College rivalries

Dan’s cousin-in-law, who studied at MIT, gave us some hand-me-downs for John this past weekend.

Sorting through the piles of clothes, she came across a Cornell t-shirt.

“Take this! It's downright ecumenical!”

My mother-in-law has a wonderful stash of magazines. She keeps issues for a number of years and I enjoy looking through her collection when I visit during the holidays. This past weekend, her stack included Country Life, Southern Living, and Better Homes and Gardens.

I copied down a dozen or so interesting recipes this time, but after reading Amy Laura Hall’s Better Homes and Children a few weeks ago, my admiration for the well-decorated “country” and “southern” homes faded. Instead of seeing well-coordinated living rooms, I saw child unfriendly environments. In place of comfortable throw pillows and impressive collections, I saw stainables and breakables. Most of all, I noticed the phrase “partner” all too often in the copy describing the owner(s) of the abode. It is no wonder that homes are not ready to receive children when child-hostile groups provide the inspiration for home decoration.

My mother-in-law, by the way, has a beautiful home which was very ready to receive my son. She is tidy (much tidier than I am!) and, besides the magazines, very few things were low to the ground. Her well-waxed wood floor ensured that John couldn’t travel far enough to get into trouble (not that he's very fast yet!) before someone caught up with him. Besides checking the plants for dropped petals every few hours, letting John explore her living room was much less work than letting him explore mine.

In the country, on the farm

It is a beautiful day today. The sky is clear and blue and the sun shining in the large living room windows has warmed the floor. Sitting on the sofa, the windows provide a picturesque view of trees on the ridge. A few evergreens color the otherwise gray hillside.

The Blacksburg area is beautiful. The roads wind through working farms and mowed lawns of expansive yards. There are open fields with horses, cows, and sheep surrounded by thickly wooded forests. There are also rolling hills and steep slopes.

Being here is like being in another world. We went to breakfast at a local “hang out” today. Camo and hunter-orange were the most prevalent color schemes and we ate our greasy breakfast biscuits next to chainsaw grease and fishing flies. Two (dead) deer were in the truck bed next to our Toyota.

My brother-in-law and sister-in-law parked out of sight.

Dan’s uncle asked them, “Is your car American made?”

“Yes… Why?”

“It is usually better to park foreign-made cars by the window.”

Yet another reason to breastfeed

Now that John is so big, I get more and more comments like, "He still nurses?" or "What do you mean, he doesn't eat food?"

My parents are exceptionally supportive. My father reminded me that no college students nurse, and that while some babies stop at 18 months, others nurse significantly longer.

But, for other people, here's one more reason to nurse: Breastfeeding may lower mother's risk of Type 2 Diabetes.

Back from John's therapist

John had his ninth physical therapy session today and he is bushed.

We started going for his neck (torticollis - “wryneck”) in September but it seems that neck problems are far reaching, so the therapist has worked with him on crawling and related skills, also. I think the connection is that as you crawl, the shoulder muscles get stronger and that helps the neck. The other connection is that a baby would go crazy if only its neck were stretched for an hour. Also, I would go crazy if I had to pay a co-pay of $10 for fifteen minutes of neck stretches. So, we see the physical therapist for an hour each week.

I thought that John’s exit milestone was crawling, which he mastered last Monday afternoon. Apparently not, however, because today the therapist worked with him on crawling up stairs. Note: John now not only likes crawling up stairs, but he also thinks falling off the side of the staircase is fun. I guess it is Mommy’s job to teach John that falling is scary. It wouldn’t be good for other patients to see one patient in the therapy room howling while he was learning that falling off the stairs could hurt.

I like the therapy room. It is bright with large, opaque windows all around, and with blue and red mats. Ropes hang from the ceiling to which inventive therapists hang “boats” for patients to use to catch velcro fish. Huge balls and wedges and steps of every primary color line the perimeter of the room. The therapists have many toys which light up and talk, but I am proud of my son when he grabs for the stacking cups instead of the talking Elmo steering wheel. I am even more proud of my son when he climbs up the stairs to smile, one by one, at everyone who walks through the room, unaware of the steering wheel telling him driving is fun and instead delighting the other patients.

We going to visit Dan’s parents this weekend. They live in a split-level house, so I’ll be running after John instead of posting.

I’m feeling crafty

I’m exceptionally good at starting craft projects.

I’m quite bad at finishing them.

I’m working on getting better!

Current works (in order of importance to me):

1. Jean quilt started September 2004: I have all the squares cut out and am edge-stitching each square so that the they will not fray in the wash. I hope to finish the edge stitching by early December and start piecing the quilt by early next year. It will be twin bed sized for the bed in John’s room. Since jeans are so heavy, it is common not to use any batting but instead to have a thick backing of either flannel or fleece. I’m leaning towards flannel - opinions?

2. Butt-sweater longies started November 2005: I had a number of wool sweaters from garage sales and a wool dress that no longer met my standard for modesty, so I felted them in the wash and am working on making them into longies and soakers. Do longies work all right for crawlers? I don’t think John will be a crawler for very long, but it would be a shame to have a pair of longies ruined quickly. However, since the cost per pair will be about $2 and an hour of sewing, I don’t really care. I’ll probably use the longies for pajamas, which will minimize the wear and tear while keeping John warm, and well diapered.

3. T-Shirt Quilt started October 2005: Amy, along with a pile of can’t-dispose-of-but-can’t-wear-either t-shirts inspired me to start this project. So far, I’ve only reduced the size of the pile (by cutting away the useless parts of the t-shirts). I don’t plan to work on this again until the jean quilt is finished.

4+. Needlepoint tablecloths started 1997: These kits were given as a present while I was an exchange student after I finished needle pointing (is that a verb?) another tablecloth my host-grandmother had started over a decade beforehand while on vacation in a foreign. She had lost interest in the project and never finished it. Guess I’m just continuing the tradition!

Pictures to come... the batteries to our digital camera are currently in Dan’s bike lights.

Nifty baby-wearers

I haven't become a baby-wearing addict by any means. I think I have the most content son *ever* and, since he's totally happy playing on the floor with blocks by himself for two hours, I don't feel like a negligent parent when I let him play on the floor of the room I'm in while working around the house. However, I think it is good in principle and will probably wear John's siblings around (even if they are content - to protect them from big brother).

Today, at Princeton Mommy's group, a set of very old Chinese grandparents wore their maybe seven month old twins to baby group (couldn't figure out the exact ages - the grandparents spoke not one word of English). It is getting cold here, so the baby carriers were doubled up blankets (maybe 2.5'x4') with one long (5'?) strap from either end of the to short side. The grandmother had no problem with the back carry, but the grandfather needed some help and didn't look quite as comfortable. The hefty blankets making up the carrier seemed to make a lot of sense for late fall and early winter.

OK - I do live in New Jersey, so it is rare to even see a sling here, so seeing these in action was neat!

Leaves, leaves, more leaves

After living in places where I had no yard work to do for over five years, renting the second floor of a house on .6 acres in New Jersey has been an eye opener. We have over 18 full size trees on the property as well as probably another 10+ bushes which are over 10 feet tall. There are, of course, many smaller bushes, but I won't count those for now!

I've been raking during many of John's naps over the past few weeks and was frustrated - an hour of raking seemed to not make the least of a dent! Argh. Today, there were six people raking the yard for two hours. They didn't even touch most of the side yards, but at least the backyard isn't covered by layers and layers of leaves anymore. I'll continue raking the side yard that my kitchen window looks out on and the area of the backyard that I want John to be able to play on next summer (good grass only grows in well-raked areas). Hopefully, the mower will be fixed next summer so that I can keep down the grass in the play area (drat those fleas).

John has been nursing more recently (probably because he started to crawl! Until this week, keeping him latched on for more than 5 minutes at a time was impossible, but now he'll nurse for upwards of 20 minutes) so I picked up a book on tape from the library called, "Mother Tongue," about the development of English. If the mega-nursing spell continues for a while, I think I'll check out Churchill's History of the English Speaking Peoples.

I've got to put a word out for Reformed Praise's new CD, "Cross Centered Worship". David Ward is the owner of Reformed Praise and he wrote the songs on the CD; he also used to lead worship at our NJ church. He has since gone to seminary and now is a music minister in Minnesota.

I thought I'd stopped blogging, but...

My mom told me about an article in the San Jose Mercury News ("Murky News", as my parents like to call it) about the increase in C-Sections. I'd told her some of the information when I was preparing for John's birth and had decided on a CNM instead of an OB, but it was nice to have a fairly mainstream newspaper address the high rate of C-Sections.

I've found a lot of mothers I know are misinformed about C's, not recogonizing it to be a major abdominal surgery and considering it an easy way to avoid the pain of labor. I can't really say much - having only had a few hours of labor, I don't think I can encourage someone who might be in labor 20+ hours!

Speaking of misinformation, I'm a bit frustrated about breastfeeding misinformation, too. I still exclusively breastfeed my 9mo son (by his choice - he doesn't seem to want food) and many moms say to me, "Oh, you're lucky you have enough milk! I don't have good milk production. I wish I could exclusively breastfeed." Most of the moms who have made such a comment had their babies sleeping 10+ hours without eating by 6-10 weeks of age! Now, I'm not dead-set against a baby sleeping through the night early, and I've had friends whose babies have done just that without a milk supply problem. However, one shouldn't teach their child to sleep through the night and then complain about lack of milk.

A second article that I want to recommend from this month's Books and Culture prompted me to start writing again! I'd love to hear people's reactions.

John is Mr. Inquisitive. He started crawling Monday and pulled himself up to standing on Tuesday!!! His favorite toy is his tool truck (complete with wrench, screwdriver, hammer, and saw). He has six teeth.