the birth survey

I'm not a person who usually gets swept up in causes, but after giving birth to two children and sharing stories of the experience with friends on both sides of the Atlantic, I became more and more disturbed by the trends in maternity care in the USA. At first glance it seems we are dazzled with 'choice' in this country, if fortunate enough to have decent health insurance. We can choose our obstetrician or midwife (if we can find a hospital that actually has midwives, or have insurance that covers home birth midwives) and choose the hospital where we get our care and give birth, but when you dig deeper it becomes apparent that without reliable data about rates of intervention such as the use of pitocin, Edpidurals or C sections for individual hospitals and practioners, this choice is an illusion. This survey from the coalition for the improvement of maternity services is collecting data about hospitals and health care practioners that women will be able to use in the future to make informed choices about where to give birth. If you had a baby in the USA in the past three years you can contribute.

all our children are above average

Much like the inhabitants of the fictional 'lake Wobegon', where "all the women are strong, all the men are good looking, and all the children are above average" , I am convinced that my own children, and the children of my family and friends are far superior in both looks and intelligence to the average child.

Geekygirl amazes me with the language skills she has for her age (she is exactly 2 and a half). Perhaps because it seems such a short time ago that she spoke her first words (one of her earliest and most adorable words was 'butter' for butterfly, accompanied by a charming hand flapping imitation of the insect), I am blown away when she says things like:

"today I celebrate someone's birthday"

"I ate my dinner already"

" I spilled my milk yesterday"

"He wish he could have cheerios too" (about her brother, who was indeed eyeing her cheerios)

"I like muscetti (spaghetti), it's a different kind of pasta"

and my favourite, from last week

"how are you feeling, Mummy?"

I feel that this is one of the most rewarding things about being a parent, to watch their minds and emotions unfurl and bloom through the aquisition of language.

Which is a good job, because it seems that geekygirl has inherited from one of her parents (who me?!) the need to use six words when one will do, and to have her two penneth worth inserted into every conversation. A common refrain in the house whever her father and I try to have a conversation is

"talk to me, what are you talking about?, talk to me, TALK TO ME!"

good fences make good neighbours

We are in the midst of a garden landscaping project here at geekyhouse. Neither geekydaddy or I are in the least bit handy, so we have called in the professionals.

Our house is built into a steep hill, and the small yard is in two levels. From the top yard we can see over the top of our house. This means that the yard has very high fences. Rotting, swaying fences, painted with a dubious flaking red paint. Parts of fence have fallen down in every storm over the past 10 years. It was the sorry state of the fences that prompted the garden remodel, and today is the day the much anticipated new fences are being put up.

This meant that yesterday the old fences came down, so last night we could trespass into our neighbours yards! The site of the yards next door, one beautifully tended; the envy and inspiration for our own remodel, one urban jungle furnished with rotting kitchen chairs and rusty barbeques, reminded me of newsreel pictures of apartment buildings torn apart by disasters. The view seemed an intrusion into something personal. The fence just creates an illusion of private space, creates little pocket worlds seperated by boards.

It also prevents geekydog from pooping in the neighbours yards, so I didn't let her out when I got home.

Now, keeping everyone fed, cleaned and contented in our house, in the 2 hours between getting home time and bedtime, is a very fine balancing act, and it doesn't take much to tip the equilibrium from harmonic to horrific. Somehow that lack of fenced yard made last night one of the less succesful ones.

I tried taking geekydog out on her leash, at the same time attempting to keep geekygirl away from nails and heavy machinery strewn around the yard, but apparently the novel contents of the yard needed to be sniffed, and the dog would not pee. The neighbours dog was out having a good sniff too, so I relented and let geekydog roam free with him in the new territory. Now geekydog is quite a well trained and obedient dog, but she suffers from a selective deafness when exploring exciting new things. And the neighbours dog suffers from actual deafness. The dogs romped off and would not come in.

By the time the dogs were returned to their respective residences, the kids were starving. For some reason I had decided to make chicken stew from scratch for Geekygirl, (every now an again my guilt at too many fish stick and tater tot meals kicks in and I become toddler gourmet for a day, but this was definitely not the night to do it).

Geekybaby is a recent recruit to the world of solid foods, but he demands them with menaces. He had already been sitting in his high chair, dribbling with longing, for far too long. When I took a break from shoveling pureed carrots into his mouth in order to fetch an equally hungry and impatient geekygirl her much delayed dinner, the shriek of protest he let out caused her to burst into sympathetic and even louder howls. As I sat the table surrounding by tearful, bellowing children, I felt like bawling myself. Then as Geekygirl spooned up her chicken stew with gusto, and I resumed the carrot shoveling, the din turned to blissful silence for a few moments. I caught my breath, looked at the clock and counted the minutes until bedtime.

le weekend

The weekends seem to have so many more hours in them than they used to. Possibly because we now get up at 7.00am (if we're lucky), rather than some time after noon. I sit here on a Sunday night, totally but yet pleasantly exhausted after a really very uneventful weekend. One of the things that keeps me sane in life is to keep a Pollyanna like tally of all our little succesess and achievements. Here is my 'jobs well done' list from one ordinary weekend. I'm going to start with Friday afternoon to make the list longer!

Obtained passport photos of both children on the way home from daycare. This seemed like a great idea. How long could it possibly take? Well, quite a long time, apparently. It started well, the large tattooed man dropping of 27 rolls of film let us ahead of him in line. Geekybaby managed not to cry while I suspended him puppet style in front of the white backdrop, trying not to have my hand visible; 'look no wires'. Geekygirl threatened tears, but the kind assistant promised her candy.

And then, as ten, twenty, thirty minutes passed without the production of our photos or the promised candy, Geekybaby began to cry for his dinner, Geekygirl bored of trying out her new found counting skills on the displayed items and I started to get ansty. I decided to purchase our own candy, since I realized the assistants bribe must have been a cunning ploy to get me to do just that. Mmm Swedish fish. (What is Swedish about them, I always wonder?). Fortunately the candy held us over until the overpriced pictures were delivered.

Saturday morning in an amazing feat of efficiency, we got the passport application in, and all our grocery shopping finished before 9.30 in the morning!

Seven loads of laundry were run. It should have only been five, but I discovered that if you hurl the contents of the kids laundry basket into the machine without panning through it first, you may accidentally launder a used diaper (pee pee only, before you cringe at the horror). The result of this 'experiment' was one very saturated diaper, and gel from the diaper spread all over the 'clean' clothes. Two washes later they were almost gel free.

The dining room table was cleared of many weeks worth of junk and real mail, old newspapers still in their blue pastic bags, magazines that I am certain I have never subscribed to, and other sundries. This is an incredible feat. And we didn't even have the threat of dinner guests to motivate us this time. We have to invite people over at least once a month otherwise we would drown in paper.

While both kids miraculously overlapped on naptime, I found time to dowload pictures from my camera and fancify this blog page!

We even spent time with friends, friends who we have known since long before we had kids, and who now also have two kids. These are the best kind of friends, and these guys are the best of the best. Our kids get along great too (admittedly in a rather loud, overexcited, insane, chasing, throwing things kind of a way). Its takes a while, with friends you meet after you become parents, to figure out whether you really get along, since the kids are the force that throws you together. Would these people have been the kind of people you would have hung out with before kids? And with long time friends who don't have kids, though I love to spend time with them, I find myself embarrased by my complete inability to focus on a conversation for more than two or three sentences, my patchy knowledge of current affairs, and am ashamed of my unfashionable outfits, designed for easy baby to boob access and if clean, certainly not ironed.

Of course I have a far longer list of things that still need to be done, but I'm not even going to depress myself by thinking about it. There are always more things to do. Right now I'm going to bask in the enjoyment of having had a very productive and fun weekend.

hot lunch day

Fridays are fabulous for many reasons, and we have one more reason to love Fridays in our house. Friday is hot lunch day at daycare. The staff make yummy healthy food for the kids and us parents get a break from packing a lunchbox. We love hot lunch day.

The knowledge that it is Friday is greeted with great delight by Geekygirl. Here is how the conversation went this morning in our house

Me: "Guess what day it is today?"

GG: "Its Friday! Hot lunch day, yay!"

she continued "It's not Tuesday anymore. Tuesday is old lunch day"

Huh?

I assure you we always pack our daughter a fresh meal, but apparently the lunches we make are now referred to as 'old lunch'.

I really hope she isn't saying this to the daycare teachers.

urban babies go to music class

Back when I was a mother of one, with all that time on my hands, I signed Geekygirl and I up for 'music together' class. Just because I work outside the home why should I be denied the pleasures of waving scarves and beating tambourines in a room full of toddlers, I thought? Fortunately a class is offered at 5.00pm for us masochist mums. While it is a bit earnest and hippy dippy (think indian chanting, scottish folk songs and 'frere jacque' rather than 'the wheels on the bus') we have enjoyed it. Geekybaby has been attending class since he was in utero, and now he too has started to bounce along to the songs and eat the instruments, so I have bitten the bullet and paid them both up for another semester. Though I am starting to have second thoughts, because of the gargantuan effort required for the 45 minutes of fun.

Class is held in the rec room of a swanky new condo complex in SOMA, beside the ballpark. It has a Safeway on the ground floor, so us music mummies can park there for free if we make a purchase.

Perhaps because of the rather well heeled catchment area of this class, many of the little musicians are dressed up to the nines for the occasion. There is one little girl in particular who always looks as perfect as a new pin. Her outfits are of the kind that I would only buy for a wedding; delicate dresses with matching sweaters and Carrie Bradshaw-esque oversized flower hair clips. Think Suri Cruise, only cuter. Geekygirl is more of a leggings and funky T shirt kind of a girl (a particular favourite being her 'children under the bed shirt'
a gift from auntie followthatdog).


This would be just fine, except that after a day at daycare, she is usually dressed mainly in paint and glue, and her hair is decorated with mulch. Often she has so ruined the mornings outfit that she is dressed in her spare clothes, horribly shrunken leggings that may have once been pyjama pants, and threadbare, stained T shirts.

Since one of the pleasures of taking my adorable little girl to a public forum like this is to show off both her adorableness and my great taste in toddler wear, I felt humiliated by the sideways glances we recieved. "what a lovely child, but what a shame her mother dresses her like a refugee" I sensed the glamourous parents thinking. So I now try to make an effort to put our cutest feet (and other body parts) forward for class.

Getting to class on time, with both children in a mood to coorperate is a ridulously complicated operation. Here are all the things that must be achieved for a successful music class outing:

1. Remember that it is music class day
2. persuade Geekygirl to wear cutest clean outfit available and not spill breakfast on it.
3. Remember to put double stroller in car
4.Remember to bring diaper bag, and to put diapers in it.
5. Remember to pack spare fashionable outfit in case too much fun was had at daycare and Geekygirl is in hideous spare clothes by days end.
6. Remember to bring snack, and empty sippy cup
7. remember to fill sippy cup from water cooler before leaving office
8. Get out of office by 4.00pm.
9. get both kids out of daycare by 4.30pm (unexpected last minute diaper changes, or a toddler's need for one more go down the slide can seriously impact the timeline)
10. Cross fingers that there is not a home Giants game to snarl traffic, and get to parking garage by 4.55pm
11. Put parking ticket in a spot in cluttered purse where it can easily be found later.
12. Perform emergency parking lot costume change on Geekygirl if required, and if time and toddler temperment allows
13. Arrive at class in time for the 'hello song', and behave well enough to stay until the 'goodbye song'.
14. Dash around cramped urban safeway-trying-to-be-whole-foods with giant double stroller filled with hungry tired children, meeting horrified gazes of young trendy folk, in order to get grocery purchase to validate parking.
15. Remember to give cashier parking ticket to validate
16. Get kids and groceries back in car and out of garage before 90 minute parking time is up.

Maybe I am overachieving by even attempting to get to this music class. I think this might be our last semester!

little Mr. Handsome

One of the reasons I started this blog was to brag about my fabulous children. My kind and lovely coworkers often ask me 'and how is the baby?' as we congregate around the microwave at lunchtime. I think they are expecting a one word answer, not ten minutes of me waxing lyrical about his accomplishments. So in order to preserve my professional image, I will pour out my delight in his fabulousness here instead.

I'm always making up nicknames for the kids and animals, and at the moment my favourite name for geekybaby is 'little Mr. Handsome.'

Perhaps this is because when Geekybaby was born he was not very handsome at all. Crushed in my pelvis, (I['m 5 ft 2" and he was 22 inches long) 10 days late, he was battered and bruised with bloodshot eyes, and a deep crease where his nose met his forehead. I'm pretty sure there is a 'Star Trek TNG' species that looks exactly like him, but I'm not quite geeky enough to know the name of it.









He had the most amazing grimace






But as his bruises faded, and his eyes cleared, his sweet and mellow personality started to shine out in his face










And he just grew more and more gorgeous. He also developed great taste in clothing.

He is so adorable now that I will even forgive him for the puncture wound in my right nipple that is making pumping at work even less fun than usual. I now understand why some women wean their infants when they grow teeth. And cannot fathom why anyone would get their nipple pierced.

Until I had babies I didn't really understand why people would have 3 or 4 kids. Now I almost understand people who choose to have 15. But we have decided that geekybaby will be our last baby, so I revel in his every precious gloopy flappy baby moment.