Merry month of May

Having entertained Saturday and acomplished some overdue home improvement projects Sunday, we all went to the zoo on Monday. It was hot. It was crowded, which is what we get for going to the zoo on Memorial Day. But it was still fun. Yelena likes pictures of animals in books but, except for the fish in some of the African displays and the penguins, she was pretty much uninterested in the three dimensional article. "Yelena, look, there's a giraffe. Right in front of you. Giraffe." Baby gazes intently down at the bubbling water.

The smell of grilling everywhere prompted me to suggest to Eli that we journey up to Ken's. Once there, Yelena was riveted by the Cubs game on TV. No interest in giraffes, lions or bears, but TV! Whee!

In other Yelena news, still no mobility. When she's on her tummy she tries to swim, kicking her legs and paddling her arms in the air. Hopefully she's making a connection between movement and motion. She is also starting to sometimes scoot in her knees and pick up her hips in a crocodile pose. Yelenasana. She loves to stand and is getting better every day. She's talking a lot more, but she's not doing the "babababa, googoogoogoo" babbling that babies are allegedly supposed to do. What I understand about language acquisition that's not necessarily an essential step, but the books (which I stopped reading) are really into it. She's making more and more consonant sounds and trying them out with different vowels, so linguistic development in progressing. Every day when Daddy gets home from work, Yelena sees him and says, "Ooo!"

Not peachy keen

Yelena does not like peaches. A few days ago, I gave her some peach-apricot museli, which she rejected after one bite, pursing her lips tightly and shaking her head back and forth. Last night while I was dancing Daddy attempted to give her some peach yogurt. Again, one bite and refusal to eat anything else for fear of the dreaded fruit. For lunch both yesterday and today Yelena gobbled up pear yogurt like it was the best thing since hindmilk, so it's definitely a peach aversion. I wish the Yo Baby Stonyfield yogurt didn't come in mixed packs since now we're stuck with peach yogurt. Stupid packaging.

I find furry slimy peaches revolting, but not so much that I wouldn't offer them to my baby. As a kid, I had an aversion to pretty much all stone fruit. Now I love cherries and, although I don't really eat plums or apricots by themselves, I don't mind them as an ingredient. (Yelena likes both thus far, mixed with apples at least.) It's not just a texture thing, or the feeling of biting into a caterpillar -- it's the sickly sweet smell, my olfactory nerves flashing my primitive brain that something might be rotten. That's probably also why I LOATHE bananas. Just the smell of them, unless totally green, sets my stomach aquiver. And when I was pregnant it was ten times worse, switching el cars to get away from someone dangling a banana peel and smelling Eli's breakfast banana in the evening. I obviously have not offered banana to Yelena yet. I figure if Eli wants her to try some, he needs to buy said evil fruit himself, serve it to her, dispose of the evidence and exorcise all banana aromas from her person before I get home.

Pic me up

Evil evil evil Sudoku

I am holding Marsha personally responsible. Because I have been living under a rock for the past year, I had not heard of Sudoku until she mentioned her husband's obsession. So I decided to find out for myself. Evil! Of course, I started with ones rated difficult instead easy or medium, as if I have to prove something to myself. Man, talk about intellectual masturbation. I finished one last night (after the fair maiden was asleep, although I am tempted to neglect her in favor of the numbers 1-9), had a tremendous feeling of accomplishment combined with a strange emptiness, realized I had nothing to show for my work but a scrap of paper and eraser crumbs all over my nightie, and instantly wanted to start another. I am blogging while Yelena naps lest I start another puzzle.

Literary let down

Like many a love affair, the last two books I read started out all enchantment and ended with a whimper. I wish there had been the accusations or flying plates, so that’s not the best metaphor. These two novels, which have nothing else in common, dished up tasty little starters, a cold entrée and an over-concocted desert for Ali Smith’s The Accidental and a trite trifle for Wesley Stace’s Misfortune.

OK, of the two, Smith’s was actually quite stylistically well-written, but in that conscious I’m-envisioning-great-reviews-as-I-write-this kind of way. She handled the different voices well, I just never found the Amber/Alhambra character quite believable, nor the way everyone accepted her presence plausible. I guess that’s the difference between me and the protagonist family – I would have told her to sod off before dinner. Also, the whole cinema interludes in Amber/Alhambra’s voice were a bit too Rushdie, let’s-throw-in-as-many-pop-culture-references-per-square-inch-of-text-as-possible. (Done with the hyphens.) The ending was way too pat and contraindicative of the attempted realism of the rest of the book. It didn’t necessarily piddle off in the middle, it just didn’t jive with my sensibility.

From the blurbs and the first couple chapters, Misfortune promised to be a Middlesex Shandyesque romp. I was excited enough to even recommend it to Eric. I rescind my recommendation and I pray he hasn’t started it yet. Stace, whose day job is being the singer John Wesley Harding, had a great set-up of gender and failed to explore it beyond a few temper tantrums. What might have been the most interesting part of the book – the missing year hinted at spent as a cabin boy and in the gutter, Rose wearing his cousin Prudence’s red dress – was completely glossed over, as if it would pain the author too much to put his character through any development or real trials on stage. All the talk about Ovid and metamorphosis, and the actual process of the character’s final metamorphosis into a straight guy who likes wearing dresses, was superficial at best. The quick wrap up ending was telegraphed from hundreds of pages away. Now, I don’t have a problem with the English novel trope that wraps everything up tidily, legitimizing the illegitimate child, a wedding masque, alls well that ends well – Tom Jones and Humphrey Clinker are among my favorite novels – but could the author do the reader the courtesy of a few McGuffins? After reading through 500 plus pages I feel I am owed an enjoyable twist, or at least a worthwhile philosophic episode or two.

I’m reading Pnin now since I can’t stomach another literary disappointment quite yet. Nabokov won’t let me down.

Oh my goodness

Lately, both people we know and complete strangers have been telling us what a “good” baby Yelena is. Typically I avoid the double wiggly so-called reputed punctuation marks unless excerpting, writing dialogue or am too lazy to italicize or underline, so I really mean them around the word “good.” A few thoughts about this whole goodness thing follow. They are not necessarily in any order and some assume that good is a valid baby category while others deny it. Some are generalizations, yes, but I’ve enough examples of each to justify a few sweeping generalizations for rhetorical purposes.

If there are good babies, are there evil babies? Baby Stewie aside, I thought tabula rasa was the whole point of babies. Can a baby be “bad?” Is a colicky baby bad? Poor thing, it can’t help its colic. And it can’t help if its parents don’t know how to deal with it either.

There are no good or bad babies, only good or bad parents.

For babies, happy or unhappy. For parents, responsive or unresponsive.

When a baby is “bad” people blame the parents. Well, let’s not pussy foot around here. They blame the mother. But when a baby is “good” it’s because of the baby’s inherent nature.

Is Yelena good because she is relatively quiet? Because she is content to sit in the Bjorn checking things out? Because she is responsive, engaging and makes eye contact? Because she can stay up for hours without a melt-down? If she weren’t some of these would it make her a bad baby?

I know plenty of babies with radically different personalities and I think they are all fabulous babies. In fact, all my friends’ babies are good babies. New equation: baby = good.

In some respects, Yelena is actually high-needs (refusal to bottle-feed, refusal for months to get on anything remotely like a nap schedule, still not getting the “ideal” amount of sleep listed in all the baby books). Some people would shake their heads when hearing this, judging her or judging my parenting, id est bad baby or bad mommy. Some of these same people now call her a good baby. My responding to her unique needs was apparently bad in their eyes a few months ago, but now they have conveniently forgotten their earlier judgments because she is somehow conforming to their idea of “goodness.”

I hate the development race. I hate the competitive mommies league. I hate feeling guilty or like I’m not doing enough or that I’m an inadequate parent because Yelena isn’t doing XY or Z at the month listed in the baby book or when so-and-so’s son or daughter did. I know I should be a little ducky with water skimming off my backside. I know that the look of absolute love in my daughter’s eyes should be enough. My husband and my mother telling me I’m doing a great job should be all the reassurance I need. But sometimes I still feel guilty or inadequate or judged, judged, judged. So Yelena can’t crawl. So she doesn’t have any teeth yet. So she’s not doing quadratic equations and reading Flaubert in French. I hate that I can’t just rejoice in the miracle of my daughter’s existence, kiss her perfect cheeks, drench myself in her giggles and comfort her when she cries. I hate when people jump on my cloud and I hate that I let them.

Often, after saying how good Yelena is, people say something like, “Just wait until you have more than one,” or “The next one will be an absolute terror,” or “Just wait until she’s a toddler/teenager.” Besides taking the sugar out of a compliment this attidute begs some questions. You think my mothering is adequate for only one child? You think my child is only “good” because of dumb luck and this luck isn’t going to hit twice? I’m going to stop being a good parent or she’s going to lose her goodness when she starts walking/talking/talking back/driving? Why do people who know almost nothing about me feel the need to tell me how I am going to behave or predict my future? These same Delphic oracles told me I was going to be screaming for the epidural and plopping my kid in front of the TV. It's a good thing I have a booty ample enough for all of y'all to kiss.

Finally, to all the people for whom calling Yelena "good" was their way of complimenting and admiring my adorable charming baby: thank you. I think she's the epitome of baby goodness, too.

Report from sick bay

Last week Yelena was nearly over her malaise -- she had a low/mid-grade fever that broke during our Thursday morning nap -- but she contracted a new one this past weekend in Erie, complete with her first ever cough. She is already a bit better and is still smiley, but it's so sad listening to gunk rattle around where the aspirator doesn't reach and watch her little coughy face. My mother reminds me that all this is building immunity. As usual, she's probably right and I should cancel the plastic bubble I ordered. I am recovering, too. For a while there it seemed the illness cycle was going to pass our pater familias right by, but he began to feel the exhaustion today and I can hear him cough in his sleep right now.

For the good news, Cherubino seems a bit more himself. Last night he weighed in at 14.5 lbs. so he's no longer shrinking. He brought his green disco ball to me today and ran (!) after it a few times. I even caught him trying to hump Spina yesterday (dry hump, I should say, since he is a castrato), so he's obviously got a bit more vim and vigour about him. We'll check his blood work in a few weeks to get a better idea, but there are some positive indicators.

Reversal of Proportion

Yelena had her 9 month check-up on Friday. I would have written about it sooner, but Uncle Aaron was visiting through Monday and now Yelena and I are a bit under the weather (she is sitting rather peacefully on my lap as I type this, after the rare additional early afternoon nap, so listlessness all around).

Yelena weighed in at 18 lbs. 15 oz. and stood at 28 inches. This put her just a touch above 50% for weight and at 75% for height. Yup, that's right -- somehow a child of mine is on the tall side, although I am sure it is just a temporary condition. Her head continues its expansion and is in the 90th percentile. (43.75 cm for those of you tracking Yelena's head circumferance. Freaks.) She doesn't need to crawl as she will employ her powers of telekenesis when she wants something. Already the Cheerios are making their transcendent arcs through the air, one little dancing O at a time. The cats are terrified. Oh, did I mention I'm a little under the weather?

I need to go pull a few more dandelions before the rain starts. (I spent nearly 2 hours on Monday pulling them up and that was just in the front yard. I dreamt of dandelions that night.) I will attempt to blog again soon and post some cute pictures.

Your 2 Cents

I re-added the comment link, hoping the word verification eliminates the comment spam I was getting.

The C word

I haven't blogged about Cherubino's cancer for a while because I have been waiting for good news to report. It's not that all the news is bad, it's just there's not nearly as much good news as I would wish.

Upside: He stopped vomitting blood within a week or so of starting chemo. He's very sweet and gentle and not hiding out moping. Except for his white blood cell count, which is a bit low, all his other blood cell counts are fine.

Downside: Moderately low white blood cell count. Worse, he is terribly, frighteningly skinny. I feel like we've entered a Stephen King book where my lovely fat Buddha incurred the wrath of a pack of Gypsy squirrels and was cursed, "Thinner." (Even I went through a Stephen King phase in seventh grade.) In October he was almost 19 lbs. When he went in for his endoscopy mid-March he was 16.75 lbs. Last week he was down to 14 lbs. He is a shadow of himself. I can feel his vertebrae and ribs. When I came out of the backroom at the clinic and the vet techs had taken him out of his kennel to cuddle (they all adore him) and I didn't see his eyes I thought, "What a pretty cat," not realizing he was my faithful Cheru baby. Chemo sucks.

He's also lost a bit of his pluck. He's not acting sickly, he's just not fiesty. Although he cuddles them, he doesn't really want to play with the other cats and seems a bit resigned to things, i.e. he used to meow and talk the whole time in the car but on the drive up to the clinic the other day he didn't talk and just curled up and looked at me with sad jeweled eyes. He does like sitting in the sun by the sliding glass door and watching the birds and squirrels, so I'm hoping that, and lots of loving, will keep him engaged. Fight, fight, do not go gentle and all.

Dr. G -- after talking to the internist and the oncologist -- has decided that, due to his intestinal troubles, Cheru may be having difficulty absorbing the steroid that he is taking in addition to the chemo. (Which Dr. G at first warned me may produce an overweight cat and might ultimately result in [treatable] diabetes -- instead, the opposite has happened.) So, starting Sunday, we're going to do a steroid injection rather than a pill. We're also going to give him a vitamin B injection, which should help absorption, both of the medicine and the food. If we thought pilling a cat was difficult, just wait until we start shooting him up. Dr. G thinks this may be the solution to getting Cheru over the hump. Here's hoping he's right.

Black Swan Green

I finished David Mitchell's Black Swan Green yesterday. It was the best book I've read since, well, Cloud Atlas. (OK, just perused my book list -- Kafka on the Shore was as enrapturing, but you catch my drift as I've read about 50 books between the two Mitchell novels and the only one on par was Murakami. Well, and the George Elliot novels but that's like comparing apples to truffles. )

Before I rave, rave, rave about Black Swan Green I want to take the piss at the reviews and blurbs. Yes, they are glowing but comparing it to other "coming of age novels" and calling it the British Catcher in the Rye? C'mon. Salinger is a great writer, but Holden Caulfield is a complete wanker, sympathetic only to other disillusioned privileged teenaged boys seeing a reflection of their apathy and disengagement. Mitchell's Jason Taylor is a wonderful boy: intelligent, sensitive, geeky, awkward and believable. And ultimately, unlike many male coming of age protagonists, a mensch through and through. (Plus, Jason is a considerable bit younger and less penis obsessed than these Alexander Portnoys and Charles Highways. I know, give him a couple years, right? But I doubt it.) The Kirkus blurb on the back claims that Jason's adventures recall those of Tom and Huck. Huh? How so? In as much as he has scuffles with other kids and meets interesting adults along the way, perhaps, but what a lame parallel. Huck has Jim, Tom has Becky and Huck, Jason -- in a true mirror of 13 -- has only himself.

I don't want to compare Black Swan Green to other novels. It is in and of itself brilliant and compelling, funny and sad. Mitchell's prose is crystaline, his portrait of adolescence vivid -- I felt the pangs, confusions and yearnings of 13 all over again. Without sentimentality. Although there is a touch of nostalgia for the Golden Age of early 80s music, for which I'm a big suckerfish. Like Ghostwritten and Cloud Atlas (I'm comparing Mitchell to Mitchell. Apparently I cannot resist comparison.) the stories are about the overall human condition, but without being heavy handed or pretentiously philosophical. When so many contemporary novels are self-conscious, riddled with "look how clever I am" gimmickry, it is delightful to read stories without pyrotechnics, just taut prose and vibrant characters.

Mitchell is the master of the chapter. Here, the novel is divided into 13 chapters, one from each month between Jason's 13 and 14th birthdays. Each chapter could stand alone as a short story, but the arc through them swells, like the movements in a symphony. Jason's maturity grows subtly as the bookprogresses, but without any singular ah ha coming of age moment. In the end, he is a wiser, more mature and secure 14 year old, but he's still only 14, not the adult looking back at 14.

Just suck it up and go buy it in hardcover.