Wet Feet

this is so boring, but I'm posting it anyway, because I'm trying to get back into the habit

Miriam knows what she likes. I'll never forget the first time she saw a frilly pink dress, it was this time last year, she was not even a year old. Only my quick reflexes kept her from wiggling herself right out of the sling as her little hands grabbed at the frothy princess halloween costume.

She'll request three or four wardrobe changes a day. There's some striped pj's that she likes to wear snapped at the neck so it flows down her back like a cape. She's forever swiping Naomi's sparkly pink shoes. And the princess dresses, all I can say is I'm glad we have so many. Because if Naomi so much looks at one, Miriam is right there next to her, wanting to look exactly the same. because Miriam is sitll such a chunky little peanut, I have to knot the dresses at the back so they don't drag on the floor and trip her up.

Naomi wasn't like this (if she was, it was not this extreme). Naomi did not express many preferences about her daily attire until she was nearing four. As long as she was comfortable, she didn't seem to care much what I put on her. Miriam chooses her own clothes every day; there's no other way. She like dresses, she likes pink, she likes brights and bolds. I foresee a long winter of struggling to get her into tights.

Maybe I will knit her a pair of baby legwarmers. Anyone know a good pattern?

Five

1.Hi there. Things are good. But I read this bit in salon yesterday about diaper-free babies. Having known a semi-diaper free baby (hello Phida, love your panties) I just have to set one things straight: this is wrong: "parents train their diaper-free infants and toddlers to communicate their bathroom needs through specific gestures and sounds". Parents no more "train" their infants to communicate these needs than we "train" them to comunicate hunger cues or sleep cues, or later, "hey play with me!" cues.

Elimination cues are part of the standard package, but they wither away when they go unheeded. It's called a feedback loop. It's not a special skill these wacky overachieving parental olympians are drilling into their impressionalble infants. It's the way things were done thoughout most of human history. When speaking of nature, four year olds who've still not quite mastered potty business are the abberation.

When you train them out of feeling their elimination neeeds, you have to train them back into it later, and it takes a lot longer. Not that there's anything wrong with that. I'm telling you this as someone who regularly strains the limits on her kids' disposable diapers. Naomi trained a few months past three. Miriam may hold onto her diapers for even longer. I'm just sayin, is all.

2. H&M Magazine claims that the new look for fall is "neo-grunge". A 90's girl like me went into spasms of joy reading that, of course.

And then I started to wonder, does that mean all those guys in layered tshirts, beaded bracelets, baggy pants, and docs are no longer unfashionable, they are now stylish throwbacks? Maybe it's just me, but I seem to know a lot of those guys who haven't changed their look at all since the 90's. Now instead of looking hopelessly dated, they might look authentically cool.

What it means for sure is that it's time to get a new pair of docs. Maybe teal, ten holes, steel toe.

3. Which I will buy with the money I will be making waiting tables a few nights a week. Yeah, it's that time, time to get a jobbyjob. I count pennies at the end of the month to buy milk. Seriously. Pennies. I have a place in mind and I'm working on my resume and ramping up my personal charm. I'll tell you all about it. And I'll probably start linking to waiterrant on a regular basis.

4. I'm getting a new blog. I think a wordpress blog, because I'm damn tired of wanting to tell you things but not wanting the whole world to see. I'm also damn tired of having more than one blog where I post things. I've outgrown this one.

The myspace blog gets a lot of love, but that's because I can control who sees what, and it dovetails nicely with my friends in real life and my musical interests and my penchant for taking pictures of myself. but grownups are a rarity on myspace. And I'd like to write for grownups.

I'll let you know when the new blog happens (duh). It will happen when I think of a title. Jo suggested the tagline be "don't talk to me about Whitesnake". I don't know. I kinda like the tagline I've got. Maybe I'll have a special music section, or it will be the tag on all music related posts.

Whatever happens with the new blog, I'll be keping the adoption archives available. I'll have to check into whether it will be better to move them or keep this blog where it is and the archives intact so people's links don't get broken.

The content is bound to be different; there will probably be more pop culture stuff, more music, more job related angst, less adoption (but still some), less breastfeeding (hey, I'm done), more about single motherhood, more sensitive stuff about divorce and relationships (under password, obviously).

There won't be any ex-spousal mud-slinging, however. Josh and I are finally becoming friends and I don't want to fuck with that. It would be more about my personal journey, the password being more of a securty blanket for me. The password is my woobie.

5. Miriam's verbal development continues to be...unorthodox. She speaks more Ewok and Kitty than English. I'v heard her say a few things. She can say "shoes". Once, when I was half asleep, I saw her pick up her bottle and say "baba, all gone". And when she falls, or she drops something, she says something that sounds suspiciously like "oh shit". The rest of the time she chats away in a highly developed language that I don't happen to know. But she meows just like a cat. In fact, she sounds more like a cat than our cat does. I'm pretty sure she thinks she's a cat.

have some more kool-aid, honey. this won't hurt a bit.

Jenna and Nic have both posted about the first year after relinquishment. I have to agree: the first year was a breeze, in comparison to the years that followed. After the postpartum fog lifted, there was hope. Things were going well in the adoption, I had a good job and was going back to school, I was planning to move far away with someone I loved very much. I was going to get it together! I was going to make it worth it!

Everything seemed exactly as it should be. I had cheated grief, and would continue to cheat grief for another year or so.

When a birthmother just a few years out from relinquishment starts singing the praises of adoption, I just can't take her seriously. I know that's elitist of me, to discount the experiences of someone because they haven't yet served enough time, but I remember being that girl all too well.

And these are the women, by the way, who do most of the work with adoption agencies telling pregnant mothers that adoption isn't so bad.

MotherTalk: Becoming Jane

Tonight I went to see a movie by myself, notebook and pen in hand. I sat in the very front, I didn't negotiate popcorn priveleges or share soda. It was a beautiful moment as a single person.

Becoming Jane is not a biopic, and the expectation of such will ruin the enjoyment of this charming movie. For Austenites, the parallels between the characters in the film and the 19th centruy English folk brought to life by Jane's pen, especially those populating Pride and Prejudice, will be clear. It is Jane Austen reimagined as Eliza Bennett, with a dash of Lydia's passion. Tom LeFroy is Wickham all over, except for his Darcy-esque goodness. There are several Mr. Collinses, all inhabiting a different angle on what Mr. Collins could truly have been. It's novelization in reverse. We writers create characters that are amalgams of the people we know in real life; this flight of fancy took whole characters and reduced them to their contributing parts.

There is a funny little moment when Jane hears Lady Gresham utter the phrase "pretty little wildnerness". She gets that familiar writer's urgent need to record, and rushes off to jot down the phrase, which would be spoken by Lady Catherine in the pages of Pride and Prejudice.

Lady gresham: "what is she doing?"

Mrs. Austen: "she's...writing"

Lady Gresham: with horror, "Can anything by done about it?"

No, your Ladyship. Not a damn thing.

It's all speculation, of course. When the suspension of my disbelief relaxed allowing my logical mind space to maneuver, I remembered that Jane Austen was far from beautiful and was certainly not as radiant as Anne Hathaway. And the author who penned Lydia so unsympathetically could hardly have behaved as the Jane protrayed in this movie. But none of this really matters, in my own fantasy of the life and loves of Jane Austen, this is how I would have wanted it to go. No, she never married, but she loved as deeply as any intelligent, rebellious, culturally constrained woman could love.

But the number one reason to see this movie? Tom LeFroy is sexy as hell.

Enjoy it, ladies. It goes into wide release this weekend.

True Blue

Call me a copycat (I could do worse than copy from Jo), but I recently made the leap into blatantly unnatural hair color.

Before this I stuck to semi-natural drugstore colors. Even if the colors clearly did not belong on me (burgundy, as much as I love you, you do not belong next to my face), someone, somewhere, theoretically, could have had hair of that hue grow out of their head.

Black looks good in the winter, but as soon as I start to tan the effect is lost, and it just looks stupid. Because my hair is only a few inches long the black dye had grown out already and I have had (gasp) my very own natural (brown, boring) color.

Now that my matron of honor duties are over and I could spare the coin for the bleach and color kit from Rite Aid, I did it, mostly just cause I could. Mommies can get away with this kind of thing. Our bosses don't care what color our hair is. And I was bored and restless. And it's way cheaper than that snake tattoo I keep talking about.

Phase 1 was the bleaching. eek. It took a long time and it was frightening to see myself with blinding bright yellow hair. 

Phase 2 involved the staining of my hair and everything in the vicinity with the entire bottle of color. My fingernails, four days later, are still stained. There was so much extra color on my head that I could have stood in the shower for another hour and the water would still have run blue. The next day I was sweating so much in the heat that there were blue streaks running down my face and neck. And, oi, my pillowcase will never be the same

The result was worth the mess it made. And for those of you with smurf jokes at the ready, the smurfs did not have hair. They had white hats and blue skin, not blue hair. Enough smurf jokes. Really.

When it fades (hoping for a nice peacock phase, courtesy of that neon yellow base) I'm thinking of going for plum. Or maybe orange.

Soundtrack to the colorization: The new Editors cd, An End Has A Start*. Especially Escape the Nest.

PS- I have been getting lots of comment spam, so I enabled the comment verification thing. Let me know if you have problems commenting.

*Dontcha just love the Robert Palmer throwbacks in that video?

well, how did you get here?

Sometimes the google searches crack me up.

prodromal labor, 36 weeks 50% effaced, 38 weeks fingertip dilated: Don't hold your breath. But don't unpack your bag, either. Is there anything more maddeningly ambiguous?

shangra la diet, diet hoax shangrila: it's not a hoax! 70 pounds and counting. I just bought my first bikini, and my first legitimate size 6. I never stopped indulging in cookie dough whenever I felt like it. It's surreal.

adoption posts: Lots, right here.

jul site:wetfeet.typepad.com, thumbscre.ws jul: I think you're looking for her.

bright green breastfeed poop: Sometimes that happens when there's a foremilk/hindmilk imbalance. Try to feed on one side for a whole feeding to make sure the baby is getting hindmilk.

throw up yellow liquid during 1st trimester: It's probably bile. That happened to me in m pregnancy with E, the only time I had morning sickness, and it was so very foul.

pinking shears haircut: It's probably a really bad idea. If it was a good idea, stylists would have pinking shears in their little bags, wouldn't they? But still, I'm intrigued.

becky fart roseanne: Ha! I love that episode.

when a women is in her early stages of being pregnant does her pie smell like milk?: Whaaaa?

it feels lke lightning running through my veins every time i look at you: Oh yes, the David Gray song that makes me cry like a baby every time I hear it.

can you use curtain rings to make baby slings: I suppose you could, but it wouldn't work very well, and they aren't safety tested for that. Try these instead. They rock.

wording for dear birthmother letter, what should i say to the birthmother? How about "I'm really sorry". And mean it.

gap nursing bra: they rock. I had a few.

pregnant and craving v-8: Drink up! At least your not craving cookie dough. Or chalk.

labeling birthmothers bm: Ew. Don't.

squirmy worms on floor of wet basment: Uh, okay.

saturn returns 1977: Oh yes. Isn't it fun? But it's almost over.

messy people, weird neighbors: Guilty on both charges.

ready for second baby: Are you ever? Is anyone?

intimate cuddling: Sure. But I'll still kick you out in the morning. And I probably won't return your phone calls either.

the cheerfulness is almost too much!

Internet, I come asking you for advice. Aside from the usual precautions, locks on doors etc, what kind of security do you have on your home? An alarm? A dog? An NRA sticker in your front window? A well-placed baseball bat? Do you have a gun? If so, where do you keep it? Do you feel safe?

My brush with crime and the scares I've had since (another last night: a noise by my back door woke me out of a sound sleep, I called the cops, again, and it turned out to be nothing, again. I am beginning to feel silly for wasting time and taxpayers money this way) have me thinking of the sort of safety precautions that would make me feel secure that my home is well defended.

Last night, when I was convinced that there was someone lurking downstairs, I realized that my only weapon of defense was my phone. I am putting all my faith in Killadelphia's city services. I need to be more self-sufficient than this, or I will never get another full nights' sleep again.

I am leaning toward getting a dog. Except that it would be 1. expensive, 2. labor intensive, 3. limiting, and 4. I'm not all that fond of most dogs (although there are a few I would clone if I could.) Oh yeah, 5. the cat would hate it. But the right dog, big, friendly, well trained, tolerant with kids but protective of the pack, would be worth all that. There's nothing like the love of a good dog. And the girls would love having a dog too.

Although it makes me ill to think about it, my other option would be to get a real weapon, you know, a gun. I would do it right, of course. I'd learn all about it and get liscenced and keep it under lock and key separate from the ammo and all that. I'd really rather not have one. But until people don't get stabbed and assaulted during home invasions in my neighborhood, I don't know what else to do.