too intense

Thursday evening, my husband and I deposited Nathaniel into his grandmother's eager arms and slipped out of our house. It was our fourth wedding anniversary, and exactly five weeks since Nathaniel's birth. We had a date.

We ate at a nearby restaurant, a fancy French restaurant that we had walked by many times but never entered. The food and service were, as rumored, superb.

We also had some entertainment. We were seated near a dramatically dressed couple on a date. They bowed and danced verbally like two Oprah-influenced peacocks. He used the phrase "self-actualizing" without irony. She allowed as to how she was currently processing some self-identity issues.

At one point his intentions became clear. "I want to sleep with you," he exclaimed loudly enough for all nearby tables to hear.

The murmur of the restaurant dropped imperceptibly as the diners strove to hear her response.

"You don't want to sleep with me." She demurred, loudly enough to make sure the rest of the room heard her side of the story.

"No," he declared passionately, "I do!"

She dropped her eyes coquettishly. "No, you don't." She paused for dramatic effect. "It would be too intense for you."

("Ouch," my husband muttered.)

He drew back and smiled a roguish smile. "Oh," he whispered throatily, "I could handle it."

My husband and I immediately took big gulps of some very fine wine to stop our giggles. For the rest of the evening, every so often, my husband leaned over, raised one eyebrow at me, and whispered, "I'm too intense for you!" I would hastily gulp more wine to prevent some fancy-restaurant-inappropriate laughter, which, in hindsight, probably added to the overall problem of the giggles.

I hope the power date couple never figured out why my husband and I were giggling so much.

boromir bats for the bosox

Clearly the reason that the Boston Red Sox are now World Champions is that they have a Flawed Tolkien Hero on their team.

You think I kid?

Here is Boromir in his more well known Lord of the Rings get-up.

Here he is in action for the Sox, but this time supposedly called "Johnny Damon."

Things turned out a little better for him this time around, though.

birthday honors

In honor of Nathaniel's one month birthday, and in keeping with the drizzly day, I made J Strizzy's pumpkin chocolate chip oatmeal cookies. Yum.

Nathaniel, in honor of his own birthday, slept for five hours straight last night. Five hours! After a month of waking up every two to three hours (and sometimes every hour), five hours felt like I'd slept all night.

My interrupted sleep cycles being what they are, I couldn't fall back asleep after such a long, luxurious sleep, and proceeded to wake up more exhausted than usual this morning. Luckily, it was a drizzly day. I stayed inside, ate pumpkin chocolate chip oatmeal cookies dipped in hot cocoa, and napped when Nathaniel napped.

I think everybody needs a nap day every so often. I recommend it.

eating like a baby

I do not think the phrase "sleeping like a baby" means what people think it means. Unless one is excited by waking up incontinent every few hours, it does not seem to be a desirable state.

Eating like a baby, however, is something I can get behind. If my own baby is any indication on this matter, and I think he's pretty typical in this regard, eating is one of the high points of his life. No worries about carbs or fats or Atkins for this kid.

He really, really enjoys his meals. When I nurse him, he smacks his lips. He grunts enthusiastically. He slurps loudly. Halfway through, his eyes roll back into his head, and he sighs with deep and evident pleasure. He burps with gusto when he's done.

I don't think anybody has ever appreciated my cooking this much.

raw

I've been a news hound since I was a teenager, always reading the newspaper avidly and subscribing to various news magazines. I never found it boring or dry. We currently subscribe to two newspapers and several magazines, and up until recently we regularly read them.

I barely look at them now. I still don't find it boring. But for the first time in my life, I need to tune out the news.

I feel exposed now. Vulnerable, I suppose. I don't read the news so much anymore as I feel it. I hear about a car bombing in Iraq, and I see the mothers who have lost their children. I've had dreams about nuclear proliferation, repeated nightmares about global warming gone amok. Even the traffic report isn't safe: there might have been a traffic accident, and somebody might have been hurt or killed, and that person might have parents somewhere that are aching for him.

Right now, my boy is small, and I can hold him and sing to him and mostly keep the world away. But each day inexorably brings closer the time when he will step out on his own, headed out into the world with its suicide bombers and rampant pollution and wars and red-light-running drivers.

Will I ever be able to read the news again?

gods among men

I have some nominations for Man-God status:

Those people who call us, ask when they can come by, arrive, and (this is the good part) bring us food.* Extra bonus points given for noting how awesome my son is, but really, the nomination was assured with the quiche. Or the fresh pasta. I salute you, man-gods!


* "food" may include alcohol, which while not exactly nutritive in the traditional sense, is certainly good for the soul.

wrong address

This morning I received an email with the subject line 'Pregnancy lactaton.'

In prior days, I probably would have simply deleted the mail without looking, not having a burning interest in either pregnancy or lactation. But nowadays, I'm all about pregnancy, 'lactaton,' and gullibility-enhancing sleep deprivation.

Well. As it turns out, the subject line 'Pregnancy lactaton' had about as much to do with actual pregnancy and lactation as the subject line 'XXX' has to do with the alphabet, if you catch my drift. My goodness. The Internet, home of all manner of small businesses, is also home to quite a few breastfeeding entrepreneurs. I could, apparently, set up quite a side business as the result of this lactation shindig.

preservation of the species

I met a new facet of my personality yesterday: the instinctive primordial brain that makes the preservation of my offspring my absolute, numero uno priority.

I was coming down our hardwood stairs, carrying a sleeping Nathaniel in the crook of my left arm. As I got towards the bottom, I slipped.

My primordial brain immediately screamed, "PROTECT THE BABY! PROTECT THE BABY!" In response, my left arm instantly tightened up, pulling him in close to my chest. My right arm flew across my body, stabilizing him from the other side.

Sadly for my body, this left no arms free to break my fall. I remember thinking that it was really going to hurt, but I also remember knowing that I had no choice.

And then I hit the stairs. As I feared, it did hurt. My derriere is now unattractively colored and my knee is moderately tweaked. However, Nathaniel didn't even wake up.

The instinct to PROTECT THE BABY is remarkably powerful. I've never fallen before and not instinctively tried to break my fall or otherwise preserve my body, but this time, my own health was clearly way down on the priority list.

prime birth dates

Shortly after Nathaniel's birth, we were all sitting together in my hospital room when the on-call pediatrician came in for a routine check-up.

"The 23rd, huh? That's a good day." I think she was just making polite conversation.

"It's a prime number," my husband and I chorused in response.

Somewhat startled by our enthusiastic tandem math, the pediatrician paused. "Huh," she said cautiously, "I had never thought of that."

At that point the attending nurse joined in. "Oh, I'm born on a prime too! My birthday is September 9th."

My husband and I both glanced at each other. "Um," I said hesitantly, "I don't think nine is a prime. But it's a good day anyhow!"

hands and their uses

Everything about my boy is long. Long legs, long arms, long torso, and long sleep cycles. Even his toes are long. At a wee bit over 22 inches at birth, he was substantially taller than the average newborn, which is between 19 and 20 inches.

Like me, his fingers are long. Most people who see him notice his hands, and the common opinion is that he's inherited his mother's piano-playing hands. "The hands of a pianist," the refrain goes.

One group of friends, however, has a different opinion.  My friend N., a devoted programmer, said with delight, "He's got hacker hands!" P., a video-game fanatic, enthused, "He's going to be such a good gamer!"

It's all in the audience.