Skipping Town

Saturday afternoon, Andrew, Lucia, and I went into Sacramento (“the city”) so I could get my hair cut. We decided to have an early dinner at a place we really like—the Tower—and, though it was slightly chilly, we were able to sit outside thanks to some heat lamps. We were very cozy, and Lucia was an angel for the whole meal. When Andrew ordered fish n’ chips, the waitress said, “That’s a great choice for a cold night.” It was in the mid-fifties. Andrew wasn’t wearing a coat. It was a lovely way to spend a February night. Last night, we went to the grocery store for some food and baby Tylenol. As we checked out, the cashier asked what Lucia’s name was. “Lucia,” I said. “What??” the cashier said. “Where’d you guys come up with that ?” I told her it was Italian. “I had an Italian friend once,” she said. “She was…very passionate.” I don’t know why I persist in telling strangers her full name—there apparently aren’t a lot of Italians around here, and it’s not a name that anyone seems to hav...

Yesterday evening, Andrew and I found ourselves sitting before the deacon, discussing areas of strength and areas for growth in our relationship. It was difficult coming up with growth areas, so we found ourselves talking about how Andrew wishes I’d wipe off the kitchen counters, and how I wished Andrew FOR GOD’S SAKE! would do a load of laundry once in a while. It was difficult to nit-pick like this, because we actually don’t care about these things at all (well, Andrew probably does wish I was better at cleaning up, but he loves me anyway). However, we were forced to do so to get through that evening’s “marriage preparation” session. I was really dreading the whole thing, unsure if I’d be able to get through it without blurting out in exasperation, “We’ve been married for over two years, and been together for six! Just convalidate us, already!” Fortunately, Andrew always manages to pull out the charm when he has to (or even when he doesn’t have to). At one point, I was discussing how...

Yesterday was Lucia’s four-month checkup. She’s 12 pounds 8 ounces, 24 inches long, and doing great in general. The doctor, however, told us something surprising: that we can start introducing solids whenever we want. Lucia is eighteen weeks old today, four and a half months, and I’d always assumed we’d breastfeed exclusively until six months. But now I’m debating. I never thought I’d devote this much mental energy going over the merits and drawbacks of feeding my baby something as bland and boring-sounding as rice cereal, but I can’t stop thinking about it—and I can’t make up my mind what to do. I’ve heard a lot of different advice from different friends, and have read a lot of different things online, and each person and site seems to offer good arguments—for both sides. One might suggest that I should follow the recommendation of our doctor, who we like very much and who has been seeing babies for twenty-seven years. But he gave a suggestion, not an order, and so it’s up to us to de...

I think we have a city girl. We took Lucia to San Francisco this weekend for Valentine’s Day—her first taste of a big city, and our first weekend trip with baby in tow. It was a rousing success, and Lucia seemed to love it. We drove down Saturday morning through thick fog, which cleared once we were in the city. It was a beautiful day, warm and sunny, and instead of going right to our hotel we decided to explore the Marina neighborhood and have lunch. Lucia napped almost the entire way down, then began screaming as we searched for a parking place. When we found one, I nursed her in the car, and then we found an outdoor table at a deli and had sandwiches. Then we walked around, enjoying the city atmosphere, passing countless other babies in strollers and generally feeling like we were back where we belonged. It was wonderful. Next we drove down to the water and walked around a bit. I nursed Lucia again as we looked out at the boats; then we took a long walk toward the Golden Gate Bridge...

My once-smiley baby, my once-good-napping sweetheart, has taken a turn for the difficult this week. She’s consistently refused to nap, and she’s been fussier than usual—she just hasn’t been her squealing, good-natured self. She’s also drooling buckets and gnawing on everything that crosses her path, so I’m wondering now if she’s teething. I went out today and bought several teething accoutrements—chewy rings, vibrating rings, teething beads—so we’ll see if she likes them. I don’t see any teeth coming in, so this is really just a shot in the dark, but it’s like a switch went off with her mid-week. I’ve done little the past few days except struggle to get her to nap. I succeeded for about one hour today—she fell asleep in her stroller during a walk, and then I wheeled the stroller into the laundry room and put the dryer on. Success. She fell asleep on our way home from Babies R Us, too, and is currently sleeping still strapped into her car seat. But it’s a far cry from the nice two-hour ...

Lucia, once a stellar napper, is now on day two of an afternoon nap strike. Yesterday, she napped for no more than half an hour, and only under duress. We had a screamy, whiney, hysterical evening with our little Fusskins. Today, she napped fine in the morning…fell asleep in the car as I returned from meeting a friend for lunch…and then refused to nap at all from about 1pm on. I rocked her, bounced her, fed her, fed her some more, left her in her crib, put her in her bouncey chair, and still nothing. She keeps looking at me and grinning, wiggling about good-naturedly, but in about one hour I know full well what we’ll be in for. Sigh. I’m tempted to blame her sleeplessness on the brownies I’ve been eating, but blaming her moods on foods is how I’ve come to find myself eating a diet free of dairy, broccoli, tomatoes, and citrus, so I’m loathe to eliminate anything else without any hard scientific proof…

Last night, Andrew and I had to go to a class to prepare for Lucia’s upcoming baptism. We were annoyed with this from the get-go. The class was scheduled from 7:30-9:00pm—way past Lucia’s, or any baby’s, bedtime. I’d called the coordinator, a humorless woman who I knew immediately was childless, to try to beg one of us off, but she emphasized that it was vital that both of us be there. She suggested we just get a baby-sitter. When I explained that no, our baby is only four months old and, furthermore, we don’t have any family here, she said, “Well, doesn’t she have a little carrier or something?” As though she were a little cat. When I saw this woman in person, my intuition was proven right. She gave a thin smile to Lucia. “Cute. Almost makes me want one of my own,” she said. She was close to seventy years old. Anyway, we and about twenty other people then sat through a mini-religion class taught by the deacon’s wife. Bits of religion classes past floated up from the depths of my memor...

It’s been a long weekend. Andrew left at 4:30am Saturday morning to fly to Miami for the Super Bowl, so Lucia and I have been on our own for two days and, now, going on two nights. We’ve fared okay. Lucia is an amusing and generally pleasant companion, making me laugh with her newfound ability to make raptor-like screeches. She seems thrilled to have found her voice—and it’s a loud one. Tonight, though, as I talked to Molly on the phone, her cute screeches took on a sinister whining quality, and she began thrashing in her bouncey chair, and I could see that she was morphing into Fusskins before my eyes—a transformation as dramatic as the Incredible Hulk’s. So our evening was chaotic, as I stupidly tried to make myself a carmelized onion dip to soothe the unhappiness of being by myself (I got as far as carmelizing the onions and gave up), heat up and eat my dinner (I wound up eating lukewarm stew standing up, bouncing Lucia as I ate), and get her to sleep. Which she is now. For now. Tod...

So we decided to buy the 'expensive' car, the 2006 Volvo V50, the one requiring a car loan. We deliberated all weekend and through Monday, finally coming to a decision Monday evening. We decided we'll keep this car through any moves we may make; and, since it has just 18,000 miles on it so far, it should last us for years, through lots of baby-stuff hauling and probably even another kid. Andrew made a valiant effort to haggle, but CarMax held true to its no-haggle pricing policy. We went for it anyway. It's a pretty great car--as brand-new as a 'pre-owned' car can get, nice black leather interior, no leaks when it rains. It feels good to drive it, like we've taken some sort of step into an adult world we'd been previously shut out of. We haven't yet christened the car; that will take a while. Vern has earned his name--after 160,000 miles and several years of sporting a THE CHRISTIAN RIGHT IS NEITHER bumper sticker, I should hope he has. We'll see...

Little Lucia, You’re sixteen weeks old today—four months—and it still seems crazy that we’ve had you for such a short amount of time. You’ve eclipsed everything else in our universe in so dramatic a way that it never fails to surprise me—no, shock me—to see you out in the world, where you look so incredibly small in your carseat. At home, to me, when we’re together all day and all night and my every thought is focused on your well being, you seem larger than life. You are now blowing spit bubbles with gleeful abandon. You’re so good at it now that you sometimes spray spit everywhere, smiling all the while. You’re also starting to chew things—especially your hands—but also whatever blanket or sleeve happens to be near your mouth at any given moment. And the drool. Oh, the drool. You’re a champion drooler. You take great pleasure now in having me stand you up on my knees. “Who’s standing? Who’s standing?” I say excitedly, and you seem excited, too. You manage to support yourself for a co...

Here’s a little game. Let’s see if you can guess which of the following Sunday evenings Andrew and I experienced this week: Evening #1 We’re invited to a black-tie Grammys party in a suite at the Staples Center. Andrew rents a great tux, I get a sexy new dress that is not in any way conducive to breastfeeding, and we fly to L.A. for the night. We drink champagne and eat glamorous snacks and see Bon Jovi live, singing “Livin’ on a Prayer” right along with him as we gaze down at the stage below. We smugly congratulate ourselves on having such a spectacular evening out. Evening #2 We spend most of the day car-shopping, and then car-deliberating, and spend the evening in Roseville. Andrew attempts to make a Dungeness crab bisque while Lucia, aka Fusskins, whines constantly for approximately four hours. It’s the kind of whine that’s exhausting simply to listen to. We’re so tired and frustrated that we decide to wait to have the bisque until after she’s in bed. Putting her to bed is, of cour...

Don’t get me wrong: we love our Vern, our 1997 Volvo sedan who’s been part of our family since we moved to California. But now that I actually leave the house and want to do things with the baby, it’s getting harder and harder to get by on one car. It’s not that big a deal to drive Andrew to work, but it seems to throw off our morning schedule of playtime, feeding, and naps, upsetting her before we’ve even taken a bite out of the day. So we’ve decided to add another car to our life. It’s probably high time to do so. Vern has almost 160,000 miles on him, which, in Volvo miles, is still fine. And though he runs just fine, he does have his problems. Here are just a few: We can’t open the driver’s side back door from the outside. The interior light is hanging, literally, by a wire, dangling precariously over the carseat. The driver’s seat cannot be moved forward or backward. The car leaks when it rains. The AC doesn’t work well enough for us to survive NorCal summers. We devoted this weeke...

It’s finally warming up. That’s a funny statement on many levels—mostly because the “cold” we’ve been having hasn’t been colder than low-40s, with most afternoons getting into the low-50s. But to this Californian—and by “Californian” I’m referring to the fact that my blood, now thin as water after two and half years, makes me so—it’s been cold, cold, cold. I can’t seem to warm up. It could be because it’s rained nearly every day for two weeks, making everything damp and chilly, or because I can’t seem to stop losing weight. (It was fun to fit into my pre-pregnancy jeans again…and now they once again don’t fit—for the opposite reason). Whatever the case, Skeleton Mommy here is quite glad to see the sun for the second day in a row. I think Lucia is going through a growth spurt. Once a through-the-night sleeper, she’s now waking up twice to eat. And she’s been fussy the past couple of days, refusing to breastfeed—I think she’s just so hungry she wants a no-work-needed bottle. This makes m...

Tomorrow morning, Andrew and I (and Lucia) are going somewhere new and exciting: marriage class. Yes, marriage class—as in Catholic pre-marriage counseling classes, even though we’re already married. Well, to us and the government, we’re married. To the church, we are not. And so, as part of my “return to the church” (i.e., doing what I have to do to get Lucia baptized), Andrew and I are going to get a convalidation—an official recognition of our marriage by the church. And this will involve three sessions with the deacon. My meeting with the deacon on Wednesday actually went very well. He didn’t ask any probing questions about why I haven’t been going to church for the past ten-plus years, and there was, fortunately, no reason for me to discuss my views on gay marriage, abortion, or contraception. Get the convalidation, go to confession, schedule the baptism for Lucia—and that’s that. He’s making the whole thing quite easy, and so I can’t complain too much about the classes (I’ll leav...

Aside from when Lucia is napping or asleep for the night, there are very, very few moments during the day when Andrew and I are not interacting with her in some way. We play on her floor gym; we do tummy time; we chirp at ourselves in the bathroom mirror; we swat at things in our bouncy chair; we read; we make faces at each other on the couch; we feed; we walk around the house; we look out the window; we lie on the bed. But sometimes, sometimes, I deign to multitask. This morning, as Lucia played on her floor gym, batting around jingling objects, I ate some nut bread and tried to read the paper. I was right on the floor next to her, but, I admit, I was not gazing at her intently. Suddenly, the jingling stopped, and I looked over. Lucia was giving me a slight baby-frown. Then she turned her eyes to the newspaper, and I swear she gave it a dirty look. She was not the center of attention, and she was not amused. Later today, as she was breastfeeding intently, I slowly, surreptitiously, re...

I went to church on Sunday on a reconnaissance mission. Andrew and I have agreed (or, rather, I proposed and Andrew amiably went along with it) that Lucia should be baptized, and so I found a local Catholic church and went to check it out. The logistics of a baptism are challenging, seeing as how I’m a lapsed Catholic, Andrew’s not baptized at all, we were married outside the church, and we’re not members of a parish. And the reasons for pursuing it are murky, even to me, even though I do feel it’s the right thing to do—despite the fact that the things Andrew and I will teach her are at odds with most, or all, of current church doctrine. An unwise perusal of the Catholics Come Home website last night, where I read that not only are homosexual unions “disordered” but childless married couples are as well, reminded me that for a liberal-minded person living in 2010, being a Catholic necessarily means cherry-picking from the less astonishingly outdated and intolerant parts of the faith. B...

We’re hitting a kind of stride, Lucia and I. We have fewer fussy days than splendid smiley ones; we have a quasi-schedule of naps and playtime. We’ve even been getting out of the house together. And I’ve been getting lots of work done. It’s been a good week. The weak link in all of this is the feeding. For weeks we’d been doing wonderfully—and then, on Tuesday, for an unknown reason, Lucia embarked on a one-day nursing strike. She refused to breastfeed, would scream when she got anywhere near the breast, and generally did her best to give her mama a nervous breakdown. I pumped and bottle-fed her all day. The next day, she was back to normal. Who knows why it happened? In any case, I worry quite a bit about whether she’s eating enough, whether I’m producing enough, whether her naps are too long, whether she should be eating more frequently, for longer periods of time, and so on and so on. I feel mildly—well, not mildly; fully—obsessed with her eating, and each time she latches on and nu...

After weeks of screaming and blatant looks of hatred and disgust, Lucia has finally come around to tummy time. Her ability to roll over seems to have transformed things for her; whether it’s “fun” for her to roll over isn’t quite clear, but it’s certainly not unpleasant, and she even smiles now when she does it. This weekend, we also bought her a mirror to encourage her to keep her head elevated for longer periods of time—and she loves it. She stares at herself, smiles, gurgles. She and her reflection blow spit bubbles together. It’s adorable. Here's our first video uploading attempt:

We made it! Our first night sans-papa was uneventful—which, when Fusskins takes such pleasure in dramatically grand and prolonged entrances, is a good thing. Lucia was a little angel all day and all night. Thursday morning, we went to a baby-and-mama workout class, where she sat peacefully in her car seat while some of the other babies cried and cried (the roles, surely, will be reversed at some point). She was wary when Julie, the teacher, greeted her, giving her a serious, appraising stare that made her look older than twelve weeks. For the rest of the day she napped when I wanted her to, ate peacefully when she wanted to, and went to bed with nary a Fusskins in sight. Friday was fine as well; these regular naps—two hours each, morning and afternoon—seem to be working wonders. She’s more cheerful when she’s up, content to sit on my lap and read books, dance with me to a variety of songs, and roll over again and again on her blanket on the floor. It seems to be getting more fun for he...

Little Lucia, You’re three months old today, becoming more baby-like and less infant-like by the day. We’re marking your three-month milestone with a milestone for me, too: my first time alone with you overnight. Daddy’s on a business trip all day today and most of tomorrow, so it’s just you and me. Will you understand someday how scared I am about this endeavor? It’s such unreasonable anxiety—if you cry, well, you’ve cried before, and you always stop crying eventually. I’ve cleared my work schedule today so all I have to focus on is you. You, and maintaining my sanity. I’m fine so far and am determined to, as your dad so kindly says, “get out in front of it” should I start feeling overwhelmed. You have a new trick: rolling over from tummy to back. You did this once or twice before Christmas, but now you do it consistently. You always look a little surprised when it happens, but today you looked a little pleased, too. When you’re on your back you can roll firmly onto your side—surely i...