With almost 365 days of parenting under our belts, there are still only a couple of things we know for sure, one of them being that simpler is always better when it comes to our child, at least. She’s happier in a simple wrap than a fancy stroller, happier in our bed than a big beautiful wooden crib. Happier with the boob than the bottle. Happier with books and simple toys than she is with books and toys that flash and talk and beep-boop (although she does, on occasion, find them irresistably mesmerizing). Her bum is happier in cloth than in disposable diapers. The only exception to this is her preference for real animals over stuffed, which is considerably more complicated.

When I was pregnant with her I felt like I was constantly browsing all of the amazing baby things available from Etsy sellers, and had to practice restraint of steel to not spend every extra dime on beautiful blankets and cute silk-screened tshirts and adorable wooden toys. If I were doing it all again and had money to spend, I would definitely start with all of this:

Before she grew into her FuzziBunz, she wore nothing but prefolds and covers. They worked very well for us and were the most economical choice for buying new cloth diapers, but I was thrilled that Jess was willing to sell me her Fuzzibunz as Hazel’s cousin outgrew them, because we find them a lot more convenient. We received several covers as gifts, but if I had to purchase them for myself I’d go with cute handmade ones like these from Baby Bustle.
>> Airplane diaper cover, size small : $6.00

Wetbags with cloth dipes are a must, and this one by The Pat-a-Cake Baby is soooo cute.
>> Small zoo animals wetbag : $18.00

I don’t know how I would have functioned as a new mother without the wrap in which Hazel happily spent most of her time, snoozing away, for her first few weeks. After 24/7 coziness in the womb, wearing her around all day and all evening meant that our already-easy baby hardly ever, ever fussed. It meant we could take her anywhere and do anything and she was completely fine. Sunday afternoon music in a bar every single weekend? No problem, Mama, I’ll just snooze in here. In a fit of desperation to soothe her during tooth #7 entrance time, I got out the wrap (she has since graduated to an Ergo carrier) and tucked her inside. She went right to sleep with her long legs and arms dangling free instead of all cocooned up inside like when she was a newborn… and I felt my heartstrings pulling for another little teeny newborn to carry around. Uh oh.
>> Pretty pretty wrap by Li’l Peeper Keepers : $38.00

Let’s face it, sometimes you want your baby’s basic necessities to contain a little bit of excessive cuteness. Sure, you could by plain cotton booties and hats for cheap, made in China and sold at Target, but they are only going to let you dress them in stuff like this once in their lives, and for a VERY limited amount of time. Best to put them in the bear hats before they realize they have hands that can pull them off.
>> Cotton & natural beech wood knit hat and booties set by Mama Rosa : $40.00

I always meant to buy a teething necklace while I was pregnant and never got around to it, but will definitely be all over it with #2. I’m sure I would use it now, as Hazel is still nursing and teething – just sayin’ :) I have been mostly without necklaces since she was born, and 51 weeks later, I don’t feel any less naked. Even if I am wearing a babyproofed necklace I generally take it off to put her in her carrier, because I don’t necessarily want her chewing on, say, faceted glass beads even if I know she can’t break the strand. I’d never have to take something like this off :)
>> Natural wood teething necklace by Mithril Dreams : $22.00

Pukey, drooley babies go through 472348923878423 tshirts a day. Enough said.
>> Organic cotton recycling tshirt by feral empire : $16.00

…aaaaaand the same goes for blankets. I wanted my musician-hubby’s first child to have something made out this awesome Michael Miller fabric, but they both ended up being deprived. She was gifted blankets as far as the eye could see, so I couldn’t justify it even though it’s sooooooooooo good. Maybe a skirt for next summer…
>> Groovy guitars minky blanket by Bundle Boutique : $25.00

The good baby stuff on Etsy is truly endless. Every kind of wrap, sling, and carrier, clothing, shoes, diapers and covers and cloth wipes, burp cloths, blankets, hats, booties, soaps and lotions, cloth wipe spray, great toys and plush, reusable nursing pads and cloth pads (which I was never brave enough to try, by am assured that they are amazing for all of your postpartum bleeding needs:), soother clips, bibs, piggy banks and tons of other “gift” stuff, keepsakes for Mama… you can even find organic crib mattresses, complete nursery bedding sets, handcrafted rocking chairs, nursery shelves and wall art, baby shower invites and thank you notes and birth announcements… seriously, aside from car seat purchase, who needs Target??

Listening: Damien Rice
(I am) Reading: The Blue Cotton Gown
(Hazel is) Reading: Growing Vegetable Soup
Working on: birthday project; photo-taking; endless photo-editing
Packing progress: 25 boxes, 9 plastic totes, and almost every single thing from the walls – done

If I were returning to work after my maternity leave ended, yesterday would have been my first day back. Maybe Hazel would have spent the past two days in YSM’s daycare, which is amazing and full of wonderful people who I would completely trust with my child, where I am nearby and probably would not even cry having to leave her there for the day. Or maybe she would have been here at home with a babysitter, or with her daddy. All would have been fine and good for her in their own ways, but they all would have left me heartbroken. All of yesterday and today I keep thinking, “I could be missing this right now.” Missing her pull open her bottom drawer and fling her skirts and pants everywhere. Missing her clapping herself to sleep in her crib for her afternoon nap. Missing the morning banana-hair-treatment. Missing her sitting on the floor beside me right now, reading aloud an old issue of Look magazine. A whole day’s worth of hugs and cuddles and books and smiles for other people and none for me. It’s not that I don’t trust other people to take good care of her – I just don’t want to miss anything. I don’t want daycare workers – even amazing ones who are my friends – shaping her little life. My dad was always home with me and Mikey’s mom was home with him, and we just can’t do any other way.

I am so grateful to live in a country whose government takes parenting seriously and supports new mothers and fathers, where I don’t personally know a child under the age of one who is with anyone other than a parent during the day. And we’re all the wives of grad students and/or students ourselves, so it’s not like we can stay home because we’re well-off. Thank you, Canada, for this past year.

That said, I’m so glad that even though my leave is officially over, I don’t have to go back to work. I know it works very well for lots of families, but Hazel is learning and progressing so fast right now, I can’t imagine that she would stay on this track away from Mikey and I all day, and I don’t want to miss a thing. I’m so glad she doesn’t have to go – that I’m able to work from home, that starting at the end fo next month we’ll be living rent-free until next summer, that Mikey will be able to hole up every single day and work towards fall employment, and we’ll be able to make do (in a place that costs 1/3 of this city’s living expenses) with saved money, my Etsying, Ebaying, taking care of other people’s kids, making custom wedding jewelry, and anything else I can figure out a way to get paid for doing.

I don’t care that we’ll be living poor, and I don’t care that our student loan repayment committments are damn near as lengthy as marriage and having children, I don’t care that we’ll have to figure out how to live in the middle of nowhere with one car, I don’t care that I can’t have a pair of Frye boots… I love beans and rice. I love plain buttered & herbed pasta. As long as we aren’t living on credit cards I will be happy.

Remind me of this in four months when I’m whining about money. And feel free to contribute to my boot fund, which thus far does not exist.

adorableness & morning reads

banana-hair

Mikey and I both took a facebook quiz about which Seinfeld character we are, and we both got Jerry. It said something like everything always evens out for you. Hopefully they keep evening, and Mikey will have his dream teaching job next fall, and we’ll figure out what to do with ourselves for the summer. It might end up being staying at Darla & Trevor’s even if they have moved home by then. They may or may not be back at that point, but told us we are welcome to stay a couple of months longer if we don’t have anywhere to go in June and they are home.

We don’t have much of a plan, and, oddly, I don’t care.

Listening: Abigal Washburn
(I am) Reading: The Blue Cotton Gown
(Hazel is) Reading: 2005 issue of Look magazine
Working on: work work, meh
Packing progress: packed some summer clothes and the last four large things on our walls, which I was clinging to because I hate bare walls, but I let go. Our walls are now totally nekkid except for silhouettes and a clock.

That’s right kids – the heat is back on. We didn’t even make it four whole months with no heat. At the end of May we *thought* it was off, but upon sticking our hands down to the baseboards found that it was still on very, very low. They didn’t actually turn it off until June. JUNE. Welcome to Canada, where on Sunday morning we saw a girl in a tank top and jeans chatting with a girl in a furry parka.

So that’s it – fall is over. At least I had a few days to put Hazel in the cute sweaters that people got her last year and that she has finally grown into, and she was totally comforable indoors AND out.

When she woke up from her nap today she immediately positioned herself on the floor in her Book Deshelving Stance, and tried with all of her might to wrap her mouth around the word “books”. I could tell exactly what she was trying to say – she was pulling and paging and flinging and smacking, all the while muttering “beesh” and “boosh” and “bbcchhhh” and other B “words”. Eventually she gave up, and then at supper she paused in her pea-shoveling to gesture at the book Mikey was reading and said “beesh”.

“Hazel, can you say BOOKS?”, he asks encouragingly. She peers at him for a few seconds, looking up from underneath her eyelashes, a pea poised for entry, and says, very quietly, “books.”

He and I bolted upright, grinning at each other across the table, sure it was a fluke. He says it again.

“Books!!”

“BOOKS!!” she screams back and flaps her arms wildly and smacks her tray, peas flying, legs kicking.

“Hazel, say books!!” (we’re very excited here)

“BOOKS!!”

“Say books!!”

Now she’s shoving peas again and it comes out “beesh, beesh, beesh”, and that’s the end of that.

We’ll try again tomorrow. Now really IS the time to stop swearing.

Listening: Chris Coole
(I Am) (for real) Reading: The Blue Cotton Gown
(Hazel is) Reading: Hidden Hippo – the newest addition to her collection of very very magical Clare-Beaton-illustrated books
Working on: Luca’s birthday present
Packing progress: took everything off the bedroom walls and… piled it all on the kitchensewingoffice table

Before Hazel was born I firmly decided that she was not going to be the tiny owner of a million toys. She was going to have smart, aesthetically pleasing, socially responsible, and mostly silent toys. Not a box full of things that blink and flash and try to teach her seven languages at five months old. Just normal, simple toys that would inspire creative play. I fantasized about a nice wooden kitchen with lots of wooden food and stuff like that.

So far, she’s doing pretty well. Of course she has a few small talkey-singey-musical plastic things and that’s totally fine – she enjoys them. I happily watched the gifts roll in during her baby showers and first Christmas, because everything Toy was reasonable and stuff that we could have picked out for her ourselves. Books, music, puppets, wooden puzzles… all good things in the land of Hazel’s toys. We have most of her first Christmas gifts already planned – nothing crazy. Same for her birthday – I have two books and an Eric Carle growth chart hoarded away in our closet – things I’ve picked up during the year when I’ve found them for a few bucks each. I have one thing I want to get for her. And I wanted to get her a “Daddy present”. I had no idea what this might be, I was just going to have Mikey pick out something for her. I figured it would be a book.

So why, why, why did I do what I did today?

I’ll tell you why – I just wanted to go for a walk. It was a beautiful day. I found myself wandering by this toy shop a few blocks from our building. It’s directly across the street from the horrid toy store where I used to work, so I knew it existed but had just never had a reason to go inside. Today, however… it beckoned me. It called to me and it’s bubble machine blew huge, sparkly, beautiful bubbles out the door and right towards me, and the sun was glinting off of them, and I just… I just went in.

Straight away I found the perfect “Daddy present” and put it on the counter to wait for me while I continued wandering. I didn’t even think twice, knew I wouldn’t have to consult him. It’s exactly what he would have bought for her. No, it’s not Star Wars related. But you’re going to have to wait for it.

I kept wandering. Circling around all the lovable stuffed animals and paging through books and wistfully fondling toddler art supplies, imagining the day Hazel will be able to use it all. It is a magical store and I am very glad that we are moving far, far away in two months.

After going through the whole store I spied a staircase. I peeked down. More store. A whole basement full of more wonderful toys. Every imaginable Schleich animal including the entire collection of to-scale dinosaurs. Beautiful wooden dollhouses and barns and a kitchen set and a freakin’ cute little farmer’s market stand. A wooden teaset. No toy guns or battle toys in sight. A pacifist toystore. And then I got to the back corner, and there, covering two walls and two stand-alone shelves were Breyer horses. Hundreds of them. Maybe even a thousand. I scowled at them in disgust, imagining the little Yorkville girls who have boarded horses and expensive riding lessons and own thousands of dollars worth of fancy tack and riding clothes and have walls covered with show ribbons and….. shelves and shelves and shelves that hold their endless collections of Breyer horses.

I kept staring at them, and scowling, and thinking, and…… oh? Is that an Andalusian? And look… look there is a Quarter Horse that looks just like Blizzard. And a paint mare and filly. And oh my, look at these tiny ones. Hazel would love to have a pack of these. They are only five dollars for a pair. But… well… well what about the bigger horses?

Logic: “No, no you idiot. This is such a bad idea. Do not buy a Breyer horse for your kid’s first birthday. It’s unethical.”

Heart: “But they are so beautiful and lifelike. And she loves real horses. And she loves toy animals. Wouldn’t it be nice to start her a collection on her first birthday?”

Logic: “No, it would definitely be very stupid to do that. You might buy her a twenty dollar horse today, but in four years she’ll want the thirty dollar* horses. And then she’ll get serious and want the limited edition collector horses that are going to cost you at least seventy bucks a pop. And she’ll be reading the Saddle Club books and she’ll want all the Saddle Club horses to match. And then she’ll be too old for “toys”, so she’ll want the Super Amazing Native Horse In Full Dress Complete With Human Also In Full Dress… and you could buy ten acres of land in Nevada for what you’d shell out for one of THOSE horses.”

Heart: “But…”

Logic: “NO! She’s going to have a real pony someday, she has real horses at her Grandma and Grandpa’s house. You don’t need to get her started on plastic horses.”

Heart: “But look at these. A Morgan mare and foal. They are so pretty. They are what her great-great grandfather raised. And her best friend’s name is Morgan.”

Logic: “Well… I guess they are an investment. Someday when she’s a poor college student she can sell them on Ebay like Manda.”

Feel free to “I told you so” till your heart’s content in about five years.

Listening: The Nightmare Before Christmas music in my head (I’ve put it on for fifteen minutes or so twice this week during Hazey’s witching hour – she loves the music but that’s all that will keep her attention.)
Reading: The Blue Cotton Gown by Patricia Harman
*I bet it takes my mom way less than four years to buy her this one.

two whole months older than the last time i posted one of these, so there is lots of new stuff to report, including but not limited to:

- a total of five teeth, with at least two more ready to make an entrance.
- an overnight realization that she could squirm around in our arms and be set on her feet, holding onto our fingers, and just take off walking – her “walking” improves exponentially every day.
- impressive vocalizations – forming “sentences” with questions and inflections and a lecturing tone (for the dog) and much fist shaking, demanding things, talking to herself, talking to other animals – her common vocabulary includes “duggit”, “diggit”, “dickdickdick”, “DA”, “dada”, “mama”, “tickticktick”, “thickathickathicka” and some other nonsense – all of these usually mean “dog”. first thing in the morning she attempts to peer over the edge of the bed, yelling “DA!” and gesturing at paisley, asleep in her bed. while we eat dinner she hangs over the edge of her booster seat, looking down at paisley and saying “diggit” over and over and dropping bits of food.
- she camped and swam and stayed in a hotel and swang and all kinds of other firsts
- she started dancing and has not stopped (bobbing up and down in near perfect rhythm, flapping her arms, swaying side to side, rocking back and forth, or as many of the above as she can manage at once). live music elicits much more dancing than recorded but she’s a huge fan of both. we’ve been listening to tons of our old music that was gathering dust and she loves every bit of it.
- she has an incredibly long attention span, and thus seems uninterested in GOING anywhere most of the time. she’ll flip around and scoot on her butt or get up onto her knees, but is essentially content wherever she is. she will often play with the same toy (or non-toy) for half an hour or forty minutes before she loses interest.
- favorite toys: credit cards / metro cards / any kind of cards; thick cardboard flashcards; CDs; small animals; books; playsilks and silk scarves; balls; any kind of containers.
- huge fan of baths
- huge fan of spooning
- huge fan of paisley
- huge fan of water
- favorite foods: everything that has ever passed her lips; she just eats what we eat now – loves every kind of fruit and vegetable she’s ever tried; LOVES breads (bread bread, pita, whole wheat tortilla wraps, bagels, muffins, cornbread etc.); olives; lentils; rice; cheese; yogurt; she’s a berry freak; smoothies; CHERRIES – omg cherries; mashed potatoes are huge; saurkraut; oatmeal is huge; graham crackers are to die for; pasta… i can’t wait to see what she WON’T eat. she also still nurses all the time. she’s a foodie for sure.
- mikey is now more efficient at putting her to sleep than i am. her sleep is great now that her teething has subsided. my brief rest until tooth #6… then i might be back to laying with her an hour or more every night to get her to sleep.
- she loves people – has gotten a bit shy as is typical for her age, but will still flash smiles right and left at strangers even if she’s hiding her face mostly in my neck.
- she just keeps getting more & more awesome :)

last night hazel was taking a bath, splish-splashing about and screaming and was in the zone where she can play and not even notice if i’m in the room. i’m sitting on the bathroom floor, chin propped on my arms propped on the edge of the tub, totally spaced out, only paying enough attention to her to reach out and grab her if she happens to flip face-forward into her two inches of bathwater (she’s not paying attention to me either, so i don’t feel guilty).

she has her fish, her ducks, her cup, bowl, and tiny watering can all corraled between her chubby thighs where she can easily reach them, so when she thrusts her hand into the mess of toys and comes up with something that she immediately shoves into her mouth, it takes a couple of blinks to register.

a turd. oh my god. it had to be a turd. i didn’t even see it – the poor little guy didn’t even have time to bob up for air before she grabbed it, but holy crap… what else could it be?? what do i do??? what would mikey do???? why is he out buying a cd right now and not taking care of the first time she has ever pooped in the bath in her life?????

lights are flashing in my head and the big sign, like at the head of a pinball table, is flashing “TURD TURD TURD!!” but i can’t react, like my flippers are stuck and here comes the ball and oh my god.

she’s chewing.

ok, do something, she just chewed.

it seems like hours, but about two and a half seconds after poop passes lips i snatch her out of the water and expertly fish the poop out of her mouth with my right hand and fling it into the toilet (i’ve been fishing things out of her mouth for months now, after all – tiny piece of paper? i can find it in no time). i whip her into my other arm and with my poop-less hand pry her mouth open and inspect for fecal matter. nothing obvious. check her hands. look okay. wash both of our hands, dash to kitchen table with giggling, wet, towel-wrapped baby and make her drink about half a sippy cup of water (okay i don’t MAKE HER, but you give that kid a cup of water and she doesn’t know when to cut herself off – could be a problem later in life). take her into the bedroom and lay her on the bed and inspect her mouth again. nothing. okay.

wipe her (already spotless, of coures) bum and put a diaper on her, then go wash both of our hands again. check her mouth again. make her drink more water. put a tshirt on her and now she wants to nurse. she nurses a TON and plays with my face with her poop-hand and i’m cringing the whole time, thinking about her poopy mouth and her poopy hand. put her on the floor and she grabs for a book.

she examines “do’s and don’ts” and i wonder why todd parr didn’t write anything about not eating your own poop. she grabs a penguin book and there is a page about a penguin pooping. she reaches wayyyyyyyy forward for another book and squishes her tanked gut and barfs up a whole bunch of water and milk and a few grains of rice from dinner and there is no poop in it. i’m very relieved. i call my dad to see if i should do anything. he laughs so hysterically and for so long that he was incapable of holding the phone properly up to his ear. he calms down eventually and tells me she was just recycling.

a bit later my mom comes in from the barn and calls me; she says daddy told her she needed to hear the story from me. so i tell her. she laughs but not quite as much as him. she asks if i’m going to tell mikey. i hadn’t really thought about it – but of course i’ll tell mikey. he gets home a few minutes later and i keep her on the line so she can hear his reaction, which is bound to be tremendously funny.

“mikey, your daughter just did something awful. i mean really, really disgusting.”

his eyes widen. “did she touch paisley’s butthole???”… and he’s taking a few steps backwards.

“no, no worse than that.”

his eyes widen some more.

“she tried to eat her own poop.”

he relaxes. “oh… well i did that when i was a baby. my mom told me.”

“i mean… it was IN HER MOUTH.”

he’s only half paying attention to me now, and half extracting his new, remastered version of reckoning from its bag.

“yeah, that’s not so bad.”

“….so, you think touching the dog’s butthole is worse than eating your own poop.”

he looks at me like i am clearly the most stupid person on earth.

“yeah, that’s what i think.” then he kisses her on the mouth to prove his point. wanders towards the kitchen, head tilted back and giggling his “mikey is the funniest person alive” giggle as he goes. “i don’t know why, but that’s what i think!”

almost three teeth. i can barely think. she is doing well but it puts me on edge because i’ve heard so many teething horror stories that i keep waiting for her to detonate. they only seem to really bug her in the evenings so i made her some banana/strawberry/vanilla soymilk popsicles and she looooves them. camilia helps with the pain, i think, but she’s having a harder time winding down to sleep than with her other teeth.

she has her next to last doctor’s appointment in this country tomorrow and i’m having major anxiety. not for it, but for all healthcare related stuff when we move home. she will be able to get a medical card (if her citizenship & social security number are all taken care of by then), and mikey and i will likely just get something super cheap with a high deductible because we never go to the doctor, but finding a pediatrician for her… ugh. i’ve gotten some suggestions, and i’ve also been told who to avoid because they will throw us out for not vaccinating on schedule. when i told our doctor here that we weren’t vaccinating during her first year she didn’t bat an eyelash. in retrospect it would have been nice if she had asked why, or was even curious if we were making an educated decision at all, but oh well… at least we didn’t have to deal with any of that here. i just don’t ever want to walk into a doctor’s office and be told to not come back unless i’m vaccinating on schedule. or maybe that only happens in jersey city.

while i was cleaning today i found a scrap of paper with mikey’s grocery list from his ten days as a bachelor. i should not leave him alone for that long ever again.

mac
cheese
chips
vanilla ice cream
yogurts

last night hazel started bobbing up and down to whatever music we were listening to. we thought it might be a fluke but she’s happily bobbed all day today, music or no music. it’s so cute i can’t even stand it.

paisley has eaten half a bowl of food and two pizza crusts since we got back to the city. poor dog :(

i was on the phone with kelly today twenty minutes or so after the time mikey usually gets home – i figured he was running late because he’d stopped to pick up fixins for dinner. hazel was in a funk (i plopped her on the floor to watch winged migration for ten minutes while i tidied up – hazel’s first tv), she was tired, and i really wanted to get dinner happening for all of us so she could eat before she had a meltdown. i kept waiting for paisley to freak out, which lets me know he’s coming down the hall. flannery, who lives across the street, beeped into my conversation with kelly but i didn’t get to it in time. i called her back right away:

“oh nevermind. i can just see our husbands talking at the crosswalk and they’ve been there for half an hour, and i can’t even chop okra because i can’t put oscar down because he’s teething and if i put him down he’ll cry and wake up toby. i wanted you to call mikey’s cell phone and have him tell brett to stop talking and come home… but i think they are parting ways.”

“does mikey have grocery bags in his hand?”

“no, no… looks like he hasn’t gone yet.”

dammit.

when he got home i had just set hazel up in front of the tv and she was rivited. she glanced at him for two seconds and didn’t even acknowledge his presence – he announced to me in an alarmed voice that hazel was watching tv, like she was sneaking it. then she tipped over backwards to suck on her feet and stare at the tv, basking in the blue-screen glow. how can a seven month old be so fixated on television??

tonight was the last sunday that chris will play the local until fall (which freaks me out – what if he doesn’t start until november like last fall? will we ever see him again??). a bunch of our friends were there, and hazel got really into a song that tony & kristine hopped up on stage to play/sing with chris. she bobbed and flapped her arms and sang her little lungs out. i gotta tell ya’, it was the cutest thing ever, and i am happy that our musician friends appreciate hazel’s “art” and don’t get annoyed when she sings with them. after the song ended chris started talking about hazel, things like: “…but she cries when she doesn’t get her way. and she’s SUCH a baby.”

and a woman at the bar yelled “but we love hazel!! hazel is a rockstar!!”

mikey and i looked at each other. do you know this person? no? do you? afterwards she came up to me (and hazel) and started gushing over her and talking about how you can tell she’s been listening to music since before she was born, and how you can tell which songs she really likes…. who is this woman? hazel is smiling and cooing at her.

eventually it was revealed that one night when tony had hazel walking her around he introduced her to this friend of his. okay, much less awkward that you keep squishing my daughter’s feet now that i know you’re a friend of a friend.

is it always going to be this uncomfortable when hazel makes friends that i don’t know? how do i just… let her go off into the word and make friends with people and not worry incessantly that she’ll become really attached to some little creepy kid. or some really dangerous friend? what is going to happen when she makes friends with kids who like to build fires for fun? what if she IS that kid? she is MY kid after all and i kind of have a problem with fires.

all of a sudden i see twelve year old kids alone on the subway and it terrifies me. we were going somewhere the other day and this little pack of skate-shoe-wearing preteens were making their nervous-looking friend repeat “dundas, dundas, dundas” over and over, lamenting the fact that their cellphones didn’t have a signal underground, and they put her on our train and then presumably went off to get on their own train. this girl was sitting in the seats across from us and i was very, very close to asking her if she knew where to go once she got to dundas (i assume it was the mall – there is nothing else there). i was so scared for her. she’s so tiny. and i see elementary-aged schoolkids coming home from school on the subway in little herds all the time. hazel isn’t riding the subway alone until she’s at LEAST seventeen. that gives her two years to work it all out before she’s legally allowed to start drinking.

not that……….. she’ll be riding the subway where she grows up. or drinking legally at age nineteen. i don’t even know what i’m rambling on about.

i knitted half a dishrag tonight and watched a documentary on asteroids that was terrifying. i’m trying to think of anything but that.

since hazel has been on a napping strike for three days i decided to swaddle her this afternoon to see if that would help. she went right to sleep and was out for three hours. i put her to bed hours ago and she hasn’t woken up once. amazing – all because of something that she resisted vehemently until we stopped doing it.

or maybe it’s because they turned the heat off.

listening: nothin’ – the backstabbers in my head
reading: columbine

she’s been eating so much that she only nurses during the day once in the morning and once in the afternoon, both before naps. this is kind of freaking me out. sample of other things she eats:

yesterday – 2/3 of a banana and two cubes of sweet potato for lunch. the rest of the banana mixed with half a cup of papaya and three cubes of peas for dinner. she seemed to want more so i kept feeding her papaya until there was only one tiny container left in the fridge. she ate over a cup. she also sucked on a few olives in her little mesh feeder while i prepared dinner – don’t think she actually got much through the mesh.

today – another half-cup of papaya and two cubes of sweet potato and a quarter of an avocado for lunch. 2/3 of a banana and three cubes of peas for dinner.

it doesn’t really seem like lots of food, but even two weeks ago we couldn’t often get her to finish more than a few ounces of anything, because she was still nursing all the time and wasn’t hungry. she liked it, but just wasn’t hungry. now she is giving up her daytime nursing for real food. eek.

today we were at winners in the checkout line waiting to buy our photo frame when the woman in line behind me (older, platinum blonde, heels, huge sunglasses, white pants – Total City) started cooing at hazel and talking to her and then asked me if i liked the white patent-leather-with-huge-gold-things-heels that she was going to buy. i didn’t, but of course didn’t say that. i said they were cute.

“i don’t know if i want to spend eighty dollars on them, though!”

“well……… are they comfortable?”

“oh yeah, really comfortable.”

(still gushing to hazel)

“well then why not?”

(then she looks down at my feet)

“you probably don’t have this problem, perfect feet!”

(i have no idea what to say here)

“actually my feet are really narrow – i hate shopping for shoes.”

“well honey, look at mine! i have MAN feet! well…. i *am* transgender.”

(cackles happily, slaps my shoulder………. well so she is. i hadn’t even noticed.)

“then i guess i shouldn’t complain about my feet, should i?”

she cackles again, tells me she just turned sixty and anticipates having a shoe-buying problem for the rest of her life. fawns over hazel’s little shoes. i’m done paying. i tell her happy birthday and gather up my bag. she tips her chin to look over her gigantic sunglasses at hazel and tweaks her little foot one last time, tells her how beautiful she is one last time.

this kid is going to grow up in a world so much more narrow than the one she was born into.

listening: nothing at all. hazel is sleeping. mikey is at the dollar.
reading: columbine…….. can’t put it down. i can’t yet tell if this is because it’s really good or just because i am fascinated with gore / crime / criminal psychology
listening: actually, the person upstairs is slamming something against the wall over and over. awesome.