Joshua's Spot

National "Love a Chuka" Day

Appropriately, the universe at large - or at least, or not-so-large little slice of it - seems to be going out of its way to shower a little joy and beauty on my lovely wife on this, her 35th birthday.

The sun has finally decided to show its malingering face, for instance, after several weeks of slinking around behind some truly nasty collections of rainclouds that have been dumping on us enough to get our little state of Oregon in the national news all too many times recently, for all the wrong reasons. The blue sky and bright sunshine are much appreciated, Oh Big Guy In the Sky. My little Sunflower needed some rays to warm up her Miami-bred bloodstream, which was evolved for more clement climates.

A whole huge bunch of babies apparently decided Felicia's birthday was a really great, wonderful day on which to  be born - just trying to bask in a little bit of her reflected glory, if you ask me. Since she's WORKING on her birthday, and is ON CALL no less, which makes things really frustrating for those of us who would like to do something REALLY NICE for her on her birthday, she's gotten to deliver a whole bunch of that huge batch of babies, but oh well. It would be selfish of me to try to keep her all to myself, I suppose. (Won't stop me from trying...)

I know I don't talk a great deal about Felicia on these here blog pages, which is kind of ironic, since the blog is all about Josh, and Josh is all about his Momma... I guess it's just my Midwestern side showing, which keeps all my warmest, fuzziest feelings hidden away inside. But on her special day, I guess I can go ahead and tell all and sundry that I'm just crazy about this woman, and wouldn't know how to function without her. She's the center of my world, too, so Da Boo is just going to have to share, durnit. NOT his strongest quality, sharing, admittedly, but we can work on that.

Happy Birthday, Felicia. And don't forget, even though you're on call, you're supposed to COME HOME at some point before your special day is over!

Photo Shoot, and the Imminent Demise of the Milk Fairy

First, while I've got your undivided attention, don't forget to go to the photo album - I finally got around to putting up a SMALL SAMPLING of the gazillion photos my mom took of Joshua and Bela (and, incidentally, Gimli) in her three- hour photo shoot last weekend.

No, you don't get all 170 photos. And no, I'm not posting the "baby porn" butt shots on the internet, not without doing a background check on all y'all first, to make sure you're not going to sell photos of my son's cute little tush to some nutcase named "Serge" in Bulgaria who's going to post them all over a bunch of wacko underground child porn sites hosted somewhere in deepest, darkest Micronesia. (If you want to see the "tush 'n' boots" photos - which are, admittedly, cute enough to be in a gallery - you'll have to contact my mom. If you don't know HOW to contact my mom, you probably don't have any business looking at my baby's butt anyway, so ha.)

So go take a look. And yes, before you ask, my mom is indeed pretty much a professional at this stuff. She does a fantastic job, even if she was complaining about how getting up and down chasing babies all over the floor with a camera is a good way to wreck your back.

NOW... on to the more momentous news:  the Milk Fairy is on her way out the door.

I should explain, before I get started on this story, something that may have been mystifying some of you more perceptive readers for the past few posts - namely, why we've been so stressed out about finding alternatives to breastmilk. In case you've been sitting there reading about our gyrations trying to get the picky little poop to take everything from juice to whole milk to drinkable yogurt, and asking yourself "why in the world don't they just give him formula, for Pete's sake??"...  well, that's a very good question. Unfortunately, the answer is very simple:  we have the most stubborn baby in the world when it comes to food, and he HATES formula. Always did. Never took it. Two sips, and then it's as though you were trying to feed him deadly poison in a suspension of sulphuric acid, topped off with castor oil for flavoring. (Granted, I've sniffed the stuff, and tasted it, and I can't say I entirely blame him. I mean, who do these people think they're fooling? The stuff neither looks nor tastes ANYTHING like breastmilk. But I digress.)

In the whole history of our attempts to get this little snot to take formula - at least as a backup to breastmilk, if not as a replacement for it - we've managed to get a total of maaaayyyybe four bottles into him. We've tried every kind - every brand, soy-based, milk-based, organic, those with DTE and PCB and ABCDEFG, those claiming to be "our closest formula to breastmilk" and those claiming to be better than breastmilk... we even tried flavoring the stuff with hazelnut syrup at one point, on the theory that it'd be like a flavored latte (hey, it works with his mom). Nu-uh. No way, no how, poke my eyes out with a pitchfork, Dad, I'm NOT drinking the stuff.

We've been trying this since he was about, oh, I forget, maybe six or seven weeks old, and the results never changed. You'd think he'd get thirsty eventually - but no. You'd think his taste buds wouldn't be quite that sophisticated at such a young age - but no. So when it came to finding a reasonable alternative to breastmilk, one that could take over not only the nutritional component but also the hydrating function, we were kind of up poop creek. Between that and the fact that he still thinks sippy cups are throw toys, we've had a hard time of it.

Well, we finally managed to find not one, but two silver bullets, now that he's almost a year old. Silver bullet number one:  drinkable Yo-Baby (whole milk organic yogurt), the kind that comes in a bottle (rather than a tub) and is designed for drinking like a smoothie. He loves the regular Yo-Baby, so the drinkable stuff seemed like a good bet, and sure enough, it works. And then there's silver bullet number two:  chocolate milk. (Predictable - he is his mother's son, after all.) Now that he's within shouting distance of being "legal" for drinking milk, we decided to push ahead with it even though he's not technically a year yet - desperation will do that to ya, folks. He had little to no interest in the unflavored whole milk - he's no dumb baby, and his momma's milk didn't come from no cow, thankyouverymuch - but the CHOCOLATE stuff, now... THAT got his attention.

So between the two, and adding in the discovery that for whatever reason, sippy cups with a straw (rather than a nub) work pretty well as long as you don't let him hold it, we've suddenly found alternatives that work.

Now, much as Felicia loves breastfeeding her baby, and as depressed as she gets at th e thought of giving it up (prompting crises along the lines of "my baby doesn't need me anymore"), she wants ANOTHER baby almost as much. So now that Joshua's eating solid food pretty well, and has things that can somewhat replace the breastmilk that he'll take more or less willingly, we've finally run out of ready excuses to start the weaning process.

Which means that starting this past Wednesday, the Boo has been getting off the Booby.

It's going better than we would've expected, actually - at least as far as the Boo is concerned. He looks startled when you put him into bed straight after his Bookie, without the Booby that normally follows, and he definitely knows something's missing - but he does go to sleep. The 5am feeding is harder, since he yells like mad when he sees me (rather than his momma) coming through the door, bearing a sippy cup full of yogurt instead of two big full boobies, but desperation is a powerful incentive, and he'll eventually drink himself back into satiety and go back to sleep, with only about a minute or two of very vocal rebellion. And he still yells and pleads and tries to manipulate himself into booby every time he sees his momma - and at this point, he knows every string to pull, every button to push, every weak spot in his momma's soft heart, so this can be Very Trying Indeed. But so far, Momma's held out, for two whole days and counting, and Joshua's doing surprisingly well, in spite of the bumps and potholes in the road.

Momma, now... Momma's a whole different story.

First of all, her boobs are a safety hazard - anyone coming into a room with her should be warned to don a hard hat and a hazardous materials suit, because those suckers could blow any minute. She looks like a heroine out of a Japanese cartoon - you know, the ones with the tiny waists and size 64EEEE boobs that defy gravity and point every which way. You could actually map out the milk ducts with a felt-tip pen, if you were so inclined, she's that engorged.

Which means, secondly, that she's very, very sore. Last night, she was wearing three (count 'em, three) sports bras, and took 800mg of Advil, and was still not having a good time. And she's sure not sleeping on her stomach anytime soon.

But thirdly, and most importantly, she's deep into the grieving process for her lost breastfeeding, which was something hugely important that she shared with her son. This is a big deal, and I really grieve with her - they both just loved the intimacy of it, and the peacefulness, and the quiet time with each other. It's hard to WATCH her give that up, so I can only imagine how it feels for her. I keep telling her that she shares so many other wonderful things with him, and that she still makes him laugh and be happy better than anyone else by far, and that she's a great mom for so many other reasons than Ms. Left and Ms. Right - but I have a feeling it's going to be hard to get through with that message for a little while. So let's all just do our best to be very, very supportive right now, shall we? The Boo-Momma's having a hard time of it, and she needs all the love and comfort she can get.

In the meantime, though, I'd suggest you provide your support from a safe distance, just in case. I mean it, those things could really blow.

It's been a quiet week in Lake Wobegon

It has been pointed out to me by an anonymous but apparently dissatisfied source that "there has been a L-O-N-G dry spell on the blog lately." Therefore, having been dragged kicking and screaming by my fingernails back to the keyboard by my ever-demanding public (consisting, no doubt, of about, oh, three people, but what the hey, it's a "public" in my book), I'm now pummeling my so-called brain to come up with interesting things to say.

Failing to come up with anything scintillating, enlightening, or even (at the minimum) marginally distracting to say, I'll fall back on the cheat used by veteran bloggers (of which I, clearly, am not one) all over the world - I'll throw pictures at you!

That one's for you, Pops.

(There, that should keep them occupied for a few minutes, while I think up something else.)

At the risk of getting into way too much detail for those of you who aren't sitting on the edge of your seats to hear every little detail about Joshua's every movement and utterance, here's what's been going on with him this week:

1. He has backslid a bit on the sleeping-through-the-night thing - last night he woke up twice, to his mother's semi-dismay. (Even then, she said on her way out the door, "He's just so cute, I can't possibly be mad at him, even when he keeps me awake at night!") This is perhaps somewhat related to Small But Subtle Change in Behavior #2, which is...

2. ... that he has started looking at his before-bedtime feeding as a Wrestling Opportunity, as well as a Chance To Argue His Way Into More Time Awake With Parents. This started Monday night, when after gulping down his first two ounces of formula, he began twisting around and yelling and complaining and wrestling the bottle away every time the nipple came near his mouth as I tried to give him more. One thing's for sure:  whatever other body parts he might not have figured out yet, he's certainly developed his tongue into an impressive tool, since he can come up with all kinds of ways to use it to thwart my attempts to feed him with a bottle when he really doesn't want it. After battling with Simba the Grumpy Baby Lion Cub for about half an hour, I finally called for reinforcements, and Felicia brought me a bottle of breast milk to substitute for the formula, to see if that made any difference. It did, but only for a little while - I guess he must have decided that hey, if this squirming-and-complaining-and-going-on-a-hunger-strike routine worked that well in getting an upgrade from formula to breastmilk, he might as well try it again and see if he could get bumped up to Booby Time (read: Baby Nirvana). We drew the line at that, and ultimately got him to bed, after much mobility and bottle-dodging on his part. He got his revenge, though - he was up again within three hours, and this time got The Boob. Victory was his! (Sigh.)

Let's hope this doesn't become a pattern.

3. More enjoyably, His Squirminess finally discovered why opposable thumbs are such wonderful devices this week - he started grabbing onto toys that his Daddy hands him. Granted, he doesn't hold onto them for very long, and he hasn't yet discovered the Next Fun Thing that'll no doubt come along (namely, that opposable thumbs, along with all those fingers, can also be used to pull every possible kind of grabbable object toward one's mouth), but I'm sure it won't take him long.

Yes, I've got this major milestone in his genius-caliber existence on videotape. Maybe this afternoon, if y'all are especially nice to me, I'll dump the video into the computer and get it posted on the Neptune site. (So stop yer grumbling, or else! Ha!)

Otherwise, life has been going on as normal. I've been at work in the garden, a bit, as baby and other commitments and weather have collectively allowed. I've been doing my best to get back into a physical therapy and gym routine to take better care of my knee, having been suitably cowed by my various doctors and therapists and other such sadistic torture-mongers. Felicia and I took the baby out to Ashland yesterday, and had a nice relaxing afternoon, me meeting with Rabbi Jackie for another in my long sequence of conversion classes and Felicia breastfeeding the baby in the park and doing some baby shopping in a wonderful little store on the plaza. A good time was had by all, except for the puppy, who was left home alone all this time and was very, very happy to see us when we got back late in the evening.

Meanwhile, on the larger canvas, like everyone else in America who isn't living under a rock and has some vague awareness of the political process, I've been watching the events unfolding after Sandra Day O'Connor's surprise resignation with a mixture of resignation, indignation, and bemusement. It's a strange thing, to be sitting here fully aware that one's country is changing while one watches, due to perfectly obvious and visible processes and events, and not be able to do a thing about it - just sitting by and looking on and listening while the wall that has separated church and state so well, and with such great benefit for so many people, for the past two hundred years and more, comes crumbling down around us, while an appallingly large number of Americans cheer and egg the President on.

Including members of my own extended family, no doubt, which is what particularly saddens me. Case in point: I received an e-mail from one of them, no doubt sent with the best of intentions and in all obliviousness to the effect it'd have on me and those like me, the gist of which was that this is a Christian country, and those unpatriotic souls who keep trying to keep (Christian) prayer out of schools and keep (Christian) Biblical excerpts and (Christian) holiday decorations out of the public realm should just recognize that this is a Christian country founded by Christians for Christians, and just get over it. After all, it was the religious right who won the last election, and that's what elections are about, isn't it? The majority that won gets to impose its will on the minority that lost. If you were in Saudi Arabia, you'd expect to hear Muslim prayers; if you were in Israel, you'd expect to hear Jewish prayers; so anyone who thinks we shouldn't expect to hear Christian prayers in America is simply denying reality and the intent of the Founding Fathers and, basically, being downright un-American.

There are so many things wrong with this outlook that I don't even know where to begin, but it's really had me down, and upset, and frustrated for the several weeks since I got it. (And no, I haven't said anything about it to the relative in question, at least up to this point - though I have no idea whether or not this person ever checks this little blog. What can I say? I'm a chicken about confrontation.) Let's just sum it up by saying that this was a country founded, in very large part, on the principle of religious freedom - which means not having the will of the majority religion, whoever they are and whatever their beliefs, imposed on the minority who believe differently, whatever they believe. And "freedom of religion" does not mean you are free to choose whatever brand of Christianity you prefer (unless, of course, you want to be Mormon or a Jehova's Witness, of course, in which case you're almost as screwed as you would be if you were, say, Jewish, or Muslim). It means you're free to choose to believe whatever you want, including no religion at all, and not be hounded about it, made to feel un-American because of it, given a litmus test for public office (explicit or implicit), be required to submit to another religion's public and compulsory prayers, in school or elsewhere, or otherwise be made a second-class citizen or be excluded from full participation in American society because you do not share the mainstream's religious views.

There is a very large difference between being a country that has a majority Christian population, and being a "Christian country," in the sense that this cousin meant it and that many on the religious right are claiming the United States is or should be. In Saudi Arabia, Islam is the official religion, and is compulsory - no other religion is tolerated, no other is recognized, and the country explicitly and heavy-handedly denies full rights (including freedom of worship and expression) to those who follow other faiths. Is that the kind of country we really want to be? Israel, although it embraces freedom of religion and has very large Muslim and Christian (and other) minorities that are full citizens and are granted full freedom of worship, was founded explicitly to be a home for the Jewish people, and Judaism therefore and understandably has a special role in the public and political life of the country. The United States, in stark contrast to either of these cases, was founded upon the principle of full freedom of religion (along with freedom of occupation, speech, and all the others that so many fought and died to establish and protect) - and although most (not all) of the founders would have identified themselves as Christian to a greater or lesser degree, they explicitly rejected the idea of enshrining their own personal beliefs in any official way in the founding documents of this country (although a few relatively harmless and non-specific references to "God" and the "Creator" managed to find their way in, at the insistence of what passed at that time for a religious right). Indeed, the country's founders went to great lengths to protect freedom of belief and conscience - perhaps because the memory was still very fresh in their minds, back then, of what can happen when a religious majority (including a Christian one) is allowed to mix church and state, with all the power and authority and force and potential for abuse that comes along with the trappings of the state. The experience most of them had in mind, after all, was with the England of the time, which most of their ancestors had fled specifically to escape the tyranny of conscience and belief imposed by the Anglican Church.

This country was founded by French Huguenots (Protestants) who had fled from Catholic France, Methodists and Baptists and Quakers fleeing from persecution in England, Jews fleeing from persecution pretty much everywhere, and Deists and Enlightenment thinkers who believed only vaguely in God, if at all, who wanted to be left to philosophize or experiment or just plain think in peace. All of them, minorities who had been oppressed by a State-empowered majority religion in their home countries. And all of them, when they got here and set about to found a country of their own, agreed on one thing, if only one thing, when it came to religion:  none of them wanted the others imposing beliefs on them, however many of the "others" there might be, and however few of them. And to a remarkable degree, up until fairly recently, and with a few bumps along the way, they succeeded in creating a country where everyone could believe what they wanted.

So this cousin's e-mail both saddened and irritated me. Not least because it was simply wrong, on many accounts, both philosophical and historical. Also not least because the kind of country the e-mail seemed to be advocating was one in which I'm not sure I would recognize, or particularly like. And also not least because it's an attitude that I seem to be hearing everywhere these days, in the press and among our neighbors and co-workers and, yes, relatives, with few of those people even bothering to think twice about the implications or where they would lead us.

But most of all because, in case any of you have missed it (or forgotten), His Poopiness is... Jewish. (As is his mother, and yes, as will be his Poppa, once I get through these interminable conversion classes.) And I really don't want my son to be made to feel like a second-class citizen in the kind of country that will result from the unthinking, no-doubt-unintended religious supremism that is being so easily and jingoistically embraced by so many otherwise well-intentioned and wonderful people in this country at the moment - including this cousin of mine, whom I won't name. I don't doubt they meant nothing harmful in it, and probably didn't even stop to think that this kind of e-mail could be in the least bit hurtful or upsetting - but that's the essence of the problem, isn't it? After all, if you're a member of the complacent and ebullient majority, how would you possibly know how it feels to be the one person in the school classroom who feels utterly alienated, alone, isolated, confused, and above all, utterly different while the rest of the class repeats a prayer that to them seems simple and harmless, but that goes against your faith (whatever yours might be)? Or to send your kid to school and wonder if he's going to be beaten up today, because he's different, an outsider, a Jew (Jesus-killer) or a Muslim (terrorist) or an atheist (unbeliever) or an immigrant (job-stealer).

This is why our laws, our Constitution, and our traditions all go to such great lengths to protect the minority - and yes, why winning an election does not mean you get your way in everything, and why the Senate has a filibuster (to provide the only check that exists in the legislative or executive branches of our government against the tendency of the majority, however slim, to impose their will, whatever it might be, on the minority, which would otherwise be voiceless outside the courts)... and why maintaining the independence of the courts, including their ability to defy a popular President, is so critical.

Sorry for preaching, and thanks for letting me get that off my chest. Mostly I just keep my own thoughts about these things, but when it's something that could make the world a darker, more difficult, less welcoming place for our little Joshua, it's a lot more difficult to just eat it.

Now we will return you to our regularly scheduled programming...

The Good Mother

And the adjustment to the demands of Real Life (tm) begins.

Felicia's begun doing her patients' deliveries again this week. In theory, as a concept to contemplate from a distance, this didn't seem like such a big deal - after all, "doing a delivery" (from the OB's perspective, rather than the mom's, anyway) most often means going in a couple times over the course of labor to examine the patient, check on her progress, look at the strip (from the monitor), and make any adjustments to meds that might be needed; maybe talking to the labor nurses a few times by phone as things change; and going in to stay when the patient starts pushing, through the delivery of the baby and the placenta and any repairs that need to be done. If the delivery is uncomplicated, particularly with a patient who has had children before (because they go faster, and because you have a history by which to judge how their labor tends to go and thus can plan better), this can be completely consistent with, say, breastfeeding, and having a reasonable amount of time at home with your family, if deliveries are the only thing you're doing (i.e., excluding office hours, surgeries, consults, and all the other stuff that normally fills up so much of Felicia's day).

That's the theory, anyway. Theory, meet Maternal Instinct.

Liz's delivery didn't really cause any true conflict, because we basically packed everyone and everything up and went in en masse, baby and bottles and daddy and all. (I kind of struggled with it, at least while Felicia was talking about leaving me at home alone with Joshua while she did the initial exams, but that's another story, and it all turned out well in the end.) Delivery by caravan is not something that we can adopt as a general practice, however; most of Felicia's patients are less understanding than Liz, and considerably less interested in opting for the Package Deal, whereby for the same low, low price they get not only a highly skilled, very fun obstetrician to do the delivery, but her husband for the videography and photography and blogging, and a little tyke to boot to give them an idea what kind of critter they're about to bring into the world and to provide a sense of scale and perspective in the initial pictures, the way they do in fish-trophy pictures, standing you up next to your freshly-caught tuna or bluegill or whatever so you can better judge how big it really is. I think the average patient would be rather startled, actually, were Felicia to troop in with the whole family behind her, baby and daddy and doggie and all, and announce "Here we are, ready to push? Honey, get the camera ready, and you, the father-to-be, would you mind taking that bottle and feeding Joshua while we get to work?"

Nope: starting taking deliveries again means Felicia has to leave the family at home while she does her thing. And that's where the heart-wrenching comes in.

The first non-Liz delivery Felicia did was on Sunday evening. Of course, in typical pregnant-woman timing, the patient decided to start pushing (requiring Felicia to rush in to the hospital) just at the worst possible moment, when a) the baby was crying-hungry, b) the baby's diaper was poopy and wet both, c) I had four dishes on the stove, all coming to a boil, d) we had Liz and Steve and Liz's parents (and Bela!) all due for dinner in about half an hour, with the table not yet set or anything, and e) the puppy hadn't been for a walk in so long he was starting to look at me funny, eyeballs swimming in pent-up pee, with this "are you ever going to take me out, or am I just going to burst all over your carpet?" kind of expression on his poor puppy face. I managed to juggle it all, somehow, and was then helped considerably by the infusion of multiple Hirnis (and a lone but by no means unskilled Marshak as well) to provide reinforcements while I finished the dinner and got the rest of the stuff under control.

Felicia, however, came back toward the end of dinner in tears, she was so heartbroken at having to be away from her baby (and, incidentally, me and the puppy too) for three hours or so. Now, mind you, normally this is the kind of attachment and overflowing lovingness that I would normally pay good money to encourage, since it's really a Very Good Thing to be missed that much while one's spouse is away at work - but when the mother of one's firstborn child is all snuffly and teary-eyed and accusing herself of being a bad mom and a horrible person because she has to leave for a few hours (really, not a very long time at all, as it turned out) to do her job, even my most selfish instincts were happy to take a back seat to the overwhelming sympathy and concern I felt for her. It's just really, really hard to see someone I love so much suffering so badly, especially when she truly is a great, world-class mom in the making.

The dinner party, by the way, was greatly enjoyed by all (or so they told me, anyway, possibly just out of a desire to be polite to the brain-addled new daddy) - and I, for one, derived a considerable boost in confidence out of the fact that I was able to handle what I would have previously considered a nightmare scenario, preparing for a dinner party while the baby was hungry and crying and needing to be changed and the puppy was needing to be fed and walked, all by myself, all at the same time. If I can survive that kind of test of my domestic daddy-nannying skills, maybe I can manage this Mr. Mom thing after all. (If we really wanted to test it, we should have the washing machine overflowing and a couple extra kids screaming and getting into a fight and the phone ringing off the hook and the water main bursting in the front yard, just for kicks, but let's not be masochistic about it just yet, shall we? One has to ease into these things, sort of, if at all possible, unless one has a ready supply of valium on hand, and even then, oy.)

Meanwhile, Felicia ran heart-first into this same wall of motherly guilt and fear of abandoning her baby last night, when she got called in to deliver another patient in the middle of the night. She had just enough time to do a rush-boob-feeding to try to top off the baby before she had to rush out, which in reality just teased him and woke him up enough that he was very, very aware that he'd been shorted his full boob time, so Daddy and Baby ultimately got up and did a middle of the night bottle feeding with thawed breast milk from the freezer. Which was fine, thankyouverymuch, even if it's kind of amazing how many infomericals one finds on television at, like, 3 in the morning. But again, Felicia came home feeling like the worst mom in the world, in tears at having to leave her baby.

We'll adapt, I'm sure. One, daddy really can handle this (he thinks), and baby is fine as long as he's fed. Two, there's no chance this kid is going to forget his mom, given how much she loves him and how much time she spends cuddling him and telling him how much she treasures him (enough to make the puppy thoroughly envious of all this mommy-time Joshua is getting, for instance). And three, for the record, I truly and honestly believe that Felicia is well on her way to being the best mom in the history of the world - well, tied with my own mom, that is (hi mom!), and I'm sure with Butzmom too (hi Grandma Jo, and Joshua says hi too!). (Erm, dig foot out of mouth, reinsert in shoe, firmly command foot to stay where it belongs.) So we'll be fine. In the meantime, though, send kind thoughts Felicia's way. She's finding it much more difficult than expected to adjust to the idea of being anywhere but where her baby is, the poor wonderful adorable thing.

Oh, and by the way: I have absolutely no idea whether or not any of you faithful readers have been trying to send me e-mail lately, but if you haven't heard back, it's not because I don't love you anymore. My e-mail has been partially down for about two weeks; I can send, but not receive, so I haven't been getting anything from anyone. (Well, aside from the occasional spam message that somehow mysteriously gets through, and no, I really don't need any Viagra, thanks, grr.) We're changing our internet service this week, finally ditching the satellite and moving up to DSL, which is available at our rather remote house at long, long last, so hopefully this isolation from the rest of the virtual world will end shortly and I'll start getting e-mails from the rest of you like a normal person very soon. In the meantime, I really do love you, I do! But use the phone!

Just the two (and a half, ish) of us...

Before I forget, if you haven't checked in for a while, there are lots more pictures on Joshua's other spot. I think we might even be up to two, maybe three pages! So be sure to take a look - that is, assuming spending half an hour browsing through a whole bunch of baby pictures isn't right up there in your book with having someone stick a drillbit in your ear. (In which case, what are you doing at Joshua's little blog in the first place, huh, huh?)

Also before I forget (this being the morning of Random Thoughts bouncing through my very Random Mind): at the risk of stating the obvious for those who are not quite brand-new to blog-dom, you should be aware that as I add posts to this thingamajig, the old ones roll off the bottom... into the archives, to which you can find links along the left side of this page (sorted by month). If I've been particularly verbose, and you've been particularly lax about checking in (and shame on you, nyah), you may actually have missed some before they got archived. So if you're really a glutton for punishment, be sure to click on the archives over there to the left and bury yourself in all the Past Poops That Were Fit to Print.

There. Now that all that is taken care of and I've done my bit of shameless Joshpromotion for the morning, on to the business at hand...

As I think I've mentioned in blogspace previously, Grandma Jo and Grandpa Mike finally abandoned us (waah!) to our own devices (double-waah!) yesterday morning... like, way early yesterday morning, since they had to drive up to Portland to catch their plane. Portland is about a three and a half hour drive for Felicia-Knievel, about four and a quarter for mere mortals like me, and about, oh, six, maybe seven for grandparently types. So Mike and Joanne hit the road at the very uncivilized hour of about 4 am yesterday morning - as best my bleary mind can recall, since I not only don't function very well that early, I don't even believe any human being should ever have to personally experience such times in the morning, and certainly not without at least six, maybe eight cups of coffee. But we got up nonetheless, or made a good pretense of it anyway, and kissed them goodbye, while Grandma Jo smooched the baby all over his little chubby cheeks and she and Felicia both did a lot of much-deserved sniffling. Then we went back to bed, to not-really-sleep for a couple more hours, and woke up to a house in which we were alone with the baby.

All I can say is, thank goodness for baby swings. Even though we got what turns out to be a pretty rickety, substandard one that plays 15 songs all completely out of key and either rocks hardly at all or threatens to launch the little tyke into space (with nothing in between) - and even though we have serious Swing Envy every time we look at the one Steve and Liz picked out (they being the much more organized types that they are) - it's still like having a third set of hands available to hold the little guy while we do other random things, like, say, take showers, or go to the bathroom, or, well, write entries in the blog.

Otherwise, our first day on our own was a lot better than I would have expected. We actually managed to spend most of it out and about - running errands around town, going to Medford to look at porcelain tiles for the front porch and countertops for the outdoor kitchen we're building and go to Barnes & Noble and stuff - and then came home to a relatively relaxing evening at home, with just The Pack. Which consisted of a) Seinfeld, b) Sex in the City (Felicia's an addict, truly), and c) our first adventures in breastpumping, bottlefeeding, and firing up the bottle sterilizer.

Granted, getting this whole breastmilk-by-bottle system humming is the only way Felicia's ever going to be able to get back to work, so we can support our contractors' children in the manner to which they've become accustomed. But clearly, we have a few wrinkles to iron out. For one thing, the Medela nipples that came with the breastpump that Felicia's partner Tamara loaned us have a tendency to half-drown the little boob-happy tyke if his daddy isn't really careful about how far he tips the bottle. Number two, we'd better hope the pumping thing in itself goes just a little bit faster as time goes on, since at the moment it takes a very long time indeed to get an ounce or two in the bottles. (Luckily, it takes Joshua an equally long time to gobble down an ounce or two at the moment, but remember, if his growth continues in straight-line fashion, he's soon going to be 23 feet tall. One assumes he'll be just a tad more peckish by then.) And number three, Daddy has to get this whole thing down, or at least learn how to put on a better act of knowing what he's doing (like, say, not half-drowning the poor kid every time he tips the bottle), or Mommy is going to a) rip the bottle away and consign Daddy to the parenting dungeons, never to feed the baby again, and/or b) offer so much gratuitous advice on the precise angle of tiltage to use, or which way up the nipple should go, or what kind of tap on the lips will best signal Mr. Fussy that there's foodage approaching his little lips... that Daddy will throw his hands up in frustration and refuse to turn on Sex in the City the next time around, which will precipitate a major existential crisis, which Would Be Bad.

We'll sort it out. After all, between us we have something like, oh, 36 years of education - how complicated could it be?

(Any comments about "famous last words" and the like, you can just keep to yourselves, thankyouverymuch.)

I may be in real trouble, here...

Joshua has been introducing us to the concept of "projectile peeing" over the past twelve hours or so. He's pretty impressive at it, actually - he's sprayed our window blinds (range: three feet), the changing table itself of course (range minimal, but the coverage is impressive), and his own face (which, given his reaction, was probably a "miss", though it's not clear exactly what he was aiming at).

Once upon a time, Felicia would have pounced upon this kind of gratuitous messiness and tried to stifle the pee before it got all over everything. Lately however, my lovely wife (a.k.a. "Ms. Maternal Instinct") nearly bursts with pride every time he does this. Last night, for example, as our first-born son was letting fly all over the drapes, instead of rushing to cover up his little firehose with a baby washcloth or something, Felicia just stood back and beamed with happiness. "I don't care if he pees all over everything," she declared, "I'm just so grateful he's alive." (This is on top of other, equally alarming expressions of over-the-top motherly adoration, like, "I love this boy so much I'd eat his poop!" and "I don't care if I am sleeping in his pee, I just love him!")

Can you say, "upcoming discipline problems"?? All together now...

We're getting ready to take the little bladder-happy monster to see Dr. Steve this morning, for a weigh-in and a check on his wee-wee (the source of Much Trouble lately, as you no doubt recall). Felicia's been feeding him almost non-stop in an effort to help him cram for his weight test, in hopes that he'll absorb an extra ounce or two and bump himself up a few percentile points. I suspect that this too is merely a foreshadowing of things to come. Today a weigh-in, tomorrow the SAT...

My dominant emotion these days? I'd have to vote for "loving bemusement."

Booby booby everywhere, and not a bit for me...

Sometime Saturday morning, the Milk Fairy landed with a vengeance. You could tell by the fact that Joshua was suddenly sleeping for about two hours after every feeding, with a whole new level of self-satisfaction in his facial expression... not to mention the fact that Felicia's boobs roughly doubled in size over the course of just a few hours. Now, those of you who have actually seen my lovely wife will be boggling a bit trying to imagine how that could be, since she was never particularly lacking in that department (to put it mildly). Just trust me - she got a lot bigger all of a sudden. Our bed was already feeling surprisingly crowded, between the two of us, the puppy, and now the baby. The addition of these two humungo boobs may finally push me over the edge - quite literally, right onto the floor. I'm wondering if they make nursing bras with flying buttresses for extra support, kinda like the ones that hold up Notre Dame. We may need some engineering help here.

So, all in all, life is at least a bit quieter and less stressful here on the western front. At least during the day - the little squishy-faced tyke still manages to keep us hopping to his every blurp and bleep and whimper pretty much all night long. But the important thing (bleary eyes being nothing new in this household, what with Felicia's normal call and delivery schedule and all) is that Joshua's weight had already jumped back up three ounces by mid-morning Saturday, when Dr. Steve last checked him. First step a few precious ounces, next step true typical baby blimphood - here we come!

Tonight is the bris - i.e., the ritual circumcision - which is a Big Deal. Now, those of you in the know will be fully aware that any Jewish gathering worth its salt will involve enough fantastic food to feed a small army three or four times over, so Grandma Jo has been cooking for days to get ready for our little get-together. I've heard legends about her preparations for the bar mitzvah she catered for each of her two sons, and from what I gather, I suspect less thought and effort went into the D-Day invasions. By comparison, our little bris, with its mere 16 or 18-person guest list, will be a walk in the park - but still, we've got trays in the freezer in the garage, every chair in the house has been drafted, our dining room table has been gift-wrapped, I'm digging up our camping coolers to keep drinks cold, and we've had prep work going on in the kitchen for the past three days or so.

Believe me, I'm watching every detail - since I'll be the head cook in a Jewish household, I guess I'd better take every opportunity to learn at the feet of the master!

Meanwhile, if I was at all concerned that motherhood and new responsibilities would dilute Felicia's unique je ne sais quoi, I needn't have worried. Her way of inviting best friends David and Patrick to the bris was to announce, "You missed me blowing out my [CENSORED] at the delivery, so you'd better be there to see Joshua get his little wee wee whacked!"

Just kinda makes you wince to think about it, doesn't it??

Waiting for the Milk Fairy...

Amazing as it may seem, after such an utterly life-altering event as the birth of one's first child, life does go on... or something that might pass for "life," anyway, if one doesn't quibble about little details like sleep, being able to think straight, or getting anything done beyond changing diapers and fetching an endless supply of things that baby and momma need and that are somehow scattered all over the house in the most unlikely places. Still, we've survived three whole days without major incident, and even if we're a bit bleary, we're more or less standing. Sort of.

Another installment in the series of revelations that have come upon me as this adventure in new fatherhood has unfolded: God has a real sense of humor when it comes to arranging things for first-time parents. For instance. It would seem to make sense, if one were designing things in the optimal manner, that the system would work something like this: 1) baby arrives; 2) baby gets hungry; 3) baby goes "waah," once, in a highly cute and attractive way; 4) milk supply immediately arrives, whammo, on demand; 5) baby stops crying, everyone's smiling, cut to commercial.

But no. Instead, here we are, waiting for the Milk Fairy to come along, while little Joshua's cry goes from downright adorable and the sweetest thing we ever heard, to just a little worrisome as one looks ahead to life a ways down the road, to a tad monotonous after the tenth time over the course of the past coup, to the veritable Knell of Doom when one has just set him down, with high hopes of getting a bit of sleep, at 3:55am, when the little monster is perversely wiiiiiiide awake. I'm sure colostrum is a wonderful thing and just what the baby needs, as all those crunchy-granola midwifely lactation types assure us - but man, will we welcome that Milk Fairy with open arms.

Joshua above all will be happy to see her, since he's getting a bit hungry. He's dropped a bit of weight, down to 7 pounds 1-1/2 ounces, which is still within normal limits but a little nervewracking for a couple of brand-spanking-new parents strung out on no sleep like a couple of junkies about two days overdue for their next hit. Dr. Steve tells us not to worry, that the Milk Fairy will come along, and little Joshua will be just fine. Still, if we should ever get a customer satisfaction survey in the mail from God, asking for suggestions on how he could improve our overall parenting experience and thus attain that 100% satisfaction rating that every good company strives to achieve, I think we'll have a few tips to pass along.

Exhibit 2 in the Case of God's Sense of Humor When It Comes to Welcoming New Parents to Their New Mode of Existence: he sets new babies' internal clocks quite precisely... but backwards. It's entirely predictable - little tyke sleeps all day, parents get ready for bed, little tyke goes onto the bed in between said parents (or into the bassinet, or whatever), eyes pop WIIIIDE open, little tyke is very, very up, and little tyke wants to eat - all... the... time... all... dang... night. Being the Modern Parents that we are, we share the nightly duties, too, which means Felicia feeds, I burp, and we double-team the squirmy monster when it comes time to change poopy diapers (and he nevertheless has us thoroughly outnumbered, somehow). Which means we're both up every thirty to forty-five minutes throughout the night, which is Not Good.

This system can, and probably will, be improved upon. Primarily, I suspect, with the help of that dang Milk Fairy, who's probably off having a slug of 2% with the boys and just lost track of the time, the bubblehead.

I have to say, though, I'm just utterly in awe of Felicia as a mom. Not only does she carry this little guy flawlessly and without incident (if not entirely without complaint) for 40 weeks; not only does she deliver him precisely on time, and without missing a single day of work; not only does she push him out like a champion and produce an absolutely gorgeous little healthy baby via a beautiful, touching delivery, with minimal muss and fuss (a few misadventures on the trip into the hospital and the occasional pyscho moment pre-EpiDarryl notwithstanding)... but she's just an incredibly patient, gentle, (mostly) unflappable little momma. While I'm feeling punch-drunk with lack of sleep to the point where even the puppy is a little leery of getting too close to me until I've had at least two quarts of coffee to return me to a state somewhat approximating a decent human being in the morning, Felicia just keeps plugging along without batting an eyelash. Mostly. It's just an awesome sight.

Granted, it's only Day Three. But I'm really thinking we're going to have to have, like, nine of these little tykes. It'd be a terrible shame to waste this kind of natural talent.

Joshua's birthday story - the full(er) version

Baby's sleeping, Momma's sleeping, Grandma Jo has the baby watch for the moment, and for the first time in the past 48 hours or so I have a real breather with nothing much to do... so I thought I'd take the opportunity to tell little Joshua’s birthday story, so someday we’ll be able to show him how it happened that he came into the world. (The rest of you are welcome to listen in, as long as you're nice and quiet and don't wake the baby!)

The whole thing started about, oh, sometime Monday morning, when Felicia began having contractions. Now, you have to understand – Felicia is so oblivious you could walk an elephant in front of her and she wouldn't even notice unless she happened to run her car into it, so she didn't realize she was having contractions until about mid-day, when she was done seeing patients and had finished doing a C-section. (That's right, folks: she saw patients and did a delivery the very same day she went into labor. If this little boy ever starts slacking off, and doesn’t want to do his homework or clean his room, his momma has a whopper of a guilt-trip all set up and waiting.) When I met Felicia for lunch in town, she squirmed around so much in her chair that I thought she had ants in her pants. She just couldn't get comfortable, and kept getting up to move around. I think that’s when we realized that something big was happening.

So we went on home, and Felicia and Gimli (the puppy) took a long walk up and down the driveway… five times, no less, and our driveway is steep! I went along for a couple trips up and down (about as much as my still-recovering knee could take) and timed her contractions, which were about 3 to 5 minutes apart. So we set up an appointment with Dr. Medley (Felicia’s partner and

OB

) for later Monday afternoon. When we went in, Tamara put Felicia and Joshua on the monitor, and sure enough, there they were: nice, strong contractions, about 2 to 5 minutes apart, and Felicia was 3cm dilated, about 70-80% effaced, and her bag was right down in the cervix, all ready to break. Joshua was still high, but not as high as he had been… so Tamara told us we’d be having a baby sometime between then (this is 5pm on Monday) and Tuesday morning. Which was probably the best news Felicia had had in about, oh, 40 weeks… meanwhile, about the only thought that my so-called brain was capable of processing at that point was that it was a really, really good thing we’d finally packed that hospital bag just the day before.

So here’s The Plan, as Felicia formulated it as she was sitting in Tamara’s exam room, moments after hearing that she was in early labor and would be having the baby soon. She was going to go home, take a nice, relaxing shower, put on her makeup, do her hair, get into something nice and comfortable and attractive, and waltz into the labor unit at the hospital later in the evening looking beautiful, calm, collected, and highly fashionable. I, meanwhile, would take the time to pick out some nice music for Felicia to listen to during labor, feed and walk the puppy, gather our bags and cameras and things, make a few phone calls to let the Usual Suspects know they were about to be grandparents/aunts/uncles/etc., and basically get everything organized to do this thing in a nice, orderly, peaceful manner. Anesthesia would meet us at the labor unit, Felicia would get her epidural, she'd go "mmm" and give a little push, and the baby would pop right out, voila, all done. Sounds nice, no?

This Plan lasted about, oh, fifteen minutes.

What really happened is that Felicia sat down to take a pee shortly after we got home and heard a little “pop.” When nothing else happened, she shrugged and got into the shower, which was apparently a Wonderful Thing – so much so that the moment she stepped out, her water broke all over the bath mat. At which point a bunch of things happened really, really fast: her contractions got a lot more intense, she doubled over the counter, and she started yelling for me to come into the bathroom.

I, meanwhile, had gotten far enough into The Plan to have stuck a few CDs (the wrong ones, as it turned out later) stuck into a carrying case while I fed the puppy, and then went outside to take him for a post-dinner poop. Next thing I know, Grandma Jo is leaning her head out the front door to yell “David, come quick, Felicia’s water just broke!”

Unfortunately, about the time I hobbled back around into the house, she added, “April Fools!” Which, given recent experience, put me in just suspicious enough a frame of mind that when I got into the bedroom and saw Felicia doubled over moaning a lot, the first, immortal words out of my mouth when my lovely wife went into active labor with our firstborn son were something wonderfully sensitive like, “Are you really in that much pain, or are you just making a lot of noise?”

I have this woeful suspicion that this is one of those things that I’m just never going to live down.

So we throw everything within reach into the car, whether or not it was really needed (and missing some things that were needed), yell a few last-minute instructions at Mom and Mike, and hobble Felicia into the passenger seat. At this point, she’s not only not lucid, she’s only barely mobile, and the contractions are coming fast. I, meanwhile, discovered a simple fact that I’m sure many fathers have discovered the hard way before me: the moment one’s wife goes into labor, one’s IQ drops roughly in half. One also loses all sense of direction, coordination, and common sense. If the laws were just, a man whose wife is in labor should not only not be allowed to operate heavy machinery, he should be declared a ward of the state and locked up for his own safety and that of those around him until at least 48 hours after the whole shlamiel is over; better yet, until the kid is about 21 years old, gainfully employed, and no longer his problem.

Which explains a few things about the trip to the hospital.

Here’s the setting: we live about 8 miles or so from

Three

Rivers

Community

Hospital

, with the town of

Grants Pass

in the middle. I can normally manage this drive in about, oh, 20 minutes (the section through town is pretty slow, since the main street is full of stoplights, a Southern Pacific Railroad crossing, and a lot of retirees who think anything over about 10 mph is appropriate only if you’re driving the Daytona 500). Felicia, whom I suspect of being secretly descended from a cross of Evel Knievel and Attila the Hun every time she gets behind the wheel, can do it in about 12 minutes – more like 8 if she has a patient in labor and needs to get there in a hurry. All the cops in town know her car on sight, and have long since given up on trying to give her tickets or even slow her down, since they know someday it’ll be their baby she’s rushing in to deliver, and she’d probably hand them something with three heads and eighteen fingers and say “Ha! That’s for that speeding ticket that one time!”

You can see why having me, Granny Dave, rather than her, Evel/Attila, behind the wheel at a time like this is just asking for trouble.

So here we are, racing toward the hospital. Felicia has the passenger-side window open because she’s hot and uncomfortable, and every time she has a contraction she grabs hold of the handholds and starts climbing out the window, which is not exactly making me any less panicky. At some point in between contractions, when she’s more or less lucid, she tells me to take one of the side streets through town, instead of the main drag, because it’ll be faster. A lot of trouble could have been avoided if she’d also told me which one to take, because as we’ve already seen, I am in a State of

Imminent Fatherhood

and am a) legally brain dead, b) incapable of operating heavy machinery, and c) without the directional sense that God gave to a pneumatic hammer. So I wind up on 3^rd Street (those of you who know

Grants Pass

can see it coming), heading south.

Problem A occurs when I spot a Sheriff’s car along the side of the road and slow down from, oh, about 65 (in a 25 mph zone) to maybe, say, 45. Felicia chooses this moment to come out of her pain-induced haze and notice the speed dropping, and snarls something like “What the *@#! are you thinking?? Speed up!” Torn between my Midwestern, law-abiding upbringing and my wife, who is seeming increasingly dangerous and not a little frightening, I do as ordered and hit the gas again. (In retrospect, I should have ignored the cop; if he had happened to stop us, I could have happily shifted the blame for any delay onto him, and thus thrown some nice fresh red meat who was not me in front of my semi-psychotic wife. Live and learn.)

Problem B is a direct result of my choice of side street (see above, and refer to the already-mentioned issues with directional sense, relative IQ, and the inadvisability of letting Imminent Fathers within 50 feet of a moving vehicle in the first place). See, 3^rd Street goes through town quite nicely until it hits G Street, at which point it does a weird thing and heads off in a completely different, and from Felicia’s point of view utterly useless, direction.

Predictably, just as I realize I’ve made this important error, Felicia picks just that instant to become aware of her surroundings again. So from the passenger side I hear my formerly sweet and kind and loving wife snarl out, “Do you have any idea where you’re going?? CLEARLY NOT. Because you’re… going… the… wrong… WAY.”

You’ve never seen a guy pull a U-turn in the middle of the road so fast.

Eventually we screech up to the hospital, and Felicia manages to stagger into the hospital with me hovering around her on all sides at once, trying to figure out what I could possibly do to help her. I’m rather relieved to see that she snarls just as much at the labor nurses as she does me (safety in numbers, and all that), as she throws herself down on the bed in her newly assigned room while five – count ‘em, five – labor nurses hover around her.

It’s at about this point that the focus of Felicia’s attention shifts, thankfully, from her deadbeat can’t-drive-worth-crap husband to the absent anesthesiologist, who is NOT repeat NOT right there waiting with her epidural, in spite of the fact that she forewarned him about three months ago to be there at exactly this instant, even though it’s his anniversary and he’s supposed to be at the coast with his wife; and in spite of the fact that Felicia’s first call after her water broke was not to her OB, but to the labor floor to have them call anesthesiology and get him there STAT, because she’s damn well not going to go through this without serious drugs. It’s also at about this point, particularly after a minute goes by without a guy darkening the door in a gown bearing needles and drugs, that she starts uttering threats against said anesthesiologist’s life and bodily integrity.

Thankfully for all concerned, it’s only 15 or 20 minutes later that Darryl (who will forever be remembered in this correspondent’s mind as Epi-Darryl, the Miracle Man) really does appear, breathing words of comfort and bearing heavy narcotics. Mere minutes later, the wife I love and treasure re-appeared from behind the clouds of labor pains, full of smiles and apologies and more than a little relief. And two new, enthusiastic converts to the joys of epidurals were made on the spot.

From that point on, the labor was everything I’d ever hoped it would be: peaceful, beautiful, gradual, and above all, painless, for all concerned. Felicia was full of love for the father of her baby, which was quite a relief after the Unfortunate First Utterance Upon Discovery That One’s Wife Is In Labor incident, not to mention the Case of the Blind Idiotic Driving Like One’s Grandmother, for both of which Felicia forgave me, though not without promising to spread the word of my dimwittedness far and wide.

We arrived at the hospital somewhere in the neighborhood of 6:15 in the evening; sometime around 2:30 in the morning Felicia started pushing. About an hour and fifteen minutes later, at 3:46 in the morning, with Daddy helping hold Mommy’s legs and Grandma Jo helping Dr. Medley deliver the baby, Joshua Elie Smith entered the world, smoothly and with a full head of dark, curly hair in the lead, topping a 13-1/2 inch head and followed by a 21-inch-long, 7 pound 12 ounce body. In attendance, along with mom and dad and Grandma Jo, were Grandpa Mike, Tamara Medley (Felicia’s obstetrician and partner), best friends Lisa Solomon, Liz Hirni, and her husband Steve Marshak (also Joshua’s pediatrician), and big brother Gimli in the form of a picture on the bulletin board that served as Felicia’s “focus” during labor. A couple minutes later Grandma Kay and Grandpa Ken got to hear their first grandchild’s cries by phone. Felicia and I both cried a lot, and we both agreed that Joshua is the most beautiful, perfect, wonderful baby in the history of the world. We may not be entirely objective, but hey, I’ve got the pictures to prove it!

So that’s the story of how little Joshua came into the world. A little panic, a few boneheaded moves on his daddy’s part, his mommy not quite following her own plan like she wanted, but it was all beautiful, awe-inspiring, and wonderful even so.

A word about the name. The “Joshua” part is a combination of three of the people we love and admire most in the world: 

• his Great-Grandpa Jim, who has been my idol and the type of person I aspire to be for as long as I can remember;
• his Great-Grandpa Joe, the second grandfather I never expected to have, whom Felicia and I both love (and love to tease) dearly, and who stole my Grandma away at her 60^th high school reunion and turned her into a giggly, goofy teenage girl again; and, last but far from least,
• Joshua’s Grandma Joanne, who did so much to make Felicia the amazing person she is today, and who brought us together to make this little boy in the first place.
  

The “Elie” part (pronounced just like “Ely”) is after Felicia’s dad, a strong man who accomplished much, not least of which was to raise four great kids who have each accomplished a great deal in their own right. If Joshua inherits a little bit of the best of each of those incredible people, he will be a very fortunate little man indeed.

There are more photos on Joshua’s online album; click here, or on the link to the left, to take a look. Check back every so often, too, ‘cause there will be more coming soon!

All our bags are packed...

At long last, after much bludgeoning and doom-saying on my part (a brief sample: "You know, if you don't pack your bag yourself, you're going to wind up coming home in whatever underwear I pick for you - and you know what that means...!!?!") - Felicia FINALLY packed her bag for the hospital. Which was an odd experience, since in part we were packing for a little baby we haven't even met yet. We went down the packing list provided in the Bible (a.k.a. The Girlfriends Guide to Pregnancy) and stuffed all kinds of things into Felicia's hospital bag, from slippers and socks (to keep her little footsies warm while she's walking around the labor floor in between contractions), to shampoo and conditioner (so she can get cleaned up and beautified afterward), to little tiny socks and hat and blanky and binky for the baby to come home in. Not to mention the all-important camera, video camera, extra flash memory cards and batteries, and all the various other things yours truly will need in order to keep his dazed and panicky self productively occupied and record the event for posterity while Felicia is doing all the hard work.

So I guess we must be just about ready. We're all packed up. The car seat is installed. The changing table and bassinet are all set up next to our bed. The baby clothes are freshly laundered, and all our bottles and binkies and things have been run through the dishwasher and are sparkly clean. Felicia even had her pedicure yesterday, courtesy of ButzMom, so her toes are all pretty and clean - which is what she was really waiting for all this time.

Now if we could just convince Joshua that it's time to come out, we'll be ready to rock.

We had a nice little last-minute dinner party last night, with Steve & Liz and Lisa & Matt, along with ButzMom & Mike and me & Felicia (plus Joshua and Steve & Liz's little critter, who is doing his/her best to race up behind Joshua and come out first, the little cheater). Since I know the first question all you food-obsessed Butzes are going to ask, I'll anticipate: the menu was salmon with roasted tomatoes and Israeli couscous; a lentil and bulgur salad with spinach, basil, and cilantro; fresh spaghetti squash; and capri salad as an appetizer (tomato slices with fresh mozzarella, fresh basil, and a drizzle of olive oil on top). ButzMom, for her part, contributed her famous Skor for dessert (yum!), and we had a couple nice wines plus one somewhat sketchy one that Steve grabbed while Liz wasn't around to supervise. A good time was had by all... but my secret plan to prod Joshua into action by getting us all involved in something fun and entertaining - thus activating his interrupt-mommy-and-daddy-to-claim-all-the-attention instincts - somehow failed to do the job.

So I guess we'll have to shift to Plan B - which is to go to Ashland for the day and have a good time somewhere about 45 minutes' drive from the hospital, away from our freshly-packed hospital bags and all the other stuff we need, and where it would be really inconvenient to go into labor. Surely that will work.

And if that fails, we'll just have to resort to the old standby: SEX. Durnit.