motions as not just simple presets, but variable, and doing Different Things (picking bass notes, different strum rhythms) with my right hand.

Guitar Ensemble Skills is also shaping up to be one of the most fun classes I've ever taken, as well as being 'useful'. Well, and hard. And encouraging me to practice stuff I've gotten extremely rusty on. Which is good! :-> Ensemble classes in general, at OTS, mean students with a range of instruments in a room working up arrangements to perform songs provided by the teachers (often themed -- there's a Guns'n'Roses ensemble, a Bangles ensemble, a jazz fusion ensemble, etc). Usually, this means 2/3 of the students present play guitar, you're lucky to get a vocalist, bassist, drummer, or Something Else Weird, and many of the teachers have been taken aback by the fact that one of my favorite things in all the world to do is to sing harmony vocals. So you often get six guitars all doing mostly the same rhythm part, with one Really Good guy doing leadlines, and a lot of unison singing.

Not in this class -- lawdamercy, no! And I'm glad of it. Firstly, I'm one of only three people who brought guitars to the class (and the least skilled of the three, which I anticipated), so there's actually a desire for me to learn and perform steady-but-basic rhythm lines. Drat it. Which means I have to actually practice my C#m chords at speed, and so on. However, the teachers are also massively in favor of multipart vocals YAAAAAY. And we have a drummer. And the gal who came to class without an instrument entirely, who said she wanted to primarily sing, turns out to be a classically-trained pianist in her 'other' musical life, so can put nifty keyboard riffs on things to substitute for, say, horn lines in the original artist's arrangement.

Yesterday we worked up a serviceable, really neat arrangement of Paul McCartney's song 'Jet' in an hour and a half -- I can tell you, it's really nice working with pros. :-> Now I just need to get home and practice my fingers off trying to get those barre chords back ... now that I have a shiny gaw-juss (to steal Eric Coleman's pronunciation) guitar with low enough action to make them unpainful.

Oh, and do my math writing assignment before Tuesday, and practice my piano class homework before Monday, and ... did I mention next week is the last week of classes at HWC? Argh. :-> Still, good argh.