Virginia Lately

It's hard to learn to use a spoon. Perhaps not as hard as eating yogurt with your fingers. But Scout tries both regularly, just to be sure.

Looking at herself in the mirror remains one of her favorite pastimes. She does not always have pants on her head for these sessions of self-adoration.

She loves bathing and reading. Now, thanks to the duckie tub, she gets a little of both.

She spends a good deal of her time hanging out with this adorable boy...

...and his adorable brother. They both walk, and with a good dosage of peer pressure, Scout will try it too.

She loves to push things around, her stroller here.

Usually, these days, she's pushing a little walker. It's given us both a lot of independence.

She still loves playing in the dirt.

We recently took a little road trip out to our CSA farm and picked a LOT of basil. Scout thought it was great fun.

And this is just a typical day at our house. Virginia makes her way into the bathroom whenever the door is open, trying to get someone to give her a bath, or let her participate in theirs.

When she does have to get dressed, she loves to put hats on. And her diaper is usually sticking out the back of her pants.

She still loves to read.

Many happy hours are spent pulling books off the coffee table and reading them.

She's getting better with the spoon (and still working on growing more teeth).

Another favorite pastime, staring out of this window.

She is occasionally distracted by the pile of toys next to her perch on the couch.
Always the poser.

Celebrating

I like the fall
The mist and all
I like the night owl’s lonely call
And wailing sound
Of wind around

I like the gray
November day
And dead, bare boughs that coldly sway
Against my pane
I like the rain

I like to sit
And laugh at it
And tend my cozy fire a bit
I like the fall

I didn't write this poem, Dixie Willson did. But a friend recently introduced me to it, and I love it. It was exactly what I needed to cheer me up on a miserable, hot August day. No, I am not a summer person. So now that things have turned cooler, I'm welcoming Autumn and the opportunity to enjoy more beautiful leaves (it's not that fallish yet; the trees are changing, but the picture above is from last year). Bring on the fall!!
The mist and all

Healthy Observations

This summer, for various reasons, I've been trying to be more healthy. First, my good friend Bethany invited me to participate in a competition with weekly challenges to improve our health. Second, the size of our garden plot quadrupled this year, so we had a lot more vegetables to eat. And third, back in the pre-Spring when we hadn't eaten anything fresh in months, fresh veggies sounded like something we couldn't get enough of. So, because our fabulously "progressive" health insurance gives us up to $200 toward buying a CSA share, we opted to split a weekly produce share with some friends. Thus, for the past few months, veggies have been making their way into our house like summer will never come again. And we've been eating, and storing, them as quickly as we can.

Although The Great Produce Plethora of 2010 will continue for another month or two, the healthiness challenge is ending tomorrow. So, I thought I'd share some of the things I've learned.

1. I don't love bread nearly as much as I thought I did. I still like it, but I don't need it.

2. I do love chocolate every bit as much as I thought I did. Possibly more.

3. Most cookbooks use vegetables as minor ingredients but aren't great at recipes that give you the vegetable as part of a somewhat nutritious side dish where you really get to enjoy the flavor of the vegetable. However, if you can find them, the cookbooks that do this are great.

4. Lettuce goes out of season. Who knew? In the middle of summer when it's really hot, it's too hot for lettuce. Of course you can still buy it in the store, but then you can buy tomatoes in January too.

5. All Bran tastes like cardboard. Cliche, but true.

6. Flax seed tastes worse.

7. All Bran and flax seed make excellent ingredients in delicious breakfast bread products that completely disguise their otherwise undesirable flavors. I do love whole grains, but it seems I enjoy them more collectively than individually.

8. 64oz. of water isn't that much. You can even drink it on a Sunday night after you finish fasting. Have a bathroom handy.

9. 96 oz. of water is a lot to drink in a day and takes concerted effort. Not to be attempted on a day when you have to fly somewhere.

10. Strength training is not that bad. I don't know why I always avoided it before, but I actually enjoy it in some forms. I will no longer neglect this aspect of exercise.

11. If you don't do any abdominal workouts for two weeks, no matter how great your abs were before, your abs are pretty much going to be gone at the end of those two weeks. And when you resume the ab workouts, you will be sore.

12. It's a lot harder to keep my healthy habits in line when I haven't had enough sleep. It takes energy to talk myself into making healthy decisions.

13. I can get almost as much pleasure from thinking about the food I want as I get from actually eating it. Okay, I already knew this one. But it's a great little trick.

14. The second (or tenth) bite of ice cream doesn't taste any better than the first. It's important to take time to enjoy it, and when you've had enough, save some to enjoy another day.

15. The difference between runners (them) and joggers (me) is that they pass me.

16. It's a lot easier to run three miles at the beach than in Phoenix (elevation friends, elevation).

17. There are a lot of things you can do with vegetables that put their nutritional value in question. But fennel really is a lot yummier if you braise it in butter.

18. Yoga is addicting.

19. No matter what the scale says, having a baby has permanently altered my shape. We suspected this to be true and it has been confirmed. Or maybe being old altered my body? After all, the pre-baby clothes fit just fine, but the pre-law school clothes, less so.

20. You can freeze tomatoes. Just wash them and freeze them. The little ones turn out like marbles and the big ones are like billiard balls. It's actually kind of cool.

21. As it turns out, you can have too many fresh vegetables, but that doesn't mean we won't do exactly the same thing next summer. Because which ones would we want to do without?

Things that make you go, huh?

At a certain parking garage in Madison, there is an elevator* for people with wheelchairs, strollers and other stair-prohibitive situations to get to ground level. It's great to be so handicap accessible, right?

EXCEPT they've hidden the elevator behind this extremely heavy metal door. Sure, there's a nice handicap-friendly handle on the door, but the door still weighs about fifty pounds and closes rather abrubtly the second you stop pushing on it. I have enough trouble with my able body and my stroller. I cannot imagine an eighty-year-old wheelchair-bound grandma holding that door open for herself while she wheels through to the elevator, even if her wheelchair is battery powered. So yes, this elevator is completely accessible to all disabled people who are also body builders. Everyone else will just have to take the stairs.

*I should say that this particular elevator is well worth the effort, if you can get to it. It has glass walls so you can look out on the city as you go up and down. Scout loves the windows, and I love admiring the courthouse that looks more like an acquarium-casino hybrid that anything government related. It's a lovely view.

Assistant Gardener

Warning! Proud Mommy Post

The past several weeks have been full of excitement for Scout. She has acquired a lot of new skills and had some new experiences.

With it being Father's Day, Virginia had to decide what to get for her Dad. She inspected this shirt thoroughly to see whether it required replacement.

No luck, it was still in fine shape. Of course, that was only until James wore it to a conference the next day, with an uncapped pen in his pocket. So the new shirt gift idea was a go after all.

Virginia got to swing for the first time. Overall, she liked it.

She is now pulling herself up on things.

mostly me

She has started eating things that are bigger than bite size.

We are still working on not shoving an entire pancake into your mouth at the same time.

This picture is here because I think it's cute.

And this is the last pointless picture with no justifiably relevant caption. But look at that smile!

And actually, if you look closely enough at the smile, you can see the new top tooth sticking out, so there is a point after all.

She has started crawling, at last!!

This is what we call the "army crawl" or "leopard crawl," depending on who you ask.

Some say it's just "scooting," but we pretty much ignore them. Deliberate forward motion is good enough to be crawling in my book!

And just because we were on the scooting/crawling border, she is now doing a full, up-on-all-fours crawl.

Life is full of simple joys.

Thoughts on Constant Parenting

This afternoon I had to take a little trip to the bathroom. I even took a book with me, silly me! I left the door a little ajar because I had a feeling Virginia would want to come be near me, as is often the case. As predicted, she promptly showed up, proudly pushing the door open and crawling right on in.

Scout is currently fascinated by doors. She loves to push them open and closed. So, she busied herself with the usual swinging back and forth of the bathroom door. Then she got a little excited and swung the door right into her face, whacking herself in the mouth right where her new teeth are emerging. Needless to say, drama ensued.

There was screaming, there were tears. I coached her to crawl over close enough that I could pick her up and put her on my lap for a few minutes to give her some comfort. She told me all about how awful it had been and how that mean door whacked her right in the face. I tried to be as sympathetic as possible.

Finally, she calmed down and began spinning the toilet paper on its holder. I could see that it would all be on the floor shortly if she didn't find other entertainment. So, I pulled a few soap samples from the basket on the back to the toilet, showed her how nicely they rattle, and put her and them back on the floor to play while I finished my business.

At this point, I started thinking about a friend who was recently asked whether becoming a parent isn't really a selfish decision. And I'd been philosophically pondering this question for several days. But now, with my daughter trying to pull her soap from the edge of the bathtub, I just had to laugh. Anyone who thinks parenting is selfish has no idea what parenting is all about. Whatever it started out as, it very quickly becomes a major commitment and a lifelong lesson in service unlike any other.

There are a lot of jobs that are very demanding. But most of them don't follow you into the bathroom. Even if a crisis happens while you're in there, it usually just has to wait a minute or two until your personal business is taken care of. Parenting is its own special kind of work with no bathroom breaks, no sick days and very little shift work.

How Scout Plays Peek-a-Boo

This is hiding

Notice how the corners of the cloth are pulled down?


And this is peeking

Notice that the corners are now up.

After all, if she actually covered her eyes, she might miss seeing your wonder where she's gone, and that would be no fun.

Now that we have a one-year-old

Some things are still the same (every book must come off the shelf).

Some things are messier.

And life involves a lot more posing.

Especially when she's gotten into something and spread it all over the floor.

I wonder where she gets it from?
And, my personal favorite. Her hair is long enough for some great pigtails (and a fauxhawk, but I didn't take a picture of that).

At Least I Got What I Wanted

Because nobody has a complaint department anymore...

Around 4:40 this afternoon, our modem stopped working. This came as only a mild surprise since at about 4:15 Scout was holding it in her hands, eating it like a sandwich, and then slammed it into the floor. In addition to the aforementioned interaction with our one-year-old, we knew it was a modem problem because the modem is typically alight with various flashing and steady green lights. Now, only the power light was on, and it was red. Not a good sign.

So, we called our internet service provider, who also provides the modem. And just because I know you're wondering, that provider is AT&T. We don't use them because we like them. We use them because they are the only carrier who will give us ESPN 360, and James loves College Football. But I digress....

James graciously took the first turn on the phone, spent ten minutes giving the automated system as much information as possible and finally got to speak with a real person. This person said that the red light means the modem is shot, the modem (which is only a few months old) is no longer under warranty, and we must buy a new modem. He puts James on hold for about five minutes, then comes back with a phone number to call to order a new modem. We're not thrilled about the money, but we need our internet more than our $50.

So James calls the new number and speaks with a nice woman in Texas who says that she can't help us. He must call another number, which she gives him. Bear in mind that every one of these phone calls involves the same ten minute automated system maze navigation before you can speak with anyone. He calls the new number and learns that whoever this is has closed for the day. They're only open until 6:00 Eastern and it's now 5:20 in Wisconsin (we've been at it about 35 minutes).

My turn. I call the original number again. I've been through this little maze a number of times and I know that if you just start pushing buttons at random, you get on the fast track to a customer service representative and the person you'll talk to is more likely to know what they're talking about. So, I push my random buttons and speak with a guy named Renee who concurs that the modem is shot and says I'll need to order a new one. Oh, and he's sorry for the inconvenience of having to call so many different numbers. So Renee checks his little computer (two minutes on hold), which tells him that whatever customer service place is supposed to service us will be open for another half hour. So he's going to transfer me to them. At 5:34, I start holding. At 5:57, I stop holding. Either every customer in Madison is calling them with a problem or they're not actually open anymore. And I'd rather complain to a person than be on hold anyway, right? Possibly my favorite thing about being on hold with AT&T is that they keep telling you help is available online. If I'd just long onto att.com, they could probably solve my problem faster, which would be great if my problem weren't the fact that the internet isn't working.

So, being the tenacious sort, I call in again. This time I'm more patient, go through the slower maze, answering more automated questions. Whoever I speak with this time also says that I need a new modem. And he apologizes for the inconvenience of me having been on hold so long. It seems like he might have some other direction for me, but he suddenly disappears entirely. I have been hung up on.

Not to be defeated so easily, I call one more time. It should be noted that at this point James has left and Virginia has grown bored with the books I'm trying to use to entertain her and is
now pushing random buttons on my computer. The screen display was upside down by the time she was done. Great. Anyway, on this call I once again push 0 a bunch of times and, after surrendering minimal information, I speak with a very nice woman who, of course, apologizes for the inconvenience of...well, she couldn't actually put all of what had happened to me/us in words. But she tried valiantly, and I politely tried not to laugh. This time I told her that I needed a new modem. I figured yet another diagnosis would just waste time. She still checked and concurred that, yep, the red power light means you need a new modem. Then, wonder of wonders, she said something helpful! If you want a new modem really quickly, you can just go to an AT&T store and buy one. Tonight even. She gives me the addresses and phone numbers of three such stores in Madison. And if they don't have a modem, Best Buy will. There's hope! With a little luck, we can be blissfully back online tonight! I call the store, and they don't even close until 8pm.

I start to call James to give him the good news, but Virginia has a little meltdown and needs to be put to bed for any further progress on the modem problem will be permitted. That's fine, they're open until 8. To bed she goes, and I call James to tell him where the store is. As we're finishing our conversation, I glance at the modem and notice that there are green lights now. In fact, the power light is green. The ethernet light is green. And only the DSL light is red. I do the standard fix of unplugging everything, waiting fifteen seconds, then plugging it all back in. The lights flash, they flash some more, and suddenly, they're all green! I open up my laptop, get the screen display turned right side up again, and open up Mozilla. Low and behold, the internet is fine. Everything is fine. For no apparent reason, the modem has returned from the dead.

It is now 6:35 p.m. And while I am a little chagrined that two irretrievable hours of my life have been donated to customer service calls, I am also feeling a little grateful that I never did get to speak with anyone who would take my credit card number and send me a new modem. Because it probably would have taken at least two hours to convince them they wanted to let me send it back for a refund.